Rotating Collection Quests Through Characters
What has worked for me is going ahead and taking all collection quests that I'm remotely interested in. I then pick the toon with the lowest xp currently and let him collect the items first.
  • If it's horrid, I stop and drop the quest on all toons.
  • If it's ok, I just do it on the one toon and move on.
  • If it's really easy, I repeat it on a second or third or more toons until I've finished the other parallel quests I'm working on.
Also, I find it super helpful to go through the questing guide I'm using beforehand (like Jame's leveling guide) and indicate which chains I definitely want to do and which I could probably skip. Makes those decisions really easy as you come across them and further improves the efficiency of the guide. Of course this works for me because I can take time at the office to do it