Still chugging along in classic, rolled a Shaman, because I am going through the horde side of things for the first time and what could be more iconic?

Did my first dungeon (RFC) as a healer (first time healing, and despite being elemental specced I seem to still be low enough level that doesn't matter much), and had a lot of fun with it. Looking forward to trying out Wailing Caverns soonish.

Went on questing, and just finished hitting 19. The Barrens is like a never-ending slew of quests. Like I turn in a quest, I get 2 more. I've been trying to free up a few quest log slots because my friend wants to do SFK and already has 3 quests for it he can share... but I am constantly at 19-20 quests. Hopefully within the next level or so this will slow down and I can clear out my log, go do a couple dungeons, and come back fresh for Stone Talon mountains. It'll actually be my first time ever setting foot in that zone (excluding getting carted around by a friend on a 2 seated flyer 10 years ago for trick or treating achievements), so I'm looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, I've been in the barrens for about 9 levels, from 10 to 19. In that time, my herbalism has gone from 20-25 up to ~45. Herbs are just so darn rare there. I had a quest that required me to turn in at Silverpine Forrest, so I ran on over there. In the 5-10 minute run from Undercity's zeplin to Silverpine, I went from 45 to 70 herbs. The difference in quantities of nodes is absurd. Sadly most of the low level herbs seem to be AHing for around vendor price, but still I am glad to finally get the skill up a bit and unlock the next tier of training.




Also, for all the jank and balance problems at end game? I am really just enjoying the Shaman class in general. Mana as an actual resource is something I did not realize had ever existed (I started in Wrath), and having to make the decision between dealing extra immediate damage to the mob, healing myself, or using Flame Shock/Searing Totem for some ongoing damage provides interesting game play even though I am hitting on average one button every 6 seconds. I feel like this is exactly the kind of game play they were trying to bring back when removing gcd lock from specs during reworks at various times, but never really hit that same sweet spot of interesting decision making.

I'll also note those decisions are far less interesting in a dungeon setting. When I was doing RFC I really was just spamming Healing Touch at various ranks and maybe dropping a Fire Nova totem/auto attacking if the tank's health was high and I could afford it. And that may be why it never worked to dial back rotations and give more free space, since in the group setting you don't need to worry about casting that heal on yourself vs damaging, and I don't know that they could even create a design where that would be the logical way to do things, short of removing the healer role from the game forcibly.