I'd just like to say that buying specialized equipment is in no way mandatory for a Prot grinding build. Prinsesa was my first toon on this server, and thus had to earn everything she had.

When I started grinding on the Dabyrie Farmstead, I was only using the [Commander's Crest] from SFK. Eventually I got the [Aegis of the Scarlet Commander] and the [Sword of Omen] from tanking SM runs, and those lasted me well until 60.

Better equipment just allows you to make bigger pulls, but isn't really required to make the style work, more than knowing how and when to juggle between Light and Wisdom.

For warriors, opinions are usually very divided over fury and arms.

Arms is fairly slow until 51+. The power of heavy 2H comes from instant attacks and rage. If you went Arms all the way, the lack of crit from gear and Cruelty means you are always rage-starved. Heroic strike is on next swing and has severe rage opportunity costs. If you took Cruelty first before going Arms, you will take 5 levels longer to get Mortal Strike. At almost lv40 I got twinked on SM gears plus a Mograine's Might, going into Dustwallow Marsh it took forever to kill one mob as pure Arms. 41-50 was painful as well. Fury was better despite the misses, the rage generation was better. Contrary to what earlier posters said, the talents 1 through 41 increase DPS. Enrage is very underrated, as you'll be surprised how often you get crit. The pool of obtainable 1H weapons was a lot better too. Blue 2H weapons off the AH have high prices, fast swing timers, and procs we don't always care about.

Arms starts to shine around 51+, with Endless Rage and Poleaxe specialization. Firstly, you get [Ice Barbed Spear] off an AV quest, which is powerful for the level. Secondly, at 51+ you can start to work in both Endless Rage and Cruelty, meaning you get a ton of rage. Thirdly, you start finding Beast/Bandit/Soldier green gears giving a lot value for money. Getting TM towards the late 50s will give you more options between WW, overpower, pummel and berserker rage.

IBS can last you fairly well until 60. At 60, a simple run through Ramparts of BF will get you either a [Hellreaver] or [Warsong Howling Axe]. Either weapon will last you to 65. At 65, getting friends to run you through Ring of Blood questline will net you a [Honed Voidaxe]. That weapon is good till 69, where you can replace it with the cheap [Crystalforged War Axe] from AH for the final level and subsequent quests. All weapons benefit from Poleaxe specialization, means you don't have to respec from 51 to 70.

I've been leveling a paladin straight prot from the beginning (10-30 might have been better as Ret), and will second this. I'm on a low population server, so finding groups for anything low level when I level him (usually the middle the of the night) is impossible, so I have purely solo-quest gear. The AH usually has nothing worthwhile. I wish I knew someone who was a Blacksmith, because I can't find anyone who will make me shield spikes.

Nonetheless, I've not had a problem, although I have very rarely ground for XP and haven't at all since the buff to quest XP. I just pick up 3-4 mobs in the area that include ones I need to kill and juggle Seals so I can minimize downtime. Now, since my gear is weak I can't take on 4 same-level mobs and expect to come away with full life, but I can still kill them with only a bandage. I can solo "normal" elites a few levels below me without trouble; I've yet to try same-level or higher ones.

When playing as a Prot paladin when you have full (or nearly full) Ardent Defender, you want to keep your life just about at 30% so that you get the full benefit of it; it makes Seal of Light (and pots) that much stronger. Hopefully you're not on a large pop PvP server. If you have any competition for mobs, be sure to use rank 1 Consecrate to tag them (or just smack each one once); Reflected damage will not tag mobs, no matter how much you do. Use bandages instead of mana to heal so that you can kill faster (use Holy Shield and Consecrate more) - that much is true for *any* healing class except Enhancement Shaman post-Shamanistic Rage.

While it is not ideal I am looking to push a restoration shaman up. I would like to get some advice as to leveling this spec as it does not have any damage talents until the third tier if I stick strictly to the restoration tree.

Gear is easy, tuxedo pants and spell thread or clefthoof path. Then as much nature damage as I can lay my hands on. However I am at a loss for talents. It doesn't seem to matter in the restoration tree. If I pursue this route I look to leading off with lightning bolts and melee to finish.

I don't expect it to be as easy as going Elemental but as many have mentioned before the spec for a Shaman doesn't seem to matter all that much till the thirties. This is how I expect to spend talents to thirty Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Opinions?

If you're really going to do that you should get Nature's Guidance for sure, and probably Imp Reincarnation.

