So I have decided to main dwarven priest in Classic. I will have some 5 days off for release to get as close to lvl 60 as possible.
With plenty of time till release I am testing optimal routes and setups for leveling based on Joana's Alliance leveling guide.
Now a warning for you friend - if you're not into min-maxing nitty gritty details stop reading at this point! Theorycraft incoming :D

For speed leveling as a priest one of paramount things is to have a decent wand. Typically what you should do when leveling a priest is to get equipped with craftable Lesser Magic Wand at level 5 and Greater Magic Wand at level 13. These things are dirt cheap on established servers but on fresh server getting them in timely manner is a feat. Here is a nice guide from Kargoz how to ensure you get both of these wands even when solo leveling on a fresh server:

And now here I am wondering what would be best approach regarding wand crafting vs. speed leveling

1) Follow the Kargoz guide. This means I will have some speed leveling downtime with an alt and even more with skinning on main char.
2) Craft only Lesser Magic Wand because it is viable with single char on a normal speed leveling route - see details here
The downside is that the earliest point for dwarf to farm required 58 linen cloth is from Gol'bolar Quarry troggs. This means I will get Lesser wand around level 11 which is quite late and too late for it to really shine.
3) Forget about getting craftable wands and rely on quest rewards - Wands by level
I will most likely have to rely on wands from Bashal'aran and Gathering Idols quests as they are on most viable speed leveling routes. This means no downtime for professions at all but no wanding till level ~13 - when I can reliably solo Bashal'aran quest. No wanding sucks for priest but on fresh launched server with people fighting for tagging mobs it might actually be reasonable to go on with no wand for longer. After all finding a mob to tag can be more challenging that conserving mana across first couple zones.

OR I can just assume that I have guildies who will funnel all linen cloth and strange dust to me so that I can power level my enchanting.
That one is of course optimal for my dwarf leveling but I am yet to see if such coordinated effort is possible in the first place. Especially during first unstable hours of storming servers after launch :D

I have decent knowledge of the priest class but I never speed leveled before. So I am looking to any veteran priests of old or generally experienced speed levelers what is optimal based on options 1-3. Or do you maybe see some other important aspects to consider?

If you're trying to speed level, having two crafting professions isn't the way to go. From my experience on the beta, there are enough people trying to level enchanting to swamp the market with Lesser Magic Wands, so they're only about 10 silver a piece.

Even so, if one of my guild mates won't cut me a deal for a Lesser Magic Wand, I'll make a macro so I can advertise in General chat in my leveling zone. There will always be someone with a surplus, since it's one of the first things you learn with enchanting.

Cielos wrote: ↑

5 years ago

If you're trying to speed level, having two crafting professions isn't the way to go. From my experience on the beta, there are enough people trying to level enchanting to swamp the market with Lesser Magic Wands, so they're only about 10 silver a piece.

Even so, if one of my guild mates won't cut me a deal for a Lesser Magic Wand, I'll make a macro so I can advertise in General chat in my leveling zone. There will always be someone with a surplus, since it's one of the first things you learn with enchanting.

Hey Cielos, thanks for this info, that's exactly what I was looking for!
So if experience from beta is that Lesser Wands are massively accessible early on then indeed grinding professions yourself makes no sense. This is especially promising that with level cap in beta people have much more gold from quests rewards what can inflate prices. So for real release I would optimistically expect prices even below 10s.

Are Greater Magic Wands craftable in beta?
Could you please let us know if there is any accessible supply of these too?

Currently on the beta, Greater Magic Wands are 23 silver each and there's a pretty decent supply, too.