Part I: Beginning

Once you get to level 20 some parts of your leveling will become easier, and some will not. The first change that you are going to find is that having the ability to teleport all over the world is absolutely amazing. It’s probably my favorite trait of the class overall. For that matter, it’s my favorite trait of every class in the game.

One change you are going to find with your questing and such is that being able to AoE grind through your quests is going to make them fly by a whole lot faster. Some quests are not impacted by AoE grinding at all, like ones that have you bring back Mr. Mob’s head, or ones where you have to deliver an item from Location A to Location B (though teleporting can help with that), and so on. But a lot of quests involve killing a certain number of specific mobs or collecting a number of items that drop from certain mobs. These are the ones where AoE grinding really shines and where your leveling process starts burning some serious fuel.

Where you level is not especially important, just try to focus questing to some degree in areas that have a lot of mobs grouped together that are melee mobs rather than ranged attackers or spell casters. My first Mage leveled through the 20’s in Hillsbrad Foothills much like my Paladin did. The Mage I am leveling right now did these levels, mostly, in Ashenvale. If you want to follow my path then feel free, but as long as you are questing in an area that is level-appropriate for you then you should be just fine. Just remember to stay away from the caster mobs and ranged attackers as they are the only ones that pose any real threat; at least from an AoE standpoint. If you’re going against mobs 1v1 then by all means just kill everything you see.

Scope
This post is about playing your mage and getting them leveled up to 39. I am going to talk about AoE grinding a bit, but that’s not the focus of this post. That will be in the next post in this series where I discuss the particulars of grinding. If you want to find out about how to AoE with a Frost Mage then you should probably look at that post rather than this one. AoE Grinding: Frost Mage Edition

Here I am going to show you how to spend your talent points, which glyphs you should get, what spells you should cast or avoid, general rotations, etc. So the scope of this post is the mechanics of leveling a mage, not the technique of casting your spells.

Important Spells

Levels 21-30

Counterspell (level 24) This is an excellent spell that should always be somewhere on your screen. I don’t necessarily recommend it be on your primary action bar, but have it somewhere that you can access it. It’s great for PvE (when facing casters), and it’s excellent for PvP. Check the macro section down below for this one.

Conjure Mana Gem (level 28) This spell creates a gem that you carry around in your bags that acts just like a mana potion, restoring amounts of mana that scale with your level. The gems you make early on in the game are always single use, but as you get to end game you will mage gems that have three uses. Creating a gem costs more mana than it returns, so note that it’s something that should be prepared ahead of time.

Ice Block (level 30) This is your first “oh crap” button. It throws a solid block of ice around you for the duration making you immune to, well, everything. The drawback to it is that you’re stuck there until it wears off or you cancel the spell. Use it when you pull too much, when you have Frostbite proc in the middle of a pull that can’t be fixed, when you’re about to die, when you’re covered in DoTs/Poisons/Disease, when you fall off a cliff and can’t find Slow Fall, or when you want to see yourself in a funny little pose since it keeps you exactly as you were when you cast it. If you have the Glyph of Ice Block, use it any time you need to reset your Frost Nova cooldown. And do not feel like you have to wait out its duration. If it’s accomplished what you need it to, feel free cancel the spell early and go back to your business.

Teleport: Darnassus/Thunderbluff (level 30) At level 30 you get access to your faction’s Druid city teleport. I don’t know what the reasoning is for putting these off until level 30, but apparently Blizzard does.

Levels 31-39

Mage Armor (level 34) gives you Resist Magic 5 which isn’t great, but not bad, and also allows you to regenerate 50% of your regular mana regen during combat. A lot of people love this spell and use it in place of Frost Armor. I rarely use it myself, but it’s still a decent spell.

Alliance
Teleport & Portal: Theramore (level 35) Here you are able to both teleport and open portals for your party to travel to Theramore. This portal actually sells pretty frequently for me on my Alliance server as it’s an easier way for people to travel to that portion of the world. Tips for portals vary on every server, so you’ll have to see for yourself how much gold you might be able to make off of it. On my Ally server this portal sells for 3-5g and I see people asking in trade chat for it every other day or so.

Portals: Stormwind, Ironforge, Exodar (level 40) You can now open portals for your party members to be teleported to these major cities. Selling portals is an easy way to make a few gold, but again it varies on each server. My Alliance server still sells all portals and these typically bring in a 10g fee each. You don’t get the portal for Darnassus for a few more level yet, but that one sells for the same.

Horde
Teleport & Portal: Stonard (level 35) You are able to both teleport and open portals for your party to travel to Stonard. This portal used to sell almost constantly as it was the shortest way for you to reach Outlands for the first time since it’s just north of the Dark Portal. Now that those portals exist in every major city you might as well forget the fact that this one exists. I do find an occasional request for it from groups that want to run through Sunken Temple on my old Horde server, but for the most part people just don’t need it anymore.

Portals: Orgrimmar, Undercity, Silvermoon (level 40) You can now open portals for your party members to be teleported to these major cities. Selling portals is an easy way to make a few gold, but again it varies on each server. On my Horde server the only portals you ever really see people asking for are Org and TB, with an occasional ask for Undercity as well. The only time you ever see anyone ask for Silvermoon is when there’s a holiday event going on. For my Horde servers you’re lucky if you can get 2g for a port to any of the Horde’s major cities.

Leveling 21-30
Rotation Option 1: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Fire Blast
Rotation Option 2: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 3: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frostbolt
Explanation: This will pretty well be the rotation you use for the rest of the game for single mobs. Basically your life revolves around Frostbolt spamming and throwing out a Fire Blast or Cone of Cold to finish them off.

As you may notice, at this point Fireball is completely gone from my rotations and it will see very little, if any, use throughout the rest of my playing. The only time I go back to Fireball from this point on is when I am fighting a mob that is resistant or immune to Frost damage.

If you feel a need to throw a Frost Nova out there to stop a mob that’s rushing into melee range then feel free to do so. If you like Cone of Cold more than Fire Blast then feel free to use it as well. I generally stick to using Fire Blast as my finishing move, but as you get higher in levels and mobs start having more hit points I begin to use Cone of Cold more frequently for the sake of having more chances to proc Frostbite and freezing the mob in place. Doing this gives you a chance of ending many of your fights without taking a single hit.

Remember that you have your Mana Gem for when you need to restore your mana. Unless you’re in the middle of a horrible pull and already running out of mana then using the Gem by itself should give you enough to finish the fight. If you need more mana than that, then feel free to use a Mana Potion in addition to the gem.

Leveling 31-39
Rotation Option 1: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Fire Blast
Rotation Option 2: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 3: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frostbolt
Explanation: Nothing new here.

You don’t get any new offensive spells in this range, you just get higher ranks of the ones you’ve already got. Refer back to the section above for specifics.

General Tactics

There is one thing in particular that I want to point out right now. As you begin gaining more levels the mobs you are fighting are going to gain more hit points which will require you to cast more spells due to the fight taking longer. The longer a fight lasts, the more likely the mobs are to close in and start attacking you. Do not be afraid to stop casting a spell in order to save yourself. It’s alright to take off running half a second before your Frostbolt goes off. There’s nothing wrong with that; especially if you are close to dying. It’s perfectly acceptable to run away like a little girl, screaming your head off while you wait for Frost Nova’s cooldown to pop so that you can freeze the mob in place and then get back to killing him. There’s also nothing wrong with throwing a Frost Nova the second the mob comes within range and running away all together.

For a Frost Mage a strong offense truly is the best defense you can have. You defend yourself by attacking your enemies and slowing them down or freezing them in place. You don’t have to constantly be on the move and you don’t have to kite every mob that you face, but the abilities that you have give you the time and the opportunity to almost completely control the field.

I’m going to introduce now a tactic I like to call Run Through. It’s most effective when using either Frost Nova or Cone of Cold (or Dragon’s Breath if you’re a Fire Mage). It’s best represented in Rotation Option #3 up above. Assuming that you do not get a Frostbite proc from your Frostbolts, the mob is generally going to arrive near to melee range close to when your second Frostbolt is cast or in the middle of the third. I like to be aggressive on my Frost mage, so I take right to the mob’s face; so if he’s closing in after my second cast I don’t wait for the third cast I just start running into him after the second.

As you get close to the mob cast Cone of Cold and keep right on running through them. You can then cast Blink if you want or just keep on running a ways before turning around and going back to Frostbolts to finish them off. This is going to accomplish a few things 1 you’re going to deal additional damage with an instant cast, 2 you are going to put distance between yourself and the mob, and 3 you have yet another chance to proc Frostbite and freeze the target in place.

By running through a mob to do this you also open up the option of them causing a Frostbite proc from hitting you with a melee attack while you have Frost Armor on which will freeze them in place for you and make your job a whole lot easier. If you remember back in Part I, I mentioned that my hit points are just another resource for me to use, and this is what I mean by that. I’m giving away a few hit points by giving the mob a chance to hit me, but what I’m gaining out of the deal is another chance to proc Frostbite.

AoE Grinding: Frost Mage Edition
Here are your basics of AoE Grinding with a Frost Mage. For more details you will need to refer to the next post in this series which will discuss the details of AoE grinding across all levels.

Generally speaking you want to pull a group of mobs, at least 3, into a central location, Frost Nova to freeze them in place, and then move out of melee range before casting Blizzard. Now, that’s a very generalized version of it, but it’s essentially what it is. There are a lot of tricks that you can use to help you in this, and sometimes you have to sacrifice your cooldowns to make some of them work.

Step 1: Pull The first thing you have to do for any type of AoE grinding is pull the mobs. The easiest way to do this is to jump on your mount and ride around into all of their threat ranges.

Step 2: Corral The second thing you have to do is get them all bunched up together. If you’re still on your mount then ride away, turning a bit here and there to get the mobs next to the others. It’s a bit hard to explain how to do that, but practicing will help you understand. The point is to get all of the mobs close enough to each other, and to you, that a single Frost Nova will catch all of them.

Step 3: Freeze The third thing you have to do is stop them from moving. The best option for this Frost Nova, though at later levels your Water Elemental gets an ability called Freeze which is a ranged Frost Nova that works just as well if not better. Be aware that in this stage you will occasionally miss some of the mobs. It’s good to have items with +Hit on them for doing this, but they aren’t required. You don’t miss very often and even when you do it can still be managed.

Step 4: Distance The fourth thing is putting distance between yourself and the mobs. The traditional way of doing this is to use Blink to teleport yourself a short distance away. However, Blink is not 100% reliable and can often teleport you right into another mob, or group of mobs, if you haven’t been keeping an eye on your surroundings. Personally, I don’t Blink at this point unless the mobs have managed to Daze me which makes you move slower. If I’m not dazed or otherwise rooted in place (nets, webs, etc) then I simply run. I run about 10 yards away and then turn around. Whatever method you choose to use for moving, be sure to turn around and face the mobs when you’re done. The optimum distance is twice the size of your Blizzard’s AoE circle or just slightly further. Going too far means that the mobs will be out of range for Blizzard, while not going far enough means melee mobs will be hitting you in the face while you cast.

Step 5: Blizzard Now it’s time to cast your Blizzard and watch the pretty numbers fly by as they all start to die. You want to position your Blizzard so that all of the mobs (or at least all that you can manage) fall within the area of the damage. You also want the furthest edge of Blizzard’s effect to be as close to you as possible. When a mob is frozen, that freeze breaks after they’ve taken a certain amount of damage, and Blizzard deals a lot of damage. So by keeping the area as close as possible it means that when their freeze breaks they still have to walk through the AoE damage to get to you. Since we also have at least one point in the Improved Blizzard talent (minimum level 20) your Blizzard now has a chill effect that will slow the mobs down. And since we have points in the Frostbite talent, every spell with a chill effect has the ability to freeze the target in place. And every time Blizzard deals damage it chills them, meaning that every time it hits it has a chance to proc Frostbite.

Step 6: Clean Up After you’ve cast your Blizzard you need to decide what’s next. If the mobs are still alive then you have to finish them off. You can do that by either casting another Blizzard if they have a lot of health, or casting Arcane Explosion of Cone of Cold if they just have a little bit of health left. If the mobs are already dead, then your only form of clean up is collecting your loot.

Notes
If you are fighting caster mobs in addition to melee, then pulling them and rounding them up into a single group isn’t going to be as easy. Until level 30 your only real option is to have the caster’s location be where you coral all of the rest of the mobs, or to line of sight the caster and coral everyone there.

At level 30 you get an excellent spell called Ice Block. It freezes you in place and makes you immune to everything for its duration. The great thing about being immune to everything is that caster mobs will move into melee range and just start attacking the ice, as will everything else. This gives you a coral method to use when facing casters as well. If you happen to be using the Glyph of Ice Block (level 30) then every time you use Ice Block it resets/removes the cooldown on Frost Nova so that you can immediately cast Frost Nova again. If my pull has gone bad I’ll use Ice Block just to let everyone come to me and start all over again.

Another thing to note about Ice Block is that it gives you a great opportunity to change the direction you’re heading after a Pull. When you go to initiate your Coral you can use Ice Block to do it and then rotate your camera to take a look around the area. Find which direction is clear of mobs so that you know which way you’re running, and have that be the direction you go when you pop out to initiate your Freeze. Playing with an AoE Mage was the reason I turned off the Smart Pivot option in my UI > Camera options. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s what causes your camera to rotate to the direction your character is facing if you rotate the camera with a click-and-drag left click. It allows me to look in any direction, for as long as I want, without having to hold down my mouse button to keep it there. If you aren’t aware, the default settings allow you to hold down both the left and right mouse buttons to run, and when doing that it causes you to run whichever direction the mouse moves. So if you hold down the two mouse buttons coming out of an Ice Block you will run the direction that your camera is facing instead of the direction that your character is facing. When you do it, go ahead and shake the mouse left and right just a hair when you first come out because it’s the movement of the mouse while the right button is down that forces your character to turn that way, but the turn is instant so once the character takes off running the way you want them to you can stop moving the mouse and use whatever method(s) of movement you use normally.

Explanation
Because we’ve combined Frostbite with Improved Blizzard, we have the chance to constantly freeze the mobs in place during your Blizzard. That is why Frostbite is so essential to a good Frost leveling spec even though so many other people claim to hate it. If you find that Frostbite is messing up your pulls then the answer to that is simple, remove your Frost Armor before you pull. If you don’t have Frost Armor up (or Ice Barrier after level 40) then you aren’t going to freeze the mobs in place during a pull because there are not chill effects to make it happen.

I personally keep my Frost Armor spell on all the time, regardless of whether or not it might proc Frostbite and “ruin” my pulls, because I can handle the pulls that other mages apparently feel are dangerous. As I said, if my pull goes a bit bad, then I’ll just Ice Block and let them mobs come to me and then Frost Nova once the Ice Block is over. The duration of Ice Block lasts longer than all of your freezing abilities, so the mobs will break free before your Ice Block wears off. If you use the Glyph of Ice Block then your Frost Nova will already be available when IB wears off so you pop your Frost Nova and then jump right back into the steps above starting at #4-Distance.

If none of those options work because something else comes along and fouls it all up, then welcome to being in a world you don’t control! In this case, put your true mage skills to the test and kick the crap out of them anyway. You’ve got a ton of tools at your disposal to handle the mobs you’re facing, so put them to use. If you need to sheep one, then do it. If you need to Cone of Cold to try to proc Frostbite for Blizzard, then do it. If you need to run around in circles while you wait for Frost Nova to cool down again, then do it. If you want to Arcane Explosion spam hoping to slay them all anyway, then do it. If you took the Glyph of Evocation at 20 as I suggested, then try to run around until Frost Nova is up again, freeze them in place, and then hit your Evocation to restore 60% of your health and mana, and then slay them all.

If the crap hits the fan, then turn the sucker on high and start flinging that crap wherever you can until you’re either the last one standing or you’re all alone in the graveyard. These are the moments that help you grow more confident in your ability to solo content, or that teach you what mistakes not to make again.

I love screwing up an AoE pull with way more mobs than I could take on otherwise and still pull it off without a single Blizzard being cast. I’ve taken out 8 mobs with nothing but Frost Novas, Cones of Cold, and Fire Blasts while running around in circles because my attempts to freeze the mobs kept missing or not freezing. It’s not always easy, but it sure is fun when you come out of it still standing.

Macro Suggestions
There are a few new macros to bring to your attention at this point.

Counterspell: Cancel whatever spell you might be casting and immediately cast Counterspell.
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

Ice Block: Stop whatever you’re doing and cast Ice Block
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Ice Block

Sometimes a big spell is about to go off and it needs to not happen. If stopping that spell is potentially more important than casting the one you’re on, then make the call and counter the spell. Heals and Mana Burns are the primary target for this unless you’re low on health and need to stop a dps spell from killing you.

Ice Block sometimes has to be cast on the fly simply to save your life rather than to help you in your AoE grinding. When that is the case, don’t bother with trying to get that one last spell off, just throw the barrier up and deal with the situation once it wears off.

Talent Points and Glyphs: Level 21-39

Starting at level 21, this is how I would suggest spending your talent points.
Ice Floes +1 (3/3) Reduces the cooldown of Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block, and Icy Veins by 20%.

Piercing Ice 3/3 +2/4/6% damage to all Frost spells.

Shatter 3/3 +17/34/50% critical strike chance against targets who are frozen.

Arctic Reach 2/3 +14/20% range to Frost Bolt, Ice Lance, Deep Freeze, and Blizzard spells and +20% radius to Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells.

Cold Snap 1/1 Resets the cooldown of all Frost Spells.

