We really need to make some list of the funniest, most naive Sam Deathwalker ideas about wow. That one probably comes first.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Sam DeathWalker',index.php?page=Thread&postID=131021#p ost131021
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We really need to make some list of the funniest, most naive Sam Deathwalker ideas about wow. That one probably comes first.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Sam DeathWalker',index.php?page=Thread&postID=131021#p ost131021
You have to understand, anyone that has leveled a character to 20 currently has more knowledge of the game then he does. He is amazingly resistant to suggestion as well so I imagine he will get to the level cap in a couple years with the same level of knowledge he has now. I really wish I could think of a reason to level that many characters just to wreck his amazing ego ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Zub',index.php?page=Thread&postID=131214#post1312 14
Long post incoming.
Making an unbiased post based purely on actualy figures for XP gains in kills and quests, the conclusion I hope to arrive at logicaly is questing > grinding, but as I said, I'm presenting the numbers as they are for now...
Notes: "Orange" con mobs will give the Max XP per kill achievable, red will reward the same XP as a +4 orange mob
All quest XP gains listed are for same level quest, ie a level 20 quest is rated as level 20, not attainable at 20 and actualy 24+
XP for quests are averages and trying to ignore dungeon quests.
This isn't a guide, just a comparison between grinding and questing, and an outline of XP in WoW
If there is any doubt between 2 figures, or any rounding off to be done, I've done it in the favour of grinding, IE rounded UP mob XP and given lower XP numbers
Note on Questing: The XP listed per quest obviously does not take into account any of the following:
Travel/discovery XP gained
Killing mobs en route to and from the quest giver/location for completion
Grinding mobs while at said location for the actual quest (Say you need to kill 10 mobs, Sam will need 10x6)
Mobs you kill for drops, if the drop rate is high, Sam should take these as he isn't opposed to grinding a while
Waiting for a quest mob to respawn is more grinding
Reading the above, you can see questing is in fact a combination of grinding just as Sam is doing, but with added XP chunks for quest completion, the only real factor is whether or not the travel time is worth that chunk of XP at the end.
Sources:
XP formulas: Wowwiki: Mob XP Formulas
XP to level: Wowwiki: XP to lvl Formulas
Quest XP: Wowhead (filter quests by faction and level)
Lets start of with about where Sam is now, level 20, and then I'll jump to 30, 40 and 50 with the same figures.
Level 20:
A character on their own, with no outside help (or outside help of an equal level player that does not "leech" xp):
Equal level mobs: (20 x 5) + 45 = 145 XP per kill
Orange +4 mobs: [(20 x 5) + 45] x 1 + [0.05 x (Mob lvl - CL)] = 145 x 1.2 = 174 XP per kill
A group of 5 as XP varies by group size, and again no outside help:
Group of 5 - equal level mobs:
145/5 x 1.4 = 41
41 x 3 = 123 XP per mob with RAF
Group of 5 and orange +4 level mobs:
174/5 x 1.4 = 49
49 x 3 = 147 XP per mob with RAF
Average quest XP rewards vary, lets say the lowest for any normal quest is 1050 and the most is 1950 at level 20 for a yellow con quest, this is 3150 to 5850 with RAF. If you take 147 as your average XP per kill then this is 21-40 kills per quest
You will need 20800 XP to level to 21, therefore 141 mobs. As little as 4 quests, or as many as 7 (XP from "other" gains not counted, as mentioned above)
Level 30:
A character on their own, with no outside help (or outside help of an equal level player that does not "leech" xp):
Equal level mobs: (30 x 5) + 45 = 195 XP per kill
Orange +4 mobs: [(30 x 5) + 45] x 1 + [0.05 x (Mob lvl - CL)] = 195 x 1.2 = 234 XP per kill
A group of 5 as XP varies by group size, and again no outside help:
Group of 5 - equal level mobs:
195/5 x 1.4 = 55
41 x 3 = 165 XP per mob with RAF
Group of 5 and orange +4 level mobs:
234/5 x 1.4 = 66
49 x 3 = 198 XP per mob with RAF
Average quest XP rewards vary, lets say the lowest for any normal quest is 1200 and the most is 3650 at level 30 for a yellow con quest, this is 3600 to 10950 with RAF. If you take 198 as your average XP per kill then this is 18-55 kills per quest
You will need 38800 XP to level to 31, therefore 195 mobs. As little as 4 quests, or as many as 11 (XP from "other" gains not counted, as mentioned above)
Level 40:
A character on their own, with no outside help (or outside help of an equal level player that does not "leech" xp):