This is very wrong. VT is an amazing dot that rivals SWP to the point that pain is usually dropped from grinding cycles before touch is. The mana regen is bonus. If you didn't love shadow priest grinding from 50 on, this is the most likely problem. Dots abuse the five second rule. You didn't spec Misery.

If you're taking so much damage that it's outracing your bandage cooldown along with improved VE (stop wasting mana on shifts), you need to fight weaker mobs. Hell, if you have to PWS yourself regularly you need to fight weaker mobs. Toward that end, shadow focus can get cut way back -- if you need more than +4% hit for a mob, you need to fight weaker mobs. Spirit Tap returns fixed mana for your given spirit no matter what you kill, so fight green mobs not orange ones. Don't discount post-BC shadow till you've seen SWD. If you're drinking, you're wasting too much mana. I often log off of my t5 mage to farm with my priest wearing 5/6 tailoring and level 70 greens "of Spirit" because drinking annoys me -- shadow priests have 0 downtime unless you're trying to kill stuff that's too strong for you. The 2.4 buff to spirit is completely nuts.

Your nod to Meditation is worthwhile. Around 61-63 you can spec out of deep shadow and into 1x/0/41 to start working on meditation to further limit downtime, and pick up inner focus at 64 for fun. If you're not stacking spirit (see especially healer blues that have spirit+spellpower, like [Gloves of Piety], in outland) your results will be lacking no matter what you spec.

Thanks for the tips. I was killing even-leveled quest mobs in hellfire when I made the switch, which is pretty much what leveling is about these days (I hit outland pre-2.4) if you hit outland as soon as possible. Of course, once you hit 70, farming is a different ballgame from questing for levels entirely.

The reason that i use pw:s on every single pull is because I hate pushback. I hated losing time off of mind flay, I hate having my smite turn from a 2 sec into a 5 second cast, and as I mentioned, reflective damage is hideously broken.

My own spreadsheet (which is ridiculously amateur and likely wrong ) showed that VT overtook talented SWP from a mana efficiency standpoint around 500 spell damage, but doesn't out-dps swp until around 1000 spell dmg. 1000 spell dmg just isn't viable at in your 60s for leveling (and certainly not pre-outlands unless you're dusting off your old raiding toon). I'm just now getting close to breaking 500 spell dmg at 64 on another character (mage) in green drops and quest rewards. On top of that, the extra duration of a talented SW:P really helps beat the 5 second rule for maximum spirit tap efficiency.
And, of course as I mentioned, a healer is 10x more desirable for instances than a shadow priest.

Lag is also an issue for me, though that is difficult to quantify, since I play from Alaska on an east coast server (damn auto-picking realm list). The bottom line is that the disc build just works better for me even if shadow looks better on paper.

I tried not to dis shadow spec too much, because it obviously works for a lot of people, just trying to get another perspective on priest leveling out there.

One thing a lot of people seem to forget about for shadow levelling is psychic scream. Mind flay is practically designed to work in conjunction with the fear. My levelling rotation was VT, SW:P, (apply VE if you need the health), flay, scream, flay, flay (mob is usually dead or can be SWed now). When I got shadowfiend I swapped to VT, MB, flay, scream, flay, flay, SW.

In essence, a mob doesn't run very far if you flay it as soon as it's feared, so there are very few places you can't use fear to avoid pushback.

(That said, the basics of priest levelling is just to get spirit tap and stack spirit through the roof. As long as you follow that formula you can be any spec and you'll do fine.)

The primary reason to go Restoration all the way up is to establish the mindset from day one. I have already leveled an elemental to 70 and have an enhancement at 65. I was mildly disappointed with enhancement. In that vein I do not have a dedicated healer on my main account so I decided that as I like the Shaman style that Restoration was the next logical step.

If not restoration, how do I avoid NOT taking elemental all the way up and getting restoration. I fully understand that with sufficient gear a non-resto shaman should be sufficient in healing but I wasn't able to pull that off myself with my elemental shaman. It just seems to me that Restoration "fixes" that class more so than what Priest experience.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is the to 50 that I have mapped out. If you or others think I am just inviting too much pain I would ask, should I go elemental till 50 then swap? Is Restoration viable as a leveling spec after Earth shield?

