Hotspots for team AOE XP? Nurfed's expert advice appreciated

[WCT]

Hi Nurfed,

This might be the wrong forum, but there was a post on solo leveling hotspots here as well as a post asking the perfect group of 5 classees, so I thought maybe my post would at least be somewhat relevant.

Anyway, I am in a team of Warrior/Priest/Warlock/Shaman/Mage around level 30, and instead of having people go through quests, we were thinking about grinding XP by doing Massive pulls and killing them all with AOE. I know Nurfed has been doing massive pulls since the very beginning (as demonstrated by the screenshots of Nurfed killing 7-10 raptors in WC at once), so I thought that I might get some expert responses here. My main questions are the following:


1) What locations are great hotspots for doing what my party wants to do? I've heard of people pulling all the level 25 elites in that NE Den up in Stonetalon to go from 25 to 30, etc. Maybe some of you know some more hotspots and the recommended leveling ranges to grind in those spots? Maybe you could even list the Xp/hour that you've experienced and the # of mobs you killed per pull, so I can see how my party is doing in comparison to the Nurfed teams.

2) Question 2 goes along with question 1: Is it more efficient to do this kind of stuff on elites, or on a whole tonload of regular mobs?

3) Given my party setup, what should every member in the party be doing to achieve maximum xp per hour? Warrior and Priest's roles are no-brainers. Warlocks is probably Hellfire, with the Imp out for stamina boost. I'm wondering what would be the best for Shaman (stoneskin totem, and what else? magma totem? flametongue totem?). And most importantly, what have you guys found to be the best AOE for Mages to spam (insta-cast improved arcane explosion, flamestrike, or blizzard?) in this situation?

4) When the casters start spamming the AOE's and like 10 out of 40 mobs start peeling off the warrior, what's the quickest way for the warrior to get all the hate back on every single mob? It would have been a ton easier with the old taunt, and I've read Indalamar's long article about some of the adaptations he's had to make, but somehow I don't think a few Demoralizing Shouts, Thunderclaps, and Cleaves are gonna do much against a Warlock going fullout Hellfire and a Mage spamming AE/flamestrike/blizzard. I mean, even if the casters hold back on the nukes, at least a couple mobs are still gonna make a beeline right for the cloth casters, which spells big trouble. Any tips on this regard?


I know that Nurfed are the king of doing AOE killings, so I hope to hear back from some of you guys on what you've found to be most successful. Also if you're not in Nurfed and are gonna give some advice, I appreciate it too as long as you've actually done a significant amount of AOE grinds before and are not just speculating (I can speculate as well as you can, but I am looking to hear results from players with actual experience).

Thanks,
WC

[Anonymous]

u wont get aggro back when they mass aoe the mobs.
I think that grinding stuff with a 5 person group is not worth it.( Only elites)
I think insta arcane explosion is the best aoe for this purpose.

[Hybby]

Instant AE.

1 or 2 priests, the rest mages. In your 30's, go to stranglethorn vale, and AE entire camps of Trolls. I did that, and the xp per hour was... high.

[Kintoun]

Once I cap out my rogue, I'll be making a mage and PL him with a capped priest. Just get instant arcane explosion and spam away on MOBs while the priest heals.

[Klay_of_Kapitol]

* * * WARNING, ENVIE LENGTH POST ***

This is a pretty new AoE setup that Moto, Niss, and I came accross:

We actually found a good way to AoE using warriors. What you need is two axe spec warriors, two ravagers, and ventrilo.

We've successfully done large AoE pulls of 4-8 equal level mobs and surviving You assign a main tank who "tries" to hold all the mobs on him, in charge of taunting, shouts, and as a secondary, is the second AoE DPS. The second warrior sits in berserker and builds up rage while the group focus fires on one mob. The main tank should be arms spec so he can throw a WW relatively easily when he builds the rage off tanking.

You wait for either warrior (we've had many times where we had consistent WW procs where everything gets hit consistently for 200+ damage for the entire duration of the fight) to proc, if you draw agro and a warrior is proc'ing, we don't even taunt. Run it to the warrior, on the next hit it will come off, but just in case the other tank can just bring it off you when you bring it back.

This requires more participation from the rest of the group as far as agro management because while in a proc the warriors cant mitigate their DPS to pull one mob off you when you can just bring it to them.

The 3rd class we had a warlock, hellfire, succubus CC for adds, and exhaustion for runners, and recklessness =) It's lovely, health stones aplenty because there are many situations where the warrior getting beat on 6+ elites will go down faster than Kaiser at a turkish bath house.

We use two healers, a priest and either a druid or a shaman. Shaman would be ideal if you make it -very clear- with the shaman he will do nothing but heal and drop totems. It doesn't work if your shaman has any urge to melee.

Druid is also nice for thorns and mark, root, big efficient healing, their mana restore skill (if the fight goes long, you're looking at 2 of the best healers, a 3rd mana pool, and 2 mana pots).

The best part of this is that the warrior proc actually generates rage per mob hit. So if you proc battle stance, you're looking at full rage at the end of the proc for a sweeping strikes cleave, of if you're sitting in berserker, you're looking at a lot of whirlwind, cleave, and mortal strikes.

I will also sit in defensive on the beginning of the pull for the first proc, it is a lot of threat built up on all the mobs (aoe taunt) to proc in defensive because of the bonus to defensive threat.

