[WoW] AOE Paladin Boosting, when to move on to next instance?

[daviddoran]

I've been running my alts through Deadmines and SFK, and now they are around 21-22. I can easily do Scarlet Monestary with my holy pally, pretty large pulls, and my spell dmg kills most stuff before I get too worried. I also made a macro for all my alts that can heal to heal my main, and that helps a lot. But I'm wondering, would I be better off going to Gnomer first? (I'm Aliance BTW, so until the alts are 30 getting to SM is a long run...) I really never liked Gnomer tho, corpse runs suck a lot (but maybe not necessary with a 70 lol)

I also sometimes put it on Master Looter, then I only have the Greens to deal with. I want to level faster, and get gold at 70 when its ez mode (7x daily quests FTW!)

Should I just keep doing SM and only loot the bosses? Or am I gimping the XP Too much by being barely able to enter the instance? That was my plan but the stupid Library is bugged and some mobs don't keep attacking when I pull, and they run back, makes my AOE less effective, and I get some random dude wailing on my alts when I'm not expecting it. I've been doing Armory, which is pretty easy, and then I'll do Cath. Then my plan was to do ZF (just because I can pull while mounted...) until 45 and then do Strath (holy wrath > undead) until 58 then off to outland and regular 5 boxing. Is that a good idea? Or does anyone have any other thoughts?

[Tdog]

Stay in SM till 40 and move onto ZF. Screw Gnomer, it's terrible for boosting. Also the library isn't bugged. Some zones the mobs will purposely reset if you run to far away just like outside of instances. Gnomer is actually one of these zones which is one of the bigger reasons why it sucks for boosting.

I've used two different paladins too boost. 1 with 11k hp and 950~ spell dmg and another with 8.3k hp and 300 spell dmg (green "of the sorcerer" gear) and tbh the surviablility of your paladin comes more from the talents and abilities rather than your gear. Using BoL and strafing, which most people don't :( , while gathering mobs makes up for alot of gear issues. Sure it's still much nicer to use my BT geared pally in comparison to my green geared pally but till you get past ZF it's not a huge difference. Gear does start to come heavily into play in BRD+

[Tdog]

Come to think of it some people have said that RFK/RFD isn't too bad at this level you might try that. Or if you're not already in SM you could boost in Stocks till 26-27 since you're alliance.

[MrPlopp]

That was my plan but the stupid Library is bugged and some mobs don't keep attacking when I pull, and they run back, makes my AOE less effective, and I get some random dude wailing on my alts when I'm not expecting it.
Back in the days (before Burning Crusade) i used "Consecration (Rank 1)" while pulling mobs (all the time, when it wasn't on CD that is), not sure if it's still working tho :S

[daviddoran]

I guess I'm not the only one who hated gnomer... Thanks for the info on Library, I will try rank1 consecration to keep em angry at me. I actually have so much mana with all my +int gear I can probably just spam a higher rank. I'll experiment to find the ideal combo of dmg vs mana consumption.

[Ruodhaid]

I would go st at level 35 :)

Yesterday i found this video http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=78555 , and after seeing it i went down there to test it and got 2 druids from 46-50 in no time

but this will prolly be fixed very soon

[pinotnoir]

So your saying once you hit lvl 35 got to sunken temple and do the trick in that video?

[Ruodhaid]

indeed 10 hrs will take you from 35-52

but dont forget meny shields or some repair bots spend 200g en repairs today from just that

[pinotnoir]

Can you give me some detailed information about how to do this? Does it just go on forever until you decide to kill the boss? Should I wear my prot gear or spell damage? Anything else you can help with would be appreciated.

[daviddoran]

I would go st at level 35 :)

Yesterday i found this video http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=78555 , and after seeing it i went down there to test it and got 2 druids from 46-50 in no time

but this will prolly be fixed very soonI am trying to DL the vid now, but what exactly is the trick? Endless spawns or something? If yo ucan get from 35-50 that fast, I better get to 35 lol!

I am

[Coltimar]

Sadly, downranking Consecration is rubbish these days :( And yes, I hate Gnomer too.

[Ruodhaid]

body pull the boss, have your back against the wall

go afk whit blessing of stanctuary and retribution aura, come back every now and then to press your Figurine of the Colossus

When the boss dies of hitting you, zone out reset :)

if you cant see the movie then just find a mini boss troll named zolo in st and do what i postet above

this is the gear/spec i use, but you can prolly do whit any paladin aslong as you have the blessing

i bring 3 shields whit me when i do this and 2 stacks of repair bots

[daviddoran]

Wow, so you just afk and auto kill the skeleton adds for like hours at a time? Eek! I'm holy spec currently, but I'd respec for this. Gotta get that trinket too, never dropped for me so far. I have a 41 hunter im gonna try this with.

Are there any other similar encounters at lower lvls? If you could do this before lvl 20, you could have 60 levels in under a day while being AFK most of the time...

[Thulos]

I'm so going to have to try this, was thinking about boosting with a 70 mage but this makes me want to try out my paladin. Can anyone recomend a paly spec for this. I've only ever been a healing paly.

[pinotnoir]

I guess I need to start running shattered halls for that trinket.

[Tdog]

Do the skeletons interupt spell casting? Because if they don't you don't need the figurine you could simply throw on concentration aura when you need to heal yourself along with Spiritual Focus and not have any healing spell push back.

[Tdog]

Well the skeletons don't seem to interrupt and this method seems to be working great however Zolo eventually dies on me. How do you keep him from dying when you do this? Just turn off retribution aura and have your back to him?

[daviddoran]

I assume he'd have to die eventually, unless he self heals, but then he still will eventually run OOM. Maybe your spell damage is too high? Too bad you can't downrank auras. I guess once he dies, you just run out reset and repeat.

[Ramesses]

oh man i cant wait to try this.

How long is it before he dies? Has no one figured out a way to keep him alive longer?

Seems like its a pretty far run with 5 lowbies, to get back to the boss every time he dies. I would think this slows you down quite a bit?

[Dezeral]

I tried this yesterday. My first run I used the Petrified Lichen Guard shield with a felsteel shield spike Zolo died in about 2 minutes. For the next runs, I only used the Petrified Lichen Guard to clear the trash and used my other shields without spikes for Zolo himself. Zolo lasted much much longer when I only used ret aura and BoSanct. I believe it was 3 cycles of the colossus trinket, so about 6+ minutes. On the next attempt, I feared Zolo every time I could bubble myself. This prolonged the fight a bit and also caused Zolo to drop another skeleton totem whenever fear broke. My twink was level 45 when I started and 48 when it was time to raid BT. On my best run, I reset the FuExperience statistics counter and hit 200k xp/hr. Obviously, the true number is lower including clear/travel time to the boss, but when you're actually at Zolo, you can crank out a lot of exp.

If you view the big circle as a clock, you have 6 possible locations for Zolo to spawn. If he spawns at 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock, you can leave the twink right there near the entrance portal which makes the run much faster. Tip: Make sure you have sense undead on. I think out of the 6 times I did this yesterday, Zolo was at the 7 o'clock position 3 times, 11 o'clock 1 time, 1 o'clock 1 time, and 9 o'clock 1 time.

[Ramesses]

Th
I tried this yesterday. My first run I used the Petrified Lichen Guard shield with a felsteel shield spike Zolo died in about 2 minutes. For the next runs, I only used the Petrified Lichen Guard to clear the trash and used my other shields without spikes for Zolo himself. Zolo lasted much much longer when I only used ret aura and BoSanct. I believe it was 3 cycles of the colossus trinket, so about 6+ minutes. On the next attempt, I feared Zolo every time I could bubble myself. This prolonged the fight a bit and also caused Zolo to drop another skeleton totem whenever fear broke. My twink was level 45 when I started and 48 when it was time to raid BT. On my best run, I reset the FuExperience statistics counter and hit 200k xp/hr. Obviously, the true number is lower including clear/travel time to the boss, but when you're actually at Zolo, you can crank out a lot of exp.

If you view the big circle as a clock, you have 6 possible locations for Zolo to spawn. If he spawns at 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock, you can leave the twink right there near the entrance portal which makes the run much faster. Tip: Make sure you have sense undead on. I think out of the 6 times I did this yesterday, Zolo was at the 7 o'clock position 3 times, 11 o'clock 1 time, 1 o'clock 1 time, and 9 o'clock 1 time.

Some good info! Thanks!

Is Zolo considered undead? If not, how did you fear him? With your alts?

[Gurblash]

http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=5712. He's undead yes :)

[Dafa]

Is that leveling method more tailored for 1-2 alts in group or can 4 alts get good xp off the skeleton kills?

[Ruodhaid]

Just reset zolo when at he is at 10%, jump down to the dragons, he will evade and reset, you can run op again :)

the respawn rate of trash trolls is however insane, so you want zolo to be on the first platform i just keep resetting the instance untill i got him at that platform, and then i use that instance / evading trick for the rest of the time

[Ramesses]

Just reset zolo when at he is at 10%, jump down to the dragons, he will evade and reset, you can run op again :)

the respawn rate of trash trolls is however insane, so you want zolo to be on the first platform i just keep resetting the instance untill i got him at that platform, and then i use that instance / evading trick for the rest of the time

Now THAT is what im talking about. Thats what i was looking for!!

[Tdog]

35->50 in just over 10 hrs.
160k xp/hr sustained for 5 hour session. (Includes hearthing to Stonard for repairs and running back in).
Just reset zolo when at he is at 10%, jump down to the dragons, he will evade and reset, you can run op again :)

the respawn rate of trash trolls is however insane, so you want zolo to be on the first platform i just keep resetting the instance untill i got him at that platform, and then i use that instance / evading trick for the rest of the time 1. Funnily enough this is the exact same thing I figured out. Resetting, refinding Zolo, Clearing to Zolo for your alts is a huge time sink and not worth it. When you first enter the zone take only your 70 to scout ahead and find if Zolo is in one of the first 2 platforms (11 and 1 o'clock positions on the minimap). If you're careful you can run right up to the platforms w/o aggroing a single mob. If Zolo is not in one of the first platforms reset the instance till he is.

2. Once you have found Zolo on either the 11 or 1 o'clock platforms clear the 3 mob packs on the stairs as you're running back to the entrance where your lowbies are.

3. Now that you have your alts at Zolo's platform make sure they are out of aggro range of the skeletons and also the pats in the stairway (Was really only a concern in the mid 30's for me).

4. Now that you're ready to pull Zolo you need to understand how this works. You're not actually trying to kill the skeletons with your reflective damage, you simply need to tag the skeleton with any sort of damage to be able to recieve xp for your alts. The skeletons are only summoned for 45 seconds and then they will automatically die. If durning that 45 seconds you do even 1 point of damage to them your alts will recieve the xp once the die.

-HOWEVER-

As some of you have noticed too much reflective gear can kill Zolo super quick resulting in alot of unneeded down time. After several hours I finally figured out that the only thing you need to do this BoSanct. NO SHEILD SPIKE, NO RETRIBUTION AURA!!! Use Devotion Aura unless you're armor capped which at this level is probably around 18k ac, then you could probably just keep concentration aura on.
-BoSanct, Spike, Ret Aura = Zolo living for 6 mins.
-BoSanct, Spike = 12-15 mins.
-BoSanct = 30+mins.

Again you're not actually killing the skeletons, you're just tagging them and they will automatically die after 45 secs. which is plenty of time for you to get a block off on one of their attacks which will proc BoSanct and tag them for you lowbies. Don't use conscreation either.

Try your best to not accidently melee Zolo. Each hit probably knocks off about 1 min. of his life and he loves to try to get in front of you. He is also transparent and a pain to see at times.

5. Once Zolo hits roughly 8-10% I heal up to full, at 3% I jump off the platform trying to avoid the dragonkin, and straight back to Zolo's platform, heal up, switch out gear if needed, and get back too it.

6. Once your gear is all broken and you have to repair, unless you really want to spend the money on a repair bot which I wouldn't recommend, hearth to Stonard (or Nethergarde for alliance), repair and ride straight back. Again being careful you should be able to run all the way to the platform w/o aggroing anything which is another reason you will want to have Zolo on one of the first 2 platforms. Rinse and Repeat for as long as you got the time.

7. Some of you are probably finding out this can be quite expensive in repair bills. I recommend buying 2 sets of green level 65-70 gear "of the elder, eagle" if you don't have the Figurine of the Colussus or "of stamina" if you do. You will also need about 3-4 shields per set of armor. Not only do you not need great gear to do this but it's too damn expensive to justify using your high quality gear for this.

With a measly 370 defense and no additional blocking, dodging, parrying, Figurine of the Colussus, CD's, or w/e other gimicks I can easily last indefinitely. Simply use SoW to build up mana in between heals, switch to concentration aura heal up, back to devotion aura, and continue using SoW. If you get back to full mana before you need another heal, use SoL to prolong the time before you need to heal yourself again. If your gear starts breaking durning mid fight don't freak out. Just focus and keep using SoW and make sure you're getting all you're swings in. I've actually gone on indefinetly with all broken gear excluding my shield. It is a pain in the ass to do it though and I don't recommend it but I'm simply pointing out that if you're gear does break mid fight don't reset, just keep going. Each reset sets you back alot of xp/hr.

If you do have the Figurine of Colussus this is ridiculously ez-mode as you can simply use the trinket once every 2 mins. and that should be all the healing you will need till your gear breaks.

8. This probably sounds more complicated then it is. Once you have done it a couple of times you'll see that this is super ez-mode. You don't really have to be paying full attention once you get it down and in fact to illustrate how easy it is, I wrote this whole post pretty much while using this strategy. :D GL!!!

[Tdog]

Also wanted to point out that I think a Shaman and a Druid might be able to do this as well. For the Shaman use a low level shield spike, healing totems, figurine of the colussus. Druids use rank 1 thorns and should be armor capped with as much dodge gear as they can muster. Warriors might be able to pull this off if the have a Figurine, low level shield spike, and defensive stance.

I don't know for sure on these classes as I haven't tried them and also the lack of BoSanct might not work out for them too well. If anyone does try them out, please let us know how it went!

[daviddoran]

I happen to have the Naglering, which does 3 damage, which is enough to tag em, but not enough to kill zolo too fast. Trouble is I am holy and I don't have nearly the staying power of a tankadin. I do have some tanking gear (couple heroic plate and some kara ones) and the Nightbane tanking shield, but I had better results with my skullflame shield a bit more reflective damage, less armor tho, and it has a spike :( but its life steal keeps me alive longer. I actually died before zolo :( But I got an amazing amount of xp, and because im holy, my heals heal for a lot, so with concetration on, and spiritual focus, I can heal without interruption, until my mana runs out (my tanking gear is mostly warrior stuff so no INT, and i only have 6300 mana in that gear)

Is it worth it to respec? Even with my half tank/half healer gear? The xp I am getting on my 41 (now 42 lol) hunter is crazy. As soon as my team reaches 35 this is a MUST for any instance booster. I will probably do it until the mobs are grey, just cause its so easy. I can actually watch the xp bar move... I can't wait to try this with a prot spec. Any tips for a build? It's basically just gonna be a boosting build just for this...

[Tdog]

I happen to have the Naglering, which does 3 damage, which is enough to tag em, but not enough to kill zolo too fast. Trouble is I am holy and I don't have nearly the staying power of a tankadin. I do have some tanking gear (couple heroic plate and some kara ones) and the Nightbane tanking shield, but I had better results with my skullflame shield a bit more reflective damage, less armor tho, and it has a spike :( but its life steal keeps me alive longer. I actually died before zolo :( But I got an amazing amount of xp, and because im holy, my heals heal for a lot, so with concetration on, and spiritual focus, I can heal without interruption, until my mana runs out (my tanking gear is mostly warrior stuff so no INT, and i only have 6300 mana in that gear)

Is it worth it to respec? Even with my half tank/half healer gear? The xp I am getting on my 41 (now 42 lol) hunter is crazy. As soon as my team reaches 35 this is a MUST for any instance booster. I will probably do it until the mobs are grey, just cause its so easy. I can actually watch the xp bar move... I can't wait to try this with a prot spec. Any tips for a build? It's basically just gonna be a boosting build just for this...BoSanct is a must for paladin boosting. When you are taking damage from literally hundreds of mobs this blessing lowers the incoming damage by a tremendous amount. TBH this is the only time this blessing really shines. Yes you may be able to heal for much more in holy spec but you are also taking alot more damage. With a proper "boosting" spec you will only need to heal every 3-4 mins.

Again I don't recommend using any raid tanking gear either, yes it will do just fine keeping you up but the reality is you just don't need it and it costs way too much in the long run to repair it. Spending a mere 180g I bought my paladin a complete "of the elder" set along, some rings, a neck piece, 3 shields and she is sitting at 11.5k hp, 370 def, 140 mp5, 200 healing and I don't have a single problem keeping myself up indefinitely.

If I was to respec holy and put on my +2100 healing set I'd probably be OOM long before Zolo was ready to die. You also don't block or parry when you are casting a spell, so even though you aren't getting spell push back you are taking alot more damage every time you need to heal.

[daviddoran]

So I respecced to Prot, my it's wonderful! I mean I loved being holy and healing, but it sucked for anything solo. I can't believe I didn't do this before! I guess I was afraid of paying too much gold to go back and forth. It will be kinda moot though, as I am leveling 2 more paladins, one on the same account as my main and another on my 2nd account. Then I can keep one holy and one prot on the same acct and not worry about spec. Hell, I love pallies so much, I'll probably make a dedicated Ret pally, and tri box :)

Anyway, as prot spec, with BoSanct, i lasted MUCH longer. Especially with my Skullflame shield, the lifesteal once upped my HP by 5%! I am gonna look for any other lifestealing stuff, and maybe I can just live indefinately...

It's just rediculous how fast the xp builds up. In just a couple hours (most of which me trying out different gear/resetting/dying) i got 2 levels out of my hunter.

[Heenan]

Bah! I worked my butt off to get my Pally up to par for grinding and now I have to undo everything for this :P It'll be well worth it though. I am going to try your strat tonight Tdog. Since my alts hit 38 last night, SM XP is slow going.

[Marathon]

A couple of questions with probably more to come afterward.

1st question - I have tried viewing the video alot but I cant seem to view it. Any ideas?

2nd question - I tried doing this on my own with out my alts just to try it and with a defense rating of 491 and an armor of 14500 with devotion aura on and the mobs still ate me alive. In fact the only way I was able to heal was to bubble and heal. But being prot and not holy I was only able to heal a little bit. Can u help me with this.

