A New Way To Level?

Here’s something that I’m experimenting with, and I want your input on.

In the latest patch changes were made to leveling. Quite a few changes that should improve your leveling speed. The main change was having your flying mount (at a quicker speed) sooner. I have been leveling up a druid casually and this dramatically improved my leveling speed. Being able to fly and drop in on select quest objectives, dodging “trash” mobs I didn’t want to kill, then of course flying back DIRECTLY to the quest hubs, instead of following trails.

The coolest new addition to leveling is getting experience from battlegrounds. This discussion is completely server AND faction dependent because in some battle groups you there are problems with long queue’s and loss/win ratio.

However on my server I tend to have “nearly” instant queue’s, and I’ve been running Alterac Valley, where the objectives are still completed most of the time, whether you win or lose. From my experience so far my faction in the battlegroup is about 50/50 win ratio, based on the time of day. Which isn’t too bad at all.

The new experience addition comes every time you complete an objective inside of a battleground, or selected outdoor PvP areas.

Since every battle group is different you may want to test this out in different battlegrounds. But I prefer Alterac Valley. For instance, some battlegroups alliance might just dominate Arathi Basin, if so queue there for all your wins.

The exp you get per objective seems to be ALWAYS lower than completing a quest at the same level. However when you go on streaks (and like I said you want to find where your battlegroup dominates) you can complete objectives much quicker than quests at times.

This also eliminates traveling time. Traveling from quest hub to quest hub, and then to quest locations. Depending on how quick you are with leveling (and if you use one of the recommended guides) you could spend a lot of time trying to find quest mobs or quest items. So it could prove to be a much quicker leveling experience.

This is for PvP players (those of us who hate the grind of leveling, and prefer to spend our time in PvP situations. So there are also some other great side effects from leveling through PvP.

Honor Gain: While you are getting exp, you are also collecting honor (and tokens) that you can use to QUICKLY gear up at level 80. Previously if you were a PvPer, you had to first level up to 80, and then begin your honor grind. Now you can knock out some of this while you level.

PvP Practice: Even with the entire leveling grind, you have a chance to “learn” the effectiveness and playstyle of your character’s spells and abilities.. if you like to PvP chances are you might choose a different spec at level 80. This is entirely true on my Druid. I leveled up in Feral (until 71). Switched to Restoration at 71 so I could be an asset in PvP, and also practice my future spec.

Now the clear downside to this is that there will be a lot of under level players inside of battlegrounds.

Is this a real problem though?

If both factions have characters inside which are trying to level, the effect should theorectically play off of itself. (I’ve noticed a lot more lower levels on both factions inside of the BG’s.)

But I can still see a negative side to this.

However, even though I’m level 71 running Alterac Valley, I still consistantly stay at the top of the healing charts.. which is my role to play… so I think i’m contributing more than I am stealing from the good of the faction.

I will try to update this post with actual level speeds, or hourly experience rates. But I want you to do the same.

What’s your experience with PvP for leveling?

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How to Level Faster

Something new that we are going to begin doing, is answering questions directly from players. When we sent out our most recent survey, we had a LARGE response, with tons of great questions that were asked. We will start by answering questions from the survey.

If you have any questions, here’s how to get your question answered:

1. Post your WOW Questions as a comment to any post.
2. Submit your question in the “Ask Warcraft Legion” form (Coming soon)

Todays Question:

Why does WoW keep crashing with error 132? Hehee. No, I guess my question would be, how can people level up so quickly when it takes me forever to level up?

Leveling up quickly is a talent that takes practice. The top levelers in the game do everything they can to shave seconds off their leveling time. Most mistakes made during leveling are repetitive, and when you can shave seconds off here and there, this will add up to LARGE amounts of time saved over all.

Here are some things to do to make sure you are saving as much time as possible.

Questing – First things first. If you aren’t questing your way to the level cap then you are going to be going to be moving at a snails pace. You should also be using a strategy that we like to call “Quest Cycles” which instead of doing one quest at a time, you collect all the quests needed and complete “zones” or brackets of leveling all at once. This cuts back on traveling time. This is hard to do at first (unless you fully know a zone) so the best tip to take when starting out is to try and collect as many quests as possible, and then go do them in batches.

Down Time – Downtime is the death to all levelers. My definition of down time is any time spent not getting experience. (Things like traveling, eating/drinking, pvp, dying) these are all examples of down time. To reduce down time make sure you always have the highest level food/water with you, if possible carry bandages.

Talent Spec – Make sure your TALENT SPEC is built for leveling. There are some talents that are mainly for leveling, while others are for pvp or raiding. Make sure you have talents that assist in reducing downtime. Death/PvP is one of the biggest time sinks. When you die you have to run all the way back to your body. So be careful when pulling mobs. Don’t get TOO aggressive. And always try to carry some potions on you, in case things get ugly!

Cool Downs – Most players don’t use their cool-downs when playing. They should be used automatically as soon as they are back up. Things like +dmg trinkets, special abilities (blink, sprint, evasion, bubbles, innervates, evocation etc) These will all save you a large amount of time, so they should be used EVERY chance you get. Players usually like to save these for “near-death” encounters. Which is rare when you begin to play correctly. So using these cool downs will increase your leveling rate drastically.

When it comes down to it, the better you know your class, and the better you know your surroundings (the mobs, the individual quests, the zones) the better you will become at leveling. You can leverage our experience to get that knowledge just by following our blog posts!

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