Now I have no idea what the classes entails and haven’t done any research beyond just checking out their names right now. I don’t know how they perform in game with the various activities or their potential at end game so it’s up to you to pick my class.
Voting finished
Ended up with Paladin for the class to boost and Druid to level
Two polls though; the character to boost and the one to actually level. I kind of want both as there is some new content to enjoy and it would be interesting to be a part of the end game rush with raids, dungeons and PvP. Leveling one I think is also important just to experience the rest of this vast game and learn more about it.
30 thoughts on “Experiment in Azeroth: Picking a Class”
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Healing the masses 
Before I can really give a vote, what do you want to play? Interested in healing? or do you want to pew-pew or take things in the face?
Do you prefer having lots of tools/tricks to use in combat? Or would you prefer something a bit simpler and straight-forward? Is there a fantasy archetype you generally gravitate to in other games?
dont think.. just vote =p
I really have no idea what i want to do or the roles I would like and I’m pretty adaptable to whatever class styles
Don’t play a Priest to level. You may die of boredom.
managed to level a mystic in Tera… my tolerance for boredom is quite high haha
In Pandaland, leveling a Disc Priest was literally covered in 3 spells. Smite, Penance, and Power Word: Shield. And frankly the latter two were just to change things up a little.
Didn’t matter if you were questing or spamming dungeons. You just spammed Smite on everything, nonstop.
that sounds incredibly boring lol
Dreadfully. I quit the game again instead of dealing with that shit.
Death Knight starts you at level 55, 58 or so when you actually finish the mandatory introduction zone. Plus that zone includes a tonne of lore that will fly over your head until you learn more about the world in general. So don’t choose that.
Please go Horde. From what I know of your personality, you will, like me, find the Alliance levelling storylines (and general characterisation) intensely irritating.
Now, I voted for Druid to level because you can be anything. Tank, healer, caster dps, or melee dps. Plus flight form which is the best “mount” in the game (not biased no sir). I reckon you’d like Warlock at 90, gleefully setting things on fire and siccing your pet demons onto stuff.
nice..warlock from what i’ve read offhand does sound fun
I am firmly in the Horde camp, because their race choices are far superior in my opinion. I literally have like 6 months or less play time under my belt, and I have to say that the game I played back in the WotLK days was superior to the game that exists now, with the way they simplified skill trees and/or choices and even the whack a mole combat is more streamlined. Yeah, just about anyone can jump right into the game but there comes a point when you’ve dumbed it down beyond recognition.
Originally I played a Warlock, and I absolutely loved it. Haven’t tried it in the more recent time I spent with the game. More recently I was leveling a Priest and a Paladin and I found both to be quite fun. I’d say for the level 90, you should probably pick something that would be needed in the group you may or may not be planning to play with. For something to level yourself, I’d go with a class that is easy to solo, and any of the three I just listed or a Hunter would be able to do that (but from what I can tell, any class is super easy to solo, cause you know, it’s WoW). I would lean more towards a DPS or healer just because to tank eventually you’d have to know the zones so you can kind of lead. I won’t tell you my votes, I’ll just do it, but that’s my advice. But what do I know?
Also, I can’t believe you’re going to play WoW. With all the shit you gave me for giving it a whirl again a couple of months back. I get the compulsion especially with blogger friends wanting you to join in with them, but I don’t see it as a long term solution. But again, what do I know? I can’t commit to an MMO anymore.
neither can i… archeage is still pulling my interest for group pvp but just definitely slowing down a little. Sooo have some time for another project and well… why not
awesome … thanks
“the way they simplified skill trees and/or choices”
This isn’t even correct. The “choices” before weren’t choices, they were simply optimal and were usually of the “do 1% more damage” variety. The talent trees are more complex now because multiple talents on the same row are useful, they change your playstyle dramatically in some cases, and you have to be able to figure out which talents are suited for what situations.
Before: pick between A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I…where A is obviously the best and you’d be stupid not to take it.
Now: pick between A, B, and C…where none is obviously the best and you’ll often want to switch them around in different cases.
“Yeah, just about anyone can jump right into the game but there comes a point when you’ve dumbed it down beyond recognition. ”
Go do current Challenge Modes (or hell, even Heroics) and talk to me about it being dumbed down beyond recognition. Not even getting into Mythic raiding or something here, some of the Challenge Mode stuff is brutal currently.
“I don’t know how they perform in game with the various activities or their potential at end game”
Unless you’re getting into Mythic raiding or Rated BGs/high ranked Arenas, all classes and specs will perform roughly the same — the minor differences in overall power won’t matter. So pick what sounds cool.
In general, a class that can do more than just DPS may be helpful so you can do more than one role if you decide you want to try it out. Which means no Mage/Warlock/Rogue/Hunter.
