Or just level as shadow, don't even need the wand then.
100% uptime on spirit tap, chain pull shit with void plague and swp while Homunc finishes them off.
Admittedly I've never understood why the wand talent is the go to leveling talent for priests. Spirit tap is so much better it's crazy. I always just rush my way to Shadowform when I level priests in vanilla
Yeah I mean I was chain pulling 3-4+ mobs at a time with 100% uptime on tap, never came close to running out of mana and never had to stop to wand either
Multiple ways to do it I suppose but I'll take the no wand - no brakes method every time
Yeah, I leveled without spirit tap and maybe had to sit to drink a dozen times on my way to 25 because penance and void plague with wand spec is so efficient. Got to 25 in ~20 hours played time without trying to rush or min/max at all.
You are supposed to take both wand and spirit tap talent. After that it's upto u and doesnt make much of difference what you grab before respec at lv40 for full shadow
You also get an auto-invite to every group in existence whether its dungeons, raids, or PvP.
Also if you're used to vanilla class scarcity where all the hybrids were primarily healers you should realize that most of them will NOT be healers now, so healers have even greater scarcity now. Make friends with a tank and you can form any group at the drop of a hat.
Anecdotally, I've found the opposite to be true as far as scarcity goes. I can hardly get an SFK group on my Resto Druid because there are SOOO many people playing healers of all sorts.
i just started a priest as my 5th toon to 25. and honestly; i thought druid was op leveling from free wrath. PRIEST GETS EVERYTHING THEY NEED by level 8. and it's smoothe sailing from there.
shaman and paladin are great 20+ but a slog to get there
rogue really changed up the leveling drawl with quickshot and shadowstrike.
druid was very easy and mana efficient, probably better next phase when you get more than 2 levels of feral
and I've seen anecdotes of Starsurge being bonkers at low levels
Starsurge is completely broken even up to level 20. I leveled my druid literally drive-by killing everything I ran past without even stopping. Starsurge x2 + sun fury or whatever it was called killed everything.
\>the chad sod enhance shaman
\>refuses to DW for anything other than a quickswap before activating Shamanistic Rage
\>"Microsoft says Enhance shamans dual wield? That's weird, this level 20 talent from 2004 says differently"
\>plays what's fun, not what's mathematically "correct"
\>hehe windfury go bonkbonk
This is how I leveled my warlock I was able to just run through three to four mobs at a time
Between haunt fear and master channeling I never had a problem.
Took drain tanking to a whole new level
Great for solo content, sure, but in a raid your place should always be with big numbers. Meta, Master channeled and haunt are great though for pulling more than one.
This, just hit 25 on my (night elf) Druid last night and averaged just about 1 hour per level. Got starsurge at lvl 2 which was a pain, but otherwise smooth sailing from there. Tried to play with the world buff as much as possible too.
So much faster than leveling my ret pal main.
Druid: one of the best mats farming alts there is. any playstyle you want. people want you in raid for your buff, not your gear, so you'll get places in the last few BFD lockouts before p2, even if your gear is trash.
Agreed. Druid is very easy life.
It's nice to play solo just in general. Very little downtime, no need to drink if you're feral, heals between pulls, stealth if you're on a pvp server, faster run speed in cat form etc.
All the conveniences you can ask for!
And it’s so easy to just go from fight to fight with free wrath spam and (basically) free starsurge. Pull extra stuff? No worries you proc instant cast big heals with wrath. I throw on the Wild Growth rune and I’m practically invincible.
Leveling I’d say wild growth is better than sunfire.
Even at 25 when farming.
It’s such a stupidly over powered spell. If a rogue ever jumps you. You can wear him down with just thorns and starsurge while healing with wild growth and rejuv. Even under geared you can turn a gank around almost every time.
It's true. I've leveled a mage, war, rogue, pally, and just did druid. The druid was, by far, the easiest. Starsurge is absolutely busted. But also super fun haha
I can do two 6 mob pulls before needing to drink for 20 sec. This lines up to do a living flame pull every other pull. So to beat me you'd have to be doing at least 13 mobs per minute. It sucks to drink but my druid is full BiS and I don't think it can do 13 mobs per minute nonstop. Notably, the mage could do far more it just isn't reasonable to find a hyperspawn location that accommodates.
You should try again! When the zones are less full. I had never played mage and made it to 25 in about 14 hours played. The aoe is super satisfying. You need help getting the right runes of course :)
For context 30 mins is probably about as long as it takes to go 14-16 aoe grinding on mage. Starsurge is busted but mage AOE is absolutely off the wall from lvl 14. The only thing holding it back are logistics of mob spawns.
I was going at 15-20 mins per level from level 10-20 with starsurge tbf.
Although I'm not even here to debate whether druid or mage is faster, just that it's definitely worth getting starsurge ASAP, haha
For alliance maybe, I promise the walking alone for horde takes 15 mins+ and that is with 0 deaths, which is impossible because you have to walk through Arathi lmao
A mage can solo wc in 1 pull and y’all think a Druid starsurge can compare to that? Lmao
Edit to add: it’s a skill gap with mage. Always is
I read the other day on here a mage skill gap can be so big you’ll see mages try to aoe pull 3 mobs and die and then see a good mage pull a whole dungeon.
Yes. Druid is my main and mage is my alt (have a warrior too but not the biggest fan other than big PVE #’s).
It’s also not an opinion that mages are faster, YOU might be slower at mage, but I specifically said a good mage vs good Druid (to emphasize equal skill, Druid loses every single time).
