A thing I noticed thoughout my WoW career is the special relationship healers (especially priests) have towards their alts. Although after 2 years of WoW and with the relatively trivial leveling curve in this game almost everyone has at least one or more lvl 60 alts, healers and their alts are special case.

Most alts of non healer mains only exist "just for fun" to experience the basic gameplay with another class and do not occupy much gametime of their repective players. With healers this is different.


Let me explain using my own example:

As I started raiding nearly 1,5 years ago with my priestess and accquired a raiding spec (Disc/Holy), Is soon realized that farming was almost impossible to do efficently with a healing spec (this has been allieviated somewhat with the priest patch of 1.10 but the basic problem remains basically because of itemization). When you raid, you are generally expected to come prepared; that means you have to be able to finance your own potions, enchants and repair money. Guild banks generally only reimburse on things like flasks and some extraordinary wipefests during progression nights.

So this is where it starts for almost all priests. We don't start raising alts "just for fun" but out of the need for a "farming machine". I have chosen, as so many others,a rogue (hunters being the other popular choice).

Leveling my rogue up was innocent enough. It didn't took away much time from progessing my main. The problem starts of course, as all problems in WoW, after you reach the level cap. The natural desire to improve your char through better gear as well as the realiziation that PvP can actually be fun on a DPS class (most raiding priests I know are not very active in the PvP circus on their mains). This is where it becomes increasingly timeconsuming to progress your char and when it becomes taxing on the progression and identification of your main.

When following the WoW forums you will often read statements like "I raid with my priest, but my de facto main is a [insert DPS class here]". This is not only forum rant. Of all the priests I know, there is just one that onyl plays his priest while the other priests, myself included, generally log out from their main, after the raid is over and switch to our DPS alts.



Now this is problematic because of two reasons:

1. Although we can safely assume that 90% of char progression is made in a raiding environment, switching out of your main to an alt after raids deprives your main of the remaining 10% char progression. If you would PvP and farm with your main, the honor and reputation rewards could also be used to make your char more effective in raids.

2. Having a main for raid purposes only damages indentification with this char (as you possibly start to care more for your alt as for your main) and is a source for healer burnout.


The main culprit for this problem is of course healer itemization. Though one could spend his DKP also on some damage items, these are DKP that you will lack to spend on healing items, thus making you a less effective healer.



I would like to know how other healers and especially guilds deal with this problem. DKP discounts on misc damage items for healers, lessened farming requirements for those classes, gold transfers, or do you just live with it as it is.

This problem will be much more acute with the release of TBC. As TBC is basically a reset for all lvl 60 chars by voiding the raid time invested on char progression (mudflation) the sentiment on the boards is that not a few priests and druids will rather switch their alt with their mains, and thus already aggravating the preceived short supply of healers in the game.

Like many Priests, I have a 60 rogue alt.

It's just a farming toon and one I use for alt raids when I want a change of pace. Unlike many (it seems) I actually really enjoy playing a healer in raids, and I doubt I will ever shelf my Priest in favour of another class.

It's the warlocks that don't do alts.

Very interesting post.

I can identify with a lot of what you're saying. As a holy priest, I found myself rolling a rogue alt as my "farming" class. I ended up playing my priest exclusively in raids, and spending my non-raid time on my rogue. I got my rogue to lvl 60, then farmed instances to get the best possible gear I could in all slots, moving on to PvP up to rank 10 to fill out the rest. Recently I've been taking my rogue to the 20 man instances and Molten Core to pick up some raiding experience.

Certainly, I fell prey to the second of your concerns; that a healer who plays an alt more than a main loses focus, and indentifies increasingly with what should be a secondary character. However, at the point where I started having to raid on my rogue to get any upgrades, I eventually realised that no matter who my main was, I would always get to the point where an alt is required to have any non-raid-day progression available. I learned to appreciate my alt for what it should be - an occasional change of tempo and a chance to enjoy an alternative gameplay experience.

I think the solution for guilds is to allow an outlet for people to keep advancing their alts - if a player reaches a point with their alts where they can't get any more out of that character, they are vulnerable to a "grass is greener" syndrome, spurring a desire for main change. Even if you just have a guild 20-man once a week with alts allowed, as long as people can keep developing an alt then hopefully they can resist the temptation to main change.

