One technique I developed to level my alt warlock, inspired by the DoT and run method in SM, was to take it to the next level: solo SM. From level 35 onwards, in very poor gear, it was a breeze to fear mobs behind the instance portal, and even a low level VW can take a fair amount of punishment from most of the mobs. XP ranged from 700 to 1200 per mob unrested, depending on my level and the level of the target (highest was ~1200 from a lvl 39 Mage at lvl 35).

With a healthy supply of bandages and a bit of patience, I managed to grind out 4 levels in about 4 hours of playtime. I found Cath to be the easiest instance to solo, once I was high enough to get over most of the level-based resistances, since the initial corridor is easy to clear and provides a handy kiting space for later on. In particular, Cath allows you to use the central waterfall to kite obscene numbers of mobs from the Cathedral itself at once. The furthest I ever got was 3 pulls before Mograine, until a respawned pat swiftly ended my fun.

While not necessarily the fastest method of levelling, it certainly was some of the most fun I've had. I was almost disappointed when the XP gain became too low to justify it any more. I don't know if any class other than a warlock or hunter would stand a chance at soloing the instance but it's definitely worth trying for those classes.

The pet trick only works if the newbie is grouped with another character, for some reason it doesn't work for a soloing newb.

Thats weird, I was grouped with a friend when I found this out. But I think he went out of range sometimes, unsure wether this affected the xp tho (except xp beeing split on 2 people ofc)
Did the person you were grouped with have to be in range for you to get xp?

The "old" tap leveling (the one where you get good exp) worked/works like this.

player a = low level
player b = high level

A hits a mob that is still green(gives xp) for B.
B kills mob

This is done not in party.

Problems your are facing is that if the level distance is to big the low level wont be able to damage the mob that is green for the high level(resist, miss) and this brings the speed down to nothing.

Only the level of the player that does the damage is important for the exp.

And as i understood the new method, if a pet does the damage instead of the high level player the mob can be any level and the low level still gets exp.

player a = low level
player b = high level

A hits mob.
B sends in pet.
A gains full exp.

Now the question is what is the best pet for this?

EDIT:I think it would be good to put something about tap levelling into the think tank because every 3 or 4 pages someone ask about it and there is always alot of confusion about it.

When I tried the pet tapping method with just my hunter and a newb it was the same as the hunter doing the dps. After reading about this method more over on the dual-boxing forums Main Page - Dual-Boxing.com Community Forum I discovered you need to have 2 newbs grouped for this to work, not sure why but thats how it worked when I tried it.

i just tried the pet thing and it did not work.

I had a lvl 23 hunter in barrens with a lvl 70 hunter ungrouped.
The lvl 23 was in party with someone in orgrimmar ( some random guy lvl 20).

I shot a mob with the hunter turned auto shot off and killed the mob with the pet of the level 70 hunter.
Only got experience depending on how much damage each character did.

Am i missing something here?

Im partly wondering if athenes paladin was prot or holy, because he could just be prot, for better tanking/more avoidance, and have the paladin he is leveling just heal him. Would it also work as holy though? and just spam heal with no interuption, the damage he takes would be more , but the healing would also be alot better, so overall i guess he would be fine against 10~15 slavepens mobs? (i guess there isnt much point in pulling more then that seeing as aooe cap is at 10?)

Paladins can with Holy talents indeed achieve uninterruptable heals, it's also not worth it unless you don't have tanking gear for these kind of endeavours. The AoE cap is also not based on the amount of mobs you're hitting, but the total amount of damage your AoE does, and doesn't apply to Consecration.

The REAL Power Leveling Guide By Spotnag

This.
Cleverly thought out, but you need three accounts/people instead of two.

Tried this earlier today with a mage friend and me boosting a level 10 paladin through RFC. I can confirm that this method does indeed work, each pull was about one level for the "leecher".

