My Baby's Druid

Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer, staring at . . . whatever it was I was staring at, when my 12-yr-old daughter came and said, "Mom, will you teach me how to use those things you use when you heal?"

I looked up.  "You mean Grid and Clique?"

When I first returned to healing in Burning Crusade, I had never really heard of healing addons.  But I noticed pretty quickly that I was not keeping up with some of the other healers.  One day, I asked our most senior Resto Druid (who also happened to be our raid leader) how he could heal so much.  He told me that he used Grid, which showed him when someone had aggro and was therefore going to need a heal, so he could cast a heal before they took much damage.

I was intrigued, so I did a little research.  I learned there was a spiffy addon called Clique, which would allow for one-touch targeting and healing, so to speak.  I downloaded Grid and Clique and went through the pain and agony (ok, not quite, but you know what I mean) of configuring Grid to display what I wanted, how I wanted.  Clique was much easier to configure, as all it involved was, basically, clicking on the spell I wanted bound to a mouse key or key combination.

I practiced on the battlegrounds (lots of opportunity to heal in a short amount of time) until I felt comfortable, then I started using it in raids.  And--oh, boy--it sure made a difference.

So when my daughter asked me about healing, I knew there was only one thing to do:  download Grid and Clique to her machine.  (I also included GridStatusHots and GridIndicatorCornerText.  And, yes, I realize I could have downloaded Healbot or something, but I've never worked with it, so it would have taken me longer to set up and figure out.)  I did a basic configuration of Grid for her--she only has three healing spells as a level 20 Druid--and set up Clique.  Then I showed her how it all worked.  (She giggled when she saw the countdowns I had set up to show the remaining time on her Rejuvenation and Regrowth spells.)

"I suggest," I told her, "that you go find something to kill where you can practice healing yourself with these key clicks, so you can get used to them.  You want it to be automatic in a dungeon, where you don't have to think about which key is what."

She gave me this "Oh, Mom, I'm perfectly capable of managing" look (her eyes didn't roll, but I'm sure they were tempted), and I headed to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.

Shortly afterward, I looked her direction and there she was, in a dungeon, not even breaking a sweat.  She took it for granted they would successfully complete the dungeon to the extent that she did not even tell me when they killed the final boss. (Rather than bouncing into the kitchen, eyes shining, saying, "I did it! I did it!"  Nope . . . just all in a day's gaming . . .)

And thus we see once again that many times, the difference between failure and success is having the right tools . . . or maybe it's just natural genetic talent.  /wink