I often see people say warriors were hardest and hunters were easiest, but what classes fall next to those?
I didnt play until BC. I played this rogue (tansfered off of my original server, started on Rivendare when it was newer) I made a paladin some time later and was surprised by how easy it seemed, but the game may have been quite a bit different by then.
I tried to search to find this, but didnt see a post specifically about it, maybe im just bad at searching.
Night Elf Mohawk is actually the hardest. Most people can’t even find it on the character creation screen.
Paladin and Priest are also considered slower levelers for their own reasons.
This is my list from easiest to hardest (keep in mind easy, not quickest)
Hunter
Paladin
Druid
Warlock
Priest
Mage
Shaman
Rogue
Warrior
Honestly you can argue a lot of these like priests are super easy with just shielding and wanding and you’re good but I’m taking into account that you’re on a pvp server.
Warrior rogue paladin are the slowest to level
Make leveling a personal challenge for yourself. Level as an auto attack melee only, naked Mage. Oh! No items either! Have fun out there! ![:star_struck:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/star_struck.png?v=6" ":star_struck:")
Many people did say Warriors were the hardest to level solo (likely due to high gear dependence). Rogues weren’t terribly easy, but you could stealth, slowly, around things. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of Druid leveling, but I did most of mine before numerous class bug fixes and the Druid talent revamp. Priests could be somewhat boring with wand spam haha.
Rogue for second hardest, probably, for pretty much the same reasons Warrior is difficult.
Warlock is second easiest, probably, for pretty much the same reasons Hunter is easy.
Hunter
Warlock
Druid
Mage
Priest
Paladin
Shaman
Rogue
Warrior
If you were accounting for a PvP server, Priest would be high up. They’re some of the better solo PvPers.
Mages, Warlocks and Hunters are Tier-1 levelers
Shaman and Druids are Tier-2 levelers
Rogues and Priests are Tier-3 levelers
Warriors are Tier-4 levelers
To get into the hows and why would probably exceed the word-count cap of a forum post. In short, Hunters are great because of the pet tanking, high efficiency, low gear-requirements and high damage. Warlocks are great because of the same things; pets, efficiency and damage. Mages are sort of in their own class because they’re excellent levelers for unique reasons; frost control, on-demand food and water and AoE farming (an Imp Blizzard build can get you through the 50 - 60 stretch faster than anyone).
Shaman and druids are next because they have great survivability but issues with either damage output or efficiency. Balance/Resto have s***-low damage and Ferals is mid-tier at best. Elemental has VERY high burst damage but you’re drinking every other pull if you’re consistently casting. 1h-Enhance builds are both durable and efficient but your damage suffers for it.
Priests and rogues struggle for the exact opposite reasons; damage and surviability. Shadow priests are monsters, but a SW:P, MB and a few mind-flays into a mob you realize you’re at 50% mana. Probably the MOST drink-heavy spec to level. Leveling Disc is mostly SW:P --> Wand and watch a movie on the other monitor. It’s a terrible experience. Rogues are complicated. Seal Fate Dagger and Combat Dagger are both really fun builds that are super bad for leveling because of the positioning requirements on Backstab etc. On Private Servers you can “frontstab” but this was proven impossible on the WoW Classic Demo (as expected). So you’re locked into Combat Swords for leveling. It’s boring (about 3 buttons) and rather fragile. If you pull more than 1 - 2 mobs you better have a Vanish or you’re toast. Outside of Warrior, I find rogues the least enjoyable leveling.
Lastly, poor warriors. What makes Warriors so painful to level? Self-sustainability and gear-dependence. Warrior damage is actually awesome. In fact, it makes Warrior one of the best “Dual Leveling” classes in the game. But you need a healer/dispel buddy. On your own… you’re super fragile. Even with all that HP and armor you’ll get torn apart by a couple of mobs. You can sometimes hamstring + rend kite elites to solo the group quests but it’s time consuming and you’re liable to pull adds. Your overall damage and survivability are also 100% tied to your gear, so you need to stay on top of it. Hard to do on a fresh Classic server without 1000g to blow on a jam-packed Auction House. Tanking all those dungeons helps, but it’s a really inefficient way to level in terms of experience-per-hour. Warriors are the most made class on Vanilla Private servers and statistically, less than 2% of them make it to 60. The warrior leveling experience weeds out a LOT of people. (As a pro-tip, stack spirit and use staff weapons. Yes, as a warrior.)
~ 14 years of on/off experience with vanilla WoW.
My list, primarily based on the statistics that many guides have used.
Easiest:
Hunter
Warlock
Druid
Paladin
Mage
Shaman
Priest
Warrior
Rogue
In terms of speed: (fastest to slowest)
Hunter
Druid
Warlock
Mage
Shaman
Rogue
Priest w/wands
Paladin
Warrior
In terms of speed:
Some people will try to argue that Warlock is faster than Druid. This isn’t really the case. They are easier but not faster. Druids have more mobility through feline swiftness (15%/30%) and travel form. Even IF the Druid doesn’t have mount money right at 40, the mount speed difference is negligible over short to medium distances when considering mount cast time vs instant cast travel form. Also by this point (lvl 40) the Druid has left the Warlock far behind.
