The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling Up 1-20

The Care and Feeding of Warriors anticipates Patch 2.3 the way Cookie Monster rips the plate from your hands and devours the cookies with a 'gnom gnom gnom' sound and flying crumbs everywhere. Matthew Rossilearned to do a mean Cookie Monster, Grover and Elmo impersonation when he was in his twenties. He doesn't like to talk about it.
Since we have in the past been accused of focusing too much on the 70 game, this week's installment of TCAFOW will be spending some time with the brand new warrior. Since we know Patch 2.3 is on the way with improvements to leveling and instancing between 20 and 60, it behooves us to be level 20 or thereabouts when it hits, and that's what this post is all about. While it's not terribly hard to level to 20, it never hurts to discuss the do's and don'ts of the initial 'trying-on' period of the class.

The first few pieces of advice are general ones. First off, if you can, go to the Draenei or Blood Elf starting zones to level grind. The quest progression is better, the rewards are better, the zones are well designed to funnel you from place to place, and you can solo almost everything you'll come across with a few notable exceptions that will require grouping as you near level 20. Do as much in these zones as you can, perhaps even set your hearths there if you don't mind being fairly cut off from other zones. The blood elf starting zone has the benefit of a transporter in Silvermoon that will take you to Undercity, and thus the zeppelins for transport to Kalimdor, while Azuremyst and Bloodmyst isle are a touch more isolated, requiring two boat trips to get to. But at low level, a few corpse runs are no major impediment compared to the experience you'll gather in those zones.

There are things you can always do to make a new warrior's life easier if you have a higher level main: they're obvious, and I won't cover them here because either you have such a higher level character and can figure it out pretty easily, or you don't and therefore don't have recourse to them. Similarly, higher level friends can help you, but if you don't have them you don't have them. This post assumes you just bought the game.

Levels 1 to 10 of the warrior are, like most classes, incredibly basic. You start off with Heroic Strike and Battle Shout at level 1, gain Charge and Rend at level 4, Thunder Clap at 6,Hamstring at level 8. Clearly, since these are all the abilities you are going to have, and you won't have gained any talents yet, these are the abilities you will be choosing from. You may not even have a ranged weapon yet: get one as soon as you can. While charge is fun and awesome and a rage generator, there will be times you're going to want to pull a mob over to where you can more easily control the fight. Remember, adds are not your friend at this level, as you have no real way to deal with them.

At level 10, you gain several abilities including Bloodrage, Sunder Armor and Taunt. To unlock the last two, you must complete your Defensive Stance quest. The horde can get this quest in the Barrens or Tirisfal Glades, so if you're leveling in the Blood Elf lands you'll be making a trip to Brill, but luckily that's not terribly difficult. If you're leveling in the Draenei zones, they have their own version of the quest so you won't have to leave the zone at all. Either way, the quest can be challenging but is not impossible or even particularly difficult to solo, and is the first of several warrior specific quests you'll get as you level up. The Defensive Stance quest usually leads into another quest for a decent green quality weapon at about that level, which you should complete even if you've been lucky enough to get a equivalent or better weapon, as it's more experience and a chance at some money.

While there's not much call to tank anything while soloing, if you can get groups for quests at this point you can start to practice. If soloing you'll probably not switch out of battle stance, and it is possible to get to level 20 without tanking anything at all. I don't recommend this. Try and get in some tanking as you level and gain new tanking abilities -Shield Bash at 12, Revenge at level 14, Shield Block at 16. Disarm is useful whether or not you're tanking, as it reduces the damage the mob can do to you, as does Demoralizing Shout.Another advantage of trying to get in some tanking practice between 10 and 20 is that it can help you develop your stance switching. 10 -20 is also when you first gain your talent points. By level 20 you will have spent 11 of them, so now is the time to consider what style of warrior you want to level up as. 

Many warriors choose to level as arms. I personally always spend my first five talent points inCruelty. This may or may not work with your desired playstyle, I merely offer that a 5% boost to your critical hit rate at these levels is nothing to sneer at. Either way, while leveling try and make sure that you control the fights you pick as much as you can. Clear around quest objectives, killing everything as safely and quickly as you can, and pull harder mobs away from where there will be respawns if you can arrange it. At this level, warriors simply aren't well-equipped to deal with adds and unless you're very fortunate on your gear, you can often be overwhelmed by a mob that you'd expect to kill easily based solely on its level. A poorly equipped warrior is a very weak warrior.

