Any new power-levelling strategies?

[Shriek]

Well, a lot of you guys have been around for a while now, with many working their second and third chars up to 60--have you picked up any new tips for levelling up a new character quickly? Bolty's old post on questing efficiently still holds a great deal of water, but surely some new tricks have surfaced since.

I've recently hit 60 and find myself really wanting my baby priest to get levelled too, both for the benefit of my smallish guild and because I've really enjoyed the little bit of group-healer I've played, and she's too low even for most of our alts. I remember several quests with really good exp. payoff in the 50s, now, but I'm at a loss when I log on as a lvl 21 who doesn't solo anything like my hunter. Especially since I haven't played since the wand change, before which I was using SW:P+wand+dagger+renew to solo...it doesn't seem to work as well now.

I don't suppose getting someone to help me kill a few ancients is gonna make me shoot up five or six levels, huh? :P

---Grunt Shriek

[Drasca]

Duo with friends, always announce what quests you're doing in LFG channel, complete quests in groups of a location, and only do instances with high level help.

That's power leveling.

[Concillian]

For a priest below lvl40 you don't have a lot of options for leveling quickly

If I had to redo my priest, I think I'd take spirit tap earlier, improved SW:P and potentially wand mastery just for soloing, then respec out of it at 55-ish. With improved Renew, Spiritual Healing, Spirit Tap AND improved SW:P you can really be insanely mana efficient when soloing and cut your downtime to virtually nothing, but you still just can't do too much DPS unless you're DEEP into the Shadow Tree.

The patch essentially doubled wand DPS (before actual wand DPS was half of what was listed), which means that if you get a good wand you can probably out DPS the old dagger/wand combo just doing wandings, but you have to pay attention to the cooldowns for if you need to cast.

If you can duo with a mage who's willing to AoE for you while you heal, that is a great way to get quick grinding XP, but you have to find areas that don't have other people in them because you run out of mobs.

The method I use when with Alram's mage is to SW:P each mob to get them on me, then shield him. He can then cast flamestrike, followed by Blizzard. By then the shield is down and he will start in with Arcane Explosion (talented to be instant of course). I'll renew as soon as he starts losing health, and flash heal as necessary. Sometimes mobs are on me, and the Improved Flash talent helps in that case.

Against 3-5 mobs I am generally down to about half mana, he is usually between 1/4 and 1/2, but can be lower depending on what level the mobs are and how many AEs it takes. Obviously while he is AoE-ing I'll heal as necessary.

Then we both sit down and drink, then find more. The biggest difficulty in this is if we are looking for specific mobs, we can easily outpace the respawn timer.

The flamestrike adds DPS while casting other spells and Blizzard is far more mana efficient than AE, so it's a good idea to try to get that one off. When we started, he would just go with AE, maybe flamestrike first. He added the Blizzard, and it helps his mana situation quite a bit, which gives us a reserve in case something goes wrong ™.

Not only is it good EXP, it's also good practice for instance AoE work for both parties. He understands that when I shield him when he's not being attacked it means he needs to cast flamestrike and start with the AoEs. And I know that if I see a flamestrike go down, that I better pay attention to his health more than usual.

Obviously at level 21, you're not going to find a mage with all of those skills/talents yet, but they can get 5/5 IAE as early as 24, and that is the important one. Duoing with just about anyone will help you speed things up, but with a willing mage, you can speed things up a LOT.

[Alram]

:D
It is indeed effective and great fun; the mage levels fast as well.

At the risk of telling you something you already know, play when your xp bar is blue,and you are nicely rested. Always park your priest in an inn or capitol city when you are logging out.