Strongest PvE Solo ClassFollow

Most classes can do this.

My personal choice for sheer survival is a Protection Paladin.

You might have trouble with "old world raids" since most raids used to require you to be in a raid group before allowing entry. I used to group an alt who was nowhere near and convert to raid but not everyone has that luxury.

If you don't want to play a massively multi-player game, I'd suggest they play a solo RPG. Skyrim is coming soon.... =P

Personally, since the change to Mangle, I would suggest a druid for leveling ease. They can play any role and can solo-clear a decent amount of old content very well.

If you don't care about leveling for some reason, DK (Blood) and Paladin (Protection) are also excellent at clearing old content alone. My DK is probably the strongest right now (hello Death Strike), but I have solo killed old raid content with all three (minus a few obvious bosses).

With that said, I've solo'd Kara with a Warlock, Shaman, Hunter in addition to the above. All classes can solo quite a lot of content if you have the patience to learn how to adapt. The most important aspect of choosing what class to play is your personal interest in the class. You're not really going to enjoy any content if you dislike the toon you are running.

Play what you like. After all, it's a game and games are for entertainment, right? =)

edit: I've found the best way to form a raid for soloing is to ask a guildy to log onto an alt (must be level 10 or more), I then invite them (be sure you are the Raid Leader) and they log off. This way even if you die you can still run back into the raid instance. And believe it or not, you can die soloing old raids =)

Edited, Nov 1st 2011 8:45am by TherionSaysWhat

Enhancement Shaman for TBC soloing is awesome. Maelstrom gives you instant self-heals and you can still dish out some nasty DPS.

Definitely Blood DK. Damage high enough to rip through mobs, high defenses (including a damage shield), and the ability to self-heal. Not to mention one of the best Oh-sh*t abilities in the game for this kind of activity.

This surprised me a lot. I never expected them to have as much survivability as they do. The instant heals last a long time, especially when a mana potion is a good chunk of your bar. Add in some tank-like CDs, an earth elemental, and the awesomeness of Earthbind -> Ghost Wolf as a last resort.

Good times.

One thing to maybe keep in the back of your mind is the stat normalization Blizz is talking about with MoP. There won't be nearly the jump there is now in health from one expansion to the next, so it may get a whole lot tougher for non-tanks to solo old content.

Mostly because it updates and changes? My connection has led me to almost exclusively solo play because if I connect to a dungeon in a group I get booted offline. Solo work on achievements etc is something I can do it's an escape from the every day which allows me to talk to guildies and friends. My dollar, my choice :)

I jumped ingame last night to unwind after a stressful evening, just solo stuff while I chilled out.

Same here.

Most single-player games don't expand and grow. That means buying new ones on a regular basis, which can be more expensive than a subscription. WoW also has over 7 years of content. I've never been able to accomplish everything I've wanted to do in the game, mainly because there's so much to do that I'll never get it all done.

You also get multi-player content when you feel like it, and single-player content when you feel like it. Soloing alt, raiding alt, PvP alt, etc. All that time soloing can benefit your multi-player time as well. Besides people feel the need to get away from a guild for a while, a soloing alt is a nice place to do that.



Edited, Nov 1st 2011 12:41pm by someproteinguy

It's not like the game is trying to sell the multiplayer portion anymore, anyway. With the single player oriented leveling experience, the LFD tool and soon the LFR tool, you can play this game without really interacting with other players.

I mean, sure, you play with four others in a dungeon, but it's only a hair's width more multiplayer than Mass Effect or similar games where you roll with an AI crew. I've done entire dungeon runs where no one uttered a single word except for the initial 'hi'. How is that considered multiplayer?

Rose-tinted glasses are rose-tinted, but I remember when people actually communicated in the game. And I'm not just blaming the generation of gamers today, or Blizzard's recent development strategies. I feel it in myself as well. Where I used to be able to sit around Ironforge at level 58, chatting with random people about random stuff, looking for any good groups being formed, I now find myself wanting to level up to 85 as fast as possible so I can get geared up and... get... better gear?

Even now that I'm leveling up Alliance characters, I find that I rarely do quests, rarely seek to communicate with the other players, rarely want to go explore something for the hell of it. I just want to run some dungeons, get mad at people who suck at life, get to end-game and grind that gear like I've done on all the other characters.

I guess my focus has shifted from playing the game to wanting to be better than others at it. Get better gear so I can run the same dungeons with the new gear. Get more gold so I can have more gold to spend on nothing. And so on.

Wish I could just man up and start on a new server. No heirlooms, no gold, no rush. I tried that, but I kept being annoyed with the fact that I had to level up. Not that the leveling experience itself is boring (the new quests are kinda awesome), I just don't have the patience anymore.

Edited, Nov 1st 2011 10:46pm by Mazra

The thing is you're both right.

Mazra is right about how people used to talk in groups and Therion and Pigtails are right about the game getting boring without social interaction.

