Leveling alts quite slow now, how do I do it fast?

[Azerate]

I'm going through my 2nd allied race now. It's definitely way slower now, that's a fact. People who argue that have just no idea what they are talking about, or they belong to the crowd who "stopped using heirlooms while leveling because it feels better" before the leveling revamp. So now it might feel the same speed if they actually use them. As for the fun, it's a very subjective matter, that's the problem. Speed is objective, fun is subjective. They may have increased the fun for some, but reduced the speed for all.

Here's how I feel about different level ranges based on my Velf.

General thoughts:
1. You need to play the class you're leveling very well in order for it not to be a pain. For some people this won't be a problem, because they can pick whatever and just play it as if they mained it for years. Many others aren't like that, including myself. Unless you know the class inside out, the leveling will be notably slower. Some quests/bosses basically require you to max out your performance for the gear you own. And even then you may just barely do it

2. Many pieces of content are badly optimized. Quests, objective bosses and even dungeons. Here are some vivid examples that I remember from my velf
-Azjol Nerub - Hadronox. Those who made the mistake of doing this dungeon while leveling recently probably know already what I mean. The scaling of Hadronox and the mobs he has to eat is way off. It takes like 10 minutes of waiting for him to move up the slope and then he often evades or bugs out.
-The group quest in Grizzly Hills with worgen killing. I suppose this one isn't that valid of a criticism because technically it aims to be a group quest and does that very well. It's undoable solo due to the infinitely spawning adds.
-Mount Hyjal - druid boss in the southern part. Just flat out undoable without dying. The only way to do it now is to die halfway (usually more than once) and hope that you can corpse run while the mobs you summon are still fighting her.
-WoD bosses. Especially the boss you kill in the scenario required for building the garrison. This one is unskippable if you want to proceed and is now a challenge on the level of mage tower from 7.2. Especially if you're a class with a long cooldown on escape mechanics. You need to evade/live through about 3-5 attacks that hit you for 50% hp. Same goes for many bonus objective bosses in WoD, but I was mostly able to get them down solo, but again - mostly thanks to knowing my class well. With some I had to have help (like the one in the cave bonus objective in Gorgrond).

A couple other quests with ridiculously overpowered mobs, which sometimes causes them to evade and not work properly, which I don't remember.

3. WoD leveling on treasures is definitely faster now, the xp seems to be slightly higher.

4. Method-0 (hate the cringy name btw) sucks. And I'm not arguing with numbers here, people are saying it's significantly faster than questing, and it very well may be. The problem is that it's ridiculously boring and impossible to run for a longer time due to instance lockout. Maybe I'm still missing something here. I tried it in Tol Vir and it sucked.


1 - 60

This part is kind of okay. It is way slower, but the new way of experiencing the old zones is an interesting thing, until you level through all of the zones multiple times probably. So yes, people have a point that it's more "fun" at least in my opinion. The problem here is that the innovation will get old, and it will still be slow.

60-80

Hands down the worst part of the leveling now. Unless you are using some kind of exploit, which many people these days do. The problem is at some point they will probably 'fix' all those, and we will be fucked. This part of the leveling made me stop for about a month, because it was just that slow. Funnily enough, I was actually doing Northrend, which was stated to be faster than Outland by knowledgeable people.

74-81

Here I actually went and soloed Kara. Very fast and enjoyable. Wasn't possible for me below 74 which many people are suggesting. The mobs were simply too strong though that may be warrior-specific. After that though it;s been a breeze and I loved every moment of it.

81-88

Here I did Hyjal, simply cause I like Hyjal. Wasn't the fastest but I generally enjoy the zone so I was fine-ish with it, apart from some overtund quests. Also did the arena in Twilight Highlands for some quick experience.

88-90

Did the trash in ZG as suggested here by SirCowdog. It was okay, but I made a mistake of killing too many types of mobs. The best way would be to only kill the crocs probably, these give crazy amounts of XP. Next time this will be way more enjoyable cause I already know what to kill and what to avoid.

90-101

WoD leveling in general though is better imo. Save for the boss issues, if you can overcome these, it's faster and better than pre 7.3.5. Before, I could hardly reach 98 while doing all treasures in all zones. Now I easily get to 98 and return after getting the artifact and continue until 101 in Nagrand. Loved this part.

