Spork

For leveling a rogue, once high enough, go mace spec, pick up riposte on the way, and get the Shatterer ( Thottbot World of Warcraft: The Shatterer ). After that, find a good offhand mace and go nuts. Downtime will be very minimal, especially vs mobs that use weapons. They will be either stunned or disarmed the entire time. Also makes dueling other melee classes a joke.

 

Edwardino

In my spare time I speed run video games. For example, I can speed run the original Legend of Zelda in under 40 mins. (3 mins from world record... grr!) I've applied some of my crazyness to WoW. Here's my tips for specs.

Druid Tips:

10-20
-Start with 1 pt nature's grasp, then get reduced wrath cast time, then back to nature's grasp.
-Don't forget to buy water!
-If you can get a blacksmith to put a counterweight on something, then go feral instead. It will work in Bear form @ lvl 10 and greatly increase your attack speed. Haste is worth a lot at low levels.

Two options are rougly the same depending on your gear/preference:
Option 1)
20-35 - Feral
35-50 - Get Furor, Omen of Clarity, Natural Shapeshifter, and continue with Feral talents.
-Why OOC over LotP? Your crit rate is just too low to consider LotP as a worthy addition. OOC Procs will seal grinding speed, as your damage will most likely be capped by the speed of your energy regen. Furor will allow you to powershift to get quick kills.

Option 2)
20-40 Feral
40-50 Moonkin!
-Moonkin @ 40 can AoE grind mobs. I wouldn't recommend doing it for a pure EXP perspective now that quests are good- but if you have a bunch of multimob quests, it's superior to Option #1 for lvling speed. Simply run around and moonfire & insect swarm 3-5 mobs while in caster/travel form->let them come to you. Then Moonkin->Barkskin->Hurricane.
-Only do this if you've managed to get some +int/stam leather.. note: LEATHER. not cloth. You need the armor bonus to AoE.

Both options are superior to just going pure feral alone.

50-70
-Feral + Mangle. No question.

Paladin Tips:
Prot IS superior to Ret assuming you can twink yourself out with a shield spike and whatnot.

10-35 - Ret
35-50 - Prot
-Scarlet Monestary, Uldamon, Maraudon... If you have rest exp this place is nice to run. As a paladin you can AoE pull mostly everything with ease assuming your team knows how to handle a pally tank.
-Stranglethorn kill quests are easy. You can pull a whole troll camp. Or 5 Tigers.
50-60 - Ret
-Mobs are getting into the realm where they start doing more magic damage. Ret is superior now.
60-70 - Ret OR Prot
-Depending on how many instances you run, and given the speed at which instances are done with a pally tank, either is desirable. Though, if you're solo, Ret is the better choice. If you've done them before, you can be very precise with your Outlands quests and kill your 1 named quest mob quickly. Prot tends to take longer, but you end up getting experience for taking out the whole fort along with the named quest mob. It's a tossup. I personally have done Ret from 60 onwards.

Mage Tips:

10-30 - Fire
-Very easy answer to why fire is superior in early levels: You get your next rank 2 levels earlier
30-50 - Frost
-AoE grinding is mostly dead. But, theres still so much opportunities to AoE grind quests.
50-70 - Fire
-Easier to solo single mob quests that litter this level range. Blast Wave/Dragon's Breath becomes superior to Blizzard in AoE Quest grinding situations.

 

Spiry

I'll add about shaman:
taking Elemental Weapons over Spirit Weapons at lvls 30/1/2 and Mental Quickness over Weapon Mastery at lvls 35/6/7, as they each add more bang to your buck.

 

Maels

Tally another up for affliction to level a warlock. Felguard is heavy downtime due to having to heal him or waiting on his mana (or tapping your health away...then eating). Casting more bolts (than afflcition) that are less DPM than all the dots, it's not comparable to affliction's 35-45 mobs per drink. Get 2/2 Imp Drain Soul, an add-on that deletes excess shards and drain every pull (pull 2-3) and you're golden.

I believe with Curse of Exhaustion (for killing elites) along with instant Howl of Terror and drain tanking, survivabilty is greater than demo's as well.