Well, you are clearly a dedicated WoW player and I most certainly am not. The illusion of choice that it may be still seemed more interesting than the system they use now. EQ2’s AA system was still superior anyway, same goes for Rift’s Soul system, etc. Difficulty coming down to learning scripts or padding numbers isn’t interesting or complex in my opinion. It shouldn’t come down to the best way to Min/Max, it should be about creating the character you want to play.
“The illusion of choice that it may be still seemed more interesting than the system they use now.”
I suspect this is because you’re not involved in the end-game. While leveling, the whole “pick a lot of bonuses as you level” (even if the bonuses are like 0.5% improvements) can feel more rewarding for some players. But at max level, changing your spec and having to redo 71 talent points was awful. Especially when you were only switching one or two points. And you had less actual choices (and often no actual choice) to make.
“Difficulty coming down to learning scripts or padding numbers isn’t interesting or complex in my opinion.”
What do you mean by “learning scripts?” For example, I did a challenge mode dungeon yesterday (very hard dungeon with a time trial, more difficult than normal and more difficult than heroic). I had never even BEEN in the dungeon before (on normal or heroic, let alone challenge), yet we were able to beat the first three bosses in one attempt and the final boss in two attempts (and I was the healer, so it’s not like the group could carry me).
But I know of dozens of other group that constantly wiped over half a dozen times on the first boss before giving up because they simply weren’t good enough. And if I’m able to beat the boss the first go while never seeing it before and others can’t get it after six or more tries, obviously the difficulty isn’t from learning a script.
Not sure what you mean by padding numbers?
“It shouldn’t come down to the best way to Min/Max, it should be about creating the character you want to play.”
That’s actually an argument for the current talent system — it removes the whole “pick this talent for a 0.5% increase in performance” and gives you broader choices that have a large impact. For example, as a Shadow Priest, one row of my talents is choosing between having my DoTs give me more of my best nuking spell, getting a souped up temporary pet that I can use more often than default, or making one of my spells boost another when used in combo. Each is a different playstyle that some people will like more than others and *all are valid.*
I didn’t have that kind of choice in the old system, there was only one playstyle as a Shadow Priest, period — even picking terrible talents wouldn’t change that.
As I said, EQ2’s (or EQ’s for that matter) AA system and Rift’s Soul system are light years ahead as there are plenty of viable ways to spend your points. Have “the one true build” is a flaw in the system, not a boon. Having those useless talent points ( I played again recently, and was leveling a Paladin and remember a choice between 3 variants of a small movespeed buff… like I don’t feel more powerful having earned that. It’s stupid.) doesn’t add choice it adds fluff.
In those above games if you respec, you had to redo the points as well, until later when they added in the ability to save certain specs and swap between them. This is better than saying “let’s eliminate the need to respec and make them play with the one true build.”
Learning scripts = don’t stand in the fire and learn the boss’s patterns or what you have to expect in a fight. Raids and Dungeons used to have this, in damn near every MMO I’ve played. I’m sure WoW and most games have maybe changed up the formula a bit, which is why I also added the “or padding numbers” bit.
Padding numbers = inflating HP and other stats to make for an increased difficulty. That’s not interesting, it just takes longer to kill the thing. Sounds exactly like what you describe in the “heroic” runs. Doing the same content over again with bigger numbers equates to laziness on the developers part, it isn’t interesting. Since, as you pointed out, I’m not currently participating in the end game, you’ll probably come up with more ways to refute what I’m saying, as any fan of a game would. However, in the end, this is my opinion, and you won’t be changing it. All MMOs have similar flaws at this point, as a result of trying to copy WoW for the monetary success, not to make games that are actually better or at least on par (as far as polish goes, not necessarily design principles). This is why I’ve had trouble playing any of them for years, because it’s the same old bullshit over and over.
“However, in the end, this is my opinion, and you won’t be changing it.”
I’m more concerned about j3w3l’s opinion at this point 😉
“As I said, EQ2′s (or EQ’s for that matter) AA system and Rift’s Soul system are light years ahead as there are plenty of viable ways to spend your points. Have “the one true build” is a flaw in the system, not a boon.”
I sincerely doubt that (the viable ways to spend your points). Or rather, something may have been viable because the content was easy enough, but it wasn’t optimal. Technically you could beat anything outside of the hardest raids back in Vanilla/BC/WotLK without spending a single talent point. So it was viable, but not optimal.
“I played again recently, and was leveling a Paladin and remember a choice between 3 variants of a small movespeed buff… like I don’t feel more powerful having earned that. It’s stupid.”
