Going by this thread, almost the sole enjoyment IS the final achievement of the goal and maximizing xp per hour. It’s a whole foreign world for me.
My play time is already 100% efficient because i sign on when im in the mood and sign off when not. My goal IS gameplay, not some far off goal.
Thankfully the game does a great job of fostering both camp’s inclinations.
My bags were always full so, alts to hold onto junk and what not might be efficient.
Well having good gear is good for leveling, from dungeon or rare quest items.
I miss doing zf and st quests, but I kinda forgot about all of sunken temples do to its changes the hakkar egg and other stuff.
Hakkar egg boss could drop 2 epics I think very nice if lucky I got some on my other toons.
WC staff quest is a good one crescent I think it was called, and sylvanus ring are almost musts.
But can’t believe how many people got lost in sunken temple and ignored me when I tried to show them the fastest path to complete all, even the secret treasure/boss.
chasing gear while leveling is a waste of time.
as I recall your gear would be better ever 3-4 levels just from questing.
but if you enjoy dungeoning for gear, knock yourself out.
BUT you will slow your progress to 60.
Unlike many expansions, content was good all the way though all levels.
Pro Tip: Not rushing through has it’s perks, spend less time worrying about your leveling speed and just smell the awesome content along the way. 60 will still be there when you get there.
i just found remote areas with good spawns/drops and grinded after my first time.
In Classic you definitely what to pause every so often while you are leveling and do a once-over of your gear. You will be visiting your trainer whenever it is convenient to top-off your training, and there will be plenty of opportunities because you will often be in a capital city working the auction house, dealing with full bags, and so forth.
In many respects, your ability to manage your gold while leveling up has the biggest effect on your progression. Training, buying weapons, armors, enchants, pots, making repairs… it adds up quickly. Don’t just depend on quest and dungeon drops. That’s really #1.
While one doesn’t have to go after every bit of gear early, keeping certain bits of gear up-to-date is important in Classic. For casters, the weapon and the wand. The wand in particular. For mele, the weapon for certain as well as decent armor (which mele often ignores in retail). Warriors and pallies also need to keep their armor and shield current.
Classic is not retail where you can just ignore everything until max-level. If you ignore the gear, the enchants, the pots, the scrolls… ignoring all of that will result in a lot of unnecessary pain while leveling. It isn’t a waste of gold to spend some of it on improving your toon while you level because honestly the real gold generation occurs later on after you have reached max-level anyway. You want to have a reserve while you level, but you don’t want to be a scrooge. It’s there to be spent. Just be sure to steadily built it up so you have enough to buy your mount at 40. If it isn’t increasing quickly enough it means you aren’t working the auction house or managing your inventory or chosen professions well.
Personally speaking I will almost certainly go with my warlock first and do herbs and enchanting (and of course also cooking, fishing, and first aid). Herbs to help with cash generation, and enchanting to help with leveling. People really underestimate the effect that having every enchantable slot filled with even low-level enchants has while you are leveling. I won’t switch-in tailoring until after I hit max-level, if I do it at all. And warlocks (as well as hunters) are very good at farming to build cash. Going with a end-game profession setup from the start (typically Engineering + Tailoring) can make for a painful leveling experience.
Also, a quick note for Warriors, Pallies, and Shammies… you will be using a shield a lot more than you think and your armor matters a lot more than in retail. Don’t just focus on the weapon. Every little bit helps. Also, for Warriors and Pallies, don’t expect to just go 2H, you will wind up dying a lot more than you need to. You need to keep your 1H, 2H, shield, and armor all in tip-top shape which is why these classes are often called ‘gear dependent’. Leveling a Warrior or Pally first can be painful because you won’t have enough gold to keep everything in tip-top shape.
-Matt
-pick up all the quests in an area before you head out. Many of them are done in a similar area.
-Avoid dungeons unless you can get all of the quests involved (have group members share their quests) and only do them if you know your group isn’t going to afk for 15 minutes several times after before or after each boss.
-kite your kills to the next kill so you spend less travel time. Also start kiting back to the quest giver when you’re about ready to start handing in.
-Get flightpaths while you’re in the area! get the redridge flightpath when you’re doing the eastvale logging camp quests (otherwise you’ll be running from westfall when you could be flying).
-Set your hearth often. If you’re questing in an area and need to turn in a bunch of quests, hearth back rather than run.
