How to level the Unarmed skill in WoW Classic

In World of Warcraft Classic, players can fight enemies without having a weapon equipped at all.

Although you don’t ever want to find yourself in this incredibly disadvantageous position, there are advantages to leveling your Unarmed skill, just in case you ever need to bare-knuckle brawl with an enemy in the open world. We recommend getting your Unarmed skill up early in the leveling process, so you don’t find your strikes missing later in the game if you’re ever in a scenario where Unarmed is needed. 

Here are some of the benefits of leveling your Unarmed skill in WoW Classic, as well as the best strategies regarding how to do it. 

Best ways to level Unarmed in WoW Classic

The only way to level Unarmed in WoW Classic is to unequip whatever weapon you have in your loadout and physically punch your target. At first, you’ll definitely notice that your Unarmed strikes don’t do a whole lot of damage on their own. But if you invest time into the Unarmed skill, their damage will progressively get more noticeable. It’s also possible to simply start leveling Unarmed when your weapon breaks, so if you’re low on durability, you can withhold the repairing process and let the slot go empty by itself to give you a chance to strike without a weapon.

In early leveling zones (levels one to 10), many enemies can be defeated with Unarmed strikes alone, provided you have enough armor to survive an encounter with one, as well as food to regenerate your health quickly after what’s sure to be an uphill battle. Classes such as Warriors and Paladins, who have immediate access to Mail armor, will have a definite advantage when it comes to the survivability needed to level Unarmed effectively. 

What is Unarmed used for in WoW Classic?

The only real benefit to leveling your Unarmed skill in WoW Classic is for situations when your weapon breaks and you’re left in a world where you need to punch your enemies out of pure necessity. If your gear breaks while questing, or worse, while you’re in the midst of a dungeon and can’t leave to repair your weapon, you could be in a situation where your Unarmed skill might come in handy. 

The only time you can make use of a weapon and the Unarmed skill at the same time is when using a fist weapon, although many of those aren’t best-in-slot for classes across the board.

Additionally, some enemies in the game have a Disarm mechanic attached to their abilities, meaning you’ll be temporarily left without a weapon while fighting. If this happens, you’ll want to have at least a decent amount of points in Unarmed to keep combat flowing smoothly and your damage numbers up.