Equal level mobs: (40 x 5) + 45 = 245 XP per kill
Orange +4 mobs: [(40 x 5) + 45] x 1 + [0.05 x (Mob lvl - CL)] = 245 x 1.2 = 294 XP per kill
A group of 5 as XP varies by group size, and again no outside help:
Group of 5 - equal level mobs:
245/5 x 1.4 = 69
69 x 3 = 207 XP per mob with RAF
Group of 5 and orange +4 level mobs:
294/5 x 1.4 = 83
83 x 3 = 249 XP per mob with RAF
Average quest XP rewards vary, lets say the lowest for any normal quest is 3150 and the most is 5450 at level 40 for a yellow con quest, this is 9450 to 16350 with RAF. If you take 249 as your average XP per kill then this is 36-65 kills per quest
You will need 74300 XP to level to 41, therefore 298 mobs. As little as 5 quests, or as many as 8 (XP from "other" gains not counted, as mentioned above)
Level 50:
A character on their own, with no outside help (or outside help of an equal level player that does not "leech" xp):
Equal level mobs: (50 x 5) + 45 = 295 XP per kill
Orange +4 mobs: [(50 x 5) + 45] x 1 + [0.05 x (Mob lvl - CL)] = 295 x 1.2 = 354 XP per kill
A group of 5 as XP varies by group size, and again no outside help:
Group of 5 - equal level mobs:
295/5 x 1.4 = 83
83 x 3 = 249 XP per mob with RAF
Group of 5 and orange +4 level mobs:
354/5 x 1.4 = 100
100 x 3 = 300 XP per mob with RAF
Average quest XP rewards vary, lets say the lowest for any normal quest is 6800 and the most is 8500 at level 50 for a yellow con quest, this is 20400 to 25500 with RAF. If you take 300 as your average XP per kill then this is 68-85 kills per quest
You will need 120900 XP to level to 51, therefore 403 mobs. As little as 5 quests, or as many as 6 (XP from "other" gains not counted, as mentioned above)
Conclusion:
As you can see, once you take into account that alot of quests have you killing mobs, give you rewards, a massive XP bonus and that as you level the ammount of XP you need increases dramaticaly, the ammount rewarded by mobs does not: The ammount rewarded by a mob doubles more or less from 20 to 50! The ammount of XP you need is almost 6 times that needed at 20!
I can see why you'd see grinding as better at the sub-20 levels, but above 20 they increased quest XP given in a recent patch, and lowered XP needed per level.
Questing also sends you on from zone to zone with "fedex" type quests. With creative hearthstone settings and lvl 1 alts parked all over the world your travel time is cut down by alot, plus Shaman get a 15min Hearthstone spell iirc.
I did have more to add, but my lunch is ready :P
I'll add more as I think of it, please read through the above and think about it... Questing is not hard, grab Lightheaded and Cartographer adons, these will tell you where quest items/mobs are and help you navigate to them. If not use Wowhead. Grab Jamba for quest taking/finishing and other Multiboxing assistance.
Hope this helps...
Any feedback or corrections to the above are more than welcome btw, and I'll happily edit to add additional information as required
Great post Shogun. Questing is of course much faster in WoW but I think the benefits you get from leveling this way are even more important. Gear, money, and reputation. All things you will spend even more time having to get later.
Disclaimer: I haven't played wow, even thought about playing wow, or any Sony MMO since Beta 3 of wow hit my mailbox.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'glo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=131248#post1312 48
Here's the thing, Sam came from Neverquest, in Neverquest you grind, grind, grind and grind some more. The absolute best way to accomplish ANY advancement in Neverquest is to kill mobs over and over and over. Mobs don't leash like they do in WoW, so you can mount someone up, run all over a dungeon fuck and be gone and manage to create a HUGE train of mobs that comes running in... blow them up, and repeat as necessary. There were many places when I left EQ that you could AE grind, and it was amazing xp.
I got like 1k xp for doing a fedex quest somewhere in the barrens when I first started in WoW and realized how much it didn't suck... you quest from 1-Levelcap FASTER than you could possibly grind it. The ONLY exception to this is if you have Levelcap friends/alts who are willing to fund/do the work for you.
@ Samdeathwalker:
My RAF expires in 27 days. I only did 2 RAF accounts linked to 2 vet accounts, however in that time I have leveled 4 shaman 1-60, 5 shaman 60-70. I was stupid and did NOT grant levels to the 5th shaman until the others were 64, this cost me grouped quest xp (at my own choice) for 4 shaman for two full zones (Zangermarsh and Terrokar). I have also leveled 4 warlocks to 40 in this time.
