How do you main a "non solo spec" at the start of an expansion?

[Omedon]

I wanna be careful how I word this thread because I don't wanna come off as "are you INSANE" even though I often feel that when I, as a guy with 35 120s with all but one spec represented, notice the stark difference between how disparate the specs are in handling what I call the "personal game" in WoW. The questing, the overworld objectives, and soon the Torghasts and the Maw.

There's a saying that one of my fellow altoholic guildies and I come back to when we do a piece of "personal game" content that makes our warlock mains sweat a little. That saying is "and somewhere, someone is maining X, or hoping to" where X is one of a few classes or specs that I won't name directly but is clearly not a warlock doing "personal content" stuff on their own.

At the start of an expansion, we're all in the "personal content" tunnel, that includes tanks, hunters, warlocks... and glass cannons and healers. One of those categories will have a much easier time on their own purely by virtue of the fact that they are, in a trinity environment, "designed to get hit" while doing damage or have a pet to delegate that duty of taking damage to while the player does damage. The other category... is not.

So this question is pretty broadly aimed and I'm interested in knowing what the "non solo spec" mains do at the start of an expansion. Does it bother you that there is an entire subset of specs that are basically designed to handle this "personal content" better than you? Do you main these less solo-friendly specs because the type of player you are moves to trinity content ASAP? I have a friend who almost always wants to start with a healer and level in dungeons, but we all know that she'll have to do the "personal content" eventually.

In case I need to say it beforehand, yes, I accept that players vastly better than me will make the "non-solo specs" work better than my warlock main... but I mean... I keep up well enough at half the effort. Does that bug those highly skilled players? As someone keenly aware of "effortconomics," I can't justify leading an expansion with a spec like that.

So tell me, what tricks do you employ? Does it bug you that this disparity exists? Do you not care, are you X spec for life regardless? For me, I'd love to see some more parity so I can justify earlier use of more of my alts, but I just can't bring myself to dust off certain specs until, say, flight is unlocked.

Let's keep it respectful, I'd like to know your thoughts.

Thank you for reading

EDIT after a few pages of comments:

I feel it's important to point out that starting an expansion with a "non-solo spec" isn't just committing them to leveling content which, yes, is designed for everyone to be "good enough" at, but also the pre-flight life of daily undertakings. Yes, everyone is going to get from A to Z on the story content, but you can't tell me that a mage, a priest, a beastmaster and a blood DK have the remotely same experience traversing the pre-flight world and getting daily stuff done.

[Doffen]

I leveled up as Mage in BfA first. I don't care though, don't have any issues with it. Did level it first in Legion too. I have heard guildies that think its pain and some say it was almost impossible(man those guildies) but I guess that makes me understand where you are coming from. Some players do struggle more with such specs, but personally I don't have an issue with it.

Leveled all alone as Horde Mage too in BfA(guild is Alliance) Arcane, no mirror images. I felt the stat nerf for sure, but not as bad as some laid it out to be for them. But, we are different so there you go.

[fatgunn]

Pretty much every class can easily handle leveling, you just have to make slight adjustments to how you play.

• Mages might need to eat more, but you have conjure food.
• Locks and Hunters have pets to mitigate incoming damage.
• Warriors will make good use of healing from victory rush.
• Healers and other specs from healing classes(ret, enhance, ele....) will sprinkle in healing to keep themselves alive.
• Rogues have readily available CC.
• Tanks will tend to do bigger pulls and aoe stuff down.
• Druids, Paladins, Dks, and DHs do almost all of it.

You can't play a Priest the same as a Warlock and expect the same outcome, but every class can have a reasonable leveling experience if the player takes the time to play around that character's strengths and weaknesses.

[Razion]

Solo content is easier once you do trinity content as a non-solo optimal spec and get gear to trivialize the solo stuff. If you go into every new patch/expac with Mythic Raid gear from the last, the weaknesses a spec would have if they weren't even in blues sometimes aren't even visible. You can avoid a lot of headache being caught up, but you can also lose the new player perspective if you don't see it for long enough. I wonder how many people know what it's like on all specs in ilv320 gear in the Nyalotha patch? Probably worse than they imagine if they stick to one character in mythic raid gear from the last patch.

