World of Warcraft®

I have seen a lot of topics asking for help, which class to chose, which level, what gear, if there are any guilds and more. I thought I'd make a thread to try to answer these topics and anything else a twink interested player might wonder. I hope you will find this thread helpful.
Personally I'm a 70 twink as you can see, thus this is the bracket I will focus on, I appreciate tips from people knowledgeable in other brackets, 80s, 19s and 24s for example. I will also include a list of the twink guilds that I know or that writes to me and asks to be included.

If you got questions after reading, add Lebro#2385 on battletag. I'll do my best to answer them.

70 Bracket:

PVE: Every class is stronger now than they were in The Burning Crusade, therefore raids are also easier than before. There is no need to gather the 25 best twinks in the world to down Kil'Jaeden or Illidan. All you need is a nice group that can hold together and follow some tactics.
When it comes to heroics, they will be easy even if you go in Brutal Gladiator gear (Buy full set with offparts for slightly more than 2k honor, I will return to this.) It is only in green gear or blue gear that they will be truly challenging. In my guild, we have a big variety of gear level when it comes to players, we have BiS (Best in Slot) geared players that do 6-7k dps or 30k hp as tank aswell as people with green gear struggling with 2k. With this mix we have downed all raids and heroics.
As raids are so much easier, we sometimes do so called challenge runs. That means that we unequip 50% of our gear and try like that, making it quite hard in some cases. Another way of making it a challenge is doing timed runs, splitting the participants in two groups and see which group is the faster. All classes are viable in pve. With these words, it's pvp time.

PVP: That every class is stronger doesn't matter very much as it balances out. There are flaws in the balance just like in every other bracket but overall it's a quite good bracket. The main balance problem is resilience, you can reach ridiculous amounts of it because of the 40% base and the 20 resilience gems that are available. The highest I have seen is my friend with around 87%.
The key to battling resilience is called PVP power, another thing you can gem but unlike resilience it almost doesn't exist on gear. I'm aware of 2 exceptions, an offhand for casters and a ring for casters, both Brutal Gladiator offparts. This means that a decent player with a class that can heal fairly good, healer specced or not, is impossible to solo if he or she gems all resilience. Healing is also very overpowered at the moment. I almost heal myself to full health in one flash heal, that's a 1.5 seconds cast. If a fully PVP power focused player meets a fully resilience gemmed player he can count on facing around 50% resilience. My friend got 87% due to some special gear, most don't get more than 80%. Resilience might seem like a big problem now but truth is that there aint that many players with maxed out resilience at all. Especially when it comes to players that aint healers. Now to some class balance! When it comes to gear of preferance it's a mix of resi and pvp power, some people go with agi/str/int aswell but I'd say pvpp is to be prefered.

Classes:

Deathknight: A good melee dps, in a duel they have problems facing enemies that can heal but in a group they can put on a lot of pressure over time. The damage they can deal is high, especially vs more than one target. Their silences and other kinds of ccs are also quite good. Perfect for shutting a healer down while the rest of the group kills that other player. Also fairly good at getting kills. Blood is the specc to go but frost is completely viable.
"On the lower levels, the damage output between Blood and Frost in PvP isn't considerably different and Blood is perfectly viable as a DPS spec, while having a lot larger survivability to Frost. Unholy unlocks a lot of it's core mechanics on a later level.", - Shágon. Thanks for that!

Druid: Here we have to split the guide into different speccs as they got so many, too many if you ask me.
Balance - A good caster but without a shield. The heals are very good so this is a reliable specc that will always perform.
Feral - Feral is cat dps, a decent mele that got more survivability but less damage than rogues. Not one of the best classes but hard to kill due to heals.
Guardian - bear tank. Only useful as flag carrier or defending a base. Here you want resilience all the way.
Resto - The strongest specc, with hots and resilience it is impossible to solo kill a restoration druid. They can spread their healing to the entire team, one of the best healers as their hots makes them hard to kill despite a silence chain. They got damage reduction aswell, even when silenced. Their only downside is that they lack the priest shield, something that is very useful for a healer to put on his buddies.

Hunter: An awesome dps, what the hunter lacks in survivability (a lot) it makes up for in nuke. Hunters and mages are the best dps and nuke classes in game. Just be prepared to die quickly if you are caught ofguard without an alert healer nearby. Healers are advised to constantly keep some kind of shield or hot on hunters.