For those of you to lazy to watch the movie:

Three accounts, mage, paladin and X leecher. Make a group, zone in to instance of your choice and park the leecher and mage at the entrance. Paladin runs and pulls a large number of mobs back to said entrance. The mage is kicked from the group and now the paladin consecrates all the mobs until they reach 30% health. This is when the mage, out of group, freezes the mobs in place and the paladin runs out of the instance. The mage then kills the mobs, again all done out of group, the leecher gets full amount of experience.

I tried this for an hour or two in SM Cath with a 70 Mage, 70 Paladin and 28 Rogue, 29 Paladin. I was playing the rogue and the other paladin would stay in to be power leveled too.

We had a few problems with deaths on the mage and the alts. And also freaky reduced EXP (not entirely sure why).

We did pretty much the same thing. Paladin pulls a huge pack, mage gets kicked from group before the paladin reaches the entrance or the mage gets in combat. The paladin would knock them all down to about 30-40% then leave, the mage would frost nova > arcane explosion them all down.

Sometimes, mobs would just randomly go for the alts. Not entirely sure why, but I'm assuming it was because of a few that would 'run in fear' before the mage started his DPS, so the mage wasn't on the threat list for them and the alts were as they were grouped with the paladin and they were in combat before the mage.

As I recall, we only really got full EXP a few times. I don't think we could quite get the timing on frost nova and stuff right, and the mage died a few times as well as the alts.

Afaik the amount aoe cap is set to a certain amount of mobs, im not sure the number, but lets say 15, so even if you pull 150 mobs, your aoe will do The same total of damage to those 150 mobs as it would to the 15, so 10% pr aoe. ?

I tried this some tonight, and it worked like a charm for me atleast, was me playing 3 accounts at the same time (On a 3~4 year old laptop mind you!) Took a little while to get into it, but when i did it started going rather quick, went from 34-40 in like 1 hour 30 minutes~2 hours (and 10-15 minutes to go repair shields/afk xd) I guess il start going to BRD when all my chars are past 40, and see how that works out, and also try out brs. Was using a pala in 6/8 t6 etc so could pull all of armory without any probems of surviving, did cath in 2 pulls though cause my mage would probably have trouble aoeing all those mobs down seeing as his gear/hp/specc wasnt THAT good. At first i tried keeping the mage outside of the instance til he needed to come and do frost nova> aoe etc, so i would have lots of time to cons them down, not having to worry about the 60 second timer on mage, but i noticed that sometimes when doing this i would just get 100~ exp pr mob for no reason, and also realized that 60 seconds was more then enough to cons them down > use mage to kill rest. Now just need to get all my alts to 60 before they nerf this =P

Today, 00:50, my paladin was level 15
5 1/2 hours later (Shadowfang Keep, then SM at level 20)
Say 'Hello' to level 33, a friend joined us with his lvl28 warrior when i was lvl 24 with the pala, else my pala would be even higher by now.
I played the Mage+Leecher, another friend played a pala we specced prot for this, no ubertankinggear.
I would encourage to give the leecher BoP from the pala that leaves the instance, because sometimes mobs in the frost nova will hit him, if he's the only one in melee range. Especially in SM, where you park him at the portal, and the pala also tanks the pull only 4-5 yards away: Running away in fear + Frost Nova + 2-3sec to wait for the tankpala to leave instance = Sometimes a dead+sad leecher char

Paladins' consecration doesn't work like other AoE spells, and is not subject to the AoE cap. So if a paladin consecrates over a 150 mobs, it'll tick for the same amount as if it hit one. (I've tested this to 30+ mobs, including situations where other AoErs are commenting on how little their spells are hitting for).

Hunter Weps?

Are there any hunter weapons that are particularly good for there level or are quest rewards that you can get early with the help of a higher level, etc. The only one that I can think of now is the AV crossbow, although I'm not even sure how good that would be for a hunter, I just know I got it for my rogue as a stat stick.

