My Boosting Experience (70 Pally and Lowbie Hunter (and now Lowbie Shaman))

[Talamarr]

I'm currently boosting a hunter with a 70 tankadin and wanted to share my experiences as I progress. My plan is to do 100% instance boosting with this toon until he catches up with my shaman at 52. I'll then three box the 70 pally, shaman and hunter together.

Here is the path I've taken so far:

1-10: Quests. I stayed in Kharanos until I hit 10 and did my pet training. Then I took the tram to SM and headed straight to DM

10-15: Deadmines. It took a few runs and a few levels to get the efficiency down. Early on, I died a lot from the pather sneaking up on my lowbie. What I found is that the best way to deal with this is to move along through the instance as fast as possible. The pathers would finally catch up to me right before I entered the VC room so I would just hang out for a minute and kill them. I was getting roughly 8 bubbles per clear and I was clearing the instance somewhere between 10-15 minutes. I did hit the reset limit a few times.

15-20: Stockades. I really love this place for the simple fact it's in Stormwind making vendor / repair / rested area access so much easier. I typically three pulled the instance. First the straight hallway, then the left wing and finally, the right wing with the bosses. I tried single pulling the hallway and the left wing but it was too sketchy. The knockdowns make things a little hairy and it wasn't worth it, imo. Speaking of which, the knockdowns are probably the most annoying thing ever. I may load up on Free Action Potions next time I boost in there. All and all though, it went really smooth and I got about 1/4 a level per clear in about the same 10-15 minute window.

20-21: Scarlet Monastery. I made the loooong and deadly walk to SM, picked up the flight points on the way, honored the flame in each town and got several discoveries. This got me well into the next level. However, when I started clearing graveyard, I noticed I got the same xp / mob in SM as I was getting in Stocks. I noted that xp rate was slower in SM because of the level difference penalty. So I decided to hearth back to SM and do some more stocks.

21-25: Stockades. I'm baaaackkk. Really this seemed like the best move here. I had stocks down to a mindless science (watched TV while doing this) and just grinded out to 25. It didn't take long and I was able to pick up the kill quest at level 22 from the guy right outside the instance. (Note, there is also a Stocks quest giver in Old Town to collect 10 red bandanas that's worth picking up too).

25-27: Scarlet Monastery. I headed back to Scarlet Monastery and was getting MUCH better xp / mob. Almost double than before. I cleared Graveyard, Cathedral and Armory twice and dinged 27 (I think I was close to 26 when I left SW).

And that's it so far. At level 27 I'm close to 19 hours /played and there was a lot of BS time in there. My current plan is to stay in SM until 35 and then head to ST.

One other note, I had a friend bring his lowbie druid for 5 or 6 levels in stocks and was getting group bonus for about 10 extra xp / mob.

[Knobley]

Hi,
I'm doing the same run as you are and am just slightly behind you.

I'm using a druid to boost with, since I don't have pally.
I've got three accounts, so I'm alternating boosting 2 locks, and 2 pallies... (I NEED those pallies for the zolo trick).

I'm taking exactly the same path as you... and my experience is almost exactly the same.
1-10... quest
10-15... DM... same problem with you as the patrols... I figured that my druid would be slower at this than your pally, but the times you posted are about the same as mine. I pull everything to each door, and the swipe them down. It's critical to make sure not to miss any of the mobs or they will make mincemeat of your lobies. The patrols are also a problem. I learned to stop after sneed and pick up a patrol, and then stop again after the furnace room and pick up the patrol. When I remembered to do those things, all went well, but it took many trials to figure that out.

15-25... stockades... this is pure easy mode after dreadmines. I'm pulling straight to the back as well as to the end of the hall on the west wing in the first pull. Then the four rooms near the instance. then the hallway on the (and sometimes the rooms, depending on how bad the stun is getting) in the east wing. Everything else... rinse and repeat. 15 minutes = 1/4 lvl for the alts. As the alts lvl up they start getting more xp per kill, but, of course it takes more xp/kill to level up so that the end result is that the 1/4 lvl per run stays pretty constant.

