Tipsout claimed in a recent video that instance grinding is much faster in classic than on private servers for two reasons: they give more experience and are easier. He spitballs an example of grinding 12-16 in RFC in 2.5 hours and compares that to Joanna doing the same levels in 3 hours 10 minutes.

With leeway breaking a lot of kiting methods and /sit exploits not being functional this is attractive to me as a future warrior. Obviously you're avoiding quest overcrowding which some people are straight up not playing during the first few days to avoid, and further you'll be keeping your gear up to date which provides good returns for some classes. Beyond that dungeon running can simply be fun especially if you have competent friends to play with. As a downside your reputations and gathering profession skills will suffer.

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.

Thoughts?

I've watched the whole thing (surprisingly one of the better and more informed videos he has ever made).

I think aside from the mind-numbingly boringness of farming only dungeons it may be viable? Of course I don't know if his calculations are actually accurate for the entire way from level 10-60. It may be that some dungeons at certain levels have less mob density thus lower xp per hour as opposed to just grinding or questing.

If I had to make a wild guess, in case the dungeon grinding is more efficient vs. questing, I can see it being an attractive alternative to level 30-40 leveling when everyone is doing STV on a PvP server.

So for a pure racer type of person, grinding dungeons may be a fast (and secure) way of reaching 60. Of course I don't see the point in doing this as I'm not going to be racing to 60 and rather want to experience the whole Azeroth, but I get that everyone has different goals.

There appears to be some merit in the dungeon grinding, since people are recruiting for it in the Guild recruitment thread for this exact strategy as a method to power level to 60 in first week: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1126&p=18050#p18050

I don't see why not, efficiently farming elite mobs and constantly having your gear up to date sounds effective, if a little mind numbing.

Won’t grinding dungeons all the way cause some issues down the line with missing reputations and such?

Tec wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Won’t grinding dungeons all the way cause some issues down the line with missing reputations and such?

Meh, can't see it being a massive issue. Maybe for crafting recipes and mount discount?

Pff, mounts, discounts. We need to be 60 asap!
Dungeon Spaming is a good alternative for people who cant level alone!

I will probably grind dungeons to get into level 40 faster. At least seems to be faster this way for me.

I guess a good positive is getting much better gear than questing!

But like @Gallow said, I would rather experience the game/world then play LFG all day
In my mind grinding dungeons to get to 60 without doing quests to me is playing WoW wrong lol
Might as well play dungeon crawler on your phone...

Im excited to hear this. I tend to farm dungeons until I get all the gear from them that I want. This usually means a minimum of 5x runs per dungeon. I dont normally have an issue with running dungeons, even if its slower, but there are a lot of people who will do one run only loaded with quests. This will make grouping easier for me!

On launch, i plan to do every dungeon, including RFC (as ally) multiple times.

side note, i plan to 3 man a lot and am looking for suggestion for best dps for 3 man group that has druid tank and pally heals?

beached wrote: ↑

5 years ago

i plan to 3 man a lot and am looking for suggestion for best dps for 3 man group that has druid tank and pally heals?

It doesn't matter what dps you have as long as it's someone you would enjoy to play with

There is something about dungeon experience grinding I don't enjoy,
I guess I get sick of doing the dungeon over and over, I prefer just doing quests.

I look for the locations of all the dungeon quests before I enter the instance, and then I complete and hand them all in together, I don't want to do that dungeon again unless I need an item.
There are usually around 5 quests to complete for each dungeon, stratholme and Scholomance you would be lucky to get a group before 60.

Funny how this has flipped around, normally it's the hardcore speed levelers that scoff at dungeons. Really this is good news for everyone: casuals can do their one run with full quests and get more out of it. And aren't these old instances a cornerstone of the vanilla experience? Manually filling your group, traveling to the instance on foot, making it work at all costs; people praised these things to death when Classic was announced.

Personally I'm in a position where I've got ~5 people eager to play with me on release and questing with a full group is ass. Running instances is a no-brainer for me. I know, good problem to have.

beached wrote: ↑

5 years ago

i plan to 3 man a lot and am looking for suggestion for best dps for 3 man group that has druid tank and pally heals?

Mage would be great: polymorph, free water and portals, uses different gear from your party members. Druids have good AoE threat so you could toss flamestrike and arcane explosion around with impunity. Warlock would be good too for similar reasons.

Nyxt wrote: ↑

5 years ago

But like @Gallow said, I would rather experience the game/world then play LFG all day
In my mind grinding dungeons to get to 60 without doing quests to me is playing WoW wrong lol
Might as well play dungeon crawler on your phone...

I second that emotion.

Lendryn wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Funny how this has flipped around, normally it's the hardcore speed levelers that scoff at dungeons. Really this is good news for everyone: casuals can do their one run with full quests and get more out of it. And aren't these old instances a cornerstone of the vanilla experience? Manually filling your group, traveling to the instance on foot, making it work at all costs; people praised these things to death when Classic was announced.

I love this. This is just too true.

I'm in a similar position with 5 friends. Due to the recent issues with hunter I have been looking for a new class and have been trying to check my friends schedules for launch day. If we can organize a solid 3-4 days to play together at launch I am considering going warrior. Dungeon farm 1/2 way or 3/4 of the way to 60 as a group. Dungeon grinding as a team would be SUCH a blast, especially with how much easier these dungeons appear to be compared to what we faced on Private. People are saying they are 10-20% easier on Classic? Not sure if there is a legitimate source to confirm the difference in difficulty but it would be interesting to see... From what I understand we are still missing certain variables like armor values / resist values??? Reinforces my concern for raid difficulty though.