[cparle87]

Fatgunn nailed it. Don't forget if you're a hybrid that you do have heals, often part of your rotation, like feral's predatory swiftness and ret had I think a free instant word of glory after a killing blow, but that was forever ago.

[Saltysquidoon]

I feel like the thesis statement for this thread is wrong? Or at least not representative of how easy retail levelling is.

Every spec can blow through levelling half afk watching a tv show/youtube on your second monitor. Hell traditionally 'bad' levelling specs like healers are actually as good at levelling or even better than their dps counterparts (such as disc dabbing on shadow) these days.

[SirBeef]

I wanna be careful how I word this thread because I don't wanna come off as "are you INSANE" even though I often feel that when I, as a guy with 35 120s with all but one spec represented, notice the stark difference between how disparate the specs are in handling what I call the "personal game" in WoW. The questing, the overworld objectives, and soon the Torghasts and the Maw.

There's a saying that one of my fellow altoholic guildies and I come back to when we do a piece of "personal game" content that makes our warlock mains sweat a little. That saying is "and somewhere, someone is maining X, or hoping to" where X is one of a few classes or specs that I won't name directly but is clearly not a warlock doing "personal content" stuff on their own.

At the start of an expansion, we're all in the "personal content" tunnel, that includes tanks, hunters, warlocks... and glass cannons and healers. One of those categories will have a much easier time on their own purely by virtue of the fact that they are, in a trinity environment, "designed to get hit" while doing damage or have a pet to delegate that duty of taking damage to while the player does damage. The other category... is not.

So this question is pretty broadly aimed and I'm interested in knowing what the "non solo spec" mains do at the start of an expansion. Does it bother you that there is an entire subset of specs that are basically designed to handle this "personal content" better than you? Do you main these less solo-friendly specs because the type of player you are moves to trinity content ASAP? I have a friend who almost always wants to start with a healer and level in dungeons, but we all know that she'll have to do the "personal content" eventually.

In case I need to say it beforehand, yes, I accept that players vastly better than me will make the "non-solo specs" work better than my warlock main... but I mean... I keep up well enough at half the effort. Does that bug those highly skilled players? As someone keenly aware of "effortconomics," I can't justify leading an expansion with a spec like that.

So tell me, what tricks do you employ? Does it bug you that this disparity exists? Do you not care, are you X spec for life regardless? For me, I'd love to see some more parity so I can justify earlier use of more of my alts, but I just can't bring myself to dust off certain specs until, say, flight is unlocked.

Let's keep it respectful, I'd like to know your thoughts.

Thank you for reading

Pretty simple, you level as a spec you can solo while setting loot specialization to that spec that can't. That way you get the best of both worlds. Level up solo, while getting geared up on the non solo spec.

But seriously, you can solo all specs from 1-60.

[Short]

depending on the class/spec some solo content is generally easier than other regardless of level and/or gear.
however, the leveling content itself is fairly balanced. though some classes/specs might have more downtime than others, almost every class/spec has a play style that either avoids damage, mitigates damage and/or heals damage taken in some way, shape or form

ultimately the leveling experience will be different for everyone, but as far as that goes, it isn't the end game so players don't put to much thought/effort into it these days, and it doesn't require that much effort either to be fair.

solo content at max level however, now that's a whole other can of worms i ain't touching with a 10 feet pole.
that shits more crooked then Anna Paquin's smile.

[Marrilaife]

The only classes that I find annoying to level are mages and priests. Priests you can level as shadow until you start not being able to outheal the damage, then you can swap to disc, it's slow but steady. Mages I just don't play, so no idea tbh.

Shaman I level as ele and hard quests you have earth ele and fire ele and BL / hero to push through. Enhance is probably equally as viable, some people say even better, but ele allows you to use the same weapon for healing.

Monks are kinda squishy (WW) and brewmaster is mega slow to level, but WW with Xuen and SEF you can push through harder quests.

Rogues stealth around to skip unnecessary mobs, on necessary ones use stuns, crimson vial, evasion / riposte, you can't tank beefy rares in crap gear but rest is usually fine.

Warriors - fury has decent self healing, prot can absorb quite enough damage for most questing and has victory rush too.

