• kenlyric

Edit: Seems more useful as a discussion of talent themes than it does with specific builds. And yeah, some of em were terrible.

It doesn't matter a great deal compared to when you are raiding or PVP. Still, the right talents can grease your movement between levels.

So, which are the talents you consider *must have* while you're leveling. Which are the duds. Which look good on paper but don't pan out in practice? What are the major respecing points for that class.

This info can be found on wowwiki and in some of the class forums. But the wowwiki builds are almost without fail as terriblle as anything I can come up with on my own. Also, I didn't want to derail the twinking thread.

A more generic summary of the purpose of this thread would be "what talents should I seek and which talents should I avoid while leveling." For me, this means I put things in the following priority:

1. Downtime reduction. (Movement speed, efficiency talents)
2. Increased Damage talents
3. Survivability and Utility talents.

Essentially, how can one hide their noob idiocy behind good talent choices?

 

Auran

First and foremost, I'd say the number one way to increase your leveling speed assuming you're soloing and not getting power-leveled in any way is to increase your movement speed. In that light, I can make a few suggestions with various assumptions built in (assume you can afford respec costs a couple of times while leveling, etc):

Druid: Getting the Tier 3 feral talent to increase your cat movement speed. You can max this out like 9 levels before you get travel form. Avoid the Shredding Attacks talent, you won't be shredding much as a soloer. You'll want to get Mangle as soon as possible, followed by Omen of Clarity as soon as possible. The remaining (9?) points however you feel is best.

Hunter: Similarly to Druid, Tier 3 BM talent to increase your pack speed. Not huge, but can save you time. On a similar note, I've found a pet with Screech to be the end all, be all of leveling/grinding. It helps for mutliple targets and is great aggro generation/focus dump. Also, there's no reason not to put more than 41 points in BM. By the time you'll actually want 20 points in MM, you'll be respeccing for PVP or raiding anyways. I'd definitely go with Spirit Bond 2/2 and Frenzy 5/5. Some of the rest is up for grabs, depends on what you like and don't like.

Priest: Until you get Shadowform, you'll be using your wand...a lot. Believe it or not, Wand Spec is powerful and important. At the early level (10-15) it doesn't matter too much which you go for first, Wand Spec or Spirit Tap, but once you hit 40, you'll want to respec Shadowform and then your next 5 levels, I'd go back and grab Wand Spec again.

Mage: It's been a while since I leveled my mage, but even 3 years ago, AOE grinding was very effective (back in my day, we had to spec insta Arcane Explosion). It's my opinion that frost is the superior leveling build, especially toward the higher levels (when you can get all the nice talents for shatter, etc). A few things support this: frost tends to be more efficient, frost crits are instant and are less likely to go "unused", and your survivability will be quite a bit higher.

 

Vandermonde

I dumped wand spec somewhat earlier than that and didn't ever take it back, but it is sadly relevant early on as you say =/

 

◊ Malan

I don't understand what in the hell you were trying to achieve with that Enhancement Shaman build.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Theldon

I am currently leveling a Paladin alt, and I am curious why you have included a protection build over a retribution one. I am fairly clueless as to which spec is the best for paladin leveling, but I'm curious why protection is better.

My argument for retribution would be better single target DPS, plus that movement speed talent for reasons you described in your original post.

 

Pyros

I guess he didn't make a post with all specs available, and I'd also favor ret over prot. Prot is good in some specific level ranges, much like frost blizzard AE mages, where you can grab quite a lot of mobs and AE grind(like plaguelands fields and stuff).

About the druid comment, I found that later on, it's good to come back and put 2points in shredding attacks, so you can Pounce > Mangle > Shred >Shred(if you get a clearcast), which does pretty damn good burst damage to start the fights. However many people don't bother stealthing between mobs and just run around pulling with FF and chain mangling, so whatever suits your tastes I guess.

Overall I'm not convinced of the point of this thread though, and it could very well fit into the Twinking Tricks and Alts thread since it's rather relevant. It's also not hard to find leveling specs when you go to your class forums, or wowwiki.

 

Mode

For warriors, you should seriously consider going Arms in the early levels and furthermore using a spec that is, on the surface, stupid. >link< +50% crit chance on overpower is huge when your base crit chance is 5%. At level 40, respec to fury and enjoy bloodthirst. Take improved execute, not weapon mastery.

Supposedly, paladins can progress at a pretty quick clip by AOE grinding from some point onward. As a side benefit, you're much better at tanking instances.

 

savernon

The problem with just saying one build is the "leveling" build is that really doesn't cut it if you truly are going for best at that level range. That and each one of those a level 70, so I'm not sure if you are talking about going from 10-70, or for whenever the expansion hits. Back to the builds though, with druids you can respec a lot every couple of level bands to get some better effects. Feral swiftness is really great before you get travel form, but once you do get it, it looses a bit of its impressiveness, especially if you have intensity for mana regen and mana pot whenever you feel like you. You can just cat form a mob down -> travel form to the next one -> cat form.

Thick hide and survival of the fittest aren't very good solo leveling talents either. Those 6 points could be put to better use in Brutal Impact, Shredding Attacks, Feral Aggression, or Nature's Grasp.

