When I started writing this post the below was to be the introduction to the real point of the post, but when the “introduction” was closer to 500 words I just abandoned that idea.
A long time ago (back when Molten Core was a relevant raid to run) I played a Druid. What spec I was is irrelevant since there only was one “accepted”, and that was restoration. Innervate was the 31-point talent back then and if you didn’t have it you didn’t fulfill your role of “Priest mana-battery”, and thus was useless. Needless to say it wasn’t very fun, so I quit that Druid.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for almost four years, the painful memories of raiding with a Druid passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, my interest in it was piqued once again.
Having recently come back from a long hiatus from WoW I leveled my Blood Elf Hunter from 70 to 80 and tried out all the stuff that I had apparently missed. I also had a Blood Elf Paladin that previously had been my main, but for some reason I can’t even remember now I decided that healing was done for me and from now on I would be a mindless DPS and forget all about responsibilities like keeping a tank alive and moving out of fires.
It was an interesting experience, and I didn’t have to play more than halfway through the first zone before I decided that this was actually… fun. So I leveled the huntard to 80 in no time at all (QuestHelper is a wonderful tool that reminded me of WAR), crafted myself some epics and tried my hand at raiding. All was gold and green forests… until they announced that they would redo the Druid bear and cat forms.
So I, in my strange mind, decided to throw all that I had previously done under the bus and continue my old level 60 Night Elf Druid on another realm.
Actually the new forms are not the entire reason why I did it. Running around in Dalaran I saw Druids wearing the Dreamwalker set, and I thought it looked awesome. Secondly I had previously raided with a healing Paladin, and it was basically a two-button experience. From what I read about Paladins when I came back not much seemed to have changed, while Druids on the other hand had like seven different kinds of healing spells now. Maybe it wasn’t healing that was the boring part, but just Paladin’s two-button-healing?
That was my hope when I continued the Druid with the goal of becoming a restoration Druid wearing the Dreamwalker set. But the experience of leveling an Alliance toon instead of a Horde was much different, and that was originally the purpose of this post. But, alas, I fail at making points. So, to be continued.