The first real decision in World of Warcraft comes before you leave the character screen. You pick a race and a class, and while the race is mostly a matter of looks and story, the class decides how you’ll play for the next hundreds of hours. It sets the role you can fill in a group, the armor you wear, whether you fight up close or from a distance, and which spells sit on your bars.
There are thirteen playable classes. Each has three specializations, except the Druid, which has four, so the game offers forty in all. The specialization is what really defines a character’s job, and two players of the same class can have completely different evenings, one keeping a raid alive and the other dealing damage at the front.
The choice is less permanent than it looks. A character picks a specialization at level 10, and after that it can switch to any other specialization of its class as often as the player likes.
Start with the role
Group content in WoW is built around three roles. Tanks hold the attention of enemies and take the hits. Healers keep the group alive. Everyone else deals damage, and in a five-player dungeon the usual split is one tank, one healer and three damage dealers.
That makes the role the most useful question to answer first, because only some classes can fill each one. Six classes can tank: the Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Monk, Paladin and Warrior. Six can heal: the Druid, Evoker, Monk, Paladin, Priest and Shaman. Four are damage dealers only, with no tank or healer specialization at all: the Hunter, Mage, Rogue and Warlock.
The overlap matters more than it seems. A Paladin, Monk or Druid can tank, heal or deal damage, so a player who later wants to try another role can do it without starting over. The pure damage classes give up that freedom, but they never have to split their attention between jobs either.
What a character costs to run
Whatever you pick, the class will need gold. Armor wears down in combat and costs gold to repair, and the consumables that help in harder content, such as potions, flasks and food, are bought or crafted. Gear made by other players through crafting orders comes with a commission, and changing the look of your armor with transmogrification costs a small fee each time. None of these costs is large on its own, but together they make gold a steady part of every class’s routine.
The usual sources are adventuring, professions and selling what you find on the Auction House. If farming eats into hours you’d rather spend learning a rotation, you can buy WoW gold instead. Treat the seller like any online shop: know the delivery method and timing up front, and read its complaints somewhere it can’t edit them.
Up close or from a distance
The second question is how you like to fight. Melee characters stand next to their target, which keeps them in the middle of every fight and asks them to move out of danger often. Ranged characters cast or shoot from a distance and spend more of their attention on positioning and timing.
Some classes stay on one side of that line. Rogues and Warriors always fight in melee, while Mages, Warlocks and Evokers attack from range. Others let the specialization decide. A Hunter can fight in melee as Survival or from range with a bow or gun. A Shaman can wield weapons as Enhancement or throw spells as Elemental, and a Druid can fight as a cat in Feral form or cast as Balance. The Demon Hunter, a melee class for most of its history, gained a ranged specialization, the Devourer, with the Midnight expansion.
Armor type and gear
Every class wears one of four armor types, and that decides which gear drops are useful to you. Mages, Priests and Warlocks wear cloth. Demon Hunters, Druids, Monks and Rogues wear leather. Evokers, Hunters and Shamans wear mail, and Death Knights, Paladins and Warriors wear plate.
This has a practical side in groups. The fewer people in your group who share your armor type, the fewer players compete with you for the same pieces. It also affects which professions make gear for you: tailors make cloth, leatherworkers make leather and mail, and blacksmiths make plate.
The hero classes
Three classes start their story differently. The Death Knight arrived with Wrath of the Lich King, the Demon Hunter with Legion and the Evoker with Dragonflight. Each skips the standard opening zones for an introduction of its own: Death Knights begin at level 8 in Acherus, the Ebon Hold, Demon Hunters at level 8 in Mardum, and Evokers at level 10 on the Forbidden Reach. The Evoker is also tied to one race, since only the dracthyr can play it.
All three once required an existing character of a certain level before you could create them. Those requirements have since been removed, so you no longer need another character first. They make a fine first character, though a standard class gives a slower start that leaves more room to learn the basics.
A simple way to decide
Knowing which role you enjoy narrows the list first. Not knowing yet is a good reason to pick a class with several roles, which gives you room to find out. Then pick by feel. The class whose look, weapons and story you like most is the one you’ll still be playing a year from now, and that matters more than any ranking of which class is strongest this season.