Every other class is not worth mentioning because it's ez mode.

Oh and I don't play in warmode so no idea how classes fare in world pvp.

[arkanon]

I wanna be careful how I word this thread because I don't wanna come off as "are you INSANE" even though I often feel that when I, as a guy with 35 120s with all but one spec represented, notice the stark difference between how disparate the specs are in handling what I call the "personal game" in WoW. The questing, the overworld objectives, and soon the Torghasts and the Maw.

There's a saying that one of my fellow altoholic guildies and I come back to when we do a piece of "personal game" content that makes our warlock mains sweat a little. That saying is "and somewhere, someone is maining X, or hoping to" where X is one of a few classes or specs that I won't name directly but is clearly not a warlock doing "personal content" stuff on their own.

At the start of an expansion, we're all in the "personal content" tunnel, that includes tanks, hunters, warlocks... and glass cannons and healers. One of those categories will have a much easier time on their own purely by virtue of the fact that they are, in a trinity environment, "designed to get hit" while doing damage or have a pet to delegate that duty of taking damage to while the player does damage. The other category... is not.

So this question is pretty broadly aimed and I'm interested in knowing what the "non solo spec" mains do at the start of an expansion. Does it bother you that there is an entire subset of specs that are basically designed to handle this "personal content" better than you? Do you main these less solo-friendly specs because the type of player you are moves to trinity content ASAP? I have a friend who almost always wants to start with a healer and level in dungeons, but we all know that she'll have to do the "personal content" eventually.

In case I need to say it beforehand, yes, I accept that players vastly better than me will make the "non-solo specs" work better than my warlock main... but I mean... I keep up well enough at half the effort. Does that bug those highly skilled players? As someone keenly aware of "effortconomics," I can't justify leading an expansion with a spec like that.

So tell me, what tricks do you employ? Does it bug you that this disparity exists? Do you not care, are you X spec for life regardless? For me, I'd love to see some more parity so I can justify earlier use of more of my alts, but I just can't bring myself to dust off certain specs until, say, flight is unlocked.

Let's keep it respectful, I'd like to know your thoughts.

Thank you for reading

There really is very little difference overall between leveling as a tank or dps. Sure, some tanks can do large pulls and self heal through some of the damage, but their ST damage is usually pretty average when compared to a dps. And imo, there is even less difference between a class with a pet, and one without. Maybe i am missing something? Im not sure what you are actually trying to ask, maybe you could clarify?

- - - Updated - - -

The only classes that I find annoying to level are mages and priests. Priests you can level as shadow until you start not being able to outheal the damage, then you can swap to disc, it's slow but steady. Mages I just don't play, so no idea tbh.

With mages or any other range/nuke class, i find its all about positioning. Where a tank might rush straight in and just pull whatever comes to them, a glass canon should start from the outside of the area, and work their way in. You will be killing shit in 1-3 hits as a glass canon, so nothing should ever get to you, not even close, and you can swap from target to target just flatout ruining mobs.

When it comes to the elite mobs i find mage a bit tricky if you burn through all your cds, and the mob just brushes it off. Really its about saving your CDs for those tough group quests, and just popping everything and going balls to the wall.

But, i can say from experience with terribly geared mages and scaling content in BfA, that if you blow everything and they are still on 50%, you might be having a bad day. A couple of group quests had you taking down 2-4 elites at once, and that could be a little tough to manage if you are in questing greens - especially when nothing can be sheeped.

[oplawlz]

In modern wow there's almost no difference, with the exception of the few classes that are extremely good at solo play like DK or DH. I didn't notice any difficulty change at all between disc priest/frost mage/arms war/outlaw rogue/feral druid etc.

[arkanon]

In modern wow there's almost no difference, with the exception of the few classes that are extremely good at solo play like DK or DH. I didn't notice any difficulty change at all between disc priest/frost mage/arms war/outlaw rogue/feral druid etc.

I did notice SOME differences in how i preferred to approach a quest area - for example i was more comfortable charging in with cds up and pulling a huge pack of mobs on my pally/warrior than say my rogue or mage, but the quest would usually take about the same time all up.

