Deflated

 A while back, some of my old college pals invited me to join them in starting fresh in WoW classic; they'd all played a fair bit of WoW, mostly Horde, and wanted to try the old content in new ways, playing classes they hadn't played before, Alliance toons to experience new content, and so on.  So I did.

I played Everquest back in the day, mostly on my druid, and did some raiding.  In those days, raiding as a druid meant being part of the healing squad, pretty much.  And not the strongest part, either.  I spent a lot of raids with my toon staring at the floor, and me staring at health bars and the healer chat, counting full heal rotation heals.  It was stressful (no one wants to miss a full heal and let the raid down).  

It was also fun sometimes, heck, a lot of the time.  I loved being the pull team healer, for example, hitting someone with a regen just before they went out, and then waiting til they flopped (monks) to heal them up so they could jump into the fight.

What I never played was a tank.  I remember one time, in Velious, when we healers were standing back, and some small dragonny mobs spawned and just chewed through us in no time; and one of the tanks was wondering how it was we'd died so fast, not thinking about his armor and the fact that people were always focused on healing him up.  

Anyway, I wanted to be a tank, so I rolled a paladin.  And our group played on Sunday afternoons, and we could use voice, and that was just lovely to hear friends' voices from far away, and to move through stuff that was totally new to me, if not to them.

I joined a guild, and learned more about tanking from other paladins, and got bit by the bug a bit so leveled up my paladin faster than the group.  That was my bad in some ways because it meant the group wasn't having as much fun with challenging stuff.  I should, in retrospect, have leveled up another toon (a druid, as it happens, a dps druid).

But it gave me a chance to help on small raids and stuff, which was fun enough, except that I wasn't geared enough to be a tank, and there were way better tanks, so I ended up healing.  And that meant I couldn't roll on tank gear, because I was, for the guild, a healer, and that was frustrating in some ways.  At least I didn't have to look at the floor or count in a full heal rotation.  I was very much being carried by the better geared folks, so what I did wasn't that important, anyway.

My friends were hitting 50, but I was 60, and somewhat raid geared (the lowest level raid geared).  (My druid was also 60.)

Then TBC hit.  And as of May, my old computer couldn't handle the graphics.  So I ordered a new computer, and was out of the game for a couple of months, most of the summer in fact.  When I came back, I was further behind the guild than before.  And the guild fractured, and I joined a new guild started by a friend.

Then my friend M's computer couldn't handle the graphics, but M isn't in the greatest place financially, so wasn't quick to think about buying a new computer (I offered, but M didn't want that).  And M was the one who'd played the game most fully, and played at the highest non-raiding levels.

A and D, the remaining friends, had 60 level toons, and so we decided to try doing TBC content together, and that was fun.  They'd done it before, but I hadn't at all.  I leveled my paladin to play with guildmates, but played my druid pretty much only with A and D (having learned a bit of my lesson).

A couple of weeks ago, though, another update messed up A's ability to load the game.  So we didn't play.  

Meanwhile, in the new guild: people need tanks for non-raid stuff, but were months ahead of me, doing heroics (a higher level instance), and I didn't have the time or inclination to do the work to be able to do heroics.  (Because it becomes work...)  So if I can fit in a raid (low level, and thus basically being carried by others), it's as dps, which I suck at as a tank paladin.  If I did the work to get to heroics, then I could tank for heroics, but would never be tanking for raids because we have well-geared raid tanks, and so on.

So I thought, hey, I'll bring up my dps rogue, and maybe do dps.

And I spent a lot of time this short break doing that, and got my rogue almost to 59.  I have a friend with a 60 paladin and we could partner if I get to 60 in TBC.  

But yesterday, some friends in the guild were looking for a tank for a non-heroic instance, and I offered my Paladin.  Great.  We were short a healer, however.  And then one of the more geared tanks came on, and I said I'd be happy to heal, so I healed.  And we did the instance twice, and it was pretty good.  MUCH better the second time, mostly because I did a better job healing than I had and positioned myself better.  But it was also stressful because we wiped a couple times the first go, and while no one was cranky at me, and all were kind, I felt bad because I wasn't healing so well.  (I have gear for healing, but not great...)  I was thinking about changing over to being a healing paladin rather than a tanking paladin.

Then yesterday, D and I got together to do a bit of content, and D (who is A's partner) said that A wasn't really interested in getting a new computer, and was pretty much thinking they're done with WoW.  And that's also the feeling I get from M.  They've started playing a newer game, Guild Wars 2, and that works well on their computers.  And it's all new content for them.

Of the three friends, D is the one who I know least well from before days, and the one who drives me a bit crazy with their play sometimes.  

We finished up early, because I was tired (because of all the time on the rogue).  

Then, last night, I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about health bars and healing and blah blah.  Not fun.  It made me really think about not wanting to be a healer primarily.

I don't know if I'm that interested in playing WoW without my old pals to group with on Sunday afternoons.  I feel like I spend a lot of time on whichever toon doing the same thing.  On the rogue it's: sneak, approach mob, hit 5 (high damage sneak attack), hit 3 (attack haste), hit 2, hit 2, hit 2, hit 2, hit 4...  

I don't feel like working to get able to do heroics.  I don't want to heal on raids or groups.  And when I'm honest with myself, I don't want to hit the same keys over and over for pixels.

I'm feeling sort of deflated right now.