My locs are at 25, and my pallies are at 21. I was very seriously considering moving on to SM with the pallies (since they're the ones I really want to lvl), but after reading your post, I'm gonna stay on at the stockades until they hit 25... then it's the loooong run to SM (twice) for my two little groups.

Thanks for your write up... lets me know I'm pretty much on track.

Knobley

[Drizzit]

sm might be worth the run. At lvl 20 -25 i was lvling like every three runs in cath. 25-30 was 4 runs. From 30-35 was 4. then 35 on was a pain it was 5 runs and add .5 after every time you lvl.

[Talamarr]

At lvl 20 -25 i was lvling like every three runs in cath.

Just cathedral alone? How many people in your group? Just the one lowbie? That seems like a lot more XP than I was getting. I'll have to double check that tonnight.

[Drizzit]

I was running my rogue (70) and 4 other toons.

[Knobley]

sm might be worth the run. At lvl 20 -25 i was lvling like every three runs in cath. 25-30 was 4 runs. From 30-35 was 4. then 35 on was a pain it was 5 runs and add .5 after every time you lvl.

I'm leveling every 4 runs of stockades, and I'm pretty sure it's in probably about the same times as 3 monestary runs. Repairs and seasonal xp boost are VERY handy so I'll stick here to 25. My pallies will be a tad less sqishy then. :)

[Talamarr]

27-31: Alternating between Cathedral and Armory. Graveyard is so/so, Library is pointless. Mobs leashing is not good for large PL pulls. I was able to get Cathedral down with 2 pulls and Armory trash with 1 big pull (I started skipping Herod after I got all of his drops for my hunter; not a very good time:xp ratio). I'm getting roughly 11k/instance pull. I'm at about 1 day /played time. I'm not going to break any speed records as there was some AFK, traveling and messing with pet training time in there. I never had a hunter so messing with the pet mechanics was interesting to me. But this sure is a lazy way to level (lazy FTW).

Also, for pally boosting, I recommend the trinket Uther's Strength ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11302'). It really helps when you've got an ass-ton of mobs beating on you, the shield is up a lot of the time.

I'm going to try to one pull Cathedral tonight. Just head straight to Mograine and pull the whole zone. I think I tried this before and found that Mograine will reset but I'm completely fine with that. Trying to DPS him and that healing chick is annoying with Pally DPS and a lowbie hunter with no gear and no gun skill lol.

4 more levels to go and then I'm headed to ST.

[Thulos]

I've been boosting in cathedral with my paladin and 4 shamans in toe. It's really slowing down now at 37. I'd like to move to ST and do the Zolo trick but I can't seem to get a group together to do SH to get the figurine of the Collosus. Anyone know if its possible without the figurine?

[Talamarr]

I haven't done it yet, but I would assume you should be able to bubble heal if needed, assuming you didn't build up any aggro on your lowbies. You could also respec into Holy tree just for this and pick up 5/5 Spiritual Focus. That with concetration aura will give you 100% uninterrupted heals. I have the trinket and I may do this too just for backup and to help when boosting in higher level instances.

[Kyle K.]

I have been boosting my 4 horde Shaman now with my level 66 Paladin, and up to SM it was going very good. But I can not get anywhere near the 10 minutes per run for Armory, I average about 13-15 Minutes in armory with 3 pulls. I just take to much damage, even with 9400 HP. I get almost 1 level every 4 runs in Armory which I am not sure is a good. RFC and SFK seemed to go very quickly, but now it just seems to be a slow down, healers in Armory are the worst thing, it prolongs the fight and with limited mana it makes thing rough. Its been 16 Hours to level 25, which is nice, but I just feel I am going a lot slower then everyone else haha.

