I don't think that I'd spend 120 on 4 18 slot bags when you can get 4 16 slot bags for 20g. If you run out of bag space a lot get a mod that sells all your grays and specified whites with one click. AutoprofitX is what I use.

I think you are missing the best way to powerlevel with your lock. Tip: It's not aoe'ing cathedral.

You don't use seed on anything. You park your alt 20-30 yards from the entrance. You dot 5 mobs with curse of agony or siphon life, and zoneout when they get low health. (20%) They die, your alt gets full experience. This is completely different than aoe spam running, it's much faster and more efficient.

I think i leveled my lock enough so far :
The World of Warcraft Armory

And i prefered a priest walking with me healing me while i spam dot everything that moves constantly life taping.
We were 2 players - back in the days when didnt knew i could dual box that

So, I started the levelling process last night. I've got a 70 Holy Priest in Tailor/Kara epics. I took him and a fresh level 8 shaman on my wife's account to RFC.

Surprisingly, I had trouble finding people to join the RFC run to get the party xp boost - I only had 4 in the first run, and 3 in the second. I finally got a full party on the third and subsequent runs.

XP was good. I was getting a decent half level every run. I didn't really time the runs, but I assume the last 3 took 12-15 minutes, and the first few took 20-25. It took a while for me to get the hang of holding aggro with an AoE spell that doesn't have an aggro component (Holy Nova), as well as not running out of mana (surprisingly hard when you're using Nova). Also, some noobs killed themselves, forcing me to res them.

Loot was set to FFA. Everyone was quite happy. They divided up the loots while I killed.

However, it's come to be very clear to me that Holy Nova will not work much past RFC. The damage is simply too low. I'll be reverting to Dot and Run once RFC dries up. It does work well for RFC, however.

I tried putting the priest on follow and questing at first, but due to the reliance on mana, the priest really didn't help much. I already had an spellthread on her pants, so she had so much HP that health wasn't an issue anyway. It would probably work for a warrior/lock/rogue, but casters don't benefit.

Can someone just clarify what the lockout timer is on instances? My priest got locked out on the 6th run, but my shaman -didn't-, and I'm certain it took me longer than an hour to do 5 runs.

Where should I go at 15? I was considering Deadmines or SFK. SFK would be leagues more accessible.

Quick question, what stats would one want to stack if you were making a protection paladin solely to instance grind?

Avoidance stats, especially block and parry, and obvs Defense, Stamina, and Spelldmg.

Int/Mana/5 are not bad things, but Seal/JoW + Spiritual attunement should do most of the work.

You will want the trinket from Shattered Halls (Heals you when you block use on it). Also you will want several shields, since as a palli your main source of threat/dmg is Blocking on multiple mobs your shield dies faster then all your other gear will. Otherwise as the others have said Stam and Mp5 will be your friend since runing out of mana will make it quite hard to slaughter the mobs and can even risk death if you do not have a healer in instances beyond SM.

I presumed levelling, and thus, parry is quite nice for the extra swing, and thus the extra seal/judgement proc that it brings. As good I'd say as block until you start to get substantial spell dmg, which won't happen until outlands.

When I leveled my Protadin I focused strictly on Block. Always keep the best shield available equipped, Focusing primarily on Stam/Int gear, as well as picking up some +defense items is crucial. Oh, and keep a fast weapon in your main hand, but this you probably already knew.

Ok. My Level 60 Paladin just went to Outlands. And wow, am I unprepared for Hellfire Citadel. My main is a holy priest... but I really dont' think my Protection paladin is viable at the minute for instancing in Hellfire Citadel, I am thinking of respeccing Holy to grind some instances.

What kind of mp5/+heal should I be looking at AS A PALADIN for Hellfire Citadel and Coilfang Reservoir? And/or what kind of tanking stats? I think 4k hp is -really- to low.

I tanked Hellfire Ramparts at 60 on my pally with no trouble with a mix of Of the Champion and Of the Elder greens and a Flurry Axe enchanted w/ +40 spelldmg that I had been using since 40. Had about 5-6k HP, about 25-30 defense over level, and total avoidance with Holy Shield of around 60%.

What?

Prot pallies are destruction machines. Buy every single champion piece you can find in the auction house, forget about stuff like int, spell damage, mp5, etc; you don't need them. Get a GOOD shield -- I used Skullflame until level 62 when I picked up the Sporeggar shield. Put a spike on said shield, and proceed to round up between 4-6 quest mobs of whatever you're doing and AE them down with r1 consecrate and holy shield. You'll never run out of mana, you'll never die, and group quests are all easily soloable.

