RAF Team Boosting Questions

[kalrok2]

I've leveled a team of mixed classes so that I now have at least a level 60 of each class in case I ever want to try out a class in the future. Initially I was just planning on leaving the RAF accounts dormant and then transferring whichever class I wanted to try out to my main account as and when. However the multiboxing bug has bit me and I want to try it out properly.

I'm now in the process of leveling a 5 man shaman team to level 60 which I'm expecting will be around 22 hours /played. Eventually I plan on taking this team to 80 and use them for PVE with my tanks.

However seeing as RAF is valid for 3 months, and I am currently unemployed, I am thinking of creating another 5 man team after the shammies as it will only take me a week of doing around 3 hours a day to get them to 60.

At this stage I'm thinking of making a 5 man POM mage team to mess about with in BGs. Problem is I'm wondering whether the mage setup is too similar to the shaman setup. Do you guys think I would be better off leveling a different class for variety, and if so which ones would you recommend and why?

Another question, does it make sense within the RAF period to level as many 5 man teams as you can stomach so that your are then covered in case you ever want to try something else out in the future? Just wondering how many teams you guys have managed to level within the RAF period.

[Khemikal]

I for one and using up all of my RAF time. I will end up with one of each class on my first two accounts (limited to only 6 slots on my main account because I didn't want to delete/xfer my horde chars to a different realm). I will also end up with a handful of 5man teams to play. I am wanting to have a few teams for variety, though I think I'll end up play my shaman team the most.

[Ualaa]

I'd personally level a ton of combinations, during the RAF time.

Consider a melee team.
4x Rogue, with a healer can be decent.
4x Ret Pallies, with 1x DK is strong.

5x Druids is one of the most fun teams I've done.
You can dual spec for 1x Feral and 1x Resto for PvE.
Not sure on the best spec for PvP with druids.

I actually liked 5x Disc Priest.
I wouldn't see a full caster team progressing to heroics.
But Moorea has done many normal dungeons with this composition.
And all casters can work for pvp.

A mage heavy group can be decent.
Arcane is a lot of burst.
Or frost is a lot of control - snares/freezes.
Would probably lean towards the Arcane, damage is king.

I'm running 4x Warlocks + 1x Disc priest.
They're opposite faction and no RAF, so going up slowly.
But the team is quite fun too.

A lot of combinations to try.
Quite a few have a blast on a mixed team too.
Generally mixed teams can rock in PvE, but aren't the best in PvP.

[wougoose]

Considering you can boost an RAF team up to 60 in 8-9 hours /played if done right, I would go for as many groups as you can.

I personally had 5 accounts that I only boosted one team up on, letting the RAF expire. Now I have many other team ideas and can't deal with no RAF. Time = money for me, and boosting is work...so I'd rather it be quick and painless. I ended up buying 4 new alt accounts and trashed the old 4, starting on a brand new server and only bringing my main along to do the boosting. I could have only gone with 2 more accounts and transferred after boosting, but I want quite a few teams and it made more sense financially to completely start over :)

So far I've got a team of DK/4x Rets up to 60. Time to park them and continue with a 5x druid team, then possibly 5x rogues. If I'm still going and not burned out, maybe a backup shaman team.

I would recommend taking your time on the boosting. While I accomplished 1-60 in 10 hours on my first team, that translated into a week of time. I don't want to burn out, stop boosting, and 6 months down the road want to start over again. You can get quite a few teams up to 60 by playing a few hours here and there. 90 days is a long time, but not if you get burned out and stop after the first week :)

[Ualaa]

I've heard quite a few people purchase 4 disposable classic (not battlechest) wow accounts.

RAF from two existing accounts to two new accounts.
The new accounts (disposable) can be any race/class, since you're not keeping them it doesn't matter.
Boost to 60th.
Keeping the two on the existing accounts.
Grant levels etc.
Then ditch the disposable accounts (or level another set).

Then do the same with the other two keeper accounts and two more disposable accounts.

Since you are leveling twice, at 1/3rd the 1-60 pace.
It works out to 2/3rds the normal time.
Which is still decent, but nothing spectacular.

Long story short.
If you have RAF, level a bunch of options.
Anything you think you might want to try down the road, is worth doing now while you have the RAF.

[kalrok2]

Hmm yeay I figured as much, makes sense to make full use of RAF while you have it. I will just park my 60s then and level 1 team per week during the RAF period going slowly (ie 3 hours a day) so that I don't get burned out from boosting.

The 1-60 is fine for me, as it's fairly quick and so worthwhile during the RAF period, however I don't see myself being able to do the 60-80 with more than 1 team possibly 2. At this stage I will def push the shammies to 80 and then get them geared up and get hierloom gear for the 2nd team, although I am still undecided about the 2nd team, although now that someone mentioned it 5 druids does sound like fun and offers a lot of options (are stealth runs still done) so I might try that out rather than a mage team.

