I'll answer the leg patch question for completeness: Yes, it still works. I applied a nethercobra leg patch to tuxedo pants today and mailed them off to an alt. It's nice to have a nethercleft, nethercobra, and spellthread patched tuxedo pants for any alts I make. The extra stamina (or just raw damage of a nethercobra patch) really make a difference. Plus the tuxedo pants look nice.

Took a cue from this post and put an arcanum of rapidity on a noble monocle instead of the blood elf bandit mask. Not only is it classier, it was available at level 1 instead of level 5. I also put an arcanum on a pair of leather pants, minor haste on leather gloves, 6 stats on a simple black dress, and then fiery on a 1dps club. The club went from 1.9 to 1.07 weapon speed; the three haste enchants provided 78% haste making level 1-10 a really quick run. I went with a 1handed mace and leather items for my warrior so that I can use the same items to level a rogue/pally/shaman later on.

From personal experience, this has been confirmed - i.e., nerfed. Tried the DnD with 15 rogue and 70 s-priest in VC and SS - no luck. XP was about 10% of what I had been generating previously. I have no experience with that ridiculous Athlene method, so I cannot speak to that, but logic tells me that Blizz somehow tied the ratio of XP to the number of char's in the instance at the beginning of the combat, not the end.

I'm in the process of leveling some alts to be ready when woltk comes out, the gold is not a problem (well, spending 600g for 2 1h weapons and 2 +20 agility is a little too much, but a two hander with + 35 agi is more reasonable)

I'm not really sure about some decisions to make for each class... I'll be leveling a:
- warrior: until lvl 50 a dual wield spec with double lifestealing seems pretty good for reducing downtime (i hate sitting down to eat), should i go for double potency on an early stage in your opinion?

- hunter: will beastmastery still be the best spec even with a twinked toon? Does the pet will scale well or I'll just be gimped by using it an important source of dps?

- mage: what approach to follow? Fire for fast killing single targets or frost for powerful (120+ spell dmg at low levels) aoe grinding?

Keep in mind that i usually prefer grinding instead of questing since I'm fed up by doing them over and over (I know about jame's guide), I prefer to level solo and preferably with boe items (pugs are evil and asking a guildie to run you through an instance is not something i like to do).

Thanks for any suggestion.



Regarding useful consumables:
[Elixir of Major Frost Power] are quite insane at lvl 50.. (i suspect there are also for fire spells and shadow)

I am currently leveling a partly twinked hunter, following the Beastmaster tree until 50 then switching into Marksmanship. Starting off at level one I used a tuxedo pants with the +stam +agil patch (nethercleft?) and I think +35 health on the top. I have also been active on the AH for bows trying to get them every four levels or by the eights if blue items are used. For armor I have been very lazy only actively seeking out Green Whelp Armor (for stun) and Fletcher Gloves and then moved to some blue gaunts at 40 that provided simialr crit. I still wear the tux pants but will swap to some heavy scorpid with the same patch at 44.

Pet has been fine. I swap out to pick up new abilities every once in awhile but as I selected a boar there isn't much he can learn as there are major gaps in gore/charge. I have had him as far back as four levels and he caught up fine. This usually occurred when I went on a learning binge; meaning I was trying to fill out my pet skill sets in case I wanted a real second pet.

I do plan on picking up an owl once I reach felwood.

I do not grind, I do quests. I know them by heart and exploit them to the fullest. To me they are automatic as I need to kill mobs in the same area why not for a bonus. It does make the leveling go faster but even combined with full rest my pet rarely stayed one level back.

As for DPS, your pet exists so you can exert your DPS. I don't rely on him to kill, I rely on him to let me kill.

I just finished my warrior alt to 70 lastnight, he was level 18 2 weeks orso ago. Best thing for me during the leveling was dual crusader. Just gather the orbs on your main, strath side clearing is guarenteed 1 orb, and usually dropped 3 or 4 in total, that + enough large brilliant shards to do both enchants and sell some aswell.

