RAF time almost up (cry)

[turbopinto]

As much as I hate leveling, this RAF time has actually made it fun even when starting new teams from scratch. I probably have time to make 1 more team and get them to mid 40's? Unless I stay up all night on my next 4 days off. I maybe could pull it off, but beware teh wife aggro.

When I did instance powerleveling with my 70 huntards (1 dwarf, 1 tauren) it took each team about 1D, 12H /play to get 60, just questing took about 2D, 4H average. The instance powerleveling started at lvl 10 (deadmines, and ragefire chasm) and pretty much stopped at lvl 48 in ZF, and I went straight questing after that (gift the 5th team member to a level equal the other 4 powerleveled toons). I went a little beyond 60 on some teams, before I remembered that the 90 days end was coming up (sad) ah well. I was hoping to do more, but with real life there's only so much I feel I can dedicate to the game. Plus the kids love to multibox too, so that cut into the time I got to play >.<

My results during RAF are:

5x space goat shammys lvl 62

5x night elf druids lvl 62

5x gnome mages lvl 60

5x gnome locks lvl 60

5x undead rogues lvl 63

5x tauren druids lvl 60

5x blood elf locks lvl 35 (that server went down 1 day, so I started another team on another server)

My plan is to add at least 1 prot pally to each faction for a main tank for boosting/ heroics later, but I gotta decide whats next on the agenda for the last 6 days of RAF. I'll be using all my gift levels 1 day before the official end so I don't end up losing them. I plan on adding priests and maybe warrs for fun later. But what to for my last RAF team? maybe 1 prot, 1 holy, 3 retardins, or 5 shadow priests? It will probably be horde side as I like having more even number of teams to choose from when I'm bored with 1 side (plus I like to actually WIN in PVP sometimes..)

I don't have Wotlk yet, I didnt want to be distracted before the end of RAF with the new content, so no DKs yet. Any opinions?

[zhenyalix]

note... prob obvious to everyone but me... but when it says linked until X date... you lose raf at midnight the night before (i ended up not using up all my gift lvl's because of this not that it really mattered cause i have more raf'd toons than will ever see 70 much less 80... but still was frusterating that my bank toon is only 40 and not 60 dangit! lol so make sure u burn up everything before midnight!

[zhenyalix]

and on another evil raf note... saw after thanksgiving sales for norm wow 9.99 or 20 bucks for the battlechest from a few of the major stores... now with the free month u get there............. lol i'm just glad i'm sooooo burned out of raf boosting, though i could see tinkering with it again when i have a few lvl 80s to destroy with :D (and just let the accounts expire after that first free month)

[zhenyalix]

and i have to ask.... i only got 20 something lvl 60s out of my raf... and ended up giving 9 of them lvl 60 mounts training tbc greens gear etc etc the other night adn spent over 6k gold doing it lol u got epic mounts on all of those toons? raf about made me broke

[turbopinto]

Epic mounts? what are those? In the first 2 teams, I tried getting everything done on them all. But after that, I figured I'd earn enough as I went on later since I wouldn't even be playing them until I decided to continue to 70+. Heck, on the last 4 teams, I didn't even train skills not in the tree I wasn't planning on leveling in. ie: my tauren druids (the last team i've leveled) they are feral (cat), and I only trained the skills I always use, and some healing. I am still at the rank 2 wrath and almost all the other balance spells. I never trained other feral attacks like claw, growl, maul, etc. I just basically pounce, ravage, mangle, and ferocious bite.

Since I didn't have a team of 70s on the horde side, gaining cash for epic mounts became secondary to making as many teams as possible just to get to 60. I'll get there, but not yet heh.

[zhenyalix]

lol thats the boat i'm in too... soo funny to see people freak at my locks in lvl 1 gear with no training at all... no pets nothing... (i boosted everything from 10-60 with my mage) so some of the healers actually casted some spells... the rest just sat dormant

[daviddoran]

My raf ran out a while ago, but I'm still experiencing the "growing pains" associated with the lightning quick leveling. My RAF characters basically can not solo anything remotely close to their lvl. I had to slowly build up their stats, quest in hellfire for gear, and start getting gold for skills. I just now at lvl 69 bought epic land mounts... hell, my druid was just using travelform in front of the others on their lvl 30 mounts... Thankfully, it's not that difficult to recover from a crazy fast lvling.

