I think one of the other issues is there are some specs that are fun to level/quest that are not fun in the events. So they might have been a good class to main in War Within, but are too much of a pain to level to 70.
I don't know if you've tried, but leveling from 0-70 right now doing only quests is ridiculously easy. XP gains are huge. I leveled a monk to 70 without heirlooms (which don't really matter much for turbo leveling since they only give rested XP bonuses) in 20ish hours.
It seems a little slow for me at the start in the teens. The gearing is certainly better. The increase monster and quest item density is a lot more fun too.
The event is for gearing for stuff you can't use until 70 and leveling from 60-70 if you have il 300 gear or better. If you enter earlier, you are going to be carried.
Warlock is now 70 and demonology is a ton of fun!
My enh shaman is will be 70 in a NY minute too.
I think I'll give my ret pally a go now.
Most of the classes, at least the specs I like feel really good now.
I love ret pally who is now 70.
Shd priest is cool and now 70, but has some weaknesses. Probably undergeared too
My current 70s are:
Priest
Demon Hunter
Hunter
Warlock
Paladin
Shaman (68.9)
Death Knight (67)
Okay, so I haven't played WoW for years at this point--most of my characters are at whatever the max level was in Legion. I didn't play much Battle for Azeroth until the end of it, then Shadowlands put me off the game until Dragonflight. I was really pumped for Dragonflight, but it didn't deliver for me either. I do like being in at the start of a new, long story, so I'm hoping I can stick with it this time.
There's just one thing that's really bugging me: is it me, or have most classes become ridiculously complex? It seems to me like they're designed to only be appealing to someone who plays a single class and learns all the ins and outs. I like to play multiple classes. In earlier expansions, the talents and rotations were mostly pretty straightforward. This time though...
I'm getting reacquainted with all the classes, and it is brutal. Most of my characters have WAY more abilities than can fit on three whole rows of buttons. Several classes require learning multiple rotations, as the abilities are only useful in one of two modes. For example, Fire mage has combustion and not-combustion rotations, and they are pretty different. Fire mage may be a bad example, because it is one of the simplest, but it is the one I'm most familiar with. Arcane mages are similar, with burn and conserve phases, and so many cooldowns and utility abilities that they can't possibly all fit on a single row of keys.
I am literally running out of keyboard shortcuts for most of my characters' abilities. It's making me a little crazy. I feel like I'm missing something, that I should be able to ignore much of the complexity. Even the "easy mode" articles on Icy-Veins are way more complex than I remember.
Anyway, it looks like I won't be doing my usual leveling up one of each class during War Within, because it's just so overwhelming. Makes me sad, because I like the variety, and I'm a very casual group player, so I don't really want or need to get into the minutiae of every class's kit. I've already ruled out Warrior because all the other melee classes feel better to me. Rogue also isn't doing it for me right now. The one that makes me saddest is Hunter. Beastmaster is by far the simplest leveling spec, but somehow Blizzard has turned it into an overstuffed kit full of abilities ranging from crucial to marginally useful but critical in certain contexts. The rest... I'm still working on wrapping my head around them. I want to be familiar enough that I can stick with one and be happy with my choice for a few months.
Anyway, sorry about the rant. It's really frustrating me and I needed to vent.
If you're just leveling you can pretty much ignore long cooldowns on most classes. And if you're playing a class with short-term cooldowns you can mostly ignore the no-cooldown filler stuff; short-term cooldown attacks will mostly come back up before you pull the next mob.
The game won't tell you about that ahead of time though; you still have to sift through all the abilities and see which ones are actually relevant for open-world content.
It is a symptom of the talent tree revamp. There are a lot of marginally and situationally useful long cooldown abilities that are filler or serve similar purpose to each other.
-That being said, the survival hunter is straightforward with kill command and raptor strike. I use wildfire bomb as well for both single and multitarget. What most people miss on that spec is the mobile ranged attack playstyle of the archetype hunter.
-The ret paladin is really powerful and simple. Yes there are a TON of abilities. But they can be played with a judgement (pull), then their basic builder and the erupting red blade basic attacks to build holy power. Then, spend holy power on the single target hammer finisher or the AOE finisher, or the holy power based heal. Tackles all content with ease. Most of the talents go toward empowering those abilities. Everything else on the bar can be largely ignored.
