... once I tweaked it some.
My first 80 via the guide was pre-SiS and the guide made things easy to complete and speed to 80. My 2nd run to 80 was a bit of a mess
So overall I was impressed for my first real use of SiS. It kept up during the RAF/BoA xp boosts perfectly fine, after adjusting the slider. Then when I came back to the guide after not using it for several levels SiS got me back in sync with minimal effort. My first level 80 was pre-SiS and was also RAF, finding where I should be in the guide was NOT this easy.
As for my level 80 time... you can look at it two ways:
1) I got to 80 really slow for the XP boosts I had. Well consider that I also wasted time with professions (1st aid @ 450, skinning at 450, mining at 201, BS at 204 after dumping skinning, multiple weapons raised to 275-300 range) and time spent re-speccing, chatting, AFKs and so on. I also did not use a lot of rested XP since I tended to not sleep in Inns.
2) I got to 80 faster then expected. Well I had a lot of XP boosts and an existing 80 to feed the new toon gold, equipment, enchants and cold weather flying at level 70
My first 80 via the guide was pre-SiS and the guide made things easy to complete and speed to 80. My 2nd run to 80 was a bit of a mess
- 1->58) Used the guide with RAF and BoA bonuses. SiS was able to keep up and skip ahead. I had to adjust the slider to 4 in order to get things to run smoother. Even with that I still skipped the collection quests on one of the two RAF accounts. Things seemed to stay perfectly in-line while doing that.
- 58->62) Powered through instances with some level 80 friends. I did not use the guide.
- 63->68) Ran back to back LFG queued as a tank. Did not use the guide at all
- 68->71) Farmed the never ending stream of bad guys in Howling Fjord (actually got a suspension from Blizzard for doing this that I had to work through). I did not use the guide at all.
- 72->77) I went back to the guide and mixed LFG with the guide. I was impressed how well SiS was able to get back in sync. Slider was still at four so when I was 75 the guide had me doing 71/72 quests. Since I was still getting 26k XP per turnin I was happy. I slide the slider down to two and after about another 6-8 quests the guide auto-skipped a bunch of quests and put me right into the 74 quests while I was 76. Very impressed
- 77->80) I changed from the leveling guide to the SoH rep (storm peaks) full guide. The guide went really smooth and SiS was pretty quiet. I guess since I was 77 and the guide thought I should be 78/79. I did have to manually skip the "You should be 79 now, if not grind some" step. Since I was only 3-4 bars into 78 I just skipped that one step and all went well. I hit 80 and still not completed the SoH guide section.
So overall I was impressed for my first real use of SiS. It kept up during the RAF/BoA xp boosts perfectly fine, after adjusting the slider. Then when I came back to the guide after not using it for several levels SiS got me back in sync with minimal effort. My first level 80 was pre-SiS and was also RAF, finding where I should be in the guide was NOT this easy.
As for my level 80 time... you can look at it two ways:
1) I got to 80 really slow for the XP boosts I had. Well consider that I also wasted time with professions (1st aid @ 450, skinning at 450, mining at 201, BS at 204 after dumping skinning, multiple weapons raised to 275-300 range) and time spent re-speccing, chatting, AFKs and so on. I also did not use a lot of rested XP since I tended to not sleep in Inns.
2) I got to 80 faster then expected. Well I had a lot of XP boosts and an existing 80 to feed the new toon gold, equipment, enchants and cold weather flying at level 70