Classes in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft consists of 9 playable classes - Warrior, Druid, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Hunter, Rogue, Paladin and Shaman. Each class has special talents and spells which give them all a unique purpose in the game.

Druid

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Male Night Elf Druid wearing Dreamwalker item set

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Druid in Moonkin form standing in Darnassus.

Druids in World of Warcraft are able to take on multiple roles within one class and to transform into various animal forms to suit a variety of tasks.

• In caster form, Druids can cast damage spells and healing spells, as well as various offensive and defensive support spells. The druid can also resurrect other players in combat.

• In Bear form, the Druid can act as a Tank. When shifting to bear form, Druids gain an increase to their armor and health.

• In Cat form, the Druid acts as a melee DPS class. Using their boosted attack power and various Energy skills.

• The Moonkin form gives the Druid a 360% bonus to armor and increases the chance that spells cast by nearby party members will critically hit by 3%. In this form, the Druid can only cast Balance spells which are two schools of magic - Nature and Arcane. In the upcoming expansion pack The Burning Crusade, the Moonkin form will also increase physical attack power, and each melee attack will have a chance to regenerate the Druid's mana. [1]

• Druids may also learn to take on the form of a cheetah and sea lion, giving speed bonuses on land and water respectively.

• In the upcoming expansion set "The Burning Crusade" Druids will be able take on a Flight form at level 68 and travel in the sky. This flight form will only be usable in Outland. [2] There will also be various improvements to the druid class overall including both increased dps and healing in feral/balance and restoration specializations.

• In the upcoming expansion set The Burning Crusade, Druids will be able to take on a Tree of Life form and all party members will gain a boost to their healing spells based on the druid's spirit, but mobility will be limited and the druid may only cast Healing-Over-Time (HoTs) spells including Swiftmend. Also there will be improvements in balance including a spell where the druid can summon Treants that will protect the caster for a limited amount of time. In feral specc druids will benefit from increased dps and also various new attacks. [3]

Druid talents

Restoration focuses on healing and reducing damage. Balance focuses on damage spells and effects. Feral focuses on improving melee damage and/or tanking ability while the druid is in his or her animal forms.

Hunter

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Orc Male Hunter.

The Hunter class is based on the beast master and ranger classes seen in traditional roleplaying games. A unique class, their primary source of damage comes from ranged weapons such as guns, bows, and crossbows. As a hunter levels up they may learn how to track nearly any type of friend or foe.

The hunter may learn to tame beasts as pets to assist them in battle. The pet adds extra damage and can "tank" the monster by keeping it busy at a distance while the hunter does the damage. Most pets are unique and can learn a variety of different abilities including beast specific ones for example cats learning stealth.

As the hunter progresses through levels he or she can train Aspects. These allow the player to passively improve their skills or talents by taking on bestial traits such as increasing run speed like a cheetah. Hunters can also lay traps to freeze an enemy for a short period of time, slow several down, do additional damage to a single target or multiple targets via an area of effect when triggered.

Mage

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Gnomish Female Mage.

Mages are a magic-using class who focus on elemental and arcane spells. Although they can deal large amounts of damage in a short period of time, survival is difficult due to their low hit points and limitation of only wearing cloth (the weakest armor category).

Only mages can conjure food and water, allowing for quick regeneration of hitpoints and mana out of combat. A mage may also conjure a mana crystal that provides the creator with a one-time mana boost similar to a Mana Potion. Mages also have the ability to teleport themselves to any of their faction's major cities. Mages can create portals to teleport their entire party to a major faction city.

Mages have damage output with spells available from three schools of magic: Fire, Frost, and Arcane as well as a wide selection of Area of Effect spells (AoE), capable of damaging multiple enemies in a targeted area or near the mage. Mages can also polymorph their target rendering it unable to act for a short period of time, although it boosts the target's regeneration rate exceedingly. Mages can deal the most damage of any class in the shortest amount of time due to their burst damage and Area-of-effect spells.

Mages may use staves and learn one-handed swords and daggers. If wielding a one-handed weapon, a mage can simultaneously carry an off-handed item to obtain a minor ability boost. Mages, along with the Priest and Warlock classes, may also use wands for ranged attacks.

