So I did it this weekendFollow

I went Alliance and completely abandoned my Horde characters.

I had always had Alliance characters I folled around with when Horde got boring, but for the first time this expac I took one to the cap. And then a couple weekends ago I got a second one to the cap.

I'm kind of the opposite. I've all but abandoned my paladin and DK in favor of my hunter and warlock this expansion.

I have given healing an actual fair shot in a raid setting. I've found that I really don't enjoy it. Healing in heroics is fine, there's less pressure and less people to keep alive. Raiding, it's just too stressful. And if I can't do a good job healing with a resto druid, who are OP right now, I don't think I'm cut out for healing period.

I also leveled my DK to cap and I enjoy her. I'm not very good, but I do okay. Frost is pretty fun, but I'd like to try unholy as well and see how I like that.

In general though, I think I'm always going to be happiest playing a ranged DPS. I still <3 my shadow priest and my frost mage.

If you do more dps as a disc priest, than as a shadow priest, you're doing something wrong with the shadow priest. I'm assuming you mean at 85. If it's before that, I just want to remind you that the game isn't balanced for pre-85.

Similar situation for me. Came back at the day of the Cataclysm and started over on a new server Alliance side. Before my break I only played Horde so even without the overhaul of the old world (of Warcraft) it would have been new and exciting.

And this was the first expansion that saw me raiding fo' realz.
Back in the day my only "raiding" experiences were running through Kara with my PvP equiped WL because that pieces had higher Def (/facepalm for myself). This time I had a RL friend around, who happened to be the main cause for my coming back + faction change. Thanks to his effort I now gear, enchant, skill, etc. properly and with my current main, a shadowpriest, are at 6/7 HC and Ragnaros normal down.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with my progress.

I've always preferred melee characters.

They generally have more survivability and you can just go from mob to mob to mob and not have to stop and eat/drink/evocate/innervate/heal and you don't have to worry about "OMG, this other mob started attacking me before I got the first one dead!" etc. You can just beat the first mob down and then move onto the second one and not have to worry. All the melee classes now have good self-heals, easily enough to let them take on 2-3 mobs at once without flinching.

It is a lot harder to do that with ranged characters, and once a mob closes the range, you're reaching for your "get out now" buttons... frost nova, fears, etc.

I always found melee classes to be a lot more relaxing and forgiving game-play. This is doubly so for a tank-spec, it is very hard to die in solo PvE as a tank spec. Very Hard. Sometimes you have to _try_ to die and even then you survive things that would have killed anyone else three times over.

Edited, Oct 31st 2011 6:34pm by Lyrailis

Yes, that's why you all are getting a damage buff in Dragon Soul next patch. Because Blizzard hates you.

oh I know. I haven't done extensive raiding on my DK, but enough to know that melee are definitely at a disadvantage. But at least Blizz is trying to do something to rectify the situation, even if it is just a band aid.

I'm doing lots of stuff the same, leveled plenty of alts, geared most of them up for raiding and all but two have done some raid content. I'm working on a few horde characters, but the highest is level 61 so I can't say at this point that it's much different from previous expansions.

My guild is more focused than the one I was in the last few expansions, so I'm actually working on heroic content on my main which is nice.

I've also got more in to multi-boxing than I was previously. Only one of my 85s was leveled on it's own, the others went in pairs. I've also leveled a couple of 5 man groups (highest is 41 at the moment) and that's been really fun, I'm currently waiting to see if I can scroll of res myself (only 15 days to go) and I've been saving so that I can put game time on the other accounts either way. I'm hoping I can get them to level 60 at least, when I'm running dungeons on my alts I keep thinking about how cool they would be to do on my own.

As a slight aside, I tried playing my rogue the other day (I've had this character for about 5 years and she's just dinged level 50) and I can't think of anything I'd like to do less. It's my fault for being assassination spec and accidentally selling one of my daggers, I went to an instance and spent most of the time pressing two buttons (sinister strike and S&D) and watching my energy bar. I dread to think how little dps I did. I've now given her combat as offspec but couldn't face staying on her to try it out. I have a ret pala (ok), enhancement shaman (ok) and feral druid (meh) so I'm doing more on the melee front than I have previously.

I levelled my first ranged to 85 in Cata, a mage, and just rolled a hunter alt. I think my previous ranged alt, a lock, made it all the way to level 12 so something of an improvement! Still not sure about the hunter long term, something still just feels awkward about it. Only level 22 though so still fairly fresh, and I generally take a long time to really get into a class. On the other hand, I'm just not enjoying my rogue the way I did in wotlk, where she ended up pugging up to better gear than my paladin main.

Paladin is stil the main, and for the first time getting into heroic content - currently 4/7 hc. Raiding as prot although I switch to ret for the one tank fights, and I have to say I don't mind ret dps. Yes there are annoying moments when there doesn't seem to be anything to press, and then the opposite when you have three things you'd like to use at once, but overall I still enjoy it.

But that implies a ret pally could actually kill something!

Kann, if you'd like some help with your shadow priest, feel free to PM me with what you're doing rotation wise inside dungeons. I'm more than happy to help. There's also a thread towards the top of the priest forums about shadow that's about two months old or so, but it's still accurate as far as information.

I really need to work on finishing up that shadow sticky.

Nah, not supersawesome shadow secrets here. I really enjoy helping people learn their spec, so I'm very open about anything I can do to help people play better. I don't withhold anything.