Well, if you enjoy group pvp on the side, you can do some arena on the side for some good PVP/grinding gear, especially since you can spend a couple hours in the arena, and be done with it for the week, leaving you with plenty of time for raiding/farming.

Seems to have the opposite effect, actually. Alts help keep healers interested in the game... not necessarily because they don't enjoy healing, but because it's a good change of pace. Not to mention the fact that it's fun to be able to get upgrades quickly (most of us in Tier 2+ probably get one epic a month at best) - of course, this depends on your guild's policy regarding alts.

Personally, I have a paladin and a (horde) warrior. I actually use my paladin for farming, since it's easier and more efficient (no downtime, no deaths). My paladin is also a lot better at PvP, both due to gear and, well, heals. I can perform a passable imitation of a warrior by running around with my 2hander shouting "HALP! MY RAGE BAR IS BLUE!" and refusing to heal, but the warrior's great when I just want to kill lots of people.

Maybe I would agree with your point if I wasn't an herbalist. My druid was my first level 60 and always resto specced. Today I have 5 lvl 60s including a warlock and a hunter who can grind 10 times faster than my druid. But when I need to specifically farm money I will still log back in my druid. Because the most efficient way of farming money that I have found till today, out of 5 level 60s of different classes with many different professions each, has always been farming for herbs and sell them in the AH. My druid is my only herbalist and therefore he's my official money making char. You don't need to kill mobs to make money.

Before my Warlock got to 60 I wanted to get him some MC epics and then just respec to SM/DS and use him as my official grinding char. I did that, but at the end my warlock farming wasn't as efficient as my druid herb farming. It never in my whole wow life used my alts to farm for something that my druid needed. But I farmed everything all my alts needed with my druid.

I never rolled alts for farming. All my alts I made for fun. Most of them are still healers because I love healing and wanted to experience healing with different characters.

Today my druid isn't my main anymore, just because I don't think the class is fun compared to my other chars. I still love healing, but healing as a shaman or priest is tons more fun. I'm not sure how many of my alts am I gonna level to 70. But I am definetly lvling my shaman but because I love healing with it. I don't think BC is gonna make healers any more or less rare than what they are today. Those of us who like to heal will still like it and will keep playing healers regardless of how long we take to kill mobs. There are many other ways of farming with healer characters.

My main is a mage and quite capable of farming things of course, although not as ideal as some classes perhaps. Nonetheless, I have a Troll Rogue that skins, a Shaman that fishes, cooks and picks flowers and Hunter that picks flowers and mines (and other alts I just play for fun on occasion and use to make mooncloth). Although he is *by far* the worst equipped of them (talking greens here), the Hunter is the one I take out farming stuff simply because he can perform the two useful gathering professions and frankly, his killrate and ability to eventually solo almost any target is pretty damn good anyhow. I keep telling myself that I should gear him up a little but meh, I really dislike running alts even on farm-status content and the owl is the one doing most of the work when I farm as it is.

The only time I drag my main out for non-raids is BGs to keep the cheap combat pots and the occasional live strath money run or whatever. He's an enchanter and an engineer, while my shaman handles the alchemy end of things so I'm reasonably self-sufficient with the alt army feeding me mats and pots. Since I do like having those two professions on my main character, I simply couldn't see dropping one for a gathering option and without herbalism especially, I don't see farming as profitable in general. I do take the mage out for 5-mans on rare occasions I guess but that's mostly 45 minute baron runs for alts or other silliness and I will run him off to azshara when I need runes but frankly that's about it.

Personally, I've gone through this cycle twice so far.
I levelled my paladin and raided with him extensively. I rolled a warrior alt to have fun playing outside of raids. Eventually I changed mains and started raiding my warrior as main tank. As my out-of-raid fun time was no longer interesting with the war, I rolled a mage.