I have no issues with you leveling a disco priest, it's your toon and I had a former toon who adored 31/20/0. I am only talking about shadow grinding. Don't spreadsheet mobs you're grinding, you're not raiding BT quite yet. Without multiple dot cycles running their full course, the theorycraft applied to raids is inappropriate to grinding shadow (keeping 4 other people chain casting is a different job than keeping yourself chain pulling). Mobs are going to die before dots fall very often, VT+SWP give you a lot of control over exactly how much dot dpm you waste. A shadow kill is going to throw 1-2 dots and then some nukes -- almost always at least one blast, flay and SWD. You add extra nukes or wand shots depending on cds, 5SR, mana, and range. Just think of all your pushback losses (dps for MB and dpm for MF) as on the same order as the dots you let fall off.

As much as I've said about priest grinding in the talent thread I should post the base shadow talents I used 62+. I took 0/3 focused mind because I was literally mana capping every pull; improved MB is a natural talent to reduce if you're not. The 0/5 shadow focus should scream "incompetent" at me but with [Zangar Epaulets] (quest reward) and one or two green gems with spell hit I got hit capped for what I was grinding. In principle 3/3 SA was supposed to make my dps 5mans easier, but in practice I healed every run anyway so I can't say if it helped. I want to stress that this is an Outland-only spec; you just won't reliably find spell hit any sooner. From there I went to meditation, inner focus, and back to marginal shadow talents after.

This next bit is not specifically about priest grinding but is general advice. You don't need every pull to go 100% correctly and according to plan. You just want 90 of every 100 pulls to go well, so overnuking one mob and needing to wand the next isn't two failed pulls but just the rough spot on your long grind. Taking 6 seconds to bandage after only 10% of your pulls is far better than plant-casting a heal for 1.5 seconds every pull.

No, soloing as resto is just painful. All it lets you do is solo a few more elites, which don't really exist anymore. Earth shield doesn't stop pushback that much, so all you're getting is less bandage time. The playstyle is the same. Also, Nature's Guidance is really important, that's basically 3% more damage (since hit gear is hard to find), which beats a lot of other talents. At worst you can swap out the crit talent for a minor gain in dps. Also, imp chain heal is worthless for leveling and 5 mans, while Nature's Guardian is really awesome for everything.

If you wanted to practice healing or something, elemental can heal most leveling dungeons adequately, especially with all the new damage gear out there (downrank), and the only tool you're missing is earth shield.

What exactly disappointed you about enhancement? When did you do it? After 2.4 enhance is THE fastest leveling spec, period (post 40). Only hunters and warlocks come close. You do ridiculous amounts of damage, you have instant ghost wolf to save travel time in those short hops that mounting is worthless for, and you never run out of mana. Granted, you might not be able to heal some dungeons, so...in any case, the best practice is found at 70, so the sooner you get there the better.

If your pulling more then 3 adds, Stone claw, instant ghost wolf and reset. 66 is a turning point with Earth elemental. But just how much better my mildly twinked enhance shaman is compared to say my Ret Paladin who had t2.5/Naxx continues to amaze me.

I did try resto for leveling in the 50's as I stockpiled honor,tokens as a AV twink but its about as viable as Holy Paladin leveling. If you want to do instances as resto and leveling on the same server as a 70 main. Simple respec every 5 levels post 50 and the cost is relativily painless.

I am leveling a shaman now, currently 35 and enhance. I've been looking forward to 40/41, but I have a question, which is better to take first, Stormstrike first or dual wield? Also, are there many options for early DW weapons? [edit, just picked up 2 [Heaven's Light] for 40, should be fun]

Also, a more long term concern is eventually switching to resto around mid 60s-70 (depending on when I want to do instances). I will have to go with enhance quest rewards for leveling purposes. Is there any good way to balance the two, or will I just need to be smart with upgrades and transition slow?

Go with dual wield first.

Use all green quest rewards towards leveling. Use instance drops towards building a restoration set. Still I would not concentrate on Restoration items until post 65 as most drops before then will be vendor fodder afterward. The only quest rewards I remember having by the time I reached 70 on my first shaman was the HFP reward for killing the demon in the slime pits and the totem reward. i finished 70 before netherstorm and shadowmoon which left me much better situated to choose appropriate quest rewards.

Oh, since your only in your 30s, make sure when passing through fellwood/winterspring to do the complete Quest: Words of the High Chief - Thottbot: World of Warcraft which is the end of the chain dealing with the furballs. The quest rewards are very very good, being +29 spell damage or +50 attack power in trinkets. On each character which completed the quest I kept these trinkets a LONG time. The quests are both easy and follow your natural leveling progression, meaning they should both be done by the time your 58 and will be hard to replace before 65

Trinkets
Power of the High Chief - Thottbot: World of Warcraft
Strength of the High Chief - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

I'm having a lot of trouble to compare attack power/strength/agility values when choosing my equipement as an enh shaman (lvl42 currently).
Wowwiki is quite confusing with all the formulas, so did I miss something, or should I use an addon which can enable to better my dps?

