Powerlevelling in stratholme.

[daviddoran]

I went away and took a look at the video of the paladin soloing stratholme. It's almost as if stratholme was designed for the pally

After licking my wounds I decided to analyse my disasterous run, and the main cause of failure is down to the curse that stuffs up healing/eating and does damage over time (for 10 minutes).

Initially I thought I would bring my 70 shaeman and use it as a healbot for the hunter and I'm sure that would work.

However I think I'm going to level my 34 druid through to 46, to join my rogue on the run, just for the ability to remove curses.

I'll also bring a shedload of potions and a large bunch of bandages.

I am however going to start levelling a paladin as soon as possible. I think every multiboxer should have one.

Technically...all MB'ers should have 2 The 2nd to level up the 5th member of the team on the 1st paladin's account.

That's what I started doing. I realized quickly that questing a 5 man group gets boring after a while, and all I wanna do is get the next level of skills, not grind away mindlessly with the ones I already have, so i resorted to boosting.

Im boosting my second paladin right now, along with 3 locks that were kinda an accident, but now that I got em, they will be my "boosting" people. Locks make it easy to get lowbies to instances that they aren't really meant for (too low for summoning stone, 70 too high to use, etc) and they can hearth and be resummoned. Seemed like a good idea to me at least, and to make sure I will be able to summon any char on any acct, I made 3 locks. They also make for a nice dps trio for a pair of paladins (tank/heal) so i'm gonna try em out in heroics when I get a chance.

[shaeman]

Thought I would update my original thread.

I initially gave up on soloing stratholme on my hunter due to the massive nasty debuff of what I thought was a curse. I was looking at my level 40 paladin to see what ability removes curses - and found that they couldn't.

I realised that the debuff is actually a disease and that if i brought my level 70 shaman along he could remove that disease.

I never bothered going back (It was always a sort of to do later). Anyway last night my son decides he wants to get a crusader enchant on his 19 twink rogue, so having a look at the cost of mats I decided it might be better to do a farming run. I let my son control the shaman and I went in again with my hunter. Bearing in mind my son hasn't played the shaman, and he was playing it on the other computer that didnt have the macros or addons i use he was running the shaman in a very limited way (i.e pretty much as I would be if dual boxing).

Well - What can I say. The difference was absolutely amazing, and I had a hell of a lot of fun to boot.

Having my own healer and having the disease removed pretty much ensured I was able to take on each pack.

I can only imagine how much better it would be with a spread of totems and the odd fire elemental/ earth elemental being popped.

I cleared up to the first boss. (The one that turns in to a varimanthas style demon mid fight). Got about 7 shards from disenchanting and 3 rightous orbs.

So i am going to get the dual box setup for my hunter and shaman sorted and run this quite frequently.

The only issue I have is how the heck to get out of the instance after killing that first boss - can't just run out and reset unfortunately.

I may have to set my hearth to light hope chapel and run back and reset. Does anyone know an easy way out - or do you generally have to do a full instance clear.

So it looks like my level 47 rogue is going to get a fair bit of boosting in future (and my pally, druid, shadow priest team will be in there when they get to 45).

[Chibi]

mind sound a bit stupid, but get a lv 70 paladin to boost you through, my main is a holy paladin and every alt i boosted through scholo and strath goes really fast, the aoe damage ticks for loads when you got a paladin in T6 and the exp is quite a nice boost if you cba to level questing. Ofc im 5 boxing now so with my shamans I'd have to do it myself (so i prolly won't .... scholo has too much fear, strath too many enrage and cleave mobs and in cloth gear that won't be smart )
edit: to reply to the above person run back from where you entered the main entrance, when you arrive there go to the right gate (you went left to go scarlet) open that (double gate) kill the skellies there then go to the big opening right in front of you, you should now see the boss that drops the keys and 3 packs of skellies (and the chapel) that's the side entrance also known as undead site, you can kill the boss (not really needed) but you'll have to kill the skeletons guarding the gate on your right (aka the door that leads outside) kill them open up and your out.
unfortunatly you can't go out of the main entrance so you'll have to go out side entrance, reset and run back to the main entrance

[shaeman]

sadly the social side of aspect has died for me in recent months. With people quitting the game entirely, or until Wotlk or swapping faction entirely I've lost the group of people I could have called upon (mind you not many paladins amongst them).

