I put almost all points in shadow but I do miss healing.  I did a ZF group last night and we had a druid healer, but the tank would get frightfully low on hp so I would toss some shields.  Then on the gauntlet event, the healer died.  I was NOT doing that again so I dropped shadowform and kept the tank up.  The healer asked for a rez during combat and when I had no mana, so their awareness wasn’t very good.  But we got through everything even though I had to drop shadowform to heal a second time, and I got a blue neck piece and staff!

I then went and learned basically all my heals in case that happens again.  It’s too bad you don’t get another bar when you turn shadow; I can’t just flip bars like druids can.  I forgot so much skills cost to learn.  I had around 40g and had 11 at the end of that.  Whoops.  Good thing my mage can make gold fairly easily.

So I’ve leveled as fire from 1 to 60 but today I am respeccing to frost.  Fire is a thirsty, thirsty spec and on the advice of a friend I took improved scorch to help that. It did help but you have to watch stacks.  That’s not a problem, I kind of like that, but when I went to solo even level 40 dungeons and I got my ass kicked, I decided to go frost.  I need to be able to solo farm to make gold and fire can barely handle 2 level 45 elites in a row without going OOM.   I hope to switch back to it later at some point, since I really enjoy ignite lighting fools on fire. When it triggers and the mob or players bursts into flames, it’s so rewarding.

I played a bit of frost today and comparing the two specs isn’t really fair.  Frost has frostbolt, cone of cold, frost nova, and blizzard.  Right?  Fire has Fireball, Scorch, Flamestrike, Fire Blast and depending on talents, Pyroblast and Blast Wave.  Only, frost seems to hit just as hard with only frostbolt, and uses way less mana.  In fact, I am getting crits with JUST FROSTBOLT that rival regular hits with pyroblast, a skill that is a talent AND takes 6 freaking seconds to cast.  I was flabberghasted by that.

Now I will say that as Fire I only ran into two spots that had fire immune mobs.  That little spot in Arathi Highlands and the volano in Un’goro.  I have a feeling there are more water elementals than fire; a whole island of them in Stranglethorn Vale, ones in lakes like in Eastern Plaguelands, etc.

Lots and LOTS of mobs use fire, starting with the Defias Pillagers, pirates in Stranglethorn, etc.  I’ve only seen maybe 2 that used frost spells, and that wasn’t until 50+.  You don’t even see arcane until Eastern Plaguelands anyway.

In short, fire is more fun but frost is better, if just boring boring boring.

I find myself trying to be helpful on my fire mage but it doesn’t always turn out so well.  I was on my mount in Tanaris and I noticed a horde druid getting trained by a few mobs.  I dismounted, frost nova’d, and thought I’d blink myself out of there, being cleverly helpful.  Well I didn’t notice I was low on mana from recasting all my stuff so I used nova, the druid ran off happily and I got dazed and beat to death.

Then today I was in Western Plaguelands and noticed a douchebag horde frost mage starting an AOE pull.  I find it especially obnoxious to do in an open area with other players.  Anyway this person rounds up like 5 ghouls but they happened to aggro an Alliance paladin somewhat near by.  The guy watches the paladin get aggro, walks up, does nothing, then just runs off.  I bounced to the paladin, nova’d as one goes and yelled RUN.  Well, he doesn’t, he invites me to group and tries to fight them.  I had started to run but I came back to help and guess what.  We both died.  Sigh.

Oh and the warlock that laughed at me when spell batching caused me to overpull and almost die? Fuck you Necropost.  On the upside since the servers don’t have CRZ, or group finder, I will just note this name down and if they need anything ever, refuse them. HA.

So far people in classic almost across the board have been lovely.  Passing out buffs, helping each other randomly with mobs one way or another, grouping up for quests and waiting for everyone to get all of their items, etc etc.

Well, one guy today, Warriorbeast, asked for 1 more for the Captains Chest quest.  I PM’d him, no invite.  He asks again, I respond in general, no invite.  Maybe 3 minutes later he invites, only then he engages the mob, kills it, says he’s done and drops party.  I wasn’t even there yet.   He then ends with “wsp for inv in the future’.  I did, asshole.

The hunter however, Netharen, waits for me to get down there and keeps the group active, for me to try to loot it anyway.  I could not, so he offered to stay and kill it again, which we did.  A horde paladin named Sna even jumped in to help  The nice players far FAR outnumber the jerks but since you cannot jump servers any more, it’s good to note those being impolite.

When I started in Wrath I began with a mage.  Around the time ICC came around, I had switched to a priest who I still consider to be my main and played it as such through the rest of Wrath, Cata, and MoP.  I always thought to myself if classic came around again or if I could start back in 2004 I would make a priest.

Well classic DID come around and a made a priest.  Only, healing is brutal.  Like just as bad if not worse than healing at the beginning of Cataclysm.  Having to drink after EVERY SINGLE pull is crazy. So I swapped to shadow.  Only even at 42 it feels like it takes an entire mana bar to kill anything and killing is SO SLOW.

I’m now  26 on my mage and I LOVE IT.  Free drinks and food.  Blink, frost nova, sheep, counterspell, teleports, and spells that feel they can hit a mob from MUCH FURTHER AWAY.  So I think perhaps my mage will be my first 60 and I wasn’t wrong to start with one in Wrath.

Of course in Wrath I started as arcane and now I’m fire, but that’s neither here nor there.  I guess frost is better but I really like killing things with fire, so, oh well.