Guest Post: Boomkin… er… Resto… er… Boomkin?… er… Resto? LFG

I was trying to catch up on my blog reading today, which has gotten woefully behind, and saw Bell’s request for some guest blogging to get her through the holidays. There are several druid blogs in my rotation of things to read, and I’ve thought of starting one myself, but thought… meh… who has the time? Look at poor Bell always juggling a bazillion things and lamenting her lack of time in her blog. But one blog entry I thought I might be able to pull off, and help out a blogger who I very much enjoy in the process.

So here’s my story about why I’m not level 80.

Syll, my main toon (whazzup, Duskwood?), is about 300,000 xp from level 80. 300,000 xp. That’s… what… 2 hours of playtime, max? And last night I could have done it. I could have finished it up, seen my achievement blasted through guild chat, whooped it all up. I mean, everything was in line in the universe for this to happen. My husband had actually FALLEN ASLEEP and wouldn’t have even noticed if I was playing late into the evening. I was well-fed, but had some holiday snacks on standby (peanut brittle ftw!). Kids were bathed and tucked in and settled into that perfectly peaceful rhythm of the almost-snore of youth. I had rested xp all the way to 80. I settled into my computer chair and played… for half an hour. I then turned my computer off and went to watch the latest offering Netflix had sent my way.

Why, gentle reader, you may ask? A fine question. The reason is I can’t choose between Boomkin and Resto and, until I reach 80, I don’t have to.

A little history may be in order here. Syll was my first WOW toon, and for a long, long, looooong time, he was my only WOW toon. I picked a druid because it was inconceivable to me how someone could NOT play a druid based upon their abilities and flexibility. And I wanted to heal. It’s just part of who I am. So poor Sylly was a healer from the moment he hit Azerothian soil. Not that he minded. It took him months to realize that every friend he made quickly out leveled him… he was happy making new ones. He was content to bore every mob he ever met to death, merrily popping HOTs on himself along the way. He didn’t KNOW the pure exhilaration of nuking 5 things into the ground at once. He didn’t KNOW that corpse runs could be occurrences only experienced due to moments of sheer stupidity on the part of his operator, but took them as a matter of course if more than, say 2-3 mobs at his level decided to take a bite out of his butt. He was straight Resto from level 1-70.
Tree all the way. He ended up a T5-T6 raider in the end, with a full complement of sweet badge/raid epics and a plus heals number (remember those?) that was always welcome wherever he went. He had his own style for rolling out HOTs and tossing innervates and such around that was a joy to behold. And he was happy… until…

Until I leveled a mage. It’s true. I broke down and rolled an alt. I never intended for her to be played. She was actually created at the behest of a guildie as part of an off-color joke. I leveled her, slowly at first. She almost died off at about level 40. Anyone who’s leveled a mage to, say, 50 knows why. But I began to love her. It was so much FUN to have huge amounts of unbridled whoopass at my disposal. I feverishly worked to get her to 70 before the expansion, and poor Syll only got to come out for raids and to farm mats for raiding. I still loved him, but why would someone want to do dailies on a tree when they could do them with an ice mage???

Then word came of the expansion, and in a fit of misery and despair at the thought of Syll wading through ten levels of quests at a snail's pace, I got an idea. Picture me here rubbing my hands together and looking like the Grinch when he got HIS wonderful, awful idea of how to keep Christmas from coming. I could level Syll BOOMKIN! (Feverish light in my eyes). Switch him over into a gleefully fat, goofily wonderful owl beast just to speed up the leveling process, to take out some of the agony of crawling through quest content. (Mad cackles). My guildies wouldn’t be ready to raid for weeks anyway, I reasoned, so they won’t need Sylly’s uber leet heals; they’d never miss them. And I’d switch back to Resto as soon as I dinged 80.

Which is why I haven’t dinged 80, of course. Because being a Boomkin is SO MUCH FUN! Holy Cats (as Bricco would say)! I’ve been running around Northrend just nuking everything to the GROUND! Running ORANGE QUESTS without thinking twice about it. Dancing with everyone, everywhere, at the drop of a hat because… lol… well you’ve seen the Boomkin dance, right? I’m having a blast!