Mage skills

Fire focuses almost exclusively on dealing lots of damage in a short period of time. Frost mostly focuses on slowing and stopping creatures, as well as having a much more controlled and constant DPS. Arcane focuses on mana conserving abilities and skills to combat other caster type classes. Since the game's inception, Mages have typically spent their talent points into either a combination of Arcane and Frost or Arcane and Fire, with Frost being meant for PvE and Fire for PvP. Since patch 1.11, Blizzard has made changes to the Mage's talents and have attempted to form a kind of Fire/Frost Mage, or Elementalist Mage in order to add even more versatility to the Mage's talents.

Paladin

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Human Male Paladin as seen in World of Warcraft.

The Paladin is a supportive, hybrid melee fighter. A paladin's main role is to provide support to a group, be that in the form of healing, buffs, tanking or damage. Paladins use an assortment of spells, auras and blessings to aid themselves and others. Paladins also have powerful offensive spells against undead and demons. Due to balance issues, Paladin spells that work against Undead monsters do not work on players of the undead race the Forsaken which is classified as humanoid.

The Paladin is currently only available to the Human and the Dwarf races of the Alliance. In the upcoming expansion, The Burning Crusade, paladins will be playable by both the Draenei and the Blood Elves. The latter belongs to the Horde, so Horde players will be able to create paladins for the first time. Similarly, the Draenei will be able to play as Shamans.

The Paladin class is a healing-melee hybrid, able to heal allies and inflict damage upon enemies. Paladins are the Alliance counterpart of the Horde Shaman, though the paladin is more focused on healing and defensive melee while the shaman is focused on offensive casting. Renowned for their survivability, the paladin achieves this through their high armour points, mana efficient healing spells, and their trademark invulnerability spell often called "the bubble". In addition to this, paladins are also very competent in a support role through their Auras and Blessings--spells that buff or improve a players strength. However, because of their extremely high survivability, the paladin deals the least amount of damage in the game, relying on outlasting their opponents. Due to this, many Paladin players have changed classes after realising the relatively small damage that they deal compared to other classes. The Paladin class, if played well, can be a useful support for any raid, although many players have complained that it is a "jack-of-all-trades" class with no specific uses or talents.

Paladins, just like warlocks, can get a free class-specific mount at level 40 and an epic mount at level 60 relatively cheaper than normal mounts.

Paladin skills

The paladin's skills are divided into three separate trees; Holy, Protection, and Retribution. The Holy tree is the paladin's casting tree and focuses on improving the paladin's skill and efficiency at healing and casting. The Protection tree is focused on further improving the paladin's survivability and Tanking potential. In order to function sufficiently as a Main Tank in WoW, a paladin must go deeply into this tree (although all three trees provide utility towards threat generation).

Finally, Retribution is considered to be the paladin's PVP or DPS tree, focused on improving the paladin's damage output and utility in PVP conflict.

Priest

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An Undead Forsaken Female Priest

The priest possesses the most powerful healing spells of any character class in World of Warcraft as well as having the capability to resurrect fallen players and cast buffs to temporarily enhance the attributes of the party. Each race has two class specific spells unique to the priest class. The priest class is often a support character that provides durability and survivability to a party of players.

Priests normally focus on either healing or damage dealing spells. Priests are either classed "Holy" priests or a "Shadow" priests. Holy Priests are normally centered around healing and are therefore highly sought after for raids. Shadow priests are better at doing damage and fighting in PVP combat and are very viable in 1v1 fights as well as providing useful DPS for raids.

Priest skills

Holy spells are typically related to healing or similar abilities. The shadow tree of talents focuses around the Priest's offensive abilities. Discipline spells are usually supplementary abilities to the Priest, e.g. protective shields, Stamina Buffs and self-buffs. The most common talent specification for a healing priest is a Holy/Discipline combination. For a pure damage dealing priest, Shadow is the best tree to go into. However, shadow priests' abilities to heal are limited. Therefore, shadow is a more leveling and PVP specification, while holy and discipline is used for end-game raiding.

Rogue

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A Night elf male Rogue from World of Warcraft

Rogues are the "assassins" of World of Warcraft. Rogues are available to all races except for the Tauren and the Draenei in the upcoming expansion World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

Rogues completely rely on Energy for their abilities instead of Rage or Mana. Also, rogues use combination points to execute finishing moves. Another unique feature to rogues is Stealth. In "Stealth" mode, rogues move around the world environment undetected at a reduced movement rate. Stealth makes the rogue invisible to other player and non-player characters as long as the rogue maintains the required distance. While stealthed, rogues can pick an NPC humanoid's pockets or use several special moves. Something that separates Rogues from other classes is their high DPS.

