New characters pt. 3

So you're starting to get a good handle on what this game is all about, going through all the quests, killing lots of enemies and learning how to use your character. Then you hit level 10 and notice another menu button pop up that wasn't there before and it's flashing at you. You click on it and a menu comes up that with 3 tabs, each one with a tree of buttons that are connected to each other somehow, and hovering the cursor over each button gives you a description of some sort of new skill and they all seem to help you out. These are your talents, and from now on you will get one point per level to spend on them. That means when you get to level 70 you will have accumulated 61 points, which isn't nearly enough to fill all those spots, so you're gonna have to pick and choose where you spend them carefully.

Talents define your character. As you make your way further into the game you will hear the terms feral druid and resto druid, holy pally and ret pally, and these terms define not only the class but the talent build as well. A feral druid is specced mainly in the feral tree while the resto druid utilizes more of the restoration tree. The skills and abilities are split up into 3 talent trees for each class, and each tree boosts a different aspect of what that class can do. In the beginning you won't notice any big changes to your character, but as you get to the more powerful talents the benefits become very obvious. Talents are very important to how you play your character so you will want to be thinking about what aspects of your character you like and from there figure out which talent tree corresponds to that.

The rest of this post is purely how I like to play and may not exactly be your preference, but being a mainly solo player who likes to quest and level up, I always choose the talent tree that will make this go as quickly as possible. The best way to go about it is to figure out which tree will result in your damage output increasing. As you are levelling up you should be more concerned about how fast you can kill an enemy and less about how long it takes them to kill you, because killing enemies quickly means you are advancing that much faster through the game. This means you are looking for the talent builds that will maximize your DPS (damage per second) and don't generally help you out in areas like healing or defense. In some cases a class will have talent trees that all boost DPS, and in this case your style of play will depict which talen tree you want to use. From the research I have done I will list the talent trees each class has and what aspect of the character they will buff. This is by no means official, but is how I have come to understand things and may help you figure outwhat talents to go after.

Druid:
Balance - offensive spells
Feral - melee (DPS for cat, tanking for bear)
Restoration - healing

Hunter:
Beast Mastery - hunter pet
Marksmanship - ranged DPS
Survival - traps and other support skills

Mage:
Arcane - arcane spells (high burst, low mana sustainability)
Fire - fire spells (not so high burst, better mana sustainability)
Frost - frost spells (lower burst, high mana sustainability and survivability)

Paladin:
Holy - healing
Retribution - melee DPS
Protection - tanking

Priest:
Discipline - support, damage reduction
Holy - healing
Shadow - spell DPS

Rogue:
Assassination - poisons and sustained DPS
Combat - burst damage
Subtlety - stealth and "trickery" skills

Shaman:
Elemental - spell DPS
Enhancement - melee DPS
Restoration - healing

Warlock:
Affliction - DoT (damage over time) spells
Demonology - summoned warlock pets (demons)
Destruction - burst damage spells

Warrior:
Arms - two-handed weapon DPS
Fury - dual wielding DPS
Protection - tanking

Once you have decided on a talent tree you like it's time to figure out which talents you are going to put points into. I won't go into detail on this, but there are many other guides and blogs out there that do, so now that you've narrowed it down there should be a lot less research to go through to find the info you want. Just make sure the guides are up to date with the current patch as some talents change with new patches and an outdated guide can really mess things up for you. You will find many talent builds that come from the same tree, some for raiding, some for PVP, and it's up to you to figure out which build is going to benefit you the most. Once you find the build you want you are going to want to distribute your points as you level in a way that when you hit the level cap you will have that build.

Now you should be continuing on through the game and should be very comfortable with your character, although there is still a lot left to learn, but the overwhelming part should be over so have fun making your way through the levels and learning about all this game has to offer. Good luck!