Icy Veins 1/1 +20% spell haste and reduces pushback on channeled spells by 100% for 20 seconds.

Frost Channeling 3/3 -4/7/10% Mana cost of all Frost spells and reduces threat generated by Frost spells by 4/7/10%.

Winter’s Chill 3/3 Gives +3 chance to crit with Frostbolt, and a 33/66/100% chance that your Frost spells will increase your chance to crit the target by 1%, stacks up to 5 times.

Cold As Ice 2/2 Reduces the cooldown of your Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, and Summon Water Elemental spells by 10/20%.

Ice Floes is simply there to reduce the time on our cooldowns. Every spell that it effects is useful for AoE grinding as well as leveling in general, so reducing the cooldowns on those is great. Piercing Ice is just a general increase to all of our damage; the more damage you do, the few spells you have to cast. Shatter is going to increase the chance to crit when targets are frozen by 50%. That’s a huge boost to our crit and since every spell you’re going to use has a chance of freezing your target, that means you’ve got a whole lot of potential for landing crits. Shatter is the reason why we want Frostbite.

Arctic Reach helps with the range at which we can cast our spells. That means you can get off more Frostbolts before an enemy can close in on you, and it means you can cast your Blizzards from a greater distance as well. In addition to that it increases the radius of Frost Nova and Cone of Cold. The increased radius is crucial to what you do as a Frost Mage, but it’s also a hard thing to judge because neither of these spells shows you visibly how large their radius is to being with. It’s something you’re going to have to learn on your own and just become aware of. With practice you’ll start picking it up instinctively and you’ll just know when you can catch someone with it and when you can’t.

Cold Snap is easily one of the best talents you ever get. It completely resets all of your Frost spells and makes them available to you again. So you can blow all of your cooldowns, hit Cold Snap, and they’re all right back ready to use again. Icy Veins is a great spell for two reasons: 1 the increase spell haste means all of your Blizzard damage happens in a shorter amount of time (or other spells if you’re fighting single mobs), and 2 removing the effect of pushback means that you get the full bang from your mana-buck from your Blizzard even if you’re getting punched in the face while you do it. I don’t cast it on every Blizzard, but there’s nothing wrong with using it every chance you get. The haste from Icy Veins also works on your Evocation, by the way, so if you need to refill your life/mana in a pinch that’s the way to get it done.

Frost Channeling is last up on the list. The reduced mana here is the primary reason for taking the talent as Blizzard is a huge mana cost spell. The reduced threat is nice when you’re running with groups though it serves no purpose at all when soloing. Winter’s Chill is a stacking debuff on the target that gives you an additional 1-5% chance to crit each time you hit them with a Frost spell. The extra crit chance goes for all spells, not just Frost, but Frost spells are what stacks it from 1-5%. Cold As Ice is strictly to lower the time on your cooldowns.

Glyphs for Leveling
The only glyph slot that is going to open up for you at this level range will open up at level 30.

I recommend the Glyph of Ice Block for level 30 which resets your Frost Nova cooldown when you use Ice Block. It’s great for AoE grinding so that you can make sure that your pulls go off as smoothly as possible.

Some people prefer to go with Mage Armor here instead to get mana regeneration during combat, but since I prefer using Frost Armor I don’t personally recommend it. Since I can summon my own water on the fly and have mana gems I don’t really care about regenerating mana during combat. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not my personal play style.

Gearing Up for Spellcasting
Your gear priorities don’t change: stack Spell Power and Intellect, take Stam/Hit/Crit when you can find it, and the other things don’t really matter. Hit becomes increasingly important as you level, so take it when you see it if it’s not going to cost you too much Spell Power or Int.

Again, Tailoring can provide a lot of useful upgrades for you around this level so you might want to check with a Tailor if you aren’t one yourself.

You are still going to be more likely to find a good staff at these levels that a one hander plus an off hand item, but just go with whichever you find that can give you better stats. A lot of the Inscription off-hand items open up during this level range which can give you additional spell power, so if you find a nice off hand go ahead and take it, but you’re still more likely to find a better staff overall.

And as always, keep an eye out for good wands that provide stats. If you find that you are actually using your staff for anything other than killing off mobs that are low on health, then you’re probably doing something wrong; like using Mana Shield for anything other than PvP.

Suggested Instances
I would highly suggest in your twenties that you run through either Deadmines (VC) or Shadowfang Keep (SFK) (both, if you can manage it) for good gear during those levels. You can find a staff, gloves and ring in VC, and excellent robes in SFK that will last you well into your 30’s.

In your thirties, Scarlet Monastery is the place to be. You will get gear from here that will last you into your 50’s. You can get inside the doors of all four sections at level 20 if you have someone run you through, or you can start joining LFG for it at level 28. For a mage you can find shoulders or an off-hand item in SM:Graveyard, a great robe and an excellent staff in SM:Library, and while SM:Armory offers very little, there are a couple of items in SM:Cathedral that can really help you out as well. Primarily SM:GY and SM:Lib are the areas for you to focus on, and both of them can be ran with a group of people around level 30 with little problem. Especially with your AoE skills.

Edit: (10/29/09) Added level listing for spending talent points.
Edit: (10/30/09) Finished Ice Block section near the spell description at the top and added Ice Block information to General Tactics section as well.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: AoE, Frost, Leveling, Mage, Run Through

Related posts:

1. Mage Leveling Part I: Beginning
2. Icesnake’s Add-on Emporium Segment #5: Mage Fever
3. Druid Leveling: 1-20 (Balance)

In sticking with my normal routine here, I’m going to break the Mage leveling down into smaller blocks rather than lumping them all together. I already have a Mage sitting at level 80 that I have not bothered to play in about eight months, and I am currently leveling another mage on my wife’s Alliance server, Durotan-US.

I posted a while back about grinding rep grinding on my mage and getting Exalted with Darnassus at level 31, but I have not yet covered the process of leveling the character.

If you took the time to look at my post on Motivations Assessments then you’ll see that I’m a mechanics-driven guy. I like to plan out my character before I even bother rolling him. I like to know my spec, my gear, professions, where I’m going to level, instances I want to run, recipes or mats that need to be farmed to make them better or help ease a hard task, or whatever.

Part of that whole process of planning out my characters generally involves taking a look at information on blogs and on forums. I like to get a general idea of what other people are doing in case a change that I missed or had forgotten about has changed how something works or in case I just don’t know how to play the class or build to begin with. For the most part, the information I find there is useful, but there’s one big exception that just really bothers me: Frost Mages.

A lot of what you see on the Frost Mage is actually useful, it just isn’t as useful as it could be. Everywhere you look for information on the Frost Mage and how to level with them using AoE, you find some very key bits of information that people seem to agree with and support, and yet…they’re wrong.

So not only am I going to be covering the leveling process of the mage in this series, but I am going to dispel some of the many myths concerning Frost Mage leveling like talents and rotations that people tell you to avoid which actually slows down your leveling, what spells you shouldn’t use even though they all say you should, and how to realize that even though you may wear cloth armor your ice is even thicker than plate.

Choosing a Race
Mages have a pretty wide variety of races available to use. Alliance has Human, Gnome, and Draenei while Horde has Troll, Undead, and Blood Elf.

Each of the available races has is pros and cons for the class, and in the overall scheme of things you really can’t go wrong with any of them since the “cons” really make very little difference at all. But, since I did just do a whole series on all of the races, I will actually take the time to point out the pros and cons of each in relation to the Mage class in particular.

Human: High starting Intellect (23) for a large mana pool. Diplomacy to help with Reputation grinding throughout the game, and Every Man For Himself to break you out of snares so you don’t get stuck in melee.

Gnome: Very high starting Intellect (27) plus the Expansive Mind racial bonus gives you the largest starting mana pool in the game. As with the humans, Escape Artist allows you to break snares to prevent being stuck in melee.

Draenei: High starting Intellect (24) for a large mana pool. Gift of the Naaru provides a racial heal that you would otherwise lack, and Heroic Presence helps you hit with your spells more often.

Troll: Below-average starting Intellect (19) gives you the smallest mana pool for a mage, but Berserking gives you 10-30% faster casting time when used.

Undead: Above-average starting Intellect (21) gives you a decent starting mana pool. Cannibalize allows you to restore up to 35% of your health over 10 seconds if you have a dead humanoid body near you.

Blood Elf: Very high starting Intellect (27) gives you the second highest starting mana pool in the game. Arcane Torrent allows you to instantly restore 6% of your total mana every 2 minutes.

As the saying goes, play whatever you want to play. From a purely mechanics stand point, Humans and Gnomes are your best bet for Alliance, and Blood Elves and Undead are the top two for Horde. I personally prefer Human and Undead of all the ones listed.

Important Spells
Mages get tons of spells, and I would expect nothing less from a class of that name. Luckily, the majority of them are actually useful.

Going from Left to Right, Top to Bottom we have the following:
Levels 1-12


Fireball, Frostbolt, Fire Blast, Frost Nova, Arcane Intellect, Conjure Water, Polymorph, Arcane Missiles

Fireball is your heavy hitter early on and it’s the only offensive spell you start out with. It’s damage is high throughout the entire game, but it has a longer cast time than Frostbolt. It’s a great spell to use for pulling mobs where its long cast time makes little difference.

Frostbolt will be your bread and butter spell during your entire career as a Frost Mage and will be the spell you cast more than any other. It doesn’t hit as hard as Fireball, but it does have a faster cast speed and it slows enemies down as well.

Fire Blast is a great finishing move, your only instant cast spell with decent damage for a single target until higher levels.

Frost Nova is used to freeze the mobs within its radius in place so that they cannot move. Great for both crowd control, offensive, and defensive purposes. It is also a key part of Frost Mage AoE grinding.

Arcane Intellect is your primary buff spell that you should never be without. Trainable at level 1, and provides you with a bonus to your Intellect which means more mana and more spell crit.

Conjure Water is a big gold saver over time and is how you never have to worry about carrying enough water around with you to restore your mana. Cast it when you first log, while you’re standing around chatting with friends, checking your mail, scanning the auction house, etc. Get a stack or two worth of your water and then go about your business. I never have less than a full stack of water and oftentimes have 2 full stacks though I’ll end up using less than a stack during an extended play period.

Polymorph Your primary crowd control used to turn a single target into a harmless animal for 20 seconds. Use it to even the playing field with how many mobs you’re facing, use it to pull, annoy players of the opposing faction, or use it to run away from combat.

Arcane Missiles A channeled spell that does great damage if you manage to get the full channel time out of it, or a huge waste of mana if you are not able to fully channel it. A potentially deadly spell when used in addition to frost spells.

Levels 12-20

Frostbolt, Fire Blast, Frost Nova, Blizzard, Frost Armor, Evocation, Arcane Explosion, Blink

Nothing new about the first few spells up there.

Blizzard you get at level 20 and it is the key to your AoE grinding. It has a high mana cost, but with its high damage and large radius the cost is well worth it when facing multiple mobs.

Frost Armor you get early on in your playing and though it’s protection does help keep you alive when enemies manage to move within melee range of you, the true beauty of the spell comes when you properly spend your talent points turning it from a purely defensive spell to both offensive and defensive at the same time (more on that in Part II).

Evocation is key to reducing your downtime by allowing you to restore 60% of your total mana over a few seconds. It is a channeled spell so should only be used when you are not getting hit (unless you have no mana and need to get whatever you can). When you use the Glyph of Evocation as well you also restore 60% of your total health over the channeled time as well.

Arcane Explosion an instant cast AoE spell that’s great for finishing off mobs that are low on health. The spell is very taxing on your mana and should not be used any more than you need to, but it is a very helpful spell when utilized correctly.

Blink is a ten yard teleport that can save your life, shorten your travel time, or give you an advantage in combat.

Teleports

Alliance (left column): Stormwind, Iron Forge, Exodar
Horde (right column): Orgrimmar, Undercity, Silvermoon

Each of these spells is gained at level 20 for your respective faction, allowing you to teleport yourself to the respective city. At higher levels you will be able to open portals allowing your party members to travel to the chosen city as well.

Leveling 1-6: Starting Zone
Rotation Option 1: Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 2: Fireball, Frostbolt, Fireball, Fireball, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 3: Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball
Explanation: You start out with just Fireball and Frost Armor, with Arcane Intellect being trainable for 9 copper at level 1 as well. Initially you’ll just Fireball the snot out of everything until it’s dead. Fireball hits harder than Frostbolt, but it also has a higher mana cost and a longer cast time as well. I stick to Rotation 1, personally. But you don’t get Frostbolt until level 4 so for the first few levels you have no option other than #3.

Frost Armor is a decent armor buff for you and it slows mobs down when they hit you. It’s not really necessary to have it on at this low level because nothing has a chance of killing you anyway, but it will save your life later on so you might as well get used to having it on at all times. Arcane Intellect is trainable at level 1, so as soon as you have a few coppers in your belt pouch go grab that for +3 Int, which equates to +45 mana, which at this level is an additional 2 spells worth of mana.

If you know how to kite, then you may want to start practicing your kiting while using Frostbolt. Basically you cast the spell and wait for it to leave your hand, and the second it does so you start moving away from your target. The idea is to use the slowing effect of Frostbolt to constantly keep yourself out of your opponent’s reach. If you’re a kiting veteran you can pretty easily make it all the way through level 6 and out of your starting zone without ever taking a single point of damage.

Leveling 6-12: Surrounding Map
Rotation Option 1: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Fire Blast
Rotation Option 2: Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 3: Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles, Fireblast, Wand
Explanation: At level 6 you get Fire Blast, and at level 8 Arcane Missiles. Both of them are often considered to cost more mana than they are worth, though Arcane Missiles is more accepted now than it was in previous patches.

This is the level bracket where you find a lot of different advice on what sort of spells you should be casting. A lot of mages like to keep using Fireball as their pulling spell and then move into Frostbolts, but I personally step away from using Fireball at this level and don’t bother going back unless I’m bored and just want to change things up a bit.

I use Fire Blast from level 6 all the way through level 80, it’s my finishing move, it’s something I use to pull when I’m AoE grinding, it’s constantly on my bar bound to my 4-key and it never leaves. Some people don’t like it, some think it’s mana cost is too high or it’s damage is too low, but regardless of what their opinion is I think it’s a wonderful spell.

Rotation 3 up there is one that I never bothered with before but found to be extremely effective this time around. Arcane Missiles is a channeled spell that shoots out little purple missiles at the chosen mob. It’s an expensive spell, but as long as you get to channel the whole thing then you pretty well get your money’s worth. If you don’t get to use the full channel time then it’s a definite mana drain and not worth the cost. I found though that I was able to use Frostbolt once, follow it up immediately with Arcane Missiles, and by the time the channel was up the mob was either already dead or within a single Fire Blast or one shot from my wand away from dying.

Level 10 is where you get one of your primary spells for the rest of the game, Frost Nova. When you first get it the main benefit that you get from it is just keeping mobs from closing into melee range with you while you back away, but later on it’s going to provide you with the foundation of your AoE grinding as well as significantly increasing both your chance to crit and the amount of damage that you deal when you crit due to the talent points that you invest.

I also want to point out that level 12 is when you can learn Slow Fall. This is one of the best utility spells in the game if you take the time to learn how to make use of it. I get the minor glyph for this spell at level 15 and it never gets changed. It can save your life in both PvE and PvP, it can save you time and effort when you’re traveling, it can screw with other players if you feel so inclined, etc. There are a lot of uses for this spell, and regardless of it being utility rather than dps or defense, it’s one of my favorite spells in the game from any class.

Leveling 12-20: Secondary Zone
Rotation Option 1: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Fire Blast
Rotation Option 2: Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt
Rotation Option 3: Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles, Fireblast, Wand
Explanation: Basically the same as before.

You don’t see a whole lot of changes in what you do or in what spells are available during these levels, so it’s pretty much more of the same thing.

At level 14 you are introduced to Arcane Explosion which is a decent AoE spell that is centered around the caster, but it is also one of the worst mana draining spells you get throughout the entire game. It does go on my primary action bar and it does stay there the entire game, but it only gets used in specific situations. The damage on it is not great, so I tend to use it either to pull multiple mobs at a time or to finish off mobs that are low on health and other spells like Fire Blast are on cooldown. After I start AoE grinding, I often use Arcane Explosion to finish off the group of mobs when their health is low enough that casting a second Blizzard is a waste.

At level 16 your Arcane Missiles reaches Rank 2 and gets a pretty significant boost in damage. I actually used Rotation 3 to kill a lot of mobs at this level just because I did not expect it to be nearly as effective as it was and I was surprised by that compared to when I leveled my previous mage. I pretty well stop using Arcane Missiles at level 20 in all things except pvp.

Find a rotation that works for you during these levels and stick to it. A big part of being a mage involves spamming the same buttons over and over until things die. Adding kiting and other forms of movement into your combat does a lot for keeping the mage an interesting class to play and helping you be ready to react to whatever situation you might find yourself in. Nothing sucks more than plinking off a single mob only to find another mob walk up and agro you from behind. Getting used to being able to move on the fly early on will end up saving your life later in the game. It helps to always be aware of your surroundings.

After you hit level 20 you finally find yourself able to AoE grind effectively and much of your world begins to change as you find out that you go from spamming a couple of keys to kill a single mob turns into casting a handful of spells to kill an entire group of them.

General Tactics
There are a lot of different tactics that you can employ as a Frost Mage. Frost Mages have more potential for crowd control than any other class. Your primary spells slow down your targets and after spending talent points even have the chance of freezing them in place all together. You have Polymorph that allows you to change a target into a harmless animal for a time, and spells such as Blink (level 20) allow you to move around the field faster than your opponents.

