WoW professions

[Ligier]

If one's going to attribute the Grimtotems to the Tauren's character, it's only fair to remember the Dark Iron dwarves, who summoned the evil lord of all fire elementals help them establish dominion over their foes.

Though, my WoW-fu is rusty, was that before or after all three clans were involved in a three-way civil war for.. well, I don't know what the hell for. Do drunk dwarves need an excuse to gut their fellows?

Gnomes aren't *really* evil. I'd say they're more tasty. Delicious, tasty gnome-kebobs... MMMMmm. *drools*

To the OP, I'll add my opinion to the consensus that two gathering professions are the way to go. By the time you hit 70, you should be filthy rich, and if you're not... well, don't worry, with the amount of daily quests available, you will be in no time.

[Civil War Man]

Hard to say - sort of annoying the way they squish under Tauren hooves. Whoops, just stepped on another! Yeah, hard to take the Evil Warlock seriously when she has bubblegum pink hair.

If you do not know why Gnomish warlocks are hilarious, then you have obviously not participated in the warlock quest chain that results in the most epic battle in all of WoW.

That battle being the one versus EL POLLO GRANDE <The Black Chicken of Death> Screenshot

Yes. A level 50 chicken. A huge one. At least as big as a Tauren, just judging from the screenshot.

Unfortunately, even though it is considered a Beast, Hunters are not allowed to tame El Pollo Grande.

THE BLACK CHICKEN OF DEATH CAN BE TAMED BY NO MAN!

[Ford Prefect]

That's like something out of Space Rangers 2.

[Broomstick]

Given the large number of pop culture references and nods to obscure things in WoW that might even be where it came from.

[darthbob88]

If one's going to attribute the Grimtotems to the Tauren's character, it's only fair to remember the Dark Iron dwarves, who summoned the evil lord of all fire elementals help them establish dominion over their foes.

Though, my WoW-fu is rusty, was that before or after all three clans were involved in a three-way civil war for.. well, I don't know what the hell for. Do drunk dwarves need an excuse to gut their fellows?

That was at the end of the war, apparently, and may be the reason the war ended. Apparently the war started as the standard war of succession, with everybody wanting to be King of the Dwarves.

[White Haven]

The Wildhammer lost calmly, the Dark Iron wigged out and turned an entirely fairly pleasant mountainous region into a blasted, lava-pooled hellhole. So yeah, Grimtotem and Dark Iron both divide each other out of the equation and leave Dwarves and Tauren being un-asshats.

[Kuja]

If one's going to attribute the Grimtotems to the Tauren's character, it's only fair to remember the Dark Iron dwarves, who summoned the evil lord of all fire elementals help them establish dominion over their foes.

Except there's a major caveat to that. The dark irons are not signatories of the Alliance and the other dwarves have been at war with them since long before the events of the first Warcraft game.

Magatha Grimtotem, on the other hand, is sitting in Thunder Bluff as a questgiver, and is mentioned as one of the tauren's racial leaders no less. As such, the Grimotem clan's position in the Horde is far murkier than the relationship between the dwarven races.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hard to say - sort of annoying the way they squish under Tauren hooves. Whoops, just stepped on another! Yeah, hard to take the Evil Warlock seriously when she has bubblegum pink hair.

If you do not know why Gnomish warlocks are hilarious, then you have obviously not participated in the warlock quest chain that results in the most epic battle in all of WoW.

That battle being the one versus EL POLLO GRANDE <The Black Chicken of Death> Screenshot

Yes. A level 50 chicken. A huge one. At least as big as a Tauren, just judging from the screenshot.

Unfortunately, even though it is considered a Beast, Hunters are not allowed to tame El Pollo Grande.

THE BLACK CHICKEN OF DEATH CAN BE TAMED BY NO MAN!

"Death to Stormwind! Death by Chicken!"

Lol.. that's just downright hilarious.. I wonder about Monkey Island 3 now.

[PainRack]

God. I remember how paladin sucks in terms of levelling. Even the revised ret talent tree doesn't give you the same amount of DPS other characters have. The difference is that like warriors, you can "endure" and thus grind much longer than other characters, although you're still limited by your mana bar, as opposed to warriors with their rage.

