Are shamans the end all be all boxing class?

[Morx]

Seems I hear about a lot of shaman teams out there, and was curious if this is the best class for boxing? Seems easy enough.. whether they are all ele, which seems the best, or have a heal in the mix if you go with a Pal x1, Shm x4 team.

For a new boxer, would a shaman be considered an "easier" class to learn boxing with? I've just simply gotten my feet wet with 2 warlocks, and it was fun watching them cast all at the same time. :P

Thanks for any information.

[nogbog]

Shaman just have a lot of options.

Any ranged class is good for multiboxing, melee is even good for some things.

It's all about tastes really. I've always liked warlocks so that's what i've gone with.

[Morx]

I've got a paladin, that I'm boosting with friends up right now, and when thats finished, and geared, some time down the road, I intend to boost a new 5 box team just to see if I can do it.

Warlocks, especially with amazing macro guides in the other forum from Bradster, seem like a great choice. Have everyone of them with a different pet, or all the different pets and watch them just kill everything so quickly. :thumbsup:

[Otlecs]

It depends what you want to do.

I originally wanted to farm instances, so I went with a Pally, Priest, Hunter and two mages and already had a 70 lock to swap in when needed.

That's fantastic for instances, but I wanted to PvP too and the lack of synergy becomes really obvious in PvP. Especially the lack of fear control, even with the trinket.

So I went with a bunch of priests for a while, but found them too squishy and the fear ward gets consumed. Not ideal, and I didn't want to stare at undead all day long for WotF.

So I tried hunters. Great fun until things get up close and personal, then it all gets a bit messy. It's doable, but can be frustrating.

So now I've joined the masses and rolled Shamans.

The thing is, they can do it all:

- Highest armour class of all casters.
- Can use shields.
- Grounding totems make PvP and PvE encounters with other casters a walk in the park.
- TREMOR TOTEMS :love: make fear just about a non-issue.
- Multi-target nuking from a single target (instead of having to click the screen) - big deal for boxers.
- Can melee when out of mana and actually do useful damage.
- They can all heal. "Kill the healer" just doesn't work.

The list goes on. There aren't many down-sides, other than the fact that the majority of their damage is nature-based, which can make for some nasty surprises in PvE :)

There's just no other class that can genuinely do all of the above.

Of course, the lack of "traditional" crowd control means you have to get creative, but that's no bad thing.

So, yes, I do believe they are the be-all and end-all for "do anything" multi-boxing, at least for people who don't want to play Undead.

That doesn't mean they're the only viable group though - not by a long, long way!

[Sekij]

I love ghost wolfs in my shamans because whitout that i cant do anything against saps :/ and with 4 chars on follow i can stay in one place forever if rogue really dont like me :)

[Otlecs]

and with 4 chars on follow i can stay in one place forever if rogue really dont like me
Shameless thread derail ahead.......

Are there any totems that break stealth? As I recall, there was a time that one of the fire totems would attack stealthed players, but that was a while ago now. I haven't had a chance to try that with my 40's shammies yet.

[Ifalna]

I think magma totem pulls people out of stealth as its aoe. Also dropping a rank 1 one while capping a base is terrific, as if any stealther attempts to los cap it, it interrupts them ;)

[Otlecs]

Excellent! :D

[Tizer]

in short, i think people are saying, yes, shaman own hard while others scrape by. ;) You simply cant better the totems ;D

[Morx]

- Multi-target nuking from a single target (instead of having to click the screen) - big deal for boxers.
I've noticed, that is definitely a huge deal for MBers. I'm just curious how you do it? With macros?

I've got a Paladin I'm questing/boosting currently, and my plan is to hit 70, get some gear, and then be ready to boost even faster any new team I start. I hear a lot of Paladin / 4x Shaman teams, and so was just curious..

Of course, this is turning into a post that might be better suited for the macros forum. ;)



As for what I want to accomplish, running instances would be the goal. Good chance, I'll have friends sub in, but for the most part I want to be able to run myself through instances and farm heroics. A paladin + 4x shaman sounds like a fantastic combo, as long as I hone my skills to be able to manage with no CC. :thumbup:

[dvons]

and with 4 chars on follow i can stay in one place forever if rogue really dont like me
Shameless thread derail ahead.......

Are there any totems that break stealth? As I recall, there was a time that one of the fire totems would attack stealthed players, but that was a while ago now. I haven't had a chance to try that with my 40's shammies yet.Earthbind used to break stealth but they nerfed that in patch 2.2 or 2.3. Best thing to do with rogues now is remain in GW for as long as possible so they don't sap you and have a magma or searing totem down (searing not as effective since it doesn't pulse but it does last longer. :S )

[Dominian]

Makes me realy sad to see my shamans spread in a star formation without my tremors down.. :P

Other tools people tend to forget is purge and earthshock(with the round robin you can lock down any casters without instants...