Since you don't have Kings, 2 AP = 1 Strength = 0.8 Agility (including more dodge and armor here)

Is a fury build with dual wield significantly better than a fury/slam build with a slow 2h around the 30-45 range?

I was planning on going slam with WW axe picking up imp cleave and imp ww along the way with sweeping strikes to basically ghetto AE while levelling. I figured a large 2h weapon would be better for this than dual wielding just because of better damage output when Sweeping strikes is up or when using WW and Cleave.

After clarification with him, I thought it would be worthy to add his answer here:


My mistake, I am not explaining it properly, since I was explaining it backwards.

2 attack power = 1 Strength = 1.25 Agility

So 10 Strength vs 12 agility on two items, get the Strength item.

Thank you

I'm looking to warrior leveling as well, from what I've read arms is less gear dependant while fury really shines if you can buy blue quality weapons and put at least fiery on them (I will go with dual lifestealing since i prefer having more healing and directly used procs.. crusader often goes wasted when the mobs are dead)

fury also offers a better multi pull management (sweeping strikes), an escape ability (piercing howl) and some skills for reduced downtime (bloodcraze, bloodthirst)


the chance to hit it's not a great problem in terms of loss of dps and the warrior leveling article (2h arms VS 2h fury VS 2w fury) shows that

fury if supported by decent gear wins the dps battle and offers some useful goodies for leveling


I haven't a warrior (yet) but I'll go fury!

I leveled 2 warriors (tauren+draenei) and 2 priests (UD+draenei) to 70.


Warrior
On my first warrior I tried prot and arms. Prot was good until ~40. It was slow but almost zero downtime. Then above 40 it significantly lost grinding power, battles began to last 40+ seconds which was intolerable. I expected shieldslam to be a good damage ability, but without blockvalue on the gear it's pretty useless for soloing. I respecced arms and it was not much better. Having a slow (3.5+) weapon makes you extremely rage starved and vulnerable to chain dodge-miss-parry streaks. And they happen a lot, their combined chance is something like 15% against an equal level mob.
I very strongly advise against arms leveling, at least for pre-Outlands gear levels.

Dual wield fury worked very well on both warriors. The miss rate IS NOT a problem. That is just a popular myth. Even with that high miss rate you'll have tons of rage compared to a 2hander, you can always afford pummel against casters and you can use BT on all cooldowns. My miss-streaks were more frequent and lasted longer with 2H than with DW.

My dw gear focused on 2 fast weapons before BC areas (to offset miss rate and get a steady rage inflow), then I aimed to get a slow MH for harder whirlwinds. Your yellow attacks will be hit capped extremely fast, and that's all that really matters. Beyond that, focus on crit and str.

Talents to max out asap: cruelty, UW, commanding presence, blood craze, piercing howl, dw spec, enrage, flurry, weapon mastery, sweeping strikes, BT, precision, imp. berserker stance. Yes you can safely skip imp.WW and rampage. These are useless for leveling. Put the rest into parry and improved HS maybe. WW and HS are rage dumps, focus on landing a BT every 6 sec, it's pretty much possible on every gear level.

Piercing howl is an excellent escape ability, you can get it "free" it you go fury. If you're arms, you need to waste 5 extra points to get it and you either get it after MS or you don't get MS at 40... Neither of those options are good.

Nowadays, as devastate got a significant boost, you can consider DW prot leveling after hitting Outlands and acquiring a bit of DW gear. It' surely subpar compared to fury, but at least you'll be able to tank instances. To be honest, nonprot tanking beyond the first Outlands instances becomes extremely inefficient and frustrating.


Priest - shadow
Wand spec is indeed good until around lvl20. Then you get mind flay which is a very effective way of grinding. Basically max out spirit tap, shadow focus, mind flay, imp SWP, imp Scream, shadow reach, shadow weaving, VE, focused mind, darkness, shadow form, misery and VT as soon as possible.
You don't need shadow affinity, silence and shadow power for leveling.
Silence won't hurt but I found it pretty useless, fears, mana burns (and even high DPS) took care of healer mobs pretty effectively anyways.
Improved mindblast is pretty useless, you will not really use anything beyond dots, MF and fear and SWD anyway.
After you got VT, go for meditation and inner focus on the disc tree.

