Leg Armor/Spellthreads can still be applied to BOE items by a high level character, then passed to your level 1 twink as of patch 2.4.

As for the +40 spell damage enchant, it still requires an ilevel 35+ item to apply. The +30 spell damage enchant can be applied to any weapon, but since that enchant drops only from pre-TBC raids, one can expect it to be very rare except on old servers.

In that regard, the [Staff of Jordan] is the earliest caster-type weapon you can enchant with +40 spell damage, although an [Annealed Blade] is probably cheaper if you don't want/need to max out so badly.

Just tried this in SM Cath. Me, Prot Pally + friend's alt pally. Pulled Mograine's entire room with all damage disabled, had her bubble, run in, and drop rank1 cons. Tag was successful, I aoe'd them all down. She got even less exp than usual.

So now that mage+pala boosting is nerfed, whats faster, just doing normal questing? Or is boosting while being in group with a prot paladin better? (Mainly talking about lvl 45-58 here, ive heard stratholme works well, anyone have any tips on how to do this?)

Whats the best way to ae grind with a pally in strath? I just got my shaman to 45 and headed out there, and the xp per hour seems 'low' (about 50k an hour, i was doing 100k in SM) is this normal? or am i doing it wrong? Iv mostly just been doing the big ae undead packs, 3-4 at a time

I'm not entirely sure what kind of a rush people are in, but normal questing -- with a quest guide -- is awfully fast. Skip everything painful, do everything easy. You'll pick up levels nicely.

As for instances, you just want to get as many level appropriate people and then 1 lvl 70 if possible. If you need it, get 2 lvl 70s and 3 level appropriate people (or your level, however inappropriate). I was in BRD earlier on my lvl 41 druid. A friend's 70 warlock ran the show with a couple of 50ish toons. The average level was not so good for me and I still got an entire level in about 2 hours. Earlier today, I got a ZF run through (with every quest) and got an entire level in about an hour but I did spend about 2 1/2 hours gathering the quests (which netted about 2/3 of a level).

If you want to be jam-power leveled, you can have stuff AoE-d easily in bulk up through Scarlet Monastery before it gets challenging and you'll be able to pull levels quickly. It gets harder as you move up. By the time you hit the 50s, there are some awfully good quest circuits to pull (see WPL for instance) that will net an entire level. There are also the 4 x 4 cloth turn ins (linen, wool, mage, rune) with each of the 4 cities. There are also the Argent Dawn turn ins assuming you can buy the mats off the AH. There is also the possibility of the "all Stratholme" quest run assuming you can get someone to run you through both sides and bang out every quest while you are there (which I believe involves a mid-instance exit?).

It's just very easy to power-level the 50s without anything resembling an exploit.

I didn't try it in SM as xp with a 70 mage in my group just aoe'ing everything down was fine, but I did do this in Slave Pens at level 55. Maybe Outland instances are different or maybe they've adjusted something since then. I don't think we even bothered to do the leave group/tag/rejoin thing until Outlands because just putting yourself on follow of a 70 mage and aoe'ing SM/BRD over and over again for 20 hours straight was great xp by itself. Also, I leveled traditionally the majority of my leveling (my friend did his 100% in instances after level 20) with only using the method I outlined in Slave Pens and Mana Tombs. I guess you proved that it will not work with lower instances (or maybe all instances if they fixed something). Apologies for not explicitly mentioning that I did not try this method on any other instances than Slave Pens and Mana Tombs.

It has been mentioned in this thread before, if the higher level player doing the tap leveling is in con range (mobs are green to them. level - 8) then you can still get full exp for the kills. Diminishing returns on exp is +5 levels, so a level 55 will get no more exp for killing a level 60 than he would a level 70. The reason Slave Pens is used at 55 is that the mobs are still green to level 70's (62+) and a level 55 can enter the instance.

Well, having a paladin boost you is not an exploit at all, also its partly just that i want to know what the fastest way possible to level is. I am leveling more than just one alt, so i kind of want it done as fast as possible seeing as its going to take forever no matter how i do it.

As to boosting, boosting in slavepens etc still works fine, and is not an exploit, nor is it illigal in anyway, the leaving instance things have all been fixed though.

Given that anyone, as far as I know, can pick a Songflower:

Songflower Serenade - Spell - World of Warcraft

- Cleanse a flower
- Summon alt
- Pick
- Be god for 60 min.

You get the worst XP/hr in Strath at 45, it will just keep getting better as you level. Just keep practicing, eventually depending on your gear it is possible to clear the entire front undead area in 2 pulls (3 if you catch the Magistrate). The more you can do at once the less downtime you'll have, I think I actually started hitting the reset lockout when I got it down to 2.

