I’ve done a lot of playing around on low level Warlocks over the last couple of months, and it’s been hard to find one that really felt right in all the ways that low level alts need to in order for me to keep playing them rather than simply deleting them before I really have a chance to see what they have to offer. Having played a Warlock off and on over the last couple of expansions, I was surprised by how much things felt…off at low levels across the different specs. We’ll get into that a bit later on in the article. I did eventually find a spec that really felt right to me, and we’ll discus that as well.

For now, let’s take a look at the Affliction Warlock, what makes them (and their DoT’s) tick, and how you can become a successful soul-sucking, DoT’chucking overlord of death.

Playing an Affliction Warlock
Before we get into details on spells and specs and all that business, I wanted to take a minute to talk a bit about some of the things that separates Warlocks from the other cloth-wearing caster classes, and also take a look at what’s so special about Affliction in particular.

Demons
The first thing that distinguishes the Warlock from all other casters is their demons. Frost Mages get to pretend to be cool, but when you get right down to it the Warlock is where it’s at. Warlocks get access to four permanent demons, though only one can be active at a time. They also get access to two temporary demons, but I won’t be covering those in detail in this post because you won’t have access to either one of them in the 1-30 level range. However, you do get access to all four of the permanent pets so we’ll take a look at those now:

Imp: The demon you start with provides some nice DPS to help you get started, and he’s ranged so he doesn’t take much damage (most of the time). His Firebolt attack provides a bit of burst damage which you’re otherwise lacking at low levels. In the long run, you won’t use this little guy all that often in any of the three Warlock specs, but he is useful early on if you’re looking for more damage. The main advantage to using the Imp is that he’s ranged, so he can more easily deal damage to multiple enemies that are spread out as opposed to any of the other demons who are mostly melee which have to run all over the place if the mobs are clustered together.

Voidwalker: Your second demon exists primarily to save your life. He’s a tanking demon, and he typically does a really good job of keeping your enemies focused on him rather than you. He can get a little squishy at times if you’re pulling too many mobs, but you have the tools you need to keep him alive. The Voidwalker is the default pet to use while leveling in PvE content because of his tanking abilities. In PvP he’s not all that useful, though his Disarm ability can save your life in PvP. While in dungeons, you should check with your tank and healer to see if they want to you use a different pet or if they’re fine with the Voidwalker. Until you get the Felhunter at level 30, this should probably be the demon that you focus on using outside of dungeons and PvP.

Succubus: The least used demon overall, the Succubus is a bit of a niche pet. She has great utility in PvP, and she does some decent damage as well. If you’re just looking at damage, the succubus is not for you. If you’re looking at PvP utility then she very well could be. Overall, she’ll be your least-used pet unless you just use her because you enjoy having her around.

Felhunter: Your final permanent demon is your strongest DPS option. The Felhunter is the default demon of choice for both Affliction and Destruction Warlocks. Demonology Warlocks get a special pet that deals more damage, but since you don’t have that luxury you’ll just have to settle for the coolest pet out there. You won’t have access to his special abilities in this level range since you get him right at the end of it, but he’ll still do solid damage for you. The one drawback that the Felhunter has is that he’s melee which means sometimes he’ll spend a lot of time running around from one target to another.

Killing Them Slowly: Affliction
There are two primary ways that you deal damage in WoW. The first and most common is direct damage, spells that deal their damage as soon as they hit. The second is damage over timer spells, or DoT’s, which hit the target and may or may not do damage right away but will deal damage at various time intervals throughout the duration of the spell. Affliction is the master of the second kind, focusing primarily on DoT’s to deal their damage.

DoT’s also come in two varieties: debuffs and channels. Debuffs are spells that hit the target and then apply a harmful debuff on them which will deal damage to them for however long the duration of the debuff is. Channeled spells deal damage in the same way, but instead of applying a debuff they instead deal their damage for the amount of time you’re able to channel it before the channel’s duration ends or your channeling is interrupted.

As an Affliction Warlock, you will be putting both of these types of DoT’s to good use. Your primary source of damage comes from debuffs, but you’ll be channeling plenty of spells as well. For the level 1-30 range, Corruption and Unstable Affliction are your main debuff DoT’s, while Drain Soul and Drain Life (Harvest Life) are your main channeled spells.

Affliction Mechanic: Soulburn & Soul Shards
Each Warlock spec has a special mechanic now that makes it stand out from the other two. For Affliction, this is called Soulburn, which allows you to burn a Soul Shard in order to boost the effect of certain spells. Soul Shards are generated by Drain Soul (1 Shard every second time it deals damage, or 3 Shards if the target dies while Drain Soul is active) and Corruption (5% chance for 1 Shard every time it deals damage). By default you can only have 3 Shards at once, and you can increase it to 4 with a glyph (see Talents and Glyphs below). When you want to use Soulburn you simply cast the Soulburn spell which triggers a buff, and then you cast the spell that you want to enhance and that’s it.

In this level range, Soulburn is kind of boring and fairly limited in usefulness because you don’t have access to all of the spells that it impacts. Here is a table of which spells are effected by your Soulburn at this level, and what benefit you gain from using it.

In this level range I most often use Soulburn for instant demon summons, and for increased healing from Drain Life/Harvest Life. Using it to make your Curse hit an area is cool too, especially if there are casters flinging big spells at you, but I tend to use that more in PvP than PvE. Health Funnel can go a long way towards keeping your pets alive if you get into a bind, though typically I just summon a new pet instead, but that’s just me.

Important Spells & Abilities
Here we’ll take a look at all of the spells that you have available to you, and talk a little bit about which ones you should really focus on (or avoid) and what they’re used for.

Spells for Levels 1-10

• Shadow Bolt (1): Sends a shadowy bolt at the enemy, causing Shadow damage.
• Summon Imp (1): Summons and Imp under the command of the Warlock. Imps cast ranged Firebolts. [Soulburn: Instant cast.]
• Corruption (3): Corrupts the target, causing Shadow damage over 18 seconds.
• Drain Life (6): Drains the life from the target, causing Shadow damage and restoring 2% of the caster’s total health ever 1 second. Lasts 6 seconds. [Soulburn: Healing increased by 50%.]
• Summon Voidwalker (8): Summons a Voidwalker under the command of the Warlock. Voidwalkers can withstand heavy punishment. [Soulburn: Instant cast.]
• Create Healthstone (9): Creates a Healthstone that can be used to instantly restore 20% of your maximum health. has 3 charges.
• Unstable Affliction (10): Shadow energy slowly destroys the target, causing Shadow damage over 14 seconds. If the Unstable Affliction is dispelled it will cause damage to the dispeller and silences them for 4 seconds.

Shadow Bolt is your only form of burst DPS right now as all of your other spells deal their damage over a period of time rather than up front. Shadow Bolt has a bit of a long cast time, but it hits really hard and is an excellent choice of spell for pulling new mobs into combat. For most mobs while you’re questing, your DoT’s are more than enough to deal with them so you won’t need to cast Shadow Bolt very often, but once you get into dungeons and PvP this becomes your primary filler spell unless you have a reason to substitute one of your channeled spells instead. Summon Imp is your first demon and he’s a decent source of DPS. Imp isn’t the best source of DPS, but he’s the one that I prefer for low levels because things tend to die quickly enough that using one of the others loses you DPS because of the time they spend running around from one target to another where the Imp just shoots off fireballs all day long. He’ll provide your party members with a Stamina buff while he’s active, too.

Corruption is your first DoT spell, and one that you’ll want to cast on every mob you ever have any intention whatsoever of killing. Drain Life is your first channeled spell, and it does a fair amount of damage while also restoring some life to you. This spell is replaced by the Harvest Life talent if you happen to take it at level 15, which is an AoE version of the same thing. This is your other primary option for a “filler spell” once you’ve already got your DoT’s established if you would rather do more immediate damage with this instead of waiting for the cast time of Shadow Bolt.

Summon Voidwalker is your second demon, and this is the one you’ll probably want to use most often while you’re questing. In dungeons you should probably switch to one of the other demons for DPS since Voidwalkers tend to piss off your tank by constantly taunting mobs. Create Healthstone gives you an item with 3 charges that can be used to heal yourself. You can also hand these out to party members, though doing so is a pain in the butt early on when you have to cast the spell to summon one, then initiate a trade, then cast to create another one and trade it to another person and so on. Generally, I don’t bother making these for other people unless they ask me to because it’s so tedious to make > trade > make > trade back and forth.

Unstable Affliction is your spec-specific DoT spell which has a cast time. You want to apply this to most of the enemies you face as well. Cast this and follow it up with an immediate Corruption cast and you can bet the target is going to be hurting. If you’re in heirlooms then this combination will be enough to kill most things on it’s own, but you can speed the process up by either adding a Shadow Bolt to the mix or utilizing one of your channeled draining spells like Drain Soul or Drain Life (Harvest Life) which we’ll talk about later.

Spells for Levels 11-20

• Health Funnel (12): Sacrifices 2% of your maximum health to restore 6% of your summoned demon[s maximum health every 1 second for 6 seconds. [Soulburn: Instantly restore 36% health and reduces damage taken by 30% for 10 seconds.]
• Fear (14): Strikes fear into the enemy, causing it to flee for up to 20 seconds.
• Life Tap (16): Sacrifices health to restore mana.
• Curse of Enfeeblement (17): Binds the target in demonic energy, reducing physical damage by 20% and increasing casting time of all spells by 50% (25% on player targets) for 30 seconds. Less effective on dungeon and raid bosses. you can have only one Curse active per target. [Soulburn: Your Curse of Enfeeblement will affect all enemies in a 15 yard radius around your target.]
• Soulstone (18): When cast on a living party or raid member, the soul of the target is stored and they will be able to resurrect upon death. If cast on a dead target, they are instantly resurrected. Targets resurrect with 60% health and 20% mana.
• Rain of Fire (18): Calls down a fiery rain to burn enemies in the area of effect for Fire damage over 8 seconds.
• Drain Soul (19): Drains the soul of the target, causing Shadow damage every 2 seconds and energizing one Soul Shard after it deals damage twice. If the target dies, three Soul Shards are energized. Lasts 12 seconds. If the target is at or below 20% health when Drain Soul deals damage, it deals 10% additional damage and causes all of your other periodic Affliction damage effects to instantly deal 100% of their normal periodic damage.
• Soulburn (19): Consumes a Soul Shard, unlocking the hidden power of your spells. Affects Summon Demon, Drain Life, Soul Swap, Seed of Corruption, Health Funnel, Curses and Demonic Circle: Teleport.
• Summon Succubus (20): Summons a Succubus under the command of the Warlock. Succubi are dangerous, close-range spellcasters. They seduce Humanoid creatures, preventing them from attacking. [Soulburn: Instant cast.]
• Summon Felsteed (20): Summons a Felsteed, which serves as a mount.

Health Funnel is for keeping your pet alive, and depending on how well you’re geared and how quickly you can kill things you’ll either rarely use this spell or use it all the time. In my experience, it’s usually easier to just summon a new demon than bother trying to heal one. Fear is your crowd control spell and one that you’ll want to be familiar with casting. By default, Fear causes the target to run away which can get you in trouble sometimes if they are “social mobs” meaning that if they get near other unfriendly targets they will pull them into the fight. You can use a glyph to make them tremble in place instead of running away if you’d like, but I prefer my fear targets to run because it’s more helpful in PvP.

Life Tap sacrifices a portion of your life to return mana. You shouldn’t have too much trouble with mana at this level, but in case you do find yourself running low then this is how you get it back. Just remember that your healer’s mana is more important than your own in most cases, so don’t expect your healer to constantly spend their mana to heal you just because you ran out of mana. Curse of Enfeeblement is your first curse, and the only one you’ll have for quite a while. It’s not a bad spell, but dungeon bosses and PvP are the only time you should bother using it since everything else should be dead before it matters. I wouldn’t have even included it in this list if there had been any other curse to choose from in this level range because it’s so unnecessary at this level.

Soulstone gives the target a free resurrection if they die during the duration. When you’re playing solo you might as well always cast this on yourself. If you’re in a dungeon then it’s best to use it the healer or maybe the tank first, but if you have the Mass Resurrection guild perk then you can keep it on yourself there as well. Rain of Fire is your first AoE spell and the damage it deals is pretty good. It can be expensive on the mana side, so keep that in mind before you go spamming this thing all over the place, but don’t be afraid to use it if you have more than 3 things that you can hit at the same time.

Drain Soul is another channeled spell, and it has an execute component to it which means it deals increased damage if the target is down to 20% or less of their health, and it generates Soul Shards. Soul Burn is how you consume those Soul Shards, as we discussed in the previous section.

Summon Succubus is your third demon, and one that you’ll probably use the least. She’s good for PvP, but not especially thrilling for PvE. I mention her only for the PvP aspect, honestly, as she’s otherwise not all that useful to you. Summon Felsteed is a mount rather than a normal spell, and in my opinion it’s one of the coolest looking mounts in the entire game. Since you get a mount at level 20, you also get your first level of riding skill for free, so you’ll save a couple of gold over other classes (except Paladins who also get a mount).

Spells for Levels 21-30

• Soul Harvest (27): You and your demon absorb nearby wandering souls, regenerating 2% health every second while out of combat. This effect is disabled in arenas.
• Summon Felhunter (30): Summons a Felhunter under the command of the Warlock. Felhunters are drawn to magic and heal themselves by consuming beneficial magic effects from enemies.

You get more than just two spells in this bracket, but most of the others aren’t worth mentioning.

Soul Harvest is a passive effect rather than an actual spell, which allows you to regenerate your health more quickly while you’re out of combat. I mention it here mostly because it means you’re going to have less downtime overall so it deserves to be noted that it’s there. Also, this was a spell during Cataclysm that restored health outside of combat when you channeled it, so if you’ve taken a break from playing a Warlock for a while and are just now getting back into it you might be wandering what happened to this spell.

Summon Felhunter gives you your final permanent demon, who also happens to be your most effective DPS demon. If you don’t need the extra protection offered by your Voidwalker, the Felhunter is the demon you should use by default. I covered the demons in a bit more detail in the previous section if you want to go back and reference that.

Leveling an Affliction Warlock
The Affliction spec is all about spreading DoT’s on all of your targets, and then using direct damage or utility spells to fill in the gaps until you need to reapply your DoT’s (assuming everything isn’t already dead). Let’s take a look at how a Warlock weaves the nether, shall we?

• Single Target: Shadow Bolt, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, {Filler Spell, see below}, Drain Soul
• Multi-Target: Unstable Affliction & Corruption on ALL TARGETS, Rain of Fire or Harvest Life (Talent)

Single Target If you’re facing mobs one at a time, whether they be questing mobs or dungeon bosses, you want to take advantage of the situation that you’re in. To do that you want to pull the mob with Shadow Bolt so that its cast time isn’t “wasted” time during combat. Follow that up by applying both of your DoT’s. I prefer to cast UA before Corr because the cast time is at least partially absorbed by the take it takes Shadow Bolt to travel from you to the target. There are two options for your Filler Spell: Drain Life and Shadow Bolt. If you’re wearing heirloom gear, then I suggest you use Drain Life because chances are you’re dealing enough damage with everything else that the target’s going to be dead before a Shadow Bolt could finish casting (unless it’s a boss fight). If you’re just wearing quest rewards, then I suggest you use Shadow Bolt as your filler instead so that you can get bigger bursts of damage in to help bring down the mobs.

Multi-Target For killing multiple targets, you want to establish your DoT’s on as many targets as possible and then utilize an AoE. Rain of Fire is a class spell so you’ll have access to it as long as you’re high enough level, while Harvest Life is a level 15 talent spell so you’ll only have access to it if that’s what you take as your first talent. I really like Harvest Life, so I take it in all of my Warlock specs at the moment; the damage is good, the healing is decent, and the mana cost is cheap. If you get into a bind and those multiple mobs are trying to eat your face, just Soul Burn and then Harvest Life and watch those healing numbers start flying by.

Talent Points

• Harvest Life: Drains the life from all enemies within 15 yards of the target, causing Shadow damage and restoring 3-4.5% of the caster’s total health every 1 sec for 6 seconds. [Soulburn: Healing increased by 33.3%.]
• Mortal Coil: Causes the enemy target to run in horror for 3 sec. The caster restores 15% of their maximum health.

Harvest Life replaces Drain Life when you take it, but it’s an AoE version of the spell. I most often use this as my filler spell when I’ve already got DoT’s established on my targets and I’m just waiting for them to get down to 20% health so that I can Drain Soul and finish them off. It only heals you for 33.3% instead of Drain Life’s 50%, but keep in mind you’re hitting multiple targets with it now too. If you prefer to level by facing single targets, then this probably isn’t the talent for you and I would recommend Dark Regeneration instead as Drain Life would be the more effective spell.

Mortal Coil is an instant Fear that also heals you for 15% of your max health making this a great tool both offensively and defensively. Personally, I actually use Shadowfury instead, because I’m real big on AoE as I’ve said before, and I also like to PvP so being able to stun multiple targets at once and do it instantly is more appealing to me. Which one you use is up to you, Mortal Coil is technically the “better” choice between the two, I just prefer to use Shadowfury myself.

Glyphs
Oddly, Affliction doesn’t have a whole lot of glyph choices that really thrill me. They don’t do much to help your damage output, at least not at this level, but they do at least offer a bit more survivability.

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Siphon Life: Your Corruption spell will heal you for 20% of the damage dealt.
• Glyph of Demon Training: Improves your demon’s special abilities: Your Imp’s Firebolt cast time is reduced by 50% and fires in bursts of three. Increases your Voidwalker’s total armor by 10%. Your Succubus’s Seduction ability also removes all damage over time effects from the target. When your Felhunter uses Devour Magic, you will also be healed for that amount. Increases your Felguard’s total health by 20%.
• Glyph of Soul Shards: Increases your maximum Soul Shards by 1.

The first major glyph that I suggest is Siphon Life which will cause your primary DoT to also heal you for 20% of its damage. That might not seem like much if you’re fighting one target at a time, but get Corruption up on 5-10 mobs at once and watch that healing roll in.

Demon Training makes your pets a bit more effective. Your Voidwalker will be able to tank better, your Succubus will be able to use her Seduction without having to worry about DoT’s breaking the target out early, and your Felhunter will be able to heal himself every time he eats an opponent’s buff.

