I've finally succumbed to temptation and am currently downloading the 10 day trial. Assuming nothing too horrible happens, I'm probably going to get the full game, which leads me to a few questions:

Should I get the original game first, or get the Burning Crusade expansion as well? Is there any content from the expansion that I will see right away with a new character?

I'm going to be playing an Undead Warlock because it seems the class most like the D2 Necromancer (curses and a pet), which I still remember with nostalgia. Any tips on the class? Any tips for a new character in general? I'm looking to mainly solo first to experience the game at a slow pace.

What exactly is the difference between PvE and PvP servers? I've been trying to do a bit of research on this but it's very confusing. Battlegrounds who?

How about servers? Which have good populations and least amounts of doushbaggery?

Should I know anything else now? Things that aren't obvious, to watch out for, etc?

Treat me like a WoW-dummy. Talk slowly, explain things as if to a child, I don't mind. Any advice is appreciated!

There is content you won't be able to see if you do not get the expansion immediately -- namely the two starting areas for the Burning Crusade races, as well as the races themselves: Blood elves for Horde, Draenei for Alliance. This is not a major issue, though. Still, I would suggest getting both.

Warlocks are great soloers, so that's a good choice if you like the playstyle. I'm afraid pets are mostly unreliable as a warlock, though. You can also only have one at a time.

-The imp is the first and most basic minion a warlock gets. It casts fireballs and can go into phase-mode where it cannot be attacked (though in order to attack, it will have to stop phasing). It also provides a very valuable stamina buff.
-The voidwalker is the second minion which you get at level 10. It's the tank, the minion that's supposed to take all the hits -- but it's not good at it.
-The succubus is the third minion, acquired at level 20 (though an annoying questline, I must say). It's provides damage dealing and crowd control in the form of seduce. Unfortunately it has almost no health and no armor and it dies very easily.
-The felhunter is the fourth minion, acquired at level 30. It is your primary pet versus other spell casters, as it can interrupt their spells and dispel their buffs.
-The infernal and the doomguard are mostly the same: pure damage pets with no true special abilities. You also eventually lose control of them and have to cast Enslave Demons to keep them. I am not sure when you get them, but I believe you get the infernal at level 50 and the doomguard at level 60. I do not think anyone uses these pets anymore.
-The crown jewel of minions, the felguard: Only available through the top talent in the Demonology tree, the felguard is the single best pet you can get. It is available at level 50 if you put every talent point towards getting it. The felguard, while not possessing the stamina buff of imps or the crowd control of succubi, deals the most damage of all your pets and can actually serve as a tank, making it the most reliable pet you can have.

The demonology tree enhances your pets and their abilities, and is the strongest soloing tree. The affliction tree gives you damage-over-time spells (DoTs) and enhances abilities that work over time. The destruction tree is the "nuking" tree, the strongest damage tree that warlocks have. Affliction and destruction warlocks generally only use their pets for buffs. Find out which works best for you, but keep in mind that each tree has its own playstyle.

PvE and PvP servers are only different in one aspect: On a PvP server, in areas that are marked as "contested", everyone becomes flagged for PvP. On areas that are marked as the territory of a faction, the opposite faction becomes flagged.

Battlegrounds are like instances: Special zones that only holds up to a limited number of players at a time. These zones are purely for PvP-play, and all have different objectives that you must accomplish in order to "win" the battleground. There are currently four: Alterac Valley, 40v40, "AV"; Arathi Basin, 15v15, "AB"; Eye of the Storm, 15v15, "EotS"; Warsong Gulch, 10v10, "WSG".

I'm afraid as a European player, I can't tell you much of which servers to choose, but I believe there is a sizable population of Lurker Lounge players on Horde side of the Terenas-US server, which at least can be a consideration.

Something you should be aware of... Hm. Well, the end-game splits into two: PvP and PvE, with occasional overlap. PvP-end-game is all about arenas -- almost like small battlegrounds but with teams and special "arena points" which you can use to purchase gear. PvE-end-game is all about raiding -- raids are large-scale instances, 10-man and 25-man. These usually take a considerable amount of time to complete, and they are only reset on a timer specific to the instance (usually once every week; I believe it's Tuesday in the US). Both styles of end-game naturally have requirements on gear and skill, depending on how competitive you are.

Some addendum for Triggerhappy

The Warlock is a very different animal than the Necromancer. The Necromancer ran with a horde of minions, the Warlock runs with one. Curses here are different as well, you will have debilitating (Curse of Weakness, Curse of Tongues), Damage boosting (Curse of the Elements, Curse of Shadows, Curse of Recklessness), and damage doing(Curse of Agony, Curse of Doom). Curse of Weakness is never used (it's just a stop gap until you get some of the other curses), Curse of Tongues is only used against casters (mostly in PvP, occasionally in PvE for specific fights), Curse of the Elements/Shadows/Recklessness is used to boost damage through Fire and Frost/Shadow and Arcane/Physical respectively, Curse of Agony is a 24 second DoT that ramps up damage every few ticks, and Curse of Doom is a straight shot of damage after one minute.

One thing to note about Curse of Recklessness, it also make the mob immune to fear which can be very helpful if the mob will run to get help from others, but switching to CoR as the mob is about to run, it will stay or will return if it has started to run. Warlocks that are quite proficient with it's use can literally control where a mob goes by using CoR, another Curse, and Fear.



Not really, the problem is people don't learn how to use the pets effectively. Ideally, if you learn how the pet is used, it will end up giving you maximum effectiveness.



You'll use this guy until you get a Voidwalker or when you're grouping mostly. The imp itself is pretty fragile, he cannot tank, and will only be a minor speed bump for most mobs. If you need to run however, he can give you a little bit of a lead if you don't have too much aggro over him (he should be able to pull a mob back to himself, more if you're good with multitargetting).



The problem people have with the Voidwalker (nicknamed Blueberry) tanking is when they get near to a new decade level (x0, his new taunt happens every 10 levels, so 20, 30, 40, etc) or when they don't recognize how to cast their DoTs to give the Blueberry enough of a lead. If you're going to go nuts with damage, the Blueberry isn't going to be effective, on the other hand, if you are patient, the Blueberry will hold the mob until it dies, usually running your DoTs like Curse of Agony, wait a second, Corruption, wait a second, Immolate, and Blueberry will hold the mob (unless you're getting close to x0, then you have to space the DoTs a little more).



