I’m down to about a post every week and a half. Sorry about that. I’ve been busy lately, and when my time is short and I have to choose between playing WoW or blogging about WoW, I’ve chosen playing.
I mentioned in a previous post that I was leveling my mage using only the LFD tool. I’ve done no quests except the occasional “talk to this guy” or to turn in a “This Item Begins a Quest” drop that I picked up in an instance. I started this project in January with him at level 23. He’s now at level 60.
Pros and Cons –
The best part about this is that I have not had to spend any time running back and forth across zones. Also, since this is my fourth toon, I don’t have to do the same quests that I have already done three times already. Most importantly, I won’t have to level through Outland again.
I”l be honest. There are plenty of downsides to this method. First of all is gold. Without running quests, my income is severly limited. If I didn’t have a main with a lot of gold it would have been a problem. I’ve needed to get gold from my main for training, leveling professions, and my mounts. If you’re leveling your first toon then this is not the way to go.
Its also not as fast as questing. My friends in the guild who started their toons around the same time as me are already at 80.
Another problem is gear. Since my only source of gear are boss drops and greens from trash mobs, upgrades are few and far between. At level 60, I’ll still running around with a couple of pieces I got in my 30’s.
Here’s my rundown of the instances that I’ve done so far:
When I started this project in my mid-20s I got Razorfen Kraul repeatedly. This was pretty easy, so the runs went smoothly. Gnomeregan, though, was terrible. If anyone left the party, the replacement couldn’t get to us from the entrance because of random respawns, so we would give up if a single person dropped. I only finished Gnomer once in about 8 attempts.
In my upper 20s and low 30’s I got Scarlet Monastery Graveyard many, many, many times. That was fast, but it got old. A couple of levels later and I got SM: Library and Cathedral a few times. Cathedral was fun… a good tank could round up about 30 mobs and we would AoE them down. I never got Armory in the random dungeon. All the SM instances were great. We rarely wiped, and when we did the wipe recovery wasn’t too bad.
In my late-30s and early 40’s I got Uldaman a few times. This was a blessing and a curse. It was so big that a single run could give me almost a full level of XP. Unfortunately, it was so hard to nagivate that a single wipe usually meant the group would disband rather than recover and restart.
Early level 40s brought Zul’Farrak – one of my all-time favorite instances. Those runs were good. Again, we rarely wiped. Wipe recovery wasn’t terrible because you could mount inside the instance so the run back was quick. I completed every ZF run that I got in the random LFD, and they gave a load of XP.
The mid-late 40’s brought Maraudon and Sunken Temple. Both of these are HUGE. They are terrible for LFD. Every wipe resulted in the group disbanding. No one wanted to run all the way back. For Maraudon, most people can’t even find the instance entrance because of the maze of caves before it. Sunken Temple is even worse. The multi-level layout makes the minimap useless. Both of these instances were a real chore to finish. Fortunately, I only got assigned to Sunken Temple a few times. Maraudon, though… I’ll have nightmares of that for months.
The 50’s got even worse. Blackrock Depths is a great instance, but not with LFD. The run back from the graveyard is tremendously long. A wipe resulted in a 20 minute recovery, and so people would drop group. There is tons of trash and inexperienced tanks could really get themselves in trouble. Further, if no one has the Shadowforge Key then you are limited in what parts of the instance you can do. I drew BRD in the random dungeon dozens of times, but only completed it once.
The late 50’s brought Dire Maul, which is not too hard but no one really knows where to go. We only did DM East, which was OK. DM West was much harder. I liked DM, especially when compared to the horror of pugging BRD. But then in level 55-57 I got Lower Blackrock Spire a bunch of times. LBRS had the same problems as BRD… really big, hard to navigate, and really far from the graveyard. In all of my LBRS runs I never got to more than one boss. Eww. (funniest was when one tank ran into UBRS by mistake. Oops!)
Other than Dire Maul, level 50-57 was terrible for pugging. Just when I was starting to despair and consider giving up on the LFD leveling method, I hit level 58. It all gets better at level 58. Why? All the Death Knights join the game at level 59. Sure, they are often noobs and sometimes can’t play the game worth a darn. But the shortage of tanks goes away, and the queue time drops from 20 minutes to about 6-10. Also, you get to start the Outland instances, which are better designed and easier to recover from wipes.