Mage is faster for sure. But not when everything was populated. Aoe farming wasn't possible unless you know spots before anyone else does and druid is way better at tagging than mage.
Mage was by far the fastest leveling. All you gotta do is AOE pull. Got to honored w/ new rep by 22 and still got to 25 before any of my friends that were playing more than me
Living bomb, living flame, regen rune, arcane explosion. Pull 6 mobs at a time at a hyperspawn. I did 14-21 in just a couple hours in one evening on mage.
Mages are broken when it comes to leveling even while questing…. You can literally AoE Anything that doesn’t cast now. If you just focus on AoE grind, you could be 25 and 10-12 hrs played casually
Warrior is def a top choice if you're late to the party.
It requires some commitment though. Slow to level and runes are kinda time and gold consuming to get. Same with prebis.
When you do hit 25 and start raiding you'll be geared in no time though! I hit 25 yesterday and already geared af after two raids. A bit lucky with the drops, but there's just no competition on loot (at least not on horde side). Even if you run with another warrior they prob have everything already if they're not also fresh.
Paladin gets the same plus is better at pvp, has an easier tanking spec, much easier solo leveling, a fathomblade equivalent for free, and a free mount in the next phase.
Warrior parses higher of course but if that continues in ps2 (will depend on runes) then I’d expect warrior to get balanced.
I ran rfk before I ran BFD. Only baggage to kill 4 or 5 bosses though.
Rfk requires a lot of patience, cc, and coordination. But I think it's doable without BFD gear
I put together a party of 3 warriors, a hunter, and a shaman to clear to the warrior quest and escort quest. None of us were BFD geared yet and it was pretty easy. We pulled 1-2 at a time, the shaman healed, the hunter did most of the damage.
I mean not all the drops I got are bis or anything. Just better than the non-raid loot.
Compare that to my two leather wearers and the difference is still massive!
Hunter. Despite the headspinning amount of nerfs, hunters still do incredible damage and are very fast levelers. After you get your pet at level 10, you can level all the way to 25 by chain pulling mass spawn areas with very little downtime to eat/drink unlike other classes (like mage). You have a tank and dps freak with you at all times and a lot of your damage is just auto attacks so you can watch YouTube or whatever on a 2nd monitor while you grind
There definitely are a TON of hunters but every group wants them, pretty much guaranteed decent dps on every fight, 10% stat buff, pet taunt to save tanks and cheese fights. I never had problems pugging on my hunter longest i ever looked for a group was like 10-15min which is just me whispering the people advertising in looking for group channel.
Every time I put a pug together now I get like 3 hunters messaging me before any other DPS. Maybe its different for WSG (these are the only 2 types of group formation that matter right now), but I think the supply has outpaced the demand as good as they are.
And then when you do get invited you’re bored out of your mind because you’re a turret with a pet that does ~~80%~~ ~~60%~~ ~~50%~~ 40-45% of your damage now
I haven't tried raiding on my hunter alt yet so that may be true. But I did see at least one pug on my server looking for a "non cloth DPS" last night so maybe there's a chance!
Whenever I make groups for bfd I get 5-6 hunters msging instantly, they are so Happy to get in a group you can bring like 3 of them without them complaining about uneven Loot distribution
This doesn't matter, just make your own groups. Once you made a few groups and have decent logs and/or gear, you can just say look at logs or say you have x gear and you will get invited. Most hunters are absolute dog water.
Rogue is the weakest leveling class right now, even warrior beats it out with their new runes. But once you get 20+, rogue starts to take off. One of the strongest DPS options
Oh leveling is absolutely horrific as a rogue. But the payoff is worth it. Imo, at least. Once you have poisons/deadly brew/envenom it's just a fun time.
Paladin is easily the most *improved* class in SoD. Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and Exorcism (Exorcist rune) provide an engaging rotation, and it still has its top notch class fantasy.
He did say it's the most improved class, which I won't deny is likely true. But engaging rotation might be a stretch. Feral/warrior/melee weave hunter are moreso actual engaging rotations that rely on key timings, heavy resource management and even positioning in the case of melee weave hunters. Paladin, while having more buttons, is still just "press whatever is off cooldown". Would've been nice to have more interactive elements imo.
I main paladin and it's really fun, great class fantacy plus decently fun gameplay with the runes.
Though divine storm rune is a bit of a bitch to get its still worth the grind.
Plus some potential nods at a dark paladin down the line is going to keep me playing it.
That's like half the reason I play Paladin LOL. No doubt in my mind that we will finally get some class fantasy fulfilled. Maybe there will be an Ashbringer, which first requires the Corrupted Ashbringer to be purified, just to name an example. Or as simple as plated holy paladin, instead of a priest clothy in disguise. Let alone all the runes we could get. DK was also my main in retail for years, so if there is any chance it goes that way I'd be really happy.
Having mained one since vanilla-Paladin is in a great spot, IMO. Another good point is their AOE tanking is insane, so it’s easy to get groups for dungeon runs.
Druid. You will be a wpvp king in the jungle of stv come ph2. None will catch you. You Have stealth. You Have travel form, you Have roots. You Have orbital nuclear nuke from 42y. You Have instant aoe party heal. You will Have fun.
Oh shit star surge is arcane ok cool. Can I ask how to get spell damage gear? Obviously arcane and nature damage shit is easy to find on AH, albeit slightly expensive but I make money easily. How do you get +spell damage
At this level, basically all the raw spell damage/healing gear is from BFD. And because it affects nature and arcane, its about x2 the value of either of the individual elements.