Kiting is a great tactic to use for any class that can actually do it, and only a Hunter has the potential to kite mobs better than a Mage. Practice kiting early on and get used to using it.

Prior to level 20 your options for taking on multiple mobs at once are fairly limited, but you do have some options. If you know that you are going to pull multiple mobs whether you want to or not, likely because the mobs are right next to each other, then the best way to take on those mobs is to cast Frostbolt on the target that you want to kill first and as soon as you start casting the spell go ahead and click on the other mob to target him as we get ready to use a crowd control spell on it.

I use the Quartz addon to tell me when I can start casting another spell but if you don’t have access to an addon like that then just start spamming the button for your next cast which will be a crowd control spell. If you have Polymorph already, then that’s the spell to cast on that second mob and as soon as you start casting it you need to retarget the original mob. By doing this you are going to slow down the first mob by hitting them with Frostbolt (if it misses, it misses, just go with the flow), the second mob is going to agro you as soon as your Frostbolt hits/misses that first mob and come running after you. Before he takes more than a couple of steps though he’s going to get hit with your crowd control which essentially takes him out of the fight until the spell wears off which should be more than enough for you to kill the first mob.

After the crowd control hits it’s time to focus fire on the first target and take them out. If you managed to start this type of battle off from a distance, which you should have unless you had no other option, then it’s likely that using this method along with some amount of kiting will allow you to take out both mobs without taking any damage yourself. Another option you can consider in this type of battle is to go ahead and use Frost Nova when the first mob starts to get within range of you. You can then spend a few seconds running away from the first mob and then turning back around to Frostbolt them again before they are able to start moving.

Facing melee mobs is your specialty and where you can really show overwhelming strength because of your many slowing and freezing spells. Caster mobs are slightly harder since they are going to hit you just as much as you hit them, but that’s where a couple of your other spells come into play, primarily Dampen Magic (which lowers the amount of damage you take from spells) and Counterspell (which stops a spell from being cast), though you will have to wait a few levels before these are made available to you.

Macro Suggestions
Because the mage has so many spells that he can use, and all of them have their various uses, I use a lot of macros when playing a mage. Some of them are just for saving space, some are for being able to change from one type of damage to another for when you find thing like elemental that are immune to your main damage type.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts before, I have a standard that I follow when setting up my action bars so that similar spells from each class can be found on the same keys. So when I’m in the habit of playing my mage and then step over to playing my paladin I don’t end up casting the wrong spells just because my fingers want to react a certain way.

The first Mage Macro that I make is a simple one for Fireball:
#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Fireball

At level 4 I add a similar macro for Frostbolt:
#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Frostbolt

After I get more levels and decide to remove Fireball from my normal rotation I replace both of those with a single macro instead:
#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast [modifier:alt] Fireball; Frostbolt

The macro above will cast Frostbolt by default, but will change to Fireball if I hold Alt when I cast the spell.

Macros like the one above are time savers and space savers (the third option is anyway). They set your character to attack the target with your melee weapon and then start casting a spell. The benefit of that is that you will attack the mob when they get within melee range when you aren’t casting a spell. It also helps you to target mobs without having to click on them or tab to start off as it will auto-target the nearest mob that is in front of you and within range if you do not already have a target selected.

Talent Points and Glyphs: Level 10-20
This is the talent build that I recommend for leveling with your Frost Mage up to level 20. As you progress higher in your levels a lot of the talents that are only getting some points right now will be capped and some talents that are being skipped now will be filled in. Frost Mages get a lot of use out of their talent tree.

3/3 Frostbite: Gives all of your Frost spells a 5/10/15% chance to freeze the target in place for 5 seconds.

2/3 Ice Flows: Reduces the cooldown of Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block, and Icy Veins by 7/14%.

3/3 Ice Shards: Increases the critical hit damage of your Frost spells by 33/66/100%.

2/3 Precision: Reduces the mana cost and improves the hit chance of all spells by 1/2%.

1/3 Improved Blizzard: Adds a chill effect to your Blizzard spell reducing the target’s speed by 25% for 1.5 seconds.

Frostbite is the most controversial of these talent points and the one that most guides tell you to avoid when trying to AoE grind with your Frost Mage. Where they feel that it can ruin their pulls, I’m here to tell you that it’s going to save your life as well as help you kill faster which reduces the mana you have to spend and because of that reduce your downtime. Ice Flows reduces the cooldown of some of your most beneficial spells which also reduces your down time.

Ice Shards is going to double the amount of damage that you deal with your Frost spells when you crit. At this level that’s just a nice little bonus when you manage to crit, but in a few levels you are going to greatly increase your chance to get crits with spells while your target is frozen (which is why Frostbite is especially powerful in AoE grinding). Precision gives you a better chance to hit which is always nice, but it also reduces the mana cost of all of your spells so that you can keep on grinding for longer periods of time. The 3% reduction might not be all that significant, but it’s going to add up over time.

Improved Blizzard is going to add a chill effect when it hits which will make your AoE grinding that much more effect, and it will give Blizzard more chances to proc Frostbite on the target which will freeze them in place, which in turn will give Shatter (the talent that increase crit chance on frozen targets I mentioned above) a chance to proc, which then gives you the benefit of doubled crit damage from Ice Shards.

As I said before, you will be filling out these talent points as you gain more levels, so do not worry too much right now about the fact that you are leaving some of them incomplete.

Glyphs for Leveling
Mages have a decent number of glyphs to choose from, and most of them are actually pretty good. Some of them are crap, which is the case for all classes.

You get both a Major and Minor glyph slot when you hit level 15 with any character. I personally start off with the following Glyphs:

Glyph of Frost Nova [Major] Increases the amount of damage that a target can take before breaking the freeze effect of Frost Nova by 20%.

Glyph of Evocation [Major] Also grants you 60% of your total health over the channeled time of your Evocation spell.

Glyph of Slowfall [Minor] Removes the reagent requirement of the Slowfall spell.

Glyph of Frost Nova is going to help you to some extent prior to level 20. It is not a great glyph that you will use throughout your entire career, but it will help give you better control while leveling. I use this glyph when I hit 15 and I replace it with Evocation when I get to level 20. If you don’t feel like wasting the glyph then you can either wait or use another one in its place, or if you’d like you can use it instead of Evocation.

Glyph of Evocation changes the spell so that you restore 60% of both your health and mana over the channel duration. Being able to restore 60% of both every 3 minutes is huge for reducing your down time and it can be used in the middle of combat just as easily as it can between pulls. You can use it after casting Frost Nova or Polymorph to allow you to regain most of your health and mana in the middle of a big fight, a bad pull, or when an unexpected enemy paths into you in the middle of a fight. I use this glyph at level 20 and keep it there until I get close to level 80.

Another option that is open to you for your Major glyph is the Glyph of Frostbolt which increases the damage of Frostbolt by 5%. The down side of the glyph is that it also removes the chill effect of Frostbolt, which is one of the primary reasons for using it in the first place. I do not suggest the glyph, but if you find that dealing more damage is more important to you than controlling your targets then it is a good replacement when fighting single mobs.

Most of the Mage’s minor glyphs suck pretty bad. Some increase spell durations, some reduce mana costs, and others have no effect on the game (such as the Glyph of Penguin).

I personally pick Slowfall because I use the spell constantly. Slowfall can save you travel time, can save you from a fall that would have otherwise killed you, or it can be used to great benefit in PvP. Taking away the reagent requirement for the spell allows you to cast it whenever you want to for nothing more than its low mana cost. At this level of play I would not consider any other minor glyph to be more valuable.

Gearing Up for Spellcasting
Your primary stat is, was, and forever will be – Spell Power. It’s the bread and butter of everything you do. If your damage sucks then you suck, so stack this whenever you can.

Next in line is going to be Intellect for your mana pool and spell crit. If you don’t have mana then you aren’t going anywhere except to the spirit healer. A tank needs plate armor (or thick fur) to survive, and you need mana. It doesn’t matter how much health you have or how much damage you can deal if you don’t have the mana to put any of your spells to use.

A lot of other things can help you as well, Stamina for health, Hit so that your spells actually do what they are intended to do, Crit to make those spells hit even harder, and so on. That’s where you should be looking after Spell Power and Intellect are covered.

Tailoring is a great source of gear throughout the various levels, especially if you plan on solo questing and solo AoE grinding your way to the top. You can generally find better gear in instances than you can from tailoring when you are starting out, but you can certainly weave that cloth to fill in any gaps you might have.

Whether you use a staff or you go with a one handed weapon and an off hand item is mostly up to you. Use whatever will give you better stats overall and go with it. Typically the low level staffs will be better than other options, but just use whatever you have on hand that provides the most benefit.

Keep a close eye on wands that are available to you and be sure to get one as soon as possible. You can equip the lowest level wand in the game at level 5 and it’s basically a free source of ranged damage. A lot of wands, starting in your teen levels also have other stats on them if you are willing to look around a bit to find them.

Part II: Levels 21-39

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Frost, Leveling, Mage

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1. Mage Leveling Part II: 21-39
2. Icesnake’s Add-on Emporium Segment #5: Mage Fever
3. Druid Leveling: 1-20 (Balance)

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Gift of the Naaru (Instant cast, 3 minute cool down, 40 yard range)
Heal your target for 35 + (15 x Level) over 15 sec. The amount healed is increased based on the caster’s Spell Power or Attack Power, whichever is highest.

Heroic Presence (Passive)
Increases chance to hit by 1% for you and all party members within 30 yards.

Gemcutting (Passive)
5 point skill bonus to Jewelcrafting.

Shadow Resistance (Passive)
Reduces chance to be hit by Shadow spells by 2%.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

One of the defining characteristics of the race is Gift of the Naaru, which is an instant cast Heal Over Time (HoT) spell that increases in power as your character does. This is the only racial ability that heals, and it is the only one that can be cast on someone else as well. When I think of the Draenei race, this is always the first ability that comes to mind for me. As far as leveling early on and getting a solid start this is the best of the Draenei racial abilities.

Another racial that you can’t go wrong with though is Heroic Presence. This is probably the defining racial for Draenei when it comes to end game. Having a higher chance to hit is great even at level 1, and while the 1% never gets higher this ability becomes stronger as you level.

If you feel like being a Jewelcrafter, then Gemcutting is a nice little boost for you. It’s only a +5 bonus as opposed to the larger bonuses that some of the other races receive, and I’m not really sure why that is to be honest, but every little bit helps. For a race that is heavily reliant on gems and crystals for energy and so forth I don’t see why their bonus should not be more like that of the Gnomes, or Tauren at the very least.

You do find a few mobs that use shadow magic throughout many zones in the game, so having Shadow Resistance can be helpful to you from time to time. Overall it isn’t much better than any of the other racial resistances of the other races, but there are certain zones in the game where shadow damage is fairly common.

Class Analysis
Hunter: With 20 Agility, 21 Int, and 20 Stam the Draenei Hunter is pretty well rounded. You won’t be hitting quite as hard as other races will starting out, nor will you have as much mana or health as some of them. But, it’s still a solid choice with all of your appropriate stats starting out at, or above, 20. Gift of the Naaru can also be used on your pet in addition to your Mend Pet spell, so you have a good advantage in keeping your pets alive. Heroic Presence of course provides a nice bonus to your chance to hit as well, making the Draenei a solid choice for a Hunter.

Mage: With 24 Intellect, 19 Stamina, and 24 Spirit you have your starting attributes covered pretty well. As a class that is unable to heal itself (at least not without a glyph), the Gift of the Naaru is a great help and since a mage is going to stack Spell Power above all else that heal is going to be quite powerful, especially in lower levels where your health pool is small to begin with. A lot of the Mage’s survivability is also reliant on your spells hitting, so the racial bonus from Heroic Presence is great as well.

Paladin: As is usually the case, the Paladin has pretty well rounded stats for all builds with 23 Strength, 21 Stamina, and 21 Intellect. The Ret Paladin takes a bit of a loss with only 17 Agility so you won’t crit quite so often as other Paladins will starting off, but you aren’t all that far behind the curve really. All of your builds will have good Attack Power and/or Spell Power to boost your Gift of the Naaru even though it’s not quite so big a deal to a class that’s capable of healing as it is to one that’s not. And having your Taunts or Judgements miss is never a good thing so Prot/Ret Paladins will make good use of Heroic Presence.

Priest: With 23 Intellect, 25 Spirit, and 19 Stamina the Draenei present an excellent option for the Priest class. Gift of the Naaru isn’t quite so useful to you as it is to other classes that don’t have bubbles and heals, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not handy in a pinch. At the very least, it’s another healing spell and it comes with no mana cost at all.

Shaman: Similar to the Paladin the Shaman has a nice array of stats for his builds: 20 Strength, 22 Intellect, and 20 Stamina. Also like the Paladin, Enhancement Shamans take a slight hit by having only 17 Agility so they don’t crit as often, but with the versatility of the class that can pretty easily be overcome. While Shamans are capable of healing themselves with spells, their mana is better spent elsewhere if they are not healers, so having a free HoT everything three minutes can be a great benefit.

Warrior: The 24 Strength and 22 Stamina help give you a nice start on your two primary stats, though you do once again fall victim to the lower 17 Agility that takes away from your crit as well as your avoidance if you happen to spec into Protection. Another class without healing capabilities means another class benefiting from Gift of the Naaru.

Psynister Preferences
Personally I prefer the Shaman as the class of choice for the Draenei because everything fits together so well for them. But, the race is a great choice for all of their available classes so you really can’t go wrong here. I would say Paladin, Priest, Mage, Hunter would follow next in line for my personal taste.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Draenei, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Blood Elf
2. Racial Analysis: Orcs
3. Racial Analysis: Human

Not too long ago I gave a my Review on Dual Specs. My mind has somewhat been altered by that since then after seeing my wife do it on multiple characters, but not a whole lot (mostly due to the fact that I’ve still only done it on the one and am not impressed).

What I want to talk about today though, is a problem I see with other people who are doing it and a question that has been asked of me: When should I dual spec? the answer to that question will follow. However, I’m going to cover all of the W’s concerning dual specs: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

This is my opinion, and I share it with you now:

Who Should(n’t) Dual Spec?
Basically, anybody who wants to dual spec, and can afford to do so, should do it. There’s no reason not to dual spec if you want to try it out and don’t mind spending the money to do it. My wife loves being able to switch between her specs and has a blast being able to step into different roles on the same character. I enjoyed it a couple of times here and there, though in the end it just never became necessary.

The people who shouldn’t dual spec are the ones who:

• 1) Don’t want to
• 2) Are not willing to get gear for both specs via question, PvP, or grinding
• 3) Can’t afford it themselves and are not good at making/managing their gold

Dual Specs are not a requirement to play this game. Some guilds I have seen do require it, but if you’re in that type of guild then you probably already know this stuff and don’t need to bother reading. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t bother. Save your gold and spend it on something a little more useful, like Epic/Cold Weather Flying.

If you aren’t willing to get the gear for both of your specs then you should probably avoid DS. The reason I say that is because if you have the wrong gear (tank gear on your healing spec, for instance) then you’re not going to perform very well. If you can’t perform in your second spec, then you’re never going to use it either. In cases like these you’re basically just throwing away your gold for no reason.

If you can’t afford something that you want, you simply shouldn’t buy it. Making gold in this game is not hard. Holding onto that gold once you get it is for some people (/raise hand), but it’s not hard to make it. Please don’t ever make the mistake of trying to borrow gold from friends or guild members if you aren’t positive that you can pay it back quickly. I’ve borrowed gold from a guild member one time, and I only did it because there was an item on the AH that I had been searching for for months that was about to sell and I didn’t have the gold yet. I had enough auctions that I would have the gold the next day, but I wouldn’t have it before the auction expired and someone else won it. I got the gold, bought my item, and repaid the loan with 10% interest 3 hours later. If you can’t manage something like that, don’t ask to borrow gold. (/end mini-rant)

What Should Your Dual Spec Be?
For some reason, people ask this a lot. I really don’t think this is a question that needs to be asked to anyone but yourself. What should my dual spec be? Well, probably whatever I want it to be..? For this question, ask yourself what you want to do with your character. If you want to heal, and your class is able to heal, then make one of them a healing spec. If you want to tank, and are able to do so, then make one of them a tanking spec. If you want to dps, then spec for it. If you want to PvP, then spec for that.

The answer to this question is really one that only you can answer. Spec for whatever you want to do with the character. If you are doing it for your guild because you need to fill an open role, then you probably already know the answer to this question yourself. If you are doing it because you want to try a different build to see how it works, then again you probably already know the answer to the question. If you want to do it, but you don’t have a specific reason driving you towards it, then that’s when the question needs to be asked. But, it’s a question you have to ask yourself; what am I doing right now? (tank, heal, melee/ranged dps, single/AoE dps), what would I like to try instead or perhaps in addition to?

When Should(n’t) You Dual Spec?
If you are going to dual spec, then I suggest you do it as early as you can so that you can get practiced at using both of them. Whatever the specs are for, use them for that purpose. So if you have a healing spec, then use it when you are in a group like when running through instances or doing battlegrounds. If you have a PvP spec, then use it in BG’s and Arenas while you level. Whatever the role of the spec is going to be, use it when in that situation. If you happen to have two specs that fill the same role, but with different talents, then trade off on a fairly regular basis so that you get practiced with them.

