Hirnek 29 - 43

I blew through the 30s and I got Hirnek to 43 today. Leveling with all the changes in experience requirements makes leveling easy! Especially when you use Jame's updated leveling guide. Of course, because he cut out all of the grinding sessions, Hirnek still doesn't have a mount (but I have travel form, so... so what?).

What am I finding? I'm re-discovering my deep love for druids in general. I'm finding that I'm having more fun with Hirnek than with Claz (don't be sad, Claz, you'll get to 70. I promise!). I think my play style fits with the shapeshifting better than with the ranged DPS. I seriously was grinding Claz today while eating: attack mob, pop trinket, let autoshoot fire while fixing my PB&J. I came back, set down the sandwich, attacked another mob while going back to the kitchen for a coke.

No, I'm not saying that Hunters are easysauce. Well, I used to tease a hunter I was guilded with back when I had Amantara about how easy hunters were, but I never really meant it. At the time I had a lot of angst about the state of the druid class and all the love that the hunters seemed to be getting. Yes, I'm still a little raw about how ferals got a huge amount of love when BC came out and then we got nerfed. And, when I really think about it, a level 68 druid with quest reward gear really shouldn't be able to take out a level 64 shaman, 62 warrior and 62 mage. Well, I shouldn't have been able to do it, since I'm so horrible at PvP. But it was still tough to take. I mean, I stuck with Amantara through a lot of teasing because of how terrible ferals were at one point and then when the love pillow (as opposed to the nerf stick) was gently pushed up to our furry little faces...

Anyway. No, I'm not saying that hunters are easy. They're not. They take a lot of skill to properly equip, spec and learn the tactics for. Playing a hunter means a lot of backend preparation and learning before you even go into the instance.

*Cough* Not that I'm saying druids are easy. They're not. Druids take less backend preparation (because there's less itemization? Hmmm...) than hunters, but they're such that you have to be more on your toes and adjust your tactics a bit more. In my opinion!. Hunters seem to have a lot more options to recover if things aren't going the way they plan: the mob comes after you, feign death or intimidate or trap. The mob comes at your druid? Run away!

You see, I think I have a touch of ADD. I'm not a person that can sit back and zone out while I grind, which you can do with a hunter. I need to be jumping around, popping out of kitty, warstomping, moonfiring, casting a HoT, switching to bear, enraging and then pounding the living crap out of whatever dared to raise its fist/claw/tentacle against my nature-fueled fury. Can you tell I used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons?

Anyway, there's a lot of camaraderie in the druid community. Just look through the official forums (don't bother with the "nerf druid!!!111!1!" QQ Posts) and you'll see that, for the most part, druids help each other out. Sure, we'll tear into each other in the BGs, but if you play a druid, you're more likely than not to get a /wave and /salute from a passing highbie druid than you would if you played a rogue and another rogue happened by. This is especially true with the old school druids. Those of us that grew up through the "you need to innervate if you want to see MC" period of WoW are more likely to help each other out or at least ignore each other. I mean, go to Moonglade and you'll see a lot of silly bears, kitties, trees and hawt nelf ladies (*cough*) dancing together, lions and panthers all together in a big hippie love fest.

And I get all caught up in that. Amantara would sit and fish in Moonglade for hours. If I noticed a cow druid trying to do his Aquatic form quest, I would lead him to the right spot. I've ganked groups of lowibies but left the druid alone (and even maby do a /lick and /hug while he tried to stick up for his friends). I just get off a bit on the druid.

Ugh. I'm such a WoWNerd.