If you purge a char with 10k hp whos buffed with Fortitude,kings,motw that alone should be 2000-3000 wich he cant get back unless rebuffs.. If you use it on a priest or mage and remove theyr shields you can add 1000 removed in a purge. (assuming you got 5 shamans like me)

In WOTLK totems buffs gives affects the whole raid...

wich means i can easily support meele with a WF totem to increase theyr overall damage.

[TheBigBB]

Besides the other benefits which may be compensated for with other classes, the one thing I couldn't get past when deciding who to multibox with was the fact that a shaman team will pretty much never have to corpse run individually, and rarely have to at all. As long as any one of them is alive, you can res, and most of the time you could have a self-res up as long as you're not in a bad position to do so. Even if they all died, running them ALL back at once is no problem. I don't think any other class even comes close to the ease of shaman death recovery.

[BobGnarly]

I've played a few compositions now, and overall, yes they are:

very high burst dmg. wear 2nd best armor in game - with shield in our configuration for even higher armor. Can heal while in dps spec, and chain heal (arguably) second only to circle of healing as best multibox heal. can res, and have wipe recovery (this is huge). totems play to group "synergy" of mutiboxer (stacking buffs), and basically seal the deal (staggered tremor totems make them almost immune to fear, grounding totems shut down casters, earthbind totems mess up melee, fire-and-forget poison & disease answers, etc, etc). and more
There are other groups that have other more specific strengths, but point-for-pound, especially for pvp, I just don't think you can beat it.

[Mendicant]

I'll repeat some of the things others have said.

- You can wipe 5 times per hour and never do a graveyard run
- You can aoe heal and aoe dps without any placed spells
- Shield+Mail gives awesome armor. The low-level resto talent ancestral healing gives another 25% armor... basically making the target have plate armor equivalent.
- totems give massive utility, and you won't have to worry about fear as long as you get a few tremors down



Now, while I have not run 4x warlocks 1x priest (YET) I have some nice things to say about them:
- You can wipe 4 times per 30 minutes and never do a graveyard run (soulstones)
- You can aoe heal and aoe dps without any placed spells
- Much larger mana pool w/ heals and lifetap
- Almost fear immunity w/ fear ward/wotf/mass dispel/fel hunter fear-eat
- Pet utility
- Massive damage without stopping with coa/corruption/sl

but the massive downside is lack of armor... which prevents them from ever being able to do heroics and many outlands instances w/out a tank :(
Even with Soul Link, the most damage reduction they can have with awesome pvp gear is about 39%, VS shamans at almost 50% in quest greens/blues

[Simulacra]

I started my box team before the shammy revolution and watched the shammy teams get more and more popular. I run Pally,Lock,Mage,Mage,Priest and have to say that it's a complete PITA, fun though :) A shammy team seems to be able to run content with less aggravation that a mixed group. I love my team but it's only downfall is fear bombs and that's where shammies shine - tremor totems! pretty much immune to fear. I'm Boosting 4 shammies at the moment lol - not to replace my team but just so I can swap them in and out for more utility.

So if I were to start over I'd roll Pally and shammyx4

[Otlecs]

- Multi-target nuking from a single target (instead of having to click the screen) - big deal for boxers.

I've noticed, that is definitely a huge deal for MBers. I'm just curious how you do it? With macros?
The thing about chain lightning is that it doesn't need anything special at all - just hit it on your current target, and it takes others with it. No macro required.

Since the demise of the "map ping" method some time ago, I'm not aware of any way to target an area (for blizzard, etc) without clicking.

[Naysayer]

The thing is, they can do it all:



- Highest armour class of all casters.

- Can use shields.

- Grounding totems make PvP and PvE encounters with other casters a walk in the park.

- TREMOR TOTEMS :love: make fear just about a non-issue.

- Multi-target nuking from a single target (instead of having to click the screen) - big deal for boxers.

- Can melee when out of mana and actually do useful damage.

- They can all heal. "Kill the healer" just doesn't work.



The list goes on. There aren't many down-sides, other than the fact
that the majority of their damage is nature-based, which can make for
some nasty surprises in PvE qft



Also, I've never played a shaman before I started my new team of 5. I have soloed 7 classes to 70 before I started multiboxing and I just plain hated the shaman class so I never touched it. Now look at me :( . Shaman just have everything you need as a multiboxer. Unless you want to multiclass every other single class setup has a few major weaknesses.