I have a full time job, two hours of every day is shot with the commute, friends, family, etc... I play primarily weekends, and lightly on the weeknights. I'd say average 2 hours a night M-Thurs, and 16 hours between saturday and sunday. So over the last two months of RAF I'll call that 9 days played total. (Which matches pretty closely to my played time in game, but I'm at work so i can't tell you what that is.) I specifically took the 5 shaman from 60-70 because I intend them to be my main focus in Lich King, that was by far the longer trek (rather than 1-60).
Issues Sam is facing that 99% of us aren't or ever will:
That said, Sam would be far better off...
- Money - Sams got none in game. With no source of gold he does need to gather, rotating tags on 5 groups has got to be a total bitch for looting. Skinning is based on the ability to loot, etc.
- Skill Training - With RAF I leveled so damn fast I couldn't afford training. All said and done I leveled 5 characters to 70 and earned 8K gold. The majority of this was in the last 20 levels with auctions that sometimes took days to sell, a few lucky blue drops, etc. The majority of this also went right back into the characters for Mounts, Epic Mounts, Flying Mounts, Gems, Enchants, Etc. Since Sam doesn't have funding, he's counting on a very limited selection of skills, this is fine, but if he's casting downranked spells even 25 of them will take longer to kill single mobs, etc...
- Inexperience - Sam doesn't have the benefit of having leveled in WoW before. I'm a vet of MMO's, I've played since UO hit retail, I've beta tested every MMO that hit the shelf between UO and WoW, and a few after WoW hit... I've also played retail on most any that were available Pre-WOW. All this experience tells me that no other game levels like wow. I never found such a need to quest as you have in WoW. I don't kill ANYTHING in wow while I'm leveling unless I'm questing for it. Sure, I'll kill shit thats NOT required for a quest, but it's because it's between point A and B, both being parts of my quest.
- Egomania - Sam is an egomaniac, his ego is massive, huge, it has it's own guild... This ego means that it's going to be hard for Sam to listen to those who are offering genuine advice.
- Massive Multiboxing - No one here but Prepared has busted out 20+ accounts at a time... if they have, they sure as hell aren't talking about it.
There, got it out of my system.
- Questing - You get kill xp the same, and huge lumps of quest XP along the way. Reds give the same XP as oranges which give similar XP to Greens... the added effort/resists/etc aren't worth it. Quest.
- Leveling at least one 5 man team to 60 first. - Get to 60 on five toons, repeat with another 5, repeat again and again and one final time. Grant the pally to 60 if you care about a pally by the time you are 60 on the shamans... i've long viewed him as a wasted slot. I figure thats 5 weeks of play being a noob and having limited money. Teh first 5 man team will probably take 2 weeks, the others less and less time.
- Buying a friend - it's illegal to buy gold, it's illegal to buy powerleveling, it's not illegal to pay some schlep a sum to transfer to the server and happily help you by being a mentor and paying for skills out of their own pocket (I suppose this could be a gray area, but as long as they give their time on their account it's just an agreement between two humans about how to spend their digital time). Another way would be to trade something highly valuable (how are the Zevra codes delivered, can they be used on another account that the one that they were given like a trading card can?) for lots of gold... really you need about 1K gold to get the 26 toons to 60 without buying ALL your spells, just the important ones.
I think everyone that has posted is frustrated with Sam refusing to listen to us or follow our suggestions. I think the above 2 posts lay out clearly what needs to be done to make things more effiecient, but Sam won't listen. Oh well, we try not to tell people how to play just make suggestions. I'm moving over to Prepared's thread, it's much sunnier over there.
doesn't really matter, past 20 you are fresh meat for PVPers, and he will hit a brick wall when a few people decide to spend hours camping his toons in STV and elsewhere (wetlands, lol). Thats the nice thing about having multiple teams to level (and boosting), if you do get camped you can just log in to the second team and level them merrily somewhere else.
It is kind of ironic though, all this discussion and competition to essentially replicate chinese sweatshops. I remember reading about some gold farming companies in china where 1 guy is monitoring 50+ (obviously botted) accounts, and they have dozens of such guys, and to them its just a decent job where they get paid $10/day or whatever. I wonder what some of them would think about crazy Westerners wanting to play 20+ accounts at once :)
Let me respond to the very intelligent Shogun post, as this kind of math is in fact the way to determine what is better.
I'm at level 20 (well less actually) now. And as he correctly states its 21-40 killz per quest. Lets take 35 (cause of extra exp you get during the quest) as a resonable figure. Do I quest or not?
