Grinding Heroics

[Drommon]

I wanted to avoid the collection quest nightmare in Northrend so I solo leveled my tank (warrior) in Alterac Valley to 80th level. I am going to use him to tank instances and herioc instances from BC through wrath. I have some questions regarding this.

Do you still get XP in the BC heroics?
Am I going about this in an efficient manner? (subjective I know but any input is helpful).

My team is listed in the signature. Any input regarding them would be helpful too.

Thank you,

Drommon

[Zal]

I would just multibox AV and do kill quests between queues. I gained 3 levels yesterday doing this (77-80). Grinding BC heroics would suck because they're not your level.

[Drommon]

XP in BC Heroics? Yes, to a point. Normal level XP rules apply.

Efficient manner? No. See 1st point.

Run instance that are in your level range. That's all you need to do.


Thanks Fur. What would be a good instance to start with? I was thinking Sethekk halls...

[Drommon]

I would just multibox AV and do kill quests between queues. I gained 3 levels yesterday doing this (77-80). Grinding BC heroics would suck because they're not your level.


How do you manage 5 toons in the BG? I have seen 5 shamans in the BG several times. But a team like mine? With different level brackets?

[Raskaz]

I would still try to get a few quests in between instances since getting your team to 80 by just doing instances is as much a chore as just doing quests.

BC isn't really that bad when it comes to quests since you have quests hubs whereas in wotlk you basically can't avoid certain collections quests in order to unlock the follow-ups so you might take advantage of that as long as your toons are still in that lvl range.

When you hit 70 on your toons you might even get a few bosses down in Kara. The xp isn't that great but it's really fun (did that with my lvl 80 tank and 4x70s)

[Drommon]

Well I took the team into Mana Tombs for a trial run. They did well with the mage dying twice against the mana wyrms. The run took 80 minutes. Some time was spent creating new macros and optimizing others. The warrior did a good job of CC with devastate (AOE stun affect), the rest of the party just DPSed the mobs down... very fast. Overall the 66th level toons gainied 27% of a level from the mobs before quest turn ins and looted 57g of grey items plus everyone earned consortium rep. Not bad in my opinion. Actually I am happy with the way things turned out. I know that mana-tombs isn't the hardest instance or even hard at all. But it was a good first run to test the waters of this group make up. It appears that I will have to run instances 3-4 times to level my toons. Although this may change as I get higher in level. I have also decided to do the quests associated with the instance as that gives more xp and some rares.

Now for some group optimization ->

My priest is shadow/disc and I was thinking of making her Holy/disc or Disc/holy. Any suggestions here?

My Mage is Arcane (all talents in arcane so far). I am thinking of making him Frost/arcane. Any suggestions?

Or any suggestions in general in regards to group makeup?

Thanks,

Drommon

[Jubber]

I find that its best to do a mix. Quests give you tons of gold on a 5 boxing group. Also is your grind with purely rested xp. Do you plan on letting them regain rested or just grinding all the way cuz that will slow down quite a bit once you are out of rested and only grinding instances.

[Drommon]

I find that its best to do a mix. Quests give you tons of gold on a 5 boxing group. Also is your grind with purely rested xp. Do you plan on letting them regain rested or just grinding all the way cuz that will slow down quite a bit once you are out of rested and only grinding instances.

I agree with doing a mix. I just want to avoid the collection quests in NR as much as I can. Doing the NR collection quest while dual boxing my warrior and priest is an experience I do not wish to repeat. Eventually I just BGed my warrior to 80. I will do some quests, but mostly quests that pertain to the instance. I will also do the easy collection and kill quests. I do enjoy doing the instances, they are not a grind (for me). As for rested Xp.. well since I only can play 60-90 minutes a day M-F and about 4 hours on weekends... I haven't had a problem with getting rested XP. But yeah, I see what you are saying.

Drommon

[daviddoran]

at 65 you can go into UK on regular, so I'd go that route. With an 80 tank you should be ok. I'd dual spec the priest holy/shadow. Holy priest is pretty easy to box for heals. On my dps button my holy priest has a sequence, with mostly ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,renew,,,,,,,,,,,prayer of mending etc and that does the job for most trash pulls, and i just manually throw a big or small heal on the tank, and press a few aoe heal buttons. Hell probably with a dps warrior and priest, you probably wont need much if any healing for a while. I 'd suggest grinding the mage/lock/druid in UK until they hit 71, then take the 4 of them into AV until your priest hits 80, then just do the 3 of em. Just keep the warrior and priest near a summoning stone and do instances when you are tired of AV, or you need some more gear. I used a prot pally and a holy priest to grind up 3 locks from 70-80 using almost entirely instance grinding. I had all the blue caster gear by the time I was done.

[Drommon]

Thanks for the tip Daviddoran. I recently thought about doing UK, but decided on Mana Tombs as a trial run. I agree that the warrior/priest combo in the group is the core part with the rest just adding DPS as needed. I am going to try UK tonight. I will let you know what happens. I bet I am in for a surprise and will have to adjust formations and macros. I seem to have to do that for every instance I run.

