Introduction to Hana and Gillien

I don't expect anybody will be reading this since it's the first entry and essentially a test post, but I figure someone might and a first post shouldn't come out of nowhere. So welcome to Flash of Moonfire. I wanted the name of this blog to reflect the nature of my two 70s, a balance druid and a holy paladin, hence the portmanteau of two of their most commonly cast spells; Moonfire and Flash of Light. Hana is my main. I've played since her pre-BC and Gillien was started as an alt during BC (and if the Death Knight class pleases me, they will be joined by a DK named Marno).

Phaelia of Resto4Life and the guys at WoWInsider say that you should know your focus before blogging and I realized that I would not be very useful as a hardcore balance druid blogger. I'm not a number cruncher. I'm not a high level raider. I'm really not comfortable giving advice that random strangers will argue to death with me about. And possibly most of all, I have a paladin alt that I love talking about because of all the zany things that I've done with him that people generally do not do as a holy paladin (like tank Magister's Terrace or dps heroic Shattered Halls; and I did both with the exact same spec I use to pvp and heal raids). So this is a blog that is about both druids and paladins; the only two classes that are capable of tanking, healing, and dpsing, and quite frankly it's that flexibility in them that I like so much. If that makes my focus a little broad, so be it. I'll let my thoughts go where they go.

I don't really recall exactly why I chose to be a druid when I first started playing, but I'm fairly certain it had to do with shapeshifting. The idea that the druid class could mimic the basic mechanics of a warrior, or a rogue, or even a mage through shapeshifting was probably not a consideration of my newbie self. Seeing as I had no idea of what those classes even did in a party, gaining these things called rage bars and energy bars meant nothing to me. I'm quite certain I just wanted the ability to turn into animals. As for becoming a balance druid, the reason for choosing that talent tree was quite simple. The first attack a druid has is Wrath. It is a spell. I got my first talent point at level 10. What to put it in? Why improving the casting speed of what was obviously my main attack of course!

Hana went balance and never looked back. *But*, I believe in the ability of a hybrid class to be a hybrid and that they should embrace their hybridness. Hana healed at least part of every instance she ran on her way to 60. She healed most of the instances on her way to 70. It wasn't until she entered Kara that something changed. Suddenly being a balance druid wasn't just my preferred playstyle because it was fun while I was soloing. If I was going to raid, I wanted to be the best balance druid I could be. I respecced… to balance, but with raid talents in mind. Once I started raiding, I also realized that I wasn't healing as much anymore. When my guild did heroics, I went as dps, and when we first started Kara I quite frankly couldn't heal a heroic in my off-spec healing gear. This was way before the advent of ZA and the T5-level badge gear.

So I created a little sidejob to handle my joy of healing, and Gillien was born. Being part of a Horde guild in early BC we had zero holy paladins since not everyone had had a chance to level one, let alone to 70, and those we had went prot, so I figured this would be a good way to be helpful. My guild at the time broke up shortly thereafter, but I kept playing Gillien, because I found that he could do the two things that Hana couldn't (at least not in high level content); he could heal, and surprisingly enough, he could tank too, even while holy specced. Now he is the only pally I know that has tanked every BC instance from Ramps to Magister's Terrace with 41 points in holy (and I did it while leveling too, so with the exception of a couple 70 instances, they were done in nothing but the blues I got from quests or as dungeon drops).

These days Hana is sitting pretty in ZA/badge gear and Gillien is in a mix of PvP and Kara. Originally Gillien was going to be my PvP outlet… I wanted to be that annoying holy paladin that runs around all the battlefield healing people but nobody can manage to kill him because he bubbles and runs… but I found out that I don't like 70s pvp enough to devote him fully to that.

For the rest of BC Hana has been joining my friends in Oporotheca in attempting to nail a ZA bear mount before patch 3.0 blows that possibility out of the water (we almost got it thus week… almost!). When I'm not playing her I'm most likely on Gillien trying to get another my last few badges for the super nice healing mace, trying to get his epic Netherwing mount, or doing pvp/arena, more or less in that order. Then once WotLK is out, it'll be all about getting my feathery butt up to Northrend to give those bad guys a taste of moonfire. :)