60-80 : 4 shamans 1 mage... leveling / spec advise plz

[Decadence]

I have 4 Shamans and 1 Mage that are all currently 62.
I got to outlands at 58ish and have almost all of hellfire complete (except the instances)

Currently my specs are:
4 Shamans : Full Elemental
1 Mage : Full Fire

Should I be grinding instances (like Ramps?) or should I be continueing to quest (which seems very slow). If I do instances should I swap my mage over to arcane due to agro issues (she makes a horrible tank at the moment)

Should I be grinding quests in another zone? what zone order should I do? The only quests I know by heart are Hellfire / Nagrand.

My plans were to level in outlands till 68 then switch over to northrend, unless there is better options out there.

[Bot]

when i solo leveled outlands recently i quested from 58 to 68 and this was the zone order:

hellfire
zangarmarsh
terrokar
nagrand
and a tiny bit of blades edge

that put me at 68.

but with a 5 man team i dont know how well your efficiency will scale.
one question i have is why dont you have a proper tank?

[Decadence]

Because I have a 80 ulduared paladin, 80 naxxed druid, 80 naxxed warrior... i dont need more tanks.

I'll switch to 80 pallyx1 80 shamanx4 when I get there... i just want the mage for pvp.

[Bot]

ah sounds good i was just curious

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I've taken to skipping terokkar lately and don't miss it a bit. I do:

Hellfire (usually hit 62-63 before I leave here, including having run ramps and blood furnace for the quest completions).
Zangar (usually 64-65 before leaving, including slave pens and underbog quests)
Nagrand (do the ring of blood ASAP for the nifty weapon)
Blade's Edge (I skip the wyrmcult nets/whelps quests but do the rest)
Then it's a toss-up between shadowmoon and netherstorm if I haven't already hit 69/70. Roughly similar gear upgrades either spot. More faction (from signets) for scryers in netherstorm, and aldor in shadowmoon from what I've been able to tell.

As to whether instance grinding is better than questing, whichever bores you the most. Your group is kinda squishy in instances so quests might be the faster option. Grinding instances is mind-numbingly boring for me so I just run 'em for the quests and then go back to normal questing. The trick to grinding is stamina (i.e.: not gouging your eyes out with a spoon from boredom). The trick to questing is knowing what areas/quests to skip collections in. A tough choice, to be sure.

[HTeam]

I go ahead an knock out 68-70 doing all the easiest quests I can grab in netherstorm and maybe a bit in Shadowmoon Valley.

Very helpful on a pvp server as these zones are complete ghost towns. I've been getting ganked a bit in Borean.

Netherstorm in particular has a ton of quests in that little undead village. You can do nearly a whole level right in one place.

[daviddoran]

You might consider going frost on the mage, you should have much better CC ability, just lock down the enemies and nuke em with shaman. Maybe dual spec one shaman resto for bosses?

[Decadence]

I hit 62 on all of them today, did Ramps and was able to get to the last boss no problem... but the last boss' fire that he spits was unavoidable by me even with a fire resist totem... just not enough hp to take the hits and move quick enough.

I had to bring in my 80 paladin to finish the quest for the 4 shamans, I probably could have done it at 63-64. but attempting to get everything done ASAP. I'm planning on specing the mage frost either tonight or tomorrow to try things out, I just have to change spec / glyphs / macros in ISBoxer.

[Starbuck_Jones]

The dragon boss in hellfire can be blasted out of the sky before you start the encounter. Get him to 0hp, then start the encounter.

[daviddoran]

Thats how I do it. and it'd be way easier with 5 dps...