Generally speaking, and in my own opinion here, you should not wait to dual spec at high level unless you need to. If you do wait that long then make sure that you gather the gear you need for it before hand, and try to do some research on your spells and talent points. Waiting until higher level to try out a dual spec is a good way to find out that you suck at what you want to do. Unless you have played the class at that level before then you aren’t going to know what to do or how to use the class. You might have a good idea and be able to scrape by, but if you haven’t spent any time during your leveling to learn how to play the class then you aren’t going to be very good at it and probably won’t bother using it very often.

What I’m trying to say here is, don’t put it off expecting to just step into the role at higher levels and be good at it because it’s probably not going to happen. Get it early and start practicing using it so that you have at least some idea of what it is that you’re going to be doing. You can’t expect to be a good tank when you’ve never had to bother with generating threat or using your taunts. You aren’t going to be a good healer if you’re constantly spamming a single heal that doesn’t even begin to compare to your other options even though it looks like a great spell to you.

Where Do You Dual Spec?
Any of your class trainers around the world can open up your dual spec talent tree for you. The cost is 1,000g and there is currently no way of lowering that price. Most of your trainers will be in the major cities though some of the smaller towns throughout the game have trainers as well.

Why Should(n’t) You Dual Spec?
There are plenty of reasons why you should dual spec, as well as why you shouldn’t dual spec. If you want to try out two different talent trees, then dual specs might be for you. If you want to be able to heal when you’re in a group but also love to solo your own dailies and such, then dual specs are probably great for you. If you like to grind mobs with an AoE Frost build but love to instant cast people to death in battlegrounds, then dual specs are a good idea for you.

If you have a fairly small raiding guild that likes to mix things up now and then with which people fill which roles, then dual specs might be for you. If you have a guild that does not have members on a consistent schedule and may need to cover a role that is usually filled, then dual specs might be for you. If you just want to have fun and enjoy the game from multiple perspectives then dual specs might be for you.

You shouldn’t dual spec simply because someone else wants you to or because you feel pressured by a guild, unless you were already aware that they would require it and knew ahead of time. You shouldn’t dual spec because some loser thinks it’s required for you to be recognized as a good player. You shouldn’t dual spec simply because you have an extra thousand gold sitting around burning holes in your pouch. Instead, send that gold over to me.

If you want to dual spec because it’s interesting, opens up more opportunities for enjoying the game, or because you just want to have fun with it, then by all means jump right in and do it. Just don’t do it because some guy tells you that you have too or that you’ll never be able to raid or get invited to a good guild if you don’t.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Dual Spec

Related posts:

1. The Impossible Matrix
2. When DPS Goes Tank
3. [Patch 3.2] Tankadin Talent Spec

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Arcane Torrent (Instant cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds. In addition, you regain 6% of your mana. Death Knights and Rogues restore 15 runic power/energy instead.

Arcane Affinity (Passive)
10 point skill bonus to Enchanting Profession

Magic Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 2%

General Assessments
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

If you ask me, Arcane Torrent is clearly the winner for the Blood Elf’s racial traits. It’s good no matter what level you are. Every class relies on some form of energy (mana, energy, runic power, rage), and this ability gives you a percentage of that back instantly an for free. In addition to that it interrupts spell casting in an area around you. This is one of the few racial traits in the game that is beneficial to every class that is available for the race to play.

Having Arcane Affinity is great if you happen to be an enchanter, basically allowing you to level the skill up with fewer mats early on and then letting you get a little further ahead before having to get more expensive or harder to find materials later in your levels. Obviously situational as it does nothing at all for you if you do not have the profession, but it’s good if you do have it.

Out of all of racial resistances in the game, Magic Resistance is probably the best one all around as it affects every type of spell rather than a single type and is essentially a 2% Dodge versus spells. You will face casters more and more as you move up in your levels, so it plays a larger role later than it does early on, but it’s a nice passive bonus to have.

Class Analysis
Mage: Your 27 Intellect puts you right in line with the Gnome with the two highest Int scores in the game starting out. The 18 Stam is still decent though it could be higher, but 21 Spirit will help with your regen. Enchanting is one of the most common professions for a mage, so if that happen to be the route you prefer to take then Arcane Affinity will be a nice bonus for you. And of course you have the mini-Evocation known as Arcane Torrent that will restore 6% of your mana when used.

Rogue: The 25 Agility helps make you a solid choice for a Rogue with 18 Strength and 19 Stam backing you up. The high agility makes up for the somewhat lower strength score, and Arcane Torrent allows you to not only shut down one of your worst opponents (spell casters), but also gives you a 15 point boost to your energy every 2 minutes.

Warlock: Just below the Mage at 26 Intellect you too will have a great start on your mana pool. The 19 Stam could certainly be higher for a class that sacrifices their hit points for more mana, but 19 is still a great start. The 21 Spirit will help with your regen early on and Warlocks are eventually able to convert Spirit into additional Spell Power to make their spells stronger as well. The extra mana from Arcane Torrent will help you just as well, allowing you to get mana back without having to lose your hit points as you do with Life Tap. Warlocks also frequently take Enchanting as one of their professions making you a bit more likely to make use of Arcane Affinity than some of the other classes.

Hunter: The 25 Agility sets you up with a strong base of ranged attack power and the Hunter is able to take advantage of the 24 Intellect you start with as well. Hunter damage falls way behind when there is no mana to back you up, so Arcane Torrent can be a real benefit to you.

Paladin: The 19 Strength starts you off a bit lower than the other choices for Paladin, but considering you are the only option for Horde until Cataclysm is released, that’s something you just have to deal with. Luckily you have 22 Agility to help with dodging and melee crits, a 20 Stamina to keep your hit points high, and 24 Intellect gives you the mana you need to keep on going. A Paladin without mana might as well be dead, so having not only a high base Int but also Arcane Torrent allows you to somewhat overcome that problem. Your biggest threat is spell casters, so being about to silence them with Arcane Torrent as well as being 2% harder to hit thanks to Magic Resistance .

Priest: Much like the other casters 26 Intellect along with 22 Spirit will help with your mana issues, and your 18 Stam is decent though it could use a boost. Again you can make excellent use of Arcane Torrent to get your mana back when you need it. And Priests also frequently take Enchanting as one of their professions if you want to make use of Arcane Affinity as well.

Psynister Preferences
My personal preference for the Blood Elf is the Paladin. The benefits of this race cover the weaknesses of the Paladin class making it an almost perfect match. Following that I would go Mage, Rogue, and then all of the rest. Considering the racial traits offered by other Horde races, Hunter is not the best choice for you, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a BElf Hunter.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Blood Elf, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Draenei
2. Racial Analysis: Orcs
3. Racial Analysis: Gnome

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Stoneform (Instant Cast, 3 minute cooldown)
Removes Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. In addition, Armor increases by 10%. Lasts 8 seconds.

Gun Specialization (Passive)
Your chance to critically hit with Guns is increased by 1%.

Frost Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance you will be hit by Frost spells by 2%.

Find Treasure (Instant Cast, No Cooldown)
Activate to see treasure chests on mini map. Lasts until canceled.

Mace Specialization (Passive)
Expertise with One-Handed Maces and Two-Handed Maces increases by 5.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

Having the ability to cleanse yourself of Bleeds, Poisons, and Diseases is certainly beneficial to you at any level in the game, and Stoneskin does all of that in one ability. The 10% bonus to armor is a nice benefit, but I don’t find that to be the strength of the ability.

Any time you manage to get a straight bonus to your chance to crit, you know you’ve found a gem. Dwarves get +1% crit when using guns from Gun Specialization which makes them excellent hunters. Warriors and Rogues are also able to take advantage of this, but since it is not their primary form of attack it will not benefit them nearly as much as a hunter.

Having Frost Resistance can help in Northrend, and in small patches around other areas in the game as well. The percentage of course is small, so it will not be a huge benefit to you, but every little bit helps when the time comes to put it to use.

One ability that I always found fun is Find Treasure. It works like any other Find ability like Find Minerals or Find Herbs, but it looks for items that can be looted like chests, barrels of milk, weapon boxes, etc. It’s surprising just how many of those things you can find sitting around in Stormwind. It’s also surprising just how many chests you can find tucked away in a cluster of trees or behind a distant bush and such when you have this turned on. There are a lot more chests in this game than I thought there were.

Having Mace Specialization gives you a nice bonus to your expertise, making maces one of the better options for Dwarven Ret Paladins. Other classes can benefit from it as well, of course, and any class that attacks with a one or two handed mace will find it beneficial.

Class Breakdown
Hunter: While your 19 Agility could be higher, you still have a solid start on your primary stat. With 19 Int and 24 Stam you’re going to have a good pool of resources for keeping you alive and being able to use your mana-based attacks more often. As mentioned above, the +1% crit provides a great boost to your burst damage when using guns as well.

Paladin: With 24 Strength, 25 Stamina, and 19 Intellect you have a good start on any type of paladin you want to play. The 16 Agility hurts somewhat for a Ret build, but the high strength balances that out nicely. Mace Specialization can come in handy if you happen to be using a mace, and Stoneform can be used in place of some of your other spells without requiring mana.

Priest: You get a good start on your mana pool with 21 Intellect, and you have strong support for that with 22 Spirit and 23 Stam. Priests are well known for being hard to kill and that high Stam along with Stoneform make it even harder.

Rogue: Your 19 Agility could handle being a little bit higher, but 23 Strength and 24 Stam helps you to pack a harder punch (stab?) and gives extra survivability as well. One of the Rogue’s major annoyances is not being able to stealth due to various DoT effects, and while Stoneform doesn’t get rid of all of them it does take care of some of the more common ones while also adding a bit to your already low armor.

Warrior: Starting with 25 Strength and 25 Stamina, it’s no wonder why this is the most common class I see among Dwarves. Stoneform provides great utility that your class does not otherwise have and you can probably benefit a bit more from the increased armor from Stoneform than any other class save possibly the Rogue.

Psynister Preferences
My personal preference for the Dwarf is a toss up. I don’t particularly care for dwarves, but when I picture one they’re always holding a gun. So my three-way tie for preferred class for a Dwarf is going to be Hunter, Rogue, Warrior. Dwarves are a good fit for all of their available classes, but if it were up to me then that is how I would rank them. I’ve never been a fan of Dwarves being spellcasters, so I don’t know that I would ever roll a Priest even though they have good stats for them. Dwarven Paladins are great options as well, and you see them frequently in PvP environments, but if I’m going to play an Alliance Paladin then Human or Draenei are my top choices.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Dwarf, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Human
2. Racial Analysis: Troll
3. Racial Analysis: Draenei

I will have more details about leveling my new Mage, Belsynis, in a future post. For right now I want to focus on a specific aspect of what I have been doing with that character, which is farming reputation with Darnassus for the sake of getting their mount as opposed to the boring (in my opinion) Human horses.

Fueling My Fire
After rolling my Mage I made an announcement in Twitter, “Playing around with a Human mage on #Durotan with @Fynralyl, trying to get Exalted with NElfs asap for cat mount. Honored at level 14 so far”.

I got a few responses to that, including the following:

• @WoWDawgs, “@psynister won’t happen by level 20.” and “@psynister not possible. Not enough rep quests to do it by 20.”
• @LordKaladar, “@psynister GL with that.. its like Darkspear.. once you leave the starting area.. there are no more Elf quest hubs “
• @Faulsey, “@psynister It’s hard to get exalted with a faction by -40- nevermind 20. (Did Darny when my Drae Hunter got his first mount, at 40.)”

All those responses really managed to do was get me even more focused and determined to get it done. While I was pretty sure level 20 wasn’t going to happen, I was hoping for some time shortly after so that I wouldn’t have to stick with the boring horses that the Humans get by default.

I got to work on grinding the reputation after I hit level 10, and though I was flying through quests and building up rep pretty fast, it didn’t take me long to see that it was not going to happen nearly as fast as I had hoped. So, I put that out there on Twitter as well, “#WoW My mage is level 16 and is about 1k Rep over half-way through Honored. No way I’m hitting Exalted by level 20 unless I turn of exp.”

I only got one reply to that one though, @WoWDawgs, “@psynister heh heh heh.”

As I’ve said before, telling me that I can’t do something, or that it’s not possible, is the best kind of motivation you can give me. It’s not a matter of trying to prove people wrong, it’s about overcoming the limits around me.

Fueling My Frost
So, after the guys on Twitter told me how hard it was going to be, I decided it was time to put all the knowledge that I had built up from leveling my previous Mage to 80 to good use and started hitting the grinding wheel pretty hard.

When it comes to building reputation with the Faction Races you don’t have a whole lot of options. Basically, you quest and you turn in cloth, and that’s about where it ends. But cloth can only be turned in once per cloth type until you get up to Runecloth, and you can’t do that until around level 50. You can turn in Wool Cloth once at level 10 for some rep, and Silk Cloth at level 30 for some more rep, but otherwise your only option is questing.

I looked up quests on wowhead.com to try to find where to get reputation with Darnassus, but what I found was that almost every quest mentioning Darnassus rep was wrong either in that it gave a different amount of rep than the website claimed, or that it gave the rep with another faction all together. After about the eighth time I was burned on that deal I gave up on referencing quests and instead focused on the NPC’s that gave the quests.

Advice: The most reliable method I found in finding quests in other zones was to accept quests that either came from, or were turned in to, a Night Elf NPC.

So I knew that I had to focus solely on questing, and that’s what I did. While a Fire build hits harder, and an Arcane build is apparently viable now for leveling, I stuck with what I know works and what I’m most familiar with: Frost

You can take a look at Belsynis on the Armory with the following link if you’d like:
Belsynis (Alliance Main)

Reputation: Honored
Somewhere in my mid-teens, I forgot to note exactly when it happened (/fail), I managed to hit Honored with Darnassus.

When Belsynis hit level 10 I left the Human starting zones and went straight to the starting zone for the Night Elves and quested there as though I were a level 1 Night Elf. I did every quest in the starting area of Shadowglen and then moved on to the town of Dolonaar and did every quest there as well. After finishing those I moved on over to Darnassus and did every quest they had to offer me as well.

When you want to build reputation with a faction, hit their starting areas first and then progress through the entire zone. I don’t mention specific quests here because I literally did every single quest that I was able to find in the entire zone. I ran a path around the entire map after I thought I had done them all just to see if I could find any quests in some random, out of the way location that I had missed before. My thoughts proved to be true as I found no other quests that I had left undone.

My wife is currently leveling a Draenei character, and as she heard me mention that I had finished with the quests in the Night Elf zones she mentioned that there were several quests in the Draenei starting area that offered the reputation as well. This is where I did the search for quests on wowhead.com (mentioned above) that came back with disappointing results. Luckily, I did find quite a few quests that gave the reputation, but a lot of them were very small amounts. In the end, it was certainly worth the time and effort to do them. As with the Night Elf zone I went through every area on the map for the Draenei and accepted every quest I could find that came from or was turned in to a Night Elf NPC.

Doing this did slow down my progression in leveling because I was already higher level than most of the mobs that I faced. I did gain experience from all of the quests that I turned in, but that experience was enough to continue pushing me over the level of the mobs that I faced in most of the areas.

So I left the Human starting zone of Elwyn Forest at level 10, the Night Elf zone of Teldrassil at level 14, and the Draenei zones (Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles) at level 16.

Reputation: Revered
From there it was time to head to the next stop in the Night Elf quest lines and head over to Auberdine. Most of the quests in this zone reward Darnassus reputation, but not all of them. Following the same guideline here as I had in previous areas I took every quest that came from a Night Elf NPC or was turned in to one and did every one I could find.

It didn’t take me long to get up to level 20, but since I knew I still had a long way to go before I got my Darnassus mounts that I went ahead and bought all of the human horses (including the black one from Wetlands) so that I could quest faster.

In the end I did every quest, or quest chain, in the entire zone except for the ones given by the Gnome upstairs in the Auberdine Inn. I did his first quest, found that it gave Gnomer rep, and then left it at that for him.

The good thing about Auberdine is that it’s a fairly small zone with a whole lot of quests. The bad thing is, a lot of these quests require you to do a lot of running around back and forth. There also happens to be a couple of quests that send you into areas that are also part of even higher level quests from other zones that send you back to Auberdine. So you can be running around in an area full of level 16 mobs and then find yourself facing a level 29 mob out of the blue. So a word of advice if you are doing this with a low level toon, be careful around towers.

I manged to reach Revered in Auberdine, but I did not get very far into it before I ran out of quests. As with Teldrassil, I ran a full circuit around the map after finishing all of the quests to make sure I did not miss any. This time around I actually found 2 that I had missed, so it certainly paid off this time.

Next stop, Ashenvale.

Reputation: Exalted…Almost
Most of the quests offered in Ashenvale provide you with Darnassus reputation; not all of them, but most. A couple of those quests include running through the BFD instance in Northwest Ashenvale, and since my wife had a freshly transferred level 80 Paladin on the realm I just had her run me through it, though I did find a group for it the following day as well.

Ashenvale has a lot of quests that span the entire map, and the locations of their quests are overall pretty good though not great. I generally liked doing the quests here, but there were a few of them that just really bugged me. Quests that require an item to drop that has a horribly low drop rate, kill quests that require certain numbers of several different mobs that are all spawned randomly so that you have to do a full clear of the area five times to get the ones you need, etc.

Ashenvale is where the level of the mobs finally started meshing well with my own level and where experience really started picking up.