So far I’ve done Hellfire Ramparts several times. Its quick, easy, and even a noob DK can tank it. And that’s where I am now.
Edit: Since I wrote this post, I have made it to level 69. The Outland instances were a breeze compared to the late vanilla dungeons. Most runs went well, until I started getting Sethekk Halls and Auchenai Crypts, which are obnoxious. I’m a little sad that I only got to see a handful of the Outland dungeons on this toon. I never drew Shadow Lab using LFD, or any of the Mechanar=Botanica-Arcatraz trio. That’s a shame.
Forever a Noob - A WoW Rogue Blog 
After levelling my rogue and warrior pre-LFD, I started playing my paladin (round the 30s when 3.3 hit). It was great until the late 40s (although a wipe in Mara generally meant the group dropped out), then it was Sunken Temple, and BRD over and over… plaguelands to 58 it was 🙂
It would be nice if they look at redesigning the old azeroth dungeons to be more casually and LFD friendly (ie shorter corpse runs, some maps etc).
However – at low level there are two sticking instances that are a problem; Wailing Caverns (it’s so damn long) and Deadmines (now where’s that instance entrance?). With this in mind, it can put new players off early on in the game, not too good, and the leetist players think they can burn through it like their heroics, very bad.
Personally I like the LFD system, but due to the way vanilla was created it seems messy… hope that’s fixed come the xpac 🙂
I have been leveling my priest using only the LFD. A couple of other cons include having no flight paths, since we all get teleported to the instance, and some professions will suffer. I have mining on my lvl 40 priest and the mining skill is still very low.
But it is a lot of fun running instances i’ve never seen. I started after Wrath and didn’t know what a dungeon was until I hit 80.
I think using the LFD tool is a nice way to easily get into dungeons and complete any quests that you may have picked up for those dungeons. But as you’ve said, the leveling in dungeons alone is even slower than questing. So I feel that is better suited as a supplement to questing rather than a way to level on its own. Same for BG leveling.
From a tank perspective, I don’t think LFD is slower than dungeons. MAYBE once you get to Northrend (I have noticed a considerable slow down), but the nigh instant queue means you are basically grinding elite mobs non-stop.
I’ve leveled 5 levels or so on a mid-20s priest exclusively via LFD. It’s amazing how BORING low level healing is.
I’ve leveled a number of times on a mid-30s (now 40s) rogue. I’m amazed how the “AOE them all” mind set has become common even in the old Classic dungeons. Had a tank try and “AOE them all” in ZF only to learn that the mobs will Hex you. Since we didn’t have a decurser there was no way to get the tank back in action so we all wiped. 4 times. When someone mentioned CC he left the group.
And… I’ve leveled about 15 times on my DK tank (60-75) and loved every minute of it. I initially ran Strat and Scholo, just to get a feel for my abilities. Then I did Dire Maul East and Dire Maul West. DM West we did in a 3 man team up until the dog boss (including the tree boss).
Overall, I would recommend LFD leveling for tanks, but I can see how it would be difficult for DPS (and even healers).
Nice to read the perspectives of fellow LFD-levelers.
I’ve been running as a Holy/Prot Paladins and haven’t had too many bad experiences. Currently sitting at 53, having run BRD Prison quite a few times, I cringe every time someone asks to do more. But besides that I’ve found ST and Maraudon to be quite good with the large amount of mobs to grind, as long as someone knows the instance.
Atm, I’m just dragging myself through the runs, knowing that Outlands will improve the experience greatly.
Much better to write good posts occasionally then to feel the need to post all the time when it’s just fluff. I never understood bloggers who put arbitrary and unnecessary post quotas on themselves. You always end up with junk about someone’s daily life that have nothing to do with the blog’s topic or sheepish posts that are nothing but apologies for not posting. If there’s nothing to talk about, there’s nothing to talk about– that’s all there is to it.
I’ve been leveling up a couple of my lvl 70 alts by doing nothing but dungeons and have found the XP really fast, the drops good, but the gold thing is definitely an issue. It’s also tough to get all the dungeon quests when you’re basically just queueing from the inn all the time.
I’m currently leveling a hunter. By almost exclusively using the LFD tool. And I must say I love it. Sure, as a DPS its much slower than questing but I’ve seen those quests before and it’s the teamwork I like about WoW.
