Instanced Leveling with a Mixed Group

[Rudi89]

With the Recruit-a-Friend promotion I'm thinking to level up a Paladin tank for fun and profit. I have the following accounts:
Account 1 w/ lvl 70 Mage, T5/T6 gear
Account 2 w/ lvl 70 Priest, T4/T5 gear
Account 3 w/ lvl 62 Mage, Outland Greens (wife's account)

My thought was to use the wife's account to Recruit-a-Friend and roll a lvl 1 mage on her account so that I could instance level with the lvl 70 Mage the two new RaF toons. Then when the new mage and pally get to lvl 60 I would switch to the wife's mage and have a 4-box of:
60 Pally, 62 Mage, 70 Mage, 70 Priest

I have several questions. First, would I get dramatically more XP if I were to add a 3rd RaF character to level along with the other two? I suppose I can test this but curious if anyone has a solid Mob XP calculator (the WoWWiki one is lacking). Second, would leveling in instances using the 3x XP be relatively quick? Finally, would a 4-box of a 60 Pally Tank, 62 Mage, 70 Mage and 70 Priest be able to run starting Outlands instances? Should I simply bite the bullet and add a fifth box for a third mage?

[daviddoran]

You will get a bit more exp with 5 than 4 cause of the group bonus (I believe) so I would just go ahead and get the 5th. Pally priest and 3 mages is quite the AOE powerhouse. Even at lvl 21 my team just spams that :) That gives you more zhevras, and more gifted levels too, so you can get a free 60 or two once you are done.

[puppychow]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Mob_XP#Group_Experience

Its not going to be a huge difference, a 5 person groups gives a 40% bonus while a 3 person group gives a 16% bonus - remember tho the xp is first split across all 3-4, the group bonus is supposed to help mitigate the xp split, I believe for absolute fastest leveling boosting just one character is the fastest, although adding more doesn't slow you down significantly; probably around the order of 20 or 30% longer with 4 alts instead of 1, since you are killing elites in instances stuff so fast most of the XP comes from mob XP/hour (x3 xp in RAF) instead of group bonus.

4 can instance in outlands the early instances easy enough, your mage can probably solo ramparts/slave pens. The latter instances will be very hard though, especially the 70 ones. Just for that I'd suggest picking up a 5th, so you can always do any instance (or heroic, once geared). Keep in mind its a ton easier having as many of the same classes as possible. Just fewer buttons to push and fewer timing issues to worry about.

[SaltyPoison]

I may be misunderstanding you, but if you intend to multibox using your accounts AND your wife's account, there is a good possibility all of the accounts will have action taken against them by Blizzard for account sharing. If your wife will be playing her account and just grouped with you, then you will be fine.

[Moorea]

[...] I believe for absolute fastest leveling boosting just one character is the fastest, although adding more doesn't slow you down significantly; probably around the order of 20 or 30% longer with 4 alts instead of 1 [...]
Before RAF 3x I made some experiment in stockades and found I got the most xp with 1 high level and 3 lowlevels; 1-1, 1-2 and 1-4 were all lowers than 1-3; so typically when I ran my alt I tried to get 2 other lower level to tag along for max xp

I'm not sure how that plays with the 3x which probably now dwarves the grp bonus (unless the grp bonus is also multiplied by 3 ?)

[Rudi89]

Yep, my experiments seem to confirm that you get the 3x XP bonus on top of the group multiplier. But I found that with the 3x XP bonus for quests it's simply a heck of a lot faster to quest-boost than instance-boost if you have a level 70.