Leveling Up Alts Post-60

Figured I would post my experience in the event it helps someone else make a decision. I’ve gotten so many amazing tips from this community and it’s all a result from players’ willingness to share their knowledge. I don’t know where I would be without watching videos and reading guides on this website.

With that said, I thought of potentially boxing shortly before Classic released. I had a few friends that i was lined up to play with so ultimately I just ended up leveling my priest (main char) to 60. The plan was to do some farming and then make an alt army. After much consideration I ended up with a priest/warrior/mage/mage/lock team. I was tempted to go with all casters but I was worried about the ability to dungeon farm so threw a warrior in the mix. Went with one warlock for the summon ability, which is awesome and well worth it imo.

I made the four Alts and leveled them up to 10 quite quickly in the undead starting zone. At that point I figured I could farm instances and just AE everything down with my priest using holy nova. My plan was basically to AE from 10-43 going from RFC — WC — SFK — RFK — SM.

I must say that it has been a lot slower going than I anticipated (and that I remembered when doing something similar many many years ago). I’m lvl 29 on the alts and I have tried doing some of the questing areas such as Tarren Mill to get 30. 30 is big since I get hellfire on the warlock and SS on the warrior, so I’m thinking that will allow me to do well in SM.

In hindsight, and for those of you in a similar boat, it seems that starting five alts and leveling them together is far superior to what I’ve tried. At this point I’m kind of pot committed, but wanted to share my views in the event someone else is faced with the same decision. I can do some testing and provide exp numbers if anyone is interested in the data when I get home tonight.

If there is a high level character in a party and nearby, your low level characters will get significantly reduced experience from every kill even if that high level doesn't even enter combat.


What a high level character can do well is do pulls in instances and leave the party while your AOE group mows everything down. For instance a level 60 priest can pull SM armory in 4 pulls and cathedral in 6 or 7. Of course your other 4 character will need to be all casters to kill all the mobs before your puller gets teleported out.


Some experience numbers from my group. Level 60 priest pulling and playing an alt mage. Me playing 2 mages and another guy playing a warlock.
Deadmines: 25k exp/h without the warlock. Priest was doing damage on most pulls with elites.
Stockades: 48k exp/h. Cleared the whole instance while hitting instance cap so can't go faster than this.
SM: 30k exp/h at level 30 with just graveyard and a few pulls in library
SM: 80-90k exp/h at higher levels with clearing Armory and Cathedral but skipping bosses.
ZF: 95k exp/h doing scarabs, zombies and pyramid trash mobs.
BRD: tbd. Torch room farming sounds most efficient but we'll find out when we get there.

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Originally Posted by Carto

Figured I would post my experience in the event it helps someone else make a decision. I’ve gotten so many amazing tips from this community and it’s all a result from players’ willingness to share their knowledge. I don’t know where I would be without watching videos and reading guides on this website.

... ultimately I just ended up leveling my priest (main char) to 60. The plan was to do some farming and then make an alt army. ...

I made the four Alts and leveled them up to 10 quite quickly in the undead starting zone. At that point I figured I could farm instances and just AE everything down with my priest using holy nova. My plan was basically to AE from 10-43 going from RFC — WC — SFK — RFK — SM.

I must say that it has been a lot slower going than I anticipated (and that I remembered when doing something similar many many years ago). I’m lvl 29 on the alts ...

In hindsight, and for those of you in a similar boat, it seems that starting five alts and leveling them together is far superior to what I’ve tried. At this point I’m kind of pot committed, but wanted to share my views in the event someone else is faced with the same decision. I can do some testing and provide exp numbers if anyone is interested in the data when I get home tonight.

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Thanks so much and please share what you can.

So far I have not seen any actual Power leveling scenarios that were compelling and proven to be superior on live Classic over a properly constructed 5 man team.

There are lots of us that will be looking at 2nd teams (or at least alts) once we get to cap... At this point some of us are second guessing our approach with our primary teams...

Personally I wonder sometimes if I should have just quickly leveled a main first like you did either in a group or solo (like Hunter/Druid/Rogue) and then twinked out my actual team to level for dungeons.

In the end I am pretty much committed to my path and am learning a lot about new things (all melee team is definitely new to me) so I guess it is OK. I do like new challenges & overall try to view this all as a marathon and not a sprint anyway so not that worried about it.

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Originally Posted by Dvl

If there is a high level character in a party and nearby, your low level characters will get significantly reduced experience from every kill even if that high level doesn't even enter combat.


What a high level character can do well is do pulls in instances and leave the party while your AOE group mows everything down. For instance a level 60 priest can pull SM armory in 4 pulls and cathedral in 6 or 7. Of course your other 4 character will need to be all casters to kill all the mobs before your puller gets teleported out.


Some experience numbers from my group. Level 60 priest pulling and playing an alt mage. Me playing 2 mages and another guy playing a warlock.
Deadmines: 25k exp/h without the warlock. Priest was doing damage on most pulls with elites.
Stockades: 48k exp/h. Cleared the whole instance while hitting instance cap so can't go faster than this.
SM: 30k exp/h at level 30 with just graveyard and a few pulls in library
SM: 80-90k exp/h at higher levels with clearing Armory and Cathedral but skipping bosses.
ZF: 95k exp/h doing scarabs, zombies and pyramid trash mobs.
BRD: tbd. Torch room farming sounds most efficient but we'll find out when we get there.

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does healing the group out of party effect xp also? Is the priest supposed to build up threat via healing himself, then leave group and AOE on levelers or?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dvl

If there is a high level character in a party and nearby, your low level characters will get significantly reduced experience from every kill even if that high level doesn't even enter combat.