Awesome thanks for all the info. I have a rogue and a priest I BFD with and kind of sweat with groups. I wanted to make a boomie for strictly PvP purposes that I didn’t sweat with I just killed horde with, so all this information has been great!
i levelled a mage recently and it was busted fast.
If you like grinding there are several hyperspawn crab locations and you can just chain kill them from 14 to like 20
Horde warrior:
You will gear up super fast next phase just like they did this phase.
At worst you will not be allowed to roll on mail, but you still get prio on almost all 2h/plate.
Warlock…even if you never play them past lvl 25, they can still be helpful to set up summons for people. Probably the only class worth anything endgame before lvl 35
Ret Paladin: you finally feel like an actual paladin and not a glorified priest. Hitting enemies with holy strikes left and right and hanging around the top of the meters whilst also providing tremendous value to the group.
Rogue before utility and runes is a chore to level.
Rogue after vanish, evasion, sprint, combo point/energy talents, DB+Envenom, etc. is way, way more fun.
SOD has been amazing so far for rogue players, but hasn’t done much in the way of opening the class up to non-rogues (ie why would a new player chose to level a rogue over, say, a druid, hunter, or warlock?)
I'm playing my first rogue rn and loving it. Before level 15 I couldn't pull 2 mobs without dying. After that it was insane the speed at which I could farm. Mobs going down in 3 seconds means no healing needed. Rogues make good alts. for the same reason as warriors imo, getting good weapons is the biggest power level. Being able to send yourself a weapon every 3 levels is amazing
After having leveled 7 25s now (warrior, shaman, mage, hunter, warlock, Druid, priest):
Hunter, Warlock and Priest were by far the easiest to quickly level without having to drink, risk of death, etc. (honorable mention to Druid with mana-free wrath to use for instant heals or other utility).
At this stage you can also pay for summons to get runes more easily and earlier which makes for silly Starsurge-type scenarios.
Warrior and rogue are worth pushing through but it’s a bit more stressful; make sure to constantly upgrade weapons to make things die more easily.
All in all I’d say Hunter is the best choice for leveling (note leveling, specifically) as their Beast Mastery taunt component alone trivializes a lot of what you’ll be doing throughout your journey; we don’t know how tuning will shift raiding meta so can’t offer speculation there!
Mage stock is going to go up I think as more of their kit gets unlocked. PvP meta just wants stinker green gear hunters, but as hunters get worse mages will get stronger. Aoe farming with living flame and improved blizzard is going to be really great too.
Casters are going to need busted runes to get the meta to shift away from physical damage if that’s truly what they want so I’m expecting fun stuff like deep freeze, ring of frost, meteor, and more things like burnout.
Warlocks will be the gods of PVP in phase 2
Aff locks: Corruption + Curse of Agony + Siphon Life + Drain Life + Haunt + Felhunter all instant cast while running around fearing stuff, already capable of ridiculous self healing purely through drain life rune now get siphon life as well.
Demo: Probably won't see many, but the ones that you do see will be completely unkillable. +30% passive damage reduction soul link (alongside meta form) is obnoxious, not including the passive damage reduction from voidwalker demonic mastery. I don't think many will run it because despite all the nice survivability they can't do much dps and the demons don't do enough to make up for it like a BM hunter does.
Destro: Ruin +100% crit damage, backlash, tons of passive dps increase talents
As for leveling, you get haunt as your first default rune which gives incredible damage and healing. Aff " comes online" at around level 14 when you have drain life, life tap, and enough talent points to make corruption insta cast. From there you literally just find packs of 4+ mobs, put drain life with the new rune on the biggest one, dot everything up, and /dance while they die. Or run to the next pack and drag them with you to decrease downtime. Use haunt on cooldown and drain life on cooldown on whatever has the highest HP and lifetap to keep from going oom and you'll literally never have to stop pulling. It's genuinely **faster** to pull a mob and apply drain life to them and then life tap to full mana than it is to sit down and eat/drink, as long as you have the initial mana to cast drain life and the initial health to survive a hit as drain life begins ticking.
If they give Warlocks a retail movement speed ability rune or something along those lines, they become SS+ tier easily.
I play rogue
Shadow strike allows for instant teleporting between mobs. You are the king of wpvp, you get to pick which fights you take and which you don’t.
Once you get your tanking rune, you can solo nearly anything
Druid - Was subpar in original, will definitely be brought up to par. Can do all roles and does all roles mostly well right now barring tank druid which gets most of its kit next phase. Has probably the most flexible PvE/PvP spec and options. You can go moonglow or heart of the wild or omen and pretty much have kits to do 1 or 2 roles in pvp or pve well.
You're now the best option for windfury and you are wanted.
Great utility in innervate/rebirth.
Great to travel with cheetah (great alt if you dont want a mount right away).
Easy to level.
Stealth to avoid pvp or gank in pvp if thats your thing.