I think the point I'd make is the cycle isn't healer specific. There are two distinct aspects to the game - raiding, and not-raiding. Both are fun for different reasons. Not everybody plays both roles and it's not common to experience both roles on the same char - mainly due to the fact that *most* classes make sacrifices to be efficient in the raiding environment and it's expensive or not optimal to switch frequently. Some folk have a single char, and log on to the game only during raid times, putting it down for non-game activities. Some folk never raid. Some folk enjoy both aspects of the game and that typically requires multiple chars to enjoy both aspects efficiently (hence alts).

Transitioning a char from 'alt' to 'main' requires you to make the same sacrifices on the second char and you'll end up repeating the same process. Don't use your enjoyment of your alt played outside of the raiding environment as a good predictor of your raiding experience with that toon. I have many lvl 60 toons and I can honestly say, my least favorite class out-of-raids is warrior - even though it's by far my favorite raiding class. My favorite solo class is my warlock, but I despise the thought of raiding on it.

I've never said, that I don't like healing, in PvE at least. Raiding is basically problem solving and in PvE (i.e. Raid) healing is just as much part of the equation as is DPS and tanking.

Things are different when it comes to PvP though. The underlying psychology of PvP is very different from PvE raiding. You don't try to solve problems there. You want to choke the living crap out of your oppenent and healing other while they eviscerate (or nuke or execute or whatever), isn't half as much fun as doing the devastation yourself.

Remember this isn't a "staring at health bars sux" post, but rather about how large parts of the healing population deal with the "out ouf raid" experience of this game.


Regarding Herbalism and alternate ways of farming that VIB mentioned. My priestess has tailoring / enchanting, while my rogue alt collects herbs. While herbs are really an excellent moneymaker the best "cash crops" are those you need for raiding. So I really can't afford to sell my dreamfoil and gravemoss on the AH because i need them all for Greater Protection Potions as well as Magebloods (Major Mana Potions are cheaper to buy from the AH though, then to use the herbs for it). Gromsblood goes to the guildbank for flasks as well does Stonescale Eels from fishing. Nightfin Snappers are made into soup for personal use. So best stuff from herbalism and fishing ends up for personal and guild use and thus does not qualify for cash generation.

My alt was.... my druid /bonk

The guild I was in was direly short of druids... like raiding without MOTW. I had one that was 30 or so, so I leveled it as quickly as I could. Of course, a soon as I finished that, we recruited a bunch, and shortly after I hopped to a guild that had plenty. He is still really handy for picking weeds. After that I started working on a hunter as a farmer, but ended up spending more then I made with him, doing his D2 set. Now I'm working on a warrior, it's just what I do I guess.

I created my priest the day the game launched and right now my highest alts are a level 55 hunter and a lv 45 paladin (haven't played the paladin in around a year but I suspect if paladins could have been horde then I might have ended up changing mains).

I make money selling ore/bars/arcane crystals and exploiting people's stupidity in the AH. If I really need to grind something I borrow a friends char or ask one to grind with me.

I'm also one of the few priests I know who PvPs heavily. I have different PvP sets I use: damage or survivability or PvP heals depending on the situation and I've picked them up after the first few people of a given class who would use them on raids get them, or from BG exalted rewards, or from 20 mans, or off-spec items that no one else really wanted. I've been to rank 11 a few times but never had the grind in me to get the epic gear. As far as current raid itemization goes, ever since seeingthe ZHC I've been saying all healing gear should have a healing and half-that-healing-in-damage component. It's not a huge deal though, especially given how the TBC PvP system is going to reward win ratio over time.

I've never really regreted playing a priest and I find the *vast* majority of those whiny healer threads on the WoW boards are completely overblown. The only thing that has truly annoyed me about out-of-raid priesting is that I've always felt we should be the straight-up best PvP healers when specced for it and we're not.

I know a majority of healers can totally relate with what you are saying. Personally, I came from EQ to here and boxed multiple characters to grind AA's, I guess it followed me here. The guild provides for Titans for tanks, Black Lotus' for healers and general tradeskill items from raids for equipment and that's about it, including Nexus Shards for mains enchants.