My Pally friend switched to Prot in level 40, so that he could keep running a mixture of instances and doing AOE grinding. But you need to be able to purchase mithril spikes for that to work properly. Thankfully, the death of activity on Plaguelands means that AOE grinding there is more profitable. My Arms warrior saw virtually nobody there.

[GuppyShark]

With the large improvements to quest XP, it's better to just mash faces as Ret. Grab a quest guide and go to town.

Mind you I did a lot of my Outlands as prot just because I got sick of ret DPS, my main is a rogue.

[Lancer]

I'm leveling a pally alt with the intent of making him a Tankadin. I've even started collecting the Furies deck (mostly due to getting the Ace and 5 through drops) so he can get the Vengeance trinket, and yeah, questing is the fastest way of getting XP, short of having guildies run me through an instance.

[Lord Revan]

atm it's quests for XP, instances for gear (and grinding to get bored ) and indeed pallies aren't nice to lvls (I joke that pallies don't got DPS they got DPH(that's damage per hour)), especially if you do like me and level as full holy (ok I'm not full holy but 45/16/0).

[Civil War Man]

Leveling as a Holy Paladin? Why do you hate yourself so much?

[Steve]

Leveled my protadin as Prot/ret mix and then pure prot after getting harangued by a friend on my horrible mixing of talents. Yes, levelling is hell, especially pre 2.3. Leveling my Arms Warrior hasn't been as hard because things die fast against her, but Rhysdav, he's only good stacking Seal of Vengeance DoT and consecrating to gradually attrit a foe to death.

Of course, I haven't gotten to run Rhys through a lot yet, only +64 TBC instances I've seen have been all of auchindoun save Auchenai Crypts, Steamvaults, and Hillsbrad. I'm still using the quest reward blue plate legs from Mana Tombs . Only epic I've got is the Shattered Sun rep shield.

Oh, and my three highest leveled toons (70 Protadin, 66 Arms Warrior, 45 Hunter) are all gatherers in prof: first two are mining/skinning and third is herb/skinning.

[Lord Revan]

Leveling as a Holy Paladin? Why do you hate yourself so much?

it was my first true pally char, ages ago and I didn't know how hard it would be.

this is her current spec, maybe not the best possible but it works.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I haven't really allocated my talent points to anything because i'm undecided what to do with my paladin. So far, I'm leaning towards a retribution/protection though if I go 100% healer, I guess holy. I'm in a PvP server, hence my inclination towards Ret/Pro.

[Temjin]

For god's sake, go ret (maybe prot) for leveling. If only for your own sanity. If you want to heal, you can still heal instances at least up to lvl 40 no matter what your spec or gear is.

But leveling as holy is just torturous, unless you do nothing but instances.

[Lord Revan]

I haven't really allocated my talent points to anything because i'm undecided what to do with my paladin. So far, I'm leaning towards a retribution/protection though if I go 100% healer, I guess holy. I'm in a PvP server, hence my inclination towards Ret/Pro.

I can say from experience that leveling as Holy pally is sloooooooooow, you shouldn't think about holy until level 40 at the earliest.

[Bedlam]

Hay I made it all the way from 1-70 with a fully Holy Priest, it did take about a year though.

[White Haven]

I did as well, on the priestable thing. I had a reason, though, hehe. 1-60, I didn't want to get to 60 and then find out that I sucked as a raid healer on my dedicated raid healer. Back then, Shadow was ass-terrible, so that wasn't a fallback option. 60-70...well, sorta half a reason. I went shadow, but I'd always feel useless in groups when the healer wasn't awesome, basically I'd get guilty if we wiped because I wasn't the one healing. Aaaand I was levelling at the start of Burning Crusade, so there was enough instancing going on that Holy wasn't...quite...insane.

As for paladins, level as Ret if you're planning to be Holy or Ret, but if you're planning to be a tankadin, I actually recommend Prot AoE grinding. It's a little slower after the quest exp patch, but the end result is that you'll hit 70 with all the right reflexes to step right into actual tanking with, saves you having to relearn and unlearn habits.

