Mission Accomplished! Class collection complete

Gotta catch em' all! I finally grabbed the bull by the horns and finished those two last levels I had on my rogue to get it to 80, and that means I have now finally leveled one of each class to 80 (I hid the names of my chars in the picture, people on the internets are so inventive nowadays and I don't want my chars to end up in some german porn-video)! I know I'm not the first, and definitely not the last, but it has been a long, fun trip. What really took so long was getting my rogue to 80 once and for all. After 4.0 I actually found it was easier to quest (once I had gotten all the errors out of the way by switching UI). With Recuperate I didn't even have to stop to bandage/eat all too often, great! Dinging my rogue to 80 finished a mission I had set for myself many years ago. I'm not sure how it started really. After having collected a handful of 80's I probably thought I might as well go on and do the other classes as well for a full set. Most of the time it was easy. The only class I ever leveled solely (or mostly anyway) to finish this goal was my poor rogue. Which probably is the reason it has taken me so long. All the other classes where fairly easy and fun to level, but with my rogue I've had one long whine-trip.

Mind you, I've never leveled my rogue when I thought it was boring. It is my WoW-motto to never ever do anything I would think boring while playing, I might as well go do something else then. I have occasionally had the urge to play my rogue, the urges have just been way more scarce than with my other classes. I even got my rogue to 65 already back in BC, but then Wrath came and I had to get it to 80 instead of 70. I also "had" to get a death knight for the full set. I couldn't be arsed at that moment, so my rogue turned into my bankalt instead. But then came BoA gear and I thought, with those cool weapons maybe my rogue would suck less. So I deleted my old rogue (you think I'm retarded, I know), started a new and gave her all the BoA gear I could find. And it went ok. I have complained many times about all the issues there are with rogues.

After level 20 or once everyone else gets aoes, rogues kinda turn into the "not good at anything, really"-class. You won't do good dps, no one needs your cc, you can't heal and you can't tank. No other class feels as useless, trust me, I've played them all ^^ The only thing really special about rogues is the one thing I am completely uninterested in - stealth ganking.

But being the cheerful person that I am (ahem) I decided to turn this into a challenge instead. By going Sub I had the tools to help me at least do decent damage in instances and quicken up questing as well. With Shadowstep I could be where the action was. Warriors have charge and Feral Cats have charge, rogues have nothing. Unless you get Shadowstep. With Shadow Dance I could spread Garrotes and Ruptures across all targets, which became like a substitute aoe and actually worked really well. It is insanely more difficult to put up 3 garrotes and ruptures on 3 different targets than to click your Blizzard spell, which left me completely worn out after each instance. I had strained myself so to get all the dots and combo points going perfectly. But now that she finally is 80, I'm actually eager to try out a raid setting, probably as Assass instead of Sub. I think rogues have an interesting set of tools which could make them fun to play in endgame.

So much about my impression on rogues. What do I think about the other classes?

Priest
Well yeah, this is my main class and has been since the beginning (although I have jumped to locks for short periods). I've tried all healing specs, and priest healing is still the most fun. 4.0 has changed my attitude towards the fun-ness of some of the other healing classes, for instance I think paladin healing seems more fun than shaman healing now (druid is still at the bottom somewhere) but priest healing has always remained on top. If I were to rank healers now I'd probably say priest - paladin - shaman - druid. My old list was priest - shaman - druid - paladin.

Druid
Is one of those classes that never really stuck with me. I didn't really like their healing style, with all that hot-spamming (ok, all healers spam something, but hots was too easy). I didn't like their tanking style, with that extremely boring rotation of skills (which has become better since though). I didn't like feral cat dps, because I am generally no fan of melee classes. I did like boomkin somewhat actually. I didn't nerdrage as much about the bad proc-mechanic (aka Eclipse) that boomkin dps was so completely dependant of as some did (Love). It worked well enough I thought and has now been revamped to work even better. If I had to choose to play only one specof druids it'd definitely be boomkin.

