A huge leveling weekend for me.

When we last saw my stable of characters I had a Rogue at level 48, a Priest at level 40, a Shaman at level 38, a Mage at level 20 and a Warrior at level 6.

That was what they all where when I updated them two weeks ago.  I did some serious leveling on my Mage last weekend getting my Mage up to level 52.  So far I am still having fun with my Mage but I really hate those last few levels before entering BC content. 

My Shaman is my Refer a Friend character, so when I do work with it I level at triple speed.  I do not work on it as often as I would like to of course, but then again, I do not think what I want to do even I would do. I want things instantly.  That triple experience has spoiled me.  In a way that is why I was enjoying my Mage.  Old school leveling the way it should be.  You have more time to learn your character that way.  I read a lot, that is my only saving grace for my Shaman really.  Otherwise I would be lost.  Enhancement Shamans are not exactly easy compared to most classes.  If not for reading I would be lost.

As for this post, as an update, my Shaman has now reached the golden land of 60.  Enough for BC with a little buffer to handle everything I run into.  I need to step back some to get my mining up before I venture into BC.  Do not want to go there and not be able to mine anything.  With the refer a friend thing leveling becomes a joke.  I was up to level 53 and my leveling partner was at level 52 when a friend came on and offered to give us a few dungeon runs.  Of course we said yes.

So off to BRD we go and in one run through BRD I get to level 56 and my leveling partner gets to level 55.  Yes, one run, only one run, you heard that right.  Not only is BRD huge with lots of experience but at triple experience when you are being run through it is a leveling goldmine.

Off to BC content now.  Yes, you can get into Ramparts at 55 no matter what all those guides online say.  I know they say 57, but trust me, 55 gets you in.  It is a short dungeon with lots of warn bodies which means short and quick and tons of experience.  In a little over a hour we did 6 runs and we were both at 60.  You might say, even at triple experience that is a little too quick don't you think?  Maybe you remember the time wrong.  Nope, I remember the time perfectly.  I was 60 already and my leveling partner was 59 when we went to enter and could not get in.  Too many instances in the last hour.  Being you can do 5 per hour that means we had been playing less then an hour and had done 5.  We only needed to wait like 5 minutes and we were in.  That run made my refer a friend level 60 as well.  That is when we stop getting triple bonus.  So no use power leveling them together any more.  I am sure we will still hook them up again at some point and do some level.  Once I get my mining sorted out and he gets his herbalism sorted out.  We both out paced them.  Big time.  I love refer a friend.

My little Rogue is still plugging along, mostly in Tanaris and Un'Goro trying to get leather to up my leather working before it gets too far behind.  I figure I still get experience from the kills, so might as well get the leather I need and some experience at the same time instead of having to come back for it later.  He has gone for 48 to 55 now.  Rogues are stupid easy when killing things they have a few levels on.  Sneak up from behind and ambush them and then 1 shot or 2 later, it is dead.  Makes for quick leather gathering for sure.  Hopefully I can get up to BC leather working by the time I get to BC level of 58.  Needless to say, my skinning is doing just fine with all that skinning I am doing.

My little Level 6 Warrior met up with a larger level 6 Mage and they are now leveling as the second refer a friend grouping I am doing.  My short Dwarf following a large Draenei is rather humorous.  I did a ton of reading on warriors.  I am going to be leveling Prot.  I figure it will help us with dungeon query time and with triple experience Dungeons are a win/win to get through those annoying areas. Being we are getting triple experience even the best quest hubs end up being tons of useless quests super fast because we out leveled them.  And the way questing areas are designed some times you have to go from one end of the world to the next while questing.  It is not very itemized.  With the dungeons we can pass complete quest zones in no time at all if we really wanted to.

Leveling with a complete aggro hog like a Mage will sure as hell teach me how to tank better I am sure.  I am looking forward to that.  I only have one level 80 tank, my bear.  I do not count my DK, while I do have a tank spec and a set of tank gear for it I have never actually tanked with it.  It is there more for "if" I need it and not "when" I need it.  I am sure when I level a tank from 1 up I will have a more complete understanding of it so that way I can just jump into a dungeon with my DK and tank a hell of a lot better then if I do it now.  While the characters are different the concept is the same.  Once you get skilled at handling the concept doing it with other types is more about getting used to their skills instead of the ones you are used to.  It will be a lot easier then learning how to tank and what the skills are at the same time.

My little warrior is already level 17, we did not play too long, but I can not wait until I get to 40 so I can charge in defensive stance.  That will make my life a ton easier.  Before I got thunderclap I could not hold aggro against a bunny rabbit with a Mage shooting at it.  That helped some.  Now, in defensive I am doing much better.  Already going around and picking up a tons of mobs for the Mage to mow down.  Leveling with this pair has the potential to be a sick combo.  As long as I do not die and they go for the Mage.

Last but not least is my favorite class to play outside of my hunter.  My Priest.  A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I started my priest as a PvP only character.  Blizzard decided to make PvP leveling suck by taking away the daily PvP quest for the lower levels.  Bastards.  I leveled a little without it but it was harder to do that.  Took longer and query time is not really all that fast.  It is not like you are getting battle ground after battle ground and always moving so always earning.  I started to do some dungeons with the priest, I figured that being a priest my query time would be better.  Needless to say after waiting 1 hour and 40 minutes once for a dungeon before giving up and going to bed I figured I had no choice but to quest. 

At level 60 I started questing again, the first time since I was a high enough level to get into a battle ground.  Wow, that is a lot of levels without ever questing.  At least once you hit BC leveling is stupid easy.  The real question here is can it still be stupid easy for a PvP speced healer?  I was almost sure I would be in need of buying an offspec just for leveling but I was willing to give it a try.

Up to level 65 now and with the exception of soloing a few 3 man quests I do not think my priest has even taken damage at all.  Sure, I need to stop and drink often but my priest, a healer, is a killing machine in her PvP spec.  A few quests I did, more on a lark, where me soloing an elite two levels higher then me.  Each time when I came through, usually with less then 20% mana left over, I saw there in awe.  A healer just soloed 3 man elites, with PvP spec, some PvP gear and built for healing.

So all in all it was a productive weekend for leveling.  107 levels in one weekends worth of time. (a little less because the Mage numbers are for 2 weekends)  All that, and I still raided this weekend too.

That basically means, if I could have done this on one character I could have went from level 1 to level 80 in one weekend.  Okay, it doesn't actually work like that, but that is still an impressive gain for levels this week.

Now I have a slight problem.  Only 2 characters left not worked on.  A Pally in the 20s and a level 1 lock.  What am I to do now?  Once I am done with them I can not make any more characters on this server.  I'll cross that bridge when I come to it I guess.

I love leveling and love the prospect of having one of each class at max level.  Not to mention the most important thing.  One of every profession.  This whole alt thing started because I wanted the other professions really.  I just came to love making them.  I didn't start that way.