My little hunter is now lvl 67 and it’s starting to get pretty slow. I need to run approx 10 – 14 times (Shettek halls mostly it seems) to get to lvl 68 (Cant wait! Northrend here I come)
My experience of the dungeons in the 50’s is a different one than what seems to be the case for most people. Most of my runs went well. People were polite and many knew the way and were willing to show the ropes. Well I might just have been lucky…
I hate it. Really!
When an Instance last longer then half an hour the tank or the healer drops group….
Brd in under a hour isnt makeable.
I wish the deserter debuff would last 24 hours.
I mean whats the point in downing a whole Instance in 15 Minutes.
It does take more time to do a Quest while levelling.
I really miss the feeling that downing an Instance boss is something special.
Sorry for my bad English.
well me and myy recruit – a – friend are leveling exclusively using the LFD tool, so far we are i nour early 20’s and with the 300% experience(more if you have BOA, it stacks) it’s probably the fastest leveling ive ever done in my life. right now im level 26 and when i /play i have about 3 and a half hours on that toon. while im not saying that questing with my RAF would be even faster, i think this is alot more fun. really, remember to think whats this game about? shooting yourself in the head with questing or having fun?
anyways. we plan to do this until we hit outlands then im going to straight questing because there gets alot more fun the the gayass vanilla questing.
also, one more thing about the cons. when me and my raf started playing, we startedo n a completely new server and with only doing dungeons my money isnt falling too low (well by meaning i have like 1 gold) and my professions arent falling either. (tailoring and enchanting, both of which are levelable in dungeons pretty good tho) its going to be kinda a pain with the flight paths later IMHO although.
overall, i love the LFD tool, but for it to be faster make sure you have RAF lol or it will in fact be a little slower. and also remember that you will have amazing gear 24/7 if your LFD leveling. dont think that its going to fall because well, back in the questing only days before LFD, people often did dungeons FOR THE GEAR more so then the exp lol. ok, now im done hehe
I’m did the same thing with my pally. Prot/holy but usually tanked. I enjoyed being the tank since it meant I got to set pace and I rarely didn’t finish an instance and even did complete BRD runs several times and the lower blackrock spire twice.
I just completed my fifteenth consecutive BRD total wipe. Twelve with a holy priest with a full heirloom set and three with an MM hunter in full heirlooms with pricey enchants and gear. Every single wipe was the tank’s fault. Half of them couldn’t make it through the first room. Pick apart clusters of stationary mobs with patrols in the vicinity through careful pulling? No way. Run up the middle. Charge into the midst of the next bunch you encounter. Why did we all die so quickly? The pat you ignored just smoked your healer? Welcome to sudden death.
BRD is far, far more difficult than any L80 5 man heroic. I’ve done them all repeatedly with multiple L80 toons. Yes, even the dreaded Oculus. They are face rolls compared to BRD. In BRD you have to wait, watch, plan and ever so carefully pull. If CC is available, you better use it. LOS pulls? Duh!
I’ve steamrollered countless heroics in over-geared pugs. That kind of slipshod play doesn’t cut it in BRD. I’ve healed idiot tanks, clueless dps and under-geared groups. What burns me most is that I successfully tanked it three years ago and know exactly what needs to be done. But the tanks I see in BRD seem to think they are in another L58-L80 no brainer instance.
So, I runs alts up to the point where LFG frequently assigns BRD and then quest to L58. Then, it is back to fast leveling in Outland and Northrend.
I love, yet sometimes loathe, the LFD tool. It is great because it takes out parking yourself in the /lfg channel (which on some servers have degenerated into another /general chat like /trade) and barking for more players. Just wait, quest, whatever until your queue pops. It’s pretty efficient!
But the more I run it, the more I see the foibles in this system as well as the general mindset of the current WotLK player. Like Ken mentioned in the comment above, BRD has been the litmus test for your average pugger. Up until Sunken Temple, most of the lower level instances were a walk in the park and the average joe could faceroll through without much of a care in the world. Blackrock Depths is where you are nailed to a wall. It’s huge, sprawling, and a source of facedesking horror for anyone who has lived in this instance in Vanilla like I, and many others, have.