 

Elerion

If I was levelling a priest again, I would do:

10-14 Wand Spec (This assumes you are not on a brand new server. On a completely fresh server where you are levelling quickly, you can skip wand spec since you will be limited to world drop wands. In any other case buy all the enchanting wands and be utterly overpowered into your 30s.)
Now start building your shadow tree:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
That is roughly what it should look like at level 37. ISWP before Focus, Reach before Weaving. Now grab another two points in whatever. Silence usefulness varies by server and grinding location, but is probably a good choice. VE is pointless before shadowform. When you hit 40: Respec.

Up to this point your kill method has been dot, nuke if mana allows, wand to death, renew yourself if needed, repeat. Nuke frequency has increased during the last few levels as the relative power of your wand has decreased. You have been stacking spirit along with what little spelldamage has been found. Now you turn into a spellcaster instead of a magical hunter. Your gear should change accordingly with much higher emphasis on +damage through tailoring items and shadow wrath items, but spirit is still your second best stat.

Your new spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Imp VE can be replaced by Silence according to need. You're now grinding in shadowform with VE, and finishing mobs off with wand once they hit you. MB -> SWP -> VE -> Flay (-> Flay) -> Wand. If needed due to a resist or engaging mob from too close, rank 1 fear is superior to PWS for pushback avoidance, assuming you don't pull adds. Unless you are utterly twinked to the gills with +damage, you probably want to grab Wand Spec for your next 5 levels, as it's still a considerable part of your damage and the shadow talents here aren't that awesome. Then fill out improved VE, shadow weaving, and Silence. Now you're 50, and respeccing again (unless you skipped Wand Spec).

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

New order VT -> SWP -> VE -> MB -> Flay (-> Flay) -> Wand. At this point start building up the disc tree. Wand Spec > UW unless twinked or doing PvP. Martyrdom first in tier 2, then IPWS. Inner Focus first then Meditation. Put the last 5 points into Shadow Power.

Welcome to 70.

 

Ngita

No pulling tools means lots of big body pulls unless your very careful. Gear wise as Fiola touched on with the re-itemisation changes, their is almost no prot/holy gear below level 66-67 outside of raids. Just Greens of random enchantment and a dozen or so peices from level 40-66 up.

I am unsure who this thread is addresed to as anyone likely to read it would be best served by twinking a 100g for respecs if it at all possible.

 

Pyros

Just going to comment on that, I'm not 100%sure about BE starting zone since I've never lvled a caster there, but at least in draenei statrting zone, you can get wand quest rewards as early as level 6-7. Thus, even on a fresh server, wand spec is still pretty useful. As horde, it's only a problem if you start as tauren since TB is so far from silvermoon, but there's no tauren wand user anyway. For alliance it's a bit longer if you don't start in darnassus or azuremyst, but from the human starting zone to the draenei starting zone, it should take about 40mins max, assuming you know what you're doing.

It's well worth doing on any char really though, unless you're bored of these zones, since the quest rewards are much better in the "new" starting zones and the quest concentration is much higher(leading to faster leveling, even assuming you know the other zones very well).

 

Elerion

That may be. I just remember three years ago at launch when I was sent a Fire Wand - Items - World of Warcraft at like level 13 and thought it was great

Interesting anecdote, wand-related dps was actually better at low latency levels at launch (when we didn't have autoshoot) than now if you had the correct combination of weapon speed and wand. Swing timer would run during wand cooldown, so a quick dagger would hit between every wand shot. I had maxed wand and dagger skills up to level 40.

 

Sapphrina

While playing around with pala alt, I found this to be very effective for solo questing up through the levels:

Early on, go for crit rating/agi where possible, to the point of wearing leather armor in several slots. AP/strenght is a bonus, but not nearly as important as critting. Around level 40ish you want to start switching your focus more to a balanced mix of AP and crit.

Talent progression is..

