Choosing Gathering Professions for Leveling

Jon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:58:23 +0000

So you’ve just started a new toon, maybe its one of your first, or maybe you’re coming back to WoW after a break. Either way, I’m going to tell you exactly which professions I like for leveling.

This will be a series of posts, but I’m going to start with what I feel are the most important professions for leveling fast – and that’s the gathering professions.

The gathering professions are:

Skinning
Herbalism
Mining

All three are great for leveling up, and if you’re hell bent on leveling as fast as possible, you might even consider taking 2 gathering professions.

Before I look at each individually, I have a few thoughts for you:

1. Start your profession as soon as humanly possible. If you start using it at level 10, you’ll be leagues ahead of anyone starting at level 20. Not to mention if you start 10 levels late you’ll need to back track… which will waste you time & frustrate you.

2. Choose a profession that makes up for class inadequacies (I’ll go into this).

3. If you’re doing recruit a friend, or dual boxing with recruit a friend it might be easier to just skip professions altogether & come back to them once you hit 80.

4. Taking 2 gathering professions will likely necessitate you swapping one for a crafting profession once you hit 80, this can be expensive. Is the trade off worth it? That’s up to you.

Skinning

Skinning is one of my favorite professions to level up with.You don’t have to go off course to find herbs or ore, you just take half a second at each skinnable creature you kill and you’re done.

So what does skinning get you for leveling?

Master of Anatomy: increases your critical strike rating, dependent on skinning level.

By skill level 75, you’ll get your first Master of Anatomy rank, which will give you a +3 crit strike rating, and you scale up to 40 by level 80.

You might scoff at +3 crit strike, but at low levels this means many more crits, much more damage, and faster mob killing.

What classes should take skinning?

Since you should always take damage dealing specs when leveling up (unless you just enjoy playing another spec), any class will benefit from this skill greatly.

Remember, +crit does NOT just affect melee classes. +crit will also increase the chance your spells critically hit (and critically heal!).

Herbalism

Herbalism is a profession I seem to choose for every toon I have…

While its not quite as easy to gain skill in as skinning, herbs are found all over Azeroth and beyond, and are still relatively easy to collect while you level.

The biggest side benefit of herbalism to leveling up (unless you’re bank rolled by a level 80 toon) is that you can sell the mats for tons of gold at lower levels… Its actually not that odd if you think about it.

Because higher level players spend all their time in Northrend and to a lesser extent Outland, the old world is relatively inaccesable to them. They’re lazy, and they just want their herbs now without having to trek across the entire continent to get them.

Which is where you come in with your herbs.

But enough about gold, what does herbalism do for you?

As with skinning, at skill level 75 you get your first rank of LifeBlood, which when activated gives 300 health of healing over 5 seconds.

What classes should take Herbalism?

Classes benefiting most are those who can’t heal themselves, so:

Warriors, Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, Mages… Any class that doesn’t have specific healing spells.

That’s not to say classes who already heal via spells can’t benefit from lifeblood. If you’re low on mana, or just a leveling fiend that wants to reduce downtime, then you’ll love Lifeblood.

Team up Lifeblood with First aid and you’re pretty much set for zero downtime.

Mining

The last profession I’ll look at today is Mining.

Mining is much like herbalism in that you need to go off path a bit to grab it, but still relatively speaking its a handy profession to have for two reasons.

First off, you can sell the mats for a ton of gold on the AH – rivaling herbalism for gold making at low levels. Secondly, you get a passive ability that you don’t need to worry about as you level up.

Mining gives you the Toughness ability. This means at skill level 75 you’ll have +3 stamina, scaling all the way up to +60 stamina at level 80.

You might already see a small problem with the mining ability… and that is, it just increases your maximum health, which means you still need to maintain that health with either healing, bandaging, or eating… and this means more downtime and resource usage.

Its for this reason I favor herbalism and skinning over mining for LEVELING. +60 stam at level 80 is a nice boost to max health and is fantastic for tanking classes or really anyone involved in PvP.

But leveling?

I have to say leave mining alone unless you want to have it for end-game benefit, or if you want to go the one gathering, one crafting profession option.

Got your own experiences with gathering professions for leveling up fast? Let us know via comments.

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Elemental Shaman Casting Rotation for Leveling Mid Level Characters

Jon — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:21:26 +0000

This is a quickie guide for all you Elemental Shaman’s out there with mid level Shamans wondering about efficient casting rotations while you grind up the levels.

I’ll cover PvE solo leveling here – clearly you’ll be looking for a very different, burst damage rotation for PvP!

Elemental Shamans, unless well controlled, can really burn through mana.

Unlike their enhancement cousins, they really need to keep an eye on mana usage, especially when leveling up and grinding mobs.

Lets begin…

PvE Leveling/Grinding:

Notes: Lightning bolt is your friend for efficient casting – make sure you max out the first row talent Convection to get 10% cheaper casts.

Water shield beats lightning shield for long term efficiency — while lightning shield will help you kill mobs quicker, your mana will drain so fast you’ll be on your behind drinking juice all day.

Choose a good weapon – staves with +int and +spirit are ideal, and while you might take more damage than a shield 1h combo, mana is really the problem area for Shamans, not health – this is especially true once you hit level 40 (mail).

If you’re leveling as fast as you can you should also be following the “two level rule” – that is, try and do quests that involve you killing mobs two levels below you for optimum leveling efficiency. Doing this also means that once again we can focus on mana instead of health to level in the most efficient manner.

The Leveling Casting Rotation:

Lightning Bolt – Lightning Bolt – Lightning Bolt

Have active Windfury Weapon, Mana Spring, Water Shield.

No other totems are necessary. This is statistically the most efficient cast rotation for conserving mana.

You’ll get two LB’s off before engaged in melee, and the third will come off without a hitch thanks to Eye of the Storm.

Chain Lightning is a faster cast, and more damaging, but way more costly in mana – same goes for your shocks.

Helpful Talents For This Build:

Row 1: Convection (maxed)

Row 4: Eye of the Storm (push back reduction)

Row 5: Unrelenting Storm (mana regeneration even during combat)

Helpful Glyphs:

Glyph of Lightning Bolt

Glyph of Water Shield

Conclusion:

Its not a fancy or complex rotation, and truth be told, I will change it up now and then just to amuse myself… but if you’re pulling solo mobs over and over while leveling, this will keep you killing mobs all night long.