Go five or go home?

So after deciding on a trio that I thought would be nice late-game (hunters with stacking Ferocious Inspiration) I got to leveling. I just hit 12, and the game is more obnoxious than it is fun. Mobs die so quickly I literally spent 70-80% of my time running to the corpse and looting it. Pets, autoshot twice, run to corpse. Its looking like ~500 kills per level if I were to just grind it out. I doubt I could instance level them as I only have three. Even if I rolled with three different classes, things would still die so quickly that I believe I'd have the same problem.

Does it get better? Am I in a dead-zone where I don't have enough clones to solo instance, but too many to make questing viable, thus making the game simply no fun to play?

Pretty discouraged at the moment. :(

Actually, I'd say you have a lot of things going with your current team of 3 hunters. If you could find a dedicated Tank and Healer, you could level really quick in instances. Of course, you personally don't have control over the healer and tank so you can't solo instances, but you could burn through instances like its nothing.

Also, when and if you decide to PVP, you'll tear up other players in this 30-39 and 40-49 brackets without really being a twink.

If you want to solo instances, then yeah, you might have to get two more accounts with the intentions of healing and tanking yourself and slaves.

I am playing a trio right now, 2 locks and a priest, about the same level as yours. I have not had any trouble questing, even drop quests have not been too bad (I treat them like grinding with a bonus at the end). Things do die crazy fast, but I have no complaints about that, makes the quests fly by.

There is a reason people don't overland quest in groups of 5... it just isn't that fun. I toyed with 5 hunters, and had an experience similar to yours. I found that I had the most fun fighting in zones that were 6 or so levels above me. The monsters hit harder, and went down slower, but offered much more XP. Give that a try.

You can also try to solo instances when you outlevel them by a few levels. I'm not sure what the XP will be like, but it should be more challenging.

There isn't much content in the game tailor made for 3 person groups, and Blizz took out most of the overland elites :-( .