I leveled a balance druid from 1-60 before the 1st druid revamp. It was pure pain. I recall one epic fight against an ogre caster in Feralas - the ogre could heal itself and I watched it refill its life bar several times as I struggled to kill it with my pitiful damage, no interrupts, and lack of mana. As I recall, feral was the leveling spec of choice back then. But I had no interest in spending all of my time as a cat, and feral was a piss-poor dps class too, so balance it was.

When the druid revamp happened and I had to turn into a giant owl-bear-thing in order to deal damage, I switched to resto. Druids were actually perfectly fine healers, but they were slightly looked down upon vs others for small groups because they had no OOC rez. And they were needed in the early raids because only druids & mages could remove curses.

It's a little strange to think of what the game was like back in the beginning. Three classes had tank specs, but only warriors could actually perform tanking duties. And only warriors got tanking gear. All of the healer classes had dps specs that people would laugh at you for using at the level cap. Why did they put all of those talents, spells, and options into the game and then not let you use them?

Reply