Leveling only using LFD?

[MMaroon]

I just leveled from 70 with my Shadow Priest that had been in mothballs since BC and I did it almost entirely through LFD, doing quests while in Q. It might have been that I'd never done that before, but I found it fun AND fast, faster than questing to be honest. And I had always thought questing was faster. The only downside for me was now I have to go back and grind rep that I missed on the way up. I'm still finishing up Therazane because I need the shoulder enchant. Of course, killing stuff is EASY in Deepholm as a lvl 85 with an avg iLvl of 351...

[Deleted]

Tanks can carry and do >50% of the groups dps, a healer (disc priest) can do ~25% once they hit atonement. I'd say grab a tank.

[Deleted]

Leveling only per LFD needs more time than "real" leveling, but if u still want to do it, i suggest a pala for tanking and heal. If u dont wanna play a pala, i would play a drood. So much fun jumping around and yell BOOOM!.

[hempaa]

i actualy leveld all my recent alts thru LFD/BG , you wont wana wait 1 hour or so, then go HEAL/TANK , heals being even faster ques than tanks, one often seen problem is terribad groups on both bg/LFD so choose a class that you can praticaly carry the other 4 , some of them are blood dk , disc priest, wel played hunter / mage, and others. GOOD LUCK

[Lilly32]

Just hope I dont get stuck with one of those tanks who thinks its funny to pull mobs 1-2 at a time. I remember clearing instances up to Outlands on my tanks in like 4-5 pulls.

[Somarlane]

Tank queues at low levels tends to be the same time as healers and dps, with healers maybe edging out tanks - so about 5-7 minutes? At content cap, tanks have the faster queue, followed by heals, then dps (YMMV). I leveled as disc priest and had a blast, but in the Cata dungeons I had to switch to holy because I couldn't keep up with the damage. (That was a couple patches ago, though, and there have been tweaks to the spec since.) Shaman was fun, too. Mail armor makes them more durable than a cloth healer; and totems like Mana Tide & Earth Elemental, when used at the right time, saved my group from wipes. Also, BLOODLUST! >:D

I just want to caution, however, that leveling entirely through dungeons can leave your character in a tough spot when it dings 80. My hunter ended up without the necessary average item level to make Mount Hyjal/Vashj'ir the appropriate difficulty (thank goodness for my tanking pet). She also couldn't queue in LFD until I bought her Cata greens from the AH at level 82.

[Condoner]

Just hope I dont get stuck with one of those tanks who thinks its funny to pull mobs 1-2 at a time. I remember clearing instances up to Outlands on my tanks in like 4-5 pulls.

I actually had to adopt a only pull what I could solo mentality, because a lot of healers would bitch at me for "going too fast" and would refuse to heal me until I slowed down.

I'm sure they would have loved to kick me, but when you make sure your group is always in combat, it's unpossible.

Edit: And with the old shield block, warriors used to be able to pull entire instances so long as the monsters could be killed in 10 seconds.

[Deleted]

I actually had to adopt a only pull what I could solo mentality, because a lot of healers would bitch at me for "going too fast" and would refuse to heal me until I slowed down.

I'm sure they would have loved to kick me, but when you make sure your group is always in combat, it's unpossible.

Edit: And with the old shield block, warriors used to be able to pull entire instances so long as the monsters could be killed in 10 seconds.

Oh tell me about it, I did a few ramparts on my DK tank. I did a 12 pull and we died and the healer said "What are you doing tank, why did you run out of range".
Its like...... where did he expect me to run?

Oh, and I died over 13 seconds - so it wasn't like he didn't have time to run over and heal me.

[Agallochh]

I tanked dungeons from 13 or whatever until 80. Then I quested to get better gear before doing dungeons once for the dungeon quests and then resorting back to quest grinding since 80-85 quests give a lot of exp, are easy, and usually have multiple quests in the same areas.

---------- Post added 2012-01-30 at 10:58 PM ----------

I actually had to adopt a only pull what I could solo mentality, because a lot of healers would bitch at me for "going too fast" and would refuse to heal me until I slowed down.

I'm sure they would have loved to kick me, but when you make sure your group is always in combat, it's unpossible.