3rd question - Once you jump off the platform do the mobs chase after you and kill your alts ?

Thanks for you support !!! :thumbsup:

[Tdog]

A couple of questions with probably more to come afterward.

1st question - I have tried viewing the video alot but I cant seem to view it. Any ideas?

2nd question - I tried doing this on my own with out my alts just to try it and with a defense rating of 491 and an armor of 14500 with devotion aura on and the mobs still ate me alive. In fact the only way I was able to heal was to bubble and heal. But being prot and not holy I was only able to heal a little bit. Can u help me with this.

3rd question - Once you jump off the platform do the mobs chase after you and kill your alts ?

Thanks for you support !!! :thumbsup:1. /shrug works just fine for me. Google pally st boosting you might find another video of it. Although the way I personally am doing this is imo easier and more efficient than the videos I've seen.

2. I'm assuming you're using top rank of BoSanct right? Using Concentration Aura AND spiritual focus talent when you heal? When you do go to heal, switch to concentration aura and then use Holy Light not Flash of Light. Even though FoL is more mana efficient you do not block or parry while casting thus you take a ton of damage while trying to heal yourself. HL is 3x the HPS as FoL and you will suffer less healing time thus less damage taken while trying to heal up.

Also don't be trying to heal constantly either. I usually don't heal up till I'm at about 1000 hp. You may want to heal up at about 1500 the first few times till you get use to it. Either way the goal is to stay in 30% range for as long as you can since you are taking the least amount of damage due to Ardent Defender. With 5/5 reckoning + SoL you can basically just keep yourself healed in the 30% range with just that alone for a good long time.

Don't stand in the middle of the platform either or the skeletons will surround you and you will be taking damage from behind by alot of skeletons. Stand in the corner of the platform by the edge. This will force all of the skeletons to be in front of you thus you will have a chance to block, dodge, parry every single attack thrown at you. It will also make it so you can easily use SoW and SoL as the skeletons will want to move all over the place on you.

3. No, they all evade immediately after jumping off the platform. As long as they aren't in aggro range/LOS you're lowbies will not get aggro.

[Kayley]

I do it the super super lazy way. I park my shamans near, drop healing + a stoneskin totem. :P

I just jump down with the paladin, shamans die. Res them when I come back up. Although it is a little shady, who knows what would happen if a GM spotted you :p


*edit*
I was teasing about it being shady, creative use of game mechanics all the way!

[Marathon]

Thanks for the replies ... my 3 alts are still in SM at level 32 atm. But I am going to get them to 35 by tonight or at least by tommorow.

I am using the highest BoSan - And switched to conentration aura when i tried to heal. But no I did not have the spirtual focus talents. I am 49 Protection and 12 Ret - and I dont have th 5/5 in recokening either in the prot tree. So I guess I should respec. How do you think I should respec ?

Thanks again for the support. :thumbup:

[Tdog]

I do it the super super lazy way. I park my shamans near, drop healing + a stoneskin totem. :P

I just jump down with the paladin, shamans die. Res them when I come back up. Although it is a little shady, who knows what would happen if a GM spotted you :p


*edit*
I was teasing about it being shady, creative use of game mechanics all the way!Yea I was explaining how to do it with just a paladin for everyone's benefit. Obviously different group make up will have different options.

As far as it being shady...It's a whole hell of alot less shady than the paladin/mage zone out method that Athene used for the longest time. And after doing a bit of research I've discovered posts of this strategy as far back as april of 2007 which said posts suggested that it was around even longer than that. So I can't believe for even a second that blizzard doesn't already know about this method.
Thanks for the replies ... my 3 alts are still in SM at level 32 atm. But I am going to get them to 35 by tonight or at least by tommorow.

I am using the highest BoSan - And switched to conentration aura when i tried to heal. But no I did not have the spirtual focus talents. I am 49 Protection and 12 Ret - and I dont have th 5/5 in recokening either in the prot tree. So I guess I should respec. How do you think I should respec ?

Thanks again for the support. :thumbup:Yea you're not going to be getting heals off unless you are 100% immune to spell pushback.

If you don't have the Figurine of the Colussus I'd suggest you get spirtual focus. Using alts to heal won't work because it may take a few seconds to get a block off and generate some aggro and skeletons are respawning all the time so you're alts will definitely die if you try to use them to heal yourself. You can however using healing totems if you have shamans. Once you reset the group will die but you can just rez them up once you get back to the top.

Reckoning isn't necessary but it is very nice as it will always be up and you'll practically be swinging twice as fast thus receiving twice the benefit of SoW and SoL.

[Marathon]

Yeah I dont have Figurine of the Colussus just one of those nice trinkets I never got. I looked it up and it has a 12% drop rate. ;(

[Tdog]

Yeah I dont have Figurine of the Colussus just one of those nice trinkets I never got. I looked it up and it has a 12% drop rate. ;(Well Fortunately you don't need it. I don't have it either and I've been doing just fine. Doing it right now in fact on my 2nd team :D

[Marathon]

Ideas about best spec for this ? Besdies the 1o points in holy for the 5/5 for spirtual focus?

Ok my 2 shammys and 1 mage have all hit 35 .. blah so tired of SM .... going to try and get a few practice runs in before I actually sink the time to bring my alts.

[daviddoran]

I used to be full holy spec with just enough points in prot to get kings, and when I respecced to mostly prot, I didn't do any in holy (cause I wanted improved ret aura) but I can see now that the points in ret aren't necessary, as BoSanct does more dmg anyway. I'm probably gonna respec (again, ugh) and put the rest into holy. Having more INT always helps, and for self healing, spiritual focus and conc. aura are must haves. When WotLK comes out, we get 10 more points at 80 (and even better gear) so you could do mostly prot, a bit in holy, and still go 10 in ret to get Deflection (increased parry) Then it will be extreme ezmode. Hell you could probably boost in outland instances...

But, I was able to watch my health go up by as much as 5% with my skullflame shield. Its lifestealing proc must be going crazy. That and JoL keeps me up pretty good. And there's always LoH. I used to always get improved LoH, but even then the CD is sooo long, that it's only worth it if you are deep into holy as a raid main healer, and are already OOM...

My alts just hit 30-31, so a bit more SM boosting (which is getting faster BTW) and it's off to ST. Too bad the new patch and lvl 30 mounts aren't out yet, it'd be a whole lot easier with mounts and crusader aura.

[Marathon]

Tdog you the man !!!!

I finally figure out what I was missing before ...."SEAL OF WISDOM" .. you wrote it down clear as day I just over looked it. I totally went in there and did exactly as you said I got my alts from 35 to 37 in 30 min.

I respeced to get 5/5 of reckoning , along with 10 points in holy and with Seal of Wisdom i totally had plenty of mana. I even took it the point where most of my gear was red just to try it out and I was still able to keep my self up. I also put up healing totems at one point just to see if my alts would agro and if you move them back into the hall way before you jump off they totally dont gain any agro.

This is super ez mode and I hate questing through the 40's and ZF has always been a pain to me.

Tdog and everyone else thank you again for explaining everything to me ... this is going to make getting to 52 so much easier.

:thumbup:

[Heenan]

This works, and it works well.

I leveled my alts from 37-51 over the weekend. And I was playing what I consider to be casual. Everything that Tdog posted works. I even bought crappy greens so that the repair bills wouldn't be too drastic.

What I found that helped the most was purchasing a 70th level green shield "of Stamina", or whatever, it really doesn't matter (actually I bought 4 of these shields so I could stay in there near indefinitely). You don't want to reflect that much damage back at Zolo, but enough to tag the skeletons for when they despawn.

I did this with a 0/44/17 spec (no reckoning - pursuit of justice + improved ret aura). I didn't feel like respec'ing just for this part of the grind, so I left it at that and it works great. The key is to not consecrate, not block, not do anything that will kill Zolo any faster. Just swing and SoL/JoL to mitigate some of the damage coming from the mob of mobs.

Near the end of the weekend I got it to where all 5 of my shields would break (all durabilities of 85-100) before Zolo was even at 15%. That's really what you want here... your gear to break before Zolo can die. I am powering a mage, so I would have a fresh portal to Stonard ready when my Pally ran back up the stairs. But just bind to Stonard if you don't have that and run back.

As far as healing goes, I just used Divine Shield + Holy Light x 3. With the 12 seconds of immunity you can get off 3 good heals. Most times it would only take 2 heals and you can start swinging again. With the 4 minute cooldown (talented) it timed out perfectly for the next time I was low.

So the next question... what's the best strategy for Stratholme? :huh: Or is it really best to quest it out?

[Marathon]

Plaugelands is cake for pallys with all the undead mobs around. But yeah no doubt ... kinda curous as to what to do once i am out of ST

[daviddoran]

Remember, that as the characters get boosted, they get close to your 70, and while the mobs get harder for the 70 to multi mob tank, the alts are more able to help/heal. I bet you could do pretty well in UD Strath as long as you have a char or 2 that can heal. Maybe even buy some BoE gear for their lvl that helps with int/+heal. My 70 holy pally could solo a lot of Strath, just not bosses (not enough DPS) so I bet as Prot it'd be easier. With some additional DPS/Healing, running through UD strath should be cake. Just watch out for the guy with the KB with aggro dump.... I used holy shock to get back aggro, but taunt will work now too. If you can take out Baron, you can hope u get lucky and get deathcharger...

But I'd love to know if there's another similar place for neverending spawns...

[raylion]

Just had a thought (not tried it yet but it could be plausible)...in Scholomance in the second room there are six summoners that summon Risen Lackey's. They battle for 1 minute and grow in numbers quickly but I'm not sure if they give XP when the minute expires, might be a possible next step after ST?

[glo]

Just had a thought (not tried it yet but it could be plausible)...in Scholomance in the second room there are six summoners that summon Risen Lackey's. They battle for 1 minute and grow in numbers quickly but I'm not sure if they give XP when the minute expires, might be a possible next step after ST?

I'll probably try this in a day or so but if someone beats me to it please report back if its a viable next step? :-)Don't think you will get any XP out of risen lackey at all, they are level 20 mobs.

[glo]

A couple things..

Quest to level 10
Head to Deadmines until 20
Alliance can do Stockades until about 27
Head to SM until 35
Head to ST until 52

This ST trick is even funner if you drag Mijan to Zolo, she will keep him healed until your pally runs out of durability or you hit 52 ;)

I use my 70 group to clear the entire ring so there is no chance of complications then bring in the alts before pulling the two mobs together.

[sargorn]

This works, and it works well.
So the next question... what's the best strategy for Stratholme? :huh: Or is it really best to quest it out?

Strat isn't too hard.

But what you want to be doing is only doing the undead packs in the early area of strat.

Don't go UD side for baron, the anti-magic/silencing banshees make quick work of you here.
Don't go human side, the charging warriors with a knockback are a pain here.

I clear the front part in about six-seven pulls.

Lets say we go in the back door,

* Pull the three packs outside the chapel.
* Go over to the gate on the left and pull 1/2 the courtyard. Make sure to pick up the elite ghouls and big ugly green if he's close. If green is in your pull, you need to back to a wall (well you should anyway to block more, but still) as he does a knockback. Target green, JoW/BoW. Use trinket when low, and/or bubble/bandage/heal depending on spec. Pop Avenging Wrath if you're bubble's on CD and/or you're comfortable.
* Pull the rest of the courtyard.
* Head around the back and run through the alley - spawning the boss there. Run forward a bit and pull a few extra packs (2-3) and green.
* Run to Human side, pull all the packs back to the 'trap' gate. run through and aoe them down in there.
* Pull the packs towards the courier then head back towards the trap, aoe.
* Pull the other two hallways, reset.

That's pulling completely solo, no heals. With heals you can pull a little more at a time, but you can't bubble then of course.

[sWaTs]

Is there any kind of an official response, that this isn't considered as exploiting?

Would love to try that myself ;)

[Littleburst]

That is awesome!

God i wish i had a pally >.<

Gonna try and beg some guildies/friends now ^^

[Knobley]

God i wish i had a pally >.<

Yeah, me too. I DO have a lvl 70 drood in decent gear however. I'm planning to use him to boost some alts tonight, and I'm gonna run some tests with him. I fear that the thorns trick won't work, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

Knobley

[Knobley]

Is there any kind of an official response, that this isn't considered as exploiting?

Would love to try that myself ;)

I wouldn't call this an exploit, but I do expect that this trick, along with boosting in general, will eventually be patched into non-existence.

[Marathon]

Update from ST - one of my RL friends was leveling one of his toons with my alts, and he hit 52 and was still get exp toward level 53. So while i am sure it is at a slower rate you can stay there untill level 53.

[Heenan]

Yeah, when I hit 51 I was still getting decent XP. I am going back for a few more levels :)

[Tdog]

I stayed right up tilll level 55 and was still sustained 89k xp/hr from 54->55. Worth it to stay right up to 55 imho. 55->56 however you're only going to be getting xp from half of the skeletons so you'll probably only get around 40-45k xp/hr. Probably no better than just questing at that point.

I personally chose to start farming Strat for gear, DE mats to sell, and get use to using my team's many gained abilities since level 35. Just FYI, I spent about 120g for each of my mages to learn their new abilites from 35-55. Times that by 3 and add in the 120g I spent on my priest and I spent 480g just to learn new skills. Then another 500g ish to buy the mounts and they still need gear too :)

So my recommendation is after doing this go to BRD, Strat, Scholo, DM or w/e and send time getting use to the ton of new spells you got, get up to level 58 and move on to outlands.

[Knobley]

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/4404/khonsuvg7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Well, I took the druid pictured above to give this a try, and the dmg just came in to fast for me...Too many skellies even with my rank 8 thorns. If anybody has any respec suggestions I'm all ears... this guy is on the Velen server.

Knobley

[Tonuss]

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but what is being described here is an exploit of game mechanics, and as I understand it, we try to shy away from that sort of thing on the dual-boxing site. You are unlikely to be actioned for this (since people would need to report it, and it's not likely that they would even know you are doing it unless you told them), but I am guessing that once Blizzard gets wind of it, they'll patch this.

[Talamarr]

I disagree. Taking your time to kill a boss mob doesn't seem like an exploit. Yes, they may patch this so the skeletons don't give XP but I don't think it's an exploit. I think mobtagging is more of an exploit than this but that's just personal opinion though.

[Marathon]

As far as it being shady...It's a whole hell of alot less shady than the paladin/mage zone out method that Athene used for the longest time. And after doing a bit of research I've discovered posts of this strategy as far back as april of 2007 which said posts suggested that it was around even longer than that. So I can't believe for even a second that blizzard doesn't already know about this method. Quote from Tdog 2nd page on this thread

I agree with Tdog on this one. I am pretty sure that Blizzard knows about this and honestly now that my guys are in thier 50's it serously takes about 45 to an hour to level with out any rested exp. Which is about the same time it would take if you where leveling a toon by questing etc ...

I have leveled countless toons. And personally I am just bored to death of questing and on my current low population server finding groups to do low level instances is almost imposable, if I could even find a group of people to do an instance with me knowing that I was playing 3 toons at once. They would be like hell no .... I am not playing with you if your playing all three because of thier lack of understanding.

Anyway, I am going to stay in ST probably untill my guys hit 55 then I am going to take them to Outlands and start doing BF. I think I should be able to 4 man it with my 70 pally, 2 level 55 shammys and 1 level 55 mage.

[Tdog]

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but what is being described here is an exploit of game mechanics, and as I understand it, we try to shy away from that sort of thing on the dual-boxing site. You are unlikely to be actioned for this (since people would need to report it, and it's not likely that they would even know you are doing it unless you told them), but I am guessing that once Blizzard gets wind of it, they'll patch this.Thing is that this method is plastered all of the internet. Run a google on it. It's at least more than a year and a half old and even though clearly the majority of the wow community doesn't know about it, I can't believe that Blizzard isn't aware of it. If blizzard is aware of it and hasn't done anything about it then as far as I'm concerned they are okay with it for the time being. It's not like we are walking on or through walls, using shady zoning out methods, evading mobs to get them to despawn, or skipping content through dungeons or a number of exploits out there. Again Athene's zone out method was hella shady and we all damn well know Blizzard knew about that one for a very long time. The guy constantly bragged about his method everywhere and it took forever and a day before Blizzard decided to nerf it.

All this is is tagging mobs, and letting them beat on you until you are dead. Sorry but this does not feel like an exploit to me.

[Heenan]

I do believe this one is somewhat shady. It is definitely manipulating an encounter. Otherwise you'd have to clear the instance, or find a certain combination of mob spawns to grind. I say this because I felt dirty while doing it... similar to ganking someone with 5 Hunters, dirty, but it feels good at the same time :whistling: Like seeing 16 levels in 3 days. That pretty much wins over reason every time.

The worse thing that can happen is Blizzard turns off the XP for the skeletons. I guess you could possibly get a ban? I don't know.

Anyone want to report themselves and talk to a GM about it? :D

[Tdog]

I do believe this one is somewhat shady. It is definitely manipulating an encounter. Otherwise you'd have to clear the instance, or find a certain combination of mob spawns to grind. I say this because I felt dirty while doing it... similar to ganking someone with 5 Hunters, dirty, but it feels good at the same time :whistling: Like seeing 16 levels in 3 days. That pretty much wins over reason every time.

The worse thing that can happen is Blizzard turns off the XP for the skeletons. I guess you could possibly get a ban? I don't know.

Anyone want to report themselves and talk to a GM about it? :DI actually don't see that it's manipulating anything, not the encounter, as the skeletons would die and give you xp irregardless of using a level 70 or not, nor does it manipulate any game mechanics as all you're doing is tagging summoned mobs and letting them die which is what happens in other scenarios with summoned mobs that auto die. This just happens to be the best place to do it.

Nonetheless I have a GM ticket open right now and I'll let you guys know what I find out.


Edit:

... similar to ganking someone with 5 Hunters, dirty, but it feels good at the same time :whistling: Wanted to point out that while it may feel dirty, it's not against the ToS or an exploit. Sure this is most likely not what Blizzard intended to have happen but that doesn't automatically make it an exploit.

[Tonuss]

Nonetheless I have a GM ticket open right now and I'll let you guys know what I find out.
I think that's a good idea. I see where it can be considered an exploit because you're taking advantage of the boss's mechanic (summoning mobs that die after 45 seconds) to generate experience, where normally prolonging a boss's life would end badly for the group, or at least would not confer any extra benefit. If the GM tells you that it's fine, I have no problem with it. I was more concerned about stuff being discussed here that might cross the line since it's something that the folks who run the site take seriously.

