Boxing with Non-Boxers

[Feider]

I tried running Halls of Lightning yesterday with my Prot Warrior, Frost Mage and 3 puggers. One asked "is that a good idea?" but they were cool with it. I have run instances with my full 60 team but never with other people. Over all I think it went pretty well.

How often to you all run like this?

[Dorffo]

same :)

I run our guild healers/tanks through heroics as needed.

[Tombs]

I do this quite often, either dual DPS, Tank/DPS, or Tank/Tank in VoA. I often don't tell people cause I do this in PUGs where people are rarely confident of the abilities of the people they are grouping with.

[Zal]

Everyday the trade channel will look like this
[Trade] Zalist: LF healer for H ___, paying 100g plus any repair cost taken during run.
[Pug1] whispers: i'll go!
[Pug2] whispers: i'll go!
[Pug3] whispers: i'll go!
[Pug4] whispers: i'll go!
[Pug5] whispers: i'll go!
[Pug6] whispers: i'll go!

sometimes i wish i 5 boxed

[kadaan]

I 2-boxed quite a bit in BC as Feral Druid tank + Frost Mage. The best ones are when they don't even notice till near the end and ask "Why do I ask the mage a question, but you always answer?" "Because I am the mage. I'm 2-boxing" ".... wow, and you're beating me in dps? wtf?"

I think most puggers just don't realize how boxing works, think you'd have to alt+tab, something that would make you suck. If they give you a chance, I'm sure they'll be impressed and will be more than willing to tag along again :).

[Poetry]

I think most puggers just don't realize how boxing works, think you'd have to alt+tab, something that would make you suck. If they give you a chance, I'm sure they'll be impressed and will be more than willing to tag along again :).

Our guild just has 4 members (friends and family). Two boxers, one former boxer, and one non-boxer. Your post made me think of a conversation we were having with the non-boxer a couple weeks ago about dps, and he figured he should naturally be beating us because he was playing only one toon and we were playing multiples...alas, the damage meter tells him differently every time we run an instance lol. A lot of work and research has gone into great castsequences and optimal synergy to be very efficient. People who have never boxed can have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.

[Biomehanikka]

since i only triple box, i run with my two good guild friends, they pick up the heals and tank so i got a good deal going on. the healer seems to space out alot though lol

[Mooni]

If I play, I sub someone in.
It's really good training and the macros that I've developed as a result of it help my core team too.
I'm a prot pally, 3 elemental shamans and 1 resto shaman. No matter what I bring in I've gotta be quick on re-writing a few macros. Something I learned was that I could keep a spare set of macros around for everyone I ever PuG with, but that takes up a hell of a lot of room. So better I just add /target whoever into the macro for my offline member.
Yeah yeah I know, this wasn't a question about macros and stuff, but here it comes anyway. Here's my team:

Pomme (tank)
Sangarde (Alpha female DPS)
Snew (DPS)
Tweet (DPS)
Shingo (healer)

I don't know if your server is like mines, but even though we're not a PvP server 99% of the server is DPS specced folks. So chances are I'm ditching one of my DPS to bring someone along. That means either Snew or Tweet get replaced.
I needed a way to not only heal the person if they're a meleer, but also if they're ranged and can't just mooch chain heals off of my tank. So it's like this:

Sangarde has a HEAL SNEW macro:
/target snew
/cast [modifier:alt] chain heal; lesser healing wave

In fact Tweet and Shingo and Snew have it too. Shingo I just add a /castrandom and riptide in because he's resto spec. If I hold down alt while I hit it, all of the shamans chain heal that target. If I don't hold down alt and hit it, all of the shamans lesser healing wave that person.
So let's say I invite Doomchickenstein and Xkcd along because they have leet boomkin and DK DPS. I'm gonna kick Snew and Tweet. Instead of moving macros around, or making special ones, I'll just add into the old heal snew macro one more line.
/target xkcd
/target snew
/cast [modifier:alt] chain heal; lesser healing wave

Now since Snew's not online and I'm grouping with xkcd, I'm just gonna hit that macro and it'll heal xkcd. Later when he says "g2g I hear my mom coming upstairs kkbyelol" I just boot up snew and without having to swap any macros, she's back in the healing party. The computer won't target xkcd because he's now off in bed pretending to be asleep. Just like it wouldn't target snew while I booted her. So same thing for the tweet macro, I add in one line on all the shamans for Doomchickenstein which takes less than 30 seconds total.
/target tweet
/target doomchickenstein
/castrandom [modifier:alt] chain heal; lesser healing wave, riptide

okay this time I showed you the resto version in case anyone wanted to ask. If tweet's offline it'll heal whoever I put in there. If she's online (and they're not) it'll heal her and not them. Hold down alt, and it'll chain heal them (for whatever reason; usually because I like making green layzor beams)

Back to the subject, like I said: It's great training to work with different types of people. Rogues, whirlwindy warriors, DKs who death grip stuff, druids who hurricane as soon as you pull - you can't know how to deal with everything that goes wrong until you make a few mistakes! So don't be afraid to, it's worth it. They're usually greatful to have someone to run heroics on their new alt with anyway.

-Mooni

[Bigfish]

I try to avoid it, mostly because I'm not going to work up healing macros for people who shouldn't be taking damage anyway.

[siphon232]

i'm running dk and 4 ele shaman. macro for allowing others in without having to change stuff around alot is party based

shaman

/target party2

/cast chain heal

etc for other shamans just change the party number. 3 chain heals go off as long as the guy is close by he gets a splash.

