Ding! 65 & Patch 2.1

Though this picture is in the Blade's Edge Mountains, most of the experience for level 65 came from smacking down firewing blood elves, arakkoa, bonecrushers, and, most recently, the mobs down in the bone wastes. And yes, the firewing smacks mean that I went with Scryers in the great Scryer vs. Aldor debate. The rewards are indistinguishable that I often wonder if Blizzard didn't set them up as a sort of joke to see the community go crazy trying to decide between six and half a dozen. For me, I already had some second-rate fire resist leatherworking patterns, so I went Scryer for arcane resist and the very nice healing staff. We'll see if I finish the rep grinding.

Patch 2.1 has a couple of additions to keep in mind for moonkin. The new clock-like timer for timed spells is okay, though I was pretty scared to notice pre-2.1 that I could "feel" 10 seconds extremely accurately and really don't need the GUI to help me out there. That moonkin form now, like cat and bear, has its own replacement action bar is nice, but the first time you notice can also a bit disconcerting. That is, when you go to moonkin form, your #1 action bar is now blank except for number 1, which is still melee attack. I had a moonkin bar set up for #3 and a separate bar for #1, and would occasionally use #1 for accessing a couple of extra spells in 'kin form, so discovering this in the middle of a fight was initially a bit disorienting. Still, now we've got another bar to fill, which is great.

A few bits from the patch notes that might be useful.

Barkskin now reduces all damage taken, with its duration reduced to 12 seconds and cooldown reduced to 1 minute. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate this ability can be used while frozen, incapacitated, or cowering in fear. That functionality was already present, but not listed in the tooltip.

Omen of Clarity: This spell is no longer castable in Tree of Life Form or Moonkin Form.

Mangle(Bear): Damage increased by 15%, but bonus threat reduced so that overall threat generation will be unchanged.

Subtlety(Restoration Talent) now applies to all spells, not just healing spells.

Teleport: Moonglade: This spell is no longer castable in Tree of Life Form.

Barkskin means that it goes on my moonkin action bar now as a good armor buff. I am going to miss Omen of Clarity; that's a good talent to combine with melee-based strategies like a panzerkin. Mangle is interesting only in that there's no threat increase, so it doesn't help bears tank better than 'kin than before. And now panzers don't want Subtlety at all, as tanking means wanting threat.

I'm thrown off a bit why trees can't teleport to moonglade. Why bother with this? If it's a humanoid form, let it teleport. Hope kin aren't next.