The Queue: Wear shoulder pads like it's 1989 and get The Immortal title
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 5th 2009 at 6:30PM
Salutations and fond wishes everyone. Today in the queue we'll spend a moment looking at shoulders you can get for your alts. Shoulder padding, if you will... Remember shoulder pads? I hear they were popular in the '80s. Along with Ghostbusters. And Ghostcrawler is popular now. So therefore Ghostcrawler is only two steps removed from the fads of the '80s.
Bet ya' didn't see that one coming.
Be sure to submit your questions about patch 3.1 in the comments. We'll try to answer as many as possible in the next few days.
Jared Daniels asks...
"Would you recommend getting the inherited plate shoulder pads solely for the purpose of leveling my Death Knight and Warrior from 70-80? My main is a Mage and I am coming close to being able to buy the ones from using Stone Keeper Shards. If no, then what would you recommend I do with the shards?"
Given that the trek from 70 to 80 provides many great green and blue shoulder options, I wouldn't waste my shards if I were you. While the shoulder pads do provide a 10% experience bonus when killing monsters, the vast majority of experience gained in Northrend comes from doing quests. Take those shards and use them to buy Bind on Account shoulders for your other alts instead.
Spiraea asks...
"What's a good achievable title for a priest? Specifically, a night elf priest. I know a player can go after and have whatever title they so please but some classes seem to have titles that are made for them. For example, Druids have "Guardian of Cenarius" while Paladins have "The Argent Champion". Anything for priests?"
The Immortal. Hands down.
If you want to inspire confidence in your group members, get that title. Then you can do fun things like say in the LGF channel, "Holy Priest with the immortal title LFG, PST." I can guarantee you'll get a group anytime you want one. And if you can't? Give me a call, I'll pay for your server transfer so you can join my guild.
OnBreak asks...
"I'm planning to start a new Horde character (never played horde) over a new server with a friend of mine who's gonna be starting WoW (we'll be using the recruit a friend thing). I was wondering if the is a class combo who could allow us to do instances while leveling but without requiring us to get other people. I was thinking Hunter-Priest? Would the pet be able to tank instances on the way of leveling?"
I've leveled several characters up with the recruit-a-friend program. I've mainly done my leveling with dual boxing each account myself, and I've found that the best combination has been my Hunter-Paladin. With that combo you're going to be given a lot of leeway in what you want each character to do. The hunter is obviously going to be your primary DPS, but you can also have your Paladin pitch in and hit things when necessary, or tank a group of mobs like a pro. Oh, and Paladins can heal too in case we all forgot that.
Using this combo I've found it possible to do everything in the old world. I've even been able to run some instances after I'm a few levels ahead of them (Dead Mines, for what it's worth).
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Trilynne Feb 5th 2009 6:40PM
for the Horde duo leveler, I would have one of you take up a tank class, and the other a healer (or perhaps two hybrids so you can both try the different roles). DPS is a dime a dozen for the lower level instances; it's harder to find people who can tank or heal.
Zaabel Feb 5th 2009 6:46PM
DPS may be a dime a dozen, but the questioner specifically said he didn't want to get more people. I would also heartily endorse the Paladin-Hunter combo. My GF and I have a hunter-paladin combo on our mains and we can also run most 5-mans just a couple levels above the elites.
Dora the Explorer Feb 5th 2009 6:56PM
Too right!
That's exactly what I was going to recommend.
A friend that I made in wow and me are leveling new characters this way; thus when you want to go to an instance I guarantee you won't have to wait long to fill up the 3 dps spots.
IrishWoW Feb 5th 2009 8:11PM
I've gotta go with the whole "hybrid" thought, personally i levelled my main (elemental shammy) with an irl friend who switched between prot and ret on his pally, we've done this same technique many times nd it always extremely fast
The idea of both classes having moderate heals meant there was literally no down time when we levelled, short of having to run to BE starter zone at lvl5 ^^
Granted we didnt do all that much instancing, mostly just ploughed our way through the zones at breakneck speed, but whenever we did take a break to instance possibly the most enjoyable thing was that as elemental and retri we could still quite easily heal and tank instances respectively, needing only to find dps and using this same method up to the nexus (my 3sec cast heals just became too slow at this point)
just my 2cents anyway and apologies for the wall of text, i tend to ramble on when im tired ^^
vazhkatsi Feb 5th 2009 7:56PM
yeah, i pretty much duoed deadmines on my first hunter when i was level 21, and a 18 priest healing my pet. mainly because i had omen, and didn't pull off of my pet. (pre3.02) our tank dced, our dps was underleveled and the other dps kept pulling threat and dieing. get a hunter/healer duo, get a tanking pet, and go with that. it works pretty damn well.