You juse use the remaining 75+ rage to sunder, get shouts up. Nisstyr who was our warlock, would AoE once we get enough agro (half health usually) and help us finish the mobs. Usually at the end of the fight I will single target execute, execute, execute.

We were able to very successfully farm Uldaman and AoE pull everything using this group make up (and we've been using it for a few days now, I just don't see one better right now =) using a 45 War, 44 War, 45 Lock, 43 Druid, 42 Priest.

There is also *no* downtime, the lock, and warriors can keep going AoE. The only thing that I've found we had to slow down for is when we come out of a 4-5+ pull and the priest has to drink. We're doing Zul'Farak now, and I'm thinking the primary thank should change off Ravager, keep one to AoE, and the primary should use Rockpounder or Stoneslayer for the upper end MS and DPS.

Right now both our warriors are sitting on ~17% Crit so on a 4-5 pull, you're guaranteed a big crit (if not more) and the deep wounds DoT. ~2600-2900 damage over 9 seconds on a 4 pull and the bleeding.

We've seen WW proc Sweeping strikes Retaliation from one person, I've never seen anything sicker, that's up there with 1K+ DPS sustained on an AoE pull from just one person, but that's a once in a blue moon holy shit I can't believe it just happened kinda-thing... =)

Even when done right, it seems like it's sustained Chaos! If anyone can duplicate this, let me know how it goes with a shaman. Windfury was nice with rage generation and the extra swing, but we never have a rage problem and the druid big heals are just amazing.

We're 47 now and we still can't put down Ravager because of this AoE build. I doubt I will even at 60, just use whatever Epic uber weapon for PvP and still use Ravager for Instancing.

Negatives: The obvious, not getting a whirlwind proc and it takes a lot of communication, I doubt you will be able to do this with a pickup group without wiping on the first decent size pull.

P.S.: To the original poster:

I know this group makeup doesn't answer your specific group makeup, that is something you'll learn from experience what your group can and can't handle. I suggest trying AoE elites for better XP and loot, and to truck it to 30's and start with SM library.

[Mithras]

the warrior getting beat on 6+ elites will go down faster than Kaiser at a turkish bath house.



Bwahahahaaaaa...nice.


Very nice write-up Brother.

[WCT]

Wow, thanks for the awesome writeup. Double ravager does indeed sound fun. Yesterday, I heard somebody say they went to NE Dustwallow and pulled 40 Murlocs at a time. In terms of XP, I wonder if it's more efficient to pull the ~8 elites at a time like you're doing or to do 40 regular mobs at once. I'm not even sure how to pull those murlocs since they got nets and frost nova...that must be pretty hellish. I'm also surprised that you said the mobs have to be down to 50% health before the Warlock can even start Hellfiring. That kind of worries me, b/c there's only 1 warrior on our team, and he's sure as hell not gonna be able to get everybody down to 50% by himself even with ravager & ww & windfury all at once.

[Envie]

* * * WARNING, ENVIE LENGTH POST ***



Hey, I resemble that remark!

Nice writeup - more seekrit strategeeeees!!!

:lol:


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[Anonymous]

Hm tactic sounds like fun but i dont like the ravager ;) ! But its more a personal hate :D !

[Landogarner]

Very nice writeup.



Envie! When are we going to see you ingame again? =*/

[nick5454]

Please all these are wrong except mages

Screw warriors and feral druids, they wont help. don't even worry about aggro management. AE will over take all aggro. A warrior is nice for added dps but why lose the xp bonus and share gold?

I'm a mage I can handle up 8 2 levels higher mobs at once.

So why have 5 people so the xp sux?

If you take a group with 2 mage and 2 healers you can easily handly 30+ mobs at once with no problems
The most I have done in a team like that is 30 before the damage aoe cap.

I have a buddy who is a mage and us together, no healer can do 20 mobs at once.

If you really want to maximize your earnings do 3 mages plus a healer(priest).

the mob will not move if you time all frost novas

I have 2 accounts and a priest alt so I pull 15-20 mobs blizzard, switch and pop a heal and shield
then cold snap, freeze again, blizzard, then finally run in, CoC, ae and thier dead.

I usually make about 100k-130k xp for my alt and we bank about 400 gold per hour.

Also don't listen to the madness, AE is a waste of mana and will kill you. It will drain your mana and doesn't do that much damage*(Horrible dps/mana management and doesn't slow the mob). The idea is to slow thier movement by 50%.

All you need is 2 magesand a priest . Both mages mount and meet in circle then one mage runs in fire an AE to get aggro and ice block. The other runs his mount into pile and jump on mount( this makes the mobs not attack) and fire a frost nova in the air. then run 15 yards and blizzard, you can spin your screen after blizzard starts. Then other mages breaks his ice block and blizzards.

After the timer is almost done( hopefullyyou have mods that show this) 2nd mage will frost nova. and continue rinse and reapeat. And you didn't even need a healer. But, it guarantees you live.

With that theory you can take on between 20-30 at once with no problem. But due to the damage cap on AOE stop blizzard halway and start over. Make sure you have mana pots and gems ready.

Also Locks and druids have nice AOE so you can use. Make sure you spec blizzard with 2 talents only and full CoC. Do not spec all 3 in blizzard, because CoC will not override the buff.

Thats AOE farming at its best. I kill so many at once i don't hardly have time to loot before they start re-popping.

Good luck

[Nastrand]

Thanks for clearing this up for us 3 years later. You have been a great help.

[Neown]

Any time, i broke my forum cherry