Most gimped questing/leveling/soloing specs

[HardCoder]

Wow, hasn't prot pally come a long way from the days of "pull the zone." Sure, now, you can pull the zone, but it'll take you a half hour to kill it.

I just don't like playing ret. For one thing, I hate keeping up short term buffs. For another, it's just like a half dozen buttons light up randomly, and very slowly. I get that ret is a great spec in the hands of someone who likes it. But protadin just doesn't do any solo DPS. It performs maybe half as well as blood DK. Maybe. Healadin might be okay except the AoE is gone. I just don't want to play ret. God. Dammit.

And I have a druid. I prefer keeping her speced resto and balance. Except balance is a profoundly annoying spec to play when you have mobs meleeing you because you can't do a damn thing except run in circles casting moonsunfire and holy shit does that get boring. Meanwhile, the best you can do with resto is cast a moonfire and go cat form. It works, it just works OMFG so slow. My druid is gimped unless I have a whole nuther set of agility gear, AND a spec I don't want.

Which is YOUR most annoyingly gimped spec?

[Riordrian]

i LOVE balance for daylies/lvling you just need to use some cc/slows (vortex and shrooms)
and the most gimped for me is elemental shaman but thats probably just me b/c i love enhance and melee in general but somehow i can´t lvl or quest more than 5 mins as ele without going enrage

[Felarion]

Fury on leveling is also pretty horrible. Funny thing is alot of people exp their warriors in this, while arms is 10x times faster. Generally most classes i leveling i compare to my warrior, which leveling in arms is really smooth and cool.

Rouge are hard in any spec for me.
Shamans are nightmare
Dk in frost are really smooth, same as warrior
Warlock in destro is mid-ground for me, not so bad with voidwalker.
Hunter is a cake, same as warrior and frost dk.
Paladin is same thing as rouge, slow as hell in retri if i compare it to arms warrior/frost dk.

[HardCoder]

My DK and pally are alts. I farmed up klaxxi and arch weapons for them, decked them out in crafted and AH gear. They're level 86-87 with ilevel 425-430 and 463/471 weapons.

The difference between blood DK and protadin, IT IS FUCKING HUGE.

Prot pally has I think one single target attack based on weapon damage and it's something like 150%. DK has of course nothing BUT attacks based on weapon damage. Now, neither of these matters when tanking because you have a billion vengeance. But if you have only 1-2k vengeance because you are kiting some rare around, it sure as shit matters, because if you aren't young, you'll fall asleep before it dies.

Single target my DK in blood is 20-25k (level 87 with a 471 agility 2H), and a lot more if I soak "avoidable" damage for vengeance.

My poor pally, I can't get much above 10k single target (level 86 with a 463 strength 1H). Good God does it take a long time to kill rares. Bear in mind this is the single target (prot spec) DPS I was used to with heirlooms and good leveling gear at level 80.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 03:25 AM ----------

Let's see, in other news, my demo warlock bank alt is doing just awesome (also 87). It's funny, the voidwalker pet does absolutely STUPID damage because of its reflective ability. But it's a class/spec with good AoE and self heals and utility and all that.

I just don't like questing so I am leveling my alts with rares, treasures, pet battles, and grinding random mobs. I will loremaster Pandaria one of these days but not right now.

[checking facts]

holy pally, for sure.

mobs die so slowly, and I'm yet to find one single AoE skill in that spellbook. you know when you get a pack of tiny mobs that die fast but hit hard, and you're supposed to AoE it? well, I'm single targeting each one of them -_-

[Nivena]

enhancement shaman pre cataclysm was a nightmare indeed: leveled as a noob with Robes of Arugal (+int); a staff from Wailing Caverns


Elemental Shaman doesn't look like fun to me too; especially on the lower levels.

[melzas]

Shamans are nightmare

Huh? Enhancment is probably one of the best leveling/solo play spec out there... no downtime, great selfhealing, insane burst, decent mobility. Aoe might not be so great, but that's not enough to call quest/soloing/leveling shaman experience a nightmare!

[Kilpi]

holy pally, for sure.

mobs die so slowly, and I'm yet to find one single AoE skill in that spellbook. you know when you get a pack of tiny mobs that die fast but hit hard, and you're supposed to AoE it? well, I'm single targeting each one of them -_-

Healing spec is not a leveling spec (unless doing dungeons).

[checking facts]

Healing spec is not a leveling spec (unless doing dungeons).

I'm leveling (by questing) with a healing spec, so it's a leveling spec to me

[Kheirn]

Huh? Enhancment is probably one of the best leveling/solo play spec out there... no downtime, great selfhealing, insane burst, decent mobility.
Aoe might not be so great, but that's not enough to call quest/soloing/leveling shaman experience a nightmare!

I've always loved my Enh samm still do, and leveling was really smooth and nice until I hit 89. I don't have particularly bad gear, running around with a 442 mainhand and average ilvl of 410-420, yet I hit like a wet noodle, I take tons of damage and my healing is very low.
Taking on two or three mobs can easily lead to death.
It's not a skill issue either, my gf said she experienced exactly the same thing (top-class enh since wotlk)

It has really put me off getting to 90, it's just so much more painful than any other class I leveled.

[Deleted]

Easiest to level is arcane mage.

[Terahertz]

i LOVE balance for daylies/lvling you just need to use some cc/slows (vortex and shrooms)
and the most gimped for me is elemental shaman but thats probably just me b/c i love enhance and melee in general but somehow i can´t lvl or quest more than 5 mins as ele without going enrage

I loved doing dailies on my balance druid. Mass pulling mobs while popping all CDs at once with double moon/sunfire was hilarious while mass-firing my starsurges. But without CDs it's really, really, REALLY boring and quite bad.

