A bit of a silly question about 1-85 group w/o RAF.

[Jeremiah]

Sounds like someone bought 3 accounts and thus can't get RAF bonus :P

I'd say Druids would be the most fun and fastest to level. I've always been able to level a druid up to a days played time faster from 1-80, i presume it'd be a similar speed boost from 80-85.

You get your 5 x battle res's for low downtime in case you muck it up (which happens a lot to boxers experienced and amateur alike) and you can have your heals in your team. I find 5 x boomy to be quite fast and fun for PvE, 5 x kitties were quite popular for those playing PvP so I'd assume it'd be fun for PvP levelling.

Main bonus to druids levelling is their stealth ability. Makes skipping quest mobs a breeze and should increase your quest completed/hour experience rate.

I'd also agree with the suggestion of paladins, fun class to play, easy to learn.

Sometime I'm having quite a lot of fun with is warlocks. 5 x affliction locks, it's pretty much DoT everything you can see and keep running...no real downtime either. I would say 5 locks is easiest I've found. Next easiest is 5 x frost magi. 5 x Water eles, 5 x frostbolt, everything dies.

In terms of fun/ease, Magi/Warlock. In terms of speed, Druid/Paladin

[kate]

What would be the quicker way to level a group of 1-85 without boosting, RAF, and rest experience? Just starting from level 1, is there an ideal group to just brute force to 85? Doing instances or questing? Would you use the same classes, or different classes?

Thank you for the input in advance, and apologize for the silly question. This will most likely be my third team for trade skills once I have hit 85 with my cookie cutter pally and shaman team.

For your team, a good one can be:
Paladin - Tank, awesome buff (Blessing of Kings) and auras
Cloth - Either a priest or a mage. Priest gives you a really nice shield + a little extra passive healing & undead CC, while mage gives you ports, food, and more general CC. Or you could take both.
Fill out the rest of the team with 2 or 3 shaman - they do solid DPS, have decent healing even when in DPS spec, totems are lovely, and even better, they can reincarnate so if you wipe you can bounce right back up.

This team would generally be very easy to play and write macros for, and would be quite good at both questing and doing dungeons.

Once you pick your team, without RAF, heirlooms or boosting, it seems like questing is rather fast to go from 1-60 now, so mixing questing with doing each dungeon (get some nice gear there). Be in a guild that has the 10% bonus exp perk and it's even better.

I needed a break from Alliance, so I'm rolling a horde team right now that's Paladin, Priest and 3x Shaman - it's quite lovely.

[Whur]

Thank you everyone for the replies and input, and thanks ghonosyph for noticing my initial question. I have read everything, and it made me think more, I haven't gotten around to deciding yet. I love this community, you are all really helpful even to the newbies like myself! :-) I will give DKs another try a bit later on. I am not sure, it might be that they seem complex, but really I did not give it a real try!

[EDIT]: The reason for the delayed reply was that I am desperately trying to random instance to 80 with my 1x Paladin, and 4x Shaman (my first team). I have never done Cataclysm so far so it is all exciting. I am also solo playing my hunter in the roleplaying guild I am a member of, to experience all the quests and zones too. :-) Full up!