Soul Shards increases your maximum Soul Shard count from 3 to 4. At this level you probably aren’t using Soulburn enough to justify having the three you get by default, but in case you just love burning those souls then this is the glyph for you.

Minor Glyphs

• Glyph of Nightmares: Your Felsteed and Dreadsteed can cross water while running and leave a trail of flames.
• Glyph of Health Funnel: Your Health Funnel instantly restores 15% of your demon’s health, but has a 10 sec. cooldown.
• Glyph of Unending Breath: Increases the swim speed of targets affected by your Unending Breath spell by 20%.

As usual in MoP, minor glyphs don’t really do a whole lot for you. Nightmares in my favorite since there actually are some times that being able to walk on water will save you time. You do have to be riding your Felsteed/Dreadsteed in order for it to work, but considering those are two of the coolest mounts in the game that’s not really a drawback.

Health Funnel is one you might consider if you do find that your demons are always taking a lot of damage. You can probably get more useful healing out of using Soulburn: Health Funnel than just this glyph, but the two together can put out a lot of healing in a short amount of time as well.

Unending Breath makes you swim faster, which is kind of cool. Most of the times that you’ll need to go underwater in today’s Azeroth though will provide you with a way to breath underwater by default and most of them also include an increase to movement speed. Not all of them do though, so it does still serve some purpose even if it’s small.

Gearing Up Your Affliction Warlock
Since you’re playing a caster, you’ll shoot for typical caster related stats. However, since your damage is based on DoT’s rather than direct damage, you’ll prioritize Haste as your secondary stat.

Intellect >= Spell Power > Haste > Crit

Since it’s something I’m known for, let me also give you a link to Cloth section of my Heirlooms Guide.

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When and if these new heirlooms do become available, I will update my existing guide, or write a new one to make sure that all of your heirloom needs are covered from which ones you need or want for which class, to which enchants you’ll want to put on them as well. Until they are confirmed to be in the actual patch, I’ll just stick with this guide to give you an idea of what’s there.

This post will show you all of the new heirlooms that were found in the 5.2 patch, and compare them to their existing items so that you can see how they compare and whether or not they might be on your list of things to do once they go live.

[Update: I found a blue post yesterday that confirms that these new upgraded heirlooms will in fact be in the 5.2 patch, as well as the new shields and off-hand item. The price for the upgraded versions of the heirlooms is the same as the current version of the heirloom plus you have to turn in that old heirloom. So, if you want a level 85 heirloom, they basically cost twice as much as the original because you have to turn in a copy of the original in order to get it.]

The Cost of New Heirlooms
We don’t have any idea right now what these will cost. The assumption is that they will cost Justice Points as the current heirlooms do, but we don’t know what the prices will be, whether they’ll be the same as the existing heirlooms, more expensive, or if they’ll get the current price and the old ones will get cheaper. We don’t know if the current heirlooms will no longer be offered, or if you’ll be able to trade them in for a discount on the new ones. There’s plenty of speculation out there, but so far I haven’t found anything to confirm, well…anything.

How much do these new heirlooms cost? We don’t know.
Will they cost gold, honor, justice points, or something else? We don’t know any of that, either.
Will we be able to trade in current ones for new ones? I doubt it.
Will the old ones magically turn into the new ones? I doubt that, too.

[Update: We do know the cost of these heirlooms now. The three brand new heirlooms are two shields (one tank, one caster) and an off-hand item, and each of those costs 2,175 Justice Points. The upgraded versions of the heirlooms which will scale to level 85 instead of level 80, require you to turn in the original heirloom and then also pay a number of Justice Points equal to the original cost of the item. So far their PvP heirlooms have not been confirmed, though they have been data mined. So we don't know for sure if you will be able to upgrade those or not. We also do not have any word on whether or not you will be able to get the upgraded versions through the Argent Tournament or the Darkmoon Fair.

My suspicion is that those will continue to provide ways to get the base heirloom, but that they will leave the upgrades as a way for people to dump their Justice Points. I could see the Darkmoon Fair maybe getting the upgrades, but I don't think the Tournament will since it's part of the level 80 world where the new DMF is a part of the level 85 world.

[Update: Confirmed that you can use the Darkmoon Faire to upgrade your heirlooms, the follow the same pattern of requiring you to turn in your old version plus pay the full cost of the original again. Also found that you cannot buy the new off-hand item via the Faire at this time, though it is available for Justice Points. The shields however, apparently never made the cut and are completely unavailable.]

Comparing New vs. Old
I was going to try to do a side-by-side comparison of the heirlooms to show you how the 5.2 heirlooms stood up to the current ones, but Wowhead apparently only has stats for the maximum level of the new heirlooms, which is 85. That makes doing a direct comparison impossible since the current versions only go up to level 80 and I can’t see what the level 80 stats are for the 5.2 version. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t make an educated guess, right?

So for this little test we’re going to look at the current heirloom Bow, the Charmed Ancient Bone Bow, and compare that to the 5.2 War-Torn Ancient Bone Bow.

CABB: 68 Agility, 68 Hit, 68 Crit (at level 80)
W-TABB: 267 Agility, 267 Hit, 267 Crit (at level 85)

That’s quite a difference, right?

The best way I could see to compare these was to take an existing heirloom that’s good until level 85 and compare its own stats at level 80 to itself to see what kind of percentage it comes out to. Since stats are added to items in different proportions based on the item slot in question, I decided to check multiple items as well.

Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak (Lv 80): 57 Stam, 38 Int, 25 Crit, 25 Haste
Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak (Lv 85): 224 Stam, 149 Int, 99 Crit, 99 Haste

Burnished Helm of Might: (Lv 80) 68 Str, 103 Stam, 47 Parry, 43 Expertise
Burnished Helm of Might: (Lv 85) 267 Str, 401 Stam, 183 Parry, 169 Expertise

Mystical Kilt of Elements (Lv 80): 103 Stam, 68 Int, 45 Spirit, 45 Crit
Mystical Kilt of Elements (Lv 85): 401 Stam, 267 Int, 178 Spirit, 178 Crit

The stats for the cloak range from 25.25% to 25.50% when you check what percentage the level 80 version is compared to the level 85. For the helm, stats range from 25.44% to 25.69%, and for the legs the range is 25.28% to 25.69%. If you average all of the stats for all three items, then you come up with 25.45%.

If you do the same calculation on the two different bows, you’ll see that the stats are each 25.47%. So the new items seem to follow more or less the same scaling format that the current items do, which means that the most likely result will be that the new heirlooms are exactly the same as the existing heirlooms with the exception that they scale up to level 85 instead of only level 80.

With that knowledge in mind, I think the most likely thing we’ll see in relation to the cost of these 5.2 heirlooms is that they will be the same cost as the existing heirlooms. And since the 5.2 version will cause all of the current ones to become redundant, I expect that they’ll make the level 80 versions simply no longer available for purchase. [Update: We now have confirmation on the costs. Upgraded heirlooms will require you to turn in the original heirloom, plus they will cost you the same amount of Justice Points as the original. So basically, these upgraded versions of the heirlooms cost twice as much as the original, and you lose the original if you upgrade it. As the items are completely separate, you will need to re-enchant them.]

I would love to see them add a way for us to upgrade our current heirlooms into these new versions, but Blizzard is all about making you play the game to get things in the game, so I’m leaning towards a whole new grind starting all over again. Since there’s only 5 levels worth of difference, I think that’s going to be their justification for making you pay the full price on the new ones. I would love to see reduced costs or other methods of obtaining heirlooms, but I think Blizzard feels pretty good with where they’re at right now and probably won’t bother changing it.

Some of the posts that I’ve seen people discussing these on, and even some of the comments on Wowhead suggest that they’ve finally given us a set of armor for plate-wearing casters (Holy Paladins), but that’s not the case. They do have an upgraded version of the plate shoulders that already exist in the game, but there is no chest, helm, or legs to go along with them. So if you want to level a Holy Paladin, you’ll still be rocking those mail heirlooms on into 5.2 and beyond for the foreseeable future.

Completely New Heirlooms
There are also a few brand new heirlooms that were found in 5.2′s data that do not currently have a related item in-game.

Weathered Observer’s Shield Caster Shield
Flamescarred Draconian Deflector Tanking Shield
Musty Tome of the Lost Caster Off-hand
Inherited Mark of Tyranny PvP Battlemaster’s Trinket

[Update: The only item from this list that made it into the game in 5.2 is the Musty Tome of the Lost. The shields did not make it in, nor did the PvP trinket.]

The first two items are shields, but the PTR database on Wowhead doesn’t list any stats on them at all. If you look at the original items that these are based on, which all heirlooms are, the Observer’s Shield was for casters (spirit and intellect) and the Draconian Deflector was for tanks (dodge). The Musty Tome of the Lost is a caster off-hand that gives Stamina, Intellect, and Haste.

The fourth item is a PvP trinket, but not the kind that breaks crowd control effects. Instead, it increases your maximum health for a time. This will allow you to pair it up with the current PvP heirloom trinkets, or the more improved 5.2 versions so that you can have both trinkets providing you with a boost to your PvP stats. [Side Note: Even the 5.2 version of the PvP trinkets that break CC effects still have a 5 minute cooldown.] [Update: None of the Honor heirlooms have been confirmed yet on the 5.2 PTR. So the two shields and the off-hand have been confirmed, but the PvP trinket has not.]

Another Look at Rings
We first found out about these rings when information was datamined from the 4.3 patch and we started learning more about the Darkmoon Faire. We still haven’t seen them introduced to the game yet, but that’s the same time we also found out about the heirloom legs that were only recently introduced.

Antique Myrmidon’s Signet: Strength, Stamina, Hit, Crit, +5% Exp
Burnished Dark Iron Ring: Strength, Stamina, Dodge, Expertise, +5% Exp
Gleaming Seal of the Archmagus: Stamina, Intellect, Crit, Haste, +5% Exp
Ornate Band of Accuria: Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste, +5% Exp

[Update: As of 5.2, these rings are still not in the game.]

The first ring will be for Strength DPS classes, the second for Strength Tanks (possibly all tanks), the third for DPS and Healing Casters alike, and the last one for Agility DPS classes and possibly Agility Tanks. Also, note that these rings are all unique-equip which means you can’t wear two of the same ring. So melee DPS will likely wear the main ring along with the Strength or Agility DPS rings (whichever isn’t their primary one), Tanks will use the tank ring along with either the Strength or Agility DPS ring that’s appropriate for their class, and casters will pair the Archmagus ring with either the Strength or Agility DPS ring depending on whether Hit or Haste is more important to them.

I’d like to tell you that leveling up as a Frost Death Knight is a hard thing to do, but then I would be lying. You see, Frost Death Knights have this thing called a God Complex where they think they can kill whoever they want to without harm or repercussion to themselves, all the loot belongs to them, their DPS is through the roof putting everyone else to shame, and so on. The bad news is, occasionally that will come back to bite you in the butt and score you a trip to the spirit healer. The good news is, that whole God Complex thing started because the majority of it is actually true.

Enough with the intro, let’s take a look at how to go about leveling and playing a Frost Death Knight.

Playing a Frost Death Knight
The Frost DK is a powerhouse of AoE burst damage. From the time you pick up your first sword and choose your spec, you’re going to be destroying everything that gets in your way. Your playstyle will evolve a bit as you gain more and more levels, but the power that you hold in your AoE means you will be able to go through quests at incredible speed, and in areas where mobs are close enough together you can kill enough of them in a short enough amount of time that you can earn more experience from that than you can questing. With the right selection of talents and glyphs you will also be able to take on groups of mobs that are higher level than you and still end the fight at, or close to, full health.

Now, just because your AoE damage is so fantastic doesn’t mean that you can’t also deal out some serious pain against single mobs. You also have a chance to proc guaranteed critical hits from two of your hardest hitting abilities, and those procs are incredibly frequent. We’ll get into rotations for AoE and solo a bit further down in the article, but first let’s get a little bit better understanding of how the Death Knight class actually works.

Presences

• Frost Presence (55): Strengthens you with the presence of Frost, increasing Runic Power generation by 20%, and reducing the duration of effects that remove control of your character by 20%.
• Blood Presence (57): You assume the presence of Blood, increasing Stamina by 25% and base armor by 55%, and reducing damage taken by 10%. Threat generation is also significantly increased.
• Unholy Presence (70): You are infused with unholy fury, increasing attack speed and rune regeneration by 10%, and movement speed by 15%.

Death Knights have three Presences to choose from, and can have only one active at any given time. You’ll start off with only Frost Presence, and after a few levels you’ll add Blood Presence. Frost is a DPS stance, where Blood is for tanking. At level 70 you’ll get access to the last one, Unholy which is another DPS stance.

Blood Presence is one you should typically ignore unless you’re in a group situation and the tank dies. With your AoE capabilities, you can lay down some serious threat. Blood also has some benefit in PvP situations, and if you’re fighting hard hitting mobs then you might want to consider it as well. In my journey to level 75 (I’m currently 81) I’ve been in Blood Presence for a grand total of about 5 minutes, and even then only because I was carrying a flag in WSG.

When you get to end game content, you will want to run Frost Presence at all times as that’s simply the best method of you increasing your DPS. However, while you’re leveling you may find that Unholy is more beneficial for allowing your Runes to come off of cooldown faster because you can front-load your DPS so much with Howling Blast and Blood Boil that you don’t need to bother with other spells. So as far as leveling is concerned, I suggest you try out both Frost and Unholy and use the one you feel benefits you more. Personally, I tend to lean more towards Unholy for leveling, but I’m an AoE grinding fanatic so it suits my playstyle better.

Resource System: Runes and Runic Power
Death Knights operate on a dual-resource system, where using one builds up the other. They aren’t a fully integrated pair of resources though, as using the second does not restore the first, but it’s important to know what they are and how they work so we’ll take a look at them in a little more detail here.

Runes are your first, and primary resource. You have 2 Blood Runes, 2 Frost Runes, and 2 Unholy Runes as a Death Knight. Your spells all have certain requirements to cast them, with most costing 1 of a particular type of rune, and some requiring multiple runes but usually of different types as opposed to say, 2 Frost, it will require 1 Frost and 1 Unholy. Now, as Frost your Blood Runes are converted into what are called Death Runes which are basically wildcard runes that count as any type of Rune. So if you wanted to cast four spells in a row that cost 1 Frost Rune, then you could do so because your Death Runes count as Frost (and Blood, and Unholy).

When you use a rune it switches from being an Active rune to a Regenerating rune, meaning that it’s currently unavailable, but once it’s finished regenerating you’ll be able use it again. If you use up the other rune of that same type before the first rune is finished regenerating, then the newly-used rune goes into a state of Depletion, which means it’s been completely consumed and will not begin the regeneration stage until the first rune goes from regen to active.

I know that’s going to be confusing if you aren’t familiar with the DK class yet, so let’s look at an example: You start the fight with your runes at 2Death/2Frost/2Unholy all Active. You pull with Howling Blast (1F) and follow it with a Plague Strike (1U). This means you’ll have 2 Active Death runes because you haven’t used either, 1 Active Frost and 1 Regenerating Frost because you’ve used only 1, and 1 Active and 1 Regenerating Unholy because you’ve used only one of those as well. If you then cast Howling Blast (1F) and Blood Boil (1D) then your runes will be: 1 Active and 1 Regenerating Death because Blood Boil takes 1Blood which you don’t have so it uses Death, 1 Regenerating and 1 Depleted Frost because you’ve used both, and 1 Active and 1 Regenerating Unholy.

The Regeneration process takes 10 seconds by default, but your Haste increases the speed of regeneration, as does Unholy Presence (10%, so basically 1 second off). So once a rune is used and starts to regen there will be a 10 second count before it becomes active again, and if you use the other rune of that same type before the regeneration is finished, then the second rune stays in depleted status until the first regen is finished. There are all kinds of addons that you can use to monitor runes if you struggle with them. Unlike Mana, being in or out of combat has no effect on how quickly your runes regenerate.

One thing to note about Death Runes is that they are consumed only if you do not otherwise have an active rune of the necessary type available. That means, if you cast Howling Blast and you have a Frost Rune available, it’s going to consume the Frost Rune even if you have both Death Runes available. it always prioritizes the actual rune required to cast the spell first, and then uses Death Runes only if all of the others have already been consumed.

Runic Power is the second resource, and you build it by using Runes. Any time you use a rune, you gain 10 Runic Power, pretty simple. There are some abilities that generate Runic Power without costing any runes, such as Horn of Winter, and there are other abilities that grant you additional Runic Power beyond just 10. You start with 0 by default, and you build it up to a maximum of 100 as you spend your runes or cast the other abilities which grant Runic Power.

Also, if you decide to use Frost Presence, you’ll generate 10% extra Runic Power. Not that that’s a whole lot, really, but it certainly adds up over time.

As Frost, you’ll spend the vast majority of your Runic Power on Frost Strike as it’s one of your primary single-target DPS attacks. You might spend a bit in Death Coil as well, but unless you pick the talents and/or glyphs that allow you to use Death Coil for healing you probably won’t have much use for that spell beyond finishing off mobs that run away from you when they have only a sliver of health left.

Diseases

• Frost Fever: A disease dealing Frost damage every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. Caused by Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Chains of Ice, or other spells.
• Blood Plague: A disease dealing Shadow damage every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. Caused by Plague Strike and other abilities.

For the most part, the majority of your damage is going to be dealt directly rather than over-time, but diseases are a key part of your DPS not because of the damage that they do themselves, but because of how your other spells interact with them. For example, Obliterate is a single-target attack that deals massive damage on its own, but it gets a 12.5% damage increase for each of your active diseases on the target, and Blood Boil is an AoE attack that deals 50% extra damage to targets that have either of your diseases on them. As you begin to progress towards end game and find more mobs that can survive beyond your initial burst damage, disease damage will play a larger role in your overall DPS. From 55-75 though, you will more often than not kill your targets before your diseases manage to deal even half of their total damage.

Runeforging
Runeforging is a unique class ability that allows you to basically enchant your weapon. A Runeforging counts as an enchant, in fact, so it’s important to know what these do so that you can decide whether you want to utilize a runeforge or an enchant. Applying a runeforge to a weapon requires you to be near a rune forge, so you will need to either use a Death Gate to return to Ebon Hold to apply it, use the one in north-west Ice Crown, or find one of the few others scattered around the world now. Not that it’s a big deal since you have access to Death Gate, it’s just something to be aware of.

