This past week, New Moon started trying something new. We have decided to offer an Alt night every two weeks for Karazhan. This past Thursday was the first Kara Alt Night. The problem was that our guild is short on healing alts.

I leveled most of the way to 70 as a Retribution Paladin. It is a terrific leveling tree and it’s the way to go for speedy leveling as a Pally. In my mid-60’s, I changed my spec to Protection to be the tankadin I am today.

To allow our main healers to bring alts to Kara, I decided to change my spec to Holy, just for this run. I was lucky enough to be collecting Healadin gear in Kara ever since I went in there, so gear wise I was in good shape. I was also secretly hoping that the gear would hide my inexperience in main healing, and it did a fair job at making me look good.

I had a little bit of a hard time remembering my new spells, namely Divine Illumination, Divine Favor and Holy Shock; other then that, I felt pretty good about my performance. However, it was awkward being in the back. A tankadin is always front and center. My instinct was to run in and whack-whack-whack. As a healer, you will be in the rear most of the time, away from the action. It was a change, but the best place to adjust to that as a Pally is in Kara. I say that because I would still toss the occasional Exorcism during fights, as well as a Hammer of Wrath if people didn’t need healing at the time. Heck, I was even able to look around more and cast Hammer of Justice on the pesky mob that went after a caster, giving the tanks time to get that mob back. And I can’t forget the best part of all … bubbling. I would occasionally get the affections of a nasty. There’s nothing like bubbling and continuing to heal without missing a beat.

As I said, I managed to hold my own, until we hit bosses. The length of those fights started giving me mana issues. 70% seemed to be the magic number. Around 70% through the fight, I would go out of mana. Now remember, I’m technically over geared for Attumen, Moroes and Maiden with over half of my healing gear coming from Karazhan, so I was surprised by the mana issues. I think I need to chat with some healadins to see if I’m missing something on mana regeneration/conservation. I know better use of the Holy Paladin Talents would have helped, but I don’t think that would have been enough.

All-in-all, I felt pretty good about the night. I think Holy is a fun tree to get deep into and I enjoyed main healing, at least in Karazhan. I think I could do Holy every once in a while; and now, having tried all three trees as a main spec, I can finally say that I’ve done the Paladin Trifecta. But for the time being, I’m back in my tanking clothes ready for the front line again. That’s where my heart and the Light tell me I belong.