Help with 5 Box PVE Talent Builds

[Boxcarwilli]

I'll be running 5 blood efls, 2 mage, 1 priest, 1 pally and 1 lock. I will be doing only instances all the way while leveling. Anyways, before you comment make sure to look at these builds. I didnt include any PVP stuff, went for talents that would be best for instancing as I want to box every 5 man in the game.

I have no clue what to spec the lock, need some help here from those of you running mages and a lock.

I went with a raid kinda build for the mages, let me know what you think...
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300550000020000000000050520200230303 005312500030000000000000000000

For the Pally it's mostly prot of course
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMMqtVbx0hb

For the Priest all holy, however, I have one point for either Circle of Healing for Divine Spirit...since all my toons will be using mana I think the Divine Spirit would be best correct?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxT0zhxzZfhxcf0qVhV

[daviddoran]

Not sure about your mages, but it looks like you just want your bread and butter spells to do more damage, skipping the extra spells, which are harder to box with, so the mages seem fine.

For the Paladin, I'd lose Spell Warding and Improved Ret Aura, and put 5 points in 1h weapon specialization. It increases ALL damage 5%, which greatly increases threat, and helps the overall DPS. Ret aura is good for lowbie boosting, but in the later dungeons, you need more mitigation, and the amount of damage improved ret aura gives isn't worth it IMO, unless you have a ret paladin, or maybe a shockadin supporting the tankadin.

For the Priest, I'd go for the Circle of Healing. It's just a great spell. And No Holy Nova? I love spamming holy nova and arcane explosion, for those "oh crap" moments, when I freak out and can't seem to target right, or the mobs run behind my casters, etc. Plus, if you have a lock, holy nova and hellfire are a nice combo. I made a 3x mage 1x priest 1x paladin so I could be the "king" of AoE farming... I gotta figure out how to do some GtAoE spells, like blizzard, flamestrike, rain of fire, etc.

[Boxcarwilli]

Not sure about your mages, but it looks like you just want your bread and butter spells to do more damage, skipping the extra spells, which are harder to box with, so the mages seem fine.

For the Paladin, I'd lose Spell Warding and Improved Ret Aura, and put 5 points in 1h weapon specialization. It increases ALL damage 5%, which greatly increases threat, and helps the overall DPS. Ret aura is good for lowbie boosting, but in the later dungeons, you need more mitigation, and the amount of damage improved ret aura gives isn't worth it IMO, unless you have a ret paladin, or maybe a shockadin supporting the tankadin.

For the Priest, I'd go for the Circle of Healing. It's just a great spell. And No Holy Nova? I love spamming holy nova and arcane explosion, for those "oh crap" moments, when I freak out and can't seem to target right, or the mobs run behind my casters, etc. Plus, if you have a lock, holy nova and hellfire are a nice combo. I made a 3x mage 1x priest 1x paladin so I could be the "king" of AoE farming... I gotta figure out how to do some GtAoE spells, like blizzard, flamestrike, rain of fire, etc.

Great advice, thanks a lot!

[badashh]

With that team, you aren't going to be casting flamestrike, blizzard, or rain of fire. you would have to mouse target and what not. But you could go for improved arcane explosion, and I'm not sure if locks have improved helfire. But if you really want to aoe some groups down I see your pulls going like this. If you just want to aoe go for a 33/28 build for the mages.

1. avenger shiled
2. consecrate while mages and locks dps first target(so you can build threat).
3. Then hellfire and spam arcane explosion(blastwave when up).
4. you will probably just have to heal the pally cause you will have enough threat build up but in case someone aoes you got holy nova!

that will be some sick aoe.

[Boxcarwilli]

With that team, you aren't going to be casting flamestrike, blizzard, or rain of fire. you would have to mouse target and what not. But you could go for improved arcane explosion, and I'm not sure if locks have improved helfire. But if you really want to aoe some groups down I see your pulls going like this. If you just want to aoe go for a 33/28 build for the mages.

1. avenger shiled
2. consecrate while mages and locks dps first target(so you can build threat).
3. Then hellfire and spam arcane explosion(blastwave when up).
4. you will probably just have to heal the pally cause you will have enough threat build up but in case someone aoes you got holy nova!

that will be some sick aoe.

Maybe a more important question to ask is how do multi mage boxers go through instances, are you aoe the trash or casting Pryo, Scorch and Fireball?