-use your cooldowns! people forget them a lot and they can be the difference in levelling quickly or having a lot of downtime.
-Make a bank alt. Mail anything you could AH to the alt to free up bag space. You could also have the alt buy reagents and mail to your main or even some of the quest items you have to buy or make. Level it to level 5 and get enchanting so you can DE stuff too.
-Only buy spells and abilities you’re going to use. You don’t need every rank of fireball if you’re levelling a mage as frost. Also note when you get new ranks of spells you will need so you can return at those levels rather than returning too early or too late.
This is true, but only situationally.
Warriors, and Shaman can hamstring/earthbind kite, and effectively have way more mitigation as a result, while also having way more damage from using a 2hander.
That being said, many (or even most) people aren’t nearly motivated enough to snare kite every single mob as it’s rather high effort, in which case 1h/shield becomes realistic. For shaman in particular, Flametongue---->WF @ 30 with the fastest possible 1h + shield is the 2nd fastest way to level before 40 (at which point Ele becomes competitive as well).
With Warriors, I’d say it’s worthwhile to both have and to level a 1h weapon+shield weaponswap just as a general rule… Super useful if you want to tank a dungeon while leveling, and can save your life on bad pulls. Keeping 2 weapons “current” is far from easy, while really leveling efficiently, however, and there is a sizable killing speed penalty since your weapon will never be fully maxxed out at any point during your level…
Paladins on the other hand, imo if leveling as pure ret, don’t need a 1h/shield at all unless they plan on respeccing prot and AOE grinding later levels… Plate Armor and self healing with nothing else to spend mana on keep 2h using ret’s downtime nearly non existent… It’s just -powerfully- boring. Like warriors, maybe have one leveled just to tank a dungeon, but outside of that you’ll get little-no usage out of it.
On the topic of efficient “leveling”, but referencing leveling weapons themselves…
Once 60, buy the cheapest/fastest attack speed weapons for each weapon type available to you, and head out to Blasted Lands. There are mobs that self banish/go immune that you can level any non capped weapon skills on with minimal risk. Prevents that awkward situation where you get a major weapon upgrade post level capping, then sit around useless the rest of the dungeon/raid because you are leveling it from 1, or still have to use your old weapon to finish the run.
Well, what you will find if you try to level a Pally as Ret from the start is that you will take too much damage traded against what starts out as relatively small increases in damage. You have to get almost to level 40 AND you have to get significant gear-improved crit before Ret’s many offensive crit-based mechanisms really start to make a difference. Ret’s mechanisms don’t work well right off the bat. So consider waiting until you get to higher levels before retalenting to Ret. You’ll thank me ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Everything in the Prot tree works out of the gate, including the reactive elements like Redoubt (because you won’t have any real crit defenses and will get crit a lot even from normal mobs). You will be surprised at just how often Redoubt triggers, its pretty insane. Every single point spent in the tree will reduce down-time. You get BoK with 11 points in the tree. The talent tree gives you both offensive and defensive talents on almost every tier so you can fine-tune the talent build as you level. The Reactive components are powerful and allow a smooth transition to tanking more mobs at once or when unexpected adds come into play. Etc.
So, for example, a Human Pally can pump Precision + Sword Specialization with one-handed swords. The talent mix in the Prot tree would be: Redoubt, Precision, Toughness, BoK, Anticipation or Shield Specialization, Improved HoJ, then back to Anticipation or Shield Specialization, BoS, Reckoning, One-handed weapon specialization, and finally Holy Shield. Then push into the holy tree to get consecration (or earlier, depending, since Consecration works very well for multi-mob engagement). Stack those reactive abilities, they are what make the spec work. (Ret Aura or Sanctuary, Redoubt, Reckoning, Consecration from the Holy tree, Holy Shield, shield spikes on the shield).
Prot won’t do as much DPS as Retribution, but IMHO you level faster because you can handle more mobs literally from the first point you spend. At higher levels Retribution does more single-target damage, but Prot can take down more mele mobs when 3 or more mobs are engaged at once.
Retribution is still the DPS spec for dungeons and RAIDs, obviously, since Prot depends on the mobs going after you. But Prot is very good for leveling. Not as good as other classes, but it makes it bearable when you hit areas where you can take on multiple mobs at once.
-Matt
All levelling plans and guides can go out the window when you’re on a pvp server.