[Gadzooks]

Thanks for the tip Daviddoran. I recently thought about doing UK, but decided on Mana Tombs as a trial run. I agree that the warrior/priest combo in the group is the core part with the rest just adding DPS as needed. I am going to try UK tonight. I will let you know what happens. I bet I am in for a surprise and will have to adjust formations and macros. I seem to have to do that for every instance I run.

Make a macro that says "/target ice tomb" for the Prince, the first boss in UK. It helps, a LOT.

Use your sheep. The trash pulls in there hit HARD, and some of them are tricky.

[gitcho]

can anyone tell me if AV @60 is an efficient way to lvl? I did the 71-80 bracket (before it became 80-only) and it was amazing ... Questing was better for me than instance grinding from 60-70 - but don't know about bg's... how is the 60's bracket?

[F9thRet]

In the starting area for WotlK ? Howling Fjord/Keep? The one from the Ship in minithil harbor...

anyways, you can go there, and just tag the mobs at around lvl 63-64 and level up pretty quick to 68.

The guards help kill, but as long as you hit them first, it's xp fast and furious.

Hope this helps.

Stephen

[Multibocks]

I did AV last night on my 71 mage and I turned around to answer the phone, turned around again a few moments later and I was already marked AFK. Gotta ported out shortly after and said, screw that. The new AFK is really bad if you gotta pee/getwater/doanything while running AV. Questing is much faster now that xp was nerfed/semiun-nerfed.

[Gadzooks]

What's the "new afk" marking? Is there a new reporting bot?

Nah, it's just a VERY short time now for you to be flagged, and people are flagging everyone, just to be jerks. You know, pause to drink at a tower, defending it, "ZOMG THEY'RE AFKING REPORTED!"

Because of all of the AFK abuse, you have to chain-pull BGs now, pretty much. Stop moving, and you get marked. Do no damage, get marked. It's ridiculous.

[daviddoran]

I was getting harrassed on my 5 shaman the other day, the entire bg was trash talking me, and it seemed that everyone was chain marking me afk, so I couldn't stand and defend like everyone else, cause you have like 60 seconds to get all your toons into combat or they get insta ported AND marked as a deserter. It's way too easy for people to abuse it and remove someone they simply dont like, while AFKers in the cave are still able to stay in, and then there's the bots that go whack on the wolves and rams....

Blizz needs to rethink what is and isn't "active" in a BG. If you've capped a tower or bunker, and are guarding it, you could very well be out of combat for 4+ minutes, so if enough people dont like you, poof you are gone. There needs to be more of a safeguard before it just boots. like, if you are near an enemy tower/bunker and it's being capped, that should count as "combat" as far as being reported AFK is concerned.

Maybe instead of an instant boot, they should take a page from website registrations, and put an image with text on it, and you have to type the text to prove that you are a person, and not a bot...

[Multibocks]

Ya if you get marked when you die, 30 secs to rez then you got a whopping 30 secs to find someone to kill and get the debuff removed.

It's ridiculous.

[Gadzooks]

As much as it's being abused by players, I see Blizz being between a rock and a hard place with the problem - the ultimate solution is to remove exp. from bgs, but the afk problem has been there for a long time - before it was for gear, now it's exp.

If there's a tiny crack in the mechanics, there's 100,000 players waiting to exploit it. The lazy will always be looking for ways to get around things.

[cilya]

I leveled from 73 to 80 this weekend doing AV (was AV weekend) and questing on 3 chars, pally tank, holy priest and mage.

I actually found it quite good. Ok, you have to wait 10-15 min between each battleground but that isnt so much of a problem anymore now that you can sign in from anywhere and end up the same place after so you can quest while AV'ing.

I didnt have any problem with /afk situations except once where i got kicked - but that was actually ok - spend 2-3 minutes chatting with a GM on a 4th char not in the instance so that was deserved.

But AV's went so fast - 12-15 min each for 100k xp. Pretty decent imo. Very few leachers and a lot more effecient than I have ever seen AV before.

Was kinda getting tired of AV before - half the BG was always leaching so it was really a horrible waste of time.

Didnt have many problems with being a multiboxer there - only bad comment I got was "what a waste of money". But got lots of good comments - (ok was basically the main tank for an entire day - so that might have helped a little)

[Drommon]

Make a macro that says "/target ice tomb" for the Prince, the first boss in UK. It helps, a LOT.

Use your sheep. The trash pulls in there hit HARD, and some of them are tricky.


The thread kind got off track but that's ok. So I went to UK. The trash mobs have the health of the BC bosses in normal mode. I did 2 runs and got wiped by Prince Keseleth (sp?) each time. The first time through my priest was speced to shadow and I kept losing my mage to the trash mobs. When I got to the first boss, prince keseleth, I was surprised and that whole battle lasted about 5 seconds. The second time through , I re-specced my priest to disc/holy and the trash mobs were easy since I just dedicated the priest to healing only and the run was faster. But I still got wiped by the first boss but managed to reduce his 142.8k health to 47k before the tank died (last one standing).