Any other tricks for solo leveling a hunter? I'm already going BM and using gear with high level enchants and other sorts of general advice spread through this thread.

There are some good hunter weapons out there, but quite frankly it doesn't make that much of a difference. Just ensure you have a new weapon every 5 or 10 levels and get melee weapons with good stats on them. As a BM Hunter you get quite a bit of mileage out of +damage scopes, so apply scopes to all weapons even if it is just the smaller versions.

As for Hunter levelling in general, when you kill stuff quickly a lot of people swear by boars due to their charge giving a silly amount of threat, often enough to be able to finish off the enemy before they go for you.

For longer-lasting enemies and general tanking, I prefer a pet with Screech.
Screech is also awesome for helping out others with dungeons and quests (no cap on the targets affected, huge AP debuff that stacks with all other AP debuffs etc). Screech is spammable but lasts 4 seconds and will normally not be autocasted until it expires, so when you have Go for the Throat you can (at least you could) spam it for an all but unreachable threat ceiling until you get badge/raiding gear.

I do not know if pets level faster now than they did after 2.1, but if they don't then you should always tame a new pet with the needed levelling abilities instead of levelling up a pet (the pet can be one or two levels below you without major issues except for aoe aggro radius, but below that - just grab a new pet). Growl doesn't cost points so you teach that immediately to any new pet, then you just keep trucking. More abilities are just gravy and not needed while levelling - do train them if your pet gets enough training points.

I'd recommend you to get a Screech pet at L64 or whenever they get the last level of Screech, as you will want to have a pet with Screech maxed out in any case for raiding and dungeons. Remember - Screech + Demoralizing Shout/Roar means that Curse of Recklessness can be applied to target for more physical DPS.

When training a solo pet, I'd recommend <innate ability>, Growl, Claw and Dive/Dash. Dash is not needed with a pet who has Charge or whatever the boar ability is named (don't think boars can even learn Dash for that matter).
The reason for getting a pet with an innate ability is that just having Growl and auto-attack makes levelling / attitude adjustment so much easier.

There are few good innate abilities - Charge, Screech, Warp and (possibly) Lightning Breath. LB is not what it once was (the Hunter version to the machine-gun Firebolt Imp) but it is nice for initial aggro - only if they've removed the "let's fly away 10 feet to use LB" part of it though, if they haven't you have to spam it yourself.

When you do use a Screech pet, make sure you hand out ear mufflers to all melee you team up with.

I can confirm the 3 accounts boost method still works. We did SM armory (and some cath but found it harder) with a regular holy/prot pala in a mix of tank/vengefull healing gear and a mage with random gear. Pulled entire cathedral (if you jump turn etc you dont get to much damage since you parry/block most of it) and just keeping myself up with holy shock. Make sure you dont hit any of the mobs with melee or any skills. Pulled all the way back to the instance portal, concecrated 3 times to 25%, kicked the mage from the group and left the instance. Mage killed mobs in a couple of seconds and alt got full xp from just standing there. At level 26 it was pretty much 90% a level per pull. At level 38 now its around 8 bars a pull.

Athene was in steamvaults before, wondering if you could pull off the same method there and what kinda gear your pala would need.

Can anyone recommend a boog power leveling spec for a 70 mage? I plan to use her to power a few twinks up doing instance runs She is normally a fire mage for raiding. She has 1100 spell damage is that helps.

WE have used her before when she was frost and it was effective, but we are looking to ekk out as much as possible.

Thanks

Go 40/0/21, max out all talents for survival and AE. This is assuming you're doing instances where you can take a moderate beating.

I always preferred a good 2H sword, axe, polearm when leveling my hunter. It tended to have better overall stats than a couple 1Hs, and you don't compete with rogues to buy them. I even used feral druid staff a time or two when the agi/stam was an improvement over what I had. Although that will get you /lol's from people.

I suppose go with two 1Hs if you're going to apply mana oil to both of them to improve your uptime.