It’s actually incredibly relevant when movement is important — meaning, y’know, stuff that’s actually difficult (end game dungeons/raids and rated PvP). And whether you choose to constantly have a passive movement increase or a burst increase on cooldown changes the way you approach different situations. Hell, end-game raiders/PvPers often constantly change their movement talents depending on team composition/arena/battleground/boss fight.
The fact that you think it’s stupid, in other words, is due to you not doing anything hard enough to where it was relevant. But by the same token, having 5% more HP or 5% more damage wouldn’t be relevant either in those situations.
“Learning scripts = don’t stand in the fire and learn the boss’s patterns or what you have to expect in a fight. Raids and Dungeons used to have this, in damn near every MMO I’ve played.”
Er…what? So you can’t have stuff to avoid and enemies can’t have special abilities? So every mob should just have HP and auto-attack? Or cast basic spells that are just pure damage?
There’s a huge difference between “Okay, you need to learn the fifteen different positions to go to in sequence when the boss hits 50%” and “When the boss makes a circle on the ground, get out” or “When the boss starts to case that spell, spread out as a group.” One is hard to learn but easy to execute, the other is easy to learn but hard to execute (difficulty of execution is obviously dependent on tuning and how much leeway the designers give you).
I mean, I’m seriously trying to think of an RPG (MMO or not) that didn’t involve avoiding bad stuff and figuring out how to defeat certain enemies…
“Doing the same content over again with bigger numbers equates to laziness on the developers part, it isn’t interesting.”
Except that’s not what heroic is at all. The easier difficulties exist so that people worse at the game have something to do. The bosses have less abilities which are less lethal. What will instantly kill you on Mythic will severely wound on Heroic, moderately wound you on normal, and barely tickle you on LFR (because it’s designed for a group of idiots). If you’re going to be doing Mythic raids (the hardest), then you might do Normal/Heroic a few times for fun or to help friends but you’ll be spending 90%+ of your time in Mythic. But if you’re less capable, you’ll be doing Normal modes and maybe if you’re good enough a few Heroic bosses. It is certainly NOT just doing the same content with bigger numbers.
And I haven’t even done a normal dungeon this expansion at max level, just heroic. Challenge Modes are a specific timed version, completely optional, don’t even drop gear, and are just there for, well, a challenge.
“That’s not interesting, it just takes longer to kill the thing.”
Having a mechanic instantly kill you if you get hit, having it do 90% of your HP, and having it do 45% HP massively changes it. One you always have to avoid, one you can mess up a few times but probably not much, and the other you have a lot of leeway. Numbers and tuning matter a great deal in difficulty and it changes mechanics from being interesting to being ignored.
“I’m more concerned about j3w3l’s opinion at this point ;)”
Apparently not, since you’re spending an awful lot of time trying to convince me that my opinion is invalid. I offered my thoughts and you found it necessary to argue against it. I’m now aware that you’re a fanboy, so I should have known better than to egg it on. Consider me done with it.
“Apparently not, since you’re spending an awful lot of time trying to convince me that my opinion is invalid”
I’m afraid you’re actually apparently missing my point. I’m spending an awful lot of time convincing j3w3l that your opinion is invalid. You’re making a bunch of unfounded and incorrect assumptions about something you don’t understand and I’d hate for that to be the only viewpoint j3w3l sees. I don’t expect you to believe that, of course, but I hope j3w3l does.
“I offered my thoughts and you found it necessary to argue against it.”
I try to correct misinformation. There are plenty of things you could criticize about WoW and rightfully so. Game has a decent chunk of issues. But you’re saying stuff that doesn’t even make sense.
” I’m now aware that you’re a fanboy, so I should have known better than to egg it on.”
If presenting reasoned arguments with in-game examples makes me a fanboy, then consider me astounded. I do find it interesting that rather than address any of my points you try to dismiss all of them with a derogative term.
But hey, have fun, been nice chatting.
alright you two.. that’s enough now and both points have been presented. I will now adjudicate on them by making a chicken dizzy and seeing which way it falls
I call right wing! But only if you spin the chicken an even number of times.
Sorry it went belly up… You both lose so GOOD DAY SIR!!
But I have to get something, right? I can’t simply get nothing!
>.>
If MMO history tells us anything, it’s that you can never go wrong picking a Warrior.
lol.. exactly what i thought when picking a class in wildstar
I voted Mage for boost because they are pretty fun but tedious to level in my opinion. I voted Monk for leveling because they can be everything and it’s the newest class. Oh and Horde FTW.
Monks are also the fastest class to level based on # of hours played. Since they get special daily quests that gives then a large, stacking, xp multiplier buff.
I voted to boost a Paladin. I’ve always had a soft spot for Holy and Prot, even though usually they have little to no place in Arenas.
yeh it seems horde will be one character for sure as they do align to what i tend to like