WoW: A Guide to Dungeon Leveling

With WoW's Dungeon Finder feature, it's now possible to level solely through dungeon play. Considering my love, and extensive experience, leveling this way, I figured I'd write a guide for those that may want to use this method, and use it effectively.

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Heroic Halls of Lightning with my super-shiny UI

Step 1: Which kind of player are you?
There are two types of levelers for our intents and purposes. Picking which one you are can have an effect on later choices.

The first type is The Maximizer. This is ideal if you have a limited amount of time to play, and you'll be pushing hard to hit level 80. This is when you spend any queue time you have to quest and play your character.

The second type is The AFKer. This is ideal if you have long times to play, and plan on doing other things while you're waiting in queue. Whether grinding professions, chatting with friends, or going AFK completely to do other things.

The AFKer is ideal for people who can play all day but have things to do around the house. Maybe you have cleaning you need to do. Maybe you're 82% of the way through your novel and really shouldn't be playing but want to find a balance between working and playing.

This method works well for that. I am actually more productive using this method than I am just working straight through. It's energizing knowing that fun is just around the corner.

Though be warned: if you miss your queue you'll have to start your wait all over. Play close attention to the estimated wait time and mouse over the minimap icon to see if the icons representing your prospective group members have started turning from black-and-white to color. Fortunately the DPS fill in a couple of minutes before you get a full group, so stay close to the computer at this point.

*NOTE* If you already know what alt you're wanting to level, you can skip the next couple steps. But, if you're still unsure, read on.


Step 2: Choose Your Role
Tank:
Tanking can be a lot of fun. But with it comes a lot of possible frustration. You will be blamed for a lot of stuff that's not your fault. The nice thing is you can always just drop the group. You'll get a 30 minute debuff preventing you from queuing up immediately, but better than playing with assholes.

Queue times will be very short for you. Typically less than a minute. This makes it great if you want to level quickly. But, if you're the AFKer type and plan on trying to balance chores and WoW it's not the greatest choice since you'll never get away for more than a minute or two.

Healers:
Healers are a different challenge. The group relies on you to keep them alive during their fuck-ups.

Though to be honest, I personally find it a little dull. But it is a break from being a mindless dps.

Healers have a medium queue time. Longer than tanks, but typically shorter than DPS. It's up to you to see how that fits in with either questing or doing other things while waiting. My usual average is about 15-20 mins (as compared to 20-30 mins for my DPS).

 Healing as a priest can get a little dull.

DPS:
DPS is arguably the easiest of all the roles. All you do is kill the enemies. You don't have to worry about holding aggro, keeping people alive, or even really paying that much attention to the world around you. You just focus on what you're doing, and not worry about being responsible for other people.

In many ways, this can make it the most fun role to play. Little responsibility, and who doesn't like seeing big numbers on the DPS meters? However, you are also the most replaceable, and therefore less likely to be cut slack if you're screwing up. You'll also be looking at the longest queues. I usually see about 20-30 minutes, but I've had it get as high as 45 minutes for a single queue.

*Note* Consider whether you'll be leveling with a friend or friends. This can have a lot of benefits. You get someone whose skill level you already know. You can have more fun because you're playing with someone you know. Finally, if you're a group of 3 or more, you get majority on the Vote-To-Kick feature. This can keep you safe from those that are kick-happy and try to kick anyone who they don't believe is uber-leet. It also allows you to guarantee kicking someone out if they are just unbearable to play with. And if you go with at least a tank and a healer, you will find groups incredibly fast (i.e. instant).

If you're leveling solo, you might want to be beware of these premade groups. A lot of them tend to use it as carte blanch to run their mouths and insult everybody that isn't in their premade group. Just a word of warning.

The reason this is important to consider now is that if you haven't settled on a role, but you know your buddy is dying to be a tank, rolling a second one isn't going to do much for leveling together. On the flip side, if you know your friends don't want to tank, but you're willing to try, you can shorten the queue times for your entire group.

Step 3: Choose Your Class

This step can be a lot easier once you choose your role.

Tanks: Warriors, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights (if available to you)
Healers: Priests, Druids, Paladins, Shaman

Every class has a DPS spec, so this is completely up to you. Consider what you haven't tried and what sounds fun. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, as it falls almost completely to personal choice. The pros and cons of each class could fill up a post in and of themselves, so I'm going to leave this short. Just do what interests you.

