WMMMP 1-40 Lessons Learned
Just reached 40 on my WMMMP team. Don't really have that much time to play so it's been a slow go. Intent is to share my experiences and get any feedback/recommendations others may have as I will begin the 40-60 journey sometime next week (moving, no internet setup yet).
Points of Emphasis:
- Set hearthstone as close to instance as possible (stole from someone else, it's great advice, always do it).
- Holy Nova is mandatory if you're planning to AoE
- In hindsight I probably drug my feet quite a bit doing instances more at level rather than being a couple levels ahead of them. However, I think it paid off in the long run as by the time I was a level or two higher than the instance, I was already very familiar. It also helped me feel somewhat challenged in instances.
- Skinning is a good profession to have until 40 for a little bit of extra gold. Specifically if you run instances like WC, SFK, and BFD.
- I was leveling professions from 1-28. This was a huge mistake. I realized I had 0 gold and was not going to get mounts unless I knocked that off. Once I got to 40, the first thing I did was buy mounts (barely).
- Sell off everything. I vendored everything except BoE rares, cloth, and leather. Had a bank toon parked in a major city. Every couple hours I would hearth, mail off cloth, log over, and AH it. I made quite a bit of gold doing this and probably wouldn't have been able to afford mounts otherwise (given that I wasted a bunch early on with professions).
- Once I hit 40 I celebrated by spending some time on professions.
Future Plans
- Level herbalism and mining between levels. I.e. level 1-50 mining, level 40-41, level 50-100 mining, level 41-42, etc.
- Stop AHing cloth, level tailoring on all 4 clothies (mooncloth c/d for the future).
- Stop selling green items, disenchant instead for Enchanting
- Sink gold into crafting professions as I get it. It's likely the gold spent on these would quickly pay for themselves and eventually epic riding on all 5 toons.
How I've leveled (so far):
1-14: Questing
14-18: RFC
Overall positive experience. Super straight forward.
18-24: WC
Took some getting used to, but after a few painful slow gos, eventually got the hang of it and found my groove. Did everything single target for the most part, which makes it not very quick, but it was fine. Counterspell would have been awesome.
24-26: SFK
This is when I first started playing around with AoE rotations a little bit. AoE was too volatile in this instance for me at 24 and the run back is absolutely abysmal. The magic shield mobs after the first boss were a real pain in the ass and admittedly I probably grew the most in terms of skill and understanding of my team in this instance. I got burned out in this instance and stopped playing for a couple weeks. When I came back I got my head out of my ass and overcame a lot of the issues I was having.
26-28: BFD
Not sure why this instance gets a bad rap. It's a long flight from Org for Horde. I only flew from Org because I wanted rest XP. I wish I had come here sooner. It definitely took a run or two to familiarize but I actually enjoyed this instance a lot. Gear was overall underwhelming but good XP and got to start AoEing.
28-30: RFK
I was not using Holy Nova on my priest to this point, and I realized I was really missing out. This was the first instance I did as a truly AoE grind comp and by the time I left here, I really felt like I got the hang of playing the team. Having Skinning on my warrior made for some nice gold.
30-34: SM GY
I should have stayed at RFK another level or two, but I was pretty excited to hit SM. Unfortunately doing this at level was a little difficult. I made up for this by making smaller pulls and single targeting elites. It was pretty quick XP despite that. By the time I was 32 I was making large pulls and AoEing. The healing debuff was something I had to be mindful of, but just a minor setback. I was ready to be done after 4 levels of an instance that only takes 10-20 minutes and gives 10-15% xp per run. To give you an idea of how much I ran this instance, I had 4x Embalmed Shroud by the time I was done.
34-37: SM Library
The beginning of this instance is super annoying. I actually find it more annoying than the mages in SM Cath. I did eventually find a routine for dealing with the huntsmen. Strategy for the dog boss is to focus fire the boss with tank, AoE with mages/priest, single target finish the boss who will be at 20-30% HP when the dogs fall. Those dogs have a ridiculous amount of HP. Once you get past the initial part, I find the rest of the instance very easy. As you level up, the larger of pulls you can make (obvious). By 36 I was making 6-10 mob pulls, which is pretty efficient. The monks hit really hard in the latter part of the instance. There's a point in the instance when you reach them where the incoming damage increases dramatically. I died a couple times trying to overpower the instance at lower levels.
37-39: SM Armory
This instance is a weird intermediary between Library and Cath. I certainly could have stayed in this dungeon longer, and if I were trying to get this instance down to the most efficient (0 deaths), or farm specific gear, I probably would have stayed here another level or 2 before moving onto Cath. The main problem is that it's not higher enough than Library and not lower enough than Cath to really devote any amount of time to it. I got the pieces of gear I needed on my warrior, got to 39, and got out. I found I couldn't pull more than 3 packs in the beginning of the main hallways, or more than 2 towards the end (where the mobs are all 37-39). That being said, for a dungeon done at level, it's pretty quick/efficient and none of my pulls were less than 4 or 5 mobs. There really aren't any mobs that are hard to deal with. I did find there are some mobs that will interrupt your healer, so the best strategy really is to just run in and start AoEing, don't worry about firing off direct heals.
39-43 (probably): SM Cath
The first pull in this dungeon is great. Zone in, gather up the first hallway (5 mobs), AoE them down. Then it becomes a shitshow with the casters casting frostbolts and slowing down the mob gathering. I'm still working on perfecting this. Right now my strategy is to get as quickly to the cathedral as I can. The reason for this is the actual Cathedral has very AoE friendly mobs. The mages in the Cathedral WILL do AoE, so I try not to get more than 1 or 2 of them at a time, but I can quickly incinerate groups and I really only wipe in the cathedral if I massively fuck up. That being said, it's completely possible to pull half the cathedral if you're not somewhat mindful. I need 2 pieces of loot off the final boss on each mage, plus 3 on the priest. I wanted to get in here sooner rather than later to get all the gear. I'm sure it will get quicker, but it's already fairly quick. If I get tired of Cath I will go do a quick run of Armory for more tabards (I have 2).