Benediction - Imp BoM is unimpressive at low levels. +4 AP to rank 1, +7 to rank 2. If you spend some money from your main on gear, you'll pretty soon be killing things fast enough even without any BoM, but burning mana on seal/judge and the occasional heal, that for some closely populated areas, you'll want to use BoW.
Imp Seal of the Crusader
Imp Judgement - not to spam judge the same mob, but because sometimes you'll twoshot stuff and will want to get on the next one fast.
SoC
Pursuit of Justice
Conviction

1 filler point now, doesn't really matter. I'd go for Crusade, some might want Deflection, Vindication or even Imp Retribution Aura. Avoid Eye for an Eye, mobs don't crit on spells. I know this feels like a waste, but the comfort is every single point you spend until lvl 50 will increase damage output.

Sanctity Aura
Twohand Spec
1 point in Imp Sanctity Aura
Vengeance
Repentance - Mainly for more SoC judgements on harder quest mobs.
Sanctified Seals
Last point in Imp Sanctity Aura
Fanaticism
Crusader Strike

At 51 you could respec, moving the first 5 points into Imp BoM, and start filling up Sanctified Judgement. Then grab Divine Strenght, and work towards Precision and BoK.

The only legitimate use of the BLINK tag:
Schrödinger's cat is [BLINK] not [/BLINK] dead.

 

glowacks

I had a priest get to level 35 in order to disenchant Outland stuff, and was the third priest I had leveled. I found that Spirit Tap was not always useful in the low teens due to the overpoweredness of spirit at low levels to begin with (assuming you stack spirit) and I was wanding a great deal, making me wish I hadn't tried without wand spec at all. However, I wanted to get Mind Flay asap. This was also a mistake. Rank 1 Mind Flay is utter crap and only does damage comparable to wanding. Thus I would go with the common enlightened wisdom of taking 10-14 Wand Spec and 15-19 Spirit Tap. Improved SWP I found to only really help when fighting multiple mobs, but it's a really good use. Shadow Weaving is utter crap for leveling, but I find that even though VE does very little healing off-the-bat, it costs nearly no mana and becomes a very very cheap (and somewhat weak) renew. You don't need it every mob either, and if you're strafing away once you open, you should normally be waiting for the mob to get into Mind Flay range regardless.

Now, after I decided to level my priest beyond 35 (mainly to learn the next enchanting rank), I found that I was basically not wanding because of all the new greens that were added that had spell damage (both world drops and quests). You don't have to scour the auction house for +shadow or get twinked to get a good amount of +dmg in the 40-50 region. Just don't fight mobs higher level than you, and you'll not need more than 2 wand shots. Thus I would put points down towards VT and not have to respec out of Wand Spec again at 50.

10-14 Wand Spec
15-19 Spirit Tap
20-21 Imp SWP
22-24 Shadow Focus
Mind Flay sucks until 28. The enchanting wand you can equip at level 26 does more DPS than rank 1 Mind Flay - the wand you have is likely not far behind MF in damage. Skip it until 28 when you can learn Rank 2.
25-26 Improved Psychic Scream - because you'll want Silence eventually and need filler
27 Improved Mind Blast or Shadow Focus - this much in Shadow Focus is mainly useless, and more than one Mind Blast per fight is very rare, so this is filler
28 Mind Flay
29 Imp MB/SF see 27
30-31 Shadow Reach
32-34 Shadow Weaving (it might suck, but its better than the alternatives)
35-39 VE, Silence, and Focused Mind. I don't know whether to favor the efficiency talent or the new abilities. Silence is helpful, but a long cooldown, and VE helps efficiency at some minor rate comparable to Focused Mind (maybe?).
Respec at 40, dropping Wand Spec for Darkness
40 Shadowform
41-44 Shadow Weaving and Imp VE - neither are stellar, but the alternatives are nearly useless
45-49 Misery
50 Vampiric Touch

From here go down to Inner Focus and Meditation, then fill in the raid-centric PvE talents in shadow or respec healing. You'll probably end up moving the 3 points out of Silence to fill them all in.