Edit: And with the old shield block, warriors used to be able to pull entire instances so long as the monsters could be killed in 10 seconds.

On my paladin I could pretty much solo every dungeon I was in to begin with. My healers never had mana issues healing me, and I bet I did these dungeons faster than most people. I've been tanking since vanilla on my warrior, so bringing a paladin into the mix only made things easier.

I usually told healers to go to a DPS spec since I can keep myself alive with my plethora of c/d's and Word of Glory healing me for just about my max health.

[Nikkaszal]

Simple solution don't lifetap in combat unless you want to heal back up with drain life. It's not like you should ever have mana problems anyways...

See, you're exactly who I was talking about.

All it takes is a SINGLE HoT to cover Life Tap's damage. Once GCD. Minimal mana. That's all.

Maybe you don't realise that Warlock AoE eats up an absolute shit-ton of mana when spammed BECAUSE OF LIFE TAP.

[Bombkirby]

It doesn't feel quite as fast as questing or even doing CtA: WSG (or Random BGs after 40.) But it doesn't require much traveling...so I can see why some people would do it.

[Lilly32]

Up to level 35 in less than 24 hours played always queued in LFD while I quested. Just hope it stays as fast at 85 and I get lots of goodie bags like I did on my tank.

[DeusX]

I leveled my Hpala by doing LFD almost exclusively. It was fun to heal for me, but it had a definitive downside:
- no Therazane reputation for shoulders enchant, I had to become Inscriptionist to get past this problem.
- no quests done in Hyjal => no access to Molten front, no posibility to do the dailies there, no ilvl 365 loot (I dinged 85 when Firelands was relevant).
- other quests / reputation issues, not being phased correctly with my mates in some situations because I did not quest in certain zones.
- you have to do the Twilight Higlands starting quest chain to get access to the portal (relevant if you need to buy enchant recepies or if you need faster access).


Right now this stuff it's not that relevant, but in MoP i recommend a mixed leveling mode, do not skip quests because 2 main issues: reputation and phasing.

[Zka]

If you want to level only in LFD and want to be effective then take a friend and make a tank+healer pair. Pulling 2-3 groups up to lvl ~80 is pretty feasible if tank & healer are not clueless.
I'm (mostly) LFD leveling a druid, usually I'm healing. Most tanks are not pulling more than 1 pack and that's quite slow. Maybe they have bad experiences with healers, I don't know. Too bad that 50% of tanks who pull 3+ groups and don't even stop moving are very undergeared/unskilled. Getting a tank that is skilled and geared and knows how much he can pull is very rare in LFD. You will either get a lazy momma or a clueless rambo in LFD
As the guy above me said, don't skip Deepholm, or your Therazane rep will suffer. Everything else is irrelevant at the moment imho. Even Therazane isn't so important to be honest. It's the final tier and the increasing raid buff is here, minmaxing time is over unless you want heroic raiding.

[Deleted]

OK just decided to come back after a break since around 4.1 Going new account on a fresh server because being OP in full heirlooms gets old fast. Which would give me faster queue times and be easier? Tank or Healer? I played tanks before Bear, DK, 2 Paladins and they were a joke to play. In fact I have no clue why theres a "shortage" with 500% threat they are easier than DPS to play. But Id also like to try a healer out. Also I heard they added bags for queuing solo and completing heroics. Who usually gets more of them tanks or healers?

Also since I know my tanks pretty well if I do go healer should I go druid or shaman?

From my experience on Qing in low level dungeons (on dps) you need to wait on a healer longer than a tank therefor I'd say less Q times for healers.
Healing or tanking should be super easy in low level dungeons. I don't think I've ever wiped leveling unless people went crazy and pulled like 50 mobs. (Part of this is due to heirlooms.)

Not that experienced with healing so I can't comment on druid vs shaman much. Druid seems to be stronger in PvE endgame is all I know.

Also (I'm not sure if you knew this) pretty much all dungeons quests in ANY dungeon (vanilla, BC, wotlk, cata) start by npcs in the instance now. Definately makes it worthwhile to Q specific if you have never seen that dungeon.

(The only exception that I've noticed is Throne of Tides which still requires you to clear most of the questing zone first.)