I wanted to try to keep from completely bouncing off of WoW after all my feelings about the War of the Thorns content. I decided that leveling something new from scratch would be fun and would keep me far away from the pre-expansion stuff for a while. Because I’m full of terrible ideas, I’m trying to level a priest via pugging dungeons.
This is DiscGrace, my new blood elf disc priest. It’s been a few years since I really played a priest, but in my heart my undead priest will always be my main. Now I’m trying to re-learn how to disc while subjecting myself to the best and worst of pugs in WoW. Either I’m going to get super good at priesting, or I’m going to ragequit MMOs for a while. At least I’ll get some good blogging out of it.
I leveled to 15 questing in the blood elf starting area. I like how quiet it is there, and how much has stayed the same since I first started playing the game. Once I could queue for dungeons I started running them and only questing a little to fill in the down time. I’m going to try to run them all in order if I can.
Deadmines: This was a reasonable group. I had a very nice bear tank. I was frustrated for a while because you don’t get atonement until around level 20, so I had to heal “properly” for this one. I hadn’t run many dungeons since the leveling changes last patch, so the time to kill the bosses was surprising to me. Other than that this was a smooth run.
Ragefire Chasm: Another reasonable group. I could get used to this. I had a monk tank this time. They were a little bit slow to pick up aggro but other than that there were no problems. People even said thank you when we were done!
Shadowfang Keep: My first wtf moment of this experiment. I’m amazed it took this long. Had a pally tank and a monk that kept rushing ahead and pulling. I finally had atonement at least and kept everybody alive fine even through some big pulls and various kinds of stupid. The wtf moment came about halfway through when the pally asked me “don’t you know how to atonement heal?”. That’s…what I was doing the whole time? Apparently they were mad that my largest heal on the meters was my shield, and nothing I could say seemed to placate them so I just gave up. Even the annoying monk that kept pulling stood up for me which was a shock. I ended up keeping my mouth shut for the rest of the run and just kept healing the same way I had been the whole time. Very odd.
So far I’ve made it to level 22 with only one relatively small incident. I’ll call that a win. I’m sure things will keep getting more interesting as I move into more complicated dungeons. Anybody want to take bets on how far I get before I get sick of pugs and give up?
Moonshine Mansion 
Discipline is not my best choice 🙂 It’s kinda interesting, but I prefer a more relaxed gameplay. My fingers were steaming when I tried LFR Tomb 🙂
I admit I liked it better back in Wrath, before smite-healing was a thing. Monk has been my go-to healer since they were introduced, but I really wanted to try something different for this pug experiment.
I go with Holy spec 🙂 Discipline is very cool for leveling, because it heals you upon beating mobs.
Sigh.. Yeah.. It’s always a surprise what you are gonna get. My advice? Add people who are cool to your friend list and schedule dungeon levelling with them. My Blood DK went from 65-90 with the same healer and dps across a few days. We had fun, chatted along, ran into nearly zero trouble.
Some days I have patience for pugs, but on others I’ll just leave the instance if I start seeing toxicity. The allied races made a lot of people level as tanks and healers just for a quick queue when they have no idea or inclination to learn how to play them.
Every once in a while you’ll get two buddies who dont care about the group, and make it nearly impossible to votekick if they start being toxic or causing unnecessary wipes (there are ways to get them to be fooled into kicking one another of course).
For one thing, I don’t get this stupid trend of meter comparing in low level dungeons.
I’ve seen more and more vote kicks starting calling “low dps” on a new player when dungeons are going perfectly fine and smooth.
With new players I always like to give advice and teach instead if the whole “go away noob, git gud” people throw at them, but recently had to make a vote to kick a new player an it made me feel terrible but there was no other way.
This druid tank with only one dagger equipped and no helm (Because “the helm was ugly and he turned into a bear so he didnt need it”). Now this could be a child playing but we quickly found it wasnt, when we gave some pointers, always being kind about it, saying “no worries, mate, we were all new to this once”, and he started arguing with us saying we were toxic and a bunch of things I wont repeat here.
I was healing and was the leader, and after rejecting the first couple of votes to kick him, trying to give him a chance to learn, I kept going oom (MW Monk) because he wasnt using mitigation. When I dared to point it out, he told me go go somewhere not very nice, and that I was the noob there because he was, and I quote “dodging” the bosses attacks. Some camera zoom allowed me to see that for him dodging meant moving left or right when the boss attacked.
After yet another attempt of coaching him, and him ignoring and cursing at us, I allowed the vote to pass.
And you know the silly thing? Maybe I like to suffer, but for me these negative enraging moments are easily compensated by when you get an amazing fun group, or when you and other veterans help a newbie get better and by the next couple of dungeons he’s made a huge improvement and is super happy 🙂
Oh man I hate when people try to vote kick in lowbie dungeons because of meters. Especially now when you have people of vastly different levels, with access to more or less of their spells. I look at the meters for my own curiosity but I won’t ever link them, even if someone asks. I’ll kick for trolling, toxicity, or afk but that’s about it. I’m all about helping new folks to learn IF they are actually open to learning. People like mr. “don’t you know how to atonement” just go straight on my ignore list so at least I won’t have to heal for them ever again.
Once upon a time I enjoyed the challenge of “healing through stupid” because it helped me become a stronger healer. Now if I ran into a tank like the druid you had, I’d probably just abandon and try again later. My sanity and time are precious commodities!
You can use Drums of Fury at level 20.
I don’t think anyone gets the Heroism spell until way up in the 60s, so … surprise them!
Good luck, I think that you will have a grand time.
I’m on a new server so I don’t have an alt that can make them. Maybe I can bum some off of a guildie. This sounds useful!
Typically first and last boss of a dungeon; I hope that you find some, they should be very cheap!
What a good idea to try to get back to the game. I have been thinking about the same thing. I haven’t played in almost a week
I really like dungeoning. I feel the same way as Lord; even just a “Hello” or “Thank you” in a group these days can make all the difference; It’s so nice when you come across players that are friendly and interesting in communicating.
Yeah, the one group where people actually said thank you really stood out. I got to take it for granted a little from playing FFXIV. I will keep doing my part to say hello and thanks at a minimum!