I only had a few accidental run-ins with Horde NPCs, but none of them were fatal. I did stumble onto a couple of rare spawns that gave me lessons on how to die quickly though, and chief among them was Prince Raze, a rare spawn demon that hits extremely hard and is well known for agroing my characters while I’m in the middle of fighting other mobs or just as I sit down to eat/drink. That rare spawn alone is responsible for over 20 deaths across my various characters, and because of that I now make a special effort to go and kill him any time I take a high level character into Ashenvale, even if my destination is nowhere near his spawn point. He killed Belsynis once because I didn’t see him when I attacked a mob near him, and a second time when I came back specifically to claim my revenge. The third time he went down.

But, I’m getting off topic here. Back to questing.

I kept a very close eye on my reputation throughout this entire process, but especially during the anxious grinding from Revered to Exalted, and the closer I got the closer I kept my eye on it.

After finishing every quest I could find in Ashenvale, and having already turned in both Wool and Silk cloth for rep, I still had not reached Exalted, though I was close. I hit the internet again searching for quests in other zones and managed to find a few spread out in various places, but they just didn’t weren’t enough. I found a few quests that would give me what I needed, but they all high minimum level requirements of 38 or higher and I was only level 31.

Reputation: 121 Reputation short
I looked everywhere I could think of and just couldn’t find anything at all. I was so close, and yet I was stuck. There I was sitting just 121 reputation away from being Exalted with Darnassus, and I had no other resources that I could tap for it without gaining several more levels. I spent a couple more hours in the game running around in other zones trying to find another quest and still found nothing. It was about 4 a.m. then and I had said four hours earlier that I was going to stay awake until I reached my goal. But while my mind loves the game, my body couldn’t care less and it was done. So, I called it a night with 121 Reputation left to go.

The next “morning”, I got on and it hit me. I had run full around the entire map looking for quests in all of the previous zones but I hadn’t bothered doing so with Ashenvale. I knew though that I had completed every quests around there so I wasn’t very hopeful. I ran and I ran. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I let out a big, heavy sign of frustration and disappointment as I pulled up my map for a vain search for hope.

As a long time Horde player the first thing that always draws my eye when I look at the Ashenvale map is the flight path there on the coast at Zoram Strand. My eyes found it this time too, and suddenly memories came back to me. Memories of killing a stupid PvP flagged NPC Night Elf that sits beside a fire near the Horde flight path. A dinky little level 14 nobody that I killed every time I saw him simply because he was Alliance. I had avoided the area on Belsynis because I knew that the Horde camp was there, but I had always wondered what his purpose was as my Horde characters killed him.

So, I jumped on my black horse and went straight for him down the quickest path I knew. Sure enough, just as he came within range on my map I saw that he held a quest. I accepted, ran a little ways north to get the statue he wanted and then rushed right back to him. I handed him the statue that was just lying there on the beach with a single naga watching over it and my computer froze…

But it only froze for the half second that it takes for my MultiShot addon to take a screenshot when I get an achievement, Somebody Likes Me. The quest gave me 9 silver coins, 120 experience and 165 Reputation with Darnassus. I reached Exalted: Darnassus at level 31 and I went ahead and finished off that little Night Elf’s quest line just to return the favor.

The only thing left to do was to /cast Teleport: Darnassus and purchase all four of the mounts that were available to me. I keep the black horse on one of my action bars simply because he performed his duty well in helping me get all of those quests done, but the White Striped and Black Striped Frostsaber mounts are the only ones that I ride now.

The white one is my favorite:

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Darnassus, Exalted, Farming, Human, Reputation

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1. Reputation Farming: Cenarion Circle and Sporeggar
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Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Berserking (Instant cast, 3 minute cooldown)
Activate to increase attack and casting speed for 10 seconds. Speed is raised by 10% at full health, increasing as health is lost to a maximum bonus of 30%.

Regeneration (Passive)
Increase health regeneration bonus by 10%. Also allows 10% of normal health regenerate during combat.

Beast Slaying (Passive)
5% damage bonus to Beasts.

Throwing Weapon Specialization (Passive)
Increase Throwing Weapon crit chance by 1%.

Bow Specialization (Passive)
Increase Bow crit chance by 1%.

Da Voodoo Shuffle (Passive)
Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

Berserking: Is one of the key features of the race, but I very rarely see anyone actually using it. While the 10% bonus when you’re near full health isn’t huge, the 30% speed increase when you’re low certainly can be, especially if you happen to be a healer or a melee dps class.

Regeneration: Overall I would say that this is the strongest of the Troll’s racial traits. It can go a long way towards reducing your downtime, though it does have a stronger presence for some classes than it does for others.

Beast Slaying: With most of the mobs in the game falling into the category of Beast, you could almost just call this a straight +5% damage and call it good. This is one of the most beneficial racial abilities in the game when it comes to leveling. If you’re at all into grinding mobs then this makes the troll race an excellent choice for you. However, it’s usefulness is geared more towards leveling/grinding/farming than it is raiding as you will not find much use for it if you are raiding end game content.

Throwing Weapon Specialization: Increased crit chance with thrown weapons is good, but you aren’t going to be using it very often. Personally, I rank this among the most useless racials in the game. Only a few classes use thrown weapons, and none of them uses it as a primary form of attack. If anything I would rather have a bonus to Hit than a bonus to Crit.

Bow Specialization: This more than makes up for the sadness of Throwing Weapon Specialization by giving you a bonus to crit when using a bow. Obviously a Hunter will get more use out of this than anyone else, but a straight 1% crit is a pretty big deal.

Da Voodoo Shuffle: This racial works well with both PvE and PvP. Like many other racials, it is a situational in its usefulness, but being slowed is never fun and this will help you shake it off faster.

Class Breakdown
Hunter: With 25 Agility your primary stat gets a great start, tying you for first place with the Blood Elves for Horde Hunters. The 16 Int is a bit low for your mana pool, but certainly still manageable, and you have 22 Stam and 21 Spirit to provide you with a boost to your survivability. Having Bow Specialization provides you with more burst damage potential than every other hunter race save the dwarves with their Gun Specialization. For low level PvP, this is one of the best race/class combinations you can take.

Mage: Starting at 19 Int puts you slightly below the curve with your primary stat, meaning you’ll have a bit more down time than other races when you start out. Your racial Regeneration will help with your health both in and out of combat, and Berzerking can give you a nice boost to your casting speed when you need it as well.

Priest: As with the Mage, having only 18 Int is going to mean you start with a smaller mana pool than other races, but you also have 23 Spirit to help with your mana regen, and 21 Stam for a good starting health base. Regeneration becomes extra useful to you since you are able to bubble yourself to prevent damage from coming in while you regenerate, and you also get a lot of benefit from Berzerking.

Rogue: With 25 Agility you get a high primary stat and 22 Strength backs you up on damage quite well. The 22 stamina gives you a slightly higher starting health than most other Rogues, and you benefit from either Throwing Weapon or Bow Specialization depending on which you use (if either). Being able to Regenerate while stealthed is a nice bonus, as is reducing slow effects which are crippling to Rogues. Once you are able to make use of poisons, Berzerking becomes a real treat by increasing your attack speed and giving you more chances to apply your poisons. Being a melee-only class as well as having fairly low armor with leather as your only option, a Rogue will likely make more use of Berzerking than any other class, and get more out of it as well.

Shaman: You have a nice balance in stats with 22 Agility, Strength, and Stamina. Again you hurt just a bit in the mana pool area with only 17 Int, but as a hybrid class that uses both spell casting and melee attacks you are able to use Berzerking to its full potential.

Warrior: Everything you need as a Warrior is right there waiting for you on the Troll. With 24 Strength, 22 Agility, 23 Stam, and 21 Spirit you’ve got all of your bases covered and all with scores above 20. Rengeneration is going to give you a bit of an advantage while in combat, and Berzerking may come into play more often for you than any class other than Rogue as a Warrior will always be up in the thick of battle.

Psynister Preferences
My personal choice for the Troll’s best fit is going to be the Rogue and Hunter, in that order. Looking at the starting attributes and abilities, Warrior is probably your best fit overall. When I roll a Troll it is always either Rogue or a Hunter. My first “main” character was a Troll Shaman that was pretty fun to play, but overall he didn’t really compare to other shamans that I have played of other races. Race doesn’t play a very big part in the overall picture, but it was enough that I don’t even consider Troll when I decide to roll a shaman.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Races, Troll

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Orcs
2. Racial Analysis: Dwarf
3. Racial Analysis: Human

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Shadowmeld (Instant Cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect.

Elusiveness (Passive, Rogue and Druid only)
Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while shadowmelded or stealthed.

Quickness (Passive)
Reduces the chance that melee and ranged attackers will hit you by 2%.

Wisp Spirit (Passive)
Transform into a wisp upon death, increasing speed by 75% (instead of 50%).

Nature Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance you will be hit by Nature spells by 2%.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

Shadowmeld Is an awesome ability that has a lot of uses in PvP, PvE, and Roleplaying as well. This is an excellent racial and easily my favorite of the race. It can provide you with some amount of safety when you need to go AFK in the middle of a hostile region, and it can help to some degree in PvP situations to hide from your enemies.

With Elusiveness, classes that are able to become stealthed are even harder to find once they do so. A Night Elf subtlety Rogue is almost impossible to find by players or mobs that are not at least three levels higher than them. Classes that are not able to stealth do not gain quite so much benefit from this as those that can, but it does affect your Shadowmeld as well.

Staying alive is always a good thing, and not getting hit in the first place due to Quickness is a nice way to get started off on the right foot for that. Short of being able to heal yourself (like the Draenei), this is one of the best defensive racial traits in the game making you harder to hit.

Nothing sucks more in this game than dying and having to run all the way back to your corpse to resurrect yourself, and the Night Elves are the only ones that give a special benefit like this. When you die you run faster than someone on a regular ground mount on your way back to your body. This also happens to be the only race that has an animation for it other than a greyscale version of their regular character as you turn into a wisp.

As with the Tauren, Night Elves possess Nature Resistance which again is able to help somewhat in certain circumstances. It’s not an exceptional racial trait, but with resistances generally being fairly hard to find every little bit helps.

Class Breakdown
Druid: While their 18 Strength is not perfect for the feral druid, it is a solid start for either tanking or dps. The 25 Agility shines through for the feral Cat druid’s dps as well as a bear tank’s avoidance. The 19 Stam is their second lowest score, but it also happens to be a very solid score for starting out. With 22 Int and Spirit all of your starting needs for mana and spirit-regeneration are already ahead of the curve. With their starting stats this is about as close to an absolute perfect fit as you can get.

Hunter: Right off the bat a 28 Agility sets the Night Elf as the strongest Hunter in the game as far as base stats are concerned. Next up on a hunter’s needs is 20 Int and 20 Stam which both give you a solid start on your primary attributes. The 21 Spirit will also help to keep your mana regeneration going for minimizing your downtime.

Priest: With 22 Int and 23 Spirit the Night Elf gets a good boost on their starting stats and the 19 Stam is fairly strong for starting out as well. While Agility is not very important to you, being able to start off with a 25 will help you a bit with dodging attacks early on.

Rogue: Much like the Hunter, 28 Agility makes the Night Elf the best stat-based Rogue starting out as well. The 18 Strength could be a little bit higher but the higher Agility more than makes up for that. The rest of the rogue’s stats start off with a 20 which makes for a very well balanced start.

Warrior: With 20 Strength you aren’t going to be the strongest Warrior starting out, but you aren’t going to be the worst either. Your 25 Agility will help a lot with your avoidance which is especially nice if you plan on filling the role of a Tank, and 21 Stam and 20 Spirit will help keep you alive regardless of which path you take your class.

Psynister Preferences
Even though I do not care much for the Alliance Faction and rarely play on any of the few toons that I do have in the faction, the Night Elves are still my favorite race in the game. I could really do without the Michael Jackson dance that the males have, but everything else about the race (especially the occasional front flip when they jump) just fits in perfectly with what I like in the game.

With my constant exception of the ever-hated Warrior class, I love every class selection that the Night Elf has open to them. Narrowing the classes down for this race is really hard for me as they are such a perfect fit for each of them. If I absolutely had to narrow it down to a single one I would say that Hunter is the perfect fit and my personal preference, followed closely by Rogue and Druid, and finally Priest.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Night Elf, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Tauren
2. Racial Analysis: Troll
3. Racial Analysis: Gnome

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
War Stomp (0.5 second cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds.

Endurance (Passive)
Base Health increased by 5%.

Cultivation (Passive)
Herbalism skill increased by 15.

Nature Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance you will be hit by Nature spells by 2%.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

With War Stomp you are able to stun everything within 8 yards of you for 2 seconds. This stun can be used for any number of things, depending on your class, but what I generally find myself using it for is to heal. Almost all of the classes that can heal are able to do so either within 2 seconds time, or soon enough thereafter that they can avoid most of the pushback that they might otherwise suffer from being attacked. It’s also useful for either gaining distance or making use of crowd control spells if you are a class and spec that makes use of such.

Taurens are pretty well known for their Endurance, and every class can certainly benefit from having extra health. While Warstomp has a lot of applications during combat, this is probably the best of the Tauren racial abilities.

Everybody has to eat, and cows like veggies. Cultivation provides a large boost to herbalism that allows you to pick almost every herb in your starting zone from the very beginning. Most starting zones include 1-2 nodes for Mageroyal as well, which cannot be picked until skill level 50, but that number is not quite so far off when you start with a +15 bonus to begin with. The major drawback to this racial is that it does not count towards your ranks of Lifebloom. So where everyone else gets Lifebloom Rank 1 at skill level 75, a Tauren does not get that spell until skill level 90.

Taurent have Nature Resistance from sleeping in the dirt so much. Fire is probably the only damage type that I see more of than Nature while leveling prior to Outlands. Nature damage generally is not very high, so while Nature Resistance is a bit weak from the low score that it has, that low resistence actually works quite well against a low source of damage.

Class Breakdown

Druid: This is probably the most common of the Tauren classes, simply because they are the only Horde race that can choose the class. With 26 Strength and 22 Stam, along with their various other racials, the Tauren is an excellent choice for a bear druid. Having only 15 Agility hurts a bit if you plan on being a Cat druid, but there is enough +Agi gear to be found that you can overcome that fairly easy. Your mana may lack a bit with only 17 Int to start off, but having 24 Spirit will help to keep your mana and health regeneration high.

Hunter: With 18 Agility, the Tauren does not make the best race for hunters. You also have only 15 Int to work with which means your special shots will not be able to be fired quite so often. Your 25 Strength is somewhat wasted as you should never be using a melee weapon, but for the rare times that you are forced to use them at least they can hit hard. With 23 Stam and 23 Spirit though you do have a very solid base of health and regeneration to keep you alive. Hunters probably get the most benefit out of Thunder Stomp racial of all of the Tauren’s class choices by using it to gain distance on an enemy who has closed in to melee.

Shaman: Starting with 26 Strength is going to help an enhancement shaman with the melee effectiveness and makes up for the poor 15 Agility. A 23 Stam and 24 Spirit will be a great benefit for your survivability, and while 16 Int hurts somewhat in the size of your mana pool the Shaman has some of the lowest mana costs for spells in the game.

Warrior: Warrior is one of the best fits for the Tauren making the most use out of their three highest stats: 28 Strength, 24 Stamina, and 22 Spirit. Warriors can always use more hit points (Endurance) and an extra stun (Thunder Stomp) is always good as well. One of the most frequently taken professions for warriors is Alchemy, which is usually teamed up with Herbalism which can take advantage of Cultivation as well.

Psynister Preferences
If you want to get the most out of your race/class combination, then Warrior is clearly the way to go for a Tauren as everything lines up almost perfectly with that class. You cannot go wrong with this race/class combination and it’s one of the strongest that the game has to offer.

My own personal preference, since we all know I hate playing a Warrior, is going to be the Druid though. Even when the new expansion, Cataclysm, comes out and allows Trolls to become druids as well, Tauren will be the race of choice for Horde Druids in my book. I see a lot of Tauren Shamans running around and while I have thought about rolling one myself, I personally prefer the Orc for that role as Enhancement or Troll for Elemental/Restoration.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Races, Tauren

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Night Elf
2. Racial Analysis: Draenei
3. Racial Analysis: Gnome

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Escape Artist (Instant cast, 1.75 minute cooldown)
Escape the effects of any immobilization or movement speed reduction effect.

Expansive Mind (Passive)
Intellect increased by 5%.

Arcane Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance you will be hit by Arcane spells by 2%.

Engineering Specialist (Passive)
Engineering skill increased by 15.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

The Gnome racial abilities are similar to the Undead’s in that they aren’t specifically geared towards any one class, with one exception in Expansive Mind. Expansive Mind offers an excellent boost to your intellect and that boost is able to scale with you while you level because of it being a percentage increase.

Gnomes have the Escape Artist ability that allows them to break out of any root/snare effects used on them as well. While it does have PvE applications at times this is one of the better PvP racial abilities that are offered. This ability makes up half of the Every Man for Himself ability of the humans, with Undead’s Will of the Forsaken making up the other half.

While Arcane Resistance, or any other resistance for that matter, is not going to be used all the time, there are times when this is helpful. At only 2% it’s not a fantastic bonus, but every little bit helps when the situation for its use arises.

Gnomes are pretty well known for being Engineering Specialists, and they have the +15 bonus to back it up. This will save you from having to waste mats on some of the lower skill-level items while leveling the profession and it will also help save you the a lot of gold on much more expensive mats to get it leveled up later on. If you plan on leveling to your racial cap of 465, then you’re free to do so but as of right now in 3.2 there’s no reason to go beyond 450. I would imagine we get another 50-100 skill levels in professions once Cataclysm comes out though, so it doesn’t hurt to max the profession either.

