Two players dual/triple boxing together

[Blokus]

At the risk of getting flamed for another "what classes should I use" thread, I'm gonna throw this one out there for any feedback.

A friend is "pulling the trigger" on getting his second account for dual-boxing. Though I'm four-boxing, I've agreed to triple-box with him for a full five team. This is strictly for PVE with mainly heroics in mind when we can get to that point.

Anyone doing this and have experience on what works well? I have at my disposal at 70 a Pally, 2 Locks and a Priest. He has a 68 Hunter and a 54 Druid as the quickest he can get to 70.

We'll probably go with Pally/Lock/Lock/Hunter/Druid

While just about any character mix that covers the trinity (tanking, healing, DPS) can probably be made to work, are there any that just stand out as the best way to go?

As the triple boxer I'd love to handle just the DPS part and let my friend tank and heal, but that might be asking too much.

One thought is for both of us to have a healer in our own subgroup. He could be ProtPally + RestoDruid and I would be Lock+Lock+Priest. We would mainly keep our own subgroup healed but still backup heal the other group if needed. But if the healers do nothing but heal that might be too much healing and not enough DPS.

Since he is new to the whole multiboxing thing (other than listen to me ramble about it all the time) there's going to be a learning period while he gets it under control. Maybe we ought to start brand new characters and level and learn to coordinate together. If so we can be more choosy about classes we use rather than trying to make what we have now work.

Neither of us have made it to heroics yet, so we really don't know what we are up against. It appears just getting geared up for them will be a task, but we have a good guild of RL friends to help out.

Any thoughts, ideas?

[Contents]

You probably would want to start a new set just so he can get acquainted with multiboxing.

Personally I'd have him run a Paladin and a DPS class
While you Take a healer and 2 dps.

As long as one of you is controlling the tank and the other is directly controlling the healer you should be able to bring any DPS and be able to go far.

As a side note, do you plan on only levelling up together, or are you each going to level your group solo?

[Eteocles]

Druids are baaaad main healers for the later stuff; they can heal okay but HT is too damn slow and hots don't heal enough to counter any burst dmg whatsoever. Let the Druid tank(which they excel at and aren't TOO bad at multimob tanking with swipe and tab mauling + demor roar to soften the blows a lil and more hp/armor than any pala could ever hope to get + no mana reliance); let your priest heal, making it DruTank HealPriest, lock lock hunter; locks can SS/HS and curse of weakness if absolutely necessary or fear to save priest :p

[Vyndree]

As a 5-boxer who raids with a 5-boxer, tanking and healing should not be considered "too much". As a tank, you'll be watching your own health in case you need to pot/blow cooldowns, which is exactly what a healer is watching. Suvega and I have two independant groups -- he has a total of 4 mages, a priest, and a prot warrior. I have 5 shaman (1 resto), 1 holy priest, and a prot pally. We can mix and match the classes whenever we need to.

Anyway, I don't know what the point to that was, but it's certainly viable, but you do lose some nice things like being able to afk at random. IMO, if you're going 3 and 2, I'd do healer/tank and dps -- the micro is in the number of roles/classes you need to play at once, not the actual number of characters involved.

[Blokus]

Thanks for the replies so far, good stuff to think about.

What about both of us playing the same class for all 5 characters ... like 5 shammies?

Is the awesome power of 5 shammies due mainly to the coordination by one player or could they be even better if controlled by 2 players who learn to work very tightly with each other?

Neither of us have shammies, so we would begin at level 1 and find out if we can make it happen.

[Blokus]

Holy crap. Just saw the "3 box +2 box" thread that had already been started. Must be something in the air.

[Dor]

Id def use the priest/tank/lock as the 3 and let the other guy do hunter and maybe offheal with the drood or lvl up another dps.... IMO.... priest makes the best multibox healer (just so much easier on grp heals while having good single target healing too)

.. not sure if having a main healer and an offhealer in a grp would allow you the dps needed for some fights.. but it would be nice for the priest to be able to focus heal on the mt and the grp get healed by the offhealer

..if the firend was going to run 2 dps, Id suggest making another hunter since 2 of the same class is easier to deal with (least seems so in my case)

:edit: just saw the other post on 5 classes..if you are planing on pve heroics, then you more or less need to have a dedicated healer and dedicated mt (prot pally/warr drood)

[Vyndree]

Thanks for the replies so far, good stuff to think about.

What about both of us playing the same class for all 5 characters ... like 5 shammies?

Is the awesome power of 5 shammies due mainly to the coordination by one player or could they be even better if controlled by 2 players who learn to work very tightly with each other?

Neither of us have shammies, so we would begin at level 1 and find out if we can make it happen.

5 shammies is fine, you'll just have to coordinate between the two of you which totems to lay. It's harder to do instances without a plate/bear tank, though. I'm finding I'm overlapping some earth totems, or laying useless air totems, when I run with all 5 of my shammies. The 5th is probably not bringing too much to the table besides an extra grounding and healing stream.

You could always have 1 person go 3 shammies (1enh/2ele shammies maybe? 3 ele?) and 1 person go 1 tank (warrior, perhaps?) and a resto healbot that lays windfury... Yummy.

[kayb]

For 2+3 boxing I'd definitely have one guy controlling tank/healer and the other one dps/cc. When you're playing tank you know when you'll need healing, and you can time heals perfectly. If you're running a tight operation, the only one needing heals will be the tank, so it will be very easy. Druids are fine as healers, the only problem they have is threat. With a poorly geared tank, it will be an issue. But the great thing about playing both tank and healer is that you'll know before it becomes a problem, and you can taunt in time, or you can start the encounter with last stand or shield wall, while you work on threat. You can decide on the approach, while the other guy focuses on minimizing incoming damage through crowd control, or nuking down a single target before it even reaches you.