Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft is chock full of ways for players to challenge themselves in a variety of ways, and players find plenty of new ways the developers hadn’t intended to challenge themselves all the time.
The latest leveling challenge seems to have arrived. Players have been challenging themselves to level while forcing themselves into a style of play that radically reduces the power of their characters.
The new method in question has players leveling without ever picking a class specialization at level 10. By doing so, they’re heavily limiting their abilities – literally! Most abilities that a character receives comes from picking their specialization.
This also stops players from being able to get talents, which can provide passive or active abilities that provide a significant buff to characters. Buff might not even be the proper word – these abilities are what make a class worth playing, in most cases.
By not picking a specialization, players are garroting their abilities to only be what their “global” class abilities are – the abilities offered to a class regardless of what their specialization is.
A new style of challenge leveling has emerged in the #Shadowlands pre-patch – leveling to 50 without a spec!#Warcrafthttps://t.co/UPrCwqpk1q pic.twitter.com/5pTTDIPSkw
— Wowhead💙 (@Wowhead) October 24, 2020
This does a few things, such as restricting you out of dungeon leveling – more or less. Players wouldn’t have the abilities needed to effectively heal or tank, and without picking the specialization to begin with, may struggle to even be able to find a group.
If you’re a damage dealer, you’ll be dealing wildly less damage, as well as having several fewer utility/survivability options. Warriors, for example, have practically no healing whatsoever in the middle of a battle, the global ability Victory Rush being the only healing ability available.
That isn’t to say that it’s difficult, though – just arduous. World of Warcraft is absolutely filled with ways to challenge yourself to level, and with the latest improvements to leveling with Chromie Time, challenges like this have actually never been easier.
Many players have challenged themselves to level to max only by utilizing alternative ways of gaining experience, such as only through pet battles or through gathering materials through professions like mining and herbalism.
One of the keys of this challenge is that it needs to be done solo or, at best, with other players doing the same challenge. Not picking a specialization while you’re carried by a higher-level well-geared player isn’t much of a challenge at all, now, is it?
Regardless of this not being the most ground-breakingly difficult thing, it’s still extremely impressive to see how creative players are with the new ways to challenge themselves they constantly come up with. If you’re a glutton for punishment, maybe you can finish the challenge with the fastest speed?
