Twinking tricks/Leveling alts - Page 27

Anthion · 03/28/08, 11:54 AM

Tap leveling is nothing new, it's been mentioned in this thread multiple times, if you tap a mob out of group that is in a higher level characters con range and they kill it you get full exp (pre-BC con was 12 levels, now it is 8). The point of diminishing return on exp is 5 levels, meaning anything you kill higher than 5 levels above you gives the same exp. Optimal tap is 5 levels above you and 8 levels below your accomplice, so for example if you were level 57, you would want to tap level 62 mobs and have a 70 kill them out of group. Obviously the greater the level difference between you and the mob, the more resist chance there is making it harder to tap.

As far as leveling to 70 in a little over a day, you can't do that by just AoE grinding instances with higer level toons. It has to be done by DoT and zone or some other similar method. Not sure if it would work but it might also be possible to save time by having the low level toon alt-F4 while the other character pulls the zone back to the beginning of the instance. Just before the high level gets ready to zone, log in the low level AoE character, zone the high level, and have the low level finish them off only to reset, zone, and alt-F4 again.

Parkerlol · 03/30/08, 7:00 AM

Shelly · 04/07/08, 5:15 PM

In regards to professions for alts,

My main is a 43 Paladin with Jewelcrafting/Mining as her primary professions. I've decided to take a brief break from her, in the hopes that it'll make the 43-58 stretch less onerous after some time away. I've been wanting to try playing a Warlock for some time, so I decided to roll one.

I enjoy leveling professions naturally as my character progresses, as opposed to powerleveling them. However, I figure that I should take at least one gathering profession for my alt so she doesn't become a complete gold sink, requiring cash and materials from my main on a regular basis.

Tailoring and Engineering seemed like a fun mixture for my Warlock in terms of craftable epics, but I can't level both of them at the same time without spending a lot of gold at the AH.

What mixture of professions have you all found ideal when leveling alts? Is it most efficient to take two gathering professions and then powerlevel two crafting professions at a certain point? Or is the gold influx in Outlands good enough to allow me to simply buy any materials that I need?

jerry247 · 04/07/08, 5:37 PM

From my experiences I have found that two gathering professions until level 50 works well. At level 50 drop one and pick up a crafting profession. If you desire another crafting profession 70 is probably the time to do that. I recently (october) rerolled on mal'ganis, my first character is the gatherer, mining and heb, who funds/supplies my other two alts alchemy/jc and mining/engineering (whoa thats expensive).

This plan has worked very well, but a lot of my mats for day to day crafting come from the AH more than the field, so I could probably drop my gathering skills and not feel to much of a pinch, but then why would I play my hunter.

Draegan · 04/07/08, 5:57 PM

Go with the tried and true mine/herb combo while leveling. By the time I hit 60 I had about 1300-1600 gold. YMMV with your server's economy.

I usually, after hitting 70, will drop one gathering prof. and pick up one profession where they have decent epic patterns. My paladin is herb/mine and at 70 will go mine/engineer.

LiquidHAL · 04/07/08, 6:40 PM

Originally Posted by Draegan

Go with the tried and true mine/herb combo while leveling. By the time I hit 60 I had about 1300-1600 gold. YMMV with your server's economy.

What do you do about tracking? I usually do mining/skinning, if there wasn't a little dot on the minimap I would probably miss at least half the nodes i get, it must be worse with herbalism since herbs are usually that much harder to spot.

Draegan · 04/07/08, 7:23 PM

Set up a macro:

/castsequence [nocombat] find herbs,find minerals

Just keep tapping it as you're traveling. You should inherently know when you're near where ore might spawn (mountains hills etc).

ZeroWashu · 04/08/08, 7:13 AM

Originally Posted by Shelly

What mixture of professions have you all found ideal when leveling alts? Is it most efficient to take two gathering professions and then powerlevel two crafting professions at a certain point? Or is the gold influx in Outlands good enough to allow me to simply buy any materials that I need?

Skinning and mining.

For my lock I had skinning and mining until 60 then dropped skinning for engineering and at 65 dropped mining for tailoring. I kept all my mining mats as I leveled.

On my current alt set; I have 3 characters I am moving to or have completed to 60, I did two as miners and one as an herbalist. All three "could" skin if I wanted to but I ended up with two of them actually doing it.

Skinning is an obvious as you make your own resource nodes. Even selling to the vendor is fine but I would just AH it all and have more than enough level 40 mount money. Herbalism to me didn't really pay off until you get to Felwood+ and can get dreamfoil, mountain silversage, and plaguebloom. Now herbalism is great if you have an alt with alchemy who you can just dump this on for the elixirs as you level up.

I would never wish blacksmithing or jewelcrafting on anyone while leveling. First both take too much time and resources which are better spent leveling. Alchemy, Leather working, and Tailoring, can all be done while leveling without too much impact on speed. Enchanting has always been "alt" fodder to me. Engineering is my new fave and all new characters will have it.

