[WoW] Dual-Boxing Powerleveling Class Guide

[Minister]

World of Warcraft Dual-Boxing Powerleveling Class Guide

Hello, all. Admittedly, I am new to these forums and have only been dual-boxing in WoW for a few months, but I thought compiling some observations for the beginner or prospective dual-boxer might be a good idea. Since I will be powerleveling, not muling or farming, I am writing from that perspective. As far as I know, there are two types of powerleveling: team leveling, in which two or more characters of similar levels are questing/grinding together, and carebear leveling, in which a high-level companion follows a low-level main who is doing the quests/grinds.

WoW is a great game for more than a few reasons, but one of their developers put in some previously unknown hurdles for dual-boxers bent on powerleveling. Let's take a look:

1. I remember one time in Everquest, when my lowly 18 Ranger in Eastern Commonlands was targeted by a passing high-level druid. Taking pity on my grinding, she cast Skin Like Diamond on me. It was the most glorious 15 minutes of my sad little toon's existence. High-level buffs can catapult a character to greatness: just imagine a top rank Thorns on a level 5 Warrior. Unfortunately, Blizzard thought of this and downranks your spell to the target's level. So a 70 Druid can cast a top rank Thorns on a level 5 Warrior, but the spell will automatically downgrade to a rank 1 Thorns. Conclusion: for buffs, team leveling is just as good as carebear leveling; in fact, it's better, as you're leveling two toons at a time.
2. Blizzard also has scaled XP, which means as you go up in levels, the experience you get from a static mob goes down. At grey, a mob will no longer reward XP, and if you kill something which normally would give you XP (green-red) in a party with someone who would not receive XP, Blizzard considers the kill "unchallenging" and will only give you nominal XP for it. So carebear levelers cannot group together: just being nearby will not affect your low-level character's XP. This is irritating because some of the best abilities require you to be in a group: Paladin or other class auras, Power Word: Shield, and Shaman totems. But we will persevere.
3. WoW has a concept called "tagging", in which the first person or party who damages a mob claims it, and will receive all experience and loot. Since carebear levelers cannot group, the lowbie must damage the mob first in order to get XP at all. But even beyond that, WoW scales your XP based on what percentile of damage you do to the tagged mob, meaning your 10 Hunter cannot tag a 50 elite, then get the XP after your 70 Mage pyroblasts it. So carebear levelers will have to rely on their high-level characters for support and non-damaging offensive abilities only.

Carebear Leveling High-Level Classes, from Best to Worst

1. Paladin: by far and away, the best carebear to have. First, he can heal, resurrect, and Cleanse. Second, Blessings are versatile buffs for whatever class he needs to support. Third, Righteous Defense can keep up to 3 mobs off of you at a time. And last, and somehow best, is a Paladin's non-offensive Judgment of Wisdom, which can help Priests, Shamen, and Hunters regain mana quickly.
2. Priest: very good support capabilities. Again, he can heal, resurrect, cure disease and magic effects, and adds the Power Word: Fortitude buff, which is very handy. As above, it is a big crutch that he will be unable to Power Word: Shield your lowbie without being in a party, but acceptable. Psychic Scream more than makes up for it, to keep mobs away from the ranged or caster lowbies. Last, don't forget that Shadow-specced Priests have Silence.
3. Druid: great support, especially for melee. A druid's heal-over-times are superior, can cure poisons and curses, and Mark of the Wild and Thorns are great buffs. He can only resurrect once every 30 minutes, though. Bear/Dire Bear form plus his Growl, Demoralizing Roar, and Challenging Roar lets him keep mobs off your lowbie very well with little damage to himself. Also, this is the first class with some form of crowd control: Hibernate works on beasts. Don't forget to use Faerie Fire for melee support, but avoid Entangling Roots as it damgages your target slightly.
4. Shaman: somewhat good. He can heal and resurrect, but not being in a party hurts since you cannot get any major benefit from his totems. Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems seem to work well, as does Purge. Water Breathing and Water Walk are good occasionally.
5. Warlock: king of the crowd control. He can't heal you, which is a big step down, but he can Fear and Seduce while you kill, so you shouldn't be taking much damage. Curse of Tongues, Weakness, Exhaustion, and Elements all do not damage the target, and will not be downranked, so fire away.
6. Warrior: slap on Defensive Stance, and get ready to taunt. Battle and Commanding Shouts require a party, so literally the best thing you can do is keep the mob off your lowbie. Use Bloodrage then Taunt, Demoralizing Shout, and Challenging Shout. Hamstring works to keep them in range, but make sure you don't damage them.
7. Mage: starting to get pretty bad. Mages can Polymorph, summon food and water, and buff Intellect, but after that almost all of their abilities affect themselves or damage their targets. Avoid Frost Nova for the latter reason.
8. Hunter: no buffs. Freezing Trap and Improved Hunter's Mark are the only things worthwhile here.
9. Rogue: Sap only.

