Looking for leveling strategies for cata and mop

[Ravenoff]

I've just towed my first WoW RAF teams to level 80 via my sole lvl 90 main through instance boosting and will soon be granting levels to complete 5 box clone teams.

But - what are the strategies for cata and mop questing for 5 boxers?

My 90 main druid went the Vashj'ir route and I spent a lot of time on quest chains that seem inappropriate for boxers - like the Ruins of Vashj'ir where a large portion of time is spent "vehicled" as the battlemaiden. Then I finished up in Uldum, where quests seemed a bit more boxer friendly, then I went straight to mop.

I completely skipped Mount Hyjal, Deepholm, and the Twilight Highlands, so I'm hoping for mix and match quest strategies to avoid slowdowns while boxing.

I completed MoP before the XP bolstering, but still had only done 10 quests in Townlong Steppes before dinging and never touched quests in the vale or the dread wastes. Again, hoping for strategies to avoid slowdowns for boxers.

Any input on the least painful method?

[luxlunae]

I'd do hyjal and the first two instances, then if you want grind in deepholm. I would never try to box vashj'ir, the sheer quantity of gather is painful. If I were you I'd probably do the zones I didn't see with the druid hyjal > deepholm > highlands. Catas going to be painful at times though, just the way it is. You can't skip gather quests just because you don't want to do them. They dangled shared gather credit in front of our noses a patch or two ago, but then yanked it away.

I'd only play them when they have rested though, and work on the rest of your RAF teams while you still have RAF.

[Mickthathick]

My only comment is to not spend too much time grinding, Blizzard's new bot-detection systems seem to be based on time spent doing repetitive activities and seem to be pinging innocent players who spend too much time farming/grinding.

[Blubber]

I personally really enjoyed Hyjal on my mixed team, I did the occasional dungeon and generally enjoyed it. My route was hyjal > deepholm > twilight, did every dungeon along the way.

Now mop is a different beast, at least for me, I really hate questing. I'm currently running dungeons to get to 90, but it's not easy. The XP is not that good, and some of the mechanics are either very hard or completely impossible. Maybe questing is a better bet, I don't really know.

And as luxlunae said, only quest and run dungeons when they are rested.

[Khatovar]

Now mop is a different beast, at least for me, I really hate questing. I'm currently running dungeons to get to 90, but it's not easy. The XP is not that good, and some of the mechanics are either very hard or completely impossible.

I couldn't disagree with this more. Dungeons in MoP are a cakewalk compared to Cata for me. I don't even think I managed to do a single dungeon in Cata at "appropriate" gear level and I'm fairly certain there are at least 3 that I never completed at all, even after the expansion was in the death throws before MoP was released. The mechanics were just too much of pull these levers and cure this and run away from that and pray these two things don't happen back to back and keep these CCd while 2 other "team members" do these things ... 90% of anything I accomplished in Cata dungeons all felt like dumb luck or outgearing. Very little of it felt like skill and all the practice in the world wasn't going to get me through the walls I was running up against.

Conversely, I was able to complete all the MoP dungeons in quest gear with very little issue. And while questing wasn't great, at least you could skip stuff and do different areas.

[Ravenoff]

Speaking of PITA gathering quests - how affective is loot-a-rang? While it requires 490 engineering to make, it says it only requires 125 engineering to use and its bind on use, so a single high level engineer should be able to distribute it to lowbish engineers.

I'm getting some spotty details on its workings - can one get away with /targetlasttarget? a comment on wowhead said it doesn't require a target as of 5.2, but I would expect a mouseover or something. (and its cast time was reduced to .1 seconds)

If it works the way I hope it does, with AOE looting, a global macro for all toons with this could make gathering quests less painful.

my engineering isn't high enough yet to try.

[JohnGabriel]

Speaking of PITA gathering quests - how affective is loot-a-rang? While it requires 490 engineering to make, it says it only requires 125 engineering to use and its bind on use, so a single high level engineer should be able to distribute it to lowbish engineers.

I'm getting some spotty details on its workings - can one get away with /targetlasttarget? a comment on wowhead said it doesn't require a target as of 5.2, but I would expect a mouseover or something. (and its cast time was reduced to .1 seconds)

If it works the way I hope it does, with AOE looting, a global macro for all toons with this could make gathering quests less painful.

my engineering isn't high enough yet to try.

IWT works well in WoW, no need for the lootarang thing.

[Khatovar]

I use mouse passing or IWT depending on the situation. Now that WoW has AOE looting, it's much easier.