Guide: Leveling your Hunter 80-85 in Cataclysm

[Xedriell]

what about doing daylies a day before and turning them in when cata hits, and then begin with regular questing?

[Nooska]

Scrolls do work on pets ^^

They DO, but the WONT (Present tense, future tense).
And thats a good thing (means our pets are balanced around them no being buffable, meaning we have to carry less stuff around to be balanced with the other classes)

[Asuras]

what about doing daylies a day before and turning them in when cata hits, and then begin with regular questing?

When transferring a character with 14 dailies ready to turn in, which was worth 20% exp.

I plan to:
Park myself in blackrock to find the new instance.
Use Crusader tabard to port to IC and have 20-25 dailies in IC and SP ready to turn in.
Hearth set and ready to Org and head to Vashj'ir -> Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands.

In the mean time level up on beta to get a head start on learning the quest chains and such.

[lodoo]

When transferring a character with 14 dailies ready to turn in, which was worth 20% exp.

I plan to:
Park myself in blackrock to find the new instance.
Use Crusader tabard to port to IC and have 20-25 dailies in IC and SP ready to turn in.

I don't think dailies will give xp, you will probably need normal quests. Which means tough luck if you are northrend loremaster.

[Naveel]

Apart from the fact that they give xp or not... They won't give a lot of experience relative to the amount of experience you need to level 80 to 81. Sure it will help and sure it is a nice start and if you are not in hurry why not do it! But if you wanna rush things, those first 5-10 mins are spent at a lower exp/hour rate compared to somebody who heads off directly for Vashj'ir or Hijal.

Also I got asked the question why I advised to go and see Hijal after doing Vashj'ir there are a couple of reasons for that:
1) You won't be level 82 yet, so you can't go Deepholm anyway (unless you would do dungeons in between)
2) Deepholm is where things start to ramp up in difficulty and numbers, you don't wanna end up there doing quests where you have to drink/eat between every single pull (in a manner of speach obv.)
3) While you are in Hijal, better stay there and finish most of the quests so you ding 83 in Deepholm faster



I didn't add this to my guide, it's more generall knowledge but still:

People are always obsessed with where you can get the most experience. It's a short term vision almost: go to the higher level areas where there is more experience to be gained. It can (and will) backfire, simply because you will spent more time and effort in completing the quests. Somebody doing quests in lower levels earns experience as well and will give in more quests per hour than the above case, he will also do the higher level quests at a faster rate (later on).

Yes but that Paladin who got a server first with WotLK went Borean Tundra -> Dragonblight (to avoid the crowd). Well first: Dragonblight isn't an as big increase as Deepholm is compared to the 2 starting zones. This is for 2 reasons so:
1) Remember how if you had T6+ gear you didn't realy had to upgrade your gear during the whole experience in cata upgrades for the best geared raiders comes at level 83 (Ensidia beating naxx25 in mainly there TBC gear versus: You'll be grinding many 5-man heroics to stand a chance in a cata raid)
2) WotLK is 10 levels while in Cata we got 5 levels
3) Add the above two together: In cata your gear increases way faster and the relative gaps between levels is way way bigger.

Concluding: Dragonblight was a starting zone compared to Cata terms

Also, If I'm not mistaken that paladin did: Borean Tundra -> Dragonblight -> Howling Fjord! So you see: he deliberately goes and picks up the "easy" experience in Howling Fjord instead of going to Grizzly Hills what was certainly an option. This experience in Howling Fjord could be gathered quickly and so he stays ahead of the relative content difficulty of the area compared to his character.

[Asuras]

I don't think dailies will give xp, you will probably need normal quests. Which means tough luck if you are northrend loremaster.

Nope it works, transferred to beta with dailies and worked fine.

People have done this in the past without trouble and also with 25 dailies, that got me to 40% (which is a good head start no?)
So again:
- Park in Blackrock Mountains to find Blackrock Caverns instance.
- Use Tabard port to Crusader Tournament in Ice Crown, hand in Ebon and Crusader Dailies.
- Fly to Storm Peaks and hand in Son's of Hodir Dailies,
- Use Engineer Portal to Sholazar Basin, hand in Dailies there.
- So with 40% head start.
- I Hearth to Orgrimmar and head to Vashj'ir -> Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands

I've already did this on beta and with the above + instance run when it pops, levels 80-83 is very quick. Levels 83-85 was much slower though.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...t-with-BestBuy - Read the second question

[Rukah]

Nope it works, transferred to beta with dailies and worked fine.

People have done this in the past without trouble and also with 25 dailies, that got me to 40% (which is a good head start no?)
So again:
- Park in Blackrock Mountains to find Blackrock Caverns instance.
- Use Tabard port to Crusader Tournament in Ice Crown, hand in Ebon and Crusader Dailies.
- Fly to Storm Peaks and hand in Son's of Hodir Dailies,
- Use Engineer Portal, hand in Dailies there.
- So with 40% head start.
- I Hearth to Orgrimmar and head to Vashj'ir -> Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands

I've already did this on beta and with the above + instance run when it pops, levels 80-83 is very quick. Levels 83-85 was much slower though.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...t-with-BestBuy - Read the second question

This is very helpful, thankyou. If one were to skip dungeons entirely whilst leveling (but hand in dailies), do you think I could get 80-82 in hyjal alone, no dungeons?

