World of Warcraft Maximizing Your Leveling Potential

Name	Maximizing Your Leveling Potential
Category	Leveling

It is really pretty simple to level up in World of Warcraft. You do quests, you buy new gear, you grind a little and run instances. But, have you ever wondered if there was more you could do to maximize your leveling potential? Well, there are many secrets to what you can do, and I am going to reveal all of them to you in this simple guide.

I strongly suggest that you do these things, if able and if you want to. If you don’t, it’ll slow you down somewhat, but you should always do what will make you enjoy the game the most.

Follow my hints and you’ll be sure to start making leveling progress sooner rather than later.

Respecialize
So, you may have moved over to a specialization that doesn’t seem so appealing. Or, you might be a healer who is still specialized in healing because your guild wishes it of you. Well, forget it. You need to spec in a way that will allow you to level quickly, and unfortunately, healing or protection isn’t going to do it. Here are my recommended specs.

Druid: You have two good choices here; Balance or Feral. If you want to be a caster, go for Balance. You can pop heal and do tons of damage, root, and debuff. However, you need to learn to manage your mana well to minimize downtime. You’ll want to maintain max distance, Starfire, Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Starfire, and so on. With Feral cat form, you can stealth, use combos like a Rogue, and do good amounts of damage. There is virtually no downtime and you have a good chance of surviving. The choice is yours really.

Hunter: For Hunter, your best bet is Beast Mastery. No other spec even comes close. This specialization could very possibly be the fastest way to level in the game besides a Mage. Beast Mastery buffs up your pet and is a sure way to kick some butt. Always send your pet in just before you fire off your first shot.

Mage: Fire all the way. Burn, burn, burn. Fire has the potential to do so much damage it’s not even funny. So get some +Fire gear, and figure out your best path up this line. Your best bet is always to start off with whatever does the highest damage, Frost Nova, and then keep it coming. No target should ever have time to reach you if you do it properly and maintain maximum distance.

Paladin: As for a Paladin, the Retribution line speaks clearly. It has become more of a Damage-per-second class overtime and therefore your best bet in Outland is to travel the path of the holy-warrior.

Priest: You want to be Shadow specialized if you’re going to attempt to solo a Priest, though I recommend getting the Wand talent out of Discipline. Being a Shadow Priest means you might have some rough mana-spent spots where you need quick DPS. Be sure to have a hefty wand in your ranged slot.

Rogue: From personal experience, I’d say a ‘mutilation’ specialized Rogue is an excellent choice. It is a ‘combat daggers’ line type, with a lot of points spent in Assassination, and a few spent in each of the others as points become available. Make sure to play it as a stun-locker. Stealth, Cheap Shot, Mutilate, Mutilate, Kidney Shot… That whole deal.

Shaman: For a Shaman, you’ll want to go Enhancement. The other specs have a tendency to be mana deficient, but with Enhancement, you’ve got so many individualized opportunities on how to play your character. You can dual wield for extra damage, still get the use out of totems, and use all of your elemental powers while maintaining high-mana and keeping yourself healed.

Warlock: If you’re going to be a Warlock, you have two ways to go. You can go Demonology, and let your pet do all the work, or you can go Affliction with a Voidwalker. This depends on your play style. Demonology can be quite boring in certain situations as your pet will do most all of the work, while Affliction offers you a chance to do LOTS of damage while letting Mr. Void kill things upfront.

Warrior: Last but not least, the Warrior. If you’re going to go Warrior, whatever you do, do not level Protection. You want to be Fury specialized with a maxed out Off-hand talent and dual wield. There is no other good way to level a Warrior.

Gathering/Crafting Skills
There are two ways to go with this one. Either maximize your gathering and crafting professions or don’t use them at all.

Crafting can either slow you down or help you out, depending on what you’re doing. If you manage to become efficient with a craft, it may help you, but if you only put half a heart into it or waste too much time in it, it will definitely hinder you.

As you level, if you’re trying to craft, keep your skills up to par. Tons and tons of skinnable creatures, herbs, ore mines, and cloth droppers are found all over Azeroth & Outland. By keeping your trade skills up, you open an opportunity to level faster by possibly making more money and/or having extremely good gear for your character.