The thing is that social interaction doesn't take place in groups any more. Unless maybe you have a group of friends or guildies. It mostly takes place in guildchat or other such channels. And you can just as easily chat to people there while soloing as while grouping. Probably easier since you can pause when you like to type stuff.

Digging out my rose-****** glasses I can remember EQ groups where there was more talking than anything else (except by bards - they got a rough deal). It is partly down to pace and style. I couldn't go back to the EQ way of sitting camping the same patch of turf pulling and killing the same mobs for the entire evening. Frequently for many evenings in a row. It was boring and so in a way it forced people to be sociable.

WoW is so much faster paced and faster levelling that you don't stand still long enough to talk. I've had groups where stopping to type has left me missing heals or having to run to catch up. Maybe I'm just rubbish at typing

There is a much bigger difference between solo play in an MMO and a single player game than a lot of people seem to realise. Apart from the fact that the option of groups is always there for things like the HH, there is constant interaction in other ways.

For example: You may solo and play the AH, getting satisfaction from building your virtual fortune. You can't do that in a single player game because there isn't a player economy to work with.

Prot Paladin vs Blood DK:

Prot Paladin: More mitigation through blocks. Get enough Mastery and nearly every attack is reduced by 30% IIRC. They can also heal themselves without having to hit mobs and have more ranged attacks (this is very helpful for low-man Ragnaros in Molten Core). You also have Lay on Hands for a full refill, which is extremely powerful in low-manning. Also, you have Divine Shield to get rid of very nasty otherwise-incurable debuffs (like the nerubian poison in H-CoS) if necessary. You also have more AoE than a Blood DK, too. You've got Consecrate, Hammer of the Righteous, and Holy Wrath (which is an excellent AoE stun on several mobtypes with glyph).

Blood DK: More Self-healing. If the mobs are weak, the self-healing will help you more than the blocking. The only thing is, those heals are weaker than a paladin's, unless you're taking lots of damage (in which case you will probably die). Also, Blood DKs do a lot more single-target DPS, which helps on bosses that don't have quirky adds or mechanics.

So, in the end, in most cases, Prot Paladin will win.

If you _really_ want to low-man crap with a Prot Paladin, pair them with a Ret or better yet, a Holy Paladin.

My mom and I managed to duo the Frozen Halls Heroics, complete with all achievements except Bronjahm's and the achievement you get from the last boss in FoS.

Bronjahm's, you need more people I think, and the last boss of FoS, you need at least 3 interrupters I think. Or a lot more DPS than what 2 people can do.

We even managed to get the achievement for escaping from the Lich King within 6 minutes in Heroic Halls of Reflection with a Prot+Ret Paladin duo.

Edited, Nov 1st 2011 7:34pm by Lyrailis

That's what happens when I type while listening to fast/upbeat stuff lol.

Anyways...

Lichborne/Death Coil has a 2min cooldown IIRC.
Sac-ing your ghoul has a similar cooldown.

But I suppose it is true that the self-heals do help a little.

Also, another thing the Prot Paladin has, is Seal of Insight.

Not very many people use it in this way, but I've found it to be very powerful when low-manning things as Prot. That, PLUS Mending is a lot of Self-Heal that doesn't even use a GCD.

Edited, Nov 1st 2011 7:42pm by Lyrailis

It does with Mending, though. Reckoning does work with Mending (so does Hammer of the Righteous, or even Consecrate. From reading up on WoWhead, it sounds like _anything_, literally ANYTHING will proc Mending).

Seal of Insight and Mending together are pretty powerful.

Sure, a DK could grab Mending, but 1). He's using a 2H Weapon, so less procs, and 2). He's only got what, one DoT (unless he throws down DnD) and one AoE (well, 2 if you count Heart Strike, but that only hits 2 mobs)?

Paladins are going to see a lot more Mending procs than DKs would, I'd think. And, to top it all off, they Also have Seal of Insight to buff the amount of passive self-heals received.



Yeah, after I posted that, I was like "wait a minute... I should check that..."

Sorry about the ninja edit.

Oh, and BTW, while fighting low-level trash (such as my Heroic Halls of Reflection example), casting Holy Light with the Crusade buff up is also very powerful, especially if it crits. I don't think H-HoR would have been possible without me and mom using up our Crusade charges even while fighting trash. There's also a few times when it is possible to cast Holy Light (with Crusade up) on bosses that have adds AND spells they cast. You're not taking any incoming melee hits while the boss is casting and you can sometimes get out a 25k+ Holy Light out while the boss is casting. This only works on Level 80 content, though, as you don't get Crusade from grey mobs.

You CAN, however, get out the occasional Divine Light. Seal of Insight makes sure you're not going to OOM. I've done that on a few spellcasting-heavy mobs/bosses as well.

Yet another edit: Flash of Light can work too.

Edited, Nov 1st 2011 8:16pm by Lyrailis