With the recent WoW Classic discovery of mobs in dungeons rewarding more experience, the topic of sticking with dungeons longer for the purpose of leveling has been brought up. However, this is very much an already existing reality on private servers as a valid and effective way of leveling. But to approach this type of leveling system halfheartedly will not yield positive results, and can cause players to fall behind the speed of leveling. This brings me to the topic at hand: Dungeon Speed Leveling.

What is Dungeon Speed Leveling (DSL)?

This is where the term Dungeon Speed Leveling and its implementation comes into play. Essentially, it means continuously performing a dungeon with small or no pauses at all. By all means, it is not for everyone and will require a great deal of effort from everyone in the party. There are multiple benefits:

• Avoids dealing with quest reward items or waiting for quest mobs to respawn outside of instances.
• Avoids dealing with bugged quests/items.
• Skips the masses and not have to deal with mob tagging, which can be very frustrating and impedes leveling on servers with a large population.
• A refreshing and challenging spin to the monotonous grind of leveling.

How to succeed at Dungeon Speed Leveling?

So we’ve established the fundamentals of this type of leveling. But as the terms suggests, speed is a very big factor if we want to stay ahead of traditional leveling. With that in mind, I will go into the many ways you can improve your dungeon clearing speed in this section and throughout the guide.

• Try and find a core group of friends that you like having around — it also helps if they are experienced with World of Warcraft. You should start building a list of friends that share the same passion for this type of leveling; if one of your friends logs off, you will want to have someone to replace them immediately.
• Voice communication software is very important, whether it be Discord or any other VOIP. Something as simple as accidentally pulling a mob can lead to the death of your party if it is not immediately communicated in voice. It’s also just a great way to socialize with people. You can talk about your day, exchange stories, etc…
• Questing still plays a role in leveling, but a very small one: you’ll be grabbing quests related to dungeons. However, some quests are not ideal to take as they consume too much time and don’t reward nearly enough experience. In a later guide, I’ll address which ones you should keep an eye out for.
• Talents and gear need to be tailored specifically to Dungeon Speed Leveling.

DSL Class Priority

Before we discuss classes, it’s worth noting Horde players can start DSL earlier than Alliance because they have access to Ragefire Chasm (Level 10 dungeon).

Hybrid

Some classes have situational advantages over others. For a first time player in WoW, the following classes categorized as Hybrids allow the player to more easily rectify emergencies/mistakes from themselves or others. Although they are technically Hybrids, they will most of the time be relegated to the healing role — but their spell toolkit is what separates them from others. Most of the time there is one of the following classes in a group.

• Paladin – An Alliance ONLY class but arguably has the most diverse spell toolkit that allows for mistakes.
• Druid – Passive healing spells, capable of somewhat tanking at a moments notice due to Taunt and capable of resurrecting a player while in combat with Rebirth.
• Shaman – Unfortunately, nothing stands out when compared to other hybrids.

A more experienced player/group with an absolute guarantee their party will survive will look to acquire a Druid as their ideal healer.

Tank

Now lets look at classes that will be in the front line and receiving most of the damage, better know as tanks. First time players as well as experienced players should consider Warrior above any other tanking class.

• Warrior – Arguably the best tank for our purposes due to amazing defensive abilities, such as: Last Stand and can remove a shield and equip instead weapons focused on dealing more threat/damage.

DPS

Now let’s move to damage dealing focused classes to help us chip away at mob health the most effectively.

