WoW Group setup

[Bunny]

Hi everybody,
I have been planning on 5-boxing WoW for quite sometime now. I have been reading these forums and got some great information on hard- and software setup, thx for that. While I am pretty sure about my system I am not quite sure about the characters to use.
I am going to use 5PCs with 5 monitors. One of these will be my main char: a priest. The other four PCs will share 1 keyboard and 1 mouse.
At first I was thinking about playing four mages for some massive aoe action, then I thought about 4 warlocks but came to the conclusion, that mages will be a little easier to handle.

The question I seek some input on is how you feel about three mages and one warlock for the extra utility (soulstones, pets, debuffs...). The goal is to AoE through instances and see how far I can get with that team. Later on I will throw some PvP in but that is not my main focus.

Any input is appreciated,
Bunny

[Ellay]

As few classes as possible, 4 mages 1 priest is the winner :) or 4 warlocks 1 priest.

I would pick the mages, but that's because I'm biased.

[Steph]

I went for three warlocks and one mage to keep my priest company.

Sure, Warlock AoE is a bit weaker than mage AoE, but not that much. All chars do single target and AoE damage. The warlocks have soul and health stones to offer alongside their pets and the mage comes in handy with water, arcane billiance and portals.

I find that my three felguards are fine for tanking duty. Tested up to boss 2 in the Slave pens so far. Having three means that you can afford to let one or even two drop. Redundancy is a nice thing =]

Have fun picking your setup of choice!

[trigemina]

I'm currently 3-boxing a Priest/Mage/Warlock team doing PvE. They are all at level 38 now and having the Voidwalker to tank is great! Since you're focusing on PvE, you should probably think about having some kind of tank.

[Qcybershop]

go with 4 locks and priest it so pwnz on pvp. drink and buff from mage is nice but i dont think it that big of a deal(but i focus mainly on pvp tho). life tap and holy nova keep me going nonstop so far anyway. :twisted:

[Xzin]

If you don't intend to do ultra high end PvP - then consider adding a warlock. The soulstone alone would be amazing - plus a VW tank = money.

And summons..... and imp stam buff..... decent aoes but not as many PbAoEs (ones that emanate out from your character).

It would be pretty complex to control but I imagine with practice it would be doable.

Not sure if it has as much appeal for PvP though.

[Bunny]

Thank you all for your replies.

I found out: My main problem is my lack of knowledge of the warlock class - I will have to do some research there. But at least one warlock seems mandatory to have a tank the priest can focus on healing - that keeps single target fights a little less cunfused i suppose.

The idea i had was to find as many matching functions between mage and warlock and use those during regular fights, e.g.

Key 1 = frostbolt, shadowbolt
Key 2 = arcane expl, the warlock pbae (hellfire??)

So the idea is to keep spamming the 1-key on one keyboard that controls my dds during a single target fight while being able to concentrate on my priest to heal or react to what ever needs being taken care of. The same goes with spamming the 2-key for pbae fights.

I realise that i will not use my toons to their best because I will have focus on a few abilities per class (during fights). From my experience on dualboxing wow, daoc and lotro I have found out, that my playstyle on multi-boxing is to concentrate 80% on one monitor, and 20% on the second (the 4 DDs) - I just can't handle more . :(

Anyways, any further input is welcome,
I am still debating (maybe 2 mages, 2 locks?)

The soon-to-be Bunnyz on EU-Durotan

[Steph]

Regarding action bar use, I use primarily the buttons 1-4 for attacks by warlocks and my mage while leaving these blank for my priest.

These four buttons are needed for direct single target damage, dots, drains and AoE. I use [modifier:alt] and [nomodifier:alt] to get a second function on the buttons, such as shadow burn and fire blast instead of shadow bolt and fire bolt or drain mana instead of drain life.

I have previously used smite on the priest as well, but stopped doing that to be free to heal whenever needed and to have mana reserves when needed.

[trigemina]

Don't forget that you can use a macro for your spam key:

Mine is something like this:

/castsequence [target=party1target,harm] reset=combat Immolate, Curse of Weakness, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt; Immolate, Curse of Weakness, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt

This way you get in a DOT and a curse before you start spaming direct damage.

