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My mages are 53 so I will be ready to go into outlands very soon. From what I've gathered questing will be your fastest option. If you do hellfire, zangar, and terrokar, you should be ready to hit northrend by halfway through nagrand. That's my plan anyway.
I did most of Hellfire, Zangarmarsh and Nagrand non-collection quests (and some easy collection quests) and hit 70. I also ran normal instances about 20 times.
So, you have a lot of flexibility on which quests to take since you can easily hit 70 before you even set foot in half the zones in Outland.
I'm not going to go so far to say that I'm embarrassed by my (lack of) leveling, but it's going along nicely and professions are all pretty much either out of Vanilla WoW content, or they're almost into Northrend content. Also, my mixed group just hit 68. My priest/lock group is not quite 72, but that's because I've barely done anything in Northrend with them. My druid group has one at 70 and the others catching up. Currently, they're not going anywhere quickly since I'm playing around with speccing them and picking up Outlands professions materials (read: leather and ore - tailoring and enchanting are up to Northrend levels on my mixed group).
Here's how I'm doing it - The priest/lock group and the druid group are going to do questing and PvE world grinding when a nice spot (read: benefits my mixed group somehow to have mats from this area) presents itself. The mixed group did quests mostly through Zangarmarsh to 64 (didn't go to Outlands until 60) and has instanced the whole way to 68. They're going to keep instancing until 70 and then do kill quests to the point where Outlands doesn't have them anymore. Why? They're easy and there is money involved (hundreds of gold on each character).
I really like instances for leveling and gearing. Each of my mixed group characters is more powerful (in terms of where each class should be) at this point than my first 70 (a druid) ever was or likely will be. I plan that Northrend, aside from the intouctory zone quests, is going to be mostly the same leveling pattern as Outland has been.
As an aside, I'm really loving the Deathknight as a tank. When the patch comes out, my Unholy Blight is practically going to be spammable. Also, I'll have access to a new rune that give 25 defense. And if that's not good enough, the Death Knight ends up doing five thousand damage to targets that my group is not even attacking. I'll switch to lesser priority mobs and find that their health has dropped enough from my AoE attacks that my DPSers can spam away without worry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Boylston',index.php?page=Thread&postID=167767#pos t167767
Boylston, I'm thinking of doing the same thing as you are doing, and I actually can run the exact same group composition as your sigs if needed. 2 questions for you if you have the time :)
1) how long did it take you to level with rested on average? 3 runs? 4? 5? how long per run? any wotlk instance better for grinding in than others? (like the bf recommendation for TBC earlier in this thread)
2) you said ease of the run varies with group makeup (obviously) in your experience, if you can make up a dream team for instance running, what would you recommend?
nice group setup? good aoe tank and loads of aoe, that should speed things up conciderably ;)
im just after the 60-68 grind and i done it just by questing HP>Zangarmarsh>Terrok>Nagrand>Blades Edge and was about 4-5 hrs a lvl. Im not sure if thats good but i was happy with it. Just skip the nasty collection quests(remeber in zangarmarsh there are a good few collection quests that have tradeable objectives(ie.unidetified plant parts,fertile spores,bog lord tenticles,mature spore sacs) i just collected 5x amount on main and traded over to clones before handin.
I mightve missed it but if not id also like to add one more point in favor of instance grinding.
It is often the case that there are 1 or 2 awesome items you can get from a quest that will last you a long while. However, as a rule, instance loot will always trump quest loot. Youll get a lot of crap doing instance grinding (have a DEer with you) but your peeps will also get some of the best items availalbe for their level as they level up.
Anyways, just a thought.
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Originally Posted by 'echo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=167979#post167 979
Oh, it'll take longer than just 5 runs of anything at any point. I don't know exactly how many runs of a given instance it would take. By "run", you may also change that to mean the path you are intending to clear, not necessarily a full clear. I would often bop into an instance, kill 1-2 bosses, then reset and keep on going. The goal was really getting the blue dungeon drops my characters needed, not completing the dungeon. I killed Maiden of Sorrow in Halls of Stone 26 times to get cloaks for my hunters, but only did the whole instance 8 times. Here are some good grind-out-XP instances for my team in WotLK:
Nexus (I like this better than Utgarde Keep, personally. UK isn't necessarily bad, though)
Drak'tharon
Gundrak
Halls of Stone
Nexus has loops that make it easy to clear and exit in a hurry. I generally skipped last boss. Gundrak and HoS are similar in that they are non-linear. I farmed Nexus until 74-75, Drak'tharon until around 77, and used Gundrak and Halls of Stone for 77-80. Use Wowhead to find good blue drops for your team and concentrate on the instances that drop them.
That's a hard question to answer without knowing your eventual goals. Healer+4xHunters is a breeze to run instances with for leveling, but then it hits a bit of a hard wall for doing Heroics. If heroics is your goal then you probably would prefer a bona fide Tank+Healer+DPS setup. If heroics is your goal, yet you still want to PvP with some/all of your team, then it's hard to go wrong with a 4xShaman+Tank setup. 5xDruids is very flexible as well, and is starting to get some attention in the community. If all you want to do is Heroics and no PvP, you might get maximum class synergy out of a Pally+Shaman+Mage+Warlock+Boomkin setup (or any number of other synergistic ranged DPS setups).Quote:
Originally Posted by 'echo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=167979#post167 979
Gotta know your eventual PvE and PvP goals before I can really recommend anything.