10 boxing setup

[mmmbox]

Having 5 box since WotLK came out I've lately been thinking of going 10 box.

The current 5 man content doesn't provide any more challenges, the only instance that is accually hard is HoR and given that it doesnt really have any rewards that would improve my team its kind of a bummer doing instances atm since all i do is stacking gold selling Crusader Orbs, Primordial Saronites and gems.

While gold is always fun to get it never was the goal of my boxing, that was just something that happened.

So yesterday I 5 boxed the weekly on my server (AnubRekan in Naxx) and made my decision to try 10 boxing with the goal of putting as many of the ICC bosses under my sword as possible before the launch of Cataclysm.

My long term goal is to have a fully functional 10 box team by the time Cataclysm is launced with a guild etc :)

Group setup - Current

Paladin - will they ever be rivaled as the ultimate box tanks?
Priest - imo the best box healers there is
x3 hunters - i will swap one of them for a druid, i topped 5k dps on trollgore with my MM hunter (IIC 10 geared mostly 5.3 k GS) so 2 of these will be the "white" dmg you need to avoid things like immunity to spells on for example adds on 2nd boss in ICC

The "others"

Paladin or warrior - im leaning thowards paladin, more buffs, aura etc, just plain easier to have 2 paladin tanks then to add a warrior
x2 Shaman - here im going for 1 Elem 1 Resto x8 totems can never be wrong, right? ;)
Warlock - more dots, dps boosting of other casters, IMP gives more hp etc
Priest - yes my 3rd healer is another priest a bit overlapping on the buffs but still the raid healing is awesome

So why didnt I chose a mage or DK, mages are to DPS focused, to little utility besides INT buff and they have the worst survivalability in a 10 box situation, DK are to complex with thier runes and also having healed, tanked and dps in ICC my experience is that they take the most dmg, produce the least threat on boss encounters.

im curious to see how other 10 boxers do, i dont find alot on these forums anymore about it, perhaps im not looking hard enough :) but also some comments on the group setup from ppl who play other classes then my original 5 box.

Cheers!

[HPAVC]

To much coffee

I am sure you can throw 53k of gearscore at most bosses and win, even if your group is high mixed damage type and redundant buffs, and half your team is non-dps.

There is not much flexibility in dual-specs for your group, just a ret paladin and a shadow priest.

If you augment your group with different classes, I predict a lot of twitch will occur within the Kill Shot and proc management area that will make those classes very low performers and bleed out the raid. Only so much twitch you can introduce before your raid is suffering a lot of DPS issues.

[Gormand]

My ultimate 10 boxing I think would be a bit different
Tanks
Pally & DK - DKs have awesome snap threat and the best AoE for more then 3 mobs. While they dont have the tricks of Pallys they do have Death Grip & Strangulate to take care of those annoying caster mobs.

Healers - Damn this is hard. My main single toon is a Disc priest so I think about healing a bit more then the rest :)
So
Disc priest - Dedicated Tank healer, would have a cast sequence for heaving incoming damage fights to use shields, penance, Prayer of mending when on cooldown and fill in the rest with flash heals.
Resto Druid - HoTs on tank and on the people taking the most damage. Harder to manage but if you need to move your healers they can keep on healing.
For a third I am torm between a Holy Priest - Raid healer, Circle of healing, renew etc etc or Resto Shaman - Chain heal FTW, totems, Earth shield, etc

Could maybe sub out Disc Priest for a Shammy and have chain heal in a cast sequence.

DPS
2x Hunters
1x Warlock
1x Mage
1x Boomkin

Mage has focus magic, polymorph, Int buff, Frost nova, and decent DPS while moving (Assuming Arcane spec).

[Mercurio]

I have really enjoyed having 10 accounts for the last 18 months or so.

Shortly after WotLK came out I was able to accomplish my goal of soloing most of Naxx. Doing so back then in blues was quite an experience - each boss presented unique challenges and was quite a bit of fun to overcome. The gear upgrades that these got my fledgling teams were great rewards and motivators to see if I could add another boss to my resume each week.

Unfortunately, the days of 10-man solo raiding for upgrades are long past for me.

I was looking forward to Ulduar until I figured out that Bliz had decided to throw out all the mechanics of the game to this point and add in a "fun" vehicle-based first boss that (at least initially) was unboxable. Even doing a few bosses in Ulduar in PuGs playing only one toon, I figured out that Bliz had made the bosses past Flame Leviathan very movement intensive. I never cared for Ulduar and never really ran it much (even solo).

TOC was (and is) a lot of fun, with five quick bosses that give (gave?) great upgrades. However, those bosses are not soloable by a 10-boxer, either. I ran ToC on most of my 20 toons most weeks there for a while till they all had the major upgrades. It was a great way to learn the ins and outs of classes that I had previously only used a small portion of their key abilities with boxing.

ICC is fun to PuG too - I got all 10 of my ally toons through it last week - but I don't think it would be soloable, either (maybe Marrowgar?)


So solo raiding hasn't been on a 10-boxers play card since Naxx, but I still enjoy having 10 accounts. Benefits include:

Playing one team when the other got a crappy daily heroic and is waiting for the 15 min cooldown
Watching for good ICC raids in Dalaran trade while the other team is doing a heroic
Soloing the weekly raids
Playing more than five toons when running a 25-man raid with guildies (I played six when we downed Ony 25)
Playing the AH while solo raiding
Playing the AH while running a heroic on the other team
Soloing ICC10 trash for rep and rings for twice the benefit and at twice the speed I could if 5-boxing
Being able to hit one button and produce 10 epic gems transmutes at one time ;)
Providing flexibility to swap out basically whatever combination of classes I want to take to... whatever
Now that my 10 alliance toons have 5.3K GS, I might be able to solo some of Ulduar with sheer force of gear. I've thought about doing so, but I'm honestly not sure I have the skill (or mental bandwidth) to do it and it would provide me with absolutely nothing in the way of advancement of my toons. Maybe if I get really bored one day I'll try.

