Power-leveling an alt with a Prot Paladin

A great power-leveling resource is Jame's Guide to leveling...
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personally ive allways loved more doing the armory in one pull, its just so comical running and grabbing everything

I believe I've perfected my method of leveling alts on a second account with my tankadin. The warrior in my sig is a product of this, with about 3 days /played to 60. I'm currently leveling a druid through Stratholme with a guildmate. So here's a little guide I wrote up.

Before You Start

Get a buddy to level with you, or three. I promise, at least one person coming along will make it go much faster. Make sure they're always with you, and park everyone's alts at the instance. Most of the time, you won't be able to use meeting stones to summon anyone. You can probably get your friends to cover your repair bills as well, and there will be plenty of those.

Gear for block rating and stamina, with these handy:
- At least 4 shields. PLG's are okay, but it doesn't matter because most of your damage is coming from Consecration. I carry 5 shields.
- Figurine of the Colossus. This trinket is a godsend, a near-instant full heal when kiting masses of mobs.
- A damage-absorb trinket. Since you probably haven't been farming Ouro lately, this means Runed Fungalcap. You need this to open the door in SM Cath, unless you manage to avoid aggroing any mobs whatsoever.

Spec prot, your usual tanking build. Keep this in mind:
- If you respec for PvP, then a good rule of thumb is that if you can handle a pull as Prot without using your FotC, you can handle it as Holy with it.
- Blessing of Sanctuary is by far the most important talent.
- Reckoning for mana regen far outweighs 1hws for killing speed.
- Pursuit of Justice is worth it.

Remember that when you're kiting large amounts of mobs, you should strafe so that you can block most of them. Also remember that your shield will be taking a lot of durability so you need to watch it like a hawk. If your shield breaks and you don't notice it within 2-3 seconds you will die horribly and wonder why.

Unless you're facing the instance reset cap, don't stop to loot anything but bosses and rarespawns.

Leveling 1-15

I think you can manage this one. Don't bother grouping, just make whatever race/class you and your friends want to be playing and get to 15 on your own if necessary. Takes a few hours.

Leveling 15-30

Stockades. Even if you're Horde, as long as you have patience.

The lowbies will move up to experience range when you start clearing each side. Pick a friend to autofollow on your alt.

Pull the front and left sides at once, then the right side (with all the knockdown mobs) at once. You'll have about 50% downtime with this method, do 5 resets, make a sandwich, loot it all if you feel like leveling tailoring/first aid.

Curve: Fast until mid-20's, then around 26 or 27 it will get very fast again.
Costs: Pretty hefty repair costs, as you're spending a lot of time training huge amounts of mobs.

Leveling 30-45

Scarlet Monastery.

At level 30, get your ass to Mars. Don't bother escorting, as you will be safe on the roads pretty much the entire way. Straight to Chillwind, swim around WPL and probably die once on your way through the Bulwark.

Do a rotation of 3 wings and then reset. After around 35, cut it down to just Armory and Cathedral as the experience from Library will start to suck. After 40, the experience from Armory starts to suck too, but you shouldn't cut it from the rotation because that will result in lots of downtime. The lowbies will sit at the zone-ins and not aggro anything. At low levels, they will immediately aggro the first mob in Cathedral by zoning in, so be prepared.

Library: Run straight to Doan, and kite through every mob you see on the way back. Kill them at the entrance. Watch out for the pat that will spawn in the front hallway when you kill the boss.

Armory: Run straight to the end, pop your bubble and open the door to Herod. Hit him with Holy Shock or Avenger's Shield and start running back to the entrance. Kill them at the entrance. Watch out for Herod's whirlwind, if the lowbies decide to come play with the boss.

Cathedral, easy mode: Grab the mobs in the front hallway and aggro as many mobs as you can on the way to the Cathedral. Bubble to open the door, tag Mograine and run like hell. Pull them around the corner at the end of the first hall and kill them. You won't get loot from Mograine.

Cathedral, harder method: Grab the mobs in the front hallway and avoid aggroing too many mobs on the way to the Cathedral doorway. Pop your absorb trinket to open the door. Kill Mograine where he stands, and wait for Whitemane to come out. BEFORE Whitemane reaches 50% health, pop your bubble. Immediately after you shield throw a judgement or whatever at her to make sure she drops below 50%, because she could easily be healed up by the other mobs. If you fail to bubble at the right time you'll have up to 8 seconds of everyone beating on you while stunned, which can get you killed. Kite them all back to the corner at the end of the first hall and kill them. You'll get boss loot and get about 50% more experience from the extra mobs that aggro when you pull Whitemane out of the Cathedral.

Curve: Abandon Library around 35. At level 40 the experience definitely slows down. You could consider going off to solo quest for a few levels here, but you would probably take a lot of time to get your alts ready for normal leveling again.
Costs: Repair costs aren't quite as bad here, unless you get yourself killed trying to do Cath.