Class Breakdown
Mage: This is an excellent choice for the gnome race because of their bonus to Intellect from Expansive Mind, which is calculated in even after gear bonuses. Gnomes are capable of having the highest mana pools of every race/class combination in the game. Higher mana pools means less down time for you. With a starting Intellect of 27 you also have more mana starting out that every other race/class combination in the game as well. The 19 Stamina could use a boost but it’s still decent so not a big deal, and 22 Spirit helps you to regenerate that large mana pool a bit faster.

Rogue: Rogues have a great bonus from being a gnome because of their Escape Artist racial. Since Rogues are only able to be a melee dps class it really hurts to not be able to close in on your target and being able to break roots and snares serves you well. With 26 Agility you make one of the best starting rogues in the game as well, though you do miss out on a bit of Attack Power with only 16 Strength. You finish off the primary stats with a 20 Stamina which is a solid start on a decent health pool. Engineering also happens to be one of the favored professions of the Rogue class.

Warlock: Much like the Mage, Warlock is an excellent choice for any Gnome. They fall slightly behind mages with 26 Intellect instead of 27, but you make up that point with 20 Stamina instead of 19, and you share the 22 Spirit. Increased Intellect from Expansive Mind helps to prevent mana issues, and Engineering Specialist is put to use by quite a few Warlocks as well.

Warrior: Warrior is a pretty common choice for gnomes, but from a straight attribute analysis it’s not the best choice for you. Your primary stat is low with only 18 Strength, so you lose out on some attack power and Block from your base stats. A 26 Agility helps to fix some of that though, providing you with extra Attack Power, Crit, and Dodge. Your high 26 Intellect goes to waste as does your Expansive Mind racial, but 21 Stamina puts you a bit above average and you can make great use of Escape Artist, especially in PvP when used alongside your Charge attack.

Psynister Preferences
My personal preference for the Gnome is certainly a caster class. They make excellent Rogues as well, but I like my rogues to look a little more brutal than cute. If I were to pick a single favorite class for the Gnome race, it would be the Mage. Warlock is a close second, and Rogue is not far behind either. I don’t care for Warriors to begin with, but I would not personally consider a Gnome Warrior for anything other than low level PvP.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Gnome, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Human
2. Racial Analysis: Blood Elf
3. Racial Analysis: Orcs

There is going to be a wealth of information spread out all over the internet soon enough on the many, many changes coming out in the new expansion and since I’m not at Blizzcon myself I can only get you the information that I can find myself or hear via twitter.

The official release date has not been given (yet), but it will be in 2010 from what they have told us so far. My guess is that it will be around November, but only time will tell.

New Race/Class Combinations
The first thing I want to cover is the new race/class combinations because this is something that I have wanted since I started playing. I have hated racial restrictions on classes since it first appeared way back in the days of early Dungeons and Dragons. I like all options to be open and restrictions, while good for the Lore freaks, annoy me to no end.

So, here is your chart for the new race/class combinations:

In case you aren’t able to see those changes, here’s a list for you:

Orc: Mage
Undead: Hunter
Tauren: Paladin, Priest
Troll: Druid
Blood Elf: Warrior
Goblin: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior

Human: Hunter
Dwarf: Mage, Shaman
Night Elf: Mage
Gnome: Priest
Draenei: (nothing new here…)
Worgen: Death Knight, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior

Starting Zones Remade
All of Azeroth has been royally screwed by the escape of a dragon known as Deathwing. The whole world map has been remade, and starting zones are changed to take you from level 1-15.

I love this because I love to level. This chance is going to open the doors wide open to leveling and I wouldn’t be surprised if I reroll a character of every race, and likely more than one of both the goblins and worgen.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
This is something that Blizzard said they would never do. Of course, this isn’t the first time they’ve done something they said they wouldn’t. Regardless, it’s here. I said before that I did not see this ever happening because Blizzard would have to remake the whole world map to make it possible. Well, that’s exactly what they did and so we will now be able to use flying mounts in Azeroth.

New Profession: Archeology
This is a nice surprise, and one that has absolutely no details – yet.

We know that it will allow you to find ancient artifacts and special rewards, but that’s all they’ve told us so far. What does it actually do? Who knows?

Whenever we receive more information I’m sure I will post it here for you to see.

But Wait! That’s Not All!
There is a lot more that has been revealed, but I have even fewer details on that than everything else I have already posted here. As more information becomes available I will post it.

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Orcs
2. Racial Analysis: Troll
3. Racial Analysis: Human

Classes and Starting Attributes

Racial Traits
Will of the Forsaken (Instant cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Activate to remove any fear, sleep, and charm effects.

Cannibalize (Instant cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Activate to regenerate 7% of total health every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. Only works on Humanoid or
Undead corpses within 5 yards.

Underwater Breathing (Passive)
Underwater breath lasts 233% longer than normal.

Shadow Resistance (Passive)
Reduces the chance you will be hit by Shadow spells by 2%.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

The Undead racial abilities do not really have any impact on the class that you take. Rather than having racials geared towards class the undead are geared more towards general gameplay. Will of the Forsaken is one of the most useful racials in the game, especially in PvP, with the human’s Every Man for Himself being the only one that can outclass it. Even though it is a spectacular ability in PvP, it does still have a lot of uses in PvE as well as mobs that are able to fear/sleep/charm you appear throughout the game.

Cannibalize is probably the most defining feature of the race and it’s one I absolutely love. It’s suited best for classes that are unable to heal themselves, so a Priest will not get quite as much use out of it as a Rogue for instance. But, free healing is free healing no matter which way you look at it. Overall it heals you for 35% of your total health if you are not interrupted while using it. Side Note: There’s an addon that you can get if you like to have a some extra fun called Comix, which plays special sound effects when you activate certain abilities, score critical hits, etc. When you activate Cannibalism is plays a track from the Cookie Monster, “And now, me eat cookies! Omnomnomnomnomnom.”

Underwater Breathing isn’t as spectacular as it used to be. Back in the day if you went underwater with a non-Undead you kept your eye on that breath bar and made sure you didn’t get any closer than absolutely necessary. A few patches back though they increased everyone’s breathing timer to 3 minutes so that any race can pretty well stay under as long as they need to. Undead can stay under for significantly longer, but you probably will not have much need to do so.

Shadow Resistance is good for every character, especially when you get up around level 50 or so. It’s decent for PvP even at low levels when fighting Warlocks and Priests, but it’s not exceptional. Overall it’s a good thing to have and will help keep you alive in some cases, but it’s not spectacular either.

Class Breakdown

Mage: From a cosmetic standpoint, I think that Undead make the coolest looking casters in the game whether they be Mages, Priests, or Warlocks. That’s not a huge thing for most people, but I’m throwing it out there anyway. With a 21 Int the Undead gets a strong start on the class’s primary stat, and backed with a 21 Stam and a huge 27 Spirit, this race was built to cast. I would like to have a higher Int with the Undead, but 20 is still a solid start. The higher Stam and exceptional Spirit really helps to keep you on your feet though.

Priest: With 28 Spirit the Undead make for some of the best Priests in the game. Having 20 Int sets you up with a good mana pool right off the bat and 21 Stam also helps with your squishiness. What the Priest needs, the Undead has, and it has it in a good supply.

Rogue: Undead Rogues are somewhat iconic and nothing beats one-shotting your target with an Ambush and then Cannibalizing their corpse. With 21 Agility the Undead Rogue gets a good start on their primary stat, and they follow that with excellent scores in their other attributes as well: 20 Str, 22 Stam, 25 Spirit. Rogues are always looking to stack Agility to help them hit harder and crit more often, but they also need Stamina to keep them alive. Even though a Rogue can destroy their target in a matter of seconds they are also fairly squishy themselves with only Leather Armor to protect them. While Rogues do not stack Spriit for any reason it does help you to regenerate your health more if you happen to be in a hostile area and cannot risk sitting to eat or have run out of bandages/potions.

Warlock: Undead Warlocks have a lot of things going for them. While they don’t have the huge mana pools of other classes or races, a 20 Int is still a strong start on it. Key to a Warlock’s mana issues though is his Health as Life Tap can be used to trade in your life for mana instead. With a 22 Stam, 27 Spirit, and the Cannibalize racial ability the Undead fill that need perfectly. The Stamina will give you a larger health pool to Life Tap from to begin with, and the high Spirit helps you regenerate both of those pools while your demon and your DoT spells wittle your targets down into piles of loot.

Warrior: Undead have a slightly smaller Agility (18) than most Warriors would prefer, but it’s certainly not a deal breaker. With 22 Str and 23 Stam Undead Warriors fit their bill nicely, and 25 Spirit helps with regen to reduce downtime as well. As another class without heals, Cannibalism again shines through as a great method of restoring a decent amount of your health.

Psynister Preference
My personal preference for Undead is to be a caster. They work great for all of the other classes as well, but they really excell at casting. I tend more towards Mage than Warlock or Priest, but I do have an Undead Priest that is nearly indestructable. I really like the whole look and feel of an Undead Rogue, and they are a solid choice for it. Much like the Human, Undead are designed to serve well in any function you assign them to. It’s hard for me to pick a single class for my personal preference, but if I had to choose then it would probably be Mage or Warlock on a personal level, or Priest and Warlock as far as best race/class combination.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Races, Undead

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Human
2. Racial Analysis: Troll
3. Racial Analysis: Blood Elf

I have two post series in mind, one based on each race and an analysis of them as a whole, and another for each class. Starting with races feels sort of odd since people are usually more interested first in a class and then deciding which race to make them, but I’m going to switch it up just a bit and do both of them.

Classes and Starting Attributes
Orcs have six different classes that they can choose from: Death Knight, Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior.

Racial Traits
Blood Fury (Instant Cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Increases attack power by (Level*4)+2 and your spell power by (Level*2)+3 for 15 seconds.

Hardiness (Passive)
Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 15%.

Command (Passive)
Damage dealt by Death Knight, Hunter and Warlock pets increased by 5%.

Axe Specialization (Passive)
Expertise with Axes and Two-Handed Axes increased by 5.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

I find the Orc to be an excellent race for all of the classes that it can take. With their passive racial, Command, they make for excellent DK’s, Hunters, and Warlocks as they are able to increase the damage of their pets. With Blood Fury they are able to increase their attack and spell power significantly with every class, and their reduction to stun durations helps in both PvE and PvP environments.

Class Breakdown
Hunter: With a starting Agility of 20 the Orc is a fair choice for a hunter, though not outstanding. With an Intellect of 17 they will be lacking a bit more in mana that other races. Neither of these is a reason not to have an Orc hunter, and both of them are countered strongly by the passive racial, Command that increased the Hunter’s pet damage.

Rogue: With a starting Agility of 20 the Orc is a fair choice for a rogue, though not outstanding. Lucky for the rogue though, they don’t rely entirely on Agility for their strength in melee combat, and the Orc’s 24 Strength helps to balance that quite a bit. Higher strength will allow you to hit harder, while the slightly lowered agility will mean you aren’t quite as likely to score a critial hit. Having said that, note that the percentage of crit gained from only 4 points in an attribute is very, very minimal at only a fraction of a percentile.

Shaman: Shaman’s rely on a lot of different stats as they are very much a hybrid class. The higher strength and lower intellect pushes them more towards Enhancement builds than it does Elemental builds, but shamans are fortunate in that many of their spells have a low mana cost. With a nice balance of attributes with a high Strength value Orcs make for excellent shamans. With racial bonuses to expertise with Axes and the Blood Fury racial that increases both Attack Power and Spell Power (both used by shamans), Orcs are a prime choice for Horde shamans, and are my personal preference when rolling shaman. Strictly looking at racial abilities and stats, Orcs make amazing shamans, and this class is the only one that fully benefits from Blood Frenzy as shamans use a mix of melee attacks and spells during combat.

Warlock: Orcs start off with 19 Intellect as a Warlock, which makes them a fair choice. Inceased pet damage means you are not quite so likely to draw agro off of your pet at lower levels, and your racial ability of Blood Fury can provide a strong boost to your spell power to help increase your damage output. Orcs also have a solid starting amount of Stamina that will help when you get up to around level 8 or so and start being able to cast Life Tap to sacrifice your health for more mana.

Warrior: While this class doesn’t make use of the Command racial, it does put every other aspect of the race into use. High strength and stamina make this class an excellent choice, regardless of your talent specializations. Whether you’re a tank or you want to deal damage in large and frequent quantity, you can never go wrong with an Orc.

Psynister Preferences
Personally, I feel that Orcs make the best Horde Shamans, and I feel that Shaman is the best class for the race as well.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Orc, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Draenei
2. Racial Analysis: Troll
3. Racial Analysis: Blood Elf

Classes and Starting Attributes
Humans have seven different classes to choose from: Death Knight, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior.

Racial Traits
Perception (Passive)
Increases stealth detection by 5 points (equivalent of 1 level).

The Human Spirit (Passive)
Spirit increased by 3%.

Diplomacy (Passive)
Faction reputation gains increased by 10%.

Every Man for Himself (Instant cast, 2 minute cooldown)
Activate to remove all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character.

Sword Specialization (Passive)
Expertise with One-Handed Swords and Two-Handed Swords increased by 3.

Mace Specialization (Passive)
Expertise with One-Handed Maces and Two-Handed Maces increased by 3.

General Assessment
Here I go over each class with an analysis based purely on stats. A lot of people on forums like to ask what race their should pick for a certain class, and the answer they receive is always the same, “go for whichever race appeals to you most visibly”. But these people aren’t asking which race looks the prettiest, they are asking which one will help them the most with the character. The answer they receive is pretty valid, it really doesn’t matter. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t help as well.

While your race does not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of how powerful your character will be at end game, it can impact how well you do early on. Oftentimes a player will start a character and then decide within the first 10 levels whether or not they like the character. So, it’s important to start off with a solid race/class combination if you’re not one for sticking it out for a while to really give the character a chance.

If you ignore the long term and start out looking just at the base starting attributes then I find the following.

As is typical with most games that include other playable races alongside humans, the human receives a few extra little perks so that everyone doesn’t just grab the extraordinary races and leave the humans behind. The excellent thing about the Humans is that their attributes all start out at 20 or higher, so every class choice that they have is great. It might not be exceptional like some of the other races that have base attributes above 20, but they don’t fall into the trap that those races do in having less than 20 for another attribute.

The Human racial ability of Perception is good for all classes, though it’s not exceptional. It has more use in PvP than it does in PvE, but even then it’s not all that great as the only class that’s going to be using stealth against you (Rogues) is likely to have spent talent points to raise their stealthing ability as well. But, not every rogue will be spend their talent points the same way, so this could very well save your life. There are some instances that use stealth in them as well, so it does have PvE uses, just not a whole lot of them. Spell casters will find the most use out of The Human Spirit, and priest and warlocks tend to love it.

Their racial bonus from Diplomacy makes quite an impact on anyone who plans on doing any reputation farming. I’m not usually a big fan of farming rep, but here lately I have had to do just that with my paladin so that I could get Enchanting formulas for him. Unfortunately, I’m a blood elf so no +10% bonus for me (/frown). If you have any plans to spend a good deal of time with end game content or raiding, the time that you save from having Diplomacy make it one of the best racial abilities in the entire game. You will not see much benefit from it for the first part of your character’s life, but it will certainly pay off in the long run.

Gaining Sword/Mace Specialization gives some of the melee classes a bit of an edge. While the bonus from these isn’t spectacular, every little bit helps.

And the strongest of Human racial abilities is Every Man for Himself which has applications in all aspects of the game. Gnomes can escape snaring effects, Undead can remove effects that cause the loss of control, but only Humans can do both at once. Again, this is an amazing ability for PvP, but it also has great potential in PvE as well with how many mobs are able to use the very effects that this protects you from.

Class Breakdown
Mage: As I mentioned before, the Human’s high starting attributes make them good for all class choices, and with Intellect and Spirit both starting at 23, Humans get an excellent start on the mage class. From a racial ability stand point, the mage’s only real benefit for being a Human is going to be the increased Spirit to help with mana regeneration.

Paladin: Being a hybrid class the paladin’s attribute points are a bit more spread out than other non-hybrid classes. But again, since Humans start with such high scores in everything they are still exceptional in all class choices. With Strength, Stamina, and Spirit all starting at 22 a Human paladin is a perfect choice for the class and specifically for the Protection Paladin spec (I have quite a bit of Prot Pally info here). If you do happen to be playing a tank, then Every Man for Himself becomes an excellent tool for helping you stay in control.

Priest: Priests rely pretty heavily on their Spirit to regenerate their mana for them, and The Human Spirit is a perfect fit for that. With 23 Intellect to establish a solid mana pool early on and 24 Spirit to help with the regeneration of that mana, Human Priests will have less downtime to worry about regenerating their mana. Every Man for Himself also allows a healer (or dps) to stay more focused their roles in a group. Nothing sucks more in an instance than having your tank die because something took out your healer, and the Human has some great tools to prevent that from happening.

Rogue: If you look at the table above with the starting attributes you will find that most race/class combinations have an overall +6 bonus if you count the number of attribute points above 20 and subtracting those below 20. The Rogue is an exception to this as they receive an overall +8 bonus. Humans make great Rogues with a starting 23 Agility, and while it’s not the highest in the game it is certainly a solid choice for a rogue. Being able to slip out of your enemy’s hands is always a rogue’s job and Every Man for Himself helps with that a lot. The increase from The Human Spirit will also help you to regenerate your health while stealthing around your enemies. Rogues also benefit from both Mace & Sword Specialization, though you don’t see a lot of mace rogues these days. At early levels swords are a stronger choice for rogues than daggers, and these racial bonuses can help you even more.

