Whilst I read blogs and listen to podcasts that talk about upcoming changes, I don’t go out of my way to test things. I have not set foot on the PTR, and I like it that way. Oftentimes a change will be reported as a nerf, and then not have as big an impact on the game as expected when it goes live. Things change so much on the PTR that I’d rather focus on playing the real game, and cope with the changes when they happen.

There’s a nice write-up on the Rolling HoTs blog with some testing that Sylly has done by changing her rotation before the patch hit. This gives me hope that my healing style will not need to change too dramatically, and will remain a primarily pro-active style. I’m at work today, so I hope that the servers will be back up and operational by the time I get home. I won’t be raiding tonight. I’ll be sorting out my main and dual specs, and making sure all my UI mods work.

For any other druids out there, like me, who don’t feel prepared for the 3.1 patch, I’d like to recommend the excellent Restokin list of resources for all druids in 3.1 – I’m going to be finding that very useful I think

I’ve thought a bit more about what made me uncomfortable with the whole moonkin thing, and I think it’s the competitive nature of dps. I know it doesn’t have to be competitive, but I have a very strong competitive streak (my husband won’t let me play Monopoly any more!), and I found myself quite disappointed that I wasn’t putting out more damage.

As a healer it’s easy to keep my competitiveness at bay. Everyone knows healing meters are fundamentally flawed and not to be relied upon, and as long as people are staying alive, and my performance in the meters is comparable with the other healers I am quite happy.

For some reason I felt differently about dps. I felt I should be doing better. I felt that I ought to contribute more. Some of it is obviously gear shortages, as I’m still mostly wearing my healing gear for Moonkin form. Some of it is just inexperience showing (one boss fight it took me half the fight to get in range to cast my little tree friends, which will have lost a lot of valuable dps time). I’m sure it will come with practice, and as I still intend to has a dual spec of Moonkin with patch 3.1 eventually hits, I’m sure I’ll get more practice. I think I need to lower my expectations a little of how much I can contribute as a Moonkin, at least in the short term, but I still feel much more valuable as a healer.

I’m sure when dual specs are implemented there will be some people who find themselves happy in either of their selected specs, and able to switch whenever needed. For me, I suspect I’ll be a tree as much as possible, keeping the moonkin option for solo farming or for those times when I want to do something with friends who already have enough healing.