[Asuras]

Yeah you can without level 80 dailies and dungeons, like I said 80-83 is relatively fast.

[Prizil]

Question to those on beta. Hour wise how long is it looking to ding 85. Trying to plan how it out and seeing if I can do it in one sitting.

[Acquilae]

The average seems to be ~25 hours played.

[Algore]

Never understood why you would want to stack up with flasks and food, sure they will help out your performance by ... 0.11192%?

Just get glyph of misdirection and you're sorted tbh.

[Manas]

Apart from the fact that they give xp or not... They won't give a lot of experience relative to the amount of experience you need to level 80 to 81. Sure it will help and sure it is a nice start and if you are not in hurry why not do it! But if you wanna rush things, those first 5-10 mins are spent at a lower exp/hour rate compared to somebody who heads off directly for Vashj'ir or Hijal.


1) You won't be level 82 yet, so you can't go Deepholm anyway (unless you would do dungeons in between)
2) Deepholm is where things start to ramp up in difficulty and numbers, you don't wanna end up there doing quests where you have to drink/eat between every single pull (in a manner of speach obv.)

Atleast get the facts straight, ok?
25 dailies give about 550K xp = roughly 1/3 of a level for 5 mins work. This is valuable if you will be dungeoncrawling instead of questing since then you dont need to compete with the crowd for quests and you dont have to care about staying "ahead".

1) And you WILL be 82 after finishing either Hyjal or Vashj, you DONT need to do both.
2) Deepholm is NOT that hard. Being 82 and fresh out of Hyjal I was able to quest just fine, and this was even with the annoying bug that kept my pet at 6K hp for 15 seconds after dismount.

[Baelzibub]

2pt T5, glyph of misdirect, Survival spec with Serpent spread, multishot spam == win. Basicly, you will level without ever dying, exept in dungeon wipes.

[Naveel]

2) Deepholm is NOT that hard. Being 82 and fresh out of Hyjal I was able to quest just fine, and this was even with the annoying bug that kept my pet at 6K hp for 15 seconds after dismount.

And that was also the build where Kill Command was way OP, if I remember right?

Granted if you have decent gear and you are a decent player like you and me: yeah Deepholm won't be a challenge, however it will start to slow down, believe me, I've been in the zone a couple of times leveling my hunter.

Turning in the experience from dailies is nice and if your figures are right, I would probably even indeed admit that I was a bit fast putting that up that I wouldn't recommended it for this installment.

[Nooska]

As an aside, in icc10 gear (nonheroic, I copied as soon as I was able to) I have levelled to almost 83 from archeology alone. I've had digsites in uldum, and as BM with a turtle the mobs there are easy to kill - in ICC10 gear (absolutely 0 reforging or upgrades on this character), so the "go farm high xp mobs" might work out pretty well, glyph of MD and farm southern Uldum till you are 83/4 then hit twilight highlands. I'm not sayibg it WILL be faster, but it IS viable.

[Xedriell]

As an aside, in icc10 gear (nonheroic, I copied as soon as I was able to) I have levelled to almost 83 from archeology alone. I've had digsites in uldum, and as BM with a turtle the mobs there are easy to kill - in ICC10 gear (absolutely 0 reforging or upgrades on this character), so the "go farm high xp mobs" might work out pretty well, glyph of MD and farm southern Uldum till you are 83/4 then hit twilight highlands. I'm not sayibg it WILL be faster, but it IS viable.

And a lot more annoying

[Shoot-]

Nice guide, I plan to try and keep to this as much as I can, I was originally going to use a rhino to level but didn't realize the turtle's special ability, gotta go grab one right now. Also I was originally going to just do straight BM from 80 - 85, but I may do marks for two levels or so as mentioned in the guide.

[Threndsa]

Uldum and Twilight Highlands are not the same difficulty. uld is MUCH easier. Trying to skip right to TH will get you killed very quickly in my experience unless they have toned down the mobs in the last 2 beta patches.

[Naveel]

Uldum and Twilight Highlands are not the same difficulty. uld is MUCH easier. Trying to skip right to TH will get you killed very quickly in my experience unless they have toned down the mobs in the last 2 beta patches.

There is a bit of a dificulty difference but not that much to my opinion. The idea is that if you are close to level 84 (or already 84) at the end of Deepholm it might be worth it. It's a bit against my other advise (of making sure you do the two first zones before you hit Deepholm). But at about that time (for me at least) the next goal is getting into Heroics as fast as possible. I am not sure of the following, but I think the iLevel of quest rewards in TH is going to be better, even giving you some 333 weapons if you find a group for the Ring of Blood style quest.

Granted it's a gamble I take, but at the moment I'm willing to take it, although I still haven't commited my chips as they say

[Feriad]

Have to ask, you needed 1.6-1.7million exp to get 79-80 if i remember correctly. Does Cata continue from like 1.9million exp needed or will it be more like 3mil+ multiplying needed exp like happened in tbc->wotlk?