[Niwes]

I wanna be careful how I word this thread because I don't wanna come off as "are you INSANE" even though I often feel that when I, as a guy with 35 120s with all but one spec represented, notice the stark difference between how disparate the specs are in handling what I call the "personal game" in WoW. The questing, the overworld objectives, and soon the Torghasts and the Maw.

There's a saying that one of my fellow altoholic guildies and I come back to when we do a piece of "personal game" content that makes our warlock mains sweat a little. That saying is "and somewhere, someone is maining X, or hoping to" where X is one of a few classes or specs that I won't name directly but is clearly not a warlock doing "personal content" stuff on their own.

At the start of an expansion, we're all in the "personal content" tunnel, that includes tanks, hunters, warlocks... and glass cannons and healers. One of those categories will have a much easier time on their own purely by virtue of the fact that they are, in a trinity environment, "designed to get hit" while doing damage or have a pet to delegate that duty of taking damage to while the player does damage. The other category... is not.

So this question is pretty broadly aimed and I'm interested in knowing what the "non solo spec" mains do at the start of an expansion. Does it bother you that there is an entire subset of specs that are basically designed to handle this "personal content" better than you? Do you main these less solo-friendly specs because the type of player you are moves to trinity content ASAP? I have a friend who almost always wants to start with a healer and level in dungeons, but we all know that she'll have to do the "personal content" eventually.

In case I need to say it beforehand, yes, I accept that players vastly better than me will make the "non-solo specs" work better than my warlock main... but I mean... I keep up well enough at half the effort. Does that bug those highly skilled players? As someone keenly aware of "effortconomics," I can't justify leading an expansion with a spec like that.

So tell me, what tricks do you employ? Does it bug you that this disparity exists? Do you not care, are you X spec for life regardless? For me, I'd love to see some more parity so I can justify earlier use of more of my alts, but I just can't bring myself to dust off certain specs until, say, flight is unlocked.

Let's keep it respectful, I'd like to know your thoughts.

Thank you for reading

my assumption is the following one:

Blizz stated a few years ago, that over 80% of their playerbase playing over 80% of their whole wow life/career just one single character. this means 80% of all players just play a one and only main char in their whole life. if this is true for the playerbase, this means, this must ofc also be true for most players of the mmoc community.

why do i mention this ?

i assume you will get a lot of answers here, telling you that they are super happy with their char and all is fine. and this is true, because every toon is viable for what you mentioned (open world etc).

the ppl that telling you this, would have to play all other classes first, to realize the difference. otherwise they can not share this point of view with you. and since 80% do not do this, this whole thread will be somewhat „filthy“ by default. i do not think you can gain that much out of it.

i can understand this, because i play since 15 years without interruption and i played every class besides DH and Monk to the max (not just max level, competitive high level stuff). i totally understand the difference between a mage and a hunter or lock, when it comes down to i.e. 2-3 mid/heavy mob fights.

the slight differences are the character niches. some fits better into open world stuff than others. but all are totally viable. example: the slight difference between a mage and a hunter/lock is, that if a mage would have a totally empty world where he can kite and blink around as he wants, he is exactly same good as a hunter looking at his tanking pet 5 yards away, while he bombs the mob. the key difference here is, that we normally not have a giant empty open field in open world content. so the hunter have that slight improvement to stand a bit away with his pet tanking down a mob, without much movement. while the mage has to carefully blink in a single line back and forth, to not pull other mobs.

the mage player that play a mage from day 1, have zero problems here and its all fine. but maybe he will state how easy (and maybe lame) a huntr is, if he ever switch his main to hunter and play more than only the mage class.

if you play a main for your whole life, you will be fine with it. and it IS fine, because all classes are viable for that content. you can not understand this slight differences, until you plaeyd them all. thereffore the answers in this thread, will not share your point of view.

its a simple natural problem and this problem make such a thread somewhat obsolete by definition/default.

[oplawlz]

I did notice SOME differences in how i preferred to approach a quest area - for example i was more comfortable charging in with cds up and pulling a huge pack of mobs on my pally/warrior than say my rogue or mage, but the quest would usually take about the same time all up.

Right, they certainly play differently, but I wouldn't call one harder than the other.

