Dugi’s Leveling Guide

Posted on 19 March 2010 by

If you’ve ever been out looking for a World of Warcraft guide, you’ve probably seen banners advertising Dugi’s Ultimate World of Warcraft guide.  For those of you who know the name and nothing more, the Ultimate WoW Guide consists of a few separate guides focusing on specific areas of the game.  There is a leveling guide add-on, a dailies guide add-on, and a gold guide ebook.  All are top-notch, and Dugi truly is at the top of the pile as far as WoW products are concerned, but for this article we will be focusing specifically on the leveling guide add-on. If you’d rather skip my review and go straight to Dugi’s site you can click here.

What is Dugi’s Leveling Guide?

Dugi’s Leveling Guide is an in-game add-on for World of Warcraft.  Many players feel that the game doesn’t really start until you hit the level cap, and the leveling process is nothing more than a chore that has to be done to “get to the good stuff”.  For others, going through the same quests that they’ve been doing for the past 5 years is mind-numbing, and they just want to get through it as fast as possible.  In-game leveling guides were created as an attempt to solve this problem for players.  It’s much more tolerable to just log in and follow the glowing arrow, drop and pick up quests as you’re told, and know exactly when to hand them in, where to set your hearthstone to, etc.  After leveling my first 2 characters to 85, I can tell you personally that I would never have gotten my other 3 characters to 70 or even 80 let alone 85 if not for in-game leveling guides.  Dugi’s guide is, in my opinion, the best of the in-game leveling guides, and if you read my review below, you’ll understand why.

Dugi’s Leveling Guide – Review

So, as you probably picked up earlier on this page, I’m a bit of an altoholic.  I like to experience the game from all angles, which is great in terms of keeping things fresh, but terrible for getting anything done.  I was amazed when I got my first character to 85 without any help, because I never thought I’d be able to buckle down.  The only reason my 2nd character, a Death Knight, made it to 85 is because he started at 55!  Once he dinged, I told myself that was it, no more leveling… Which worked out great until I decided I wanted a Druid.

Yep, it was time to buy a leveling guide.  I’m a little bit obsessive about my hobbies though, so I decided to buy 4 of them and try them all out.  All of them were great in their own right, but my #1 favorite out of them was Dugi’s leveling guide.  It was the fastest, it had the most intuitive user interface, and as a bonus, it integrated very well with his Dailies guide, which I had been using to speed up my daily quests on my Death Knight.

It’s extremely easy to install, just a matter of dropping the files into your Addons directory, and it pops up as soon as you get in-game.  I’ve tried Dugi’s guide with brand new characters as well as characters that I had completely shelved at various levels, and there is no guide that is more well-rounded.  From the moment you start questing until you hit the level cap, the guide holds your hand every step of the way.  I never wondered where to go next, or whether there was a faster way to level.  It shaved a full 2 days off of my fastest leveling time!

If you’re like me and you play characters all spread across multiple servers so you can play with friends, schoolmates, and coworkers, this guide is killer.  It’s as close as you can come to leveling on autopilot, and it truly does take the pain out of leveling.  After using it, I wouldn’t ever level a character again without it.  If you’re sick of leveling slowly or trying to figure out where you should be leveling, Dugi’s leveling guide is your best bet.  There’s no faster way to level.

Click here to download Dugi’s In-Game Leveling Guide

Warrior Leveling Guide

Posted on 19 March 2010 by

Newly updated for Cataclysm! Warriors are the quintessential melee class in World of Warcraft.  Every race has access to them, since every race has members that are able to pick up a sword, spear, axe, or mace.  Though they may not seem like it, they are actually a hybrid class since they can switch easily between tanking and DPS roles.  They split the roles up between their talent trees, with Arms handling 2-handed DPS with a focus on burst damage and PVP utility, Fury dealing with dual wield and sustained damage, and Protection giving you access to all the talents you need to be a top tier tank.

Warrior Leveling Stats

Since you’ll likely be focusing on DPS for leveling purposes, you’ll want to stack as much strength as possible.  Don’t neglect your crit rating, but for the most part you should be stacking strength whether you’re going Arms or Fury.  Keep your stamina at a reasonable level as well, since if you get an add you want to be able to survive long enough to kill the first mob and hit the second with Victory Rush.  If you’re leveling as Protection, that’s a different story.  Early on you’ll want to stack Stamina and Strength, and in the later game you’ll be looking to add Parry, Dodge, and Mastery Rating to your list of desired stats.

Warrior Leveling Build

If you’re planning on soloing or instancing as DPS, this is largely down to preference between Fury and Arms.  I’m partial to Arms myself, as I’m not a huge fan of dual-wielding and I like to do some PVP as I level up.  Arms is great for single target killing, if you keep your weapon up to date most things die before Mortal Strike is off cooldown.  Here’s the cataclysm warrior leveling build I use – click here.  If you prefer to dual wield and focus on sustained DPS, Fury might be a bit better for you.  Fury is also a great leveling build, like I said it comes down to preference.  If leveling as fury is more your thing, here’s the cataclysm leveling spec for you – click here.  Finally, for a small group of you who are planning on spending most of their time in instances and want a shorter queue, I’m not leaving you out.  My preferred Protection talent build for cataclysm is as follows – click here.  Note that Protection is kind of a deep tree, and needs more than 31 points in it to really shine.  Any of those builds should be able to get you to 85 without much trouble.

Warlock Leveling Guide

Posted on 19 March 2010 by

Newly updated for Cataclysm!  If you’re looking to master shadow and flame and summon demons to do your bidding, you should find Warlocks to be to your liking.  Warlocks are a pure DPS class, but they have plenty of versatility in how they perform their role, with their talent trees allowing them to swap between damage over time with Affliction, direct damage nukes with Destruction, or turning their summoned demons into an even bigger threat with Demonology.   Since a draw to darker powers is not exactly a race-exclusive trait, all races can be warlocks with the exception of the Night Elves and Draenei on the Alliance, and the Tauren of the Horde.

Warlock Leveling Stats

Your most valuable stat while leveling will be intellect, but thanks to Life Tap, stamina will usually be a close second for you.  Intellect provides you with a larger mana pool, a bonus to your spell damage, and an increase in your critical chance, so stack it as much as you can since it’s your bread and butter DPS stat.  Since you’ll be wearing cloth for armor, stamina is also pretty valuable, and provides you with a bit of a buffer if you pull aggro from your pet or a tank.  In the late game you will want to add spell power and maybe critical strike rating to your want list, depending on your spec.

Warlock Leveling Build

Since Affliction suffered some survivability nerfs with the release of Cataclysm, I’ve found Demonology to make the best leveling spec.  Getting a Felguard at level 10 is beastly, and the passive damage boosts in the tree will still give you plenty of firepower to take down your enemies.  Here’s the cataclysm warlock leveling spec that I’m currently using – click here.  If you want to kick it old school and level Affliction, that works too.  You’ll probably have to bandage a bit more often since you’ll be using Fear more than a Demo lock, and you’ll have a harder time surviving adds, but your kill speed will be quicker so it might even out in the end.  In my always-humble opinion, for Affliction the ideal cataclysm warlock leveling build is this – click here.  Finally, if you want to roll shadow mage style and assault your enemies with blasts of pure evil, Destruction is reasonably viable for leveling too.  The cataclysm spec for destruction warlocks that I came up with is this – click here.  No matter which spec you pick, warlocks tend to cruise through content without much effort, so you should be good to go for leveling your warlock to 85 with any spec!