I recommend staying dw fury all the way.
If you want some good weapons at 65, pick up blacksmithing (and dont forget to pickup the weaponmastery quest at the appropriate level like i did).

Please excuse me, I heave read through all 31 pages of this thread but have not seen my particular question answered. What I am wondering is if the ZG head enchants may be applied to items such as Noble's Monocle or Blood Elf Bandit Mask?

I know that all of the level 70 head enchants will not work for such items, however I had never seen these particular enchants mentioned.

Yet again I apologize if this question has been answered already and I have missed the answer. Thank you all for your time.

I'm not 100% sure but I believe they can. ZG helm enchants soulbind, though, unless I'm very much mistaken.

Do the ZG enchants soul bind even white items like I had listed in my original post?

It's really probable that the enchant can transform boe items into soulbound ones.. there's a way to apply them but it involves exploiting some game mechanics (I Highly doubt people will report you for leveling an alt with ZG and scryer/aldor enchants.. just don't be moronic and use them in bgs)

For mail wearing bank alts, you can get the Unadorned Chain set and leather wearers can wear the Sun Cured set. They are especially noticable in Alliance banks as they can only be purchased at BE vendors in Eversong woods. The boots will accept the run speed enchant so combine one of the sets with the Blood Elf Bandit Mask and the really neat looking BE level 1 weapons and you're nearly unique in SW.

Currently working on a level 22 mage and I was looking for some tips on AoE grinding. Anyone know of some good "hot spots" for AoE grinding at certain levels? I know the effectiveness of AoE grinding is debateable, but if people know of some good locations with a lot of nearby mobs that are AoE friendly (non-ranged/caster types with no tricks up their sleeves) I'd love to try it out. Last time I leveled a mage I didn't even try any AoE grinding until the fields in WPL.

I used Mage area of effect locations - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft as a reference point for decent AoE spots. It's tough going though especially in the early levels but at 22 you can get 3/3 elemental precision, 2/2 Imp frost Nova, 3/3 Permafrost and 3/3 Improved Blizzard which are pretty much the core talents you need to do it successfully. Good luck.

Go'shek Farm in Arathi if you're alliance is absolutely amazing.

AoE doesnt get much benefit from +dmg (its something like 13% per target) int would probably be more useful

I'm looking for some prot paladin tips. The main problem I'm having right now is that I simply run out of mana every 2 pulls while all the prot pallies are claiming that they can chainpull stuff without running out of mana.
I usually pull 4-5 mobs and then use a couple consacrations (4 enemies and consacration is better DPM than holy shield, especially if it doesn't use all the HS charges) while keeping holy shield, ret aura, blessing of sanctuary and seal/judgement of wisdom up. I have 2 questions here:

• Should I be using BOW and seal of rightehousness instead?

• Is there any way I can increase my blockchance at these low levels? (I'm 45), I've been trying to stack some defence to get my avoidance up (78% with redoubt and HS up)

I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. I'm quite sure that these claims of unlimited mana come from the genre of people that levels a lock via void draintanking + wanding and thinks they're efficient, I just want to be sure.
(my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory)

I'd also like to recomend [Battleworn Thrash Blade] to any prot pally out there. The extra swing is a white swing (didn't it use to be yellow?) so it can proc everything, which makes up for it's less than ideal speed.

When I went through this I wasn't twinked out which probably helped learn a lot more about real limits.

Only enchants can raise your block chance and they are not worth it in your level range, you will out level your shield; I do not know the minimum level for the enchant.

My choices when I was doing this were too...

1. Best mobs were -2 to -3 levels
2. Mana Oil
3. Blessing of Sanctuary
4. Judge Seal of Wisdom
5. Seal of Crusader
6. Holy Shield with 3+ opponents
7. Consecrate with 3+ Healthy opponents
8. Bandage after fight, or shield and bandage during

As a side note, I was not beyond chugging pots during or between pulls to maintain the rate at which I could process groups. I also found many places where I could gather large amounts of beasts to be more valuable than humanoids as I never had to worry about runners.