• Hunter – Can safely deal damage from range, including an AOE spell, Volley, to deal against a pack of mobs. The hunter’s pet can be used as an emergency tank. Can also perform Feign Death if a mob is accidentally pulled, and has Aspect of the Pack to move through a Dungeon faster.
• Warlock – Can use Soulstone on the tank and apply damage over time spells or dots that do not rely on the warlock’s spell hit chance. They have an AOE spell to deal against a pack of mobs: Rain of Fire. Also, Warlocks possess amazing mana uptime, and thus faster dungeon clear time, due to Life Tap. They can also summon players near a dungeon’s entrance.
• Mage – Very mobile and offers a plethora of group utility, ex: Polymorph, Frost Nova, Ice Block, etc.. all the while providing reliable damage and an AOE spell to deal against a pack of mobs via Blizzard.
• Warrior – Great group utility through damage bolstering spells like Battle Shout, Demoralizing Shout, etc., and an AOE spell to deal against a pack of mobs with Cleave. However, they have a lack of hit chance when Dual Wielding, thus it is suggested to equip a 2 handed weapon.
• Rogue – Sadly falls short, because of a lack of group utility but offers great single target damage.

Talents

Talents will often reflect the players level of expertise with the game. Players may want to lean towards survival related talents/tree if they are new to the game, while more adept individuals should look to increase damage and movement speed. For example:

• New Players – Demonic Embrace
• Skilled Players – Pathfinding, Pursuit of Justice

Professions

What can we take as a profession to optimize our DSL?

New players should look to acquire First Aid as a form of healing other party members in a pinch. Because we’re all about speed, I don’t suggest any gathering professions that require you to stop for a while. The same goes for main profession, with the exception of Enchanting which allows you to Disenchant items at any time.

Popular Group Compositions

Having an ideal group composition can help us make sure there are no redundancies and downsides. The recommended composition below depends on your party’s overall skill level, as well as character level.

New Players

• Prot Warrior
• Holy Paladin
• Mage
• Warlock
• Hunter

Experienced Players

• Prot Warrior
• Resto Druid
• Rogue
• Warlock
• Hunter

Very Experienced Players

• Level 20-29
  • Feral Tank Druid
  • DPS Shaman w/ Healing Stream Totem / DPS Paladin
  • x2 Rogue
  • DPS Warrior

• Level 30-39
  • Feral Tank Druid
  • DPS Shaman w/ Healing Stream Totem / DPS Paladin w/ Seal of Light
  • x2 Rogue
  • DPS Warrior

• Post level 40
  • Feral Tank Druid
  • DPS Shaman w/ Healing Stream Totem / DPS Paladin w/ Seal of Light
  • x2 Rogue
  • Hunter

This comp has access to Aspect of the Pack from the hunter which increases run speed. It is possible to replace a Paladin who doesn’t have Pursuit of Justice for a Rogue, which can enable more members to travel faster to the next mob.

Specific Strategies

The Hardcore Route aka AOE’ing/Cleaving.

The following is not suggested for the majority of players as it explores an avenue that requires deep knowledge of a dungeon, and assumes all party member are on the same page and have good synergy with each other. To put it simply, it revolves around clumping up the majority, or at least a lot of an instance’s mobs in a corner or room and nuking them through AOE spells, such as Cleave, Blizzard, Volley, etc. (I will not include ledge/platform aggroing which is technique used to clump up mobs in specific locations, as it differs for each server.)

Melee Cleave (Pre Level 30 suggested)

This technique involves having 1 Prot Warrior, 2 DPS warriors, 1 Priest, and 1 mage. The mage runs through the instance gathering aggro, and once a substantial amount of mobs are pulled, uses Ice Block. The Prot Warrior proceeds to aggro the mobs with Thunder Clap, Cleave, Challenging Shout and other warrior immediately follow with Cleave, Whirlwind, Sweeping Strike, etc.

Spell Cleave (Level 30+ suggested)

A mage uses Blink and Arcane Explosion to gather aggro on nearby mobs as he runs through the dungeon, casting Frost Nova to slow down the cluster of targets so other party members can catch up. At a certain agreed upon numbers of mobs, the pulling mage can Ice Block and other mages will start casting Blizzard to gain aggro and simply burst down the mobs. If a warlock is present and level 22, A warlock’s Eye of Kilrog can also be used to pull mobs.

If you enjoyed this guide and want to see more like it or are interested in other non-meta builds check out the Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/caperfin