I’m currently finishing up on my 1 month hiatus from the game and looking to try out UVHM as soon as I start playing TPS again. I’m planning to play only main story missions until I get to R&D, then do runs of R&D for XP through till 60, similar to what I did in TVHM actually.
Anyway, so I was curious about how everyone else is getting to 60.
I did story missions only save for activating the grinder and got all the way up to 52 going into the Empyrean Sentinel and came out at 53. Have used the Holodome and Iwajira to get to 58 but it hasn’t been quick by any definition.
I don’t know how you only got to 52 by the end. I was at 57 and was only accepting the main storyline mission.
I used the Guardian Hunter mission after beating the Sentinel to power level to 60.
Got from 50 to 51 farming Iwajira’s big brother, then got to 55 doing only the main quest up to and including RK-5. Got to 57 doing about 6-7 sidequests and the Holodome to get a new Party line… so far so good, i’m halfway to 58 and i’m not out of ideas yet 
After reading the topic about [UVHM XP][1]
[1]: Is UVHM a little too stingy on XP? On second thought, I will probably also complete several of the side quests with non-unique quest rewards, though I’m hoping those rabid stalkers still give good xp in UVHM.
Got to high 53 doing story missions only (+ grinder one), then opened the guardian hunter mission and did the rest. To the person wondering how it is possible to run thru the story and only be low-50’s – I’ve run through the story twice with 5 characters (=10 times) & now UVHM with two. So, I know the maps pretty well. But, I was surprised I didn’t level up higher than that myself.
I just played through the story doing all the sidequest in between missions. Hit 60 shortly after I unlocked the Lunar Launching stations, reset and doing a full playthrough at lvl 60.
Getting to level 60 wasn’t easy by any definition. FFYL many, many times and most ended with re-spawning. Haven’t completed all of the side-mission though in hindsight I probably should have.
Currently at 57 and 1/3 of the way to 58, and I am about to enter Jacks Office.
I’ve done all the side missions and generally start each session with a brisk run through Triton Flats,
Pretty sure I’ll be able to get to 60 by the end… If I need any of the lvl 60 weapons I’ll do another run through… But I can’t see a need for them
I have been killing Red & Belly, because they give great XP compared to most enemies in UVHM (I think around 12K each?) At level 58 now.
I reached level 55 finishing all the main missions, from there it was a very SLOW and boring process.
To update my progress… Entered veins of Helios at level 59 I had just hit it after turning in all the missions from the hub.
Still only skipped 2 missions so far, … It’s looking that by doing most of the side missions it scales pretty well… I saved quit before doing each side mission so that I was sure the mobs re spawned, and made o point of running through most of r&d if I was in there to do a mission
I finished the main storyline only and reached lvl56 and farmed RedBelly.
Didn’t get a Striker 
How did I progress from level 53 (after all story missions) to 60? Well, after acquiring the level 52 shock Rosie, I specced into Tombstone, Unchained and High Noon, put on a High Rollin’ Crapshooter with +6 Tombstone and +5 Unchained, set myself up behind the sera guardian of the guardian hunter mission as to minimize lag and time spent per kill, popped Showdown, pressed the left mouse button, pressed Shift+Tab twice to open and close the steam overlay, which locked the left mouse button and continued to shoot my rosie, and then Alt+Tabbed out of the game.
Half an hour later I was level 60 and still killed 6-7 sera guardians per Rosie clip (based on the amount of Impatience stacks gained), and made a huge mistake by having picked up Unforgiven whose explosion at the end of Showdown crashed my game.
Then I did it again and again because it crashed a second time after looking at the horrendous amount of bodies.
(As you can see, I levelled to 60 without ending showdown even once.)
Now am level 60 without too much hassle. Wasn’t fun, but at least it was easy. Also, level 49 maggies work wonders with Tombstone and Hot Lead against level 60 enemies, save for bosses of course.
I’m patient so ill be waiting for more story DLC before I even go past 50, at the moment I’m happy with getting each one to 50, I’m a slow gamer so I probably wont have half of them at 50 before the story DLC is out