World of Warcraft MEGA-FAQ

For one you must pick a realm and you will have to stay on this realm for all of your characters. I believe you can make 10 in total. I tell you this because if you get on WoW because of friends you must know their or you’ll never be able to interact with them.

You can have 10 characters, also called Toons, on each realm, with a total of 50 characters across all realms. But keep in mind there are PvE, PvP, role-playing, and PvP RP realms.

Here is a link to where you can check the status of each realm to help decide where you want to play, because high population realms require waiting times to get in, but low-pop realms could pose different problems, such as one faction having a big advantage:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Here is also the link to check the status of realms:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/

As far as picking a character, you can make 10, so it’s not like you have to get it right on your first try. But if you don’t like your character, be it  looks or skills or play-style of the class, then feel free to get a another  fired up. Any toons on the other faction, regardless of server, cannot  receive mail from your other toons on the other faction – so if you get your  main and want other characters on the other faction you can make them on any server because they are basically on their own anyway.

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Characters

 

I will tell you that this game is based on only a few play styles. I would say tanking, nuking, healing, rogue, and hunter are your styles of play. Tanking is done by warriors, Death Knights, and several other classes. Nuking is done by mages, warlocks, and other classes with high burst damage. Healing is done  by priests and other hybrid classes. Rogue is your stealth style, but also your melee and DPS class, with melee and DPS possible with other sources as well. Hunters are a unique class in that they are the only ones to use ranged weapons to any true effect. And of course there are many hybrids, such as the druid, who can do a little bit of a lot of these.

I will lay out a somewhat simple outline for each class here:

Warrior – you tank, take damage, and deal damage, that’s about it. Pick this to make WoW a simpler game. Paladin – can do a bit of everything, but is mainly an offensive healer. Mage – spells and buffs, but basically no armor. Warlocks – spells and minions. Relies on leeching opponent’s health. Hunter – pet and faster ranged attack speed. Rogue – stealth, poisons, burst and sustained damage. Shaman – hybrid based mostly on magic. Can even do melee to good effect. Druid – beast forms and can do about everything, but weak armor. Priest – healer/protector, but can dish out damage if you wish (will be highly sought after for groups, trust me) Death Knight – a tank with potential to have a pet or heal itself. No reason to not have a DK.

*NOTE: I hear that Mages, Shaman, and Druids can have pets at some point as well, though I’m not entirely sure how.*

All classes are limited in what weapons and armor they can use, and some can use more armor at higher levels. And all classes have three branches of talents to follow which determine how your character will play, and you can even change these later.

Lastly you must choose a race, or firstly, but the last thing I cover. Your race provides you a few special abilities and perks, and also limit what  class you can choose. One key thing to keep in mind is where you start. All races start in the same area, and as far as Alliance the most popular are the humans. And of the starting Alliance zones, the gnome/dwarf zone is tougher  than the night elf or human zones.

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Stats

 

Also known as attributes, but no matter what you call them they are what the  game boils down to, your gear, leveling, gold, professions, talents, and time are all intended to help boost these to as high as possible.

They break down to a number of categories, and some boost others and/or do the same things.

You can look at all your stats in the character pan, and under your nice  profile you can see a few panels you can change.

To test your stats you can either do live sampling in the field using an  addon called recount, or go beat up on a test dummy found throughout cities.  Or just know what you are doing is working for what you want to do.

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Base Stats

 

*NOTE: Pretty much all of these will apply to your pet too, if you have one.*

Strength – Melee attack power. 2 for Warriors, DKs, feral Druids, and Paladins. 1 for everyone else. Improves block value if you can hold a shield, and boosts DKs’ parry rating. Agility – Attack power, critical rating, armor, and dodge. Ranged attack power for warriors, hunters, and rogues. Melee attack power for hunters, rogues, shamans, and cat druids. But everyone gets the crit, armor,  and dodge boosts. Stamina – 10 health points for each, except the first 20 which only give 1. Intellect – 15 mana points, the first 20 just give 1. Also improves spell  critical strike. And can be used to fastly level up weapon skills. Spirit – Increases health and mana regeneration. The graphs of how much it  helps in relation to your level will dip as you level, but even the caster classes can find some foods and potions to regen much faster. Meaning that unless you have skills or talents that rely on spirit,  you have no reason to get more.

