Thursday, March 18, 2010

I am... A Druid

My second character to 80 was a druid.  I will surely be posting a lot more about that character because that one is, less used, which means not uber geared.  That alone makes for many chances to get grumpy over stupid people. 

While the druid was not the second character I made it was the second character I leveled up all the way.  Most of the time I just give up in the 20s.  Made a DK to use as a bank alt and leveled it to max out professions but over all I was not that happy with how DKs work.  I also made a rogue, a priest and a paladin at some point, all stopped in the 20s.  I might go back to them some day.  The druid however, that interested me.  More so after the looking for dungeon tool came out.  I liked the idea of instant query with my baby bear, but more on that in another post.

Leveling a druid is like is cheating.  Whoever says that hunters are ez-mode to level has never played a druid, that's for sure.  Hunters take a lot more work and effort then a druid.  Don't get me wrong, I love my hunter but if they ever decided to make class changes, I would level a ton of druids and then change them to the other classes.  A monkey could level a druid fast.  Add heirloom items and that monkey will be breezing from 1 to 80 in no time.
 
Now don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that druid's are ez-mode game play, any class can be ez-mode, but with even the slightest idea how to play the game the druid can fill any role, even more so early on.  That is what makes it like cheating.  Need a tank, you got one, need a healer, you got one.  Sure, neither of the two roles will rule without some talents to back them up but early on it does not matter much.

The bear can take all the elites you need to for the quests you will get.  I remember one quest on my hunter where I needed to kill a 42 elite that had 2 people with him.  I got the quest at around 36 and figured I would try it.  Needless to say I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter.  I tried it a few more times with different approaches all to no avail. However, same quest with the bear, I got the quest, ran right up to the guy and smacked the every loving crap out of him.  Sure, I had to pop out to heal once, but handled him and his two little friends without even breaking a sweat.

After taking a little bit of a beating you can pop out and heal yourself and then go right back to attacking.  There is no down time for a druid.  Rarely, and I do mean rarely, will you ever need to stop to drink and you never need to stop to eat because you can heal yourself.  Sure, the rut between 35-55 seemed to take forever, but once you hit 55 you might as well be 80.  Now you have entered no skill territory.  Do a few quests in silithus, mostly for the one cooking recipe that will help get past that 275 hump, is why I choose the make that my leveling area, and it will get you to 58. 

When you get to outlands it will take literally no time to get from 58 to 68 if you have a sugar daddy toon to get you your flying skill.  Then at 68 when you enter northrend it is almost 80.  Sure, 12 levels is not "almost" 80, but with epic flight form, at 70, and cold weather flying you can move though quests at the speed of light.

Collection quests as a druid!  Are you kidding me?  Fly over and pick up what you need.  Mobs there? Who cares, they might hit you once or twice but you got what you needed and you move along.  Why do they even waste my 2 minutes to make me go collect these things, just award me the gold and experience for talking to the guy.  It is not like his quest is going to take any time.  It is just busy work.

So you say that the quest is in an area where you can't fly?  Then just stealth your way there.  Do what you need to do. Leave.  Nice and simple.  One of those long quests where you need to fight your way through 100s of mobs to get to that one boss one in the back?  Just stealth through and kill the boss and stealth out.

How about using your stone to get out and having to wait for a cooldown?  Not as bad with a druid, you can go to moonglade.  Not perfect, but makes getting out of a hard place a lot easier.  The time it saves is sometimes a hell of a lot less then waiting for your stone to come off cooldown.

Now admittedly I have not leveled all the classes in the game but being I do read a lot and do make an effort to know what the people around me in the raid can do, I think it is safe to say that the druid has leveling made.  No class has as many tools at it's disposal.  The ease of everything as a druid is crazy.

I love my druid, not only because leveling it was fun as can be because of the ease but because it gives me the chance to experience other parts of the game, all other parts, all in one character.

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