[Tdog]

Update: 2 hours later I'm still waiting for a GM response. Gawd the customer service with GMs sucks :P

[Tdog]

Update: Finally talked to a GM after 3.5 hours...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/GMSTconvo1.jpg
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/GMSTconvo2.jpg


Basically she/he said they didn't know. The GM referred me to the Blizzard Support Policy Page ('http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20309') . If you look up the Exploitation and Client/Server Manipulation Policy ('http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20224') section you will find that the only 2 relative portions are ...


Bug Exploitation
We have a top notch Quality Assurance team who tirelessly stamp out bugs and design inconsistencies within World of Warcraft. However, a handful of trained professionals can never isolate and resolve each and every bug in such a deep and complex game accessed simultaneously by thousands of players. You may come across the occasional bug during your adventures. Some bugs are minor and do not affect gameplay, but sometimes these bugs can be used to provide an unfair advantage to certain players or affect the service itself. Factors included in determining the appropriate penalty:
Whether or not the exploit is performed intentionally, maliciously, and/or repeatedly Whether or not the exploit damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy Whether or not an attempt has been made to conceal the exploit's use If a player is found to have abused/distributed an exploit, he/she may: Be given a verbal warning if exploitation is unintentional and no attempt has been made to hide its occurrence Be temporarily suspended from the game In extreme cases the account will be closed outright Bug exploitation that we consider extreme includes, but is not limited to: Any exploit that has a severe negative impact on a realm's economy Causing disruption in service or intentionally crashing a realm/server While these repercussions may seem harsh, we feel very strongly that this type of abuse has no place within Azeroth due to its negative effect on other players or the service itself.
This is clearly not a Bug. The programmers did not mistakenly make the skeletons continuously spawn, die automatically after 45 seconds, and give xp.


Abuse of Game Mechanics
The distinction between exploiting bugs and abusing game mechanics is a fine one. While bug exploitation involves the abuse of what is essentially a programming mistake, the abuse of game mechanics is the act of taking advantage of the limitations of the World of Warcraft game systems. Since the line between the sanctioned use and the abuse of game mechanics is sometimes unclear, we prefer to educate players before taking any action against the account being used. This category includes using/distributing game mechanics in a manner unintended by their design that:
Damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy If a player is found to have abused/distributed such game mechanics, he/she may: Be given a verbal warning Subsequent related offenses will result in temporary suspension from the game "Damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy" Seems to be Blizzard's definition of Abusing Game Mechanics which this does not do any of the following. It doesn't affect anyone else in the game and you make no monetary profit off this. If fact you rack up a huge repair bill doing this not to mention all the money you have to spend to get regeared up as after 20 levels of no gear/money/drops you are in desperate need of upgrades.


However I told the GM in the convo I was going to be making a post on the Wow Forums to see if I can't get a Blue post.
Link to the thread I made on the Support Forums. ('http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=7475678715&sid=1')



Edit: Accidently included the "Unapproved Third Party Software" section.
Edit 2: Fixed the order of the GM SSs.
Edit 3: Added link to the thread made on the Support Forums.

[Marathon]

WOW impressive Tdog. Thanks for the post and I look forward to seeing an update. :thumbsup:

Oh and learning 15 levels of new spells X 3 was defently a hit in the pocket book. And I have not even bought my mounts yet because I am waiting on the discounted rate to come with the new patch.

[Tdog]

Updated: Added link to the post I made on the WoW - Support Forums.

[Tdog]

WOW impressive Tdog. Thanks for the post and I look forward to seeing an update. :thumbsup: ...
:D I'm not into cheating the system either but like I said many times before I really don't feel like this is an exploit/abuse. Sure it may not be what Blizzard intended but that doesn't necessarily mean it's abuse either.

However I think being completely certain is always a wise course. So I'll just have to check up on the thread I made and see if we can't get an offical answer either way.

[Marathon]

I might consider this a cheat if my pally was not paying such a high price for what I am doing. I mean the repair bills and the cost of buying new armor has really hit me in the pocket book. And basically this is the same thing I was doing in SM but without any of the rewards. I mean at least in SM you got several blue drops to de and plenty of cloth and other goodies to sell after each run. Here in ST all you get is broken armor and a high repair bill. Yes the exp is awesome for your alts, especially at first but if I was not in ST doing these skeletons I would find another instance to grind exp for my other toons because like I said before I am not questing out these last levels I am just to bored of it. And I mean I leveled a pally to 70 to on a pvp server, where either all I am is a AOE Tank or a healer with no HOTS so I feel like this just one of those rewards for leveling the toon.

[Tdog]

Welp still no Blizzard response. They also moved it to the Bug Report Forums which means that they looked at it and chose not to comment on it so take that however you like. I tried and I have yet to see anything to make me think in the contradictory of what I was formally thinking.

[Stabface]

Hmm, gave this a shot. @L48 its ~1 bubble per 2 minutes... pretty sure BRD is better at this level, and you get drops if you care to take time to loot (which of course makes the XP slower).
Kind of funny watching all the skeletons die, but gets old after you break 3 or 4 shields....

[daviddoran]

Well I frankly don't care much about gear, because once I hit outland the quest rewards will replace them. If I can get from 35-55 quickly, The gear I get would be obsolete in a matter of hours.

I just need to figure out how to make zolo last longer... I forgot to jump down to reset him, so now i gotta reset..... boo

[Dopledin]

:thumbup: TDog mentioned they would be and they are. I respecced for better thorns, have 18.5k armor and just over 14k health. I did bring a shaman though for the grace of air, heal, and stoneskin totems. Tried it with out the totems and you last for awhile, but after a few minutes you have to reset Zolo(hopefully remembering to change to cat form before splatting that 800 health all over the floor the first time). Now I jump to reset thorns, but will probably make a macro to cast it and go back to bear form.

May be better trinkets would let me do it without the totems, but at the moment I don't have them.

The hardest part was getting the alts into the instance with the super wide aggro range. Definitely a nice way to move through the mid 30s and 40s.

[Mamut]

First post!

level 55 on my new team in record time using an average geared pally with a figurine. Zolo lasts a very very long time for me. I'm using my regular tanking gear, its mostly blues with a couple epics, 495 def 11k HP's etc.

What i do to keep zolo alive is use rank one of my BoS and no other reflective spells/items and use my regular tanking gear. I break 11 shields and am on my 12th shield before my armor starts breaking and i have to hearth and repair. My team is warlocks so i just summon myself back to get back at it. 12 Shields is usually 3 or 4 resets of zolo and 22g in repairs. My figurine keeps me up easily until i break 3 pieces of gear, then i would have to seal of light if i wasnt so lazy. So far Ive only had to repair a handful of times so the cost isn't so bad as i thought it would be.

As for it being shady, I really don't know if its something blizz would frown on. I think its a lazy way to boost, but after the first 10 or so levels other boosting methods would be close in speed, or at least after 50+ would be.

Thanks to all who posted about this, now off to Strat for more boosting madness.

EDIT: Dopledin, you could try to move all the mobs and zolo away from his totems, feral charge to the totem to make room so you can thorns + lifebloom then back to bear to minimize damage. Just an idea.

[Morganti]

We tried an average geared druid last night and it didn't work at all. We weren't seeing xp from just thorns and the druid couldn't survive very long. Tried an enhancement shaman respeced to resto/enhance and it worked better and we were actually seeing some xp gains, but zolo went down way too fast on his shield spike. Looks like I'm just gonna have to hit 40 in SM/mana surges and go quest from there.

[Knobley]

:thumbup: TDog mentioned they would be and they are. I respecced for better thorns, have 18.5k armor and just over 14k health. I did bring a shaman though for the grace of air, heal, and stoneskin totems.

Do you mind linking your druid, or at least giving his name and server?

I couldn't keep Khonsu ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Velen&n=Khonsu') up for very long.

Knobley

[Dopledin]

Do you mind linking your druid, or at least giving his name and server?

I couldn't keep Khonsu ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Velen&n=Khonsu') up for very long.

Knobley


Dasbeef ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal%27Ganis&n=Dasbeef') on Mal'Ganis. Before I brought the shaman for the totems, I wouldn't last long either. The totem drops extended my ability to stand there indefinitely really. I respecced the thorns back to regular to see if Zolo would stay alive longer, though early on my swiping was the first problem.
EDIT: It looks like Khonsu has more of a neck snapping build and gear, where as Dasbeef is my tank and basically is built to last... though my gear is lacking atm.



That's a great idea, Mamut. I will try that this morning before heading into work. I don't know how much having another 70 effects exp for the alts in ST, but I'd rather just bring Dasbeef if at all possible.

Peace

[Knobley]

Thanks Dopledin,

Respecing for Improved Mark of the Wild seems obvious enough. I think I can get my wife to make me some heavy clefthoof which I can then socket more defensively. But it sounds like you're saying that this requires a Shaman to help out... which, imho, isn't the same thing as druid doable... it's the same thing as druid+shaman doable.

Knobley

[pinotnoir]

Damn you guys! I just got my team to lvl 35 and plan on doing some of this tonight. Dont get it nerfed you bastards!

[Marathon]

Almost got my team to 55. The two shammys are 53 atm and the mage is 50. I dont think this is going to be nerfed. The only problem you are going to have is falling asleep at the monitor because after awhile you just get tunnel vision doing the whole thing.

[Memn]

Damn you guys! I just got my team to lvl 35 and plan on doing some of this tonight. Dont get it nerfed you bastardsI just read about this, and I can't wait to try it out. Only problem is that my main team just made 70, and my next team is only 12... some fast RFC, SFK & SM runs for me.... Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend....

[Tdog]

Damn you guys! I just got my team to lvl 35 and plan on doing some of this tonight. Dont get it nerfed you bastards!Damn what's taking you so long? I'm about to take my 3rd and final team through there right now. In the process of having them all fly down there as I'm typing :D I also purposely made the title and content of my WoW thread a bit vauge to fly under the radar of the majority of the WoW noobs that have no clue wtf is going on.

[Tdog]

O btw if you use Sense Undead you can see the mini troll bosses in the first 2 platform before you even get to the first pack of mobs. Just fyi :)

[Heenan]

Yah, I am pl'ing a Hunter, so I would alternate running in the instance with Sense Undead and Track Undead. Keep resetting until he's on one of the closest platforms :D

[daviddoran]

I hit the reset limit trying to get zolo on the right platform. I had a weird disconnect mid fight that caused me to die, and had to keep resetting to get zolo back where I wanted him. It was late, so I just went to bed, but the xp gains were phenominal. I was chatting with a friend whilst doing it, giving him the usual "ding" updates, and I was surprised at the frequency of them. It seemed so much faster than my SM runs were. I can stay alive pretty good in my green "of stamina" and "of elder" gear I bought (thanks for the tip) as long as I use wisdom.

Any tips on a macro that targets the next skeleton? I couldn't get mine to work. I tried /attack [target=Atal'ai skeleton,nodead] but it didn't work. Is there a way to quickly target a type of mob by name? I should also put a seal of wisdom/judge/reseal cast sequence in there too. Or maybe make 2 macros. I ended up just putting the regular "attack" button, cause I was always targeting the next mob who hit me after my current target died. I wasn't watching tho, and it started targeting zolo, and he died :( It's amazing how much time that wasted by having to go and reset....

[Mamut]

Thorns doesn't tag the mobs or didn't seem to for me when i tried it on my druid. I used swipe and tab to tag them. Since thorns doesn't tag mobs, don't bother putting it on, or zolo will die quickly. Staying up using ilotp, frenzied regen, and 4 healing stream totems (something like 11 per 2) I managed to stay up for 10 mins or so, but i think my druids gear is abit low to make it feasible. My shamans never entered combat, I had them around the corner, and the healing stream never put them in combat so resetting wouldn't be an issue.

Working on my second team in SFK, hope to have them to 55 tomorrow. 4 locks, then 4 SP so i can mix and match em how i want.

Good luck

[pinotnoir]

I just logged in awhile and got my guys from 35-39. I work too much and the next free day I will have is Sunday. I ran through 6 shields before my gear was looking bad. Glad I have the figurine. I park my alts right outside zolo and use one of them to target him so I can keep an eye on his health. I jumped off the ledge when he got to 8%. it took him awhile to get down that low.

[Tdog]

I just logged in awhile and got my guys from 35-39. I work too much and the next free day I will have is Sunday. I ran through 6 shields before my gear was looking bad. Glad I have the figurine. I park my alts right outside zolo and use one of them to target him so I can keep an eye on his health. I jumped off the ledge when he got to 8%. it took him awhile to get down that low.I was just teasing you about it taking so long :) RL always is a greater priority than gaming. Plenty of times I can't really even touch my team for a couple of weeks while other times I can play all day long if I really feel like it.

[Heenan]

... I park my alts right outside zolo and use one of them to target him so I can keep an eye on his health...I recommend FocusFrame ('http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/5681/') for this exact scenario. The only issue is when you jump off the ledge and run back up you'll lose the target due to being out of range. But I just use a /target Zolo /focus hotkey.

[ChaoticMonk]

This sounds so awsome! I'm new to multiboxing and my team is only 16 right now.

Would this work with a lvl61 prot pally or would he go down way too fast?

[daviddoran]

I don't think a 61 paladin could make it very long at all. with 10khp and not judging/no colossus, my health goes down pretty fast. Even if you had Pre TBC tanking epics, I don't think it'd be sufficient.

If I were you, I'd use the paladin until he can't boost effectively (VC/DM, SFK, WC, etc) then work on getting the pally leveled while you stock up rested xp on the lowbies. If you plan your leveling well (rep rewards/quest rewards/instance drops) the moment you hit 70 you can buy some of the blue rep set pieces for pretty cheap, and have at it!

[Memn]

I tried this with a guildy last night. Got him from L38-41 in about 45 minutes. The travel time - and guarding him into the instance was worse than anything else.

Couple of tips:

- Buy a bunch of white quality shields from an NPC armor seller. You can wear your epic armor, and a crap shield and your repair costs will remain low - just make sure you keep an eye on the durability of the shield and replace it before it hits 0. Once it hits 0, your armor will be taking the durability damage.

- The corners of the balcony are excellent for protecting your back, plus, it doesn't interfere with the camera like backing into the wall does.

- Use Iron Shield Spikes, or rank 1 BoSanc. It makes a huge difference in how long Zolo stays up. (I wish I could heal that beautiful, XP giving troll!) Iron Shield Spikes do less damage, but putting iron spikes on 30 shields may be more logistics than its worth.

- With Figurine of the Colossus and decent block rating you don't even have to swing. My paladin is geared for ZA, so I was only down maybe 2-3k health before my figurine cooldown was ready again... I let my health get down to about 300 or so - but that was mostly for dramatic effect since I was there with a guildy. "DUDE! - QUICK! LAY OF HANDS DUDE!", "Meh, Lay of hands is overkill... I'll just pop a trinket... ok, full health.."

I think a shaman or warrior is the second best classes for using this method, and I'll probably start collecting block rating gear for one of my shamans for when I need to boost alts on my main account...

[pinotnoir]

I will try it with my epic gear. I put on green of the champion stuff and used my shields. My gear really didnt go down much. The bulk of my repair bills were the shields.

[noir]

For the best vendor shield:

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30775
Layered Bone Shield
2523 Armor
55 Block
Durability 85 / 85
Requires Level 70
10.85g

If you can find a cheaper green shield or five on the AH, go for it. =)

[Memn]

For the best vendor shield:

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30775
Layered Bone Shield
...
If you can find a cheaper green shield or five on the AH, go for it. =)I just bought about 20 or so of the L40 shields that were for sale in Stonard... They were only 3g, and super easy to get... Easy logistics FTW!

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=2451 Crested Heater Shield

[Stabface]

Save money and buy the cheapest one from the vendor - you're still going to be blocking all the damage.

[noir]

I <3 you guys. All my gear is breaking crazy fast as I'm watching my guys go on the laptop... but this is amazing.

[TheHamburglar]

I was doing this on my 60 pally without much trouble. I used my 4x Shaman to heal throwing down a stoneskin and healing streams which kept me going till my shield broke.

BTW if anyone has any lvl 55-60 shields on Mag horde side I need some badly.


Earthen Elixirs ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32063') + Force of Will ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11810') + BOS + Stoneskin = Easy Street

[daviddoran]

I was farming SM Cath so much, I got many of the shields there. I shouldn't have DE'd them.... I must have had like 20+ drop.

So the level of the shield doesn't matter so much? If so, I will literally fill my bag with 1g shields...

[Stabface]

You don't need a good shield. Save your money.

Look in your combat log and see how much these skeletons are hitting you. In my case at 70 its something like 20 damage. So, that is all the block value I need in order to take 0 damage on a block.

With a full tanking setup I have something like 600 block value, if I swap my shield for the worst possible block value (1) shield (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=2362) then I still have a block value of over 400. Which is many times more than these skeletons will ever hit me. Even just a single +block value item, of which there are many easy blues you can get -- like the Devilshark cloak, Steam-Hinge neck, Sha'tari belt (quest item even, no worrying with a drop%) -- will put any 70 paladin with a 1 BV shield over the necessary amount to completely negate the damage on blocks from these skeletons.

Unfortunately though, there are only a very small handful of items available pre-70 with +block value on it. Nexus-Guard Pauldrons @L67 are all that are readily available, some old world Warrior T2/T3 plate has it as well but that is not generally available anymore and not useful to a Paladin.

[Tdog]

/shrug if you guys really want to use your raid gear go for it. It costs me 65g to repair my gear from completely broke while it only costs me 13g for the green gear. Sure my BT gear last 2x as long but it costs 5x as much to repair. Don't want to run back 2x as much? That is why I bought the 2nd set of gear.

Also I would venture to say that you don't want any additional block rating tbh. I have none on my green gear, I tag ever single skeleton, and most importantly I usually get about 40 mins before Zolo needs to be reset. In the 45-50 seconds that the skeletons are up, redoubt and the difference in levels between you and the skeletons should easily ensure you getting one block off on each and every skeleton.

[Stabface]

block rating != block value

[Mosg2]

Anyone else have experience trying this with a sub-70 Paladin? Would a level ~60 or so be able to pull this off? I'm just not sure what the minimum block value/rating and dodge/parry is to be able to swing this.

