My PVE team

[Nixi]

Fairly new to the forums and pro multiboxing. I just bought my quad core PC yesterday and i'll post my specs and price later once I get the info together. I must say i'm a tad disappointed in not being able to turn up the graphics on my main toon to the max settings even with my 4 clones setting at min settings and no sound. I only have 1 geforce 8800 GT. But anywho, I'll post about the PC later. I wanna talk about a PVE class setup.

The goal is to do Heroics. I might raid later, but right now I'm looking at tackling all the 5 man heroics with my team.

So far I have:

70 Troll Warrior (Fury for now)

63 Orc Shaman (Elemental)

60 Blood Elf Pally (Holy)

60 Blood Elf Warlock (Destro)

60 Blood Elf Mage (Fire)

I started with the warr at 70 geared up in outland greens and pre tbc grand warlords PVE gear. The shaman was at 62, also in mostly pre tbc AQ20, ZG, T1/2 gear. The mage, lock and pally are my newbies. I didn't have a PC to run 5 copies of WOW (only 4), so i left the shaman outta the loop until yesterday.

My experiences with taking the Paly, lock, and mage (hereby refered to as the 'newbs') from the mid 30's to 60 consisted of my Warrior boosting the newbs in nothing but instances. I might have done a half a dozen quests, all tied in someway to instances. Running 4 (now 5) different classes is just hard and requires tons of buttons. I end up not using 70% of each classes abilities.

I'm seriously considering moving the warrior out and replacing him with my pally to tank. This leaves me with a gap. I'm not against replacing two characters, but I need help with the synergies of each class. I'll go through some of my options:

Warrior for Priest

New Team: Pally (tank), Priest (heal), Mage (fire), Lock (destro), and Shaman (ele)

I only solve one problem by replacing the war with the priest, and that's the obscene amount of micro-management my warrior takes. I still have 5 diff classes, but I like the AOE heals of the priest, the synergy of fire dmg from lock/mage, and the elemental shaman can DPS and heal and buff with totems.



Warrior for Pally

New Team: Pally (tank), Pally (heal), Mage (fire), Lock (destro), and Shaman (ele)

I get rid of the warrior and bring in 2 pallys to take my class count down to 4. I'm not entirely convinced this is a good idea because i'm not sure how many buttons will overlap with the pallys anyway since their group roles are so different. Comments from anyone using a Pally tank and pally healer?



Warrior for Shaman

New Team: Pally (tank), Mage (fire), Lock (destro), Shaman (ele) Shaman (?)

My first shaman was my main toon for awhile, and I really like the class. I've dreamed of being part of a 5 man shaman Arena team before tbc came out, but I never did it.(never thought about multiboxing it myself haha) Once I got to these forums I can just see how popular the shaman choice is and i'm tryign to avoid it. I really think this would cut down on buttons alot, because i'm sure 2 ele shamans can handle main healing duties through all instances until heroics, then i just switch one to resto and I still have the ele shaman to assist in healing.



My next list of possibilities is to scrap 2 (or even 3) of my current toons and go for some high synergy DPS.

Instead of going through all the possibilities, I just wanna ask about the various combos of Mage/sPriest/Lock that could synergize well together.

I keep thinking I'll add a priest healer, but then my mind keeps saying, "if you put a priest in there, just have the shaman heal and go shadow, You've got a lock and a bunch of mana users!" So then i'm stuck thinking about my mage. If the priest and lock are going crazy with the shadow dmg, i feel like my mage is left out, and I kinda wanna remove him in favor of Lock, Lock, Spriest. Once I go that rout, I feel like the shaman is kinda outta place, and I want to move him out for a Priest healer, leaving Lock, Lock, sPriest, Priest, Pally. Can this work in heroics?

Gah, there are just so many things going through my head. I suppose if anyone has any experiences in heroics with a pally tank and a single healer, and whether you're forced to CC or if you can just AOE everything it would go a long way to helping me ditch the mage.

Wow, I've done a great job at rambling. Anyone have any comments on which way you'd go for a PVE team aiming at heroics? (using these classes: mage, lock, priest, pally, shaman)

[Boylston]

Just one quick input, playing Pally as Tank and Pally as Healer is really two "classes" in terms of multiboxing macro setup.