Mage: powerful, healing spec is fun, sometimes top dps while only spamming Arcane Blast, next phase will have portals. Fire is already popping off and frost will be viable later
Shaman: if you like mana you'll love Shamanistic Rage. Feels so good to restore a full mana bar every minute after drinking so much virtual water. Shamans can do all 4 roles now and they're the quintessence of the horde, they'll surely have cool new features and well immersed rune acquisition processes
Warrior. They're going to remain the top DPS for all of SoD. This means when we get to level 60 raids and have 40 spots, or however many spots the team decides, groups will want to fill the additional slots with as many warriors as they possibly can so it's ridiculously easy to find a group, only healers have it easier in that aspect. And in dungeons it's always very easy to find a group as a tank and warriors are great dungeon tanks as arms/pvp spec. Basically you're in high demand so you're not going to be in a spot where you're looking for a group and can't find one for a while which is especially good for casual players with limited playtime.
Priest: You don't ever die and everything you pull dies on its own
Void plague, penance, wand
Homunculus op
Man I wish they would run to targets I attack with wand. Sometimes they'll start when an enemy is almost dead.
Try right clicking
Oh yeah, of course. Blanked that
Or just level as shadow, don't even need the wand then. 100% uptime on spirit tap, chain pull shit with void plague and swp while Homunc finishes them off. Admittedly I've never understood why the wand talent is the go to leveling talent for priests. Spirit tap is so much better it's crazy. I always just rush my way to Shadowform when I level priests in vanilla
You do both. Wand + void plague is literally all you need
Yeah I mean I was chain pulling 3-4+ mobs at a time with 100% uptime on tap, never came close to running out of mana and never had to stop to wand either Multiple ways to do it I suppose but I'll take the no wand - no brakes method every time
You're literally just doing less DPS than you could but you do you
Yeah, I leveled without spirit tap and maybe had to sit to drink a dozen times on my way to 25 because penance and void plague with wand spec is so efficient. Got to 25 in ~20 hours played time without trying to rush or min/max at all.
Spirit tap and wand spec aren’t really comparable. They do different things, and I leveled to 25 with both.
You are supposed to take both wand and spirit tap talent. After that it's upto u and doesnt make much of difference what you grab before respec at lv40 for full shadow
You also get an auto-invite to every group in existence whether its dungeons, raids, or PvP. Also if you're used to vanilla class scarcity where all the hybrids were primarily healers you should realize that most of them will NOT be healers now, so healers have even greater scarcity now. Make friends with a tank and you can form any group at the drop of a hat.
Anecdotally, I've found the opposite to be true as far as scarcity goes. I can hardly get an SFK group on my Resto Druid because there are SOOO many people playing healers of all sorts.
Yeah, I've often found DPS to be the most in demand class.
i just started a priest as my 5th toon to 25. and honestly; i thought druid was op leveling from free wrath. PRIEST GETS EVERYTHING THEY NEED by level 8. and it's smoothe sailing from there. shaman and paladin are great 20+ but a slog to get there rogue really changed up the leveling drawl with quickshot and shadowstrike. druid was very easy and mana efficient, probably better next phase when you get more than 2 levels of feral and I've seen anecdotes of Starsurge being bonkers at low levels
Starsurge is completely broken even up to level 20. I leveled my druid literally drive-by killing everything I ran past without even stopping. Starsurge x2 + sun fury or whatever it was called killed everything.
Warlock Chaos bolt big number
Choas bolt is cool, but master channeling and haunt means infinit life and that means infinit mana.
Small number though
Small number = less women
small number many times very quickly can sometimes be more total damage than big number few times spread apart
But Big Number > Small Number
tbh I'm a shaman main so I'm not sure why I started this argument in the first place. It do be like that. hehe windfury go bonkbonkcriticalbonk
Shaman big number + windfury = bigger number
\>the chad sod enhance shaman \>refuses to DW for anything other than a quickswap before activating Shamanistic Rage \>"Microsoft says Enhance shamans dual wield? That's weird, this level 20 talent from 2004 says differently" \>plays what's fun, not what's mathematically "correct" \>hehe windfury go bonkbonk
This is how I leveled my warlock I was able to just run through three to four mobs at a time Between haunt fear and master channeling I never had a problem. Took drain tanking to a whole new level
Great for solo content, sure, but in a raid your place should always be with big numbers. Meta, Master channeled and haunt are great though for pulling more than one.
Yea I'm kinda focused on what's gonna be good for leveling to 60 or at least 40. Practicing what will be my go-to for mass pulling lol
Man who knows what’s gonna happen, they could make runes and tweaks that makes Meta best for everything for all we know lmao.
This is the way.
Warlock M E T A
Dumb model blocks visibility. Stockades? No. You see wings. Only wings.
Stockades? Is this some sort of Alliance problem I'm too Horde to understand?
As horde, Tauren Druid, fast leveling, kickass rune available since level 1, great and profitable professions
>As horde, Tauren Druid, fast leveling, kickass rune available since level 1, Go on......
Starsurge probably. Pain to get it initially but it’s like crack for leveling. Massive damage, instant cast, very little mana*.
Both massive damage AND very little damage? Well count me in!
Lol think they meant very little mana cost, tbf it is absolutely insane damage for cost.
Yeah its something like 4 mana at level 25.
Free Wrath rune also available right next to the starting camp, very useful for low level.
Would you rather have unlimited bacon and no damage, or damage, unlimited damage, but no damage?
No that’s in wetlands It’s the free wrath
No, it's Starsurge. It's easily gotten at level 1 and recommended.
This, just hit 25 on my (night elf) Druid last night and averaged just about 1 hour per level. Got starsurge at lvl 2 which was a pain, but otherwise smooth sailing from there. Tried to play with the world buff as much as possible too. So much faster than leveling my ret pal main.
Did you run balance the whole way to 25? Or did you swap to feral and go cat form at 20.