• Rune of Cinderglacier (55): Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to increase the damage by 20% for your next 2 attacks that deal Frost or Shadow damage.
• Rune of Razorice (55): Affixes your weapon with a rune that causes 2% extra weapon damage as Frost damage and increases enemies’ vulnerability to your Frost attacks.
• Rune of Spellbreaking (57): Affixes your one-handed rune weapon with a rune that deflects 2% of all spell damage and reduces the duration of Silence effects by 50% (not cumulative with additional Silence duration reduction).
• Rune of Spellshattering (57): Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that deflects 4% of all spell damage and reduces the duration of Silence effects by 50%.
• Rune of Lichbane (60): Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that adds 2% extra weapon damage as Fire damage or 4% versus Undead targets.
• Rune of Swordbreaking (63): Affixes your one-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 2% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%.
• Rune of Swordshattering (63):Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 4% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%.
• Rune of the Fallen Crusader (70): Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 15% for 15 seconds.
• Rune of Nerubian Carapace (72): Affixes your one-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Armor by 2% and total Stamina by 1%.
• Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle (72): Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Armor by 4% and total Stamina by 2%.

These are all of the runeforgings that currently exist in the game, and you’ll have access to all of them within the scope of this guide. If you’re going to wield a two-handed weapon, then you want Rune of the Fallen Champion. If you are going to dual wield instead, then you want Razorice on your main-hand weapon, and Rune of the Fallen Champion on your off-hand.

Until you get to level 80 and unlock your Mastery perk, there’s not much benefit at all to using two weapons instead of one, so I suggest you stick to using a two-hander until you reach level 80 and then figure out which you prefer more.

Important Spells & Abilities
All numbers below are taken from Wowhead’s database, and those with a level slider were set to 75, the max for this specific guide. Numbers in parenthesis are the level at which you gain access to the spell or ability.

Since DK’s start at level 55, they have a lot of spells dumped on them in a short amount of time, so these lists of spells are going to be long even though we’re only looking at a 20 level spread. So sit back, enjoy the ride, and prepare for information overload.

Attack Spells for Levels 55-75

• Icy Touch (55): Chills the target for Frost damage and infects them with Frost Fever, a disease that deals periodic Frost damage for 30 seconds.
• Plague Strike (55): A vicious strike that deals 100% weapon damage plus 309 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time.
• Frost Strike (spec): Instantly strike the enemy, causing 105% weapon damage as Frost damage.
• Howling Blast (spec): Blast the target with a frigid wind, dealing Frost damage to that foe, and Frost damage to all other enemies within 10 yards, infecting all targets with Frost Fever.
• Death Coil (55): Fire a blast of unholy energy, causing Shadow damage to an enemy target or healing damage on a friendly Undead target.
• Obliterate (61): A brutal instant attack that deals 230% weapon damage. Total damage is increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target.
• Death Strike (56): Focuses dark power into a strike that deals 185% weapon damage plus 331 to an enemy and heals you for 20% of the damage you have sustained from non-player sources during the preceding 5 seconds (minimum of at least 7% of your maximum health). This attack cannot be parried.
• Blood Boil (58): Boils the blood of all enemies within 10 yards, dealing 2304 to 2816 Shadow damage. Deals 50% additional damage to targets infected with Blood Plague or Frost Fever.
• Death and Decay (60): Corrupts the ground targeted by the Death Knight, causing Shadow damage every second to targets that remain in the area for 10 seconds.

Icy Touch is the typical method for Death Knights to apply their Frost Fever disease. However, as Frost, you have access to Howling Blast which does the exact same thing but deals even more damage and deals its damage to all targets in an area. As such, you won’t be casting Icy Touch as Frost because it has the exact same cost as Howling Blast and is inferior in almost every way.

Plague Strike is your method of applying the Blood Plague disease, and until you get a better method around level 80, you’ll be using this spell a lot to apply that disease and beef up your other attacks. Frost Strike is your primary Runic Power dump, it’s single target only but since there’s no AoE spell that uses Runic Power it doesn’t really matter. The spell does good damage, and you’ll get a passive proc pretty early on that will guarantee this baby crits when you use it so it’s a great skill.

Obliterate is your hardest hitting single-target ability, and at level 70 it will be your ticket to free Howling Blast casts. Death Coil won’t be used very often unless you’re fighting a lot of caster mobs or need to stay away from a boss’s big attack or something. You can take talents and glyphs that turn this into a healing spell, but whether or not you use those is up to you.

Death Strike is already a pretty decent attack on it’s own because it can heal you, but when you combine it with a glyph (discussed near the end of this article) you’ll be able to cast this one for free every time you kill something which will make you an incredibly durable and efficient killing machine. Blood Boil is your second source of AoE damage, and it actually hits even harder than Howling Blast does. It is truly a fantastic AoE attack, and it packs one heck of a punch even at level 55.

Death and Decay is last on the list, and it deals some pretty solid damage. It does come with a 30 second cooldown which means you won’t be using it for every fight unless you’re taking breaks in between to let it cooldown. But, if you’re fighting things in a dungeon particularly since health pools will be larger, then you want to cast this as often as it comes off of cooldown. In terms of AoE, there’s not much else you’re going to use Unholy runes on once your diseases are established, so you might as well get some more AoE damage out of it.

Buffs & Procs for Levels 55-75
Note, this list does not include Presences, which were discussed in the Playing a DK section up above.

• Blood of the North (spec): Permanently transforms your Blood Runes into Death Runes. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost, or Unholy Rune.
• Icy Talons (spec): Your melee attack speed is increased by 20%.
• Plate Specialization: Increases your Strength by 5% while wearing only Plate armor.
• Killing Machine (63): Your autoattacks have a chance to grant a 100% critical strike bonus to your next Obliterate or Frost Strike.
• Improved Frost Presence (65): While in Frost Presence, your Frost Strike ability costs 15 less Runic Power.
• Brittle Bones (66): Your Frost Fever also applies the Physical Vulnerability effect (target takes 4% additional physical damage).
• Pillar of Frost (68): Calls upon the power of Frost to increase your Strength by 20%. Icy crystals hang heavy upon the DK’s body, providing immunity against external movement such as knockbacks. Lasts 20 seconds.
• Rime (70): Your Obliterate has a 45% chance to cause your next Howling Blast or Icy Touch to consume no runes.
• Might of the Frozen Wastes (74): When wielding a tow-handed weapon, your Obliterate deals 40% more damage, and all melee attacks deal an additional 10% damage.
• Threat of Thassarian (74): When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, and Frost Strikes also deal damage with your off-hand weapon, and your Frost Strike damage is increased by 40%.

Most of this list is very self explanatory, so I won’t bother talking about everything.

Killing Machine is your ticket to free crits when you cast Obliterate or Frost Strike. You’ll typically want to use these on Obliterate if you have the Runes available to cast it, but if you don’t have the runes then go ahead and spend it on Frost Strike. After you hit level 80 your weapon choice will determine whether or not Frost Strike is better than Obliterate of Killing Machine procs, but we’ll get into that in the next guide. Improved Frost Presence reducing the Runic Power cost of Frost Strike means you can deal a lot more damage to a single target than if you were in Unholy Presence. This is why I suggest Unholy Presence for AoE situations and Frost Presence for boss fights.

Pillar of Frost is a buff that you definitely want to be familiar with. Immunity to knockbacks isn’t that big of a deal in the PvE world, but you might want to keep that in mind if you enjoy PvP. The real benefit is from the 20% Strength buff, and the fact that it only has a 1 minute cooldown so you can use it quite often.

When you get access to Rime, you finally get a reason to consider changing up your playstyle a bit. Obliterate costs 2 Runes to cast, and it hits only one target which isn’t always ideal when you’re facing multiple mobs at once. However, Rime gives you a chance for Obliterate to proc a Rune-free Howling Blast cast, which means you can get even more AoE damage thrown in there. Obliterate is already a great spell that deals powerful damage, but this just gives you a little bonus incentive to cast it, regardless of your situation.

At level 74 you get both Might of the Frozen Wastes and Threat of Thassarian. The first gives you a 40% damage increase to Obliterate along with a 10% damage increase to melee attacks in general if you’re wielding a two-handed weapon, which is why wielding a two-handed weapon prioritizes Obliterate for Killing Machine procs. The second increases the damage of your melee attacks by adding damage from your off-hand weapon as well, and it also boosts the damage of Frost Strike by 40% when you’re dual-wielding, and that’s why you prioritize Frost Strike for Killing Machine procs when you’re dual wielding instead.

Utility Spells for Levels 55-75

• Death Grip (55): Harness the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter, drawing the target toward the Death Knight and forcing the enemy to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds.
• Death Gate (58*): Opens a gate which the Death Knight can use to return to Ebon Hold.
• Pestilence (56): Spreads existing Blood Plague and Frost Fever infections from your target to all other enemies within 10 yards.
• Raise Dead (56): Raises a ghoul to fight by your side. You can have a maximum of one ghoul at a time. Lasts 1 minute.
• Mind Freeze (57): Smash the target’s mind with cold, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds.
• Chains of Ice (58): Shackles the target with frozen chains, reducing movement speed by 60% for 8 seconds. Also infects the target with Frost Fever.
• Strangulate (58): Shadowy tendrils constrict the enemy’s throat, silencing them for 5 seconds. Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 seconds.
• Path of Frost (61): Your freezing aura creates ice beneath your feet, allowing party or raid members within 50 yards to walk on water for 10 minutes. Works while mounted, but being attacked or receiving damage will cancel the effect.
• Icebound Fortitude (62): The Death Knight freezes his blood to become immune to stun effects and reduce all damage taken by 20% for 12 seconds.
• Horn of Winter (65): The Death Knight blows the Horn of Winter, which generates 10 Runic Power and increases attack power of all party and raid members within 100 yards by 10%. Lasts 5 minutes.
• Anti-Magic Shell (68): Surrounds the Death Knight in an Anti-Magic Shell, absorbing 75% of damage dealt by harmful spells (up to a max of 50% of the DK’s health) and preventing application of harmful magical effects. Damage absorbed generates Runic Power. Lasts 5 seconds.
• Control Undead (69): Dominates the target undead creature, forcing it to do your bidding. While controlled, the time between the undead minion’s attacks is increased by 30% and its casting speed is slowed by 20%. Lasts up to 5 minutes.
• Raise Ally (72): Pours dark energy into the dead target, reuniting spirit and body to allow the target to reenter battle with 60% health and 20% mana.
• Empower Rune Weapon (75): Empower your rune weapon, immediately activating all your runes and generating 25 Runic Power.

I’ve gone ahead and listed all of the utility spells you get in this level range, but I’m only going to discuss the ones that are particularly important.

Death Grip is important because you’re all about dealing damage to things, right? Well, the best way to deal damage to things is to make sure they’re close enough to actually get hit! With this spell you can pull an enemy to you, which means no more pesky caster mobs nuking your face from a distance. It’s also good in dungeons for peeling mobs off of your healer, or in PvP for all sorts of things. Death Gate mostly gets mentioned because that’s your easiest way to access a Runeforge when you get a new weapon and need to enchant it.

Pestilence is how you spread diseases from one target to every other target within range. Personally, I use a Tier 1 talent that adds Pestilence’s ability to my Blood Boil which means I can spread my diseases while also dealing AoE damage so I’m not “wasting” runes on casting this when I can do the exact same thing and also kick the crap out of things at the same time. Raise Dead gives you a ghoul minion for 1 minute which can help you with DPS, but is most useful if you invest in the Death Pact talent which lets you drain 50% of your ghoul’s life to heal yourself for 50% of your maximum health. He lasts for 1 minute and it has a 2 minute cooldown, so you might as well pull this little bugger out whenever you get the chance for extra damage or just to have things beat on something other than you for a minute.

Mind Freeze is your melee-range interrupt/silence, and Strangulate is your ranged interrupt/silence. Chains of Ice will rarely be useful in PvE, it’s primarily a PvP spell in my opinion. Path of Frost allows you to walk on water, which is great for fishing. You can also use a glyph that reduces your fall damage while this spell is active.

Icebound Fortitude reduces the damage you take by 20% for 12 seconds, so it’s a nice survival tool and can come in pretty handy on large AoE pulls. Anti-Magic Shell is another defensive cooldown, this one reducing spell damage you take by 75% for 5 seconds or until it has absorbed 50% of your max health worth of damage, whichever comes first.

Horn of Winter is an Attack Power buff that lasts 5 minutes, and also gives you 10 Runic Power every time you cast it, which is nice since it doesn’t have a Rune cost. This is sort of your filler spell if you have nothing else to do in combat because your Runes are all regenerating and you don’t have enough Runic Power to cast Frost Strike. Raise Ally allows you to resurrect someone instantly, so you’ll want to be aware of it’s use if you plan to do much in dungeons or raiding.

Last but not least, Empower Rune Weapon allows you to instantly restore all of your runes to Active status, and grants you 25 Runic Power. This is a great DPS cooldown for both AoE and single-target situations. With this, I was able to easily pull groups of mobs in zones that were six levels higher than me and AoE them down before they killed me. It was great for farming herbs in Cataclysm zones when I was just barely half-way through Wrath content, and the experience really helped me get through Northrend which is the hardest place for me to level as I still have some burnout from that expansion.

Leveling a Frost Death Knight
Alright, so now that we know how the Death Knight class works and what spells we have available to us, let’s get into some rotations.

• Single Target: Howling Blast (F), Plague Strike (U), Obliterate (FU), [Howling Blast if Rime procs], Obliterate (DD), [Howling Blast if Rime procs], Frost Strike x3, Horn of Winter, Frost Strike
• Multi-Target: Howling Blast (F), Plague Strike (U), Blood Boil x2 (D,D), Howling Blast (F) or Obliterate (FU), [Howling Blast if Obliterate procs Rime), Frost Strike x3, Horn of Winter, Frost Strike

Single Target If you're killing single targets as Frost, then you want to keep throwing out your big hits. Start of with your diseases, and then start in on the big blows. Obliterate is your biggest damage dealer right now, so focus on that. If Rime procs, make sure you throw those out there since they're free damage, but otherwise you want to use Obliterate as much as possible, keep diseases up if you're fighting a boss but while questing nothing should live longer than your disease duration anyway. When Killing Machine procs you want to prioritize Obliterate, but Frost Strike is fine if your runes are all regenerating. It's better to use a proc on weaker ability for good results, than to overwrite a proc and miss using it completely.

Personally, I avoid killing single mobs whenever possible because it's just not worth my time. I can kill six mobs just as fast as I can kill one, so if there's any possibility at all that I can kill things in multiples then that's how I prefer to do it. That's just me, it's not something that's written in stone. If you like them one at a time, then more (frost) power to you.

Multi-Target is my preferred method of killing, questing, leveling, farming, you name it. Out in the world, almost nothing will be able to stand up to this rotation. I frequently killed mobs that were 4-7 levels higher than me in groups of 4-10. Blood Boil in particular hits like a freaking truck, and Howling Blast is nothing to laugh at either (well, you'll be laughing pretty hard, but those on the receiving end won't). The key to being able to do this with mobs that are higher level is either using Dark Pact, which lets you drain 50% of your Ghoul's health to heal you for 50% of your max health, or using the Glyph of Dark Succor which gives you a free cast of Death Strike every time you kill something that gives you experience. With some types of mobs you won't need to heal even if they are higher level than you, but others can deal a significant amount of damage so you'll want to either use your defensive cooldowns or make use of healing talents and abilities.

If you're doing Multi-target in a dungeon, then I suggest you use this rotation to start the fight, and then switch to Obliterate for your Frost and Unholy runes and Blood Boil for your Death runes. Obliterate will give you a chance to proc free Howling Blast casts, and Blood Boil is your big hitter, so that will be your best method of spending your runes from that point on in the fight.

Talent Points

• Roiling Blood: Your Blood Boil now also triggers Pestilence if it strikes a diseased target.
• Lichborne: Draw upon unholy energy to become undead for 10 seconds. While undead, you are immune to Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects, and Death Coil will heal you.
• Death's Advance: You passively move 10% faster, and movement-impariing effects may not reduce you below 70% of normal movement speed. When activated, you gain 30% movement speed and may not be slowed below 100% of normal movement speed for 6 seconds.
• Death Pact: Drain vitality from an undead minion, healing the Death Knight for 50% for his maximum health and causing the minion ot suffer damage equal to 50% of its maximum health.
• Blood Tap: Each damaging Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike generates 2 Blood Charges, up to a maximum of 12 charges. Blood Tap consumes 5 Blood Charges to activate a random fully-depleted rune as a Death Rune.

I use Roiling Blood because if I'm going to spend a Blood (Death) rune to spread my diseases, then I would much rather do it while also dealing significant damage. Pestilence by itself does no damage, it just spreads the diseases, but this will cause Blood Boil to spread disease on top of dealing its damage. For leveling, this is one of the best talents you get in my opinion. Lichborne is my talent of choice because I do PvP quite a bit and find it useful for the CC breaking functionality, but also because you can use it in combination with Deal Coil (see macro section below) to heal yourself with your Runic Power if you find you're in need of additional healing.

Death's Advance is sort of a quality of life talent, it increases your speed by 10% at all times and can be activated for 6 seconds of 30% speed. People might not realize it, or perhaps they just take it for granted, but increasing your movement speed actually has a significant impact on how fast your character actually levels. You may also consider using Asphyxiate instead. It's good in PvP because it's a ranged stun, but it's also really good in PvE for dealing some instant damage and for a touch of survivability if you've pulled just a few too many mobs. I used it for most of my leveling, switching back and forth with Death's Advance and I enjoy using both of them.

Death Pact is a fantastic healing talent, allowing you to heal 50% of your maximum health for the low low price just 50% of your Ghoul's hit points. I don't need to use my Ghoul in most combat situations, so he instead turns into a (re)living healing potion. If I start to get low enough that I'm uncomfortable, I just summon the ghoul and immediately hit Death Pact to heal myself for half of my hit points. Blood Tap is probably the best method of rune regeneration you can get. Some people prefer the passive regeneration talents instead of active like this one, but this gives you more control of the situation and ensures that you get the runes you need when you need them instead of just being random. I typically use Blood Tap for the sake of getting another Blood Boil cast in heavy AoE situations, or to get more Obliterate casts during boss fights.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Dark Succor: When you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor, while in Frost or Unholy Presence, your next Death Strike within 15 seconds is free and will restore at least 20% of your maximum health.
• Glyph of Pestilence: Increases the radius of your Pestilence effect by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Reduces the cooldown of your Icebound Fortitude by 50%, but also reduces its duration by 75%.

The first two glyphs are the ones that I really suggest, with the third being the best one I can think of for the leveling process. Dark Succor is the most important for leveling because that's how you're going to destroy everything around you and end the fight with full health while you're at it. In an AoE situation, after you unleash your Blood Boils and Howling Blasts you should just be a Frost Strike or two away from killing anything that's there, and then you can start spamming Death Strike to finish everything off and heal yourself while you're at it. It's an incredibly powerful healing tool while you level.

Pestilence is just to give us a better radius on spreading our diseases, and since Blood Boil deals 50% extra damage to targets that have an active disease on them, you want to make sure you get those diseases on as many targets as possible. Icebound Fortitude is mostly if you're a crazy sucker like me and enjoy pushing your limits either by fighting higher level mobs or by fighting large groups of mobs. You'll get better survivability overall from being able to use Icebound Fortitude more frequently rather than for longer periods of time. Since you're going to kill things so quickly outside of dungeons anyway, the normal duration of the spell is going to be mostly wasted making it better to reduce the cooldown.

Other glyphs you may want to consider include: Anti-Magic Shell if you're into PvP while you level, Shifting Presences if you find yourself changing frequently, and Death Coil if you often run in groups or do LFG a lot and want to be able to put your Runic Power to a defensive use rather than offense. Death Knights have some pretty decent glyphs to choose from, but as far as Frost-specific glyphs go there's not really anything that's super appealing except for Dark Succor and even that is only good while leveling.

Minor Glyphs

• Glyph of Path of Frost: Your Path of Frost ability allows you to ffall from a greater distance without suffering damage.
• Glyph of Tranquil Grip: Your Death Grip spell no longer taunts the target.

None of these are all that critical, so you can really use any glyphs you want. I use Path of Frost because I have a tendency to dive-bomb my targets from the sky because it makes me feel cool. Tranquil Grip is the closest you'll come to a truly useful glyph as it removes the taunt from Death Grip. It's a glyph you'll likely use at end game, so you might as well get it now.

The other minor glyphs are either cosmetic or have an effect that really makes no difference at all. I use Death Gate personally, just because I often farm things in the area of Ebon Hold, so I can get there in half the time. Most players though, probably won't take enough trips through the Death Gate to make this glyph worth using or worth making/paying for in the first place.

Gearing Up Your Frost Death Knight
Here are the stats that you're looking for on your gear.

Strength > Hit = Expertise > Haste > Crit

Strength is the source of all your damage, so that's the top. Hit and Expertise determine whether or not your attacks hit their target, so those are up next. Haste isn't a huge deal, but it does impact disease damage. The problem with Haste is that you'll kill everything except for dungeon bosses so fast that it won't seem to have much impact at all. Crit is low on the list because we have Killing Machine which guarantees that we crit often enough that there's not much point in raising our random chance to crit.

Macros
I don't have much for you in the way of macros for the Death Knight as most of their spells are pretty straight forward.

#showtooltip
/cast Lichborne
/cast [@player] Death Coil
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro is one that only works if you’ve taken the Lichborne talent. When you cast Lichborne you become Undead which makes you immune to some crowd control effects which is why it’s often considered more of a PvP talent. However, by becoming undead you also become eligible to be healed by Death Coil as it deals damage to enemies but heals undead allies. With this macro you can spam the key that you have it bound to and you will apply Lichborne to yourself to become undead and then start casting Death Coil on yourself every time you press it. This is a bit of an emergency button, though you could use it at any time to heal yourself even if it’s after the fight is over and you just don’t want to waste the time eating food or applying a bandage to heal yourself.

Playing a Shadow Priests
Shadow Priest became one of my favorite classes to play at the end of the Wrath expansion. I don’t really know what it was that really made me enjoy it so much, but it was just such a fun and powerful class that I really enjoyed it a lot and even ran a fair amount of arenas with some of my old guildmates.

Shadow Priests have a lot of similarities to Warlocks with their DoT’s and channeled spells as well their their tendency to be willing to deal damage to themselves in order to deal even more damage to their enemies. But, a Priest is still a Priest and that means they also have the capability to heal themselves and others, and of course they have access to that fantastic damage-absorbing bubble.

The life of a low level Shadow Priest can be quite boring if you aren’t wearing heirlooms and don’t have access to much in the way of gear beyond quest rewards and dungeon drops. From levels 10-20 you have only two spells that deal damage and one of those is a DoT with the other being a channeled spell that deals damage over three seconds (see above picture). At level 21 you finally get some more spells for dealing damage and things start to look good again as you start to kill things more quickly. If you’re feeling underpowered or bored, the best thing you can do is try to develop some more patience as it’s going to take you a while to feel more powerful. I’ll talk about a couple of things you can do to fix the issues in game further below as well, but just be aware that the life of a Shadow Priest is not one of total domination right from level 1, though it can get there soon™ as long as you’re willing to stick with it.

Important Spells & Abilities

Offensive Spells

• Smite (1): Smite an enemy for Holy damage.
• Shadow Word: Pain (3): Causes Shadow damage instantly, and additional Shadow damage over 18 seconds.
• Mind Flay (10): Deals Shadow damage over 3 seconds and slows the target’s movement speed by 50%.
• Mind Blast (21): Blasts the target for Shadow damage and generates 1 Shadow Orb.
• Devouring Plague (21): Consumes all of the caster’s Shadow Orbs to deal Shadow damage and additional Shadow damage ever 1 second for 6 seconds. Also heals the caster for 1% of their maximum health when it deals periodic damage. Damage and healing increased based on the number of Shadow Orbs consumed.
• Vampiric Touch (28): Deals Shadow damage over 15 seconds. Each time Vampiric Touch deals damage the caster gains 2% of maximum mana.
• Shadowform (24): Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage by 20%, reducing all damage done to you by 15%, and increasing all party and raid members’ spell haste by 5%. However, you may not cast Holy spells while in this form.

Smite is the damage spell that you start off with, and the one you’ll be spamming until you choose Shadow as your spec at level 10. Once you choose to become a Shadow Priest, Smite will automatically turn into Mind Flay and you will no longer have access to Smite at all. Mind Flay is your go-to spell once you have SW: Pain cast on everything. Shadow Word: Pain is your primary damage over time spell (DoT) and one that you’ll want to cast on everything you ever enter combat with. Ever.

Mind Blast is your first direct damage spell after you’ve lost smite, but it does have base 8 second cooldown so you won’t be spamming it. It’s also your primary source of Shadow Orbs which you finally get to use once you reach level 21. Devouring Plague is you second DoT spell, this one having the added benefit of restoring health to you while it deals damage, but it now requires you to consume Shadow Orbs to cast it so you’ll have to generate those Orbs through the use of Mind Blast which has a cooldown. You’ll get other methods of generating shadow orbs at higher levels, but for now this is all you’ve got. So you’ll be saving this for bosses when you’re running dungeons, healers or flag carriers in PvP, and rare spawns or whatever looks at you funny while you’re solo questing.

Vampiric Touch is another DoT spell, this one actually having a cast time where your others do not. You’ll mostly use this for pulling mobs, followed by an instant Shadow Word: Pain. Stacking DoT’s is what you’re focused on though, so you’ll want to be sure to stack as many DoT’s on as many targets as you can when you’re not plinking things off one at a time. Shadowform is more of a buff than a spell, increasing your Shadow damage, reducing damage done to you, and increasing your haste. You can’t cast Holy spells when you’re in Shadowform so you’ll leave the form whenever you try to heal yourself, but that’s not really that big of a deal thanks to its damage reduction, and you can always either simply reapply Shadowform after you heal or just wait to heal until the end of the fight.

Healing Spells

• Flash Heal (3): Heals a friendly target.
• Power Word: Shield (5): Shields a friendly target, absorbing damage. Lasts 15 seconds. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 seconds.
• Renew (26): Heals the target every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.

Flash Heal is incredibly powerful at low levels, as it can almost bring you back from nearly dead to full health even when it doesn’t crit; keep in mind this is a Holy spell so it will break Shadowform. It has a high mana cost, but a fast cast time so don’t be too afraid to use it, just don’t plan on casting it often. Power Word: Shield is your bubble, and it’s something you’ll want to be very familiar with casting as it does not break Shadowform.

Renew is one you probably won’t be using all that often because it’s healing amount isn’t all that high and it’s a Holy spell so it breaks Shadowform. It’s a heal over time spell (HoT) so you can cast it prior to combat, cast Shadowform, and then go to town dealing out damage. But, if you need healing then you need healing and that’s all there is to it. If you find yourself in need of a HoT, then go ahead and cast it and just reapply Shadowform afterwards. The name of the game is killing things without letting them kill you, so if you need it then cast it.

Utility & Misc Spells

• Inner Fire (7): Increases armor value of items by 60% and spell power by 10%.
• Psychic Scream (12): Causes 5 enemies within 8 yards to flee for 8 seconds. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.
• Resurrection (14): Brings a dead ally back to life with 35% health and mana. Cannot be cast while in combat.
• Dispel Magic (22): Dispel Magic on an enemy target, removing 1 beneficial Magic effect.
• Power Word: Fortitude (22): Increases the Stamina of party and raid members by 10% for 1 hour.
• Fade (24): Fade out, temporarily removing all your threat for 10 seconds.

Inner Fire is your first buff, and it’s really good for both survivability thanks to armor increase as well as offense thanks to the spellpower increase. You should always have this buff active. Resurrection is how you bring people back to life. Dispel Magic you won’t use very often at all unless you’re fond of PvP in which case you’ll be using it all the time. Power Word: Fortitude is your second buff, and one that you should always keep active on your party and raid members for a 10% Stamina increase.

Fade will help to reduce the amount of threat you’re putting out if you find that your tanks aren’t able to maintain boss agro. Unless you’re in full heirlooms and your tank is in full whites or crappy quest rewards you shouldn’t have a whole lot of use for this spell early on. It’s good in PvP to make your opponent’s pets leave you alone, but that’s about as far as it’s going to take you.

Leveling a Shadow Priest
I’m going to give you a couple of sample rotations here. Note that these are damage rotations, so I’m not taking healing into account for the most part. If you’re fighting things that deal decent damage to you then make sure you have a bubble active and heal as necessary.

• Questing Single Target: Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay spam
• Questing Multi-Target: Mind Blast the first target, Vampiric Touch & SW: Pain all the targets, Mind Flay spam
• Dungeon Bosses: Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, SW: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mind Flay x2, Mind Blast, refresh DoT’s, Mind Flay spam

Questing Single Target
Killing single mobs is pretty easy, though a bit slow when you’re first starting out. Prior to level 21 you only have SW: Pain and Mind Flay so you’ll DoT the target and then spam Mind Flay 2-3 times until they’re dead. Boring, but effective. After 21 things will start to pick up for you pretty well and you’ll be able to burn things down much faster thanks to Mind Blast and Vampiric Touch being added into the mix.

If you’re facing mobs that deal a fair amount of damage to you, then I would suggest casting PW: Shield after the first Mind Flay. You don’t really need to bother with it before then, and that should last you for most of the encounter and allow you to just heal up if necessary after the fight.

Questing Multi-Target
The rotation shown up there is strictly your damage rotation, it doesn’t include things that are going to keep you alive. The reason I didn’t include things like that is because the situation can be completely different based on which mobs you’re facing when you do it. In general, the point is to get your DoT’s rolling on all of the targets, Mind Blast when you can, Mind Flay when you need filler, and otherwise just stay alive while you let your DoT’s do their thing.

Your utility spells can be a real help in multi-target pulls, and so can your healing spells. Power Word: Shield is the most obvious example, and you should definitely use it when facing multiple mobs. I suggest you bubble as soon as the second target gets within melee range, or when you have three targets focused on you. Next up is Psychic Scream which will make up to 5 targets within 8 yards run away in fear. This is fantastic as a DoT user since your DoT’s generally won’t break the effect too early. The drawback to using Scream, unless it’s glyphed, is that when mobs run away they can also agro even more mobs which might put you in a dangerous situation. Practice using Psychic Scream and become familiar with the pros and cons of its effect so that you can judge for yourself when is a good or bad time to cast it. Typically, mobs that are humanoids are the ones you need to worry about fear agro from.

There’s also the case of your level 15 talent selection. If you chose Void Tendrils like I did, then you can wait until all of the mobs are close to you from your DoT’s, cast Void Tendrils to lock them all in place, and then take a few steps away from the mobs and open a can of shadowy pain. If you went with the Psyfiend then you can reapply DoT’s and use Mind Flay as mobs run back towards you every time it sends one of them running away in fear. If you took Mind Control then you won’t have much benefit for fighting multiple mobs beyond taking control of one and using them to beat the crap out of each other. Doing that takes your own damage away though unless you’ve made sure to apply DoT’s liberally before hand, and even then you never know how effective a mind controlled minion is going to be while leveling.

Dungeon Bosses
When you’re fighting bosses in dungeons the main thing you want to focus on is keeping your DoT’s active. Following that, you want to be sure you’re casting Mind Blast every time it comes off of cooldown so that you’re generating Shadow Orbs to use with Devouring Plague. It’s up to you whether you want to keep a 1 Orb Plague running most of the time, or if you’d rather wait to have 3 Orbs before you cast it each time to make it more effective. Which you do is up to you, I typically make the decision based off of how quickly we’re dealing damage to the boss. If he’s going down fast then I’ll just go for a 1 Orb, but if it’s going slow then I’ll wait for 2-3 Orbs.

As you get access to more and more ways of generating Shadow Orbs you’ll want to make sure you’re using a 3 Orb Plague whenever possible, but at this stage in the game you’ve only got one way to generate orbs and it has an 8 second cooldown that you can’t do anything about. You get your next Orb generating ability at level 46, and your final generator in your mid-70′s.

Talent Points

• Void Tendrils: Summons Shadowy tendrils out of the ground, rooting up to 5 enemy targets within 8 yards of the caster for 20 seconds. Killing the tendril will cancel the effect.
• Body and Soul: When you cast Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith, you increase the target’s movement speed by 60% for 4 seconds.

Void Tendrils is the one that I suggest because I feel it gives me the best control of the situation. Psyfiend is a good choice as well, and one that I’ve seen a lot of Priests use in PvP especially. Dominate Mind is a really fun ability for PvP, but not a whole lot of use in PvE until you get above level 80. Which one you choose is really up to you, as always, but my personal preference is Void Tendrils as I’ve had it be incredibly beneficial in solo questing, dungeons, and PvP as well.

I chose Body and Soul for level 30 because I feel it offers the most consistent movement opportunities for all situations and overall it just felt like the better choice to me, personally. I think the other two both offer viable movement functionality, with the first two being more appealing from a leveling perspective than the third. I suggest B&S, but I think you should play with both of the first two a bit and decide for yourself which one you would rather roll with.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Reflective Shield: Causes 45% of the damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield to reflect back to the attacker. This damage causes no threat.
• Glyph of Mind Flay: Your Mind Flay spell no longer slows the target. Instead, each time Mind Flay deals damage you will be granted 15% increased movement speed for 5 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.
• Glyph of Psychic Scream: Targets of your Psychic Scream and your Psyfiend’s Psychic Terror now tremble in place instead of fleeing in fear.
• Glyph of Holy Nova: Teaches you the Holy Nova ability which causes an explosion of holy light around the caster dealing Holy damage to all enemy targets within 10 yards and healing up to 5 allies within 10 yards. These effects cause no threat.

There are a lot of things to take into consideration when it’s time to pick your first primary glyph. I’ve listed these in roughly the order I would suggest taking them in. Reflective Shield gives you some sure damage potential and can help with those multi-target situations when you have several mobs attacking you at once. The damage on it can be iffy, but it’s still effective if not fantastic. Mind Flay does nothing for you performance-wise, but it does offer movement which can be very useful.

Psychic Scream is a really good option if you want to take advantage of your fear effects without the risk of pulling additional mobs. The drawback is that they don’t run away from you thus there’s no separation so once the fear wears off they’re right back in your face from the start. If you’re going to roll with Psyfiend instead of Void Tendrils, then I would suggest using this glyph as there’s a really high chance that Psyfiend is going to get you killed if you just let it fear everything left and right.

Holy Nova is another one that’s not really right up our alley because it focuses on a Holy spell which breaks us out of Shadowform, but at the same time it does give you ready access to an AoE spell at level 25 which you wouldn’t otherwise have until level 74 when you get Mind Sear. If you like to kill things AoE style, then this is a glyph you might want to consider since it also heals you at the same time that it deals its Holy damage to those around you.

Minor Glyphs
For Priests, all of our minor glyphs are purely cosmetic or vanity and have no impact at all on gameplay. As such, use whatever you want. My personal preferences are Shadow Ravens which changes the appearance of your Shadow Orbs to be Ravens instead, and Shadow which reduces the transparency of Shadowform so that you see more of your character’s actual appearance while in Shadowform.

Gearing Up Your Shadow Priests
Gearing up your Shadow Priest at this stage is pretty simple because there’s not a whole lot to choose from in the first place and you’re not all that needy either. You’re looking for these:

Spellpower >= Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit

If you’re interested in knowing which heirlooms you need to get for your Priest, and which enchants to put on said heirlooms, I give you my: Heirloom Guide.

Spellpower and Intellect are your focus since they will determine how much raw damage you do. Haste comes next because it will give you more damage from your DoT’s and also speed up the channel time of Mind Flay which means you’ll do more damage in a shorter amount of time. Crit is good because you are a DoT focused class, and every time a DoT ticks to deal its damage it has a chance to crit for extra damage, so increasing your chance to crit is always good. Spirit belongs on the list because you’ll get 100% of your Spirit counted towards Hit and while that’s not a huge concern while leveling it does suck when you’re sitting there spamming Mind Flay on a mob 5 times before the thing actually hits it; trust me, it’s happened to me plenty of times.

Overcoming Boredom & Weakness
Because of the way Shadow Priests learn their spells early on, it’s easy for you to feel weak or bored if you’ve played other DPS classes that have more access to harder hitting spells right out of the gate. Also, besides the ability to DoT multiple mobs at once, you don’t get an AoE damaging spell until level 74 which can sometimes make it feel as if it takes you “forever” to gain a level as you kill things one at a time. So here are a few things that you can do to make your Shadow Priest level experience a little bit more enjoyable in the early levels.

Roll Undead
In the Mist of Pandaria expansion, Undead traded in their ability to breath underwater for 10 minutes for an ability called Touch of the Grave which gives all of your attacks and damaging spells a chance to drain the target with Shadow damage and heal you for the same amount. This ability has roughly a 7% chance to proc for every spell you cast and every damage tick from your DoT’s. While you’re in Shadowform you also receive a 20% increase to Shadow damage which will also increase the damage of Touch of the Grave. Sure, 7% isn’t all that great of a proc chance, but the damage on it can really help in an otherwise slow to kill spec thanks to none of you’re pre-21 spells dealing direct damage. The healing you get from it is helpful too, of course, though that’s not really a big reason for you to take it as a Priest since you have healing spells readily available anyway.

You could also pick another race which gives you a racial ability that impacts damage such as Orc, Troll, or Goblin. Undead is what I went with and I have noticed a difference between my Undead’s damage even without wearing any heirlooms compared to a Draenei that I have in full heirlooms. The base damage is clearly in favor of the one wearing heirlooms, but the spikes of damage from the Undead racial are definitely noticeable during the low levels where it’s really an issue, and I’ve had mobs go from full health to 30% in a single tick of SW:Pain thanks to a Touch of the Grave proc that added to the damage.

Roll a Panda
The only reason I mention the Panda is because they have a racial ability that extends the duration of their Rested bonus to experience. So if you’re having a hard time leveling your Priest you can play the toon until they run out of Rested bonus and then shelf them for a few days to build it back up. It won’t really help you perform better, though they do have a stun that could be useful as well, but if you’re struggling to get through the levels then building up and maintaining rested might be the way for you to go.

Things really do get better for you once you hit level 21, so simply pushing through it until you get access to more spells might be enough that you won’t need to bother rolling a Panda.

Pick Engineering
You can also choose Engineering as one of your professions and make use of their explosives for additional damage, which also happens to be AoE damage. These work especially well if you’ve also chosen the Void Tendrils talent for level 15 as you can gather mobs close to you with your DoT’s, root them in place with Void Tendrils, and then use an explosive on the group while they’re rooted in place. Explosives come in two varieties, one that just deals damage and one that deals a bit less damage but also applies a stun effect. Since Void Tendrils remain in place for 20 seconds or until they are destroyed, using bombs that also stun the targets means your Tendrils will remain alive longer as well.

I like having access to bombs for the extra damage, but their cooldown does get a little tiring after a while and using them frequently means having bag slots devoted to carrying them around which might be an issue for some people as well. On the plus side, bombs do decent damage for their level, they’re easy to make and maintain supply, and they provide you with both AoE damage and crowd control that you may otherwise be lacking.

Glyph of Holy Nova [Avoid]
At level 25 you can get the Glyph of Holy Nova which will give you ready access to a spammable AoE spell, though it does have the drawback of not being usable in Shadowform. However, I tested this glyph at level 25 against a group of eight mobs that were all level 12-14. Care to guess how effective Holy Nova was against them? The spell did an average of 25 damage to each mob per cast, and I had to cast it 43 times in a row in order to kill the eight mobs. Unless you think that casting a spell 43 times just to kill some mobs that are half your level is a good thing, I suggest you stay away from this one.

I was really hoping that this glyph would be the magical answer to my AoE concerns, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. It’s very much like the Glyph of Corpse Explosion for Death Knights which similarly gives them access to an AoE spell at the cost of the Major Glyph slot, but even at level 67 that spell does a whopping 125 damage to mobs which is ridiculously low. If my experience with these two classes is any indication, I highly recommend that you stay away from glyphs that give access to new spells for all of the classes as the results have be terrible.

So hello once again, my wonderful readers. I hope you’re ready for some light reading.

As always, I post guides based on the characters that I am playing at the time, so that I can give advice based on actual experience within the level ranges that I’m describing. I don’t write guides for a class that I already have at max level and just assume that how it works at end game is the same early on because I know that is not always the case. So, you’ll see in this first MoP leveling guide that I’m writing about Resto Druid leveling because that’s what I’ve done with my own since level 10. I will write about the other Druid specs when and if I decide to level one.

Playing a Resto Druid
For most of the leveling experience, leveling as Resto will play very much like leveling as Balance. You won’t have the same spell selection or the Eclipse mechanic, but you’ll be flinging Wrath and Moonfire spells like a mad (wo)man. If you choose to level in PvP or by running dungeons, then of course you’ll be spending most of your time healing people rather than casting your offensive spells, but we’ll get into that aspect further on down the line.

As a Resto Druid you’re going to find that you are about as close to immortal as anyone can get. You don’t have the killing power that some of the other healers have because of your limited spell selection, but you do have some of the most efficient and effective heals that money can buy. Add to that increased survival from having Bear Form and increased mobility from Cat Form, Travel Form, and even Aquatic Form, and you’ve got one incredibly durable healer.

Important Spells & Abilities
In this section you will see a spell name which links you to Wowhead, followed by a number in parenthesis which represents the level at which you learn the spell, followed by a description of the spell’s effect. Any numbers listed in those descriptions will be based on the maximum level of the guide, in this case 30, and based purely on the numbers in Wowhead’s database (which are occasionally wrong).

Druids tend to have more spells than everyone else on the face of the planet, mostly thanks to their different shapeshifted forms that have their own spells associated with them. I’m going to go ahead and include those in this list mostly because they do offer some decent DPS options at the lower levels when you don’t feel like spamming Wrath until your fingers go numb.

Damaging Spells

• Wrath (1): Causes 98-124 Nature damage to the target.
• Moonfire (4): Burns the enemy for 28-34 Arcane damage and then 91 additional Arcane damage over 14 seconds.

I’m going to go over damaging spells first, despite this being a healer’s guide, because if you’re questing solo then you need to know how to go about earning that experience and you’re not going to kill things with Rejuvenation. (Un)Fortunately, it’s a very short list. As far as damaging spells goes, you’re going to be spamming Wrath and weaving in an occasional Moonfire when you’re trying to kill things solo. Another option you have is to use your Cat or Bear forms, preferably Cat, to deal physical damage as well. You can pretty safely quest in Agility gear and still effectively heal yourself to get by in the solo questing game, but somewhere in your 30′s or 40′s you’ll get an ability that converts your Intellect into Agility while using Cat form which will make that much more effective.

Personally, I just stick with casting my spells and using the animal forms purely for movement. I’ll go over rotations in a section further down the post.

Healing Spells

• Rejuvenation (3): Heals the target instantly for 210 and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
• Nourish (8): Heals a friendly target for 305-353. Heals an additional 20% if you have a Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, or Wild Growth effect active on the target.
• Swiftmend (10): Instantly heals a friendly target that has an active Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect for 691. In addition, restores 691 health to the three most injured allies within 8 yards of the initial target every 1 second for 7 seconds.
• Revive (12): Restores a dead target to life with 35% of their maximum health and mana. Cannot be cast during combat.
• Regrowth (18): Heals a friendly target for 486-542 and another 2,361 over 6 seconds. Regrowth has a 60% increased chance for a critical effect.
• Nature’s Cure (22): Removes Magic, Curse, and Poison effects from a friendly target.
• Healing Touch (26): Heals a friendly target for 914-1,078.
• Nature’s Swiftness (30 Talent): When activated, your next Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, Nourish, Rebirth, or Regrowth becomes instant, free, and castable in all forms. The healing and duration of the spell is increased by 50%.

Rejuvenation is your bread and butter heal, apply liberally. Nourish is a nice filler heal that has a low mana cost. Swiftmend is a spell you only get if you pick the Restoration spec, and it’s a fantastic heal. Revive is how you bring people back to life after they do something stupid. Regrowth is another great heal, this one provides both direct healing and healing over time and it also packs a very large crit chance.

Nature’s Cure is your cleanse, something you certainly want to familiarize yourself with; just don’t forget it has an 8 second cooldown so it shouldn’t be wasted on things that aren’t going to matter. Healing Touch is a very powerful heal, but it has a long cast time and a huge mana cost so you should only use it when you really need it or when you have a spell or a proc that makes it cost no mana.

Nature’s Swiftness is a talent spell that you get only if you take the talent, but I wanted to include it here since it’s the talent I suggest for level 30, great for making things instant, free, and more effective.

Utility Spells

• Entangling Roots (7): Roots the target in place for 30 seconds. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.
• Teleport: Moonglade (15): Teleports the caster to the Moonglade.
• Travel Form (16): Shift into travel form, increasing movement speed by 40%. Only usable outdoors.
• Aquatic Form (16): Shift into aquatic form, increasing swim speed by 50% and allowing you to breath underwater. Only usable in water.
• Faerie Fire (24): Prevents the target from stealthing or turning invisible, and causes 3 applications of Weakened Armor (-12% armor total).

Entangling Roots is a pretty important spell for you to know about if you’re going to do a lot of solo play. On the one hand, you’re a healer and you can probably sit through several mobs stabbing you in the face for a good long while, but since one of your two damaging spells is a damage over time spell (DoT), it helps sometimes to nuke the mob, DoT them, and then Root them in place to let your DoT deal it’s damage while you either start attacking another mob or you heal yourself if you’ve taken a lot of damage.

Teleport: Moonglade is for class quests, herbalism training, a vendor item or two that can sell well on the AH, and easy access to the northern portion of the Kalimdor map. Travel Form and Aquatic Form are both for faster traveling from one point to another, with Travel Form typically being much more valuable than Aquatic.

Faerie Fire has little use for you in solo play, unless you’re fighting mobs in your Cat/Bear forms frequently. In dungeons you should cast this on all of the bosses you come across to help your team kill them faster. In PvP this should be cast on ALL THE THINGS, especially Rogues, Druids, and Mages so that they cannot enter stealth or use Invisibility on you.

Druid Forms

• Cat Form (6): Shift into Cat Form (DPS), increasing auto-attack damage by 100% and movement speed by 25%.
• Mangle (6): Deals Physical damage to the target, generates 1 combo point.
• Ferocious Bite (8): Finishing move that causes damage per combo point and consumes up to 25 additional Energy to increase damage by up to 100%.
• Prowl (6): Enter Stealth mode, reducing movement speed by 30%.
• Rake (8): Rake the taret for Bleed damage and additional Bleed damage over 15 seconds.
• Swipe (22): Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting physical damage. Deal 20% additional damage to bleeding targets.
• Dash (26): Removes all roots and snares, increases movement speed by 70% while in Cat Form for 15 seconds.
• Bear Form (8): Shift into Bera Form (Tank), increasing armor contribution for cloth and leather by 120%, Haste and Crit from items by 50%, and Stamina by 20%.
• Growl (8): Taunts the target to attack you.
• Mangle (8): Deals Physical damage to the target, generates Rage.
• Maul (8): Maul the target for 110% weapon damage, +20% additional damage against bleeding targets.
• Swipe (22): Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting physical damage. Deal 20% additional damage to bleeding targets.

Cat Form deserves some special attention here, not because of the damage you can do in it, but because it gives a 25% speed increase while it’s active. Moving around quickly means you’re leveling more quickly, and you get this speed increase available to you at level 6 which is a good 9 levels faster than anyone else is able to increase their speed assuming they even get a speed increase in the first place. If you do decide to deal some damage in Cat form, I’ve got rotations listed in a section below for you to see how to use it.

Bear Form won’t be used by you much at all. It does have better survivability, so it isn’t bad, but its damage is low and it’s otherwise not very thrilling for a Resto Druid. In PvP you might use Bear Form more often if you happen to be carrying a flag, but that’s probably the most you’ll ever use Bear form. If you have a decent amount of Haste on your gear, then you can abuse Bear form a bit by shifting into Bear, casting Nature’s Swiftness (level 30 talent) and then Regrowth can give you a very powerful heal with an even more powerful HoT. When will you need that super heal? Uh, probably never while you’re leveling. Doesn’t hurt to be aware of it though, right?

Leveling a Resto Druid

• Questing Single Target (Caster): Wrath, Wrath, Moonfire, Wrath spam
• Questing Single Target (Cat): Wrath, Moonfire, Cat Form, Rake, Mangle, Mangle, Ferocious Bite
• Questing Multi-Target (Caster): Wrath & Moonfire the first target, Moonfire two more, Rejuvenation, Moonfire the rest, repeat
• Questing Multi-Target (Cat): Wrath first target, Moonfire everything, Rejuvenation, Cat Form, Swipe, Swipe, Swipe, repeat

Questing Single Target
When you’re going after a single target, just burn them down with your spells. You might not be specced for damage, but that doesn’t mean your Intellect and Spellpower can’t be put to good use nuking the crap out of things. If you’re far away from your target when you pull then go ahead and double-cast Wrath so that you can take advantage of the time the first spell takes to travel to the target to cast the second one. If you’re already close to them though, just do one Wrath to start it off, then Moonfire, then go back to Wrath spam.

If you want to add some Cat damage to your rotation, go ahead and start with your spells anyway unless you’re already within melee range. From there you want to get Rake’s DoT effect active and then use Mangle for burst damage. You can use another Mangle in place of Ferocious Bite if you’d like, I just hate to see combo points go to waste so I tend to use it when I can.

Questing Multi-Target
You won’t have access to an AoE spell as a Druid until you get Hurricane at level 44, so if you want to take on multiple mobs then you need to do it with your Moonfire DoT instead. Open on the first mob with Wrath for direct damage and Moonfire for DoT, Moonfire to pull a couple more mobs, Rejuvenation yourself to get some heals rolling, apply the DoT to everything else you want to pull and then start over. Now, Rejuv by itself may or may not be strong enough to keep you up during that fight, so if you need to throw some more heals on there then do so. Regrowth plus Rejuv works really well for me in most cases, but you might also need to throw Swiftmend in there for good measure (just make sure you stand inside it’s area effect on the ground so you get continued healing from it as well). Use one encounter to judge how many mobs you can handle in the next. If you needed to heal a lot then don’t pull as many next time, but if you didn’t need much healing at all then try adding another mob or four into your next pull.

If you want to throw in some kitty power, then you’re going to pretty much do the same thing as you would in caster version except that you’ll switch to Cat Form for Swipe spam after you light everyone up with Moonfire. You can cast Swipe twice with a full Energy bar, and then just auto-attack for a couple of seconds until the energy builds up enough for the third Swipe. At that point, you want to go back to caster form because your Energy is going to refill too slowly to be much use where your spells will be much more helpful; and you’ll likely need more healing at that point as well.

When you start fighting groups of mobs instead of singles, always start with just 2-3 and work your way up. You want to get a feel for how much damage they deal, how quickly you can kill them, and what kind of special abilities they might have that could end up killing you if you’re not prepared for it. You’ll find mobs all across the leveling spectrum now that have various forms of crowd control spells, and you need to be aware of which mobs can stun, knockback, or silence before you go and agro ten of them and find yourself unable to heal.

Restoration Healing
Druids are unique healers because they focus on healing over time (HoT) spells instead of direct heals. This means that Druid healers can sometimes seem more boring to play early on because a HoT will keep someone topped off for several seconds where a direct heal would simply heal for it’s amount and then be done. If you’re running dungeons with a well geared tank and DPS who don’t make you want to slam your face through a table whilst flipping said table, then you often cast a HoT or two before the tank pulls and then cast DPS spells for the rest of the encounter and your tank will still be a full health at the end of the fight.

Healing versus Mana
For the most part, you aren’t going to have to worry about mana at all while you’re leveling unless you’re weaving heals and damage spells constantly for a lengthy amount of time. But, if you’re going to be effective at healing when you’re max level, then you should still be aware of what these spells cost you in relation to how much healing you’re getting out of them in return. Healing amounts listed are averaged in the case of spells which have a healing range.

I’m not going to get into hardcore math here, and I’m going to leave out all of the modifiers such as spellpower and crit chance. In fact, I’m going to skip almost all of the math here and just let you look at the table. I know not everyone is going to take the time to actually look at that table, so here’s the summary for you.

If you want cheap heals, throw Rejuvenation on everyone who’s taking damage. If you want a big heal, cast Swiftmend if you can, Regrowth if you need it fast, or Health Touch if you’ve got time to spare.

How To Heal
For solo leveling you should be able to get by just fine with little more than Rejuvenation and an occasional Swiftmend to keep you alive even in dire situations. If you need to root something in place and then move away to get out of melee range then you can heal yourself back to full with Healing Touch or Regrowth followed by a Rejuvenation.

If you’re running dungeons, then again Rejuvenation is your primary healing spell that you want to cast on everyone taking damage. Swiftmend will offer nice burst healing in your tank gets in a bind or your DPS are getting hit hard. Regrowth combined with Rejuvenation will keep your tank alive and well during any moderate-to-high damage boss fights. Nourish is good if you want to provide little bursts of direct healing to keep people topped off, and it’s one of the more mana efficient spells we have, just try to make sure the target has a HoT on them so you get that extra 20% healing from Nourish. Healing Touch takes the same amount of time to cast as Nourish, but it heals for about three times as much and also costs almost three times as much mana. So use Healing Touch if people are really taking some serious damage, but don’t plan on spamming this sucker with that mana cost. Stick to your HoT’s as much as possible and get a feel for how much damage someone can take and still survive thanks to your HoT’s. If someone isn’t below about 50% of their max health, then you probably don’t need to bother with casting a direct heal on them, just let your HoT’s do their job and refresh the HoT’s as needed.

For PvP you’re going to focus primarily on fast cast times. Rejuvenation is your primary heal again, and Swiftmend maintains it’s priority for high healing situations. Regrowth becomes much more important because time is almost always an issue and in PvP it’s better to heal someone and keep them alive than it is to worry about your mana. Healing Touch brings some powerful healing, but be careful with it’s large cast time or you might find yourself mid-cast when everyone’s dying around you. Nature’s Cure will see much more use here than anywhere else in the leveling process, but with an 8 second cooldown make sure you’re cleansing effects that matter and not something you can easily heal through or ignore.

Nature’s Swiftness: This spell doesn’t heal on it’s own and it can be used for more than just healing, but it deserves to be mentioned here regardless. This spell makes your next spell instant, cost zero mana, and increases the healing and duration of the spell by 50%. It also allows you to cast those spells regardless of which form you happen to be in, so you can cast a heal while you’re on the run in Cat/Travel/Aquatic form. If you want a massive heal, use it with Healing Touch. If you want a powerful HoT, then use it with Regrowth. I prefer to utilize Nature’s Swiftness through the use of macros which I’ll share with you here:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Nature’s Swiftness, Healing Touch

#showtooltip
/castsequence Nature’s Swiftness, Regrowth

You use /castsequence instead of just /cast here because there’s a little glitch of sorts if you use /cast that will make you pop out of different forms when using it, and then not actually cast the spell that you want unless you activate the macro again.

Restoration Talents

• Feline Swiftness: Increases your movement speed by 15%.
• Nature’s Swiftness: When activated, your next Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, Nourish, Rebirth, or Regrowth becomes instant, free, and castable in all forms. The healing and duration of the spell is increased by 50%.

For your level 15 talent, you really can’t go wrong with any of the three choices. I prefer Feline Swiftness because it increases all of your movement by 15% no matter where you are or what kind of movement you’re dealing with, and constantly moving faster means leveling faster. Displacer Beast is also a really great talent (especially for PvP), allowing you to teleport 20 yards forward every 30 seconds. Wild Charge offers different kinds of movement based on which form you’re currently in and I don’t care as much for it just because I want more control over my movement and I don’t feel that all Wild Charges were created equal.

For the level 30 talent, I find Nature’s Swiftness to be overall more useful during the leveling process, regardless of what type of leveling you do. Renewal is good if you’re going to do more PvP or if you’re pushing more challenging content since it can instantly heal you for 30%, but for typical leveling it’s not necessary. Cenarion Ward is like a reactive healing bubble that kicks in after a target takes damage. With how strong HoT’s are in the leveling game, I felt that this spell was incredibly unnecessary, so I haven’t even bothered trying it out yet.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Rejuvenation: When you have Rejuvenation active on three or more targets, the cast time of your Nourish spell is reduced by 30%.
• Glyph of Healing Touch: When you cast Healing Touch, the cooldown on your Swiftmend is reduced by 1 second.
• Glyph of Regrowth: Increases the critical chance of your Regrowth by 40%, but removes the periodic component of the spell.

Most of the major glyphs really don’t matter much to you while you’re leveling, at least not at low levels. My preference is Rejuvenation because I like to level via dungeons and PvP so it’s pretty common for me to have multiple Rejuvenations running at the same time and Nourish spam can add up pretty quick when someone is being focused. Healing Touch isn’t too bad, but it should be pretty rare that you’re going to need multiple big heals in a short period of time at this stage of the game. Regrowth gives you a 100% chance to crit at the expense of no longer having a HoT effect from the spell. It’s fantastic for PvP, but for running dungeons and probably solo questing as well I’d rather have the HoT, personally, but it’s your call.

Minor Glyphs

• Glyph of Aquatic Form: Increases your swim speed by 50% while in aquatic form.
• Glyph of the Stag: Your Travel Form can now be used as a mount by a party member.
• Glyph of the Treant: Teaches you the ability Treant Form.

None of these really matters, so just pick the one that you want. The first one I always go for is Aquatic Form, and I do so strictly because it has an actual, measurable effect in the game by allowing you to swim faster. Stag is cool if you’re grouping, allowing a party member to ride you (/gasp). Treant changes your physical appearance to be the old tree that used to be associated with healing druids, but as far as I’m aware it doesn’t have any impact at all on your spells like it did previously, it’s purely cosmetic.

Gearing Up Your Resto Druid
Gearing up your Resto Druid in this level range is pretty simple and straight forward.

Spellpower >= Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit

At this early stage, you shouldn’t have to worry about regen at all, so just focus on stacking Spellpower and Intellect for stronger heals, Haste to try to get more healing ticks in on your HoT’s, Crit because every time a HoT ticks it can be a crit, and Spirit because regen never hurts even if it doesn’t necessarily help (yet) either.

Stat priority will change as you get higher in level, but for 1-30 all you really care about is Intellect and Spellpower, the rest is just gravy.

Heirloom Guide

I will get these added into the primary heirloom guide soon, after I have time to make sure they haven’t slipped in any other heirlooms that I just haven’t noticed yet. We’ve known for quite a while now that there are a number of heirloom rings that have been data mined at the same time the legs first were, so I’m going to make sure those are not included before I edit the original guide. But until that time, here’s your guide for leg armor.

New Heirloom Legs
These heirlooms are going to cost you roughly 1,750g each. I don’t have a character that is Exhalted with a guild right now since I haven’t played in forever, so I can’t confirm the exact costs for those of you who get high enough to get the maximum discount. However, it’s pretty safe to assume they’ll cost you somewhere around 1,500-1,750g. I know gold is easier to come by these days than it used to be, but for those of you who will need to put forth a real effort to save up the gold, there you have it. The requirement to purchase them is Honored reputation with your guild.

You purchase these heirlooms from the guild vendor (I believe), and they require your guild to have gotten the “Working Better As a Team” achievement which is getting every profession leveled up to 600 skill level, which won’t be possible until MoP launches. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning today, right?

These heirlooms are good all the way up to level 85, so we’re sticking with the Cap – 5 thing we’ve been seeing since the introduction of heirlooms. As you look at the table below, note that the stats you see here on my blog are the stats as they appear in-game on a level 85 character. The stats on Wowhead are significantly higher than the in-game version, as is the case with the new Monk staff. So don’t look at the stats there and think they’re mindblowingly great, stick to the numbers you see here or what you see for yourself in the game.

As you can see, we have Plate legs for both Tanks and DPS but still nothing new for plate casters. We also have Mail legs for both Melee DPS and Caster DPS as well as Heals. Leather legs cover the DPS and Heals well, though there’s nothing particularly tanky available for the Monks and Druid out there. You’ll get by just fine without a tanking stat for your leather legs, but for the sake of covering all the bases there it is. Cloth naturally only has one leg choice and it follows the same pattern we’ve seen with all of the other heirloom armor up to this point, meaning that all of the cloth casters have a piece to turn to but the gear has stats for DPS more so than healers as there is no Spirit available.

Enchanting Heirloom Legs
I’m going to hold off on posting the enchants right now because even though there are a lot of leg enchants that appear to be available for these heirlooms, some of them do have item level requirements that don’t show up on their tooltips. That being the case, I’m going to try to do some more in-depth research on the leg enchants before I go ahead and post the information. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a good place to find the information on those hidden tooltips, so I’m going to have to either experiment in game or find another source online.

For now, just know that your only low level options offer a nearly worthless amount of bonus Armor rating which is decent if you’re going to have a low level twink but otherwise a waste of materials. The higher level enchants offer much better stats, but the drawback of their stats not being in effect until you reach a higher level. So do you want good stats for 25 levels, or do you want crappy stats for all 85? That’s up to you, but I’ll take the good stats for 25.

Collecting More Information
If any of you happens to know specifically of any of the enchants that have hidden item level requirements, I would appreciate the help cutting down the list.

This post will be a follow-up/do-over of the review I wrote in July after BWE3. The initial review discussed things that I saw in the game based solely on my experience with that one weekend, so this time I’m going to correct some of the things that I was wrong about or that I didn’t clearly describe, and remove some of the things that bothered me then that don’t now after playing it more or understanding better.

I’m going to go a little bit deeper into the Professions (classes) in this post and relate them to WoW and SWTOR classes for those of you who are still on the fence about what you want to roll. I’ll talk about their special class mechanics and try to dispel some of the misconceptions you might have going into it if you aren’t already familiar with the GW2 Professions (like Thieves and Stealth).

Character Creation: General
I like the GW2 character creation process, and I think they did a solid job of giving us customization options and I like the majority of what’s there. You start off by choosing your race, then you pick your profession (class), and then you start in on customizing your look with a pretty decent amount of control in terms of shape, size and color of your characters attributes.

As I mentioned in the initial review, one of the big differences you’ll see during character creation in GW2 versus other MMO’s is that there is no faction choice. That’s because there are no factions in GW2! You can play with any/all of your friends whenever you want to, and you have no need to fear players of the opposite faction ganking you because there is no opposite faction.

It is also important to note that you can only have characters on a single server in GW2. If you’re an altoholic like me, you can’t get around the limit to the number of character slots by joining other servers like you could in other games. I’ll go into more detail about servers in a moment, but for now just be aware that your five character slots are all you get in GW2 unless you purchase additional character slots from the Gem Store. Servers are the closest thing GW2 has to factions, and we’ll get into that more in the server section.

Professions (Classes)
If you’ve been playing MMO’s for a while but are new to GW2, then this is probably going to be the most confusing twist on terminology that you’ll see. In GW2 the classes are known as Professions. Crafting professions are just known as crafting. So when someone is talking about professions in GW2, then they are supposedly talking about their class rather than what they can craft. But by nature of the confusion, they may very well be talking about their crafting professions instead. So…just be prepared to be confused. I do my best to call them professions, but I constantly catch myself slipping back into classes.

In my initial review of GW2, I took a very high level look at the classes and just gave a general idea of what the classes professions do and how they work. Part of that was due to the limited amount of playtime that I had, and part of it was due to me not taking the time or perhaps paying enough attention to really notice some of the details that I had missed. So this time around I’m going to give you a little bit more information about the classes, but I’m not going to go too deep since I have a post (or series of) in mind for that later.

Adventurer Professions
The Adventurer Professions in GW2 wear medium armor, and they have a fair mix of ranged and melee mechanics, and support the full range combat styles that allow players of multiple playstyles to enjoy them.

Engineer: Is one of the two classes that I have little-to-no experience playing yet. They are a primarily a ranged class, but they also have a class mechanic that allows them to use a variety of gadgets and items to increase their versatility including grenades, offensive and defensive turrets (stationary pets), and thrown potions that grant offensive or defensive perks. Because their class mechanic gives them access to so many extra spells, the Engineer is one of only two classes that cannot swap their weapon during combat.

In terms of WoW, they are like a marriage of the Hunter and Shaman classes, using the toys that come with the Engineering profession. If you were to relate it to SWTOR, then it would be the Trooper/Bounty Hunter class with a built-in Biochem profession.

Ranger: In order to fully grasp the Ranger class, you need to step out of the MMO world for a second and go back to Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons. Rangers can be either ranged or melee, depending on weapon selection. Their special class mechanic is their pets, which work similarly to how pets work for Hunter-style classes in most other MMO’s, with each having one signature ability for the species in addition to its normal attacks.

Relating them to WoW there’s the clear affinity to the Hunter, but Rangers can also be incredibly effective in melee giving them a playstyle somewhat similar to a Thief or DPS Warrior. The SWTOR equivalent would be DPS Smuggler/Agent or Knight/Warrior.

Thief: Thief is one of the most generic kinds of characters for any fantasy game out there, so most of what you would think of will hold true. The key difference between GW2 Thieves and other thief/rogue classes out there though, is Stealth. In GW2 Stealth is not something that you can hang out in whenever you want to. Instead, Stealth lasts for anywhere from 1-4 seconds and that’s it. When most people think of the Thief archetype, they think “assassin” when what they really need to think of something more along the lines of Batman or a Mistborn if you’re familiar with Brandon Sanderson’s work.

Their special class mechanic is Steal which teleports you to the target and changes the Steal ability to a one-use spell that’s related (loosely) to your target. The spells can do a lot of different things, including AoE damage, stealth, crowd control, (de)buffs, and healing. The random nature of the spell turns a lot of people off of using it for anything other than it’s teleportation effect. Each target has a set group of spells that Steal can become, but which of those it ends up as is random so you never know what you’re going to end up with for sure.

The GW2 Thief isn’t about sneaking around in stealth and then opening up with a huge spike of damage followed by tons of crowd controlling stuns. So in WoW terms yes you will be playing similar to a Rogue, but mostly a Combat spec Rogue, and also the Hunter and even a touch of Mage. For SWTOR, you have some obvious ties to the Scoundrel/Agent or Shadow/Assassin, but also the Sentinel/Marauder with a touch of Madness Sorcerer/Balance Sage.

Scholar Professions
Scholar Professions wear light armor and are what you would typically associate with “clothies” in that they are casters and tend to be more squishy and suited to damage, healing, and controlling playstyles.

Elementalist: The Elementalist is a basically a wizard, as I’m sure you could guess by the title. They cast spells that are tied to the elements of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Their class mechanic allows them to switch between each of those four elements which has a different set of spells tied to each of them. So where every other class has 5 spells associated with each of their weapon sets, an Elementalist has 20 (5 x 4 elements). For that reason, Elementalists also cannot swap weapons during combat as having access to 20 spells vs 5 is already imbalanced enough that 40 vs 5 would just be ridiculous.

While the Elementalist has tons of spells associated with it, each of the spells that are tied to each weapon also takes on some trait of the weapon itself. For example, Dagger spells have a smaller range while Staff spells have larger areas of effect. This also does a good job of making the Elementalist feel different from one weapon to another despite such a large spellbook.

In WoW terms the Elementalist has obvious connections to the Mage, but it also relates to the Destruction Warlock, Priests of all specs and a bit of Resto Shaman as well. From SWTOR it would tie easily to the Sage/Sorcerer, and has some small relation to the Commando/Mercenary.

Necromancer: Another classic name that relates well to its implied roots. Necromancers focus on dark magic which includes lots of debuffs, summoning undead minions, and stealing life force from their victims. Weapon selection can have a pretty big impact on how the class plays and how aggressive you’ll be, as well as whether you’ll deal damage directly, over time, or in a trap-like fashion.

Their special class mechanic is called Death Shroud which takes the life force stolen from targets and converts it into a special resource bar that allows you to turn into a shadowy form with a different list of spells. Death Shroud converts the Life Force resource bar into a secondary life pool, and while in Death Shroud you use of your Life Force in order to cast your spells. You might have to try it for yourself to fully grasp how it works, but Death Shroud makes it possible for Necromancers to be incredibly durable.

In WoW terms, the Necro is linked closely to Warlocks and has some traits of the Mage, Shadow Priest, Survival Hunter, and distantly the Assassination Rogue. In SWTOR the Necromancer would be most like the Balance Sage/Madness Sorcerer, but the spells are so different in general that there’s not really a great SWTOR class that matches the Necro.

Mesmer: Mesmers are a very odd and interesting caster class that focuses on illusions and chance. Their special class mechanic is their illusions and the ability to “Shatter” (sacrifice) them for different effects. Shatter can be used to deal AoE damage, apply Confusion which deals damage when the target uses abilities, Daze which is like an interrupt of a “soft” stun, or Distortion which causes you to evade all incoming attacks.

Chaos is sort of the name of the game when it comes to Mesmers as a lot of the spells apply a random buff to allies and/or debuff to enemies, and some are just sort of interestingly bizarre like the fact that they can wield a Great Sword but the damage that it does is increased the further away you are from the target.

To relate the Mesmer to WoW you can only do so loosely. It has a touch of Warlock, Shadow Priest, Rogue, Hunter, and Mage. I can’t really think of anything in SWTOR that really fits the Mesmer enough to even really say that it fits, but it has a small relation to Sentinel/Marauder and Sage/Sorcerer. With both of these games, the amount of difference outweighs the similarities significantly in my opinion.

Soldier Professions
Soldier Professions wear the heavy armor, and as you would expect that means they tend to be much sturdier than the other classes.

Guardian: Guardians do a great job of living up to their name. They use melee weapons exclusively, but the majority of their attacks have either some element of AoE damage to them, or they both deal damage to enemies and heal your allies at the same time or debuff your enemies while buffing your allies. They have excellent survivability because of how many abilities they have that provide survivability in the form of added healing, boons (buffs) and conditions (debuffs) on top of their heavy armor.

Their special class mechanic consists of three Virtues: Courage which provides a guaranteed block every 40 seconds and can be activated for an immediate bock to you and your allies, Justice which makes every fifth attack burn your target and can be activated to make your and your allies’ next attack apply burning, and Resolve which gives you regeneration and can be activated to heal yourself and your nearby allies.

In WoW terms, the Guardian had definite ties to the Paladin, as well as the Warrior, Priest, and maybe a touch of Warlock if you look at it right. For SWTOR the Guardian would be your Guardian/Juggernaut, and to some extent your Vanguard/Powertech but with less mid-range capability.

Warrior: The only class that I haven’t even rolled yet to get an idea of how they play because the concept of a warrior is so overwhelmingly popular in gaming. Warriors can use almost every weapon in the game, giving them a good deal of versatility, and also allowing you to play a Warrior in a way that does not feel like every other game out there. For example, you can have a Warrior that uses a Rifle as their primary weapon and stays ranged almost exclusively.

The Warrior’s class mechanic is called Adrenaline which stacks up to three times. Each weapon has a specific ability that uses adrenaline, and the more adrenaline you have when you use it the more powerful the effect of it is. Most of these adrenaline burst skills have some form of AoE damage or deal a large amount of damage to the target as well as giving the Warrior a boon (buff) or the target a condition (debuff).

In WoW terms, the Warrior is obviously a Warrior, but it also has some Hunter, Paladin, Feral Druid and a bit of Shaman as well. For SWTOR the obvious links would be to the Knight/Warrior classes, with a little Smuggler/Agent thrown in for good measure.

User Interface (UI)
The UI for GW2 is pretty basic, and while it does have some customization it doesn’t have very much. Most of what you can customize right now is the scale of the UI overall and how large your minimap and chat windows are. I used to really love modifying my UI when I played WoW, but playing SWTOR with its limited UI customization prior the Jesus patch removed my reliance on that.

That being said, I certainly wouldn’t mind having more control over my UI. I’m mostly interested in being more in control of where mine and my opponent’s health bars are. By default your health is centered at the bottom of your screen and your target’s is centered at the top which makes keeping a close eye on them both a bit difficult. Because of their position, I have to put more effort into looking away from what’s going on with the combat itself to see where my health is in relation to my target’s and determining whether or not I need to push for a more evasive/healing style or if I should push for more DPS to finish them off before they down me. I would also prefer to see hard numbers on my target’s health bar rather than just visually noting the percentage that they have left, but that’s just a personal preference that really doesn’t matter.

Now, before someone else goes ape $*&@ about me wanting WoW’s addons that play the game for me, let me say that I do not in any way want that to be the case. I want more control over what I see, and where it’s displayed — I’m not looking for something that tells me when to jump or move, or call out when my opponent is casting Spell X. But I would like to be able to move things where I want them to be, such as moving the health bars to the center of my screen and next to one another so that I can keep full track of our health totals with my peripheral vision while I focus on what my target is actually doing so that I can see when I need to reaction with dodges and evades, or when I need to prep an AoE healing spell for a group when I know a big damage effect is about to be cast.

I’ve seen some information online recently that indicates that ArenaNet has no intention of ever allowing mods or customization to the UI beyond what they have in the game right now. Over time, I’m sure I’ll get used to the current system enough that it won’t bother me any more, but at this point I’ve played so many other games and for such a long time that do allow me to have that amount of control over where things are positioned that it bugs me to no longer have that control.

Overall, I do like the UI for GW2. I like that they allow you to open multiple windows that stack on top of each other by default, and that you can move them all around however you please and the game remembers those positions. I just wish that I had a little more control over where that information was displayed because you can’t tell everything just by looking at your character or your target. You can tell a lot, they did a great job of giving visual clues about what boons and conditions are present and so forth, but not all of those have a something visual either. I certainly wouldn’t say that the UI is a turn off or a reason to stay away from the game, even if you are used to that level of customization in other games.

Combat & Removing the Holy Trinity
In GW2 they have done away with the traditional MMO roles of Tank, Heals, DPS. Some people do consider GW2 to have it’s own version of the trinity which is Heals, DPS, and Control but even if you do consider it to be a trinity it doesn’t actually work the same way because of how they changed things to remove the holy trinity.

Combat in GW2 is much more mobile that most of the other mainstream MMO’s, and it’s a concept that has caused problems for a lot of players who didn’t know that going into it. Everyone is able to heal, everyone is able to Dodge incoming attacks, and very few spells require you to stand still while you cast them even if they have a cast time or a channeled element to them. Kiting is a skill that everyone will need to develop if they have any hopes of surviving even just the leveling process, and anyone who was so used to facerolling things in WoW because of great tanks or overpowered gear that they didn’t even know how to use their CC abilities is in for a rude awakening in the form of deaths and repair bills.

Another thing that’s different in GW2 is that, depending on your class, 33%-80% of your available spells are tied to your weapon(s), and each class only has access to either 1 or two sets of weapons during combat. So even though your Ranger has some fantastic damaging attacks with his Longbow, some sweet movement spells on his Great Sword, and some killer condition damage on his Sword & Torch combo, he can’t use all three of those in the same fight.

I mentioned before that my personal preference would be to have access to my whole spellbook. I still stand by that as a matter of personal preference, though I know some of the readers took it as me saying one thing when I meant another. To explain a bit further, I’d really like to use the third spell from my Great Sword even when I’m not actually using that weapon. I’d be perfectly fine with swapping out the third spell on my current weapon in order to have access to it, but my personal preference would be that if I know how to take a running leap at someone then I know how to take a running leap regardless of the weapon in my hands when I do it.

That being said, I made the point at a time when most of my experience with the game had been with spellcasting classes. It wasn’t until I started playing more melee focused classes that I saw how unrealistic that would be with the way the game is set up. In some cases it would make sense, like if I can cast a wall of fire with a Dagger then why can’t I do it with a Staff? But then you get into melee classes, or non-casters rather, and you see that it wouldn’t make sense for you to shoot five arrows when you’re wielding a sword. Sure, you could modify the animation and the text or whatever, but you come to a lot of situations with physical attacks where doing that just wouldn’t make sense. If they had made buttons 1, 2, and 3 all be weapon-specific and then let 4 be a movement spell of your choice, and 5 be an AoE of your choice or something like that then it would make sense to allow you to pick and choose, but it just doesn’t work with this setup.

Having gotten much more play time in now, I don’t mind the current set up nearly as much today as I did right after my first time experiencing the game. There are still times where it bugs me that I don’t have access to that one spell (usually a movement spell) when I’m using other weapons that are more effective in actual combat, but I do like what that adds to the game as well. At first that whole aspect simply annoyed me, but now it has started to grow on me. Even though there are those times that I wish I had access to that spell, there are other times where I accidentally draw agro from 4-5 mobs at once that I’ve struggled to kill one of before and I’m able to solo them all because I made good weapon choices and utilized my skills to the fullest. The awesome factor from those situations has surpassed the annoyance factor of not having that one spell that would save me, what, 15 seconds of running? Not a big deal in the long run.

Now let’s take a little bit closer look at the trinity:

Tanking: While GW2 does have an agro table that determines who a monster is going to attack, there are no taunts that force a mob to attack a certain person and the formula for determining agro is unknown so there’s no way to manipulate agro. Tanks in GW2 will not be focusing on holding agro so much as they’ll be focusing on the survival of themselves and their allies via control spells, healing, and boons & conditions (buffs & debuffs).

Healing: Every profession in the game has access to healing spells, so there are no dedicated healers either. You can certainly spent your talent points to improve your healing spells and gear for additional healing, but there are no healing spells that can be spammed so even when you have modified your spec to focus on healing you literally cannot sit there casting healing spells over and over because every healing spell has a cooldown. While every class can heal themselves, and many of them have an AoE healing spell or two, the number of healing classes so to speak is very limited and even they can’t cast heal after heal after heal.

DPS: DPS is something that you certainly can do in GW2, and basically every player will be doing it to some extent. The biggest change for DPS is the same as the tanks, which is the lack of taunts. DPS players will have to react what’s going on around them to avoid getting themselves killed, and they will have to pull away from dealing damage and heal themselves when they start to get low.

Control: The new addition in GW2′s trinity of sorts, Control is about using effects that limit enemy movement and abilities to reduce their effectiveness against your group, or doing the same to promote your allies movement and abilities to improve your own effectiveness. Control is one of those roles where you have to really know which spell to use and when, or else you find yourself under performing or using up so many of your spells all at once that suddenly you can’t do your job.

Effective Level System
GW2 uses a semi-horizontal leveling system, where-in your effective character level is reduced when you go to zones that are lower level than you actually are. So if you take a level 20 character into a level 4 zone, then your stats are reduced to make you “effectively” as powerful as a level 4 character. You don’t lose access to any of your spells or gear, and all of the benefits of your talent points are still in effect as well, but your overall power is reduced so that even in that level 4 zone you will find some things challenging.

The GW2 system is semi-horizontal because while you will get effectively lowered so that low level zones remain challenging, it does not increase your effective level to allow you to take a level 4 character into a level 20 zone and hope to survive. So a level 20 in a level 4 will have to be careful but shouldn’t be too challenged, but a level 4 in a level 20 would be dead.

I mentioned in my initial review that I both loved and hated this system because the thought of being able to go back to a low level area on my main character to play with my friends thrills me, but sometimes I enjoy going to a low level area and destroying the mobs there while I farm nodes or farm for something special from killing a mob. Having had more time to play the game now, I don’t really mind that there’s not a way to toggle the reduced level on or off. I’ve had the opportunity now to see the system in action a bit more and even if the mobs aren’t a total push over because of my reduced stats, I’m still more powerful because of my gear and talent points.

As one of the readers pointed out in the initial review, if you could turn if off just for trivial things like farming, you could also turn it off for not-so-trivial things like special event bosses that they put in lower level zones that are intended to be difficult for everyone, and a system like this allows that to be an epic encounter for even level 80 characters where being able to toggle it on/off at will would destroy that functionality. If I had the choose between being able to participate in an epic encounter with all of my toons, including the low level ones, and being able to lazily farm mats then I would gladly go for the epic encounter.

You can’t add content to a level 20 zone in WoW and expect it to be a challenge for anyone above level 24. Heck, in the modern era of enchanted heirlooms you can’t really expect it to be a challenge for anyone above level 16 (or a skillfully geared level 10 twink). Low level zones then become a complete bore to the majority of the player base. With a system that reduces your effective level to be equal to the content though, you can constantly add things to any zone that you want to, regardless of its level range, and still have it be challenging.

With a vertical scaling game like WoW or SWTOR, the gameplay is designed to be grindy so that you face content that’s hard when you first get to it, but then the more you do the better your gear becomes and the easier the content gets until it’s no longer a challenge, then you move on to the next challenge and the same thing over and over. One of the major drawbacks to vertical scaling system is that it creates level brackets which divides the playerbase. You end up with players who are level 1-10 that can’t play with anyone higher than them, but the level 11-20 players don’t want to bother going back to the 1-10 area because it would be too easy/boring. But the 11-20 players can’t go hang with the 21-30 players because their bracket is too hard, and the 21-30 players don’t want to bother with the 1-20 zones because they’re too easy/boring or because they’ve gone through that grind so many times on so many characters that they never want to go back. Since they never add new content to low level zones because of this grindy bracket system, nothing ever makes that zone desirable to higher level players again.

Balancing Issues: It should be pointed out though that there are some cases where the effective leveling system has some balancing problems right now. We had two dynamic events last night when we were in areas with an effective level 3-5 levels below us, but the mobs that spawned were 3-5 levels higher than the effective level. If there had been a lot of players in the area then the level difference might have been overcome easily, but in these particular cases there were less than 10 players present and the mobs were two-shotting everyone. In one of those events the raptors that were spawning were also higher quality monsters (I forget the actual terms used for GW2), so they were stronger than a normal mob of that level would be to begin with.

So if you’re playing the game right now and just trying it out to see whether or not you really want to invest in it, be aware that right now there are some balancing issues that they will hopefully take another look at. We submitted tickets to bring the issue to their attention last night after Fyn died for the sixth time or so even with me geared and specced as an Elementalist healer, so hopefully they see that it’s an issue and get it resolved soon.

How Servers Work
In Guild Wars 2 servers are the closest thing a faction that you’re used to from games like WoW (Alliance vs. Horde) or SWTOR (Republic vs. Empire) in that it’s the only form of barrier that exists between players. However, it’s unlike both of those games because the barrier only exists in a single form known as World vs. World PvP (WvW, WvWvW, WuvWuv, or however else you want to say it).

You can only have characters on a single server in GW2. If you purchase a server transfer, then your transfer moves all of your characters at the same time, not just a single character like you might be familiar with from other MMO’s. But again, the only reason to move from one server to another is for the sake of WvW PvP. World vs. World PvP plays a big part in the overall concept of the game, but it doesn’t have to be something that you participate in if PvP isn’t your thing.

The reason why WvW matters beyond just being another activity is because the worlds (servers) during the WvW matches grant a buff to their entire server that increases tons of things from stats to experience gains to magic find. Your server can never accomplish anything at all in WvW and everyone would still be able to play the game just fine, but if you happen to be on a server where a large population of PvP players or big guild alliances are found then you can end up with a lot of those bonuses which will make things easier or perhaps more enjoyable in some situations.

WvW aside, you can whisper people on any server, from any server. You can send mail to any player, regardless of server. Once they turn the feature on after server populations settle you’ll also be able to join groups with anyone from another server, even multiple people from multiple different servers. My understanding is that you can use that same cross-server grouping for Structured PvP (sPvP) as well once it’s live, but I’m not 100% sure on that part.

So while different servers serve a similar purpose to factions from other games in regards to WvW, none of that exists outside of that so it’s easier to play with your friends in GW2 than almost any other MMO out there. Add that to their effective leveling system and you can really start to see how much effort ArenaNet has put into allowing people to play what they want, with who they want.

Grouping: My Biggest Gripe
I’m a big fan of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to its faults. Some of the gripes that I have about the game are just gripes and likely more than a little selfish, some are more legit, and some are possibly just bugs in the system.

To keep this post focused on the positive, I’m not going to get into the little things that annoy me personally, but for the sake of giving an honest review that people can look at and say, “that appeals to me” or “that is reason enough for me not to buy this game” this one needs to be included even though I already talked about it in the initial review.

Before I go further with this, let me explain how the questing system works in GW2 for those of you who haven’t had a chance to play the game or study up on it much. In GW2 quests are broken down into three types: Personal Story (PS), Heart Quests (HQ’s), and Dynamic Events (DE’s).

Personal Story: When you do a PS you are taken to your own instanced area so that you can experience your personal story. Sometimes your group members can join you and sometimes they can’t, and in the case of them being the same race as you and at the same point in their own personal story progression the quest may or may not count for them based on the quest itself and which choices they made during character creation and/or in previous personal story dialogue options.

Heart Quests: These are static quests that are always available in the world, but not typically repeatable. You can usually participate in the events related to the HQ, but you won’t typically be rewarded for your efforts. HQ’s are designed to give you an idea of the intended progression around the map. When you talk to a Scout who shows you different parts of the map and highlights the HQ’s for you, you can see the quest level of each HQ to get an idea of what level they are and thus what order you should approach them in. They’re sort of a map within your map. Dynamic Events typically spawn in areas near the HQ’s, so following those around in order of level should give you a good idea of where to look for level appropriate quests.

Dynamic Events: Dynamic Events are the heart blood of GW2′s questing system. They can be triggered by a number of things, including: population in the area, talking to a trigger NPC, completing (or failing) a related HQ or DE, or a certain amount of time passing. These are infinitely repeatable, but they are only available when the trigger event takes place. Because the triggers can change and take place or not take place, and the cooldowns related to them, it’s possible that you could level a character to level 10 and then go roll that exact same character and level in the same area following the same path and not do 100% of the same DE’s with both characters. Some of the DE’s would surely be the same, but it’s possible one or both toons would experience DE’s that the other did not, and it’s possible that there are still others in those same areas that neither of your characters got to see. The concept continues through the entire game.

The Issue With Grouping
In GW2 joining a group with other players provides only one real benefit over not being in a group at all – party chat. That’s the only thing you get out of joining with someone else versus just being in the same place as someone else. Your efforts don’t count towards their progress any more than if you weren’t in a group with them, you have no idea how close they are to completing it or what else they need to do to complete it unless they tell you via chat or VOIP, and sometimes your presence is actually a hindrance to them.

Your PS is tied to your character, that’s why it’s personal, so it makes sense that these are intended to be soloed to at least some degree. However, PS is also the only type of quest where having someone in your group versus not having someone in your group can have a direct impact on the quest’s result because by nature of being personal only people who are in your group can participate. But, not all of the PS’s allow your group members to join you.

HQ’s on the other hand take place in the open world. Unless the context of the quest is specifically per-individual, it makes sense that two people helping each other to accomplish a task should be completed more quickly than a person doing it alone. However, being in a group gives you no benefit at all in a HQ because the actions of one person do not impact the actions of another. The closest you can come is killing mobs because two people killing the same monster will go faster than you killing it solo. But keep in mind, you both have to be in combat with that mob when it dies in order for you to get credit for it. If I kill a mob you need for your HQ and you never took a swing at it, then you get no credit for it regardless of whether or not you’re in my group. The same used to be true for gathering items in an HQ as well, but from the quests we did in early access it seems like they have changed that so that items gathered for quests are instanced similarly to crafting nodes now.

Dynamic Events are similar to HQ’s in set up, being focused on certain areas in the world, but the completion of the event itself is the goal rather than an individual’s progress. Your reward is based on your contribution, but whether or not the DE is completed and how quickly is determined by everyone’s contribution in the entire area. So if Bob runs through a DE area and kills one mob before running off to do PvP, then he will get his contribution for the one mob and even his one mob counts towards the progress of all of us. So during DE’s, essentially everyone is in one group even if you’re not actually in a group at all and never intentionally do anything to help another person.

So, in the case of PS’s, being in a group can provide a benefit of speed assuming that the PS allows group members to help you and that the PS involves combat. Some PS’s that include a gathering element allow party members to help, and some don’t. In the case of being the same race, some PS’s allow the quest to count for both of you, while others will make you complete it once for each player even if it does allow your full group to participate at the same time.

In the case of an HQ, being in a party provides no benefit because everyone’s progress is personal. Two people killing the same mob at the same time does give credit to both, but that credit would be given regardless of you being in a group together and would still be given whether the other player had a personal, seething hatred for you as a person or they were your spouse of 30 years or a total stranger.

In the case of DE’s, it seems like being in a group would be a good thing because everyone’s contribution counts, but since their contribution counts regardless of if they are in your group or not it doesn’t actually matter.

If group members could contribute to the progression of HQ’s and they could join you in all or most of your PS’s, then the DE’s would be fine just how they are and this wouldn’t be a problem at all. With the current system though, minus the exception for the PS’s that do allow group performance and do allow multiple players to claim credit for a single completion, GW2 doesn’t actually encourage you to help or play with one another so much as it encourages you to follow the pack of players to leech off of the group’s performance or to just play solo since there’s no point in grouping in the first place. You aren’t encouraged to play with other people so much as you’re encouraged to play near them.

Now, that’s not to say that they discourage grouping, but with the current implementation of grouping you might as well be a solo player following the masses rather than grouping up with a friend. It might not be as social, but since you can join multiple guilds across all servers and chat with anyone on any server, not to mention guild VOIP systems, you really aren’t missing out on much in the social realm by being solo.

Leveling: How I Love Thee
With my gripe on grouping out of the way, let me take a minute to talk about what I love the most about this game – the leveling experience itself.

There are a lot of reasons why leveling in general is the thing that I like to focus on the most in MMO’s. I don’t do it to chew through the content as quickly as possible, I do it to experience the growth and progression of the characters themselves and to see how I can stretch my skills in the different level ranges to accomplish hard tasks with limited tools or resources.

I also level because that’s the aspect that I enjoy blogging about the most. I haven’t done much in the way of writing leveling guides since I stopped playing WoW frequently last December with the launch of SWTOR, but leveling guides have been my passion since shortly after I started blogging. For those of you who may be new to my blog, I want to let you know that my leveling guides aren’t the kind that tell you where to level and which quests to do an all that, I’m not into that crap at all. My guides are written to help you understand your class and its abilities, and how to play the class better or in a more enjoyable way to help your performance.

Alright, I got a bit side tracked there, so let’s get back to leveling –

The way the spells and weapons system works in GW2 makes it so that each class can feel incredibly different just by changing your weapons. A Ranger using a Axe/Dagger vs. a Longbow for example, a Warrior with a Great Sword vs. Rifle, a Rogue with Dagger/Dagger vs. Shortbow — it allows the experience of playing the character to be so different that each class can feel like multiple classes. I really love that there is so much versatility built into that system and that the weapons themselves allow you to cross the line of what something is “supposed” to feel like. Just pushing the button to change weapons mid-combat can have the same affect as switching your spec in WoW. Just imagine if you could go from a Feral Druid to a Balance Druid or an Operative healer to a Sniper DPS in the middle of the a fight with no problem.

And that’s just the beginning of the what’s so cool about the leveling process in GW2. That’s not even including the combo fields that you can create either with just your own spells or when you combine them with the spells of other people in your group or in your area. It’s just a whole new level of involvement that you could ignore if you weren’t interested, or you could fully explore if you were.

I also like that there are so many ways to earn experience in this game, and that doing so gives you the ability to spend your time doing what you want to do. Some things are certainly more efficient than others in terms of earning experience, but you can still level by focusing on whatever aspect of the game you love the most. Generally speaking the three things I enjoy doing the most in MMO’s is questing, crafting, and PvP and in GW2 you get experience points for doing all three of those.

I really enjoy the questing system in GW2 as well. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I do like a lot of the different aspects of their questing system, particularly dynamic events. If they do continue to add content to all of the different zones in the game, then I think there’s really a lot of potential to keep this game moving for a long while. With the semi-horizontal scaling system they have established a great foundation to be able to add content anywhere at any time and keep it relevant which just can’t be done in a game with vertical scaling.

With the openness of the servers and how many tools they’ve put in to allow you to communicate and play with people from any other server, they’ve really broken down some of the walls that have held other games back. Blizzard has picked up on that in their more recent history with things like RID grouping and so forth, but they still don’t have the full structure in place yet to really make the servers essentially non-existent.

Too Long; Didn’t Read
Too long? We barely topped 7,500 words!?

Is the game perfect? Not in my honest opinion, no.

Is the game fun? Abso-freaking-lutely!

Today we’re going to take a closer look at the items offered in the Guild Wars 2 Gem Store, and I will share my thoughts on the items and services that they offer and the prices they’ve put on them both in terms of Gems (the cash shop currency) and their literal cost in terms of US Dollars. I also made a Google Docs spreadsheet that has the costs broken down for euros and pounds for those of you across the pond and in…whatever other places use those currencies. And of course, I will be sharing a link to said document with you as well.

What is the Gem Store?
The Gem Store is GW2′s version of a cash shop, which is a common feature in free-to-play (F2P) games through which the game developers are provide items or services for real money in order to make a profit on their otherwise free game. Guild Wars 2 has gone with the most successful version of a cash shop, which is one that focuses primarily on vanity rewards that have no direct impact on the game or whose impact does not affect your character’s power in relation to another. This method keeps the game “fair” between players by not allowing one person to use real money to make themselves more powerful than another.

In GW2 you can spend real world money to purchase Gems, which are the currency of the Gem Store (the GW2 cash shop). These gems are sold in batches of 800 with a price tag of $10 (or £8.5). You can then use those Gems as currency for items or services, or you can sell them to other players at the Trading Post for Gold (the primary in-game currency). This means that you can get Gems either by paying $10 for 800 of them, or by purchasing them from other players with gold that you have earned while playing. So even if you don’t have any extra cash that you can personally spend, you can earn enough gold on your character to buy the Gems that you need to purchase whatever you’re looking for from the Gem Store.

Just keep in mind that the going rate of exchange between Gems and Gold is constantly fluctuating so even if you see that you can buy 100 Gems for 5 Gold today, that might not be the case tomorrow so if you’re saving up for something big then you’ll want to keep a close eye on the exchange rate and buy your Gems when they’re cheap.

What Can I Buy?
There are currently 34 “things” that you can buy in the Gem Store. Most of those are items, but some are also account-wide perks such as extra bag slots, or services such as transferring all of your characters from one server to another.

The items that are sold come in two varieties; consumables and vanity gear. Most of the consumable items are single-use and impact only a single character, while the vanity gear is available for all of your characters. All items that you purchase from the Gem Store, as far as I’m aware, will be received by your character through the in-game mail system.

It is important to note that not all of the items you purchase through the Gem Store are bound to your character, or even to your account. Many of the items, such as dyes and mini-pets, can be sold to other players via the Black Lion Trading Post. This allows you to earn gold by spending your gems, but it also gives you an easy way to give gifts to your friends.

Break It Down! *dance*
To start this off, I’ll give you this link to Psynister’s GW2 Gem Store Conversions where you’ll find my conversion costs to show you the true price of each of the items and perks offered in the Gem Store so that you know just how much each of those things actually costs you. The Google Doc also has a link to the Wiki page where I got all of my information, so big props to Wiki.GuildWars2.com for providing me with the information in the first place.

We’ll take a look at all of them in this post today, but I will also be sharing my thoughts on whether or not I consider them worth their cost. Keep in mind that my opinions are just that — my opinions.

The following sections are broken down into the different categories of items/perks that you can purchase, and I’ll discuss each section in turn. I’m not going to talk about every item that’s for sale, because many of them are vanity and by their nature appeal to only certain people. So the items that I’ll actually address in any detail are ones that appeal to me personally, turn me off either from a cost perspective or from what they do, or ones that have some other information I want to pass on to you such as how some of these items can be found in-game so there’s no need to purchase them unless you want to speed up the process of collecting. The final heading in this post will be my summarized thoughts of the shop as a whole.

Style

I’m not going to break every one of these items down to analyze them all individually because these are the vanity items which everyone will have their own opinions on. Personally, I’m not that big on having a certain look so I won’t bother purchasing the majority of these. The ones that I do purchase will most likely come from converting gold into gems so that I’m not actually spending any money on them.

If I were to pick out those that I found to be the most fun/interesting I would say Aviator’s Sunglasses, Ringmaster’s Hat, and Pirate Captain’s Costume were my top three.

Transmutation Stone: This is the odd item in the group because it’s not actually a piece of vanity gear, but rather an item that allows you to transform one piece of gear into the image of another. It’s basically a consumable version of WoW’s transmogrification system. One thing I’d like to point out about these is that you can also get them as rewards from certain quests in-game. I want to say the ones that I got from the BWE3 event all came from chests that I received for accomplishing different goals in PvP. It was either those or the Mystic Chests that I found. The point is, you don’t have to pay money for these if you don’t mind being patient while you collect enough from rewards.

Consumable

Asuran Bank Portal: Remote access to a bank is something you often wish you would have access to in other MMO’s. In GW2 that’s not quite as big of an issue because you have instant access to a mailbox everywhere in the world and times where you need access to a bank such as while you’re crafting or when you’re trying to sell things on the Trading Post, you’re generally within a few seconds worth of travel between the locations. The one big draw of these is that the mail system, as it currently stands, cannot be used to mail items to your own characters, you have to do that through the bank or by mailing things to a friend and then having them mail it to your alt. At 44 cents a pop, or 31 if you buy in bulk, these are fairly cheap.

Whether or not they’re worth the cost is going to depend on how much of an altoholic you are, how often you play solo versus playing with other people you could trust, how much of a hoarder you are, and how often you find yourself in need of accessing a bank. They don’t really appeal to me because I will almost always be playing with my wife and/or guildmates who I know I can trust, and when I’m not I have my wife’s account information and computer sitting 2 feet away from me so I can load game at any time to transfer things on my own.

Dye Pack: Welcome to the Guild Wars 2 lottery! People are going to be buying these suckers left and right both to collect them for their own use as well as selling them on the trading post. There are somewhere around 475 different dyes in the game right now, and I guarantee you these are going to be a hit with a large portion of the playerbase. I don’t really care what my gear looks like, so I won’t be buying them for myself, but I’m sure we’ll end up buying some for my wife and all those duplicates will either end up on her alts or on the trading post.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to play GW2 yet, you can find dyes by just playing the game. Some of them are sold by vendors, and others are drops from killing mobs or opening chests. So don’t feel like you need to buy these to get the colors that you want. Everyone also has several dyes that they have access to by default, somewhere around 16 or so, so even without having any special dyes you can still change your colors up enough to be just another cookie cutter Necromancer. At $2.50 these have a pretty hefty price tag on them, even considering you get seven dyes in each pack.

Evon Gnashblade’s Box o’ Fun: A purely vanity item that’s just fun to play with. I haven’t seen one of these myself, so I don’t know how much fun they actually are, but I expect we’ll see quite a few of them since having fun is the whole point of playing the game. [Update: I got to see one of these in tonight's stress test and it was actually quite fun so I could definitely see these being used a lot.]

Mystic Forge Stone: I didn’t have time to experiment with anything like this while I was playing during the BWE or stress test events, so I really have no idea how good this is. At 56-63 cents each, they aren’t all that expensive, but I have no idea of their value so the price is equally meaningless to me. Surely one of my readers can help fill you in, though. (Right, readers?)

Mystic Key: This is another item that you can find in game, but they’re supposedly quite rare. I’ve only managed to find one so far, and that one was a quest reward during (I think) my class story quest. The Mystic Chests that you open with them are uncommon, but certainly more common than the keys. The rewards inside the chests are usually quite good, so you’ll need a way to open them if you want the goods inside.

Support

Bag Slot Expansion: This will probably be one of the more frequently purchased “items” in the shop, as MMO players are always crazy about having extra bag space. This is also SUPPOSEDLY one of the account-wide perks, so buying it once means all of your characters get access to an extra slot. I say supposedly because there’s an argument on the forums about whether this one is account-wide or per character. You can have up to seven slots total, and you start with either four or five. Up to BWE2 you started with four and needed to unlock the other three, but BWE3 through the stress test on 8/10 we started with five and needed to unlock only two.

At $5 per slot these are one of the more expensive purchases you can make, but you only ever need to buy 2-3 and then you’re done (assuming they are account-wide). I would like to say that early on you won’t really need the extra bag space, but I guarantee you we’re going to see level 80 characters before the first week of September is finished and even those who don’t rush through the leveling process are going to find themselves in want/need of extra storage after the first couple of weeks.

Are they worth it? Rather than do all the math over again, how about I just point you to a fantastic resource I found on the GW2Guru forums: Inventory and You: Maximizing Space on the Cheap. I’ve gotten some mixed replies as to whether or not these are actually account-wide or if you have to buy them for individual characters. If they are account-wide, which most people seem to think they are, then I would consider them potentially worth the price only after I’ve leveled my crafting enough that I can make at least 12 slot bags for all of my alts.

Bank Access Express: See “Asuran Bank Access” in the first section as these are exactly the same thing. I think one of these was a typo caused by name change somewhere along the line, but I could be mistaken.

Black Lion Merchant Express: Summoning a merchant that anybody can use for 5 minutes isn’t too bad considering he can both buy and sell. How useful it is depends on how much farming you’re going to do and where you’re going to do it. They’re pretty cheap at 31-44 cents each, so if I end up getting into a farming frenzy at some point in the future then they might get a consideration. From my limited experience with the game so far, I don’t think it’s really worth it. But again, if I find myself in trouble from an inventory standpoint I can always just mail things to my wife and have her keep them in her mailbox until she gets to a vendor and then keep the money from selling them while I do the same for her.

Black Lion Salvage Kit: Top of the line salvage kits are probably going to become a big deal for high level items and probably the mid-level items as well. Salvage kits are used to break down items and gear that you find into material components used for crafting. The better the salvage kit, the better the quality and quantity of goods that you receive from destroying it. Are they worth 31-44 cents a piece? That’s hard to say right now since I haven’t tested them on anything and I no one can accurately predict the value of crafting materials beyond the level 20′ish range. Will I buy them? Not likely. That’s largely due to the fact that I enjoy crafting and I enjoy farming and I always end up with way more mats than I could ever possibly use because of my crafting and alting obsessions.

Black Lion Trader Express: Access to the trading post (auction house) from anywhere could be a good thing for those of you who are farming, and it makes it easier for you buy/sell mass quantities of materials since you can use it when you’re already standing at a bank. I don’t think I’ll be playing the auction house enough to ever bother with this

Instant Repair Canister: This one doesn’t interest me in the least. It might be good if at level 80 you find that repair costs are ridiculous, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case and even if it were I’d rather buy gems, sell them for gold, and then decide for myself whether to spend gold on repairs or other things. Of all the items under $1, this is one of the more expensive ones and one that I feel is one of the more useless. I haven’t seen high level repair costs though, so maybe I’m judging it a bit too harsh.

Revive Orb: Is the time it would take me to run from a spawn point back to my current location ever going to be worth $3 to me? I don’t think so. If it could be used in WvW PvP, then people would probably spend gems on these, but since they aren’t there’s no reason to bother. Not in my opinion, anyway.

Account

Bank Tab Expansion: An extra 30 slots in the bank is pretty good. Is it $7.50 good? That’s up to you, really. Is it worth it to me? Possibly somewhere down the road. If I get to where I’m earning a lot of gold in game then I’m sure I’ll convert to gems and grab these.

Character Slot Expansion: This is the first purchase I’m going to make, and the only one that I’m 100% sure of. There are eight professions (classes) in this game, but you only start out with five character slots, so I am definitely going to open up three additional slots for both myself and my wife right away. We haven’t received any indication of what the actual limit is to the number of character slots, but I think eight is all that I’ll need. If we really get sucked into this game and they allow more than eight slots, then I could see us buying more slots at some point in the future maybe.

That being said, extra character slots are the third most expensive item in the Gem Store at $10 each. The only thing more expensive is a world transfer to either a medium or high population server which we’ll talk about next.

World Transfer: In GW2 you can play with anybody from any server at any time, with the sole exception of World vs. World PvP. That’s important to know because you’re only allowed to have characters on one server. Period. Transferring is only important if you end up on a server that absolutely sucks at WvW PvP, and even then only if you care so much about receiving the Power of the Mists buff you get from succeeding in WvW that it bothers you. You can be in multiple guilds at once and you have almost unlimited access to your friends regardless of which server they call home, so I see very little point in ever purchasing this.

The World Transfer has the two highest costs of them all. I thought it was quite interesting that they decided to have three tiers of payments for transferring servers, based on the size of the server you’re going to. It makes it more expensive for those who want to move to high population servers for the WvW benefits, and makes it cheaper for people to flee the overflowing servers for a bit more peace and quiet. This was actually the item that stuck out to me the most because of how they’re handling it and I think it’s actually a rather brilliant move given how servers are handled in the game. If you don’t want to spend over $20 to transfer all of your characters to the top servers then you better choose wisely when you roll or accept the one you end up on and deal with it. The real answer to not having the WvW buffs after all isn’t to leave your server for a better one, but rather to inspire your fellow players, offer them leadership and coordination, and teach them how to earn it for themselves. You want cohesive server communities? Well here’s your chance, ladies and gents. Here’s your chance.

Boosts

Crafting Booster: If you want to power level your character and your crafting at the same time, then this might be a fantastic purchase. It costs just under $2 so it’s not exactly cheap for a one-time use item that only lasts for an hour, but if you know you’ve got the mats and/or gold to power level your crafting then this could potentially earn you a huge amount of extra experience in just one hour. I haven’t found anybody who’s done the research to see how much of an impact this will have, so I can’t say for sure whether it’s worth it or not from a cost vs. reward perspective, but I think it has potential.

Experience Booster: This one sounds like it might be really cool, but actually the experience you get from killing mobs is one of the slowest forms of farming experience that you can find, so even with a 50% boost it’s not really all that impressive. When you compare it to crafting, they cost the same amount of money/gems, but you can craft items significantly faster than you can farm mobs so I don’t think this one is worth the cost.

Killstreak Experience: Now this one shows some potential. If you’re big on farming mobs for experience and drops, then this could be a great item for you. The question is whether or not you can find enough locations in a enough locations across varied level ranges to make it worth the cost. I don’t know the answer to that right now, but since this one renews itself as long as you kill something within 30 seconds I see a lot of potential here. If this works in a group setting where as long as you’re in combat with something that gets killed will trigger the reset then this thing has huge potential. If you have to actually land the killing blow, then I’m not so sure. It’s a gamble either way though, because you could always walk right into some server lag or a disconnect that kept your timer going and end up wasting your money.

Magic Find Booster: An extra 50% magic find is nothing to sneeze at. That being said, I have no idea how effective it actually is, or where you would find a rewarding enough area to farm kills to fully utilize it. I could see this being a hit in dungeons, or in certain locations if we find a large population of mobs concentrated in a fairly small area, or if they end up making certain magical gear drop from specific mobs (like WoW does).

Minis

Minis Pack: Getting three random mini-pets is a pretty great idea if you ask me. I don’t know how hard it is to find pets in the game itself because I’ve never seen one. Knowing that at least one of them is guaranteed to be uncommon raises is value though. I do know that these can be sold on the trading post, so it’s very likely that you’ll see these flooding the auction house off and on as people try to buy them with gems and then sell them for higher amounts of gold. Would I buy them? Eh…maybe, maybe not. It depends on how cute they are and whether only my wife falls in love with them or if I end up falling for them too. I haven’t even seen a pet in GW2 yet, so I have no idea what any of them look like or if they have cute little animations or sounds, I really don’t know.

They are pretty expensive, but I know I’ve spent way more than $3.75 on loot cards for my wife to get pets in WoW, so I’m sure we’ll end up tossing some green at these in the future.

Overall Impressions
Overall, I think ArenaNet did a good job with the GW2 Gem Store. I think they went with a very solid model for it by keeping out any form of gear that gives stats and by not making players pay to open content or make content easier. There are some options to speed up your experience gains, but I don’t think that any of them is going to have a significant impact on how quickly people actually level up, with the possible exception of the crafting one depending on what the actual math is behind that whole process.

I’m glad to see that we’re able to get the extra character slots, though admittedly bummed that we have to in the first place just to even the number of slots versus the number of professions (classes) in the game. It’s understandable, but that’s one of my personal pet peeves in MMO’s is not having enough character slots to sample all of the classes without deleting and rerolling to do it. Again, I understand it and think it’s a good idea from the business perspective, I just personally don’t like it.

While there are a lot of things that I won’t bother buying in the Gem Store, I think that they did a really good job of keeping the things that they offer varied enough to have things that appeal to everybody. Some people love vanity gear, some love being able to dye their gear to be whatever colors they want, others are more interested in buffing their character with things like the experience boosts, some collect mini-pets, others like to increase their storage for things like crafting and working the trading post, and people like me are addicted to rolling all the alts. I love that they didn’t try to stick things in there that everyone would feel like they need to buy. They put plenty of things that will appeal to a large number of people, but they did a good job of staying away from needs and have-to’s.