Uses for gold when levelling a team

[Vivan]

I was going to ask more specific questions but I think a general discussion thread would work best.

What are some good ways to use disposable gold to improve the levelling speed/experience?

Off the top of my head:

Engineering bombs for DPS/threat management
Mana/health potions for improved sustainability/ bigger pulls
Buff foods (?)

But I haven't put any of this into practice and I haven't looked at any specifics. Any thoughts?

[Apatheist]

The primary use I can think of would be purchasing BoE's (depending on which classes you chose.) Some low-mid level BoE's that are BiS well into raiding. Being able to afford and equip them at their minimum required level would be a pretty huge advantage. Freezing band, wardens staff, edgemasters, cloudkeeper legs, robes of winter night/archmage are just a few I can think of.

Also, being able afford your 40/60 mounts on all of your characters is obviously a nice boost to efficiency.

[Vivan]

The primary use I can think of would be purchasing BoE's (depending on which classes you chose.) Some low-mid level BoE's that are BiS well into raiding. Being able to afford and equip them at their minimum required level would be a pretty huge advantage. Freezing band, wardens staff, edgemasters, cloudkeeper legs, robes of winter night/archmage are just a few I can think of.

Also, being able afford your 40/60 mounts on all of your characters is obviously a nice boost to efficiency.

Can you think of any breakpoints where it becomes worthwhile to drop gold on non-endgame BoEs? One obvious one I can think of for casters is 13 for the greater magic wand, but I'm sure there are other points where it makes sense to just buy gear to give a big improvement.

[azboxer]

Get professions up while leveling - can enchant gear as you get it
Start buying your pre-bis boes early and equip when you can
Buy the biggest bags you can for all your characters

[nodoze]

Multiple Warlock leveling guides recommend getting the ShadowWeave set starting at level 37 which may make sense for Warlock based teams if you are still leveling via DoTing vs AoE. They are Tailoring crafted BoE items and likely could be bought pretty cheaply but if you are running a Priest with your Warlock team you likely want Tailoring on one or more characters anyway and could craft them yourself.

[Vivan]

Do you think it's worth going for the + fire/frost spell power stuff from tailoring or should mages just focus on int/spirit to keep up the mana?

[myrsnipe]

Most of the time a 5 man team doing instances should be well geared enough, but I’m sure there are some great craftables or boe ‘s that can fill the lvl gap, especially for physical classes

[Quiding]

For my healers and caster I made
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10041/dreamweave-circlet
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10019/dreamweave-gloves
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10021/dreamweave-vest
They lasted into dungeons at 60 for me.

For my warriors I made/bought this and put +100 health on it, lasted untill I bought plate items at 50 or so.
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=2870/shining-silver-breastplate

[Homer]

For my healers and caster I made
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10041/dreamweave-circlet
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10019/dreamweave-gloves
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10021/dreamweave-vest
They lasted into dungeons at 60 for me.

For my warriors I made/bought this and put +100 health on it, lasted untill I bought plate items at 50 or so.
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=2870/shining-silver-breastplate

I think those items make sense for your healer, but if you are using AoE spells like for example AE it only gets 14% of the SP so I tend to go for pure int.

[nodoze]

I think those items make sense for your healer, but if you are using AoE spells like for example AE it only gets 14% of the SP so I tend to go for pure int.Any idea what gear is best for Warlock's Rain of Fire or HellFire if you want them to do decent damage but also be very tanky?

[Homer]

Any idea what gear is best for Warlock's Rain of Fire or HellFire if you want them to do decent damage but also be very tanky?

33% - 8.25%/33% - 2.2% is what RoF and Hellfire receive from gear respectively, the second number being per tick, I have been stacking stam/int gear on my WPMML team since the lock takes aggro so much, although never really goes oom, but its a good stat, if you were having no mana problems Stam/Agi gear would be best for a few extra dodge points, but won't really make a difference as its 20 agi to 1 point of dodge at level 60, less while leveling.

[Vivan]

Just dropped a bunch of gold on getting level-appropriate int/stam/spirit gear in every slot for my team. Gained about 400 mana which will definitely help avoid going OOM on big AOE pulls.

[Yukzor]

Just dropped a bunch of gold on getting level-appropriate int/stam/spirit gear in every slot for my team. Gained about 400 mana which will definitely help avoid going OOM on big AOE pulls.

At what level?

[Vivan]

At what level?

24/25 - I'm sure there are better breakpoints, but my team was mostly wearing level 9-11 greens so it was a big upgrade.

[Apatheist]

I wouldn't recommend focusing on shadow damage gear on warlocks while dungeon grinding. 90% Of your damage in dungeons comes from hellfire. Also, spell damage has such a minimal effect until you can stack enough of it that it's just not worthwhile while leveling. I chose the gear with the most int/stam. Same as mages. You just want as much health and mana as you can get. At around 50, when you start getting to a level where you can acquire some preraid BiS gear, it's worth starting to collect shadow damage items.

That being said, there are some items with int/stam and spell damage that are obviously worthwhile. The staff from ZF is an obvious pick.

As for buying "non-endgame BoE's" it depends on the cost. I wouldn't spend a lot of gold on BoE's unless they were useful for a good long while. An example of this would be freezing band for mages.

https://classic.wowhead.com/item=942/freezing-band

You can equip them at level 47 of them and they're preraid BiS. Just weigh the gold investment against how much use you're going to get out of it. If you can replace the item with something you can farm by yourself at 60 then it's probably not worth investing a ton of gold in. In fact, even then it might not be worthwhile since IMO stam/int take priority over spell damage while leveling anyway. You're probably better off just using a green "of the eagle" ring. Particularly since most of your damage is going to be coming from fireball/arcane explosion while grinding dungeons.

