Class pick

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1

What character to create

I’m wondering what race/class/spec I should roll in retail

Hoping to find something close to this.

  • I don’t like melee so something ranged. Melee gets so hard for me in groups and fights with lots of mobs there is just to many spell effects and stacking of characters for me in melee.

  • I don’t need a class that can heal, but I’m not opposed to healing or dps I wouldn’t mind tanking either but I doubt there is a range tank.

  • A class that can solo most content (old raids, dungeons are a plus) but more importantly I’d rather be able to not have to constantly find groups just to quest

  • something with minimal downtime, I don’t care if I have to drink and eat every so often and I don’t need the fastest leveling class but I would rather not have to drink for 15 secs after every mob I kill

  • I would like something that in Pve endgame that doesn’t have a 20 button rotation ( the less the better while still being useful). I quit in pandaria and was a feral Druid main and my normal rotation was like 15 buttons without having to watch for price and stuff. I would say I could do a 10 or less button rotation comfortably before cooldowns. If something has a lot of long cooldowns that ok because that’s just 1 button every couple mins or so.

  • this isn’t required but it would also be cool to be a class that isn’t overpopulated. Like for instance in wrath back in the day like 50% of my server were death knights and if you were one it was hard to find a group

Sorry it was long I tried to include as much info as I could think of…thank you for any answers

2

Hm, what about a hunter? Or a mage? Hunters good if you need to go drink water real quick because your pets are still attacking, but they’re pretty popular.

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3

Hunter and Warlock are probably the best ranged soloists from the point of view of survival. I don’t have any recent experience with Warlocks, but neither BM or MM hunters strike me as overly complicated to play.

If you don’t mind swapping specs, Druid is a decent choice. Boomkins have a fairly chill rotation, and running through old content as a kitty swiping everything is one of the faster options. And you can go Guardian for the tougher stuff. It’s the only class with both ranged dps and tank options.

Downtime really isn’t a thing in retail like it is in classic. I do eat on my mage, but nothing like in Vanilla and BC.

As for overpopulated, again, it’s different in retail. Because leveling characters is so easy, you’ll see people at the high end swapping around as the meta changes. Druids are probably overpopulated out in the world because they are strong gatherers, but at lot of those are alts (and probably bots) that you won’t be competing with for groups. Hunters are always popular due to their general ease of play and strong soloing, but not so much that groups are a major issue.

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4

I would go with Druid.

You can play ranged dps and healer. Druids are the best leveling class in my opinion. You can stealth, interact with things while you are in flight form without having to kill mobs near by if you don’t want to. You can run faster in no mount areas in cat form. Balance druids have a very few rotational key binds. You can also play feral (it is going to be really fun I hear in DF) or tank as bear if you wanted to. Bear tanking is very chill and forgiving, it is the best tank for players wanting to learn how to tank. Druids as a whole do great in endgame. Every Druid spec is looking pretty good going in to DF and they are great to have in dungeons and raids because the huge amount of the utility they bring.

Hunter is a great leveling option too but it is a dps only class so healing or tanking isn’t an option. Although you have 2 different ranged dps specs and they have pretty simple rotations.

Mage and warlock are also great, same with hunter, it only has dps specs but all 3 are ranged and they are always valuable in raid and dungeons.

I would say that hunters, mages, warlocks, and balance druids are all really popular (But probably not as popular as dks were back in the day so I honestly don’t think you should worry about popularity.)

One last class I would recommend is Shaman, they are less popular, have great utility for endgame content and you can heal or play ranged dps. Although I think their rotation is a little more involved than the specs I mentioned above.

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5

At this point, any class can solo content just fine. Don’t stress on this point. Some classes will have easier times doing old dungeon/raid content, but I think it’s generally okay for any class to do it.

That said, if you want the most forgiving ranged classes, you’ll want a pet or self-healing.

If you choose a class/spec, check out their that respective class/spec’s page on IcyVeins. They have an “easy mode” section for people who don’t want overly complex rotations.

I’d suggest picking one that looks appealing and trying it out while the XP buff is active.

Personally, I’d recommend a demonology warlock or a BM hunter. For casters, I’d say Frost mage or Ele Shaman. I find Balance druids kinda boring, but they also fit your desired traits.

For population, I feel like Shaman are less common than the other classes.