The burning crusade and a burning desire... (Long Post)Follow

Probably a long rambly post, im just letting my fingers type so you have been warned :)

So there i am, standing in front of this gigantic Dark Portal, which actually gives a nice green glow. I look to my left, and to my right. "Yep", i think to myself, the Blasted Lands are worse than The Barrens. A brief flashback to my Quillboar-killing, Wailing Caverns-annihilating, Crossroads-corpsing times has me chuckling to myself, well until my guildie yells, "FFS Sarathai you lazy bum, get your **** through here and start questing". Friggin spoilsport. Anyway i hold my breath and jump into the green portal, and go to grab a drink while i whizz through space and time.

When i return, i find myself in a "Sanctuary". This seems ok as the little gnome warlock jumps around in front of me, in the annoying way that seems to be a racial for gnomes. Well as a great and noble Tauren, i swat him aside and walk to the bottom of the stairs, where i behold the biggest and possibly the most ugly,(Possible rival being Princess Theradris sp?) demon ive ever seen. He seems to know im thinking nasty things about me as he sends two great hurtling fireballs right at me. They explode at the bottom of this 'sanctuary' and turn into the biggest Searing Infernals ive ever seen. The collective mass of horde and alliance soldiers down below start wailing on them, as a small army of Felguards approach. Not bad not bad, im liking this new place called Outlands already. What do you do in my situation, when you arrive in outlands for the first time, seeing your comrades fighting bravely against the demonic onslaught? Well naturally you stealth, creep through the fighting mass, and try to attack that big ugly b*stard standing over on the other side looking, well... big and ugly. Well i was just glad the graveyard wasnt a long run, i guess the almighty blizzard anticipated these kind of moves that morons like me would do. Good old blizzard. Well i rezz, run back up the steps before the next set of nasties arrive and in a typically stubborn, tantrum-like manner, cast a hurricane over those felguards. I guess they got a good tickle before they had their legs cut from underneath them.

Meh, so i turn and start talking to some of the locals, while my guidie mocks me from his flying mount. That b*stard, i gave him some gold for that mount! I shake my fist at him in rage, only to be covered by the excretion that his mount innappropriatly releases. (Well you know, not really but thats the sentiment he had). Well i have to go to this place called Thrallmar(?) so i hop onto a wyvern, spit at the big bloaty blob and set off on my way. I stare at the sky for a moment as i fly through the air, it looks pretty cool to be honest. But im not entirely sure why there are bits of broken land floating around, i guess big boy back there probably slipped or something in the past. Well i arrive in Thrallmar, do the usual meet n greet and head outside to see a GIANT ROBOT attacking a bunch of mages. WTF is a giant robot doing here?? This isnt gnomeregan, i thought that only the gnomes would be silly enough to create something that they had no hope of controlling. Genius? Pfft you wont say that when those gnomish contraptions blow up in YOUR face when your trying to zap that ickle wickle gnome rogue who is lagging around, stabbing you in the back with his poisonous toothpicks. But i digress. This is neither the time, nor place to rant about tiny gnomes. Us Tauren Druids have big problems, big indeed.

You see, ever since i arrived here, ive felt kind of different. Maybe this is due to me getting spanked by an enhancement shaman, or the fact that its impossible in AV to get close to someone without the collective mass of a bajillion Mages or Warlocks blowing you to smithereens. Ive heard stories, ive heard rumours, ive even seen this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxgGFVk0SM (shared by one Giggles the Pig i believe). Yep, the big owl is calling to me... and i dont know what to do. You see, i love PvP, when i reach the cap i want to go into a BG and tear **** up, i want to go to arena and "pewpewpew" so to speak. But i dont know if i want to do it in my Feral Form. I played a messed up feral build until lvl51, when i respecced for mangle, and now i have dinged 60 (Last night, ding!) i realise that there isnt much point in respeccing until 70. But i have some questions along this line which i bring to this batch of the Cenarion Council :

1) The typical, "How does boomkin/oomkin/bigfatowl" fare in arena and bg and such? Now im lazy, but ive still done some reading on this.. starting with this post: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=6;mid=12022855822124323;num=4;page=1

Now if its true that Resto druid owns 2v2 and is awesome 3v3, 5v5 (of which i have no doubt) but its also said that Feral druids only really shine in 5v5, and balance druids in 3v3. Is this really the case? I mean come on, i find that kinda hard to believe (from a feral perspective). Then again, ive only done arena twice at lvl 29 and got spanked both times as i was a complete noob, (apologies to the mage who was my partner way back in the day). I dont want to be gimped and limited to one bracket, and i dont want to heal as a resto, (although obviously im going to be tossing out cures if the need arises). So this question is more of a 'do boomkins really suck at 2v2 and 5v5' and could you relate some experiences? (This is kind of the main question as i love PvP, ad mostly concered with effectiveness in PvP).

2) For a PvP build, do you think putting points into Feral charge and Bash are worth it? I mean just because your a boomkin, dosent mean you should ignore your other forms. I was thinking of maybe Pounce > FF > Mangle > Shred > Bear form> Bash > Roots > whatever a boomkin does... kind of thing, but id be sacrificing points in either improved motw or furor or Ooc and natuarlist, especially if im filling out most of the balance tree. Whaddya think?

3) If i respecced to balance at 70, would i be disadvantaged in the sense that i probably wouldnt have say Balance rings, trinkets etc? I mean in the sticky it says the main stats to focus on are, "Nuking Druids - +spell damage, +spellcrit, Mana/5, Int, Spi" which are needless to say, quite different from the feral main stats. If im going into bg at 70 against people who already have some/all of the PvP reward gear, would i be spanked by any class on the basis of sub- par gear? So to this end would it be wise to start stacking gear for 70 as i travel through outlands? Im asking this because im still unsure about whether i want to respec or not.

On a relative note, would it be fare to say im purdy screwed if i hypothetically went through arena and bg to get the merciless gladiator stuff etc, then realised i wanted to respec ??!!

4) Meleeing. I read somewhere that when a Oomkin melees, mana regen can occur. (cant remember the source now). If this is the case how often do you melee in both PvE and PvP? I mean, obviously you will probably gimp damage to a certain extent by relying on melee, but is it possible to gain an equilibrium between meleeing and spellcasting so the Oom case is reduced? This would probably have a lot of variables in PvP, depending on class etc, but there must be another reason why we get like 400% armor increase and an attack power increase of 150% from the boomkin form than to just take a few hits while you CC to get some ground to spell dps. Could someone shed some light on this?


Ergh, im out of time. Im going to have to end my post here. I will probably be back to ask a few more questions later as there are still some ringing around my head but things to do meh. Thanks for any responses and sorry for the long post, its my style! ^^