Shamans are a nice class with a lot of different spells and abilities. You can play a Shaman in several ways. You can choose to be either a Melee or Spell casting damage dealer or become a Healer. The Shamans could only be played by the Horde races until the release of the Burning Crusade when the Draenei of the Alliance made it possible to become an Alliance Shaman. Shamans can wear all weapons except swords and are dependent on leather armor till level 40 and can then wear mail armor.
Shamans are well known for their ability to place totems that boost both themselves and party members. There is a great variety of totems that can be cast and these are divided in four schools: fire, water, earth and air totems. Only one totem of each school can be active at a time. Besides the totems, a Shaman also has another great ability called Blood Lust, or Heroism for Draeneis, which boosts all party and raid members haste rating by 30% for 40 seconds. Not to forget, the Shaman can also summon a Fire and Earth Elemental from time to time.
Then there are several abilities that the Shaman can benefit greatly from during leveling and basically in any kind of scenario. The Shamans have an ability called Reincarnation which comes with a cooldown of one hour. The Shaman will be able to resurrect the moment he gets killed if this ability isn’t on cooldown. It does require a reagent called ‘Ankh’. The Shaman can also learn Ghost Wolf at level thirty which improves his running speed which is nice for leveling, even though mounts can be used at level 30 now as well. Shamans also have Astral Recall which basically serves as another Hearthstone, this one has only 15 minutes cool down though and doesn’t cost you a spot in your bag!
As you can read above, the Shaman truly does have some great abilities. The talent trees will provide you with even more cool spells and abilities.
To begin with there is the Elemental talent build which is meant for casting damage dealers. You will use lighting and fire attacks to maximize damage. A nice AoE spell that becomes available later is Thunderstorm which does nice damage and knocks back enemies.
Then there is the Enhancement talent build. This build is created for melee damage dealing Shamans. This build will allow the Shaman to equip two one-handed weapons and will also give him some great melee attacks. If the Enchancement build is followed to the end you will be able to summon two Spirit Wolves which are extremely powerful both in PvE and PvP.
Finally there is the Restoration build which is focused on healing. Shamans can be great healers with their Earth Shield, Chain Heals, Healing Waves, Mana Totems and Riptide. The Restoration talent tree does not only give new abilities but also gives great boosts to already existing abilities.
A Shaman is easy and fun to level with all these abilities. Another nice thing a Rogue in example does not have is that you can switch between melee damage, being a caster and a healer whenever you like.
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A Rogue is a pure DPS class that wears leather armor and should focus on getting a lot of Agility which will give him some Dodge chance thus survivability while leveling. A Rogue also has some nice stunning attacks that should always be used to minimize damage done to him. First Aid is definitely necessary to minimize a Rogue’s downtime.
The Rogue has three nice talent trees and they all have their pros and cons. If you want to make a nice leveling build you should check out the one below because it takes a bit of all three talent trees and it will give you a lot of useful abilities and boosts to level up like crazy.
You should start by putting some talents in the Combat tree. Start with Dual Wield Specialization and then go for Precision to make sure you hit a lot with both weapons. Now go for Deflection because you will encounter a lot of melee mobs and that makes 6% parry chance really nice. Skip Riposte but do take Endurance so the cooldown of Evasion and Sprint are much shorter. These two abilities are great while leveling. Now Improve your Spring and Dodge chance and finally take Blade Furry which is just great when you’re fighting two mobs at once. It increases your damage by 20% anyway for 15 seconds so even if you’re fighting one mob it’s quite good.
Now put five points in Malice at the Assassination. Take Ruthlessness and Puncturing Wounds. Do take Vigor asap because it is really nice to have 110 Energy. Take Lethality to improve the damage from your critical strikes and then go for Vile Poisons and Improved Poisons. Take Cold Blood which is a killer and Fleet Footed to increase your movement speed which is always welcome while leveling. Take Quick Recovery and then take Sealed Fate to apply combo points faster which is a nice combo with Cold Blood.