Step 4: Prepare Yourself

This is a big step, so I'm going to break it up a little bit.

4.1: Get Your Gear

If available to you (i.e. you have a high level, preferably 80, character on the same server. These items can be mailed cross-faction.), you're going to want to grab some Bind-on-Account (BoA) heirloom gear, in particular a chest piece and a shoulder piece as these provide +10% experience gained each. These can be obtained from your faction's Emblem of Heroism vendor in Dalaran for 40 emblems per piece, or from the Argent Crusader vendor at the Argent Tournament for 60 Champion's Seals per piece.

There are also shoulders available from the Wintergrasp vendor for 200 Stone Keeper's Shards. These are slightly inferior to the ones sold by the other vendors as some of their stat budget is spent on resilience. But this difference is negligible.

There is also a BoA ring that offers an additional +5% experience gained, but this is only available by winning the Kalu'ak Fishing Tournament. As with the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Derby, there is only one winner per server per week. So I wouldn't wait around on that piece. If you can get it though, great.

You can get BoA gear for most of your character's equipment slots. All BoA will scale with your level, and is roughly on par with anything you'll get in the dungeons. However, only the chest and shoulder pieces grant extra XP, and should therefore be your first priority. I wouldn't worry too much about other pieces unless you have a ton of currency to burn.

A shot of the queue information available from mousing over the minimap icon. When you reach the head of the queue, those greyed out icons will fill as you are matched with potential group members. Note that it will give you the time in queue, and if available, the average wait time.

4.2: Get Your Addons

There are thousands of addons out there. But there are three in particular I find useful for dungeon leveling.

Altoholic is a great tool for managing multiple alts. Leveling multiple characters at once allows you to keep one gaining rested experience in an inn or capital city (which grants 200% XP to kills, and stacks with BoA gear). Rested XP is king. Given that the vast, vast majority of XP you'll be gaining is from kills, this cuts your leveling time in half. You can see which of your characters has the most rested XP to burn, what they have equipped, and if they have BoA gear waiting in the mail (usually, it only records a character's mail when you visit the mailbox on that character. But mailing items to your own characters gets recorded when it's sent.)

Omen Threat Meter allows you to view the amount of aggro you have on an enemy in comparison with everyone else. This is important as it can help you hold aggro if you're a tank, or not grab aggro if you're not. Keep an eye on it, and be aware of where you are relative to others. WoW offers an in-game equivalent, but I find it lacking in comparison.

Atlasloot Enhanced is great for seeing what gear is available in each dungeon. It allows you to also maintain wishlists for your character. You can maintain more than one if you want alternate sets, or lump everything into one.

Now, as I said, there are thousands of addons out there. I would suggest taking some time and browsing through them. You'll find many that are class and role specific that catch your interest.


4.3: Learn About Your Class and Role
Take a few minutes and learn a little about your toon and what your toon will be doing. You don't have to become an expert, but perusing some standard specs, acquainting yourself with abilities (particularly things like buffs, crowd control, and effects to get rid of debuffs and fears), and knowing what your stat priority is will go a long ways towards making you better at your character from the get-go.

Now, you don't have to be perfect, and certainly feel free to explore your own spec ideas and what not. But the better idea you have about what you're doing will help you from getting the wrong gear or being a detriment to your group.

Playing in a group can be far different from playing solo. Buffs, aggro management and other synergy effects become very important. Speccing for group play can be vaguely different as well. By finding out which talents are important for group play and why will help you make better choices.

4.4 Choose Your Professions
Thanks to the Blue Ink Alchemist for helping me in this consideration.

Now, if you have other characters on the server and gold is not a major issue, choose your professions however you see fit by any method or strategy you would use for any alt, regardless of leveling method.

But, if gold is an issue for you (such as not having a high-level character on the server to pay your bills) then you may want to consider Tailoring (even if you don't wear cloth) and Enchanting. While conventional wisdom is that the 3 gathering professions are the fastest money-makers, nodes and skinnable mobs are far more rare in instances than they are in the world at large.

However, the majority mobs in dungeons have a chance to drop cloth. As an Enchanter, you can disenchant both what you make, and unwanted gear in the dungeon (though you aren't guaranteed what you DE in dungeons.) So these are more likely to be profitable than other professions, and require less of an investment to level.