 

Copernicus

A mage should level in deep frost. Shatter is a huge damage increase (that's controllable) and the crit talent is better for leveling. Elemental Precision is also one of the best talents for a leveling caster, letting that caster attack mobs two levels higher than them with no problems with resists. Frostbite/Frost Armor is also a useful combo, as Molten Armor/Impact isn't until TBC. If I was leveling a mage, I'd go for - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - with a priority on the Shatter chain. After that, it's up to the caster. Frost Channeling, Arcane Subtlety, and the other frost talents are all useful. But not critical talents for leveling.

 

Questioner

Prot is a very nice build for levelling as a paladin post level 30. However, I have no idea why he put 5 points into divine strength. If you are going into holy, you must go at least 10 for it to have any effect (for the uninterruptable healing talent). Either way, if you are levelling as prot, your healing comes almost solely from SoL or JoL, not via your healing spells.

Ok, I actually just looked at the rest of the paladin spec....say what? Is this a joke?

The major flaw in this thread is that the ideal specs for levelling are not ones with 61 talent points.

 

Vie

Are you discussing the grind from 70-80? I get this impression since nearly every spec uses 61 talent points.
If I'm mistaken, elaborating more on respeccing while leveling should be added.

 

Alerian

I have done a lot of leveling recently since work causes me to log in 30 minutes after my guild's raids start. I'm sitting at 7/9 classes between 60-70, so here's some of my thoughts:


Mage: Frost is really the best choice as Fire specs will make you drink as much as 50-100% more often, a huge time sink leveling your character.

Paladin: The change to quest XP makes Ret a better choice again. While Prot Paladins aren't horrible to level with, they are only really ideal for quests where you have to kill multiple mobs in the same area. Many, many quests involve having to go somewhere and kill 1 mob or loot 1 item. Unless you can find situations where you can get 2-3 mobs beating on you, Ret comes out being quicker.

Priest: I think Wand Spec is better than Unbreakable Will while leveling. The ideal leveling sequence is PW:S, Mindblast, SW:P, MF (1 or 2x, depending on enemy level), Wand until dead.

Warlock: Similarly, I believe that Affliction is better than Demonology, especially after level 40 when Dark Pact becomes available. The Felguard is fun and all, but he didn't speed leveling and only increased my downtime.


When it comes to leveling talents in general, anything that minimizes downtime for eating and drinking is usually good, so long as it doesn't minimize it so much that it takes you notably longer to kill your targets.

 

• Latito

For Rogues, Lethality is really not that impressive of a talent when leveling. With a crit rate in the range of 10-15%, you just don't crit very often. An extra 15% damage isn't that big. Yes, 15%.. you go from a 200% multiplier on crits to a 230% multiplier.

As mentioned, movement speed is important, finding a build which can get Fleet Footed would be pretty nice.

 

• Surreptitious

I'd submit that with the 2.3 Quest XP buff, Retribution is the more viable leveling spec. There is simply more XP gained by finishing quests rather than grinding now, and that lends itself to single target DPS. Sure, there are kill XX type of mobs quests that can be trivial with Prot, but only if they are melee types of mobs.

Also, Persuit of Justice is a great leveling talent. 15% increased movement (and mounted) speed available as soon as level 22? It adds up a lot over time.

 

Phlis

Actually
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

All anyone ever needs to know about leveling a shaman. Get the resto points first. After that, it doesnt't really matter.

 

Douglas

Should probably remember that this ties in with equipment, too.

Recent trends are for prot/holy and ret to require utterly different equipment. If you want to occasionally respec from your leveling spec to prot or holy for instancing, ret gear won't help -- no int, no spell power, no mp5, no defence, no block, et cetera.

But if you have good prot gear you can make due with it as holy spec, and if you have good holy gear you can make due with it as prot spec -- neither is optimal, but neither is pessimal either. A holy paladin in true ret gear is useless, and a prot paladin in ret gear, nearly so.

(But if you're going to just bank full sets of T5-or-better gear for each spec before the leveling starts, it's not so much of a consideration. Just wanted to put the idea out there for consumption, though.)

 

PSGarak

Much to my surprise, the warlock Felguard build is actually a viable leveling tree. Before level 50, however, I doubt there's a very good reason to be in the demo tree, and if you're planning on using the voidwalker for anything other than very specific overleveled-named-elite mob encounters, you're doing it wrong.

As soon as you have the succubus, you use the succubus for leveling (and grinding in general). Then generally means you want a concentration talent. Affliction, unquestionably, is simply better than any other warlock tree, and most other trees in general, at killing multiple targets at once. And Dark Pact is quite possibly the best grinding talent in the game--it turns out that leveling is about sustainability and consistency of damage, rather than absolute DPS, and giving your character access to ~400mp/5@70 does wonders for sustainability.
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator is the basis of a good affliction leveling spec. UA doesn't end up being that useful because it's not instant-cast, but it has potential.

If you want to go felguard when it becomes available, it's an option. It has similar damage, and similar sustainabiltiy because a lot of your damage isn't coming from your own mana supply. Personally I don't like the playstyle at all, and I still think that affliction does better at fighting multiple mobs which gives it an edge in hardcore grinding, but also requires better gear. Levels 40-50 are affliction.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Krazen

For locks, affliction is the way to go, particularly if you don't really care about looting the mobs.