So I learned that my priest and warrior should change specs based on the situation either dps/dps or tank/healer. The other toons barely put out enough DPS to win the fight before mana runs out. But for the boss, mana ran out and the fight ended on that note.

Overall I added new tweaks to my play style and got better at CC. But now I think I will go back and do instances that have mobs that are the level of my low level toons like Mana Tombs and Sethekk Halls. My toons are at 90% of a level now. They earned roughly 3 times to xp from the mobs in UK than in MT. One other issue was even though all the toons can go to UK, the 66th level ones cannot summon or be summoned from the summoning stones and they also cannot get the quests for the UK dungeon.

Drommon

[Drommon]

In the starting area for WotlK ? Howling Fjord/Keep? The one from the Ship in minithil harbor...

anyways, you can go there, and just tag the mobs at around lvl 63-64 and level up pretty quick to 68.

The guards help kill, but as long as you hit them first, it's xp fast and furious.

Hope this helps.

Stephen

Yes, I did this to get some shards for the warlock. I noticed that I got about the same XP from those mobs that I did from the mobs in Mana-Tombs. I thinks its a good idea. However for me, I like doing instances because it really pushes my limits on creating macros, useing the right tactics and abilities at the right times. I am also doing the instance runs to prepare me for the heroics later on. In addition I like getting the rares. This is not an issue of time for me, it is more of an issue of avoiding collection quests in NR and strengthening my skills for instances. I RAFed my toons to 60th level. Did some instances and quests to 66th level. Then I dual boxed warrior and priest to about 71st level. From there I soloed my priest to 76th level until I learned about AV leveling and thats when I took my 71 warrior and BGed him to 80 in 2 weekends. I was going to do the same with the priest, but I decided she would hit 80th level when the other toons were about 78-79th level. And since I didn't get to enjoy any of the BC content since I started playing WoW Sept 2008, I decided to do the BC instances and heroics. A personal choice thats all. But yeah, I see that your idea works well for leveling fast.

Drommon

[Moorea]

I would get the 3 laggard to 71 through questing, with the changed xp curve, questing 66->69 in nagrand and 69->71 in northrend is very fast and then 4 box AV while doing quests (and the northrend instances) in between

[Drommon]

I did Mana Tombs again last night. No toon died or took much damage at all. Clearing the instance took about an hour and my toons leveled to 67. The second time yielded the exact same type of rares as the first run oddly. I have also done the quest chain for Auchindoun: Auchenai Crypts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auchenai_Crypts). Getting the Aged Cleftfoot blubber was stupid insane to complete the quest chain. Although you don't need the quest to enter, I did it just for the extra content. Plus it has some cool rares at the end. The low level toons are 30% to the next level. I will go to the crypts tonight.

Drommon

[F9thRet]

Yes, I did this to get some shards for the warlock. I noticed that I got about the same XP from those mobs that I did from the mobs in Mana-Tombs. I thinks its a good idea. However for me, I like doing instances because it really pushes my limits on creating macros, useing the right tactics and abilities at the right times. I am also doing the instance runs to prepare me for the heroics later on. In addition I like getting the rares. This is not an issue of time for me, it is more of an issue of avoiding collection quests in NR and strengthening my skills for instances. I RAFed my toons to 60th level. Did some instances and quests to 66th level. Then I dual boxed warrior and priest to about 71st level. From there I soloed my priest to 76th level until I learned about AV leveling and thats when I took my 71 warrior and BGed him to 80 in 2 weekends. I was going to do the same with the priest, but I decided she would hit 80th level when the other toons were about 78-79th level. And since I didn't get to enjoy any of the BC content since I started playing WoW Sept 2008, I decided to do the BC instances and heroics. A personal choice thats all. But yeah, I see that your idea works well for leveling fast.

Drommon

No way I can fault you at all for that, as I've done much the same myself.

I do both to be honest, as I get tired of running back to back instances after a while, and this is a cool way to burn through rested.

The draw back is, you miss out on gold, gear , etc.

Stephen

[Drommon]

So far I took my toons through all the instances in Auchindoun and Utgarde Keep two times each. Leveled them from 66-69 and 76-77, see signature for toon make up. Got enough blues, greens, grays and cloth/skins to earn me about 1200 gold. I did a little bit of questing in Howling Fjord and a few low level NR dailies. Once my low level toons reach level 70 I will be doing the outland heroics for content mostly. My plan is to run them normal mode once and the heroic mode once. I then plan to move back to NR and begin the instance grind there after questing for the needed instance quest. One thing for sure though, after running instances and tuning your macros to them, questing becomes a breeze as your toons just one shot everything lol. I just send my warrior out on his mount and round up the local mobs for a meltdown. I am not sure, but I think this method is really good for earning a lot of XP if your in the right area with lots of mobs with fast respawn rate.

Drommon