And if you're on PvP, so much the better. You quite simply don't lose to near level players, it doesn't matter who they are. They can't do enough damage to 10k armor and 7500hp at level 65 to do you any serious harm before they beat themselves to death.

I've got 10 characters on my account as of now, and I'm seriously considering deleting my mage and warlock just so I can roll up 2 more prot pallies simply because of how awesome they are.

Int/mp5 are wasted stats for the most part. S/JoWisdom is usually enough to keep consecrate and holy shield going which is the plurality of your threat. Keep a healthy supply of mana ports handy and you'll never really have to worry.

Stamina and any avoidance you can get are pretty much all you need. Block rating also translates to more threat as well so don't shirk it. Ignore spirit/str/agility for the most part. Hit/spell hit are largely useless as only the the first tic of consecrate is resistable and currently JoBlood isn't resistable either. It may be handy for taunt but honestly the number of times you'll need taunt instance grinding is pretty low. BoP will usually buy you the time you need to re-establish agro.

Spell damage weapon enchant and one or two of the spell damage trinkets from outlands quests are pretty vital though. The trinkets allow you to establish agro on boss pulls or larger AE packs while the spell damage enchant makes up for the lack of low level prot pally gear.

Oh, and no matter how much they complain, bless everyone with salvation.

I always give my healers wisdom and will suspend the salv rule if I'm outdamaging you (PUGs make me so so sad).

Also about RFC -- I found this really, really, really annoying due to all the mobs that have a knockdown, so I decided to just level my alts to 20 and do SM instead. I'm surprised no one else has mentioned being knocked down since it was so annoying to me as a level 70 to be constantly stunned in a level 10 instance.

I've had similar problems with the 'right' wing in Stockades when I was Frost (which I'd normally choose if I was going to settle down to some power leveling). However, when I respecced Fire I found that Blazing Speed lets me get so far ahead of everything which lets me kite them around a bit while out of range and hit them all at once. You might be able to get the same effects with rocket boots (if you're an engineer) or a swiftness potion. Of course, that limits you to only a single large pull every couple minutes, so I guess it depends if you're okay doing smaller pulls in between.

Also, while Deadmines would be difficult to reach as a horde character, Wailing Caverns is minimum level 10, and SFK is minimum level 13. Personally I'd go straight to SFK then DM at 20.

I'd just like to go on and recommend QuestHelper again for anyone who hasn't tried it yet. This is probably the biggest timesaver for leveling ever created - forget about your dual white swords with Fiery enchants or your white pants with Mystic Spellthread.

The biggest impediment to leveling is sitting on your arse, wondering what to do next and where to do it. QuestHelper skips all that and just points you from one place to another - even if the pathing isn't completely optimal, YOU'RE ALWAYS MOVING, which keeps the exp flowing steadily.

Again, if you don't have QuestHelper but you do have a character below level 70, go grab it now. I know this sounds like a massive plug, but I can't help it - I quested out 2 levels in one night despite being a massive procrastinator.

With the addition of the new quests to Dustwallow Marsh, there is a trick that will siginificantly speed up your travelling across continents (this only works for Alliance characters):

1. Go to Theramore Island and get Traitor's Among Us from Calia Hastings near the docks (across from the Gryphon Master). Continue her quest line of four easy quests. This can be started at level 32.

2. Completing the chain will open A Disturbing Development from Lieutenant Aden near the city gates towards the marsh. Follow his quest chain of 9 more quests that end with Return to Jaina. This last quest will enable you to get a teleport from a mage standing outside the mage tower in the Stormwind Park. The teleport will take you from Stormwind to Theramore Isle.

3. As long as you never hand in that quest, you will always have that teleport, usable with no cooldown and as often as you like. You don't even have to keep a quest item in your inventory.

4. Set your hearthstone to Shattrath city. You can now get to almost any area in the world with minimal time requirements. Getting to Theramore only involves portalling to Stormwind, jumping down the mage tower and asking the mage to transport you to Theramore. From Theramore you have a short flight to Ratchet and Gadgetzan (Caverns of Time!).

This is even useful for level 70 characters. I did the quest chain on my main just to have that teleport.

Note: If you happen to be a Gnomish Engineer, stop the chest chain one step earlier. This will give you a teleport from Theramore -> Stormwind (opposite direction). You can then use your Gnomish transporter to Gadgetzan, fly to Theramore and port to SW every four hours for free.