Just dot and fear then away.

 

Jebraltar

Divine Strength is almost completely useless for prot-grinding. Even Divine Intellect is more useful. Once you've invested five points into Holy, as already mentioned, there's no reason not to get Spiritual Focus. Being able to heal yourself with mobs on you is enormously useful, especially given that you probably won't have a big set of awesome tanking gear.

With the buffs that Ret has received, I'm fairly certain that it's now utterly superior for leveling anyway. Prot is just a fun way to level, it's not all that fast outside of a few specific level ranges. (For prot grinding to work, you want large groups of enemies, preferably with slightly low HP and damage, that are clumped up. The murlocs in Dustwallow are the perfect example. Anywhere with casters, especially healers, your efficiency goes down to barely being above that of a 0/0/0 spec.

Edit: I only just now actually looked at the Paladin spec. It's mind-numbingly bad. Conviction has no place in a leveling build, Improved Judgment is mostly going to hurt your sustainability, and Benediction is the only thing you have points in in the retribution tree that's not utterly useless. Prot grinding consists of judging Wisdom/Light on one mob and then sealing Wisdom/Light while Consecration, Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, and Blessing of Sanctuary kill them. Reckoning is a perk, and its biggest advantage is that it doubles your Light/Wisdom procs, not that it makes your kill speeds oh so fast.

Within the prot tree itself, you're missing Anticipation, which is subtracting quite a fair chunk from your survivability at low levels (good luck hitting the defense cap without it in leveling gear) and from your avoidance/block at all levels. Only 2 points in Toughness is questionable, to say the least. 3 points in Imp. Hammer of Justice is a complete waste - HoJ is occasionally useful if you're soloing a mob or something, but if you need to heal more than once a minute, your mana pool will not survive that fight anyway. Ardent Defender is perfectly designed for AOE grinding, and makes for a much better choice than Weapon Expertise. (Ardent Defender is pretty close to a 20% health increase and it also increases the efficiency of any self-heals you use at low life. I've grinded in plenty of spots where mobs would take me down to 35 fairly quickly, and be nearly incapable of getting me down further.) Another talent that would be useful, if you felt comfortable with freeing up the points, would be Sacred Duty - in addition to giving a very respectable stamina boost, it lets you use Divine Shield more often, which means that you can pull bigger groups and be confident that DS will be up so you can use it and bandage.

 

• Chicken

I'd actually say linking a full talent spec isn't particularly helpful to this kind of discussion, you're better off posting a guideline of how you spent your points as you leveled up. It's more interesting, and especially for the classes which have a lot of talents that end up being taken at max level in the earlier parts of their trees it can be helpful to know this. You can count on common sense to some extent, but on occasion what seems the most logical choice isn't. For an example see Latito's post above; most rogues leveling with Assassination would be very likely to pick up Lethalithy, but unless you're using Backstab a lot while leveling and have Improved Backstab, the talent really doesn't do you much good because your crit rate simply won't be high enough (This also counts in some extent for other of the good rogue talents; I leveled my rogue as Assassination and respecced him once he hit 50 to better optimize his talents around Mutilate and my sudden increase in combo point generation).

There's also some classes in which picking up your "ultimate" talent in a tree is something really not worth doing at it's earliest level; generally because the ability is too situational, or while great in a group environment, not needed in a solo environment where things are dying too quick for it to be of use anyway.

I'm also unsure whether there's still much to be said on this subject; there's a lot of guides out on the internet providing excellent soloing specs for every class the game has to offer. These don't provide the only way you can play a class, but typically they'll provide you with the build which is easiest to get the hang of while also having good killing speed.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

• Surreptitious

I agree. With Affliction post-Dark Pact, all you have to do is buy "of the shadow wrath" greens, and with the sheer amount of +shadow you get, you can dot up multiple mobs, drain one to regain any health back (with Fel Concentration there is little pushback). Dark Pact all your imp's mana (leave him passive and phase shifted for best effect) while going to the next pull. You should be at 80%+ health and 80%+ mana between pulls.

Felguard is only good after level 56-- not level 50. That's when you can get Instant Corruption again, as well as having Demonic Frenzy, Intercept, etc. I preferred Affliction after 64 or so again though, after getting enough +dmg from quest greens.

 

Earthhoof

Seconded. Clearcasting is a nice bonus, but, from leveling my mage, not really worth it (though until I got some more Frost talents, I will say that uninterruptable AM is a nice thing to have in a tight spot). Particularly once you get CoC, the control afforded by a Frost Mage is fantastic. Anything that eventually gets close to you is basically guaranteed to get hit with Frostbite or a Frost Nova. The ability to kite around otherwise dangerous mobs is tremendously nice; you can stop runners with relative ease. My delight on finding that I could kite that murderous elite panther in 1k Needles to death was extreme.

As for Paladins, I used to find people advocating spending the first 10 points in Holy to get pushback-resistant heals. Is this still a good plan, or should one just go ahead with Ret?