Blizzard hotfixed several faster leveling routes tonight

[pinelakias]

Great leveling experience! Started leveling my rogue! The whole process was so unique that I was logging on and off because of boredom with him for two weeks. Managed to get him to level 48 without killing myself. I bought tokens and made him level 110! Can't wait to level my mage next!

[SirCowdog]

Good to know, I hadn't thought to try it. Thanks!

@splatomat I pretty much agree.

Keep in mind that heroics use the old level brackets. So:

TBC 70
WotLK 80
Cata 85
MoP 90
WoD 100

You could also weave in normal dungeons too. For instance, Normal Ramparts scales up to 80, which means at 82-83 you can begin to repeatedly solo it. I found it to be difficult at 82 and not really worth the effort, but some classes may find it easier.

I haven't tested every single dungeon or heroic, so keep in mind that YMMV. But it's an interesting alternative to normal questing.

[FelPlague]

Quadrupling mob HP and nerfing heirlooms is a completely pointless nerf to leveling. You can already level slowly if you chose to do so by not using heirlooms. Now they are simply forcing everyone to level slowly in order to make people feel more compelled to buy boosts. The Blizzard white knights who show up to every thread about leveling and claim its about anything other than selling more boosts are comically stupid.

funny because if they really wanted people to buy boost you know, they would make the heritage armor obtained through boosts?
but i dont know, its allmost like when a new player joins they enter the world and 1 shotting mobs isnt fun to them, nor is a player leveling with heirlooms fun to 1 shot a boss with full looms
they nerfed the stats of the looms, not the exp.

- - - Updated - - -

Already got Nightborne and Highmountain to 110. Doing VE now and then Lightbulb Draenei. Levelling is easy as hell atm.

can you /played times please? i wanna see, im thinking of leveling them but idk... i would just delete them after as i have all the classes at max allready.

[shadowmouse]

But it's an interesting alternative to normal questing.

As such, I'd welcome a change up. I'm a long time altoholic, but the fun for me is being able to change among different clusters of characters on various servers to do current or near current content. Jokes like knife fights with Deathwing have gone past worn out and right into cringe for me.

[SirCowdog]

As such, I'd welcome a change up. I'm a long time altoholic, but the fun for me is being able to change among different clusters of characters on various servers to do current or near current content. Jokes like knife fights with Deathwing have gone past worn out and right into cringe for me.

Agreed.

I found a bit of new value in leveling through different zones on different characters, as well as trying to solo different dungeons and raids under the new scaling.

Strangely enough, for me all of that interest instantly evaporated the moment I set foot in Argus and lost the option to fly. I really just despise the ground-centric experience. It's just not fun.

[shadowmouse]

I really just despise the ground-centric experience. It's just not fun.

Not to derail to no flying, that horse has been beaten to death and is now sub atomic particles, but going through some of the old zones does really rub that in my face. There were areas where they took advantage of flying to change things up a bit, and I feel like mobs were noticeably more aggressive about trying to shoot you down if you flew too close. Now, we just get hung up on blades of grass or branches that apparently have invisibly fine extensions beyond the tip of the branch. Oh, and spirals are fun, let's make lots of things spirals! Sigh.

[SirCowdog]

Not to derail to no flying, that horse has been beaten to death and is now sub atomic particles, but going through some of the old zones does really rub that in my face. There were areas where they took advantage of flying to change things up a bit, and I feel like mobs were noticeably more aggressive about trying to shoot you down if you flew too close. Now, we just get hung up on blades of grass or branches that apparently have invisibly fine extensions beyond the tip of the branch. Oh, and spirals are fun, let's make lots of things spirals! Sigh.

I don't mind some areas from the ground. Ashenvale, silverpine, Hinterlands, and Barrens are all fine. Honestly, most of the Zones before WoD are tolerable without flying. But you can REALLY feel the difference the moment you set foot in WoD and Legion.

To bring this back to leveling, it's no wonder people are looking for alternative ways to level when confronted with such drastically different environments. What's worse is that Blizzard would rather nerf alternatives until they're not really viable rather than give players real options. Even dungeons post buff are still slower than questing.

[shadowmouse]

@SirCowdog I'm bowing out on the flying talk. I voiced my dislike for the new trend early on, but we're stuck with what we've got and if I beat that horse any harder I might split the atom and reach fission.

[Lime]

What I want to know is how did OP know that Blizzard was going to nerf the dungeon boosting method a week or so before it actually happened? Did a GM tell you that or? O.o

It was pretty obvious that it would be nerfed. Blizzard went out of their way to slow down leveling and people were bypassing it.

I guess fast leveling is only okay if you drop $60.

[Deleted]

Pro tip for 100-101

At lvl 100, send to your alt 25-30 marks of honor (dont remember exactly, probably 28 for dual wielders) and get the pvp pieces from the latest pvp vendor in Ashran. These are 710 ilvl (head, shoulders, back, chest, bracers, gloves, belt, feet + weapons). When you equip them you should see a great jump in hp and stats. For me, imagine, i doubled hit points just by eqquiping those. Those pieces will last until 103-104, but will make you oneshot almost everything in the starting Legion content.

PS: This is incase you dont use looms for 100-110. Still you can get the off-pieces, like bracers, gloves, belt, boots

- - - Updated - - -

Wait, hit rewind, I don't remember hearing this one. Any special quirks, or just run to the instance and work through it? Any particular cautions?

