Gearing at 80 - Heroics as a multiboxed team - Worth it?

[Rin]

I'm writing this in the hopes that I can spark a discussion on the effectiveness of gearing in Heroic instances with a multiboxed team. Having leveled different teams and groups up to 80, I'm starting to believe that its faster to simply run raids (or run Heroics w/ one character) and get geared right away at 80, rather than dealing with Heroic dungeons as a 5-boxed unit. From what I have experienced, getting a group together for a 10 or 25 man raid (namely Naxxramas, since thats where the majority of the loot at 80 comes from), is relatively simple. I've never logged on and not seen at least 5-10 different raids form during any given night. Having participated in these PuG raids, the only complaint that I care to make is that sometimes people leave early (RL > WoW anyways), so the raids don't always complete, but for the most part, PuG teams can clear the dungeon in a casual evening (~4 hrs, 6 hrs if the dps is terribad (~1500)).

The other thing that I've noticed is that you don't need to be well geared in order to deal with the entry level raids. I have cleared Naxx with an average of about 1500 dps (some people coming in at under 1000 - don't even know how this is possible to have such low numbers at 80, unless someone is in ALL greens, but whatever). In a complete raid run, typically I find myself winning 2-4+ items (plus off spec stuff if no one wants it). In one run of both Naxx 10/25, one of your characters could end up with 4-8+ items, plus 16 emblems of Heroism, and 16 emblems of Valor.

When I think about my characters as a multiboxed team, I realize that immedieatly at 80, you're not going to walk into Heroic Azjol-Nerub and clear it (if you do, more power to you). Nor are you going to do this in UP or the Halls of Stone. It seems like if you pick a day to split one character apart from your team, you can get a lot more done. Last Saturday for example, I took a break from my Ulduar raid shammi, and began working with my other elemental shaman. By the end of the day I ended up with a couple of off-spec items, 40+ emblems of heroism, ~150 gold after repairs (no dailies), and 2-3 epics. I went from about 1600 dps in the morning to 2500 dps by the evening. All I'm missing now on Shaman #2 are raid based items (this week), before I can break 3k with her as well.

All too often, I see people on these forums either unable to complete an encounter because their not geared enough, or unable to do it because of the steep learning curve. Since I have only been 80 for two weeks on my new team and have I have one character nearly fully raid geared, while another one of my characters is "raid ready" at 2500 dps, It just seems to me like the "not geared enough" scenario can be fixed so easily that it amazes me that other's haven't just started out by gearing up 1 toon at a time. At this rate, and unless if I just /quitwow I'd be amazed to say that I wouldn't have my entire 5-box team in 4/5 7.5+ by the end of the month/early next month. I don't get why others would want to struggle through things when they can take the one character at a time method and accomplish more. Thoughts?

[Bollwerk]

I've thought a lot about this too. I also feel that it's more effective to just run PUG Naxx with one toon at a time, rather than run Heroics. The problem that I run into though is that many PUGs I've been in are horrific and can't clear in a single night. =(

I do think it's nice to have the option to do either at least. More choices is always good. I would like to see more 5-man instances like Magister's Terrace though, where all the boss drops are epic when on Heroic.

[Greythan]

You can do heroic Gundrak in shiny greens.

There are a ton of upgrades in that heroic alone for a newly minted 80 team and it gives you 2100 rep along with 5 emblems per run. Takes no more than 60 to 90 minutes for the non-overgeared.

I didn't leave there until I had some gear, but my few runs of heroic UK lead me to believe that could get on farm status pretty quickly for a new 80's team as well. More upgrades.

So, between rep being generated on ALL FIVE toons concurrently, drops, and emblems its a pretty fast and predicable way to gear up at 80.

[Enndo]

Getting a pug for naxx is really easy, but lately ive been having more fun running my lowbie 5 man teams through old school instances like mara and sunken temple,its been so long since ive been able to run those instances since no one is ever trying to do them anymore, ill get a team to 80 one day lol but for now i like the pre bc stuff.