Keep in mind though, unlike SM, Strath can be a goldmine. If you don't have leveling buddies to do the looting you might want to take the extra downtime and make yourself a couple thousand gold (less if your shaman isn't an enchanter) on the way to 60. In this case it's less important how efficient your pulling is because looting time will dominate the drinking.

AOEing an instance with a paladin or mage is not an eploit. Once you are dropped from a group and reinvited to try to game the system, I'd say we've crossed over into exploit territory. I'm not Blizzard and won't be the one banning your account, but it hardly seems worth it.

You're right to be mixed up because people definitely do it differently.

Personally, I 2-box SM with the lowbie standing at the entrance and train all the mobs back to the zone-in. In Strath, I alt-tab back and forth to keep my alt at the maximum safest distance, or preferably go on autofollow with someone else's alt who does that for me.

I really have never tried this, but is it possible to have a 70 Shaman throw in their totems into an instance and run out, while having a lower level character still fight inside?

And, again, that's perfectly acceptable, no one would question it. The "leaving" trick has apparently been nerfed to the point of irrelevance. Once the high level tags the mob, it gets treated as if they are there regardless of whether they zone out.

The "kick from the party" nonsense is obviously an exploit.

So, yes, two-boxing, or having a friend who plays a mage or pally. It's basically "inefficiently efficient". You can do it without leaving a zone (sometimes Stormwind). You can milk it for many levels. It goes on a strange curve of getting better for the low level toon and then eventually worse.

It should be obvious to most people that if you can get more lowbies, the XP will be better for all the lowbies than if there is just one.

ItemLevel 35 doesn't mean "requires level 35". It means the iLvl of the item used for calculating its stats has to be at least 35; iLvls are generally higher than the level requirement for the weapon. You can see iLvls listed on sites like WowHead (in the 'level' column of search results).

The following is a list of all green/blue/purple weapons with an iLvl of exactly 35 (thus, the lowest you could possibly put a +40 spelldamage enchant on):
Weapons - Items - World of Warcraft

Specifically, [Scorn's Focal Dagger] is the lowest blue item which is specifcally aimed at casters (req. lvl 30).
However, [Bleeding Crescent] is available from a quest which requires level 28, and thus could be acquired by a twink in the 20-29 bracket (for shammies and pallies) and [Skullbreaker] can be acquired via another level 28 quest for mace-using classes (iLvl 36).

My friend just tried to have me apply 40 spelldamage to [Hypnotic Blade] and it failed to enchant. The item level is 39, but it requires level 34 to equip.

Wowhead commentary seems to be of the opinion that the enchant first checks the level required to equip. If that's not there (as in the case of a quest item), it then checks the item level.

Can anyone confirm or correct this?

Yes, it struck me as odd, but I still don't know why it wouldn't let me enchant it, given that its "item level" is above 35.

For twinking in the 29 bracket, wouldn't it make more sense to find a BoE green with over 10 damage of whatever school you need and then slap a +30 spellpower enchant on it instead of getting a non-caster weapon to put 40 spellpower on?

Also, I can confirm that it does check the level required to equip first - I've tested it.

Assuming you could find it, and find someone to do 30 spellpower; considering the ilevel 35 blue weapon linked above is +9 all-school damage, I don't know whether single-school would be enough to make up for the itemization lost from going from a blue to a green item.

Anyone have the numbers on that?

Aiiane: I'm aware that the enchant limitation considers item level, but only for items that do not explicitly have a level requirement to equip, such as quest rewards.

In this case, [Scorn's Focal Dagger] wouldn't be able to receive a +40 spell damage enchant. It has an item level of 35, but a level requirement of 30, overriding the normally viable item level.

That being said, both Bleeding Crescent and Skullbreaker would be able to get the high-end enchants, since they're item level is 35/36 and they don't have a level requirement.

I suppose you're right - the best you can get out of random enchant onehand greens is 7 spell damage, which is not enough to offset the 10 damage extra from the higher spellpower enchant.

However, using a staff with a +20 school specific damage amount on it you can parallel the spell damage available from a +40 enchant on one of those items plus an offhand with 10 school specific damage. It's probably easier to go with the 40 though because of how much of a pain it is to get both the materials and an enchanter for +30 spellpower.

Healer out of group following the alt has been mentioned repeatedly throughout this whole thread.

With gems like these I give this post 5 more replies before the EJ moderators shut it down like they did the Art of Making Gold thread.

Seriously, if you have something NEW to add, post. If you are just going to repeat something people posted before, or inform us all of how long it took you to do something. Go stroke your epeen somewhere else, especially if you are going to be so lazy as to not mention a single detail and then so stupid and discourteous as to simply say the reason why is that you're too lazy.