Choosing the right alt

[Hedon]

Ok, I'm having the following problem:

My main is a lvl 60 disc/holy priestess (Melisandre), which is doing great in raiding but is unfortunatly of little use anywhere else. Though I can take on every mob a shadow specc or any other class can, killing speed is simply abysmal. This makes soloing a rather frustating experience. I tried the new silithus content and gave up quickly as soloing mobs in disc/holy mode was such a mind numbing grinding compared to the the killing frenzy I rememebred, when Melisandre was still shadow/disc specced. PvP is another problem...

To make things worse, I have to somehow get the money for my epic mount together as guildies are making fun my good 'ol standard skeleton horse (though I really only need to ride from Kargath to Blackrockmountain, Brackenwall to Onyxias Lair and Grom'gol to Zul'gurub; but it is an issue of proper representation ;) ). As you can't make money out of high-end raiding (no cashloot, high repair costs) I have to find some other way.

So not being able to enjoy solo content / PvP as well as the need to take care of above mentioned financial pressures, I decided it is time to roll a casual/PvP/farm char to relax from raiding duties as well as supporting my raiding main Melisandre.

So far I have leveled up a lvl 20 warlock (Meret) and lvl 13 rogue (Illaria). As leveling beyond lvl 20 begins to be a bit time consuming I want to make sure that make the right class choice for my alt.

This is where I need your help.



Let me reiterate the "job description" I have in mind for my alt:

1. Has to level up fast and casually (when I grind I need to be in zen like state where I play the game at an almost subconsius level, chatting away in voice, or listening to music. That is the main drawback in playing a rogue imho: you have to pay close attention to your actions and time your skills carefully).

2. Deriving from point one but more specifcally in terms of cash flow: must have a reasonable killing speed.

3. Being soloable of course.

4. Low dependency on gear, as I don't want to run instances to equip my alt properly. Running instances is what I do on my main almost exclusively and I need sometimes to do things on my own.

5. Having solid PvP qualities, just in case I need either to defend myself or get the sudden urge to gank someone :shuriken:

6. Being fun to play :)


Being a clothwearer is plus, since Melisandre is an accomplished tailor and thus can provide cheap gear upgrades.

Any Ideas? Warlock, Rogue, Mage or Hunter? What do you altitis experts say? *g*

[nobbie]

Play a Feral specced Druid, he's just great since patch 1.8 :)

[oldmandennis]

I like the pet classes. The pet gives you a little buffer if you aren't paying much attention.

Of the two, I found hunter to be the easier to lvl. Autoshoot Autogrowl will get you through most fights if you are chatting away.

Feral spec druid is ok, but it's like playing a rogue as far as twichyness goes. Plus you gotta be ready to pop back to caster and start your heals early.

[Artega]

Warlock if you're dead-set on making gear for your alt.

Hunter otherwise. Hunters are more durable than Warlocks, and are the fastest-leveling class in the game. They can also solo a variety of farmable mobs (elites like Devilsaurs, Stone Guardians, and various dragonkin) efficiently. Pick up skinning and mining for maximum profit.

[Drasca]

Go with anything but warlock if frustration bothers you in the least bit.

Warlock fulfills all except open PvP defense factor and maybe attention factor (actually, end game PvE is mostly shadowbolt or hellfire spam mixed with banishes and the odd pet command, so nevermind). Hunting with a warlock is fine, being ganked via War/Rogues as a lock is not.

Melisandre sounds like a Night Elf's name. If so, an alliance warlock would not be a good idea on a PvP server as mez/fear is doubly useless vs UD and completely useless vs shaman (then again, shaman do well against everyone in PvP).

Much easier to hunt everyone else, especially mages.

Go with mage or hunter if you want to fulfill the other qualities. Hunter autoshoot can be very... mindless.

Warlock PvP is very frenetic and will be frustrating until you have both the equipment to succeed often with it.

Then again, you may be called upon to bring your Warlock in PvE raiding.

[kandrathe]

...
1. Has to level up fast and casually ...

Rogue, although no AOE, still the highest single target DPS if played right.