Worth keeping in mind that BiS lists are geared towards raid entry and aren't necessarily as efficient when you're gearing to grind dungeons as a boxer.

[nodoze]

I wouldn't recommend focusing on shadow damage gear on warlocks while dungeon grinding. 90% Of your damage in dungeons comes from hellfire. Also, spell damage has such a minimal effect until you can stack enough of it that it's just not worthwhile while leveling. I chose the gear with the most int/stam. Same as mages. You just want as much health and mana as you can get. At around 50, when you start getting to a level where you can acquire some preraid BiS gear, it's worth starting to collect shadow damage items.

That being said, there are some items with int/stam and spell damage that are obviously worthwhile. The staff from ZF is an obvious pick.

As for buying "non-endgame BoE's" it depends on the cost. I wouldn't spend a lot of gold on BoE's unless they were useful for a good long while. An example of this would be freezing band for mages.

https://classic.wowhead.com/item=942/freezing-band

You can equip them at level 47 of them and they're preraid BiS. Just weigh the gold investment against how much use you're going to get out of it. If you can replace the item with something you can farm by yourself at 60 then it's probably not worth investing a ton of gold in. In fact, even then it might not be worthwhile since IMO stam/int take priority over spell damage while leveling anyway. You're probably better off just using a green "of the eagle" ring. Particularly since most of your damage is going to be coming from fireball/arcane explosion while grinding dungeons.

Worth keeping in mind that BiS lists are geared towards raid entry and aren't necessarily as efficient when you're gearing to grind dungeons as a boxer.Great inputs.

If you can get solid pure stamina pieces on a slot would you take that over int+Stam items if you plan on life-tapping and/or drinking regularly anyways?

When farming and my voids have aggro I have been periodically life-tapping to keep mana up and let the health regen in parallel (and/or be healed) so I was looking at stamina as potential mana.

My party composition is Paladin Tank with 3 Warlocks and a Priest healer (since I have 2 Paladins I also have a Paladin healer option). I was planning on prioritizing Stamina for my locks, in part for hellfire as well as general survivability, and I figured my Paladin will be drinking often between pulls anyway (I also have a Mage for free water).

[Apatheist]

Great inputs.

If you can get solid pure stamina pieces on a slot would you take that over int+Stam items if you plan on life-tapping and/or drinking regularly anyways?

When farming and my voids have aggro I have been periodically life-tapping to keep mana up and let the health regen in parallel (and/or be healed) so I was looking at stamina as potential mana.

My party composition is Paladin Tank with 3 Warlocks and a Priest healer (since I have 2 Paladins I also have a Paladin healer option). I was planning on prioritizing Stamina for my locks, in part for hellfire as well as general survivability, and I figured my Paladin will be drinking often between pulls anyway (I also have a Mage for free water).

Not sure if there's a "right" answer but I prefer to stack as much stamina as possible so I can lifetap liberally.

Shadow/spell damage increase lifetap damage and mana return so as you level and get more damage items, your mana pool becomes less relevant. It's mostly from 20-40 that you have to choose between either damage or base stats. After 40 there are quite a few nice pieces that will have stamina and either spell damage or shadow damage.

Something else to keep in mind is that when you have enough shadow damage the increase to your DoT's is significant since they receive 100% of your bonus damage over their duration. Spreading DoT's for cleave may even be more DPS than hellfire on an average high level pull of 3-5 mobs like the ogre packs in DM.

[Vivan]

I've found that enchants actually go a long way with helping your team, especially early game. Speed on boots is huge, and given that enchants can be applied at any level (I think?) it's possible to get a huge benefit early on by using lategame enchants. Of course this is expensive, especially since you'll be replacing gear often, but some slots the enchants are good enough that you can keep the same item for a loooong time.

[Mercbeast]

For warriors (or any melee based group), you should really look at cheap boe weapons, and keep your plate up to date.

When I first went into to test the waters of BRD over 50-52, I was still using the enforcers staff from ZF on all my warriors, the one with the stun proc. My armor was also mostly all low level 40 plate (since I farmed the GY primarily, basically no dungeon drops).

In my mid 50's when I went back to BRD, I was still using the enforcer staffs on 2 of 4, and all 4 of my warriors still had like level 40-44ish plate in several slots. BRD was a struggle. Realized how out of date my gear was, went and bought a bunch of BoE greens, and 4 blue boe swords, and BRD became much more manageable.

[Hardcore Scape]

i made over 1k oil of immolations leveling from 40-60 and used them to gain some extra threat on my warrior tank, now with force reactive I don't really use them as much. They definitely help and you can make them for 20-30 silver each.

[Ticks]

I haven't bought much off the AH for my team (they're 41 now) - I have always been more concerned about having gold for my mounts which I will be able to purchase tonight without having to use any of my other chars gold. I just use the items that drop from instances and some quest rewards. But I can see where better gear from the AH can make things a lot easier and I am expecting to get more gear in my later levels as I approach 60

[Vivan]

What are some good consumables to use while levelling, assuming gold is not an issue? Oil of Immolation stands out as an obvious one.

[nodoze]

IIRC Peregrine did armor potions on his Mages and possibly some others. I remember him posting about it when leveling so you could maybe search his history to find that.

[Mercbeast]

Yea, defense elixirs are super cheap, and a nice little mitigation boost to a caster group.

I think he also used invuln potions from time to time as well.

[Vivan]

Yea, defense elixirs are super cheap, and a nice little mitigation boost to a caster group.

I think he also used invuln potions from time to time as well.

Just bought out the whole AH of these - 250 armor is pretty huge!

Also considering throwing some endgame enchants on weapons I find - since casters dont really change weapon that often it isn't too much of a loss.