The one thing that bothers me the most about the LFD tool is the even greater removal of one from meaningful social interaction. If there was a bad player, ninja looter, and so on in groups pre-LFD tool, they would be on your realm and they would be ousted for their transgressions. Not so much anymore. The people you group with are likely not from your realm, therefore social expectations are nearly non-existent. Politeness is, entirely, optional. Granted, caustic behavior is not entirely new on the internet and virtual worlds, but it is increased greatly when even more restraints on behavior are lifted.
Mind you, most of the groups I have been with have been anywhere from tolerable to almost pleasant, but it doesn’t take much for that one bad group/group member to make things terrible.
I don’t know what game you’re playing, but from 1 to 70, there is no faster way to level outside of using the LFG tool. Questing is not faster on its own and I am dumbfounded to hear more than one person here suggest otherwise. Prior to Northrend, LFG will get you levels considerably faster than quests will.
Then again, I’m not a punk. I heal and tank when I level, not DPS.
DPS are punks? Hmmm… I guess a tank and healer can down a dungeon by themselves then without those pesky punky dps. lol
Seriously, though, I thought the LFD tool would be faster. However, questing almost certainly is quicker. With the LFD tool you get most of your XP from killing mobs. When questing, you kill mobs AND get quest rewards. Since the XP needed per level has been reduced since vanilla WOW, the quest XP rewards are significant. Often a single quest hub will get you a whole level.
A single quest will never, at any level, give you a full level worth of experience.
If you add in the experience from killing the number of mobs you need to complete the quest then it’s possible at level 1-4 and that’s about it.
@Psynister
Do you understand what a “quest hub” is? It’s an area (town, outpost, crash site, etc..) where you can pick up many quests at once. Then you go around the zone in an efficient manner, working on all those quests as simultaneously as possible. Sometimes a particular zone may require several passes. Take for example Thrallmar, that can be considered a “quest hub”, and you probably would average more than 1 level per pass.
Questing is still the fastest possible way to level, *IF you know what you’re doing*. This isn’t always the case.
The reason LFD is faster for some players is that they’re basically forced to grind non-stop. You have other players to police you. Some players need that to level faster. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, one could make the counterpoint that if you’re rushing through levels, you’re missing a lot of the game: the inspired story lines, the outside world, lower-level Battlegrounds, the socializing with other players (let’s face it, LFD ‘socializing’ doesn’t count), and (shudder) Barrens / Trade chat.
Got to agree with Ken above. I’m in the middle of leveling my 3rd toon through the lfd system and I have yet to finish UBRS. It ALL comes down to poor tanking, every single wipe. I’m sad to say that because I usually try to support and have faith in the tank (it’s a thankless job made worse by internet ass-ism) but there’s some awful players out there. I always roll healers, too, so I’m a lot more attuned to what the tank is up to than the dps generally are.
Well fortunately with a full set of Boa gear and a few hours to kill I manage to move past the BRD phase in a day or two. Then it’s on to the relative ease of Dire Maul.
What, no ‘Failing’ Caverns tales?
Possibly the worst instance in Vanilla. Way too bloody confusing on what you’re supposed to do, and its a luck of the draw if you have ANYONE in the group that has an inkling of what to do.
I started the LFD process at level 23, so I was past the Wailing Caverns level.
I agree, though. I went in there with my level 80 to get the achievement, and we were in there for almost 2 hours because we were constantly getting turned around.
When you get someone who does know their way around the instance, and assuming your group has some idea of how to work together, a full WC run takes about 45 minutes. I can do a full clear on my 80 Mage in about 12 minutes, 11 of which are spent running around.
WC is confusing when you look at it, but it’s actually a very easy instance to get around if you take the time to learn it. It’s just like Sunken Temple or Mauradon, both of them are very easy to navigate once you figure out the simple design of it that’s hidden behind several layers of complexity.
Doing a full WC run in 12 minutes is physically impossible. I’m sorry, that’s just a flat-out lie. The escort itself takes longer than that.
I’m sorry, but after a whopper like that, I don’t think anyone here will be able to take anything you say seriously.
You didn’t mention this reputation issue – My level 80 Druid has is about as popular with the Alliance factions as the average just-escaped-from-Arthas Death Knight. She became a champion of Darnassus while honored – and that is one of her better reps. I really hope they let us buy tabards at lvl15 so those of us who want to level that way won’t be grinding rep endlessly at 80.