2. Deriving from point one but more specifcally in terms of cash flow: must have a reasonable killing speed.

Rogue, use stealth to get to Herbs, or Mining Nodes. If a mob comes along, Vanish. Skinner is also lucrative.

3. Being soloable of course.

Rogue, or Hunter.

4. Low dependency on gear, as I don't want to run instances to equip my alt properly. Running instances is what I do on my main almost exclusively and I need sometimes to do things on my own.

Rogue. Some kill damage is gear dependant, most is just skills and talents.

5. Having solid PvP qualities, just in case I need either to defend myself or get the sudden urge to gank someone  :shuriken:

Rogue.

6. Being fun to play  :)
Being a clothwearer is plus, since Melisandre is an accomplished tailor and thus can provide cheap gear upgrades.

You can make your rogue a cloak.

Play a rogue up to level 20, and if you don't like it try a Hunter. :-) And, don't worry about getting invited to play in instances. :-)

[Treesh]

Play a rogue  up to level 20, and if you don't like it try a Hunter.  :-)  And, don't worry about getting invited to play in instances.  :-)
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Rogue is less soloable than hunter in my opinion. They are also a bit more equipment dependent than hunter. A hunter with crappy equipment can make it farther, easier than a rogue with crappy equipment because the hunter has a pet to mitigate damage taken and help with DPS too. You will also be able to handle unexpected adds more easily for when you get trained out in the world.

[savaughn]

Rogue is less soloable than hunter in my opinion.  They are also a bit more equipment dependent than hunter.  A hunter with crappy equipment can make it farther, easier than a rogue with crappy equipment because the hunter has a pet to mitigate damage taken and help with DPS too.  You will also be able to handle unexpected adds more easily for when you get trained out in the world.
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100% in agreement here. A rogue wears the "new" off of a dagger in 3-4 levels.

More specifically, I'd recommend a Beast Mastery hunter. Kicking up the DPS on your pet makes you even less gear dependent and having the pet armor and hit point talents gives you a lot more flexibility.

It's not quite as ignorable as a disc priest (I've actually hit renew/SW:P/shoot wand and gotten up and left the room before) but it's still pretty easy.

[bonemage]

Hedon plays Horde side, Melisandre is undead. On that note, I thought I would throw in my favorite solo character, the undead warrior. A warrior is great for grinding multiple greens, and the undead racial trait cannibalize is perfect for soloing. If the mobs you are killing are undead or humanoid, this one racial trait can cut your downtime to nearly zero. I haven't tried all classes to high enough level to say which one is the "best", but this is one race/class combo that is very effective for grinding.

[Arethor]

I realize I'm not as knowlegeable about all the classes, but as you'll see by my signature I've atleast tried them all out. Sorry if it's a bit lengthy but just putting down my thoughts about each class. This also reminds me that I need to update a few of my alts' status :lol:

Warlock - My first character was a Warlock. A little bit of a difficult grind as I soloed most of his levels. Because I couldn't find groups I also skipped instances entirely (Still never done a full Sunken Temple or BFD run with him) or only ran them once (Maraudon). When he hit 57 I started gearing him up from the end-game casual instances (Scholo/Strat/DM) Once I capped and started looking to make some more money to get my Dreadsteed I found it to be a little tedious to farm. I had no problem of survivability but I'd be medium to low on mana after each fight. Long story short, while I love my warlock I wouldnt' suggest him for your purposes

Mage - A mage would be a good alternative if you wanted to go cloth. Portable Food and Water dispenser. But I've noticed my mage isn't always the quickest to level. He's very fragile at early levels. Most even level mobs can be burned down before, or as they reach you, but if you get 2 or 3, you're done for. Only now after I have Blink (Level 20 iirc) is it becoming easier to solo.

Rogue - Decent soloers, the ability to stun most mobs allow for both crowd control and for an escape mechanism. In my opinion one of the quicker leveling classes. Good for farming at endgame, bring a stack of bandages and you can farm at a pretty good rate for an extended time. A little more equipment reliant than some other classes, requires you to have a decent weapon to be able to put out optimal damage.

