Back-dating this one to the date Sandy dinged.
Welp, in the interest of completeness, Sandy dinged a few weeks ago to hit 11. I picked the Combat tree, and so far, so good. The DPS these guys can do is incredible. I'm not sure how close I would get with cat form at 11, but I'm mowing guys down so quickly I barely have to heal up before I'm after the next "kill x of y" mob. That's not all bad. In fact, I've come to enjoy the x of y quests a little more recently as Sandy's started cutting through them like butter.
(I know, it's the worst Paint hack ever, but I couldn't stand Sarah staring at me like that.)
Though I still think the leveling is a little too easy, and though I'd much rather be playing Jal, I have to admit playing a rogue is a lot more fun at this point than it was before. Before, I was sort of going through the paces, checking out the blood elf starting zone and enjoying the eye candy. Now, I have moments of, "Hey, going rogue is a lot of fun."
Folks that have read this blog off and on for a few years know that my favorite part of being a balance druid, now that I can't pretend to tank any more, is when things get out of hand and I'm forced to off-heal. The rogue seems to offer a much different approach to gaming. I enjoy DPSing as balance, but the rotation mastery has, in my experience, been a little too methodical. I'm sure there are rotations for rogues that I'd need to learn at end game too, but just the melee factor makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a little more fun.
I mean, as a boomkin, I'm just shifting from one target to another and spamming wrath/moonfire/starfire/etc etc. It's not quite like healing, which feels a little bit more like a mini-game (watch the life meters! Watch the debuff icons! Healz healz healz!), but there are still times, particularly in my flirtation with raiding, that make balance feel a little disconnected from the game. You're almost playing a bit trip version of WoW rather than engaging with a true Multi-User Shared Hallucination. The fantasy, in-the-story feel breaks down considerably. I think there's at least a chance that rogue dps promotes a more connected game experience, if only because you're forced to move next to your next target before whacking it.
I did enjoy soloing Lord Roccor in cat form, but this is a different ball of wax completely.
In other news, sheesh, stop opening the Pandaria beta to more schmoes! I mean, honestly, by the time I get to it, everyone else is going to be freakin' masters. If you don't beta test, you're hamstrung in the worst way when new expansions are released. I complain about this enough that you'd think it was a stump speech, but the overly broad beta test really does bother me. Heck, folks in my blog roll are already getting our rotation for Mists down. That really kills much of the fun of the expansions for me.
Finally, I've recently been getting the Jal itch back. Pretty sure I'll reactivate for a month -- at least long enough to grab my flaming treants before Mists comes. There's something about that armor bonus that's highly motivating. Part of me wants to spend the month finally getting my, what, 14 or 15 year-old Ultima Online character's music skill to 100% first, but I'll probably skip poor Thopas again to get Jal his shoulders.