This is the DPS/CC pet. Mostly she is used to assist you with DPS and to CC an additional Humanoid mob if you have two. The Ho (as many call her) is usually used in concert with Drain tanking (get to that more in a moment). Typically if you are dealing with a mob or two, she'll be beating on the same mob that you are drain tanking.



This pet is mostly used for PvP (nicknamed Puppy or Doggy). The damage the felhunter produces is not that high and in general PvE play you're better off using either a Blueberry or Ho. In PvP is where they shine however, being able to shut down opposition casters as well as helping with seeing stealthed Rogues and Druids (through Paranoia). In PvP, the good Warlocks are either using a Puppy or using a Felguard (if they are that deep in demonology).



These two pets are rarely used by most. The Infernal gets used more than the Doomguard because of it's PvP uses. The Doomguard, while being able to put out a large amount of damage, is not worth the trouble it takes to summon one (either using the summoning spell which kills one of your party members or by use of Curse of Doom and hoping CoD kills the mob and it triggers a Doomguard and you then have to enslave it). The quests for both come and 50 and 60 respectively for the summons (Curse of Doom also comes at 60), but you will likely not do the quests until you are a bit higher (the Infernal quest can be soloed when you achieve 53 with difficulty as the mob you must take down is 57, unless they changed that recently).

Now, Draintanking. What this is is the use of Drain Life with certain Talents to make it rarely end up being interrupted. You DoT up the target mob with Corruption, Immolate, and Curse of Agony and then use Drain Life and Life Tap to keep your health and mana up. If done correctly, you should have no downtime or very little at all.

Also, I would look at more than just the Undead for Warlock. Both the Orc and the Blood Elf have some useful racial abilities that can help out immensely, especially if you plan to do any PvP (Orc are more resistant to stun and Blood Elves can silence and drain off some mana). So before you definitely make the plung at going with Undead, take a look at the racials of the other two Horde Warlocks before making your decision (going Blood Elf will require you to get the expansion, but it's worth getting).

On PvP vs. PvE servers: on a PvP server, once you reach certain game locations ("zones", usually around level 20ish and up), you will be automatically flagged for PvP. This means that any member of the opposing faction can come up and attempt to kill you (and vice versa). A few terms related to this are ganking and corpse-camping. Ganking refers to a high-level character of the opposite faction killing you. Corpse-camping happens when the opposite faction stands around your corpse waiting for you to resurrect ("rez") so they can kill you again.

On a PvE server you do not get automatically flagged- you have to do it manually. Or attack certain PvP-flagged targets. Both of the main Lurker guilds are on PvE servers, so you can see where our preference lies. Some prefer the excitement of a PvP server though. Personal preference, really.

Battlegrounds are special PvP zones where specific objectives must be completed to win. You're flagged for PvP automatically. You win tokens and honor (kind of like an alternate currency that you gain by killing the opposite faction) which you can then spend on various items. You join a battleground with the intent of doing PvP. It is completely optional and can be both very fun and very frustrating. Battlegrounds is a great place to learn how to play your character and react to different critical situations quickly.

I wouldn't be a Lurker if I didn't recommend one of our guilds. You're playing horde, so check out the Lurkers guild on Terenas. We're a great group of folks if I do say so myself. If you ever decide to roll a dirty Alliance, there's a guild on Stormrage. As I said above, both are PvE.

You picked a great time to start levelling a character- the latest patch made levelling easier by reducing the amount of XP needed between levels (for levels 20-60) and increasing the amount of XP rewarded from quests. Also a lot of tough monsters ("elites") were reduced to non-elite status, which makes doing a lot of quests that previously required a group much easier to solo.

In addition to what the above posters said re: warlocks, they're a lot of fun to play. The playstyle can be as simple or complex as you want. One of your main tools will be a spell called Fear, which sends a monster running away for a period of time. A lot of your damage spells work over a long period of time, so one strategy you can use as a warlock is to cast all of your DoT's (Damage over Time, refers to your spells that do damage over a long time as opposed to a lot of damage all at once), fear the mob, then wait for it to die. You can solo pretty much any type of enemy (assuming it is fearable) this way, whereas for some tougher enemies other classes would require a second class or some heals. You can take this a step further once you are higher level, and DoT up multiple mobs, then cast Howl of Terror which is a fear that affects multiple enemies. Fun!

To expand on what Lissa siad about drain tanking: mana is VERY rarely an issue for warlocks due to the spell Life Tap and a few of the self-healing spells you get. Life Tap converts health to mana, which on the surface looks bad, but you can gain health back via Drain Life, which is a spell that damages an enemy and converts that damage to health for you. So adding Fear into the mix, you can cast your DoT's, Fear the enemy, Life Tap to get mana back, and cast Drain Life on the feared enemy to get your health back. Voila! Dead enemy, full health & mana!

Once you reach level 10, you start to accumulate talent points. These are kind of like the skill trees in Diablo 2 in that points spent in these trees will improve your existing spells, give you new spells, add various affects to your spells, or improve your stats in some manner. I'm a big fan of Wowhead's talent calculator- it's a bit quicker than the one on the official site (and actually gets updated a bit quicker also, it seems). Check out the talent trees for your class and see which one suits your fancy. Many warlocks will tell you that the Affliction tree is best for levelling, and I would agree. Unlike Diablo 2, you can re-do your talents whenever you want for a fee. The fee starts at 1 gold and goes up the more you re-do them. It caps out at 50g. If you go a long time without respeccing, the fee gradually goes down.

Whoa, wall of text! Hope that helps.

Grab trade skills early! Read about them on the WoW site to get a feel for what they are and pick two you want asap. If you don't, you'll be backtracking through newbie zones to level up your skills instead of them progressing at the same rate as your character level.

If anyone asks if you want to do an instance - do it if you have the time. I've had some horrible experiences in groups of random people but it can be the most fun you'll have playing the game. Don't let your soloing mindset make you forget WoW is a very socially oriented game.

Grr, you've got me wanting to play WoW again...

Wow (no pun intended), so much information!

Drain tanking sounds quite fun. And the fear, pet, DoT curses interaction sounds somewhat like playing a curse/golem Necromancer in D2. Methinks I'll enjoy that playstyle.

I'm going for Undead after having read the basics on the races and classes (also how I ended up being interested in the Warlock). They have this cannibalize ability, which to a newbie like me seems extremely useful. Am I wrong in this assumption? They also have the anti-fear/sleep skill that's supposed to work even even after you have those effects on you. That seemed like another extremely useful ability (I assume there are monsters that will do that to you).

