Leveling with 5 man team

[itz4blitz]

Edit: @nodoze, nice guide I'll be sure to utilize this going forward (and on my next comp)

This is going of memory, but what I believe has worked best for my comp:

SM from 20 till about 24/25. Be sure to kill the casters with your team dropped off in back as they do Flamestrike, big pulls with the miners. Watch for Miner Johnson as he drops a nice Shield for the tank. My mages were frost here.

Stocks from 25-32. I really noticed an "uptick" in XP here (in the 30-40k XP/hr range) at the higher levels when I could pull multiple rooms. I used a paladin tank so I can't speak on a Warrior, but at 26-ish I got Blessing of Sanctuary for my holy paladin and that made a big difference on allowing me to get enough aggro to make big pulls and burn them down fast with fire mages. I also want to point out that I tried using arcane, frost, and finally fire here and fire was by far the best implementation. Once you get Blast Wave, it's gonna be a game changer. Essentially I would get 2 consecrates down then begin my flamestrike, let it tick, get another, and then pop-off a frost nova, followed by arcane explosions at the end to prevent runners. It's worth nothing that you want to pull groups to the very back of the room and get your tank to put his back against the wall to prevent crits. Once you get blastwave on the mages, and your tank gets geared and your healer can keep up, you should be able to pull 2 or more rooms. Using blessing of freedom can come in handy here at the latter levels. This is a good dungeon to also invest on some Swiftness potions for the tank to do faster pulls in and out of the rooms.

SM from 32-46/48: Graveyard was a bit of a slump for me. I should've taken swiftness potions in there, but it's a learning experience. I expect my next comp to 60 to be a lot faster based on what I've learned. I believe I switched from Graveyard over to Library at around level 36 or 37. From there you'll be able to make bigger and bigger pulls. In fact I was able to again, get up to really high XP/hr with massive pulls. It got so high that I didn't start Armory until like level 38-39 I THINK (it's been a while so I could be off here). Cathedral is somewhere I haven't spent a lot of time. Because I don't have an eye of kilrog and priest it's been hard to make pulls. You'll want to use that first hallway to line of sight the mobs in the courtyard. Again, utilize swiftness potions. For the paladin I like to also incorporate my bubble to get bigger pulls. You have to make sure you keep your range over 10 yards from the mobs once you group them as the casters do arcane explosion and it does stack and do a lot of damage.

I'm just starting ZF so I can't give you a ton of feedback there, but push into the high 40's like I indicated above before you go there. It's not easy. Be sure you're ready to decurse on your mages/priest because of the hexes and be prepared to target totems. I created a target totem macro. It works but it's not perfect yet. It's going to take more time.

That's my experience in nutshell. I'm not saying it's what you should do but it's what I've found that works best based on my 2 x paladin 3 x mage comp. I can't stress enough how good fire is once you get using it. Frost just doesn't do the damage output that you'll want. If you create a camera/auto cast flamestrike macro, it will help a lot in Stocks and parts of SM like Armory and Library but I wouldn't recommend it in Cathedral and beyond. You'll need to set a range between yourself and the mobs. Best of luck and hope this helps.