[Taliesin]

Depends what your goal is, I guess.

Mine was partly to have the challenge of doing things solo. Right after hitting 80 and setting up my macros, I was doing H UK (skipping Prince) and Drak'tharon (skipping Novos) nightly for epics and emblems with my mixed group. By the end of a week, I was doing H HoL and Gundrak. Didn't take much longer than a week to have several epic drops on each toon, exalted with Kirin Tor on each (more items/enchants), lots of DE'd shards for pattern buying, and enough emblems to at least buy an emblem belt/neck/whatever (not quite gloves or chest yet) on each toon.

I hadn't really thought about doing Naxx, since this was back in the "you must have 2000+ DPS or go away" days of Naxx pugging at the beginning. I at least wanted to get pretty close to raid hit cap before I got into raiding, but it's not necessary. Naxx 10 is the same item quality as heroics (not counting KT), so it's just a matter of deciding what items give you the best itemization you are looking for on a particular toon. Naxx definitely has some items I want, like set gear for the bonuses, but nearly every heroic has at least some other item I want (heck, the defense trinket from Loken on regular HoL was pretty huge). What I didn't like was the big time sink I would have to sit through for probably several nights for maybe 2-3 items that I might win rolls on, and for only one toon.

If you can get into a Naxx run, then its probably worth it, but those nights where you don't have a group, you might as well do heroics for even more items. Heroics can get all your guys more Naxx capable faster than running Naxx individually, in my estimation. But if Naxx is your goal, then I wouldn't tell anyone not to do that. Do what you think is more fun.

[Svpernova09]

The issue I run into on my server, is there are TONS AND TONS of Naxx Pugs, but most are very, very terrible and you'll spend an entire night on 1 boss. I took my main shaman as resto (with decent gear, crafted epics and BoE's) to Naxx 10, and it was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. So for now I stick to gearing my toons in crafted epics to meet some miniumums to get into guild alt runs, or try to pug with more respectable people. Trouble is, there are many more bad pugs than good ones. Everyone wants to be carried. I don't mind doing the legwork, but I refuse to carry idiots that just want PURPLEZ.

[Hachoo]

5 boxing heroics to get gear is gauranteed gear. In multiple ways - you get emblems, you get blue and epic gear drops, you get rep that will allow you access to epic rep items, and they can be done very fast with no reliance on anyone else.

If you KNOW you have a very good Naxx group, there is a decent chance naxx will get you more gear, but that would depend on a lot of factors - you will be rolling against a lot of other people, if you're 5 boxing they might only let you roll once, if you're single boxing you'd have to run naxx 5 times which would take something like 30-40 hours in a pug.

Bottom line is you should do both. You can only run naxx once a week, but you can run heroics every day. especially when you first start out the gear from heroics will be great. I can honestly say I've never successfully pugged naxx - mostly because it takes >2hrs most of the time for the pug just to find a full group and get to the instance and start, and then if the pug falls apart due to a bad group you start over. Then factor in that you may not even win any drops and be stuck with only emblems.

The emblem/hr of naxx with a pug is much slower than the emblem/hr of heroics, especially if you factor in the heroic daily.

So a balance of both is good - but heroics are guaranteed gear, naxx isn't, and naxx would be far more frustrating on average. Also if you can't 5 box naxx, or you can 5 box it but can only roll once, then heroics will be much faster.

[Rin]

Thank you all for your responses. Please allow me to pose another question, if I may:

It seems like upon hitting 80 with a "fresh" team, there's only 2-3 Heroics that you can complete without ending up with ultra high repair bills. Since you can only do these 2-3 heroics (and since you're brand spanking new at 80, they're not going to go quickly), isn't it more effective to take 1 of your characters and simply PuG 6-9 of the Heroic dungeons (to get decently equipped) in one night? There's at least 1 upgrade in just about every heroic dungeon (not going to include badges here), and at this point in the game, odds are you will be the only uber needy character in your group. In theory (provided you gain at least 5 items in the night + enough badges to buy a shield :P ), wouldn't this make things easier to deal with for your multibox group?

