So, is WOW worth going back to?

[Fordel]

Just pick any of the healing hybrids, (paladin, shaman, druid, priest), which ever one you enjoy the most. You don't have to spec the actual heal tree, just have a class with the heal spells available. Hunters are just so ridiculously good at soloing, you'll mostly just be a damage add or pet support.


Just keep in mind if you pick a Tri-spec Hybrid (paladin or druid), you'll need like 15 sets of gear eventually if you want to do ALL your potential jobs. Like, you'll probably want to decide if you are going to be Feral druid or a Casting druid and then stick to either of those.

[ezrast]

Druid.  You'll have versatility out the yin-yang (Ranged DPS, Tank/ Melee DPS or heals.. what's your taste today?) and can start in the same area without running around for an hour and a half.   Just play as a female since the male NEs look almost as bad as male BEs.

Well, with the RAF we can summon each other apparently.

One time I started a NE hunter and, since the NE starting area blows, decided that I would be better off leveling in Dun Morogh. Having never played Alliance before, and not realizing that this journey was not quite as trivial as, say, Orgrimmar to Undercity, I set my sorry ass running towards Ironforge at level 8 or so. It was a harrowing trek involving countless corpse runs, but I finally met with my destination and promptly set forth killing snow wolves or whatever it is dwarves and gnomes do at level 8. Then I dinged 10 and the goddamn dwarf hunter trainer told me I had to go to Teldrassil to learn how to tame a pet. Never logged onto her again.

Point being, have your wife summon you and not the other way around.

[Fordel]

Druid.  You'll have versatility out the yin-yang (Ranged DPS, Tank/ Melee DPS or heals.. what's your taste today?) and can start in the same area without running around for an hour and a half.   Just play as a female since the male NEs look almost as bad as male BEs.

Well, with the RAF we can summon each other apparently.

One time I started a NE hunter and, since the NE starting area blows, decided that I would be better off leveling in Dun Morogh. Having never played Alliance before, and not realizing that this journey was not quite as trivial as, say, Orgrimmar to Undercity, I set my sorry ass running towards Ironforge at level 8 or so. It was a harrowing trek involving countless corpse runs, but I finally met with my destination and promptly set forth killing snow wolves or whatever it is dwarves and gnomes do at level 8. Then I dinged 10 and the goddamn dwarf hunter trainer told me I had to go to Teldrassil to learn how to tame a pet. Never logged onto her again.

Point being, have your wife summon you and not the other way around.

That trip isn't as harrowing anymore. You just take a boat to SW and the tram to IF.

[Ingmar]

You do still have to get the pet quest from your own racial trainer though I think.

[Riggswolfe]

Well she'll be home from night classes in 30 minutes or so. I'm still debating what to play. I tend to like Pallies because I get melee plus some healing even if my damage output sucks. Soooo....not sure what I'll do.

[Merusk]

Feral druids get the same, and their damage output doesn't suck.

Pallies DO doesn't suck anymore, either.  They melt faces and heal well as ret if you know how to work Art of War.  However they run out of mana at low levels pretty easily.. well at least they did a year ago, not so sure now.

[Sjofn]

Druids get their toys much earlier than (current) paladins. Paladins are a boring auto-attack-fest until pretty late in their lives, which is thankfully changing come cataclysm.

Druids are rad, play a druid!

[Fordel]

Yea, if you are doing this right now, I would go druid, unless you pine for the good old days of auto attacking forever.

[Evildrider]

Yea, if you are doing this right now, I would go druid, unless you pine for the good old days of auto attacking forever.

I wanted to stab myself repeatedly in the nuts while leveling my pally.  That's how bad it was.

[Zetor]

Leveling a pally back in vanilla was awesome!  


edit: fixed link

[Riggswolfe]

Well, she wanted to make a Dranei instead of a Night Elf so I ended up making a Shaman. It was alright I guess. Sort of feels like a low powered mage to me really.

[Fordel]

Shamans are okay, if you can make it past the initial hump. They are another class that greatly benefits from Cata's new spell/talent layout.

[Xeyi]

I was levelling a shaman not so long ago and early on they're much better now than they used to be.  They now get water shield at level 20 as well as mana stream totem at about the same level, so the old mana problems are mostly gone.  Also, you can heal any instance while specced as elemental with no problems up to at least level 40.

[Selby]

It was alright I guess. Sort of feels like a low powered mage to me really.

Level as enhancement to get the most out of it.  Use a shield until you get dual-wield and then the mobs die at your feet.  The shield allows you to pull multiple mobs without much fear and solo elites up to the dual-wield mark.  With water shield you'll have so much mana you don't know what to do with (kill stuff!).

[Riggswolfe]

Well I have several characters in the mid twenties of various classes so an option I have is to swap out which I play when she gets of level.