Good point. A lot of rep comes from quests. For those who are powerleveling, though, often the reputation issue is not a big deal. On my mage I don’t really care what reputations he has.
i am always amazed at ppl with projects… that border on the insane.
good luck to them. i enjoy reading about it though. and am totally glad im not the one doing it.
however, i begin to notice i am ending up doing something similar on some of my toons. i have a L77 priest that i levelled from L72 almost exclusively via LFG. he has now over 60 EoTs and his quest log is blank. but it dont feel as bad cos i only do 1 LFG per day on him.
i can afford to do that since i have tons of alts and have variety. i spend most of my time playing dps alts, and what i do with them is run quests while waiting for their LFG of the day. once they get it and complete it, i log out of one toon and into the next (lock, mage, hunter, rogue, even ret pally).
for my L80 alts, i will either make them do rep quests while waiting (but their queue is much shorter, around 10-15 min) or farming.
every few days, i feel its payback time, and i take my tank and healer toons out to do their turn. i usually prefer to tank or heal if the class allows, since LFG is such a painful waiting game. so i will tank in DK frost presence, druid bear, prot pally or prot war and heal as holy or disc priest, resto shammy or druid tree.
so it turns out my dps classes level faster than my tank/healer classes, right? while that is true, its cos i am holding back on tanking and healing toons. cos once they hit 80, they need a lot of gear to make it to heroics. so i would rather they pick up more EoTs now so that they can get a 2-pc set and some craftable epics and head straight to H runs once they hit 80.
there really isnt any point in running non-H at L80 (except the daily 2 EoTs – but if you run H version, you get EoT with every boss and 2 more EoTs at the end of the run, or 2 EoFs if it’s the H run of the day).
My brother started playing recently – on a pvp server. Since i hate ganking i pretty much levelled my paladin to 80 using only the DungeonFinder.
Tips for other DF levellers who want good dungeon-runs and a good xp-rate.
1. Be a tank. Instant queues plus you can always rely on the tank being semi-competent. Tanking fivemans is incredibly easy, go ahead and give it a try if you havent already. Don’t worry about gear, at low levels anyone can tank and the gear will come to you once you start doing instances.
2. Ignore the hunter who is moaning for bigger pulls. Pull what you feel comfortable with and what the healer seems comfortable with healing. Leave group after one warning if the hunter starts pulling. Those guys cause wipes (Which kills your xp-rate) and its not worth the extra stress.
3. The healer. Inspect him when you enter the dungeon. A healing specced healer wearing good gear means you can afford to make bigger pulls than you could with a dps-specced healer wearing garbage. Don’t make a big deal of it and don’t embarrass the undergeared dps-healer, just make more careful pulls than you would with a better healer.
Never shout at your healer, but don’t hesitate to send him a polite whisper if his healing worries you. Healers are rarely retards but they sometimes fall asleep at the keyboard and need to be woken up. Keep an eye on his mana-bar before big pulls, many healers are shy about asking for manabreaks. If the healer forgets to heal you and causes a wipe – try to have a polite conversation with him about it. If he does not answer or answers something like ‘lol’ you have a retarded healer and should probably leave right away. Retarded healers cause wipes which kills your xp-rate. If he talks to you at all, then it was probably a honest mistake and unlikely to happen again. A healer who did not bring any drinks and does not teleport out to get some is also a likely retard and a sure xp-rate killer.
4. Try not to notice the constant ninja-looting. Never look at your recount until after the run. Its not worth the aggravation and the kicking system is garbage anyway. But after the run, put the ninja-looters and afk-leeches on /ignore so you wont have to meet them again. The pool of available players is much smaller at low levels, so its likely that you will run into the same people over and over. Put the worst of them on ignore and you will have better runs over time. As a tank it will not affect your queues at all. ( I also put rude people and obvious children on ignore, but thats more about my preference than about getting good runs )
4,5. About kicking – It requires you to stop pulling, wait out an insanely long timer and hope that the hunter from #2 has not started pulling while you’re standing still. Even then there are often some stupid rules like ‘That player cannot be kicked for another 95 minutes’ by which time you’re done with the dungeon anyways.