Have in mind that when you solo TBC heroics at 74-75+ you will be oneshotting (nearly everything). Its like the "legacy" buff is applied and you do multiple times the damage you would normaly do with your gear. (Imagine something like that old raid Tmog farming, when you one-two shot bosses), but you get something like 1500 xp per mob (i dont remember if this is rested or not) but still it is HUGE. I went from 1 hour per lvl from solo questing, to 15 minutes per level from TBC heroics grind. Essentially 4 times faster than solo quest.

[monchwow]

Recommendations for 90-100? I hate WoD with a passion. I don’t have flying. I quit before getting the Pathfinding achievement.

My only sub 100 lvl class is my 90 priest.

[Pallamouna]

At 74 i soled all outland content hc dungeons. After Votanica i was lvl 80 near 81. So i soloed Gruul and Serpestine caverns. Boom 82 lvl and now i will go to questing cataclysm areas. I played as destro warlock. @monchwow unfortunatelly only questing and que for wod dungeons. No fly means you loose time from quest area to quest area

[SirCowdog]

@SirCowdog I'm bowing out on the flying talk. I voiced my dislike for the new trend early on, but we're stuck with what we've got and if I beat that horse any harder I might split the atom and reach fission.

You're absolutely right to do so. I was arguing with someone in another thread about Pathfinder, and it bled over into this one. Sorry about that!

But I guess the point I was trying to illustrate with the flying thing is that players discovered a way to play the game differently than Blizzard wanted, and Blizzard immediately nuked it. The invasion abuse was completely justified, but the dungeon power-leveling wasn't actually hurting anything. It's done in an instance. Contained and incapable of effecting the chosen playstyle of anyone except the people who are in the instance.

It's the same thing I saw with how flying was (mis)handled. Blizzard saw that players were leveling up faster than they planned for and dropped the hammer. Granted, it's their game to do with as they please. But it's a disturbing trend. The more and more aspects of the game get locked down and controlled absolutely by Blizzard instead of the player, the less the game remains a game where players have real choices to move about an open world.

Anyway, that's all pretty esoteric. The devil is in the details, as they say. Honestly, I'd say get whatever fun you can out of the game while it lasts. Because the way things are going, pretty soon the only fun that will be allowed is the one Blizzard tells you it's ok to have.

[shadowmouse]

Sorry about that!

No problem, I agree with you, I'm just trying to focus on how to level up with minimal annoyance from the leveling changes.

[therealbowser]

Actually I wouldn't be against entirely Blizzard number crunching levels... to an extent, persay (but not really).

I mean, if they made it so 58-80 was 58-70 instead, and 80-90 was, well... 70 to 75... and just lowered the maximum levels appropriately, it just means we'd have less garbage to slog through. IE, we can pick which expansions we want to go through instead of going through, say, 20 levels of WotLK or 10 of TBC and 10 of WotLK.

The other side of this, though, is the dissatisfaction of having your level lowered and knowing that Blizzard might just keep lowering it every time new content was added. For this reason alone I'm still strongly against it... but I actually do see how it could theoretically work.

[Teri]

Definately love doing heroic TBC dungeons at 74-80, and even normals at 81/82 are doable solo (Hunter).

Please Blizzard don't change them.

To promote people to queue TBC dungeons I'd rather just have them buff the group XP there, instead of nerfing the solo-ability.

[SirCowdog]

No problem, I agree with you, I'm just trying to focus on how to level up with minimal annoyance from the leveling changes.

That sentence right there sums it all up, doesn't it?

Also, as a point of interest: You can use the LFD to queue for random dungeons if you get locked out from entering too many in an hour. It's not going to be as fast as soloing, or even questing(depending on how focused you are), but it will once again be an alternative.

[Corroc]

I wonder if blizzard is ever going to address the fact that cataclysm dungeons are crossly overtuned. Its almost like they wanted to make them as hard as they were at heroic level. I have now levelled healer and tank char through those dungeons and both times I've taken shitloads of dmg as tank from trash and had to spam heal my tanks just so they can take the normal dmg from trash. It doesn't quite fit the blizzard narative to force people to cc mobs in the levelling dungeons.

- - - Updated - - -

Pro tip for 100-101

At lvl 100, send to your alt 25-30 marks of honor (dont remember exactly, probably 28 for dual wielders) and get the pvp pieces from the latest pvp vendor in Ashran. These are 710 ilvl (head, shoulders, back, chest, bracers, gloves, belt, feet + weapons). When you equip them you should see a great jump in hp and stats. For me, imagine, i doubled hit points just by eqquiping those. Those pieces will last until 103-104, but will make you oneshot almost everything in the starting Legion content.

PS: This is incase you dont use looms for 100-110. Still you can get the off-pieces, like bracers, gloves, belt, boots

No point getting the weapons. Your artifact starts at 750.

[Woop Woop]

How many hours/days did it take you from 20-110?
Mine was just over 3 days and I was trying to speed as much as possible

[Axial]

Recommendations for 90-100? I hate WoD with a passion. I don’t have flying. I quit before getting the Pathfinding achievement.

My only sub 100 lvl class is my 90 priest.

If you have flying, just find the treasures with one of the garrison 100% XP pots. Do the bonus objectives and also a super quick way to bust through the 90s is around 92 in gorgrond, you can do the bonus objectives minus like 1 kill for them all and then the monster hunter quests and then pop the 15 min 300% XP pot with the 100% garrison pot and looms on, turn in the quests and run around and finish the bonus objectives that you left at like 1 kill and you'll go from 92 - 100 in 15 min