Hunter - Hunter's are very quick levelers. I started mine on Stormrage as a duo partner with Pesmerga's warrior. We moved through the first bunch of levels quickly with only minimal time played. When Pesmerga was away for a week I quickly gained 5 levels (12-17) while still primarily focusing on both my warlock and rogue.

Warrior - Early on the only drawback seems to be DPS. Able to take large amounts of damage, and with a combination of Arms/Fury (you don't plan on instances so no worries about being a full "Tank") You'll be able to put out good damage later on. My brother's 60 warrior is actually quite capable of pulling 3 or 4 mobs and taking them out quite quickly.

Paladin - For the purposes you're looking I'd just say that you should be glad you rolled Horde :P

Shaman - My shaman has been quite easy to solo up once he got some decent gear (Read Quest Rewards and low level drops) Able to put out burst damage, take a small bit of a beating and self-healing makes for a nice combination when soloing. I haven't really gotten to play a shaman to end-game so don't know how viable they are for farming and such.

Druid - Similar to Shamans in some respects, although I don't think I have enough experience with a druid (especially after the new patch) to make a suggestion either way on them.

Edit: click the Full character list link in my profiel to see all the toons I've played. Lazarum is now 24, Zane is now 33, Elreth is now 19, and Bordann(Stormrage) is now 17 :)

[Kevin]

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.

[Quark]

Rogue.  Some kill damage is gear dependant, most is just skills and talents. 
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While soloing, my damage runs about 45% Melee, 20% Sinister Strike, 10% Backstab, 10% Ambush, 8% Eviscerate, and the rest is "other" - though mostly poison IIRC. All but one of the listed skills is highly weapon dependent.

Addition - if you want a Rogue to solo, go Combat. Don't go Subtlety/Assassination.

[TheWesson]

if you just want to kill a lot of stuff really fast - as a priest - find a dependable mage to duo with.

The mage can run around collecting a half-dozen mobs and then spam instant Arcane Explosion while you bubble and heal like mad.

Leverages your strengths as a disc/holy priest and it's kind of an exciting healing situation.

The best area is one with 100% melee humanoids or undead.

Perhaps the two of you could easily solo some of the 30-50 instances for blue drops to sell.

I've never tried this combo with priest+warlock, but it might work well too.

...

as far as a fun class that levels fast and is fairly forgiving, I agree on a pet class. Never been hunter, but an Affliction warlock has very little downtime and no kiting. With the Succubus+DoTs you can kill very quickly too, but if you're prone to lapses of attention the Voidwalker would be better.

The fun thing about Warlocks is that you have a lot to do, what with pets, DoTs, and hard hitting ranged attacks. You can also self-rez once per half hour if you screw up.

You can just walk around a difficult area with your pet on aggressive and try to keep the two of you alive, if you like the chancy element ... ! Or you can mechanically down one mob at a time with the Voidwalker.

The 31 talent for Affliction Warlocks means never running out of mana, too, which is nice for a spellcaster.

[Mirajj]

The sole thing I have to add to this is on the hunter class. While it is (imho) the most solo friendly class, having the least amount of trouble, it pays for that by being the most expensive class to run. Especially as you get higher and you can no longer find food that your pet likes in any great quantity. You can fish up food...but then you have to spend time fishing.

Here's a look at some of the costs you'll be looking at.

Gear is usually the least of the worries, with repairs (for a solo session, not an instance run) coming in around around the 50s to 1g mark.

I use Jagged arrows. A (16 slot) quiverfull of those will run you 1g 44s.

Food. Pets eat it like crazy, and after they hit 55 any food under level 45 isn't really worth it. They'll eat through the sub45 stuff in insane speed, and go through the +45 stuff fairly fast, too. A stack of 20 Roasted Quail for my cat = 1g 44s

I keep an extra stack of food around, just in case, and tend to go through a halfquiver of arrows per 'session'. So you are looking at roughly 2-2.5g a session, just to field your hunter.

That's not much, but if you are looking to maximize profit and minimize downtime costs, you may be better off with a rogue.

