Most Efficient MoP Leveling Path - It Doesn't Matter

So I just finished leveling my warrior from 85 to 90.  This time, I tried what I'll call "the really long way." This involved fully questing out the starting area zones, and not moving on to the next zone until each was done.  As a result, I ended up hitting 90 early on in Townlong Steppes rather than in Dread Wastes.

Interestingly enough, my played time from 85 to 90 for this particular character was almost exactly in line with all of my other characters, and actually toward the faster end of the range.  The warrior came out with a total played time to 90 of 20.5 hours, which makes him just slightly slower than the hybrid level and a half method that I used with the rogue, who finished at 20 hours, and toward the low end of the range of the other characters who varied from 20.5 hours to 25 hours played.

So the definitive answer in terms of what the most effective and efficient leveling path to 90 is in MoP seems to be to do whatever the heck you want.  It honestly doesn't matter.

Well played Blizzard.  Well played.

I have one more character to level to 90 before starting on my Monk and that is my Shaman.  He's getting pretty close to level 87 and is getting toward the latter portion of Valley of the Four Winds.

After that, it's going to be time to Monk things up!

Here are the played times for each of my characters that I've leveled 85-90 so far:

Warlock - 28 hours (started on launch day, so always slower)
Death Knight - 23 hours (changed as soon as leveled)
Druid - 24 hours (changed as soon as leveled)
Paladin - 25 hours (started as shockadin - probably slowed him down)
Hunter - 22 hours (changed as soon as leveled)
Rogue - 20 hours (hybrid - stay a few bars past level)
Mage - 25 hours (changed as soon as leveled)
Shadow priest - 20.5 hours (changed as soon as leveled)
Warrior - 20.5 hours (fully quested out each zone)

Now to Try the Really Long Way

So after the leveling results from my rogue, I've decided to do the next character, a warrior, what I'll call "the really long way".  My plan is to fully quest out the early zones.  I expect based on what I've heard from others that this will result in me actually hitting 90 somehwere in Kun Lai province, or possibly the very early sections of Townlong. 

We'll see how it goes though.

Just one more toon after this though and it's going to be monk time! 

New Leveling Path Results - the Long Way Isn't - Ding! Level 90 #8

So I managed to get my rogue to level 90 today, so have the first set of results on the delayed leveling route.  This involves staying in the earlier zones a few bars longer than you otherwise would before skipping to the next zone.  So I stayed in Jade Forest until about 6 bars into 86, stayed in Valley of the Four Winds / Krasarang until just a few bars from 88, stayed in Kun Lai until half way to 89, and stayed in Townlong until 7 bars into 89.

For my previous 6 toons, not counting the character I started on launch day (always slower), my leveling times have ranged from 21 hours to 25 hours played time from 85 to 90.

For this character with the slightly delayed leveling approach, his total played time to 90 was 20 hours.  Imagine my surprise to find that doing it the "long way" actually resulted in a faster leveling time.

I'm now somewhat curious as to what the speed would be to totally play out each of the early zones.

A New MoP Questing Path

So I've been hearing a lot of chatter lately about the potential benefits of a different questing path than the one that I've been using in MoP.  My strategy with my seven previous characters to date that I've leveled to 90 is to immediately switch to Kun Lai upon hitting level 87, then immediately switch to Townlong Steppes at 88 and Dread Wastes at 89.  There is a substantial difference in the xp awarded per quest in each of those zones, so in theory, everything should go much faster taking advantage of the higher xp quest turn ins.

The counter argument that I've been hearing is that the quests are so much harder at those levels for the gear that you have, that it takes quite a bit longer to complete them than it would if you just stayed in the earlier zones, so the average xp or the xp per hour that you're getting ends up being lower.

So with character #8, my rogue, I've decided to try the other approach and go "the long way".  This is going to involve fully questing out Valley of the Four Winds and Krasarang, which should get me to the point where I'm just a few bars from 88.  Then going to Kun Lai and probably questing there until I'm probably almost half way to 89, then switching to Dread Wastes when I'm about 30-40% in towards 90.  My average leveling time from 85 to 90 on my first 7 toons ended up being between 21 and 25 hours, so it'll be interesting to see if the rogue falls significantly outside of this range.

The next character up after the rogue is my warrior, so if the results from the rogue aren't conclusive, I'll give the same approach a try on the warrior for additional data.

Ding! Level 90 #7

So this is a little bit delayed, because I actually hit 90 on the mage on Thursday of this past week, but I'm a little slow in updating the blog.  The leveling time on the mage was a bit disappointing - 25 hours played from 85 to 90.  That basically ties him for last with the paladin (excluding the toon that I started leveling on launch day).

I'm going to try a different approach with the next couple of toons and am going to stay in the earlier zones longer to see what kind of an impact that has on my leveling times.  There's obviously a huge increase in quest turn in xp as you progress to the next zone, but I'm wondering if the difficulty in doing those quests earlier on slows me down enough to compensate for that.

So the next two characters at least I plan to do by delaying a bit before heading to Kun Lai, Townlong, etc.  We'll see what kind of difference that makes.

Closing in on #7

I managed to hit level 89 on my mage yesterday, so he's in the home stretch toward becoming my 7th max level character in MoP.  After feeling a bit squishy and underpowered at level 87, the mage has really started to strengthen back up at 88 and the quests in Townlong went much better than Kun Lai did.

Server maintenance today is likely going to delay me getting there until Wednesday, but it should still be getting done shortly.

I'm also down to just running one or two LFR wings per week on my warlock.  All he really needs at this point are two more Tier pieces which both drop in the second half of Heart of Fear.  I may actually start gearing another character since both the warlock and the priest are essentially fully geared at this point as well as being all rep'd up.