I'm going Horde 'cause I have an aversion to goody-two-shoes characters and sides. And what's the exact opposite of that if not the people who want to destroy all life (and even other un-life!) with a plague?

I'm a bit confused on the pets. You guys have given me pretty much opposing viewpoints. If as Alliera says they aren't there to tank or add significant damage, what is their purpose? Just crowd control? On the other hand Lissa says they can be useful for all of the above! I'm very much confused here, and need to get un-confused fast, since I assume I can't splash across all three skill trees and need to make my choice at character start.

Battlegrounds sound very interesting. PvP servers sound like they would be rife with frustration, especially for a new player like myself. So I'll stick with PvE for now. I can always do a paid character transfer anyway, if I understand it correctly. I'll probably look up the rest of the Lurkers when I get interested in doing instances (I assume they're like Guild Wars missions, segregated from the rest of the world).

As for professions, I was gonna go with Tailoring (since I read that Warlocks can only wear cloth armor). What would be your suggestions for other useful ones to take? How useful is First Aid, for example?

Well, thank you muchly for the mountains of information to digest. It's greatly appreciated!

Oh? I didn't think what we said were that different.

Pets are there to deal damage, tank and crowd control. I just have less faith in the voidwalker's tanking capability than Lissa does, mostly because I think it goes too slow.

Do note that while the option to transfer your character is there, you cannot do a PvE -> PvP transfer. Blizzard refuses to allow them.

As for trade skills, First Aid, Cooking and Fishing are called secondary professions, and you can have all three at once. The primary professions are the rest, and you can only have two of those.

Well that's disappointing with regards to PvE -> PvP transfer. Oh well.

So Alliera, would you recommend investing into the Demonology tree, or would I be better off with curses and direct damage spells/talents? I've seen references to re-specs, how easy/difficult are those to do?

How would I ensure I'm keeping up with the trade skills? If I want to be a tailor, do I just keep using it from the moment I get it (from my class trainer, I assume)? Or is their progression tied to leveling up?

Cannibalize is a great racial bonus and can reduce a lot of downtime. Will of the Forsaken (the fear break one) is an incredibly good skill especially in PvP, where fear is used a lot. There aren't a lot of monsters in the game that have fear so it gets limited use in PvE content.

Pets are an integral part of the warlock experience, but if you are looking to have a minion who does the majority of your killing work for you then you might want to take a look at a hunter. Warlock pets complement a lot of the various warlock skills but none of them are really out there to do the grunt work, so to speak, except for perhaps the Felguard who is only obtainable by putting 41 points into the Demonology tree (i.e. level 50 at the earliest).

Here's the general role of the pets:
Imp: great buffs via Blood Pact, great mana regen, ok DPS (damage per second), VERY squishy
Voidwalker: good tank, poor DPS
Succubus: good DPS & crowd control ("CC"), can't take many hits
Felhunter: ok DPS, excellent against caster mobs
Felguard: great DPS, good tank

Try out all the pets for a few levels and find which one you like using the best. Different warlocks have different preferences. Don't write off a pet before getting all their skills, either! Many warlocks ditch the Succubus as soon as they get her at level 20, but she's pretty much worthless at that level- she doesn't get all of her skills until level 26 or so. Same for the Felhunter & Felguard. Skills for pets are obtained through grimoires sold by a demon trainer who usually sits next to any given warlock trainer.

Tailoring is a very good profession for a warlock- the level 70 tailoring recipes are VERY good, considering the ease of making them. There is no associated gathering profession with tailoring, so you can take whatever you want. If you grab herbalism or mining you can sell the proceeds on the auction house to finance gear upgrades. Enchanting is also good, but it tends to be expensive to level.

You can only pick 2 main professions, but you can get all 3 secondary professions (cooking, first aid, fishing) at the same time. They're all worth getting (some would argue that point about fishing ), so be sure to pick them up as early as possible!

A note on character transfers: you can only transfer PvP to PvP, PvP to PvE, or PvE to PvE. No PvE to PvP server transfers. They implemented these back when the old honor system was in place and frankly I don't know why that requirement is still around but it is.

Don't wait till you need an instance run to join a guild. Being part of a guild increased my enjoyment of the game by about 100%. Even if you don't talk in guild chat, just getting to know folks in the guild really makes the game fun, not to mention that help is only a question away.

EDIT: bah, Alleria beat me to some stuff

I've played a lock as a drain-tanking Affliction and a Demonology spec and they're both fun.

On Pets:

The Voidwalker will tank acceptably if you're a bit careful not to do too much damage. The Felguard pet tanks just dandy and does a good chunk of damage as well. If you're drain-tanking, you're the one taking the damage anyway, so you'd probably not use the low-damage Voidwalker, but you'll want to have the Affliction talents to reduce spell interruption before going that course.

The pets can do significant damage, but many playstyles are geared to maximize the warlock's damage, not the pet's. A lot depends on how you're spending your time; a raiding warlock often uses a Demonology talent to sacrifice the pet to augment his capabilities, and an Affliction warlock can use his Imp as a mana battery with the Dark Pact talent. Great for raiding or group play, not so hot for soloing.

You'll want to specialize in a tree eventually, but you can re-do your talent points at any time for a fairly nominal cost so don't worry too much. Lots of folks go heavy into one tree for leveling to 70 and change radically once they start PvPing or raiding.

As for professions, I was gonna go with Tailoring (since I read that Warlocks can only wear cloth armor). What would be your suggestions for other useful ones to take? How useful is First Aid, for example?[/quote]

You can get two primary professions, and all the secondary professions. First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing are all secondary professions, so you can go wild with them. I strongly agree that you should keep First Aid and Cooking up to speed as you go along; I'm not into Fishing so much.

I'd recommend Tailoring for the nifty high-end recipes that produce gear that only Tailors can wear. The second one is up for grabs; I'd suggest Herbalism or Mining to generate stuff you can sell on the Auction House for cash. Some go with Enchanting for the second profession; it's quite powerful, but also quite expensive, so maybe not for you first time through. Engineering is also very nice for producing fun items, but is probably best paired with Mining so you don't have to buy all the raw materials.

You can always drop a profession and pick up a new one, so nothing's carved in stone. It does cost some time to grind a new profession back up to a useful level, so it's not something to do constantly, but it does happen.