I have:

A level 22 hunter
A level 21 rogue
A level 35 warlock
A level 25 mage

So, if I wanted I can swap to one of those if I want something that's not a shaman.

My big quandry right now is which will be my main in the long run, my new Death Knight or my Paladin?

Paladin:

Pros:

Has some achievements already
Professions and such built up to decent levels (high 200s)
Pretty much won't die under normal circumstances

Cons:

DPS? What's that? Isn't that how you find where you're at or something?
Feels "passive"
Sucks in PvP (At least they did in the past, I'm guessing it's the same now.)
In raids reduced to a heal/buff bot.


Death Knight:

Pros:
DPS!
Looks cool
Feels "active"

Cons:

A million of them around.
Will have to learn Professions from the bottom up.
No achievements except a couple of account wide ones
Even less money on hand than my pally and he's not exactly rich.

[proudft]

Ret paladins do perfectly respectable dps these days, just fyi.   They're not super-exciting - you have like 4-5 buttons - but they get the job done.

Edit:  Oh, you pooh-poohed them on pvp too.... paladins are actually pretty good at pvp, ret paladins pre-80 in particular.  Holy paladins are a tremendous pain in the ass to kill, despite several attempts to weaken them.  Prot paladins are almost as hilarious as prot warriors for getting 5-8 enemies whaling away on you and pissing them off.  Your 2006 paladin knowledge really should just be deleted. 

Hidden side benefit of making a DK: you'll rarely be grouped with one in random dungeons, since the finder tries to get distinct classes.       Also, if you happen to be semi-competent at tanking on one, people will think you are amazing, since about 80% of DK tanks are terrible.

[Riggswolfe]

Well I'm not really a tank type of guy. I don't think like a tank. I think like a DPSer/Soloer.

[Sjofn]

Yeah you need to take all your vanilla paladin prejudices and throw them away (except for maybe "paladin healing is boring," that's still true in my opinion  ). I think you would be pleasantly surprised by today's ret paladin.

[Arrrgh]

Well I'm not really a tank type of guy. I don't think like a tank. I think like a DPSer/Soloer.

If you have a tank and a healer you'll often get dungeon finder groups instantly. Pre 80 things can take longer, but at 80 tank queue times are roughly one second.

Pre 80 as a DPS you can get really long queue times, I'll grab my tank and take a guildie to an instance sometimes after they've been in the queue for over an hour.

I leveled my tank character mostly by tanking instances.

[Riggswolfe]

Well she wanted to reroll as a NE hunter so I made a druid. I like it much better than a shaman.

[Comstar]

I stopped playing a WoW many years ago, and never got past taking a look at SVT and running away screaming. Will coming back as a DPS class be worth it or is it still an issue?

[Rasix]

Base game to 60 is still the base game.  60-70 is still TBC.  70-80 in the future will still be WOLK.  

Up to 60 you still have shit loot that makes no sense combined with the same quests spread all over the fucking place (some places got better, like Dustwallow Marsh).  You just level faster now, get mounts earlier, and the classes are a lot better off than they used to be for just about everything.  

It's the same stuff that sucks, but it just sucks less from an actual gameplay mechanic and it's less of a hassle.

That all being said, if you've waited this long, might as well wait for Cat.  They get better at the whole quest based leveling thing every expansion.  If you come back now, it's just to get in position for the 80-85 content or you're really bored.  It's not worth  it for the nostalgia.. that's like being nostalgic for time spent in a body cast after falling down some stairs.  

edit: As for paladins.. my paladin is the only lvl 20+ character I've deleted.  The low level play is just beyond boring.

[Azazel]

hm. I've levelled a few characters to various points in the 1-60 game, all Alliance, though.

Beforew we stopped playing, my wife and I started Blood Elves, which were our first real hordies. Got them to 30, I think, mostly in BE land, but I believe we got them as far as Tarren Mill, I wanted to level up and do the horde-side quests to see how the other half live. Worth continuing before cata, or better to wait until after? (assuming we go back).

Also, do they still give you one of those penguin pets for merging your WoW account with your bnet one? 

[Riggswolfe]

I guess so since I have a Mr. Chilly Penguin pet and had no idea where it came from.

Oh, and my wife and I played about 8 hours tonight and we got to level 16. Not bad since she kept getting lost and I am having to relearn some stuff. That was also taking some time out to level up herbalism for her and skinning for me back in the NE starting area where everything was grey.

[Sheepherder]

Dude, you really need to be corrected on one point: Paladins rape face.  Even retribution does well compared to rogues and mages.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, Riggs you haven't played since Vanilla, so you don't really know what happened. Paladins were healbots with two worthless trees when you played. They got somewhat better in BC. They became real tanks, retribution got slightly less terrible, and so forth.

