What are my best options of starting as a fresh multiboxer?

[aviationizhere]

After taking a long break from wow playing single characters I'd love to start boxing and be ready to level in cataclysm. My old account has a 80 paladin in some hateful ret / holy gear, and a 80 druid in some hateful resto gear. Would my best bet be boosting my boxing characters in instances while they are on refer a friend or would questing with them be faster? From what I've read you need a prot pally or other tank to boost efficiently and I don't have any tanking gear for either class.

I'd love to make 5 elemental shaman but know it would be more difficult to get them all arena gear as that setup doesn't work as well as 4 elemental / healer. Is it possible to add all 5 shamans to a 5v5 team and play enough games per week for points on the 5th shaman? Lastly how effective are 5 elemental shaman at PvE in general and at what point will you need to start grouping with a tank to clear content? Thank you in advance :P

[alcattle]

A lot of questions, need more information. No matter what you want Raf is the faster way to level. I would split it up between running dungeaons and quests. you can also run BGs for honor when near a top of level (19,29,39) and then from 71- 79 run AV for super honor and leveling.
Once you get to Northrend you need a tank for instances. Since you have the Pally, dual spec him. Same with a Druid, Feral can run everything until you get to heroics.
When they all are at 80, you get to start over with the end game :D

[Ualaa]

I'm going to assume your computer can handle 5x warcraft.
If you're not sure, you can send yourself RAF invitations from your account management page, and see how it handles 5x wow.

Battlechests are cheaper then WoW + BC. You'll need WotLK too.
You'll want to set up a chain like this:
A - B - C - D - E

Send an RAF invitation from your existing (A) account.
Use the email to start your account.
Upgrade it with a retail CD-key.
Use the account management from the 2nd account to send the next RAF invitation.
Repeat until you have 4 RAF invites.

You'll need boxing software of some sort.
Or to hardware box.

I'm a big fan of IS Boxer, my signature is a guide to it.
This is a subscription program, $36/year.
But you can fairly easily configure it to do just about anything.
You only really need the wizard to get going, but there are lots of tweaks you can do.

There are other options, HKN is as strong and is free, but is script based so harder to tweak.
AutoHotKey, GameCommanderPro, Keyclone and Octopus are other options.

You'll want to group all 5 toons together.
4x new shamans + 1x existing paladin.
Quest to 10th.
10-17 Deadmines
17-20 Stockades
20-45 Scarlet Monastery
45-55 Strat
55-60 Ramparts
60-66 Underbog
66-68 Black Morass
68+ Northrend.

If your toons are Horde, 11-20 Shadowfang Keep is the alteration.

I would suggest several teams from 1-60, during RAF.
The more teams you level, the more options you'll have down the road.
And the more levels you'll have to grant to your teams.

Since you already have a Paladin and Druid on (A)...
I'd consider leveling:
4x Druid, 4x Pally, 4x Shaman, 4x Warlock...
Whatever you think you *might* want to try down the road.

If you level 4 teams 1st to 60th (approximately 1 week each team, playing casually with a booster)...
You can grant a total of 4x30 levels.
Well more then that, they cascade.. see http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=23605
But that's at least 2 toons on A, and you already have the Pally & Druid.

For the 68+ grind, you have a few options.
You can quest, and I'd do this with one team.
Collections can suck, but they usually open more quests.
And with Assist Main to target a corpse, and Interact With Target, you can frequently loot with all your toons.

Get a team to 71st, and then AV a lot.
This is another way to level and you can mix it with quests.

Another approach is to instance to level.
This is good too.

Keybind - Interact With Target.
And enable (in interface - mouse options) "click to move" on at least your slaves.

Get the Jamba addon, without a question.
This makes boxing 100x easier.

You can BG with 5x anything, so 5x shaman will definitely work.
You won't win much in arena when you're starting, but play your 10 games every week even if you lose every one of them.
At this stage its more about the points then winning.
As you approach full honor gear, try to find a healer type.
Shammies generally do best with Pallies or Druids, but any healer works.

To get points, your team needs to play at least 10 games.
And each member needs to play at least 30% of the games.
Each shammy plays 80% of the games if you go:
ABCD, BCDE, CDEA, DEAB, EABC (twice).

5 Shammies are great for quests.
But then 4 shammies and a pally are too.
I would personally go 4x Shaman and 1x Paladin.
And not even bother with the 5th shaman subbed in.

[Naxxz]

I'm going to assume your computer can handle 5x warcraft.
If you're not sure, you can send yourself RAF invitations from your account management page, and see how it handles 5x wow.

Battlechests are cheaper then WoW + BC. You'll need WotLK too.
You'll want to set up a chain like this:
A - B - C - D - E

Send an RAF invitation from your existing (A) account.
Use the email to start your account.
Upgrade it with a retail CD-key.
Use the account management from the 2nd account to send the next RAF invitation.
Repeat until you have 4 RAF invites.