Now my original priest leveled 60-70 as disc/holy, and could heal instances with only 15-20 points in holy. In grinding, I 'd go holy fire, SWP, Smite until almost dead then wand. I kept PWS on all the time because I took Reflective shield - a rather awesome grinding talent. I normally pre-cast it, but there came times I would be refreshing it mid-battle for a few mobs, before it would last the entire time again. I don't recommend doing Smite leveling unless you have people to heal on a regular basis.

On that note, I found leveling a paladin to be quite boring as Ret when I did it like two years ago or something. I got to 35ish and quit. I rolled a Blood Elf paladin recently and went straight prot. I probably would have been better off Ret for the first 30 levels, and definitely would go that way if I rolled again. But I went prot overall because it allowed me to quest reasonably effectively and not be useless for tanking. I had too many bad experiences leveling where ret pallies in dungeons were plain useless.

 

ZeroWashu

Can you really save enough mana early on to matter? Before you obtain the pushback reducing skill wouldn't time be of essence? Still my biggest issue was that to me, for both Shaman I have played, the resto tree was the last tree I went up. I did enhancement and elemental. I found their specific talents more important to get earlier. It comes down to making the targets dead as soon as possible so you don't have to heal.

For leveling specs that is my key point, the talents chosen should be done so so that mobs die faster. The less time they are alive the less damage they can do and the less downtime from recovery is needed.

 

MTW

So what would the ideal druid build be for you Edwardino? At say, 50?

 

Lavode

level 50 means you can get mangle. Do so, and remove claw and rake from your bars entirely, mangle is vastly superior - Next 11 levels, which will go very fast now that you can mangle the universe to death, go furor, naturalist, omen of clarity.

 

MTW

So Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would be good or should I switch some points around.

 

• droeber

I'd remove the points in Nurturing Instinct and put them in Bash. Pounce -> Mangle -> Shred is huge.

 

slant

My path for druid leveling:

Level 26 (feral to primal fury)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 37 (then resto to OOC)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 49 (filling out feral)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 50 (respec for mangle)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 61 (fill out resto again to OOC)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 70 (in 2.3)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Level 70 (In 2.4, with nurturing instinct. Could also put points in natural shapeshifter for powershifting, but I figured it wasn't worthwhile with <3 points.)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Bael

I found that the biggest hindrance to leveling a rogue was not a lack of damage throughput or control over a mob: it was the amount of damage that I'd take, and with bandages and food your only options to heal, that can add up to a lot of downtime.

You can avoid a lot of incoming damage just by timing your stuns well, and Spork's point of using Maces is a good one; but there will always be a few hits that get through, and mitigating them through natural avoidance seems the best way to go.

If I were to level a rogue again, I'd be looking for a build that picked up as many points in Lightning Reflexes and Deflection as possible, early in the leveling process. The first two talent points would go to Imp SS, then max out LR, max out Deflection and pick up Riposte. An extra 10% avoidance to all melee mobs - which account for a huge proportion of the mobs you'll be fighting in the game - translates directly into less damage taken and less overall downtime. You might not kill things as quickly as some of the other rogue builds posted here, but I'm of the opinion that the best way to improve your rogue's leveling speed is to reduce his incoming damage.

Riposte is an excellent talent for solo play in general; at 10% parry talented, you're virtually guaranteed a parry at least every third mob, and it amounts to the lowest energy cost damage dealer you have. The disarm is just icing on the cake. When WotLK comes out any build I take will incorporate the ability somehow.

Of course, this is completely irrelevant if you're going to be partied with a healer. If that's the case, go straight for maximum damage, with imp gouge, precision, dual wield spec and the weapon spec of your choice.

 

Spork

Yup. For a rogue, your only downtime will be healing up. So to minimize downtime, maximize your avoidance by maxing dodge/parry and timing stuns. Once you get BF, killing goes a lot faster. SnD is a great finisher no matter what level you are, but while leveling, usually only dump your openers points on it (this is assuming you're not daggers, but why would you for leveling?) For leveling purposes though, I wouldn't go more than the 31 points into combat. Once you reach AR, start putting points into the assa tree (malice/ruth/leathality are hot). If you're with a healer, those should probably be what you go for first until you can reach the lower combat tree.

