OP Items For Leveling - Significant AOE Damage (Patreon)

In my recent leveling guide were several methods were presented for leveling super-fast by killing large numbers of mobs quickly, often with the mobs pacified by the use of a black ox statue. I kept this deliberately simple and just used class-based area-of-effect methods when testing this. 

As it turns out there are two engineering items which very significantly speed up this process . They also make it possible for classes with poor aoe to use mass-mob killing methods. The items are two very similar explosives:

https://www.wowhead.com/item=153490/f-r-i-e-d

and 

https://www.wowhead.com/item=153494/thermo-accelerated-plague-spreader

Both are explosives with F.R.I.E.D doing straight burst damage and the plague spreader, as you might expect, creating a gaseous green cloud that deals damage over time.

Unlike many similar items neither of these require engineering to use, they can be purchased off the ah and do not share a cooldown. I'm not sure if this is an exploit exactly but it does seem that Blizzard thought this through poorly as the items could have been designed for power-leveling-something they definitely aren't keen on at the moment.

Additionally, and this is even stranger, these items seem to generate very little aggro. Using a low-level hunter with the large concentration of mobs outside Blackrock Hold, Burning Steppes, I was able to repeatedly attack mobs that had been aggroed by my max level death knight, without the mobs peeling and attacking the hunter. Every mob could be killed  by using these items repeatedly in two minutes and 36 seconds without any other source of damage. Naturally coupled with good aoe this dramatically increases the xp from this approach-on average it will be between 80-120% depending very much on class, spec and gear. 

However there is a major issue in that the cooldowns on the items do not start until the player has left combat which begins the moment they use their own abilities to attack mobs-so you will need some method of leaving combat in order to take advantage of this synergy with truly instant respawn farms. There are quite a large number of items currently in-game which allow the player to do this. You will not need to do this with locations such as Blackrock Hold where all the mobs eventually die, until some trigger event causes them to respawn, as you will leave combat naturally.

In my leveling video I show my fury warrior spamming whirlwind repeatedly to kill the Blackrock hold mobs in just under two and a half minutes gaining 15% of a level in just under two and a half minutes. Using the explosives this goes down to a minute if you can drop combat somehow.

It is worth bearing in mind that versatility impacts the damage of the explosives so for a class with poor aoe and versatility build is optimal. 

A minor problem that occurs with large concentrations of mobs is that the blast radius from the explosives isn't quite large enough to cover all of the targetted mobs who tend to assemble themselves in a circle around the source of aggro. A death knight can partially solve this problem with gorefiend's grasp which temporarily puts all mobs on a single spot - however this will require excellent timing as it only lasts a second before the mobs return to their circular formation. 

How to acquire the explosives

Now, how do you actually acquire these items? I found some being sold for only a few gold pieces on the auction house from someone who clearly was trying to clear his bags whilst leveling engineering-and it is worth checking the ah to see if someone on your realm is doing the same. (EDIT: this actually seems to be happening quite a lot and was not a one-off. )

However, the mats for this items are more expensive and the average ah price usually hundreds of gold, so it may be necessary to make them if you do not have a large reserve of gold. This is much easier than you might think. 

Engineering in BFA is grouped by xpac, so you can pick up engineering at BFA without having to grind through previous engineering levels as in the past. This means that, as soon as you set foot in Borallus you can pick up in engineering and make explosives as long as you have a profession slot clear. You can also do this with class trials-there is a reason to do it with a permanent character however as you can rank up in skill levels which reduces the cost of materials needed to make the items.