Quick question about granting levels, is this something I can do after the RAF period, or does this expire at the end of the RAF period?

[Ualaa]

Granted levels expire with RAF, used or not.

I'd level as many combinations to 60th as you can stomach, during the RAF period.
Once RAF is finished, pick one primary team to play.
And maybe an alternate team (different composition so it is quite different) for a change of pace.
Always having rested is a nice bonus too.

If possible, level a PvE viable team as the primary.
You can do heroics down the road, and purchase Bind On Account gear which gets you a 10% experience bonus, which can make later teams much easier to level.
The shoulders (+10% experience) are bought from badges; I'd get the cloth version of these, since all toons can then use them.
You can also get a (+10% experience) chest, from Wintergrasp and they will stack (0.90 x 0.90 = 0.8100) resulting in a 19% experience boost.

[Krago]

Hi all,

Long time lurker, 1st time poster/replier.


Granted levels expire with RAF, used or not.

I had to emphasize this comment by Ualaa. My 1st dual-boxing experience was great, got some toons to 60 and called it a day.

Then got the bug last fall and bought a third account and all went well, BUT I forgot to grant the free levels to my referrer account because I got the expiry time wrong and they were lost forever. :mad:

Now, I just bought two more account to try out 5 boxing and I'm loving!


Considering you can boost an RAF team up to 60 in 8-9 hours /played if done right, I would go for as many groups as you can.

Do you have a link for doing this 8-9 hours?

I usually do the recommended instance boosting with 80 DK or low 70s Pally but my /played is definitely not this low.

[Ualaa]

01-10 Quest with booster in the party.
11-20 Shadowfang Keep (Horde)
11-16 Deadmines (Alliance)
16-20 Stockades (Alliance)
20-45 Scarlet Monastery
45-55 Stratholme or Scholomance
55-60 Ramparts

Try boosting in these places.
Also, you can camp a toon at zone in, in advance.
And then use RAF summons to get the team there.
A geared booster helps.
Pulling the instance with large pulls/fast clears helps.

I'm never 8-9 hours; I'm usually 11-12 hours played with RAF boosting.
There's probably either a slightly more efficient route, or a better geared booster.

[Krago]

01-10 Quest with booster in the party.
11-20 Shadowfang Keep (Horde)
11-16 Deadmines (Alliance)
16-20 Stockades (Alliance)
20-45 Scarlet Monastery
45-55 Stratholme or Scholomance
55-60 Ramparts

Try boosting in these places.
Also, you can camp a toon at zone in, in advance.
And then use RAF summons to get the team there.
A geared booster helps.
Pulling the instance with large pulls/fast clears helps.

I'm never 8-9 hours; I'm usually 11-12 hours played with RAF boosting.
There's probably either a slightly more efficient route, or a better geared booster.

Yeah, that's is my usual progression and I do the RAF summons and try to perform large pulls / long trains.

After reading some other threads around here I realized where my slow leveling might be occurring, I'm a pack rat.
I stop and loot and skin everything, currently in SFK and this takes forever to skin and loot.

Must resist urge to loot tonight...

I also apologize for hijacking the thread from the OP.

Cheers.

[Ualaa]

In another thread, it was suggested to enable mouse broadcasting, and spam right click on the pile of corpses with all of your toons.

That is, if you want to loot everything.
Get all of the cloth and such.



Another approach, which loses all of the cloth drops, is to take advantage of the looting options.

1) Set the loot to Master Looter, with your booster (active toon) as the Master Looter.
2) Have your booster opt out of loot.
3) Set the loot threshold to Green, Blue or Purple.

Anything below the threshold will not sparkle.
Any corpse with an item at or above the threshold will sparkle -- for your booster to master loot it, to the toon of your choice.

I usually set the threshold to green.
So I can level enchanting, from disenchanting the greens which drop.
My roommate sets the threshold to blue, to not miss nice stuff, but doesn't mind missing greens.

Either way, you loot a lot fewer corpses, and still get the rare items, according to your settings.

[Krago]

In another thread, it was suggested to enable mouse broadcasting, and spam right click on the pile of corpses with all of your toons.

That is, if you want to loot everything.
Get all of the cloth and such.



Another approach, which loses all of the cloth drops, is to take advantage of the looting options.

1) Set the loot to Master Looter, with your booster (active toon) as the Master Looter.
2) Have your booster opt out of loot.
3) Set the loot threshold to Green, Blue or Purple.