Leveling 45-58+

Stratholme.

Don't do bosses, though you can pull Magistrate if you have the new PoJ and get lucky with lag to Exorcise him (or if you pop a sprint pot). You want to clear the circuit of undead aoe packs around from the backdoor to the live entrance, run back to the backdoor and reset. Pull as much as you feel comfortable with, and eventually depending on gear you should be able to perform the circuit detailed in this video.

The lowbies will be following at a safe distance. NEVER allow them to get in combat. Most of the mobs in Stratholme will be extremely eager to come rape your little buddies even if they've done nothing to draw aggro. Learn the patrols and intercept them before they get pulled into combat. Watch out for the rat traps, those rats have like a 60yd aggro radius for level 45's.

Costs: If your alts loot stuff while you're pulling more mobs, your repairs will be covered at this point.
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Roll a warrior, eh? What a good idea...

Like PsiVen, I've leveled a good number of alt's two-boxing instances with the little guy standing while my pally AOE's the instance.

good write up from him, so I'll just make a few comments:

some instances are a pain (ZF, with all the healers/totems) and some are easy. With the changes in 2.3, don't miss out on the quests for the instances. RFD and RFK are good as well as SM. I usually start on RFD around lvl 18, RFK is just across the way and the worst part of it is getting to the instance portal. I hit SM at 25, parking the alt at the entrance and dragging the mobs near him.

At the upper ends my alt's levels, I do massive questing (gather all quests in a zone, do them, then turn them in, then go into Battlegrounds (28,29,38,39) to build honor points and have fun learning the class. The battlegrounds allow me to build a little rest exp, as I bring the next alt online and run him for a while.

I don't have much input on the profession of the alt, though enchanting would fit, as you could DE the boss drops. I either keep the other drops, or send them to my enchanter/AH toon to do whatever with. You do it enough, you'll start gathering a good bit of the "twink" items that sell so well.

As you do it more, you'll learn where to park the guy so it's safe for him, I do prefer to run ahead and drag the mobs back though, then you can put your alt on follow to run to the next pull location. I do Library in two pulls, and Armory/Cathedral each in three.

Pay particular attention when you pull the Cathedral. I park my alt on the grass to the left of the cathedral door and pull by hitting Mograine then run back to the door, killing the mobs at the door. I've never not been able to loot the bosses.

psiven speaks the truth. Those are really the only two instances I consider powerleveling in. If you want to try for yourself.. group up a few rooms of mobs in ZF and see what happens.. It isn't pretty.


When powerleveling in instances remember because of the powerleveler's high level, experience for the lower levels is CAPPED. What that means is that having people grouped with you will not lower the base experience at all, they will only raise it through group experience. The more the merrier; fill that group up. I find this useful because you can put your other character on auto-follow on one of these group members so you do not need to control both characters.

SM cathedral is great experience from level 25-45, at which time you should hit up tanaris, felwood, burning steeps, azshara, un'goro (personal favorite), etc until you get to 50 when you start doing the strat farming pulls for powerleveling. Here you just need to watch out for the eye of naxramas. as they will put a halt to exp until you get a res. If you are in a group, however, they can most likely take these out if they get one before the gargoyles spawn.

As far as my typical exp/hr i get in these instances when I powerlevel people through. SM cathedral/armory is 45,000-52,000 exp/hr (I recommend doing both before you reset to avoid lockout). Strat farming is 90-110,000 exp/hr (much more if you dont loot, but that's a lot of money to miss out on)

edit: I have always found it faster to just level solo or in a small group up until level 25. The exp/hr is very comperable, and is actually kind of fun as you can enchant/mildly twink your character before you go. Hint: level 1-25 as a rogue/warrior with dual fiery enchants is fun.
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Official tankadin of <The Core> Tichondrius

my rogue got a bit of 25-30 and a big chunk of 30-39 done following Neuron around as she gathered up entire instances and then murdered them. Apparently the SM instances are the best for this, I guess because the mobs don't silence and not that many heal (RFD has some silencing ghouls). SM also has a fairly wide level range.

Note that if you're doing this, I think it actually works out in your favour XP wise (but not gold wise) to fill the group with as many lowbies as possible - you still get the XP penalty for being grouped with a 70, but for each person in the group you get a group bonus that pretty much cancels the penalty out.

I did RFD later a mage, was much slower (but the looting was much less painful, I'll post some screenshots of the massive piles of corpses later).
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The original Level 70 Lore-stalker
Level 70 Hunter - Eredar (retired)

How do you do stockades in 1 pull? o_O
Nevermind, you undoubtedly outgear my pally to hell and back.

That knockback in the right wing is a right PITA.

In saying that me and a feral druid had competitions to see if we could solo stocks with the others alt in <10 minutes.
Pretty easy competition even with it as 3 pulls.
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As a side note...

Bring extra shields