10-18-2005, 05:14 PM
I go on a lot about hunters but I do give some summaries at the end. For you criteria I think the hunter is the best choice though.
Hunters have been the easiest solo class in the game for me, solo or group. I've done marksman and a survival/melee variant. The melee hunter up to L30 actually does as much DPS in melee, dual wielding, as she does ranged. I generally have the pet with bite and claw on and growl off. Send the pet in conc shot, arcane, sting, arcane then raptor strike since the mob is in range. The pet will have hit the mob several times and it will die shortly. When my HP get to about 40% or I'm out of mana I turn growl on and autoshoot down the next mob or two as I regen. A melee hunter can actually go forever without a stop.
Of course so can my beast master and my marksman. Sure I will at times be meleeing a mob, but you just turn on monkey aspect and you can tank a mob easily. There is no need to eat or bandage because you'll regen HP in the travel time and you can do lots to make sure a mob doesn't get on you. All 3 of my hunters have pretty much lived off the land. I haven't hit the AH, I haven't really twinked gear. The beast master (who doesn't solo much since he is duo'd with a shaman) is a dragonscale leatherworker. I still wear a fair bit of self made gear at L56. Both he and the pet sustain over 100 DPS, as a duo we hold around 240 DPS a lot of the time, I'm using the Maraudon quest reward bow and a mix of leather and mail armor that has more stam than a lot of hunters might have at the cost of some agi because I do still off tank and tank with him in instances though that is harder with the nerfed spirit bond.
How do I know about soloing with the big hunter that is the duo? Well Treesh and I will often go on auto follow while one of us cooks dinner or takes a bio or decides we should get the dishes done. There will be 5-30 minute spells where one of us is soloing with the other one just following along. The beast master pet can easily tank two or 3 mobs at once. I'll often pull something else and send Meowry after it while she is still fighting something. If the shaman is around we simply never stop. If the shaman needs to drink I don't worry about it. If I run out of mana Treesh will drop a totem or I'll simply just auto-shoot. But like the melee hunter who often has the pet tanking one and the hunter tanking the other, my beast master will often fight 2 or 3 mobs at once to pick up the kill speed. In the duo situations this makes multi shot and chain lightning more effective and as mentioned the only thing the mobs usually beat on is the cat.
The other two hunters are engineers. The melee hunter gets a lot of use out of bombs. The marksman hunter uses it mostly for the ammo and some of the fun trinkets. The marksman hunter doesn't play much different than the beast master. Since I'm only L22 I really don't outdamage the pet that much yet and I can still have the pet hold 2 or 3 mobs and it isn't much of an issue for me to put ranged damage on something while I sit in monkey with something swinging at me till the pet can get back and growl on it. Disengage is of course awesome if you are fight two or three mobs and pull one, when it gets to you disengage and it runs back to the pet, you lose very little time from shooting the other one that you had been before multi peeled one off.
Hunters have great escape skills (if nothing else have the pet aggro it while you run and leave the pet behind so you can call pet). Hunters get a decently early travel mode. Hunters can handle multiple mobs easily, though you may have to melee some solo, but even a marks hunter can solo melee an even level mob easily. You can take out elites without any worry and even multiple even level elites though again you will be spending time healing your pet or off tanking one for a bit.
Mining/skinning will probably do you better than any craft for yourself. You don't really need the eng shot but there is some on AH that the money you get from selling mats will let you buy along with any gear you may want. I went with production professions simply because I like to. The other good thing with mining is that if you want to go eng later to make your own big shot in the end game you will have a very easy time of it. Spend a few hours in a few choice areas (1K needles to get lots of copper, tin and iron; Charred Vale to get a lot of mithril with a bit more copper, tin and iron; whatever your preferred thorium area is) and you can get all the mat you need to go from 1 to 300 in short order when you drop skinning for it.
I'll summarize the rest of the classes since I have solo'd everything to 20 and most things to 27. Listed from fastest to slowest sustained (so I include downtime and travel time) solo speeds in my experience.