Bendyr · 04/08/08, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by Merple

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 run alts through instances as high as RFD on my holy priest. The main problem with holy nova is not the damage, it's actually the threat. Since the holy nova does 0 threat, you need to do other things to keep threat up (i.e. keep a renew up on yourself, or use sticky damage like thorns or other reflective damage), or else your lowbie friend will pull threat the next time they bandage or something.

Also the lack of a silence is terrible. If you're blood elf, that will go a long way.

Originally Posted by Spork

One thing I'm finding to work extremely well for leveling a pally is speccing him prot, attaching a shield spike, getting a un-grouped 70 druid (2 boxing) to sit there and keep thorns and hots up while the pally just sits there spamming consecration and having ret aura up. I'd assume this could work well for almost any heavy armor class. I'm considering camping a 70 lock that's on the same account as the druid in the area and giving the pally a 3 min imp buff.

Does anyone know of any other random things that you can use to add a thorns type effect on an alt?

I usually use a [Stormchops] and I picked up a [Naglering] to help hold threat on my holy priest. It's kind of silly, but it's really really fun.

Yae · 04/15/08, 4:24 AM

Cant see it mentioned anywhere in the thread, but i found out a while ago that it is possible to tag a lowlvl mob and have a highlvl warlock or hunter pet kill it for full xp. Seems like it can be an efficient way of grinding the first levels until u can start dot and run out of instances.

Prinsesa · 04/15/08, 5:38 AM

Cant see it mentioned anywhere in the thread, but i found out a while ago that it is possible to tag a lowlvl mob and have a highlvl warlock or hunter pet kill it for full xp. Seems like it can be an efficient way of grinding the first levels until u can start dot and run out of instances.

How is this different from having a low level player tagging a low level mob and the high level player killing it for full exp?

Melkor · 04/15/08, 5:53 AM

If the mob is grey to the high level player then the person you are levelling won't get any XP, however if having the pet kill the mob gets around that then it could be pretty damn handy.

Prinsesa · 04/15/08, 6:07 AM

If the mob is grey to the high level player then the person you are levelling won't get any XP, however if having the pet kill the mob gets around that then it could be pretty damn handy.

Zuh? I've ran Ragefire Chasm dozens of times and I can assure you that the low level player I'm partied with is still getting exp even if level 12 Taragaman the Hungerer is grey to me. Yes, heavily reduced exp, but 0 as you say.

Tagging low level mobs with a low level toon and having a high level toon (pet or not) kill has been around for a long time - unless of course you mean while the both of them are PARTIED, which would be different and useful.

Melkor · 04/15/08, 6:26 AM

I was thinking of unpartied tagging and killing where it would have most use.

Yae · 04/15/08, 6:27 AM

Forgot to mention that this has to be done out of group.

If one really wants to push xp/hour I suppose one could do as Athene did, but instead of a party within lvl range of the mob, one would use a pet or multiple to kill the mob. The lowbie would leave the group, tag mob and the 70's pet would kill it, then reinvite back to group before he gets ported. Havent tried this yet, but it should give full xp. Might be faster than dot and run on low lvl. But it is limited by how fast the pet can kill the mob tho, and its only efficient for so long.

Too further increase the efficiency of this i think its possible to use imp hunters mark/curse of recklessness without affecting the xp gain, but helping the pet kill the mob faster.

SeanDamnit · 04/15/08, 12:16 PM

do engineer bombs/dynamite have an AOE cap?

someone mentioned earlier that it may be viable to have a prot pally pull all of Cath to the beginning of the instance where a lowbie pally is waiting, bring them down to low health, then leave the instance while the lowbie bubbles and concs them all down for full xp. I originally replied saying that conc at that low of level just isn't powerful enough to bring down all mobs. However, if EZ Throw Dynamite or a Mithiril Bomb doesn't have an AOE cap, then that idea may just be viable.

vorda · 04/16/08, 4:51 AM

then leave the instance while the lowbie bubbles and concs them all down for full xp.

Wouldnt this also work if the high level pala puts a consec right at the portal, where the low lvl one is standing aswell, and immediatly zones out? (using the high level pala's consec mainly to kill the mobs)

Prinsesa · 04/16/08, 5:36 AM

Wouldnt this also work if the high level pala puts a consec right at the portal, where the low lvl one is standing aswell, and immediatly zones out? (using the high level pala's consec mainly to kill the mobs)

IIRC from earlier in the thread, a Paladin's Consecrate disappears once he leaves the zone.

Forgot to mention that this has to be done out of group.

If one really wants to push xp/hour I suppose one could do as Athene did, but instead of a party within lvl range of the mob, one would use a pet or multiple to kill the mob. The lowbie would leave the group, tag mob and the 70's pet would kill it, then reinvite back to group before he gets ported. Havent tried this yet, but it should give full xp. Might be faster than dot and run on low lvl. But it is limited by how fast the pet can kill the mob tho, and its only efficient for so long.

*Deleted for being wrong info*

Touf · 04/16/08, 7:17 AM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

IIRC from earlier in the thread, a Paladin's Consecrate disappears once he leaves the zone.