[Tuftears]

Actually, there are some reasonably profitable fishing spots that will give you nice food for your cat too. Fishing off the Bay of Storms (requires aquadynamic fish attractors) will get you darkclaw lobsters, which can be cooked into lobster stew very cheaply, boosting its feeding power, as well as stonescale eels and zesty clam meat. Cooking the large raw mightfish will give +10 sta food, which is not so mighty in comparison to tender wolf steaks, but it might be easier to just use those instead of having to farm two things.

I suspect rogues would spin sob stories about reagents and food downtime and the need to get agility buff foods like winter squid that they can't even get in the summer.

[TheWesson]

Actually, there are some reasonably profitable fishing spots that will give you nice food for your cat too.  Fishing off the Bay of Storms (requires aquadynamic fish attractors) will get you darkclaw lobsters, which can be cooked into lobster stew very cheaply, boosting its feeding power, as well as stonescale eels and zesty clam meat.  Cooking the large raw mightfish will give +10 sta food, which is not so mighty in comparison to tender wolf steaks, but it might be easier to just use those instead of having to farm two things.

I suspect rogues would spin sob stories about reagents and food downtime and the need to get agility buff foods like winter squid that they can't even get in the summer.
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Well, warlocks have zero maintenance time + expense, except for repairing armor (not too much of that, mostly your pet is beaten on), and remembering to hit "Drain Soul" once in a while when grinding to get a soul shard.

You do fork over some extra gold for pet training (as I gather hunters do), but then again you get a free mount at 40 upon completing a quest, which makes up for that.

[Mirajj]

Well, warlocks have zero maintenance time + expense, except for repairing armor (not too much of that, mostly your pet is beaten on), and remembering to hit "Drain Soul" once in a while when grinding to get a soul shard.

You do fork over some extra gold for pet training (as I gather hunters do), but then again you get a free mount at 40 upon completing a quest, which makes up for that.
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Well, it doesn't cost us gold to train our pets, but it does cost time, as we need to go out and find an animal with the level of skill we want (Bite 8, for example, is only learnable from the 8 last worgs in LBRS), tame it, learn the skill, dump the pet, and then 'train' that skill to our 'main' pet. It's a hassle, but there's no real gold cost. A big time cost, though.

Our main pet costs come in the food to keep it happy. ;)

[kandrathe]

While soloing, my damage runs about 45% Melee, 20% Sinister Strike, 10% Backstab, 10% Ambush, 8% Eviscerate, and the rest is "other" - though mostly poison IIRC.  All but one of the listed skills is highly weapon dependent.

Addition - if you want a Rogue to solo, go Combat.  Don't go Subtlety/Assassination.
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So.... You advocate rogue? :D How much of the equipment can be had from AH, or quests? Some people say Hunter, and it is very soloable for some things. I would think the v1.8 changes made that better. I'm not discouraging Hunter, but having brought one to lvl 60 there are many advantages and just as many disadvantages. Hunters are just as gear dependent as rogues, but some of the best hunter gear is quest rewards. Hunters have traps, and feign death to help them with gathering, while rogues can stealth, vanish, and if things go south you can gouge and sprint. Both are dependant on food and bandages. I'd say the hunter has less downtime between fights that they win, but the rogue wins more fights. If you go survival/marksman spec (as I did) you can easily fight two or more mobs at a time, so that might be another plus for hunter.

[swirly]

In my mind the choice comes down to hunter or warlock. The pets make a huge difference for solo play and grinding. There is really only one reason I want to say warlock over hunter and that is the free mount at 40. With the hunter you are going to have to choose if you want to just play without a mount (using aspect of the cheetah) or if you want to drop the 90 gold for one. 90 gold is a pretty good chunk out of your epic mount fund and so its almost like starting anything except a warlock starts you at -90 gold and then has to build itself out of that hole.

Now both a hunter and a warlock can kill pretty much non-stop. A warlock can dot and then wand or drain life/mana as needed while it's VW tanks. A hunter can auto shoot or throw a few specials in while it's pet tanks. So the hunter definately wins on speed, but they are about even in that neither really has to stop after fights.

As to items, I would say that a warlock doesn't really need any particular items while leveling while a hunter needs a bow/gun. Now even with a crappy bow/gun the hunter will probably kill faster than the warlock so this really doesn't seem to be an issue for either of these. Of course the warlock could get cloth from your tailor so I suppose thats a plus for it.

