A Protection speced Pally can level amazingly quickly if they know how to. (It involves killing five mobs at once).

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I, too, have played all the classes (beyond 30, and in many cases, 40+), and actually found it faster to level my warlock than my hunter, but everyone's mileage may vary. Fear and never having to worry about running out of arrows are nice aspects of the 'lock.

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I've played a Druid(Feral leveling, Resto for end game) and a Priest (Shadow leveling and endgame) and The priest was by far easier to level. Less deaths, and a lot less downtime.

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Yeah, I also have to put the Warlock higher (faster) in the list. Lifetap means effectively no downtime. A Warlock, especially Affliction, can grind for hours without stopping to eat/drink/bandage. They can engage multiple targets with DoT's and like Hunters, are very survivable.

My experience would also probably swap Druids and Priests in that list.

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A protection spec paladin can level rather quickly -for a paladin-, but it requires a specific gear setup and only works on certain mobs. I'm glad my paladin was my main and I didn't know any better. Never having to do a corpse run is nice, but the vast majority of leveling involves killing, and pallys just do it far slower than anyone else. Leveling a druid now, the fact that it doesn't take 30 seconds to kill a mob alarms and pleases me.

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I have a hard time with the rogue being that high. Maybe it's just because I can't really get mine out of the low 20s. Without vanish or distract, it's a huge pain to stealth and get behind something for an ambush, and attempting to take on multiple mobs usually winds up with me popping Sprint and Evade to escape with my hide. I can do well against mobs a couple levels below me, but I wouldn't even try to solo some of the quests that I can with my hunter.

Does it get better as you get higher level?

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No it doesn't. Leveling my rogue through quests was often a painful process. Pull too many mobs at once ( really easy to do, as you are aware ) and you have to evacuate and use a cooldown. Of course, if that particular mob put a dot on you, consider vanish almost useless.

I would never put a rogue higher than a warlock on this list. Warlocks can easily handle and recover from "pull too many mobs" flaws.... Rogue's however, have to rely on their ability to get out of the situation, which is in effect -- downtime.

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How does a shaman restore their mana? Asssuming you're enhancement, at low levels you don't use mana, you just auto attack, and by the time you need to heal your mana is back. At higher levels, you have shamanistic rage. So long as you have decent gear, a shaman with windfury can rip through things quick smart with no downtime.

IMO a shaman is faster than a warlock. Warlock levelling speed is vastly over-rated: demonology is useless prior to felguard, affliction is safe but fairly slow due to dots taking their time, and destruction is fast to kill but has down time like a mage.

On the other hand, druids are just awesome, especially once you get improved leader of the pack. You hardly even have to shift out for heals most of the time once you get that talent.

Hunters are the kings though. Unfortunately, the fact they're easy tends to mean they also attract a lot of people who can't play very well. It's a double edged sword.

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My human pali leveled very quickly to L40 with a retribution spec. At L18 she tackled L21-23 MOBs at Tranquil Gardens in Duskwood without losing a fight. At L20 she moved on to Raven Hill and systematically chewed her way through MOBs four levels above her. She never lost a fight. At L40 her advantage is showing signs of decline. My BElf pali also advanced very rapidly. I am not convinced that palis belong in last place.

Hunters are ridiculously over powered and mine hasn't lost a solo fight for at least 30-40 levels. At L61 she remains a powerhouse. With a sound build and skill in chain trapping a hunter can win fights beyond the abilities of any other class at the same level. This class is the clear winner.

My Warlock quickly and almost effortlessly made it L40. She is so powerful and easy to play that I find myself getting bored with her. I'd put locks in second place. A pet does wonders for survivability -- particularly Void Walkers who can sacrifice themselves in order to allow a lock to flee the scene of battle.

My hybrid Arcane/Fire mage struggled all the way to L40. This might be the result of a defective build. Nevertheless, others have commented on the relative weakness of mages in solo PvE for the first forty or so levels. I would put mages closer to the bottom -- perhaps all the way at the bottom.

I would also downgrade rogues as Sap only applies to humanoids and once you take that out of the picture tackling pairs at or above your level becomes very iffy. I would downgrade rogues in terms of leveling speed. They belong closer to the bottom than to the top.

My Arms warrior has sped her way up to L48. This was assisted by a plentiful supply of bandages from my much higher level hunter.

My Shadow priestess is only L34 but has trouble handling duos. As she has been primarily relying on wands to do her killing her down time is negligible. Priests belong somewhere in the middle of the pack.

My L34 Druid has leveled quickly but not as quickly as my lock.

I suspect my rankings and those of the author are in significant measure build, gear and skill dependent. While I play all nine classes I am not equally good or bad at all of them. All of my toons except for my lock are equipped with the best items money can buy. All have access to Runecloth and Heavy Runecloth bandages 20 levels before they reach the zones where they can harvest the mats. All have a stack of Swiftness Potions on their toolbars so they can flee fights gone bad.

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The reason that rogues are so high on the list: Even though they're paper tanks, they kill things so fast that they can go through two or three mobs in the time that it would take most classes to go through 1. Ironically, their hardest levels are the lowest - as they get higher, they DO get more comparatively powerful.


The problem with this list is that it only considers speed leveling. In reality, the class viability is a tradeoff between leveling ability and endgame utility. Pure DPS classes at endgame are highly interchangeable, with the only distinction being between "Safe" dps (hunters, mages, boomkin, etc) and melee dps (rogues, feral druids, etc)

So I wouldn't consider hunters to be the most playable at endgame, because they're a dime a dozen, and easily replaced with other classes.

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Yes, for Rogue, I can say it gets better. Once you get Poisons and Vanish, it definitely gets better. By that time you have put enough points into your respective talent tree that your damage output (and possibly your defense via parry/dodge) will have increased to help take on mobs higher than your level. However, it is all about the set up. If you are just running around and you aggro a mob and are unprepared, you will have a lot harder time.

