Introduction
The best combination of programs that will facilitate training are Cartographer, Questhelper and Gatherer.
Cartographer 3.0 is available from Curse.com, and offers players an inset world map, which means you don't have to blind yourself when looking up new locations. Coupled with the powerful tools Questhelper and Gatherer, it will provide you with direct routes to any quests you or your party have accepted, and the locations of any ore, herb or fish nodes in your immediate vicinity.
- Obtain large bags. We regularly produce Runecloth, Netherweave and Frostweave bags and place them in the vaults.
- Keep a stock of buff foods. You should cook them yourself and train up, but it's not always practical.
- Stock up on bandages and train as much as possible in First Aid, even if you're a healer.
- Keep a stock of supplies, at least one bag devoted entirely to supplies, to minimize trips back to town.
- Upgrade your weapons at least once every three levels. Other items can wait as much as five levels.
- Try to find the local "kill these monsters" quests for more experience, if you're going to be killing them anyway.
- Learn to use Hotkeys and Macros. They make certain menial tasks, especially grinding, a bit easier to bear.
- If you are training an alt, consider making it a "gatherer." Skinning, Mining and Herbalism will easily earn you the coin for your mounts.
- If you have a choice between grinding from beasts or humanoids go for the humanoids; the drops are better.
- When you reach the Outlands and Northrend start questing. They have a far greater payout in experience and equipment than grinding.
The Warrior
Arms
Fury
Protection
In the endgame instances, the traditional job of a Warrior is to tank. Warriors have a variety of abilities that give them strong threat production and damage mitigation. Warriors' strength also scale very well with gear. Dual-wield Fury warriors are among the top damage dealers in the game. With the continuing addition of better gear, it is becoming more common to see warriors in raids whose sole purpose is to DPS. In solo and PvP play where aggro management is irrelevant, the warriors can produce even more fearsome damage. The Arms tree also provides many important talents that help the warriors in PvP.
The Hunter
Beast Master
Marksmanship
Survival
The hunter is known for his pets, his long-range DPS, and his traps. Each of his talent trees focus on improving one of these aspects. Depending on your playstyle, you may focus on one of these alone, or follow a hybrid build. Beast Mastery hunters with some Marksmanship talent points for added DPS are known to level extremely quickly and produce excellent damage output in raid. With proper control, a Beast Mastery hunter can easily take on 4 same-level mobs. If you prefer to deal most of the damage by yourself, Marksmanship is your choice. Survival Hunters excel at getting out of close range by more useful traps and more frequent stuns.
The Mage
Arcane
Fire
Frost
Mages are used as a ranged DPS class. In groups, they deal high amounts of damage to their targets, while generating a great deal of threat from monsters. They excel at doing Area-of-Effect damage (doing damage to multiple mobs at once). Mages have the greatest AoE capability of any class currently in the game. In addition, they are the weakest class at surviving having damage dealt against them. Because of this, it is advisable that another group member tanks while the mages do their thing. Mages have strong control mechanisms, such as snares, roots and crowd control. Frost mages enhance these control abilities, while fire mages specialize in sheer all-out DPS. The arcane tree remains a powerful utility tree providing strong burst DPS as well as very competent single target DPS.
The Rogue
Assassination
Combat
Subtlety
A rogue's main purpose, either solo, in small groups, or in a raid, is maximum DPS, with crowd control as a secondary role. Assassination rogues are skilled at dealing massive burst damage from the back of the enemies using daggers. On the other hand, Combat Rogues are balanced with both offensive as well as defensive talents, and produce sustained damage using sword, mace or fist weapons. While the damage improvement provided by the Subtlety tree may not be as impressive as the other two, Subtlety Rogues can perform many subtle moves in PvP and easily catch the unwary enemies in surprise!
The Paladin
Holy
Protection
Retribution
The paladin class is based on surviving and keeping allies alive. In endgame instances, paladins can heal, tank or dps depending on their spec. A paladin comes loaded with defensive and offensive buffs, and invulnerability spells for himself and others. The talents he chooses will augment these skills in certain ways. The Holy tree increases healing and holy damage as well as making them more difficult to interrupt; it is a great PvE and PvP build. Protection is another way to keep your allies from dying, by taking the damage yourself as a tank. This spec is required to main tank five-man instances and epic-level raid content, and is on par with both warriors and druids in the tanking hierarchy. Retribution paladins are able to produce massive damage output. It is a paladin's best PvP spec. Since Patch 2.3, it has gained popularity in endgame PvE as well.
The Warlock
Affliction
Demonology
Destruction
Although all the three trees can enhance the damage power of the warlocks, the playstyle of the warlocks of each specs can be very different. Affliction increases the power of the warlock's curses and damage over time spells. Demonology helps the endurance of the warlocks, by splitting damage taken with pets and better buffs from their pets, by either keeping it active or sacrificing it. Finally, Destruction allows for a mage-style of playing by improving their direct damage spells. Warlocks are widely considered to be one of the, if not the best one-on-one PvP class in the game.
The Priest
Disciple
Holy
Shadow
Holy priests are famous for their various healing spells and the protective shield, which make them the favorite healers for many people. While the traditional role of a priest is healing, Shadow priests, who can dish out significant single-target DPS and provide mana regeneration for the whole party, are also a common sight for end-game raids. Shadow priests also do very well in PvP. The Discipline tree helps the mana threshold, thus it complements both Holy and Shadow. In addition to powerful healing and single-target damage, Priests can also supply players with helpful buffs.
The Shaman
Elemental
Enhancement
Restoration
Shaman is a very versatile class. In endgame instances, their main roles are buffing and curing, as well as healing or DPS depending on spec. Restoration tree provides many wonderful abilities for those who would like to heal and support the others. Enhancement shamans focus on dealing physical damage. They are also loved by other melee DPS for the offensive buff their totems bring. In contrast, Elemental Shamans are caster DPS who usually do their damage from range. For PvP, Enhancement is a weak choice, because it needs melee range, but lacks ways to get or stay there. Restoration maybe preferred more. Elemental is better than Enhancement but vulnerable to interrupt/silence effects as all healing and most damage spells are of the nature school.
The Druid
Balance
Feral
Restoration
Druids are a hybrid class that switch roles largely through shapeshifting. In their original humanoid form, they are similar to priests, able to damage their enemies with spells, buff themselves and their allies, and heal people. The restoration and balance trees enhance their healing and spell damage respectively. The cat form is geared toward stealth and melee DPS, while bear form allows them to tank. Those forms are enhanced by the Feral Combat tree, with a few special talents in restoration. Druids can acquire specialized forms for balance and restoration, but many non-raiding druid will stop short of Tree of Life Form to get extra versatility from balance or feral combat.
The Deathknight
Frost Deathknight
Unholy Deathknight
Blood Deathknight
Death knights are World of Warcraft's first hero class. They are a hybrid class that combines damage dealing and tanking. Each talent tree for death knights can be used for either of those roles but depending which you choose will affect their play style. Blood focuses on the physical damage dealt by melee spell, weapons and abilities with a high self-healing rate and single target DPS. Frost focuses on control elements, with a strong critical-strike/bonus-damage, as well as several talents that improve damage mitigation. Unholy heavily focus on diseases, improving summoned minions, AoE, spell damage shielding and movement improvement abilities.