Leveling two new toons not as fast as I thought.

Well basically the last time I did 1-60 was two years ago and I seem to remember it took me about 30 days or so. A far cry from the 3 months it took me when the game first came out. So for various reasons posted in another thread I am replacing one of my mages with a Shaman and my hunter with a Druid. The basic reasons are I am replacing two ranged DPS with two ranged DPS only they both bring more buffs, healing, cleansing etc to the table.

So I buy a new account and RAF it with a vet account. I fire up the Drood and the Shammie and summon them over. I start doing the quests to get them to level 10 and with the Triple Xp this goes pretty fast about 2 hours with macro setup. I then bring my DK and mage over have my two lowbies hop onto my DKs mammoth, after kicking Hakmud with much protest from him, and ride off into fast leveling glory. Or so I thought.

So I take them out to DM getting flight points along the way and DM is just a slow clunky hard to pull dungeon. With lots of non elites hidden back in corners I find it very hard to pull them all without zig zagging back and forth. After my lowbies got wiped a few times I decide to try SFK.

Here is what I find in SFK. If I move my lowbies up to the bars my DK actually pulls the whole dungeon in three pulls and they never have to move. He goes entrance to the mage who opens the door. Since I have to wait on the mage I clear out the mobs on my DK then sit and eat. Once the Mage pops the door I pull everything in the courtyard, kitchen, baron room take a right and get all those mobs off to the side and back into the courtyard to pick up any stragglers AOE them down and my toons go from 11.2 to 13.5 and I am very happy. Then I pull everything from behind the Baron all the way up to the room with the Dog in it and kill everything there and my guys goto 14.4. I try pulling everything from there up to the forced to kill and open a door but my guys are no longer in range for xp. The next clear I try to pull Argul and everyone back to the dog room but it is just so slow and clunky I realize stopping at the dog room is more effcient than trying to go any further and then have to back track. I repeat this about 3 more times, takes about an hour and my guys are 20. So hop on the mammoth and off to SM.

I run the library just to get key for my DK and the two new toons. This goes very slow and clunky with the mobs off in alcoves I miss and when I bring the lowbies up after the pull they get owned. Once I clear library I move to the Cathedral. After a few pulls I realize this seems to be the best way to do it. SM Cathedral is basically three areas the lower courtyard, the upper courtyard, and the cathedral itself. The courtyards themselves have two layers of mobs and are basically U shaped. One layer of mobs are in the covered walkways in the outer part of the U and the others are in the grass on the inner part of the U. So what I do is leave my lowbies at the door and pull the first court yard by running into it and taking a left and following the outer part of the U. I stay along the outer wall aggroing all the mobs along there. Once I hit the wall I follow back on my route only now I run the inside part of the U all the way around aggroing all the grass mobs. Once I get to the end of that I run down the outer part of the U that I have not covered yet. This puts me back at the entrance tunnel with all the lower courtyard mobs on me. I pull them about halfway down the Hall and AOE them down.

I then move my lowbies to the stairs and do the same thing for the upper courtyard. I run along the outer part of the U pulling all the mobs then come back along the same right only now I am on the grass pulling the inner part of the U. I use the dip in the stairs to break LOS for the casters and AOE them all down on the stairs.

Now I move to the easy part of the whole thing the cathedral itself. I park my lowbies halfway up the stiars to the entrance to the cathedral and open the doors. I run towards the commander and when he is in Death Grip range I DG him and run back towards the entrance. He is kind enough to call all the mobs in the cahtedral to help him making my job really easy. I AOE them down and then do the little ressurection event. I bring up my lowbies loot the boss mobs and leave the dungeon. As a sidenote you cannot kill the woman until after the event. She has I think 4900ish HP and I crit her for 7k and she just goes to one HP and then starts the little event.

What I discovered is that I was doing 5 instances of the cathedral in about 55 minutes and was getting 1.5 o 1 level per clear. It started at 1.5 and 29 to 30 acutally took 1 cathedral clear and then part of another cathedral clear.

My guys right now are 33 Shaman and 32 Druid. I had to stop and do some class quests for various skills work up their macros and get them gear. They were level 30+ and still wearing starting zone gear. I didnt go crazy I just got them some basic greens with lots of Stamina so if an errant AOE does hit them they don't die.

All and all 1 to 30 was probably about 6 hours of actualy grinding and 4 hours of travel/figuring out pulls. Not as fast as I had read, some people claming 1-60 in 4 to 8 hours played, but certainly faster than in the past leveling solo toons via quests.

Now I know there is a guide but it just shows links to something called tour guide and does not really give any details.

So at this point I have a few questions.

Does it seem like I am behind the curve levleling speed wise? I have to admit 1-30 in ten hours is much faster than days gone by but not as fast as I was thinking.

What is my next step another few levels in the Cathedral then off to ZF for mounted pulls at 35 or move over to Uldum for 30 to 35 then goto ZF?

What is your preferred instance grinding 1-60?

Thanks.

Just as a sidenote I am not bashing ELBA's guide. I am just fried on questing and was looking forward to RAFing a pair of toons and just instancing them up. I have done the Alliance/Horde 1-60 quests so many times I had no real desire to do them again but, I really needed to replace my second mage and hunter in my current 5 man setup.

I just recently did a quick RaF touchup run with 2 new accounts linked to my main to get myself 3 lv60 druids and a bunch more grantable levels to top off all my main account chars to 60. I have done quite a lot of leveling with and without RaF at times, but in the end, I'm still just a "casual" player (according to my main's guild anyway). So with all those things being qualified, the /played time showing on the druids is 1day,14 hours at 60. I did about 70-80% boosting up to about level47 and then did the RaF tourguide to 58, and then back to boosting until 60 in Stratholme (they were just basic Wow accounts and aren't being kept around after the druids transfer off, otherwise i'd have gone to outland at 58 ).