There are primary professions and secondary professions. The three secondary professions are Cooking, First Aid and Fishing: you can learn all three, as well as two primary professions.

One of my main concerns whenever I start out a new character is bag space. You start out with a large bag that can hold 16 items or stacks of the same item. However, this is insufficient for roaming far away from town and killing multiple varieties of enemies (Who all drop different types of items). To be able to go on extended forays without returning to town to empty your bags, by selling items to vendors, you need more bags. These can be found randomly, bought from certain vendors (expensive, not recommended) or created with Tailoring.

Primary professions can be subdivided into two kinds: gathering and production. The three gathering professions are skinning, mining, and herbalism. All of the items collected with these professions (with the notable exceptions of Ruined Leather Scraps) can be sold for ridiculous sums to other players at the auction house. Generally speaking, the older the server, the higher the prices on the auction house are.

I now adopt two gathering professions when I start a new character for a rapid influx of gold, which I can use to buy bags and skills. However, when I first started playing, I would always pick a production profession with its associated gathering profession. It's just so cool to be able to make your own stuff.

Tailoring is different from other production professions in that it does not require, for the most part, any leather, herbs, or minerals. This means that you can combine it with whatever you want, although blacksmithing and leatherworking aren't recommended for a Warlock. For that matter, alchemy without herbalism isn't very useful, as you need herbs to create potions.

I suggest taking a gander at what each profession can make on a site like Thottbot or WoWwiki, to see what looks most interesting to you.

I personally am a fan of drain-tanking as an Affliction warlock, but Demonology is very strong for soloing. It's up to you. Respecs are easy -- all it requires is gold. Unfortunately it can become expensive (1 gold for the first, then 5, then it increases by 5g up to 50).


Once you hit level 5, you can get your professions. There are several profession levels:
-Apprentice; requires level 5, allows you to train to skill level 75
-Journeyman, requires level 10 and skill level 50; allows you to train to 150
-Expert, level 20 and skill level 125, allows you to train to 225
-Artisan, level 35 and skill level 200 (secondary professions require 225), allows you to train to 300
-Master, level 50 and skill level 275, allows you to train to 375

I usually recommend the two-gathering-professions route for new players, because it takes a while to get bootstrapped on cash to use for various stuff. This isn't as important for the warlock, because your lvl 40 mount is effectively free, instead of the 90g that others have to lay out.

If you decide to join us on Terenas, there are numerous tailors available that can make you bags and armor as you level. There are very few patterns that you must make for yourself until you reach level 70. Leveling tailoring is somewhat easier to do as you go along, but doing it all at once when you cap isn't horrible, either. As far as bags go, I personally have way too many 14-slot bags floating about that I don't know what to do with. Gifting them to a new player would be fun.

Some things to note about Talent builds:

Affliction/Demonology or Demonology/Affliction are the primary leveling builds. The combination of these two talent trees gives you powerful DoTs to go with a Powerful pet thus allowing you to kill more mobs more quickly. Someone that is heavily invested in Affliction can do some serious grinding at higher levels. They perform what is known at "Yo-yo pulling" by DoTing up several mobs with Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life (a talent 21 points deep into Affliction available at level 30), Unstable Affliction (41 point Affliction talent) and Improved Howl of Terror (35 talent points deep into Affliction) and using Howl of Terror to fear the mobs off you and they then in turn go out and get more mobs and the cycle repeats until the area is cleared of mobs (and you're usually looting while mobs are coming to you). Someone who invests the oppostie direction in Demology will go more slowly, but will use their pets to maximum effectiveness.

Destruction/Demonology (1/21/39 or 0/21/40), Demonology/Destruction (y/41+x,20-x-y), Affliction/Destruction (41+x/y/20-x-y) are the primary raiding builds. The Destruction/Demonology build is the best scaling damage build for Warlocks in which the Warlock uses Demonic Sacrifice to gain a damage buff from their Succubus or Imp (usually Succubus as the new fire spells don't scale as well as shadow does). Demonology/Destruction tends to get the scaling talents from Destruction while using Felguard allowing the Warlock to also output some high amounts of damage, but it doesn't scale as well as Destruction/Demonology since if the Felguard dies (which is likely if you don't pay a lot of attention to them) you will lose a good chunk of your damage. Affliction/Destruction is the tank helper/DPS build since they will be running the Imp, the problem with this build is you really only want one per 25 man raid as too many Affliction Warlocks will eat the debuff slots on the target quickly (there are 40 debuff slots per mob, but a single Affliction Warlock can take 7 by themselves and only 2 of those 7 will be shared with other Warlocks) and their DPS also does not scale as well as you deeper into raiding.

Heavy Affliction, Heavy Demonology, and a cross of Demonology/Affliction are the primary PvP builds with Heavy Affliction being more prevalent in 2v2 Arenas with Heavy Demonology and Demonology/Affliction (called the SL/SL build for taking Soul Link and Siphon Life) are more noticeable in 3v3, 5v5, and BG due to the survival that these two builds represent.

Notes on Racials.

Cannibalize: Not necessary at all. Waste of time imo. There are so many ways to heal, cannibalize shouldn't be necessary.

Orcs: In addition to stun resistence (which will save you from a lot of pvp trouble), they have the command ability, which adds +5% to pet damage. Not important seemingly, unless you go demonology or value your pets.

Fear is really too nerfed to matter much. If you go PvP, WotF helps a bit, but it doesn't affect 99.9% of PvE.

Imp: Best used when not in the same place, and using +imp talents. Since he has a ranged attack, if you are positioned differently from your Imp, you can have him lead aggro, and then attack and have that mob take additional distance to chase you. Their burst damage exceeds everything other pet too, when buffed. +1 pt Imp Firebolt, +3 pts Improved Imp = Mobile Chaingun spewing Firebolts.

Warlocks are sickenly fun. The stunts I pulled... summoning horde into alliance capital cities, Dropping a dozen Infernals with a dozen of my warlock buddies, swimming underwater everywhere, dropping off cliffs with blueberry, solo'ing elites few others would dare... Well worth the time.

Not necessary, sure. But it's free, and doesn't take a bag space. Which does help at times.

In going with Sheep's comment here, if you're interested in working towards maintaining several alts you can maintain a fairly decent support network among your characters with regards to tradeskills. For instance, my main is a Hunter, and took Skinning and Leatherworking right from the off, and hasn't changed at all. Now, while he is struggling to scrape together enough high-level leather to make stuff that he can use, he still has a plethora of lower-level Leatherworking patterns which don't earn him any skillups...

