Stupid question here, but how does boosting work?

OK, I have a team of 5 lvl 58 hunters that i am getting ready to park at 60. I will then be starting a new team of mages and I have a lvl 45 pally that I will be gifting to lvl 60.9 and would like to use her to boost the mages. I have read alot about people using pallys to boost raf teams at incredible speeds, but i do not understand the dynamics of how it works. Is the pally grouped with the lowbies? Is this all in instances? How does the pally kill the mobs without taking the xp from the lowbies? How do the lowbies tag all the mobs before the pally gets in there without getting squished? Any help would be appreciated in this. I have tried to work this out before I start playing the teams to maximize the time I have left on RAF. I would like to get the mages and them a team of shammies to 60 before i run out of time (Last day of RAF is November 12th, perfect unintended timing!) :D

Boosting in essence is the practice of using a high level to run lower levels through instances at very fast speeds.

There are all kinds of guides, tips & tricks, suggestions on how to boost particular instances so please do a lil searching for that info.

Basically you want a class that has AOE capabilities. Yes a 70 can whoop just about any butt on preBC instances but if you have to target mobs individually it will slow you way down. For most of the lower level instances a mage with AE works very well. The reason most suggest a pally is for the plate+consecrate combo. You have plate armor to mitigate most dmg coming into you. You have a very nice AOE in the consecrate. Plus you have several "oh crap" abilities to save yourself in the event you bite off more than you can chew.

Instances are used instead of questing or grinding because of the particular problem you noted with "tagging". In the instance since the mobs are elite level the lowbies get a nice chunk of xp from the kills even tho the booster is so much higher level. Also since it is an instance you pretty much know the layout and the spawn points of most mobs, so its easier to plan and run in a timely manner.

So yes you will have to drop one team member to allow the high level in to boost with.

Most ppl have stated that boosting is faster than questing to level, however it can be godawful boring. Running the same instance over and over and over again until you either max out the xp for the instance or you hit a level where you can move on to the next set.

Hope this helps. :)

8o Thanks, thats exactly what i needed to know. I am gonna start looking up boost guides for instances and get my guys ready to go. I also have a mage at 37 that I will gift up and try them each out and see which one works the best. I wish I had a lvl 70 sitting around but I closed an account when I got RAF going and the one I kept open had gold , but no high lvl toons, but I will get them as far as I can with a lvl 60 and then go from there on their own.

Dont know about your particular situation but dont forget about the scroll of resurrection thing that blizz has for older closed accounts. There are a few stipulations but if your account meets it you might be able to use the scroll program to open that account long enough to maybe transfer the high level onto a different account or send the gold over at the least.