Don't Knock It 'til You Try It

I'm tried it, I'm knocking it.

We didn't have much going on this weekend. I saw one of our raiding mages looking for a 2s partner for his MS Warrior alt. I offered to respec Holy and give it try. He was somewhat surprised at the offer but took me up on it nevertheless.

We thought Warrior/Paladin, we've got 1600 easy street.

We thought wrong.

Admittedly, I haven't been Holy since level 60, so I wasn't as familiar with all the tools as I could have been. Spells like Divine Illumination were new concepts to me.

I thought my gear was respectable. I had about 215 resilience along with 9k health and 10k mana.

I was generally the target of the opposing team, and it seemed my blue bar was much more the target than the green. It seemed like every class had someone to drain or burn my mana, and once my mana was gone I had no way to regenerate it quickly.

We wound up going 5-8 on the night, and going from 1500 to around 1450. We played 13 matches. Would you believe we got the Nagrand arena 13 times.

We fought a Disc Priest/MS Warrior team where the Priest literally did nothing but make laps around a pillar and through HoTs on the Warrior. I would have to stand still to cast to heal, so my Warrior team mate either had to stop chasing the Priest or go out of line of sight for heals. On top of that, the Priest was burning my mana.

We fought an SL/SL Lock / Resto Druid team that was very frustrating. We couldn't kill either one.

We got destroyed by a MM Hunter / Ice Mage team.

We fought a Resto Shaman / Fire Mage team that completely left me alone. I simply couldn't outheal their damage output.

We did well against Rogue/Rogue (no mana drain there), and BM Hunter/Fire Mage.

We beat a Warlock / Druid team. The Druid tried to do the whole Druid lock down thing with Feral Charges, and Cyclones. My Warrior was able to take down the Warlock while the Druid kept me locked down.

At the end of the night, we were more frustrated than anything else. It seemed like I was weakest class a healer in 2v2 Arena. Every class seemed to have an answer for all my tricks, while I didn't have an answer for any of theirs. I felt like my Warrior would have been better off with a Druid or a Disc. Priest. Strangely enough all of those guys had teams already (1600+ teams as well).

I've suggested to my partner that next time we try it with me as Ret. We will just try to burn teams down and out damage their healing. We might not do much better, but we should give it try.

If Ret goes better, I'll keep the Holy gear for Battlegrounds when I don't want to respec, and for PVE healing.