...but are useful for my second character, a Druid with Herbalism and Alchemy. A few minutes one-shotting lower-level monsters for the relevant leather, and I've got enough materials for a pair of Hillman's Shoulders fit for a moodruid. While she is too low a level to cook up any decent potions in return for my main, she can brew up a stack of pots to help any new characters I create, and it's not like she's actually going to use all those Rage Potions as a Balance Druid herself, but my Warrior will.

Remember that you can mail stuff between your characters with abandon. I haven't actually played my main account since the new mailing options introduced with 2.3, but it really wasn't that much of an issue to send individual letters with a piece of leather armour, and any herbs or alchemy fish, to my Druid from my main.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you, getting your first character up to 70 will be a lot harder than working on alts, but once you've made it, your other characters will have a lot easier time of it. Not only are you smarter with how the game works, but you do have the single-entity support network that is your main. If you're savvy, your main will save up any bags they've grown out of, and with access to Outland they'll be able to snap up huge Bind on Equip tradeskill bags (Which are large packs, but can only hold items relevant to a particular tradeskill - For instance, a Leatherworking bag can hold leathers, hides, and a skinning knife, while a Mining bag will hold ores, refined ingots, stones, and a pick). Pick up one of those, and it makes the early levelling of tradeskills a lot easier to deal with.

One other tip I can give you is to dedicate one character on your chosen server to be a mule character. I don't know how Guild Banks have affected the potency of a single-player mule (As opposed to the guildwide shared mules that the banks are supposed to replace.) but a mule for your own use helps immensely on three accounts:

1) The first is that it acts as an overflow for items that might come in useful later, either for your main character or anything else that follows. When I mentioned above that your main should keep all their bags, I didn't mean actually keep them on themselves in their bank - Ship all your old bags and non-soulbound seconds to your mule, and when another character grows into them, ship them over.
2) Easy auction house access: Found a neat little BoE green (Or blue if you're in Outland) that can make a tidy packet on the auction house, but you're in the middle of nowhere? Rather than spend all that time getting off track, heading back to a capital city when you could be out in the Badlands collecting ten buzzard asses for the next quest, head to the mailbox, ship it over to your mule, and carry on questing. Next chance you get, hop on to your mule, get all the items that your other characters found while doing real work, and put them all up for sale in the AH. It's no problem whatsoever to get a mule from any starting point to the nearest capital city.
3) Avoiding temptation: If you're saving up for something expensive, ship any excess gold to your mule for safekeeping, only keeping enough for yourself to keep up with repair bills and any crucial reagents your class may need. The thing about having a small stack of gold on yourself at any time means you might be tempted to hit up the auction house and blowing it all on junk. We've all been there, I'm sure. By putting the cash into the safety of another character, you're less likely to spend it on other stuff.

That's a lot of information to digest ... thank you all very much.

I've made my character so here we go.

Oh, one last question. Are there any decent forums for WoW other than this one? I've been repeatedly warned to stay away from the official ones, and a cursory glance showed me why ...

Thanks again everyone.

http://elitistjerks.com/ is pretty much the best. and yea the official forums are a cesspool.

my 2c since I came late to the thread.

Warlock pets each have their utility, but in general are pretty bad. Imp for the stam buff, and he can be phased shifted and used as a mana battery with dark pact. Succubus for crowd control. Fel hunter for anti-caster. Felguard for dps. VW for laughing at (its terrible after you get either your succubus or dark pact). Infernal and doomguard are junk. Infernal would be ok if it wasn't for the 1 hour cooldown, and the constant re-enslaving.

Professions: Double gathering is the only way to go while leveling, especially a first toon. None of the crafting ones offer anything that will offset the money you can make gathering, except at 70. Switching to tailoring at 70 can be very beneficial for a warlock. The gear you can make for yourself is awesome.

Server: Make sure you go with a mid to high population server. Having other people around makes the game much better. Also I would recommend a PvP server.

Elitist Jerks is a really good place for info, but always keep in mind that it's geared toward end-game raiding, so sweeping pronouncements are made daily, such as "X build is the only build worth having for Y class talents", and such stuff as that. Level your toon and have fun trying stuff out before worrying too much about some of the drivel that the raiding-obsessed put out there. (Yes, I raided my time, too, so I know where they're coming from, but, WoW has evolved to where raiding and playing 16 hours a day aren't the only way to advance anymore)

Oh, and yes, a populated server is good. I don't care for PvP servers myself. Too much immaturity in the ganking of lowbies and all that. I much prefer the PvE (Normal) servers where i can quest in peace. YMMV.

And my preference is otherwise. I prefer PvP servers (I'm on an RP-PvP myself, which is supposed to be the best of both worlds) and the threat of something leaping out of the bushes and attacking you at a moment's notice keeps a nice edge on day-to-day stuff.

Yes, it's frustrating at hell to be repeatedly ganked over the course of an hour, and Booty Bay is a really bad place to be, especially straight after the Fishing Extravaganza (There seems to be a mutual ceasefire during said event, but afterwards you'd better be gone as quickly as your hooves can carry you), but... Y'know, I like it. It also brings out some hilarious moments. Meeting Stones on a PvP server are... awkward situations for the most part; nothing like two edgy groups standing next to each other debating with themselves whether or not to strike first.

It also keeps you sharp if you want to PvP in battlegrounds or arenas. I'm not saying that by just being on a PvP server will automatically mean you'll rule over the nüblets in dedicated PvP, but you will be made of slightly sterner stuff and have a few tricks up your sleeves from your questing experience.

I actually have a couple mid-30s Horde toons on Ravenholdt... Heh.

And I plan on reactivating my account in a few days to capitalise on the Christmas holiday. Whoo.

My Warlock is now level 9. Woot!

Which leads me to another few questions. I don't seem to be able do anything to my attributes/stats. They raise on their own every level, so I end up with things I really don't need as a caster (strength mainly) getting raised anyway. Is there actually some way to manually control them?

Do you get anything out of PvP combat? I've been challenged a few times now to a duel, but didn't really want to get into them for thinking them to be a waste of time (for now). Do I get gold, experience, anything if I win?

My character constantly complains about being out of range of spells. Why won't she take two steps to get into range? I seem to remember vaguely from years and years ago in the stress test before launch (last time I tried WoW) that my mage character would close in on his own into spell range. After all, my little Fiend friend does it when I tell him to go shoot a Firebolt, why is my main character then blessed with the intellectual capacity of a gnat?