Rogues: Kill fast and can pick their fights well, but a hunter that learns how to pull can pick fights as well and can kill just as fast in the grand scheme because the hunter doesn't have to bandage or eat, ever the hunter also travels faster and doesn't lose time to moving around in stealth to pick the fight. Give the rogue engineering and you can get out of lots of situations and take on lots of different things. Only the hunter has leveled faster. You can get away without stopping and just stealth around while regening, spirit gear is actually somewhat helpful on a solo rogue depending on play style. You are gear dependent though. If you don't keep your daggers up to par you'll end up taking too much damage. If you make sure you don't get adds you can solo even level elites but not as easily as a hunter or mage.
Shaman: Solid solo class. I like self heals I don't like needing to rely on bandages or food. Shaman can melee through fights to regen mana and they can fast kill with mana dumps. There is gear dependencies but not as bad as the warrior or rogue were for me. The rogue does kill a bit faster even though the rogue stops more than the shaman does, the single target DPS is still higher. Soloing elites isn't too bad, but you will be self healing in combat and it is slow going.
Mage: I'm a frost mage so my kill speed might be slower but I have tons of escape skills and good survivability. I eat and drink a lot but I make my own food and water. But any class that has to stop to eat and drink or bandage loses kill speed. I'll repeat that if you play the hunter well they never have to stop, ever. With sheep and frost nova usage you can kill 3 or 4 pulls if you mess up. You can kill elites though caster elites are a problem until you get counterspell since you can't keep your distance from them. Generally not worth the time to do it though. Hunters don't really lose a lot of time on elites, you just kill one of them instead of 2 or 3 regulars. :) I've got a feeling that as I get higher levels I'll have more running away and down time between fights than I do now though.
Warlock: Easier to get L20 than a mage because you can play it like a hunter with voidwalker. One of my locks is in a duo with a mage and we do use voidy to round up 3 or 4 mobs and then AoE then while voidy holds them (you can change targets to spread torment around while you channel rain of fire). Solo kill speed is faster than mage to L20 but seems to be slower in the 20 to 30 range I don't know past that. I can take on as many if not more mobs than a hunter and let DoT's where them down and can fear away things that voidy can't hold through shadowbolt spam. I life tap a lot but demon armor helps health regens at those levels and starting a fight at half health is no big deal just like with a hunter or shaman. Again I play the solo one a lot like a hunter with voidwalker tanking but voidy doesn't do the DPS of a hunter pet and I don't do the DPS of hunter in most cases. Because of the pet and the DoT's and fears I expect to get more powerful than the mage as I go beyond 30.
Druid: In 1.8 might be a faster killer than the mage and shaman. Feral spec is very powerful for solo and you can self heal and never really need to stop moving. With furor doing starfire/moonfire/wrath/FF/shift pulls works pretty well and is probably your fastest kill method on hard targets. Though I still will often start as a cat on soft targets and just stay that way. You need to learn the mobs as bear form will kill faster than cat form over several targets depending on how hard they hit and your talent specs. Improved shred doesn't help your solo but it does help you dou or group. :) Heck even as a feral spec there are still times that I will root and get off as much caster damage as I can if I know that I'll be facing several mobs. A druid rogue duo can do amazing things as you can skip things you don't want to deal with, dish out insane single target DPS, tank what needs to be tanked and heal. It's not as powerful as the beast hunter/shaman combo though.
Priest: Though you need to be shadow spec if you want to kill faster than paladins and warriors when you level. It's still frustrating solo. This is the class I have the least exp with though I have solo'd some with Treesh's L60 holy priest. I move from fight to fight faster than a warrior but the fights do take longer. I would think a shadow priest would cut the kill time down enough to kill faster and still move fight to fight faster.