Rogues are all about getting the starting jump. However, unless you are deep into combat spec and have extra trinkets for more stuns or dodge and damage bursts, it is hard to take on more than 2 mobs at once.

I do have to agree that Hunters are the absolute easiest to level, and I think that Warlocks are right behind them. Right after warlock is where I would put rogue.

Some people can't do the twitchy yet methodical thinking a rogue requires to be effective. It has taken me some time to teach my husband how to play a rogue because he just can't get a lot of the fundamentals of the play-style.

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I have to say, druid is fantastic. Such a large set of abilities. I can pull at range to avoid over-aggro, nuke while theyre incoming, switch to cat and finish them off, drop out of cat, renew, and keep going. My health is ALWAYS full, my mana is always around 80%, i have effectively zero downtime except when I over-nuke or pull too many and have to heal too much then i get a drink, but thats rare. I just love the flexibility of being able to do mana-less dps, then still have that mana there to heal or keep nuking the next mob.

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Playing a level 70 Rogue myself I obviously feel more inclined to pull for my class, but with that put aside I think people are forgetting the aspects that make a rogue able to level fast. The fact we can stealth, along with druids, allows us to complete quests faster. We don't have to mess with clearing our way to the quests objective. Granted mobs would give a little more experience, but we all know a mob gives comparitively lower amount of XP than a completed quest will give. We can simply stealth to the named person to kill or whatever the objective might be. Obviously depending on the level and your spec will factor our survivability with multiple mobs but at level 30 if you are combat we can use our Blade Fury which allows multiple mobs to be fairly easy.

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There is a statistical study at PlayOn based on Worldofwarcraft realms data and they debunked a lot of the myths about the faster leveling classes.

The three fastest, in order were Priest, yes it's serious, the mage and then the shaman. There are many graphs showing different conditions and different level categories but the results are always the same.

look it up : http://blogs.parc.com/playon/archives/2005/07/leveling_time_b.html

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@14 this study really doesn't tell us much other than how long on average it takes for people playing X class to level.

Note is is not the same as how long it takes for a class to level, just how long it takes people playing the class to level.

IOW, this doesn't take into account, for instance, that maybe a large number of hunters, as is often joked about, ARE huntards (disclosure: my main is a hunter), and don't know how to play their class, or that mages can port to where they want to go, or that all the draenai shaman rolled early on were to fill in spots needed in raiding guilds and so were leveled up like crazy by hard core raiders, etc.

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@14 To put it more (or maybe less?) clearly, a study on time to level doesn't take into account the behavior of the people playing them.

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My first class to 60: Hunter.
My first class to 70: Priest.

I swear it felt like levelling the priest was twice as fast. VERY efficient class when spec'd as shadow. No problem finding groups for high-xp instances, which offers an excellent trade off from the quest grind, and make no mistake, shadow priests go from "good" solo to "Awesome" in a group (especially with one o' my lil warlock buddies).

So, somehow I think the study mentioned in #14 might have some truth. I certainly felt that levelling my priest flew by compared to my hunter.

-Sufferer

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I didn't like that class evaluation. Mages and Paladins should be much higher up with their AoE grinding.

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My comments are not to be construed as scientific by any means, but I feel compelled to throw my two cents in because I have some first hand experience with all nine classes. I have a level 70 of every class. I averaged a level a day, rotating between all nine, covering the same quests per nine day period. I think the builds make a huge difference in the rate of experience gain. My personal ranking would go something like this:

Hunter – Easiest to level. Whether I was using a marks or beastmaster, my hunter had an answer for everything.

Warlock – Second easiest to level. As affliction or Demonology, she was efficient. I’m not sure if it was the fact she was a cloth wearer or that resistances influence her ability to cc.. but I felt survivability was just a touch under that of the hunter.

Mage – Kill everything that gets in your way. In regular solo PvE, he was dominant. The only obstacles were the occasional high hp elite with guards.

Shaman – I levelled as enhancement and seldom had major mana issues. She was very self sufficient, with heals, cures for disease and poison. If something else bad was incoming, she was ready with a grounding totem. Non-elite adds played with the stoneclaw totem till I could get to them.

Rogue – My rogue had no trouble against single targets, rarely taking damage. Against two, she would pop evasion and blade flurry. So why the lower rating? Hate to say this, but nothing caused more wear and tear on me than the constant stunning and backstabbing. Carpal tunnel anyone?

Warrior – Warriors are personally my favorite class to play. Downtime eating food to replenish life was probably the only real limitation. Lack of good escape options was also sometimes annoying. But how could I pass up the chance to tank big bad dragons with a little gnome in pigtails?

Druid – My experience was primarily with a Balance / Resto druid, which seem to need more mana than I had. If I went on the offensive, I would have to sit and drink sooner than later. If I eased back on offense, the fights would go longer and I would have to heal afterward. Which would lead to drinking again.

Paladin – Holy / Ret paladin was tough to kill, but seem to take longer to kill things. Especially mobs that could heal.

Priest – Levelled a Disc / Holy priest, so that was probably what decreased the levelling rate. But it made it easier to be main healer for our instance runs.


So there you have it. If you spec to be a team player, you will probably level slower than a class that does not have to. I’m basing this on the fact that I saw, time and again, that on the days I played the bottom four classes on my list.. it took longer to ding that level. Ultimately, they all reached 70 around the same time. But the truth is, some of them “felt” like less work than others to get there.

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Feral druids have almost no downtime while soloing. Cat form kills stuff pretty fast and when you get low on health, just pop out and heal. If you ever run low on mana, innervate back to full and you are ready to go again.

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