Instance Boosting Question

[Owltoid]

Although boosting with the DK is probably working well, you can boost with your druid if your gear is solid enough. Just grab as many mobs as you can and starfall. I can take out SM Cath in two pulls, though I'm sure many can do it in one.

[rebelred]

Although boosting with the DK is probably working well, you can boost with your druid if your gear is solid enough. Just grab as many mobs as you can and starfall. I can take out SM Cath in two pulls, though I'm sure many can do it in one.

LOL. Actually the DK was FAIL. He couldn't kill fast enough and my low levels were getting 1-2 hit. I'd miss 1 guy and that was it. And he can't rez, so it became a nightmare. Thankfully, my main is an 80 resto Druid. I swapped him in and just moonfired the place to hell. My guys died once each, but a simple rez fixed it (I keep my guys on follow and just mow through the place).

His gear is heroics + some 25-man naxx stuff, so he's good to go. I'll probably switch back to DK later on when my toons can take a couple hits in case of odd aggro (DKs cool downs can come at wrong time).

[elsegundo]

you might want to get your DK in there to kill the guys in the beginning, at least so none of your lowbies will pull aggro by being too low.
the trick with lowbies is this, bring the mobs to them. dont have them follow you.
in vc, i'd go around and grab everyone in the cave, as i run back to the beginning, they would all be attacking the main instead of the lowbies.
in vc, mobs die too fast to spread diseases, so just DnD them. spread one disease if you get lucky and find an elite. most miners are non-elite.

[Souca]

What level is the DK? I spent the weekend boosting on my 80 prot geared DK and it was insanely fast. I think a lot has to do with the spec though. I spent a good deal of time coming up with a spec just for boosting. The main idea is that you want to be able to pick up mobs without hitting them, hence the need for Unholy Blight. The next important thing is to get the most damage to every mob, not just one. You are basically trying to do even damage to every mob instead of burst to a few. I set up a special macro that I use through SM to prevent me from killing a mob before I can spread my diseases.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=target Icy Touch, Pestilence, Bloodboil
/stopattack

Ocasionally I'll still get a white swing in and one shot things, but most times this allows me to get Frost Fever up and spread it to al of the mobs and then Bloodboil them for some nice spike damage. If the cooldown is up, I drop a Death and Decay and then just reapply again.

For anyone who is interested, here is my build: Boosting DK Build
Here is my armory: Lithanna Armory
Route: Quest to 10, SFK to 20, SM Cath to 40, ZF to 45, Strath to 55, Ramparts to 60.
Time: ~1 hour to 10, 12-17 minutes per SFK, 7 minutes per SM Cath, 20ish minutes per ZF, 1 hour 20 minutes for complete Live and Dead side Strath, 20ish minutes per Ramparts (Some times are iffy since I wasn't focused on them. All include reset to reset times.)

If there is enough demand, I could write up a guide to how I handle boosting with this character. Even taking time to loot and slacking around a lot I got characters to 60 in just over 19 hours.

- Souca -

[rebelred]

My DK is 80, but he's a 32/39 DPS build for heroics. I really didn't want to screw with him much since I'm playing him daily.

I leveled as unholy, so I'm familiar with using UB, et al. I'm going to probably use him when I hit SM and try again.

Just did first stockades run (hate that place) and got 75% of a level (16 - 16.75) in about 20 minutes or so. I started leaving my guys in a zone and bringing mobs to em. Been ages since I've been to these instances.

My times are sucky because I'm learning how to do this and trying to remember instances. Still think I'm leveling faster than straight dual questing.

[Souca]

Yea, I also had a helper who a let refer my first account. If he is online I just boost at least one character linked to him and then another pair of mine. Makes it easier if he can move them around.

Another thing I found that makes a huge difference is Blessing of Sanctuary. 20 runic power per doge/parry is insane and means I can pretty much have a corpse explosion every cooldown.

- Souca -

[rebelred]

I might try your build and any tips soon. I can always respec my DK later and honestly I've taken a break from endgame because I'm finding this more enjoyable.

If you've got any other tips (instance or DK), I know I'd like to know.