Team Leveling Combinations

What you're looking to avoid here is one toon who needs to stay at range, most notably hunters, and one who needs to be up close.

• Druid/Druid: one bear, one cat, no problems.
• Druid/Hunter: pet tanks, cat and ranged dps.
• Druid/Mage: bear tanks, mage dps but not enough to pull agro.
• Druid/Paladin: ret pally tanks, cat dps.
• Druid/Priest: shadow priest will pull agro no matter what, so keep it flayed during cat dps.
• Druid/Rogue: cat and rogue stunlock for the win; use Cheap Shot -> Pounce -> Kidney Shot.
• Druid/Shaman: try grace of air and strength of earth for hot cat dps.
• Druid/Warlock: voidwalker tanks, dot dot dot, cat dps.
• Druid/Warrior: fury war tanks, cat dps.
• Hunter/Hunter: use dps pets and go all out, nothing will ever reach your hunters' melee range.
• Hunter/Mage: pet tanks, both dps.
• Hunter/Paladin: do not use.
• Hunter/Priest: keep it flayed or feared, with a dps pet.
• Hunter/Rogue: do not use.
• Hunter/Shaman: unless you can stomach the elemental tree and stay at range, do not use.
• Hunter/Warlock: voidwalker tanks, dot dot dot, ranged dps.
• Hunter/Warrior: do not use.
• Mage/Mage: try to vary your builds for double debuffs.
• Mage/Paladin: difficult, but let your ret pally get a little agro before your mage attacks.
• Mage/Priest: deadly combination; keep it flayed or feared.
• Mage/Rogue: keep it stunlocked while spamming frostbolt.
• Mage/Shaman: difficult, but let your shaman build a little agro before your mage attacks.
• Mage/Warlock: deadly combination; voidwalker tanks, dot dot dot, spam frostbolts.
• Mage/Warrior: use defensive stance if you have trouble holding agro, but berserker should be fine.
• Paladin/Paladin: are you retarded?
• Paladin/Priest: try to keep the ret pally tanking, keep it flayed.
• Paladin/Rogue: backstabs galore!
• Paladin/Shaman: windfury + seal of command = critastic.
• Paladin/Warlock: ret pally tanks, dot dot dot with Succubus or Imp pet.
• Paladin/Warrior: fury war and ret pally won't take much damage.
• Priest/Priest: deadly combination; consider one build with Shadow Weaving and another with Blackout.
• Priest/Rogue: keep it stunlocked and flayed.
• Priest/Shaman: difficult, but let your shaman build a little agro before your priest attacks.
• Priest/Warlock: deadly combination; double the fears, double the dots.
• Priest/Warrior: defensive stance will be necessary to hold agro.
• Rogue/Rogue: stunlock it but always have one rogue backstabbing.
• Rogue/Shaman: deadly combination; windfury stunlock for easy kills.
• Rogue/Warlock: voidwalker tanks, dot dot dot, backstab when you can.
• Rogue/Warrior: keep it stunlocked with a fury war ripping it up.
• Shaman/Shaman: unefficient, but use two enhancement builds for quick kills.
• Shaman/Warlock: voidwalker tanks, dot dot dot during windfury dps.
• Shaman/Warrior: windfury'd fury war facemelts so well he barely needs the shaman to attack.
• Warlock/Warlock: Succubus and Imp/Felhound until you both get Felguards, then don't even bother dotting.
• Warlock/Warrior: voidwalker tanks in front of fury war, dot dot dot.
• Warrior/Warrior: double your fury war, double your fun.

Tips

• Macros are your friend on your carebear. Use the /castsequence reset=X command whenever possible so you're not wasting time trying to remember where you left your flash heal, and put /target Lowbie /follow at the end all you can to make sure you're riding his ass like Zorro.
• PvP Servers: your carebear will naturally scare away most gankers, but other highbies will naturally be attracted to you. My carebear toolbar setup is limited (full of targeted macros), so I can very rarely successfully defend myself. Sometimes it's best to switch to another toon after dying, because your attacker will assume (and rightfully so) that you're a pushover and may stick around for a few more kills.

The $64,000 Question

There are only three singular possibilities for powerleveling, either with a carebear or a team:

1. Questing. Advantage: huge experience bonuses for quest lines, some of which are extremely easy. Disadvantage: long amounts of running from place to place.
2. Grinding Non-Elites. Advantage: mindless, low risk, good loot drop rates. Disadvantage: because you'll be killing so quickly, there are few spots that offer the low respawn timers necessary to keep you active at all times.
3. Grinding Elites (inside instance or not). Advantage: great loot drop rates, higher XP per kill. Disadvantage: increased risk from adds, tougher kills.