On a related note, at level 70 you can get another free teleport from Stormspire (Netherstorm) to Shattrath. Just do the Arcatraz quest chain until the Ethereal in Stormspire offers you to use his "personal transporter". Do not hand in the quest and keep the quest item in your backpack and you will permanently be able to use that teleporter. Set hearthstone to Stormspire in this case (as an added benefit, Stormspire also has a few vendors that can be camped for a nice profit!).
You will also be closer to quite a few level 70 instances that way after hstoning.

You will never get your Arcatraz key but to be honest I don't consider this a problem at all.

First I would be curious as to your new shamans time to level 30. I use two accounts, the support account has a 70 holy/disc priest and a 70 bm hunter. The hunter is used to run instances and travel, the priest for everyday questing. I level my new characters 90% from overland quests. I can usually knock out 25 levels in less than 1 day played, sometimes more. I do instances only once the character has all the quests for the instance. For alliance I do DM, BFD (wand is amazing for casters), Gnomer (30 to 45 minute run), SM, and then ZF. (ZF mainly for caster cane - spell damage as it will last till outlands then).

The problem I had with my priest in instances, beyond being Disc/Holy is that paper classes tend to take a real beating. I would rather use a mage up to and through SM. Beyond that something with melee seems to make it much easier.

As for group bonus, was it really all that much that putting up with others was worth the time? I usually saw a 4 to 12 point experience per kill shift but the run time was much longer.

For horde, I would imagine SFK would be better by far than DM. Logistics kills DM.


It cannot be over stated, regular questing beats instance running the majority of the time PROVIDED you know what your doing. By that I mean, know what quests to do and in what order. If you have to buy a leveling guide simply to have the quests laid out in fast order. It works just fine solo or "grouped"

Oh, by grouped here is what I mean. I initially group my priest and whomever he is healing to set focus. I use focus in my macros for heals, buffs, and even assist should I neeed it. Then I drop group. As such my priest just follows his focus and pops renew as needed, rarely if ever a flash heal. My priest can self shield and renew as well. The leveling character gets full experience per kill, a lot more hit points, and only down time from mana issues. While doing this for my warrior I usually ran out of targets. The priest has never run out of mana.


As before, I would be really curious how far instance leveling gets you in one day played. I have seen some 5 man multiboxers do very well but the problem is that you can quickly outgrow an instance and melee classes tend to need lots of work skilling up. The other side effect is that gathering trade skills suffer greatly.

Levelling my hunter I've found that with the new quest XP amounts, I've been levelling too fast for my mining to keep up. I think even doing quests you'd still have to take dedicated time out for node runs now in order for your gathering professions to grow with you. Personally I've put it on the backburner for now since if I need to do node runs it'll be much easier to do so when I have an epic mount and don't aggro so easily.

He's actually speaking more to defence and weapon skills, and it's true, when you finally hit your goal marker, you spend the next 2 levels missing and taking crushing blows. Not that I've ever found that to be a problem, because you're inevitably in some of the best gear for your level, and your weapon skills go up fast enough that you're fine after ~20 minutes. You can make up for defence over time, or if you want to rush it, take the character back to RFC and grab a group of mobs and let them beat on him for a while near the door. Low on health? Run out. Heal. Back in you go.

I've actually got a dual experiment going on because my wife's main is a pally and my main is a priest. She's using her main to level my warrior, while I use mine to level her shaman.

So far, we've played ~7 hours, with significant AFK time (My wife makes a killing on the AH from the RFC/SFK greens. 35g so far.), questing(totems) and travelling time, and her shaman's sitting at 18.
I've played 5.5 hours and I'm at 14.

Her paladin is ret with prot gear - as a result, my priest is actually having a much easier time with it so far. She's reliant almost exclusively on consecration and ret aura atm.

RFC and SFK are a joke. It's free xp. When we hit 20, I'll be starting DoT and run in SM with my priest. We'll probably respec her paladin to prot for SM, because she needs the on-block damage.

I think that's where the significant difference in levelling speed will show up. 5 people in a SM party with a prot pally AoEing (group bonus xp) vs DoT and run (full xp for one character). I'm hoping to get her shaman to 40 inside 24 hours of playtime. My warrior might take more, but if the experience is painful, I'll just put her on follow and quest it out.

While you have a point, I'm pretty certain "gathering trade skills" does not refer to weapon skill and defense but in fact to...gathering trade skills.

Obviously I need more coffee before posting in the morning.

I would say that I generally prefer to level gathering skills with a mount anyway, but let's not take away from my turd-posting. To the coffee machine!