Most maps in Outland offer a ton more trade goods than the maps on Azeroth, so get your skills maximized before you ever go there. There are also many places to get new patterns, plans, recipes, and the like; therefore you’re going to want to be ready to use them.

Take All Quests in an Area
Some may view this bit of advice as common sense, but a lot of people don’t do it! Make sure that you grab all of the quests you can when you enter a new area. You’ll save trips from running back to town all the time and you can multi-quest, doing several at the same time that have similar objectives, like collecting items from a mob that you also need to kill. You can save hours upon hours by doing this.

Do Green Quests
If you want quick XP do your green quests first. Find a zone that is just a tad bit lower than you, or right around the proper level. Gather up the quests. They’ll be easier for you complete quickly, and you’ll have more money and possibly better gear when it comes time to tackle the yellow and orange quests that you have. Never abandon a green quest unless it is totally pointless or will take way too much time.

Bring a Friend
There is no better way to level and have fun than by bringing a friend along. Always take any opportunity to group up as you’ll do things much faster. It’s best if you don’t bring someone too many levels higher than you, but even if you do, you’ll have a chance to make it through quests much faster, yielding a much higher rate of experience income. Grouping up on a mob can be pretty easy if you find other people in an area where you’re questing. You can also send a message on General or the new Looking For Group channel and say something plain like, “I’m killing Centaurs in Desolace. Anyone want to come join in?”

Only Abandon a Quest If:
Only abandon a quest if it is gray, stupidly pointless (like, killing fifty things for barely any reward), or if you absolutely cannot find a group for it. If it is gray, there is never any point in doing it unless it links to a good chain. If the quest is pointless, don’t do it unless, again, it is part of an important chain. You might need to research a little on it in those cases. Try looking for at least a week to complete quests that require groups. Keep them until you surpass the level of doing them, unless you really need a piece of gear or money from it.

Make an Alt
This sounds pretty simple and quite frankly it is. Make an alt to start handling all of your auctions, left over junk and such, because this is downtime you could be spending leveling, grinding, or getting rested bonus. Rather than sending your character back and forth to the major cities, just have another character do it for you. This way, you’ll have a little extra time to adventure before you set up your auctions and logout for the night.

By doing this, you’ll stay more organized and focused on getting your job done, finishing quests, and keeping the experience flowing.

Setup Your Hotkeys
Make sure to assign hotkeys to your spells and abilities and make macros as needed. Combat is so much swifter and much more efficient when you can just press a button. Try and learn your hot keys so that you don’t have to click on icons all the time. In many cases, I find that I multitask by setting up my hotkey bars and using them while I click on other things that I cannot fit onto a hotkey set. You can avoid death a lot of the time if you just take the time to setup different bars. If you’re playing a jack-of-all-trades character, like a Druid, set up a bar for your different jobs, like healing, tanking, or damager-per-second.

Never Grind
World of Warcraft was not intended on being a grinding game, which is nice when you actually enjoy playing a game! Blizzard tried to make enough quests to where you will never have to grind, and if you actually gather and complete quests, you’ll never need to. Quests are a lot more fun, and if you combine the idea of grinding with quests, you can kill lots of mobs, gather goods and items, and get experience while you kill, plus huge experience awards for completing the tasks.

Strafe
It is a little known thing that strafing actually works. In most setups, strafe left and right will be the Q and E keys. Use them! If you need to get away from a monster that is too big for you to handle, quickly strafing back and forth, left and right, you’ll actually slow the monster down and have a more likely chance of getting away from it. Try it! Hold down the Q & W keys, or E & W, and strafe forward!

Plan Ahead
It’s never a bad idea to look things up on the internet. There are a plethora of resources out there. Take some time to plan ahead. “What should I do next?” “Which quests have the best items or make the quickest money?” “What is going to help me level up faster in the end?” These are the sorts of questions you should ask yourself and the ones you should find answers to. Try and plan to do long quest chains first, because they usually end in better rewards. Plan which zone you want to go to next or which reputation you want to maximize first. Simply get an idea of what you want to do from day to day to get the best results.

