Dungeon Leveling?

[Kazx]

I'm probably going to level up my Paladin to 80 before I even try to level my Druid to 85. The massive amount of people in the new zones is going to be a pain and make questing impossible. If I do level my druid though, it'll probably be through the LFD tool (after exploring the instance of course) and battlegrounds (if they still grant experience).

And besides, if I'm leveling my paladin to 80, maybe I can get a good amount of rested on my druid making it even more enjoyable to level on. And vice-versa while I'm leveling my druid.

[scism]

I've fully prepared myself for AoE levelling while questing. I think 251/264/277 gear should suffice to at least lvl 83/84.

There is a blue post saying that you need to have found a dungeon to queue for it, and i think the idea that phasing is involved may be spot on the money. Plus questing is fun, gets lots of money and profession stuff and unlocks the dungeon quests for even better gear than trying your luck at drops that never come in dungeons :P

I'm unsure what their plan for weekly caps on 'pve points' is and how many you get through dungeons - it may be you can do 1 a day and max it out, or perhaps you can do as many as you want.

[Deleted]

Dungeon grinding since the LFG changes were made has been very viable when compared to traditional mob killing/questing, especially on high population servers. I would not be surprised to see a large number of people bypassing the new leveling zones entirely and going straight into the LFG route of gaining XP, badges and items.

the population doesnt matter with cross-server LFG? :P

[davesurfer]

Well my wife and I plan on multiboxxing our way to 85. We will do instances during peak times, and quests in off times (we log on about 4 am server before work).

When Wrath came out, questing was a nightmare with all the people. We actually went back to TBC for the first days to allow the rush to move on. We have 5 accounts, and have been perfecting our multiboxing as we speak. We are running WOTLK randoms with 5 appropriate level toons to work the kinks out. So far it has been a success.

So we figure that we should be able to run Cat 5 mans multiboxing, and questing when the masses are sleeping.

We love instance leveling, as it is more fun than questing. But maybe because we have 6 80s each already.

Our current makup is ME - Warrior tank and 2 Ele Shams. Hers - Druid heals and Lok. With a tool like ISBOXER and keybinds this is actually faster that running with the random baddies.

[Snith]

Hey guys!

After creating various posts to locate this one, I've finally found it and I would like to bring it back to the surface. I really appreciate all of your replies and I hope there will be a lot more. As we're getting closer and closer to the release of the expansion, we've now pretty much formed our 5-man dungeon levelling teams. We've structured our teams to have various components as the possibility to aoe trough the first few levels as we should be pretty well equipped for that but at the same time deal massive single target dps while having a fair amount of crowd control.

In addition to the previous questions, I would now like to ask you what 5-man dungeon setup you would prefer in order to succeed while levelling in dungeons, this includes both class and talents!

Best Regards,
Oliver

[Radley]

In Wrath I'm pretty sure the top tier guilds were mainly using dungeon leveling to get to 80 within the first few days of release. While efficient, this seems extremely boring to me. I would rather do a dungeon every now and then in between getting my new quests done and enjoying the game.

[Daemaro]

Dungeon Leveling may not be as viable, we don't know this time around, but there are a few important factors to look at besides EXP.

Gear: You get much better gear than doing quests.
Enchanting: You can disenchant repeat gear pieces and probably be prepared to enchant your whole 10man group and max your enchanting.
Tailoring: You will most likely loot a ton of cloth to work on tailoring with.
Practice Makes Perfect: With the dungeons and raids switching up strategies and the restructure of stats and talents it's not a bad way to prepare for raids when you DO hit 85.
Good Money: Usually dungeons are good money. You can loot some BoE's that will sell well the first few months for sure. Grays sell great as well.
Save Your Quests: You will save all your quests this way, and as we know, revisiting quest zones at 85 will net you bonus gold instead of exp. Also you will be able to likely sell all the rewards at this point also. A lot of cash here.


So if you're really going for realm firsts, AoE will most likely always win out, but if you're wanting to run with friends, have some fun, learn some things, and make a good amount of gold, I would do the dungeons.

[Dedweight]

Are you sure about this? Because I never recall entering the Howling Fjord before entering the Utgarde Keep, in fact I doubt I've even entered Howling Fjord with my mage and I've still completed all the instances Utgarde Keep has to offer.

Supposedly it will be the case come Cata. Which to be quite honest is a good thing imo, the number of times I've encountered players that have never been to the dungeon outside of LFD and can't find the entrance is absurd(ICC 5mans immediately come to mind), hopefully this change will fix that for many people.

OT: As others said if you have a group to chain run the dungeons I'd say go for it, though for me it depends on what the XP/hr will be between my questing speed and chaining dungeons.

[Fortuitous]

I've fully prepared myself for AoE levelling while questing. I think 251/264/277 gear should suffice to at least lvl 83/84.

There is a blue post saying that you need to have found a dungeon to queue for it, and i think the idea that phasing is involved may be spot on the money. Plus questing is fun, gets lots of money and profession stuff and unlocks the dungeon quests for even better gear than trying your luck at drops that never come in dungeons :P

I'm unsure what their plan for weekly caps on 'pve points' is and how many you get through dungeons - it may be you can do 1 a day and max it out, or perhaps you can do as many as you want.

You'll replace epic 277's around 82, definitely no later unless you are trying to gimp your character. Each level is very significant. Just an example, each level you gain on the beta at the moment you'll gain ~4,000 more health. Yes, 400 stamina just from leveling up. ICC25 gear can hold its own for a while (simply due to already being enchanted, and having gem slots) but you better damn look at the stats on greens/blues because most of the time, with mastery rating considered, they are definitely better than the raid gear.

