I've spent the last few days focused on leveling my hunter, and have managed to get him from level 69 to level 72. While I know it makes rational sense to stick to a rotational leveling system between all of my alts in order to maximize their rested xp and minimize their total /played time, there's something inherently satisfying about watching those levels tick by on a single character.
So I may throw logic and reason to the wind and just focus on getting my hunter those last few levels to 80. He's almost done with Borean Tundra at this point and getting ready to move on to Howling Fjord. I did try using the Dungeon Finder tool while leveling, but found that the xp per hour while instancing was significantly lower than what I was running while questing. It may have been a function of the group that I was with, which was somewhat slow (including two wipes), but the difference was around 40%.
In any case, I'll probably try it again once or twice just to see, but right now, the numbers don't look too good. Even if it is slower, if you're planning to use the character that you're leveling for endgame raiding, I'd probably still advocate leveling using the Dungeon Finder system, simply because of the skill you'll develop in grouping and in playing your chosen endgame spec.
Finally, while I expect it will be more difficult to quantify that my rested xp calculations, I expect that there is something more efficient about focusing your leveling on a single character. Switching back and forth between classes must result in some period early on where you are not as effective as you could be at leveling as you are "relearning" to play the class - even if it has just been a week or so since the last time you played that class - it's still not fresh in your mind and your reactions and skills aren't as sharp.
One way to compare might be to level one set of characters using the rotational system and then level another set one at a time and compare the /played times of the two. That would be quite an undertaking though. So we'll see.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
More Aimless Wandering
I wrote back in April about how I was wandering aimlessly between games these days, not making much progress on any of them. At various tim...
-
I'm getting a third post for February in just under the wire. Thank goodness it's a leap year. I've been traveling a lot rece...
-
One of my WoW goals that has always been floating randomly out in the ether somewhere was to level a toon of each class to 80. I've see...
I tried the dungeon finder on my 72 shaman last night, and it took about 20 minutes for a group to form, which fell apart twice after people left. After about 15 minutes we all gave up after person after person joined and immediately quit the group. I did get one of my instance quests done and a nice pair of blue shoulders out of it, though. :)
ReplyDeleteThe duengon finder is a great leveling tool for healers and tanks. They get groups fast and can have comparitive xp to questing which imo is less fun. Currently im leveling up a druid healer. In between groups on my druid i get a chance to do a few quest. On my warrior i bassicly que up insta group finish dungeon ask if anyone wants to rerun if they are not scrubs and reque. I can do Draktherun keep in around 30- minutes which is around 1/4th a level. I guess you could supplement or change up your leveling by doing LFD every now and then because as dps your wait is around 20 minutes. Which will aloww you to accomplish more quest inbetween dungeons. I believe doing the random daily duengon is a must for leveling because it will allow you to build up your supply of triumph badges so that when you ding 80 you can pick up a nice peice of gear t o help you twoards getting heroic ready.
ReplyDelete@skulfrak - I've been pretty lucky so far in that I've actually been able to finish all of the instances that I've tried so far on my hunter. I've also found that just using the random dungeon feature rather than selecting specific dungeons helps given the added xp that rewards.
ReplyDelete@bobreaze - I have been using the dungeon finder a lot on my druid and find it fairly easy to get groups. On my hunter, it takes 15-20 minutes, but that does give me a decent amount of time to get some questing in. I also find that if I go into the queue first thing in the morning, it's more efficient from an xp standpoint since I'm getting the rested xp bonus on the higher value mobs in the instance. That, and using the random dungeon feature rather than picking specific instances adds to the total as well. I'm less worried about the triumph badges as this likely isn't going to be an endgame toon for me. My warlock will continue to be my raiding dps toon - to the extent that I have time to raid.