5 boxing mages leveling HELP!

[OpTiMo]

So I am on my second day of 5 boxing mages and it seems painfully slow. They are level 8. I use QH and I have leveled multiple other characters from 1-80 so knowing the zones isn't the problem. Is there a guide that I could use to help this go any quicker? It almost seems like it would go quicker if I leveled them in a party of 2 and a party of 3 at this point. Is grinding the better way to go then questing or is this just going to take a long time because I'm leveling 5 at a time? I also play alliance side if anyone can suggest a guide. Regardless of how long it takes I'm going to stick with it because this is pretty Fn cool :P Anyways, thanks in advance for any help you guys can throw my way.

[FIra]

I suggest minimize your mana costs and don't overkill on targets that don't need all that burst damage. The more you have to sit and drink, the longer it's gonna take to level. I personnally suggest leveling with all frost and putting your frostbolt on round robin. Other than that, you wanna level with all 5, and quest. I couldn't do many instances at low levels with the 5mages, but i had them all RAF so questing was worth it for me.

[oogally]

I also play alliance sideEww...

If you're just starting out, did you use RAF (refer a friend) to get 300% exp on your characters? If not, you can do RAF invites from the WoW website and get yourself started with 4 trial accounts. I just got 3 more accounts to start my 5-boxing a week ago. I'm doing the oh-so-popular paladin + 4 shaman combo, but it really does make things easy and I thought instances would be a nice way to level (totally different from pugs and I'd imagine it's a lot of good experience for later in the game) My team is level 20 now, but it seems like I've spent most of my time setting up macros, hardware, etc, and the actual leveling part goes pretty quick.

I first started out with a paladin + 3 mage combo (my fiance likes to roll a healer class) and it seemed pretty easy to set up a 2 button cc solution. I had the first button mark raid targets with the main, and set a focus for a specific mage, then the second button would have all mages sheep their foci.

If instances aren't your thing, I saw a forum post recently about a multiboxing questing guide which someone had written to work in conjunction with other questing addons. The search feature works really well.

Oh, and a note on RAF: make sure to think things through before you use it. I was thinking I could 4-box and level with my fiance if I wanted, then grant free levels to a 5th character to catch him up when he gets behind. I didn't think about it at the time, but the way I'd have to do RAF invites for that would be to have a string of 3 in there so that, when you leave one behind, the other two can get RAF exp still.

[OpTiMo]

no, i didn't use RAF. i only need to buy 2 more accoutns as i already had 3 active ones. I didn't honestly think about it and I wouldn't have wanted to leave the one guy leveling slower then the others anyways. I'm kicking myself in the butt now though. :(

[Jubber]

Yeah no RAF will be terribly slow with mages. Especially since you have no healer. I 4boxed 3 arcane mages/1 priest combo and that made it more bearable. 3 arcane explosions plus a holy nova to help heal as I chain pull large clumps of mobs to AOE down.. Worked pretty well. Since you still have a low level team i would suggest maybe adding in the priest.. it will jump your survivability way up.. At later levels you can drop a light well for when you finish AOE'ing an area or Circle of healing when you get beat on a little more than you like.

[daviddoran]

My advice: Roll a healer. Corpse runs suck. I ran 4 mages with a priest and it was great. I can see a paladin being good too, as they would be a bit tougher, and can give blessing of wisdom, to help with mana issues. Bubble helps too. Druid healer is nice, they can rez in combat, can still do decent DPS, hell you could even spec full balance, and add some nice crit to your mages :) Innervate would help get some mana back (on one toon at least) Shamans can help with mana too....

I run now with a paladin priest 3 mages, and having 2 rezzers is awesoe. A instance runs my healer died because my priest ran OOM< and I was able to finish off the mob, and rez my tank back up, and vice versa a few times my healer pulled aggro and bit the dust (Spirit of redemption FTW!) and having my tank able to rez the healer is a godsend.

So yeah, I'd never again level anything without at least one of them being able to heal and/or rez.

[emesis]

My advice: cancel the two new accounts. Use two of your existing accounts to send RAF invites to 3 new accounts. Level 2 old and the 3 new accounts all under RAF. Transfer one of the toons at 60 to the original 1/3 accounts that get left out and cancel the empty account. With RAF, you will get the 3 new mages to level 8 in an hour.

Sorry, although this will cost you a little more cash upfront it's not actually much in the long run of keeping multiple accounts open. I can't imagine leveling toons to 60 anymore, especially boxing, without the 3X bonus.

Once you've tried it you will never go back.

As far as mixing up the group, adding a healer, that depends on what you want to do later on. Pure teams are a little easier upfront because the macros are all the same, and they level absolutely fine. I brought up a group of 5 mages and maybe I died once or twice (PvP server), never to PvE. I think 5 mages are great for leveling.

[dirtybob]

This isn't ePeen, but i got my 3 box mage team to 10 and at the Crossroads in 1hr12m. How? RaF!!! It really is the cat's pajamas.
You get 90days of triple xp, summoning and extra rep and lvl granting up to lvl 60. I can't recomend it more. Its the pimp diggity.

I wouldnt worry about any extra cost as far as new accounts and upgrades. Say your going to play Wow for another year( they are going to add new hero classes:)
you'll forget about the small investment when you have a team of whatever you want out there melting faces.

DB

[Owltoid]

trying to delete :)

[Ualaa]

I'd go with Emesis's suggestion.
You'll be out the cost of one warcraft game initially.
The three new warcraft games will each grant a month of play time to an existing account, and they'll be cancelled after the two months (one month free, one month payed), so the subscription costs are a break even.

Another way of looking at it...
Just playing in the evenings and weekends, you can easily level 5-6 teams to 60th (within the RAF 90 days) if you want that many variations.
Without RAF it would take so much longer to do this.
You'll level 3x faster with the RAF, so how much per hour is your time worth?
I bet even if you valued your time at $1 per hour, you'll save more hours then the cost of one extra wow account.

[oogally]

You'll level 3x faster with the RAF, so how much per hour is your time worth?
I bet even if you valued your time at $1 per hour, you'll save more hours then the cost of one extra wow account. Lol, now that I'm working I find myself doing this more and more. Even though I had less free time during school (engineering degree) I never made these comparisons before. Although, thinking back, I didn't have much in the way of money either...

[5fingersofdoom]

Ualaa is spot on,spend the money and get it Raf'd.
I just tried doing a 5 mage team from scratch no RAF,I caved in it sucked so badly and am RAF'ing again.
Another point here is that if you are serious about getting them to 80 believe me the fresher you are for the 70-80 run the more you'll be glad you didnt O.D on scrubbing about from 1 -60. :)