Grinding Heroics

[Drommon]

I wanted to avoid the collection quest nightmare in Northrend so I solo leveled my tank (warrior) in Alterac Valley to 80th level. I am going to use him to tank instances and herioc instances from BC through wrath. I have some questions regarding this.

Do you still get XP in the BC heroics?
Am I going about this in an efficient manner? (subjective I know but any input is helpful).

My team is listed in the signature. Any input regarding them would be helpful too.

Thank you,

Drommon

[Zal]

I would just multibox AV and do kill quests between queues. I gained 3 levels yesterday doing this (77-80). Grinding BC heroics would suck because they're not your level.

[Drommon]

XP in BC Heroics? Yes, to a point. Normal level XP rules apply.

Efficient manner? No. See 1st point.

Run instance that are in your level range. That's all you need to do.

Thanks Fur. What would be a good instance to start with? I was thinking Sethekk halls...

[Drommon]

I would just multibox AV and do kill quests between queues. I gained 3 levels yesterday doing this (77-80). Grinding BC heroics would suck because they're not your level.

How do you manage 5 toons in the BG? I have seen 5 shamans in the BG several times. But a team like mine? With different level brackets?

[Raskaz]

I would still try to get a few quests in between instances since getting your team to 80 by just doing instances is as much a chore as just doing quests.

BC isn't really that bad when it comes to quests since you have quests hubs whereas in wotlk you basically can't avoid certain collections quests in order to unlock the follow-ups so you might take advantage of that as long as your toons are still in that lvl range.

When you hit 70 on your toons you might even get a few bosses down in Kara. The xp isn't that great but it's really fun (did that with my lvl 80 tank and 4x70s)

[Drommon]

Well I took the team into Mana Tombs for a trial run. They did well with the mage dying twice against the mana wyrms. The run took 80 minutes. Some time was spent creating new macros and optimizing others. The warrior did a good job of CC with devastate (AOE stun affect), the rest of the party just DPSed the mobs down... very fast. Overall the 66th level toons gainied 27% of a level from the mobs before quest turn ins and looted 57g of grey items plus everyone earned consortium rep. Not bad in my opinion. Actually I am happy with the way things turned out. I know that mana-tombs isn't the hardest instance or even hard at all. But it was a good first run to test the waters of this group make up. It appears that I will have to run instances 3-4 times to level my toons. Although this may change as I get higher in level. I have also decided to do the quests associated with the instance as that gives more xp and some rares.

Now for some group optimization ->

My priest is shadow/disc and I was thinking of making her Holy/disc or Disc/holy. Any suggestions here?

My Mage is Arcane (all talents in arcane so far). I am thinking of making him Frost/arcane. Any suggestions?

Or any suggestions in general in regards to group makeup?

Thanks,

Drommon

[Jubber]

I find that its best to do a mix. Quests give you tons of gold on a 5 boxing group. Also is your grind with purely rested xp. Do you plan on letting them regain rested or just grinding all the way cuz that will slow down quite a bit once you are out of rested and only grinding instances.

[Drommon]

I find that its best to do a mix. Quests give you tons of gold on a 5 boxing group. Also is your grind with purely rested xp. Do you plan on letting them regain rested or just grinding all the way cuz that will slow down quite a bit once you are out of rested and only grinding instances.

I agree with doing a mix. I just want to avoid the collection quests in NR as much as I can. Doing the NR collection quest while dual boxing my warrior and priest is an experience I do not wish to repeat. Eventually I just BGed my warrior to 80. I will do some quests, but mostly quests that pertain to the instance. I will also do the easy collection and kill quests. I do enjoy doing the instances, they are not a grind (for me). As for rested Xp.. well since I only can play 60-90 minutes a day M-F and about 4 hours on weekends... I haven't had a problem with getting rested XP. But yeah, I see what you are saying.

Drommon

[daviddoran]

at 65 you can go into UK on regular, so I'd go that route. With an 80 tank you should be ok. I'd dual spec the priest holy/shadow. Holy priest is pretty easy to box for heals. On my dps button my holy priest has a sequence, with mostly ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,renew,,,,,,,,,,,prayer of mending etc and that does the job for most trash pulls, and i just manually throw a big or small heal on the tank, and press a few aoe heal buttons. Hell probably with a dps warrior and priest, you probably wont need much if any healing for a while. I 'd suggest grinding the mage/lock/druid in UK until they hit 71, then take the 4 of them into AV until your priest hits 80, then just do the 3 of em. Just keep the warrior and priest near a summoning stone and do instances when you are tired of AV, or you need some more gear. I used a prot pally and a holy priest to grind up 3 locks from 70-80 using almost entirely instance grinding. I had all the blue caster gear by the time I was done.

[Drommon]

Thanks for the tip Daviddoran. I recently thought about doing UK, but decided on Mana Tombs as a trial run. I agree that the warrior/priest combo in the group is the core part with the rest just adding DPS as needed. I am going to try UK tonight. I will let you know what happens. I bet I am in for a surprise and will have to adjust formations and macros. I seem to have to do that for every instance I run.