Run 5 chars up slowly, or use a lvl 70 to speed through 4?

[Gallo]

Alright, so now I have: Priest (lvl 20), 2 Mages (lvl 20), Warlock (lvl 20), and a Paladin (lvl 30).

I've been running deadmines, slow and steady, clearing pretty easily.

Here's my question to you guys. I have a lvl 70 warrior, geared in half blues half epics, that is on the same account as the paladin. For the sake of time, should I just use the warrior to plow through the levels? I ran him through deadmines with the other 4 only follow and I cruised through in 15 minutes... and I believe I'm getting full xp (not sure how long that will last... maybe till lvl 50).

Would it be way faster in the long run to do it this way? My goal is running heroics, so the warrior tank could still work out well.

[Dor]

the lvl 70 just kills the xp id maybe use him to run thru some instances and stuff but for questing/grinding just keep the 5 man

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Pure solo on my enhance shammy was about 12 days /played (first char in the game). (300 miner/engineer)
Pure solo to 60 on my mage was about 8 days /played. (no professions)
Pure solo to 60 on my hunter was about 7 days /played. (skinning only)
My 4-hunter group hit 60 in about 10 days /played. (no professions)
My 4-priest group hit 60 in right about 12 days /played and 70 in 18 days /played (tons of professions on these).
My 4-mage group hit 60 in about 10 days /played and 70 in just under 16 days /played. (herb/mining/skinning only)
My priest+locks group is sitting at about 9 days /played at 51, so I imagine it will end up around 12(60)/18(70) or so for these guys, though I could be off as I'm doing professions on all 5.

Short version is that you'll save time leveling if you do it all at once versus trying to break things up. And having a 70 "powerlevel" you is not as uber as you might think.

[jrox]

If you've got a 70 epic mage, you can *scream* through levels if you know how to do it, but only to about 43 - 45ish

Mind passing on your wisdom? A group of friends and I did this about 5 months ago and at some points it was REALLY fast, and some points it dragged.

Basically we always had a full group, 4 of our new guys + the 70 mage, and we would just wait around while the mage would gather up big pulls and ae them. Then move forward in the instance.

We started in deadmines, i'm not sure what level, maybe 15 ish? Once we got up to about 20 we started doing stockades and that went really fast. At some point we moved on to SM were able to run all 3 of those effectively. We did the middle part of uldaman for a while, and even had some success AE'ing stratholme with some help from the 50'ish chars we were leveling up.

I'm thinking about doing this again and was wondering if there were some guidelines for making this as quick as possible.

Is it best to have a full group? It seemed like the group bonus was adding tons of exp. But I never tried it with a group of 2.

Do you have rule of thumb for the levels of the dungeons? What level should my low guy be in relation to the mobs for max exp?

Any special grouping arrangement that helps the exp? Anything different than character being leveled stands in spot x, mage kills abunch of mobs nearby at spot y? I remember reading about someone using a warlock to dot abunch of mobs, then zone out of the instance right before they die and the group was getting unpenalized exp.

Any info on the fastest way to do this would be great.

Thanks!

(woops just stopped lurking)

[Gallo]

Jrox, running through deadmines with my 70 warrior was super fast. Using Whirlwind and cleave and retaliation on huge packs of mobs, I cleared it quickly.

I'm going to do a run tomorrow with the 70 warrior + 4 new guys, and a run with 30 paladin + 4 new guys, and see which one has the better XP/hr.

I'll post my results.

[peejosity]

if you have a 70 Circle of Healig priest, on either ur 5th account or maybe even a 6th account, just have them stay out of the party so they don't steal XP and just heal your party as ur party pulls / dps'... makes things much easier!

[trainwr3ck]

A level 70 protection paladin is slower than a mage but can literally pull whole instances for a long time. Even when I was getting gear for my paladin, I ran my priest through all of BRD with him, including the seven undead dwarf bosses. Protection paladins can solo most of the old world instances. They're just a lot slower at it than a mage.

[Blokus]

You can use Warlock pets (and probably Hunter pets too, haven't tried) to help powerlevel characters.

You must have 2 or more lowbies grouped together and 1 or more warlocks ungrouped. Tag with the lowbies, and kill with JUST the Warlock pets. FULL XP for the kills for the lowbies. Don't use any Warlock damage spells or it will reduce XP.

It DOES NOT matter what the level difference is between the lowbies and the Warlocks. You will get FULL XP regardless!!

I have two Warlocks that just got to 70 this past weekend. I re-specced them to demo to get the Felguards. Now I'm using them to level a couple of Mages. All the toons follow one of the mages. I put that mage on autorun and go non-stop tagging and bagging. I don't stop to loot anything. It's very nice when it can be combined with a killing quest.

Mages are really good for this as lowbies, especially with 2 or more. I just run by some mob, tag it with Fire Blast from one mage which is instant and doesn't require stopping, and does immediate damage (i.e. not a DOT). I then send in the two Felguards. Quick kill. Fast enough that I keep running for the next mob and Fire Blast with the other mage. By that time the first mage's Fire Blast is off cooldown and ready for another mob.

The mages are in their low 30's and the kills are getting a little slower, so at some point the non-stop run-and-gun will come to an end. BUT then I'll have two mages who essentially have pets, LOL. I'll also have the Warlock's Fear and any other spells/abilities that don't cause damage.

Works only outdoors and not in instances of course, since the lowbies and Warlocks aren't grouped together.

Also it's best to have Cleave turned ON for the Felguards and they will kill faster. However, if you are in a really dense mob area ,turn Cleave OFF so you don't accidentally tag nearby mobs with the Pets since the lowbies won't get credit. I have turning Cleave on and off hotkeyed.

Is this method faster? Heck, I don't know but its a lot of fun!!

[Scribbler]

If you've got a 70 mage, you can get to level 43 in 16 hours /played.

http://edgeofnowhere.cc/viewtopic.php?t=367073

[Gallo]

So, I did a test for Deadmines today. Here's how it went:

*note that there was no rested xp on any characters.

4 lvl 20's + lvl 70 warrior: 26,000 xp / hr
4 lvl 20's + lvl 30 paladin: 8,500 xp / hr
4 lvl 21's (they dinged) + lvl 70 warrior: 20,000 xp/hr

For the first 2 runs, I skipped all loot except bosses. The last run I felt I could loot due to the fact that I proved my point.

Now, I'm wondering when the speed of using the warrior will stop being such an advantage compared to slowly going through with a paladin. I figure that I can cruise right through SM and get up to lvl 45-50 before I start to notice.