Paladins: Kill as fast as young warriors and can self heal, which ups the overall kill speed. At L60 a retribution/holy paladin kills as fast as a protection spec warrior in similar level gear but the paladin has self heals so less down time since there a plenty of ways to get mana back on the fly. The holy talents make healing in combat easy and let you heal for no mana after combat if you need to. But they still don't kill quickly. You can solo anything if you give it enough time. +3 elites are not a problem, heck I've taken on 2 or 3 +1 elites at times though if one of those elites is a caster it hurts a lot more. With my spec I never need to stop. Since I judge wisdom and run command I generally get back all the mana I use in a fight, even if I have to heal. With being able to stop all damage interruption while healing and cast a free crit heal every 2 minutes I can have my small mana pool and still take on several mobs. If I really need mana back I can using blessing of wisdom, judgement of wisdom and seal of wisdom and auto-attack and watch the mana bar rise. If you are mana positive you are health positive as well. :) I switched to eng from mining/skinning at around L40 and the bombs and dynamite are nice help as I can do more than just body pull.
Warriors: This has been the most frustrating class for me to solo. I think that is because they have the fewest options for in combat healing. All the other classes have fears or snares that let them easily get distance or time to bandage. I've still never figured out a good way to get a bandage on in combat, I've tried using intimidating but you can only use that to buy time just before your current target is dead. As a protection warrior I can conc blow a single target to get some bandage time but I can't do what other classes can. My 60 was protection spec the whole time and mostly in a duo with a holy priest and I know that prot spec is way lower on DPS than the other specs but the down time and kill speed are not fun, even with the smaller arms and fury ones I have. It's a very equipment dependant class. Around L35-45 your DPS will probably start beating a paladins (yes even an arms or fury warrior is less DPS in all the testing I've done than paladin at those levels). At L60 depending on gear your kill speed is going to jump. Gnolack as a protection spec does kill faster than Balador but Gnolack has a lot better gear and the margin isn't that big. I do think an undead arms/fury or fury/arms would be good though. Canabalize would really help the down times I see. Yes warriors can survive a lot and run away from a lot of bad situations but they have to run from things others don't and
If you can get a duo I think that hunter/shaman is the most powerful duo in the game. Treesh and I are beastmaster hunter/resto shaman. Red elite quests are doable as well with that duo. We were able to duo instances while in appropriate levels. It was slow but we could handle wailing caverns and black fathoms deep and even most of Zul'Farrak as a duo. You add a third class and you can probably do everything up to Sunken temple, including the bosses.
Hunters have been the easiest solo class in the game for me, solo or group. I've done marksman and a survival/melee variant. The melee hunter up to L30 actually does as much DPS in melee, dual wielding, as she does ranged. I generally have the pet with bite and claw on and growl off. Send the pet in conc shot, arcane, sting, arcane then raptor strike since the mob is in range. The pet will have hit the mob several times and it will die shortly. When my HP get to about 40% or I'm out of mana I turn growl on and autoshoot down the next mob or two as I regen. A melee hunter can actually go forever without a stop.
Of course so can my beast master and my marksman. Sure I will at times be meleeing a mob, but you just turn on monkey aspect and you can tank a mob easily. There is no need to eat or bandage because you'll regen HP in the travel time and you can do lots to make sure a mob doesn't get on you. All 3 of my hunters have pretty much lived off the land. I haven't hit the AH, I haven't really twinked gear. The beast master (who doesn't solo much since he is duo'd with a shaman) is a dragonscale leatherworker. I still wear a fair bit of self made gear at L56. Both he and the pet sustain over 100 DPS, as a duo we hold around 240 DPS a lot of the time, I'm using the Maraudon quest reward bow and a mix of leather and mail armor that has more stam than a lot of hunters might have at the cost of some agi because I do still off tank and tank with him in instances though that is harder with the nerfed spirit bond.
How do I know about soloing with the big hunter that is the duo? Well Treesh and I will often go on auto follow while one of us cooks dinner or takes a bio or decides we should get the dishes done. There will be 5-30 minute spells where one of us is soloing with the other one just following along. The beast master pet can easily tank two or 3 mobs at once. I'll often pull something else and send Meowry after it while she is still fighting something. If the shaman is around we simply never stop. If the shaman needs to drink I don't worry about it. If I run out of mana Treesh will drop a totem or I'll simply just auto-shoot. But like the melee hunter who often has the pet tanking one and the hunter tanking the other, my beast master will often fight 2 or 3 mobs at once to pick up the kill speed. In the duo situations this makes multi shot and chain lightning more effective and as mentioned the only thing the mobs usually beat on is the cat.