Oh sorry, one more question. When in god's name am I getting out of that forest? It seems endless and I'm yearning for a change of scenery.

Thanks again for any advice.

Nope! You get what you get. At level 10, you get the Voidwalker, which is a gamechanger, if that helps.



You get Honor for a kill of the other faction. Duels, it's just for fun.



The click-to-move setting might fix that. I dunno, I just watch when the hotkey isn't red. You get a good feel for it after a few years.



The game is designed to have you move to a new area roughly on the decades. There are a few exceptions, but most of the zones are designed for 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc. until you hit the outlands and they slice it a bit more finely. One trick if you find they direct you to a zone you find too tough, go to another races' starting area and quest some there. The game rapidly expands to give you several choices of zone in each decade, in any case.

I've been leveling an Alliance warrior to tank for a friend's guild, but it's on a PvE server. I kept expecting the Horde to camp me at the Blackrock Depths meeting stone, then realized I was on a PvE server. And then a little piece of me died inside and I cried.

Base stats are more or less meaningless. It may mean you have a little more HP, crit, or MP than another race when compared at lvl 70, but in the end it's nothing like a lot of other MMOs do it (Final Fantasy Online, for example.)

Unfortunately, no. Just don't worry about them.


Duels are generally a waste of time. You don't get anything for winning them.


I've never even heard of PCs closing into spell range automatically... You'll just have to move on your own, I'm afraid.


Generally starting areas take you to levels 10-11, and up to 12 if you do absolutely every quest. The next area you're taken into is Silverpine Forest, and while the scenery isn't that different (it's a little brighter), Silverpine is one of the most well-done areas in original WoW, in my opinion. (If you have the time, check out Pyrewood at daytime and at nighttime.)

Adding to this, I'd say that although Silverpine is a really cool place with some really interesting quest lines, it's, from my experience, much, much harder to level in Silverpine than in the similarly levelled area on the other continent--The Barrens (accessible via a zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar, and a moderate length run south, and then west) is packed with so many freaking easy levelling quests that basically from 12 to 20 you're good to go. Silverpine, though, has a pretty good gap in soloable quest density between 14 and about 18.

I'd try Silverpine first, and if you're having any trouble go ahead and make a run for the Barrens.

Starting at level 10 you get talent points. They are the primary way that you can change the strengths of your character. All classes get 3 trees. For warlocks its affliction (damage over time spells), demonology (increases the strength of your pet), and destruction (direct damage spells).

You have total control over your character. Think first person shooter. It has advantages and disadvantages.

If you stay in the zones near the Undercity that forest (Silverpine looks exactly like Tirisfal) will last until your mid 20s. Your other option is Durotar/Barrens which has more of a desert/savanna look to it.

If he has the expansion, Ghostlands is another option for levelling to 20. But Ghostlands is also dark, and you may simply be craving a little sunlight - in which case, take the zeppelin to Orgrimmar, and follow the road out to the Crossroads in the Barrens.

The game usually provides you with quests to nudge you towards different zones, and most of them are quite different from each other, with their own colour schemes, mob types, and "in zone" storylines.

Chris

Ghostlands has the best plot as far as starting zones go, and it's also the most efficient zone to level in - by far. Same with Eversong being the best 6-10/11/12 area.

The main quest in Ghostlands is Blood Elf-only, though.

Uh, no.

You can do The Traitor's Destruction (which rewards the blue two-handed sword, staff, or dagger) as any race. It can be inconvenient to level as a class that the longears can't be (Warriors and Shammies; there's a Druid trainer in Silvermoon for some reason), but since he's leveling a Warlock, that's not an issue.

And it must be said, The Traitor's Destruction line is, and I quote, "epiiiiiiiiic".

Lotsa fun, and it prepares you for working as a team a lot better than the other 10-20 zone group quests, their instances included (SFK, WC).

Uh? Prepares you to work as a team? I've soloed the entire questline up to the last quest several times...

Um, so after getting my Voidwalker at level 10 and playing until 11, I got kinda bored and at the same time curious about the other classes and races. So I went on an experimentation spree. I now have a bunch of level 5-8 characters for all the classes and most races. Now the dilemma is that quite a few of them are fun to play, yet I can't see myself devoting time to even two at a time. I find myself liking the tanking power of a Warrior, but I miss the ability to self heal that I had with a Priest (speaking of which, they actually gave Priests some real offensive power in WoW!).
I love the amazing power and range of the Mage but hate the downtime (mana regeneration) and extreme vulnerability. I love the sheer damage potential of the Rogue, but stealth seems so awkward (having to manually unstealth behind a monster to do a backstab got old after the 10th time).

So I'm leaning toward switching to a "jack of all trades" type character. Which leads to me either a Shaman, Druid or Paladin.

The Druid is out due to choice of races. I can't stand the Night Elves or their starting environment and lore. And while I love the fuzzy Tauren, they're just so huge I can't even see my target when in melee!

The Shaman seems to lack melee attack power, even with enchantments. Does it get any better? How are they in terms of solo leveling? How about late game?

Which leaves me with the last option. Paladin. How effective are they later on? For the first 5 levels I used a Human paladin he breezed through quite easily. But does this continue to hold up?

Lastly, I also got an Orc Hunter to level 8, and then find out I have to feed my pet to keep it happy, and level up too? The sounds like too much of a chore. Please tell me that isn't so, because frankly I actually enjoyed the versatility and power of the Hunter, at least in these early levels.

One of the most disappointing things was finding out that dual wielding isn't available until level 20 (!). Way to delay the fun, Blizzard. Oh wait, this is an MMOG we're talking about.

And these are Triggerhappy's adventures thus far.


P.S.
Where are the alliance and horde auction houses? I managed to accumulate 42 silver (probably a pathetically laughable sum for you folks) and want to at least see what's available there.

You don't have to unstealth to backstab. Just hit the backstab button from your stealth bar and you'll backstab from stealth.



You can move your camera angle around so you can look from different angles so you can see your target. As you level, the mobs you fight will get bigger in size so even a Tauren will be looking eye to eye with some mobs (or looking up in some cases).



Yes it will. Shaman can kick out a tremendous amount of damage at higher levels be it in melee or casting. Elemental tree is the casting tree and Enhancement is the physical tree with shocks through in. Eventually, usually around level 40, the Enhancement Shaman comes into their own with damage when they can dual wield.