[pinotnoir]

I was able to keep zolo alive 2hrs then I had to go so I let him die.

[Tdog]

I was able to keep zolo alive 2hrs then I had to go so I let him die.Nice what did you do? The only way I was able to keep him alive indefinitely was to fight against a wall and have my back slightly to him so that I wouldn't block him. The problem with that though was that a fair amount of the skeletons weren't getting tagged which overall was lowering my xp/hr even lower than resetting him once every 30 mins.

[Tehtsuo]

I was able to keep zolo alive 2hrs then I had to go so I let him die.Nice what did you do? The only way I was able to keep him alive indefinitely was to fight against a wall and have my back slightly to him so that I wouldn't block him. The problem with that though was that a fair amount of the skeletons weren't getting tagged which overall was lowering my xp/hr even lower than resetting him once every 30 mins.I have a macro for my Figurine that also has rank one blessing of sanctuary (not greater) 14 damage seems to keep Zolo up for over an hour easily.

[pinotnoir]

I put my but in the corner of the ledge and dont attack anything.. Just sit there and use figurine when I get to 10%. he lasted 2hrs. I guess it depends on how many times he hits me.

[Silaspop]

Any news from the GM's if this is an exploit or not? I just got some decent gear for my paladin and dying to try this out with four lvl 35 mages, but losing all 22 of my characters and five accounts is pretty scary, lol.

[Tdog]

Any news from the GM's if this is an exploit or not? I just got some decent gear for my paladin and dying to try this out with four lvl 35 mages, but losing all 22 of my characters and five accounts is pretty scary, lol.See post 65.
I asked a GM he/she said they didn't know and no response in the Bug report forums from Blizzard even though they clearly saw and read my thread.

EDIT: This has been around for a long time and I, well now definitely, know that Blizzard knows about it. My guess is that if it ever becomes really heavily known in the WoW community that they will nerf it like they did Athene's method which was a whole hell of alot more shady than this and as far as I know no one ever got banned nor suspended nor any other action taken against their account using Athene's method.

[Mosg2]

So, anyone have any response to my question as to what the minimum Paladin level necessary is to pull this off?

[Naylix]

Adding my 2 cents to this thread - gogo Underbog, kill ze black stalker a dozen time (or get lucky on the first) loot http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27896 Alembic of Infernal Power

This baby is not as good as Seal of Wisdom - but for grinding of hundreds of "lowlvl" skeleton = profit

Especially if you wanna watch cartoons at the same time.

Also, if you want paladin-boost stuff, get a http://www.wowhead.com/?item=12628 !! Demon Forged Breastplate - 3% chance to steal 120 life over 4 seconds´

This has about the same spelldmg coefficient as the Skullflame Shield, meaning with "of the sorcerer" green gear, you will be stealing shitloads of health, keeping you up automatically. Ofc you can equip both, for some fun SM Cath 1-pulls :) But mostly, the Sporeggar poisonshield does a good job. (though, I have seen Skullflame Shield proc for 5-6k firedmg in SM Cath ;) )

Fun times.

Ofc, the steal life thing has a small chance of killing Zolo before time - this is where jumping off becomes a good idea.

[Mosg2]

Mmm, I've got a Blacksmith... Debating if it'd be worth it to farm up that BP and make like 3-4 of'em for this. My Paladin is only level 60...

[Tdog]

That Breastplate would be the bomb diggity :D I wouldn't use it for the ST method but I would use it for all other boosting.

Does the proc have a cooldown on it? Like it can only proc once every 6 secs or so?

[Mosg2]

Well, with my Paladin only being 60 I was thinking of using the BP to offset the lower stats.

It seems to me that a 60 could do it as easily as a 70--You still have access to all of the Outlands "Of the Eagle" gear or whatever you're looking for.

[ChaoticMonk]

You wouldn't be able to mitigate as much damage at 60 compared to 70 and the level60 of the eagle gear contributes alot less than a 68+ version.

However, I still think a lvl60 could do this method but not as efficiently. You would need to heal yourself much more often and you'd pretty much have to concentrate the whole time but I still think it would be doable, just not as easily as a level70.

I will try it with my lvl61 pally and see what happens.

[Mosg2]

The difference between 60 and 70 is 50 defense rating... Shrug.

[TheHamburglar]

I'm able to do this with my lvl 60 pally in greens http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Bugged
I use my http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11810 Trinket which is almost always up so they hit for around 10-15 when its up and 20-24 when its not. With Stoneskin Totem they hit for 20-21 and with Earthen Elixir 16-17.

I don't think that The Force of Will trinket is affected by the Mitigation Cap. If i start to get a little low I'll judge BOL, with Windfury and healing stream Totems i'm able to stay around 40-50% health. That is until my Shield breaks and I don't notice =/

[Mosg2]

So how do you do it Hamburglar? Just Rank 1 BoSanct and keep like 5 shields in your bag?

[TheHamburglar]

Rank 4 BOS, But i'm able to position Zolo in a corner where he hits my back. I cant always do this but he lasts about 30-45 mins if I dont position him correctly and alot longer if Do. I'll post SS in a bit.

[TheHamburglar]

Ok here is how I do things on my lvl 60 Pally. I only lasted 50 Minutes and 4 Shields before I reset him Because 3 pieces of Gear Broke.






http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/t/thehamburglar2/141770/wvkgjrbcak.jpg http://gallery.filefront.com/thehamburglar2//1007413/ http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/t/thehamburglar2/141770/gnjnwonolg.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/t/thehamburglar2/141770/lsklqngbcx.jpg

[Silaspop]

I tried this today, took me a couple tries to actually find Zolo, even with him showing up on my minimap. I reset four times, then couldn't enter anymore instances so I logged out for an hour and retried. I had to leave my mages at the beginning, and go through and kill the mobs on the way to Zolo. I still had all of my shields from running SM, and only wasted one. Took me a while to learn how to move them around keep my back against the wall while trying not to kill Zolo, and then resetting when he was low on health. 35-40 was a breeze once I got the hang of it, but took me about four hours, but still better than being stuck in SM.

Then I tried this with one level 39 rogue in my guild, and in two hours he leveled to 50 in way less time than expected.

[Naylix]

Regarding the demon-forged breastplate:

There is no cooldown! None - I've had it ticking on 8 mobs at the same time. When it procs, it does a green glowing "drain life" animation to the mob that procced it - looks exactly like the warlockspell. 1 tick pr second, for 4 seconds. For SM farming and similar, with lowest possible repairbills, get random lvl 5 shields (or whatever) - some block value on other items (enough to block most dmg, it's actually beneficial to block close to 90-95% of dmg, but NOT all of it. The proc can happen on partial blocks, not full blocks since they are not considered a "struck in combat". Add up spelldmg from "of the sorcerer" greens and add spelldmg enchants, and you can singlepull Cathedral almost without judging anything, and you definately dont need to heal. The mana trinket (Alembic of Infernal wooshie) will give you limitless mana for consecration (you still wanna kill fast, to keep xp/hour up).

Repairbots are good, and bring plenty of shields... unless it's cathedral, just loot a new shield every 3 or 4 tries from the boss ;) Also, remember, due to the lvl difference, your chance to block doesn't have to be very high in your paperdoll info, as that info is in relation to your own level. You chance to block/parry lowlvl mobs is far higher :)

[daviddoran]

I've been standing right on the corner, and it works pretty well. I really need that figurine and the mana trinket, that would make all the difference. that breastplate sounds good too. Might need a few for breakage. I still have to be judging though, so unless I'm doing something wrong, it's not an entirely AFK thing. I just made a macro cast sequence for targeting a skele and judging light. Works for me. Once I get the chars im boosting leveled up I can farm those trinkets myself and not wait for a PuG. (Due to the levels of my chars, I'm inadvertenly ending up with 2x paladins and 3x locks, originally the locks were just for fun, but when running my pally, I wanted to add more and the locks were just low enough for VC, so i brought em along. Long story short, they are now a level or two behind the pally, and integral to my leveling (summons, SS) so this is now my highest group, and will be my primary "farming" group to gear out my paladins.) *guess it wasn't too short lol.

I'm gonna work on my other team, and let them build up rested time. Seems like a waste to not get double xp when it's so "free" Plus, it's taking me back to my 5boxing, rather than just boosting.

On my "main" 5 man team with unique classes, I'm currently trying out gnomer, just because my chars are 24-28 and I don't wanna do Stocks again, and I don't wanna struggle in SM GY. Plus there's some quests in there for some decent rewards. I should level up decently in there, then make the move up to SM. I will TRY to level without boosting in SM, (PvP server makes questing a bit annoying sometimes) and I should get some decent loot in the process.

[Morganti]

Ok, Valorin found the best way so far to do Zolo with just a shaman.

Here's the build:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZAb00xxZAbxxV0otez

Here's the description (or my interpretation of it anyway):

Nature's Guardian and Earthshield is what makes this train run. Drop a stoneskin (improved from talents), mana spring (improved from talents), and wrath of air (for more healing) totems. Let the skele's beat on you until you get to 30% and start popping earthshield and letting Nature's Guardian do the work. Basically you have infinite health as long as the skele's cant beat you down more than 10% of your health in 5 seconds (check the description of Nature's Guardian if this is confusing). You should never have mana problems, but if you pop off a few heals then drop your mana tide and start your totem cycle back over again. Keeping stoneskin up is paramount to your survival...YOU WILL DIE without stoneskin up.

I am leveling a group with a pally and lock, so I'm able to use the level 40 pally spell Blessing of Sanctuary to do my tagging damage via blocking. A shield spike would function here as well. The Blessing of Sanct also lowers the damage I take, so you might have to keep an eye on your health and pop more heals than I do (I never cast a heal unless I'm resetting zolo basically). The one caveat to this for me is when all of my armor goes red (except my shield of course) Natures Guardian and Earthshield cant make up the difference and I WILL die, so it's time for a reset then. I heal, jump down, Ancestral Recall out, repair, and then have my lock summon me back into the instance and begin again. You could also keep a repair bot alt parked outside the instance and other alts for 1 hour buffs for your shaman (Valorin does this to nice effect).

Anyway, hope this is helpful. All kudos go to Valorin. I'm just the messenger.

[Tehtsuo]

Ok, Valorin found the best way so far to do Zolo with just a shaman.

Here's the build:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZAb00xxZAbxxV0otez

Here's the description (or my interpretation of it anyway):

Nature's Guardian and Earthshield is what makes this train run. Drop a stoneskin (improved from talents), mana spring (improved from talents), and wrath of air (for more healing) totems. Let the skele's beat on you until you get to 30% and start popping earthshield and letting Nature's Guardian do the work. Basically you have infinite health as long as the skele's cant beat you down more than 10% of your health in 5 seconds (check the description of Nature's Guardian if this is confusing). You should never have mana problems, but if you pop off a few heals then drop your mana tide and start your totem cycle back over again. Keeping stoneskin up is paramount to your survival...YOU WILL DIE without stoneskin up.

I am leveling a group with a pally and lock, so I'm able to use the level 40 pally spell Blessing of Sanctuary to do my tagging damage via blocking. A shield spike would function here as well. The Blessing of Sanct also lowers the damage I take, so you might have to keep an eye on your health and pop more heals than I do (I never cast a heal unless I'm resetting zolo basically). The one caveat to this for me is when all of my armor goes red (except my shield of course) Natures Guardian and Earthshield cant make up the difference and I WILL die, so it's time for a reset then. I heal, jump down, Ancestral Recall out, repair, and then have my lock summon me back into the instance and begin again. You could also keep a repair bot alt parked outside the instance and other alts for 1 hour buffs for your shaman (Valorin does this to nice effect).

Anyway, hope this is helpful. All kudos go to Valorin. I'm just the messenger.

It's been mentioned before, but I thought I'd re-recommend the Naglering from BRD (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11669) as an effective alternative to BoS or shield spikes. I use BoS on my paladin when I boost because rank 1 still keeps our friend Zolo up for over an hour, but when I have to boost a character on the Paladin's account, I plan to use this method with one of my shamans and will make a quick run through BRD to get a Naglering for him. It has an added bonus of being on an item with no durability, so you don't have to worry about keeping it repaired to keep it tagging skeletons.

[Morganti]

The comments on wowhead are saying that they dont see the dmg proc when using it with a level 70? Might want to verify before going to farm it and expecting it to work.

[Tehtsuo]

Good point. Funny, I know the reasoning for making level 60 effects disappear at 70, but in this situation it seems laughable.
"Oh no, we can't have level 70 players doing 3 damage to things that hit them, that'll be abused." I wonder if this was the abuse they were worried about. I'm off to look for other non-durability gear that does damage on hit, wish me luck.

Edit: Search was fruitless I'm afraid. Looks like shield spikes are the best choice.

[daviddoran]

My Naglering didn't seem to tag the skeletons, so I stopped using it. With my warlocks, the Imp's Fire Shield works ok too, but has to be constantly re-applied, meaning keeping the warlock in combat range, so he dies when i bubble.

I'll stick with BoSanct Rank 1 for the block.

[Memn]

/shrug if you guys really want to use your raid gear go for it. It costs me 65g to repair my gear from completely broke while it only costs me 13g for the green gear. Sure my BT gear last 2x as long but it costs 5x as much to repair. Don't want to run back 2x as much? That is why I bought the 2nd set of gear.

As long as I was using an intact shield and positioned so that I blocked everything I didn't take much durability loss on anything but the shield. When boosting in other instances, you have to expose yourself and take hits, but with Zolo, you can keep them all in front of you - so there is very little durability loss for the rest of my gear. YMMV. I just hate having another set of gear in my inventory just for boosting.

Of course, if you let Zolo hit you in the back you will take equipment damage...

[Tehtsuo]

I got my priest from 34-56 this weekend. I discovered you can use this method to 56, as half the skeletons that spawn are level 47. You just stop getting exp for the ones that are level 46. Also, repair bills were not a problem for me: I finished up the grind with the same bank balance as when I started. All I had to do was tell a friend in my guild what I was planning, and what I needed. The idea of standing in sunken temple and getting free experience was appealing enough to him that he bought me 25 Crested Heater Shields and gave me gold for all repair costs. Also, he proved very entertaining in party chat, saying "OMG" and "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen" from time to time, and reading out the exp/hour that his addon was showing him. I plan to get funded every time I do that with an alt by inviting friends to come along and soak exp in exchange for repair funding.

[Stabface]

These (probably) work, if you want to go farm up or buy a bunch of ungoro crystals & don't have a druid & don't have blessing of sanctuary.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11567

[Memn]

I got my priest from 34-56 this weekend.



How long did it take you? I'm assuming it was just the two of you?

[Tehtsuo]

I got my priest from 34-56 this weekend.



How long did it take you? I'm assuming it was just the two of you?


My final tally was around 9 hours total. However for about 4 hours I had 3 others besides my priest in the instance with me soaking up exp. Only about 2 hours was spent with only me and my priest.

[Memn]

My final tally was around 9 hours total. However for about 4 hours I had 3 others besides my priest in the instance with me soaking up exp. Only about 2 hours was spent with only me and my priest.
That isn't too bad. I'm working on a Shammy team, and will be doing this in a week or two... guess I should plan on it taking most of the weekend. Still, its better than the alternatives.

[Tehtsuo]

My final tally was around 9 hours total. However for about 4 hours I had 3 others besides my priest in the instance with me soaking up exp. Only about 2 hours was spent with only me and my priest.
That isn't too bad. I'm working on a Shammy team, and will be doing this in a week or two... guess I should plan on it taking most of the weekend. Still, its better than the alternatives.

Yeah, and the better geared you are, the easier it is. Mine's all epics, with Kara and 25 man tanking gear. I was able to watch a few movies while keeping an eye on my progress and clicking my figurine/rank1BoS from time to time. The only difficulty was catching shield breaks, I'd love an addon with some kind of more obvious visual, or even an audio, indicator that your shield is broken. As a tank, there's no situation where it's not crucial that you put a new shield on instantly when one breaks.

[Stabface]

Thanks to Blizzard's group XP mechanics, it's actually more XP per kill with 1x L70 and 2x low level alts, than it is with a single alt.
Additionally, adding a 3rd or 4th low level alt does not affect the XP that much at least at the lower levels, not sure about when you have say a 55 alt and a L70 fighting L62 mobs.

[Caspian]

I tried this with my daughter for like 10 minutes this weekend just to test it out and she did 4 bars at level 52 in about 10 minutes.

My pally is a fairly new 70. I used my healing gear (which has more armor then my tank gear - ty PvP bunny) and rank 1 BoS. I was on pace to keep Zolo up for about 30-45 minutes I think. I had issues with healing and mana and would have needed to reset after about 20 minutes or put of seal of wis or light and kill him faster. I am going to try and get the trinkets this week and some decent greens which will make it much easier.

Now I have to get my little dudes up and put my Pally on a new account to get all 3 of them going at once. Or use my rogue to boost the priest to keep pace. Hmm Decisions, decisions.

[Tdog]

/shrug if you guys really want to use your raid gear go for it. It costs me 65g to repair my gear from completely broke while it only costs me 13g for the green gear. Sure my BT gear last 2x as long but it costs 5x as much to repair. Don't want to run back 2x as much? That is why I bought the 2nd set of gear.

As long as I was using an intact shield and positioned so that I blocked everything I didn't take much durability loss on anything but the shield. When boosting in other instances, you have to expose yourself and take hits, but with Zolo, you can keep them all in front of you - so there is very little durability loss for the rest of my gear. YMMV. I just hate having another set of gear in my inventory just for boosting.

Of course, if you let Zolo hit you in the back you will take equipment damage...Yea I know I usually went thru 4 shields before my first piece of gear broke and 5 before I was all red. Blue/epic gear has alot more durability than green gear and will last longer making it not necessary to have a 2nd set of gear. However with blue/epic gear it is much more costly to repair and the price to repair does not scale linearly. My BT gear lasted roughly 2x as long as one of my green sets of gear but costed 5x as much to repair. If you got the gold to repair your epic gear go for it. I however leveled up 3 teams with this method and saved a nice little chunk of gold on repair costs doing this.

I also only use my paladin for boosting now and had all 3 teams parked there for the full duration of the week I did this so inventory space wasn't really an issue for my 2nd set of gear.