101 - 110

Logging in, doing an invasion, logging out. Leveling alts in legion has always been the best ever and remains so for now. I hope BfA will be as alt-friendly as Legion is.

[trm90]

I should have asked this before, but... I race changed one of my 110 mains to a HM Tauren, and I'm leveling up another HM Tauren to unlock the heritage armor. Can I still mog the heritage armor on the character I race changed?

[Marrilaife]

I should have asked this before, but... I race changed one of my 110 mains to a HM Tauren, and I'm leveling up another HM Tauren to unlock the heritage armor. Can I still mog the heritage armor on the character I race changed?

If you obtain heritage it's moggable on all chars of that race, but only that race.

[rda]

Not in the world where every extra lvl cap character = extra license to print gold. Character producing assembly lines like old RAF had to go, together with uber mega xp elixirs. 6-8 hours is reasonable for levelling from old expansion cap to current expansion cap, not from scratch. It never took 6-8 hours normally, without some cheese like RAF powerboosting.

Not in the world where we have paid-for character boosts either.

I am not saying they will bring leveling time for experienced players in shape, I am not that naive. I am simply commenting that these traditional talks about "just 40" hours from 1 to max being cool and "just 24" hours being super-fast are totally off base. They all stem from the status quo and the status quo has been silly for ages. You should only be spending a couple of hours on a new char. Because there is precious little to learn, the gameplay is very similar (builder-spender-cds-dots/hots and two-three other things) and it gets simpler and closer every expansion. Everything past 6 hours or so is mindless padding that exists out of inertia and business interests.

[Azerate]

Oh right, one more glaring issue.

The leveling may scale, but the group finder and gathering profession nodes do not, which is an issue. Not sure what exactly happened, but the XP for mining and herbalism is all over the place. Sometimes you get 3% of a level, sometimes you get absolutely nothing for gathering.

Also, the group finder still obeys the same rules as before, so you won't find any groups for northrend questing if you choose to do it from 60 already.

[kr3b5]

Farm herbs or boost +15s and buy a 110 boost for 4 tokens. People also pay really well for Cutting Edge boosts.

[Katchii]

The only issue I have with the scaling is mob HP, it's way too high IMO. Being able to do your full rotation sounds cool at first...but HAVING to do your full rotation on EVERY.SINGLE.MOB at least once to kill them gets old, really really quickly. It just artificially inflated the leveling time, and feels ridiculous honestly when you have to do your full rotation on a random crab or fish or something because your rotational spell with AoE splash damage hits it.

I'm fine with the mob damage, though it could stand to be higher, but ONLY if they reduce mob HP because as it is now more then 2-3 mobs depending on which spec is dangerous. I don't mind mobs being dangerous but not because of simply how long the fights end up being but because of their abilities.

[Littleraven]

There is no "quick" way anymore. The quickest way is to just do dungeons and quests. Slowing down the leveling was a conscious decision when they did the world scaling. While it kinda sucks for people who have many alts overall I think it is better for the game that you don't just steamroll everything. You still CAN but just not nearly as easily.

[Eleccybubb]

There is no "quick" way anymore. The quickest way is to just do dungeons and quests. Slowing down the leveling was a conscious decision when they did the world scaling. While it kinda sucks for people who have many alts overall I think it is better for the game that you don't just steamroll everything. You still CAN but just not nearly as easily.

Mobs still do the same damage. Only thing it changes is some elites since they already hit for a pretty decent amount in the first place.

All this has done is make killing a lot of lower level dungeon bosses quite boring. Most of the bosses have no threat to them. Uldaman is a prime example of where the increased health just makes it even more boring because it takes longer to kill.

There is zero upside to the actual mob changes other than to increase the overall time it takes.

There is nothing engaging about a level 35 normal mob taking 2-3 more hits to kill. There is no threat. If you are going to increase their health pools make them feel more threatening. I can still pull 3-4 mobs without issue.

Just let me say this. I'm not against the changes entirely. I just wish they had made the world feel more of a threat again with these changes. Scaling is amazing. I love being able to go where I want for the most part such as Stranglethorn at 50 or Northern Barrens at 42.

[Marrilaife]

Farm herbs or boost +15s and buy a 110 boost for 4 tokens. People also pay really well for Cutting Edge boosts.

