Breakfast Topic: Are leveling and endgame disconnected?

I’m not asking if leveling is too easy, I’m asking if it’s too divorced from what we’re expected to do at max level. One of the things that limits console RPG’s from getting too much ability bloat is the limitation of the control interface, but MMO’s like WoW pack on the abilities – even after the pretty significant trim that we saw in Warlords of Draenor a max level characters interface can have upwards of twenty regularly used buttons on it. While leveling a gnome monk on the stream with the other Blizzard Watch folks, I really felt like what I was doing had little to nothing to do with what I would do. Even after we hit level 10 and I started hitting things in the face with a keg (apparently one of my default tanking moves) I had no idea of how this was going to work in 90 levels.

Of course, the argument can be made that I’ll learn that over the next 90 levels, and playing once a week, I’m not likely to get there any time soon, so maybe I’m overthinking this. Hence this Breakfast Topic, and a chance to ask you, the viewers at home. What do you think? Are those levels still a good way to learn your class, or is it all kind of a mess until suddenly you’re 100 and looking at endgame?