FYI to all those curious

35-40 is fairly quick xp. I was sustaining about 140k xp/hr.
40-50 was the best xp. I was sustaining about 180k xp/hr.
50-55 slowed down quite a bit but still better than regular leveling. I was sustaining about 95k xp/hr.
55-56 while I only went to 55 1/4 I was sustaining about 60k xp/hr which isn't too bad really. It's about the same as questing at that point.

Keep in mind all the xp/hr rates listed above was with 5 toons (70 plus 4 lowbies) in the party.

I chose to move on to Stratholme at 55 to farm greens/blues/orbs for cash as gearing up/training talents/mounts for 12 toons is not exactly cheap. :thumbdown:

[pinotnoir]

Any tips for grinding stratholme? I take it you did live side. My guys are close to 55 and I need to say farewell to my good friend zolo. After doing zolo I have become spoiled. I dont want to quest anymore.








/shrug if you guys really want to use your raid gear go for it. It costs me 65g to repair my gear from completely broke while it only costs me 13g for the green gear. Sure my BT gear last 2x as long but it costs 5x as much to repair. Don't want to run back 2x as much? That is why I bought the 2nd set of gear.

As long as I was using an intact shield and positioned so that I blocked everything I didn't take much durability loss on anything but the shield. When boosting in other instances, you have to expose yourself and take hits, but with Zolo, you can keep them all in front of you - so there is very little durability loss for the rest of my gear. YMMV. I just hate having another set of gear in my inventory just for boosting.

Of course, if you let Zolo hit you in the back you will take equipment damage...Yea I know I usually went thru 4 shields before my first piece of gear broke and 5 before I was all red. Blue/epic gear has alot more durability than green gear and will last longer making it not necessary to have a 2nd set of gear. However with blue/epic gear it is much more costly to repair and the price to repair does not scale linearly. My BT gear lasted roughly 2x as long as one of my green sets of gear but costed 5x as much to repair. If you got the gold to repair your epic gear go for it. I however leveled up 3 teams with this method and saved a nice little chunk of gold on repair costs doing this.

I also only use my paladin for boosting now and had all 3 teams parked there for the full duration of the week I did this so inventory space wasn't really an issue for my 2nd set of gear.


Any tips for grinding stratholme? I take it you did live side. My guys are close to 55 and I need to say farewell to my good friend zolo. After doing zolo I have become spoiled. I dont want to quest anymore.


FYI to all those curious

35-40 is fairly quick xp. I was sustaining about 140k xp/hr.
40-50 was the best xp. I was sustaining about 180k xp/hr.
50-55 slowed down quite a bit but still better than regular leveling. I was sustaining about 95k xp/hr.
55-56 while I only went to 55 1/4 I was sustaining about 60k xp/hr which isn't too bad really. It's about the same as questing at that point.

Keep in mind all the xp/hr rates listed above was with 5 toons (70 plus 4 lowbies) in the party.

I chose to move on to Stratholme at 55 to farm greens/blues/orbs for cash as gearing up/training talents/mounts for 12 toons is not exactly cheap. :thumbdown:

[Tdog]

Well Stratholme isn't really about cranking out the xp tbh. For me it's more about getting some gold, and also learning how to better make macros for my new teams in a much more forgiving enviroment before I start getting into outland zones. Although if you have decent gear you can still do fairly alright with grinding/boosting in stratholme. Stabface posted this video in another thread ('http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=79349') It's basically the same thing I do except I personally like to just strafe rather than hop backwards.

[daviddoran]

I have been working on other teams most recently, but plan on getting back to ST soon. A few more lvls to go and I will be above xp level, and plan on going to Stratholme until I can get to outland. I plan on farming stuff to sell, as well as using any gear that drops, because I'm gonna have 4 toons at lvl 50 in SM gear lol (unless I can solo tank most of the stuff in Strath fairly well)

Should I buy a port to shatt at 55 and run straight to Hellfire Ramparts? Could my 70 tankadin with 10khp and mostly healing gear hold up with 4x 55s? or am I better waiting until they are 60? I want to run them as a 5 boxing holy trinity group, so the earliest I can start practicing, the better, but I don't want to have to deal with under level/undergeared healer/dps. I've only done outland stuff solo, as the healer (boringmode) And all the tips in the wiki are for equal level groups at around 61-63. I want to level almost exclusively in instances, and just do quests if they have good rewards. My ultimate goal is to do heroics, (and possibly half of a kara team) so I want as much experience doing that as possible.

[Tdog]

First time around with my alliance team (70 pally 4x 58 shamans) I worked Hellfire ramparts over pretty hard right off the bat. By the time I was done with that team at level 61 I was simply destroying the place. My plans this time around are pretty much the same. Zolo to 56, Strat to 58, Quest for a few of the really good pieces of gear right off the bat, Ramparts after the quest upgrades.

[Kyle K.]

So, I have been reading this thread and am really interested in doing the Zolo trick up to level 50, although I will break at 49 and dome some BG's. But my big question is, since most of you are level 70, I am wondering how well a level 66 paladin would be able to get the job done. Sine my Shamans are nearly level 35, and I could do this soon. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Feathermoon&n=Pangiota thats my armory link just to see if anyone would be able to tell me if I would be able to do this easy xp trick. Also, is Zolo randomly spawned at any location in ST? or is it a static spawn always in the same spot. Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!

[ChaoticMonk]

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/4372/zolouc0.jpg

He can spawn at any of the "C"s but you'd want to try and make him spawn on the bottom C's (ones with red circles). Just go in with sense undead on and walk alittle ways into the corridors and you should be able to see if he has spawned in one of those spots. If not, you can reset but be careful not to get locked out.

Credit to the image goes to the creators of Atlas, I just merly edited it alittle for illustration purposes.

[Memn]

I don't have any first hand knowledge of doing Zolo with a L66 Paladin, but I speculate that you will have trouble with it. To maximize your chance for success, find as much block rating gear as you can, then defense rating, then stamina. L50 mobs are going to miss you very often already, so it may work fine, but you'll want to get hit as seldom as possible, and be able to heal without interruption.

If I were in your position I would try a build such as this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxZE0tcxczM0VbV0x (10/37/10)

Use Devotion Aura until you need a heal, switch to concentration for a Holy Light and then swap back to Devotion. Figure out how much health you lose each time you cast Holy Light, and then let yourself get down to that amount of health + 500 health or so. Try to stay under 35% health if you can, as you'll take less damage. You will probably have to use seal of wisdom to keep your mana up for heals, so create a macro to target one of the skeletons and start attack, as that will allow you to keep hitting as much as possible while minimizing your damage to Zolo.

[shaeman]

So, I have been reading this thread and am really interested in doing the Zolo trick up to level 50, although I will break at 49 and dome some BG's. But my big question is, since most of you are level 70, I am wondering how well a level 66 paladin would be able to get the job done. Sine my Shamans are nearly level 35, and I could do this soon. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Feathermoon&n=Pangiota thats my armory link just to see if anyone would be able to tell me if I would be able to do this easy xp trick. Also, is Zolo randomly spawned at any location in ST? or is it a static spawn always in the same spot. Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!



You could park your team and let them max out rested bonus and level your pally to 70. Then boost them like crazy.

[Kyle K.]

So, I have been reading this thread and am really interested in doing the Zolo trick up to level 50, although I will break at 49 and dome some BG's. But my big question is, since most of you are level 70, I am wondering how well a level 66 paladin would be able to get the job done. Sine my Shamans are nearly level 35, and I could do this soon. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Feathermoon&n=Pangiota thats my armory link just to see if anyone would be able to tell me if I would be able to do this easy xp trick. Also, is Zolo randomly spawned at any location in ST? or is it a static spawn always in the same spot. Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!



You could park your team and let them max out rested bonus and level your pally to 70. Then boost them like crazy.

Ya, I am thinking that is the way to go, my Paladin right now is basically 150% rested, I might go run some outland instances and what not, and hopefully then I can get some better gear. I was trying what TDog told me, but after the second wave of healing it was just no dice for my poor paladin. It wasn't fun watching her go down so quick, so I think I will be going in and really hitting quests in Nagrand hard and hopefully I can level up rather quickly. Thanks for the help!

[Iceorbz]

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/4372/zolouc0.jpg

He can spawn at any of the "C"s but you'd want to try and make him spawn on the bottom C's (ones with red circles). Just go in with sense undead on and walk alittle ways into the corridors and you should be able to see if he has spawned in one of those spots. If not, you can reset but be careful not to get locked out.

Credit to the image goes to the creators of Atlas, I just merly edited it alittle for illustration purposes.Isnt this upside down ?, he should be spawning at 11 and 1 oclock.

[ChaoticMonk]

That is 11 & 1 oclock...just upside down :D it looks more like it does on the minimap that way (at least on mine).

[Codam]

Today I've been boosting 4 locks, the idea being that I could use them for farming motes and such with affliction spec (MORE DOTS!!!)

Anyhow I was running them through SFK, and Wolf Master Nandos reminded me of this thread (he summons a couple of different worg adds constantly while engaged). As I type this I'm backed up to a wall with my only reflective damage coming from rank 1 BoS. Looks like he'll stay alive for about 10-15 mins. Of course anyone who knows SFK will realise this is not going to be anywhere near as effective as the troll mini-boss, due to not being as quick to reset and having to clear much further to get there. But its quite good if for some reason people want to alt-tab out and do something else whilst boosting in SFK.

*edit* I just found out that if you park your lowbies around about the door which is unlocked by the npc which you need to release then they will receive exp from right up in Fenrus' room. I havent tested how much further this goes, as I only intended to kill ferus and open the gate to get the whole instance in 1 go.

[heyaz]

Would this in any way be possible with a Warlock? I'm curious to know if I could just pop Siphon Life on each (or most) of the skeletons that spawn. As long as they hit for less than around 240 physical damage per tick, a warlock could stay alive for a very long time.

[Tdog]

Would this in any way be possible with a Warlock? I'm curious to know if I could just pop Siphon Life on each (or most) of the skeletons that spawn. As long as they hit for less than around 240 physical damage per tick, a warlock could stay alive for a very long time./shrug try it out and let us know. They only hit my paladin for around 17 when I'm above 30% and not getting the benefits of ardent defender. But that is also with BoSanct, 12k armor, and a shield for blocking.


Edit: There is literally about 50 skeletons that spawn roughly with a swing timer of probably about 2.5 seconds. Obviously you'll dodge a fair amount even w/o any dodge or agility gear given the difference in level but you're still going to be taking a ton more damage as a paladin. If it does workout fairly well enough though let us know.

[noir]

66 pally: judge light and you'll be fine.

lock: use a voidwalker, have him attacking skels and not zolo, just siphon life and heal him and you should be fine.

now, where to go post 55...? ppl say strat, but any other fast spawns? what about rounding up the trash in CoT: BM and resetting?

[ChaoticMonk]

You would have to do durnholde before you can go in CoT:BM and you have to be 65 (66?) to enter durnholde.

[heyaz]

Well I tried it without the VW and using Succubus sacrifice for 15% more shadow damage, and it doesn't look feasible. I guess I could find a better tab target marcro to make sure I get the siphon life ticking on every single skeleton, but I noticed once they really multiply and I'm missing some, my health goes down quick. They hit a warlock w/o a pet for 70-80. Easily mitigated with siphon life, the thing is keeping it on every single target.

I'll try again with a voidwalker. 10% reduced physical then 20% of the remaining will go to the VW. The question is how long will it survive. He would survive several minutes in SM, but those melee a lot harder. He has about 10k hp so I would have to take a good 40-50k damage for him to die. It maybe possible to AOE taunt with the VW every 2 minutes and health funnel, but that gets interrupted if there is even one mob on me. I'll give it a try tonight.

[sargorn]

*edit* I just found out that if you park your lowbies around about the door which is unlocked by the npc which you need to release then they will receive exp from right up in Fenrus' room. I havent tested how much further this goes, as I only intended to kill ferus and open the gate to get the whole instance in 1 go.

You can just park them at the cage area - right after zoning in.

IIRC I'd pull to the door npc, pop it, let things beat on me til it opened, then pull through the courtyard and around the outside area and through the dining hall/kitchen then back to the cage.

Kill that, then pull the rest of the instance to fenrus.

Out & reset.

[glo]

When you are finished with ST it's time to hit up Strat. Baron Rivendare spawns the skeletons similar to Zolo and they actually heal him when they die so you can theoretically go until you quit gaining xp off one kill. This will take you past 60 and has an added benefit of having a very small chance of getting a neat mount for you main ;)

Have fun!

[sargorn]

When you are finished with ST it's time to hit up Strat. Baron Rivendare spawns the skeletons similar to Zolo and they actually heal him when they die so you can theoretically go until you quit gaining xp off one kill. This will take you past 60 and has an added benefit of having a very small chance of getting a neat mount for you main ;)

Have fun!

True, do the baron's skeles give xp though?

The baron's also a bit tougher than zolo, although I haven't tried him with my paladin, with my equiv. geared feral druid it's a close fight.

The raise dead spell he casts costs 0 mana, summons six Mindless Skeletons (with 330hp /each) which are sacced after 20seconds or so to heal baron.

[Heenan]

When you are finished with ST it's time to hit up Strat. Baron Rivendare spawns the skeletons similar to Zolo and they actually heal him when they die so you can theoretically go until you quit gaining xp off one kill. This will take you past 60 and has an added benefit of having a very small chance of getting a neat mount for you main ;)

Have fun!Anyone have experience with this? I've been in Scholo with my alts at 56, but it's slow going. It would be nice to have a quick strategy for getting to 60. I don't really feel like questing until Outlands.

[offive]

Me thinks I will give this a try with my newly speced prot 70 pally and my new Shammy team. Only problem is the shaman on the same account as the pally will be out of luck. Guess she will get helped along by my main team.

Great info everyone, thanks for making this task a lot more bearable.

[glo]

When you are finished with ST it's time to hit up Strat. Baron Rivendare spawns the skeletons similar to Zolo and they actually heal him when they die so you can theoretically go until you quit gaining xp off one kill. This will take you past 60 and has an added benefit of having a very small chance of getting a neat mount for you main ;)

Have fun!Anyone have experience with this? I've been in Scholo with my alts at 56, but it's slow going. It would be nice to have a quick strategy for getting to 60. I don't really feel like questing until Outlands.

I haven't done this as of yet a friend showed me how to do it though and you do get XP. My thought at this point is to clear everything real fast with my 70 team then summon the alts right to the barons chamber.

[Tehtsuo]

The question is, do the skeletons summon at a rate which is worth the hassle? Baron's going to deal decent damage, but if the skeletons spawn fast enough to make it worthwhile, I could see investing in a shadow resist set. With the paladin's Shadow resistance aura up, it would only take a few pieces of shadow resist to make baron's damage pretty trivial.

[Mamut]

The question is, do the skeletons summon at a rate which is worth the hassle? Baron's going to deal decent damage, but if the skeletons spawn fast enough to make it worthwhile, I could see investing in a shadow resist set. With the paladin's Shadow resistance aura up, it would only take a few pieces of shadow resist to make baron's damage pretty trivial.6 skelly every 15 or 20 seconds at 82 xp per. 70 prot pally + 4 noobs to be leveled at level 55. Seems to be around 90k an hour. My paladin judges light and reseals it. The shadow aura and shadow bolt isn't really landing much so a shadow resist set is not needed i don't think.

The group I'm leveling are priests. So if i forget to reseal light, I can just toss a greater heal or 4. If your clones are not able to heal you will need to watch your seals unless your doing this in raid gear. Greens and blues I'm using and I need to keep double light up.

Good luck

[Tehtsuo]

The question is, do the skeletons summon at a rate which is worth the hassle? Baron's going to deal decent damage, but if the skeletons spawn fast enough to make it worthwhile, I could see investing in a shadow resist set. With the paladin's Shadow resistance aura up, it would only take a few pieces of shadow resist to make baron's damage pretty trivial.6 skelly every 15 or 20 seconds at 82 xp per. 70 prot pally + 4 noobs to be leveled at level 55. Seems to be around 90k an hour. My paladin judges light and reseals it. The shadow aura and shadow bolt isn't really landing much so a shadow resist set is not needed i don't think.

The group I'm leveling are priests. So if i forget to reseal light, I can just toss a greater heal or 4. If your clones are not able to heal you will need to watch your seals unless your doing this in raid gear. Greens and blues I'm using and I need to keep double light up.

Good luckI guess you don't get hit enough to have the figurine heal you to full, huh.

[Tdog]

Me thinks I will give this a try with my newly speced prot 70 pally and my new Shammy team. Only problem is the shaman on the same account as the pally will be out of luck. Guess she will get helped along by my main team.

Great info everyone, thanks for making this task a lot more bearable.You can either just have the other 4 shammies help the last shammy kill elites while out of combat every 6-8 levels or /shrug transfer the last shammy to one of the other accounts and once you're ready transfer the other shaman on that account back to the account with the paladin.

[Tehtsuo]

Tested baron, and after fine-tuning the process this works very well for me. Things to remember:

If you clear with a level 70 team, remember to kick them out when you start farming Baron skeletons. I was unhappy with the 36 exp per skeleton till I remembered my 3 level 70 shamans standing around gimping my exp. Then it went up to 87 per kill. Shadow resist aura seems to be more useful for me than Devotion. Use MAX rank Blessing of Sanctuary. It doesn't matter if you kill skeletons (you usually won't) and Baron gets healed to full every wave of skeletons. Max rank BoS mitigates a ton of damage. Buy a fast weapon, regardless of damage or other stats. I recommend loading up on several http://www.wowhead.com/?item=2490 or if you want to splurge, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30749. Your weapon will take damage, which is different from the Zolo exercise in most cases.

[Tdog]

I guess you don't get hit enough to have the figurine heal you to full, huh.Not all of us have it :(

[Tehtsuo]

I guess you don't get hit enough to have the figurine heal you to full, huh.Not all of us have it :(Eh, I was talking about even those who have it. I tried it, and there's not enough skeletons to heal a very large part of your HP pool, even if you team it up with Dabiri's Enigma. Judgement of Light seems to be the way to go for this method.

[Tdog]

Ah i c

[Mamut]

Heya again.

No the figurine doesn't heal for much, maybe 15% of my HP's. I did break my sword and was fisting it awhile, a few of those ghetto weapons would be just what the doctor ordered. After one level i left to do some ramparts for the rep/blues but i think this a decent way to get a few more easy levels after the zolo-a-thon 20 levels in one night.