 

ZeroWashu

OK. Having completed a mage to 70 using fire I have a new one coming up with Frost.

Rank for Rank it seems Fire's base damage is near the Frosts top damage. Now the advantage of frost of course is slowing the mob down but until you can increase the range you start from that advantage is not all that great. Frost spells cost around two-thirds the mana of an equivalent fire spell. (example 100 mana versus 140 for rank5 I believe). While

I have found that frost isn't good until around 30 or so when you can fully fillout Ice Shards and Shatter. Throw in the fact that Cold Snap shows up then and it becomes pretty easy. Still you have to increase the base range with Artic Reach right afterward simply because fighting stuff higher than you tends to put aggro range outside or just on the edge of base Frostbolt range.

The problem I found between the two is, it takes more casts on average to down a foe. For the most part my fire mage survived on Frost Nova and Sheep to crowd control. The FN would last long enough with the power of fire spells to drop the first target and the Sheep could be refreshed. This allowed easy management of 3 targets.

Frost so far has been a disappointment. The primary problem is that the base damage is just so low compared to Fire on a spell per spell basis. Worse, Fire gets their bolts 2 levels before frost gets its equivalent exaggerating the difference. Now while fire can cost half again as much per cast (rank5 frost=100 fire=140) it hits harder. Frost has the advantage in casting time by rank 5 and forever holds it from thereon by half a second.

Now the movement slowing of frost is fine but you start out closer to your target and you need that slowing effect because your not putting it down fast enough. Still there are times with +2 and +3 level targets where I found my aggro range was just on the edge if not outside of my base frost bolt range!

One thing I don't know but figure someone has a chart for is the dps/mana/time efficiency charted for untalented and talented frost/fire spells. That might help with the equation.

I do think frost is getting more viable as my mage (zeroryoko on eitrigg) passes into her thirties. Shatter and Frostbite are filled out providing the opportunities for the big crits. The problem with lower levels is finding items to help her crit.

 

Zaroua

Specs for leveling untwinked or with minimal twinking/power leveling. Focuses on respecing as little as possible, killing as fast and safe as possible while minimizing downtime.


Druid

1-34: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Ferocity is an obvious choice, Feral Instinct lets you Prowl around and tank instances (the threat is also useful for escort quests). Brutal Impact is an absolute must (put points in it at 15 and 16), it lets you get Regrowths off at early levels and later on it lets you Pounce > Shred/Mangle > Shred. Feral Swiftness at 20-21 followed by Sharpened Claws and Primal Fury. Then it's Feary Fire (feral), Savage Fury and Shredding Attacks.



35-50: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft OR Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The difference is if you plan on tanking instances while leveling up. If so, max out Survival of the fittest ASAP, otherwise Heart of the Wild > LotP + Imp. LotP, Predatory Instincts and then Mangle at 50.



51-70: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with 4 points left over

Pick up Furor, Natural Shapeshifter, *2* points in Naturalist, OoC, max out Naturalist and take Nurturing Instinct.


From 60-70, pick up the 2 following trinkets from quests Ancient Crystal Talisman - Items - World of Warcraft or Glowing Crystal Insignia - Items - World of Warcraft (depends on faction) *AND* Oshu'gun Relic - Items - World of Warcraft. Use those over normal DPS trinket. Whenever you shift out to heal, simply pop the trinkets to get a huge increase in healing done and reduced downtime.




Hunter

Hunter is very simple: for 1-70 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Endurance Training > Imp. Revive Pet > Focused Fire > 1 in Thick Hide > Beastial Swiftness > Unleashed Fury > Intimidation > Imp. Mend Pet > Bestial Discipline > Frenzy > Bestial Wrath > Animal Handler > 2 Ferocious Inspiration > Serpent's Swiftness > TBW. Rest in Marks.

The amount of life healed by Spirit Bond is pathetic. Putting 2 more points in DPS talent for your pet is pretty much going to save you more downtime than 2 points in that talent.



