Moonlighting: Leveling a Boomkin

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Occasionally, I'll be featuring some guest posts on my blog. Today, once again we have the rawr-tastic Aeman, who will go into detail about leveling a different-spec druid - particularly, a feathery, antlered, small-headed wrath-throwing moonkin.

Guestcat returns! I've had my druid since Day 1 of classic WoW, and he's always been Feral - even in 40-man raiding, in spite of my raid leader's preconceptions. Ok, "always" is not entirely accurate: I did spec resto when our guild lacked healers in T4/5 content (lasted about a month - sorry Averna!). I also spent a few months as a Moonkin and found I quite enjoyed the playstyle. Though I returned to tanking eventually, a seed had been planted.

Fast-forward to a few months before Lich King's arrival, when my girlfriend and I each leveled a pair of alts to 60 with Recruit-A-Friend. To take advantage of the level-granting aspect, we also powerleveled a druid each to 31.95 and boosted them all the way to 60.95. And amusingly, those druids are approaching level 74 while the paladin, warlock, mage, and shaman we leveled are still sitting at 60. More to the point of this post, we leveled them from 60-73 as Moonkins.

Playing a Moonkin after four years with a (still active) feral main character has been an interesting experience. In a way, most of my reflexes are still feral-oriented... if I'm jumped, I'm as likely to go Bear Form and Bash as I am to go Moonkin and Typhoon. But on the up side, I'm also much more ready to use feral abilities if I need to. Both of my characters use the same skill macros (excepting talents of course), so I'm quick to hop into cat form and stealth if I have to, for instance. I've known some Balance or Resto druids who never even consider their feral forms, and it makes me happy that I can use Pounce or Bash offensively and then easily shift into spellcasting. In fact, I've been considering macros to make that kind of form-shifting even easier... perhaps a /cancelform on my feral bars.

Leveling the moonkin has also made me better aware of my non-feral abilities while I'm on my main. I use Barkskin and Nature's Grasp significantly more than I used to, and I'm more aware of Roots and Cyclone, too. PvPing as a Moonkin was an eye-opening experience. As a feral I do long for Typhoon, though. ^.^

So no amazing truths or hidden wisdoms to reveal, except for this: especially if you play a hybrid class, check out the way the other specs live. No reason to go leveling a second character of the same class (unless you happen to play the best farming class in the game - woot @ herbing in flight form!), but try a respec. It'll help you understand the other specs of your class, and might even teach you a bit about your own in the process.




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