Hi
My friend is horde and I haven’t played much wow in my life. Blizzcon’s shadowlands peaked my interest and I am looking at getting ready for that. I am going to start a fresh character and would like a DPS class/build. What would be a good first character for this? Mage and Shaman are two that kinda peak my interest but I am not sure how they are late game. Any idea are appreciated.
Thanks!
Frost mage.
It’s not a hard skill cap, it does decent damage, and makes farming mobs packs easy with the slowing effects.
Between those two for solo leveling? Either one has things to recommend it, although the self-healing available to Shamans tends to put it higher on my list.
Mages (any spec) are also good though, and have the benefit of slows and snares to help out if things go south.
If you only want to dps, pure dps classes with 3 dps specs are good choices. mage, warlock, hunter, rogue. The more specs you play, the more variety, the more nerf protection, the less chance of long term boredom. Almost everyone plays multiple specs on their characters.
If you told me that you only wanted ranged dps, I would definitely go with mage over shaman as you’ll have three mage specs instead of one shaman spec (elemental). Mage and Ele shaman are both fun but 3 > 1.
Read the Icy Veins class guides for the best rotations and talents. There are also lots of good you tube class guides. All specs will be changing next expansion with new and removed skills and talents. We have a new raid coming in 8.3 and the dps rankings will change then too.
Fir your first class, whichever one looks the best to you. Out of mage and shaman id argue shaman as you will be able to switch between ranged and melee.
This will give you a taste of both worlds. Elemental is a solid spec, Enhancement is medium paced, and fun, the survivability is a bit low and self healing is a bit weak compared to the other soloing classes.
But you cant go wrong with what you enjoy, your first character will be there to teach you the ropes while you find out what you like to do in the game.
If you have the patience and want to make a more intuitive decison, you can create a trial character for each class in the character creation screen and spend as much time as you want on an airship smacking a target dummy around tp get a feel for what each spec will feel like at max level.
Im going to second the shaman pick. Loads of fun, especially enhancement in leveling and world content, you have self heals and don’t have to kite quite like a mage, plus imo shaman would be easier to pick up and get decent results with for a newer player.