Mage

There's 2 ways to go with a Mage, either AoE Frost or Frostbolt spam.

AoE: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Frostbolt: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


It's personal preference. AoE is riskier but it's really easy to gather up a 3-4 mobs before lvl 40 and AoE them down, even while questing. Frostbolt is safer but you won't be able to AoE nearly as well compared to the AoE build. For both builds, do the following: Elemental Precision > 2 in Imp. Frostbolt > Permafrost (this is a MUST) > 3 more in Imp. Frostbolt > Icy Veins. Even with the AoE build, you still want a decent Frostbolt utility.

Please note that Ice Shards is completely useless early on. With under 5% crit without Shatter and with the talent costing a whole 5 points to max out, it makes it terrible and a very small DPS increase until higher levels.



40-58 AoE: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for Outlands, go Frostbolt since AoEing in Outlands isn't practical

Frostbolt 40-50ish: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Max out Winter's Chill and Emp. Frostbolt, pick up Water Elemental at 50 and then fill up Frost talents as you see fit (Imp Blizzard, Frostbite, Artic Winds are all good).



At 70: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

After you're done with Frost talents, pick up the Arcane stuff (Arcane Subtlety is nice for instancing when you have a terrible tank, just use Arcane Blast/Missiles) to finish up.



Paladin

3 choices this time. All Paladins should go Ret spec until Outlands unless they're absolutely want to instance pre-BC. Ret is worthless for instances compared to almost every other spec out there.


1-70 Ret: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

At 20, pick up SoC and then 3 points in Pursuit of Justice. Vindication > Conviction > 2h Spec > Vengeance > Sanctified Seals > Repentance > 1 in Sanctified Judgement > Crusader Strike. After that you have 2 options, Holy for Spiritual Focus to heal yourself or Prot for 3% hit for more DPS. Hit is easy to get in Outlands so I suggest Holy and then putting the rest of the points in Ret.


58-70 Prot: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You start putting points in Ret at 59 only. This is for leveling as Prot in Outlands (which is effective). You'll want to instance a lot to take advantage of being Prot, but Prot Paladins are amazing for tanking the Outland instances (except the last boss of Sethekk) and there's always a high demand for good tanks. Just pick up all the tank oriented quest rewards and all the spell dmg plate/mail/leather (in that order) to solo. Keep a 1h + shield and smack stuff up with lots of spell dmg and SoR/Consecrate.



58-70 Holy: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Put all the points in Holy first and then go to Prot. Stack up as much spell damage as possible as SoR/Consecrate stuff down. Keep a 1h + Shield on and pick up healing gear/spell damage gear. Congratulations, you're a healer and all you have to do to find a group for Outland instances is ask in General/LFG once!



Priest

Only 1 spec, really. The only "thing" is if you can't afford to stack as much Spirit as possible before level 40, then it might be a good idea to pick up Wand Spec at lvl 10 instead of starting with Spirit Tap.


1-40: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Take Imp. Shadow Word: Pain before Shadow Focus, Mind Flay at 20. Put points in Shadow Reach and Darkness as "fillers" for Shadow Form.


40+: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Get Vampiric Touch and go into Discipline. After that, just put the points where you want (Shadow Affinity, Imp. Mind Blast and Shadow Power are all good choices - crit sucks for shadow Priests though). If you plan on instancing, get Shadow Affinity before Imp. Mind Blast at lvl 23-24.



If you plan on on healing: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Lightwell is *AMAZING* if you actually use it and bitch at your group members to use it. While in instances, try to Mind Blast/SW mobs to get Spirit Tap to proc. For leveling, stack as much Spirit as possible.



Rogue

1-70: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The utility Imp. Gouge gives greatly surpasses the extra dodge. From 15-19, max out Precision, then Deflection > Riposte. After that it's 4 points in DW spec, Blade Flurry, 4 points in Weapon Spec**, Weapon Expertise, Max out DW and Weapon Spec + 1 in Aggression and then AR at 40. After that go Assassination. Imp Poisons over Vile Poisons because you'll want to use utility Poisons while ins