World of Warcraft Classic: Best Leveling Classes, Ranked

World of Warcraft Classic is starting over fresh again with brand-new servers and a clean slate for everyone. If you are interested in starting from the beginning with everyone else, you might be wondering what classes you should start with.

If you are having trouble choosing, you might be wondering which class is best to level in WoW Classic. Here is a breakdown of what each class is like to level along with a rating of how easy, fast, and fun your leveling experience will be in pure Classic without the boosts that came from SoD.

Leveling Classes Tier List in WoW Classic

There are nine total classes in WoW Classic. Death Knights, Monks, and Demon Hunters will not yet be available this early in WoW history. Paladins are Alliance only, and you need to be Horde to be a Shaman. Each of the classes have their ups and downs, but you’ll find most people agree on the best of the best classes and the worst of the worst as well. Here is the most objective possible list for the best and worst classes from top to bottom when leveling from 1 to 60 in Classic.

The Worst Classes to Level With

Of the nine total classes, there are two that almost always show up at the bottom of tier lists. While you might enjoy playing these classes, they will certainly give you the most trouble at the beginning of the game while trying to get your toon to max WoW Classic level.

Warrior

Warriors are usually considered the bottom of the barrel for leveling, even with the changes being made to World of Warcraft Classic for this restart. It’s mostly because they have absolutely no built-in healing for themselves; they are required to carry a pile of bandages and healing potions just to stay alive. While warriors do a lot of damage in raids, that’s mostly off of the back of World Buffs.

Rogue

Rogues are sadly in the same boat as warriors, but they have it just a tiny bit better. With the addition of Vanish, Blind, Evasion, and Gouge, you have some tools to help you get away when you get into trouble as well as some stealth to help you get around enemies to quest achievements. However, you still don’t have any on-board healing, so you will still be reliant on potions and bandages. Your attacks will be a bit better, but not enough to make a meaningful difference.

The Mid List of WoW Classic Classes

There are three different WoW Classic classes that fall under the umbrella of mid-classes. They aren’t terrible like rogues or warriors, however, they aren’t the fastest either. These include priests and the two side-exclusive classes: Paladin and Shaman.

Priest

Priests are the first class with built-in healing spells that will allow you to actually stay alive while playing. You will still spend a lot of time white attacking creatures with your wand since all your offensive spells are too mana expensive, but you will be slow, steady, and safe while doing it. Once you reach level 40, however, things will speed up a little bit as you finally get your hands on Shadowform. It might be a slow grind, but it will surely be a safe one. The one plus side is that will be easy to get a slot while doing leveling dungeons as everyone will want a good healer.

Paladin

Paladin is fairly similar to priests in that you will have some ways of keeping yourself alive and saving yourself, but you will spend most of your time white attacking. Since you have access to a stun, a bubble, and some healing, you will be able to pull multiple enemies. But you will need to drink between pulls as you will use all every ounce of your mana while doing it. Specing into prot will allow you to AoE a bunch of things to death, but it will still be slow and will still be less fun than the new few classes on this list.

Shaman

Shaman is the only Horde-exclusive class in World of Warcraft Classic. Shaman has better tools to heal themselves over Priest, and their offensive spells are a little bit cheaper, making it easier to battle against just about every enemy in the game. They have a Ghost Wolf, which is an early-game “mount” they can use beginning at level 20. It won’t move as fast as a real mount, but it will get you from one place to another a lot faster than walking on foot. They are either efficient and slow or they are inefficient and fast with not much in between.

Druid

If Paladin, Priest, and Shaman are middling classes, and Warlock, Hunter, and Mage are top level, then Druid falls into a sort of in-between place by itself. Druids have some really great items in their kit to make them efficient and strong while leveling. However, there are also some problems when leveling with one of these shape-changers.

Druids are absolutely miserable to level until you hit level 10; you will basically only have Wrath and Moonfire. However, once you start to unlock animal forms at 10, you will be off at a much faster pace than other classes earlier in this list. You have a self-heal, your bear form will be fairly tanky, and you will get an even better form at level 20. You will have the bigger damage, the durability, the ability to root enemies, and the stealth you need to get through questing. Also, your animal form will move much faster than your feet, so you can get from one place to the next 30% faster than most, even without a WoW Classic mount.

They lose out to the other classes mostly because the next three are faster, and they can’t do elite quests on your own. Druids are far too squishy, and you are only wearing leathers. After your initial burst of massive damage, your damage trails off, making it harder and harder the longer any individual battle goes on.

The Best Classes to Level With in WoW Classic

There are three classes at the top of leveling. These three will be the fastest, the easiest, and most of those starting up new characters will probably want to choose one of these if the goal is getting to 60 as quickly as you can. They are Mage, Warlock, and Hunter.

Mage

Mage is great for a number of reasons. They might be squishy, but they have some powerful spells that allow them to just murder the world. You can kite so many mobs at a time that you don’t even need to quest, you can just run around and slam everyone into the ground. Mages can make their own water, even though it is slow and not as good as purchasing drinks for yourself. However, because they are so good, there might be too many other mages in the spots you are also trying to kill mobs of enemies. The number one biggest problem with leveling with a mage is that you are almost guaranteed to get bored; the leveling loop for mages is mind-numbingly boring. Mages are also great for farming money early game in Classic too.

Warlock

Warlocks don’t begin with everything you need to start with, but once you start to gather the pieces, you will be skyrocketing through levels. Like most casters, you will start off with white attacks. Thankfully, you’ll have your health stone to heal you. After hitting level 24, you will be able to max out your Fel concentration, allowing you to all but ignore pushback on Drain Life, allowing you to heal more damage than you take.

After you reach this plateau, you will be able to start and never, ever stop going. Your Life Tap will revert your HP into mana, then Drain Life will take the enemy’s HP to heal you, which you can turn into mana, and so on forever. Warlocks are like the Energizer bunny of leveling in this way. Another things that will help you keep up the loop forever will be your pet; you can start to feed off of their mana, allowing you to take less of your own life while rebuilding your mana.

A warlock will also have access to something called Fear juggling. This is where you Drain Life one mob while Fearing and putting up a DoT on another. Unlike all the other classes so far in this list, you can solo just about any Elite without help from others. The only mobs that you won’t be able to take down will be things that are immune to Fear, which means you can solo about 90% of the content yourself while leveling.

Hunter

The hunter has a really strong WoW pet, therefore they are the best. And that’s all you need to know about them.

But in all seriousness, a hunter’s pet is just so much better than literally anything else in Classic. While the first 10 levels of hunters are absolutely miserable and annoying, the second you get a pet, all that goes away. Your pet is able to draw aggro, better allowing you to range attack whatever you are fighting. Since the hunter pets in WoW Classic are so strong, the whole world will basically become your oyster at level 10.

You’ll be safe, powerful, have healing for your pet, great outs like Feign Death, and your pet will eventually get a stun. Hunters can kite things basically forever, allowing you to kill things that even warlocks would pale at the thought of taking on. And, unlike every other class in the game, hunters are the only ones who benefit from the way attacking works in Classic. Ranged attacks have lower penalties for fighting critters that are higher level than you. Here’s a basic breakdown of how it works for things that are three levels above you:

• Melee has an average 60% chance of getting a Glancing Blow, which means that 60% of their hits will do 40% less damage (the way this works is so complex that you need a whole graph to explain it, so it’s best to just say an average of 60%).
• Spells have a flat 17% chance just to not hit at all.
• But with hunters, their ranged attacks have an 8% lower chance to hit, but they hit for full damage.