Title. I also am a little older IRL (60’s) and the fewest keys and keybinds would also be a plus. I really like them all thematically, so want to pick the one that is the best and easiest to start with.
There is a general consensus that the two most straightforward healers are
- Holy Priest
- Resto Shaman
https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides will give you an overview of their gameplay, and you can check out many videos by searching YouTube for Holy Priest Dragonflight or Resto Shaman Dragonflight
I will say that for questing purposes, Priest doesn’t have any really attractive specs - Shadow Priest works for questing, but is kind of slow and clunky - while Shaman has two excellent DPS specs, so that might be something else to consider.
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Resto Shaman are very beginner healer friendly because they have some of the best “Catch-up” buttons.
My only concern for recommending Resto Shaman is that they are very heavy on keybinds. You can mitigate this somewhat with talent build, but at the end of the day, R-sham just has a lot of different buttons for different occasions.
In general, I think all healers have a lot of key-binds. Preservation Evoker, with talents focused on Emerald Blossom, is probably the lowest keybind healer I would say. It’s also pretty straightforward to play when you you’re in the groove. The only real downside of Prevoker is that you don’t have many “oh no I screwed up” buttons to re-stabilize the team.
Thank you guys for taking the time to answer and provide sources. Makes such a huge difference. Going to watch the videos now and visit a few sites.
Question for you guys… Being new and before I use my 70 boost I want to pick the right server. I see that Area52 is the largest and there are a ton fo smaller ones. I really want to focus on farming mounts and occasionally some lower M+ and possibly some PVP (no raiding).
It’s hard to decide what server and I know that this decision can really impact my long term playing. What are the primary pros and cons of larger servers and smaller ones?
I’m glad you asked!
Your choice of realm is not as important as it once was, and Blizzard are trying to make Realm choice less important with every expansion, and it will be less important again in a few months, when you will be able to join guilds on other realms, but it still has a huge impact on your experience of the game.
The basic rule of thumb is that you want a realm that
a) has a high population
b) of the faction you choose.
The worst case is to be on a realm that has a high population of the opposite faction. For example, Area 52 would be the worst possible choice if you are rolling an Alliance character, because it’s near-100% Horde.
Here are two sources of indicative realm data
https://raider.io/realms/north-americahttps://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us/lang.en
They show pretty much the same rankings.
The top 2-5 realms in terms of total population can experience lag, instability and queues at the start of a new expansion, when the rush and usage is at its peak. Blizzard are getting better at dealing with that each expansion, too, but it is still a factor. How much it affects you is a personal choice. For myself, I don’t mind it too much. A few days with a risk of inconvenience, slow logins, and maybe a couple of weeks of occasional bouts of lag is worth it to me to be on an otherwise bustling realm. Equally, I can entirely understand someone skipping the top realm for their faction to take the second- or third-biggest instead to avoid most of that.
On the biggest realms you will also see a lot of chat spam in the cities, with teams offering boosts. They will be in the “Trade - Services” channel. But you can safely leave that channel if you don’t want all that cluttering up your chat.
Assuming you are in the US, you do not want an Oceania server (oc) because of the ping times.
Neutral:
Auction houses for materials and consumables are linked now, so that’s a blessing and a curse. So AH stuff shouldn’t matter.
Grouping with people is now not constrained to server or faction anymore. So if you have friends in the game, you can still group with them.
Also, the way the game is programmed now, you’ll see players from different servers all around you in game. So running around town will be roughly the same amount of crowded no matter what server you pick.
The major factor on server choice are the Social aspects like Guilds. And things like player-to-player Services, Crafting Orders, (and leaderboards).
Guild Options:
Larger servers will have larger and more active guilds. But smaller server guilds can feel, well smaller and more like a family (if you can find them). I know you said raiding isn’t important to you - but I’ll say that getting into a competitive guild is much harder on large servers (because they are only looking for top-recruits).
Services
Like Gráinne pointed out, one downside of a large server is you get a lot of “service” spam. Basically everywhere you go you’ll get ads for Level boosting, and ATOC runs, and M+ boosts. Just non-stop and pervasive in all chats. You can manage your channels, but it can be grating to some people (myself included).
Work Orders
Crafting work orders are a new part of the end game - and it’s basically hiring a crafter to make BoP gear for you using your mats. They require some skill to complete, and on low-pop servers sometimes it can be hard to find a worthy craftor.
Character Names
One final consideration is that for large servers, it can be hard to secure a character name that isn’t already in use.
You can create multiple toons and run around the capitol a bit on any server before committing your boost. Maybe even secure a guild then send the boost. Just a thought.
So funny you listed this. I was in Area52
Creating my character and got denied on over 50 names. Went to earthen ring and like 9 of the 10 I liked weee available.
Appreciate the post btw
Area52 and Earthen Ring as about as opposite as you can get. Unless you’re mostly a solo-only player, you might have an easier time on something a bit higher pop. (Yes, guilds go cross-realm in the next expansion, but it’s still nice to be able to find stuff in trade chat.) Most of my characters these days are on Thrall, which is a big server, but not nearly as big as something like Area52. The main downside is it’s Horde-heavy, so it’s not great if you mostly play Alliance.
Just as an example, I’ve been grinding the Storm’s Fury currency, and I’m pretty regularly having to pull Udiza over to Thrall with my second account to get into a shard with enough people to complete it.
Wait druid isn’t dumb easy anymore? They used to throw HoTs and stand around picking there nose.