Inspired

The Inspired buff is an effective solution to the problem of the epic story being fairly full of quests designed for a group. Nothing shows up a diminishing game population* like being unable to form a group for low level content because everyone else is at the level cap, so ensuring that these quests can be solo'd is essential, because it's not like you can just skip the epic story.

(Okay, I'm sure you could, but why would you?)

*Diminished relative to when the content was new. I'm not on one of the higher pop servers but I'm still seeing other players around, even in the more out of the way questing areas.

I've ran four quests with the inspired buff recently. The one in Agamaur felt like a slog because while I wasn't dying I was taking a long time to beat down the mobs. Fair enough this warden is built for defence above offence, but even so I recall doing the same quest a couple of years ago on a hunter and having the same experience.

The three in the North Downs went quicker, to the point I couldn't be sure the buff was necessary for two of them, and didn't actually use it in the third. In this one, instead of being auto-applied the buff needs to be activated by using an item, and for some reason the area where the item can be used is very small and I was already beyond it when I realised this.

I could have backtracked, but I was cutting through level 24 elites with no difficulty so I kept going, only to eventually see that the boss was a level 30 Elite Master. My curiosity to see if I could take him down outweighed my reluctance to run all the way back if I died, so I went for it, and won after a long fight.

The survivability of this warden is really tweaking my altitis, and re-awakening my previously aired doubts as to whether the class is overpowered. I'd be interesting in having another character running some of the same quests as a point of comparison.

That said, it's not like I actually need an excuse to roll an alt, so much as I need the will not to roll an alt. The character creation screen exerts a pull on me that the One Ring would be proud of.