The other two hunters are engineers. The melee hunter gets a lot of use out of bombs. The marksman hunter uses it mostly for the ammo and some of the fun trinkets. The marksman hunter doesn't play much different than the beast master. Since I'm only L22 I really don't outdamage the pet that much yet and I can still have the pet hold 2 or 3 mobs and it isn't much of an issue for me to put ranged damage on something while I sit in monkey with something swinging at me till the pet can get back and growl on it. Disengage is of course awesome if you are fight two or three mobs and pull one, when it gets to you disengage and it runs back to the pet, you lose very little time from shooting the other one that you had been before multi peeled one off.
Hunters have great escape skills (if nothing else have the pet aggro it while you run and leave the pet behind so you can call pet). Hunters get a decently early travel mode. Hunters can handle multiple mobs easily, though you may have to melee some solo, but even a marks hunter can solo melee an even level mob easily. You can take out elites without any worry and even multiple even level elites though again you will be spending time healing your pet or off tanking one for a bit.
Mining/skinning will probably do you better than any craft for yourself. You don't really need the eng shot but there is some on AH that the money you get from selling mats will let you buy along with any gear you may want. I went with production professions simply because I like to. The other good thing with mining is that if you want to go eng later to make your own big shot in the end game you will have a very easy time of it. Spend a few hours in a few choice areas (1K needles to get lots of copper, tin and iron; Charred Vale to get a lot of mithril with a bit more copper, tin and iron; whatever your preferred thorium area is) and you can get all the mat you need to go from 1 to 300 in short order when you drop skinning for it.
I'll summarize the rest of the classes since I have solo'd everything to 20 and most things to 27. Listed from fastest to slowest sustained (so I include downtime and travel time) solo speeds in my experience.
Rogues: Kill fast and can pick their fights well, but a hunter that learns how to pull can pick fights as well and can kill just as fast in the grand scheme because the hunter doesn't have to bandage or eat, ever the hunter also travels faster and doesn't lose time to moving around in stealth to pick the fight. Give the rogue engineering and you can get out of lots of situations and take on lots of different things. Only the hunter has leveled faster. You can get away without stopping and just stealth around while regening, spirit gear is actually somewhat helpful on a solo rogue depending on play style. You are gear dependent though. If you don't keep your daggers up to par you'll end up taking too much damage. If you make sure you don't get adds you can solo even level elites but not as easily as a hunter or mage.
Shaman: Solid solo class. I like self heals I don't like needing to rely on bandages or food. Shaman can melee through fights to regen mana and they can fast kill with mana dumps. There is gear dependencies but not as bad as the warrior or rogue were for me. The rogue does kill a bit faster even though the rogue stops more than the shaman does, the single target DPS is still higher. Soloing elites isn't too bad, but you will be self healing in combat and it is slow going.
Mage: I'm a frost mage so my kill speed might be slower but I have tons of escape skills and good survivability. I eat and drink a lot but I make my own food and water. But any class that has to stop to eat and drink or bandage loses kill speed. I'll repeat that if you play the hunter well they never have to stop, ever. With sheep and frost nova usage you can kill 3 or 4 pulls if you mess up. You can kill elites though caster elites are a problem until you get counterspell since you can't keep your distance from them. Generally not worth the time to do it though. Hunters don't really lose a lot of time on elites, you just kill one of them instead of 2 or 3 regulars. :) I've got a feeling that as I get higher levels I'll have more running away and down time between fights than I do now though.
Warlock: Easier to get L20 than a mage because you can play it like a hunter with voidwalker. One of my locks is in a duo with a mage and we do use voidy to round up 3 or 4 mobs and then AoE then while voidy holds them (you can change targets to spread torment around while you channel rain of fire). Solo kill speed is faster than mage to L20 but seems to be slower in the 20 to 30 range I don't know past that. I can take on as many if not more mobs than a hunter and let DoT's where them down and can fear away things that voidy can't hold through shadowbolt spam. I life tap a lot but demon armor helps health regens at those levels and starting a fight at half health is no big deal just like with a hunter or shaman. Again I play the solo one a lot like a hunter with voidwalker tanking but voidy doesn't do the DPS of a hunter pet and I don't do the DPS of hunter in most cases. Because of the pet and the DoT's and fears I expect to get more powerful than the mage as I go beyond 30.
