Time to hit 60?

[gotmilk0112]

Vanilla wow is not very streamlined, even in comparison to BC, with its leveling process. There are tons of quests that take you to, not just another zone, a completely different continent. Usually doing those quests are not very efficient in their exp to time ratio, but that's part of what makes the game more adventurous and more like an organic world.

BC questing is really streamlined. The quest hubs are well-defined, and always have 2-4 quests that take place within the same general area, then a quest to lead you on to the next quest hub. You're never just wandering around like "omfg where are the quests?!" like in Vanilla.

Like, I'm actually having to look up quest guides and such, just to find out where the questgivers are in some zones. A bit annoying, but honestly, it's fun doing these quests that I never even knew existed. I never did these quests even on retail. (I'm a late-BC baby, so I leveled with the nerfed 1-60 exp requirements!)

My suggestion is that if you're worried about the time it will take to get to 60, then just don't worry about getting to 60.

But getting to max level is my focus, as max level is where all of my favorite content is!

Though really, I'm not stressed or worried about it anymore. I'm honestly having so much fun that I'm re-living that "addicted to WoW" phase I went through back when I first played. Playing 5-6 hours per day and having a blast despite the slow leveling speed. I'm just under 2 days /played, and almost to level 30.

There are TONS of people leveling, questing, and doing dungeons 1-59. Unlike many other servers, especially many servers that give you greater than 1x experience, it can be very difficult to find groups. Here on this server, it isn't so difficult to find some people who want to do an elite or group quest with you.

Yeah, this server's population is insane. I've run DM, Stocks and BFD so far. Fun times. And yeah, on a highrate vanilla server I played, sub-55 dungeons (except BRD) were completely ignored because everyone could just zip to 60 in a couple days. The only dungeons anyone ever ran were BRD, strat/scholo, and DM. That is, if you could even find a group with the ridiculously low population....

For example, grinding just rank 12-13 is going to be significantly longer than leveling. Even if you take 3-4 months to get 60, you're looking at least at that amount of time and possibly a few more months to get to that pvp rank.

Eh, I was never a PvP person. Only time I ever PvP'd semi-seriously was back in patch 3.3, when Shadow priests were insanely OP in random Bgs. Was fun melting faces in heroic ICC gear, and getting ragewhispers from horde warriors after I disarm their bladestorm

With the other expansions, Blizzard focused almost exclusively on endgame content. With Vanilla, that really isn't the case. This game is a blast to play even if you're not 60, which isn't really the case with the ladder expansions.

The other expansions are "focused on endgame content" because they're just 10 levels of questing content then a bunch of dungeons and raids. Vanilla is 60 levels of questing content with many dungeons of varying levels all throughout. 1-60 at 1x can take 1-2 months. 60-70 at 1x can take less than a week. Bit of a difference there.

[snowtime]

4-5 days is generally as fast as you can go

7-10 days if you know what you are doing but still like to do some side stuff

[Zaft]

I see that you're leveling priest, that's good. Just go 5 in spirit tap then 5 in wand and rest in shadow tree until you hit 40 where you respawn to shadow form and then get 5 in wand at 45. Remember to get spirit on all your gear (even more important than int) and upgrade your wand often and it'll be a blast.

I did it in 6 days and 3 hours as a priest. Could have done it faster if STV wasn't such a gank fest.

http://i.imgur.com/U0n0QmD.jpg

[gotmilk0112]

I see that you're leveling priest, that's good. Just go 5 in spirit tap then 5 in wand and rest in shadow tree until you hit 40 where you respawn to shadow form and then get 5 in wand at 45. Remember to get spirit on all your gear (even more important than int) and upgrade your wand often and it'll be a blast.

I did it in 6 days and 3 hours as a priest. Could have done it faster if STV wasn't such a gank fest.

http://i.imgur.com/U0n0QmD.jpg

I'm actually doing 5 spirit tap 5 imp wands and then the rest in Holy, for now. The Shadow talents aren't particularly useful until Silence/VE, which would require me to drop Imp Wands to get right now. I'll just respec full Shadow at 40 to get Shadowform.

Also, is it worth it exp-wise to do dungeons? Obviously it's worth it to do dungeons for quests, but do they provide enough exp to be at least on par with questing?

I'm going to run the SM dungeons at least twice each, because they all drop some pretty nice gear.

[Zaft]

I still think that shadow until 40 is better than holy. Without Shadow Focus you'll resist a lot, especially whilst doing higher level quests. Shadow Focus is such a great talent, it makes a huge difference mana wise and in clear speed. Mind Flay is quite useful for killing mobs quickly, especially against elites (though you will mostly spam your wand). Holy won't do much other than improving your smite and holy fire, two spells you won't be using as they are quite inefficient in terms of mana and damage. If you're going holy because of instances then don't, as shadow will be able to heal every instance efficiently.

Then again if you're already far into the holy tree then don't bother, and just continue.

Dungeons are generally not worth it, even when you have quests for it. I would do it if it's a wand there that you want to have a shot at, and you have a decent amount of quests for it. Other than that dungeons are quite slow in terms of exp. I only did WC and ST myself, and they were quite a waste of time, especially ST.

[varth]

both silence and VE are beyond terrible for leveling, so why would those matter? Shadow is faster for leveling hands down than holy, its not even remotely close.

[gotmilk0112]

Without Shadow Focus you'll resist a lot

The only shadow spell I really use though is SWP. I typically just do:

(bubble pre-pull) -> Holy Fire -> SWP -> wand to death

Mind Flay is quite useful for killing mobs quickly, especially against elites (though you will mostly spam your wand).