Which method is fastest? I don't know. I have a character of every class at various levels, and I level them all strictly by quests only because I enjoy the quests and got my fill of grinding in other MMOs. Certainly, watching the Chinese powerleveling practices might reveal something we don't know, but they operate on a different set value system: they are motivated by compensation. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Please feel free to sticky or post suggestions. Thanks!

Minister.Kel'Thuzad

[slb_07]

dam good guide wish i would have found it sooner.

[kadaan]

Druid/Shaman: windfury'd cat dps, yum.

Pretty sure cat's don't benefit from windfury, or any of the other weapon-buff totems (flametongue totem, etc).

Druid tanking with occasional heals from an enhancement shammy would be pretty nice though.

[unit187]

yep cat/bear doesnt get bonus from windfury

[Olibri]

I've been working on this for a while, so let me share some things:

First, for reference, I have 2 70s: A bear spec druid (my raiding main) and a BM hunter. I only use the druid for "carebearing".

Things that I have discovered:

1. Heals do not downrank. In particular druids are amazing as you can stack up a bunch of HOTs on a low level that can easily do more healing in a tick than his total hps. I literally follow my mage around while he gathers up groups of mobs to arcane explosion down and keep the HOTs on him. He is almost invincible with even cons and +2/+3s. It's also pretty neat to watch.
2. In low level instances a bear spec druid with ILOTP is the best you can get (heal yourself 4% on every crit no more often than every 6 seconds). I often get a low level, group with them, and then run through an instance (Stockades is the best), gather up everything that I can find, then just swipe away. The mobs do very little damage, which is easily healed by ILOTP. I just gather up 30 or so and swipe until they are all dead. The XP is pretty good.
3. Thorns is reflect damage and does not count as 'tagging'. In fact it doesn't count towards YOUR damage at all. As stated in the original post, you get the % damage you did of experience. What I've found is that things will die of thorns, but I get no XP, so I always leave it off (druids unfortunately have no GOOD AOE attack (I don't count cyclone, but might be good for a moonkin (probably not though because many mobs, particularly in Stockades will spell interrupt)).
4. There seems to be some kind of "average level" to determine how much XP you get. What I do is try to get random people to group with me. I bring them in and our characters get more XP (a little, but it's enough).
5. I have yet to find any super fast way to level an alt this way. It's faster than doing it alone, but not 2x. Generally I have a few alts, wait for them to get lots of blue bar, and then run them through an instance 2 or 3 times. It's pretty fast, but you don't learn your new character at all this way. I personally find it to be kind of relaxing to mindlessly run through an instance where I cannot possibly be hurt, but only so many times.

[Smeagoldfish]

How would 2x hunters and a pala work out? Pala being purely support.

[beyond-tec]

How would 2x hunters and a pala work out? Pala being purely support.

hunters don't need that much support.

Pally-Healer?
Hunters can heal their pets

Pally-Tank?
they got their pet as a tank

Pally-DPS?
:roll:


Hunter is perfect to play alone or together with a warlock (both pets on the mob, autoshot with the hunter, some dots of the warlock und watching the mob getting down)

[Smeagoldfish]

Well the pala got good buffs :-) And I think it would be awesome to box 3 dwarf females just for something different. So maybe shadowpriest/hunter/hunter is good?

[beyond-tec]

. So maybe shadowpriest/hunter/hunter is good?

much better than a pally

shadowpriest is a caster so it's easier to handle in multiboxing.
he gives mana and life while attacks the mob.

for elite quests you can switch out of the shadow form and heal the tank-pet while the hunters attack. should be a good combi.

[Blokus]

Edit--Ooops, sorry, forgot this was a power-leveling guide for dual-boxers when I first posted this. Hmmmm. In that case you will need help from a high level friend who has a warlock if you are dual playing a couple of lowbies.

Warlocks can be taken up a notch or two as high-level helpers under these conditions:

1) You have at least 2 lowbies grouped together in a party.

2) You have 1 or more high-level warlocks, preferably with Felguard pets, NOT grouped with the lowbies.

3) You tag a mob with the lowbie.

4) You kill the mob with JUST the Warlock pet(s) -- don't use any damaging warlock spells.

5) You get FULL XP for the kill -- split between your lowbies of course.

I'm currently doing this with two 60 level warlocks helping 2 mages who have just reached 30.

At some point as I level I'm sure it will take too long for the pets to finish off the mobs without some additional aid from the mages. That's fine as I'll start using the pets mostly as tanks for the mages. When I get about 10 or so levels away from the warlocks, the mages can then start tagging mobs and then I can use the full power of the warlocks to make kills and get full XP (as long as the mob is not grey to the warlocks).

I guess this works for high level hunter pets too, but I don't have any to try it with.