Leveled a Void Elf and a Nightbourne to 110, one through questing one through dungeons. General thoughts and available to answer questions.
Leveling took over 3 days /played, while grinding dungeons took me a little over 2 days thanks to the karazhan trick letting me skip 30% of the worst part of leveling (see below); as well as all around faster xp\hr from dungeon grinding. I didn't want to karazhan trick on my quester.QuestingThere weren't actually all that many bugs while questing. I'd say the biggest thing that slowed me down is questing philosophy from 20-80. Questing is sporadic, spread out, and item drop chance often ranges from 10-20%. If blizzard went back and modernized it, it would probably be faster\just as fast to quest as it would be to dungeon grind. Xp rates are over all inconsistent and mostly depend on which zones you do. Some zones are small and condensed and let you smash out a bunch of quests all at once, and some zones are STV.Burning Crusade was hands down my least favorite questing experience. Even as someone who played the shit out burning crusade and killed Kil'Jaeden, I'd rather fight mike tyson twice than quest in outland again. Overall questing is extremely sporadic i was flying literally ALL around a zone to complete quests. If someone is questing in the same area and they kill a bunch of the mobs on one side of the camp and you were on the other, spawn times can be quite long. People don't usually take invites either due to them being in a dungeon q. I think the old end game quest chains should be removed from lore master requirements for the zone. grinding nether crystals or w\e for ogrila took me over an hour. Thankfully, it was the only one I needed to get doneMoP leveling was very quick, around 30-45 minutes a level. Quest chapters are intuitive and easy to follow. Overall an enjoyable experience. WoD is where things start to speed up. around 30 minute levels through frostfire\shadowmoon, as quick as 20 minute levels in gorgrond. Get your artifact weapon at 98 and stay in WoD until 101 to let your heirlooms level up. I was getting 3 shot in legion when I went right at 100.edit: I quested with the intent of slowly working towards lore master. Some zones really suck to finish, blades edge for example. That makes questing\leveling take longer than if you were to use a max efficiency leveling guide.DungeonsI was getting ~1 level per dungeon up until about 35, more xp with more quests. If the dungeon had a handful of quests that xp stayed consistent all the way through to the late 60's. If not, xp ranges from 50-70% per dungeon depending on the dungeon. After level 80 it drops to 35-40%.Starting out at 20 most people don't know they buffed mob hp and damage. I had people rambo additional packs and run them over to me as the tank which was very frustrating and slowed down the dungeon quite a bit.Excluding the big ones like spire, strat, brd, and honestly dire maul, most dungeons took around 10-15 minutes to complete. After level 60, 10-15 minute dungeons become consistent. I did a mix of BC and WoTLK dungeons to keep me interested. It felt like BC had more punishing dungeons though.Around level 40 up to mid 50's is a pretty big plateau of dungeons. Lot's of repeats which means less quests and you get dire maul A LOT. Idk if I was just unlucky, but people were always getting lost in this place and these dungeons were usually taking around 30 minutes to complete. Even as a tank and being able to control the pace of the dungeon, I often started to get physically uncomfortable b\c of how the dungeon was progressing. If you're someone who feels the need to start fights with people or lash out at others, you're better off just questing from 45-55. I was taking frequent breaks to reset my mentality and not get burnt out at this point.At level 74, I did the "karazhan trick" ~5 minute *solo karazhan runs. This is when you kill all the trash from attunement, through the beast quarters, up to moroes and all of the opera trash. This will give you roughly 80% *of a level per run. You're able to do this because heroic and raid content isn't scaled to your level so people farm it easily for transmog. Your heirlooms level up significantly making you way stronger than the mobs. It wasn't until 74 I was able to do this. I'm not sure if this is the magic number, Sodapoppin's boyfriends were saying 71, so give it a shot yourself, if the mob tells you to sit down, go do your thing until you level up some more. I had to solo botanica on my quester for a netherstorm quest and I was able to solo heroic at 74, not before though. Couldn't touch mobs on my dungeon grinder until 74 as well.At level 80 I chose to grind MoP dungeons as I felt like cataclysm dungeons might be too punishing due to my experiences with the content at it's release. Overall was happy with speed of MoP dungeons so I didn't feel the need to try cata dungeons. Speed stayed consistent at 10-15 minutes. With good players you can complete dungeons sub 10 minutes. I had an 8 minute Mogushan palace for example. around 35-40% xp per dungeon. from 94-110 I stopped dungeon grinding and started to quest. quest xp from gorgrond all the way through is too fast to warrant doing anything else.edit: I want to add that dungeon speed is heavily dictated by your group and your tank. I played a tank so I was able to make the dungeon go by quickly. However, even as a tank, some dungeons dragged on due to lack of dps. If you're a dps, dungeons can drag on equally as much from a slow\bad tank. I highly suggest dungeon grinding as a tank.In conclusionI enjoyed questing WAY more than dungeon grinding, and I hope blizzard tweeks the questing philosophy to speed it up a bit 20-80. After realizing the heritage armor for nightbourne gives me a fucking soul patch on my FEMALE nightbourne, i determined that it wasn't worth. There are A LOT of new players, or maybe players that just aren't very affluent at the game, so be patient and be ready to slow down your pace to accommodate them. If you're not someone capable of that, I definitely suggest grabbing 4 other friends and queuing up as a group. I feel like dungeon grinding with 4 friends is unbeatable in terms of xp\hr.!!!PERSONAL OPINION!!! I felt like heirloom armor wasn't powerful enough. The ilvl is always just a little over the best you're going to get, which makes all of those armor slots taken care of all the way through 110 which is convenient. But I don't feel as strong as I'd like relative to the mob. I tried looking up which enchants to use and I ran into a lot of "Just use w\e you'll destroy mobs anyways" which was not the case. Every single mob was a literal battle, which is fine, but I feel like if you have heirlooms you opt into "twinking", and if you make that decision you should be significantly stronger than the mobs you fight. Maybe that's just the ARPG player in me. I personally really enjoy twinking characters in ARPG and leveling them super quickly b\c I can demolish mobs. I think PoE levels of twinking wouldn't fit in the wow leveling scheme, but i feel like it should definitely be more powerful than it is.If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.