Dungeon grinding was the way to go to level alt back in the days with geared 70+. it will be viable BUT:
-you need to know your instance, know when to switch to the next one.
-you need to kill faster an elite mob with 5 persons than the time it take for you to kill a single mob of the same level in solo outside. Hunter and Warlock will generally level faster alone if they have an unlimited batch of mobs.
-You need to understand that some instance are way to difficult / long / annoying to waste time leveling in them.
-you need to have the same 4 partners that know how to play with you so you don't need to devise strategy on every pull
-you need to optimize your pull to minimize downtime
-you need NOT to get ganked everytime you reset the instance on a pvp server

There's a google doc in the resource channel of the Dungeonboss discord which puts this method in perspective. Can't link it for some reason.

Imagine if you saw someone advertising in /world "LF Melee group for 28x SM GY Runs!!"

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Dungeon grinding was the way to go to level alt back in the days with geared 70+. it will be viable BUT:
-you need to know your instance, know when to switch to the next one.

We have that route mapped out and readily available for teams. Both from Hakurais reference and the theorycrafting our members have been doing on the route.

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

-you need to kill faster an elite mob with 5 persons than the time it take for you to kill a single mob of the same level in solo outside. Hunter and Warlock will generally level faster alone if they have an unlimited batch of mobs.

This is heavily reliant on variables you can not control on a fresh launch. Especially on a PvP realm. Dungeon grinding on the other hand allows you to level in a controlled environment with predictable results.

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

-You need to understand that some instance are way to difficult / long / annoying to waste time leveling in them.

This is accurate. Also, you wont be completing most dungeons. You will often only be doing parts of dungeons and resetting. Are you a spell cleave team in WC? Youre going to prioritize that main room with raptors because rounding them up and kiting them around while aoeing them down yields insane XP and is VERY high reward and VERY low risk. You will focus on pulls that are level appropriate and that yield the best xp per hour and then reset when those are done to redo the best pulls.

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

-you need to have the same 4 partners that know how to play with you so you don't need to devise strategy on every pull

This is the single biggest variable to making this work. The reliability of other players.

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

-you need to optimize your pull to minimize downtime

Eh.... this is easier than people make it out to be. Melee cleave is a faceroll. Pull mobs. Attack mobs. Pull more mobs. Dont stop. Never stop. A regular 5 man team will use far more CC and coordination in a pug than most melee cleave teams are using. Spell cleave on the other hand takes a great deal of coordination, but has the highest potential for xp per hour.

[email protected] wrote: ↑

5 years ago

-you need NOT to get ganked everytime you reset the instance on a pvp server

This is the strength of a dungeon grind team, they are going to be ganked less often in wPvP than the average player. Could you run into another cleave team? Potentially. But this is a far cry from the massacre that will be happening in STV and other contested zones.

@Lendryn I re-watched the Zul F instance video and they blew the monsters to pieces long before you would have time to stacks Sunders and tab our Rend on all targets.

This was above lvl 30.

I still think that Whirlwind and Sweeping Strikes will outperform Rage dumping via Cleave.

I also noted a lot of running over to the next pack with zero Rage and not utilising Charge, perhaps it's a cooldown thing or a organisation thing avoiding everyone being in combat permanently.

All that stuff said, I'm watching this topic, it is very interesting.

Not sure if this was ever linked but its gaining a lot of traction on our discord

Nice little graveyard hop resource for those attempting to get to 12-18 fast.

I'm going to level two characters in Classic. My druid as my solo main character, with an end game focus on PvP. My other character will be a dungeon crawler enh/resto shaman with my workmates in a melee + mage group. Mostly for fun over efficiency, although the comp sounds pretty good for CC and loot distribution. Warrior tank, shaman heal/enh, rogue, Hunter, mage. I'm getting pretty excited

yes, that sounds like fun. especially with your work frinds! some comps may not perform optimally from an xp per hour standpoint based on good runs, however I think a lot of people are undervaluing some of the other classes like mages to port your team and warlocks to summon people who need repairs and stuff. Especially summon early on. Allows you to cycle through group members and save a ton of time. I think a balanced group will transition really well into higher end content.

Dungeon grinding is so good, that you dont need a min/max cleave comp. and cleave comps dont necessarily address many other leveling time wasters like travel and are instead focused purely on xp per hour. We have a traditional comp going with our guild tank,heal, 3 different dps and I am really excited to see how well it does in a real world environment. Dont get me wrong a well polished cleave group will do well, but I do not think that they do so well that people should avoid rolling other comps. Especially in a case like yours with work friends as an alt.

RobGFour wrote: ↑

5 years ago

This guy is uploading vids of a melee cleave group leveling on a pserver.

@25k/hr in mid 20's
@45k/hr in mid 30's
@55k/hr in mid 40's

Not shabby, especially for warriors when compared to solo questing. Classic instances are supposed to be even better xp/hr than pservers.