-Do not play druid. It has to be the worst at needed like 8 bars for abilities. I have fun with feral. I made sure to get the talents for casting moonfire in catform, finishers being able to make regrowth instacast, and procing max furious bite. But still, all forms have 3 bars worth of abilities.
-Shadow priest has a rotation of vampiric embrace, mind flay and mind blast when it insta procs. Oh and shadow word death when it procs too. Bubble and heal as needed.
-I've actually found arcane mage to be the simplest of the mage specs. I typically use arcane explosion to build up charges for arcane barrage. Arcane blast is my puller but it is too slow to cast. And with prismatic barrier, I can pull groups to aoe down with explosion. I wish arcane missile would proc more often. I also use arcane orb for aoe help.
-demon warlock suffers from ability overload too. But all that is necessary is shadow bolt, demon bolt (when it procs insta), hand of guldan and stalkers on occasion. If you are low on health then toss in a few drain life.
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Part DEUX
-Deathknight I play unholy. Use the ranged virulent poison thingy to pull or tap groups of enemies. Then use the festering wounds builder and finisher. Use death coil as it procs insta and the healing strike to top off between fights. Death and decay can be added for aoe and it has some powerful talent enhancements. The pet buffs on long cooldown are fun for big bads.
Also last time I played frost spec, it was really powerful with the ranged DoT plus obliterate builder plus the procing spender. There are a ton of other abilities that have minimal impact on your hacking away at things enjoyment.
-Rogue I totally give up on. I used to have fun as assassination by running around events generating combo points with fan of knives and slicing them down with single target finishers. They just feel weak now. Not just because I am under geared too. Combat seemed okay but I kept asking myself, "why should I play this class over any of the other DPS class specs?" Most would say stealth, but that does hardly anything for me.
-enhancement shaman is fun but for me needs to be built a specific way. Once you've set up talents to proc a couple of things, they start to shine. The only complexity I feel they offer is choosing what to use once multiple things proc. I use the earth elemental and wolf pets on bosses. I also drop a healing totem for spot healing during events.
-demon hunter havoc spec is just plain complex. But I had a playstyle I loved before the talent revamp and I have been able to recreate it in the current patch. So if you are interested in it, be prepared to spend time with the talents. But the combat is so dynamic 
I think you're overthinking it, Ken. If you're trying to squeeze out that last 1-2% of DPS for Mythic raiding, well, yeah, you need to worry about sequencing and timing and whatnot. But if you're open-world leveling and running N/H dungeons for sh!ts and giggles and loot, you'll be smashing the same 6-10 buttons pretty much all the time. Classes are pretty much standardized these days, so it's a matter of figuring out which of those 6-10 spells you want to rely on (and it's pretty intuitive for the most part).
I see what you mean about BM hunter. I use ElvUI, and even that doesn't have enough buttons for all the hunter abilities. That said, BM hunter is mostly Kill Command spam, Barbed Shot, Beastial Wrath on bosses and Cobra Shot and Explosive Shot if the mob is still alive and/or I remember to use them. Throw out a Heal Pet every so often, and that's about all you really need.
I wish there were a source for TRULY "easy mode" build guides. Like builds that are useful for open world content, which is mostly what I do. The follower dungeons are a godsend for me because they let me actually enjoy dungeons again. Looking forward to doing more of them.
Maybe I should be the change I want to see in the world. Seems like a lot of work though.
Thanks for the tips, Fang. Maybe I'll take a look at some of the specs that I had abandoned in the past.
Right now the ones that are most rewarding for me appear to be:
Demon Hunter -- Love both specs. Havoc can be complex, but still fun.
Guardian Druid -- Really simple and powerful.
Balance Druid -- OK if I ignore some of the limited utility abilities; I got used to the phased nature of its rotation in Legion. I love the feel of this class.
Fire Mage -- Also (to me) simple, but probably mostly because it hasn't changed since I used it last. Another caster class with a great, powerful feel.
Arcane Mage -- Agree that it seems mostly straightforward. Arcane spells can't compare to the satisfaction of some of the Fire nukes, though.