More than half the people who complain about levelling just want the heritage armors, so this doesn't work. Tbh biggest question is "do I really need every single goddamn heritage Blizzard adds", unless someone is a collector and farmed every single tier set etc. (then they know mog farming is a humongous timesink, btw I'm trying to get tier1 on my hunter for 2 months now and drop chances weren't in my favour so far, lol) then the biggest timesaver is deciding which heritage you really need and which ones to simply skip.

Tbh super quick levelling was never accessible to average joe outside of specific time limited exploits, like pre-legion invasions with crafty relogging to leech the same phase (still got nerfed halfway to be a bit less quick) or argus invasion lock summon (got nerfed too), the common long term powerlevelling method was "get 2 raf linked accounts with a toon on each and a third account to boost them", who has 3 accounts to do these kind of shenanigans except dedicated multiboxers and gold farmers (extra char = extra profession cooldowns, extra mission table milking etc.). And tbh Blizzard has a point that it was supposed to be "refer a friend" not "refer your alts", so they nerfed it.

[jakeworty]

I think it is a little slower to level in general, not always a bad thing tho.

[SirCowdog]

Soooo... Level 1 to 100 in just over 25 hours /played using 50% heirlooms(no 2nd ring, no DMF buff). This character was started on the 11th. So about 7-8 days real time. No 2nd account. No help from friends or guildies. Not even portals or summons to locations. Completely 100% just me solo.

1-17: Questing on Azuremist Isle
17-58: Method-0 (Stockades)
58-74: Method-0 (Ramparts)
74-82: Kara Trash
82-88: Questing in Mt Hyjal/Jade Forest(I forgot to solo ramps normal...not sure it would have been faster)
88-90: Solo Zul'Gurub heroic. Honestly I think questing would have been faster. Paladins suck for this, even as Prot.
90-91: Timeless Isle shortcut to WoD. Opening quests for garrison+a few treasures to 91.
91-100: All the WoD Treasures in order: SMV -> Frostfire -> Gorgrond -> Talador -> Spires(with quests to unlock 20% inn buff) -> Nagrand

I actually had to hit a couple of the super easy Bonus Objectives in Talador in order to reach 96 to do Spires. The one where you click 4 portals and kill 8 orcs, the one where you collect 20 lumber and kill 6 shredders, and the one near Achindun where you kill demons and free spirits.



The full resolution screenshot can be seen here. I deleted the character name because I'd honestly prefer to avoid randoms looking up armory info to create nitpicks in other threads or bugging me in-game. I also have a screenshot for each level's time if anyone needs more evidence. Although I'm not going to spam it now unless there's overwhelming requests for it.

I'm currently working on 100-110. I'm not quite as familiar with Legions quests, so it might take me a bit longer than some of you guys. Still, I think 25 hours to 100 is pretty good, all things considered. It's certainly the fastest I've been able to do so far(and beats the living dog-crap out of the nearly 60 hours it took me right after 7.3.5).

Cut 2 hours off that time if I'd have been playing an allied race that starts at 20.

Things I learned this run:

• Method-0 for Stratholme Main Gate isn't worth the time to get there. Maybe with a true dual box?
• Jade Forest is almost certainly better exp/h than Mt Hyjal, but the first half of Hyjal is still really good.
• Stockades can be cleared in a single login/logout swap if you're quick and use Bear Tartare(this saves A LOT of time over many runs).
• If you loot on your 110 while doing Method-0(which I recommend during the Ramparts phase), your alt will get boss drops in their mailbox. This is also worth enough gold to pay for for flying on your alt.

[Lucetia]

Each zone had specific level bracket and should give as many levels as the bracket indicates, for example a 40-45 zone should be giving 5 levels with no looms / raf, a 45-48 zone should give 3 levels etc. We can't see the old brackets on the map anymore due to scaling, but each zone was designed with specific amounts of quests to give you specific amounts of xp and the amount of quests didn't change. People say the xp per level changed.

But so far I took my new allied race char with looms and completed a zone, got around 7,5 levels out of it, so without looms it would be 5, as looms are 1,5x modifier. Will have to see if some further expansions are "broken" as people claim, but so far it seems the xp rate is as intended. If I completed a zone and got 3 levels instead of 5, I'd start to worry.

Considering those numbers were just ideal ranges. I never was able to level the entire range it gave. By the time I finished zones I was about 2-3 levels from it. That's why there was multiple zones with those ranges and dungeons to supplement the gaps.