[daviddoran]

I'm not sure my pally can handle Baron + Skeletons. I had to use the Seal of Light/judge/reseal trick just to survive zolo. I only have 10k hp, and 13-14k armor. I used to be holy, but picked up a few heroic tanking epics and a few kara tanking pieces (shield from Nightbane, Iron Gloves of the Maiden) and the rest are either the blue honor PvP stuff, and random healing plate. Back when I was holy I couldn't take out the spider boss on the UD side. As Prot, I didn't get too far due to my computer crashing, but I wasn't able to take on more than 3 groups of skeletons at a time.

Another problem I noticed, is that because my guys have been boosted practically from lvl 10, all the gear they have is from SM (the warlocks still have the Deadmines gloves), which at 55 is quite low. I know gear isn't all that great, but if they pull aggro in strat, they die very fast. I had planned on just questing in outland for the rewards, and then doing some instances, but if they can barely hang in Strat, I am unsure how long they can hang in outland.

So, I either need to gear out my paladin tank so I can keep boosting until they get some better gear from outland instance drops, or do instances a bit lower than required for the gear, like BRD perhaps.

[noir]

I've got way more experience as a KZ/ZA tankadin than a multiboxer... XD

You don't need a weapon for Baron, period. You can even go tank a 5-man with just your fists and a shield. Try it. XD All your threat is from being hit. You're just gonna do less threat cos a huge chunk of your +spell damage is from your weapon.

If you need to judge Light on Zolo, then yeah, you're not gonna survive Baron. Your ultimate goal for your tankadin at 70 is 490 Defense to reach uncrit, and 102.4% miss/dodge/parry/block to reach uncrushable. Baron's level 60, so you don't really need that. Just stack Armor and avoidance and you should be fine. Go buy green tanking gear from the AH. +STA, +avoidance, +spell damage is what you're looking for.

If you can tank the trash in Strat, I don't see why you can't survive Baron. Your alts can help heal you, as long as you're good with keeping up the rank 1 consecrates to catch the skels as they spawn.

[Tdog]

What level are the skeletons in baron's room?

[dRiN]

What level are the skeletons in baron's room?Level 60

Search was : "skel" then sort by region. Stratholme. There where three options. Comments hold the truth : )

Baron Rivendare ('http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=10440') periodically summons a group of these with his Raise Dead ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=17480') spell. They have very little health and do minimal damage, but if they aren't quickly killed, the Baron will cast Death Pact ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=17471'), killing them and healing himself.

This was on a sidenote.

I have been trying out Zolo with my druid to boost part of my set. This was going really well. I kept Zolo alive. And when I ran low on health / was overwhelmed by the spawning adds I just dropped some of the totems. Gave me some time to recover and get my cooldowns reset.

trinkets (make sure to use them every cooldown).
Spyglass of the hidden fleet (for restore of 1300 health)
Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch (for extra dodging)

In this mix I had 3 healing stream totems (10-14 health per totem per tick), a pally armor aura (don't remember the name) and sometimes I would barkskin and put a regrowth and rejuv on me. By the time I needed it again my mana was replenished. I use Pitbull to track what my mana is in bearform so I know when I'm back to full again. Dont use thorns to get them to stick on you. Use demo shout instead. Also giving a nice debuff so they hit for less. Don't use swipe too often, only when you are trying to control the amount of skellies. If you swipe chances are you hit zolo a bit too. But you can try to avoid this from happening when zolo runs to one side, and you do controled swipes on the other side. Chanes on hitting him are less this way.

Too bad our realm went offline for a sec so I disconnected.

[Wolf]

Is there anywhere else that would be good to try boosting from lvl 55 other than strat, I don't have anyone else to help me clear it and I have a lot of trouble trying to solo. I have 1 lvl 60 shaman to help me but he's not very much help. :-/
Thanks.

[daviddoran]

If your highest is only lvl 60, I'd just dual box em and quest. You can simply do em faster with 2 compared to 1, and both toons will get xp from it. Just stick to azeroth until you hit 58, cause then the rewards/xp in outland is way better.

[Wolf]

Oh sorry I just realized I said that wrong >.<
I only have a 60 shaman to help my 70 pally.
The character I'm trying to level is a 55 rogue.

[Marathon]

Just got my 2nd set of two shammies into Sunken Temple last night. OMG I frogot how mindless that place was. I mean I loved seeing my toons ding every 25min but I am defently going to have some other form of entertainment going on while I am boasting the second half of my team.

[Tdog]

Just got my 2nd set of two shammies into Sunken Temple last night. OMG I frogot how mindless that place was. I mean I loved seeing my toons ding every 25min but I am defently going to have some other form of entertainment going on while I am boasting the second half of my team.I just thru up a windows media player over one of the less important lowbie screens and watched some movies while only half paying attention to the skeletons and hp.

[Septimous]

Has anybody tried this with a warrior? Technically the process sounds like it should be very similar. Attach shield spike, let them pound on you in defensive stance, swap gear as it becomes broken, etc. The problem is just deciding how to keep him healed. The only healer in the group would be a priest. Would renewing him periodicly eventually draw aggro from Zolo?

[dRiN]

Has anybody tried this with a warrior? Technically the process sounds like it should be very similar. Attach shield spike, let them pound on you in defensive stance, swap gear as it becomes broken, etc. The problem is just deciding how to keep him healed. The only healer in the group would be a priest. Would renewing him periodicly eventually draw aggro from Zolo?

By using many Demo Shouts and low rank renews I don't think your healer would pull aggro from Zolo. Maybe the spawning skellies that resisted a hit / demo shout might turn on the healer. The only bad part about the healer healing is that it would go into combat, and that means you can't reset without getting that toon killed. The best part about pallies and druid (with good support from the alts around the corner) is that they can heal themselves.

I did read on EJ in a thread about twinking alts / powerleveling that a fury warrior could kill the endless stream of skellies from a little distance. But I would not know how to keep solo at a distance, and keep the totemspawns heading for the warrior. Maybe someone on this forum has an answer for you to work with.

I had a problem with tagging the skellies as a druid. So my XP per hour was somewhat low. Now I dont use thorns/ retri aura from the alts (since I did not find them helping on the tag), and I have tried the electrofood (stormchops) but Zolo went down too quick. In my new tactics I pull zolo and wait till some of the adds have spawned. I then I strave to the right (I pull at a left position against the wall furthest away from the centerroom) That way I have Zolo on my left, and change my camera a bit to the right where the skellies start to mount up. That way I can start to swipe without killing Zolo. I can keep going for half an hour for my gear starts to go dead. I avg about 100K - 120K xp per hour.

Any other known lowdmg way to tag the skellies? I would like to get the 200K xp per hour : )

[Ruzard]

Hello everybody, I have just found additional exploit/bug for lvling in ST. You need to climp to the wall (Candle is near it). When you need Zolo's hp to be restored, just jump and use concentration, it will evade for a while. Also you can jump to a wall near candle.(I am boosting shamans with paladin).
You'll need ~6 shields. and few hundreds of gold =) you don't have to reset instance or jump down from the circle anymore.

P.s. I am sorry for my crappy English.

[Knytestorme]

Hello everybody, I have just found additional exploit/bug for lvling in ST. You need to climp to the wall (Candle is near it).
Please remove this post, exploits are against the ToS of these forums. We aren't interested in cheating in WoW :)

[Nepida]

Hello everybody, I have just found additional exploit/bug for lvling in ST. You need to climp to the wall (Candle is near it).
Please remove this post, exploits are against the ToS of these forums. We aren't interested in cheating in WoW :)

Sounds just like wording to me. Evading hmi by jumping off the ledge or jumping to where he can't get seems the same to me /shrug.

[Stabface]

Tested baron, and after fine-tuning the process this works very well for me. Things to remember:

If you clear with a level 70 team, remember to kick them out when you start farming Baron skeletons. I was unhappy with the 36 exp per skeleton till I remembered my 3 level 70 shamans standing around gimping my exp. Then it went up to 87 per kill. Shadow resist aura seems to be more useful for me than Devotion. Use MAX rank Blessing of Sanctuary. It doesn't matter if you kill skeletons (you usually won't) and Baron gets healed to full every wave of skeletons. Max rank BoS mitigates a ton of damage. Buy a fast weapon, regardless of damage or other stats. I recommend loading up on several http://www.wowhead.com/?item=2490 or if you want to splurge, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30749. Your weapon will take damage, which is different from the Zolo exercise in most cases.

Skinning Knife for the win -- it's faster than either of those AND! it has no durability. ;)
Toss a Lifestealing on it and go to town - since it doesn't bind and has no weapon type you can use it on all your level 1's (but you can't use most special attacks). http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7005

Another (best??) option if you have money to burn is Inuuro's Blade (SSO Revered 1H tank sword) http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34672
It is 1.4 speed so maximizes your SoL/JoL I guess (fastest speed for a Paladin-useable weapon, AFAIK). Not terribly expensive, and it's not unique so you can buy extras, its something around 35g with the reputation discount.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34672

[badashh]

Do you have any stats on the EXP/Hour of the Baron thing? Do they spawn fast enough to warrant trying this?

[Tehtsuo]

Do you have any stats on the EXP/Hour of the Baron thing? Do they spawn fast enough to warrant trying this?I got a full level from 57-58 in about an hour and a half. It's definitely not the best choice for speed levelling, however if you want to level while you're talking to friends on the phone, or watching a movie on a second monitor, it works pretty well. Added bonus: You don't deal with the sheer amount of hits that you do with Zolo, so your armor breaks a good deal slower. One shield break in an hour vs one shield break every 8 minutes. I used my epic shields cause the repair cost ended up being about one and a half epic shields and a quarter of my armor. Not exactly breaking the bank.

[Stabface]

Figurine of the Colossus, rank 1 Blessing of Sanctuary, and a whole bag of the cheapest shields you can buy from a vendor. Is all you need.

Also recommend a nice long book, something like *glances at bookshelf* War & Peace? Atlas Shrugged? Those look pretty thick. :)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Hello everybody, I have just found additional exploit/bug for lvling in ST. You need to climp to the wall (Candle is near it).
Please remove this post, exploits are against the ToS of these forums. We aren't interested in cheating in WoW :)

Sounds just like wording to me. Evading hmi by jumping off the ledge or jumping to where he can't get seems the same to me /shrug.Not at all. Jumping off of the shelf is a normal situation. Exploiting a clipping bug in the wall geometry is not. :P

[heyaz]

Has anybody tried this with a warrior? Technically the process sounds like it should be very similar. Attach shield spike, let them pound on you in defensive stance, swap gear as it becomes broken, etc. The problem is just deciding how to keep him healed. The only healer in the group would be a priest. Would renewing him periodicly eventually draw aggro from Zolo?As far as I know, it's not possible to have the alts help with anything but passive abilities that don't cause aggro. New skeletons spawn very fast and will pick random targets with any aggro whatsoever. If your alts so much as buff themselves during the process they will get aggro from at least a few skeletons.

[Stabface]

I've got War & Peace and Figurine of the Colossus. I'm set. lol

So you just let them all beat on you? Don't even attack back? crazy!

Yep.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_novels

[Stabface]

Has anybody tried this with a warrior? Technically the process sounds like it should be very similar. Attach shield spike, let them pound on you in defensive stance, swap gear as it becomes broken, etc. The problem is just deciding how to keep him healed. The only healer in the group would be a priest. Would renewing him periodicly eventually draw aggro from Zolo?As far as I know, it's not possible to have the alts help with anything but passive abilities that don't cause aggro. New skeletons spawn very fast and will pick random targets with any aggro whatsoever. If your alts so much as buff themselves during the process they will get aggro from at least a few skeletons.

Figurine of the Cololsus.

But perhaps instead of running SH a while for the trinket. I believe you could clear the Dragonkin from the floor below and park your alts there. You should be in heal range and LOS, if you stand your Warrior on the edge. I don't think the skeletons would go after the alts then, even if they did they would expire before they pathed that far through the instance. Well unless the skeletons wallhax and take a shortcut or aggro stuff on the way.

[Tdog]

Quick question for this "Zolo" method.

Are you guys using holy shield at all? (rank 1?)
And no consecration? (not even rank 1)

Any other tricks?READ THE THREAD BEFORE YOU POST...GEEZ!!!

J/K:P Yea don't use Holy shield or retri aura or anything. I just used top rank BoSanct in green gear, jumped off right before zolo died and ran back up and started all over again. Usually got zolo going 30 mins+ easily with just top rank BoSanct. If you want to use your raid gear and if it's good enough to use just rank 1 BoSanct more power to ya. And yes you will get like 20 levels in a 10 hour sitting or so.

[Tdog]

Its a ten page thread, cut me some slack! :D And I actually read like 7 or 8 pages of it... wasn't clear about exactly "how" you were killing all those skeletons.

thanx for the infoLOL yea I was just giving you a hard time like you give all the newbie MB'ers :D

Anyways I explained most of it when I first started back on post 26 ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=76807#post76807'). I was going to do a revamped version of it after my third team went through and put a thread in the Advanced tactics section but never got around to it. As far as the skellies dying goes, you don't actually try to kill them. You're just tagging them and they will automatically die after about 45-50 seconds or so.

Basically Zolo throws down a max of 5 totems. Each totem summons roughly 10 skellies about every 5 seconds. So you got 5 totems spawning up to 10 skeletons each every 5 seconds meaning that pretty much every second a skeleton is dying and another is spawning in its place. These aren't exact numbers just aprox. as best I can tell.

[Oswyn]

I was going to do a revamped version of it after my third team went through and put a thread in the Advanced tactics section but never got around to it.

http://www.ituit.com/images/wn-tuitb.jpg

Now you've got one! :)

[Lokked]

I had GREAT success doing Zolo with an undergeared Shaman: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Malicea ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Malicea')

I would park alt outside Zolo's room.
Move into room with shaman, set up on/near the ledge, with my back to the corner of the overhang.
Agro zolo with a something.
I face zolo the entire time.
He charges and starts dropping the totems.
I drop Stoneskin, Wrath of Air, Mana Stream, then apply Earth Shield.
I continue to apply Earthshield as it wears off, my HP slowly plummetting.
When HP gets to around 35%, Nature's Guardian starts kicking in, and between Nature's Guardian and Earth Shield, I never deviate far from 35%. If I fail to keep Stoneskin up, or miss reapplying Earth Shield, I will die within 6 or 7 seconds.
Zolo never even comes close to dieing. My gear gets destroyed long before Zolo even gets to 90%.

I normally use a Green lvl 66 shield with an Iron Shield Spike.

Anyone have any ideas on how to keep going longer then 15 mins at a time? This is about how long my gear lasts.

[daviddoran]

Trouble with non tanking classes is lack of increased block rating. You were able to last ok, but you weren't blocking much with the shield. Does red gear make you die too fast? Or is the shield enough? I would try getting some non-durability items, and plenty of shields.

[heyaz]

I had GREAT success doing Zolo with an undergeared Shaman: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Malicea ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Malicea')

I would park alt outside Zolo's room.
Move into room with shaman, set up on/near the ledge, with my back to the corner of the overhang.
Agro zolo with a something.
I face zolo the entire time.
He charges and starts dropping the totems.
I drop Stoneskin, Wrath of Air, Mana Stream, then apply Earth Shield.
I continue to apply Earthshield as it wears off, my HP slowly plummetting.
When HP gets to around 35%, Nature's Guardian starts kicking in, and between Nature's Guardian and Earth Shield, I never deviate far from 35%. If I fail to keep Stoneskin up, or miss reapplying Earth Shield, I will die within 6 or 7 seconds.
Zolo never even comes close to dieing. My gear gets destroyed long before Zolo even gets to 90%.

I normally use a Green lvl 66 shield with an Iron Shield Spike.

Anyone have any ideas on how to keep going longer then 15 mins at a time? This is about how long my gear lasts.
How exactly are you tagging the mobs with low shield block rating and just a shield spike? Did you check the xp/hr on the alts?

[vorlof]

If you have epic gear there is no need to buy a green set, just buy allot of shields

I'd get through 8 shields with my boots at 70/75 durability(meaning my gear wasn't really being touched, just the shields)

I used rank1 blessing of sanctuary to tag the mobs and figurine of the colossus once every 10 minutes (about the same time i changed shields) to keep myself alive

I didnt need to help on my alt at all, and i didn't use any damage shields at all (not even a spike) to keep zolo up for a hour at a time (then i would bubble and hs to repair)

Earthen elixirs help a lot, but cost 2 gold each on my server

my friend got 39-58 and then waited in hellfire till i was done
and my rogue went from 35-58 (3 days 14 hours played at 59. my new record!)

After 58 the skeletons stop giving experience

[Ughmahedhurtz]

If you have epic gear there is no need to buy a green set, just buy allot of shields

Key point = epic gear. :P

[glo]

This thread is getting rather long here is a quick summary.

The main mob here is Zolo this can be done with just him but pulling Mijan over to him makes it much better as you don't have to worry about Zolo dying on you.

To set this up go to ST and clear the entire upper circle where the mini-bosses are at taking note of where Zolo (and Mijan if going this route) are at. Park the characters you are boosting in XP range of Zolo without aggroing. Go to Mijan and kite her over to Zolo's location. Position your main character so the mobs can't get to his back and watch the XP start rolling in.

Items that will help
8-10 shields with spike
Figurine of the Colossus(recommended)

Blessing of Sanctuary helps if you have it, Earth shield helps if you are using a shaman. You want to minimize damage without using abilities that might damage Zolo or Mijan. You are only needing to tag the skeletons not kill them, they will despawn and give XP after about 40 seconds.

As long as you don't get your alts on the threat list you can reset the encounter by jumping the main off the ledge. You are probably going to go repair unless you got a perfect position where mobs can't hit your back ar all and you brought many shields. Leveling a Lock this way is even more convenient, after you reset hearth and repair then you can get summoned right back to continue where you left off.

With the ideal setup: a pally with figurine of the colossus and a pile of shields this becomes simplicity. You will want to recast BoS every 10 minutes, click your Trinket every 2 minutes, and change shields when they break. Remember you aren't needing to deal damage, you should just be standing there not even auto attacking.

[Lokked]

With the shaman + Shield Spike, I block 10-11% of the time. If the mob has 45 seconds to hit me, attacking at a speed of 2.0, this allows him roughly 22 attacks.

Probability of NOT blocking once is .9 or 90%
Probability of NOT blocking 22 times is .9^22 = .0984 or 9.84%

So yeah, I'm probably getting 8 or 9% less XP then the paladins. Oh well. I gotta work with what I have.