You'll need boxing software of some sort.
Or to hardware box.

I'm a big fan of IS Boxer, my signature is a guide to it.
This is a subscription program, $36/year.
But you can fairly easily configure it to do just about anything.
You only really need the wizard to get going, but there are lots of tweaks you can do.

There are other options, HKN is as strong and is free, but is script based so harder to tweak.
AutoHotKey, GameCommanderPro, Keyclone and Octopus are other options.

You'll want to group all 5 toons together.
4x new shamans + 1x existing paladin.
Quest to 10th.
10-17 Deadmines
17-20 Stockades
20-45 Scarlet Monastery
45-55 Strat
55-60 Ramparts
60-66 Underbog
66-68 Black Morass
68+ Northrend.

If your toons are Horde, 11-20 Shadowfang Keep is the alteration.

I would suggest several teams from 1-60, during RAF.
The more teams you level, the more options you'll have down the road.
And the more levels you'll have to grant to your teams.

Since you already have a Paladin and Druid on (A)...
I'd consider leveling:
4x Druid, 4x Pally, 4x Shaman, 4x Warlock...
Whatever you think you *might* want to try down the road.

If you level 4 teams 1st to 60th (approximately 1 week each team, playing casually with a booster)...
You can grant a total of 4x30 levels.
Well more then that, they cascade.. see http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=23605
But that's at least 2 toons on A, and you already have the Pally & Druid.

For the 68+ grind, you have a few options.
You can quest, and I'd do this with one team.
Collections can suck, but they usually open more quests.
And with Assist Main to target a corpse, and Interact With Target, you can frequently loot with all your toons.

Get a team to 71st, and then AV a lot.
This is another way to level and you can mix it with quests.

Another approach is to instance to level.
This is good too.

Keybind - Interact With Target.
And enable (in interface - mouse options) "click to move" on at least your slaves.

Get the Jamba addon, without a question.
This makes boxing 100x easier.

You can BG with 5x anything, so 5x shaman will definitely work.
You won't win much in arena when you're starting, but play your 10 games every week even if you lose every one of them.
At this stage its more about the points then winning.
As you approach full honor gear, try to find a healer type.
Shammies generally do best with Pallies or Druids, but any healer works.

To get points, your team needs to play at least 10 games.
And each member needs to play at least 30% of the games.
Each shammy plays 80% of the games if you go:
ABCD, BCDE, CDEA, DEAB, EABC (twice).

5 Shammies are great for quests.
But then 4 shammies and a pally are too.
I would personally go 4x Shaman and 1x Paladin.
And not even bother with the 5th shaman subbed in.


Very nice write up mate, 10/10 (Favorited this shizzle :D )

[Mokoi]

You really have to ask yourself what you want to do? Do you want to solo 5man heroics? do you want to be kick some ass in BGs?

If you want to do PvE, then I suggest at the minimum, lvling 4 shamans and then hooking up with your paladin at 80 to do heroics. If PvP is your thing, then find out what classes you like. Shaman in arena are much harder than they were in BC and only a select few people have been really competitive with it. If this is your first team, please do not expect to run into arena with 4 shamans and dominate for a long time. I have full furious shamans and find arenas just too frustrating for the amount of time it takes to get good, improve rating etc.

For grinding, take your druid get some feral gear and boost with him, it's going to be much faster than your paladin, guaranteed. A bear will destroy more than a prot pally, and a cat will own even more face with less mobs around.

But first, decide what you want to do. Multiboxing is fun, but it is not as easy as everyone here makes it out to be at first, some of us have been at it for years and have yet to really chunk what we want out of our teams.

Really not trying to be a downer, just be realistic with your goals. if you want arena, 4 shamans. if you want BGs, 4 or 5 shamans is fine, if you want to do ANY PvE content, you cna do it with 5 shamans, but your life gets much easier with a pally tank.

And yes, while your RAF is active, lvl a multitude of teams to 60, and get classes that mix well, druids shamans warlocks priests dks paladins whatever you like, but RAF boosting to 60 is retarded easy and this will save you time in the future when you DO decide you want a mixed team.

[aviationizhere]

This is great information thanks a ton! I would really like to make 5 shamans for world pvp mostly but I also love arena/bgs and would at least want the best gear each season. Is leveling through bgs viable as last I read it was slower than questing / instances. If I did boost with my paladin or druid but also wanted to make 5 shamans is their a method to equally level them all?

[Starbuck_Jones]

I prefer to boost this way.
10-20 Shadowfang keep
20-35 Scarlet monistary
35-45 Sunken Temple
45-60 Scholomance.