Take Overkill so you can do more damage when you come out of stealth and then take Deadly Brew so runners won’t be much of a menace since they get their movement speed reduced with 70%.
Take Deadened Nerved to reduce damage done to you and take Weaknesses to increase all damage done by 6%. Last but not least you should take Mutilate in this tree which is a nice attack.
Take Relentless Strikes and Opportunity from the Subtlety tree and you have a great leveling build.
With this build you will have more Energy-boosting talents, two great attacks in Mutilate and Blade Furry, increased movement speed, a lot of crit and hit rating, some Poison specialization, some Dodge and Parry chance, and you will have your Sprint and Evasion improved.
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Rogue’s have a clear purpose in WoW, dealing damage. Rogues are a melee class that can use several high damage abilities to make sushi out of their opponents, whether in PvE or PvP. Rogues can Dual Wield every kind of one-handed weapon there that can be found in WoW. There are able to use their special abilities with the use of Energy. With some of these special abilities, one can apply a combo point on their target. The Rogue also has some finishing moves that are more effective when more combo points are applied on the target. There can be a maximum of five combo points on a target and they disappear once a finishing move is being used.
Next to their great damage dealing capability the Rogues are also known because of their ability to stealth and their preference to attack from behind with their backstab ability. They walk around stealthed in battlegrounds and arenas, sneak up behind their enemies and have an edge over them. Being able to stealth also comes in handy in PvE scenarios because there is an ability called sap which can be used on Humanoid mobs which keeps them out of combat for up to sixty seconds. They are also able to Blind a enemy for 12 second, making him incapable to do anything.
Rogues also have some stunning and disrupting abilities which makes them great for both PvE and PvP purposes. Some good Rogues are able to stunlock enemy NPC’s or players, which basically means that they can hardly move, cast or attack.
Rogues can also use some poisons on their weapons that either boost their damage or put some other debuff on a target.
The following races have Rogues in their ranks: Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, Trolls, Undead, Orcs, and Blood Elves.
A Rogue can choose to specialize in the Assassination, Combat, or Subtlety build, or choose to combine either one of these talent trees. All the trees are there to increase the damage output of a Rogue, since tanking or healing are definitely not his thing and can even be considered as a Rogue’s weak spots. It is for the player to decide which talent tree suits him best. All the trees got their pros and cons, the one player likes this, the other likes that, discussions go on and on but basically it comes down to preferences.
What can be said is that the Assassination tree is usually chosen for leveling and focuses on the crit rate and poison aspects of the Rogue, while the combat build offers the Rogue the chance to specialize in a particular type of weapon, which is why this build is probably better at 80 once you got some steady weapons.
The Subtlety build focuses on the Survivability, crowd control and Stealth aspects of the Rogue. This build gives the Rogue some burst damage and this is probably why a lot of PvP Rogues go for this build.
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For World of Warcraft players, the clock is ticking to the Cataclysm expansion. The entire world will change with Cataclysm, but for now there are some important benefits that you’ve got to take advantage of while you can. Right now dungeon leveling is the perfect way to reach level 80 quickly and efficiently, and that could all change when Cataclysm arrives. The new expansion will completely reshuffle the WoW world, and some of those old Classic and Burning Crusade dungeons will disappear. You’ve got a limited time to experience these dungeons, and instance leveling is the perfect way to do it.
There are many reasons instance leveling helps you reach level 80 much faster than traditional solo questing and grinding. The most basic reason is that you gain experience much faster. You don’t have a lot of down time when you’re leveling through the dungeons because you’re pretty much killing mobs nonstop. You don’t have to spend a lot of time running to a new area in between levels because the dungeon finder takes you right to your instance. In most cases, you’ll also spend a lot less time dead and running to retrieve your body. This cuts back on your down time even more, making leveling a breeze!