For example, take a look at my non-Ulduar, "raid ready" (only 2,500 dps) character that I mentioned earlier: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&cn=C%C3%A2ndy&gn=The+Fellowsh%C3%AEp

7 (6 drops, 1 badge) of her items she received in 1 day of running Heroics with random people. She also has some offspec enhancement naxx stuff. As you can see, most of those items come from the "harder" Heroics, that aren't going to be doable (without lots of dying) multiboxing, right away at 80. I guess that's why I feel it's more effective to take one character and gear it up. Please let me know your thoughts.

[Crucial]

The problem with PUGing to gear up is that it flys directly in the face of why a lot of us multibox in the first place. Not being subject to the whims of others for 4-6 hours at a time with the 'hope' of a drop. I suppose if you don't mind it could be a faster way to gear up you've got a good reliable group to lean on but it's dependant on a lot of the factors mentioned already above. If I could mutlibox raids with fellow boxers that would be my ideal situation, unfortunately I don't think theres anyone else on Durotan alliance side except for one other boxer. Time to transfer or re-roll....

[Hachoo]

For many of the heroics, only your tank being geared matters a lot. And the good thing about that is you can get your tank into about 2/3 epic gear, maybe 3/4, the moment you hit 80 with a decent amount of money. As a multiboxer, making money is trivial at worst, so getting enough to just throw epic gear at your characters shouldn't take too long if you just finish all the quests in storm peaks, icecrown, etc.

Funny enough I just finished leveling my Druid solo boxing to 80, and I actually dinged 80 about halfway through zul'drak, leaving me half of zul, all of sholazar, storm peaks, and ice crown for leftover quests. If I could have done this x5 multiboxing it would be a crapton of money. Even as a solo boxer its quite a lot of money left.

Just something to think about. Now if you dont have the money or are unwilling to spend it, then jumping right into a heroic as a boxer at 80 is very tough. My recommendation is to at least get 5 epic weapons, and then buy every tanking epic available at 80 (valor bracers, tempered titansteel gear, titanium earthguard gear, etc).

IMO any way you look at it pugging heroics on 1 character is just way, way slower than multiboxing heroics. Unless you get a really good pug group, which you probably won't if you just hit 80, it will take you at least as long to pug 1 heroic as it will take to complete it as a multiboxer wiping 7-10 times during the run :)

[Crucial]

Good points, I guess the next question is what do you do after you've cleared all the heroics and geared up nicely but the multiboxing community is not large enough on your realm to try anything bigger?

[Hachoo]

Good points, I guess the next question is what do you do after you've cleared all the heroics and geared up nicely but the multiboxing community is not large enough on your realm to try anything bigger?That is the $1,000,000 question. For me the answer was cancel all my slave accounts and stop multiboxing. Was fun while it lasted but now that I'm back in my old guild full of cool people I'm enjoying single boxing more than I did multiboxing.

[Malekyth]

It takes me a few minutes to gear my brain into this discussion (not that I have much to contribute), because for me, the goal has always been to run heroics. The idea of gearing up to run something other than the next harder heroic in the sequence is not immediately graspable to me!

Though, as a result of running heroics, reaching toward my goals and having a good time, I *could raid now. I think about it now and then, usually when a friend on another server reports his guild's latest slaughtering of some ridiculous boss or other. For reasons already stated in this thread (waiting for hours for a group followed by a crappy run with a repair bill), and that I don't intend to stop multiboxing so don't want to join anyone else's guild, I doubt it'll happen.

