Powerleveling Advice

[Giblet]

Hi!

Just discovered this site a few days ago and already it's helped me tremendously!

My situation is this: On one account I have a 60 shaman and a 64 priest. I got a second account that has a 25 mage. I want to level up the mage as fast as possible so I've been grouping him with the priest and doing quests, Shadowfang Keep, Wailing Caverns, but not really grinding on mobs.

It seems like my mage gets very little xp per kill. The max so far seems to be about 30-50xp max per trash mob in an instance with bosses giving like double or triple that. Granted things were mostly green to the mage in WC at lvl 25, but I'm wondering if this has anything to do with him being grouped with a 64 priest. Would having him solo and AOE camps in various places while the priest just stands there and heals provide better xp?

I thought about taking the priest/mage to higher lvl instances, but the mage would get aggro too easy and be unable to put out enough dps. The priest would be spending all his time both killing mobs and keeping the mage alive.

Should I get the 60 shaman involved? Anyone doing a shaman/mage combo?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Steph]

Hello Giblet,

when you are grouped with a higher level character your XP rate suffers significantly as described by you above. This is by design.

The same effect applies in a bit more limited manner if you are not grouped but receive assistance, for example your low level character attacks a mob and damages it, then your highlevel character kills it. The lowlevel character will not get full credit for that kill. It is the same for healing as well.

This effect stops once the level difference is sufficiently small. I forgot the exact value but it is something like 5-6 levels.

Cheers, Steph.

[shockbeta]

You're best bet, and fastest way to level is to power through all the quests. Grinding on mobs can be decent xp, but when you can accomplish 5-10 quests an hour the quest xp is always better. The quest xp is not affected by helped recieved or who you're grouped with. With that in mind you're mage could be put on follow and priest could just annihilate everything, and only using your mage to pickup quest items and the such.

There are a lot of guides out there for powerleveling, some say about 4 days to hit 60. Most of these guides have quests and locations layed out for you. Most of them concentrate on getting quests done, and only have you grinding if you're not at a certain lvl before moving on. This could be the case with your combo as the mobs that would give decent xp solo, won't while grouped with high level. To offset that, you are able to do all the quests they say to skip because they're to hard to solo. you don't really need a guide to get the most out of it. Although some good ones make it so you don't have to lookup locations as they put them right in there for you, and even list in order what to do quests. Tell you which ones, and what you're looking for in an area. What I would do with lacking a guide is just get every quest you could for an area, then run around wreaking havoc.

Good luck

[Micah]

If you power through quests like that you will quickly run out of quests to do and then you are stuck grinding.

The best way I have found to power level a character is with a healer as backup because heals don't reduce XP gain. In the case of a mage, AoEing helps a lot. Gather up a bunch of creatures and have the priest just spam flash heal on the mage while he AEs them. Also, you can follow a traditional leveling guide (Joana's Guide for example) and just keep the priest on follow constantly topping off your mage. With a strategy like this you can go with a non-traditional spec that maximizes damage done instead of survivability.

Unfortunately, outside of AoE grinding powerleveling a mage is one of the harder classes because they are limited by mana instead of health, like most classes (warrior, hunter, paladin, rogue, warlock are all *really* easy to power level with a priest/paladin/shaman/druid backup because you can spec pure damage and skip all damage reduction talents/gear).

[Kyosakana]

Having done this exact sort of thing twice on two characters, I would say your best bet is to group your low level with your high level, and speed run yourself through instances. I was able to get up to Uldaman doing this. The XP gain is nerfed because of the level difference, but when your chugging thrugh elites that fast, you still gain about a level an hour. Just make sure the mobs in the instance are orange or above, and you should be fine. Also make sure your power levelee stays within range to get credit for the kills.

[Yarddog]

As Micah said above, one way is to run a lowbie with a high-level healer (priest or whatever) and just cast heals since they don't reduce XP. Be sure, though, to NOT party with your healer otherwise your XP will be reduced. With a priest this means you can't shield your lowbie since PWS can only be used on group members, but its not that big of a deal.

Of course if you don't have a high level healer, its time to start working on one ...........

[Yarddog]

An advantage to using a high level priest with lowbies is the ability to gain aggro on multiple mobs with the priest but not tag them with the priest. This is useful when your lowbie gets too many adds. Just throw up a shield on your priest (and you might also have to throw a heal on your lowbie) and this will attact all of them to the priest except the one the lowbie is currently fighting. Your priest can just stand there doing nothing while shielded and your lowbie can take on the mobs one at a time.

With this technique, there is no fear in running your lowbie into a large group of mobs. Of course as the level gap narrows between your lowbie and the priest, this technique becomes less effective and more dangerous.

Again, DON'T group your lowbie with your priest, otherwise you might as well just kill things with the priest as the XP will be the same regardless which character makes the kill.

[stompershock]

I think this method is by far the best, Using a resto spec shaman that can cast earth shield, it has 10 charges and this method works all the way up to lvl 60 and never gets mitigated. I did it on a hunters pet from 54-60 on elites and questing and it rocked. Plus its sooooo easy to double box or even quad box, cast ES on one and create heal macros for the others. But a priest renew is almost as good

[forcetrainer]

/nods

Definitely the easiest is grouping with a high-level healer. I've done this with friends before dual-boxing, and it was always the easiest. The other thought was to power grind quests, but unfortunately you'll run out of quests quickly since you're not gaining XP from the kills.

I would also recommend one of the guides out there (Joana's Horde or Brian Kopp's Alliance). No, I'm not affiliated with them, but they have done a nice job of making questing for levels easier. Grinding gets extremely boring, and with the quest guides you can burn through things without fear of death.

[ocaTwins]

Another good possibility is running instances with a fast killing class like rogue, fury warrior or hunter.

A level 60 character for all twinks up to level 40 and a level 70 character for all instances past that. The reason for the higher level in later dungeons simply is the killspeed or exp/hour you want to achieve.

Always start the instances early:
Deadmines 15-20
Stockades 20-25
Gnomeregan 25-30
Scarlet M. 30-40

I suppose you could continue with Zul'Farrak and Sunken Temple up to 50 and then Dire Maul. I would favor Dire Maul over Strat or Scholomance because of the easier pulls imo. Though I have not advanced that far yet.