Warlock: Human Warlocks do not get quite so optimized attributes starting out as other classes do, but 22 Intellect, 23 Spirit, and 21 Stamina help Human ‘Locks to do what they do best. The biggest benefit that a Warlock is likely to get out of this deal is The Human Spirit to help with life/mana regeneration as well as spell power if the warlock specs to receive the bonus.

Warrior: With 23 Strength, 22 Stamina, and 21 Spirit, a Human Warrior again is able to start off with a solid set of attributes. The same general trend we’ve seen in other classes above apply here as well: The Human Spirit will help with regeneration and by doing so reduce downtime a bit, Every Man for Himself helps to keep you in control of your own character, and the Mace/Sword Specialization abilities work very well here.

Psynister Preferences
With such a great array of starting attributes and solid, though not spectacular, racial abilities the Human can easily perform well in every class. My personal preferences for Humans is either Priest, Rogue, or Paladin, but as I said they make excellent choices for all of their available classes. If I were to pick a single class that I feel is a perfect fit for the human it would be Priest, but I put the Rogue and Paladin close behind.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Human, Races

Related posts:

1. Racial Analysis: Blood Elf
2. Racial Analysis: Gnome
3. Racial Analysis: Troll

We have some further detail on which hair/skin colors will result in which forms for the druids in the upcoming patch. With the possible exception of the change to shaman totems, this is really the 3.2 change that I am most looking forward to. This change is completely full of win on an epic scale.

The source of this information is EpicWins.com. You can check the link there for information on where to find your nearest barbers to getting the job done.

Also, here are some links to the image charts you can use to determine which changes you need to make for the form that best suits your taste. Clicking the image will direct you back to EpicWins’s website.

Male Tauren




Female Tauren




Night Elf

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: 3.2, Druid

Related posts:

1. Druid Leveling: 1-20 (Balance)
2. Shaman Versus Druid

Over the weekend I decided that, once again, I wanted to change up Lexington’s (BElf Paladin 74) professions. With his enchanting quite close to being maxed, I had no desire to drop it from how much it costs to get it leveled up, nor for the time I spent farming various enchanting recipes around the world. But his herbalism was not doing much for me.

So I dropped Herbalism and replaced it with Tailoring. I know what you’re thinking here, “Tailoring!? On a Paladin!?!?!?” Yeah, you heard me. My plate-wearing, mob-pwning, king of AoE grinding likes to knit. You got a problem with that? Huh? HUH!? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Why Tailoring?
Tailoring isn’t generally associated with Paladins, though I do know at least one other that does it, but you have to remember that I’m not big on end game material, so I don’t really care about getting the most out of whatever profession I choose to take. I take professions based on what I want to do with them. I already have a tailor in this server, but he’s only level 20 and so his profession is currently level-maxed at 225 for another 15 levels.

The main reason why I chose Tailoring was for Herbalism and Enchanting bags, with a side benefit of making my own regular bags for my various alts and, of course, the members of our Twitter-guild, MOTiE.

Most regular bags can be purchased for a fairly low price on the Auction House, with even the 20-slot Frostweave bags selling for around 100g (68-90g on my server). Even the majority of the profession bags sell for less than that, with a few exceptions here and there and one very notable exception: herbalism.

The 32-slot herb bag sells for 800-1,000g on my server, and since I still have 2 more characters who have herbalism as one of their professions, bag space is always a problem for them because I don’t want to spend that much gold on a bag. Even the 28-slot herb bag sells for 225-275g on my server, and that too is far more than I want to pay for a bag. When I can buy regular 20-slot bags that can hold anything at all for 1/3 of the price, I hate to pay that much for only 8 extra slots and have all of them forced to carry only herbs.

There’s Gold In Them There Bags
So, on the one side I am now able to make my own herb bags (20, 24, or 28 slots right now) instead of spending large amounts of gold, and on the other there is quite a bit of gold to be made if I decide to sell the herb bags myself. Enchanting bags do not sell as high as herb bags do, and while having the large bags would save me some room I am able to get by with the 20-slot enchanting bags purchased from vendors in Hellfire Peninsula.

There are two reasons, as far as I can figure, why these herb bags cost so much. First, none of these bag patterns can simply be picked up at your trainer, none of them are sold at regular vendors, none of them drop off of mobs, and none can be sold on the Auction House. There is only one way to get the patterns to make these bags, and that is by grinding for Reputation.

Here are some tables to show the specifics of the different bag types. Herb Bag values are based on what I see on my server. Enchanting bags are based on what I see on wowhead.com since I never see them for sale on my server’s AH. I compared the prices of the two types of bags on wowhead and they come out pretty close, with herb bags about 20% more expensive, so values might be comparable.

You can see from the Reputation columns that all but one Enchanting Bag pattern can be bought from regular vendors without required reputation, while all Herbalism Bag patterns require reputation.

Reputation Farming: Cenarion Circle
Cenarion Circle reputation is not too hard to come by. It might take you some time because the reputation rewards are not as high as some others, but there are so many mobs running around that you get it from that it keeps you engaged through most of the process.

There are several ways to get the reputation, but all of them basically come down to grinding mobs. I did all of my grinding with my Paladin’s Prot/Ret spec (he’s dual spec Prot-Ret/Prot-Holy right now), but I was not able to do a lot of AoE grinding here because many of the mobs are spell casters and because of that are harder to gather into groups for AoE. If I had a Ret spec available to me at the time, I probably would have gone ahead and switched to it just because it would have been faster. Overall though, it was not too bad.

Almost all of the Twilight Cultist mobs in Silithus will give you 10 Reputation when you kill them, and those cultists also drop the items that you need in order to build your reputation. There are several different types of Twilight Cultist mobs, but all of them are humanoids and all of them have “Twilight” in their name. If its name has Twilight in it, kill it.

According to my research online, you can purchase all of the items you need from the Auction House. You cannot be sure that the items will be available though, nor do you have any control over the prices. If the items are cheap, and you would like to go that route, then by all means do it. Personally, I enjoyed grinding for the items and the rep myself. And since killing the mobs that drop the items gives you reputation by itself, you will probably do better this way regardless.

The Twilight Cultist Cowl/Mantle/Robe are all required to obtain the Abyssal Crests. By equipping each of these three items you can activate stones at the different Twilight Camps that will summon mobs for you to fight. Those mobs will drop the Abyssal Crests, as well as various other items (mostly trash), including the occasional Encrypted Twilight Text.

Each time you use the Cowl/Mantle/Robe to summon the mobs though, they are destroyed. When the mobs are summoned, you have a few seconds before they actually agro you and attack. Be sure to re-equip the items that you took off before these fights begin.

You can find all of the Cultist gear at the three camps around the map (see the map for Twilight Lord Everun below), but there is a fourth camp that’s in the north/north-east corner which has a cave entrance as well. Inside that cave is the only place that you can find a type of cultist called Twilight Flamereavers, which have some of the best potential (i.e. low % chance) drops of all the mobs, and they too drop the texts and occasional cowl/mantle/robe. I mention the Flamereavers in particular because they are the only mob that you can grind for reputation after you reach Revered reputation. So if you want to continue to grind rep all the way to Exalted, then that is where you should focus. The Flamereavers are also the best mobs to target for AoE grinding.

The camp near where the Flamereavers are found is also the best location I found for farming the Cowl/Mantle/Robe, though you can find all of these items at each camp. Apparently everyone has different luck with different items, in different locations when farming here, so just keep moving around from camp to camp as needed.

In addition to getting reputation for turning in the Crests though, you also receive a Bag of Spoils which contains all sorts of little goodies for you. Some of which sale rather well on the Auction House.

The Encrypted Texts can drop from all of the Twilight Cultists, so while you are gaining reputation just from killing them, you also have a chance to pick up the texts to get more reputation. The best source of Encrypted Texts though is a special mob called the Twilight Prophet, who drops 7-10 of the texts at a time instead of just 1 like all of the others. The prophets roam around the map and have fairly slow respawn rates, so while you should keep an eye out for them, don’t plan on farming only the prophets. The prophet is always escorted by two melee-mobs as well.

Here is a map of the Twilight Prophet’s patrol paths, courtesy of wowhead.com:

There is also a Rare spawn that wanders around the various Cultist camps named Twilight Lord Everun who has a chance to drop a few cards for various decks, and also an epic two handed axe called Brain Hacker, which he dropped for me the second time I killed him. I am not sure offhand what his respawn time is, but during the time it took me to grind the reputation I needed I killed him 3 times.

Here is a map of where Twilight Lord Everun happens to spawn, and since he patrols all three of the camps, it also shows you the location of the camps for you to farm them.

I did not keep track of how many mobs I had to kill, how many texts or crests I turned in, or how many of the various other quests in the zone that I completed along with the rest, but all in all it took me 3-4 hours to grind from Neutral to Revered. There are other rewards I could get for continuing to grind rep higher, but none of them are ones that I would particularly use. In some cases there are tabards, vanity pets, or even mounts. Overall the mounts are the only ones that appeal to me at all, but they are also quite the gold sink, and gold is one resource that I don’t bother farming very often though I probably should. So rather than becoming exalted with everyone, I simple reach the level I need for the item(s) I want and then hit the road.

See Cenarion Circle Reputation for more details.

Reputation Farming: Sporeggar
Farming reputation in Sporeggar is easy, but even more time consuming than Cenarion Circle. I had already farmed Sporeggar rep with my Paladin several weeks ago in order to get the Petrified Lichen Guard shield for my AoE grinding, so I did not have to start this one from scratch. Instead, I just had to bump it up to Revered in order to get the 28-slot herb bag.

Farming rep with Sporeggar is pretty easy when you start out because there are so many mobs that give you rep for killing them, and so many items that can be turned in for rep. As you move up the ranks though, the number of sources dwindles a lot. At the Honored stage, where I started this time, there is only one mob that gives you reputation (15 rep each), but they are so few and so spread apart that they aren’t really worth the grind.

However, there are two very solid sources of reputation at this level, one from farming and the other from grinding.

To grind for rep, you want to accept the repeatable quest called Now That We’re Friends…, which has you kill 18 Nagas, 12 of which are melee, and 6 casters. The mobs are north and slightly-east of your quest giver and they do not take long to grind. Turning in the quest grants you 750 Reputation and can be repeated as often as you like. The drops from these mobs are not that great, and they are occasionally annoying to fight with the mobs calling adds and fleeing when their health is low and so forth, but it’s not a big deal.

Map

To farm for rep, you need to head to the Underbog instance in the north-central portion of the map. The target of your farming is Sanguine Hibiscus, which can be picked up in the instance, or dropped from the mobs inside. This “herb” is turned in for the Bring Me A Shrubbery! quest, that rewards 750 Reputation for every 5x Sanguine Hibiscus you turn in. The fastest, and easiest way to get it is to just clear out all of the mobs in the area around where you enter and just roam around picking it up as it respawns. Most of it is found in that area anyway, and the respawn timer on them isn’t all that long (though I didn’t think to time it).

The item looks similar to a red herb that has a bit of a glow to it. If you have Herbalism then it will show up on your map, but you do not have to be an herbalist to pick them. You can also buy these off of the auction house if you don’t want to spend the time farming or doing the repeat grinding quest.

The first time I went into Underbog I did a solo full clear of the instance because I picked up a couple of quests to come inside as well, and wanted to see what mats I could get from disenchanting the boss drops. I was not overly impressed with that though, so I just stuck to farming the herbs near the entrance the other few times I came. I killed all of the mobs in the initial area before having to go up to the ramp, farmed all of the herb I could find, ran up and killed the first boss, and then ran back down to farm the herb again. I then ran back up to the first boss’s area and back down for a final check of respawned herbs, and then left the instance to do another 1-2 runs of Now That We’re Friends… for more rep. Then back to Underbog, back to the grind quest twice, back to Underbog, etc.

I spent about 2 hours farming all of the reputation I needed from Sporeggar to get the pattern for the 28-slot herb bag, though again, I did not start at Neutral this time since I had already farmed rep previously.

Also, take note of the fact that you do not use gold to purchase any of the reputation items from Sporeggar rep. Everything is paid for with Glowcaps. The bag itself takes 25 glowcaps, so make sure you farm glowcaps from the Zangarmarsh zone as well. You can find them all over the place. I know that before 3.1 came out you could track Glowcaps with Herbalism, but I believe that was changed in 3.1. Regardless, it’s not that hard to find them, and they are in reasonably high supply.

See Sporeggar Reputation for more details.

Related posts:

1. Reputation Farming: Darnassus – Exalted At Level 31

[Update: One thing that I didn't mention in this guide is that even though you can train Aquatic Form from your trainer now instead of having to do the quest for it, I STRONGLY suggest that you do the quest anyway. You receive the Aquarius Belt for completing the quest which has some excellent stats on it.

I will add more detail on this in the next post, but for now I am updating this one to include this information at the top so that new or repeat viewers do not miss out on this excellent quest reward.]

Leveling a druid can be a hard thing for a lot of people to do. The leveling gets easier when you hit 20, but getting through those teens is where most people delete their character instead of pushing through it.

Similar to the priest, this is the third time I have tried to level a druid. The first one was deleted at level 12, the second I got up to level 24 and though I did not delete the character I never bothered playing it again either. The mistake that most people make, myself included until now, when leveling their druid through their teens is switching over to Bear Form at level 10. To be as honest as I can here, Bear Form sucks. It does get better, but when you get it it sucks. You will have much more success sticking to spell casting than you will being a bear during your teens.

Important Spells
If you’re just getting started with a druid, take note of these icons and remember them. These are the primary spells that are going to get you to level 20. There are three others worth mentioning as well, but these are the icons to remember.

The two on top are your buff spells (Mark of the Wild, Thorns), the two in the middle are your damage spells (Wrath, Moonfire), and the two on the bottom are your utility spells (Rejuvenation, Entangling Roots). I will be discussing these spells in depth down below. These aren’t the only spells you will use, as you do/will have two more healing spells as well as a resurrection spell, and another buff/utility spell (Nature’s Grasp, mentioned below). But those six spells are most of what you will be casting.

Leveling 1-6: Starting Zone

Rotation Option 1: Wrath, Wrath, Attack/Wrath
Rotation Option 2: Wrath, Moonfire, Wrath/Attack
Explanation: At this level Moonfire is a huge mana-sink and most mobs will be dead long before its full damage can take place. I suggest you save your mana and your time and stick with option 1. If you do cast Moonfire, then make sure you cast it either to pull or immediately after you pull to get the most out of its use.

As with all classes that I level, I prefer to go and grind mobs as soon as I log in with the character until I reach level 2. I don’t accept quests or do anything else, I just go kill things until I gain a level. There are a couple of reasons why I do this. First, the trash that drops from those first 8-10 mobs that you need to kill to reach level 2 will sell for enough to pay for your first ability and give you some spare copper as well. All characters have a spell that they can train at level 1, they just don’t start with the cash to do it with. Second, this helps you to reach level 6 by the time you finish your starting zone to help maximize your experience gained from turning in quests.

During your first six levels there are not a whole lot of options open to you. You start out with only Wrath and your Auto-Attack for damage, and that’s pretty much what you will be using for most of your leveling. You do get Moonfire at level 1 if you can pay for the training, but it’s high mana cost is significantly higher than Wrath so try to focus on Wrath so that you can minimize your downtime.

You also start off with one of your buff spells, Mark of the Wild. The main reason I prefer to use it is because of the bonus it gives to your stats. The armor bonus doesn’t matter much to me, but I do enjoy more health/mana.

Most mobs will die with just a couple of Wrath casts plus an attack or two. Some mobs might take three Wraths to take down instead, and that’s fine too. In early levels I tend to rotate between killing a mob with Wrath x3, then killing another 1-2 mobs by doing Wrath x2 followed by attacks, and then repeating that cycle. Since the chances of you dying in your starting area are fairly small, I use my health as another resource while leveling. I don’t mind letting something beat on me for a few seconds for the sake of conserving mana for the next fight. When both my health and my mana are low, that’s when I sit down to eat and drink.

When you get to the quests in your starting zone that has you facing mobs that are hostile (Red bars instead of Yellow), then you can go ahead and add Moonfire into your rotation if you’d like. Personally, I try to only use it in my starting zones when a mob with low health runs away from me or when I know that killing that mob is going to give me a level. Because Moonfire is an instant cast that does deal some damage right away, I do use it when my health gets dangerously low and I need to finish the mob off quickly. That way I don’t have to die, and the mob goes down faster so I can eat/drink sooner.

At level 4 you receive your first Heal over Time (HoT) spell, Rejuvenation. This is my preferred method of keeping my health up while leveling. A lot of people suggest casting it on yourself right before you start combat, I personally just use it whenever I feel a need to do so. Since casting spells is going to be your fastest method of killing mobs right now I would at least wait to cast it until after a mob has already started to attack you in melee. Generally, I cast it after I kill my current target or on my way to my next target. If I start to drop below 50% health while fighting mobs I will cast it then as well, but that doesn’t happen very often in the starting area.

Leveling 6-12: Surrounding Map

Rotation Option 1: Wrath, Entangling Roots, Wrath, Attack/Wrath
Rotation Option 2: Wrath, Moonfire, Entangling Roots, Wrath/Attack
Explanation: You don’t get Entangling Roots until level 8, but when you do you start to get a lot more control over combat.

At level 6 you get your second buff spell, Thorns. This spell is going to deal damage to every mob that attacks you. It’s basically free damage for the price of getting beat up. And since you’re going to get beat on anyway, you might as well get paid for it with the blood of your enemies. Thorns only lasts for 10 minutes, and I honestly forget to refresh the thing all the time. It’s damage isn’t great, but every little bit helps.

