How to Grind in World of Warcraft

When building your character in World of Warcraft, you must spend a significant portion of your time gaining experience through killing enemies or completing quests. While these things are often very exciting to do if you don't play very much, people who are trying to level quickly, it can be considered to be a grind, often so much so that it feels like a job. Since grinding is one of the most boring parts about World of Warcraft, many people will try to do it as quickly as possible so they can spend the majority of their time playing with friends or doing other things they enjoy.

After many different approaches to grinding, one of the most effective ways that I have found in World of Warcraft is to approach grinding the same way I would a job, where if you have a set process, it is much easier to complete something as you can be more efficient if you do the same thing over and over. While it increases the boredom, if you do something over and over again, you naturally figure out ways to do it faster. As Adam Smith said, if you specialize in doing something instead of trying to do multiple things, an enterprising man will work harder and be more efficient at his job.

While the strategy for establishing a process for grinding changes based on the character you are trying to level, there are some considerations to be made when doing it. The first major one for pretty much every class is the minimization of damage. As simple as it sounds, if you can minimize the damage that you take you will be able to get XP with a minimum of downtime. This means that you have to know exactly what spells to cast and what buffs to use for each situation and how you can best minimize the damage taken and mana used when fighting so you don't need to stop a lot. The second major qualification for this is that you need to maximize the speed in which you kill mobs. Another simple observation but it is often one that is overlooked. A good way to figure out what mobs to kill is to get an average kill time based on your time tested fighting pattern and then test out other ways to kill mobs until you arrive at the fastest method of grinding those mobs. The third major qualification to a strategy is the means in which you kill the mobs. This means that you need to know the exact order that you cast spells to elicit the maximum damage. For example, if you are a hunter you should always cast hunter's mark before a sting or other damage spell as you gain a boost to your ranged attack power with hunter's mark and therefore will do more damage. Again, make sure to experiment with this setting so that you will cast your spells most effectively. World of Warcraft can be a fun game if you take the time to play it right and by looking at these three goals to 'automate' your grinding will make Warcraft more fun for both you and the people you play with.