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

[Hellobolis]

Player power beyond gear you mean or?

Anyway there is prestige in having cosmetics while they are current. Most of the mounts and stuff loose value as soon as they arent current content.

what's your point? that this is unfair to "non solo specs" or something?

[Schizoide]

Yeah, mage is probably the second-worst class to level. Priest is definitely at the bottom although again, Shadowlands changes will help with that.

[Marrilaife]

The question is - what do you consider actually playing a character?

People have alts, sure, but what they actually do with them is the key point here. I have 50 characters at level cap, and on my main server I have one of every class, but I would still say that I only really play 1 character. I use my alts for mount farming and maybe for some gold farming here and there. Most of them never stepped into a dungeon, and for sure nothing beyond heroic dungeon level.

In the context of this thread that is about levelling? If you levelled a class then you "played" it even if you never touched it again at max level (cue heritage armor mules).

I would imagine most people have a "main", some class they mostly focus on, gear up, play m+ or pvp or raids, but there's been plenty of incentives in the past to level spare alts like class mounts in legion or allied races heritage armor in bfa. I would expect many more people having experience levelling multiple classes than playing any serious endgame on multiple classes (by serious I mean above world quests, world bosses, lfr, etc. content that is commonly done with undergeared alts).

[Beatman]

I never felt like there is any kind of gap between the specs when it comes to leveling. Maybe healers are slower, but I don't play heal specs.

[Popastique]

Click a button to respec and it's done. It is retail, not classic.

[Schizoide]

Nope. Priests suck at leveling in every spec. Mages are better, but even frost is still terrible.

Every other class is basically fine, although hunters and warlocks are clearly the best overall and all tanks are great when you can grab a bunch of mobs to AE down.

One easy fix would be to bring back bodyguards. They helped glass cannons a ton.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Assuming you have good gear from the past expansion, you can (usually) round up and AE down huge clumps of mobs as any spec, not just tanks.

I do always find it amusing when you see folks pulling one mob at a time, though. Seems mega slow!

[Schizoide]

For a couple levels until that gear goes obsolete, on many classes/specs, sure. Legion legendaries were particularly great until they turned off. I think you're forgetting just how weak characters leveling through BFA felt once they hit 116. That power drop was severe.

Anyway even with legendaries priests still sucked and mages weren't great either.

Incidentally, legion legendary effects are all disabled in patch 9.0. They won't work at lower levels or in timewalking either.

[Schizoide]

I did play my mage in 8.3, but I leveled it in 8.1.5, I believe. Why, were they greatly improved solo while leveling?

Again, not talking about your itemlvl 475 mage with maxed out corruptions etc. This is about leveling.

[ClassicPeon]

what's your point? that this is unfair to "non solo specs" or something?

Depends what you mean a solo spec vs a non solo spec is.

BUt Torghast could be a problem with this in mind yeah

[vian]

What's a "Non solo spec" in this current iteration? I have a hard time picturing a class/spec that can't just breeze through all of the leveling content,

[Omedon]

I have a hard time picturing a class/spec that can't just breeze through all of the leveling content,

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.

[ClassicPeon]

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.

All classes can have the same mount speed. Not sure what you mean

[Kaver]

Personally I never main a spec. I main a class.

[Marrilaife]

All classes can have the same mount speed. Not sure what you mean

I'd swear DK and Paladin have a passive that gives them extra?

[ClassicPeon]

I'd swear DK and Paladin have a passive that gives them extra?

You are absolutely right. I guess thats what the op meant by "non solo spec" then. Everyone who isnt a paladin or dk

[Zyrinx]

It helps if you quote the people you are answering

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For a lot of people cosmetics are important content.

Yeah Mage Tower was Legions endgame for me, and not a few others, based on our megathread back then.

[Swnem]

All specs can solo. They just vary in efficiency.

[Tacos87]

I've mained a hunter since vanilla but also always liked alts and usually end the expansions with all classes on max level.

I would say there's been a gradual decrease in pain for my non-hunter characters with a more dramatic shift around legion. Nowadays I feel it's fine whatever you play. For the few things you do need more people for, like world quest elites and such there is always other people around or the dungeon finder to help you but for the most part if you are up to speed gearwise you are fine on your own.

Sure on my hunter I never ever have to join a group and even undergeared I can deal with everything solo, but I feel it just doesn't matter in the same way anymore. Now if my undergeared mage is struggling I just take help from the group finder, earlier in the game's history I would just have to sit there and wait for someone to pop up or for a friend to take pity on me.

I haven't played the beta so I haven't done torghast but from my understanding it will not only be balances around roles but also specs so I expect/hope that it won't be a huge struggle there either.

[LordVargK]

There's a lot of hate for mage leveling and I get that. I used to think the same. Then I tried leveling as Arcane and just obliterated everything. Normal mobs get 1-2 shot, Elite mobs take longer, but since you can slow them and you have up to 3 blinks (with displacement) you can kite them incredibly efficient, while doing more DPS than any other class I've leveled. Sure, your AoE capabilities are limited by your survival. But for everything else Arcane is just amazing (and frost and fire are not).

OT:
Honestly, I level as Tank/Dps and switch to heal. Which I did not do in BfA 8.3 since having to maintain 2 gearsets for a DD spec to do visions and for a heal set for everything else was too tedious for me. Visions just suck for healers. Leveling does not. It's considerably slower but you can do it. Hopefully Torghast is tuned accordingly. Would actually be nice if it would work like the proving grounds, where healers get some NPCs and has to keep them alive through more and more difficult mechanics.