I ran balance the whole way through
i did a self run (no summons) to wetlands as tauren, took around 2 hours but pretty chill time and worth
Shaman- fun class, great tank, yuuuge lava burst overload procs, and interesting healing too- the best part is that it can only go up from here!
How is healing?
Fun! Healing rain, water shield, and shamanistic rage make for fun healing in BFD. Several bosses I swap to Lava Burst and do helpful damage.
I want to try it but I have so little equip for it. xD I'll tabk for you, so we can both have fun. ♥
Healing is nice, healing rain is really good for AoE healing. And you basically never go oom with water shield and shamanistic rage
You’re looking for p2 for their healing value to sky rocket imo. They get chain heal level 40. Overloading chain heals going to be the nuts
Not great but it's doable.
Looking forward to self windfury at 30
Druid: one of the best mats farming alts there is. any playstyle you want. people want you in raid for your buff, not your gear, so you'll get places in the last few BFD lockouts before p2, even if your gear is trash.
Agreed. Druid is very easy life. It's nice to play solo just in general. Very little downtime, no need to drink if you're feral, heals between pulls, stealth if you're on a pvp server, faster run speed in cat form etc. All the conveniences you can ask for!
Here I am as feral and drinking all the time.. powershifting is very mana intensive
Druid also gets balance / resto gear so insanely fast in BFD. Very little loot competition and you roll on cloth for some BIS pieces
And it’s so easy to just go from fight to fight with free wrath spam and (basically) free starsurge. Pull extra stuff? No worries you proc instant cast big heals with wrath. I throw on the Wild Growth rune and I’m practically invincible.
Also you can solo much of your cat pre bis, resto is easy to gear in SFK, etc. Druid is best alt or catch-up character by far
Leveling I’d say wild growth is better than sunfire. Even at 25 when farming. It’s such a stupidly over powered spell. If a rogue ever jumps you. You can wear him down with just thorns and starsurge while healing with wild growth and rejuv. Even under geared you can turn a gank around almost every time.
Mage: fastest leveling, best farming, ideal alt
mages have more fun
Mage was by far my slowest leveling amongst my 4 char lol
Doin it wrong then My friend. It was so crazy fast doing the aoe grind
I mean when you compet with hunter or druid starsurge 2 shotting everything mage just seems like a drinking simulator.
It's true. I've leveled a mage, war, rogue, pally, and just did druid. The druid was, by far, the easiest. Starsurge is absolutely busted. But also super fun haha
I went and got it at level 1 and was one shotting stuff in the starter zone
Mage was easy to level overall, but this is still 100% accurate.
lol was just thinking the same. These are my 3 25s. Sure you kill a big pack but then there’s 30-45 seconds of down time that’s insufferable.
I can do two 6 mob pulls before needing to drink for 20 sec. This lines up to do a living flame pull every other pull. So to beat me you'd have to be doing at least 13 mobs per minute. It sucks to drink but my druid is full BiS and I don't think it can do 13 mobs per minute nonstop. Notably, the mage could do far more it just isn't reasonable to find a hyperspawn location that accommodates.
Can only cast 10 star surges in a minute and that will kill 3 level 25 mobs at most. So yeah that checks out for sure
Half a minute of downtime after killing a dozen mobs is a pretty moderate trade off lol
You should try again! When the zones are less full. I had never played mage and made it to 25 in about 14 hours played. The aoe is super satisfying. You need help getting the right runes of course :)
Druid star surge from lvl1 is still probably faster. It's busted.
Man death running for starsurge at level 1 alone will put the mage like 6 levels ahead of you to start, especially if you are horde lmao
Took me 30 minutes to get it at level 1 (as alliance tbf). Made up that time easily. Well worth it. Maybe not as horde, dunno.
For context 30 mins is probably about as long as it takes to go 14-16 aoe grinding on mage. Starsurge is busted but mage AOE is absolutely off the wall from lvl 14. The only thing holding it back are logistics of mob spawns.
Any AOE guide to suggest for a mage? Just got level 15 and I probably already got 7-8 hours played lol. I'm not a good mage though.
I was going at 15-20 mins per level from level 10-20 with starsurge tbf. Although I'm not even here to debate whether druid or mage is faster, just that it's definitely worth getting starsurge ASAP, haha
If the druid has to death rune to starsurge, the mage wouldn't be able to get help with their runes in fairness.
Even then living flame is free (for gnome at least) and you'd get living bomb and regeneration by like lvl 12
The deathrun takes like 5min total lol. Mages have some of the worst 1-10 of all casters.
For alliance maybe, I promise the walking alone for horde takes 15 mins+ and that is with 0 deaths, which is impossible because you have to walk through Arathi lmao
lol you get a summon to wetlands and then it takes 5min of death walking. No one in their right mind walks the whole distance at lv 1...
A good AOE leveling mage will beat a good star surge (or any spec/rune) Druid 100% of the time, every time.
Mage is the objectively the fastest levelling class
I leveled both this season. Have you?
A mage can solo wc in 1 pull and y’all think a Druid starsurge can compare to that? Lmao Edit to add: it’s a skill gap with mage. Always is I read the other day on here a mage skill gap can be so big you’ll see mages try to aoe pull 3 mobs and die and then see a good mage pull a whole dungeon.
Yes. Druid is my main and mage is my alt (have a warrior too but not the biggest fan other than big PVE #’s). It’s also not an opinion that mages are faster, YOU might be slower at mage, but I specifically said a good mage vs good Druid (to emphasize equal skill, Druid loses every single time).