Our ZG/AQ20 raids are not mandatory nor attendance/DKP based, people can just go whenever they feel like and with an alt if they wish, so alot of our healers just take their alts to them and the MC-Saturday pick up raids our guild members usually lead out of choice. However we do not allow alts to attend our mandatory raids (AQ40/Naxxramas, BWL now and then).

Personally, my favourite way is to ask a guild member for their details and use them to farm (bear in mind the EULA). However obviously, your computer must be good enough to do it, though you only need a mediocre computer at the worst to do it. When asking tried to keep in mind; nice person/farmed consumbles/raid alot/good player. Offer them maybe a small proportion of gold you've farmed and I personally farmed some Winterfall at Winterfall village in Winterspring, just as another faction to max and it provided E'ko and Winterfall Water for them (just a bonus really). I'd be very surprised if someone's guild here didn't have a person who used a fellow guild members account to farm/whatever. I personally will give my details to a guild member if they ask, bearing in mind they have good attitude, play decently and obviously trustworthy, just the typical friend really.

I'm not a big alt fan, I'd rather use a guild member's account and 2 box which in effect both of us benefit from; he gets more consumables/gold for raids and I get the same. His character is herbalist/alchemist, so both of us gain from the herbs I collect whilst farming (I don't sell herbs, I put them on a storage-mule as they will always come of use). Additionally, as you've stated with alts you may get the whole "grass is greener" syndrome and want to play it as your main. Alternatively though, people may just prefer an alt rather than using a guild member for many reasons, each to his/her own.

I currently use a guild members rogue and farm hell of alot. However he quit a while back, so I just renew the subscription and carry on farming, hoping he'll return too. As stated, I find this 'method' the best way, you and the person of the character you're boxing benefit from it. Which on the bigger picture is beneficial for the guild, or at least in my opinion it is.

I started with a warrior. At around level 40, I started a priest. I then switched between them for rested xp. My server had a transfer available, and I transfered the warrior with my guild, but since some of my friends stayed I left the priest (considered my alt at the time). The guild on the new server died, and the warrior was retired. I had taken engineering/enchanting on the priest, assuming the warrior would supply mats with mining. For a year, I never had an alt. I never felt like I had trouble getting raiding mats or gold. Ever.

Around this time, I decided that other people didn't know how to play a shaman, so I wanted to try one to see if they were really just terrible at it. I was pretty much completely right. I leveled the shaman to 60 and pvp'ed with it pretty consistently, enough to get rank 11 and exalted with AB (even though my grind group did WSG 90% of the time, I still got exalted AB faster). Around that time I got sick of PvP, and as my priest no longer needed anything from the lower raids, I would bring my shaman. My shaman leveled up with mining/herbalism. Herbalism was a huge money maker and supplied me with mats, but I could have easily had this on my priest if I hadn't wanted to keep both engineering and enchanting. Class doesnt matter for herbalism (stealth aside, that is).

The point is, at no time while actively raiding on my priest did I ever feel like I needed an alt for grinding, making money, or pvping. The reason I stopped pvping on my priest was because I wanted to try something different, and as a matter of fact I always felt like my shaman was a much weaker pvp class than my 21/30/0 specced priest. Burst damage doesn't necessarily win in group pvp. A team that heals more will (almost) always beat another team. If you can't get satisfaction out of healing someone in pvp, it's likely you're not getting satisfaction doing it in pve, either.

Most of the Warlocks that I know (or actually want to know, rather) do have alt. Not all of them are necessarily level 60, but they do play alts.

Myself, I have a 60 Mage, 58 Druid, and 29 Shaman as my alts, but I've also at played my GF's account on many occasions as an alt, which includes a 60 Priest, 60 Hunter, and 54 Paladin.

But healing classes often have DPS class alt is common, that's true.

I think it's just the sadness I feel over not being able to spec shadow. Smite dps is pathetic enough as is and knowing that with just a simple 40 gold I could rock house just makes me not even want to bother with my priest. It's far easier to just log over to my mage or rogue and rape things. I've also got a shaman and hunter both in the mid-50's, as well as a druid and warrior in the low 30's so I may just be a twink-whore.