Anything below the threshold will not sparkle.
Any corpse with an item at or above the threshold will sparkle -- for your booster to master loot it, to the toon of your choice.

I usually set the threshold to green.
So I can level enchanting, from disenchanting the greens which drop.
My roommate sets the threshold to blue, to not miss nice stuff, but doesn't mind missing greens.

Either way, you loot a lot fewer corpses, and still get the rare items, according to your settings.

Managed to get 5 levels in SM last night in less time then it was taking me to get 2 with the looting.

So, looting is my issue.

I have tried the spam click looting method but even then it was taking a long time. So, I will try the loot filter approach you outlined above and can see that working a lot better.

I don't really need the loot, it's just a habit I've formed over the last couple years. :-)

Thanks again for the pointers.

Cheers.

[kalrok2]

Hijack away, picked up some nice tips about looting from your post!

After leveling my 1st team to 60, I'm now at 45 with my 2nd and 3rd teams. I decided to level these 2 teams at once so that I can camp an instance for longer. However I probably won't level 2 teams at once again as you spend too much time in once instance and it becomes even more tedious!

Will get both these teams to 60 by the end of the w/end but but will stop boosting for a week or so as I am pretty burned out from RAF boosting, even though I only do around 3 hours a day. How do you guys boost multiple teams during the RAF period without getting burned out?

[Krago]

Hijack away, picked up some nice tips about looting from your post!

After leveling my 1st team to 60, I'm now at 45 with my 2nd and 3rd teams. I decided to level these 2 teams at once so that I can camp an instance for longer. However I probably won't level 2 teams at once again as you spend too much time in once instance and it becomes even more tedious!

Will get both these teams to 60 by the end of the w/end but but will stop boosting for a week or so as I am pretty burned out from RAF boosting, even though I only do around 3 hours a day. How do you guys boost multiple teams during the RAF period without getting burned out?

I set the looting up as suggested bu Uaalaa and I'm going a lot faster as I managed to to ding 6 or so more levels last night fairly quickly. I was WFH so it was not a concentrated effort but without changing my looting style I would only have 2-3 at most.

So, my three shammies just ding 33, 30, and 30.

I tend to binge for a bit, so hopefully these guys will also hit 60 by end of week/weekend.

However, I also have Seagull Syndrome (tm) :-) As in, oh shiny.do this, oh wait that's shinier, oh wait...

Therefore, I also tend to play around with my other alts, I have 2 DKs @ 80 and a lock at 73 and pally at 72 1/2 or so that I am trying to ding 80 with.

I also power leveled up BS to 450 and mining on my DK tank for a distraction.

Also, also I like playing the AH as I consider that a mini game.

I guess I avoid the burnout by distracting myself with other things in game, achievements, AH, professions, screwing around, BGs helping out newbies when they ask for help in trade chat. I just started using the new LFG tools as well to help gear up my tank and that has been a fun distraction, especially since I can teleport to and from the instance, takes little to no effort.

[mmmbox]

I boosted my druid yesterday from 53-57 in scholo just parking him at entrance, but instead of looting i just leave everything cause everything but blue loot will despawn hence all the goddies will be left when i have cleared the instance and is omw out.

i clear scholo with my paladin in +20 mins, 2 runs is almost a lvl WITHOUT rested or raf xp, tho he does have x2 +10% xp items.

[kalrok2]

Well my 1st month of RAF is almost over and I've managed to level 3 teams to 60 now:
5 Shamans
5 Mages
5 Paladins

My last team took me 16 hours /played which seems to be pretty good so I think I've got the hang of it!
In addition to this I now have at least a lvl 60 of each class.

I'm still not working and I've decided I might as well use my time off to level 1 more teamsso that I am covered in the future as I don't really want to buy new accounts RAF them and transfer chars back to my main accounts if I want to try something else out.

For my next team I am thinking of leveling 5 X Druids. At the same time I will use level grants etc to make a team of 5 X Locks. After that I would have a 5 man team for each of the classes that I think would be good to multibox with (ie Shaman, Paladin, Mage, Warlock, Druid).

Out of the remaining 5 classes (ie Warrior, DK, Priest, Hunter, Rogue) I already have at least a lvl 60 of each, and I don't think it's worth leveling a 5 man team for each of these classes as I can't see them being good for PVP / PVE. I just wanted to see if anyone could think of a reason why it would be worth it to level a team of one of these 5.

[Ualaa]

I RAF'd Hunters and Priests.
They were both fun classes to play.
But have not moved from 60th since.

Rogues could be quite fun.
But with Pallies you already have a strong melee option.

And if you ever decide on DK's, they start at 55th.
And are 57th/58th by the time they leave their starting area.
So RAF doesn't get you much on those.