Some tricks:
- Don't use PWS. Use fear instead. Your bubble is only useful against fear immune and elite mobs.
- A feared mob slowed with MF will _very_ rarely pull extra adds. You may need a bit of practice to use fear safely, but it's pretty good.
- Try to finish off the mob with your wand to get a full OO5SR spirit tap proc.
- Before you get shadow form, a quick renew after a couple of pulls takes care of your HP.
- After you get shadow form, use VE for healing. Dot the mob while running away so you keep the distance to use MF effectively.
- I started to use SWD when I got that skill. VT+SWP on the mob, start running away. Apply VE, then SWD. Stop running, use 2-3 MF and the mob is dead and your HP is back to normal unless SWD crit. This takes 9-12 seconds per kill and you're not limited by your scream's cooldown thus you can chainpull more or less.
- Pull with shadow fiend when you're low on mana. Dot the mob after ~5 seconds and wait. Finish off the mob after your fiend dies.
- Focus on spirit until Outland, then go for spelldamage above all, making sure you have decent stamina and some spirit. The spelldamage combined with VT will offset the lack of spirit. You need stamina to safely use SWD other than a finisher.
- My first aid skill is still zero, I found that I don't need extra heals beyond VE and my HP usally went down just as fast as my mana, so manabreaks also served as food breaks.

Priest -holy
This only seems viable after you hit Outlands and go above lvl60. You need a decent amount of spelldamage and some crit for it to be viable. About 400 spelldamage and 20%-ish talented holy crit seemed to be decent enough to spec for smite. You need surge of light & searing light from the holy tree, spirit tap from shadow and meditation from disc. Preferably spec for PI, force of will and impDS later on.
The tactic is simple: pull with holy fire, then spam smite. Or you can just spam smite. Use SWD to finish off mobs if you wish. If you have impDS and spiritual guidance, spirit tap procs will also greatly boost your damage, this is optimal for chainpulling mobs.
DO NOT gear for spellcrit above all. Because of surge of light it may seem to be a smart idea, but it's not. Spelldamage increases both your DPS and DPM better than spellcrit. This may sound counter-intuitive, but that is the truth.
Fear is more risky to use, as you don't have mindflay to slow the mob. Avoid mobs above your level as your talents and gear will severely lack spellhit and resists will destroy your efficiency. Avoid multimob pulls too, when possible.

Just like DW prot for warriors, this talent is subpar for leveling. But as you can easily take core healing talents like improved healing, divine fury, meditation on your way to surge of light, this spec is good for you if you want to be able to solo well, while not turning down healing requests for levelup instances.

How good is Omen of Clarity for levelling a (feral) druid? I've just got to 35 and at the moment have every point in feral, but looking at both Naturalist and OoC (and furor, I guess) it makes me wonder if it's better to put 11 points into resto, then respec at 50 for mangle.

I'm in the process of a warrior right now, so I'll throw in my thoughts so far.

Prior to 20, you've got 2 options. The first is to stack haste enchants, and the second is to wear a shield. Either one works, personally, I stuck with the second. 2-handers just leave me ripping my hair out, the ability to shield bash casting mobs is a huge plus and if you manage to pick up a decent 1-hander like early like the sword from RFC (lvl 13) or the Butcher's Slicer from SFK (18) by having a friend run you through at first, it's basically as strong as a normal 2-hander anyway, but allows you some additional survivability.

Once you get to 20, obviously start dual weilding.

My initial spec, focused on effective rage generation. This winds up giving you a whacky spec, but while this may LOOK like a stupid build at 29, I actually found it to be exceptional because of the raw amount sheer number of rage generating mechanisims you've got going on. Add in the fact that your main attack that this level (HS) has its cost reduced by 3, and you're in pretty decent shape.

Again, you're obviously going to move away from that spec at 40 for your instant, but I found it to be really effective.

Another thing that I found reduced my downtime was finding a couple of key pieces with some avoidance on them. Woldmaster Cape (SFK) at first, with the dodge enchant, and obviously Boots of Avoidance later when you hit 40. We all know that Lifestealing/Crusader enchants can speed up the levelling process by reducing downtime - additionally, there's something to be said for maintaining ~20% avoidance or better while levelling and removing that damage entirely. I don't know about you guys, but the first 5 points I got post 40 were put right back into Parry.