5 boxing 5 classes

[Bunny]

Hallo everybody,
I am happily 5 boxing my priest/2Lock/2Mage team (lvl 34 now) and I have been thinking about the possibilities of 5 boxing a "real" group. By "real" I mean a group you whould join if you were one-boxing. The reason is that I feel I might hit encounters that are simply not makeable with my setup (the idea came when doan ae silenced all my toons in my first attempt to kill him and sheeped my priest with all other toons still /following him).
I have been considering the group setup and the possibilities for effectivly playing them all at the same time. All this is about pve.

In my opinion a good group setup for this is:
- deftank
- holy/disc priest
- mage (dps, sheep, ports)
- lock (dps, soulstones, pets for buffing and offtanking)
- hunter? (pet, dps)

I think the tank whould be the "stickleader" with the other classes standing back and dpsing and healing (unlike my 5 cloth group where the priest is the stickleader).
Is it only the question how much better a real warrior can tank opposed to my warlock pets? Does it justify having one less dps class?

Does anybody have any experience with this? Any comparisons about how viable it is to use a mixed setup as opposed to a 5 cloth setup in lvl 70 pve? And most importantly: is it possible to handle such a group alone?
Any input is appreciated,
Bunny

[Kyosakana]

I've leveled a "normal" group from 1-70 with the release of BC, so here's my input on the subject.

The group I leveled was Prot Paladin (tank, main box), a Holy/disc priest, Elemental Shaman, Boomkin Druid, and Fire mage, and I've been able to down every encounter and instance on the way to 70 (have yet to run msot 70 instances). I would argue that a balanced group is better able to handle every situation than a highly specialized group. Pre-61, content is really easy and you can burn down just about everything with little effort. In outland, the rules change a bit, and some encounters get really funky. A specialized group will still probably be able to take just about anything, but a lot of it will require more effort, and some fights will be REALLY skewed against you.

It isn't that hard to do, once you figure out how to work group aggro. Most classes are just spamming a few abiliities, easily done with a few well written macros.

I would say your group looks pretty solid, albeit a bit light on healing, and only 1 rezzer with a wipe protection. However, it's your group and I expect you'll run it how youl like.

The one word of advice I would offer is to take a Warrior tank. Speaking from personal experience with my protection paladin, getting by with an imitation tank, while possible, is not ideal. I'm not really sure how a bear form druid stands up mitigation wise, but the tanking scene just seems skewed in favor of warriors.

[Xzin]

(the idea came when doan ae silenced all my toons in my first attempt to kill him and sheeped my priest with all other toons still /following him).

Why not just spread out? It's not like Doan sees you coming and attacks, he just stands there :)]

Kinda wish PvP were that way.

[Kyosakana]

(the idea came when doan ae silenced all my toons in my first attempt to kill him and sheeped my priest with all other toons still /following him).

Why not just spread out? It's not like Doan sees you coming and attacks, he just stands there :)]

Kinda wish PvP were that way.

Because Doan has a tiny little room that he wanders around in, and his aoe silence has a fairly large range, and lasts a fair bit of time. With two locks, I'm sure he's easily tanked by void walkers, but one would have to watch their aggro carefully because the VW will tank him where ever they get aggro.

That, and being a first attempt on a mage boss, things almost always get sticky. Some fights are best to spread out on, some are best to stay clustered, and generally it is hard to tell which is which until you've died.

[Bunny]

Why not just spread out? It's not like Doan sees you coming and attacks, he just stands there Smile
Hehe, thats of course what i did on the second try: spread the characters in the room while the void tanks, but since my last dozen doan kills were on my 70 rogue (running others through the instance) who couldn't care less about silence or aoe damage i had the impression that i could simply burn him down on my 5 man group too. Well I was wrong, but happy since it was the first boss i encountered that couldn't just be nuked away like any trash mob - and after all: thats why i 5 box: to find out how i do against bosses that require more than nuking.

Thanks for your reply Kyosakana, I appreciate your input because the more i think about the idea the more i like it.
I have questions i whould like your (and everybodys) opinion on:

1.) What are the advantages of a paladin tank? Why not have a warrior tank and a healadin?
2.) Maybe I am just biased but why have a tank at all? is there anything in the 5 man content that cannot be tanked by a wl pet?
3.) Why did you chose a priest as your main healer? Will a healadin be as efficient at lvl 70 (without being so squishy)?