[Lord Revan]

Holy priests have a pronsiderble arsenal of offensive spells as priests are casters and now that +heal (apart from few expections) give +dmg too the gear ain't that bad, granted Shadow still is stronger, but Paladins on the other hand are melee and while pally melee AP uses pretty much the same formula as warrior melee AP your bound to have less dmg as most decent dmg talents are deep retri, also good holy gear has loads of INT, +heal, +spell crit , but not so much +str or +AP.

basically with a holy pally until very late you're stuck with melee power of a priest combinied with spell power of a warrior, how ever where holy pallies exel is endurance, being one of the best (if not the best) single target healers (even if that target is yourself) and don't pratically run out of mana while healing, you can easily outlast most normal and some elite enemies (I once killed 5-7 mobs in row without major problems).

granted that's boring as hell.

EDIT:in healing gear my pally has 456 melee AP and 74 DPS (before armor reduction) with essentially full epic gear, for comparison my rogue has 1284 melee AP and 147 DPS in her primary gear (though granted that's rather shitty), though my pally has 1939/795 +heal/+dmg though that's with +40 INT buff you get on Isle of Quel'Danas and over 200 points of my +heal comes from my INT.

[Civil War Man]

As for paladins, level as Ret if you're planning to be Holy or Ret, but if you're planning to be a tankadin, I actually recommend Prot AoE grinding. It's a little slower after the quest exp patch, but the end result is that you'll hit 70 with all the right reflexes to step right into actual tanking with, saves you having to relearn and unlearn habits.

Yeah, I actually respecced in the 40s from Protection to Retribution. I started out as Protection because my guild only had one or two main tanks, so I wanted to give them some more options if the people who had the tanks weren't available or wanted to use one of their alts.

With Wrath of the Lich King coming out, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to spec Blood or Frost. I figured that trying out Retribution as a Paladin would give me at least some vague idea as to how comfortable I would be with a plate-wearing DPS. Maybe a week and a half later, I went back to Protection, because I had over 40 levels of experience with a tank mindset. I was used to being able to wade into a group of enemies with little regard for my own safety because I was just that durable. As Retribution I found myself using my survival tricks much more often because my armor rating and stamina were just that much lower.

[Sharp-kun]

if you're planning to be a tankadin, I actually recommend Prot AoE grinding. It's a little slower after the quest exp patch, but the end result is that you'll hit 70 with all the right reflexes to step right into actual tanking with, saves you having to relearn and unlearn habits.

Better yet, tank lots of instances if you want to be a tank. AoE grinding and actual tanking are very different, mostly as the mobs hit you significantly harder and do more shit you need to take into account when working out how many you can take.

Tanking instances (starting around ZF-ST level since thats when it gets interesting) prepares you for high end tanking better than anything else.

[Jaevric]

Better yet, tank lots of instances if you want to be a tank. AoE grinding and actual tanking are very different, mostly as the mobs hit you significantly harder and do more shit you need to take into account when working out how many you can take.

Tanking instances (starting around ZF-ST level since thats when it gets interesting) prepares you for high end tanking better than anything else.

Not to mention giving you a chance to get used to all the incredibly stupid things your groupmates are likely to do and know how to react to them. Some of the shit people in pick-up groups do is just mindbogglingly stupid -- and unfortunately, some of it carries over into raids because they never learn any better. There will always be that one hunter or mage who cuts loose on the mob before the poor tank gets a chance to do more than pull it (Avenger's Shield as I recall is effective enough to negate that somewhat, but when my warrior was doing pulls with a gun and some idiot huntard starts shooting full-out right after I did...ARGH!). Or the idiots who get into a "Who can produce more DPS?" competition and disregard the fact that the poor tank has to try to hold aggro through that -- this is especially "fun" when they pick different targets to DPS.

*Edit*

Also, get used to some idiot Arms or Fury warrior who thinks the best way to keep aggro is to spam Taunt every time the cooldown is up telling you "lol paladins (or druids) can't tank, stfu and heal noob." Not saying that all Arms/Fury warriors are idiots who can't tank, but a lot of the really vocal ones are.

[Broomstick]

Those DPS contests really piss me off. My main is a caster DPS shaman (elemental spec) and I'd much rather have a group with good teamwork who don't wipe often than one of those pissing-contest "ha-ha-I-do-the-most-damage" bullshit fests. Who the fuck CARES? Especially the hybrids who won't take a second to fire off a strategic back-up heal to keep the tank or main healer going in a tight spot. Oh no! Their damage rating is so much more important than keeping the group alive and moving.