I have a 70 hunter that I've played through endgame content both pre-BC and post-BC (TK and SSC, never made it to Hyjal or BT). Because I took an enormous break and couldn't catch back up with my guild, plus I had really lost the desire for raiding, my hunter is retired to PvP and I am levelling a druid.

My main desire is to heal. I have a dps toon, and I love my hunter dearly, but I have always been fascinated by druids. I love the caster aspect, and I want to "grow" her to heal both in PvE (raiding even maybe, but definitely 5 man) and PvP. After just a couple of days work my baby droodad is level 23, with the full 5 piece "Of the Fang" set from Wailing Caverns. I am amazed at her versatility, and tend to be pretty "shifty" in my playstyle. Starfire, Moonfire, Fairy Fire, kitty shift, claw claw, claw.. rip <I usually never get the rip off, the mob dies too quickly>.

However, I am somewhat the laughing stock of my group of friends because they say levelling will go so much faster if I'm feral. I'm promised that if I will only spec feral, I'll level in half the time. Since I tend to be a pretty slow leveller anyway, that promise is appealing. But I'll wind up speccing Resto at 60 when I hit outlands anyway, to heal my way to 70 by running 5 mans. Is feral levelling really that much faster? Should I give up the "Resto since Day One" mantra and go for speed?

One thing pre-Outland feral leveling has going for it is drops and gear. Moonkin doesn't really get nice gear until you start getting outland drops. And Resto solo DPS is tough even when you reach lvl 70.

So, your friends are probably right, but I'm sure someone has leveled Resto. In fact, I think the author of www.resto4life.com did. But she always had a group with her to help.

Unless you have a leveling buddy, going resto from the beginning will be TERRIBLY slow.

I took my shaman enhancement from 1 - 68 and went resto the rest of the way. Don't regret it at all ( though with the +healing -> +dmg change it might be easier to stay resto earlier, but killing is still slow until you have a good dmg set and a good healing set )

Pre-60 you will definitely be sucking it hardcore trying to level as resto. I tried it on Pookies for a while (b/c I had a group to roll with everyday), but soloing quests and solo farming became a huge burden and I respecced to feral before long.

The great thing about pre-60 is that healing in Azeroth is such a joke you can easily do it feral specced. Pookies healed every instance from WC to ST as feral, both with my regular group and also PUGs.

GL with your droodle!

I leveled my druid from 1-66 resto ... what made it easy was teaming up with a couple friends while questing. When they were not around I ended up pugging a lot of instances but you will get a lot of experience healing.

I did 1-70 completely resto the whole time. Just be prepared to run instances more than you solo.

Solo'ing isn't really that bad as long as you remember to plan ahead on the healing and keep DPS/tank gear sets with you and use something like Outfitter.

Levelling resto is entertaining in some respects compared to a hunter or Feral Druid. lots of roots and running around rather than just standing there mashing buttons.

I guess it depends what you want from your Druid. personally I just wanted to get it to 70 (ok, 68) as quickly as possible and, while I've had a play with Balance, Feral is imo easily the quickest and easiest way to level a druid.

Where you will have an advantage is that I had no shortages of /w "wanna run <instance>" as a Druid as opposed to "LFM NO HUNTERS!" with the hunter. So if you like instances you're quids in.

First I am new to the boards, but I wanted to chime in on this question. When I started my druid, I had contemplated making the long trip to 70 while focusing on the Restro tree. Part of it is because I wanted to learn a healing class from the ground up.

Once level ten hit and I received my bear, I ended up sticking with feral and by the time I received cat form at 20, I was hooked. The leveling speed of a Feral build is hands down the one of the top three in the game.

With that being said, I made the switch at 60 since I wanted to prepare myself for healing at the higher levels. Currently I am a 24 / 27 hybrid and I am loving it.

If you are still thinking about leveling via Resto, here is a guide (http://www.resto4life.com/2008/01/19/talent-spec-leveling-restorationbalance/) from Restro4Life blog. It is a mix of Resto and Balance.

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-Annikk