Umm.... okay mind blown.Follow

Go to SW/Org. They'll be hero's boards there that offer a quest to send you to a new zone. Go to one, complete quest, experience new zones.

That's really all there is to it.

Ret is still probably the best to level with, unless you plan to run a lot of dungeons. But both tank and heal specs had their damage increased, so you can level as one of them if you'd like.

Stats were simplified. Str, Agi and Int are priority stats for respective roles. Str gives its users AP, and Parry to the plate tanks. Agi gives Dodge to most classes, but not to plate tanks. It still gives crit, iirc, and more AP than it used to, iirc. Int gives spell crit, mana and sp.

Mastery is a spec-specific stat, and you'll start benefitting from it when you train mastery at 80.

ArP was removed from the game.

Paladins now have a holy power mechanic. You generate up to 3 charges and can unleash them for damage/heals.

Dungeons are hard again, and you'll need to use CC to clear them (unless your tank and healer are really geared, with decent dps). Maximizing personal survival is now a core part of dps duty as well, so you shouldn't be afraid to use self-heal or damage mitigation abilities whilst in parties, even if it means losing damage.

Holy is actually really fun to level as too. I'm not sure if it'd be viable at 79+, but I don't see why not. Give it a try and see what happens. Since you played in BC, I'm assuming you are familiar with the term Shockadin.

I found shockadins level at a decent speed until you hit Northrend then things died quicker as ret. Didn't try prot out as a comparison but I imagine it will be roughly the same.

Fair warning Flint, ret paladins play more like kitty druids with the cooldowns you have to keep an eye on. If you decide to go as prot you won't have to worry about getting defense gear until you hit a magical number, all tanks went the way of the bear and have talents now that grant crit immunity.

I would also highly recommend rolling an alt to at least 60 to experience the new content. Most of the zones are very enjoyable to play through.


Yogcast on ret.


Edit: A youtube link to help a smig.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2011 2:00pm by Criminy

My bigger issue with the lack of AoE early on is that some classes DO get their skills, and other classes don't even get theirs around the same time. So you can end up feeling useless in groups.

To be fair, any Mage using AE in a group should be shot. Small exception to Arcane Mages with it talented (MAYBE), but everyone else should single-target. But it still requires you to be in melee range, increasing your damage taken and decreasing your threat threshold (which is a big problem, since you are in melee range).

Even if its a dps upgrade over single target, you really shouldn't be using it.

But you don't get Flamestrike/Blizzard until your 40s-50s. :(

Shaman, on the other hand, get their best AoE skill in their 20s (or teens? WoWhead has two listings).

Druids can put thorns on the tank, which is actually pretty nice damage even as a Feral. But that's it until they get Hurricane (which isn't worth using, because boomkins are better off multi-dotting and ferals have no SP). Kitties get some AoE at 36 though.

Hunters get Multi-shot at 24.

Pallies can get DS at 29.

But everyone else is mid-40s or higher. That's stupid, imo.

Endgame and leveling are very, very different entities. If you can be confident that your tank can keep threat, sure. But tank threat is extremely iffy at lower levels, even with vengeance, because most AoE talents/abilities aren't until later.

Warriors have some of the best, being able to Thundershock and transfer Rend to each target. You'll still need to wait for some bleed tics though, and carefully watch threat.

Paladins are probably your best bet, since they get Consecration at 24. Still though, it shouldn't be that hard for a Mage spamming AE to pull every mob very, very fast.

Bears get swipe at 18, which isn't exactly the best. And they don't get access to the other half of their AoE until 81...

Giving up that extra 20% threat is not something I want to do.

At lower levels, it does. And it isn't much better at high levels (if you aren't Arcane). It only gets 21.3% of your spell power. At level 22, when you get it, its based damage is 18. :/

I can't find what Blizzard's based damage is at 52, when you get it, but:

Flamestrike- 30% base mana, 89-107 damage, 60 over 8 seconds. 23.57% of spell power goes to base damage, and 12.2% to each tic (for a total of 48.8%).
AE- 15% base mana, 52-56 damage. 21.43% of spell power.
(Blizzard gets 114.29% of sp total, but I don't know base damage. It's expensive though).

So the damage isn't quite a third of flamestrike's, for half the mana cost. AND it requires you to be in melee range. It's not nearly so bad if you are arcane, of course, but most Mages aren't while they level.

Granted, this is spammable. But that's really neither here nor there, when you need to watch your threat. And with FS's cast time, you could spam that if you really wanted to without increasing your mana consumption all that much, but your threat cap will be higher and you can ultimately dish out more.

Still though, FS->ST is best until the upper levels, when you have more talents and all of your abilities.

And don't forget that Fire Blast can spread burn affects (which will mostly mean crits and pyros) to all other targets around.

Realistically, if they really want Mages using AE, they are going to have to tone down the amount of melee AoE across all levels in dungeons. Just too squishy to be anything but far away.

I was mostly considering it purely in leveling terms. The vast majority of leveling Mages are Fire or Frost (Frost for the control, Fire for the burst, and not Arcane because you don't get your frickin' nuke until 20 and it's way too mana intensive until you can get deeper talents). As such, they wouldn't have access to that talent.

And I'd still avoid using AE once you hit Outland. I can think of a sizable amount of trash mobs that use close-range AoE by then. And, by then, your tanks should largely have AoE skills, so you'll be using large groups. As such, it'll be more likely that you can get 2-5 AoEers in one pack.

I honestly don't know about lower level dungeons now, since I only ran a few in Cata beta. But since Flamestrike is more mana efficient overall, and only slightly more if spammed (which you can do from range), I see no reason to spam AE. And Blizz is around 75% base mana, and lasts 8 seconds. Untalentded, your AE GCD should still be pretty much 1.5 due to limited haste while leveling. Spamming AE for the same duration is 90% base mana.

Dunno what the damage difference would be, though, since its so heavily dependent on SP numbers (and WoWhead won't scale Blizzard for me).

Though there is something interesting about the skill to note. If your tank positions all the mobs close together, you should be able to hit them all with AE while staying out of melee range (giving you the extra 20% threat buffer). It would be too annoying to bother with unless you have AE talented though.

Leveling as a tank is faster and easier than you would think. The basic rule is that pulling only one quest mob is a waste of time - you should be trying to pull 3 or 4 or 5 every time. Also, the old instances are all nerfed into the ground - they are very forgiving of mistakes and general silliness. The new instances are much harder. Also, you can get some experience from BG's now (again).