After finishing the mage, I'm likely going to go back to leveling the rogue, who is about half way through the Valley of the Four Winds. 

Happy New Year

So I took a bit of a break from WoW over the holidays and have just now started to get back into playing a little bit.  I did get a chance to do relatively full LFR runs on both my shadow priest and my warlock over the weekend. My warlock is now sitting at a total of 8 Sigils of Wisdom, with another shot tomorrow at finishing it up and getting the legendary gem from Wrathion.

My shadow priest actually has 10 Sigils of Wisdom, but no sha-touched weapon to put a gem in.  Doesn't that just figure.

I've been leveling both the rogue and the mage a little bit, and both are currently sitting at 86. Both so far have been incredibly easy to level and both have fared very well against the soul crushing virmin warrens of the Valley of the Four Winds.  Keeping recuperate and leeching poison up on the rogue makes him essentially indestructible.  The mages ability to freeze, blink away and then huge burst makes him equally good against packs of multiple mobs.

I've also been playing a little bit of Rift in between.  I'm still working on getting my mage to the new max level, and he's now at level 53 and working his way through Seratos and Eastern Holdings.  I'm still having a hard time getting into the new Storm Legion zones as the questing and story line just doesn't seem to progress as well as it did in the earlier levels, and I find myself quickly out of quests to do and getting outleveled by the zones.

The new carnage quests are interesting in the sense that it brings a new twist to the "go kill 10 boars" quests in that, the first time you kill a boar, you'll be automatically granted the quest and can turn it in right from your screen as soon as you kill the 10th boar.

The only problem is that there are so many mobs that trigger these carnage quests and the amounts involved tend to be pretty large - typically around 16 each.  There's no rhyme or reason as to why you're killing these things and after a while it gets a bit overwhelming.

Ding! Level 90 #6.

I hit level 90 on my druid last night, making him my 6th character at max level.  Despite my flirtations with feral kitty, I ended up basically finishing him as boomkin.  I guess it's just easier for me to continue doing what I know.

The total played time on the druid from 85 to 90 was right around 24 hours, making him one of the slower toons to 90 so far.  This was probably in no small part due to time spent respecing and regearing while I flirted with feral.  No big deal.  An hour here or there doesn't make a huge difference anyway.

I also managed to max both of his professions along the way - skinning and leatherworking - leaving me with one more to go before I have all of them at 600.  That last one is engineering, so I've decided to pick up my rogue for leveling next to get engineering finished up.

I did dungeon finder this time through most of Kun Lai Summit and Townlong Steppes just for a change of pace.  It didn't seem to impact my leveling time significantly.  I went back to questing for all of Dread Wastes just for the Klaxxi rep in case I decide to do some end game with the druid at some point.

So now we'll start working on the rogue, all while continuing to finish dailies and run LFR on the warlock and priest.  I still go back and forth on whether I want to focus on disc or shadow for the priest, so for now I'm doing a little bit of both.

Epic Weapons Do Exist

So since my last post, I managed to get epic weapons to drop in LFR for both my priest and my warlock.  In neither case was it a Sha-Touched weapon, but I'm happy nonetheless.  For my warlock, it was the wand off of Elegon, which I was becoming convinced did not exist.  For the priest, it was the mace off of Will of the Emperor.

I'm working through the new Krasarang quests on both characters and have really been enjoying that a lot.  The story lines on both sides are really fantastic and it's some of the best solo content I've done in a while.

I've also gone back to working on the druid and have managed to get him to level 88.  He's part of the way through Townlong Steppes.  I've been doing a little bit of dungeon finder on the druid and have been pleased to find that the xp per hour from the mid level dungeons seems to have increased a little bit since the first time I did them.  I've been approaching 7 million xp per hour running through dungeons versus around 6 million per hour while questing, so it's obviously very competitive.

The mage will likely be the next toon that I level although I've been debating picking up the rogue next.  Engineering is the last profession that I need to max in order to get the Master of All achievement.

So maybe we'll rogue it instead.

The Mythical Weapons of the Terrace

So I've now run the Terrace of Endless Spring 3 total times on my warlock and have yet to see a single weapon drop.  I've also run it once on my shadow priest with the same result.  If it wasn't for the fact that I have seen other people in the raids get them, I would be starting to be concerned that these weapons did not in fact exist but were simply put there in the Dungeon Journal to torture us.

So, my warlock is still using his 463 staff (now upgraded to 471).

I also now have a total of three characters that are geared enough to do the dungeon finder since my paladin is now there as well.  I'm getting close to being finished with the rep grind on my shadow priest as well.  He's about half way to revered with August Celestials, which is the last one up for him.

All these dailies and LFR runs on all these toons are not leaving a whole lot of time for leveling though, so I haven't really made any progress at all on the druid.  I might quit with the gearing at some point and just focus on leveling, but at least for now, the end game gearing is enough to keep me interested.

Ding! Level 90 #5

I managed to hit level 90 on my paladin last night making it my 5th toon at max level for this expansion and earning me the Quintessential Quintet achievement.  It also pushed me over the 9,000 achievement point level, earning me that achievement, which was unexpected, since I don't really pay much attention to my achievement points.

I finished leveling as ret through Townlong and Dread Wastes which worked quite well, but then immediately geared him out as holy at max level.

Interestingly enough, the rep bonuses from Grand Commendations also count toward rep earned while leveling, so I'm just 1,000 rep away from Revered with Klaxxi already.

The next character up is going to be the druid.

I'm also working through rep grinds on my shadow priest as well.  I hit revered on Golden Lotus yesterday and so have switched to just doing Shado-Pan, August Celestials and Operation Shieldwall now.  Since my warlock is already exalted with all of the original factions, he's just working through Dominance Offensive.