While leveling up, there are a few instances you can consider running. For Horde, you can start running Ragefire Chasm at level 13, and there are several quests available for it in Orgrimmar. You may have to do some grinding in Durotar to get all the quests available, but that's never a bad thing. Most alliance and a few horde may start running Deadmines at around level 15, which is to my mind one of the best designed and most fun instances in the game and which will see gear upgrades in the next patch. If you run it and get a green drop from a boss, hold onto it for a while, if the patch comes while you're still in possession of it you may get a nice upgrade. Just as both factions can run Deadmines but only the alliance get quests to, both factions can run Wailing Caverns at about level 16 or so, but only horde get quests that take them there. Since it is in the barrens, it's easier for Horde to run it, but the boat at Ratchet makes it possible for either group to get their fairly easily and there are some nice drops here for a warrior, many of which will be getting better in 2.3. Finally there'sShadowfang Keep, very accessible to the horde via the Sepulchre and somewhat less accessible to alliance via Southshore. Many of the drops in this instance, once improved by 2.3, will be worth keeping for a while.

General advice for leveling warriors would include taking a gathering profession. Skinning or mining are often good choices. Mining can help you take a crafting profession and level it for later in the game as well as selling your ores on the AH for gearing money (you probably won't be able to craft anything you'd actually use at this level, it's more aimed at later in the game) and skinning is good because at this level you often kill things that are skinnable, allowing you to auction or even vendor the skins for quick cash. Note that auctioning is almost always more profitable, but vendoring can be much faster if you're trying to level more quickly. 

At level 20, you gain the first of your 30 minute cooldown abilities, Retaliation. Once an absolute powerhouse of an ability worthy of having so long a cooldown, it's been nerfed since until it is merely a good ability, but at 20 you won't have any other panic button so it's still welcome. You'll also gain Cleave and Dual Wield if you so choose. I personally find DWing to be frustrating until I can talent and gear to reduce the miss chance and increase the offhand damage, so at level 20 I rarely do unless I'm trying to up a weapon skill by grinding relatively lower level mobs. Finally, at level 20 you gain a quest, either Yorus Barleybrew for alliance or Speak with Ruga for horde, that ultimately leads to the creation of an excellent mail chestplate for a warrior. Both the Fire Hardened Hauberk (seen on the Draenei next to today's post) and the Brutal Hauberk are well-worth getting for the XP as well as the items themselves. 

This should leave you in a good position to begin running to 60 once the patch comes out, if that's your intention.

Next week, we may tackle level's 21 - 40 or we may hit Outland for a 58-70 gear guide, or we may do something else. I know, I'm mercurial.


There's more to the next 20 levels than Taunt ->

Spiritual Guidance: Level 5 to 20

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. For the next few weeks (unless it's something game breaking), Matt will do his best to guide you through the Priest leveling process!

Wrath is almost upon us. As a result, you may have decided that you have nothing better to do then to roll a Priest! A quick glance at the WI leveling guides shows completed class guides for every almost every other class but Priests!

This must be changed. The countdown has begun.

Elizabeth wrote a great post about the initial levels of Priesting. I'm assuming that you've decided to actually commit to rolling and leveling a Priest. If you're not sure about the class yet, you may want to read up on it some more in terms of what they can and can't do. I'll discuss talents below the level by level breakdown.

Level by level break down

Level 6: You get access to Power Word: Shield, and a buffed version of Smite. What Power Word: Shield does is it places a protective shield around you which absorbs damage dealt to you by external forces (mobs and spells but it will not protect you against fall damage). With the shield active, your spells won't be interrupted. At the same time, you'll have a debuff up known as Weakened Soul which effectively means that you can't shield yourself for a period of time. Your spell cast order will change slightly at this point. Instead of Smite, Smite, Smite it will instead now be Power Word: Shield, Smite, Smite, Smite.

Level 8: The first heal over time spell in the game is now available to you. Learn to embraceRenew. You will be using often throughout the game on yourself and on others. Instead of a direct heal, it functions as a spell that periodically heals a target. More importantly, it is an instant cast spell allowing you to drop it on someone who took some damage but isn't expected to take any further damage. A common tactic with Renew is if a friendly target took a hit but isn't the focus of the mob is for you to drop a quick renew on him before switching back to healing the main player who holds attention on the enemy.

More importantly, you get another primary using spell called Fade. It temporarily reduces your aggro for a small period of time. If your healers are causing you to pull threat, use this to buy yourself some time for other players to jump ahead of you. Note that Fade is going to largely be useless if you're not in a group with other players.

Level 10: Level 10 is the first big hoo-rah level for most Priests. Your arsenal starts opening up. Spells like Mind Blast and the second rank of Shadow Word: Pain are now at your disposal. Not only that, now you've earned god mode powers with the ability to cast Resurrectionamong other players. This is also the last level you'll get to train and use Lesser Heal before graduating to stronger heals in the later levels.

