Of Balance and Restoration.

Well, given my recent burnout from endgame raiding, and the departure of yet another dear friend from Chaotic Divinity, I decided to take a break from Wulf. In his place I started work on one of my alt characters, a Tauren Druid called Stormpaw:



The Druid levelling experience is quite different to my experiences with Hunters. They don't have the damage output of a Hunter that knows what he's doing, so more often than not they end up having to outlast an opponent with healing, or, where possible, by taking on the form of a big bloody bear:



(Don't ask me why Stormpaw has only one horn, but his bear form has two, blame Blizzard's crappy modelling.)

It's a very different style of play, one that I'm still learning. Funnily enough, it feels kinda "lonely" not to have a pet at my side when I'm questing solo, but the class itself provides new challenges.

Healing's tricky for a Druid. Most of our powerful spells have a 2-3 second casting time on them (which becomes even longer if you're being hit), and that's a long time in a boss fight. If you're the only healer in the group, you're having to constantly guess who's likely to need healing and direct your heals around that. They're also pretty mana-intensive, and I'm usually running out of mana in an extended fight if I try and cross heal a group. That said, as long as I load up on the +Int gear, I should be fine.

The other side if the coin is tanking. In Bear form, Stormpaw can happily substitute for a warrior, but I'm still struggling to get to grips with handling multiple mobs and keeping them from attacking the casters.

PVP's pretty fun as well, got dragged into Warsong Gulch by a mate yesterday. Moonfire and Entangling Roots really help with taking out enemy flag carriers, and Storm's no slouch in melee range either. I managed 95 HKs in one game and got the winning flag cap.

I'm not about to give up Wulf right now, but I'm enjoying this break and seeing the game from a different perspective.