Looking for opinions

[Paradima]

Hey everyone! :)

My plan is to 5-box a team of 4 shamans and a paladin for tanking. Having one resto shaman and the rest on the best elemental build out there I think it might work out pretty good. Sure, 3 elemental shammys might not be as good as 3 mages in terms of dps but it might work out.

The reason I'm not going for 3 mages as dps is that I already got my main (70 mage).


woho, yay!
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* No clothies (however when not going for so much hp it kinda doesn't matter)
* 4 ankhs
* 1 main healer and 3 in case
* 5 ress
* 3x chain lightning and 4x totems
* Paladin can handle more aggro
* Paladin can heal himself (however might not use it that much.. but anyways)

oh no!
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<input bad stuff here>


Anyone got anything to add? Any suggestions on macro's? Anything at all? I will try this group myself however it's always fun to know if anyone else has tried and the up/down sides.

[kyo]

the tank will have a hard time keeping agro... but it should be possible
also controlling 2 classes is not easy

[Shogun]

I'm preparing to try the same group out myself in a week or so :)
The main downside I can see will be the lack of crowd control, and i won't spec one as resto/healing, but rather all elemental but with some points in resto, and use chain heals and the occasional direct heal.

Specs will be something like: 41/0/20 on one and 35/0/26 on the others (give or take)

Not 100% sure yet though, still looking into it :)

[Paradima]

the tank will have a hard time keeping agro... but it should be possible
also controlling 2 classes is not easy

Well, if you give the tank ~6 seconds building aggro or so it should be fine. As a Paladin tank I know I can keep aggro if I get atleast 4 secs before dps starts.


I'm preparing to try the same group out myself in a week or so :)
The main downside I can see will be the lack of crowd control, and i won't spec one as resto/healing, but rather all elemental but with some points in resto, and use chain heals and the occasional direct heal.

Specs will be something like: 41/0/20 on one and 35/0/26 on the others (give or take)

Not 100% sure yet though, still looking into it :)

Nice :) Yeah, the lack of CC surely will be a pain in most cases if you do not use kiting but then again kiting is not useful if you plan on having a tank around all the time.

That's pretty smart indeed, seen the chain healing work for some. But that does depend on what mobs you're doing. If health drops fast there won't be much dpsing going on.

I feel that I might give up one shammy in exchange for a CC class.. for a hunter perhaps (pet tank, traps etc) but I haven no idea yet.

[Steph]

I would recommend to drop the pally and replace him with another elemental shammy. Look at xbox's videos to see how well that works for heroics.

Basically you go for all out dps and slowing totem kiting instead of tanking. Tanking being melee, switching between several targets and needing to react to people pulling aggro is not something you will be easily doing on the side.

[Shade]

Is Xbox actually having luck in heroics? I thought he was just doing normal 5mans.

edit - oops, just went to his site and realized it has been updated. Good stuff.

[caldvn]

I would recommend to drop the pally and replace him with another elemental shammy. Look at xbox's videos to see how well that works for heroics.

I'm more interested in how consistent he is with heroics vs what we see in one video. Looking at his gear, it's not something you can get overnight so to actually do heroics requires a bit of effort before bojs are farmable.

[Steph]

I would recommend to drop the pally and replace him with another elemental shammy. Look at xbox's videos to see how well that works for heroics.

I'm more interested in how consistent he is with heroics vs what we see in one video. Looking at his gear, it's not something you can get overnight so to actually do heroics requires a bit of effort before bojs are farmable.

Ehm...being able to demolish heroic mob packs like shown in the video's in the first place is awesome. Even a capable group of five players can not necessarily clear heroic dungeons consistantly, so that is hardly a criteria for a good or bad setup. Looking at the margin in the video's Xbox has published and the continuous takes I am rather convinced that this strategy is the most promising I have seen so far.

[caldvn]

Yes, but one slip up and it's over. That includes mob that can fear, two shot mail, and one shot cloth wearers. If I'm correct, I will assume that he doens't exactly have full blue sets but good chunk of looks like epic gear... when does farming heroic really occur and at what consistency?