I think my own answer to the $1,000,000 question is ... dude, I've got three other teams to play, and I don't yet have a single Raven Lord mount. :)

[Enndo]

Yeah I definately wanna farm mounts for whatever toon I decided is going to be my main whenever I get around to 80 lol. Tiger from ZG, ravenlord, the white ostrich from mgt, rivendares mount, attunemens steed, headless horsemans mount (in october lol) and the epic flyer Hachoo has, the blue proto drake lol.

[Clone]

Yeh I think the answer here is that its gonna be different for every person. On my server I cant even get into a Naxx pug with a single character because I dont have the achievement to link them already -.- I am fresh at 80 though so give me a few weeks of gearing and im sure Ill be making the same decision about wether I want to spend my time in a PUG or do it the hard way and go solo all the way. Personally Im thinking Ill just do a bit of both depending how tolerant im feeling on a given day :)

Edit: One thing I definately want to do when Ive got some gear though is go back through as many wow classic dungeons and raids again for nostalgia purposes, then possibly move onto tbc stuff, tho I think ive seen most of that enough to last a life time!

[Marious]

I have been 80 for a few weeks now with the team, originally my pally got to 80 and started to run heroics. I can clear UK no problem, I can clear Gundrak with some difficulty on second boss, first boss of UP for an easy emblem, DTK for an easy few other emblems, and CoT for another few easy emblems, take maybe an hour if everything goes well with every instance, per instance. So that's 3 in UP, 3-5 in Gun if I feel like clearing it but sometimes second boss gets frustrating and I just say screw it, 1 in UP I only do first boss, I get my butt whooped by other bosses and gauntlet sucks. And CoT in itself is an easy 4 other emblems, so 3+3 to 5+1+4= 11-13 for me so not too bad and the rep I make with the given place I am running for is great, that is one thing that the heroics have over running Naxx, there is no rep gain in Naxx at all. And then you dont have to deal with the horribad PUGS you can get into, any PUG you get into can turn out bad so why take the chance when you have your own group.

[Dorffo]

Good points, I guess the next question is what do you do after you've cleared all the heroics and geared up nicely but the multiboxing community is not large enough on your realm to try anything bigger?That is the question I'm tossing around right now. Two months into 80, i've purchased all Emblem of Heroism gear available and aside from a couple items that just won't drop for me, I've pulled everything I need out of all heroics. I'm working on the Glory of the Hero meta now for kicks inbetween Naxx and Ulduar runs.

As far as gearing up in heroics as a full team vs. running solo: (pal + sham)

Freshly dinged at 80 I was able to do Heroic culling of Stratholme then jumped in and did Gundrak and Utgarde Keep. After a few days of hammering on those and getting them down to reasonable runs I had snagged a couple decent drops for the team as well as enough emblems to snag the first emblem gear. From there I was able to steadily add new instances every couple days IIRC. I did blow a chunk of cash on my tank to get him up to Defense cap, and had 4 Titansteel guardians crafted for the sham (which 3/4 are still using).

I chose to run the whole team through heroics as a unit so I could get emblem gear at the same pace; and since emblems were my focus rather then heroic drops it made the most sense to me to run them all at once. Once I had purchased everything I needed with emblems I started running 4 + 1 guildy if anyone needed a particular instance.

It hasn't become clear to me yet whether or not I will continue to bring multiple toons to raids - Naxx is pretty easy to bring 4 or 5 in (either 10s or 25s) but Ulduar is kicking my butt. At this stage, I will likely be shutting down 3 slave accounts and just keeping my tank and main shaman (the accounts also have my priest/mage duo).

Raid gear is shiny and sexy, but the thought of running multiple toons through PuG raids to gear them up independently sounds painful to me. If I am not playing all of them at once in a raid, I will likely not be in a situation where having that extra iLevel on the groups' gear will make that much of a difference - fully kitted out in Heroic level gear makes herocis pretty much a walk in the park (aside from certain encounter mechanics that are unrelated to gear).