Level 80 blues(ilvl 288) are slightly under Heroic 277 items in terms of stats (stamina aside, Cata items blow every WotLK item away in regards to stamina)

[Wardley]

I was thinking about leveling in dungeons as well. But if they are harder / need to be unlocked, isn't it easier to level in WotLK instances? Just farm 'old' heroics, and level very fast?
Any ideas on this?

This is probably a good point - if you've got a full group to do it with.

Probably farming the 3 ICC wings will get you up to lvl 82/83 before the drop in XP make it not worthwhile. It should be quicker as you know those three instances already so no surprises in there.Although you'll also miss out on the new dungeon loot.

Still, I would suspect that if you're gearing up for raiding at 85, you wouldn't be planning on using too much gear for the first dungeons in Cata anyway. Did many people really enter Naxx/OS wearing stuff from normal UK or Nexus?

However, if you've not got a full group and just want to find a group use the LFG tool for doing this, I doubt you'll find anyone else at all will to run old WoTLK instances at 80 once Cata hits - the same as no-one went and did any of the tbc lvl 70 instances one WotLK hit.

[Hash]

AoE Grind IMO unless your a tank or healer for a good queue

[deadman80]

Blizz has a pattern of doubling the exp from mob kills with each expansion, so I rather doubt it will be faster to exp in WotLK heroics compared to even basic mob grinding in Cata content areas.

To the OP: If you have pre-made and balanced groups that you already know for a fact will work well together, go with LFD. It will allow your core group to exp efficiently, grab some gear upgrades for the trip up to 85, and gain some experience with the new design philosophy behind the encounters. Don't forget that Blizz has basically said that we WILL need to spend some time gearing up in heroics + crafted gear before setting foot into any Cata raid (if you actually intend to kill anything inside of one at least XD)

I would also ask for some volunteers for members who are willing to spend the extra time/effort/gold in addition to your organized groupings to level professions.. Particularly JC, BS, LW, and Tailoring since those are the profs that will be capable of making gear equal to entry level raid drops. Wouldn't hurt to have Alch, scribe, and gatherers in-guild as well to help with flask, glyph, and mat supplies. Keep in mind that there has already been a low lvl BS-made blue quality weapon that is better than Shadowmourne ._.;; (btwlol@that) It will undoubtedly be worth it for the guild to sponsor powerleveling one of each prof if you have the bank to do so, since that means faster/easier access to epics, less time in heroics before actually stepping foot into raids, and potential profit from selling BOEs on the AH.

[milkdudz21]

imo lvling in dungeons only is faster especially as a healer class or tank insta ques :-)

[DarkenedPaladin]

My plan is as follows:

1) Quest while in queue.
2) "Unlock" dungeon quests via long chains.
3) Join Queue.
4) Complete Dungeon quests.
5) Profit (AKA Level.)

[Enkidulgaa]

Dungeon Leveling is Actually a lot slower than questin, at least for certain classes
The fastest character I've ever leveled was my warlock. Epic flying skill from level 68 on, Affliction/Demo Specc with SL and Felguard, chain pulling mobs always fighting at least 3 at a time.
I leveled py pally at least 50% through dungeons, and I was a lot slower, even with instant invites as tank. If you dont have any quests you're looking at 15% per dungeon, even with heirlooms.
In my experience dungeon leveling isnt really faster than questing

[Snith]

First of all, I really appreciate all the feedback you've given me and please, continue. Anyhow as some of you may have missed out on, we do have two pre-made groups, so the responses claiming that this will only be an efficient way of levelling if you're a tank or a healer, while I appreciate it, please read the first post again.

Dungeon Leveling may not be as viable, we don't know this time around, but there are a few important factors to look at besides EXP.

Gear: You get much better gear than doing quests.
Enchanting: You can disenchant repeat gear pieces and probably be prepared to enchant your whole 10man group and max your enchanting.
Tailoring: You will most likely loot a ton of cloth to work on tailoring with.
Practice Makes Perfect: With the dungeons and raids switching up strategies and the restructure of stats and talents it's not a bad way to prepare for raids when you DO hit 85.
Good Money: Usually dungeons are good money. You can loot some BoE's that will sell well the first few months for sure. Grays sell great as well.
Save Your Quests: You will save all your quests this way, and as we know, revisiting quest zones at 85 will net you bonus gold instead of exp. Also you will be able to likely sell all the rewards at this point also. A lot of cash here.


So if you're really going for realm firsts, AoE will most likely always win out, but if you're wanting to run with friends, have some fun, learn some things, and make a good amount of gold, I would do the dungeons.

This is pretty much what we've been discussing lately and thanks for giving us your thoughts about it. We've even removed 4 fully levelled professions by now in order to give us the various benefits and possibilities to handle veins, herbs and disenchanting material.

[Snith]

Greetings!

As the release day gets closer and closer I thought I'd return to this thread to see what new information we've managed to obtain. While reading almost a hundred threads on the forums during these last few days, I've come to realize that perhaps leveling through dungeons might be the best idea, but due to the fact that while we're leveling we'll also have the opportunity to improve our gameplay as a group as well as being able to avoid the masses, it's still the plan we're going with. I have been thinking a lot about the risk of the instance server being full and we being unable to enter an additional instance, a scenario that I'm not prepared for, at all. While this could be rather devastating and putting our experience gain on hold, I believe it's a risk we'll have to take.

My main question for this post is what instances you suggest and at which level? I've been searching around quite a lot to find comments about the new and the old, remade, instances to see which ones are most beneficial. Please leave your opinions and any suggestion that might improve our game play as well as our experience gain, and of course I'd love to hear your plan for the new expansion.

Best Regards,
Oliver

---------- Post added 2010-12-03 at 12:17 AM ----------

One additional question, to which I'm rather surprised that I haven't been able to find an answer too, will the dungeons require some form of exploration in order to be entered through the "Looking For Group"-tool and how exactly will this work?