My Experience Boosting 10-40 with a Warlock

I just finished boosting 4 alts to level 41 using a Warlock and wanted to post a bit of my experience.

General summary of what I did:
1. Quested to 10
2. Shadowfang Keep from 10-20
3. SM from 20-41

I played around with RFC but figured it's a waste of time for the following reasons: chain stuns, chain stuns, and chain stuns. Deadmines took about 1-2 hours to get to as Horde, and either way the instance is too long and the patrols own your alts.

Shadowfang Keep

I headed over here at level 10 and played it out until 20. The best part about this instance is you never have to move your alts. I played around with the pulls for a few hours and found a reliable system of 4 pulls that minimizes chances of me dying. I primarily used seed of corruption pulls with a voidwalker. Make sure to grab demonic resilience talent for 15% reduced damage to the pet.

1. Walk alts into the instance and move them to the gate. Leave them there for the rest of run - they will get experience for mobs killed in the courtyard and the bridge above.

2. Pull courtyard all the way up to the stairwell. Park your voidwalker in the middle, pop seed of corruption on at least two targets. Some of the mobs will survive due to the damage shield - this part is annoying but you'll have to kill them off with rain of fire or dots.

3. Pull the butcher, baron, and go up the stairs and loop back the other way, pulling all of those mobs. Park your vw in the courtyard again, and this time use both SoC and rain of fire as some of the mobs are immune to shadow.

4. Pull all the way through the commander, the 2 bats, and the long bridge. Park your vw on the bridge and get far away - if you get chain silenced you will probably die. Your alts will get xp from below.

5. Pull all the way up to Fenris and come back to the bridge. None of these guys are immune to shadow, so you can blow them all up at once.

6. Rinse and repeat. I skip the wolf master and arugal because at this point it's too far away, there are too few mobs, and arugal won't leave his room.

This took about 13-15 minutes per clear and about 25 minutes for each level. You may be able to do it in 3 pulls instead of 4, but I died enough times that I wanted to play it safe.

Scarlet Monastery

You can do Cathedral from 20 to about 41. I never could get seed of corruption to work well enough in this instance (seemed to take 3-4 to kill the mobs, I'd lose aggro, or the pet would get his ass kicked and then I'd have aggro). I put siphon life and curse of agony (cheap mana cost, hurts pretty bad) on every target and those two were enough to kill. My spec was 30/31, using shadow mastery for 10% more damage and soul link with master demonologist so I could take the physical damage with a voidwalker.

1. Enter instance and kill the first mob immediately - he will own your alts until they are about 35.

2. Pull the hall and the first half of the courtyard, then move your alts to the end of the hall.

3. Pull the rest of the courtyard, then move your alts to the waterfall, and make sure to kill the patrol coming down the stairs before he kills your alts.

4. Clear the upper courtyard, move alts to the stairs.

5. Clear the last room and the bosses. Don't get lazy with the dots here or your pet will die and then you will. You will probably have to re-apply dots to the scarlet abbots which heal themselves.

6. Gear your alts up with the boss drops, then start sharding them if you can. It's a 100% chance for a small radiant shard which will sell for about 5g. This should cover your repair costs and maybe give you enough left over for mounts at 40.

Run takes 13-15 minutes and your alts level in 30-50 minutes. Your fingers will probably start to hurt. I'd recommend a cast sequence macro on a mouse button instead of hitting keys.

Played time on the characters at 40 was just over 1 day. However this is my first time boxing and I spent several hours 1-10 getting things set up, as well as it being my first time boosting so I spent several hours learning the instances. I figure this can be done 1-40 in about 18 hours easy.

Hope this is helpful. Any feedback or criticism would be appreciated, as I'm sure this can be done faster and more efficiently next time around.

Love to see a vid on this

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Drizzit',index.php?page=Thread&postID=81786#post8 1786

Love to see a vid on this

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Yeah I thought about that, figured I'd make one if there was demand. I'll look into it :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'heyaz',index.php?page=Thread&postID=81788#post817 88

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Drizzit',index.php?page=Thread&postID=81786#post8 1786

Love to see a vid on this

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Yeah I thought about that, figured I'd make one if there was demand. I'll look into it :)

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I have a lock, but went rogue instead because i wasn't too sure on how to do this (just get nervous). I can handle my 22 min cath with rogue but i really want to see your SFK run. Do your runs include looting?

Edit: can you link your lock?

Re: SFK

Move your lowbies in the courtyard and to the right of the fountain on the crates. This spot will give them exp except for the long room towards Arugal.
However, if you pull Arugal to you, you will see the lowbies in the minimap, and that's within exp range. So set to masterloot and assign loot to the lowbies with Arugal dead near the top of the circular steps. :)

Re: SM Cathedral

The lowbie spots I park are:

1. Entry hallway, 2nd candlestick from the arch toward the lower courtyard. Pull mobs at end of this hallway to break loss from the lower courtyard pull.

2. Lower Courtyard, just on the edge of the fountain. I pull mobs to the bottom left stairs breaking los from pulling upper courtyard.

3. Outside Cathedral to the right corner on top of the small step landing. Fighting mobs pulled inside Cathedral just inside and behind first pillar.

I've boosted my four alts for 13 levels (20 to 33) in SM with my main (70 lock).

I've used SoC all the way. I'm demonology specced but use the voidwalker so I'm hardly "best specced" for SoC as a more destro heavy build would increase my DPS.

That said, I can clear Cath in about 20 mins if I'm being honest. Could probably go faster, but I've found I a) get careless and/or b) pull too many.