I think your class makeup is actually great for PvE. Since you have some CC (Mage/Lock), and your Pally or Shaman healer wouldn't be so squishy, I'd consider respeccing your warrior as Prot.

Prot Warrior Tank
Holy Pally Healer
Shaman/Warlock/Mage ranged DPS/CC

That seems like a pretty kicking 5-man group. Work on your CC/focus macros and get to where you can have 2 mobs CCed and have the warrior tank the other 1-3...

[Nixi]

Thanks for the insights Bolyston,

You know, you're right. The group make up is solid. I just didn't realize how many additional things you have to keep track of with the addition of each class. To use more abilities I literally use /castrandom macros with my mage and pull the mobs close to her and hope for the dragons breath and cone of cold to pop up just to get use outta them.

When i first started playing with multiboxing, i was thinkign, "okay, interupts go on the "G" key, AOE's go on the "shift-Z" key, movement reducing effects on "V", etc.

Thunderclap, hellfire, arcane explosion don't synergize well getting popped from the same button. Plus the warrior just requires massive amounts of button mashing, so when i try to sync up my interupts, (earth shock, pummel/shieldbash, counterspell) on the same key, with the "/cast sequence ,,counterspell" delay tactic, i'm forced to blow through all the interupts by pounding on the key to get my war to switch stances. Or if i don't want to use the warriors move, If i hit it once i might leave my desired stance.

To sum it up for new multi-boxers, you're probably not gonna be able to have any all-in-one keys to harmoniously use abilities that are similar between the classes. Sure there are some that work good, Direct Damage for example, but many just don't.

I still can't find an X-keys in Beijing. I bought the G-15 keyboard, but i haven't had time to learn how to program the additional buttons. I can't see the 18 keys on the G-15 being enough.

After another night where i actually lost sleep deliberating on my class set up, I've came to the conclusion that even though I love my warrior, and she'll always be my non-multi-box solo character, I need her to go in favor of the paly. I'm gonna mess around with a priest for awhile, and continue reading about them and then figure out how to arrange the specs and buttons my 4 supports. Priest, Shaman, Warlock, Mage.

I was reading another thread where some of the more experienced members of this forum are tired of seeing these same class questions over and over, but after leveing my trio to 60, I can't just pop in a priest immediately and see what it's like. I actually have to level it, and by the time my priest is 60, my others will probably be mid 60's. Plus I've never really played casters before, just warriors mostly. (2 60 warriors pre tbc, two 70 warriors post tbc, 4 warrors total at max level for the respective times i've had them) God i wish i could multibox warriors, but obviously melee is hard to control. I tried multiboxing 2 of my wars and it failed miserably.

I'm thinking that the Warlock and Mage would compliment each other with fire damage, the priest does main healing duty and the shaman does what shamans do, a little of everything. Any oversights?

[Lokked]

I would also read the wowwiki articles regarding Macro functions and arguements. This will greatly help you understand what you can and cannot do on your Alts.

For instance, you could put Thunderclap, Arcane Explosion and Hellfire on the same button, and be mashing it so the mage constantly AEs, the Warrior uses Thunderclap when the CD is up, and the Warlock's Hellfire is not repeatedly cast, but allowed to channel normally.

Warlock:
/cast [nochannelling] Hellfire

This will not interrupt the warlocks Hellfire.

However, with this group setup, and the fact that you may or may not want a warrior (who excells at single target Threat, but requires great micro management to hold groups), you might want to just Shadowbolt and Fireball, rather then worry about AE damage with the Mage and Warlock. You could set aside this AE macro for when you pull groups of non-Elites I suppose.

Lokked

[tommyg]

My toons are just 40, so I don't have any multiboxing experience in TBC dungeons, but I gotta say, I really enjoy being able to have my priest toss in some Holy Fires and Smites when she's not healing. With a paladin healer, you're pretty much constrained to him just sitting there until you need a heal. I know it's a lot of work to level up another class, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I'm kind of disappointed at my killing rate when my priest isn't tossing in nukes. Tank + 4 DPS (one of which can heal if you really need) > Tank + 3 DPS + dedicated healer. I think most people with Pallytank + 4 Eleshammy teams would agree. :D More power to ya, though. If wartank + palhealer works out for you, don't worry about it too much. The best part about this multiboxing thing is that you can do things the way you want, and you don't have to answer to any dumb puggers. :thumbsup: