World of Warcraft/Beginner's Guide
From WikiCheats
Contents |
Selecting a class/race combo
Your first choices may seem like the easiest. However, your racial selection can have a fair amount of impact on your character later in the game. Consider the racial abilities carefully.
In selecting a class, it may be helpful to consider the roles each class can fill later in the game. In some cases, the specific talent spec can change the role of the class.
There are 3 general roles that a class can fill. A tank is a class that absorbs the brunt of the punishment. A healer is a class that keeps others alive. A damage dealer is a class that focuses on killing. Damage dealing is split generally into physical and magical damage.
Druid
Druids can fill different roles depending on their talent spec. The restoration talents focus the druid toward the role of a healer. The feral talents allow for either a tank or physical damage role. The balance talents allow the druid to take on a magical damage role.
Hunter
The hunter is mainly a physical damage class and one of only two classes that gets a combat pet. However, there are a few abilities that inflict magical damage. The hunter generally uses their ranged weapon and their pet to inflict damage.
Mage
The mage is a magical damage class. Be it fire, frost, or arcane. The mage is all about dealing heavy magic damage.
Paladin
The paladin is another class that can fill various roles depending on talents. Protection fills the tank role. Holy paladins work as healers and retribution paladins become a hybrid physical/magical damage role.
Priest
Priests can fill two different roles depending on talents. In general, priests are healers. However, the shadow talent line changes the priest into a magical damage role.
Rogue
Rogue are to physical damage as mages are to magical. They focus entirely on dealing heavy physical damage.
Shaman
The shaman class can fill several roles depending on talents. Elemental shamans fill a magical damage role becoming mages that inflict nature damage through heavy use of lightning. Enhancement shamans focus more on the physical damage role, but still utilize a variety of magic spells for damage. Restoration shamans focus on the healing role.
Warlock
Warlocks are one of the only two classes that gets a combat pet. They focus heavily on magical damage. The various talent lines simply change the method in which that damage is delivered.
Warrior
Warriors fill either a physical damage role or a tank role.
Selecting professions
For a new player, selecting professions can be somewhat daunting. First, there is the distinction between primary and secondary professions. Cooking, fishing, and first aid are secondary professions. You can learn all three of these. The remaining professions are primaries. You are limited to having only two of these per character. Some professions lean more heavily toward certain classes. Tailoring, leatherworking, and blacksmithing are generally focused at providing gear for specific classes. The items crafted can be helpful while leveling up but are certainly not required.
For a new player, it is probably beneficial to select two gathering professions. These professions acquire the raw materials needed for crafting. These materials can be sold either on the auction house to other players or in the worst case to a NPC vendor for money. One of the hardest parts of being a new player is feeling as though you never have enough gold to buy anything. Using gathering professions helps alleviate this problem.
Getting geared
One of the easiest mistakes a new player can make is buying weapons, armor, or bags from an NPC vendor. These items cost considerably more then their actual usefulness. It is far better to save your money until you are able to reach an auction house (AH). At an AH, you will be able to browse for items being sold by other players. The weapons, armor, and bags will be better and cheaper then any sold by an NPC vendor. Additionally, as you complete quests, you will often be rewarded with new and better equipment which rapidly makes NPC vendors obsolete and generally useless.
Talents
New players may be confused by the mention of talents. The talent system does not become available to a character until they reach level 10. Every level starting with 10 will grant the player 1 talent point. The talent system is a set of 3 hierarchical tree structures. Each class gets their own 3 trees. Each one grants improvements to various aspects of the class. Talents are gained by spending talent points in any of the 3 trees. Selecting talents while first leveling is mostly a matter of experimentation and player preference. Any tree can help with leveling, some more then others. Should you ever wish to change your talent spec, simply visit a trainer. You will have the option to pay some amount of money to reset your talent points. The cost increases each time you choose to respec. The cost will go back down if you spend a considerable time without respecing.
Communicating
In a world filled with other players, you will undoubtedly find a need to communicate with them. This is done in general through slash commands. These use the "/" character to execute various in game commands. For our purpose of communication, one of the earliest commands to know is /tell (player name here) (message here). This will send the message to only the player specified. The next most common conversation channel is /party (message) and /raid (message). /party will send the message to any players you are currently grouped with. /raid does the same but for the entire raid and not just the party you are currently placed within. Within a battleground, the /bg command function similarly to /raid.
Communicating on a more global scale is done through various chat channels. These are generally localized to zone wide chat. These types of channels can be accessed by using the slash command followed by a number (/#). By default, /1 is the general chat channel for the zone you are currently within.
