My PvE 5 Box Blog

[Flight]

This is going to be a record of my experiences 5 boxing WoW from the ground up. My main aim is to help other folks who might want to do something similar.

I will first establish where I am coming from so you know what I might be able to help with and what I know absolutely nothing about.


1. My History

i) In game

PvP - if you want any advice on PvP I am absolutely NOT the person to get it from. I have never PvP'ed ever, aside from minor forays in DaoC and UO

PvE - this is my strength. I have been playing MMORPGs, in depth, for a decade. I played EQ1 for 8 years and was boxing it from soon after launch. For most of that time I was a member of one of the leading guilds. We worked with SoE in the live game for a few years as we were the guild achieving in game objectives first. The devs would come along on raids with us and see how we approached brand new content to balance and fix it.

My only point is I understand class synergies in depth and what it takes to successfully beat game content and the various challenges encounters can throw at you.


ii) WoW Experience

I played WoW from early US beta and then in US live. When WoW EU went live I started there to join friends. I was first to lvl 60 on Terenas. I did a lot of instances for months with friends and only raided Molten Core. I haven't played WoW for the better part of two years. I have a lot to learn about the post 60 game.



iii) Real Life

My career started with nearly a decade in the armed forces, starting in the mid 80's. I was recruited as an electronics technician, repairing surface to air, computer controlled, missile systems. The point is, over those ten years I got in early on training in computers and digital electronics. I got a couple of HNDs, then did an IT degree, in my own time. I've been playing computer games ever since and CRPGs since Wizardry and the Ultima series.



2. My In Game Objectives

My only aim is to put together a 5 box team capable of beating lvl 60-70 PvE content.

[Flight]

Getting the Hardware Together


I got my rig finished a couple of days ago. I already had 3 PC's. I read through a lot of advice on this site and the WoW wiki, from Xvin, Ellay and others.

I decided to build two more PCs. I made the sad old mistake of thinking, well I may as well future proof it and spend just a little more than I need to. That is SUCH a slippery slope. I ended up spending two or three times more than I needed to.

It is an option to use laptops and maybe I should have considered that a little more. Overall I am happy with my setup but the lesson learnt was definitely buy just enough to do the job. Check Xvins advice on the WoWwiki and stick to it.

I would add a couple of provisos to that :

i) don't get a cheap power supply; there are obvious and not so obvious reason for this, but just trust me and don't do it.

ii) consider if noise and power consumption are going to be an issue. Look out for power efficient and silent gear, within your price bracket.


As far as mountings, my desk is against a wall so I just put a shelf up behind the desk and put the top bank of montiors on the shelf. The height is arranged so the top monitors just go over the bottom 3. It looks good and does the job.

I was SO dumb with the montors. Make sure to take note of whether the monitors you buy have DVI connections or not. I didn't and my three new monitors turned up with only D-Sub (VGA) sockets. May sound obvious but after not buying a cheap monitor for 6 years this was a surprise to me. Easy enough to fix and very little loss of quality, but make sure you are prepared for it. Most GFX cards will come with a converter to plug into the card, changing the DVI output to a D-Sub socket, so you will need D-Sub cables.

For those going with all PC's the only piece of equipment I would categorically push would be micro keyboards. This picture really doesn't do them justice :
[/url]http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...sonic&doy=13m6
http://.Four of them are smaller tha...ized keyboard.

[Flight]

Deciding on the team

There's no right or wrong answer here, but, with the fact in mind that we are aiming for tough instances, there are some things we do need :

i) tanking or ability to deal with mob damage output;

ii) healing;

iii) DPS


iv) should be AE damage and v) should be crowd control.

For my party, DPS needs to be fire and forget - no positioning, single button presses damage, with little management. For this team there is no other alternative than Mage or Warlock. Both have AE damage so that needs no consideration. Crowd control (CC) is a consideration but it is handled very differently and not nearly as straightforwardly in WoW as in other MMORPGs.


Largely due to my past MMORPG experience I have decided on a standard setup :

i) Tank
ii) Healer/Raz/Utility
iii) DPS
iv) DPS
v) DPS

I am not saying this is the best and I am possibly being too narrow minded. I will try other parties in future, like an all cloth group, but first time through I want something that I know will work.


It should be taken into account here that I already have a lvl 60 Warrior and Priest (amongst others) parked ready to swap in, whose classes I know pretty well. This is a chance for me to try out other alternatives in slots i) and ii) that might offer other strengths.

To me this has come down to a combination of 2 from 3 classes. Paladin, Shaman and Druid.

I am pretty much set on trying Pallie as tank, due to easily generated AE aggro. The question of Shammy or Druid is still much up in the air. A strong consideration is wipe recovery. Normally not a biggie in WoW, but I will be doing a lot of recovery at bosses deep in instances.

For my DPS I have decided on 3 x Warlocks. I don't want more than 3 classes in my team and I would have preferred less.