Hey! Thanks for linking to my video. They're all very rough and unedited, so I'm pleasantly surprised people actually started watching them and subscribing :)
The pserver we're playing on is Kronos III PTR, which is supposed to have Classic-like values as they datamined from the beta. You can see their official "promo text" at: https://www.kronos-wow.com/about/

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Some gold estimates for dungeon grinding on horde are about: "We're expected to have run 192+ dungeons and have earned roughly 200g each by the time we're 42............." according to the 5-man instance leveling discord. They have some google docs showing how they obtained their numbers but it wont let me link it here =(

Yeah. The document is still in the works, but at least here's a nice little summary for most people: http://tinyurl.com/xpandmoney
Just keep in mind, that the XP/H and estimation of time to level etc is taken from ONE level per dungeon at most cases and the money earned is from ONE run. And therefore the times and money calculations will most likely be far off, as the loot changes every time and the XP/H and the required xp will decrease/increase each level.
The discord he's refering to is this one; https://discord.gg/Edapg9S

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Selexin wrote: ↑

5 years ago

200g each? Holy shit.....

Yea. Their spreadsheet doesnt show a single epic drop either and it looks like they prioritized vendoring instead of DEing. They listed all of their items based on all of their runs and then normalized their numbers and used the median values to predict their consistent gold gain at each dungeon. They took that and multiplied it by the quantity of dungeons they ran.

edit: even if this number is off (which im certain it will be because private servers) this is still going to be an insane quantity of gold for players at 42. I know some early concerns with this method were regarding obtaining mounts etc, but that doesnt seem to be an issue either.

So far, we actually got two epic drops. A gun from Maraudon full run(but this isnt included in my shared doc, as we ignoring that dungeon), and now Blackskull shield dropped from ZF grave runs.
As for the "priority" of vendoring VS DE. We will most likely DE a lot of stuff to avoid going to vendors that often - but for esimating these numbers it's easier to just vendor everything. Most likely a lot of stuff will be put on AH where we will get a increase in gold earned, but also a lot of the cloth (which we also vendored) will be used to skill up First Aid and supplied with bandages. A lot of the loot that drops will also be used, but this again; I vendored to just give a estimation of gold earned possibilities.

I'm not very active here, but I try to be active on the Discord I linked. Any inputs for maximizing our XP/H is very much appreciated.
Thanks once again :)

Youre doing gods work @Sixtyshaman give this man some love and some thumbs up on his videos.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Youre doing gods work @Sixtyshaman give this man some love and some thumbs up on his videos.

;-* Just very eager to get started on Classic

Another crazy resource I found on Dungeonboss's discord is a full list of all the dungeon quests ingame. They are building quite the library of information on the subject. It wont allow me to link the document because its not published? But can be found in their resources tab. I'm not sure who made it though??? They seem to just be compiling all the information they find and linking each of the level cleave discords.

ALSO, for players interested Hakurai will be releasing a full dungeon leveling route on Alliance side for his patreon supporters. May be something to check out for all you Alliance guys.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

for all you Alliance guys scum.

FTFY Uppercut.

Also they do seem to be compiling some really good info. I'm looking forward to dungeon crawling with my workmates. We have a dedicated Warrior Tank and I'll heal, so the rest is just easy. Can't wait!

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Another crazy resource I found on Dungeonboss's discord is a full list of all the dungeon quests ingame. They are building quite the library of information on the subject. It wont allow me to link the document because its not published? But can be found in their resources tab. I'm not sure who made it though??? They seem to just be compiling all the information they find and linking each of the level cleave discords.

I've been using this excellent post here on the forum by d3aths which I believe is made from the document you're mentioning

From hakurai's discord (one of the guys making many tutorials/guides on cleaving): "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew finished both alliance and horde versions, just gonna proofread and set up patreon!~ I'll release a video going over what to expect from the guide as well this evening" - Hakurai

Keep an eye on Hakurais youtube channel for a finished video and his patreon will have his master version of the leveling guide for dungeon cleaving 1-60 in the next few days. I will keep posting any developments.

Should also add that I have been doing dungeon runs on a private server from 18-26 (deadmines) recently and we are easily earning 18-22k xp per hour on private server values where mobs are significantly harder (approx +30%dmg based on beta footage) and the dungeons themselves reward 25% less xp. We were also playing on alliance where we have no windfury.This translates into roughly 2+ levels per hour for a melee cleave team in this bracket consistently. Keep in mind that melee struggle most early on before sweeping strikes and then just get better and better and better. Warriors wont even have cleave at 18 and this method is still bananas. Needless to say, this method is alive and well and has incredible potential.

We have also been testing our partial runs and have started to develop a few strategies. For example, if you are doing a partial run of deadmines (or any dungeon) and only clearing entrance to foundry for levels 18-20, adding a 6th member for the dungeon reset wont be worthwhile due to how little time it saves VS the time it takes to logout. Therefore we dont spend much time looting corpses during the clear and will primarily loot on the way out, during our reset. This sounds stupid but we found that it saves us 1-2 mins per foundry run. So we prioritize a fast kill in and then loot on the way out for partial runs. Obviously during a full clear, the run back is incredibly long and the 6th member reset would be massive.


