As I mentioned in my last post regarding my baby Horde Druid I’m leveling, the best part of hitting level 40 is that I became eligible for dual-speccing. I’d recommended in my posts that players level their Druids as Feral (primarily cat) and that’s how I’ve been doing it myself. Which of course has meant generally longer wait times in the LFG queue as I haven’t attempted to be the tank on any runs yet, though I’ve had to fill in as an ad hoc tank from time to time on various runs. At these lower levels I can tank just fine without any of the bear specific talents, but certainly by the time I hit Outlands I know I’d really want some of those before I attempt to do any tanking there. And as I’m looking to maximize XP gain I’ve also been questing in-between dungeon runs.
Dual-Speccing solves the issues of this dilemma. If you want to maximize XP gain you need to be questing in-between dungeon runs – which means you either need to be feral or balance. Queuing as Feral cat and balance (DPS) in the LFG queue means generally longer queue times, which equates to lower XP gain on an hour by hour basis. You can level as Feral Bear and simply queue as tank, and that might be the simplest solution, but I definitely notice a DPS difference while questing when fighting in cat form with bear talents and when fighting in cat form with cat talents. Perhaps someone else wouldn’t mind, but my ADD screams at me to kill it already! For me the answer is Dual-Spec. One spec Bear (or Resto) and the other spec Kitty or Moonkin. I chose Cat and Resto. I quest as cat and run dungeons as resto maximizing my XP gain as I generally have faster dungeon queue times as Resto than I did as DPS.
It’s certainly something I’d recommend anyone looking at if they can afford the 1000 gold expense and the requirement to obtain two sets of gear (unless you spec Bear/Cat which will use the same set until you hit Northrend). I would think that wouldn’t be an issue for anyone who already had established characters to support the new alt, as it certainly wasn’t an issue for me.