Any input is appreciated,
Bunny

[zachwlewis]

Bunny:

1) Paladin tanks really rely on their mana to keep aggro. That said, they also have the passive skill to get back mana when healed (nerfed a bit in 2.1, though). As far as tanking is concerned, a warrior is usually a better tank, but a paladin can throw a heal or a res if needed.

The question you need to ask yourself is, "Does the versatility outweigh the deficiency of damage mitigation and/or aggro holding?"

2) Ask yourself the same question. Does having another hunter or warlock outweigh the fact that your pet has less damage mitigation and can't hold aggro as well as a warrior (or paladin or druid)?

3) A holy-specced priest will heal better and for longer than a holy-specced paladin, although if your healer takes aggro, the priest will fall much quicker.

"Do I want bigger, more efficient heals, or do I want a healer who can last longer when getting beat on?" It depends on your skill at identifying and managing threat as well as your play style.

It seems like you are debating about two classes here. You want a paladin or warrior to tank and a paladin or priest to heal. Just make a paladin and see how he fits into your group. If you find a great spot for him, then you're set. If you don't, then axe him and get the purer class.

[Bunny]

So I have been toying around with 4 melees and 1 healer and i cant get it to work because of the current /follow lags/disconnects. Sad - sounded like a fun idea to try. I hope they adress this problem any time soon.
Bunny

[Kyosakana]

Thanks for your reply Kyosakana, I appreciate your input because the more i think about the idea the more i like it.
I have questions i whould like your (and everybodys) opinion on:

1.) What are the advantages of a paladin tank? Why not have a warrior tank and a healadin?
2.) Maybe I am just biased but why have a tank at all? is there anything in the 5 man content that cannot be tanked by a wl pet?
3.) Why did you chose a priest as your main healer? Will a healadin be as efficient at lvl 70 (without being so squishy)?

Any input is appreciated,
Bunny

1. Paladin tanks can hold multiple mobs and do decent single target aggro generation, and they have the advantage of starting with full threat generating potential. However, as time goes on and their mana goes down, holding aggro becomes more of an issue the longer a fight stretches. I suppose the big thing is the lack of a need for crowd control, since they generate threat just be being in the middle of mobs and dropping consecrations.

Opposingly, warriors generate single target threat much better, faster, and efficiently, and have the distinct advantage of generating threat potential rather than spending it. They also reach much higher levels of HP than a Paladin.

Looking back, I'd much rather have a warrior tank for my group, but I'm not in the mood to level one up any time soon.

2. Pre-burning crusade, there isn't anything really hard to tank. BC content, though, is designed with a tank in mind, so a lot of bosses hit REALLY hard. As a pet can't improve their dodge, parry, and have no block, they are taking a lot of full power hits. While a pet tank can probably last a fair bit with a healer or two behind them, they are going to be a huge mana sink.

3. I went with a priest healer because priests, hands down, are the most versatile healer. In particular, fear ward, AoE heals, fort and spirit buff, and quasi-decent ranged DPS. Druids and Paladins are great single target healers, but as I already had a paladin tanking for my group, and the druid is usually in moonkin form (GREAT dps by the way), which really left me with the only option for healing to be the priest.

A Healadin does have other advantages though. Blessings are great, and their natural 50% healing threat generation makes losing aggro to them much less of an issue. With plate, they can take a few hits, and their talents make them really mana efficient.. I suppose, yes, a healadin would be just as good as a priest at 70.

[Kyosakana]

Thanks for your reply Kyosakana, I appreciate your input because the more i think about the idea the more i like it.
I have questions i whould like your (and everybodys) opinion on:

1.) What are the advantages of a paladin tank? Why not have a warrior tank and a healadin?
2.) Maybe I am just biased but why have a tank at all? is there anything in the 5 man content that cannot be tanked by a wl pet?
3.) Why did you chose a priest as your main healer? Will a healadin be as efficient at lvl 70 (without being so squishy)?

Any input is appreciated,
Bunny

1. Pallys have better AOE aggro generation, and more or less eliminate the need to crowd control things. Warriors have better HP and single target threat generation.