I'm still not quite getting this.

Player A is level 1, Player B is level 70.
Players A and B are not partied.
Player A hits a level 9 (any higher is a skull?) mob once, just to damage and tag it.
Player B kills it.
Player A gets full exp.

This kind of tap killing has worked since the dawn of time. What's the significance if pets can do it too?

Have you actually done this recently? It doesn't work. You get very little exp for it.

ZeroWashu · 04/16/08, 7:20 AM

Originally Posted by Touf

Have you actually done this recently? It doesn't work. You get very little exp for it.

It hasn't worked for a long time at that either. The pet trick is more difficult to pull off. Right now the only thing that works is instance dotting and zoning. Until Blizzard fixes that, which I fully expect them to do. There isn't a justifiable reason for a dot to continue processing if the caster leaves.

I look at that recent leveling claim for the Paladin to be interesting but only that. I doubt any other class could be used, the perfect immunity they have regardless of the comparative mobs level combined with dot and run makes it ideal.

ZeroWashu · 04/16/08, 7:35 AM

Well I have taken my warrior to 60. He is under the constant escort of my alt account level 70 priest geared towards healing (1200 in basic tailoring trash). The priest is not grouped, he just follows and has "focus" macros to buff/heal the warrior. This basically allows him to go non-stop. I have him dual wielding but protection spec ( Shargoti on Eitrigg ). I find that devastate spam is a good single opponent attack and whirlwind/cleave does fine with multiples. Concentrating on casters.

What I am looking for is advice going forward. I will need to do many of the instances and I do not plan on taking the tag along priest. His professions are mining and engineering. I will take engineering to 350 once he is 62 and make his tanking helm. He will probably at the same time make his mote extractor which while it doesn't help level will help him buy up mats should I eventually swap his mining for smithing or such.

As I would like to avoid smithing I would like to know which instances as he levels I should get him into. I plan on doing PUGs as I see requests for tanks but I am not familiar enough to know which ones have drops good for a tanking warrior. I also aim to take him to heroics/kara++ at 70 but am not sure where his gear must be to do so (other than avoidance/mitigation minimums). With tailors it was real easy to get in the door epics but do I need smithing to do the same or are the AH epics fine to equipping to get into Kara/Heroics as a warrior?

Yae · 04/16/08, 10:05 AM

Just to clarify it all a bit.

Player A is level 1, Player B is a level 70 warlock.
Player A and Player B are not partied.
Player A hits a mob once to tag it. (the mobs level doesnt matter, but mobs 5 levels over you or higher will give the most xp)
Player B's PET kills the tagged mob, Player B does no actual damage to the tagged mob, as that will reduce the xp Player A gets.
Player A gets full xp.

I did this on my priest alt and 70 warlock with felguard.
This might work differently for hunters as they have to level their pets, but i think that the reason it works has something to do with how the player wont get loot or xp off a mob when the pet kills it alone.

Rendwahar · 04/16/08, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by Polleke

One of the nicest mod combinations for levelling is Lightheaded (from wowinterface) and Cartograph (ace archives). Lightheaded is a database mod containing all commnents on quests from WoWHead. You click on a quest and you can read the comments about it in game. If one of those comments contains a location you can click that, carograph will then display a giant arrow on your screen with the waypoint to that location.
So no more searching and alt tabbing. Just follow the arrow on your screen.

This seems like it will really help my girlfriend and I. She is a 62.5 Warlock.

ZeroWashu · 04/16/08, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by Yae

Just to clarify it all a bit.

Player A is level 1, Player B is a level 70 warlock.
Player A and Player B are not partied.
Player A hits a mob once to tag it. (the mobs level doesnt matter, but mobs 5 levels over you or higher will give the most xp)
Player B's PET kills the tagged mob, Player B does no actual damage to the tagged mob, as that will reduce the xp Player A gets.
Player A gets full xp.

I did this on my priest alt and 70 warlock with felguard.
This might work differently for hunters as they have to level their pets, but i think that the reason it works has something to do with how the player wont get loot or xp off a mob when the pet kills it alone.

No.

First it would work no differently with a hunter pet versus a warlock pet. If the lock/hunter is in range to receive experience then it will be reduced to near nothing for the low level (not like anything a level 1 can tag ain't going to die to a 70th felguard in one whack anyway). So if it still works being out of range; I will try that when I get home; then it might be an interesting tactic for all of 5 minutes.

I have been dual boxing for over a year. anytime the higher level or his pet did damage the other character, grouped or not, received less experience. Worse, the more damage done by a character other than the one who tagged it the less they get - it can be lower than what they would have gotten grouped with the higher level!

As such I adopted the strategy of having a pocket priest out of group. All the priest does is to heal the new character. As such he never diminishes the experience of the power leveling character. Doesn't matter if he draws aggro or not - as long as he does not do any damage to a mob the leveling character gets full experience. The priest could stand there shielded and not cause xp loss as long as no damage is imparted. Just make sure the character being leveled can actually kill the mobs in question in a reasonable amount of time.