- - - Updated - - -

if you play a main for your whole life, you will be fine with it. you can not understand this slight differences, until you plaeyd them all. thereffore the answers in this thread, will not share your point of view.

its a simple natural problem and this problem make such a thread somewhat obsolete by definition/default.

I can say with some confidence that the people who frequent this website, on average, play far more than one character.

[arkanon]

Right, they certainly play differently, but I wouldn't call one harder than the other.

- - - Updated - - -



I can say with some confidence that the people who frequent this website, on average, play far more than one character.

Yeah, i think thats the point we are both making - obviously you approach a situation differently between an assassination rogue and a prot warrior, and each certainly have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither is overly different from the other.

My personal preference is blood dk - hes always pretty geared, and can usually just pull everything in site and aoe it all down - but omfg its painful when i have to kill a single elite. Easy, yes. But omfg it just takes so long and is so bloody boring (pun intended).

My experience tells me to play what i enjoy, and i will get to max level the fastest that way - enjoyment encourages me to keep playing, which ultimately gives me the best results. Blood dk is pretty straight forward, but it can become EXTREMELY repetitive and boring just aoeing pack after pack.

- - - Updated - - -

my assumption is the following one:

Blizz stated a few years ago, that over 80% of their playerbase playing over 80% of their whole wow life/career just one single character. this means 80% of all players just play a one and only main char in their whole life. if this is true for the playerbase, this means, this must ofc also be true for most players of the mmoc community.

I am absolutely stunned by this - and i would love to see a quote. Its not that i am saying you are wrong, or that blizzard is wrong, but that just doesnt seem possible - even the ULTRA casual friends i have try a few toons each expansion, usually to max level.

[Thetruth1400]

Does it bother you that there is an entire subset of specs that are basically designed to handle this "personal content" better than you?

No, because we can all switch specs. It's really that simple.

If you're having trouble as a holy Priest killing things fast, switch to shadow or disc. If you choose to stay and struggle, the fault is yours and yours alone.

[aceperson]

i think the big issue when it comes to less solo-friendly classes is the skill of the player. i will freely admit that i have played hunter for 10 years straight at this point with 12 alts (one of each other class) so i am most likely bias in this case but i don't normally have issues when it comes to world content unless i am not understanding something fundamental to a spec. really the only difference that playing a hunter gives me is the ability to solo psuedo world bosses earlier than other people but the classes that can't do that just group up and finish the world quest faster than i could on my own.

mages have kiting and shields and invisibility, warriors have heals, priests have heals, rogues have vanish and heals, monks have heals, demon hunters have heals and passive dodge in their rotation, shamans have heals and some of the most versatile kit in the game. throw on top that every class has some form of immunity/damage mitigation and it isn't a matter of how hard the world content is until you get the most powerful pieces of world content. and like i said before, you just group with other people for those quests and there are tons of people on at all hours when an expac is first out. by the time the game population starts to fall off, you should already have enough gear to handle those quests yourself.

[dez1216]

I just got into beta, and I didn't feel like setting up all my bars for shadow or disc after doing all the set up as holy when I character copied. I'm 475ilvl in that gear. I'm murdering leveling content in maybe 3 hits. I'm lvl 54 so far and I still haven't gained an upgrade from regular questing greens. I think people who choose to level as a healer or some such will be just fine. Especially if they did any content whatsoever on that toon in BFA. Once I'm at max level and stuff takes longer to kill, I'll just go shadow.

[Omedon]

I am absolutely stunned by this - and i would love to see a quote. Its not that i am saying you are wrong, or that blizzard is wrong, but that just doesnt seem possible - even the ULTRA casual friends i have try a few toons each expansion, usually to max level.

Yeah there's no way that quote about so large a majority being a one character player is recently accurate. That playstyle hasn't been encouraged since Legion launched. I'm sure there are some people that still play that way, but they're one of the minorities that make up WoW's "majority of minorities," they're not an overpowering majority.

[WowIsDead64]

...

Only thing, that offsets this problem for me - is dmg. If mob die fast enough, then non-solo specs don't have problems. But in other cases... I just don't like to play them. Classes like Priest and especially Mage - are my least favourite due to this problem. For example Mage should rely on mobility. But how can he rely on mobility, if respawn rate is way too high, so there is big risk of pulling more mobs when using abilities like Blink?