So I'm stuck on getting a pally in to help out - but I actually had a lot of fun completing the run last night. So much so I want to do a few more runs, improve things.

I imagine bringing the rogue in will add complexity (namely at 47 the mobs are going to see through his stealth so he'll be stuck up the back of the instance within XP range. At least I have the shaman to res him too.

Thanks for the tip on the side entrance. I'll make sure I go out that way tonight just to find it.

[Naylix]

Ok - this is in no way an attempt to patronize or ridicule - it's an attempt to educate.

I have a lvl 70 hunter on both alliance side and horde side. (orc and draenei) I solo Strat for money at times (Greater Eternals sell for 20g+ atm) I make the 45 minute Baron timer every time, with somewhere between 5-7 minutes to spare. I kill almost all trash on the way, for the greens which are the real money here.

I'm fairly well equipped, meaning Karazhan/Gruul and badge-gear. Oh, and a few S3/S4 gladiator pieces.

Easiest way to do this: spec 41/20/0 (BM cookiecutter, key elements are imp pet res, imp mend pet, focus and pet dmg talents, and GfTT in MM) - have a lvl 70 bird with max rank screech + growl (no, NOT claw, NEVER claw for aoetanking) and Dive. Imp Mend Pet is godly, as it cleanses a debuff every other tick. If you furthermore have 2 pieces of T5 (I don't) then you will slice through that instance with even more time to spare. run with Aspect of the Viper constantly, mana regen is key aswell.

If you do get the debuff, so you can't eat and it ticks for 150 every 10 seconds... well, here's where those countless stacks of netherweave cloth comes in handy. Whenever you get down to 60% health or so, wait for a tick from the disease, and click bandage. 3400health restored before the next tick. looting corpses for greens reveal quite a few 700-900 healthpots on the way, just chainchug those aswell, since they are worthless to a vendor. Mana should not become an issue, if it does, you're spending mana on in-efficient shots. The only shots you need, are steady and the occasional multi.

Ofc, if you are not diseased, pop the cheap manapots that drop on the way, to keep you going even faster. Spirit Bond can be a boon here, as 2% of max health restored every 10 seconds is enough to counteract the disease by itself. Though I prefer those talent points in focused discipline or whatever it's called.

Lastly, before the baron, outside the slaughterhouse, about 40 or 50 tiny skellies spawn in a stream - drop a Explosive trap before they spawn, let your pet pick them up BEFORE they reach you and the trap, let the pet tank them until your cooldown on traps are ready, then cast Volley on top of the pack, while pulling your pet back to you. as soon as they hit the explosive trap, drop another one and toss 1 holy water/ez-trho dynamite on their heads and the pack is gone. the 2 traps take out about 70% of their health alone.

For Baron, just nuke and multishot when the summoned skellies are close to him. - pop all cooldowns, and misdirect to the bird, and he goes down faster than Balinda in AV.

[Tonuss]

I only ran Stratholme once to PL my team of alts. Prior to that I spent a lot of time clearing Scholomance for them. I used a level 70 enhancement spec shaman geared in a mix of Kara/S2/badge epics, nothing very fancy really. Having two healers (paladin and priest) gave me a good safety net, though I did not need them most of the time. It's slow going for a shaman though. Without good AoE you are forced to work your way through the packs one mob at a time. But I cleared it, both live side and dead. Scholo seemed easier to run.

Exp was decent but since I only ran my teams on the weekend (and would skip weekends sometimes) they usually had full rested exp and they always had a group bonus. I think they capped out at 556 exp per kill at 48, and were getting 548 or so at 58/59, if I am remembering correctly.

[Deadly1]

Just my thoughts, but I am boosting in a similar level range, and my Beast Master Hunter is using BRD for the runs, the pulls are pretty easy, there are a lot of nice drops.

Its nice to complete the key quest line so you can use the "back doors" to run the instance, but my toons pull good XP, and lots of cash. I run a dis-enchanter and gathering the Greens/Runecloth/recipe drops and occasionally blues/epics have made it a great run.

I know this doenst speak to your direct issue in Sch, but just as an alternative option... your low lvls can enter as low as 40, which is a pretty big agro range, but do able.