Mage: As mentioned mages got a very good nuke, with sheeps and freezes they are one of the best classes to have in a big fight with healers, probably the very best. Shields makes them less vulnerable than hunters.

Monk: I don't know much about these yet, I rarely see geared monks as they got no Brutal set and need to get Sunwell and BT gear instead.
Mistweaver - They should be the weakest healer as they got the least resilience. Their only way of getting it is by gemming and Brutal Gladiator offparts but they lack the set itself which is a huge loss.
Windwalker - Hope to be able to get some knowledge later.
Brewmaster - Hope to be able to get some knowledge later.
As I said the few monks I have seen have never been geared enough for me to get a good picture of how good they are.

Paladin: Dps Paladins can perform very well, they are very hard to kill if grouped with a healer. They are also fairly good at ccing and good at doing damage. One of the best classes, probably the best melee overall. Both prot and ret are viable, I'm not sure which is the best, hoping to update. As a healer they are all ok, with their lack of hots and shields they are not the best for healing people in a group but they are still good. As all other healers they cannot be soloed by anyone if resi gemmed.

Priest: Wee, my favorite class. Disc - is one of the strongest heal speccs in game with their hot, aoe heal and strong shield. Unless you are more than 2 or 2 veeeery good and synced dpsers its advised not to try to kill a priest, the best you can do in a fight is to cc him unless you are more than 2. Holy is a weaker disc as far as I'm aware.
Shadow - Together with Paladin the strongest all around class, excellent damage, excellent shield, good ccs with fears, strong pet, good defensive cds like dispersion. Priests can also have two completely different caster styles. Look at my gems in primary and secondary specc. The secondary is mae for mindspikes without dots, a bit like a mage while the first works more like a warlock.Unless you got a good nuke, don't go 1v1. A well played priest is extremely hard to kill. Regardless or specc or resi. Look at my gear to see what the best is. For dps at least, if I got intellect gems that means I am in my pve gear, it's the gear with pvp power you should look at.

Rogue - Unlike before the 40% base resilience came rogue is not the king of the BG. They can be annoying with their blinds and saps but once out of stealth they aint that strong anymore. Your opener however, can still be a killer. If used vs a target without resilience gems or gear you got a fair chance to score a kill. You rely very much on your cds however. I'm an example of what a rogue can kill, if I'm not prepared a good rogue with cds ready is likely to nuke kill me.

Shaman:
Resto - Tough kill, good at interrupting casters. Fairly good among healers.
Elemental - Good damage but weak in duels, easy to disturb and will only perform really good if not attacked. If you want to top damage done in BGs this is a good choice.
Enhancement - Hell, when was the last time I saw one of these? I'm not sure but I wish I saw more. Enh is not very strong, it's a rogue without stealth in performance. Except for the heals then.

Warlock - If in a group a warlock can be good for dotting everyone and everything up, they got decent damage aswell and played well they are tough to kill for most. Still one of the weaker casters. A worse Shadowpriest one could say.

Warrior - A good flagcarrier, a warrior can gem resilience to have some real fun. The class is hardly a killer but can be extremely annoying with fears, disarms and stuns. Warriors are also very hard to kill if with a healer. As a warrior you should never duel anything that can heal however.

Other info: Brutal Gladiator gear is buyable for slightly over 2k honor, this includes every part, set aswell as weapons and offset. If you want to get the very best gear however, go Sunwell. The weapons there are stronger and most important, there are more SOCKET SLOTS. As you can use 80 epic gems in 70 sockets are important. It is actually fairly common for rogues to get a Karazhan dagger for offhand as it got 3 sockets. For 2h sword users the best wep is from Sunwell, Kil'Jaeden the last boss. All classes should also get their legs from Sunwell because of the 3 sockets sunwell legs gives. Rogues, warriors and monks might be interested in warglaives from Illidan aswell. Not only for the look but for the haste proc bonus if you got both glaives equipped. Oh, and you will kill warlock minions faster for what that's worth. When it comes to levels, it is possible to be 71-74 in the bracket but frowned upon by most people. This will also reduce your secondary stats, resilience and pvp power for example so it isn't really an advantage.

