Ding! 92

Note: I'm not sure when 91 dinged. I'll try to find that somewhere.

Okay, it's been over a year since I've played with Jal, but it's ding time again. After some hoodlums convinced me that we needed to play a bit over Christmas break, I paid for a month of access so that our noob accounts (level 20 and under) could have at least one character in them able to create a party. It was an enjoyable weekend or two or three... We finished up Blackfathom Deeps, which was fun.

So, as long as I have a month of over 20 access, it was time to get Jal moving again. Somehow, I started out in Ashran, but eventually made my way to Elodor Fields.

I'll admit that I went back and forth a bit on whether I wanted to stay in Warlords. The questlines just weren't grabbing me. I spent a little time back in Pandaria, but only just enough to learn that the XP was crummy at level 91, and to really continue following the plot, I was going to have to run dungeons. I don't mind dungeons, but I really prefer PvE when I don't have hours to invest at a single sit-down. And I don't enjoy incredibly easy PvE, so back to WoD I went.

The off-spec is dead. Long live the off-spec.

I may have also been put off on how much easier balance druiding seems to have gotten. We have one heal spell, and, as far as I can tell, only one attack in cat form that awards combo points, and no finishing moves that'll use them up. (As I write this and read why, I'm guessing I picked the wrong affinity talent. I must have picked Guardian for some strange reason. That was a mistake...)

I'll agree with the OP here; no matter what Marodriss says in the reply, it's not easier to off-spec now. Before, I'd often drop into heal mode when a group or raid went crap, and, without changing spec, be able to off-heal reasonably well even if the main healer went down. Once, I even went into bear mode when a PUG lost its tank and we'd waited too long for a new one to show up. Surprisingly, with some amazing healing, we made it through about half of Lost City of the Tol'vir with a four-person group with an off-spec bear tank before a "real" tank showed up.

And no more Eclipse Bar is better?

Balance Druids suffered from having their gameplay focus around watching a UI bar. Eclipse has been replaced by an Astral Power resource, and the Legion gameplay is to keep up powerful DoTs, generate Astral Power, and spend it on either Starsurge or Starfall.

I don't know. How is Astral Power any less UI bar centric? I'm just staring at the icon for Starsurge. And hasn't healing always been a UI-watching game? I know it was when I secondary spec'd resto.

This new setup is not more fun. But more on that in another post.

What's important is this... DING!

I've got a few more Dings! to log from my month of wagon falling, which I'll fill in ASAPish. Finishing up level 91 wasn't great. I did eventually warm up to Warlords, but at this point, the PvE remained too easy, the NPCs weren't really growing on me yet, and the garrison mini-game seemed a timesink rather than a well-integrated portion of the game proper.