Then with the 3.0 patch just prior to and for months after the Lich King release, a wave of ludicrously overpowered invincible paladins (especially ret) raped the universe. RAPED THE UNIVERSE.

HOLY SHIT IT WAS SWEET.

Then we got nerfed back into the realm of sanity, but we're not in bad shape.

[Riggswolfe]

Yeah, when my wife is not playing I've been playing my Pally. It's not what I remember that's for sure. I seem to actually be able to kill things now. I'm specced in Retribution because I figured it'd be most fun for leveling/soloing.

Edit: I should clarify that all of my playtime so far is still in "classic" WOW. I was in Eastern Plaguelands farming Thorium to get my mining and engineering to 275.

[Vision]

Yeah, when my wife is not playing I've been playing my Pally. It's not what I remember that's for sure. I seem to actually be able to kill things now. I'm specced in Retribution because I figured it'd be most fun for leveling/soloing.

Edit: I should clarify that all of my playtime so far is still in "classic" WOW. I was in Eastern Plaguelands farming Thorium to get my mining and engineering to 275.

I would almost say if you are concerned, then dont worry about mining until you hit level cap. That is only if you aren't having fun doing it or would rather do something else. If not then forget what I just said.

[Rendakor]

Yeah, when my wife is not playing I've been playing my Pally. It's not what I remember that's for sure. I seem to actually be able to kill things now. I'm specced in Retribution because I figured it'd be most fun for leveling/soloing.

Edit: I should clarify that all of my playtime so far is still in "classic" WOW. I was in Eastern Plaguelands farming Thorium to get my mining and engineering to 275.

I'd honestly suggest speccing Prot to level, even if you're not going to tank, Prot does 95% of the damage that Ret does, and you're basically invincible. You can do normal quests in a single pull of 10+ mobs, and you can handle elite quests too with ease.

[Riggswolfe]

Yeah, when my wife is not playing I've been playing my Pally. It's not what I remember that's for sure. I seem to actually be able to kill things now. I'm specced in Retribution because I figured it'd be most fun for leveling/soloing.

Edit: I should clarify that all of my playtime so far is still in "classic" WOW. I was in Eastern Plaguelands farming Thorium to get my mining and engineering to 275.

I'd honestly suggest speccing Prot to level, even if you're not going to tank, Prot does 95% of the damage that Ret does, and you're basically invincible. You can do normal quests in a single pull of 10+ mobs, and you can handle elite quests too with ease.

Do you have any suggestions RE: A specific protection build?

[Rendakor]

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZV0xA0ugGsIufzE00p0M

This will work great leveling up, as well as if you decide to tank any dungeons up through LK heroics. Get everything in Prot except Guarded by the Light first, then go Ret until level 70. Spend your points at 70 and 71 on Guarded by the Light, then finish up the Ret stuff. You don't need GbtL before then, because you don't have Divine Plea yet. 

[Sheepherder]

Rendakor understates the difference in DPS, and more importantly, the difference in downtime.  Prot is a fun build, but it only comes into it's own if you're soloing 4+ mobs at once.

Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that Reckoning is a shitty talent and taking it makes you a bad person.

[Riggswolfe]

Rendakor understates the difference in DPS, and more importantly, the difference in downtime.  Prot is a fun build, but it only comes into it's own if you're soloing 4+ mobs at once.

Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that Reckoning is a shitty talent and taking it makes you a bad person.

Yeah, looking at that makes me think Stoicism might be a better choice. I'll consider this though I'd have to respec and I think I'm at 15g for it.

Edit: Oh and my wife and my druid character are at 21-22 now. We didn't play at all on Saturday and Sunday went much slower than Friday between me leading us to too low an area to quest in and her going "Oh! Herbs!" every five seconds and taking off to harvest them.

Edit2: So, Sheepherder, you're saying protection isn't the way to go for soloing unless you're fighting lots of mobs at once?


And in the irony department, my druid now has more gold than my Pally. His two profession skills are skinning and mining and he sells everything on the AH.

[Rendakor]

Sheepherder, are you implying that there is more downtime as Prot than Ret? Because I really don't see how. I also did mention that Prot works best by pulling tons of mobs, but how is that a bad thing?

I really don't get the reckoning hate; it's a solid dps increase, while Stoicism is only useful for PVP.

[Shrike]

Protection is great for leveling. My protection pally has done 1-80 with minimal frustrations.

Yeah, it's best when you gather up a dozen or so mobs to burn down. Singletons can get...tedious. Bad for mana regen, too.

Reckoning is the heat for grinding or PvP. Tanking...not so much. That's assuming you're a raid tank, though. My own prot pally has been a huge success in PvP, but we're talking the last two brackets. I suspect anything under the 59 bracket would suck hugely. A PvP prot talent build doesn't look much like a tanking build. Not if you expect to do well, anyway.