I think it may just be the lack of instant-gratification damage spells. You'd probably notice that most priests roll alts that have abilities where you click a button and instantly get to see 500-2k damage pop up. Looking at my own guild, only one has a druid twink and none have warlock twinks. Yet almost everyone has a mage, rogue, warrior or hunter.

Honestly, the best fun I ever had was back in beta when mind blast was instant-cast.

60 rogue and 45 warrior :)

I dont make alts.
Everytime I even think of making an alt, the first thing that comes to my mind is "hey!, farm dreamfoil instead?" or "hey, you only have 150 whipper/NBD remaining! farm!" etc

I do PvP for fun with my Holy Priest. Every AB I join, I look for a blue-geared Warrior and tell myself, "Ok, I am gonna make his day" - then proceed to follow him around and heal him non-stop. In WSG, I follow/heal the flag carrier.

If I do feel the immense urge to play a DPS class - I'd rather use my friend's Naxx geared Rogue or Mage. Pure fun, no effort. Excuse me, but I just dont see the point of making alts.

Level 60 fury warrior. He probably doubles, maybe tripples my catform dps in a mix of blues/ZG epics.

I wouldn't complain at all if I could respec cheaply. Raid resto, at night respec feral and claw the hell out of shit. But nooooope. Talent specs should define your character, and it shouldn't be like another suit of armor, and a whole lot of other bullshit reasons that blizzard is obsessed with that only make their game less fun to play.

I have to agree with this.

I have a 60 mage, 60 warlock, 60 priest. I've raided on my priest through Naxx, my mage through MC/BWL/20mans, and my warlock in MC.

I love raiding on my priest. There's absoltuly nothing I'd rather be doing than learning new raid bosses on my priest =D PvP is only tolerable when I can afford to be shadow, and grinding ATM is no problem due to my shadow gear. (Which works sufficiently well that even holy grinding is faster with my priest than either of my others).

I love questing on my warlock. She's self sufficient, complex to control, and it's really easy to solo and have a ton of fun with her. I absolutly 100% despise raiding on my warlock. Tried it for a few weeks in alt MC clears- cannot stand it. Raiding strips all of the things I love best about my warlock, the multi dotting, complex pet control, etc- all of that stuff is muted or non existant in limited debuff raiding. Maybe I'll like her in the expansion- but chances are I'll probably still limit her to questing and making pots for me.

I love PvP on my mage! She gets into the middle of the action and the crowd control options really sync up with how I like to pvp. Mass explosions! Chaos! I can tolerate raiding on her for the gear (and the change of pace ocassionally) but she's a blast to PvP with and that and herbing is what I keep her around for.

I can and do do all of these things on my priest- especially when I'm able to raid as a shadow priest- but I <3 my alts for giving me solid alternatives when I'm stuck in a healer spec for difficult content. I don't mind being in a healer spec if I've got options- but playing a healing specced priest in anything but raids is pretty painful.

Luckily, atm I've got Beta.
I can be pure healbot on Live, and log over to my 67 shadow priest on Beta without paying a 50g respec fee every day =D

I raid with my priest, farm with my warrior for the typical reasons. As i leveled my warrior the appeal to pvp also shifted to the warrior, as i had been extremely active with my priest from the get go up to and including the early honor system. I was a big non-shadow solo PvP fan, so as instances progressed, and items grew in power i slowly was fed up with the way weapons were evolving opposed to caster gear (you get 70+ more top end, i get +10 more healing and 3 stamina).

I enjoy my priest much more overall, however i'll normally be found on my warrior while not in raids since there is a drastic difference in the amount of work that can be accomplished between the two in my freetime.

Then you have the DPS classes who succumb to rolling healers so they can actually join guilds :P. Of course, this is a somewhat hidden population as obviously the people in your raiding guild aren't faced with this problem.

In any event, even as a hunter, most of the farming I do is herb gathering. Repair costs aren't that bad (especially as a hunter), and a strong raiding community means that herbs are quite expensive. If I ever do want cold, hard cash - a guild strat live for ROs is more efficient than anything I can do solo. Solo farming is ridiculously inefficient even as a hunter. I must confess I don't see where the healers are coming from on this one, but that may just be my server economy.