[Talamarr]

I have been boosting my 4 horde Shaman now with my level 66 Paladin, and up to SM it was going very good. But I can not get anywhere near the 10 minutes per run for Armory, I average about 13-15 Minutes in armory with 3 pulls. I just take to much damage, even with 9400 HP. I get almost 1 level every 4 runs in Armory which I am not sure is a good. RFC and SFK seemed to go very quickly, but now it just seems to be a slow down, healers in Armory are the worst thing, it prolongs the fight and with limited mana it makes thing rough. Its been 16 Hours to level 25, which is nice, but I just feel I am going a lot slower then everyone else haha.

To be honest, you're going to hit walls like that. Even with my T6/T5 tankadin, it starts to hurt on the bigger pulls and I'm jumping at my figurine trinket. One thing that really helped me improve: I used to just run through the instance aggro'ing everything possible and quickly running back to my lowbies then start DPS'ing. Now what I do is put on devo aura, gladiator shield and blessing of kings, run to the end of the instance and just walk backwards all the way back. You take MUCH less damage. When I get in range of the lowbies, I switch back to ret aura, equip the sporegarr and turn on blessing of sanctuary. You may already be doing this but it took me some time to realize this better way.

[Deshu]

I'm doing something of the same nature. I started out multi-boxing with 3 then took a long break from WoW. I started up again recently and levleed 3 hunters to 28.

Now I'm quad-boxing as of last week so I rolled a 4th hunter to join my team. I'm power-leveling him up to join my other 3 before they get too high up. Problem is... level 28 is my highest on the Magtheridon server. So I'm sticking to questing till 8, then RFC, then WC, and maybe SFK ... but I am wondering if questing won't be a better route since I don't have a high level to clear instances with ease?

[Talamarr]

I'm doing something of the same nature. I started out multi-boxing with 3 then took a long break from WoW. I started up again recently and levleed 3 hunters to 28.

Now I'm quad-boxing as of last week so I rolled a 4th hunter to join my team. I'm power-leveling him up to join my other 3 before they get too high up. Problem is... level 28 is my highest on the Magtheridon server. So I'm sticking to questing till 8, then RFC, then WC, and maybe SFK ... but I am wondering if questing won't be a better route since I don't have a high level to clear instances with ease?

You could also try mob-tagging when he gets a little higher. When you're fighting mobs that are just green to your 28 hunters (level 19 maybe?), just put your high level hunters on auto follow out of group, poke a mob with your lowbie and have all your hunters kill it. As long as the mob you kill is at least green to your 28 hunters, you'll lowbie will get full xp.

I'm actually going to try the mob-tagging with my hunter when he's higher to see how that compares to instance boosting (but with a slightly different strat).

[Kyle K.]

Tala, the walking backwards works wonders, usually 1 quick heal when I have everything rounded up lasts me the rest of the fight. I was just wandering now though, I am doing armory, whats everyones usual XP gain from there. Right now I am averaging about 3-4 Bars a run which seems very low Level 25 Shamans, soon 26. I would think I should be pulling at least about 5-6 Bars a run, at the worst 4-5. Any idea other then being so under the level of the enemies, about what I could do to gain more XP? Thanks.

[Talamarr]

Tala, the walking backwards works wonders, usually 1 quick heal when I have everything rounded up lasts me the rest of the fight. I was just wandering now though, I am doing armory, whats everyones usual XP gain from there. Right now I am averaging about 3-4 Bars a run which seems very low Level 25 Shamans, soon 26. I would think I should be pulling at least about 5-6 Bars a run, at the worst 4-5. Any idea other then being so under the level of the enemies, about what I could do to gain more XP? Thanks.

You will start getting more xp per run when you gain a few more levels. You are getting penalized because of the high level difference. I was getting about 10k xp / run at level 29 which (i think) is close to 1/3 of a level. Stick with it a few more levels and see how it goes. Watch the xp / mob. It should go up each level.

