Secrets From The “naturally” Fast Levelers In Wow Cataclysm

After many attempts to start leveling a new World of Warcraft (WoW) Cataclysm character and feeling burnt out at level 50, I decided to do some research and digging on how the supposed “naturally” fast levelers do it so quickly. I’ve leveled mostly through questing for the past few years of playing WoW, and learned that the fast levelers also did the same. So, it puzzled me just how exactly are they questing so much faster? For example, they would spend a couple of hours clearing through a zone whereas I would spend an entire evening trying to zip through the same quests.

I came across many strategies to speed up leveling, such as having the best leveling spec, wearing the right gear, using the highest dps rotation, and paying attention to different ways to decrease downtime. From personal experience, I think the most valuable strategy to reduce leveling time is mass pulling mobs! Pulling large groups of mobs at once is faster than killing one mob at a time. Mass pulling is not only time efficient, but it makes it more fun. I enjoy seeing a bunch of numbers on my screen at once while a handful of mobs are dropped simultaneously.

For every class that I have played, I first look for ways to spec and gear the character towards mass pulling by maxing out AoE abilities. For example, playing a protection paladin, it works well to use Divine Storm for fighting large groups because of its AoE damage. To add to this, use Seal of Command because it increases the paladin’s damage by approximately 5% and gives another AoE damage when using Seal of Righteousness. Don’t forget to pay attention to other talent points that can help with leveling as well, like maxing out Long Arm of the Law for paladins because it increases movement speed between mobs. Funny as it may sound, moving from mob to mob quickly saves a lot of time—every bit counts and adds up to get to level 85 as fast as possible.

When mass pulling large groups, it is helpful to use the AoE damage abilities blended with a rotation to maximize AoE damage. I have a lot of fun on my mage leveling as frost, where I would mass pull by using Arcane Explosion to hit all the mobs, blink out to get some distance, and time my Frost Nova to keep the mobs in place to drop Blizzard on them that downs most of the group. The loose ones after the Blizzard can usually be one-shotted with ice lance or another dose of Arcane Explosion to finish off. Every class has AoE abilities and related rotation that, when taken advantage of, can boost leveling speed significantly.

Last, but not least, keep an eye out for camps or sweet spots where the mobs respawn quickly. If you need to kill 20 mobs to complete a quest, you can kill them off one by one as they appear in an area or on the road. But there is often a camp of the mobs nearby that is worth going to, to complete the quest with a couple of mass pulls. Or even, pay attention to caves nearby the mobs to mass pull as well. Just to reiterate the most important secret to power leveling, is that every bit counts. There is no such thing as a “naturally fast leveler”, only players that take advantage of every tool that is associated with the leveling character because it really makes a difference to ding 85 at incredible speed!