Warlocks have got the nod from me. The most important reason is aggro control at the start to middle of boss fights. The various pet utilites will also be huge.


I've gone with 3 Gnome Warlocks, which I have presently got to lvl 12. Warlocks are comparatively weak for the first 10 levels - I would guess at that point 3 Warlocks is worth slightly less than two mages, but that will change soon

My other two chars will prolly be Dranei, so the team won't actually come together until DM in Westfall.

[notole]

I would suggest making sure one of your chars in an enchanter/tailor for bops disenchants. I spend alot of time camping shards at 70, and this will save you alot of gold in the long run.

Alchemy and jewel crafting are all huge money sinks. If you have the patience, do it up front and dont make yourself go back and work it up.

Enchants, gems, and their corresponding primals will cost you so much for 5 chars.

If you need any help with macros, strats or anything else. Please feel free to send me a message or email.

[Bunny]

Another advice:
Keep gathering professions you might need (mining and flowerpicking) at level while you progress. Even if you think you will not need them it is a real pain in the ... to find out later that you like to have them. Last weekend I realised that I do want the professions and it was really bad getting them 2xx (my characters are lvl 50 right now).
On my 5 boxes I now have 5 tailors (5 cloth classes), 1 mining, 1 alch, 1 flowers, 1 jewel, 1 enchanter. At first I wanted to have an engineer for repair bots but with 2 locks on my team i can send my chars to town and port them back if i really have to.
Bunny

[Xzin]

Xvin here

Good advise on power supplies and power consumption / noise. I STRONGLY suggest buying name brand power supplies (reviews are out there) as power supplies differ widely and are your first line of defense against fried parts. DO NOT use the power supply that comes with an el cheapo $30 case. For heat and power, I had to run multiple lines in and to deal with the noise, I had to move all of my computers away from my computer room. It got expensive but was well worth it to me.

Nice idea with the shelf, I will add your suggestions to the wiki. Pics would be nice if you are so inclined.

I really can't speak to the PvE game as much as my main goals are PvP. I would imagine that you will have more success at the 60 - 70 levels by having a tank and flexibility. I wholeheartedly agree with you on the locks. Soulstones, non aggro DOTs, INSANE health, PETS, summons, curses, AOEs.... in my personal opinion, 'locks are a bit overpowered relative to other classes for both PvE and PvP, especially as of 2.0 with their dots harder to dispel and their 51 pt talents.

Nice write up! Looking forward to reading more!

[trigemina]

i) don't get a cheap power supply; there are obvious and not so obvious reason for this, but just trust me and don't do it.

Now this is good advice; which I didn't have in mind when I bought my $25 power supplies... One of which died within 3 months...

[Xzin]

I have seen / heard horror stories of southbridges catching fire, fried mobos, fried (magic smoke emitting) power supplies and I used to see my fair share go up before I started buying quality supplies for every system. Think about it - the power supply is responsible for taking 120v AC current (in the US) and converting it to 5 and 12 volts (mostly) while keeping everything within range - filtering out noise, over current, under current (which is constantly fluctuating) and preventing shorts or any kind of hazard. This is asking a lot from a power supply made for under $5 - and power supplies have quite a few components - any number of which failing could prove disastrous to your $500+ computer(s). Less likely but they could fail when you need them most - in the middle of a critical PvP match or accepting a quest - etc.

You only think you are saving money when you buy a $30 case with power supply.

Toms did a great review on power supplies:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/11/stress_test/

Some my work right away but WILL fail eventually. The only question is when and how much damage they will do when they fail. Please, buy good supplies - they are WELL worth the money.

This bears repeating. Don't skimp on cheap power supplies. Especially if you intend to run them continually or at near their rated capacity or want them to protect your system.

[cubbs80]

Another good bit of PSU information can be found on HardOCP's site. The 450-500w midrange shootout was particularly illuminating.

http://www.hardocp.com/reviews.html?...VudGh1c2lhc3Q=

If that link doesn't work for you, just select Power Supplies from the Main Menu on their homepage.

[Flight]

Thanks for the advice on trade skills folks. I had all trade skills at 300, but it seems now you have to level Enchanting to be able to disenchant, so one of my Mages is now levelling that.

Which of the trade skills are worthwhile doing for purely Bind on Pickup gear, so I would need to raise them ? I;m guessing tailoring as Bunny mentions having tailoring on all casters ? How is BoP Plate gear at high levels ?




Back to how I've been getting on. I raised all my chars to 21/22. I'm still sure my crew is not the best for non Elite killing or farming, but mobs die in 5-8 seconds. I realised it was too easy and I needed to get my strat in place now for instances and tougher mobs, so for most of the last week I've been reading up on the classes I haven't played before and working on UI's. It took me 3-4 days just to define what I wanted from the UI and to get it all into place. Here is what I have put together so far :


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