Most efficient leveling duo?

Tinkerfizzle · 05/14/07, 4:13 PM

Apologies in advance if there's an already existing thread where this'd be better suited.

A friend and I were considering creating alts to see how fast in /played we could reach 60 and 70. I've heard some people say Mage+Priest was good, but I don't know whether that was said from personal experience, or just theorycrafting.

With the advent of the 41-point talents, this may change things around a bit as well.

Has anyone had any experiences with particularly strong class duos while leveling?

Cel · 05/14/07, 4:17 PM

I leveled a lot of 60-70 with a Shadow Priest, and it worked very well. Anything that can be slowed can be killed with Cripple/Mindflay kiting

. I tend to think 2 enhancement shamans would level stupidly fast, however... and I'd like to try it some day when I have too much free time. You get Ghost Wolf for your earlier levels (20?), Windfury helps @ 30, dualwield @ 40, etc.

Top that off with being able to heal and not having to rely a whole lot on mana for your dps... seems good to me!

Tinkerfizzle · 05/14/07, 4:19 PM

The Shadow Priest factor was one of the big things I was thinking about, in terms of 41 point talents. I imagine it'd improve efficiency a great deal for a duo to have both VT and VE on multiple mobs/chain pulls.

• Asmik · 05/14/07, 4:21 PM

Warlock + Shadow priest would be my guess, warrior + paladin would be hot if you prefer instance grinding.

Cel · 05/14/07, 4:21 PM

Originally Posted by Tinkerfizzle

The Shadow Priest factor was one of the big things I was thinking about, in terms of 41 point talents. I imagine it'd improve efficiency a great deal for a duo to have both VT and VE on multiple mobs/chain pulls.

Don't forget you're going to be level 50 by the time you can get any 41pt. More leveling will be behind you than ahead.

CheshireCat · 05/14/07, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Tinkerfizzle

A friend and I were considering creating alts to see how fast in /played we could reach 60 and 70. I've heard some people say Mage+Priest was good, but I don't know whether that was said from personal experience, or just theorycrafting.

Mage/Priest would be good if you had a steady stream of good AOE spots. (Which get rare in the Outlands.) Lacking that, I see a lot of drinking in that combo's future. At least the water would be free.

I would recommend one full DPS class and one damage-specced healing class. A healing spec is overkill for leveling with a partner, but any healing at all does wonders to cut down on downtime. Warlock/Shadow Priest springs to mind instantly. So does Enhancement Shaman/Rogue. Any physical damage class with a feral druid, to spread the ILotP love.

• Aldriana · 05/14/07, 4:26 PM

Preexpansion, I found Feral Druid/Rogue to be pretty efficient - rogue provides plenty of non mana-limited dps, and the druid can bounce between cat (for extra dps), bear (for tanking hard mobs) and druid (to top the two of you off periodically)... plus you both have stealth if there are mobs you feel like bypassing on the way to a quest completion. Not sure how it stacks up against the other combos listed, but it's certainly not bad.

• frmorrison · 05/14/07, 4:29 PM

Most combos can work well (two people killing the same mob will kill it faster than one so it will do less damage than against one person).

I think Hunter + Shadow Priest would be best (VE heals the hunter pet and VT gives mana to Hunter + Priest). Plus both classes are great at soloing.

Phro · 05/14/07, 4:30 PM

Well if you're talking 60-70 then obviously quests/instances are the way to go. Thus I would say warr/pally since you can pretty much put together any group for any instance very quickly and questing would go a bit faster with pally mount speed aura with the addition of being able to duo most 3,5man quests. Mount speed buff may sound stupid, but think about how much running around you actually do turning in quests.

3AM · 05/14/07, 4:53 PM

If there's no objections to 2 of the same class, I'd go with 2 Feral Druids. You have everything covered there - plenty of DPS, ability to kill elites with tanking/healing (and the roles can even be switched mid fight), and dual stealth as well. The ability to tank and heal at the same time is what beats out druid/rogue for me.

