I started leveling a Druid, and so far it’s been progressing quite well. I’ve managed to get all the way to 64, been doing dungeoning since I hit 15 and unlocked the dungeon finder. It’s been a blast so far, somehow managing to capture quite a lot of what I used to like about healing, though I’ve been able to completly ignore mana management as mana seems to be rather limitless at lower levels. I’m starting to notice at least some lowering of my current mana in certain pulls now though!

I’m kind of hoping that mana remains somewhat of a non-issue though, not completly but being more dependant on your casting style rather than a reliance on managing cooldowns which just seems utterly uninteresting. Based on what I’ve seen, Druids don’t seem to get a mana regeneration cooldown though, so that’s a good sign things will continue in a interesting manner!

It’s also been great revisiting the old dungeons, even with their changes in Cataclysm. I hadn’t even had the opportunity to do all of them since the changes, so seeing what’s happened has been interesting. The changes have been for the better for the most part I’d say, though part of the charm (and simultaneosly frustration) of the old designs may have been lost. Though the new layouts & helper objectives certainly make for a much smoother PUG experience, which is rather nice while trying to level through them.

Another fun part of the leveling has been meeting a bunch of people, though often only in solemn silence. It’s still been nice to see how well players often are able to understand each other while playing through the dungeons and repeated runs with the same group are nice because one has a better feel for both how quickly things die as well as the damage patterns of the tank which makes healing much smoother. Still, there were a few memorable personas, most strongly the group I ended up doing a spontaneous Emperor run with. We’d all been thrown into Detention Block of BRD together and after completing that part of the dungeon we still had a bonus objective left so we took a roundabout route and cleared that out. Afterwards, the tank just continued clearing and most of the group (⁴⁄₅) decided to stick around and we ended up clearing the whole dungeon. It was one of those nice moments of “let’s just do this” where no words ended up being needed everyone just went with the flow. Was also really nice seeing that was possible and not blocked of by Blizzard for some obscure reason, such as is the case with the two different parts of Stratholme.

A second memorable encounter ended up being with a gnome warrior I came across who came to fill in for our tank who had to leave (incidentally, also a gnome warrior). I ended up doing a couple other runs with her and while most of our communication consisted of /cheering at each other at the end of runs once we’d queued up again, doing dungeons with her was a pleasure as she had the most well measured pulls of any tank I can remember through this leveling experience. She also had a good measure of the mobs in the encounter as a consequence, meaning random damage to other group members was minimised which makes for a nicer healing experience and a smoother run in general (DPS can have more confidence in their job when not worried about dying).

All in all, it’s been a good experience so far and I hope this holds up even once I get to the Draenor dungeons. More interesting to see is how raid healing feels, as that’s where the core of the game is for me. Hopefully all ends well and this character actually gets far enough to see that content!

So, I ended up playing World of Warcraft again after taking a break (again) about a month or two into the current expansion (Warlords of Draenor). I had decided to take the break because I didn’t have anything to do that interested me at the time and ended up returning because I got the inspiration to start leveling some more classes to see if I could find something that I could see myself playing a bit more.

The first (and only so far) class I’ve started leveling up so far is a mage and it’s been quite fun so far. I’ve ended up getting to level 92, however with the leveling motivation & speed slowing significantly since hitting Warlord’s content. I find this quite interesting, as before I had rated Warlord’s as probably the best leveling experience so far, being so focused on story. This may however be its downfall, as I’ve already played two characters through the story, doing so another time with the very rigid quest layout isn’t overly motivating at this time.

Still, I would like to get the mage to 100 before I decied what class to level next, though I’m having some difficulty deciding what that class should be. I have some interest in leveling another pure DPS class, probably a warlock, however I’m already struggling to handle the instance queue times on the mage when I do decide to do them, so I don’t think I could handle it again. I might end up leveling another tank, though that runs into the problem of difficulties with getting back into raiding which is my main interest with the game, despite my current obsession with leveling.

The final option would be to level another healer, which is where I’m leaning currently, though I’m having a hard time choosing which class. I’ve grown somewhat disillusioned with my current main, a Holy priest, primarily because the healing style has changed so much from the one I enjoyed. I might just end up trying Disc, though having been a Holy player for so long & it being what made my truly enjoy the game back in the day, I’m having a somewhat hard time “betraying” “my” spec. The other alternatives are probably either a shaman or a monk, both with some drawbacks however (can’t be a Night Elf shaman, not sure I like the extra resource in Chi with the monk).

Still though with the healers, I’m not sure how well I would like the modern very spammy feeling healing style, though that was certainly applicable to the classes I’m considering at the time I most enjoyed priest healing (though admittedly monks didn’t exist yet). So all in all, I’m still in search for what would be my current best fit within the game, if there even is one that’s good enough for me to continue playing once I start reaching raiding again. Though then the challenge of finding a guild I would like to raid with begins, which might prove somewhat difficult.