As to PvP...I'd probably say the hunter is the strongest here, but I do next to no PvP and so thats mostly a guess really. As a grinding warlock you will probably go affliction/demonology and I am unsure how good such a build would be for PvP. My gut tells me that a grinding hunter build more closely matches a PvP build than a grinding warlock build does.

As to being fun to play. My experience has been towards the warlock. I've played 2 hunters to the mid 30's or so and tended to be bored with them. They both soloed alot and I just felt like I could go to sleep and let them play themselves. This is great for grinding since thats what you said you wanted, but I never got much enjoyment out of them. I'm currently playing a warlock (level 45 now) and I've enjoyed it alot more. While a warlock can kill non-stop, it does require a bit more attention because you need to life tap, drain life, drain mana, health funnel, consume shadows, etc where a hunter doesn't really abuse their life as much or need to worry about their mana though they might have to throw a mend pet in now and again. So its almost like two of your goals fight each other. You meantion being "in zen like state where I play the game at an almost subconsius level" which I think relates more to the hunter. You also meantion "Being fun to play" which I feel relates more to the warlock. I should also state that my hunter experience is from before the new talent trees in case that affects things.

So where does that leave me?

hunter wins: PvP, grinding speed, and zen of grinding

warlock wins: fun, mount cost, and possibly items because its cloth you can make

So basically the hunter is the superior grinder while the warlock is cheaper and more fun (in my mind). So the choice comes down to that. In my mind it really all comes back to the 90 gold for the mount. Even though the hunter can grind faster, I am unsure if its worth starting 90 gold in the hole. If you play the character to 60 then maybe the speed will make up for it and more than earn that money back. If you play the character less often though and more casually...then I am less sure that the hunter makes the money back. Of course if you are playing it casually then you may not even get to mount level and so the aspect of the cheetah will be helpful earlier and so a huge boon to you (especially for gathering professions if you plan on spending time doing those for money).

I guess that if I had to make I choice, I would probably say hunter. I feel like I really want to say warlock because I'm enjoying playing it so much and it can fill the roles you specify. In the end though, the hunter is just the superior grinder and my gut says that that is what you really want here. So I'm torn, but my final choice is hunter.

[Hedon]

Thank you all for the helpful replies :)

Though the vast majority of you, recommended a hunter, I've started a mage today to compare her with my lvl 20 warlock. The main reason I decided against a hunter is simply the fact that there are no undead hunters, and undead is by far my favorite race on the Horde side (if I would be playing Alliance and could chose a sexy nightelf huntress, things might look a bit differently ;) )

On another note, there are the points miraji brought up: the need to feed your pet. While pet interaction is certainly fun, I would hate to learn the profession of cooking, for it brings along other things you have to worry about: getting the right ingredients to level it up, those ingredients taking up slots in your bags etc.
If I would plan on playing a hunter as my main, this wouldn't be a disadvantage, but rather an enrichment, but for mere utility/fun alt, learning cooking is certainly another timesink to be considered in the equation.

As to chosing a rogue: well, I've leveld up a rogue to lvl 13, and while the killing speed is unmatched I probably suck at playing a rogue; i died quite often. :/


I've leveled a mage up to lvl 10 today and I am quite pleased so far. While also a bit twitchy to play as you have to move around and kite using your frostbolt, I have found that this particular twitchyness suits me much more than that required for succesfull rogue play. Killing speed is great, and the ice kiting aspect makes it very fun to play (I will probaly specc heaviliy into frost to make the most out of it). A mage also makes for a decent PvP char, so this is a also a plus.


The mount issue that swirly mentioned is am important point though. That you get a free mount with a warlock is a big plus for a casual char.

The disadavantage caster classes have in not profiting from gear upgrades as much as a melee or hunter class, is in this particular case an advantage, as it also means less gear dependency. Another thing both mage and warlocks provide are AEs, which I imagine to be useful when farming mobs several levels below your own later.


I guess I will level up my mage up to lvl 20 and then decide whether I go with the warlock or the mage :)