The Rate of Fire Guide to Leveling guides

Chapter 1: why are some leveling guides so bad?

There’s a number of reasons.

Lets take the talent tree for starters.

1) the guide was written by someone who at level 80 (or whatever level he was at) looked back at the build he came up with along the way and Figured that well he made it to 80 with that build so It must have been good

2) the leveling guide was made before whichever patch rendered obsolete the build he used.

3) its not really a bad build but it was built with a specific pet in mind (for example there are things I would have done differently in my build if I had a Bear Boar Spider or any of a dozen other pets instead of Purrball (My Cat)

4) Gear that is available to you as you level up will also have some impact on how he levels. “Ok its got better Armor than what I have now and its 5-10 levels higher but the stats are different. . . (say + ag but a hit to stamina int or agility for example) but because of gear he got his hands on things might be a bit different from what you use. Especially if He went with say Leather crafting while you went with Engineer Inscribing JC or alchemy for example

5) And this is a bigger one than people realize... the build is a “what I would do now if I had only known back then” build. . . . Only She (or he) forgot (a)that for most of the early game the zone design is completely different from the expansion zones so what works there is not as workable in the endgame. They try to convert the current endgame “PvE” and explain how it will work at lower levels when all too often it just does not apply and (b) they did not actualy level with that talentbuild

6) Flavor of the month builds will have your head spinning at times. Lets face it a lot of those flavors are endgame flavors to start with, are more Raid or Group oriented, or were tweaked with whatever they currently used in mind (or worse are “PvP oriented” or what have you.

7) what works for him probably will not work for you. Lets face it my build as I level up is pure beast. The way Purrball and I work is that Purrball goes in and dines on a selection of fine NPCs while doing everything she can to keep them PTHO at her (Including pure damage) while I plink away with my gun (yes I have a gun, I am an engineer, I prefer to make my own ammo and right now I’m not up to crafting arrows yet(grumbles)
If I had a bear out though my build would probably be More MM because from everything I have seen bears have few problems with keeping npcs glued on them. Which incidentaly brings me to my final category

8) the person who wrote a given build never actually LEVELED that build. With dual specking you can (as soon as you have the cash) plug in any talent build you want in your second slot (heck with respecting you could do it anyway) and the odds are they are at least 10 discarded builds themselves from the build they actually leveled up on.

Now lets move on to the next big problem area the leveling guides have

“The Fastest Path to Level XXX is as follows” (and then a list of zones to hit and/or quests to take or skip)

Oy vey!

Lets be blunt here, there’s going to be a lot of difference in how you will level through those zones and how everyone else has or will level through those zones.

1) Time commitment. If player A can put in 4-8 hours a day and player B can put in 2-4 hours Player B on a per hour played basis will be able to burn through the zones with a slight bump all the way along the way in part because he will be earning more of his XP while in “Bonus time” than player A. this will tend to keep him slightly ahead of the leveling curve for each zone and also slightly ahead of what the mobs can do to him and he can do in return to the mobs just because he has that slight XP edge.

2) Population differences. Lets face it if your lucky(or unlucky take you pick) to be able to start on a new server, or on a high pop server, or on a older server where most of the player base is in the endgame, then at the very least, the competition for mobs to kill will be different, the demand for Raw mats will be different, heck even the gear on the rest of the party in a given PUGs will be different because of the ratio of twinkled alts to untwined newbie’s will be completely different.

3) Tweaks and changes made by the developers. This will probably come as a surprise to you but the Developers also read some of those guides out there and have gone back and modified quest rewards(XP Faction gains and so on) Mob spawn rates and so on. In Fact were about to hit an expansion that’s sounds like its going to throw all of those current “where when how“ leveling guides in the trash bin faster than the shredders can shred them.

4) and this is a big one. . . He was in one of the two factions, your in annother. a number of zones are completly diferent in feel from one faction to another. heck if you started out as (for example) a Dwarf and he started off as a Night elf(or you did Orc and he did Blood elf) and you both stuck to "your" starting area untill around level 10-15 just the diference in the gear you can come out with between thoes two zones can make things easyer or harder. (never mind the diference to play that can happen just because of the starting racials)
　
Now for the final category as to why a given “leveling guide” might stink.

Age.

I’ve touched on this earlier but it bears repeating

The older a Leveling guide is the less relevant to the current game it is. Any Pre Wrath guide is worthless as it stands, come Cataclysm any leveling guide is probably going to be toast,

Lets be honest, every time they “balance” talents skills spells and abilities its with the endgame in mind, not the leveling game.