Unless the player you want to kick is a complete piece of shit its rarely worth it. But if they ninja-loot and someone gets upset about it, its better to stop and try to kick the bad player or you risk having the good ones leave group. (Which kills your xp-rate. Good dps and good healers keep you moving. For some reason, the ninjalooters are very rarely good players.)
5. About leeches. The low levels are completely infested with leeches using the DF to afk-farm xp like some people afk-farm honor in battlegrounds. Usually dps-players, they are absolute death to your xp-rate because they do not contribute. I don’t expect people to be focused like we’re in ICC fighting the lich king, but i do expect them to occasionally hurt the mobs in some way. Two or more in the same group means its time to leave. Endure, there are fewer of them in outlands and they are nearly gone by the time you reach northrend. Don’t try to talk with them, they are not human.
6. Tradeskills – I went for tailoring/enchanting because the cloth and greens/blues drop in large amounts in most dungeons. (Bad choice for endgame tanking, i know. Dropped tailoring at level 80.)
7. Money. Yes, you get less money by leveling in dungeons. But you will get enough for your skills, bags and mounts.
Overall i found it a pretty quick way to level, going from 1 to 80 in about three weeks of normal play.
@Sanjassi
just wanted to say that this is a great post. level headed players like yourself with a grasp on the nuance of other players’ foibles as well as the foibles of the actual toons (tank/heals/dps) are fairly rare, in my experience.
I’d love to run some BRD/LBRS/UBRS with you any time. 🙂
i’m currently lvling a shaman and druid (both intended as heals i think; 16 and 31 respectively) and i’ve got 3 80s (hunter, prot warrior, holy/disc priest) on quel’dorei.
anyway, just wanted to tip the cap to you.
— threesixteen, quel’dorei
Dinaer,
I’m really surprised to see how often you mention players just dropping group after a wipe. As with everything else in the game I suppose it’s server/battlegroup related for the most part, but I could count on one hand the number of groups I’ve had fall apart after a wipe and every one of those can be directly contributed to a tank and/or healer that had no idea what they were doing. I’m talking about the warrior that was tanking in a grey, cloth robe in his 30s, I’m talking about the level 52 Druid that was tanking in caster form with Starfire as his threat tool, I’m talking about the Prot Pally without a single piece of +Int or +SP gear that signed up as a healer in Ramps.
It’s surprising to me to see so many people mentioning BRD as a bad LFD instance as well. I’ve done it close to 30 times now on four characters that used LFD and I honestly don’t remember a group that ever broke apart in there. We did have a few wipes in there because of patrolling mobs or ignorance (don’t touch the mugs in the tavern, guys), but never for lack of knowing where to go, being burdened by a long corpse walk, or anything of that nature.
As far as which give you more experience, questing or dungeons, it’s really a matter of where you’re questing. If you want to maximize your experience gain then the best thing for you to do is run randoms until your Rested Exp is burned up, and then chain quests instead. Once you get to level 51 the fasted method of getting to Outlands is to stop doing both of those and chain battlegrounds in Alterac Valley where you actually do gain up to an entire level in one match if your team is successful. If not, then the less you do the less exp you get so you could end up blowing a full hour on less than a single quest worth of experience.
Gear is probably the number one drawback to using the LFD. If your gear doesn’t drop or you don’t win the role on it then you’re just out of luck. I was still wearing some items I got in level 30-40 dungeons by the time I hit 68 on my Druid. Having BoA gear helps ease that burden a little bit, but not by much. I leveled through Outlands doing all of the Hellfire quests, two quests in Nagrand, and all of the rest came from LFD and about 4 WSG Battlegrounds since it was the holiday.
With gear being the big thing I personally suggest if you’re going to use LFD to be sure to do quests once you hit Outlands and Northrend at least in the starter zones to get your gear upgraded.
Thanks for your point of view. Yes, I have seen a lot of groups fall apart, although not as many after level 68. And yes, BRD was a hard instance in my battlegroup to level in.
I’m dedicated to finishing all the way to 80 without questing. Its gotten MUCH MUCH slower in Northrend, and then temptation to quest a little is omnipresent. So far I’ve stuck with it, and about to hit level 75.
I’ve managed to get almost all of my gear upgraded to something from a Northrend instance. It hasn’t been a problem – even with lower gear my damage is sufficient for these PUG groups. I’m going to replace it all at 80, of course.