I’ve leveled my mage, Centrella, from the 30s through to 80 principally using the dungeon finder (although I’ve quested in the downtime between groups). Some entirely unsurprising observations below:
- Aggro management seems to be quite tricky for lower-level tanks. Even accounting for people who are still learning to tank, and that when I started doing instances on my main it was with experienced, geared tanks, there were many runs where the tank struggled mightily. Perhaps that’s related to when they get their useful tanking tools, I’m not sure (c.f. Paladin tanks getting a taunt ~lvl16)
- Experienced players find heroic habits hard to shake. I had a number of arguments with people who wanted to skip sections/optional bosses. This makes no sense when leveling; all XP is good XP. Tanks who insist on rushing ahead to the next trash pack/section without waiting for people to loot were equally frustrating. Even if you don’t need the cash (and if you’re a new player, or as bad at wowcash generation as me, you do), the random items that drop might actually be useful to people.
- Early-stage death knights are either amazing or disastrous. Whether tanking or DPSing, once DKs were in the picture they were either near perfect (indestructible aggro machines, consistently top of the damage meters) or calamity generators (tanks deathgripping the one melee mob out of a group of casters, dps deathgripping mobs off the tank). I can’t say I remember encountering a significantly higher proportion of bad vs good, so I may have been luckier than Vid.
- Politely reminding people of their utility functions is hugely helpful. Well, I found it helpful. Being reminded, politely, that I had a decurse button and it would be really helpful if I used it made me consider utility spells both on Centrella and on my paladin. I felt genuinely embarrassed that this polite and friendly hint was necessary, and spent a little time tweaking healbot such that players with curses displayed prominently; I also made similar changes for my paladin’s ret profile re: cleanse, DI and the various hands.
- Far too many people are unnecessarily rude. This applies when not leveling too. I think I encountered all of the classics: “why you no heal?”, “you suck at tanking, I’ll tank. Do you want me to tank? Shall I tank?”, “BoK” [seriously: “I’d prefer BoK, please” is not so hard to type but infinitely nicer to read], “your dps sucks” etc. I particularly enjoyed the various versions of “your gear sucks” in leveling dungeons – well duh, that’s why I’m here. In Culling of Stratholme at 80(!!!) just the other day, I encountered “Mage healz”. Which, given I was at full health and the speaker was barely alive, was presumably an instruction to break out the bandages. That was in a group where I ended up ignoring 5 (five!) different players, so it’s perhaps not surprising.
- Good leveling instance groups are pure joy. I had a few of these. Groups where there were capable, friendly people who chatted, joked and complemented each other. Groups where the less capable asked for advice and were given it, without condescension. Groups where friendly advice was offered and recipients were thankful, rather than insulted.
I know I don’t get enough good groups as you described at the very last, but they are wonderful when they come along. At and I always try to hold onto them. “Anyone want to queue again?” We usually get two quick and easy runs for the price of one.
Interestingly, I think I’ve had more good groups at weird times. Perhaps it’s because, when people know the odds of finding another group are low they are more likely to act like full members of the species — not sure.
I got into the habit of asking “hey, btw does anyone want to carry on after this?” before that last boss to try to hang on to the nice ones. Of course, as DPS I’m not quite as much of a catch 😉
This post is really interesting to me since I’m thinking of starting a new char and then levelling it almost only through instances (except for queue downtime) from the time when I can enter them. Kinda of like a test, to see how it works out.
It made me laugh that people worry about gear in the lower level instances, no one is ever going to have more than greens really at that point *lol* Tbh I don’t really care about gear in heroics either as long as the tank is defense capped and people don’t do stupid things. Then I don’t mind if they’re a new 80 – we all start there at some point 🙂
It’d be remiss of me not to ensure you knew about Vidyala’s http://puggingpally.wordpress.com/
Her experiences levelling through the dungeon finder will be very instructive; plus her writing style is great and she’s genuinely funny /fanboi.
From my perspective, if I level another character before Cataclysm I’ll certainly do it via the dungeon finder. I *much* prefer the group experience to trotting hither and yon, collecting animal parts and notches on my weapon of choice.