Edit, just posted:



Edit 2: have since added myself to his patreon and his finished guide is incredible. An actual guide. Not by guide standards in most other contexts. This is not meaningless conjecture produced by someone who KIND of knows what they're talking about... No. This is expert advice built around tested data. Data that has been put to practice in real world scenarios WITHIN CLASSIC BETA. Highly recommended for people attempting to dungeon grind. Current estimates of a competent tryhard team range between 3-4 days played. I'm not sure how achievable this will be fore most groups but DAYYYYUM. The guide also is not based on interrupting chain quests so it allows players to transition back into solo questing at anytime pending a group collapse.

When will hunters play if cleaves are for melee teams too?

Guest wrote: ↑

5 years ago

When will hunters play if cleaves are for melee teams too?

What? Sooo... me and my team have been playing around with hunters and I see potential for using eyes of the beast + stealth pet to help round up massive pulls for casters to AoE down. Think of this as an advanced and more reliable version of eye of killrog (got this idea from the dungeonboss discord). Hunters can also work ~okay in melee cleave as they are physical and can dump combat to mana back up. Overall this will be less appealing for most hunters because they can already level quickly. Hunters will always do fairly well in any group. Adding an owl for screech is pretty good as well.

The hunter also helps with frost trap. So the mobs hit the trap first which helps round things up for the first blizzard spams. Not trying to say this is super good, but hunters can have some synergy with melee or spellcleave teams.

I got my hands on the Hakurai guide too and it's easily worth it — pooling $20 will save your group a lot of time and frustration.

Friendly reminder to remove your btag friends who you will be playing with on launch, wouldn't want to get sticky'd to them on a layer. By removing them there are higher odds to be split so you guys can address who has the least competitive layer later on and they can add everyone. Relavent to dungeon grinding because getting your 5 man on a competitive layer quick can be incredible for xp per hour.

In the same idea, be sure to keep your group members in separate guilds for different layers.

Lendryn wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Some people have been tossing around the idea of melee cleave or spell cleave groups which focus on AoE and multi-hit abilities to clear dungeons as fast as possible. Since he didn't mention them I presume Tipsout wasn't even using these heavily optimized groups when he made that ~2 levels an hour figure.

Keep in mind that Classic dungeons are not like running dungeons in retail. Tanks don't have the same abilities to gain and hold mass aggro when a group starts AOE-bombing. You'll be better off focusing targets one at a time. I remember this from Vanilla and was reminded during the beta when all the retail kids were trying to speed run the dungeons like they were doing mythic+ and getting the healers killed. If you have an efficient dungeon group it'll be fast for leveling. Not retail fast but faster than the average player. Initially I will only be running groups with people I know, most of which I played Vanilla with for this specific reason.

Cletus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Keep in mind that Classic dungeons are not like running dungeons in retail. Tanks don't have the same abilities to gain and hold mass aggro when a group starts AOE-bombing. You'll be better off focusing targets one at a time. I remember this from Vanilla and was reminded during the beta when all the retail kids were trying to speed run the dungeons like they were doing mythic+ and getting the healers killed. If you have an efficient dungeon group it'll be fast for leveling. Not retail fast but faster than the average player. Initially I will only be running groups with people I know, most of which I played Vanilla with for this specific reason.

This is true, but Classic mobs hit so softly that you wont need a traditional tank. A cleaving warrior (or two) provide insane TPS. If you watch some videos of cleaves, the content is REALLY trivial. Many groups use priest spirit tap and dont even need to stop pulling for mana regen while constantly pulling 4-6 mobs.

Spell cleave is a bit more complex, but not by much. Mobs die so fast that the AoE players just need to delay their burst until about 1/2 hp. When the mobs are at 50% hp, they get to go all out if they are running a tank. Without a tank they just need strong communication. For certain pulls (depending on your comp) you can have the AoE players go balls to the wall right out of the gate. If the beta and stress tests have taught us anything, its that Classic content is a WHOLE lot easier than we thought it was going to be.

There were actually a few guys on the beta testing 4 manning dungeons to check its viability due to the higher yield of xp per player. It didnt work out and 5 people was still found to be better, but spamming as a 4 man wasnt terrible by the calculations that they gave. Dungeons are really easy. I think that many mythic players are going to be grinning from ear to ear when they hit Classic dungeons to be frank.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

This is true, but Classic mobs hit so softly that you wont need a traditional tank.

I agree fully with not needing a traditional tank but most folks will be in leveling gear when it comes to damage mitigation. I think I would strongly suggest a shaman for chain heal in that case. It's not impossible to run AOE spell/cleave but you need to make sure the group is tight. PUGs are gonna be sketchy initially.

Cletus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I agree fully with not needing a traditional tank but most folks will be in leveling gear when it comes to damage mitigation. I think I would strongly suggest a shaman for chain heal in that case. It's not impossible to run AOE spell/cleave but you need to make sure the group is tight. PUGs are gonna be sketchy initially.

I would probably agree with this if I hadnt spent so much time watching beta footage and checking out the stress tests. There is no damage to mitigate. I will agree that the quality of player will be a massive indicator of how valuable cleaving will be. That being said, the baseline requirement to maintain adequate speed so that this method is profitable is VERY achievable.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

There is no damage to mitigate.

Folks are gonna be dying to the damage...