What a high level character can do well is do pulls in instances and leave the party while your AOE group mows everything down. For instance a level 60 priest can pull SM armory in 4 pulls and cathedral in 6 or 7. Of course your other 4 character will need to be all casters to kill all the mobs before your puller gets teleported out.


Some experience numbers from my group. Level 60 priest pulling and playing an alt mage. Me playing 2 mages and another guy playing a warlock.
Deadmines: 25k exp/h without the warlock. Priest was doing damage on most pulls with elites.
Stockades: 48k exp/h. Cleared the whole instance while hitting instance cap so can't go faster than this.
SM: 30k exp/h at level 30 with just graveyard and a few pulls in library
SM: 80-90k exp/h at higher levels with clearing Armory and Cathedral but skipping bosses.
ZF: 95k exp/h doing scarabs, zombies and pyramid trash mobs.
BRD: tbd. Torch room farming sounds most efficient but we'll find out when we get there.

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Couldn't you do the same/better with 5 casters (or Casters+Healer) as long as one is a Warlock pulling with 'Eye of Kilrogg?

A 5th character is +33% damage if your other 4 are Healer+DPS or +25% if all 4 are DPS.

Note that you can start many instances in a raid (5 man low level party + level 60 Priest) and then when the Priest drops raid the new leader can try to quickly convert back to party before you start AoEing but regardless I am not sure I see the overall net overall value considering the complexity... You maybe would be better off having a Druid out of party giving everyone a maxed 'Mark of the Wild' and Thorns (at least on any Tanks).

I’m with nodoze on this. What benefit is having a puller when you have eye? Or is the idea that the puller keeps the aggro? So far based on my experience (up to lvl 29 on the alts) the 60 priest loses aggro quite quickly once the casters start nuking.

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Originally Posted by nodoze

Couldn't you do the same/better with 5 casters as long as one is a Warlock pulling with 'Eye of Kilrogg?

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You would need a shield for the Eye anyway so one of the casters will need to be a priest. It's also difficult to group the mobs when you don't have a tank and have limited mana on your casters.

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Originally Posted by Hardcore Scape

does healing the group out of party effect xp also? Is the priest supposed to build up threat via healing himself, then leave group and AOE on levelers or?

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You can heal as much as you want from inside (while the pulls is going on) or outside the party (while mobs are being killed). Healing outside the party is quite difficult but doable for a multiboxer I guess. In Deadmines our priest actually tanked the pulls with elites so he would pull and gather the mobs, then grenade for initial threat followed by the mages spamming arcane explosion. Blizzard slow is not available at this low level. From Stockades onwards our priest only pulls and gathers the mobs and they are then kited with blizzards.

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Originally Posted by Dvl

... You can heal as much as you want from inside (while the pulls is going on) or outside the party (while mobs are being killed). Healing outside the party is quite difficult but doable for a multiboxer I guess. In Deadmines our priest actually tanked the pulls with elites so he would pull and gather the mobs, then grenade for initial threat followed by the mages spamming arcane explosion. Blizzard slow is not available at this low level. From Stockades onwards our priest only pulls and gathers the mobs and they are then kited with blizzards.

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As long as you can get the kills done before the Priest teleports out (or at least get the mobs down to a manageable level before then) I could certainly see value for having an un-killable tank. Even more value if that un-killable tank can heal the party effectively while out of the party...

A multiboxer may be able to establish healing macros for each party member such that when you click raid frames on a member of the party it sends the right healing commands to the Priest (even with the Priest out of party). Would take some planning/effort in advance but seems doable off hand...

Dungeon boosting is typically done with a mage or warrior. Mages and Warriors (using ravager) will be able to boost up to 40-45ish pretty rapidly.

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Originally Posted by Dvl

You can heal as much as you want from inside (while the pulls is going on) or outside the party (while mobs are being killed). Healing outside the party is quite difficult but doable for a multiboxer I guess. In Deadmines our priest actually tanked the pulls with elites so he would pull and gather the mobs, then grenade for initial threat followed by the mages spamming arcane explosion. Blizzard slow is not available at this low level. From Stockades onwards our priest only pulls and gathers the mobs and they are then kited with blizzards.

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I thought doing any damage on the level 60 would significantly make the xp a lot less? Does it depend on the amount of damage or something? I am definitely gonna play around with this because I plan on making some lvl 35 alts haha.

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Originally Posted by Hardcore Scape

I thought doing any damage on the level 60 would significantly make the xp a lot less? Does it depend on the amount of damage or something? I am definitely gonna play around with this because I plan on making some lvl 35 alts haha.

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Yes, any damage from a high level will reduce your xp but it's important to understand when you can afford to take that hit and still level fast. At low levels before you can even get improved blizzard it's definitely worth it just so that you can aoe in instances at all.

I'm thinking of leveling some profession cooldown alts to 35 but havent decided yet on setup. Speed of lvling is priority.

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Originally Posted by Tsazao

I'm thinking of leveling some profession cooldown alts to 35 but havent decided yet on setup. Speed of lvling is priority.

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Yeah I also want to do multiple teams of 5 characters to 35.

Don't personally care much on the classes though the advantage of doing mainly (or at least some) Warlocks is that I can use them to also summon my mains places.

If boosting can indeed be a time saver it would be good to understand the best alt team composition/approaches for those that have mains at 60 to boost with (and which classes are actually good to boost with).

When I want to switch a member of my main team I had good luck speed questing. By just killing all the mobs for the quests really fast in one zone and then moving to another of same level and doing it again. I only had to get to 20 but took very little time compared to soloing. I haven't tried this at any higher levels though either.