The facts that you have left out are mana regen per second and dps and mob HP. These 35 kills are of mobs of about 500HP each. Lightning level 3 is about 1 damage per mana. Thus to kill one mob you need 500 mana, lets assume you need 1000 mana for resists and what not. Lightning can be cast every 5 seconds or faster assuming instant pop mobs. Mana pool is about 400. Level 3 lightning is about 60 mana. (this is from memory so I could be wrong). From experice I would say that 400 mana regens in less then one minute. Lets say 10 mana per second, its fairly fast. 25 X 10 mana per second is 250 mana a second or sufficient mana to do 125 damage per second or to kill a mob every 4 seconds ...
35 mobs X 4 seconds is 2.2 minutes to get the same exp as a quest ... To get 26 its 1 hour (actually its longer with looting time and trade skillz time).
Ok does a quest take less then or more then one hour to complte 6 times?
Of course as levels go up more mobs are needed but then again how much does your mana regen go up and your damage per mana go up? If you are generating enough to kill a mob every 2 seconds well ...
At any rate when I hit level 30 Ill go over the figures again.
The mana/damage ratio is all well and good when you're looking at 1 toon, or even 5. But at 26 toons I'd be more inclined to look at it as 1 cast. There isn't a none-elite mob in the game that at same level will withstand 25 lightning bolts...
Example:
Generic bear 670 Hp at lvl 21
Level 20 Lightning Bolt does 83-95 damage
Most damaging shock at 20 is Frost Shock 89-95 damage (highest damage as most recently obtained)
I'd argue that the team tagging mobs should be casting a shock, while the remaining 5 teams begin lightning bolt, either way lets assume that all the spells do around an average of 70 damage taking into account some partial and some full resists.
25 (you have 1 pali iirc?) x 70 = 1750 damage - this is also known as dead bear...
So it all comes down to how fast you can target with the main, assist on the other 25 characters, cast a 1.5sec spell and repeat (add time to loot if you're looting)
Anywhere between 3 and 5 seconds sounds about right.
At 400 mana each character and a spell cost of 115 mana you'll get less than 4 casts off.
Lets assume that you allow 3.5 to 4 seconds so that you get mana regen between kills (it kicks in even while casting, until the cast ends iirc)
Later you'll have talents that can massively increase your up time, and blessing of wisdom will also help alot here.
Any items that give your shamis +intellect/spirit/mana regen are great at any level while grinding or questing.
If you are pausing now n then to regen mana, it's not going to make a huge dent in your kill/hour ratio as you're casting 1 spell, brief pause, next mob.
You're never* going to be killing faster because you simply can't kill faster, it won't be down to mana
*If you're toons can take hits and you find a decent area for it, you can run around and grab loads of mobs, throwing down the Paladin AoE spell consecration to keep them "tagged" (to stop them losing interest and resetting/evading) and then drop 25 Fire Nova Totems (for this you'll need the guys NOT getting XP to drop em a half second late to make sure the right group gets XP, plus the pali's damage will tag most of em before that, but if you get a method down you can AoE fairly well, upping you're kill/hour.
To be honest there are very very few areas that can support that kind of kill/hour ratio, if any once you get a bit higher.
Consider this: a maximum of 1 group at a time is getting XP as you kill, if they need 141 mobs to level (20-21) OR say 7 quests, why not make those 141 mobs you're killing anyway count for 7 quests, and get TWO levels for the price of ONE? Better yet, kill say 80 mobs for 3 quests and get 1.5 levels 61 mobs faster. You're killing them anyway!
Plan it like this: Arrive in "Town A" set ALL youre hearthstones to the local inn near the quest hub, grab all the quests, head out into an area and do quests in that area one team at a time, then move along to do another couple, all the while killing as you go. Once all 26 toons have a bunch of quests done, hearthstone HALF of them, hand in all the quests, then RAF Summon them back, then hearthstone the other half and repeat with them. You've now handed in a bunch of quests (which is made easy with Jamba/other) and have a buttload more XP to show for shit you were killing anyway, you have some items you can use on ALL toons which will increase your mana pool/damage/regen/whatever and some cash, or at worst they can't use the items and they sell them... still cash either way!
All it comes down to is a little planning and forward thought, which is something against you as you haven't played the game before, I'd honestly go buy Joana's Guide, and just drop any quest that takes you out of your way or sounds annoying. Just go 1 zone at a time and utilize the RAF summons creatively as suggested.
I honestly think combining questing with the grinding will reduce the levelling time by a massive ammount, at least 50%, and more at higher levels, as the XP/mob doesn't scale like quests do, and neither will your kills/hour purely due to game mechanics...