Hunters have a bit less mobility than Druid, but trumps Druids in raw killing power, which increases the speed that quests can be finished overall.
Mage is kind of self-explanatory. They possess the top end raw killing power, but suffer from having to eat/drink far more often than most classes. This is a huge setback to pushes them back toward the middle of the pack.
Shamans get the earliest massive speed buff with ghost wolf, but suffer from slower killing. Optimal shaman leveling often relays on mana conservation, which requires luring mobs toward your totems.
Priest w/ want and Pally = sloooow and steady. Tons of survivability but much slower kills.
Rogues is squishy, particularly early on. This means when mobs start having more HP, it is difficult to kill without taking substantial damage.
Warrior just has poor mobility, has to eat or bandage often, and suffers gear dependence more than any other class. Their weapon damage and ability to negate damage is everything. This is what has earned Warrior the reputation of the hardest and slowest class.
Mage is kind of self-explanatory. They possess the top end raw killing power, but suffer from having to eat/drink far more often than most classes. This is a huge setback to pushes them back toward the middle of the pack.
Abbbbsolutely not. Mage is arguably the best leveling class. You could make an argument for Hunter but it’s a weak one. Hunters are the fastest and most efficient 1-50 and Mages crush them entirely 50-60. Most server-firsts on Private Servers are mages. On the last launch I followed (March 29th) the number 1 spot went to a gnome mage with 3 days 10 hours played. The hunter that was #2 was 34 hours later and the #3, #4, #6 and #7 were all mages.
I’m telling you, AoE farming in the 50s is insane. Just mount up in EPL, grab about 10-12 mobs, bundle them up, frost nova --> cone of cold (shatter) --> 180 blink and channel two full Improved Blizzards. All 12 mobs are death in 10-12sec. Sit down and eat/drink and repeat. Hunters can’t come even remotely close. Mages are the undisputed kings of leveling.
Word on the streat is that druids are Tier-1 levelers that are on par with hunters. I can’t personally vouch for this, but there are a lot of players out there who say that druid is the best leveling class.
Yeah but private servers are not even close to accurate and even the private servers agree with this.
This is where you’re wrong. 1 example of a mage hitting server first. Hunters have been server first on nearly all official and unofficial servers. There’s been a few Druids. Never heard of a mage getting server first, ever. But I’ll take your word for it that it happened that one time.
Also keep in mind that experience rewards and experience per level are horribly off on private servers. Not much per level, but by a tremendous amount when added up 1-60.
There’s a reason hunters were always used by speed levelers trying to set records in Vanilla. There’s also a reason that a hunter holds the world record on official.
I’m not calling mages slow, and sure, AOE grinding is nice, but not effective until waaayyy late in the game.
Hunters, Druids, and Warlocks are tier 1 and mage is the strongest tier 2. This is agreed upon by nearly all youtube commentators, guides, and most of the general community of more or less “WoW Classic Experts.”
I find rogue to be a bit harder than warrior, as if you accidently pull 2 with rogue, you are DUCKED unless you have your cooldowns.
Warrior can normally deal with 2, or escape ok. Unless you are doing caves, warriors SUCK for caves, or crowded camps.
Also, warriors need to have a shieldbash macro for spellcasters or else take all the damages.
Hunters and Warlocks were considered S tier, due to low gear requirements, very good sustain (especially for Warlock), and pets to tank mobs so they could pull more on top of good CC.
Druids were S- ~ A+ tier because of their mobility (faster to get to and from objectives) and their immense sustain, durability, and ability to regenerate mana while still dealing damage in forms.
Mages were good, and cheapest to level, but were mana hungry. If there was no one around AoE grinding was quite good and lucrative.
Pretty much everyone else were varying degrees below that. Warriors and Rogues were the worst for individual survivability and sustain, Warriors for sure the worst (unless you funneled gold into it), Priests and Paladins had no sustain issues and had a lot of flexibility but dealt little damage, Priests could go forever without resting though. Shaman were largely better than the rest here, but they lacked hard damage tools other than casting (which ate mana) and their Searing Totem and Flame/Earth Shock, which became the bread and butter. Properly played they could go quite a while as they’d regen mana while Flame Shock and Searing Totem finished mobs.
I mean you could make an argument for it, sure. You would just be wrong.
No class comes close to hunter. Period. No discussion
Oh you’re a pserver baby I see. This is because of a little something called dynamic spawns. Everything had virtually no spawn timer so mage just aoe farmed everything. This isn’t what’s going to happen in the real game.
AE farming as a Frost Mage worked well in a group of two… Especially prior to the monster diminishing returns to effects.
Are all these Rogues not using stealth, vanish, evasion, blind, sprint, crippling poison etc. when leveling?
Seems odd to me that a class that has that many escape and evasion tools and an automatically applied snare is just barely better than Warrior. YMMV
while paladin is super slow. it’s not one of the hardest since you’ll never die.