Though as frost DK on the other hand.. UGH <3! 200k-300k obliterates to the face. I was killing the isle of thunder mobs with more ease than I did the other daily mobs with less hp on my druid.

[Deleted]

Fury on leveling is also pretty horrible. Funny thing is alot of people exp their warriors in this, while arms is 10x times faster. Generally most classes i leveling i compare to my warrior, which leveling in arms is really smooth and cool.

Such an unbiased opinion by some arms war that cant play fury !

Btw .. don't listen to this guy and his wrong idea on how classes work.

Generally .. nowdays .. basically any class and spec is easy to lvl in.

Now we have to see what *easy* means.

Does it mean to lvl nicely without death problems , decent dps and utility ? They all are.
Does it mean to one shot or kill with 2 hits most any enemy ? Probably some are better than others. ( Rogues/Mages etc.. )
Does it mean that you can lvl without worrying about pvp on a pvp server ? Surely some are better than others but in lvling... anything used good is good.
Does it mean that you make 1-90 in 2 mins ? None can.

I guess this should be a clear answer for you mr. OP.

[Hanto]

Healing spec is not a leveling spec (unless doing dungeons).

D: I beg to differ. Disc priests are super efficient for quite a while as opposed to Shadow. (By that I mean they kill quicker)

Also, if you use a Holy paladin and spec them to kill (via glyphs) rather than heal, they do some incredible damage. My alt pally is 44 and I consistently top DPS meters in dungeons and kill stuff faster than my ret OS with just Holy Shock, Denounce spam and Word of Glory (+Harsh Words glyph) for a HP dump.

[Mortifie]

Sub rogues are really annoying to quest with because:
A. backstab, one of their most important abilities, requires you to be behind the target. It ends up really gimping your damage.
B. No party members to trigger honor among thieves
C. Too many things to juggle (rupture or garrote for 20% damage, SnD, recup for energy regen)

Im sure there are worse specs out there, it just bothers me because the theme of subtlety seems like it would be sweet for that kind of stuff but the mechanics put it far behind the other rogue specs.

[HardCoder]

Such an unbiased opinion by some arms war that cant play fury !

Btw .. don't listen to this guy and his wrong idea on how classes work.

Generally .. nowdays .. basically any class and spec is easy to lvl in.

Now we have to see what *easy* means.

Does it mean to lvl nicely without death problems , decent dps and utility ? They all are.
Does it mean to one shot or kill with 2 hits most any enemy ? Probably some are better than others. ( Rogues/Mages etc.. )
Does it mean that you can lvl without worrying about pvp on a pvp server ? Surely some are better than others but in lvling... anything used good is good.
Does it mean that you make 1-90 in 2 mins ? None can.

I guess this should be a clear answer for you mr. OP.

All your post tells me is that you are less experienced than I am.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 05:55 AM ----------

Sub rogues are really annoying to quest with because:

Yes, I leveled my rogue as sub in Wrath in the pre recup days. It was indeed super annoying. When I played PvE I think I mostly quested because dungeons sucked so much. Out in the world I sucked down a lot of food and used a lot of bandages. I think I got most of my XP out of BGs.

One day early in Cata I thought what the fuck rolled assassination and that was pretty much the end of sub for me. But OMG was rogue DPS terrible in bad Cata gear or what. YES IT WAS TERRIBLE but it was better than sub. (Which was fucked until 4.2 or thereabouts.)

Combat is probably a better leveling and soloing spec but I dunno, I like the way assassination works, so I stick with it.

[checking facts]

D: I beg to differ. Disc priests are super efficient for quite a while as opposed to Shadow. (By that I mean they kill quicker)

Also, if you use a Holy paladin and spec them to kill (via glyphs) rather than heal, they do some incredible damage. My alt pally is 44 and I consistently top DPS meters in dungeons and kill stuff faster than my ret OS with just Holy Shock, Denounce spam and Word of Glory (+Harsh Words glyph) for a HP dump.

as someone who's leveling a holy pally right now, I'll say this: it's not incredible damage. it's acceptable damage. my warlock in dark apotheosis did way more damage than my holy pally, and he had AoE.

blizz, why don't you give holy pallies an AoE attack?

[HardCoder]

D: I beg to differ. Disc priests are super efficient for quite a while as opposed to Shadow. (By that I mean they kill quicker)

If Blizzard had left the basic shadow play style alone I would probably quest with my priest as shadow. But the affliction-y version of shadow, I hate a whole bunch. I can't make myself play shadow again, yet.

However, disc is a fine leveling/soloing/questing spec these days. If my priest had a 10-15 sec interrupt it would be a GREAT spec.

[Azutael]

Any melee class, as I am not very experienced playing as a melee. Rogues in particular, for some reason I still do great as feral.. one would think rogue was easier after having played feral for so many years, though I am usually resto or balance.

[HardCoder]

blizz, why don't you give holy pallies an AoE attack?

Yes, that is super frustrating. I don't understand it. My priest is stuck with some fairly lame options -- Mind Sear (not great if you're not shadow) and Holy Nova (glyph and only moderate damage), but both of those are at least somewhat effective. In holy pally world, though, all you have is a stupid seal that tickles mobs to death. Well, not to death, because it doesn't tickle them very hard.

I don't know why all the pally specs didn't get to keep Consecration, at the very least.