[heffner]

Your argument is sound. However, I personally don't play for more than a couple of hours at a time. I don't have time to sit around trying to get a PuG going. So, five boxing heroics or doing dailies to buy gear works out for me. If I did play like I used to (say 6-8 hour sessions) I wouldnt' even have to do heroics for very long [heck, even on my current schedule I don't really need to do that many]. There is no reason to, well besides for fun and the sense of accomplishment. There is a ton of pre-raid gear you can buy or get from rep [at least for the classes I play] that prepares you for Naxx. I also get to play the spec I want.

It also turns out that Naxx isn't all that difficult [never been, but that's my general impression] so things have changed since BC (pre-Kara changes etc) where PuGs now have more success (at least that's what it seems like). Also, my experience in BC was that people were very much unwilling to carry anyone through an instance or raid. If you didn't pass a gear check you weren't going. Maybe that's changed, I dunno.

Also, keep in mind it is now late in the game. People are pretty much geared out, so hitting Nax etc as a new toon will get you a ton of gear.

[Gomotron]

For me, MB'ing has always been about convenience, first and foremost.

I have a set amount of time to play each day, usually not more than 2-3 hours. I don't have time to run Naxx PUG and personally, I find it irritating doing PUG's in general.

I have farmed the same 3 heroics for the last month (Gundrak, Drak'tharon Keep, and Utgarde Keep) and have a lot of upgrades, as well as a ton of DE stuff. I am ready to raid now, if I wanted.

As it is, I am looking to go to Naxx, but with some friends that I have on my server. They are not geared well right now, but we are working towards it. I am also planning on leveling up another group (mixed this time) so that I can continue playing the game on my own terms.

That's what it really boils down to for me: playing the game completely on my own terms. That and the fact that I will know that EVERYTHING that my bots have has been through my hard work alone. I take a bit of pride in knowing this, even though their gear is not that good.

[puppychow]

Figure out why you play first and then go from there. If its to feel like your toon is more powerful (geared) than 50% of the players, then multiboxing isn't that great. You can ding 80 and instantly have epics in virtually every slot crafted/bought from AH, run a naxx25/voa25/os25 pug the very same day and upgrade a few slots. Run ulduar10/25 that same week and be within 90% of the top raider on your server. All within 7 days.

I should know, my DK hit 80 about 2 months ago and within a week he was sitting on insanely great gear and within a month he was pretty much geared BiS in almost everything. You can farm gold much faster 5x but remember you are paying $15x5 as well. Just spending a few hours a week playing the auction house can net you thousands and thousands of gold if you do it right.

On the other hand multiboxing is much more fun for doing things like daily skadi runs (almost impossible to do as fast any other way), clobbering out heroic achievements, getting 5x fishing/cooking quests done, blowing shit up in Wintergrasp, soloing old raids, etc. Its not the "optimal" route for high end PVE anymore, imo.

In TBC it made a lot of sense to multibox PVE since either you did heroics or you did raids, you kind of did have to pick which camp you fell into since high end raiding was difficult and time consuming. In WOTLK you don't have to choose, EVERYONE can single box raid and get the best gear without massive time commitments - my guild does ulduar25 twice a week, if you don't sign up for the week no big deal you don't get gkicked (lol), and we're already at Mimiron (10 bosses in). Ulduar regular mode is really not much harder than Naxx, the hardcore people have the hard modes for the extra challenge.

[Ken]

[...]
isn't it more effective to take 1 of your characters and simply PuG 6-9 of the Heroic dungeons (to get decently equipped) in one night? There's at least 1 upgrade in just about every heroic dungeon (not going to include badges here), and at this point in the game, odds are you will be the only uber needy character in your group. In theory (provided you gain at least 5 items in the night + enough badges to buy a shield :P ), wouldn't this make things easier to deal with for your multibox group?
Heroic PUGs are generally very slow, so you probably won't do 6 in one night(about 4 hours?). Just gathering 1 group for a heroic can take 30 minutes or longer. That's not counting the ones that fall apart before you get to the end boss.
My experience with heroic PUGs (with 1 character) is that average DPS is about 800-1200 and most tanks don't even know what "aggro" means or what happens when plate wearer's defense rating is below 520 535 in a heroic.
This can be solved by doing PUGs as tank or healer of course. Especially if you're a good healer, you can make a difference. Even with crap gear and especially with 'utility' healing classes like a priest or a druid.


