After my Shaman hit 84 a couple of moments ago, I noticed that I, like on my Paladin, was automatically following a certain path, or route, through the Cataclysm content.
My way (or the highway, lolol) goes:
Mount Hyjal (80-82)
Vashj'ir to where the Earthen Ring Quartermaster is unlocked (82-82½)
Deepholm + 2-3 dungeon runs (82½-84)
Twilight Highlands (84-85)
ZOMGWTF, yeah, I totally skip Uldum! [:gasp:]
Here's my reasoning:
Mount Hyjal is super fast once you know the drill. You basically move from point to point and deliver/pick up quests. Assuming you start at level 80, you'll get to 82 easily there. It also seems like quests in Hyjal are more prone to give you item rewards, which means upgrades, which means faster and cheaper leveling - hell yeah!
Vashj'ir includes a lot of traveling. Either by swimming, riding on the sea floor, or by humping around on your sea horsie. Lots of cutscenes, lots of traveling, slow pace. I leveled my Druid in Vashj'ir as the first, then leveled my Paladin through Hyjal. Hyjal seemed faster and more rewarding. Plus, the underwater thing gets old fast. It is, however, beneficial to do the zone up until where the ER quartermaster is unlocked. And while there, go to Throne of the Tides and unlock the dungeon.
Deepholm is available and doable at level 82, which is when you should finish Hyjal. The reason I prefer Deepholm is because the zone is very compact, the quests clumped up nicely and the traveling minimal. Your innkeeper is located in the middle of the map and nothing is more than a minute on an epic mount away. And the quests offer you upgrades to your Hyjal gear. Also, like with Hyjal, I found it to hold an overall faster pace than Uldum.
Uldum, while interesting, is very large, very spread out and includes a boatload of cutscenes and flying around. Like with Vashj'ir and Hyjal, I found that Deepholm simply provided faster experience and less traveling. Deepholm doesn't have as many cutesy things as Uldum, but cutesy things get old fast as well. I'll be doing Uldum anyway, for the reputation, but it can wait until I'm level 85 and two-shot stuff.
Twilight Highlands is the natural stepping stone to end-game. The quest rewards in the end are ilvl 333, which is equivalent to reputation gear (honored), so if you're not in the mood to grind reputation, make sure you do all of Twilight. It's also pretty fast (not as fast as Hyjal or Deepholm) and the amount of cutscenes and traveling is minimal and-- oh, who am I kidding, I just love the zone because you get to throw inflatable ponies at drowning goblins and use a machine gun against Alliance scum!
No, seriously, as far as I know, Twilight Highlands is the highest level zone in the game. Not much choice once you hit level 84, unless you want to do some kinky Hyjal > Vashj'ir > Uldum + Deepholm path - like I did on my Druid - which is very inefficient.
Anyway, that's just how I level up. The leveling zones are really starting to bore me, so I tried to come up with a pretty efficient and fast way. Note that I haven't researched the math on any of it, so I might be completely wrong here, but personal experience and feeling says this route is the fastest in terms of zones.
For the record, my Shaman just hit level 84 and I just finished the Vashj'ir part (I did it after Deepholm instead of before). Unless I've completely lost track of time, this character was level 81 some 18 hours ago.
What's your favorite way to 85?
Edit: Title to clarify it's Cataclysm zones only.
Edited, Jan 9th 2011 6:15am by Mazra
Edited, Jan 9th 2011 6:47am by Mazra