Until level 8 you will play just like you did from levels 1-6, sticking to Wrath as your primary source of damage.

At level 8 you get one of your key spells, Entangling Roots. It’s both an offensive spell and a defensive spell all wrapped up into one. The damage it deals isn’t significant, but it is there as a nice little added bonus. The reason for using this spell though is that it snares the target and prevents them from moving. So you can pull the target with Wrath, snare them with ER, and then Wrath them 1-2 more times to finish them off.

I still hold back on casting Moonfire at this stage because of its mana cost, but if you do decide that you enjoy using it, try to cast it before Entangling Roots. ER breaks after its duration has expired, or after the target has taken a certain amount of damage. Since Moonfire does damage when it hits, it’s better for that initial damage to happen before ER rather than after so that your roots don’t break early.

At level 10 you get one of those spells I mentioned up at the top that I did not include in the picture. The spell is called Nature’s Grasp, and what it does is it casts Entangling Roots for you on the first mob that hits you after you’ve cast it. The spell lasts for 45 seconds and has a 1 minute cooldown on it. The best thing about the spell though is that it has no mana cost. It’s great for use as crowd control in case a hostile mob comes up behind you while you’re fighting another one, or even as just a part of your regular fighting methods. Cast this, Wrath the target twice, and when they hit you they’re stuck. Then you just run away a few steps and turn around to throw another Wrath in their face. It’s an excellent spell, and I use it frequently.

Nature’s Grasp is also a great tool to use when facing fast-moving mobs, like Raptors, who can close into melee range faster than you can get off your second Wrath. Those are the mobs that I usually use Moonfire against as well to help me take them out sooner.

Leveling 12-20: Secondary Zone

Rotation Option 1: Wrath, Moonfire, Entangling Roots, Wrath, Wrath, Attack
Rotation Option 2: Nature’s Grasp, Wrath, Moonfire, Wrath, Entangling Roots, Wrath
Explanation: By now you should have a good enough mana pool that you can throw Moonfire into the mix. Entangling Roots should be part of your rotation now to save yourself from spending mana on healing spells as much, and saves you from having to look for Stamina on your gear as much.

Since I prefer playing Horde, the Barrens is the location of choice for leveling during your teens. Now, most of my toons I prefer to level up elsewhere, but some of your druid quests actually require you to be in the Barrens to do them, so I’d rather just stick to one place.

Barrens is an excellent zone for professions such as Skinning and Herbalism, and it’s pretty decent for leveling your Mining as well. The main reason to level here though, other than the druid quests, is that there are so many quests in the zone and they are all pretty well bundled up in the same areas so that you can easily do several of them at once.

You don’t really get any new spells in these levels to help you go any faster, but you do get more mana which allows you to be a bit more controlling in how combat plays out. Start off with Wrath, hit them with Moonfire, and then Entangling Roots to keep them in place. Entangling Roots will deal damage to them while it holds and Moonfire will continue to tick away their health as well. If the mob has closed in enough to hit you with melee attacks, then back up right after you root them, otherwise I suggest you just stay where you are and throw another Wrath at them. If they still have a lot of hit points left, then continue Wraths until they drop into melee range and then pummel them to finish them off.

If you have plenty of mana to spare and don’t mind a little extra downtime, then you can also go with a full Root ‘n Nuke style of switching between damaging spells and snares. I would suggest using Nature’s Grasp first since it does not have a mana cost, and then pulling with Wrath. As soon as Wrath is cast follow it up with a Moonfire. You have two options at that point, you can either run directly into the mob to get them to attack and trigger your Nature’s Grasp, or you can stay where you are and let them come to you while you nuke them with another Wrath. I generally run to the mob to get NG to proc and keep on running “through” the mob and turning around on the other side to hit them with another Wrath. Once they are snared follow with another Wrath and then cast Entangling Roots on them to root them again. Go back to either casting more Wrath nukes, refreshing your Moonfire, or just letting the damage ticks from ER and Moonfire kill them off for you.

When doing Root ‘n Nuke you have to judge for yourself how many times you need to root and how many times you need to nuke. The only time I have ever needed to root more than twice was when one of them missed. Most of the time I don’t actually need to root a second time and instead will just nuke them again to bring them down. Very few mobs here should take more than 3 Wrath spells and a Moonfire to bring them down, and what extra damage does need to be dealt can usually be covered pretty easy with regular attacks.

Another method of using the Root ‘n Nuke is to just switch off between Wrath and Entangling Roots. You can generally get off two Wrath’s per ER unless you happen to Crit with one. If you use this method then pull the mob using Entangling Roots itself, follow it with a Wrath or two, then reapply ER. Repeat as needed until the mobs are dead. You can throw in a Moonfire to increase the damage they take over time which will allow you to conserve mana a bit by not having to cast Wrath so often.

Play around with the Rooting and Damaging spells that you have until you find a rotation that works for you.

Another bonus to leveling in this area is that it is going to be easier for you to find groups going into Wailing Caverns. The Embrace of the Viper set, frequently referred to as the “Fang” set, is found in WC and it is excellent for getting you geared up and ready to switch over to Cat Form dps at level 20.

With a combination of questing and running through the WC instance, you should easily be able to hit level 20 in the Barrens. My druid is actually sitting at level 25 right now and he still has almost 20 quests that he can do in the zone. I’m not going to keep him there that long, but I mention it to give you an idea of how much experience there is to gain here.

Macro Suggestion
There is really only one Macro that I find helpful at this early level with the Druid, and it’s a very simple one.

#showtooltip Wrath
/startattack
/cast Wrath

It’s a very simple macro, but I use a variation of it on almost every class. This macro makes your character start attacking the target with it’s melee weapon, and then casts Wrath on the target.

This macro does two things:

• First, if you have no target selected then it will select the nearest target in front of you (assuming they are within 40 yards or so) and have your character attack them with your weapon. If you’re not within range to actually hit them with your weapon then your character still stands ready to attack if they do end up closing in to melee range (which they will).
• Second, this macro causes your character to cast Wrath on your target (if possible).

So the main reason to use this macro is really to save yourself the hassle of targeting a mob and then casting a spell. Instead it combines it into a single button. The side benefit of using this though is that since you are playing as a ranged caster, and your roots are going to occasionally break or miss in the first place, you will end up in melee at times. Since the /startattack line is in the macro you will start to hit the mob with your melee weapon as soon as they are in range without having to press any other buttons or take any other actions.

So it serves as a bit of a time saver, and provides a bit of convenience as well.

Talent Points and Glyphs: Level 10-19

You have a little wiggle room in the talent trees, so you can go with anything you feel comfortable with. I chose to go with the build below and I had no trouble at all while I was leveling or while I was running instances as both dps and heals.

I suggest spending these points from top to bottom, left to right.

Glyphs
Glyph of Wrath is really the only major glyph that I see you getting a whole lot of use out of while casting your way through your teens. If you really feel like being a bear then you can go with a different glyph, but I strongly suggest that you stay away from bear and it’s associated glyphs for now.

Glyph of Thorns is going to increase the duration of the spell by 50 minutes, so that it lasts for a full hour instead of just 10 minutes. This is really only a glyph of convenience, but it does help with your damage while things are attacking you so I include it in the guide here.

Personally, I don’t really care about Thorns at this level, I care more about moving around the world quickly. I do that with a druid by using the Glyph of Aquatic Form instead. You get Aquatic Form at level 16 which allows you to breath underwater and also increases your swimming speed by 50%. Normal Swim Speed is 66% of your regular running speed, and Aquatic Form by itself increases that number by 50%, so it becomes 99% by calculation though addons that monitor speed show it to be 100%. The Glyph increases your speed by another 50% (of the base 66%) which would put you at 132% speed, but again those addons actually show you to be at 135% speed in water. So you actually move faster in Aquatic Form than you do when you’re running on land.

So which minor glyph you choose is up to you. Thorns will help you in combat more, but Aquatic Form will help you in transportation more. I personally like to move fast so I go with AF instead of Thorns.

Gearing Up for Spellcasting

When you are looking for gear to help while you’re casting your spells, you want to focus heavily on Spell Power (SP). There is a lot of SP to be found in Tailoring gear, so if you have access to a tailor then you might want to hit them up for some SP gear. It’s also nice to increase your mana pool by getting gear with Intelligence on it, and it never hurts to have a nice health pool from Stamina gear either. At this level I would go for Spell Power above all else, followed by Intelligence, and then whatever you happen to find for the rest. Since Wrath deals Nature Damage, you might want to look for a weapon that adds decent Nature Damage since finding a straight +SP weapon might be hard. Preferably a one-handed weapon such as a mace or dagger, since one of your druid quests in the Barrens is going to reward you with an off-hand item that gives you a very nice mana regeneration.

Level 20: Time for a Respec

When you reach level 20, it’s time to drop that precious gold coin you’ve been working towards for so long and switch over to a feral spec. There are a lot of different ways you can spec, and you can find quite a variety of advice across different forums and blogs. Feel free to look at other suggestions from other sites, but this is the build that I suggest switching to at level 20.

Gearing Up for Feral

The primary stat you should be looking for as Cat DPS is Agility. You do get more Attack Power (AP) from Strength than you do Agility, but Agility is also going to provide you with Crit and help with your Avoidance as well. Stack Agility above all else. Anything that increases your Hit Rating is also going to be good for you since missing is going to make you suck. Strength will help you deal more damage, Stamina gives you more hit points which is nice since you will now be in melee constantly, and so on.

Having a Leatherworker is going to give you the most benefit in the land of Agility stacking, so I suggest heading there for your starting gear. Most of the Fang armor will be better for you than what a Leatherworker can make for your level, but it’s not always easy to get your hands on the full set since the gloves are the only piece that does not bind when you pick it up. My Shaman picked up the entire set with only two runs through WC, but my Druid has been through WC five times now and only has two pieces, one of which are the gloves.

If you look at the Glyphs included in the Feral spec above, you will see that I left Glyph of Thorns as the minor glyph and replaced Glyph of Wrath with Glyph of Rip. You aren’t going to be using Wrath anymore since you now claw everyone’s face off, but Thorns will become more useful with how much time you spend in melee. Glyph of Rip is going to extend the duration of your Rip which is your primary Finishing Move when you start out as a Cat.

Again, I personally stick with Glyph of Aquatic Form as my minor glyph regardless of how much Thorns can help. The only benefit you get from Glyph of Thorns is extra time on it, but since you aren’t using your mana for anything else besides an occasional heal it’s not a big deal to just recast it as needed. Extra movement speed is always a good thing though, so I like making my flippers move faster. Once again the choice is yours, either having Thorns up more consistently to help with damage, or move faster when swimming.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Druid, Glyph, Leveling, Macro

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No, not those twinkies. These Twinkies!

I haven’t had a lot to say on the blog lately because rather than being focused on leveling my characters, I’ve been focused on leveling and gearing new and existing characters to do a little twinking in battle grounds.

Since the paladin that I blogged about for so long is an Enchanter, I decided I would go ahead and start up a few twinks to enjoy low level battle grounds like I used to on my mage. I never bothered doing PvP with Lexington because I just didn’t feel like doing PvP as anything other than dps and my skill with my Ret spec is lacking to say the least.

Lex also happens to be an amazing farming and grinding machine, so farming for specific items is pretty easy with him. That doesn’t mean that the items I am looking for are going to drop any faster or easier for me, but it does mean that I can do the farming itself quickly and with ease.

Belgawrath (Orc Shaman 36)
The first character I wanted to twink was Belgawrath. I have every intention of doing a lot of PvP with him in the 49 bracket when I can dual wield, but I also wanted to try him out in the 39 bracket while he is still using a powerful two handed weapon by already has Windfury to back it up with some insane attack power.

Even at level 36 with very little in the way of actually “twinking” the character, I already end almost every battleground in the Top 3 on the horde side. I have not yet managed to reach #1, though I have been #2 several times and come close to the first slot many times as well.

The most important piece of gear for an Enhancement Shaman is going to be his weapon(s). With dual wield out of the question, that means I had to look for a slow, powerful two handed weapon. So I turned first to WoWHead.com to search their item database for two handed weapons that were in my level range.

The first priority was weapon speed. The slower a weapon is, the more damage Windfury is going to deal. The slowest weapons in the game have a speed of 4.0 and there are only 3. Two of those weapons just happen to be level 39 two handed weapons: The Pacifier and the Pendulum of Doom. Both of those weapons happen to be BoE items, which allows me to farm them with my paladin, with Pacifier dropping from a rare spawn and Pendulum (PoD) dropping from trash mobs inside the Uldaman instance in Badlands. Windfury is the whole reason to be Enhancement, and weapon speed is a multiplier in the formula used to calculate its damage. So a slower weapon with less dps can still do significantly more damage than a faster weapon with higher dps.

The second priority was high damage. The more damage you can do, the faster your enemies are going to fall. You can’t count on Windfury to proc every time you hit, so you need to make sure you’re dishing out decent damage on normal hits as well, and of course the higher your damage the higher your crits. PoD has a higher top end damage as well as dps, but it also requires level 39 to wield it as opposed to 32 for the Pacifier.

After three days of farming The Pacifier I ended up finding two of them. They drop off of a rare spawn that only appears once every 24 hours, so he’s a little hard to catch sometimes. The good thing about that long respawn time though is that if you find him once you know when to look for him again the next day. The first time I killed him he dropped a pair of shoulders I believe, but the second and third time he drop The Pacifier.

After almost two months now of farming for the PoD I still have not seen it. I run this instance almost every day 1-12 times, killing every mob that it has a chance to drop off of. So far the dice have not been in my favor. But, I am going to keep on trying until I either find it or get so tired of looking that I swear to never step foot in the place again.

Here is a table showing some information about the weapons mentioned:

Because of it’s maximum damage the PoD ranks higher in EP Value than The Pacifier, making it a better weapon choice. The Pacifier can actually deal more damage from a Windfury proc than the PoD can, but in general it will do less damage overall. None of that though takes into consideration the Proc ability on PoD to deal 250-350 damage when you hit. When you add that into the mix you will see that the PoD does have more damage potential than The Pacifier.

If you want another way to judge which weapon might be better for you, then look at their average prices on the Auction House. The Pacifier sells for up to 500g, while the PoD sells for 10,000g. While the weapons are very similar in how good they are, the PoD’s ridiculous drop rate and brutal proc ability make it significantly more sought after than The Pacifier.

Initially I enchanted The Pacifier with Fiery Weapon because each hit from the Windfury proc is also able to proc the Fiery Enchant’s extra damage, and each Fiery proc has a chance to crit itself. There were several times that I scored hits with my attack, both WF procs, and three procs of Fiery Weapon in a single attack. Three times I was able to score a full crit (attack crit, both WF crits, and all three Fiery crits) for insane damage for my level. There’s nothing quite like one-shotting a yeti or ogre that’s 3 levels higher than you.

Right now I use The Pacifier with the Crusader enchant on it which gives me a chance to gain +100 Strength (equal to 100 AP) and heal me for 75-125 damage when I hit with it. I don’t want to waste the Mongoose enchant on The Pacifier since I know that I fully intend to leave the 39 bracket and would rather not waste an 800g enchant on a weapon I will discard for good in 4 more levels.

If I ever manage to get my hands on the Pendulum of Doom then I will enchant it with Mongoose for a chance to proc +100 Agility which equates to an equal amount of Attack Power but also increases my chance to Crit.

Silkendeath (Undead Rogue 18)
I still have a lot of work to do on the rogue here, but after getting repeatedly owned in Warsong Gulch earlier this week, I don’t think I’m going to keep him in the level 19 bracket and instead will push him forward either to the 29 or 39 bracket instead.

As I do more with Silk and get a better handle on how to use the class I will give more information on it. As for leveling the rogue, there isn’t a whole lot of advice I can give that’s going to really help.

I cheated a bit in leveling him by buying the two best daggers I could find from regular vendors (3.3 dps, level 3 required) and enchanted them both with Fiery Weapon (chance to deal 40 Fire damage when you hit). So leveling him wasn’t that hard because those weapons proc all the time and often allowed me to kill many of the mobs I faced with just 2-3 hits. The Fiery Weapon proc is also capable of critting, so it often jumped up to 60 Fire damage in addition to the regular damage from the weapon, so things just sort of died when I came in contact with them.

I used those daggers all the way through level 18 and am just now switching to other weapons with just a straight +3 Damage enchant on them until I find his twink weapons.

Hookum (Tauren Hunter 11)
Hookum is a hunter that I started a couple of days ago and plan to do battlegrounds with in the 19 bracket. I do like to have my own little power trips from time to time and after seeing how easily Silk died when he faced 9 Hunters and a Priest in a single battleground I decided it was time to roll my own.

There really isn’t a whole lot that you need to know about leveling a hunter during these levels. Basically just make sure you keep your distance and let your gun/bow do your job for you. Fire, move, fire, move, etc. Kiting is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it, and that’s the only thing you need to do to get to level 10.

Since I’m only level 11 there isn’t a lot to talk about just yet on the Hunter. Pets are great, never being touched in combat is great, and the class can be “easy” to play if you’re fairly new to the game or new to the aspect of playing a dps character.

If you need to learn about playing a hunter, there are a lot of blogs dedicated to teaching you. I suggest you take a look at this series on Aspect of the Hare to start off with, and then there are plenty of resources for finding further information.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: Farming, Hunter, PvP, Rogue, Shaman

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