RAF instance boosting, my experiences and opinions.
I've just recently started 4-boxing after reading these forums for a couple of hours and watching some very nice vids.. and getting the itch..
Now my 3 x shammies are level 51 after almost exclusive instance boosting so I thought I'd share my experiences for others to learn off since I seem to see people asking various questions about instances and whatnot. I used my main, a Prot pally in Naxx 10 gear (same name as my forum account, on Nagrand-Oceanic if you're wondering about gearing). Having a Prot Paladin is beneficial over a Prot Warrior and Druid for a couple of reasons which I'll get to at the end.
I took the approach of leaving the shammies at the start of the instance in a safe spot and pulling mobs back to them. I think this is better than having them set to follow because looting is easier and you dont have to worry about them being one-shot if they are extremely low level (L22 in a L36 instance for example).
Note: The clear times I give do not include looting, you can expect the times to be at least 3-6 minutes longer per run if you include looting.
1-16
I quested my 3 shammies through here, doing the various Shaman totem quests etc as I went. I didn't use my main, just a simple setup to have them kill stuff fast ;)
16-22 - Stockades
The knockdowns on alot of the mobs mean your path is going to take alot longer to pull the whole place in one hit, so I did 3 pulls. First one; run straight to the end of the first corridor, pull the guy in the room, run back, jumping into each room and finishing back at the stairs where the shammies were standing (keeping about 20-30 yards distance from them). Then the next two pulls were the left and right wings. Very straight forward. It's also better to get as deep as possible into the wings before you pick up any mobs, so that you're not taking damage on the way there and take minimal damage on the way back to get into range for the lowbies.
Full Clear: About 8 mins.
Those 6 levels took about an hour and a half I think from memory. Wasnt really keeping track at this stage.
23-42 - SM
I started by doing all 3 wings straight up, meaning that i could reset after 3 and not hit the hourly instance limit of 5.
Lib: Took me a few goes to get the right clearing method sorted out. I found that running right to the end boss, taunting him, then walking backwards through all the packs to the start of the instance was the most effective method, taunting other packs that were out of my way. You can alternate between walking backwards (and absorbing 100% of the damage) and running away (taking damage) at your own discretion. I was mixing it up in order to reduce the durability hit that my sheild was taking (becomes more of an issue in later instances).
Full clear: 5 minutes
Armory: Same method, run to Herod, try to avoid as many mobs as you can. If you have any on you when you get to Herod's door, you can either kill them (wasted xp for lowbies) or bubble up and open the door (my preferred option). Taunt Herod and run/walk backwards to the start of the instance and kill the whole instance at once.
Full Clear: 4 minutes
Cath: Best method that I discovered is find a nice easy path to the Cathedral door without pulling one single mob, open the door, go in and take out Morgraine straight away. Ignore every other mob in the instance. Whitemane will come out, damage her so she'll go and res Morgraine. She'll sleep you for 12 seconds, as soon as the sleep is over, start running back to the entrance. For some reason, with Morgraine ressed, you now have about a 100yard aggro radius even for an 80, so you dont have to run around the sides, just watch them swarm to you when you run over the waterfall, its quite impressive :). Take them back just inside the starting corridor in order to LOS the casters and then drop all your AOE. When you are killing Morgraine and Whitemane first up, dont aoe, just use direct damage. You dont want to kill any other mobs and waste the XP.
Full clear: My best run timed at 3 minutes 16 seconds.
43-45 - ZF
I thought I'd try ZF and see what the boosting was like in there. I tried to one-pull the whole place first up, which would have been perfectly fine if I hadn't been chain-hexed, meaning I couldnt block and I took all damage of the 50 or so mobs on me at the time. So because of that I had to clear in multiple pulls, about 6 or so. A feral druid here would work wonders for quick clears. I did 3 quests which gave me about 70k with the RAF bonus (Scarab Shells, Divine-o-Matic rod and Troll Temper) since they were very accessable from Gadgetzan. Only did 2 runs.
Clear time: 40 minutes including event (once)
45-51 - Stratholme
This initially posed a very steep boosting curve for me, the random pats caused havok with my team, my first run seeing all 3 dead at least 10 times. I started by going in the main gates, parking my lowbies there and then pulling 1-2 courtyards of undead at a time. The mobs in Strath have a few debuffs which can be cleansed (DOTs, stat reduction, movement reduction) as well as Hamstring which Pallies can BoF out of which helps reduce damage. Mobs rarely stun or interrupt so casting 3 second heals is fine. Occasionally they will knock you back, at which time it's the best time for a heal since the knockback never happens in quick succession. Seal of Light on one of the big Patchwerk looking guys helps as well.
There are no safe spots to leave your lowbie team in this instance whilst you gather up a bunch of mobs and bring them back. Many times I left them in a little corner out of the way and had them killed as I was running back with 30 mobs in tow, meaning all that XP was wasted.
After the first full run I got into a mini grinding run which starts at the Service entrance and works around to the main gate, but goes no further. Zone your team in, leave them where they zone in, main goes out the gate and clears the first courtyard in one pull. Range for your team to receive XP is about 20 yards from the gate, even next to the Schoolhouse is in range. They are also completely protected and out of LOS. After the first courtyard, head left through the open gates and then right, down the hill and pick up the guys (don't enter the small entranceway yet) then run back the way you came, picking up the left side of the courtyard with the fountain, then back to kill-range for your team, kill them all. You will take damage even running backwards here. Keep cleansing the debuffs and BoF out of hamstring where possible. If you get desperate you can Bubble and holy light x3 back to full HP and continue.
Then just head back through the way you just went, but head up through the small entrance way and 5 undead ghosts will spawn (one holy wrath kills the adds, just leaving the main guy who drops a blue). Pull the next courtyard in the same fashion and run all the way back.
Full clear: 60+ minutes
Grind-run: 6 Minutes
So my shammies are currently at 52 and I'll most likely continue to farm Stratholme to 60. Currently getting around 800xp/kill for the harder trash, 200xp/kill for the weaker trash.
One point on Pallies/Warriors/Druids that I alluded to earlier, is that as a Pally you can choose when you want to do damage and when you want to just soak it in order to collect mobs. I've tried using a Prot Warrior with damage shield but since you can't turn it off, you end up killing mobs well outside range of your lowbies which is wasteful. Also having bubble and self-heals available to you is very beneficial. Druids obviously have the advantage in ZF due to the issue with Hexing, and possibly their increased HP would be very useful for soaking damage from larger groups in Strath.
So I just previewed and this post is massive.. Sorry :P But hopefully it can help someone who is wondering how to proceed with instance boosting in this way. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything :S
-Pwn