Hunter

I love hunters. It's it such an easy class to play. Admittedly I haven't tried it since 4.0 (yet) so I don't know if hunter suddenly turned extremely difficult, but I doubt it. There where only ever two aspects about hunterism I thought slightly challenging; 1 Having to kite stuff (like the zombies on Valithria) and 2 Knowing the perfect time to use Aspect of the Viper mid combat. But not even these two aspects where particularly difficult. What makes hunters so easy? well, they take the best things from both melee-ism and caster-ism without really having the penalty of either. Casters have cast-time to manage, and some casters also have to worry about mana. These things are really minor issues to a hunter. Melee have to worry about being within range and watch aggro (not so much anymore though, now that most classes have decent threat reduction tools). These things too are small issues for hunters. Not only do they have the best threat reducing skill in the game (at least before 4.0), when Blizzard changed the "dead-zone" of hunters to be nearly inexistant, range was never a problem. Also, even if you are rendered completely unable to do damage, you'll always have your imba pet to do it for you. That's some 10% of your damage as a steady dot that doesn't have to be reapplied.

Shaman

Shamans are among the most fun classes to level, which is why I have leveled some 4-5 shamans to 70+. Only one of those ever made it to 80 though. The closer shamans get to 80, the less fun they become for some reason. I never thought shamans where especially good at endgame. I might just have been unlucky, but I've never encountered a really good enhancement or elemental shaman. I've known good players who've played dps-shamans, but it just seemed like the class wasn't meant to be among the best. Resto shamans are actually decent healers, and so I decided to main my shaman as a healer. Enhancement is alot of fun though, and I really hope Blizzard have made the necessary changes to make this fun spec really good now. Elemental used to be extremely boring, probably the most boring thing you could do in a raid. It was literally LB spam. As with enhancement I hope Blizzard have changed this. As for resto I know that Blizzard haven't changed much. It made me really disappointed actually. The only thing we've got are some tools to help us manage our abyssmally bad mana efficiency. I might just stop resto shaman healing until Cata and see if it turns out better then. The other healers have too many fun new things to play with for me to want to stick around with something that doesn't.

Paladin
The problem with paladins has always been their rigidity. And easiness. Holy is the most difficult spec you can play as a paladin, and even that spec is extremely easy. Paladins have been about pressing buttons in sequence without actually putting any thought into it. Because the way healing works this has been somewhat different for holydins, but since they've only basically used two skills for healing there still wasn't much thought in it. But things have changed, and I am wildly optimistic about paladin potential in 4.0 and Cata. With the new Holy Power "combo-point"-system, which I've only tried to a limited extent so far, I see a mountain of opportunities and reasoning of thought to solve a situation optimally. I've only tried it for healing so far, and it really has turned everything around in how paladins heal. I can only hope this is the same for tankadins/retridins.

Death Knight
There are alot of issues with death knight that bothered me about them. First of all I didn't like the way runes work, especially not when tanking (which is what I've done most as a death knight). The fun in tanking is being able to be a little flexible, unfortunately death knights are the opposite of flexible. You often have to follow your runes absolutely perfect or you'll fail miserably. Also having to keep track of Runic Power, without actually being to do anything cool with it, further annoyed me. The problem with runes are that you need a certain set to be able to do anything with them. Having one frost rune might not help you at all at that moment, maybe what you needed really was a blood rune? Or a frost rune and a blood rune? It just doesn't work smoothly enough, I only feel it hampers any ingenuity. There is only one way to do solve a situation, and that makes dk's rather boring. I haven't tried DK since 4.0 came, and I've read they've done some changes to the way runes are regenerated. It didn't seem good enough to me, but I'll give it a try eventually and hope I am wrong.

