Rethinking Holy/Ret

The other night at Saur, well, we had quite a few problems getting him down. It was mostly avoiding marks, but we were also getting marks too soon. I was assigned to heal Marks #1 & 2, so I am prepared to be healing for most of the fight. Somehow, though, we ended up with 5+ Marks before frenzy, so I got quite a few attempts at just practicing my role - healing 2 Marks all night long.

After attempt #3 I felt like Holy Light wasn't giving me as much joy as it usually does. It's a teensy bit too slow. Marks are both taking consistent, predictable, light damage... So it's really a good job for Flash of Light. I swapped over to my FoL (critspec) spec and gave it a try.

It actually works quite well, FoL could keep up just fine with most damage, and my gear now contains enough haste that an elemental shaman in the raid means I'm at a 1.0 second Flash of Light. It's a nice pace for Marks, and Glyph of Holy Shock allowed me a bit of freedom between Flashes on raid or tanks.

My biggest problem is once we have two Marks I'm assigned to heal, it's hard to manage extra buttons that don't actively heal - most specifically, Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield. As we gear up and our healers and DPS get a bit more health, these stop gaps in healing won't seem as terrifying. In the meantime, though, critspec isn't going to work for me - I find myself needing to refresh buffs more often than I'm used to in bubblespec, and those are precious GCD's wasted not healing. After being so reluctant to lose my critspec three months ago, I just can't live without Divine Guardian. Or Glyph of Beacon of Light.

I initially thought "oh I'll respec and switch points around" but then I'd have have two of the exact same spec. It's fun to say that I'm double bubble but why have the exact same talents two times? If I want Divine Sacrifice for both specs, the only thing would be different would be glyphs and gear. I already carry around the gear for my FoL set (and even some random junk that isn't for either), I could just dedicate some more space in my bags to glyphs.

I could free up my dual spec for something else, although I don't know what that something would be. I have a dusty set of 226 tanking gear, but I'm not interested in raid tanking. It's fine for heroics, but I don't need to grind heroics on my raiding main. I haven't been Ret since... pre-Wrath. Madammayhem went Protection and I went Holy when we were level 60 and we haven't looked back. It's late enough in the expansion that picking up a new set of gear feels like a waste of time. Knowing full well that we are going to do the same Holy/Prot duo-pull-everything-in-the-zone-and-turn-in-the-quests grinding to 85, I doubt I'll need Ret then.

I guess my paladin can just be a Holy Paladin. It's certainly enough to keep her busy. Having the exact same talent build twice isn't so odd, right? I really do love bubblespec!