Much less running around. Also all these instances are on the same continent so no going back and fourth. Last time I ground this out, it took about 12-13h of played time RAFing with a 80 paladin and 4 shaman that just sat there. Also you never have to move your slaves, they will get full xp by just standing at the entrance to these zones.

You dont need any special tank gear for your paladin. Seal of light, blessing of sanctuary, and reckoning talent is all you need. You wont ever have to heal or wait for mana as long as you pull massive mobs. Just go buy a stack of saronite from the AH and have someone pound out 5 shields for you. Just destroy them when they break, its not worth repairing as making new ones are 100x cheaper.

[Drommon]

I'm going to assume your computer can handle 5x warcraft.
If you're not sure, you can send yourself RAF invitations from your account management page, and see how it handles 5x wow.

Battlechests are cheaper then WoW + BC. You'll need WotLK too.
You'll want to set up a chain like this:
A - B - C - D - E

Send an RAF invitation from your existing (A) account.
Use the email to start your account.
Upgrade it with a retail CD-key.
Use the account management from the 2nd account to send the next RAF invitation.
Repeat until you have 4 RAF invites.

You'll need boxing software of some sort.
Or to hardware box.

I'm a big fan of IS Boxer, my signature is a guide to it.
This is a subscription program, $36/year.
But you can fairly easily configure it to do just about anything.
You only really need the wizard to get going, but there are lots of tweaks you can do.

There are other options, HKN is as strong and is free, but is script based so harder to tweak.
AutoHotKey, GameCommanderPro, Keyclone and Octopus are other options.

You'll want to group all 5 toons together.
4x new shamans + 1x existing paladin.
Quest to 10th.
10-17 Deadmines
17-20 Stockades
20-45 Scarlet Monastery
45-55 Strat
55-60 Ramparts
60-66 Underbog
66-68 Black Morass
68+ Northrend.

If your toons are Horde, 11-20 Shadowfang Keep is the alteration.

I would suggest several teams from 1-60, during RAF.
The more teams you level, the more options you'll have down the road.
And the more levels you'll have to grant to your teams.

Since you already have a Paladin and Druid on (A)...
I'd consider leveling:
4x Druid, 4x Pally, 4x Shaman, 4x Warlock...
Whatever you think you *might* want to try down the road.

If you level 4 teams 1st to 60th (approximately 1 week each team, playing casually with a booster)...
You can grant a total of 4x30 levels.
Well more then that, they cascade.. see http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=23605
But that's at least 2 toons on A, and you already have the Pally & Druid.

For the 68+ grind, you have a few options.
You can quest, and I'd do this with one team.
Collections can suck, but they usually open more quests.
And with Assist Main to target a corpse, and Interact With Target, you can frequently loot with all your toons.

Get a team to 71st, and then AV a lot.
This is another way to level and you can mix it with quests.

Another approach is to instance to level.
This is good too.

Keybind - Interact With Target.
And enable (in interface - mouse options) "click to move" on at least your slaves.

Get the Jamba addon, without a question.
This makes boxing 100x easier.

You can BG with 5x anything, so 5x shaman will definitely work.
You won't win much in arena when you're starting, but play your 10 games every week even if you lose every one of them.
At this stage its more about the points then winning.
As you approach full honor gear, try to find a healer type.
Shammies generally do best with Pallies or Druids, but any healer works.

To get points, your team needs to play at least 10 games.
And each member needs to play at least 30% of the games.
Each shammy plays 80% of the games if you go:
ABCD, BCDE, CDEA, DEAB, EABC (twice).

5 Shammies are great for quests.
But then 4 shammies and a pally are too.
I would personally go 4x Shaman and 1x Paladin.
And not even bother with the 5th shaman subbed in.

Ualaa,

Your comments are generally very descriptive and complete. I vote to have this comment and many others by Ualaa stickied or put in wiki.

Drommon

[Ualaa]

This is great information thanks a ton! I would really like to make 5 shamans for world pvp mostly but I also love arena/bgs and would at least want the best gear each season. Is leveling through bgs viable as last I read it was slower than questing / instances. If I did boost with my paladin or druid but also wanted to make 5 shamans is their a method to equally level them all?

BG experience is slower then quest experience. Instances with a tank would probably be faster, but a lot of us have done 5x Shaman with Earth Elementals for pve; leveling you won't likely be doing heroics, so this can work.

A note on the BG experience... You are simultaneously leveling your team and accruing honor, which means you'll likely have 3-4 pieces of honor purchased level 80 gear, when you reach 80th. This is a pretty big and immediate equipment upgrade.

The easiest way to level 5x the same class, or any 5x mixed composition, is to group them together and level as a team. It will be slower then 4x and a booster, but they will level together. You can also go 4x and a booster, and then use granted levels to create a level 60 on the boosting account. The RAF sticky thread shows this. Pretty sure I linked it in the first post.