Stealth does not render a rogue completely immune to detection. If the rogue moves too closely in front of an enemy player or NPC, the rogue can be seen briefly by that character. Once a player has detected a rogue, the player may attack the rogue, which removes him or her from Stealth mode. The rogue can also Vanish from combat. Rogues may wear cloth or leather armor. They can wield daggers, one-handed maces, one-handed swords, and fist weapons in melee. They can also employ ranged weapons such as crossbows, bows, guns, and thrown weapons. Rogues can also learn to dual-wield, allowing one-handed weapons to be equipped in each hand. Rogues can create and apply poisons to their weapons, this is a skill unique to rogues and it can give either boost in damage output or for example deprive the opponent of movement speed.

Rogues also have the ability, if equipped with the proper tools, (Thieves' Tools) to unlock locked doors, chests, and boxes.

Rogue skills

Assassination abilities deal with large bursts of damage while unstealthed and poisoning targets. Combat focuses on dealing constant, even damage while unstealthed and improving the chances of dodging, parrying, and hitting targets. Subtlety works with acquiring combo points and dealing damage while stealthed. While in Stealth rogues may move behind the opponent and Ambush, Backstab, CheapShot, or other techniques usable from behind.

Shaman

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Male tauren shaman wearing Tier 3 armor.

The Shaman is a healer, warrior and mage hybrid class, and as such, the Shaman is one of the most versatile classes in the game[4]. They are designed to enhance all parts of a party while not being particularly focused on any one aspect of the game. They have powerful shock spells and massive burst melee damage, they are able to inflict massive amounts of damage in a very short space of time. Enhancement specialized Shaman are able to output damage comparable to that of a Rogue - however they cannot maintain this for long. A Shaman is a jack of all trades, master of none. They cannot compare outright to the extremes of other classes, but can fall back onto other powers the other classes lack, such as healing, heavy armour and ranged offense.

The Shaman class is only available to three of the Horde races: Tauren, Orcs, and Trolls. They are the counterpart of the Paladin of the Alliance in the sense that they are not currently available to the opposing faction. It has been announced that in the upcoming expansion Burning Crusade, Draenei will be able to play as Shamans. Similarly, Blood Elves will be able to play as Paladins.

Shaman skills

The Shaman is a hybrid and so has many skills, they can fight in melee with primarily staves and maces, but can train to use daggers, fist weapons and taking points in Enhancement can allow them to use Two-Handed Axes and Maces, and also to dual wield weaponry. At level 40 a Shaman can learn to wear Mail armor.

A Shaman cannot rely upon his melee and armor alone to win however, and has spells too. The Shaman spells and skills are divided into the three same trees as their talents: Elemental Combat, Enhancement and Restoration. Some of these spells are typical spells and some are totems, which are special and unique to the Shaman. Totems are objects a Shaman drops and they provide a certain function so long as they are present, until they are destroyed or they expire. All Totems belong to one of four types, Air, Earth, Fire and Water. A Shaman can only have one of each Element Totem present at any one time, dropping another Fire totem when one is present will replace the old Totem.

Air Totems provide ambiguous buffs to the Shaman and his party, such as Windfury Weapon Totem, which grants a chance to perform Windfury attacks, Grace of Air which gives a boost to their Agility or Wrath of Air totem to increase to their spell damage.

Earth Totems are usually centered around defense, totems such as Earthbind slow movement to help the Shaman escape damage, and Stoneskin reduces melee damage taken. Stoneclaw Totem taunts monsters from the Shaman providing a decoy.

Fire totems mostly deal damage. Searing Totem shoots firebolts at enemies every couple of seconds. Fire Nova totem explodes dealing AOE fire damage after a set period and Magma totem pulses, dealing fire damage in an area every few seconds. There are a few exceptions such as Flametongue totem, which enchants party member's weapons with fire, Frost Resistance totem which is self-explanatory and Totem of Wrath, which increases the chance to critically hit with spells.

Water Totems focus on restoring. Healing Stream and Mana Spring restore trace health and mana to nearby party members. Poison and Disease Cleansing totems cure the listed maladies every 5 seconds to nearby party members. Mana Tide totem restores lots of mana over a small duration for all party members.

Enhancement spells and skills are usually centered around self-buffing and melee combat. They help the Shaman dish out melee damage and survive better in melee combat for longer periods.

Elemental Combat spells are usually ranged attacks that deal elemental damage, making the Shaman lethal at range if he can cast spells without interference.

