Even if you're boosting, don't forget to pick up any quests you do in instances, even if they need a couple of prequests. The XP they give is well worth it. Getting a bit of variation and doing more of the instances also lets you do more of these quests. The ones you do in BFD for example will ding you a whole level.

While you'll go a lot faster not looting in instances, if you get an addon called lootfilter, you can just grab everything in the huge pile of mobs your 80 AoEd, and it'll drop all the worthless stuff for you, leaving you with just the green items, cloth, and other stuff that you can sell or use to work on the party's trades. Tailoring is the easiest levelled doing this, but if you do WC those huge piles of looted mobs are also great for working on skinning.



While it may not be the quickest way to do it, the way I've gone for gives a lot more variation than repeated boosting, and quite a few bonuses.

At the moment I'm levelling a group of 1 paladin and 5 shaman without RaF or boosting, just by doing all the instances (which is pretty fun). In fact they levelled so fast up to 32 they were ahead of the instance difficulty most of the time (taking a break from instances for a couple of levels before trying SM:Armory), and I didn't turn in a couple of the instance quests they'd done, just so the next instance would pose some kind of challenge. The benefit of this is I get a nice easy learning curve on using the group together, as they get abilities gradually, and I can work out how to use them a few at a time. It's also saving me having to write macros for everything all at once, I just add a few lines at a time.

I'm also levelling their trade skills as I go, and having them all supporting each other is great. The enchanting especially is always maxed, with all the crafted greens from tailoring, leatherworking and blacksmithing being DEed for mats (and the party is always enchanted and wearing crafted gear too). The only grind is mining and herbalism, but with the whole party together mobs aren't a problem while searching, even into higher levelled areas, so you aren't slowed down by running into them as much (and it's a way to get some XP/level skinning). I was running into level 40 mobs on a party of 33s in Badlands, while mining and picking herbs, and could still kill them (and skin them too). I did take the quest to get 30 coyote jaw bones, on each character (so 150 jaw bones to get. At least for this one it's a guaranteed drop every time), but figured I'd be there a while grinding the mining and herbalism up, I needed a load of leather for leatherworking, and the XP for that one quest was pretty good, because it was rated 7 levels higher than the party members. The XP from over 150 kills credited to each party member was also better than a single player would get for doing just 30. I still do collection quests occasionally, and it's not so bad when you have 4 other players helping you kill things fast, and you can always watch TV while you do it, because there isn't really much threat (I did aggro a roaming 55 elite out there in Badlands, but I just kept running until it de-aggroed, and rezzed the 4 members of the party it had managed to kill).

With this team I'm also looting everything. When the main's bags are full the contents gets split up between the alts (/script AcceptTrade(); macro on all characters helps loads for this). One gets greys and other junk to sell, one gets greens to DE (and any useless BoP items), another gets crafting mats, with one spare for whatever fills up first.

It may take me longer to level them this way than boosting, but at least it gives me some variation, and I'm getting to see a huge amount of game lore in the instances (which are so much better done boxed, because you can do the whole lot at your own pace, instead of what you'd be doing with other players being in a rush, or dragging their heels). I won't have to grind up professions all the way once they ding 80, and I'll have all but 1 profession covered by my party of 5.