Twìtch's Adventures: Episode 2 - Twenty Steps Into The Journey

Twìtch continues to grow up really quickly, which makes me happy. I got him to level 20 last night - I haven't trained up yet, but...two really cool things about level 20:

1. He gets Cat Form
2. He got his first kitty weapon from Deadmines last night.

Now I just need to figure out where little Hordies go to learn the rest of their weapon skills...I'm going to assume he probably learns this in Orgrimmar, but I'll look it up before I make the journey up there. Another really great thing about hitting level 20 is that he's getting his first mount. The sad part is that neither he nor my death knight on that server have enough gold to fund his riding training and mount purchase yet. Bleh...the downfalls of starting over on a new server.

I will say that I'm pretty damn excited to be able to be running instances now. My first time running an instance was Deadmines, and I got to tank. It was a little rough for the simple fact that he just doesn't have the "rage generating" talents that my level 80 druid has. You know...the talents that give you the gift of rage for dodging attacks and such. For anyone who doesn't understand rage-fueled tanks, let me explain.

Rage fueled tanks need rage to generate special attacks that boost us up on the threat meters. If we don't have rage, we're not generating much threat. That means that our dps has a much easier time pulling mobs off of us - especially caster dps. It happens at any level. Luckily, Blizzard is smart enough to give us a taunt as soon as we get bear form, so we can usually recover well enough.

Now, that first run, albeit a little rough, went MUCH better than I had imagined it could. I was happy. The second instance I ended up going into yesterday was Wailing Caverns. I stupidly queued as Heals and Tank, forgetting that I have no healing gear at all. We would have been alright except I got lost in the instance...I had stopped to drink, the group continued on, and let's just say I couldn't find them and they didn't want to find me. I ended up leaving the group and not finishing. I felt really bad, but the only way I could get back to them was to plow through mobs and that just wasn't happening...

I ran deadmines last night. I queued in as a tank but ended up giving up my tanking spot to a paladin who insisted on tanking. I sort of healed and sort of DPS'd for the entire run, and that's where I got my polearm. I was about 84% of the way through level 19 after I left there, so I ran around and turned in a handful of quests that I had completed and just hadn't turned in yet, and hit 20. It was late, so I just logged for bed.

It's still pretty crazy to be a tank at such a low level. I mean, there are SO many things you take for granted that you have at level 80 that you just don't have early on. Frenzied regeneration is a BIG one. I can't tell you the number of times I was tanking and watching my health plummet and I kept looking at my hotbar wishing Frenzied Regeneration would just appear there, even if just for that moment. Feral Charge is a lot of fun, and you definitely don't get that at this level. I do have Feral Faerie Fire now, which will make pulling a little easier, since I won't have to use my taunt to pull, especially if I'm trying to pull a group back away from another group. There are so many things that make low-level feral druid tanking a little more difficult than level 80 feral druid tanking...little things... like rage starvation and nothing that you, personally, can do to increase your "time to live", which is one of the things tanks focus on. I mean you can throw Rejuvenation and Regrowth on yourself before you pull, but that only lasts for the first few seconds of the fight.

I can't wait to see what cool things I get at level 20! I'll finally be able to queue as tank/dps, instead of just a tank. If I get into an instance where another tank insists on being in charge, I can just go kitty and scamper along for the ride. It'll be so cool! I can't wait.

I'll post again soon. It's been so much fun revisiting the early levels of being a druid, though. It's awesome :)