Basic strategy:

Pulls

Initial Hallway to stairs (3 pulls usually: 1) hallway + few from courtyard, 2) most of cy, 3) stragglers including stair patrols)

Water Courtyard (3 pulls: 1) left side, 2) middle, 3) right side

Cath (3 to 4 pulls, bosses alone)

SoC

Planting 3 seeds is necessary to kill all mobs outright. I just upgraded my gear with the new arena season, so I may try 2 again as that usually killed most but often would leave enough on low health to create a problem for me.

Pulls

I use the VW to tag mobs until he has a desired amount grouped up (10 to 15?). I then have him stay (a distance away from me) and go passive. I then start with SoC's. As I start casting my third, I have the VW go on attack to hasten the demolition of the third seed. Usually works like a charm.

The one anomoly I have noticed is that I'll have seeds either a) not go off or b) not affect all the mobs. It seems like it may be the latter, as if I pull too many it seems that can lead to a wipe. A 70 lock can get beat down quick and hard 6+ SM mobs. Can't get anything off but instants.

Anyway, my progress has been good if not boring. I've actually not been leveling my alts for a week or so due to this boredom. Only 7'ish levels of SM for me to go.

I've leveled about 6 or 7 sets of toons at various points in this game using my 70 Warlock. I've spent a lot of time perfecting pull patterns etc so I think I've got a pretty efficient pattern down (For a Warlock at least). With 1300 spell damage with my Darkmoon Card maxed out and ~10k hp I can do this is a hybrid 30/31 spec without ever dropping below ~70% hp.

1-10 questing

10-15 WC with Rank 6 Siphon Life. Go in, do a circle to the left in the starting area and then jump down and head towards the last boss. You can kill mobs all the way to the last boss and then your only downtime is between killing the last boss and making it to zone.

15-20 RFK with Rank 6 Siphon Life. Go in, take a right and just kill everything. I make a macro so that whenever I cast Siphon LIfe I also send the pet after any healing and earthgrab totems. Once you do Charlga just jump down and kill the boars all the way to zone. RFK, imo, is one of the most efficient zones to plevel in since you're killing mobs the whole time.

20-35 SM with max rank Siphon Life and Curse of Agony. The only pull that I SoC is the first pull in the Cath--If you stand between the first row of four mobs you can cast 3 SoC's before anything gets to you and it'll kill the whole center aisle. I can clear this in about 8 minutes including the last boss. That means you can take liberal smoke/coffee breaks and still get your 5 per hour in, or do one Armory run after every 5 Cath runs.

35-45 ZF with max rank Siphon Life and Curse of Agony. If you break right when you can and then clear all the tombs around that troll caster boss you can clear the whole zone in about 20 minutes and it's worth half a level from 35 to 40. My only big tip here is that you *must* put a petattack command in there for your pet to kill all the Healing totems and the Nova totems.

Wish I had 1300 spell damage. In s3/s2 pvp gear with all stam gems I barely break 1000. Problem is never HP for me - the siphon life ticking keeps it up high. I just have to split up the pulls in SM or my VW will die. ZF has been really slow so far - mobs need 3 full dots which barely gets them.

I guess I could re-do all my gems and enchants for spell damage... probably not worth it for just levels 42-45 in ZF, although may be if I'm planning on boosting more alts.

Having never specced affliction, I have no experience with siphon life. So, here comes the dumb question:

If siphon is keeping your health up might you not need soul link and if so: why worry about losing the VW? (I'm SURE I'm missing something.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Greythan',index.php?page=Thread&postID=82930#post 82930

Having never specced affliction, I have no experience with siphon life. So, here comes the dumb question:

If siphon is keeping your health up might you not need soul link and if so: why worry about losing the VW? (I'm SURE I'm missing something.)

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Voidwalker is reducing the physical damage by 30%. The problem is Siphon Life won't keep you up if you're taking 30% more damage + using life tap, and you will have to life tap constantly. I've had the VW die during big pulls and you either die or you struggle for several minutes to stay alive with a sliver of health and no mana.

I use the Succy, not the VW. With the alts as 4 Shaman they just heal the pet every few minutes when she hits half health.

Love SFK for levelling up the alts. I always put 'em on follow before reading this guide. Parking them at the gate makes the run SUPER easy now. While running this, I tested out the Xfire video capture program. Here is a quick video of my mage running the loop past the baron. If ya look closely you can see my four shaman behind the gate as I run by :P

<edit> Redid video...bigger pull than previous.

http://video.xfire.com/100d5-4.jpg

Thought I'd update my views on boosting with a Warlock in SM.

With Season 4 released, I immediately upgraded three slots with saved honor. Nothing too huge, but it did increase my spell damage and spell crit a fair bit. Now, they run about 900 and 18% (not including some talents). That's up from about 750 and 15%.

Wow, what a massive difference in SoC AE. I can now clear SM Cath in 15 minutes. Its two pulls up to the stairs. Two pulls for the courtyard outside the Cathedral. Two pulls from inside the Cathedral and rush the boss. The boss I now do with probably 10 to 15 trash mobs left. I just SoC them all down.

I think the increase in gear to the average player (I have two pieces of S2 gear, the rest is S1) really makes boosting trivial for a Warlock.

This method also seems much less tedious than having to DoT every single mob. I just have the VW gather up, spam 4 SoC's, rinse and repeat. Again, its 15 minutes from start to finish where in my S1 only gear it was probably four more pulls and another 5 to 10 minutes per run.