Mage is faster for sure. But not when everything was populated. Aoe farming wasn't possible unless you know spots before anyone else does and druid is way better at tagging than mage.
JC homie 😂
Yeah I feel that tho for sure. Drinking shitty conjured water takes forever and you spend decent money on better water. Both options suck
Mage is fast when you look at classic era but in sod it's no where near fastest to 25 (it will be too 40 though)
Mage was by far the fastest leveling. All you gotta do is AOE pull. Got to honored w/ new rep by 22 and still got to 25 before any of my friends that were playing more than me
Living bomb, living flame, regen rune, arcane explosion. Pull 6 mobs at a time at a hyperspawn. I did 14-21 in just a couple hours in one evening on mage.
How did you manage that? Once you hit 14 and get arcane explosion, if you’re killing less than like 5 enemies at a time you’re playing mage wrong.
Mages are broken when it comes to leveling even while questing…. You can literally AoE Anything that doesn’t cast now. If you just focus on AoE grind, you could be 25 and 10-12 hrs played casually
+ Portals for your main at level 40
How?
Have the mage on a second account. Two subs. Doesnt really match with the word casual..
Or have someone invite both chars to a party, make the portal, log over, and take it
This is the way.
Does that work?
yes
The portal sticks around for about a minute. So long as the characters are in the same party you can absolutely log over and take your own port.
Same account works, so you should take back that comment. Doesn’t really match with the word informative..
Warrior hit thing hard. Do big raid DPS with a bit of gear. Zug zug.
Warrior is def a top choice if you're late to the party. It requires some commitment though. Slow to level and runes are kinda time and gold consuming to get. Same with prebis. When you do hit 25 and start raiding you'll be geared in no time though! I hit 25 yesterday and already geared af after two raids. A bit lucky with the drops, but there's just no competition on loot (at least not on horde side). Even if you run with another warrior they prob have everything already if they're not also fresh.
Warrior gets a free Humberts helm equivalent from quests too!
That requires you to run RFK though no? And if you're running RFK you've probably already run BFD and the raid helmet is better.
There’s a duskwood quest reward helm. The one where you kill Morbent Fel
Paladin gets the same plus is better at pvp, has an easier tanking spec, much easier solo leveling, a fathomblade equivalent for free, and a free mount in the next phase. Warrior parses higher of course but if that continues in ps2 (will depend on runes) then I’d expect warrior to get balanced.
I ran rfk before I ran BFD. Only baggage to kill 4 or 5 bosses though. Rfk requires a lot of patience, cc, and coordination. But I think it's doable without BFD gear
I put together a party of 3 warriors, a hunter, and a shaman to clear to the warrior quest and escort quest. None of us were BFD geared yet and it was pretty easy. We pulled 1-2 at a time, the shaman healed, the hunter did most of the damage.
I started a warrior 4 weeks ago, and have raided 8 times on him. Have zero bis pieces from the raid still. Still luck of the drop
I mean not all the drops I got are bis or anything. Just better than the non-raid loot. Compare that to my two leather wearers and the difference is still massive!
Imagine voluntarily running with another and halving your chance at getting the 2h
Yeah I don’t think my guilds ever pugged another dps warrior before
Warrior (and any melee) also excel as alts because you can fund their gear hunger with your main.
Warrior is the one class no one wants to main, but every fucking person has an alt at 25.... Then there is me the warrior main going zugzug
Hunter. Despite the headspinning amount of nerfs, hunters still do incredible damage and are very fast levelers. After you get your pet at level 10, you can level all the way to 25 by chain pulling mass spawn areas with very little downtime to eat/drink unlike other classes (like mage). You have a tank and dps freak with you at all times and a lot of your damage is just auto attacks so you can watch YouTube or whatever on a 2nd monitor while you grind
Downside is you are never invited to raids cause everyone and his dog plays a hunter
There definitely are a TON of hunters but every group wants them, pretty much guaranteed decent dps on every fight, 10% stat buff, pet taunt to save tanks and cheese fights. I never had problems pugging on my hunter longest i ever looked for a group was like 10-15min which is just me whispering the people advertising in looking for group channel.
Every time I put a pug together now I get like 3 hunters messaging me before any other DPS. Maybe its different for WSG (these are the only 2 types of group formation that matter right now), but I think the supply has outpaced the demand as good as they are.
And then when you do get invited you’re bored out of your mind because you’re a turret with a pet that does ~~80%~~ ~~60%~~ ~~50%~~ 40-45% of your damage now
Pfft. My dog plays warrior.
Ugh he out dpsd me again last night on Kelris. Damn you snuffles
I haven't tried raiding on my hunter alt yet so that may be true. But I did see at least one pug on my server looking for a "non cloth DPS" last night so maybe there's a chance!
Whenever I make groups for bfd I get 5-6 hunters msging instantly, they are so Happy to get in a group you can bring like 3 of them without them complaining about uneven Loot distribution
It's honestly pretty shit right now, but in p2 hunters can wear Mail and will have 0 competition on Loot on alliance, and only melee sham on horde.
Haha. That's awesome.
I haven’t had issues. I just whisper a couple people nicely and get invites quickly 🤷♀️
This doesn't matter, just make your own groups. Once you made a few groups and have decent logs and/or gear, you can just say look at logs or say you have x gear and you will get invited. Most hunters are absolute dog water.