Now I'm sequencing my leveling accross my tams to maximize rested exp. Hopefully I will get 3 teams to 70 soon enough, then start them on the long grind to 80. My goal is to get them in at least level appropriate gear (at least 60+ greens) before they hit northrend.

I did buy 2 new copies of the battlechest, and i have 2 dormant accounts, so I may pick up the leveling torch again some day, and try my hand at 10 boxing. I probably wouldn't level more than one or two teams with it though, and there's a good chance I wouldn't play more than the first free month + one 60 day game card. It would be kinda fun to try 10 manning Kara. I could make it easy by going in with 5 80s and 5 68s just for backup DPS. Be a decent way of gearing out some toons to prepare them for northrend :)

[Malekyth]

5x space goat shammys lvl 62
5x night elf druids lvl 62
5x gnome mages lvl 60
5x gnome locks lvl 60
5x undead rogues lvl 63
5x tauren druids lvl 60
5x blood elf locks lvl 35 (that server went down 1 day, so I started another team on another server)
AGH ..?! I have two mages and a shadow priest who are 43, and 5 shamans who just hit 22 ... and five 19 hunters ...

I'm almost certainly not using RAF to its full potential. :)

[Mercurio]

I also got 6 teams up from 0 to 60 during my RAF - wanted to get the most out of it.

As to your question, you DEFINITELY need to make a team of pallies imo. You will want tanks for those guys when you start instancing and pallies are easiest for that. Level a team of pallies, then split up the teams and put one pally in each and you'll cruise through the instances you want to try out. I realize your druids could potentially fill this role too, but I'm partial to pallies.

DKs are another decent option. Either way you probably ought to level up a team of DKs from 55 to 60/61 before RAF ends for you. You'll be glad to have tanking options, believe me.

[Marloon]

My RAF is almost up too. It sucks. I have leveled up all my characters during this time. Except my Locks but they should be 60 by the weekend. I thought about trying ot level a group of 5 priests too but I will not have time plus my main account has no more free spaces. Which really sucks cause I wont be able to grant any free levels. I should have split up the refering to other accounts. Oh well. It has been fun while it lasted. Which group was your favorate?

[Jheusse]

My RAF ends on the 10th and I'm trying like hell to get my second team (4 druids) to 60. On one hand it's been a blast, though I'm nowhere near as efficient as many of the guys here. Will have 4 shammies at 60, 4 druids at 60, then either make 3 or 4 instant 60 solo toons or have my feral 70 instance boost a couple mixed trios to 31.

Nongaming wife and a 4 year old and 1 year old make RAF both a perfect solution and hard as hell to get the most out of.

But I'll tell you what, and this may be sacrilege, but I'm kind of looking forward to being done with RAF for a while and going back to my main to get to 80. Best case scenarior is I end with 4 shammies, 4 druids, a lock, priest, hunter, and warrior all at 60. And then go back to my 70 feral main because my guild has been filled with chat and instance running while I soldier on with my RAF lowbies.

Anyone else get that "gotta grind it out or the RAF cost is wasted" vibe?

And on the solo toons I mentioned above, I know I want a priest and a lock, but can't decide what else to make for those solo insta 60 granted toons. And yes I likely will try a DK group at some point.

[Marloon]

Yeah I am happy it will be over. Otherwise I would be making other boxes on other servers.

I have gained a paladin and a rogue from the RAF for free. So I am pretty happy with everything. I figured a rogue will be able to unlock boxes and a paladin can tank if I ever need it.

i will miss the 3x xp and the 3x quest xp. That quest xp was the best thing ever. When you get the quests down you can get 4 levels an hour if you do it right.

[turbopinto]

My favorite? That's hard to say. I am an alt-aholic under the worst of situations, so this RAF thing was kind of a nirvana for me. I think the feral druids were my favorite, and the paladins I have at 50 as of now are my least favorite. It may just be that I have been getting camped on these guys way more than any other group though.
People are hitting 80, and are bored I guess, they are starting to bring 3-5 people and taking over small towns and outposts with nothing I can do to retaliate as my highest team is 70. The town guards are pretty much powerless against any lvl 80 in blues much less epics. BUT Instance leveling FTW. I want to take at least most of the teams to 70 first b4 getting WOTLK, but I don't think that'll be possible the way it is now unless only instance grinding.
Outlands, though it will be way less populated will be a haven for lvl 80 campers. and though it is pretty large, it still has a very small land mass compared to azeroth. Theres only 1-2 places to level outdoors for the level you are at pretty much. I see being camped for weeks during the grind to 70 on ALL my teams, much less 80. Without a lvl 80 team to do unto others as they have to me, it will be a living hell methinks.