With 15% block:

Probability of NOT blocking once is .85 or 85%
Probability of NOT blocking 22 times .85^22 = .0280 or 2.8%

I could find +defense gear, but then I would have a much lower max HP and +healing and thus not regen nearly as much from Nature's Guardian and Earth Shield.

[kwschs]

Im in SM with a mage and 4 shaman, at lvl 26 now, if u can take the boredom its fast lvling, ill stay till lvl 40 then move to ZF

[Tdog]

...The main mob here is Zolo this can be done with just him but pulling Mijan over to him makes it much better as you don't have to worry about Zolo dying on you.

To set this up go to ST and clear the entire upper circle where the mini-bosses are at taking note of where Zolo (and Mijan if going this route) are at. Park the characters you are boosting in XP range of Zolo without aggroing. Go to Mijan and kite her over to Zolo's location. Position your main character so the mobs can't get to his back and watch the XP start rolling in.


Items that will help
8-10 shields with spike
Figurine of the Colossus(recommended)

Blessing of Sanctuary helps if you have it, Earth shield helps if you are using a shaman. You want to minimize damage without using abilities that might damage Zolo or Mijan. You are only needing to tag the skeletons not kill them, they will despawn and give XP after about 40 seconds.
I have tried the miljan trick several times and for the life of me he is completely leashed to his platform. The only way I have yet to successfully bring both of them together is if they are on adjacent platforms, I use a lowbie aggro him, and then about halfway over he wants to kill my alt rather than my paladin and I have to nearly kill the bastard just to get him back on my paladin. He also doesn't heal very often and you must be doing very minimal damage to him and Zolo.

If Miljan was anymore than 1 platform away I would end up having to kill just to keep him off the lowbies and was just way too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it imo since you can simply reset till Zolo is at one of the first 2 platforms and resetting by jumping off into the dragon pit and running down, zoning out to unaggro dragons, then running back up, having your alts help kill off any mobs you may have picked up on the way up the stairs, quick heal, and your back in business. Only takes me 2-3 mins to reset and is a whole hell of alot less of a headache to me than to mess with finding Miljan and trying to get him over to Zolo w/o killing my lowbie.


For paladins you should most definitely be using BoSanct and NOT shield spikes. Using a shield spike will not make you block anymore or tag any additional mobs and there is no point to having one on if you already have BoSanct on. BoSanct is the best buff you can have for doing this period. The amount of damage this single buff reduces is tremendous in the long run and will easily extend your lifespan by a very large amount. Stoneskin totem is the next best buff to have if you have a shaman lowbie in the group to help your paladin. With just these two buffs my paladin in green gear was only taking 5-7 damage on hit in the 30% hp range.

For shamans yes you will need a shield spike and don't bother using any of the other reflective or aoe abilites.
Im in SM with a mage and 4 shaman, at lvl 26 now, if u can take the boredom its fast lvling, ill stay till lvl 40 then move to ZFYou can zone into ZF at level 35. It gives much better xp than SM anyways, so unless you need silk cloth or something I'd head over at 35.

With the shaman + Shield Spike, I block 10-11% of the time. If the mob has 45 seconds to hit me, attacking at a speed of 2.0, this allows him roughly 22 attacks.

Probability of NOT blocking once is .9 or 90%
Probability of NOT blocking 22 times is .9^22 = .0984 or 9.84%

So yeah, I'm probably getting 8 or 9% less XP then the paladins. Oh well. I gotta work with what I have.

With 15% block:

Probability of NOT blocking once is .85 or 85%
Probability of NOT blocking 22 times .85^22 = .0280 or 2.8%

I could find +defense gear, but then I would have a much lower max HP and +healing and thus not regen nearly as much from Nature's Guardian and Earth Shield.Hmm are you taking into account the difference between level 70 and level 47-48 skeletons when figuring in the blocking?

[bsides]

This post is really great.

My paladin is not 70 yet, he is level 65 (link to my wowarmory ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Warsong&n=Melhoral'))... do you guys think I could handle some of this fight with this spec ('http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxZE0tIx0zg0qx') ? - EDIT: since I dont plan on using devotion aura, this spec may be better ('http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxhZV0tIx0zgMqx')

I'm thinking about trying and when the fight gets really hard, I'd fall and reset it... I don't know how worth that may be thou. What do you think?

[glo]

I have tried the miljan trick several times and for the life of me he is completely leashed to his platform. The only way I have yet to successfully bring both of them together is if they are on adjacent platforms, I use a lowbie aggro him, and then about halfway over he wants to kill my alt rather than my paladin and I have to nearly kill the bastard just to get him back on my paladin. He also doesn't heal very often and you must be doing very minimal damage to him and Zolo. Only had mijan reset once the very first time I tried it after that I've had no problem keeping aggro. I body pull then just walk backward with auto attack hitting her, wait when she heals and you should be able to kite this mob anywhere in the instance. If you are using a pally definately take the couple minutes to pull Mijan it insures you won't accidentally kill Zolo at all.

[glo]

This post is really great.

My paladin is not 70 yet, he is level 65 (link to my wowarmory ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Warsong&n=Melhoral'))... do you guys think I could handle some of this fight with this spec ('http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxZE0tIx0zg0qx') ? - EDIT: since I dont plan on using devotion aura, this spec may be better ('http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxhZV0tIx0zgMqx')

I'm thinking about trying and when the fight gets really hard, I'd fall and reset it... I don't know how worth that may be thou. What do you think?I'm not going to say you can't Zolo grind with that character but you won't get near the result you would at 70 with the trinket. You will have to reset often and that will hurt your ZP rate of course. There isn't really a fight you just stand there, the problem is you won't be able to heal with 50 little mobs hitting you.

[bsides]

Just tried... well, yes I can't handle it as well as a lv70 (in fact not even near it) but I can make enough for about 5 min which is not that great. So I'll level that pally and get him there. I just tested it with another lv70 and it's REALLY easy.

Thanks for this post guys... should have a sticky.

[Gurblash]

They must have buffed the skeletons in the patch or something. We havn't seen a skeleton lower than 49 the entire time... And last night Val took his 3 locks to 58 off Zolo. At 58 the xp promptly stopped.

[Tdog]

They must have buffed the skeletons in the patch or something. We havn't seen a skeleton lower than 49 the entire time... And last night Val took his 3 locks to 58 off Zolo. At 58 the xp promptly stopped.Yea I just got my 2 other teams to 58 today as well. They were sitting at 55 in the inn gaining rested xp. That was a damn quick 6 levels x 8 :D

On a side note given that the skeletons in undead strat level 58ish I think someone said a few posts back, you could theoretically boost them clear up to level 66? Assuming the xp is worth in over regular outland leveling.

RFC level 8-12
SFK level 12-20
SM level 20-35
ST level 35-58
UD Strat level 58-66
Begin questing in Hellfire at level 66
Hit 70 roughly after all quests in HFP, Zang and Terrokar are done
All gold increased for all quests all through Nagrand, Blade's Edge, Netherstorm, and SMV.

That'd be some quick easy srsly leveling. My current main team is level 69 atm, halfway through the Netherstorm quests and each toon already has 1800g each. By the time I finish up all Netherstorm and SMV quests they should be halfway ready to buy the epic flyers after the regular flyers. If I had started HFP at 66 though...CHA CHING!!! :D I'm definietly going to be doing this with my mage team next if ud strat provides good enough xp/hr.

[Stabface]

I believe it would take much longer to level to 66 from Baron skeletons than it would to just do instance grinds in Outlands. Remember that the XP per level from 60-61 is several times more than 59-60. And, you're not getting any rep from those skeletons. So I think it's best to just go to Outlands at 55 and start instance grinding for XP and useful reputation.

[bsides]

My friend just teste with me and we proved: it's possible with a Resto Shammy.

His armory is here ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Warsong&n=Risperidon') ... as you can see he didn't put any real effort on it, we just made a blacksmith low level make us an Iron Spike for his shield, a Shoulder with defense rating and a shield with block rating. With Earth Shield he can heal thru the process and put totems accordingly (mana or heals). Grace of Air is good for dodges, Stoneskin for less damage per hit. He was with Thorns from my lv36 druid but it was mostly resisted unfortunatelly. Now and then he put a magma totem rank 1, wait for a hit and then put a flametongue rank 1 just to not damage the boss (and tag the skeletons) - EDIT: the new skeletons will kill the totem so no need for flametongue... however for some strange reason they'll not hit the other totems. He have to reset on each 5-10 min or so, so it's not bad at all He died the first time but reincarnate after the skeletons went away. :)

[Littleburst]

I started at lvl 35, got an offer from an other Multiboxer who boosted me to lvl 39,9 with his prot paladin. Went great. Like everyone said here etc.

Now i'm lvl 44 and just started with a prot warrior. 2 parts T5, 2 parts T4 and some badge gear. And it's going absolutely awesome. With an iron spike he taggs mobs, but Zolo hardly gets damage and because of my totems (healing stream x 4, stoneskin, str.) he doesn't get more then 500 points of his health. Procs from T4 and T5 will probably help.
He got figurine of the collosus the collosus and spyglass of the hidden fleet (40 stam, use: 1,3k heal, 2 min CD) and we only have to stop because his gear is broke. Zolo went down 10% in 15 min with the iron spike. So if you can get a prot warrior with this gear this is the best option. Or i'm missing something completely :)

(i don't heal him, i stay out of combat.)

edit: I stopped dropping totems and he keeps at 100% health, Blade turing(absorbing 200 dmg, proc from 2 parts T4) pretty much chain procs. Trinkets are not even needed, i think one healing stream at this lvl could keep him topped off. I'm amazed by it. He just went to the store to buy food. :thumbsup:

[Naylix]

"best" is a combination of many factors - repairing warrior gear of that level is considerably more expensive than a green geared lvl 70 paladin, with trinket and white shields :)

But it would definately work, as far as I can tell.

Allround, the paladin does come out on top, due to consecration in the lower instances which is insane dmg when you pull 100+ mobs at a time :)

I believe I saw a remark about 2-pulling stockades, and 3-pulling SM cathedral - and I must say, Colossus trinket and normal quest gear without durability, and green "of the sorcerer" gear in the durability slots will easily let you 1-pull everything up to and including SM Cathedral.

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)

[Stabface]

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)

Not quite true, anything that stuns or knocks you down will get you killed if you pull too much. We are not invincible, just nearly so :)
For example with enough gear you can pull half of Stratholme but if you pull the Courier and more than a few groups with him then you're 100% dead.

[Tasty]

I should have clicked this thread a looong time ago....

[Littleburst]

"best" is a combination of many factors - repairing warrior gear of that level is considerably more expensive than a green geared lvl 70 paladin, with trinket and white shields :)

But it would definately work, as far as I can tell.

Allround, the paladin does come out on top, due to consecration in the lower instances which is insane dmg when you pull 100+ mobs at a time :)

I believe I saw a remark about 2-pulling stockades, and 3-pulling SM cathedral - and I must say, Colossus trinket and normal quest gear without durability, and green "of the sorcerer" gear in the durability slots will easily let you 1-pull everything up to and including SM Cathedral.

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)I ment that the warrior is best just for the Zolo boosting. For everything else there's a prot pally :P

[Naylix]

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)

Not quite true, anything that stuns or knocks you down will get you killed if you pull too much. We are not invincible, just nearly so :)
For example with enough gear you can pull half of Stratholme but if you pull the Courier and more than a few groups with him then you're 100% dead.



Aye, true. Which is why I wrote lvl 40 elites :) - getting stunned in SM, ZF or similar doesn't have much of an impact, you loose a bunch of health, but in worst case, you can bubble-heal it and consecrate still ticks away. Getting stunned in Strat with 40 mobs on you = certain death I agree.

Now, time to level another paladin... :p

[Tonuss]

EDIT: the new skeletons will kill the totem so no need for flametongue... however for some strange reason they'll not hit the other totems.That's because the totem does damage, and thus it generates aggro after the first tick or two. The other totems generate no aggro as long as there is a character around (ie, they'll aggro mobs if it's the first thing they encounter). They won't even aggro a healing stream totem, which means that a combination of Stoneskin and Healing Stream would mitigate large amounts of damage from the skeletons and could allow the shaman to sit there indefinitely (especially a resto shaman with an earth shield).

[Stabface]

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)

Not quite true, anything that stuns or knocks you down will get you killed if you pull too much. We are not invincible, just nearly so :)
For example with enough gear you can pull half of Stratholme but if you pull the Courier and more than a few groups with him then you're 100% dead.



Aye, true. Which is why I wrote lvl 40 elites :) - getting stunned in SM, ZF or similar doesn't have much of an impact, you loose a bunch of health, but in worst case, you can bubble-heal it and consecrate still ticks away. Getting stunned in Strat with 40 mobs on you = certain death I agree.

Now, time to level another paladin... :p

Not true - it's simply a matter of numbers. If you can get a long duration stun from L40s and still live you're not pulling enough :)
There's nothing that stuns in SM Cath, but if you say ... pulled all of SM Cath and killed only Mograine, then attacked Whitemain until she puts you to sleep? You're dead guarantee. If you pull enough stuff in ZF and get Hex'd then you are going to die before it wears off (been there done that). In the higher level instances if you let mobs get behind you it can cause problems. I pull about 40-60 mobs at a time in Stratholme and if I simply turn my back to them I'll die really fast. Even on Zolo, when my shield breaks I will die within prob 15 seconds even from full health if I don't catch it and swap in a new one.

Pull like this and turn your back on the pack and see what happens :)
http://www.speakeasy.org/~executor/zombies.jpg ('http://www.speakeasy.org/~executor/zombies.jpg')

[sargorn]

Finally got a few alts up to 35, to actually give ST a shot.

Mijan is def. the way to go, 18 shields later and neither Mijan or Zolo have gone under 50%.

To prevent Mijan from leashing... do what you usually do to prevent something from leashing - keep pissing it off til it's where you want it. Rank 1 exorcism + mana tap worked well for me. you could also r1 conc, judge something, etc.

With Mijan up you can sit there with a greater blessing on, makes it much easier to watch tv, etc. only have to rebless once every 1/2hr, watch for shield breaks and pop your trinket whenever low. Trinket makes it 100 times easier than doing it without. I don't even bother swinging at skeles. Just stand in a corner, pop trinket at low hp, rebless/RF every 1/2hr.

[Zub]

Definitely going to try this on my resto sham (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Shadow%20Council&n=Ghur).
+2k healing should allow for a nice Nature's Guardian hp return

Need to grab a few mushies to get a couple lichen guards and slap a iron spike on my current shield.

Anyone know how quick i'll lose durability?
got 10k armor, 5% block, 4% dodge and 350 def

I think i'll have to drop a rank 1 magma every now and again (even if it only tick once before it's wtfpwnd by 30 skellies) to make sure i tag most mobs, i doubt i'll be blocking near enough otherwise

toons are only 33 at the moment. need a few more SM runs before.. exciting exciting!

[daviddoran]

Just an update. Earlier reports of the skeletons being buffed were correct. After the last patch, the skeletons are ALL now lvl 49, which means that you can get a couple more levels out of good ole. zolo, and then head straight to outland! I just got my team to lvl 40 (starting at 35) after a couple hours /played and will be keeping them here exclusively until they ding 58. Make me wonder if blizz did this on purpose to make the grind a bit easier... I mean why else make such a change? It's a known fact that blizz wants people to level up faster, with the recent changes in xp rates, and the lower requirement for the mount. It's also tempting to try out the baron variation on this trick. How high can you get your alts to with that method? I really just want to do 70s instances, and dailys, so boosting is the only way i will ever get toons leveled.

[TheHamburglar]

This may or may not be a next step to a quick leveling process. While i've been running BRD with my pally and shaman to get the hang of PVE Multiboxing when i can afford to make mistakes with my lvl 61 pally and lvl 55 shammies. But the Lycem(sp?) room Where you have to light the two torches to open the door to magmus. All the mobs in there give xp up to lvl 61. I Haven't looked to see what kind of xp my alts get but my 61 pally gets around 30xp per kill the mobs are around 51-53 iirc. They are on about a 30 second respawn timer and have only 550 to 650hp so a Mage can easily take out most the room with a couple AE even with the stupid AOE Penalty damage for having more than 10 mobs. A 70 pally would be able to do this also no problem 1 Consecration pretty much kills them blocking and BOS takes care of the Rest.

[daviddoran]

sounds intriguing. I wonder how much xp per hour it adds up to. ALso seems like it's a lot easier than zolo, albeit with more time spent actual playing than the virtual AFK job zolo is. I will give it a shot with my 58 pally and locks, and my 70 tankadin.

[Zub]

that's very insteresting indeed!

Using the lava jumps (see videos for MC attunement) you should be able to get to the Lycaeum (sp!) very easily.
*puts it on the list of todo's*

[Freddman]

Is it possible to do the Zolo encounter with 1x lvl 70 Mage and 4x Shamans to be lvld?

[Zub]

Is it possible to do the Zolo encounter with 1x lvl 70 Mage and 4x Shamans to be lvld?
i doubt you would be able to cast/survive anything with 30+ skellies hitting on you. bandages tend to break easily >.<

[Freddman]

i doubt you would be able to cast/survive anything with 30+ skellies hitting on you. bandages tend to break easily >.<Gah, to bad my lvl 67 Paladin is on another PvE server and my 4 shamans and mage is on a PvP server :(

[Naylix]

And yes, I speak from experience. If paladins can round up the 30-40+ lvl 70 melee mobs on top of BT and burn them down using a lvl 62 blue shield from sporeggar - then paladins can definately pull lvl 40 elites of any number and burn them down too :)

Not quite true, anything that stuns or knocks you down will get you killed if you pull too much. We are not invincible, just nearly so :)
For example with enough gear you can pull half of Stratholme but if you pull the Courier and more than a few groups with him then you're 100% dead.



Aye, true. Which is why I wrote lvl 40 elites :) - getting stunned in SM, ZF or similar doesn't have much of an impact, you loose a bunch of health, but in worst case, you can bubble-heal it and consecrate still ticks away. Getting stunned in Strat with 40 mobs on you = certain death I agree.

