A Guide to Mages comment thread

[WarLocke]

When your skill is well below your maximum possible skill, you skill up very quickly.  So, if your wand skill is at 150/250, then you'll skill up fast.  It's only when you start getting close the the maximum amount that the skillup rate slows to a crawl.
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This seems to apply to all other weapon skills as well, and is one of the things I really, really like in WoW. When I first started playing, I was still in the EQ mindset of 'must keep all my skills near max, or it'll be impossible to level/use them later on'.

Then, when I saw how fast you could go from 0/80 to 60ish/80 (in under ten minutes for that particular example) I was boggled. Now I don't have to worry about carrying a bunch of weapons and switching out when a skill hits max (or 1 below max, which is usually the practical per-level limit pre-30ish) I just carry the best weapon available (and maybe a 2h alternate and/or an offhand item in the bank) and only switch to upgrade. It might cripple my melee output for a few fights, but it's much less of a hassle than trying to keep up all the skills all the time. B)