With 5/5 imp wands, Mind Flay will really only do marginally higher DPS than a wand, for the most part. And it costs mana. And it can be pushed back, causing it to lose 33% of its damage. I was really underwhelmed when I got it.

Holy won't do much other than improving your smite and holy fire, two spells which you won't be using as they are quite inefficient in mana and damage.

Inefficient? What? Holy Fire has the highest damage per mana of any baseline Priest spell, and Smite has approximately the same mana efficiency as Mind Blast.

Holy Fire Rank 3: 150 avg damage + 55 DoT for 125 mana = 1.64 dpm
Mind Blast Rank 4: 172 avg damage for 150 mana = 1.14 dpm
Smite Rank 5: 160 avg damage for 140 mana = 1.14 dpm
SWP Rank 4: 234 damage for 155 mana = 1.51 dpm

But really, I don't use spells unless I have to kill something quick. I always just holy fire -> dot -> wand to death.

Dungeons are generally not worth it, even when you have quests for it. I would do it if it's a wand there that you want to have a shot at, and you have a decent amount of quests for it. Other than that dungeons are quite slow in terms of exp. I only did WC and ST myself, and they were quite a waste of time, especially ST.

Even with quests? Stockades with 4 of its quests is an easy ~50% exp that only takes about 30 minutes. Same thing with BFD, clearing most of the mobs and doing 2 quests there was about 40% exp, and only took maybe 40 minutes.

A lot of really sweet gear drops in SM Lib and SM Cath, so I'll definitely be running those a couple times.

[Zaft]

You should have mind blast in your rotation. Mind blast > SWP > wand spam > second mind blast when off CD (if you have the mana regen). That was the rotation I used and it worked perfectly. Most levels I had no downtime and I killed mobs at quite an efficient speed.

Mind Flay should outdps your wand when it has just leveled up or did just a few levels ago, at least it did for me. It's not a super important spell, but it was just an example of a decent talent. It all depends how long ago you purchased your wand in conjunction with how long ago you leveled up your mind flay.

Holy Fire takes 3 seconds to charge up with talents invested for the - 0.5 cast speed, that's not really worth it if you ask me, but hey! I might be wrong. I found it quite lacklustre whist leveling myself.

Mind Blast vs Smite: mind Blast levels up every 6 levels; smite levels up every 8 levels after level 6. Mind blast takes 1.5 sec to cast; smite (with talents) takes 2 seconds to cast. Mind Blast is clearly the winner in terms of leveling. It doesn't take too long with smite where you end up at a point where your wand does more damage per attack than your smite because of the 8 levels in between each level of Smite.

Gear isn't that important whilst leveling as a priest, outside of your wand. As long as you have spirit on your gear you're good to go. I had no problems with leveling in mostly greens. Then again it's up to you.
The biggest problem with instances are other people, and the time it takes to get there. There's always that one slacker, or more, and if you don't have a warlock you might waste a lot of time getting there. The occasional wipe can also add a lot of time.


Half a level in 30 min at that level is also not considered fast if I remember correctly.

[gotmilk0112]

Holy Fire takes 3 seconds to charge up with talents invested for the - 0.5 cast speed, that's not really worth it if you ask me, but hey! I might be wrong. I found it quite lacklustre whist leveling myself.

You don't use Holy Fire mid-combat, you use it as an opener.

Holy Fire -> dot -> wand to death

Mind Blast vs Smite: mind Blast levels up every 6 levels; smite levels up every 8 levels after level 6. Mind blast takes 1.5 sec to cast; smite (with talents) takes 2 seconds to cast. Mind Blast is clearly the winner in terms of leveling.

MB also has an 8-second cooldown.

Gear isn't that important whilst leveling as a priest, outside of your wand. As long as you have spirit on your gear you're good to go.

Having blue gear from dungeons just makes your life that much easier.

The biggest problem with instances are other people, and the time it takes to get there.

I don't seem to have any problem finding groups. Hell, I have people randomly whispering me and asking me to heal dungeons.

And it doesn't take long to get to dungeons unless it's SM or a dungeon on another continent. Most dungeons are relatively close to flight points.

Half a level in 30 min at that level is also not considered fast if I remember correctly.

What the hell were you doing at 25-28 that you could get 50% of a level in less than 30 minutes?

[Zaft]

I know you don't use it mid-combat, but that's still an extra 3 seconds per mob (or 1.5 if you open with mb), not worth it in my opinion. Level 20 Holy Fire = (78 - 99) + 30 over 10 seconds; level 22 Mind Blast 112 - 121 damage. Mind Blast 1.5 sec cast = 116.5 damage; Holy Fire 3 sec cast + 10 sec dot = 118.5 damage.
The dot part of Holy Fire can't crit, so if both spells crit Mind Blast ends up doing more damage even at a 1.5 sec cast. I can't compare them at the exact same level as they level up at different times, but I think it's quite obvious which is the best spell.

MB CD doesn't matter as you're not going to spam the skill, it's only to be used once or twice per mob. Your main damage source is wand and SWP.

Blue gear doesn't make a big difference as a priest as I just said. It makes more of a difference with other classes, especially melee. Priest isn't very gear dependant outside of the wand whilst leveling. It makes very little difference as long as you have the spirit, which is given to you by quest rewards. Maybe if you're very far behind on gear and the piece gives you twice as much spirit, but for the most part you're given spirit gear quite frequently by quests. I never had a problem leveling with greens at least, as you can see by my time played.