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Skills

 

Weapon – Higher weapon skill means better chance to hit and crit, while  reducing the chance your attack is missed, blocked, dodged, or parried. Defense – Decreases crits and hits.

Basically if all 80s have max in both of these skills, there is nothing gained. It’s mostly a way to make players and characters of different levels  have something to show for it.

Melee/Range

Melee is used by any class that must be next to a target to attack it, but is also the same for hunters.

Weapon damage – Simply how much damage a weapon can do, a range. Speed/haste – Speed is how fast a weapon is used, and haste can reduce this  time by a percentage. Attack Power – Increases you damage done, and contributed to by strength and agility for hunters, rogues, and cat druids. Same as ranged. Critical Strike – Your chance to land a more powerful attack, increased with a better rating and through agility. Hit – A percentage increase of your attacks that will hit, improved with hit rating. Armor Penetration – Reduces the opponents armor by a percentage. Expertise – Reduces your chance to be parried/blocked, different than a miss.

Spell

These are the stats for casters, but all classes have spells.

Spells are the things with icons that you click to do something. All classes have spells, but melee classes would not benefit as much if only their  spells were increased while their auto-attacks were not.

Spell Power – Increases damage and healing done. Spell Hit – Same as hit rating, increases you spell’s chance to hit. Spell Crit – Same as critical strike rating. Spell Penetration – How much a spell ignores that resistance, not armor. Mana Regen – Regeneration of mana in and out of combat, with out of combat  always being much faster.

Defense

This is mainly for tank specs.

Dodge – Chance to dodge melee attacks, but not ranged. Parry – Chance to parry a melee attack, turning a hit into a failed attack. Block – Chance to block a melee or ranged attack with a shield, but only  reducing some damage. Block Value – Increases how much damage is blocked from a successful block. Defense – Increases your defense skill. Armor – Decreases physical damage. Resistance – Decreases magic damage. Resilience – Decreases crit strikes chance against you, and reduces damage  over time effects. Found mostly on PvP gear. Health Regen – How much health is restored in and out of combat. Much more out of combat.

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Armory

 

This is really only for level 80 characters or twinks. Everyone else should  just quest and spend the least at the AH for equipment.

Visit www.wowarmory.com and there you can check a ton of stuff.

At the armory you can bring up your character and have everything you would  need to know right there for you online. Most useful is the ability to find upgrades for your gear. Next to all the items you have equipped, if you view  through the armory, you can press the arrow and find all the better gear for  that item slot. Write the ones you think are in reach, research if the location is not easy to discern, and set out for them. Don’t go for the very best, just for anything better than what you got.

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Options/Interface

 

There are several settings I would suggest changing.

For video settings feel free to adjust to what you will be doing in the game  and your computer. If you plan to just quest, do a dungeon every now and then, you can probably get away with medium settings. If you plan to do PvP, raid, and spend any time in the city of Dalaran, set your settings lower.

For your interface I suggest putting up all the actions bars. The right side  bars can be for your professions, about six of your most-used spells, mounts, and commonly used items like potions or quest items.

There is also a setting to move the objectives panel. The tracked objectives  by default appear to the right, and by selecting to edit it you can drag and  drop it. As of a recent patch, tracked objectives with items will have those items by the tracking for easy use. Also as of the patch the actual items or things in the field will display as such when you mouse over them.

You can also set up so that your threat percentage and enemy casting bars are displayed. The both are near the enemy portrait, so you know if you are drawing aggro on the thing, and if it’s casting anything so you can get out of the way or interrupt it.

Finally, you can also choose to not display your helm and/or cloak. This is  nice for goofy helms, and sometimes your tabard looks better than your cloak.