[Thulos]

I haven't done it yet, but I would assume you should be able to bubble heal if needed, assuming you didn't build up any aggro on your lowbies. You could also respec into Holy tree just for this and pick up 5/5 Spiritual Focus. That with concetration aura will give you 100% uninterrupted heals. I have the trinket and I may do this too just for backup and to help when boosting in higher level instances.Well I respeced a bit to get the spiritual focus and did a couple zolo runs today in ST. I had no problem switching to concentration auro and healing myself up when I needed to. Instead of using any seal of light I used seal of wisdom to keep my mana up. WIthout swinging at him or using any consecration he died after my tag along shamans only got about 15k exp @ level 37. Considering its kinda a pain to find zolo each time and it took over 20 mins to do each run it seems like Cathedral is still better when I can do 12k exp @ 10min runs. I may give it some more goes to see if I can start getting to him faster. I could be missing something completely. Any thoughts?

[daviddoran]

the trick with zolo is to use as little reflective damage as possible. The skeletons die automatically after 45 secs or so, so all u have to do is tag em for 1dmg+ and the lowbies get xp. I use rank 1 BoSanct, no shield spike, no ret aura. Zolo stays alive a very long time.

My only problem is sometimes I get in the perfect position, on the corner of the ledge, blocking everything, taking little damage, and not losing much durability on my armor (just goes through shields like crazy) and other times I don't block nearly as much and have to keep healing until I run OOM.

I also found a spot (on the corner) where my lowbie (a paladin) can rez myself if I die. I do that rather than jumping down, cause usually, when I jump down, i don't have enough HP to survive the fall, and it's a long run back... if I just let the skellies kill me (and I through out a rank 1 consecration to tag as many as possible) and i rez with my lowbie. I really need those trinkets (figurine, and the mana regen on hit trinket) to make it basically AFK ezmode. Then I can spend more time theorycrafting on how im gonna spec my team getting boosted...

[Memn]

Sounds like he is dying much too fast. Make sure you are only using rank 1 BoS, and no other reflective gear (shield spike or otherwise).

[Deshu]

You could also try mob-tagging when he gets a little higher. When you're fighting mobs that are just green to your 28 hunters (level 19 maybe?), just put your high level hunters on auto follow out of group, poke a mob with your lowbie and have all your hunters kill it. As long as the mob you kill is at least green to your 28 hunters, you'll lowbie will get full xp.

I'm actually going to try the mob-tagging with my hunter when he's higher to see how that compares to instance boosting (but with a slightly different strat).
Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely try that!

I've been doing straight questing and it's been going very fast. Took him from 6 to 14 last night in the matter of 3 hours!

[Thulos]

Sounds like he is dying much too fast. Make sure you are only using rank 1 BoS, and no other reflective gear (shield spike or otherwise).




Went in again with only BoS 1 running and no reflect gear and he lasted for a really long while enough for my guys to do about 1.5 levels from 38 to 39.5. For those that are curious I did it entirely without the figurine. I did respec my AoE leveling build to get Spiritual Focus 5/5 and kept concentration aura running. To keep myself in mana I simply kept Seal of Wisdom up and beat on the skeletons. Worked like a champ and I never ran out of mana.



EDIT: Did another run and ended up doing 3 full levels in the one pull. My guys are 42.5! Thanks for all the help everyone, it is working great now. And definately bring lots of shields. I went through 4 total and was on the 5th when zolo finally dropped.

[noir]

Tankadin pro-tip: 3/3 Pursuit of Justice ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=44414') FTW. Why walk backwards when you can just kite the entire zone?

My 0/46/15 tankadin build ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000530513350002 1220215510520500030000000000000') -- if you're solely farming/PLing, move points from Ardent Defender back to Reckoning.

[Talamarr]

Thanks for the tip about Pursuit of Justice noir, I hadn't thought about that.

