In my previous blog, I wrote up a summary of why I felt ranged classes made for a good starting point for new players. Here, I wanted to contrast that idea with classes that you may want to stay away from as a new player. Generally speaking, I advise new players to avoid healing. Healing probably is one of the most stressful activities in the game and quite honestly is a role I’d really like Blizzard to take out eventually. The thing is that as a new player, you will probably end up questing most of the time or doing solo play, unless you’re with a group of friends. As a result, you will want a class that is more based on survival. While healing classes does have that survival component of keeping themselves alive, the general rule of thumb in solo play is that you want to down monsters as fast as possible. So you might find healing to be far too frustrating to start.
What about a tanking class like a protection paladin? Although I like survival based classes for solo play, I still feel that for a starting player, anything outside of a DPS/damaging class should be reserved for the future after you learn some of the basic mechanics. The thing about tanking classes is that their role really is defined in group oriented situations. They are essentially the leader and are the ones that the rest of the team must rely on in order to stay alive. So the tank role pretty much ought to know what they are doing before heading into group situations. Assuming that as a starting player you want to try out group play such as dungeons, raids and perhaps even scenarios, you probably should rely on someone else initially until you feel more confident about handling the responsibility of others.
The other thing is that gearing up can be difficult if you rely too much on the tanking aspect of play. Of course, now with the loot specialization, this has been mitigated to a degree. However, you might not have enough gear as a DPS to get into raids and such or you might end up spending precious valor points on tanking gear without any use. So taking up tanking is more of an exercise once you feel ready to reach that next level.
What about specific classes? I suggest focusing on classes with fairly simple rotations. Thus, feral druids (or maybe even druids in general) are not a great starting point. I like the druid class in what it originally was designed to be but it’s a complex class to master. In the case of the feral druid, it’s a great class to play solo. But the difficulty in the feral druid is learning the bleed strategy. Once you hit your upper levels, the class can be really easy to fuck up. Compared to the previous expansion, feral druids have definitely decreased in the learning curve but it does take a while to learn the rhythm of what to do.
I definitely do not recommend going balance even though it eventually becomes an easy class to use in a group setting. But as a solo class, balance can be rough, especially when you’re not geared and don’t yet grasp mechanics like multi-dotting. Also, I find balance to be pretty crummy as a DPSer. They are one of the worst DPS ranked classes at the moment. While they add a lot of utility to group settings, this is something you shouldn’t really consider until you’re more advanced with the game.
Warlocks are also not the best class to start with. Like the druid, warlocks have been simplified and even made fun compared to Cataclysm. Demonology is just a great solo class to play and can output nice damage in group settings. However, the problem with the class is the resource management aspect. Warlocks had the soul shard resource from the start but eventually each spec ended up having their own third resource. Yes, I did say three because as a warlock you’re managing your mana, your health and that third resource. While this aspect has simplified the play style overall, it still can be a bit clunky at times since you’re always trying to retain a sense of equilibrium between states to really maximize your damage output.
Another class I definitely would stay away from are priest. I tried leveling a priest back in Wrath of the Lich King and I absolutely hated the class. You constantly were out of mana and were pretty weak. I found myself dying all the time. But I gave the class another shot in Cataclysm. The difficulty of playing a priest dropped immensely but I still found the class to be struggling with mana, lacking a sufficient AoE ability (until higher levels) and almost no movement boosts. Pretty much you were fucked until you hit your mid 70s. Things might’ve changed even further since the talent system was redone, but leveling a priest can be a real chore. I feel that priest pretty much were intended to be healers but given a DPS spec just so that they could level. So if the class feels awkward to solo, then it’s probably for that reason.
The other classes themselves I feel are fine for the most part. So let’s talk about specs and leveling for a new player and which ones new players ought to avoid.
I mentioned that hunters are a great starting class these days because of their survivability. But there’s only one survival spec and it ironically is not the survival one. Your best spec while leveling is beast master. I’m a fan of this spec because of the way it originally was designed to convert your pet into a mini tank. Your pet would hold aggro while you nuked your enemies down and threw heals (mend pet) onto your guy. Also, beast master converts nicely once you’re into raiding since it does pretty decent DPS. Your AoE will never match a survival hunter but what matters here is your pet tanking and you not having to learn a new rotation from scratch.
I never talked much about the shaman in either post but I will say that you’re probably better off as enhancement rather than elemental. Now to be fair, I’ll admit never having played elemental. If I did it might’ve been for shits and giggles. But for solo play, I don’t remember once touching the spec. I’ve heard different stories but it reminds me a bit of the boomkin. The problem I have is the survivability aspect. My bias might be due to starting in Wrath where enhancement shamans were pretty much the de facto leveling spec. But back in the day you had to deal with mechanics like getting interrupted from taking damage. As an enhancement shaman, you never really had to deal with that aspect, since most of your spells were either from procs or instant casts. Also, enhancement shamans hardly had any mana issues since certain abilities allowed them never to go out of mana, except when casting a few heavy spells such as a non-proc’d healing spell. These days I never have to consider mana as an enhancement shaman but you might if you go elemental. So that’s just one more major issues you’ll end up dealing with.
How about rogues? Combat tended to be the solo spec people went with mostly due to survivability. I remember even in Cataclysm when I was playing my assassination rogue. Despite her damage being decent, she was quite squishy. Combat rogues would have some resource issues when it came to generating energy so your damage output might be lower, On the other hand, you have more flexibility in terms of weapons. I never tried subtlety but heard that it was more for PVP. Since the talent system changed, all of this might be in the past, but I still suspect that combat might win out as an all-around type of spec. So you might leave the other two alone for the time being.
Let’s talk about mages. Frost. That’s all you need to know. Oh and Ghostcrawler plays one, hence the huge bias towards frost mages. If you check out the DPS rankings, frost ends up coming out on top. That said arcane and fire really aren’t there. I tried arcane and it worked fine in Cataclysm…but only once I hit my mid-60s. The issue is that arcane pretty much was a one spell spec. That changed a bit along with getting some resource management toys (like all classes seemingly did in this expansion) but it’s a very burst oriented class. From what I’ve heard frost has great healing, a pet and is top of the damage rankings so it tends to get points. Not sure where fire is but it’s always been a really iffy spec.
Lastly, what about warriors and paladins? Generally, these classes work out pretty well. Both have become pretty efficient in terms of healing, having good armor and survivability. Also, they aren’t particularly tough classes to play. Maybe the paladin but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as a feral druid nor complex as a warlock. I would argue that both are great starting classes, especially these days.