[Marrilaife]

Considering those numbers were just ideal ranges. I never was able to level the entire range it gave. By the time I finished zones I was about 2-3 levels from it. That's why there was multiple zones with those ranges and dungeons to supplement the gaps.

I levelled 3 chars in WOD with heirlooms and "outlevelling" zones was very apparent except a couple of zones that were somehow not updated properly (silithus, arathi). So without heirlooms I would probably just go through quests at yellow and not at constant green.

I remember finishing wetlands that was 20-25 zone close to level 30 (after starting zone and 10-20 zone ofc), could be around 28 and these moments were super annoying, because the 25+ zone was already full green but the 30+ zone was unable to be started until can't remember was it 29 or full 30. These were such inefficient spots to fill, so yeah doing a dungeon could probably fix it. Still, you had to travel to the next zone.

While original vanilla had stuff all over the place, cross continent quests and generally not enough questlines at medium to high levels so you had to scour the world to find enough, the cata revamp mostly painted linear path one in kalimdor one in eastern kingdoms, with slight alternative of felwood - winterspring instead of tanaris - ungoro.

Tbh same rule applies to questing in heirlooms in cataclysm or pandaria zones. I don't remember ever finishing Uldum or Twilight highlands, and I never managed to do Vash'ir, it was just not needed. I might revisit these for loremaster on allied races now, I've started working on sub 60 zones I'm missing from the achievement, so I've done 2 zones on my LF draenei and I'm 37. But I'm not doing it for speed, only to see the zones. Still, to see every zone I'd have to level several characters, as one or 2 won't exhaust every option.

[SirCowdog]

Tbh same rule applies to questing in heirlooms in cataclysm or pandaria zones. I don't remember ever finishing Uldum or Twilight highlands, and I never managed to do Vash'ir, it was just not needed. I might revisit these for loremaster on allied races now, I've started working on sub 60 zones I'm missing from the achievement, so I've done 2 zones on my LF draenei and I'm 37. But I'm not doing it for speed, only to see the zones. Still, to see every zone I'd have to level several characters, as one or 2 won't exhaust every option.

I kind of wish Blizzard would create an option where experience points were removed, and you only leveled up upon completing story arcs or something. A "loremaster" mode, or something like that.

[fairbanks1]

Best idea is to run dungeon with a friend a with leveling pots

[Marrilaife]

Best idea is to run dungeon with a friend a with leveling pots

Yeah, those levelling pots that were removed since December and cost an arm and a leg for the few remaining ones... Gosh I can't wait until this stupid beta key giveaway palooza is over, the amount of low quality posts from 10-post users so they can plaster a screenshot on the giveaway is overwhelming in the last week. Everything from necroing 3 year old threads to spreading misinformation.

[xcitng]

Yeah, those levelling pots that were removed since December and cost an arm and a leg for the few remaining ones... Gosh I can't wait until this stupid beta key giveaway palooza is over, the amount of low quality posts from 10-post users so they can plaster a screenshot on the giveaway is overwhelming in the last week. Everything from necroing 3 year old threads to spreading misinformation.

Yeah, the posters with 5k+ definitely post quality stuff daily............

[Blamblam41]

Here at "Nu-Blizzard", we don't want you to enjoy your gameplay too much. See, our gaming psychologists revealed to us that players actually prefer slow grinds as it rewards their minds with a wonderfully powerful dose of dopamine after they work so hard to achieve their goal! So now we designed our -entire- leveling, gameplay, PvP, battle pet, raiding, transmog, story and gold systems around this very idea, that 'players prefer' the long wait for their reward, that's what makes it a 'fun game'.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, the posters with 5k+ definitely post quality stuff daily............

And the guy with 600 is still trying to shitpost his way out of irrelevance.

[xcitng]

Here at "Nu-Blizzard", we don't want you to enjoy your gameplay too much. See, our gaming psychologists revealed to us that players actually prefer slow grinds as it rewards their minds with a wonderfully powerful dose of dopamine after they work so hard to achieve their goal! So now we designed our -entire- leveling, gameplay, PvP, battle pet, raiding, transmog, story and gold systems around this very idea, that 'players prefer' the long wait for their reward, that's what makes it a 'fun game'.

- - - Updated - - -



And the guy with 600 is still trying to shitpost his way out of irrelevance.

You think having a higher post count on these forums make you relevant? ROFL sad life