80-84:
This is the bracket where you will be most OP pvewise,
80s can get 409 ilvl items for most slots and 309 for the others. 409 is gear equal to the best 85 gear in Cataclysm, 309 is better than any Wotlk available. In BGs I assume it balances out, possibly it's more damage dealt as the 309-409 items havn't got resi. Highest resilience item is around 270 ilvl.
84s got more hp than 80s, much more and can get gear up to 450 ilvl however gear scales much better in 80 so I believe 80s might actually be stronger.
http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filter=qu=3;minle=409;minrl=80;maxrl=84
http://www.wowhead.com/items=2?filter=qu=3;minle=409;minrl=80;maxrl=84
links for all the 409 things available. For more info, read post 10 on page two by Dinkywag, someone who seems knowledgeable in the 80-84s.

20-24: Very quick queues and easy to level up to, heirlooms are very useful. Probably the easiest bracket to twink in even if some items are rare drops that costs a lot of gold on ah.

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions, aswell as give criticism. Just please, stay away from non constructive negative feedback. Spending 2h and getting the comment "omg noob" is not fun for anyone and it can get you suspended, look up posting rules if you don't believe me.

Guilds, look poster below! Feel free to give tips of guilds I can add to the list with some info of their level and what they do.

Guilds:

Ante Amanthe - Argent Dawn: Alliance 70 twink guild, all raids downed and guild events many times a week. Contact Darkepic, Shizana, Zitalin or Puffsy in game if you want to join. Being 70 or leveling to 70 and behaving well is reqs. Guild also do "challenge mode" raids, meaning that we go with 50% of gear of aswell as speedruns where we try to clear the dungeon/raid as fast as possible, sometimes in two competing groups. http://anteamanthe.guildlaunch.com/
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6169577281? For more info about events and raids.

Born To Survive - Stormscale: Horde guild that is often seen in BGS. Borò is the GM.

Dat Eightyfives Guild - Outland: Alliance twink guild, I do not believe I need to write which level these 85s are twinking at (ops I did it anyway). Talk to Fatál who wrote their recruitment poster.

Deck me out - The Sha'tar: Alliance 60 twink guild, talk with Litlebunny. (Even if it's a gnome.)

Elders of the Naaru - The Sha'tar: Alliance 70 twink guild. Has a funny recruitment poster.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6298061602

Gallium Lore - Ragnaros: Alliance 70 and 80 twink guild, contact Excpl for more info.

TbaggerZ - Darkspear: Horde 20-24 twink guild. Contact GM on Karlski@hotmail.com or whisper an officer ingame.

U MIRIN BRAH - Frostmane: Alliance 70 twink guild, GM is Barracks.

Appreciate info about more guilds!

Reserved for if more info is needed.

Reserved for if more info is needed.

thanks for that, very good guide :)

A great guide made by a great player. New twinks should definately bookmark this tread, so you always can check it later for more updates.
(I will definately add this link to our guild-forum, Shizana)

Very nice guide indeed. Have requested a sticky. :)

Very nice guide man!

+1

Makes me wanna twink again but I know ill get bored within a month >.<

k..

Aw Nodoka stop being a douche!

Makes me wanna twink again but I know ill get bored within a month >.<

only if you gear up by getting pugged, I earned all this toon's gear with DKP (except for the blue trinket) and I'm still far from BiS so I can't wait for the next AQ run :)

banana

02/01/2013 15:49Posted by Nodoka

Pugging dosnt make it boring to be honest, might for some.

I would understand why those who fully focus on PvP would do it, since most exp-locked PvPers have BiS for their level.
When it comes to those who focus on PvE (like myself - on this toon), then i do not see the point in getting boosted to BiS, as it removes the joy when getting items you've been trying to get for a while. Also, why make already-nerfed old content raids easier by being BiS when starting out with the easiest raids in that content.
I highly recommend my guild members not to pug, and i also think other twinks out there should do it the "legit" way - atleast for the experience.

Shizana likes turtles

well my case is a bit special

But theres still hella lot to do, bgs, arena, achievements, etc etc.

you gotta understand that the 60-64 bracket has no arenas and BGs don't pop anymore because the 64s destroyed the fun so all I got left are raids, if i get pugged in these were is the fun? Duels in front of the BMAH?
plus I'm more of a PvE'er, it's in no way a reproach to those who pug i just say that it makes gearing up so much more satisfying in the end =D

Yup. Shizana definately like turtles.