Also, I've been trying to think of a way to get Reckoning back in for boosting as well. As far as your spec (if we're talking about mostly boosting and AoE farming), you really want 5/5 one hand weapon spec because this increases ALL damage from all sources (consecration, bos, holy shield, etc). I would drop percision and Improved Judgment as those aren't needed as much for AoE tanking, they're more for single target threat output. GREAT for raiding and instances, not so much for lowbie boosting.

Ardent Defener, to me, is a toss up for this line of work. It's important to me because I'm use to it but you could easily drop those points for something else.
I think this would be a good boosting spec
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000530513350002 1220215510520500030000000000000

[Talamarr]

I got my hunter to 35 with some runs in Cathedral and headed right to ST. He's now 45 =)

I'll keep him in there till about 55 or so and move to Strat.

[Talamarr]

35-58: ST/Zolo. Yes, I said 58 =)

When I hit 52, I took my hunter and my shaman to Strat. My plan was to stay in there until 60. Oh...my...god. I can't remember the last time I was that frustrated. I've AoE farmed Strat plenty of times but never on the Baron side. My first experience over there wasn't pretty. Those damn necros were a pain in my Pally ass. They would either kill me after they drained all my mana, or, when I finally realized the soul top could be dispelled, it would take 15 minutes to kill ONE trash mob. I never made it to Baron before I gave up. I think it will be better when I have more than one 70 helping clear to Baron so I'll go back next round of alts but I just wasn't taking it with a single prot pally. So I headed back to ST for some uber lazy(albeit, slow) XP.

Both my hunter and my shaman dinged 58. (57-58 took a little over an hour, so it wasn't that bad). No xp at level 59 so it's off to Outlands.

Quick note: I had my highest block rating and block value gear and took ZERO damage from the skeletons. I was able to push normal hits off the combat table by grabbing all my best Block Rating gear I had sitting in the bank. I never needed my figurine. Zolo would occasionally sneak in a lighting bolt for 200 but that was usually it. The only other times I took damage was when I wasn't quick enough to change out shields or my position wasn't perfect and a skeleton would hit me from the side.

ST = :thumbsup:

[Stabface]

Tankadin pro-tip: 3/3 Pursuit of Justice ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=44414') FTW. Why walk backwards when you can just kite the entire zone?

My 0/46/15 tankadin build ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000530513350002 1220215510520500030000000000000') -- if you're solely farming/PLing, move points from Ardent Defender back to Reckoning.

Or you can strafe run at full speed and keep your avoidance :)
PoJ is nice though it saves a lot of time.

[Talamarr]

Three boxing madness:

58-60: Ramps
60-61: HFP Quests and Ramps
62: Blood Furnace
63: Slave Pens
64 (current level): Underbog

My plan is to go to the next instance every level. Doing this, the levels are flying by pretty fast as, by the time I've come up with strats and farming some gear, I'm almost through the level.

Being able to three box with a 70 prot pally, 64 Elemental Shaman and 64 BM Hunter has been a BLAST. The amount of DPS I'm cranking out is really surprising. The only boss that gave me lots of trouble is Rokmar the Crackler until I was able to come up with a good strat.

For Rokmar, I tried several different things but what worked the best was all out DPS with shaman and hunter. For the first bleed on the tank, I created a macro that would cast Divine Shield and then immediately cancel. This cleared the debuff. For the second bleed, I waited until the bleed effect got me down pretty low in health and used LoH. Being a full heal this would also clear the debuff. By the time the third bleed took effect, the boss is usually dead. I used Frost Resist aura which is 10 frost resist higher than totem and freed up a totem slot for healing/mana totem.

I imagine it may get trickier at higher levels but having three different classes doesn't seem to be as hard as some have said. Maybe it's just that playing 5x the same class is just really simple but the way I have my macros set up, it is one castsequence for pre-pull stuff and one spam in-combat macro for each class. It works really well.

I've also had friends come on runs with me for more ownage. All and all this is what I've dreamt multi-boxing to be.