Dungeon leveling is also much easier than traditional solo quest leveling because you have many more opportunities to get even better gear. There are three ways you’ll have access to better gear through dungeon leveling. First, the gear you receive from doing the quests that are located inside the dungeons is far better than almost anything you’ll get from solo questing. Blizzard wanted to make the rewards for dungeon leveling even more appealing than solo power leveling because running instances is more difficult. This is why the gear you earn as a reward for doing the dungeon quests is so much better than the gear you get for doing solo quests. Blizzard also granted twice the experience for completing dungeon quests, as opposed to solo quests.
Whenever you’re instance leveling, you also get the chance to kill a lot more bosses and elite monsters. These unique creatures will drop much higher quality gear, which you will never have access to if you don’t learn all about dungeon leveling. The third way you can get better gear by dungeon leveling is the special bag you get upon completion of your first random dungeon of the day. The contents of the bag won’t always benefit your character, but sometimes they are exactly what you need.
Another great thing about instance leveling is that it gives you a chance to explore areas of the game that you can’t go into when you’re power leveling on your own. Of course solo questing certainly has its place, but you’ll need four other people to go into the dungeons and take advantage of all they have to offer. After all, you’re going to run across a lot more elite monsters in the dungeons, and they give a lot more experience than just killing regular creatures.
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Warriors are a great melee class. They are capable to Tank, and even by most considered to be the best tanking class still, but can also do great damage in both PvE and PvP. Masters of the melee fight as they are, they are capable to equip all the melee weapons and even Dual Wield. Next to that they can also wear Plate armor and Shields. Their special abilities can be used with the use of Rage which is gained by taking and dealing damage, and some talents and abilities.
The Warriors have stances they can choose between. The Defensive Stance is normally only used for tanking because it reduces the damage done by 10%. However, it does increase the threat made by 10% and the damage done to the Warrior is reduced by 10% as well. Then there is the Battle Stance which is their basic stance which doesn’t give any boosts or reductions and finally there is the Berserker Stance which increases the Warrior’s critical strike rating by 3% but also increases damage done to the Warrior by 10%. Some abilities can only be used when the Warrior is in a particular stance.
Warriors are strong and can take a few punches which make them easy to level because their damage output is good as well. One should carry a shield with him while leveling so you can tank an instance when you get the chance. At level eighty 70+ however you will definitely need to have a Protection build to tank the instances though. In my opinion Warriors are fast levelers because you can kill the mobs quite fast and then Charge into the next one. Because of the plate armor you will not lose a lot of health, though one does has a few abilities that restore hitpoints and otherwise some bandages can be used which isn’t that time-taking either.
All the races, except the Blood Elves, have Warriors in their ranks.
The Warriors have the Protection talent tree if they want to become good tanks. In this talent tree there are a lot of abilities that reduce the damage done to the Warrior. You will also improve your threat done with this talent tree and will gain some new nice abilities like Spell Reflection, Shield Slam, Shock Wave and Last Stand. A Warrior can be a great tank, in my opinion, Blizzard designed Warriors to be tanks and they are the best at it.
Since WoTLK, the Arms tree is considered to be the weakest talent tree by many Warriors. This is basically because the Fury talent tree has received some great talents that make the Fury talent tree just as good or maybe even better for PvP and it stayed better in PvE. The Arms tree was good because of the Mortal Strike’s debuff left on the character that reduced healing done on him by 50%. Now the Fury Warriors have something similar in the talent tree called Furious Attacks which also gives the same debuff of 50% healing reduced on the target. If you follow this tree you will be able to Dual Wield two two-handed weapons as only class in WoW! It doesn’t only look great but boosts the damage as well and puts the Arms build even more in the shadows. Then there is Heroic Fury, another PvP talent that removes immobilizing effects and removes the cooldown from your intercept.
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Some players really enjoy tanking and see no problem in leveling their Warrior as a Protection Warrior. Shield Slam and Revenge do decent damage and also Shockwave is nice at later levels. If you want to speed up your leveling though, you should definitely explore the Fury talent tree. Two one-handed weapons should be used until you can equip two two-handed weapons.
