I'm new to WoW, and I've tried a couple builds but I'm not really satisfied. I want to find a good, quick leveling, PvE solo hack-and-slash build. I would like some healing spells or something similar, but not if there is a major sacrifice to damage. Of course, if my defense is so high that I seldom need to be healed, then I don't need to have healing!

Thanks a lot,
TennsonXII

What level and class are you? Need to know to be able to advise :p

Basically, I want to create a new character. I currently have a level 10 Night Elf Rogue, a level 6 Human Warrior, and a level 7 Orc Warrior.

In my experience, rogues and hunters are easy-mode, you'll kill things quickly and get quests done really fast, but they are immensely repetetive. If you don't mind doing the same thing over and over and over again for 70 levels, I'd recommend either of these. Good dps with very little downtime.

Generally I recommend all new players try a class that can heal themselves. You'll often find yourself in a bit of a bad situation, and rather than just get frustrated with it, allowing yourself to die, it's a good skill to know how to get out of it. Given what you've said about wanting good damage, and maybe some healing, the two I'd recommend for you are Shaman or Druid.

Druids learn different forms for different abilities. The first you'll learn is Bear, which makes you a tank. When you shift into bear form, your health and armor dramatically increase, and you're able to hold onto multiple mobs with great ease. This is great when you get into trouble, pulling too many things. You still maintain the ability to heal, at the click of a button, you shapeshift back to human, cast your heal, then shift back to bear. Bears use the same Rage mechanic as warriors. The next form you learn is Cat. The cat form works very much the same as a rogue, just not quite the same skill range. You can stealth up to things and claw at them til they die. Cats use the Energy mechanic, similar to rogues, which results in very little downtime. Both bear and cat form use the Feral talent tree.

If you're not a fan of melee dps, the druid class also offers a Moonkin form, which you have to spec into, rather than quest for in the case of bear and cat. The moonkin form basically makes you a casting machine, doing powerful nature spells. You can cast in human form too, but moonkin offers more specialised talents for this. This uses the Balance talent tree. Finally, the last option for druids are as healers. You can eventually spec into Tree of Life form, increasing your skill at pure healing. I wouldn't recommend the Restoration spec for levelling, although it's super-fun at end game (My main has been a resto druid for about a year). It's worth noting though, as a druid healer, you don't have the same kind of heals offered by the other 'regular' healing classes. Your heals are mostly heal-over-time (HoTs), ticking for a certain amount of health every few seconds or so.

So onto Shaman. They have a similar talent structure to druids, with 3 distinct trees: Enhancement, Elemental, and Restoration. Again, I wouldn't recommend levelling as resto, unless you are working with a friend, who would need healing a lot. The main choices for levelling are Enhance or Ele in this case. Most people go Enhance, but it isn't unheard of, and certainly not unwise to go Ele, depending on what you want to do.

Enhance is melee combat. With this spec, and working through the talent tree, you are able to dual-wield weapons at level 40. Combine this with totems, which you learn while levelling, you can be a dps machine. Downside is this is a mana using class, and while Enhance is the least mana dependent, it can still lead to some downtime between fights. With Ele, you are a caster, again using mostly nature damage against your opponents. Of everything I've mentioned so far, I know least about this spec, so this would be mostly up to you to research if you opt to go for this. And like druids, Shaman have healing spells they can use all the time, although with shaman, you do not need to shapeshift to use them, they are available at all times.

Hope this all helps. If you want any more information on other classes, let me know.

hi people

Protection Specced Paladin. They don't have much damage initially, but later on they will have so much spell damage and damage mitigation that they will obliterate your enemies. The trick though is to tank the mobs when out soloing. You grab 4-5 monsters and then you use stuff like Avenger's Shield and Concecration, Holy Shield, etc. (anything that damages several enemies at once) and you use Seal of Wisdom with Judgement of Wisdom to keep your mana topped off. You heal when you get low on HP and you tank the enemies. I have fun switching targets before they die so I get all of my attackers to die simultaneously. This way you end up killing 5 guys in the time it takes a DPS to kill 1 or 2 . Plus you look badass while doing it.

Not true. My mana pool was in the 7k mark. Most ret pallies have it lower. Not to mention they usually have less HP.

mrcheese:
Ret pallies over level 60 will generally have at least 10k

By 80 they'll be hovering around 15k. I know a T7 prot pally, she has 5k mana at level 80, if you have 7k you're stacking something wrong.

Actually ret pallies suffer in the mana department in the same way prot pallies do. They've completely removed the Strength-Stam-Int plate items from current gameplay. You still see these in outlands, but they are all but useless now. Ret pallies share the same gearing and itemization as DPS warriors and DKs. Holy pallies have epic mana pools, not ret or prot. And I have 5.5k mana :P

BM hunter would be very easy to PVE

soloed ret pally , in all its new glory, 1-80, faster then any character ive played, soloed every outlands group quest (2-3 man,some 5) . Its just to easy, and now im 80 and sepcd holy.

I'd say either go with a Rogue focused on combat skills, or a Hunter with a focus on BM and a few dabblings in increasing your ranged combat skills.

For the Rogue, I'd say to either pick up alchemy so that you can make the potions to buff and heal yourself, or go with engineering since, well, you'll be able to emulate a lot of class features and abilities of other classes which will help you in soloing situations, and the various dragon pets and grenades will help out in combat as well. Either way be sure to increase your first aid and cooking skills as much as possible. Also, the Rogue's ability to stealth will allow you to solo many situations that other classes simply can't. Have a quest that requires you to steal a specific item? Sneak past the baddies that would require a full group to take on and grab it. Need to hunt down X amount of tough ogres in a cave? Use stealth to slowly pick them off when they're alone.

For the Hunter. Get a good gun or bow. I'd say gun here though. Now, you'll either want to pick up Engineering or have a friend or an alt with it, the reason, supperior guns and ammo. Now you also want to pick a good pet for this. I'd suggest the bear, I like how they can serve as a tank, but then I'm partial. Either way you want a pet that can draw aggro and that can take a lot of punishment, damage output doesn't matter much here, but the defense and hp of the pet does. Your job here will be to stand back and blast whatever attacks your pet away.