[Fuzzyboy]

Maybe a more important question to ask is how do multi mage boxers go through instances, are you aoe the trash or casting Pryo, Scorch and Fireball? Depends on the instance, level, gear and the setup. I have limited experience in that regard, seeing as my mage-team (pala, priest, 3 mages) is still low level. At the beginning range of an instance you will have to single target mostly. Basically whether you can AE your way through depends on your tanks ability to soak up damage (and not die obv, hehe), thus gear and relative level compared to the instance. I've had a very nice xp/hr rate in stockades at level 25, pulling 6-10 mobs at the time (mind you the paladin was a bit higher level that the rest of the team, which helps a lot).

Once you've done the AE things, the usual way of single target dps feels sooo slow. In reality it isn't that much slower, because you have less downtime between pulls. Whether you're able to AE the trash also depends on the trash. Casters/ranged dps mobs are tricky if you can't LOS them, certain mob abilities are tricky with AE (think about the goblin engineers in DM for instance).

[Fuzzyboy]

I went with a raid kinda build for the mages, let me know what you think...
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300550000020000000000050520200230303 005312500030000000000000000000
Your build looks fine for single target damage - if you're planning to AE you might want to consider an arcane build though. I'm planning to go with a mostly AE focused build using AM and frostbolt for single-target damage. This is primarily because it's easy to manage while boxing (channeled spells = boxer candy). Something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oi0Vc0fzxIzioZVmG0o0x

You could probably argue that cold snap would be better than slow - I guess it's a matter of preference. Anyway, the point of the build is to use nova and arcane explosion where AE is needed (with 3 mages you can rotate nova/ae in a macro so you'll get the increased crit chance shatter pretty much every time AE - you could probably do something similar with 2 mages, especially if you get cold snap over slow). AM or frostbolt will be the primary single target damage source (empowered AM would have been nice though). Frostbolt for mana save or arcane resistant mobs.

I'm not sure if icy veins affects the gcd (it's a haste effect so technically it should?). If it does it'll work with AE, although the effect is probably not that noticeable. Anyway I'm still pondering if the talent build above is the way to go, but these are my thoughts on the subject for now :)

[Boxcarwilli]

I went with a raid kinda build for the mages, let me know what you think...
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300550000020000000000050520200230303 005312500030000000000000000000
Your build looks fine for single target damage - if you're planning to AE you might want to consider an arcane build though. I'm planning to go with a mostly AE focused build using AM and frostbolt for single-target damage. This is primarily because it's easy to manage while boxing (channeled spells = boxer candy). Something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oi0Vc0fzxIzioZVmG0o0x


Great advice, I will look into that. Anyone else with mages 5 boxing trying to manage aoe or single targeting?

[HPAVC]

For the Priest all holy, however, I have one point for either Circle of Healing for Divine Spirit...since all my toons will be using mana I think the Divine Spirit would be best correct?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxT0zhxzZfhxcf0qVhVI couldn't live without CoH, with 4 lifetaps and pets thought its likely a lot more value for the mana. Its oh shit instant cast, counting as a direct healing, clear casts, inspirations is nice. I lay into that spell quite a bit, I don't see much in your party that really gets a boost out of the divine spirit buff.

[Myro]

I'm running the same group as you and am currently sitting at 65. I was fire for quite a while on my mages but decided to switch to frost to be a bit better on mana. Also, frostbite/shatter x2 can make for some nice burst damage. I started my lock as fire to take advantage of imp scorch but after switching my mages, I just shadowbolt spam now.

His spec is currently demo up to demonic sacrifice, then the rest in destro. With demonic sacrifice, I usually use it on my felhunter in instances which keeps his mana almost the exact same as my mages. I typically single target spam frostbolt/shadowbolt in instances and rarely have to drink. I pretty much go non stop up to the next boss, drink for 10 seconds and I'm good to go. I find this is just as fast as aoe in most cases and there is no risk of any of my dps dieing.

Outside of instances, I aoe everything. Round them up on my pally and spam holy nova, arcane explosion and hellfire.

Still playing around with specs but I'm pretty happy with this setup.

[Rel]

Great advice, I will look into that. Anyone else with mages 5 boxing trying to manage aoe or single targeting?

Have a look at this section, just link all your toons binds to the same macro, and I see no reason that you couldn't cross class drop AoE. MiniMap Ping Explained - Cast AOE Spells ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=4901&pageNo=1&highlight=pinglocation')

Could be wrong though, I am new to this and working on pure theory rather than practice!