 You may want to click for the larger image. Notice the new Disenchant button on the lower right. Because this character can use the item, the Need button is available. If my character could not use it (whether due to class restriction, or certain stats available), the button would be greyed out. Hovering over the button will tell you why you can't roll on it.

Step 5: Know The Etiquette and Expectations

Loot in dungeons is given out via the revamped Need vs Greed method. While the restrictions are far less stringent at low levels, it does prevent you from rolling need on most items not designed for your class. So if you're a druid that wants that nice pair of cloth pants... tough.

Some people will ask if they can get items that you win (cross-server trades are allowed on BoP gear while in a dungeon, and only to those that were eligible for loot from that boss). This is up to you. They may or may not throw a fit if you don't give it to them. If you don't need the item, you may want to be nice and give it up. Feel free to ask too, if there are items you would like that you can't roll need on, but remember it's their choice and generosity to give it to you. You don't have rights on it.

Another key element about looting is knowing that many people hold the idea of Main Spec before Off Spec to be as sacrosanct and inviolable as holy writ. When rolling on gear for a spec that you are not currently using in the dungeon, be aware of others in your group and whether they may want that particular item for their Main Spec. This is where Atlasloot, or at least a handwritten form of list, can do a lot of good, as you can specify which Off Spec pieces you're looking for at the start of the run, and see if there are any objections. Most people won't object you rolling Need if they don't need it themselves.

However, there are those that don't believe this and will roll on gear anyways. Don't be too surprised if that Death Knight steals that tanking sword from from your Paladin. It happens, just be prepared.

If you've never run a dungeon before, or are running in a role you're unfamiliar with, tell people. Your group will be much more forgiving and helpful if you let them know beforehand you're new to something. Though if you're a tank and you've never run a certain dungeon before, I suggest running it as a different role to familiarize yourself with the dungeon prior to trying to tank it.

Finally, particularly if you are the tank and therefore set the pace for the dungeon, be aware of  your party members. Watch their mana and stop periodically to let them drink. Many players may also need items dropped by optional bosses. Ask before you skip them, or if you're going in for a quick run and plan on only hitting the bosses you want to do, make it clear at the beginning of the run. Some people may get pissed off, but at least you gave them fair warning.

Step 6: To Random, Or Not To Random

With the dungeon finder, you have the option of choosing a completely random dungeon, or select specific ones to queue for. Up until you are able to queue for random Northrend dungeons (level 69), the rewards for running a random dungeon is a Satchel of Helpful Goods (you get one blue piece of gear that may, or may not, actually be helpful) and a pithy amount of additional money and experience. Given that the gear you get is almost more likely to be useless to you than otherwise, you may want to consider a better plan for your dungeon experience.

 Selecting specific dungeons

If you follow the suggestion to keep a "Wishlist" of gear you need from each dungeon available to you (whether through a hand-written list, or through utilizing an addon like Atlasloot), you can decide which dungeons will be the most productive for you to queue for. I suggest only queuing for low-level random dungeons if you need gear from all the dungeons available to you, or if you need gear from none of them, and you don't have any labeled in orange (signifying higher level, thus more XP). This way, you're running dungeons you actually need something out of, rather than blowing time in a dungeon that won't give you anything, and only randoming when all dungeons have something for you.

This is likely to increase your queue time, however. So keep that in mind. The benefit is that by only running dungeons you need, you're more likely to get all the gear you're looking for before you level out of running that dungeon, which will give you better performance.

I also suggest that as soon as you hit 58 or 68, you start on Burning Crusade and Northrend dungeons respectively. You will get much higher experience, and far better gear (even if you might not be able to use it for a couple of levels, you'll get a headstart). With the exception of tanks (and even then...) gear doesn't matter much until you hit 80 anyways, so don't spend a whole lot of time clearing out every dungeon of gear from the prior game version. Queues for borderline dungeons will be much longer anyways.

Once you hit 69, you should make your first dungeon of the day random you will receive 2 Emblems of Triumph, which once you reach 80 can get you Tier 9 gear and give you a good start on gearing out your toon for endgame.

Two Emblems a day keeps the gearing woes away.

There it is. Your guide to making dungeon leveling as painless as possible.