It depends on what spec you follow. If you go with the Retribution tree your damage is very spikey. Case in point, my Paladin had wildly varying kills on mobs where I would kill one mob in under 10 seconds and the same type of mob would take 40+ seconds to kill all due to whether I proc'd Seal of Command or not and how many crits I got. Retnoobs, as people refer to them, are probably one the most inconsistant damagers in the game swing to swing. Other classes you will see pretty stead DPS outputs, but with Retnoobs you see large peaks and troughs in your damage.

Another option for leveling is going Protection when you can get the Reckoning talent. Again, you will see variance in your DPS, but not as drastic as a Retnoob. You will be slower in killing unless you get crit a lot and you can take on a lot more mobs at once that the Retnoob can't. Also, at high levels, the Protection Paladin probably becomes one of the better grinders in the game due to the sheer fact that you will pull in large number of mobs and be damaging all of them at once with little incoming damage to your self (due to wearing plate and have very good tanking skills from the Protection tree).



Eventually you don't really notice the need for feeding, you'll just toss food at your pet every so often. What will wear on you more is the need for a quiver or ammo pouch so you can carry enough ammunition with you. In having said quiver/ammo pouch, you lose a bag slot which means you only have 4 bags to work with.



The only class that gets dual wielding pre-20 is Rogues and they need it. Most Hunters use a two handed weapon for raptor strikes shifting to dual wielding only when they can get more effective stats from the two one handed weapons than the single two handed weapon.



all major cities have an auction house, just ask a guard and they'll conviently point you to the one in the side and mark it on your minimap with an arrow point towards it if it's not on your mini-map aready.

It sounds like a hassle, but it really isn't. Most pets usually eat meat--even uncooked meat that your player can't, like the bits of wolves and bears and such that you loot from them fairly often--so it's not hard to keep some extra around, from monster drops, or just picking up a stack or two in town every once in a while. And there's a handy little indicator right under the pet status bar to let you know when. Just throw him a chunk of something whenever it's not green, and you'll be good. (And only one at a time. Click on him and you'll see the 'feed pet' icon, which gives the pet happiness over time. Feeding him again before it expires will just overwrite it, wasting food.)

And the level isn't too much to deal with either. The pet'll just gain experience with you, and levels at a decent rate to keep up with you. And if for whatever reason he falls behind, you can just go tame a different pet. You can have one active pet with you, and up to two more stabled. (Gotta pay for the stable slots, though.)

Yeah, but if I'm not mistaken, they've cheapened those, too. My new hunter paid like 10s for one slot, the other was avail for just 5g. Didn't they used to cost more?

Not that I recall, I seem to remember that being the normal prices. I think Hunters want more slots now though (I know I do).

Cows aren't all that bad. Go into your Interface options menu, and look down towards the bottom of the basics area to something that says something like "Camera Distance" or something like that. Move it all the way to maximum distance and then zoom out as far as you can and you'll find it works just fine.

Druids are probably a nice choice to start out with, but playing one late-game effectively (though this goes for nearly every class) can be moderately complex, especially in PvP. I would not recommend a Warrior, Druid, or Paladin as a first class unless you enjoy tanking; you'll be expected to tank for instance groups in most cases because there are very few occasions where there are many tank-specced tanks available for an instance.

Shammies are, in my opinion, horribly boring until at least 30. You get Windfury Weapon at 30, and that's when the fun starts, and it kicks into high gear around 40-42. From 42 to about 52, you're unstoppable. After that, it slows down a bit, but picks back up around 62 when you get access to Water Shield. I've never tried leveling with Elemental, and would definitely recommend against it until you can gain access to at least Lightning Mastery (which lowers Lightning Bolt's cast time to a more acceptable 2.00s.)

Pallies are a mixed bag. Compared to my Shammy, I find my Pally somewhat boring (mostly because the playstyle is almost entirely reactive instead of proactive), but there's fun to be had here and there. If you level as Retribution, you'll dominate from 1-40, and then it'll slow down to a more normal pace after that. If you decide to level as Protection, you'll be doing lots and lots of AE grinding instead of questing; I wouldn't recommend it for a first-timer, since it requires a decent knowledge of zones and mob types. Strongly recommend against leveling as Holy until at least 60 or beyond; I leveled as Holy from 62 to 70, and mostly by healbotting instances.

One of the hybrid classes might be a good choice for a starting character since they can all do several different things; all three are capable healers, two are capable tanks, and all three are capable DPSers (lolretardins.)

The warlock was my first love and it was a challenge to level a WoW 1.0 warlock on a PvP server. Likewise with a warrior when they were weak and a feral druid in the days before the buffs. When BC came, I had the choice to play warlock, warrior, or druid with my friends from 60-70, and I chose druid.

If you go druid, get the largest bags possible and install itemrack or outfitter (an wardrobe mod) so that you can swap roles easily. And understand up front that your druid really won't feel like a druid until level 20 or even 30. You need a range of forms before you can have druidic flexibility.

However, a druid with decent gear and a hybrid build can easily swap between tanking, healing, and DPS all the way to 70. You'll also get flight form at 68, which will let you into the endgame a little sooner if you want that. Of course, eventually (after 70) you'll need to specialize, but druids who specialize can still shine in their chosen role.

Conversely, having a tank-type (druid/warrior/paladin) or a healer-type (priest/druid/shaman/paladin) means you'll never lack for friends when you want an instance group. It's essential to have one of each for any instance group, and the mass of players in the game just wanna do damage. There's always a shortage of tanks and healers.

If you do go druid, I second Monkey's recommendation to get Itemrack. I couldn't live without it.

Lots of classes can use Itemrack/ClosetGnome/Wardrobe. (different versions of the same thing: a gear set manager) Druids and warriors come to mind as two who can benefit the most, but, any class that switches heal and DPS sets, or tank and DPS sets will find such a mod helpful. (i.e. shaman/priest/druid/warrior/paladin, mainly)

I'm sort of jumping in here mid-stream, as I didn't take the time needed to read each and every post, but I thought I'd share my thoughts at this point, as I have a level 70 Undead warlock myself. I also have a level 70 rogue, a level 70 druid, and a level 61 hunter, so I've messed around with those classes quite a bit. My biggest mage is 41, my pally is 41, and my biggest warrior is only 22, so my experience with those classes is not very big.

