This game is too slow (sarcasm alert lol)

Alright all you AE'ers, PLers, farm till I drop cause .. I hate the low level stuff and just want to get my character leveled and past all that junk below 20...

Created brand new Beam/Time corruptor on Exalted and ran through the Death from below trial 4 times. Total time committed approximately 1.5 hours. level achieved 12.

Took 12 level corruptor to Steel Canyon and joined a Posi 1 followed by Posi 2 task force. All members were in the normal range of the tf (no 50's just looking for a quick badge) and even when we could stealth we tended to at least kill most. Total time committed 51 minutes for Posi 1 1 hour 19 minutes for Posi 2 and around 15 minutes in between to recruit and grab a drink, bio, ect. approximate total time: 2.5 hours level achieved 19 (about 1 bar short of 20).

Not counting level 2 which I earned in the tutorial that amounts to 17 levels earned in around 4 hours. There was a break between earning level 12 and starting the Posi tfs so I did have about 5 bars of Patrol xp to help get from 12 to 13 faster. Aside from that I did not use any XP boosters and we did not alter the mob size or difficulty to increase xp earned. Both Task Forces had the maximum of 8 members but several of the DFB trials had only 4 or 5 members along. By doing the death from below trials I earned buffs to my damage, accuracy, recharge and defense which are still active until I reach 22 or 7 days pass. I earned all of the badges offered by the trials, all three badges awarded by doing Posi 1 and 2 and additionally earned badges for defeating COT mages (Soul Binder 200 defeats) and clockwork gears ( Gearsmasher 100 defeats) both of which are required for different accolades with powers.

Now the question is.. if 17 level in one evening of casual play is not fast enough for you... why do you even bother.

I fully intend to continue this procedure with this character and will seek out a Synapse TF next which will most certainly put me above 20 level. Then by doing Sister Psyche and Moonfire I will put myself in a position to do Citadel and approach level 30 without ever doing a single mission from any contact.. Undoubtable earn additional badges toward accolades..

Just by completing Posi 1/2, Synapse, Sister P and Citadel I'll have 4 of 6 require for task force commander accolade. Sister Psyche can potentially give me enough Freakshow Bosses for Tank Buster (required for the Freedom Phalanx accolade .. along with Gearsmasher which I have already earned). Moonfire will get me close enough to do some street hunting to get the Silver Bullet (100 council warwolves) and Slayer (110 council vamprii) required for the Atlas medallion accolade. Then with a little time flying around to get the history and exploration badges I need and a few time travel mission to pick up instance badges required I will be able to increase my end and hit points. And not one of the 4 other task forces i mentioned requires more than 1.5 to 2 hours of time so lets say at most I need to play my corruptor another 6.5 to 7 hours and I will be at or near level 30. That's 28 levels in less than 12 hours. Even if someone only plays about 4 hours a night and only over weekends (friday, saturday and sunday) they can easily be level 30 after 1 weekend of play.

Of course I understand that's not level 1 to 50 in 2 hours like the old AE'ers we had back when it first went live and heaven forbid you'll actually have to leave Atlas Park and explore the confines of Steel Canyon, Skyway, Ind. Port, Striga Island and Talos in order to join those task forces but hey you'll see new and exciting things, get to meet new people and maybe JUST maybe have fun instead of just racing to see how fast you can get to level 50.

I always say there is no right or wrong way to play this game and if sitting in AE doing the same tired farm mission again and again and again is your idea of fun.. enjoy. Personally I prefer to get out and move around a bit more LOL Enjoy the game how ever you play but stay open to new and even some OLD ideas!

The glaring flaw in your plan is that it requires running Synapse.

So tell me again why farming Death from Below four times is any different to farming AE four times?
Other than the time taken of course.

I'm of a similar mind WW. I created a time/beam defender (because it is the only hero AT I don't have at 50 and I wanted to see if the set was solo friendly for the AT.) Her creation date was the day the head start began. She is now 40 and I have done very little solo with her. What I have done is group quite a bit and currently I expect her to be 50 by the end of the week. This is less than three weeks to get to iTrials and such. In a certain fantasy game getting to 50 takes about the same amount of time if all you do is dungeons. However, that game's max level is far higher. If I were to include my expectations of becoming incarnate powered I would say about a month max without any type of PLing.

Please note, I am a casual gamer that plays for only a couple hours each day. Even my days off are sporadic play. Thus, I have no understanding of the need to be in the new grind overnight. The end game grind will always be there, it's not going anywhere. I can understand the need to move beyond some of the older content, but AE is boring and the TFs are much more involved and offer quite a bit of variety. -shrug- Again, though, as Wendy stated, to each their own.

I usually run TFs in level ranges where i can't stand the content (or recently ran the content) I run about 4 - 8 alts at a time, burning off rested XP on each character and then moving onto the next one.

This allows me to gain 2 -3 levels at a time, but also puts a lot of my characters into the same level ranged. I've used CEBR to get my claw/elec brute from level 28 to 35 so i could run vanguard stuff, and I've ran task forces on my demon/thermal to get her closer to 50.

This game isn't very slow, especially if you can get on steamrolling teams. SSK does AMAZING things to the speed of this game.

Heck, running the hollows in a team STILL nets you about 10 - 12 levels, due to gaining over 2 off frostfire, and about 4 off a clear all Atta mission (i love me some troll killin)

I have to say I question the OP's definition of "casual" if it involves running the same trial four times in a row, then two consecutive task forces. That's like calling NFL players "casual" because they only play one game a week.

Only a fast way to do it if you can get a group together, which seems hard to do on Victory.

WW is trying to point out that you can do "official" content and level quickly and NOT live at AE until you are 50 or at least into SO territory enhancement wise. And how is DfB any different than an hour and a half running an old sewer team?

Travel powers at Lvl 4 has sort of done away with the need of doing the safe guard missions to get the timed flight and jump packs. And I'm pretty sure nobody would shed a tear because they forgot to run some missions in the Hollows. Well, except for playing on the ice slides in Frostfire. There really isn't any sub 15 content I can think of blueside that I would be missing out on if I went WW's route to quickly level a new character up.

Personally, I do find level 15-22ish a drag redside.

I don't think anyone is contesting that running constantly on large teams is some very fast leveling. That being said, this method bears the caveat of having to be on a large-"ish" team for it to work, which is not always feasible depending on an individual's playtime window.

To be honest, I don't really care how someone levels, as long as they're not exploiting. The fact still remains that the very lowest levels of CoH are absolutely miserable for certain AT's and builds. Whether it be endurance problems, too few powers for a decent attack chain, "key" powers that don't come until later (Controllers pre-pets, yuck) some builds are just not as fun as they could be in that range.

I think the real issue here should be not how people are leveling (as long as they aren't exploiting, of course), but why exactly they feel the way they do about that part of the game. If certain powersets and builds are widely regarded as not fun until a certain magic level, then perhaps the game would be better served by worrying about that instead?

Game starts at level 12 with DO's for me.
Two Sewer runs is all it takes.
I couldn't be more pleased.

I ran the sewer trial up to level 20 with one character. I ran it a few times the other day with my Grav/Son Controller and finally got him from level 30 to 32. It's a nice little run. And given how simple it is to run through, as well as how simple it is to just queue up and go, it's a supremely casual experience no matter how many times you run it... at least, in a time and place where queuing up for it works relatively quickly.