2. Pre-BC, nothing hits that hard. Post BC, a lot of mobs hit hard, so being able to buff your dodge, parry, and block stats really saves on healer mana, and makes fights less over all dangerous. I'm not sure how high you can buff pet HP either.

3. Paladin was tanking. Druid is Boomkinning. Shamans are crappy healers. That left me with the priest healing. Healadin would have worked just sa well.

[Bunny]

Thank you very much for your replies and ideas,
besides of the /follow problem which is really bad for a melee group i think i will try to get the following group working:

- DefWar
- Healadin
- Druid (mainly dps but tank/heal when needed, also quick change of my maintank if the war dies)
- Shaman (for totems, dps and wipe protection - healing in really desperate situations)
- Rogue (aren't gnomes cute)

I will just gonna give it another shot and see if I can get that to work.
Keep your ideas coming,
Bunny

[Steph]

I just want to mention something that I think you are overlooking a bit in your reasoning. You are looking at the classes as if there would be one person to play each class. That however not going to be the case. You will need to split your attention between the characters. For that purpose, everything that makes doing the job more efficient or just less difficult to control helps.

A properly played rogue requires correct positioning and timed attacks for example, making him an inferior choice as multibox dps due to the horrendous amount of attention required.

In my setup, I use three felguards as tanks if needed and use a holy specced priest to heal. The benefit is very simple and clear: I dont need to do do anything about the felguards, they do the tanking part by themselves, leaving me responsible for dps and healing, rather than dealing with all three jobs.

Next, I can use Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing and Holy Nova as heals that affect the whole party, including pets. Fortitude also includes pets, as does arcane intellect. When going into a group of 4-5 elites, I can kill each of them very quickly with focussed DPS, but I dont have proper threat built on each of them. That is when Holy Nova as threat free AoE heal/dmg comes in handy. Doing any normal heal, the untouched Elites would go straight to the healer, Holy Nova avoids that problem. It is not very mana friendly, but I dont need more than one of two of them really to cover the time while there are unattended mobs around.

[Bunny]

I agree on most points you mention steph.
I have a group of 2 locks 2 mages 1 priest at 43 right now and quite frankly I am a little burnt out. I am going to let them collect some rested exp for a couple of days.
The melee group will never perform as good as 5 players with the same classes and they will probably never be as effective in the instances < 70 as the cloth group (aoeing your way through RD is really funny 8) ) but I want to try it anyways.
I have always liked melee type characters and never played a shaman or paladin before, so the worst that may happen is that in a couple of weeks I find out that I can't accomplish anything with that group. So I return to my clothy group with a couple of new macro ideas.
Anyways,
I will try it this weekend and see if it's fun.
Bunny

/edit
Thanks for bringing up the point that holy nova is thread free. I have never fully utilized that fact in my clothy group. Gonna need to change that :D

[Xzin]

I suppose I should have mentioned it before because it seemed so obvious but I completely agree with Steph. You have to be able to "set it and forget it" when it comes to multiboxing. You cannot and will not (without scripts, bots, etc) be able to time everything perfectly, which is why almost nobody multiboxes rogues. Positioning characters is a challenge and always will be with five ones to position, on top of everything else.

What really makes the Zins so powerful was my class selection. Mages have ranged damage, they do need to face their targets (unlike Warlocks dots) but many of their spells are instant cast and they have synergy with the Priest's aoe heals. All four of the mages (most of the time) act as a single mage, so I am only dual boxing really. Healing and Damage. Once you go beyond that, you start to get really complicated and things start to break down fairly quickly. Some people can and do box 5 different classes but personally, I feel that unless they were played so flawlessly that the expected results would just not be there, for the same reasons I did not box in Naxx. I would have very quickly caused us to wipe on many encounters that were so critical attention wise.

That all said, you can be very successful multiboxing with 2 or even 3 different classes AS LONG AS THEY HAVE SYNERGY. Warlocks and Mages are perfect due to their very similar "types" of spells. Shamans have great synergy with themselves (and perhaps a warrior) and a priest gives great aoe synergy as holy or shadow.

[Kyosakana]

Micah 5-boxed a melee group, including a rogue. His blog is here:

http://5boxwow.blogspot.com