Diverted in Dustwallow

I really like the melancholy (and slightly threatening, for low level Horde) feel of Ashenvale, with its beauty and its ruins and the waves lapping at Zoram Strand. Blackfathom Deeps nicely carries this through, with a (long) sand-floored cavern introducing the partially ruined temple.

Having recently tanked Blackfathom a couple of times Oswyn had to go to Dustwallow Marsh for Expert First Aid - Under Wraps and (non-violently) crossed paths with a high level Night Elf. It occurred to me that I'd never given the Alliance faction much of a go - although I levelled a druid to (I think) 38 and a hunter to somewhere in the 50s these were always solo characters as alts to my Horde main(s). So, given the comparatively early stage of the game, I thought I should give Alliance a proper go.

My initial plan was for a Night Elf warrior as a straight swap - female, since NE warriors should be female - but that character model is a stand-alone advert for diversity in gaming (seriously, look at the idle animation or sword and shield attack animation) so she only got as far as level 5. I reasoned that if I was going to play a male Night Elf he might as well be a druid, so new Duillnar is now level 31...

Levelling a druid is an odd experience. Up to level 10 it's a question of casting from afar and then when the enemy gets close finishing them off with a stick - familiar as far as I can tell to all casters. At level 10 you get bear form and so can now switch to claws, then at level 20 with cat form the game changes and casting largely goes out of the window (except for healing after fights). The contrast between the durable bear and fragile cat took a while to sink in, and prowl got me into a few situations which then went horribly wrong, but overall I'm really enjoying the class.

To me the class balance in the original game is really quite impressive. Druids have a very broad toolbox but only have access to a fraction of those tools at any one time, and deciding whether to switch forms to access other tools along with the limitations of the associated form takes some getting used to. I'm slowly getting better at those decisions but making many mistakes along the way.

The challenge level of the game is also enjoyable - camps of humanoid mobs are often quite threatening when level appropriate, and often a short-term group or careful planning and use of resources are needed where in the modern game you'd expect to win through alone.

Overall I'm still conflicted about the Alliance - the quests and overall feel are rather more bland, but also have a coherence that the mish-mash Horde lack. It's also much more populated which can be a drawback in some questing spots but holds out hope for more options in the end game.

So far I'm pretty happy with it though. Druids give so many options in any questing group, while for dungeons I've be solidly tanking (Deadmines three times and Blackfathom Deeps once - really enjoying the disarm immunity and snare escapes in the latter!). The limited toolbox but many toolboxes thing is frustrating at times but overall I think I'd now find it hard to give up.

I'd rather be tanking (at least in Classic)

In the last week or so I've had the chance to run some dungeons in Classic - Wailing Caverns (twice), Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Depths (twice). On all but one of the BFD runs I was tanking, and overall these experiences have convinced me that that's the way I prefer it.

I consider myself a reasonable tank though I still have plenty I could do better - I have a tendency to forget about some of my longer, emergency cooldowns but also should improve with things like marking secondary kill targets and reorganising after messy pulls. But generally things go OK and my healers are happy.

Things are also helped by players generally understanding that this isn't the modern game, going at a sensible pace and remembering to use crowd control where necessary.

I spent the second half of my DPS run of Blackfathom trying to work out how to suggest to the tank that we swap roles. He wasn't the worst sort of tank (those ones who have taken the role to get into the group but thinks it's just DPSing with a shield - or even on one occasion I remember with a two-hander!) but didn't seem to know how the theory translates into practice. If you're a healer or squishy DPS in that situation you just try to make the best of it, but instead I found myself in a sort of halfway house - going to fetch untanked casters who were attacking the healer, or swapping to my shield to interrupt (no Pummel yet!). We exchanged a few whispers and he was clearly trying, but not really succeeding.

One thing I didn't ask, but will do next time in the same situation, is ask "would you rather be DPSing?".

In Battle for Azeroth I've also now run the three dungeons initially available to the Horde and I was struck by how raid boss design has bled over into dungeons, with things like the Tainted Blood debuff being needed to beat Transfusion on Priestess Alun'za. On one hand this is unsurprising as the great majority of players must have raid experience now, but it also means that really before entering a dungeon you should read up on it. At this stage in the expansion it's reasonable to expect this awareness, but I wonder how Looking For Group went in the early stages.

As an aside Grulnak is currently two bubbles off level 112, and while I'm enjoying the single player story of BfA it's Classic that has me gripped.