Usually only allow dps or healers in so its usually not a problem as long as i tank.

[Orshok]

At level 70, my hunter was with my guild in utgarde keep. for the 5th dps, we couldnt find so I proposed to dual-box my elem shaman. Everything went smoothly but for the last boss, they were afraid of my box and asked another elem shaman to join. The new guy had less spellpower, didnt want to heal at all. We wiped and finally stopped the run.

[Feider]

they were afraid of my boxhehehe

[Kel]

I've instanced with others only 3 times I think, first was a pug to DM on my 2 mages, it wasn't great because that was very early on in my MB days and I had quite a few macro glitches (cc particularly wasn't working very well), second was a run with friends, but it was a ruched thing and I wasn't set up very well for the characters I was boxing, so didn't really contribute a lot to the group. Much more recently I ran ZF with my 2 shaman (both as dps because I haven't set them up for proper healing), it went better than my previous attempts, but stuff like making sure my alt is facing the right way and not pipping over when my main got hexxed were not handled by me very well. I was a bit overlevelled for it though (50 or 51) and so ended up pulling agro off the tank quite a bit, but was able to get through without being too much of a pain to our healer (who I think did really well being that they were only level 40 and ret specced). We 4 manned (a dps left after a bad pull led to a wipe) most of it, but couldn't manage Gahzrilla before people had to leave (partly I think due to my toons being in the same place and so both getting thrown in the air and taking a lot of fall damage).

I think it's probably easier to MB in an instance if you have only one role to cover (i.e. dps), I'd like to try healing at some point, but I think that will need a lot of thought to set up so that I can lead on the healer and more or less forget about what the dps is doing (other than pushing the cast button of course). Maybe where I don't MB that often I feel like I'm not performing as well as I should be and I hate being below par in the game (I also hate this if I'm covereing a role solo that I don't usually play and am not comfortable with), but I'd also like to practice and hopefully improve. The last group I had were very good about me MBing, the one that left either didn't notice or didn't care, but the two who stayed were interested in what I was doing and how and one of them added me to their friends list.

I'm rambling... but I think as someone who can't solo an instance at the appropriate level it's nice to still be able to have the instance experience. I'm always a little aprehensive about what people will think of me and if I'll bring the group down/get blamed if things don't go so well. I felt like that when I first started playing the game though, so maybe I just need more experience to get used to grouping on more than one character at a time.

[Catamer]

I 5 box but eventually I end up dropping one of mine to bring in a guild mate or a friend.
I find how things stack up make a big difference in the outcome of having a PUG or Guild mate with me.
for example, my macros are set to heal my main tank or do a general group heal so bringing in a melee DPS is usually not a good thing.... they die and I end 4 boxing the boss.
bringing in a healer is almost always fine.
bringing in a ranged DPS is almost always fine.
swapping out the tank can be tricky because again, my macros are to assist and follow the focus and it's hard to switch focus to the alt-tank and then follow one of my own, but we usually survive this as well. I could fix this but for just one run, what's the point.

[zanthor]

I boxed my shamans as elemental to 60 with raf, 70 before Lich King released but didn't really have time to gear up there... and then the old quest grind to 80. Picked one out and made him a healer since the guild needed it - and ran heroics til I was sick, naxx 10 until we recruited enough for 25's and am now sitting in full T7.5 healing and mixed T7/7.5 DPS gear...

The other four are a hodge podge of gear from just quests/factions all the way up to 25 man naxx gear as well - I've run between 2 and 5 in pug groups with much success.

My favorite would have to be when I joined a PUG Heroic Nexus with two of my shaman and was asked by one of the two DK's in the group if I could really do DPS on both... he doubted me and gave me shit before we started, but the leader and healer were both OK with it. Ends up that I blew him away by a solid 500dps on both my guys. The leader dropped that DK and pugged a new dps before we cleared 3 more heroics :).

[Bigfish]

Maybe its just me, but I'm starting to see a pattern of people who can't play 1 character well not believing someone could play more than 2 or more and still do better than them.

[puppychow]

I just did a os10 and the off tank and 2nd healer were both idiots, the raid leader was about to call the raid and I asked him for raid leader. I kicked the two idiots, invited two of my shamans (I was going as DK tank), and we 1 shotted the boss with a single tank, single priest healer, and my shamans DPSing and healing me (a fury warr "OTd" inside the portals, and I OTd the flame adds and boss) Thats at least 7 new people who love dual/triple boxers!

[algol]

Maybe its just me, but I'm starting to see a pattern of people who can't play 1 character well not believing someone could play more than 2 or more and still do better than them.

Back when I was a solo, I ran a few dungeons with boxers. Usually I found out about this once we were inside - which didn't help impressions in the least. Also most of them sucked - the added difficulty helps not at all if you can't play only one well to start with. Part of why it took me so long to get into boxing, really. Too many idiots trying to be sneaky about it and sucking in PUGs.

[Mooni]

I try to avoid it, mostly because I'm not going to work up healing macros for people who shouldn't be taking damage anyway.I can't think of any instances nowadays where this is true. Just like outlands, Northrend is full of gimmicky instances and boss fights where you MUST bring a tank and yet the tank is USELESS because there's untauntable mobs and whatnot.
I hold myself to a higher standard as a boxer; I am the tank, I am the healer, if someone comes along and dies it's not okay for me to say "well you shouldn't have been taking damage anyway sooooo....."
That's why I take 30 seconds and sub them into the healing macros for whichever of my alts are benched.