Elemental Shaman -- VERY complex set of cooldowns once it gets to 70, but the rotation is pretty straightforward.
Blood DK -- indestructible, feels great
Retribution Paladin -- easy, as Fang mentioned. Prot is also wonderful for AOE farming.
Brewmaster Monk -- also indestructible
The ones that are bumming me out are:
SUPER disappointed in Evoker. None of the variants are fun to me at all. The charged spells are not fun to me. I think this is the main thing that put me off of Dragonflight, because I really wanted to love the Dracthyr.
Rogues don't feel right to me. I don't like the dice-rolling kit of the Outlaw. I have always enjoyed Subtlety, but the way it works now is very different from the version of Subtlety that I enjoyed years ago. I don't like relying on poisons for Assassination.
Windwalker Monk -- started out okay, but gradually got overly complex as I leveled
Destruction Warlock -- the basics are okay, but at level 70 it's nuts (haven't tried Demonology yet). Not interested in Affliction because of DOTs and ramp-up.
Frost Mage -- just looks and feels silly to me. Also I'm not a fan of pets except on Hunters.
Hunters -- Beastmaster used to be my favorite, but I could not get the groove of it after a few hours of trying. Marksman is not great for solo content.
Warriors -- No spec is satisfying to me. Protection seems the most straightforward, but it seems too gimped for soloing. Fury and Arms feel very squishy. Fury shouldn't be, because of the self-heals, but I have trouble managing them and staying alive.
Melee hunter and shaman don't interest me.
I really want to try a healer for group content, but they seem to have become much more complex also. I wish non-fistweaver Monks were more popular. Resto Shaman looks good, and I may try it later.
BTW, I tried going back to Cataclysm Classic, since most of my dissatisfaction is with the crazy new talent trees. Unfortunately there are just SO MANY convenience features in retail now, classic can be downright frustrating.
Reviewing those lists, it kind of looks like I shouldn't be complaining, because I have a lot of options that I do enjoy. But in earlier expansions, I played and enjoyed nearly everything. Some specs that used to be favorites have changed so much that I either don't understand them (and don't want to take a lot of time to try), or they are no longer fun for me.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. I'm still stumbling along figuring things out.
Seems we are in alignment on a lot of things.
The AoE of the prot paladin was so much fun around shadowlands time. If they maintained that feeling, it is a solid choice.
Healers, well, for me they are super simple in combat. They are typically paired down to 2-3 abilities of a DPS spec but then woefully overkill on the healing options. They seem like they end up with one and a half bars of just heals. So those are a no go for me. I mean the resto shaman has, heals, HoTs, aoe heals and HoTs, and healing totems... So ridiculous!
I didn't spend much time with fire mage cept for pre shadowlands. It was super satisfying big boom. But now? Holy cow I am just pressing buttons with zero sense or control. Fire mage definitely 180ed on complexity.
In contrast, demon warlock did a little bit of the opposite. There are a lot of summons. Some of which are on an awkward cooldown and your imps take a while to warm up so you just chain pull before your current target is dead. But really, the rotation is shadow bolt to get your stones to 3 or more, then cast hand of guldan to aoe blast and summon more imps. Several times a fight, demon bolt procs free and instant so you cast that to get more stones and hand summoned imps.
Your rogue thoughts and evoker thoughts I am in concert with. With everyone coming back for the event, you don't see any evokers at all. In the hours that I have played, I've seen less than five. Whereas, hunters, paladins, mages I've seen like 50+ of each.
Believe it or not, Windwalker got a lot better with the talent reworks. Several of the talented abilities became passive procs or at least have passive options. I haven't dug into Brewmaster yet, but it looks like it might have gone from being the most complex Monk spec to the simplest.
Destruction warlock had a lot of neat abilities. My biggest problem was generating the shards. Who thought it was a cool idea to have a builder give you half or 1/3 shards? They really should have balanced it like the other specs where 1 builder cast build one point/shard/rune/holy power and then have spending abilities use more of those resources. It just slows the rotation down. It is related to the rogue's problems where you can cast 2 builders before you run out of energy so you build/wait/build for max combo. And it is so weighted towards max comboing that anything less is a waste.