I'm sure by now, you've figured out alot about warlock pets on your own. Everyone will have their own opinion on how it is best used, etc. Alot of how you use your pet, as well as which pet you use depends on what level you are, and how you enjoy playing. My lock is 70, and I drain tank with him. I do too much damage for the Voidwalker to hold threat against me, so I don't bother with having my pet tank anymore. I solo things via fear and DoT's...as I'm an affliction warlock. Warlocks start off pretty weak. I didn't feel my warlock was getting dangerous til about level 30 or so. Now he's quite powerful, and I don't use the pet for anything other than stealing mana from it unless I'm PvPing. At level 11, if that's where your lock is now, won't feel very strong to you, but later, the warlock will have alot of neat abilities, such as the ability to drain life to stay alive, you will do huge amounts of damage, as well as have good kiting abilities. Each class has it's own strengths, and each can do some great damage, etc. but I really enjoy my warlock, especially in PvP.

Speaking of PvPing...battlegrounds are fun. You probably won't want to PvP in a battleground with any of your toons til 18....once you hit 20 you probably want to stay out of battlegrounds til 28 or so, 38 etc, etc. The best way to learn PvP is to just jump in and do it. I use my felhunter pet in battlegrounds, which I use to stop healers from healing, or casters like mages from blasting me to smithereens. Some people enjoy using their succubus for CC purposes, which I've also done and it is effective as well. Those pets you wont' get til higher levels, so it takes some patience to see the warlock achieve his full potential.

I know you mentioned you didn't like how big Taurens are. As a druid, the only way you'll fight in melee range for very long is if you spec Feral, and at level 20, druids get cat form, which reduces your size a great deal. If you continue as a melee druid (feral), you'll be in cat form, or perhaps bear form, both of which aren't as tall as caster form. I wouldn't let the size turn you away from a Tauren druid. You actually get used to the size. My very first character was an orc hunter, and then I switched to the Tauren druid, and he seemed huge and slow, but I adjusted quickly, and ended up having my druid be my favorite toon for nearly two years.

I'm not sure that servers have been addressed in this thread, as again, I haven't read each post, but Terenas has (I think) the largest Lurkers guild horde-side. That will allow you the opportunity to see some of the content that is hard to see effectively without some help. We're not huge, nor are we "raid or die" fanatics, but we're working through the content steadily. If you haven't really settled on a server yet, and are interested in playing Horde, I would recommend Terenas.

I'm suffering from a severe case of restart-itis.

In yet another attempt at seeing how yet another class works, I've now gotten a Rogue to level 13. And it's been pretty hard from about 11. It's just nearly impossible to solo more than one or two targets at a time, and many quests don't give you any choice. You can't exactly get in behind a target and sap it, so you can handle his buddy, if said buddy is watching the entrance to the house and the other guy has his back right next to a wall. Hello Rogue, come on in, get diced.
Oh and of course right as you start the desperate fight, a patrol you killed a few minutes ago has respawned, resumed his route and walks right by. He joins the fight ... and hello again graveyard. Quest failed for the 7th time.
It probably would be so bad if they didn't send me on quests into areas where all the targets are 1-3 levels higher than me.

The Rogue is ridiculously good one on one, but that isn't possible a good deal of the time.

So I tried the Tauren again, and right you are folks, I didn't have my camera zoom out option at max. Zooming out all the way helps, but it also has the side effect of making it seem like the character is really slow. This isn't my imagination, is it? Tauren aren't any slower than regular characters?

Which leads me to a couple more questions. Before I go with a Tauren Druid, it would help to know:

1. Does equipment matter for a Druid that shapeshifts? As in, do armor, weapon damage or enhancements carry over into the bear/cat form?
2. Is the Druid solo-able? Does he have crowd control?

I ask the second one because so far the little grouping I've done has been more frustrating than enjoyable. People seem to be clueless about the roles of other characters, or even simple things like pulling one target away instead of rushing in to fight all three. It's like D2 public games all over again.

You're in the wrong area, or doing the wrong quest, then. Fastest, smoothest leveling is done with green quests (the color of the quest as it appears in your log book indicates how tough it is based on your level and the level of the mobs involved). It sounds like you are doing yellow/orange quests, that will be quite challenging. You might try another area, or simply another quest.

Tauren legs move slower, since they have longer strides. They aren't any slower or faster, but they do certainly look like they are running in tar.

Another thing to watching at about this point in the game is the quality of your equipment. If you are still using any grey text items, get them upgraded ASAP. White text equipment is usually only adequately in step for progression for a couple of levels till about level 12-15; after that treat it as the grey text equipment, upgrad ASAP. Green text (uncommon or magic) equipment is usually good for about 5 levels from its required to use level before it starts becoming a gimp item. When you start getting some blue text (rare) items they generally have at least 10 levels of use from the required level to use before they start becoming gimp in use. Later around levels 40-50 you will likely start getting some access to purple text items (epics) that can be usable for much longer.

Most new players fail to realise what a difference some of these item upgrades can mean to the character. For example at the low levels of your characters, the difference in having grey text gear and white text gear can be at least 50% extra armor rating (giving quite a bit more physical damage mitagation) and anywhere for a 50% to 120% increase in weapon DPS. Being able to throw some green items into that mix can yield even greater benefit to the character since besides typically better armor or DPS stats, these items usually have various bonus stats on them.

Unlike D2, characters usually cannot go late into the game while still wearing some 'cracked sash' unless they do very well on the rest of their equipment to make up the difference.

1. Yes, but not everything counts. Druid forms draw benefit from the stats of their armor; Various talents higher up in each druid tree even amplify the benefit. Weapons are a different story. Weapon DPS and any damage or proc enchant will be irrelevant to a cat or bear; according to Blizzard, your paw is always just a paw and it can't be magically enchanted. This is why high-end feral weaponry typically has huge amounts of "Feral Attack Power" to make up for the absence of weapon DPS. In practical terms, a +agility enchant on a weapon is great, +damage is a waste.

2. Druids have great solo-ability once they have a range of forms. You're going to suffer at least until level 20, though. Soloing things as a druid frequently means power-shifting between forms to maximize your survivability. Open in cat with a stun, switch to bear when they come out, stun (with bash, a bear talent) when you get low and pop into caster to heal yourself, go back to bear and finish them off. And druids have an outdoor CC called 'root' that fixes the target to the ground; this makes it effective on melee, but not ranged.

Honestly though, the teens are typically bad no matter what you choose--I've spit and cursed my way through them on most classes, and reaching 20 just makes everything come together.