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It's commonly accepted that DPS specs are the way to go for solo'ing/leveling a toon. When I leveled my Paladin to 85, I felt that in his retribution spec, he faced numerous challenges, namely survivability when taking on multiple mobs. So early on I decided to focus on his tank spec for leveling. Certainly, he was slower to kill mobs as fast, but I could at least take on a large number of mobs without fear of dying. In some cases, it made leveling faster as he was able to nuke down groups simultaneously.

At the moment, I'm currently leveling a death knight. When I started off, I went unholy and found that he was facing health issues and would even die at times. So I cut unholy out and tried frost in reading some suggestions on the net. While he performed adequately in terms of doing a fair amount of DPS (even reaching #1 during one instance run of Hellfire Ramparts while wearing the basic Death Knight gear), I still would find him taking a large amount of damage and having difficulty with group quests. Instead, I decided that like the Paladin, the tanking spec (i.e. Blood for Death Knights) made more sense. The first time I leveled a death knight to 80, I found Blood to be the best leveling spec as a result of their innate ability to heal themselves. Once again, I am finding this ability to be invaluable.

Matter of fact, his DPS is quite decent. I don't take multiple mobs on the same way as I do with my paladin while running solo. But occasionally, he's faced with encounters where he's forced to pull multiple mobs. Having 3-4 abilities for self healing, I'm able to pull through as well as with a few of his damage reduction abilities. And again, I find that his damage output isn't all that impaired.

So at the moment, I think that there's a bit of a myth on how DPS is better for leveling/soloing compared to other specs. Now in the case of classes that are capable of holding a secondary spec for healing, this certainly is the case. For instance, the enhancement shaman or shadow priest. However, for classes that lack of a healing component or have a tanking component, I would argue that self healing capabilities, increased stamina, damage mitigation and threat reduction are keys over raw damage output. A good example might be the hunter. While solo'ing, it's best to run as a beast master and utilize a tenacity pet. The reason being that the pet can hold aggro while the hunter heals the pet and concentrates on taking down mobs. The warlock is similar in this regard when using a voidwalker.

So what about other classes? I think with a druid, the feral/cat form as well as rogues have stealth, allowing them to avoid unnecessary mob encounters. In the case of the rogue, the vanish ability is the key while a druid can self-heal with a heal-over-time spell when necessary. For shamans, they have a totem that allows them to drop aggro at upper levels as well as potentially the instant ghost wolf form. Combined with self-healing and decent armor, I think they can do okay, although admittedly I haven't tried soloing one past 50 since Cataclysm.  As for the warrior, the jury is still out. I'll to take one out to see whether or not fury remains the better leveling spec over protection. I assume with frost mages, the elemental pet helps but i've yet to take a new one out. And lastly I don't know about priests post-Cataclysm. I just know that beforehand, the priest I used had constant mana problems and frequently would die.

Where a DPS spec holds up, of course, is in instances or if you can group up with someone else. If you're on your own, making sure you have health is more important than the damage you deal.