Thanks

[Souca]

Well, I'm thinking I might frapps a group from 1 to 60 and write up a guide to go with it. Obviously I'd speed some of the footage up

I'll be starting with horde just because that's where my 80s are right now, but aside from starting zones, most things would be the same.

The main tips I have that I think of right now are the following:

• SFK at level 10. RFC tapers off to quickly, and Stockades has too many mobs that stun. There are few immune mobs and silences in SFK, but they are minor annoyances at worst.
• SM Cath at 20. The main problem is that you can clear the whole place in 3 pulls and finish it too fast. After your fifth clear, ~40 minutes, you have to sit around for 20 more minutes before you can go back in. I'm going to see if Armory is worth adding in to cut down on the number of resets. Might not be an option on PvP servers if you are Alliance.
• For Strath, you need some way to remove diseases or have a healer that you are boosting. There is a disease that reduces health regen by 100% and because the way food works now you can't eat to get health back. It lasts 10 minutes so you will need a way to get healed back to full or have it cleansed.
• If you can boost a Pally in the group, spec them prot. Once they get Sanctuary, you shoudl macro a key to have them cast it on the DK. This pretty much guarentees you will always have a full RP bar. For shorter run you can just park one outside the isntance, but longer runs make that difficult.
• Perma ghoul is your friend. Mine manage to hold two Destroyers in Ramparts last night and actually killed them while I dealth with a big pack. In a worst case scenario you can sack him for 40% health and summon another one right away.
• Looting will slow you down. It will also make you lots of money and in Strath it will give you lots of Runecloth to get all that rep you didn't earn questing. This is a personal call you can make. Sometimes Iloot everything on the DK, sometimes I loot BoPs on the followers, and sometimes I just burn through.
• Have fun with it. Even when it goes fast, it gets boring. Make sure you don't burn yourself out with it cause then you won't finish or you'll not want to play the characters you boosted.
• Boosted characters are expensive. Even if you loot everything, chances are you will end up spending more money on training class skills than you bring in. Even questing up a 5 box group doesn't pay for all the skills they can learn.
• Outlands can be fun if you are still wearing the starter area grey chest

I'll try and start writing these things down, but if you find somethign else works better for you, I'd love to hear it. Part of the fun for me is trying to get this all down and optimized, but then again I have at least 30 some characters horde side alone I plan to boost.

- Souca -

[rebelred]

I'm alliance PVE so no issues.

Just ran stocks 4-5 times (forgot) and got my duo from 15 (0 bars) to 20.

Think I spent half the time on the ground from those stupid hammer guys. I mean come on. I'm 80 and they are 23 and I couldn't get up (like 10 of em on me plus about 20 other guys). Blah.

After I got used to it, stockades was fairly easy.

As for Strat, I run that with my DK from time to time on undead side from service entrance trying to get the mount. There's never that stupid disease when running from there. Is it really worth starting at the beginning?

I'm not worried about cost too much. I have multiple 80s, profs (2 JCs max too) and other stuff. Even set up my own guild with GB.

So according to your advice, I'm going to try SM Cath in a little bit and see if I can't get them to 40 tonight. I've got about 5 hours or so to play I think. I'll probably fail and get to 21 lol.

I know ZF fairly well and know that will be an easy roll for me. This is so much better than questing. I did another duo from 1 - 22 with 4 levels boosting and it still took me much, much longer.

Thanks for your tips and advice. I'd love to get into horde RaF DBing when I'm finished, my next DK is going to be horde (ORC FTW). :thumbsup:

[Souca]

I did a couple SFK runs this morning and recorded them. This isn't the best example, but it should give you an idea of how I run SFK with 4 followers in tow.

SFK Boosting Run - 151MB, 6:19, Xvid AVI

The video is a sped up video of two back to back runs. I included the run back, since it will be something that you have to do. I messed up a couple times, but the followers never died. I did have to go back and get two that fell off follow in the first run, but they didn't loose too much XP. Female Tauren tend to get stuck on lots of things.

While this is a rough video, I would be interested in any feedback so that any videos I do in the future can be more useful to others. If needed, I can create a thread in the movies sections.

- Souca -