I leveled from about 15-55 with a bear just because he would eat about anything. I didn't have to waste time running around trying to find fish or fruit for a special diet.

With all this talk about pulling entire instances and such to power level I decided to test whether or not just using overland quests could work. I have three accounts though I usually only keep two active now as I have settled on a system which works for leveling off any character type I need.

One of the recent improvements was to increase quest experience for 20-60 and reduce the experience required to level. What I do to maximize this is have my L70 Priest on my alt account tag along with whomever I am trying to level but out of group so as not to reduce experience; the reduction is severe as mobs giving 200 would give 20 xp.

One thing I noticed was that I usually out leveled an area before I could exhaust the quests. This got me thinking so I am now doing the following.

Priest on main account, brand new character. L70 Hunter (BM fwiw) on the alt account. They are grouped at all times. For the first twenty levels or so the Hunter hasn't even brought out the pet except when I ran her through DM. I will take her through BFD, Stockades, Gnomer, and SM but only once in each. The idea is to go to these places ONLY when I have quests that take me there. The characters are both hearth stoned to Shat.

Mob XP is usually in the range of 12-24 now. Horrible I know. Yet she is 22 in about 8 hours of play simply from having the hunter drag her from quest to quest. Aspect of the Pack alleviates low level movement issues and the can multishot/insta kill most sub level 20 mobs.

Now I have done the quests in Draenie, Human, and Night Elf starting areas. I am also aiming for high rep for her as well with Azeroth factions. I then did Elwynn Forest, Westfall, DarkShore, Redridge, and now will do part of Wetlands. She has been through DM and will do BFD by 24.

What I have found is that I have to do more quests but I level very fast without resorting to replaying the same instance over and over. I also rack up a good amount of rep in this process. It is also easier as I do not have to coordinate between multiple players or three accounts.

I have her parked temporarily as this is something I only spend time on every three days or so. I am alternating play with a solo BM Hunter to see the difference in leveling speed. Its going to be easy to out level the solo hunter but I am curious as to how much.

If it's permitted, I'd like to show you my current setup and request specific tips/guidance on the most efficient leveling method for my particular makeup.

Below are the accounts/toons at my disposal, the characters in bold being the toons we are focused on leveling while pretty obvious:

Husband:
70 Protection Paladin T4/5 mix equivalent
70 Elemental Shaman T4/pvp mix
20 Feral Druid

Myself:
70 Beastmaster Hunter T4
70 Holy Priest T4/T5 mix (a few pieces of primal mooncloth still)
24 Frost Mage

Son:
54 Combat Rogue (not concerned about leveling this one, the son got bored with it)
20 Retribution Paladin

So far, we have been questing the lowbie toons together with a mix of from memory and recently with the assistance of the Quest Helper addon. For the most part, most pulls involve the druid tanking, pally healing/dps/offtanking as needed, mage dps/aoe. We generally only play these toons on the weekends so the combination of rested xp and group bonus has been awesome. The mage is a bit higher because I played around perfecting my aoe grinding a bit so I'd be familiar with the concept. Also, we have been maxing out the the professions at each milestone simply because we had the time and the resources to do so but it's not a priority. I would also be willing to respec the lower lvl toons as needed to maximize the leveling potential although the current setup so far has been working well for us. Respecing the 70s for this purpose is not an option atm due to raiding constraints.

We are also on a pvp server so at times, we park the higher level dps toons in the area and have to log off of our lowbies in order to take care of some horde in the area which makes for slower although much safer questing.

In your opinion, with this group makeup, would it be wiser to continue with the group questing as we've been doing with attempts into 3 manning some instances for instance quests or would a mix of boosting from the higher level toons at our disposal be more effective in terms of speed leveling? Our original goal was to level the lower toons to 70 together but if there is a phenomenal way to do it otherwise so that we can play together at 70 sooner, I would love to hear it.