World of Warcraft: Beginners Guide to Starting Smart

The prudent player, on his first time in the World of Warcraft, will try to find out what play style is most comfortable for himself, while the eager player will marvel at all the choices between factions, races and classes and tends to choose based upon aesthetics. Fortunately for all players, either one of these systems of deciding works well. A character is only as good as his player, so any choice that is based upon the enthusiasm of the player and a willingness to learn and apply his skills to the game will be successful.

Some players choose to be in the middle of the fight, while some choose to stay back and cast spells from afar. Some players like to be more useful to the group, and some like to be a hero unto themselves, crashing the party and showing others their prowess in battle alone. The greatest players learn to balance these techniques while, at the same time, socializing and making a strong group of compatriots with which to play at any time.

Fortunately, any class and race combination that is available in the game can be used just as efficiently as any other, since the game has been active for long enough to bring these aspects to a pristine polish. However, for the new player, there are a few specific classes that are the best, and at the same time most popular classes to play for newer players.

The warlock is one of the most outstanding, versatile, and devastating classes in all of the World of Warcraft. Since the games inception, this class has slowly developed from a weak and hard-to-understand class, to a very powerful and highly popular one, though still somewhat misunderstood. However, most newer players can quickly adhere to the mechanics behind this class, as its most popular niche of talents lend themselves to a definitive role as a nuker, or long-range damage dealer. If a warlocks pets and spells are properly developed throughout its life, it becomes an extremely formidable force, and a great boon to any party.

Warlocks with this role in mind will want to focus on stats like Intellect and Stamina, since these are the two primary governing attributes for pure spell casters. If a player wants to stick with the darker forces of the games universe, and decides upon a character in the Horde, the best choice for a Warlock, although not very popular, is the Orc. Their traits allow them to gain incredible boosts to damage for short periods of time. With this kind of setup in place, and the proper strategy, new players can enjoy easily casting power spells from a distance and nuking any enemy before they ever get close.

When playing for the Alliance, the most popular choice is to play as a Gnome, since their high intellect and magical prowess makes them excellent spell casters. A Gnome will normally be able to cast magic for much longer without running out of energy, which is a luxury that not all Orcs will have.

Secondly, another extremely popular choice for newer players, and especially new players that follow the advice of veterans, is the Hunter. This eclectic class has some very unique and engaging abilities that allow it to survive battles that other characters would be completely helpless to complete when alone. Furthermore, the Hunters feign death ability gives it an advantage that no other character could ever have, and that is the ability to end a fight instantly and avoid a humiliating defeat. Hunters primarily use ranged weapons and attack from afar while their pets get involved in the fight at close range.

The effect of this strategy is that the player can sit far away and never have to worry about taking damage while he delivers exceptional damage using his ranged weaponry. Furthermore, even if the Hunter does begin to take damage, he is very well protected compared to other classes, and can get together a very respectable amount of damage reduction bonuses from his armor.

Furthermore, the character has an immense amount of utility, as he can be used to hunt certain types of monsters using a sort of built in radar ability, and even watch enemies from a distance while remaining unnoticed. He is a hunter in every sense of the word. Night Elves, Dwarves and Draneis make up good hunters.

As for the Hordes, an Orc might be just what your looking for because of his expertise with ranged weaponry. The Tauren Hunter has more stamina which makes him excellent for PvP. Out of all the races that make this class so effective, the Night elf is the most popular member of the Alliance to be classified as a Hunter.

The Night Elfs very high agility is coupled with an armor rating that is higher than all of the other races that can become a Hunter. This equips this race to become everything that a Hunter should be, with as little effort on the part of the player as possible.

This is most beneficial for newer players who many not understand the core statistics as well as veterans. It is worth mentioning that both of these powerful classes employ pets to do their fighting for them.
This is a core mechanic that all new players should take advantage of, since watching another creature fight for you and having the time and calm state of mind to make choices while not in the heat of battle can help acclimate green players to the World of Warcraft, and all the dangers therein.

WoW Leveling Guide