To further cement this landmark occasion, you are granted access to your first set of Priestly racials:

• Hex of Weakness
• Symbol of Hope
• Starshards
• Desperate Prayer

Again, spell cast is going to change slightly at this point. I still open with Power Word: Shield and Smite, but my third spell will be a Mind Blast instead followed by repeated Smites. If you're facing chunkier mobs, feel free to throw a DoT on them such as Starshards (if you're a Night Elf) or a Shadow Word: Pain. By chunky mobs, I mean mobs that are a good number of levels higher than you or select bosses.

Level 12: Sadly, not a lot of cool toys at level 14. Your longevity does increase with an upgraded Power Word: Fortitude and Power Word: Shield. A new spell called Inner Fire is introduced which will help increase your survivability by upping your armor count. Remember to keep this spell active at all times.

Level 14: Your highlight spell you gain at level 14 is Psychic Scream. This Fear type spell is a doubled edged sword. Know when it's appropriate to use and understand when it is too dangerous to be considered. Psychic Scream is the Priest's ultimate red button. Think of it as an in-case-of-emergency-break-open-glass. Mobs within melee range of your Priest will become frightened and run around the area potentially attracting the attention of multiple mobs. Ergo, if things are getting frantic, it's best to try to pull the enemy (or enemies) from other mobs before lighting up the Psychic Scream.

When you do blow Psychic Scream, open up with heals on yourself and watch for the effect to wear off. Squeeze a Power Word: Shield upon yourself and you might be able to land a slightly improved Smite or two on melee mobs before they get within striking distance. Again, I reiterate, it is a last ditch spell.

Don't forget to train your next rank of Renew. Cure Disease will also come in handy for the rare Diseases you might encounter at this point in the game. Keep it handy on the bar.

Level 16: Nothing major at level 16 other than a brand new healing spell aptly named... Heal! Heal packs more of a punch than it's counterpart Lesser Heal. Depending on how you talent at this point, Heal might not take the full 3 seconds to cast. If you don't have the talent reduction, keep Lesser Heal on the bar as it's still slightly faster than Heal.

Level 18: Your responsibilities have increased with the acquisition of Dispel Magic. This spell will remove a buff from enemies and debuffs from friends. I don't recall using it extensively at the lower levels, but you never really know. Bind it to an easy to reach key (like "e"). Other highlights include the next rank of Shadow Word: Pain and Desperate Prayer (for us Dwarves and Humans anyway).

Level 20: Here we go! This is the next level where you get your second set of Priestly racials. Now everyone gets access to Fear Ward.

New Racials include:

• Consume Magic
• Elune's Guidance
• Feedback
• Devouring Plague
• Touch of Weakness
• Shadowguard
• Chastise

The DPS arsenal expands yet again with the inclusion of Holy Fire. The current incarnation of the spell renders it largely useless. Once Wrath hits, however, the speed should be significantly quicker. It'll be a 1.5 second cast (I think). Priests also get their first form of crowd control in the look of Shackle Undead. This spell will become incredibly useful especially when you begin questing in the Darkshire area with the various Undead mobs running around. The next rank of Fade and another interesting spell known as Mind Soothebecomes available.

Mind Soothe effectively reduces the range at which targets will lock on to you. This becomes useful if you're trying to get somewhere fast. You can use Mind Soothe to help increase the buffer in distance that you have against mobs you're trying to sneak by. Personally, I never used it that often as I relied on my damage spells to clear the path to my destination.

That just about covers it from levels 1-20! I'll delve quickly into talents.

I wouldn't advise investing any points into Discipline just yet. You benefit more from the other trees purely from a leveling stand point. Do invest in Spirit Tap right away the moment you turn 10. It's under the Shadow tree and it'll help reduce downtime you have when facing off against mobs. The next 5 talents are entirely up to you. I preferred to remain viable for instance healing so I opted for a Holy/Disc type of build. In other words, take the first 5 points of Holy Specialization to increase your critical strike chance of your Holy spells. Note that this isn't the most optimal build to go as a Priest. If you want to stick with damage dealing and leveling as quick as possible, then pour a good chunk of your points into Shadow.

In the coming weeks ahead, I'll do my best to brief you and prepare you as much as I can.

Draenei

Long before the fallen titan, Sargeras, unleashed his demonic Legion on Azeroth, he turned his baleful gaze upon the world of Argus and its highly intelligent inhabitants, the eredar. Believing that this magically gifted race would be a crucial component in his dark quest to undo all of creation, Sargeras contacted the eredar’s three leaders – Kil’jaeden, Archimonde, and Velen – and offered them knowledge and power in exchange for their loyalty.


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