A Thanksgiving Conundrum

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (at least in America where it is celebrated this month)! I hope there is a turkey or ham and other feast items cooking up for all of you on this fine day, along with some football and family. This morning I've got a conundrum on my hands (see below), and despite taking a minor break from most things WoW, we are now two weeks away from the cataclysm content opening up in full glory. This week we received the shattering with all the old zone changes, and wow are Stormwind and Orgrimmar different (and beautiful). I have not even done much exploring outside of flying over Thousand Needles on my way to the revamped Ungoro Crater and the capital cities. There will be plenty of time to enjoy all the new zones though, so I'm not rushing through it.

So for a while I've been planning on either rerolling shaman as an Orc to have two healing classes on either side of the ledger. One main and one alt on each side for cataclysm, that was the goal. Right now I have the following setup including professions which are important:

Human Priest, 80, tailoring/enchanting/fishing/cooking (Alliance main)
Night Elf Druid, 80, alchemy/herbalism
Night Elf Death Knight, 80, jewelcrafting/mining
Blood Elf Paladin, 52, jewelcrafting/mining
Draenei Shaman, 31, herbalism/alchemy

I've tread this ground before, but my best moneymaking in the easiest way possible is bag making and transmuting/cutting gems. These markets never go away, nor would I expect them to. So my little slow money making group of three level 80's has made enough money for me to have a nice bankroll heading into cataclysm. Although there will not be a bag maker on the Horde side, I had always planned to stick with the self-sustaining JC/herbalism/mining/alchemy combo on both sides. I have really fallen in love with paladin as a leveling character, but I have started to heal some instances post 4.0.1 and all I have to say is, meh. I know there are a few more tools at endgame, but it definitely feels like I am a priest packing only greater heal and flash heal and a couple oh crap buttons with nothing else. No heal over time, no diversity, no real excitement. And while the character is a blast to play, I'm beginning to realize it is just not a main.

At the same time, I'd fallen completely in love with druid healing. The class does not have as many tools as priest, but it is very close. Plus the healing is just simply fun. I actually briefly considered making Ariel my main for cataclysm.

And then this morning it struck me straight in the face. Why be stuck with two classes that heal so similarly on both sides of the ledger? If I move the druid to be my Horde main instead of shaman, there are numerous benefits. For starters, I will have a character I am truly passionate about on both sides so I can really fire up my relationships with the guildies in both The Illuminati and AIE. I will also have a Horde 80 at cataclysm launch which means I can see all of the new 80-85 content on both factions, while I have still never even seen Outland or Northrend on the Horde side. And then there's the picture above. That's the troll druid flight form. How epic is that? Troll druids have awesome forms that outshine the night elf counterparts, although as a healer the night elf looks slightly better. Troll druids will be all over the place, but that's because they really are fresh and new and awesome. I would not want to be a tauren main, so this new race possibility is way more exciting than the orc shaman I was planning.

The downside is of course that I never want to spend actual cash on something I could avoid. However, I think the $30 investment will make cataclysm a way better game for me than it would be otherwise. I can then continue at my own pace with the paladin and shaman alts on their way to 85, and the teams will have the same professions I planned before. Plus Biancae can get a huge boost to her pursuit of jewelcrafting once Ariel comes over with bookoo bucks (probably would transfer with lots of ore, gems, and 15k gold). I am not rolling a worgen or goblin to be a main or a primary alt, so this could be how I maximize the value of cataclysm. What do you think?