For my paladin, I was having a very similar problem, so I tried switching from Sanctuary to Wisdom. While things did go a bit slower, I was able to kill without stopping. I also switched from Righteousness to judging Wisdom and keeping Light up. I also setup Judgement/Seal macros - /cast Judgement /stopcasting /cast Seal of Choice for Light and Wisdom which helped to key mashing. I never used Concecrate as it just sucked up that tiny low lvl mana pool. Also, I found it really helps to think about the mobs that you are killing and change kill orders accordingly. Without Righteousness, white damage is going to be a fair amount of your damage so I try to kill a fast hitting dual wield mob last in order to encourage reckoning procs. Additionally, I always tried to pull some sort of melee mob with a caster for the aforementioned reckoning as the casters will rarely proc it.

Can someone summarise the current possibilities for having high levels AOE? I'm thinking of starting another Druid on the Horde side, but absoloutely cannot face the early levels again (and for that matter, would rather spare myself the higher ones as well). I can have pretty much any class do pretty much anything, and so as long as it works and works quickly, I am indifferent to exactly what it entails. Sorry if this information has already been posted, but this thread is rather fragmented.

I've got a sunwell geared protadin and BT geared fury warrior that I use myself.

I was getting about 35%-40% of a level per clear of RFC at level 8, switching to SFK at level 10 (but 5 clears only took me about 30 minutes, so some lockout worries for both). At level 20 you can go to scarlet monastery (armory and cathedral both work, cathedral's a bit better but also a bit more demanding on gear), which will keep you leveling very quickly until 40-42 or so. After that, AEing sort of sucks for a few levels as a protadin, so I typically bridge it with clearing zul farrak on a fury warrior. Once I hit 45, it's off to stratholme until level 58 (the shattered halls trinket that heals for 120 on blocks is hugely useful here), at which point the dps warrior makes his comeback and clears ramparts/blood furnace. That last part requires quite a bit of gear on the dps warrior's part, and you need a lower level healer to really optimize it. I two boxed my druid as resto with healing gear and was able to pull blood furnace with no downtime, which was pretty sweet exp until 63 or so, at which point I went the tap powerleveling through quests route.

The thing to stress is that your exp is DRAMATICALLY improved if you can get 3 other low levels in the party. Like up to 50% more exp per kill.

If you really don't want to play the alt at all Vitae sums up more of less what various post before have said. The only addition that I would add is that if you spend 30 min putting together a white item twink set, as has been discussed at least twice in this thread, I find the low level to really be fun. Up until around level 20 a full white twink set will one shot almost anything, which I rather enjoy.

I don't use the AOE approach. I do have two different methods for leveling a new character.

First method: I have a L70 Holy Priest who follows, renews, heals, and buffs, the new character while out of group. Unless bound by mana the new character has no downtime and is essentially risk free. I do this with multiboxing on an iMac. It does not reduce XP gained and I simply do every quest I can. I have the new character twinked in enchanted and kitted Tuxedo clothing. If melee oriented I usually keep their weapons within two to four levels but let armor slide a bit more except for key items (like green whelp armor for those who can wear it)

Second method: L70 Hunter grouped with new character. This drops xp by 80 to 90% per kill. However I have the Hunter kill everything and move the new character via aspect of the pack. Key here is to do all quests as fast as possible, using every available zone appropriate to level. So far I level faster than method A but I do have more travel as I need to use more zones to get enough quest XP to over come the XP loss from kills.

Now I do use the Hunter to take characters from both categories through instances but I only do them when the new character has quests in there. I can turn more XP doing overland quests than any method of killing. Even hauling 3 other low levels doesn't really mitigate the loss enough when compared to time.

Quests are the key. You level insanely fast if you concentrate on doing the quests and doing them in the right order; meaning minimizing travel and knowing how they link between zones.