Restoration spells are heals or restoring skills. The Shaman is not an incredibly powerful healer but specializing in Restoration talents makes the Shaman an able healer. Unique spells such as Chain Heal give the Shaman a unique take on healing.

Warlock

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Human Female Warlock with summoned Felhunter

Warlocks are Mages who have delved too deep in to dark magic. They are a spell casting class and their strengths lie in their summoned minions (or pets) and their DoT (Damage over Time) spells. Warlocks are also known for "Fear kiting," a tactic where the Warlock causes an enemy to run in fear while his or her DoT spells slowly eat away at the target's health.

Warlocks are the best class in the game at DoT spells and also have a range of spells known as "curses" at their disposal which have a variety of effects.

Warlocks are able to directly summon four demons as pets, but may only have one pet summoned at a time. The pets available are the Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, Infernal and Doomguard. A seventh demon, known as the Felguard[5], is set to be added in the expansion, at the top of the Warlocks Demonology tree. They also have a summonable mount which means that unlike most classes they do not have to pay for a mount and the ability to summon an Eye of Kilrogg - a fast scout which is incapable of attacking.

Warlocks can use the spell Enslave Demon to take control of a local demon as a pet. They can also banish a demon making it temporarily unable to attack.

Unique to the Warlock is reliance on items called Soul Shards. Soul Shards are created using specific spells, the most common being Drain Soul. In order to get a Soul Shard, the Drain Soul spell must be active when the target dies. These shards are used to summon demon pets(the Imp does not require a Soul Shard to summon), and are required for certain spells such as Soulfire. Warlocks are also able to use a Soul Shard to start a Ritual of Summoning, using the power of two other party members to summon another party member to their current location.

With the release of the Burning Crusades expansion, the Warlock will receive some key changes to their talent tree, foremost among them being the Unstable Affliction DoT spell, which will damage and silence anyone who dispels it, and the ability to summon a new demon pet, the Felguard. Both of these abilities require almost complete focus in Affliction and Demonology talents, respectively.

Warlock skills

Affliction focuses on improving damage over time, curses, and Shadow damage. Demonology revolves around improving summoned demons, increasing the Warlock's health and durability, and provides certain benefits based on which demon pet is currently active. Destruction is centered on increasing the Warlocks overall damage, with an emphasis on nukes and bursts, as well as improving fire and critical strike damage.

Warrior

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A powerfully equipped Human Warrior from World of Warcraft

A Warrior is a class in World of Warcraft that excels in melee combat and playing the role of a damage dealer or tank. Warriors are analogous to Fighters in other RPGs. Rather than drawing on Mana to power their abilities, Warriors use Rage which, like a Rogue’s Energy, has a maximum limit. Rage builds up as the warrior attacks. Outside of combat, Rage decays slowly.

When playing in a group, the warrior could be tasked with the job of keeping the monster(s) occupied so that the activities of the rest of the party will not attract the monster's attention.

Warriors can shift between several stances or combat modes. The Battle Stance is the normal stance, while they have the ability to also switch to the Defensive Stance and the Berserker Stance. Battle stance is good all-around. Defensive stance is used for its disarm in PvP and tanking for instances and sometimes used for PvE soloing. Defensive stance makes your attacks cause more threat and reduces all damage caused and received by the warrior by 10%. Berserker stance is best known for use in PvP as it allows you to use specific abilities that counter other classes abilities and spells. Berserker stance will also give an additional % to crit and give you more rage as it makes you take 10% more melee, ranged, and spell damage. However, this also causes you to lose health quicker.

Warrior skills

Arms build utilizes two-handed weapon specialization to deliver burst damage by slow, high dps weapons. This build is suitable for both PvP and PvE. The "Cookie-Cutter" build uses a combination of Arms and Fury talents. The reason for slow weapons is not only for proc's, but also to deliver fatal Mortal Strike blows. Fury talent points are best used with high attack power and critical chance gear. Fast two handed weapons and dual wielding make the most of Fury talent points. Fury builds are generally geared towards PvP, because of high crits and DPS. There are other talent points that make this an excellent tree for PvP. Protection points are focused on taking as little damage as possible. By increasing your shield block, armor amount, defense, etc. you are able to last longer in fights. Protection is the build of choice for PvE, especially tanking. Warrior Tier 1, 2, and 3 and most plate drops are geared for Protection spec'd warriors.

External links

• World of Warcraft (US)
• World of Warcraft (EU)