So compared to my times, it looks like you are going pretty quickly.

I went and did RFD a few times after SM for variation.
I went into Uldamann for about half the instance and couldn't stand it, so i went down to tanaris and boost-quested with a 4th account level 75 helping until i could get into ZF.
I went from ZF to BRD and blackrock spire a few times til 47.

I don't recall my time played or levels but my progressions was:

Starting Quests
Deadmines (by far the worst instance in this group. random pats took out my low levels so many times.)
Stockades
SM
BRD
LBRS (since I was right there)

*I did try ZF a few times with one group but gave it up. Probably didn't pull big enough groups.

Your method is pretty good. Who ever claims 6hrs 1-60 is full of it. Only way to do that is with level granting, it would be a level every 6 minutes. Thats possible in the lower lvls but not closer towards 60.

You could be a little more effecient in SM. Do 2 pulls instead of 3. Park guys in hallway and pull lower and upper hallway at the same time. Then bring your guys to the fountain and do cathedral. Put loot on master looter and you wont have to bring the alts to loot. Also have the master looter pass on random items so you only see sparkles on greens+.

Once you hit 35 I suggest Sunken Temple instead of ZF. I just put up a video yesterday on how I level to 45 in it.
35-45 boosting in Sunken Temple

1-10 quest
10-20 sfk do only 2 pulls, you can do the entire area up to door and then everything up to right before the tower with arugal (stop at the ghost humans) with your guys parked at entrance and never moving
20-40 sm, cathedral is easiest once you get good at it you can do the entire cathedral in 2 pulls, you park your guys at entrance and pull everything outside (skip guys right outside inner door), then you drag your team to upper pool and you pull the entire inner cathedral. once you get fast at this you can do this in 10 mins or less, and you will have a 10 minute break every hour (or do graveyard/arms once an hour)
40-50 knock out some quests in hinterlands if you are horde, there are a TON of easy kill quests around jinthalor and you get massive xp

45-55 stratholme or brd or questing. i dunno if its an exploit or fixed, but if you have a geared 80 you can clear to baron in strat, then park your RAFs by the door and your pally/DK/warr/druid booster by baron. use as much reflective damage gear as possible, you want to kill the skellies (the baron heals up when you kill them so he wont die). I was averaging 250k xp/hour unrested doing this and got 10 levels in a few hours. All your gear WILL break, and you need to be geared enough so that baron won't kill you AND you kill the skellies without killing him. I did this six+ months ago so it was with a prot pally using ret aura and petrified shield with felsteel spike etc (and seal of wisdom to keep mana up).

55-60 ramparts

Thanks for the replies so far I will check out the video.

You know I wander about the skellie thing. I know they will agrro and move off the Baron. I could probably do something with this like hit them with D&D but not have the Baron die from it. Maybe do something like wipe one group with D&D then let the next group get killed for healing. Might be a little slower but would probably be the easiest way to go from 45 to 55.

I just tried this skeleton thing on Baron and got 3 xp per skeleton with RAF bonus. Xp timer calculated 25 hours to level from 46-47 lol. I'm pretty sure you'd be broken far before this. Plus as a warrior you have to hit enraged regen every 3 mins to stay alive.

Just do dead side trash clears.

Your going at a good pace. Like you said, you have a learning curve so those who have done this several times are going to post faster numbers. Everyone seems to be in agreement that going to Shadow Fang Keep at level 10 is far better than any other starter instance. There are other things you can do to speed it up. The biggest one I can think of is quit looting unless its a boss. Looting adds a good 30-50% to time to level. When you loot then your off to town to sell, then your going back to the dungeon etc. Looting adds a LOT of time to a grind. Also do a search, there are several posts and mentions about going from 55 to 60 in one run of BRD if you get all the quests. I have not done this personally and I have not seen a list of what quests to get to do this but several people swear buy it.

ZF is a popular place at 40 to go to because of the fast pulling you can do while mounted but has its gotcha's with hex, I preferred to hit Stratholme as the pulls are big and I know the place well as its one of my favorite places to hit and its a paladins easy sauce boosting zone with all the undead. Lots of bosses and lots of good lewts.

Jones I love your avatar. Yeah I don't loot I just have my guys loot the boss mobs. Although I realize at the pace they are leveling it seems kind of pointless.

I will have to look into that BRD thing. I know alot of dungeons can have a ton of quests linked to them and with triple xp that could be easy sauce.

I just did another vid of boosting in strat off the trash. It really is awesome xp, gets about 3 lvls an hour 45-55.
You can do it up to 60 but I prefer to go to Ramparts at 55 as this is when I start to actually get gear to wear to make questing at 60+ easier.

45-55 Boosting in Stratholme

Smooth thanks for the videos. I am going to probably just push through to 35 in Cathedral then head to ST. Then probably do the BRD/Quest 55 to 60 or mabye Ramparts. Just out of curiosity how come nobody boosts post 60? I realize you probably cant do huge pulls but I would assume an 80 could still easily solo smaller groups of mobs in the 60 to 70ish dungeons. Is questing really that much faster?

I was hoping to just boost till say about mid 70s then do the Ice Cronw/They took our men quests to finish off and open up dailies for gold farming at 80.

I read that guys story about mob tagging. Most people say you can do 70 to 80 in 15 to 20 hours played mob tagging in instances. Apparently this guy got banned because they didn't want the first 80 to be questionable. The funny thing is the next guy to make 80 did the same thing he just did it outside of instances so they felt he was not exploiting anything.