I may drop down to 5-boxing some day, but I'm blessed in that my wants are very few and my salary far exceeds what I spend on myself. So the money isn't really a concern and this is my only real cash splurge.

Is the extra money worth going to 10-boxing for you? Can you prove my assumptions wrong and find a way to 10-box Ulduar, ToC, or even ICC?

I hope whatever you do you have as much fun as I have had.

[mmmbox]

@ HPAVC - you can never have to much coffe, only to little sleep ;)

Kill Shot, Hammer of wrath, tranq shot etc wont be a problem they are baked into my current macro setup and are usually fired when triggered.

@ Gormand

Yes i think your input about resto druid viable, so this will definately be tried, Holy Priest have CoH and PoM for healing on the move as you say :) i might go druid instead of sham as healer, even try druid sham priest as healing making one priest go shadow.

About DK, im thinking only bosses and nothing atm that i have seen or experienced makes me think they have anything that a paladin might not do better :(

@ Mercurio - awesome, now i want to 10 box even more :D

About raiding, yes 10m raiding is a pain now with all the mechanics Blizzard is throwing at us but alot of the bosses in ICC accually seems to be manageble.

I raid ALOT and everysingle boss the only thing that runns throu my mind is "can i box this" "can this mechanic be boxed" etc :)

Ulduar - yes some fight might accually be "impossible" to box like thorim or Yogg Saron, Flame lev might accually be quite doable since you can have /follow on vehicles.

TotC 10m - hmm Acidmaw dreadscale is the only fight i see as a real (very real) challenge, PvP event yes but manageble with alot of setup of focus targets, manage the 1st min of the fight and you are usually home safe, twins - easy, Anub is will be hard need to think abit here :)

ICC - 1st boss is probably easier then any uld or totc boss tbh, only thing that is accually hard here is to avoid flames during bonestorm, if you place everychar in the red ring below boss when you target him this is only a tank n spank, challenge here is to manage the boat event.

Anyway, it might sound as I simplyfiy things but hard and impossible is very relative when you box, nothing is accaully easy when you box 10 chars but in relative tearms i dont see any boss as improbable to down.

Atm so far I cant see any boss encounter that would not be worth the effort it will take me to down them.

Look at it this way, does 10 man contain any game mechanic we (boxers) havent overcome in 5 man already? ;)

[Fursphere]

I could see the entire first section of Ulduar being 10-boxable. FL, Razor, Ingis, and XT.

Past that - possibly, but its going to take some serious work.

ToC10 would be HARD - just due to all the stupid gimmicks. But its been dual-boxed, so things go up from there.

ICC? I could see the first "wing" 10boxable (Marrow, LadyD, Gunship, Surafang). (gunship would be loltastically intense and crazy). After that - I dunno - its stupid crazy after that.

[SideWays]

I could see the entire first section of Ulduar being 10-boxable. FL, Razor, Ingis, and XT.

Past that - possibly, but its going to take some serious work.

ToC10 would be HARD - just due to all the stupid gimmicks. But its been dual-boxed, so things go up from there.

ICC? I could see the first "wing" 10boxable (Marrow, LadyD, Gunship, Surafang). (gunship would be loltastically intense and crazy). After that - I dunno - its stupid crazy after that.

I downed FL and Razorscale with another 5boxer pre 3.3 and it should be doable for 10boxers too now with the new badge gear its a lot easier of course.. I think I will try ICC10 (again with another 5boxer) this week and see how it goes. It will take some work but I think its worth it ;)

[Mercurio]

Flame lev might accually be quite doable since you can have /follow on vehicles.




Actually, I'm in the middle of doing him right now. Did him two weeks ago solo b/c he was the weekly raid and it's the weekly raid again now on KJ.

He's not bad, though it does take a while to get all the macros set up. A number of people have soloed him while 5-boxing, so doing it with 10 is no great feat.

Beyond him, though, I'd think even the other "initial" Ulduar bosses would be tough. I tried to 3-man XT about 6 months ago with a couple other boxers (I was playing 5 or 6 toons) and though our gear was only at Uld level, we never even got close. I'm sure the weekly raid will be one of these bosses soon and I'll have to give it a shot, but I'm not excited about trying it w/o some kind of reward (besides bragging rights here).

But I'm excited about you trying all these raids - if you can figure them out I'll be cheering you on!

[Fursphere]

Beyond him, though, I'd think even the other "initial" Ulduar bosses would be tough. I tried to 3-man XT about 6 months ago with a couple other boxers (I was playing 5 or 6 toons) and though our gear was only at Uld level, we never even got close. I'm sure the weekly raid will be one of these bosses soon and I'll have to give it a shot, but I'm not excited about trying it w/o some kind of reward (besides bragging rights here).I found that the strat for XT is critical. I've 4 boxed it (tank, heals, & dps) just fine. Biggest thing is when the heart drops - blow heroism/bloodlust and take it as close to 1% as you dare go. This does MASSIVE dmg to the boss, and if you nail it right, you'll get him to 50% so he skips the 75% - 50% dps phase.

And we position on the right side between the two junk piles - this normally prevents adds from spawning from these two piles.

BTW: I'd so be 10 boxing just for kicks if I could justify the extra monthly expensive. I think my wife might kill me though. (I've got the team already built though... :D )

[Mercurio]

My wife doesn't know.... <looks over shoulder nervously>

Shhhhh!