Druid: In 1.8 might be a faster killer than the mage and shaman. Feral spec is very powerful for solo and you can self heal and never really need to stop moving. With furor doing starfire/moonfire/wrath/FF/shift pulls works pretty well and is probably your fastest kill method on hard targets. Though I still will often start as a cat on soft targets and just stay that way. You need to learn the mobs as bear form will kill faster than cat form over several targets depending on how hard they hit and your talent specs. Improved shred doesn't help your solo but it does help you dou or group. :) Heck even as a feral spec there are still times that I will root and get off as much caster damage as I can if I know that I'll be facing several mobs. A druid rogue duo can do amazing things as you can skip things you don't want to deal with, dish out insane single target DPS, tank what needs to be tanked and heal. It's not as powerful as the beast hunter/shaman combo though.
Priest: Though you need to be shadow spec if you want to kill faster than paladins and warriors when you level. It's still frustrating solo. This is the class I have the least exp with though I have solo'd some with Treesh's L60 holy priest. I move from fight to fight faster than a warrior but the fights do take longer. I would think a shadow priest would cut the kill time down enough to kill faster and still move fight to fight faster.
Paladins: Kill as fast as young warriors and can self heal, which ups the overall kill speed. At L60 a retribution/holy paladin kills as fast as a protection spec warrior in similar level gear but the paladin has self heals so less down time since there a plenty of ways to get mana back on the fly. The holy talents make healing in combat easy and let you heal for no mana after combat if you need to. But they still don't kill quickly. You can solo anything if you give it enough time. +3 elites are not a problem, heck I've taken on 2 or 3 +1 elites at times though if one of those elites is a caster it hurts a lot more. With my spec I never need to stop. Since I judge wisdom and run command I generally get back all the mana I use in a fight, even if I have to heal. With being able to stop all damage interruption while healing and cast a free crit heal every 2 minutes I can have my small mana pool and still take on several mobs. If I really need mana back I can using blessing of wisdom, judgement of wisdom and seal of wisdom and auto-attack and watch the mana bar rise. If you are mana positive you are health positive as well. :) I switched to eng from mining/skinning at around L40 and the bombs and dynamite are nice help as I can do more than just body pull.
Warriors: This has been the most frustrating class for me to solo. I think that is because they have the fewest options for in combat healing. All the other classes have fears or snares that let them easily get distance or time to bandage. I've still never figured out a good way to get a bandage on in combat, I've tried using intimidating but you can only use that to buy time just before your current target is dead. As a protection warrior I can conc blow a single target to get some bandage time but I can't do what other classes can. My 60 was protection spec the whole time and mostly in a duo with a holy priest and I know that prot spec is way lower on DPS than the other specs but the down time and kill speed are not fun, even with the smaller arms and fury ones I have. It's a very equipment dependant class. Around L35-45 your DPS will probably start beating a paladins (yes even an arms or fury warrior is less DPS in all the testing I've done than paladin at those levels). At L60 depending on gear your kill speed is going to jump. Gnolack as a protection spec does kill faster than Balador but Gnolack has a lot better gear and the margin isn't that big. I do think an undead arms/fury or fury/arms would be good though. Canabalize would really help the down times I see. Yes warriors can survive a lot and run away from a lot of bad situations but they have to run from things others don't and
If you can get a duo I think that hunter/shaman is the most powerful duo in the game. Treesh and I are beastmaster hunter/resto shaman. Red elite quests are doable as well with that duo. We were able to duo instances while in appropriate levels. It was slow but we could handle wailing caverns and black fathoms deep and even most of Zul'Farrak as a duo. You add a third class and you can probably do everything up to Sunken temple, including the bosses.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.