OnBreak Feb 5th 2009 8:29PM
Yep, i think ill get a Crab right off the bat in Durotar ( I plan on starting an Orc hunter) until i can get a Gorilla in STV. I find the Pin ability so much cool in some way, having a CC and DoT merged together seems great. What do you think?
Also, this is only going to happen in late May, when were both done with school, so maybe things may change a bit. We'll see!
Paul D Feb 5th 2009 11:41PM
I've found that hunter-warlock works reasonably well. No proper healing, but you do get two tanks and four bodies total plus lots of ranged DPS and CC, giving you a lot of options for handling larger groups of mobs. If you do get into trouble, the hunter can feign death and the warlock can use a soulstone. No loot overlap either.
Gormakr Feb 6th 2009 10:14AM
I'd recommend 2 druids. You'll start in the same place, it's easy to have 1 feral who can switch from cat dps to bear for outside/ inside instances while the other goes resto or balance and can heal.
ambient Feb 6th 2009 11:29AM
I found hunter-priest to be a fantastic leveling duo. Because I chose to spec Shadow, we had the greatest success with Tenacity pets. (If you have a dedicated healer, you could experiement more with Cunning pets, Ferocity pets, and/or non-Beast Mastery hunter specs.) The synergy is fantastic for reducing downtime: Vampiric Embrace passive heals keep everyone's health up, hunter saves the mana they would be pouring into Mend Pet, and Vampiric Touch keeps the priest's mana up. Plus you have fantastic DPS and off-heals when things go bad. I also loved it when others would try and ninja our pulls. You want a mob-tagging competition?? No one can compete with Hunters for distance and speed on ranged pulls (DKs can win once with Death Grip but not again for 35 seconds!), so the Hunter rotates in a circle grabbing everything within reach, the caster and pet mow them down before they reach the group, and the aspiring bully is left pouting in a field of dead mobs. Nagrand was the definite highlight of that level grind.
I also highly enjoyed rogue-frost mage. Mage pulls with frostbolt, mob stumbles slowly over only to be cheap-shotted half way there, rogue is now perfectly positioned for backstabbing, and the mob dies before the stun wears off. You won't even use Frost Nova unless you get multiple mobs.
Next on our agenda is something more traditional: prot pally-resto druid.
Eisengel Feb 6th 2009 8:51PM
"(DKs can win once with Death Grip but not again for 35 seconds!)"
hrm...
New patch update, DK skill Death Grip will be retooled:
Death Grip will be renamed I.W.I.N. We think this is better in keeping with the tone of the overall skill and communicates its function better. Additionally, the glyph of Death Grip will be changed to to glyph of Pwnage.
Neil T. Feb 5th 2009 6:42PM
Ghostcrawler pic is just pure win.
Duck Knight Feb 5th 2009 6:44PM
Useless post to block the "first"ers? Nice.
Adam Holisky Feb 5th 2009 6:48PM
Several of us here have developed a penchant for deleting "First!" and all that garbage.
Although it's nice to know that we've grown so big we're attracting that kind of spam. But it's nice in that dirty kind of way that you feel all icky about afterwards.
funny name Feb 5th 2009 8:04PM
Bravo!...Now if only Blizzard would start deleting some trollers from the official forums we might be able to get some actual 2way conversation going about this game without the extra noise.
Just dont take it too far and turn into communist Russia.
Chris Anthony Feb 5th 2009 8:59PM
In Soviet Russia, First Post deletes YOU!
Rilandune Feb 5th 2009 6:44PM
In terms of 3.1 changes, how will the Hunger For Blood change for Rogues play out in terms of when it procs/takes effect and how it will be refreshed? Those details seemed a bit fuzzy, even for a preview of the patch notes.
Thanks!
~Rilandune
Tristina Feb 5th 2009 6:48PM
300 Shards for the Mammoth. Just sayin'
Eberron Feb 5th 2009 6:51PM
I'm going to say "Two Paladins" for which would be the best combination.
Failing that, I'd say Ret Paladin/Balance Druid. Retribution can certainly tank all the low-level content gearing up for defense rating once in Outland/Northrend while Balance druids should be able to pick up several mana efficiency talents (Omen of Clarity + Dreamstate + Intensity) allows them to offspec heal well.
So you have solid DPS/buffs for duoing content and you can easily put together a 5 man group when you have either 2 DPS, 1 DPS/1heal or heal/tank already arranged.
Invincible leveling team!
Fingal Feb 5th 2009 6:56PM
He came, he saw, he kicked our ass!
Rekkla Feb 5th 2009 7:02PM
I think the best combo is Feral druid (with inscription) and enh/elem shammy.
You've both got massive damage output, lots of survivability, both can heal, you can hearth together every 20 minutes, each of you can res the other in the event of one person dying and the shammy can self-res every hour in case both of you die. Also, you don't have the same armor to roll on after level 40.
I tried this combo with my gf for a little while, and we had a lot of success.