[Marloon]

I started to level my guys on a pvp server. I couldn't do it. I was camped everytime I logged on. So I went to a pve server. It's much more fun I feel. I don't know how you did it on a pvp server

[elsegundo]

Im on a medium population pvp server and its not that bad. so maybe its the population.

also my raf will run out soon and i cant wait. been using up the 3x bonus for several teams as well and would love to stop and level up my favorite characters to 80.

[badashh]

For me the best thing about RAF, is knowing I'm not going back and leveling anything from 1->60 again(excluding DKs). The end of vanilla wow. I ended up with 15 new 60's and I refuse to RAF or go back and level any other alts. It's kind of liberating.

[turbopinto]

Final team completed: 5x paladins. I chose 1 to be the main tank in outlands, so they were leveled to ~10.95 before the gifting began. Once through the portal, they made 61.05 with the quest turnin. The talents? none so far, lol.

I figure I'll make 3x retardins, 1x holy, and the main tank a protadin for instances. Maybe if the retardins can handle taking a beating I'll switch to 5 of those, but I dunno about it yet. I still have to actually learn how to play paladins first lol. I even forgot to get the ressurection questline done.

I broke my personal best time to 60 with these guys, took 1D/ 12.5H to lvl 60 and I dunno if I would want to do that anymore. This was done by instance grinding with a lvl 70 huntard/ gorilla pet. I like being sidetracked somewhat with escort quests, PVP, and other time passers, so just grinding nonstop was killing my fun.

I liked the RAF time, but now is the time for 60-70 grinding. I'll probably choose 2 teams per side to make it to 70 before I buy WOTLK. Hoping for after christmas sales to take the bite off paying 5x for the game. And of course looking forward to being OPx5 with DKs.

[turbopinto]

Oh yeah, for the character gifting, ill be making all sorts of disc/ holy priests to add to groups in case they need them. On alliance side I have 150 levels x 4 accounts to gift. Horde side It's 75 levels X 4 accounts. gotta get those done tomorrow since RAF runs out on Friday.

[Smahs]

Wow, that really sucks your time is up but look at the levels you got, its amazing, but I ask one question, why only level 62? Did you use the TBC trial to save a few bucks?

[turbopinto]

I had gotten the rogues, shammys, and druids that high pretty much before I realized that my time was running out. I wanted to get as many teams to 60, as that's when the RAF xp bonus runs out. Another good part about using many different teams, is that once you stop one team and start the other, the first team's rested XP bonus starts adding up. I have at least 3 teams that should be at a full 2 bars of blue xp. The other teams will get there as I level those first few teams up.

[aboron]

My RaF timed out about 3 days after Wotlk hit which was just about perfect for me.

I got:

5x shammies to 61 on pvp server
1 Pally and 4 Priests to 55 on pvp
5x mages to 35 on pvp (arcane blast x5 = fun anti-melee)

1 Warrior and 4 Priests to 61 on pve
4x mages to 59 and 1 to 54 on pve

gifted another pally to 59 and topped off a bunch of lagging alts on my main into the 50+ area, but i lost a bunch of levels due to laziness and poor planning (moved the shammy team from pve to pvp at level 45 and lost 22x5 levels, i wish i'd known that would happen ahead of time)

I got the wrath bug almost immediately and started a DK on my main and popped him over with 4 of my mage team when they were about 55 to his 58 and leveled that bunch until he matched the 4 priests in the pve group with my old warrior, then swapped him over again.

Those guys are doing very well now, up to 66 over the holiday and they are actually gaining gold instead of sucking my main dry. My next decision comes at 68-70, when i debate keeping the DK in the group or subbing in my lvl 70 pally main (who has been sitting ignored and unleveled at the first camp in BT) to do the grind to 80.

I'm thinking i'll probably keep with the DK, it's kinda the way I ended up having the pally as main before - started him with BC and never leveled my old priest main much above 60.