Method plan to get a week 1 Rag kill, and it may just be a whole lot easier than we had anticipated.

XP is modified depending on if a mob is normal, elite or a dungeon elite. Normal mobs reward 100% xp, elites are 200% and dungeon elites are worth 250% xp. Private servers were missing the additional modifier for dungeon elite mobs. So not only were you getting significantly less xp for dungeon mobs, they were far more difficult to kill.

The TLDR is that a level 20 solo player will get around 145xp for killing a normal mob by himself in the world. In a group of 5 players in a dungeon he will get 101xp for killing a dungeon elite. This is why dungeon farming can be very lucrative.

source: Hakurai (youtube video linked below)

@Stfuppercut Exactly the info I needed, thanks. Looks like the cleave combos are pretty simple, you just need a warrior and a priest with spirit tap. I'd really like a shaman for totems and back-up heals too though.

Going by the level ranges in @d3aths's dungeon quests guide you could easily get 3/4ths of your leveling done in instances. I'd guess we want to be somewhere in the center of each dungeon's range as warriors.

Concerning raid difficulty, there was recently a blue post that stated everyone is going to have 3% reduced crit against enemies 3 levels higher. That will hurt raid DPS quite a bit.

I would be interested in seeing some #s in terms of exp/hr and the # of full clears to level through various ranges. Does anyone have any figures? There has been a lot of content recently stating that dungeon leveling is viable but I haven't been able to find hard #s to compare with other leveling methods.

@Furiousfromage the video Stfuppercut linked above gives some hard numbers @4:17 for around level 20.

22k xp/h solo questing vs 27k xp/h from grinding Deadmines. It's worth mentioning that he was playing a warrior and the listed questing xp/hr is after he got geared up from the instance.

Furiousfromage wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I would be interested in seeing some #s in terms of exp/hr and the # of full clears to level through various ranges. Does anyone have any figures? There has been a lot of content recently stating that dungeon leveling is viable but I haven't been able to find hard #s to compare with other leveling methods.

From my post above:

"XP is modified depending on if a mob is normal, elite or a dungeon elite. Normal mobs reward 100% xp, elites are 200% and dungeon elites are worth 250% xp. Private servers were missing the additional modifier for dungeon elite mobs. So not only were you getting significantly less xp for dungeon mobs, they were far more difficult to kill.

The TLDR is that a level 20 solo player will get around 145xp for killing a normal mob by himself in the world. In a group of 5 players in a dungeon he will get 101xp for killing a dungeon elite. This is why dungeon farming can be very lucrative."

So imagine being a warrior at level 20. Pulling a mob. Not being able to sit/proc. Not being able to hamstring kite as well as before due to leeway. Sitting and eating between pulls and getting 145 XP for killing a mob in the world. The same warrior, in a cleave group with minimal/no downtime will be getting 101xp for cleaving several mobs with 4 other people. For certain classes, this seems to be FAR more efficient as you can increase your throughput by cleaving and thus increase your net XP by reducing downtime.

Being able to skip flooded maps with so many people on release would be good even with harder mobs and less XP per run. Now after it's "Confirmed" dungeons are easier and faster this is even better for me. I like to play with people and that's why I will play Classic, socialize during lower levels is fun!

I can't wait to spam dungeons with friends and powerlevel while getting stronk rares.

Zhohan wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I can't wait to spam dungeons with friends and powerlevel while getting stronk rares.

My opinion - I am not sure about it. But I think after Level 40 it is not worth to Dungeon Spam...!

aeh wrote: ↑

5 years ago

My opinion - I am not sure about it. But I think after Level 40 it is not worth to Dungeon Spam...!

Why???

I'm not sure if it's still worth it from the level of 40 because from that point on you'll get a lot of EP on quests etc. and the dungeons you can make are just not stacked.

Most classes can kill monsters relatively quickly from that point on, it's just a feeling, I can't confirm if it is true.

what about spamming maraudon from 43->50 , still worth more xp/h imo than questing and keep traveling beetween zone ? Then you have Brd, starting to get BIS plus make a ton xp by speed running it
I dunno, i tested on a local server after modifying the rates like on the beta classic wow, you could make like 5-6 bar just by doing the arena run on level 48. Is this possible to make every hour the same xp with quest ? If you take in consideration loot quests, gameobject quests, travel time, etc..

aeh wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I'm not sure if it's still worth it from the level of 40 because from that point on you'll get a lot of EP on quests etc. and the dungeons you can make are just not stacked.

Most classes can kill monsters relatively quickly from that point on, it's just a feeling, I can't confirm if it is true.

In my situation I cant find 4 other friends who will have a similar schedule to mine for the first 5-6 days of launch so I will likely be doing dungeon spamming (If I can get a group together) for 3-4 days and then breaking off on my own. Your speculation would actually work in my favor because I wont have a team to grind the whole way, so I hope youre right. Haha

Currently rolling with 9 players who will play quite a bit (know them all IRL) and 3 or 4 casuals/acquaintances. Group seems to grow each week.

edit: if anyone is specifically looking for a team for the first 4-5 days of classic, and is playing a warrior PM me. You would need to be able to keep a pretty high played time daily though. We are less concerned about your 1-16 time and are willing to delay our farm by a few hours for the right person.

This would come with the benefit of playing with us throughout the rest of Classic as well. We arent committing to guild leadership as most of us will be willing to jump guilds to crush content ASAP, so there will be no formal banner; just a group of guys who consistently play together.