Now, I know full well that this unchecked DPS will come to an end soon. Syll is a healer at heart. Hell, I never even took Healbot off my interface, so for 10 levels I’ve still been tracking everyone’s health everywhere I go, and hopping in to help out the healers in a pinch. I like the support role that a healer plays. And I still have Aannie, my mage, who is waiting patiently at level 71 for me to take her out of park and let her reduce all of Northrend to tiny bits. Also, my guild recruited me as a healer, and I get great satisfaction out of being part of our healing corps. But, for one more day, I’m still lingering at 79, like Wendy flying off to face pirates and Indians with Peter Pan before having to grow up and leave the nursery. Maybe two more days. Yes, definitely two more days… or perhaps three...

Recruit-A-Friend Revisited

Once upon a time I posted a short rant about Recruit-A-Friend. I was mostly in a bad mood that day, and it showed. However, now that I've actually participated in the Recruit-A-Friend program, I'm a bit more qualified to report upon the pros and cons of the program.

Shall we get started?

Pros
Ding! Ding! Dingdingdingding...
You gain triple experience from both mobs and quests. This causes levels to speed by, and you can have a level 60 in a couple days with little effort (level 60 is when triple experience ends). A red quest for SM can give around 17550 experience, catapulting a level 31 to level 32. Stocks runs can give two or three levels, both from mob experience and quest turn-ins, even when the run is lead by a level 70.

LFM...NOT!
The great advantage of the triple experience requires that you be grouped with the linked account and be within a certain level range. This encourages group play. Besides enabling the buddy system on a PvP server (where you're less likely to be ganked unless they're ridiculously higher level than you), it also means less downtime in the form of looking for members for a group quest or dangers of high-level mobs catching you unawares. If you pick classes that compliment each other, you gain a lot of experience and can adapt to many different situations. Also, you can get higher level quests done at a lower level, increasing the xp gain you receive from turning them in.

New Class, No Hassle
If you've always wanted to play X class but never had time to seriously level an alt, the triple experience smooths the way for you. Even if you simply need an alt at high level so you can get them max rank of a beneficial profession, such as alchemy or inscription, that you just don't have room for on your main, this is an effective means of gaining it. As well, you can try out a role you've never filled before, such as tanking instead of healing or DPS.

Cons
Penniless and Friendless
If your friend is using an account, likely they have no money. Triple experience gains speed you through questing areas and levels like no other, but what comes with levels? Skills and spells that need to be trained. Training costs progressively more and more money, but you're not doing enough quests to make that money. Therefore, it's an intense monetary burden upon the person who recruited the friend to supply money for both rapidly-levelling characters so that they can train and improve. In addition, since less quests are needed for levelling, reputation gains falter behind. If you want a certain class and race but want another race's mount, this is a detriment.

That Look is SO Last Month
You're doing less quests, making less money, and blowing through zones. At some point, you're going to notice your greens from VC and WC just aren't cutting it, and you haven't been picking much up along the way. You're stuck; do you keep going as you have, do you rope a 70 into some instance runs, do you grab a group and hope what you want drops and no one else needs it, or do you buy yourself some equivalent level greens which you also may/may not outstrip in just a few hours? It's a difficult question.

What Does This Button Do?
When in a group, mobs often die fairly quickly, before you're even through a full rotation. Group settings against squishy mobs often favor burst damage moves rather than a damage-over-time or a debuff setup. You can settle into a pattern of what works and works quickly, especially if you notice your partner is killing the mob before your DoT gets two ticks. You're training skills, but you're never using them. Some don't get bound or even read. I cannot speak personally for everyone who uses this levelling system, but my lock is at level 32/33 at the moment, and I only have a basic grasp of how to play her. I do not know what all my buttons are for or how to use them in a real rotation. I barely even know how to spec, because if I take too long to make a decision, the points pile up. Though my partner does not have the same difficulty (he's played a paladin before), I'm looking at all the different curses and have only the barest grasp of what works in what situations.

*~*~*

There are pros and cons to every system, as is evident. Of course, there are the bonuses of the free month and the Zhevra Mount, and it's all going to amount to personal choice. I'm going to feel incredibly noob on my lock and every other character levelled this way for a while, but hopefully I can figure it out.

All comments and additions to the list welcome.

Also, opinions: are there any races that actually look good on the Zhevra?