Now, time to level another paladin... :p

Not true - it's simply a matter of numbers. If you can get a long duration stun from L40s and still live you're not pulling enough :)
There's nothing that stuns in SM Cath, but if you say ... pulled all of SM Cath and killed only Mograine, then attacked Whitemain until she puts you to sleep? You're dead guarantee. If you pull enough stuff in ZF and get Hex'd then you are going to die before it wears off (been there done that). In the higher level instances if you let mobs get behind you it can cause problems. I pull about 40-60 mobs at a time in Stratholme and if I simply turn my back to them I'll die really fast. Even on Zolo, when my shield breaks I will die within prob 15 seconds even from full health if I don't catch it and swap in a new one.

Pull like this and turn your back on the pack and see what happens :)
http://www.speakeasy.org/~executor/zombies.jpg

Aye, that is ofc to be considered... however, my experience is a bit different. See, I do SM Cath with 2 very "epic" items, and all other durability slots are "of the sorcerer" greens.

These 2 epics, are the Skullflame Shield and the Demon Forged Breastplate. 3% chance on each hit to drain life from the mob. This drain life effect scales with spelldmg. On the breastplate, I think it's around 50% scaling, and the shield is 100% scaling at least. Which means when they do hit me, I have a 3% chance to get either 5-600 health leached over 4 seconds, or almost 1k health instantly. On top of that, the dmg from the shields fireaoe, amounts to over 5k firedmg when all of Cath is pulled (there simply are LOADS of mobs on you, only reason it's around 5k dmg, is the aoe dmgcap)

So, with max rank BoS, I take very little dmg from the melee, I resist everything from the casters, and the hits I do take, can heal me for 500-1k health. I haven't actually tested if I can turn my back through it all, as I often pop the SH trinket to heal me once. But in Ardent Defender range, I'm rather confident the life leech alone will keep me up.

And if you're wondering, no, the life leech procs have no cooldown whatsoever, I have had 5 * the lifedrain from the breastplate ticking at the same time. And the shield sometimes fire 2-3 procs in a row. (1 second apart)

You should try out that breastplate... it really is tons of fun :) (I have 2 Skullflame shields, looking to pick up a third for this, and being an engineer helps with repairing)

[Zub]

Well just went to have a little chat with zolo tonight, the group being a 70 Resto shaman (just under 2k healing, mostly epics from kara/GL/ZA - Ghr's Armory here (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Shadow+Council&n=Ghur)) and 2 level 35 shaman who had just dinged about 10min before.
I brought with me 2x lichen guard (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25828) for the fight. Very easy to farm the 15x2 glowcaps to buy those, it's a 10min job honestly.

- Entered the instance, left clones at the portal, and went to look for Zolo, (second corridor on the left when you enter, and go upstairs. Fortunately at the closest spot, didnt have to reset at all.
- Cleared the 3 groups of mobs to have a safe passage for the clones
- Brought clones near Zolo, left them in the little nook in the corridor before zolo. Dont let them too far, the trash respawns real quick.
Then i placed myself against a wall, tagged zolo, then targeted myself to avoid hitting the boss and killing him early.

The summoned skellies hit me for anywhere between 25-35, but there is a crap ton of them. You will not be able to cast a non-instant spell unless you have 100% pushback. (thankfully shamies have that when Earth Shield is on)
To give you an idea, i tried to war stomp, and the 1.5 second cast never landed.

The totems i used where
- Healing stream (with an occasional Mana tide)
- Stoneskin (makes a real difference)
- Wrath of air.

The fight goes in 2 cycles.
cycle A, every ~20sec i cast Earth Shield
cycle B, every ~90sec i cast stoneskin, WoA and Healing stream
Rinse, repeat.

If needed, drop a Mana tide, and a LHW or two. Rememebr to always put Earth Shield before LHW, or you'll not complete the cast because of pushback (yes, even with 70% anti-pushback)

It seems that positioning with your back to the edge is best so far. Scary though, as a step back will have you fall in dragons, but all skellies stack in a single spot and i assume they will give you less armor durability.
My first level grind cost me about 22g, the second 16g in repairs.
Note that your weapon seems to take no damage, however the shield was at ~50% when i went to repair (jumped the main off the ledge (clones can stay where they are), avoided dragons, hearthed to stonard, repaired, and ran him backo zolo)

clones got
51xp per skeleton at level 35
53xp per skeleton at level 36
55xp per skeleton at level 37
That's where i stopped tonight. more boosting tomorrow :-)

Hope this helps.
-Zub


Edit: Removed information about the magma totem, as it doesnt tag the mobs

[shaeman]

Well - I'm completely confused.

I went into ST tonight - It was Just my 70 (newly resto shaman) and a level 40 paladin.

I found zolo. Did all that I thought I should (apart from the first attempt where I forgot to put totems down and got wasted :) )

I didn't have a shield spike.... Dont know if that makes a big difference, and every so often I would rank one magma totem to tag.

I stood there quite a while, masses and masses of skeletons spawning. Took an absolute beating - and my son who was watching my character reported 0 xp.

I got him to check the combat log - and it was zero.

I thought it had been nerfed, but the post above tried this on the same day.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong. (It was pretty much identical to what the poster above described).

[Gurblash]

I didn't have a shield spike.... Dont know if that makes a big difference, and every so often I would rank one magma totem to tag.

You need a shield spike its the only way to mitigate dmg back to the skeletons. Just like pets if a totem does all the dmg to an NPC mob you get no xp. You must do some dmg to it, ala shield spike.

Also have the pally put Blessing of Sanctuary on your booster.

[Greythan]

Heyaz, any update?


Well I tried it without the VW and using Succubus sacrifice for 15% more shadow damage, and it doesn't look feasible. I guess I could find a better tab target marcro to make sure I get the siphon life ticking on every single skeleton, but I noticed once they really multiply and I'm missing some, my health goes down quick. They hit a warlock w/o a pet for 70-80. Easily mitigated with siphon life, the thing is keeping it on every single target.

I'll try again with a voidwalker. 10% reduced physical then 20% of the remaining will go to the VW. The question is how long will it survive. He would survive several minutes in SM, but those melee a lot harder. He has about 10k hp so I would have to take a good 40-50k damage for him to die. It maybe possible to AOE taunt with the VW every 2 minutes and health funnel, but that gets interrupted if there is even one mob on me. I'll give it a try tonight.

I'm interested as my 70 'lock is my team's booster and they just dinged 40. :)

[Otlecs]

edit: ignore this - I thought you were tanking with a pally.... Gurblash is almost certainly right - totems doing the killing is a bad thing :)

*casts around for a working delete button*

Nope, STILL can't find one... must be a very complicated operation... 8|

[sargorn]

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/4372/zolouc0.jpg

He can spawn at any of the "C"s but you'd want to try and make him spawn on the bottom C's (ones with red circles). Just go in with sense undead on and walk alittle ways into the corridors and you should be able to see if he has spawned in one of those spots. If not, you can reset but be careful not to get locked out.

Credit to the image goes to the creators of Atlas, I just merly edited it alittle for illustration purposes.

Oh, btw...
If Zolo's in either of those positions you can simply park your alts in the first room with the portal. If you're just pulling zolo that basically means 0 clearing. If you're doing Mijan and Zolo you can avoid a few of the early pulls.

[shaeman]

I didn't have a shield spike.... Dont know if that makes a big difference, and every so often I would rank one magma totem to tag.

You need a shield spike its the only way to mitigate dmg back to the skeletons. Just like pets if a totem does all the dmg to an NPC mob you get no xp. You must do some dmg to it, ala shield spike.

Also have the pally put Blessing of Sanctuary on your booster.



Oh my goodness - what a complete and utter noob i am :)

Doh!!!!

Thank you so much

[Zub]

wow i'm the noob i think, when i did yesterday i was totally convinced that having my magma totem did the trick and helped getting xp quicker >.<
I guess i must have had a better positioning or something, and blocked more attacks. i'll check again tonight, but in the meantime disregard my previous post.

I didnt have a spike on my shield either, but was using the Lichen Guard shield, which basically does the same as a spike (applies poison on successful block). I suggest getting one/two of those (it's quick/painless) if you dont want to replace an enchant on any shield you already have.

[shaeman]

Hey zub - dont be rough on yourself.

I've basically followed your spec and initial guide - it worked fine (apart from no xp for me).

I've bought 4 shields, got them shield spiked (I dont have sporregar rep), and I'm gonna take the pally back in now. Looking forward to it.

Strangely - I did a bit of pvp on the resto shaman with this build - I kind of like it (but I digresS).

I'll set my hearth to stonard so I can go back, repair and get back in there relatively quickly. (It's a drag getting back up from that central bit.)

[Zub]

i also have a Karazhan geared Prot warrior (~13k hp, 15k armor)and might give her a try as well, just to see if it is doable, but i think it's gonig to hurt big time with no heals.

Tonight i'm getting my zubs to 40 , then going to blackrock mountain and going to try the Lycaeum with my 70 mage boosting the little ones.
There's a crap-ton of easy killed mobs (~800-1000hp)in there, on a 20second respawn timer. Just have to hope they give good xp, and that the level 40s can do the lava jumps safely to get there.

[shaeman]

Well thanks to zubs description I got this working.

My paladin went in there at about 40 and 40% of the bar.

It took a little while to get in to the swing of things, but eventually I did.

As someone else suggested I buffed my shaman with blessing of sanctuary. This helped.

I've just dinged 42. There was a lot of wasted time. When I go in to zolo I stand on the left hand corner with my back hanging over the edge. When it's time to bail I drop down from there. I spent a lot of time wandering down tunnels to try and find my way back up.

For those that want to save a bit of time - look for the tunnel that has some gargoyles (or statues at the entrance to it).

I found that I could take about 10 minutes of zolo's skeletons beating on me. I would then drop down and run back up - and the respawns hadn't happened. (the respawns slow you down getting back up there).

I stopped using the magma totem - reducing the amount of times I dropped it. It doesn't tag the mobs and doesn't really make them die quicker.

I'm going to have to see what I can do to prolong the amount of time I can take a pasting.

So I'm going to look for anything that buffs intellect (the more mana I have the better). I'm going to look at putting the mana oil (alchemy) on my weapon, and to have a steady supply of mana pots to chug.

I am definitely going to bring two other lowbies in there for a bit of painless levelling up tomorrow.

Thanks to all that helped... the shield spikes were the missing ingredient.

[kega]

Doing the Zolo grind on my 3 warlocks alt's at the moment with my "just dinged 70" prot paladin. Have blue/green gear no figurine trinket. Just keep up seal of light and hit skeletons, when I'm low I hit BoP and heal then continue. When zolo gets low I bubble and jump down to reset him. Then I just summon myself back up there with my locks who is just outside Zolo's room and repeat. A it slower without figurine but still very nice, around 130-150k XP / hour. Lvl 45 at the moment.
I have 10 sporregar shields, since they broke pretty darn fast ;D

[Tdog]

I didn't have a shield spike.... Dont know if that makes a big difference, and every so often I would rank one magma totem to tag.

You need a shield spike its the only way to mitigate dmg back to the skeletons. Just like pets if a totem does all the dmg to an NPC mob you get no xp. You must do some dmg to it, ala shield spike.

Also have the pally put Blessing of Sanctuary on your booster.NOOOOO!!!! Either or, do not do both. They both proc off of block and the idea is to do the least amount of damage while still tagging mobs. Totems do not tag mobs which is why it doesn't work. They are considered pets, and all pets, guardians, creations, minions, w/e do not tag mobs.

HOWEVER since you are boosting a paladin have the paladin lowbie cast BoSanct on your shaman rather than using a shield spike. The reason being is that shield spike only deals back damage, BoSanct deals back damage AND mitigates a HUGE amount of damage when we have tons of soft hitting mobs like we do in the Zolo method.

[Greythan]

I'm wracking my brain (theorycrafting) to see if there's any viable way for a Warlock to boost in this manner. (Looking forward to what else Heyaz might have learned.) Nothing's coming to mind as very viable considering the warlock's 'squishyness'. I simply can't imagine the micro necessary to spam Siphon Life on that many mobs. (Hrm, maybe the new targetenemy might help?)

A few questions for the experts:

1) How long does it take for the skeletons to despawn? (I'm presuming that even doing a single point of damage is okay as the objective is to have all the summoned skeletons "tagged" and they then somehow despawn but still generate experience?)

2) Are there any other "breaks" in the action other than bailing out by jumping out to reset?

3) How does aggro work? I'm wondering if a fully buffed VW with a druid damage shield would be a viable option?

Thanks.

[Zub]

I'm wracking my brain (theorycrafting) to see if there's any viable way for a Warlock to boost in this manner. (Looking forward to what else Heyaz might have learned.) Nothing's coming to mind as very viable considering the warlock's 'squishyness'. I simply can't imagine the micro necessary to spam Siphon Life on that many mobs. (Hrm, maybe the new targetenemy might help?)

A few questions for the experts:

1) How long does it take for the skeletons to despawn? (I'm presuming that even doing a single point of damage is okay as the objective is to have all the summoned skeletons "tagged" and they then somehow despawn but still generate experience?)

2) Are there any other "breaks" in the action other than bailing out by jumping out to reset?

3) How does aggro work? I'm wondering if a fully buffed VW with a druid damage shield would be a viable option?

Thanks.

Haven't done much of it, but here's my input:

1) the ability is this one: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=12506
in short, totems have a 1min duration, and summon skeletons that last 30seconds.
i think this is the skeletons he summons: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=8324 (2400hp at lvl 46-47, dont know if it changed now they are 49)

2)the whole fight is constant beatting by 30+mobs.
even after zolo dies the skellies will finish their 30second life still beating on you.
You wont be able to cast anything non-instant spell for the whole duration of the fight until you jump. Unless you have 100% pushback resist or a priest/mage/paly bubble etc.

3)i guess it's proximity agro, and the fact that you tagged Zolo and have initial threat.
an alt might be able to buff you without taking agro from skelies, but any healing will definitely agro a bunch (probably all those that have not been shield-spiked)
The VW with thorns will probably work like a totem or a hunter pet i guess. it will only give xp to the pet since he will tag / 'kill' the mobs alone.
i don't think your clone will get any xp from it unfortunately.

[shaeman]

I didn't have a shield spike.... Dont know if that makes a big difference, and every so often I would rank one magma totem to tag.

You need a shield spike its the only way to mitigate dmg back to the skeletons. Just like pets if a totem does all the dmg to an NPC mob you get no xp. You must do some dmg to it, ala shield spike.

Also have the pally put Blessing of Sanctuary on your booster.NOOOOO!!!! Either or, do not do both. They both proc off of block and the idea is to do the least amount of damage while still tagging mobs. Totems do not tag mobs which is why it doesn't work. They are considered pets, and all pets, guardians, creations, minions, w/e do not tag mobs.

HOWEVER since you are boosting a paladin have the paladin lowbie cast BoSanct on your shaman rather than using a shield spike. The reason being is that shield spike only deals back damage, BoSanct deals back damage AND mitigates a HUGE amount of damage when we have tons of soft hitting mobs like we do in the Zolo method.
I put the shield spike on my shield prior to reading the suggestion to put Blessing of sanctuary. So I ended up with both.

I don't think it matters having both to be honest - Zolo wasn't being damaged enough to be in danger of dying any time this century :) I was having to bail out I guess when I just hit a critical mass of skeletons and was more or less out of mana, so couldn't pop a quick heal or earth shield anymore. The Blessing of Sanctuary did allow me to stay alive longer that's for sure.

It would actually be quite nice to not have a shield spike and replace the spike with +18 intellect on the shield. Although quite expensive if i were to do the four shields I bought specifically for this purpose.

[Yagamoth]

Have to make a pally... Argh...

Short input - If you sololy kill (Or like it is here - despawn after a while) an enemy with Thorns from the druid, you probably won't get any exp aswell. I'm saying that, cause before a while I walked through Deadmines on my 70 dinged druid just for fun and wanted to run through everything and then get a coffee or sth similar. After I came back, most of the mobs were lying to my feet, but I couldn't loot anything.

I like the idea of watching movies while levelling easily :love:

[Zub]

Went back in ST tonight, go the clone from 37 to 40, using the resto shaman to tank zolo again.
God it's boring.

I can confirm that the magma totem trick indeed does *not* work. i wonder however if Gift of Arthas (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=9088) would tag the mobs tho.
It's a debuff, but it doesnt do any damage. 30% chance to apply is great, you can be sure all the skellies will have tag it. Just have to check if it does indeed work.
30 min duration is good. That would allow for more mitigation (grace of Air for example) and therefore less durability costs. Have to try it.

Another item that might work for you paly tanks: Razor Gauntlets (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=18326) from Dire Maul.

After i dinged 40 i decided to go and try the ever spawning mobs in the Lycaeum, BRD. It took me a good hour to have them all in the lava under Incendius, to what point i realized that you can only side walk for so long, at some point you need to laval jump for a little while, and that ticks for 600dmg every 3sec.. no way my little 40s can go through with 1500hp. So i canned it. maybe some other day.

Back to ST i guess.

[shaeman]

Well I had another little play in ST today.

This time I took my pally and my shadow priest. (I could see the group bonus kicking in which was nice).

I actually managed to get some serious time on Zolo. (after an initial false start where I went to the place he was in last night and it was another guy with a slightly different name).

I came prepared.

I brought mana potions (I later started swapping in mana tide, mana stream totems, which helped reduce the number I chugged).

I got my alchemist to make Earthen Elixir (this reduces all damage taken by 20 per hit). This made the difference between me standing there for 10 minutes then having to leap off, and me standing there for 40 minutes.

I bought a repair bot (I don't have that particular engineering pattern). This allowed me to move to a corner to die (instead of jumping) then repairing.

I'm going to look to see what food buff items I can get and make some mana oil on my enchanter to coat the shamans weapon in (extra mp5 is always going to be good).

All in all this is a costly way of levelling alts, but I have never seen anything yield the xp. I topped 106,000 xp per hour (with some rested bonus inflating that) but still impressive.

(I love my shaman)

[Greythan]

in short, totems have a 1min duration, and summon skeletons that last 30seconds.

So, just to make sure I understand: at the end of the 30 seconds they "die" versus despawn (my distinction) meaning that if they've taken at least 1 point of damage its treated as a kill (i.e., yields exp) versus a despawn (i.e., wouldn't yield exp). Stated another way, there are three possible results:


You kill a skeleton before the 30 seconds is up (yields exp)
You damage a skeleton, but don't kill it, at the 30 second mark it "dies" (yields exp)
You don't damage a skeleton and at the 30 second mark it "dies" (does NOT yield exp)
Is that correct?

I'm now wondering if there is some combination of totems/auras/buffs that my team might cast on my warlock or his pet to make this viable.