I have made two builds. One will also take the Impale and Deep Wounds of Arms while the other is even more focused on Fury. It is up to your preferences which ones you would choose.
I would advise you to at least first take Improved Charge in the Arms Tree. Then you can continue with 5% crit rating in the Fury tree and go on down from there. Aim to get Death Wish, Precision and Weapon Mastery asap so you don’t miss that often and Deathwish is a nice damage boost. Flurry is extremely nice and after you take this ability you really get that ‘Rogue-in-plate’ feeling because you really make sushi out of your opponents.
Next in line is Blood Thirst which does not only do a great amount of damage, but also restores health over time. This ability is just great for leveling because it is one of the few life-giving abilities a Warrior has.
Now you will get to choose between some nice damage dealing abilities. Do move down in the tree though and pick up the remaining ones at later levels. Get Rampage as soon as possible, it is a great ability that boosts your damage significantly and only costs one talent point.
You can see that Blizzard wanted to improve the ever so useless Slam ability of the Warrior and you can see that they succeeded. You will have a 20% to instant cast Slam and its damage gets improved to. Whirlwind and Cleave as well get a damage boost in this three which makes the Warrior more capable to deal with multiple mobs at once.
Finally you got Titan’s Grip. Man did I love to see my Warrior looking ba%&$s with two two-handed weapons. Of course, it doesn’t only look great but it will also give you a whole different game play. Ok, you will need to get a lot of hit rating to make up for the hit rating loss but it is kinda cool that the Warrior, the weapon master that always could wield all weapons, can now wield two two-handed weapons instead of the Death Knights in example, which the words once spread before the release of WoTLK.
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Warlocks have always been a nice class to play. For some reason they always looked great, Blizzard always made the nicest tiers sets for them, then they have those cool class mounts. However, it isn’t only the look that counts and the Warlocks have a lot more to offer. The Warlocks are great casters and use the Schools of Fire and Shadow damage as well as a variety of different Fear spells and a Demonic Pet to bring pain upon their enemies.
You can choose a different pet for different scenarios. You can choose between an Imp, Fel Hunter, Succubus, Fel Guard, and even a Fire Golem can be summoned.
A Warlock needs Soul Shards for some abilities. These can easily be obtained though by using Drain Soul on an enemy.
A Warlock is very nice in PvP because he has a lot of damage over time (DoT) spells. If he first casts a few DoT’s and then continuously fears his opponents while also his pet is chasing them around doing additional damage, he basically can win from most opponents. The Locks also have some nice AoE spells like most other casters and have some other specific abilities. One of them is the Ritual of Souls. With this ability he makes a Soulwell which all the party and raid members can use to get a Healthstone, which instantly restores health when used. Warlocks can also create a Soulstone on themselves or on other players. Once the player dies he would be able to resurrect. Last but not least is their ability to summon other players which comes in very handy from time to time.
If you want to play a Warlock you can choose between the following races: Gnome, Human, Orc, Undead, and Blood Elves.
There are three talent trees that all enhance the Warlocks damage.
Lets start with the Affliction talent tree. Favored by many PvP Warlocks is the Affliction build simply because it focuses on the DoT spells of a Warlock and even gives him some new ones. Also the fear spells become better when this build is followed. The tactic of DoTting and then fearing like said before is great for PvP.
Then you got the Demonology build which increases the damage output of the Warlock as well as the Pets one can summon. It also gives the Warlock the ability to sacrifice his pet to make him stronger. This build is also nice for both PvE and PvP. If the Demonology build is followed till the end you will even be able to transfer into a Demon yourself. As a Demon you will get a new set of abilities and become more of a melee character with increased damage for a period of time.
The name says it all; The Destruction spec focuses on the damaging spells that do a lot of damage like Shadowbolt and the Fire based spells. This build is developed to be able to top damage meters with powerful spells.
As a Lock you can of course choose to make sort of a hybrid build between Demonology and Destruction which is also seen quite often.
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