I leveled affliction mostly because demon was broken during shadowlands (pets were real slow to ramp up and did no damage IMHO) My warlock really fell behind my other classes during that time 
I know, I know.
I am posting too many times in a row.
But...
Brewmaster monk is fantastic!!!!!!
I'm only level 28 but wow. So funny and fun to play
Having more money than sense I upgraded my preorder to get into the beta. The two things I’ll say is that the new hero disciplines add a lot to each class so some of the frustrations you might be having at 70 will be offset at 80. Two - delves are a lot of fun and a great way to ramp up the difficulty as a solo player.
How was the paladin?
From looking at wowhead, it seems like the hero talents added more bloat and little things that I cared about.
As compared to some of the warlock trees.
I guess it really depends on execution if past history proves true. Like the aforementioned fire mage versus arcane or frost. The fire mage executes on the visual impact of the skill and not just the numbers.
I'm also interested in the follower dungeons, especially if they open them up to lvl10-50s and other expansion dungeons.
(brew monk is now 32 and had a blast duoing radiant echoes on off hours)
How was the paladin?
From looking at wowhead, it seems like the hero talents added more bloat and little things that I cared about.
As compared to some of the warlock trees.
I guess it really depends on execution if past history proves true. Like the aforementioned fire mage versus arcane or frost. The fire mage executes on the visual impact of the skill and not just the numbers.I'm also interested in the follower dungeons, especially if they open them up to lvl10-50s and other expansion dungeons.
(brew monk is now 32 and had a blast duoing radiant echoes on off hours)
I didn’t go too deep on Paladin but templar looks promising. I think there are some new animations added with the talent trees like DKs getting horsemen of the apocalypse for example. And yes follower dungeons are available from the get go and a great option.
That is going to be so much fun!
Though I'd admit that doing the Deadmines without a group will be bittersweet.
(nod to original GWj crew who did it back in '04)
For rotation its helpful to use a rotation helper like:
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addon...
That way you can keep focused on the game and positioning and you will see when various cooldowns or procs have hit in order to properly keep optimal rotation going. In terms of complexity the simplest DPS classes to play (IMO) are:
BeastMaster Hunter (literally a few buttons to press and being able to be 100% mobile and dps is huge)
then a huge gap to 2nd and 3rd place lol
Elemental Shaman (another DPS spec that has basically a few buttons to push but can get hectic as the buttons you do push end up being spammed like crazy)
Assassination Rogue (Another very easy to play spec.. a few buttons to push and mostly making sure your stealth bar matches your out of stealth bar i.e. the hardest part of the spec is getting your buttons set up correctly)
It looks like some of the follower dungeons are available as low as level 10, 15 or 20.
Sadly it is only Dragonflight dungeons. The one I tried was brief and fun. It certainly isn't the way to level or gear TBH. (1 clear = 30 minutes = 1.5 levels @lvl60) I was playing my arms warrior and in one run I got some mats and a single piece of cloth gear and a weapon that was far from an upgrade (il 257 vs il 330ish)
The npc party was perfectly competent and led me through without incident.
On that note, arms is the only spec of warrior that seems decent to me. Competent but way lower on the fun spectrum compared to other classes. It does suffer quite a bit in the "why would I play this over?" question:
Prot or ret paladin
Either demon hunter
Any Death Knight
Brew or Wind Monk
Surv Hunter (not everyone's cup of tea but I love it)
Guard or Feral Druid
Enh shaman (again not everyone's cup of tea)
Looks like the last time I played WoW was 8 years ago when Legion was new though really its been 14 years since I played regularly. I started playing again this week. Not really sure why. Possibly an ad that talked about Solo dungeons, which was always a thing I thought they should do.
I was surprised at the way they handled all the old content, revising the 9 (!!) expansions to be 10-60 complete experiences that moves very fast. That's brilliant and endlessly scalable (though starts to get weird as the level cap continues to go back up). Obviously there's a ton of new stuff for me to check out.. like confusingly huge amount of stuff. But as long as I just keep following the yellow dot around I'm making progress without thinking too hard.