Stein · 05/14/07, 4:59 PM

AoE grinding is ridiculously efficient. So Mage/Mage or Mage/Priest (or Mage/Lock for seed?) would get my vote pre lvl 70 instancing.

Once you start instancing, having tank/healer would make life much easier...so dunno there.

fwiw - i would save every quest that gave significant rep for post 70 (and post honored/revered).

Suesse · 05/14/07, 5:02 PM

Consider how long a mob will survive. Sure you may have VT/VE, but this isn't endgame boss fights like you guys are thinking about, non-elite mobs will die in ~ 3-6 seconds.
Warlock/Shadow priest was really nice, but even on elites your own level you wont get full shadoweaving up the mob dies.

Monsanto · 05/14/07, 5:03 PM

Warlock on its own is really disgusting with it's utter lack of downtime (so far I've leveled a druid, warrior and warlock to 70), and I imagine it would be even more disgusting with a shadow priest. I don't think warrior/paladin would be as good, because the shadow priest is providing amazing dps, heals that go with lifetaping, and mana regen through vampiric touch.

You can talk about AoE grinding with a mage, but there's a lot of downtime involved in that. An affliction warlock and a shadow priest can dot up numerous mobs, and then AoE fear them all off and they'll be dead before they get back to you. That's easily as fast as mage grinding, and with much less downtime.

constantius · 05/14/07, 5:15 PM

I leveled from 60-70 on the TBC Beta with a 41 affliction lock and a 30+ holy priest.

Engage, CoA, Corruption, Siphon Life, TAB, keep moving while dotting, and get 5-6 mobs. Meanwhile, the priest is Renew + PW:S, and putting SW:P up as well. 4 dots will kill any non-elite mob in the Outlands, and once you have 5-6 mobs, hit Howl of Terror. When they come back in, priest drops Psychic Scream, and you drain soul until it dies.

A shadow priest would provide more nukeage, but a lot more downtime. Multiple dots for a SP suck mana really badly, and there's no regen options available (without having a heavy spirit build and Spirit Tap). Meanwhile, a warlock has infinite life with heals, and any competent holy priest will have near-infinite regen at the levels of healing required to keep a single warlock topped up.

Affliction Lock + Holy Priest worked out to 150-200k xp / hour. It's a nice combo.

mutagen · 05/14/07, 5:16 PM

Originally Posted by Tinkerfizzle

I imagine it'd improve efficiency a great deal for a duo to have both VT and VE on multiple mobs/chain pulls.

VT costs too much mana to be really worthwhile for solo or duo farming. It is a 15 second DoT, a duo is going to kill most mobs in 5 to 10 seconds and the mana returns are small to only two people. IMO it is really only useful for 5 man + bosses and bigger trash mobs.

At 70, I'm better off sticking almost exclusively to my highest efficiency spells (SW:P & MF) for solo / duo farming. Equip the 200 mana per kill trinket and the 900 mana ever 2 seconds trinket, use the Shadowfiend every 5 mins and if I pull one or two mobs every fear cycle the only downtime I have is waiting for the fear cooldown. With 2 people SW:P is even questionable, it isn't worth the GCD or the mana if single mobs are dying in less than 10 seconds. Of course you're going to have to go past 60 to get the shadowfiend and the trinkets, so the leveling experience is obviously going to be completely different.

VE on the other hand is a phenomenal solo / duo talent with just about any other class. Warlocks seem to have little downtime anyways, VE is going to seal the deal. Any spec healer + a Warlock would be a good combo IMO. Mind Flay and Aggro Ping Ping can reduce damage taken to nearly zero with nearly any class.

Other classes do well too though, a faster way to travel from 20-40 is a nice bonus to a handful of classes, though 45-58 are probably the most tedious levels right now. Stealth Duos are great, AoE with a healer is fast, I think just about any combination would do pretty good (2 paladins?).