Good class and profession combinations for leveling with a friend in WoW?
this is kind of a follow up to my recent question regarding WoW and leveling (here). My friend decided to try WoW and i would like to play with him from level 1 to 85 with a brand new character. I would like to know what are some good choices of class and professions in a 2-man party, so that there is perfect synergy between us? We are on a PvE server and are mainly focused on PvE, so you can disregard anything thats related to PvP (Arenas etc.).
One thing to consider is that my friend strongly favors playing as a hunter (he looked through the classes available in WoW and immediatelly fell in love with this one). However I can probably persuade him to play something else.
As a side note, i was thinking of a Druid+Hunter combo, where Hunter would go for Skin/LW and Druid for Herb/Alch. Both can benefit from Alch (elixirs etc.) and both wear leather (+mail for the hunter). Any other ideas, suggestions?
In terms of classes, trying to cover all three roles between the two of you is a good target. When you guys are questing together by yourselves, having one person be DPS and the other healing helps keeps downtime to a minimum. And if you guys decide to use the Dungeon Finder, having one person able to heal and the other be able to tank ensures you'll never have to wait long in the queue.
Blizzard has homogenized the classes over the years so there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the classes and specs. As long as you guys cover the three class roles, feel free to choose whatever fancies you.
For reference the hybrid classes are:
- All three roles: Paladins, Druids
- DPS + Healing: Priests, Shamen
- DPS + Tanking: Warriors, Death Knights
If you're going to take my advice about role coverage, you'll want to avoid Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, and Rogues as they can only be one role: DPS.
Since you're talking 1-85 play, Death Knights are off the table as they start at level 55.
Putting it all together:
- Person 1: Paladin, Druid, or Warrior (to cover tanking)
- Person 2: Paladin, Druid, Priest, or Shaman (to cover healing)
In terms of professions, I'd avoid the heavy crafting professions that take a lot of time to level up and are usually taken for the Bind-on-pickup endgame recipes: Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Engineering, Leatherworking. Instead, focus on the professions that'll let you help each other out while leveling, like Enchanting and Alchemy, or the gathering professions, like Mining and Skinning, which will prove lucrative and won't require too much (if any) time soloing.
I'm going to go the complete other direction and say for strict 1-85, a pair of DPS will serve best. Leveling is about killing things fast. Normal mobs will barely scratch a even a cloth wearer. The synergy comes from sharing kill quest credit by each person taking on their own mobs. 2 people focusing on 1 monster is just wasting time. Every class has some form of self healing, and otherwise bandaids & food can get you through if you really need healing. You might want to consider a hunter or warlock as one of the dps since a pet can be handy, but really any 2 solid DPS classes will tear through levels. Going into a tanking or healing spec is just going to slow things down.
Aside from first aid, professions tend to hinder leveling. It is ridiculously easy to max a gathering profession at level 85, and subsequently is easy to work with a crafting profession as well.
This is just strictly advice to get you from 1-85. If you want to consider after that if you want groups, then one of you should pick a hybrid that can play a tank. A tank in the group = instant queue pops.
I have been running this same scenario in my head and I think the following sounds good:
Mage /lock- there can be nothing bad about aie grinding up to 12 mobs at a time.
Shad priest/lock- free heals, free manage, 0 downtime and a pet. Seems a good synergy
Paladin/mage- same principle as the lock-mage, but now you have better versatility