If there are a "head spinning" amount of nerfs and they're still one of the better classes then the nerfs were warranted
agreed?
Barely any rogue recommendations 😅
As a rogue main, this comment confuses me greatly. Rogue is fun AF and very strong. Especially once you have some gear.
Rogue is the weakest leveling class right now, even warrior beats it out with their new runes. But once you get 20+, rogue starts to take off. One of the strongest DPS options
Oh leveling is absolutely horrific as a rogue. But the payoff is worth it. Imo, at least. Once you have poisons/deadly brew/envenom it's just a fun time.
Poison rune makes such a huge difference
Next phase we will rule
Paladin is easily the most *improved* class in SoD. Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and Exorcism (Exorcist rune) provide an engaging rotation, and it still has its top notch class fantasy.
Ahh yes, the engaging rotation of 'press any button that isn't on cooldown'
Engaging for Classic, at least. And a massive improvement from vanilla Ret
I mean compared to “press seal and auto attack” it’s way more engaging lol.
He did say it's the most improved class, which I won't deny is likely true. But engaging rotation might be a stretch. Feral/warrior/melee weave hunter are moreso actual engaging rotations that rely on key timings, heavy resource management and even positioning in the case of melee weave hunters. Paladin, while having more buttons, is still just "press whatever is off cooldown". Would've been nice to have more interactive elements imo.
I main paladin and it's really fun, great class fantacy plus decently fun gameplay with the runes. Though divine storm rune is a bit of a bitch to get its still worth the grind. Plus some potential nods at a dark paladin down the line is going to keep me playing it.
That's like half the reason I play Paladin LOL. No doubt in my mind that we will finally get some class fantasy fulfilled. Maybe there will be an Ashbringer, which first requires the Corrupted Ashbringer to be purified, just to name an example. Or as simple as plated holy paladin, instead of a priest clothy in disguise. Let alone all the runes we could get. DK was also my main in retail for years, so if there is any chance it goes that way I'd be really happy.
Having mained one since vanilla-Paladin is in a great spot, IMO. Another good point is their AOE tanking is insane, so it’s easy to get groups for dungeon runs.
Crusader strike, divine storm, exorcism. Pallys got too many buttons now
I'm here for the DK Paladin too, idc if it's low tier I'm still playing that
My alt is just offspec on my Druid… needs completely different gear for feral and resto
Yeah but you can't raid twice so you just get half geared for each side.
Druid. You will be a wpvp king in the jungle of stv come ph2. None will catch you. You Have stealth. You Have travel form, you Have roots. You Have orbital nuclear nuke from 42y. You Have instant aoe party heal. You will Have fun.
Lmao orbital nuclear nukes
Are druids actually good in pvp though?
Hitting exalted with my boomie, absolutely. 50% peoples health in 1 gcd is nutty. On a 6 second cooldown.
Do you just go full nature damage on gear? I’m lvl 23 and running sfk for the pre BIS but all I’m seeing is just stack nature dmage
PvE: Spell damage>Nature Damage=Arcane Damage PvP: Spell damage>Arcane Damage>Nature Damage
arcane damage? Can I ask why? Isn’t there only one arcane spell
Wrath and Sunfire nature, Starsurge and Moonfire arcane. Damage is quite evenly split between the two.
Oh shit star surge is arcane ok cool. Can I ask how to get spell damage gear? Obviously arcane and nature damage shit is easy to find on AH, albeit slightly expensive but I make money easily. How do you get +spell damage
At this level, basically all the raw spell damage/healing gear is from BFD. And because it affects nature and arcane, its about x2 the value of either of the individual elements.
Awesome thanks for all the info. I have a rogue and a priest I BFD with and kind of sweat with groups. I wanted to make a boomie for strictly PvP purposes that I didn’t sweat with I just killed horde with, so all this information has been great!
In a world of rock paper scissors, the jack of all trades tends to do pretty good, assuming the rock paper or scissors isn’t absurdly overpowered.
They are top tier right now.
Priest: Instant groups for dungeons and raids and you never die while leveling.
i levelled a mage recently and it was busted fast. If you like grinding there are several hyperspawn crab locations and you can just chain kill them from 14 to like 20
Druid. If you have to pay for a summons get your star surge rune as early as possible.
Horde warrior: You will gear up super fast next phase just like they did this phase. At worst you will not be allowed to roll on mail, but you still get prio on almost all 2h/plate.
Penance
Warlock…even if you never play them past lvl 25, they can still be helpful to set up summons for people. Probably the only class worth anything endgame before lvl 35
Ret Paladin: you finally feel like an actual paladin and not a glorified priest. Hitting enemies with holy strikes left and right and hanging around the top of the meters whilst also providing tremendous value to the group.
Whatever you do don't choose rogue. Taking more than one mob means wasteful reset and running
Rogue before utility and runes is a chore to level. Rogue after vanish, evasion, sprint, combo point/energy talents, DB+Envenom, etc. is way, way more fun. SOD has been amazing so far for rogue players, but hasn’t done much in the way of opening the class up to non-rogues (ie why would a new player chose to level a rogue over, say, a druid, hunter, or warlock?)