For example, take a look at my non-Ulduar, "raid ready" (only 2,500 dps) character that I mentioned earlier: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&cn=C%C3%A2ndy&gn=The+Fellowsh%C3%AEp

7 (6 drops, 1 badge) of her items she received in 1 day of running Heroics with random people. She also has some offspec enhancement naxx stuff. As you can see, most of those items come from the "harder" Heroics, that aren't going to be doable (without lots of dying) multiboxing, right away at 80. I guess that's why I feel it's more effective to take one character and gear it up. Please let me know your thoughts.
The key characters to running your own heroics effectively are your healer and your tank. Get those 2 geared (with PUGs and/or crafted gear) and you're set to go. DPS isn't very important if your healer and tank are well-geared.

[daviddoran]

I think that if you are pugging for fun, then go for it. If Pugging is just a chore so you can roll on gear, then don't do it. I enjoy pugging a bit, so having 5 toons available makes it more enjoyable. I got into a bad pug, got saved to the instance after one boss, and then the raid fell apart. If i only had one toon, i would have been out of the whole place for a week. All I had to do was switch toons and start over. Now my 3 mages are doing much better dps, my priest is pumping out much stronger heals, and my tank can take a few more hits.

It all goes down to one fact. This is a video game. It's supposed to be fun. Do what you enjoy, 5boxing heroics, solo box raiding, multi multibox raid, PvP, etc etc.

[Memn]

I think the best way to gear fresh L80 teams changes over time too. As PvP gear is added with each additional Arena season the value of just gearing by grinding honor increases. This is an upgrade path where you get even, consistent gain on all 5 toons at once. Its fun (for most of us) and it REALLY tests your macros and keybindings for improvement. I have worked on teams in heroics and had adequate macros and bindings for the heroics that were utter fail in PvP... but my PvP inspired configurations have usually been flexible and useful enough to work for heroics too...

If your new to 80... think about grinding the BGs for a bit....

[Knobley]

Hey guys,

I haven't read this entire thread in detail (sorry), but thought that I would mention that it's really easy to get some fairly decent gear from the tournament dailies. It takes a while, in terms of calendar days, to gather the tokens, but it's super easy to get some fairly good gear.

Knobley

[thedreameater]

From what I have experienced, getting a group together for a 10 or 25 man raid (namely Naxxramas, since thats where the majority of the loot at 80 comes from), is relatively simple. I've never logged on and not seen at least 5-10 different raids form during any given night.

You are lucky. You don't play on Ravenholdt US. We have a handful of huge guilds who have stolen all the healers and tanks. What's left is hungry dps. The guild I am in is a bunch of friends, we probably won't even clear Naxx and no one (but me) is willing to tank. Assholes, haha.

The main reason I started boxing was to butcher people in the open world. Tired of pricks camping fellow players - there are a lot of them on my server. As a group of shaman I tip the odds IMMEDIATELY. I thought I would enjoy jumping people, and its funny, but not something I'm into really. Excessive camping is for assholes and I like murdering them. :)

[jstanthr]

the zerg on magtheridon have several "moderatly" active boxers, i myself am in forsaken entities, which i am extremely active and another 10 boxer that is jst as active as me, there is another guy that recently transferred that seems to be pretty active as well, i would love for some of us to get together and make a "boxer" raid, i think it would be uber fun. if any of u guys wish to chat about it u can message me on here, of hop into my vent server iron.typefrag.com port 48069 pass:forsaken my name is jstanthrhntr in there, any of my guildys can tell u where i am or when i'll be back if im not online atm.