Do Not Use Multiple Weapons
This can be a hard thing to achieve depending on your class, and temptation can often hit in the least wanted of times, but try and stick with one weapon throughout your characters' adventures. If you take the time to grind skill up with other weapons, you’re just wasting time. This is something you should plan ahead on. Plan which weapons you want later in the game and make them your goal targets. If need be, use a maximum of two different types, like two-handed and one-handed swords, for example, if you’re a Warrior that needs to switch roles often.

Stockpiles
I know I’ve had trouble with this in the past, so I’m telling you not to forget it. Stock up on stuff before you go on quests. That means food and water. Have at least three or four stacks of each, unless you’re a Mage or partnered with one. However, never forget arrows and bullets, because there is nothing worse than going to shoot and not being able to. Make sure you have enough poisons if you’re a Rogue or nuts/berries if you’re a Druid, or whatever other reagent supplies you might need. Have at least twenty of everything you need at all times, though I recommend going as high as forty at all times. You don't want to have to run back to town because you have forgotten something essential to leveling.

Auto-Loot
Surprisingly, this saves a ton of time. Turn on the Auto-Loot-Corpse option in your Interface Options menu. Every time you loot a corpse now, you’ll loot everything all at once, rather than having to manually click each item as they pop up. Don’t worry. If you’re in a group, you won’t auto-loot greens or other rares. It will routinely open up the roll menu.

Upgrade Food and Water
It is easy to forget, so don’t! Make sure to update your food and water every possible level. Check vendors frequently to make sure that you’re not using old food and water. By doing this simple task, you’ll be able to reduce your rest time, therefore being able to fight faster and have much less downtime.

Download Mods
I recommend several modification programs, or addons, that every player should have. Whether you plan on soloing or grouping, many of these programs will help you achieve maximum success in your gaming career. If a link is not provided, try Curse-Gaming.com.

Auctioneer (http://auctioneeraddon.net) – This is your super economy mod. What it will do is scan the Auction House for you and store the current pricing trends on various items so that when you go to sell something it can give you an accurate recommendation of how much to sell it for. This is a fantastic mod to have if you are selling items to try and make a good profit. This mod will certainly help you save up for new equipment quicker!

CT_Mods (http://ctmod.net) – You’ve got to check these out for yourself. CT_Mods has a massive package that you can download consisting of some truly great creations like CT_RaidAssist, which has UI changes and raid tracking, CT_QuestLevels, which allows you to view the quests difficulty compared to your level, and CT_MailMod, which is a complete World of Warcraft mail overhaul. Be sure to try CT’s mods and simply disable those you don’t like.

Gatherer (http://www.gathereraddon.com) – This addon is invaluable for saving time and making money. It stores the location of each bit of ore or herb you collect and treasure you pickup, spots you fish at, or anywhere else you ‘gather’ something. It then displays them on your mini-map as well as your large zone map. Everything respawns in the same location, so you can make trips back out.

MobInfo-2 – This addon is handy. It shows masses of information about the enemies you fight, like their probable hit points, as well as what they are likely to drop.

Outfitter – Simple and efficient, this mod allows you to set up different gear sets, including whole sets and accessories. With the click of a button, you can quickly switch among gear sets between fights, such as to switch into fire resist gear and then back to your regular gear. You can also set up sets for specific occasions, such as when you mount. In this case, you might put on your ‘carrot-on-a-stick’, riding gloves, and spur boots, to maximize your traveling capabilities. Or you might set up a set to change stances as a Warrior, switch PvP sets, or equip different trinkets in different situations.

Sanity Inventory 2 (http://files.wowace.com/) – This addon gives you a handy box for your inventory, as well as a button to compress stacks of potions or materials down as much as possible. It also gives you the ability to see what's in your bank, bags, on your character, or in the mailbox for any “toon” that you've checked before. You’ll never mistakenly buy a duplicate item again.

SwStats2 – This mod is a meter that will show everyone in your group. You’ll be able to see their performance numbers, such as damage done, damage taken, healing done, and much more. It is highly customizable and very practical.

Have Fun
If you try out at least a couple of these suggestions, I promise you’ll be watching the experience points rake in in no time. Remember to have fun with it because World of Warcraft is a game and should be treated as such. Play a character you know you’ll enjoy and try and make as many friends as you can along the way.