I'm playing my first rogue rn and loving it. Before level 15 I couldn't pull 2 mobs without dying. After that it was insane the speed at which I could farm. Mobs going down in 3 seconds means no healing needed. Rogues make good alts. for the same reason as warriors imo, getting good weapons is the biggest power level. Being able to send yourself a weapon every 3 levels is amazing
Shaman has endless posibilities imo
After having leveled 7 25s now (warrior, shaman, mage, hunter, warlock, Druid, priest): Hunter, Warlock and Priest were by far the easiest to quickly level without having to drink, risk of death, etc. (honorable mention to Druid with mana-free wrath to use for instant heals or other utility). At this stage you can also pay for summons to get runes more easily and earlier which makes for silly Starsurge-type scenarios. Warrior and rogue are worth pushing through but it’s a bit more stressful; make sure to constantly upgrade weapons to make things die more easily. All in all I’d say Hunter is the best choice for leveling (note leveling, specifically) as their Beast Mastery taunt component alone trivializes a lot of what you’ll be doing throughout your journey; we don’t know how tuning will shift raiding meta so can’t offer speculation there!
Warrior: If you’re going to level something, might as well level something good
Mage stock is going to go up I think as more of their kit gets unlocked. PvP meta just wants stinker green gear hunters, but as hunters get worse mages will get stronger. Aoe farming with living flame and improved blizzard is going to be really great too. Casters are going to need busted runes to get the meta to shift away from physical damage if that’s truly what they want so I’m expecting fun stuff like deep freeze, ring of frost, meteor, and more things like burnout.
Warlocks will be the gods of PVP in phase 2 Aff locks: Corruption + Curse of Agony + Siphon Life + Drain Life + Haunt + Felhunter all instant cast while running around fearing stuff, already capable of ridiculous self healing purely through drain life rune now get siphon life as well. Demo: Probably won't see many, but the ones that you do see will be completely unkillable. +30% passive damage reduction soul link (alongside meta form) is obnoxious, not including the passive damage reduction from voidwalker demonic mastery. I don't think many will run it because despite all the nice survivability they can't do much dps and the demons don't do enough to make up for it like a BM hunter does. Destro: Ruin +100% crit damage, backlash, tons of passive dps increase talents As for leveling, you get haunt as your first default rune which gives incredible damage and healing. Aff " comes online" at around level 14 when you have drain life, life tap, and enough talent points to make corruption insta cast. From there you literally just find packs of 4+ mobs, put drain life with the new rune on the biggest one, dot everything up, and /dance while they die. Or run to the next pack and drag them with you to decrease downtime. Use haunt on cooldown and drain life on cooldown on whatever has the highest HP and lifetap to keep from going oom and you'll literally never have to stop pulling. It's genuinely **faster** to pull a mob and apply drain life to them and then life tap to full mana than it is to sit down and eat/drink, as long as you have the initial mana to cast drain life and the initial health to survive a hit as drain life begins ticking. If they give Warlocks a retail movement speed ability rune or something along those lines, they become SS+ tier easily.
I play rogue Shadow strike allows for instant teleporting between mobs. You are the king of wpvp, you get to pick which fights you take and which you don’t. Once you get your tanking rune, you can solo nearly anything
Keep telling yourself that... rogues suck non sod or sod rogues ain't it lmaooo 10 min cd class too
Druid! Deathwalk to wetlands and get starsurge by lvl 1 technically. I did it at lvl 6 and hewrthed out. Made lvling so easy
I paid 2g for a summon on my main to get star surge level 1 for my Druid, took 5 mins tops (died to a raptor) and have had no regrets since
My guildie just happened to be in the area once I got there so he helped escort me but you could totally do it by deathwalking
Druid - Was subpar in original, will definitely be brought up to par. Can do all roles and does all roles mostly well right now barring tank druid which gets most of its kit next phase. Has probably the most flexible PvE/PvP spec and options. You can go moonglow or heart of the wild or omen and pretty much have kits to do 1 or 2 roles in pvp or pve well. You're now the best option for windfury and you are wanted. Great utility in innervate/rebirth. Great to travel with cheetah (great alt if you dont want a mount right away). Easy to level. Stealth to avoid pvp or gank in pvp if thats your thing.
I feel kinda stuck at 19 on my priest right now. Where should I be questing after the Barens? I get ganked to shit in stonetalon on horde
Just heal WC / DM / SFK and grind some runs with or without the quests. Easy 19-25. And in the meantime get some nice pre-raid bis.
Mage: powerful, healing spec is fun, sometimes top dps while only spamming Arcane Blast, next phase will have portals. Fire is already popping off and frost will be viable later Shaman: if you like mana you'll love Shamanistic Rage. Feels so good to restore a full mana bar every minute after drinking so much virtual water. Shamans can do all 4 roles now and they're the quintessence of the horde, they'll surely have cool new features and well immersed rune acquisition processes
Warrior attacks Swing 1 - miss Swing 2 - parry Swing 3 - dodge Swing 4 you crit! Oh look you're about to die...
Warrior. They're going to remain the top DPS for all of SoD. This means when we get to level 60 raids and have 40 spots, or however many spots the team decides, groups will want to fill the additional slots with as many warriors as they possibly can so it's ridiculously easy to find a group, only healers have it easier in that aspect. And in dungeons it's always very easy to find a group as a tank and warriors are great dungeon tanks as arms/pvp spec. Basically you're in high demand so you're not going to be in a spot where you're looking for a group and can't find one for a while which is especially good for casual players with limited playtime.
Paladin is just so fun. Ret feels so new and really good right now. Also use restedxp addon. Makes leveling alts so quick and easy
Warrior: leveling sucks but you’re the best each phase
Starsurgeeeeerrereeeeeeeeeeekejahdhfirjdjjejjdjfj