Quests and Reputation
The first thing you find in Azeroth is an amazing large number of quests. Every zone or instance will have a few to a dozen or more quests available to you. For detailed information about individual quests, I am only going to refer you to www.thottbot.com
Many people argue that doing quests that are grey to you are a waste of time. I disagree completely. While it is true that you gain a fraction of the XP, you still gain some XP as well as faction reputation (this is full reputation for any quests up to 20 levels below your character's level since patch 2.0), some copper/silver/gold, and item rewards.
Reputation for a quest can be for an individual faction such as Gadgetzan or for a team such as Steamwheedle Cartel. When you gain reputation for a team, you will also gain equal reputation for the member factions. Any reputation you gain with an individual faction within a team will also gain you 1/4 the faction points with the whole team--100 Ogrimar reputation points also gives 25 Horde faction points all the way up to then end of honored and 25 points to each of the horde factions (Undercity, Silvermoon, Thunderbluff, and Darkspear).
Each major Horde or Alliance city now has a cloth quartermaster.; You will gain reputation each time you turn in cloth to that quartermaster. The quests begin with 60 wool at level 12, then 60 silk at level 26, and then mageweave at level 40. Once you have completed those three, then at level 50 you get a quest for 60 runecloth. Once you complete that quest, then you have a repeatable quest to turn in 20 more runecloth. Each time you turn in 20 runecloth, you will gain 50 points of reputation in that faction.
You gain increasing discounts for items purchased and repairs as your reputation increases. It is 5% at Friendly, 10% at Honored, 15% at Revered, and 20% at Exalted.
Reputation progresses as:
Hated (36,000) --> Hostile (3,000) --> Unfriendly (3,000) --> Neutral (3,000)-->
--> Friendly (6000) -->Honored (12,000) --> Revered (21,000) --> Exalted (1,000)
The maximum reputation attainable is 999/1000 Exalted.
Combat
Combat is not all about how much damage you can do. The most important part of combat is who is still standing when its over.
To hit or not to hit
You can assume that any NPC mob you are fighting has max weapon and armor skill for their level. For instance, a level 20 mob will have a weapon skill and a defense skill of 100 (mob level*5).
With your auto-attack, there is a base 5% chance to miss your target that is at the same level as you are assuming you have maximum skill in that weapon for your level. If you dual wield, you will have a 24% chance to miss. This is in addition to your targets chance to dodge, parry, or block. You can reduce your chance to miss with higher weapon skill, talents, expertise, and equipment bonuses.
Each point in your weapon skill increases your chance to hit or critical strike your target by 0.04% and reduces the chance your hits will be blocked, dodged, or parried by 0.04%. Conversely, each point in your defense skill reduces your chance to get hit or be a victim of a critical strike by 0.04% and increases your chance to dodge, parry, or block an attack by 0.04%. End game raid bosses are set at 3 levels above the max level or 83, which means that a raid boss has a 5.6% chance to critically strike on a tank (5% base chance plus 0.04%*15=0.6%). In order for a tank to avoid receiving a critical hit, the tank must have 140 [140*0.04%=5.6%] defense above their base (540 at level 80).
Weapon skills do not matter in PvP because all your weapon skills are maxed. Plus weapon skills were removed from all gear in patch 2.3 and a new rating called Expertise was added to replace all weapon skill bonuses so you can no longer have weapon skills above 5 x Level. Expertise reduces the chance your target will dodge or parry your attack by 1% for each point in Expertise or 15.77 Expertise rating at level 70.
When you fight a mob that has the same or higher defense skill than your weapon skill, some of your hits will be glancing, i.e., reduced damage. This only applies to your white damage, not your special attacks like sinister strike or heroic strike. Your chance to have a glancing blow is 10% plus 2% per point of difference between your weapon skill and your targets defense skill. At level 60, you'll have a 40% chance for your white damage attack to be a glancing blow when fighting a level 63 mob. A chance for a glancing blow is calculated before critical strike and a glancing blow cannot critically strike a mob.
Also, when you fight a mob that has a weapon skill higher than your defense skill, some of its hits will be crushing blows, i.e., increased damage. As of patch 3.0, a mob has to be 4 levels higher than you in order to land crushing blows and so crushing blows are no longer an issue when fighting bosses.
As a rule, tanks should always try to turn the target around keep the target facing away from the group to make it easier for the group to attack the target from behind. Also, if you are not tanking, standing behind the target has the added advantage of making it easy for everyone to see when the tank looses agro.
An NPC can dodge your attacks even if you are behind the target but cannot block or parry your attacks. However, you should never let any player or NPC attack you from behind because players cannot block/parry/dodge attacks from behind.
There is a 100% chance to critical strike a player that is sitting down.
Combat ratings
Combat has changed since the release of patch 2.0, weapons and armor no longer give fixed percentages on bonuses to combat skills, instead, they give ratings. While a fixed percentage will be same at every level, ratings diminish in effect at higher character levels. This was introduced in order to make it possible for blizzard to make level 70 gear an upgrade to level 60 gear without actually increasing the percentage bonus from any given item. For example, in order to make a level 70 item better than a level 60 item that gave a 4% critical strike chance, the level 70 item would obviously need to give a 5% critical strike chance. If they did this across all gear, a character could conceivably end up with a 100% critical strike chance.
Ratings now replace percentages on all gear but converts into an actual percentage that diminishes at increasing levels. A 28 critical strike rating translates into a 4% critical strike chance at level 34 but is only 2% at level 60 and only 1.27% at level 70. The table below lists the rating to percent conversion at levels 60, 70, and 80.
| Level | 60 | 70 | 80 |
| 1 defense skill point | 1.5 | 2.4 | 4.9 |
| 1% chance to melee hit | 10 | 15.8 | 32.8 |
| 1% chance to spell hit | 8 | 12.6 | 26.2 |
| 1% critical strike chance | 14 | 22.1 | 45.9 |
| 1% spell critical strike | 14 | 22.1 | 45.9 |
| 1% haste | 10 | 15.8 | 32.8 |
| 1% spell haste | 10 | 15.8 | 32.8 |
| 1% dodge chance | 12 | 18.9 | 39.4 |
| 1% parry chance | 20 | 31. | 65.6 |
| 1% block chance | 5 | 7.9 | 16.2 |
| 1% resilience | 25 | 39.4 | 82 |
| 1 point expertise | 2.5 | 3.9 | 8.2 |
Resilience is a new combat rating that was added after patch 2.0. It does two things: 1) it reduces the chance that you will be critically hit by your opponent and 2) reduces the damage done when you are critically hit. For 1% resilience, your chance to get critically hit is reduced by 1% and if you still get critically hit, the damage done by the critical strike is reduced by 2%.