I started with a Dracthyr Evoker and doing the Dragonflight content. Instant flight just makes chasing that yellow dot around so much easier and every flight between points is fun thanks to the new flight mechanics. As far as combat goes, I still wish things were simpler. Seems like every 10 minutes they want me to cram another new skill into my brainspace but for now I can just faceroll ~6 abilities, which is good enough. I probably wont raid or PVP so I can probably get by playing dumb.
Unfortunately most of my old characters are gone. Back in 2000something after a long break I lost access to my OG account from WoW beta and launch, which is a real shame. If they've made recovery way easier and something like merging possible I'd love to hear about that but I dont have high hopes.
Anything really compelling I should make sure to try as far as single player and open world content?
There's like 5 days on the Pandaria revamp. It is a lot of fun.
Find a higher populated server because leveling and doing the Radiant echoes event is much faster and more XP.
Try one of the follower dungeons. It isn't the most efficient but it will break any monotony of doing Echoes over and over.
Try a Brew monk, or Ret paladin for simple and powerful rotation. Or Guard druid for simple AoE farming.
Oh cool, Follower Dungeons go down to level 10. The wowhead page says they start at 60 so that must have been updated. Just did one as a terrible healer and it was a good time! I dont have mouseover targeting or focus targetting or anything like that set up, so it was nice to do that without humans hating me for it. No one died 
Follower dungeons are just for Dragonflight's (and War Within) dungeons. It sounds like the expansion pre-patch went ahead and changed the default leveling path from Battle for Azeroth to Dragonflight, which would make follower dungeons available while you level.
As for old account recovery, I've read several anecdotes of that being way easier than you'd expect. It sounds like you just contact customer support and provide any details that you can remember. I guess they don't worry much about security on accounts that have lain fallow for years, and er on the side of giving people their stuff back.
Account recovery went ok. Spent about a day in back and forth emails with the support team, with some trying to close the request prematurely because they didnt read properly, but in the end I got my original account assigned to a new email address (my current email with the '+wow' as part of the name, which Im surprised worked. So I didnt have to make a new address, everything goes to my main inbox).
Found all my old characters and... well ones that felt high level a long time ago (85 tops) are now about 20 which is like 2 hours of work on a new character. Is it likely I have anything of value on those characters at this point? They're ones who completed original WoW, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. Seems like any items would be moot, maybe some appearances would be cool?
Anyway I cant get them transferred to my main account. Apparently about 4 weeks ago, after 20something years, they closed any ability to transfer characters between accounts. So I'd be stuck with 2 subs no matter what. So I think after trudging through my posting history here to find names and servers of old characters and scoring a victory in recovery, that they're probably pretty pointless unless Im missing something. They'd even have to be renamed.
I am sure there are achievements and things like rep grinds that are worth something on those old characters.
That is weird though. The level squish should have cut them in half. So 85's should be like 42 now.
I think they are still figuring out the warband stuff. So things like old world reps may become account wide. Plus I am sure you have a ton of old school transmogs and mounts (pets?) that you would lose if you deleted the characters.
Also of note is that it takes less that 20 hours to level a new toon to max. Less if you run Radiant Echoes on a populated server.
My mage found her groove in Radiant Echoes and is now 52. My brew monk is now 35. Those will be the last 2 70s for me. I'll pass on the evoker, warrior and rogue. Kinda tells all of it if I'd rather level a 35 and 52 to 70 over a 60, 62 and 61 respectively...
My guess is the transfer-characters-between-accounts feature doesn't yet work with Warbands, and they didn't want to hold up deployment just for that.
Regarding transfers: That makes sense. I'll hang onto the account and see about transferring if that opens up again.
My Evoker who started last Sunday hit 63 yesterday and I was not expecting the huge spike in difficulty at 60. I was breezing groups of 3-5 solo before, now I died 3 times trying to 1-1 a named quest target (non-elite)
Yeah, the level scaling has been weird since they started messing with it in the run up to War Within.
60-70 leveling is rough due to being under geared. You level so fast that you can't keep gear close to level. Heirlooms help specially weapons if you have them maxed to 70. I noticed the damage decrease 60-70 on my rogue cause my daggers only went to 60.
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