Mage
Mages used to be played by masochists. Back when they were horrible to level and every skill in their arsenal seemed to point at Blizzard not knowing anything about casters. Remember when Evocation was based on Spirit? Remember when you could only conjure one stack of food in endgame, so you had to log on one hour ahead to conjure 100 stacks of water for your raid? Remember when you oomed after every fight and was killed by two blows from any mob? Yeah, that has long been the fate of the mage and I don't know if I admire or pity those who played mage back in Vanilla. I didn't! I started my mage in BC. They were pretty horrible to level back then too, but less horrible in endgame at least. Alot has changed since then and mages have finally in 4.0 become a good example of the fact that Blizzard actually can design a class where every talent tree is about equally good and that doesn't suck to level just because it's a caster. It seems mages are in fact a little overpowered at the moment, and will probably be nerfed. I easily did 8,5k dps on a boss dummy on my 5,4k gs geared mage. I don't think I've ever been close before. It's difficult to point a finger on what makes mage so much fun. Pew pew is what they do and they do it well. I played arcane a long time simply because it was the best spec. It was also rather boring with all that Arcane Blast spam. I switched to Fire and I love it. It has the perfect amount of uptimes and procs to keep track of to feel challenging all while being really rewarding. If you get those uptimes and procs timed well you'll do awesome amounts of damage.

Warlock
I've mained warlock twice, short periods of time, once in Vanilla and once in BC. I think the pet was what attracted me, I liked the companionship. Locks also sucked less than mages to level because your pet could always do the job for you when you oomed. Or you could sacrifice it and run when you had overpulled. There was (probably still is) more micro-managing to a lock than to a mage. I was eventually convinced to go healer again because people always need warlocks, and I have moved further and further away from my lock. I like all the specs locks have, and I hope now in 4.0 that Blizzard have succeeded in making them all raid-viable as they have with mages. I've never been any good at playing lock however. I don't know why. I know back when you needed to cc how I really practiced to become awesome at fearing, banishing and seducing at the same time (and trying to push some dps at that). I remember having a lock-tank (not me though) on Leotheras in SSC. That was the prime-time of locks in my book, and I suppose I don't like them as much anymore because they feel like less interesting mages. Maybe. It feels like locks have all these tools and potential that never really got to be used properly in Wrath. I hope this will change with Cata.

Warrior
I love prot warriors! I don't like dps warriors that much though. I think what I don't like about melee classes is that I have to adapt so much to someone else. I have to be ready for when the tank pulls in a way I don't have to be as a caster. I want to be where the action is as soon as possible without pulling aggro. As a caster I can just wait for the right moment, and then start shooting. As a melee I have to position myself perfectly, and it still won't be good enough when the tanks runs around like a headless chicken with the mobs. Melee offered -too much- micro managing. Well rather it forced it on me. As a tank however, I've got the power. I decide when to pull and best of all - the mobs will always be exactly where I want them since they're hitting on me (unless some pesty druid, mage or shaman uses Typhoon, Blastwave or Thundershock of course). Prot warriors have become insanely powerful over the last few years. Blizzard have made a few tweaks here and there and that eventually made prot warriors into the one-man-army they are today. 4.0 gave even more tasty stuff for the prot warriors. Aoe threat has become less good, on the other hand we've got higher damage output and healing tools. Because of my lack of interest I haven't checked out dps warriors at all actually. I'll be honest, dps warrior is alot of fun. Prot warrior has just been so much more fun that that's what I've always played instead. Maybe it's time to give dps warrior another go however (also tanking is dreadfully boring in raids).

If I were to rank the classes in terms of fun-to-level and fun-at-endgame the lists would look like this (note that these lists are subject to change at any moment!);

Fun to level
Shaman
Paladin (only after 4.0)
Warrior
Hunter
Mage
Druid
Warlock
Death Knight
Priest
Rogue

Fun at endgame
Priest
Mage
Hunter
Druid (only as boomkin)
Warlock
Shaman
Paladin
Rogue (never raided with this class though)
Warrior
Death Knight