[Bunny]

Thanks for the makro with the curse and dot - that is really helpful.
As for the group setup i have decided on three locks and one mage starting tonight (after picking up the last two pcs). This way I have the ability to use two tanking pets (in case one dies), one imp for buff and still have a sheep and all the nice mage stuff when needed.
Thanks for all your input, keep it coming
Bunny

[Qcybershop]

if you decide to go with 4 locks curse of weakness is pretty useless in my experience. i use curruption, Curse of Agony, siphon life, shoot, shoot in my /castsequence macro (the reason i got 2 shoot on there cause some time u got differnet latency between machines). most elite mob that 2 lvl above u will die with just 4 curruption and 4 agony (really good in farming, lvling and pvp). this way i just hit 1 key for most mob.

p.s. Xzin set up is very awesome in farming instance, and PVP
p.s. i'm just a drive by dot kind of guy :)

[Steph]

I keep dots and direct damage spells seperate to have some control over what is happening and just use the castsequence for the dots. Besides - for almost all mobs pressing the shadow bolt/fire bolt/petattack button once sees the target dead, even without the priest doing anything. Casting DoTs or curses just wastes mana in this situation. =]

[Qcybershop]

i actually dont use direct damage spell like shadow bolt as much as dots. i can kill more mob at the same time with dots than direct damage. also u do have to face mob to cast direct damage spell but not dots. i do have seperate key for direct damage and aoe keys but i hardly ever use them. i do send pet to attack before i dots but dots hit mob before pets got there anyway :wink: i dont use priest to do any damage neither

p.s. locks can lifetap and priest and aoe heal so i dont have any down time (minus loots time :wink: )

[Bunny]

Hi everybody,
I just want to share my experiences on my first weekend of 5 boxing.
Friday night I had all the hardware setup, the fridge was filled and I had cancelled every appointment for the weekend. I was planning on using 5 undead toons since I think they are cute and I have never played horde past level 40something. I decided on 1 priest, 2 locks and 2 mages. To be honest I know mages and priests very well but I have never bothered to try a lock so I was not sure what was coming.

Here is what I found out:
* Any quest outside of instances is very easy, collect X of Y quests are really boring and take quite some time
* inside instances the big bosses are usually not the problem because you tend to have a controlled fight (send pet, heal, nuke etc.); the problems occur if you have multiple elite mobs that are either tanked or sheeped (having two sheeps helped)
* You need a good setup of macros and (even more important) you need to get familiar with them to be able to use them and not panic if the s hits the v. That needs quite a bit of training, I think I wiped 20 times in rfc before I could run it without deaths at an acceptable speed.
* Soulstone really helps
* WC really sucks if you don't know your way around.
* leveling up takes roughly 25% more time that doing it with one toon (up to level 21 that is)
* You get very mixed reactions from other players
* You get enough material to have all toons max their tailoring skills
* It is really fun!

I was suprised about the warlock class. The pets are really useful and they never seem to go oom. In fact I am seriously considering restarting with 4 locks and a priest. Losing the Int buff will hurt but water is not that big a deal (I still have about 3k gold available from the alliance toon on the server I play).
A second plus is that I have less abilities to care about. That may seem unlogical but in the fights versus non elites it doesn't matter - any spell from all toos kills the mob, but in elite fights I had to care about so many things that I hardly have the time to do anything but the macroed castsequence.

The only thing that keeps me from rerolling 4 locks is the sheeps as I believe they will be really useful when the instances get harder. Anyone willing to share their experiences on this topic?

Gotta get back to work,
Bunny

[wougoose]

Bunny,

If I were in your situation I would change to 4 locks and a priest. The main reason being it is easier to manage with only having 2 classes. Not having the sheeps is not too big of a deal, as with the two other locks you are granted two extra pets that can act as a form of cc. Not having water is also a loss without the mages, but as you stated locks are very mana efficient and have no downtime as long as the priest has mana. I haven't tried this setup yet, but I'd imagine sending the pets at different elites and dotting them all in a few seconds should do very well. If anyone has more experience with the combination, maybe they can fill in what i've left out :)

-Goose

[Bunny]

Thanks for your advice.
I was even thinking playing a second team of 1 pally 2 mages and 2 lock but change the accounts that way i can later log in 4 locks, 4 mages or any combination of that together with a priest or pally but i fugured that will be to tiring for the moment to collect 100 bear asses instead of the 50 i need for my current team.
Bunny