How many pvp videos have you seen people post having their ass handed to them? What makes you think someone will show a wipeage run? or how many attempts or how many runs until someone got a youtube worthy video? Oh that's right...everyone that posts video is perfect...

What's the cooldown of the Elemental Totems? 20 minutes? You screw up with having them tank, wipe, that's your butt sitting around for 20 minutes till cooldown is up?

A lot of things factor in creating the ideal group for your PVE or PVP needs, it's not a simple, let's kite and nuke'em strat...

What are the limits of 5 shaman group in pve? PVP I see a lot of fun. PVE, I'm not so certain, you may get away with some instances but at what cost?


Looking at the margin in the video's Xbox has published and the continuous takes I am rather convinced that this strategy is the most promising I have seen so far.

P.S. They are not continous takes...

[Steph]

Caldvn,

I did not say or imply that xbox's entire videos are continuous takes. I did not imply either that the show off videos are gameplay as it happens.

Xbox's videos do show taking down heroic trash packs in continuous takes. I find that relevant for two reasons a) killing heroic bosses is in most cases easier than the way to them, b) trash is killed pack by pack. If you can manage the trash packs, you are at the bosses which are mostly anticlimactic.

Xbox cuts his own videos, sure, but he does show that he can get the job done. Yes, its not the regular heal/dps/tank way, but making do with heal/dps is way easier to manage and control. If you can do better with your heal/tank/dps team, please post some videos, I would be happy to see how you do it and learn from you.

Cheers, Steph.

[caldvn]

Some bosses you can definetely get away without having a tank, but the bulk of the heroics will need some type of tank, whether druid, paladin or warrior to make things easier.

I'd be curious to see if 5 shamans could handle the 3 set of spawns down the corridor towards the last boss in Heroic Mech, even before that there's Mech type of droids that do arcane damage that takes some time to kill, and do serious damage.

As for fraps, last time I tried fraps, my FPS went to crap, making things difficult to play, most likely tweaking issue, so if I ever have time I may post a full Mech/Slave Penz run.

Still, keep in mind on what you plan on doing if you multi-boxing whether pvp or pve, it's a question of the easy and the hard way. How many 5 man shaman groups are there that aren't multi-boxing and doing heroics? Cause there's always a tank, 3 dps/cc and a healer.

[Ellay]

Going to chime in :)

When making setups keep it simple!! The more variations of classes thrown in the harder it is to manage. My angle and I would venture the same as Xzin is to combine a healthy dose of PvP and PvE and make your setup compatible with both. If you lean for just PvE a higher mixture of classes is doable since all fights are predictable and there is time alloted for setting up strats.

For PvP reactions need to be intuitive and on the fly, thus having a core of the same class enables this to be much easier. The main issue involves loss of control of your characters, I.E fear / and aoe fear. Make sure your setups have a counter to this method. All pvp trinkets remove it now which is great.

[caldvn]

The number 1 question is.....how good are you at multi-tasking!!!! :)

[Paradima]

Going to chime in :)

When making setups keep it simple!! The more variations of classes thrown in the harder it is to manage. My angle and I would venture the same as Xzin is to combine a healthy dose of PvP and PvE and make your setup compatible with both. If you lean for just PvE a higher mixture of classes is doable since all fights are predictable and there is time alloted for setting up strats.

For PvP reactions need to be intuitive and on the fly, thus having a core of the same class enables this to be much easier. The main issue involves loss of control of your characters, I.E fear / and aoe fear. Make sure your setups have a counter to this method. All pvp trinkets remove it now which is great.

Ayes, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. I'm pretty used to boxing now, with 2 diffrent classes atleast. The real problem lies in that I can't decide how to go. Being feared or sapped is not that big of a problem.

The hard part of multiboxing 2+ classes imo is timing the skills. Some classes does not have the same casting times and that messes things up and forces you to bind one macro to one char, one to another and so on.

Do I want to go with a warrior as a tank and have 3 mages + priest or do I want to go with a pally as a tank and have 4 shamans.. or would I want something else? I can't decide so I guess I'll have to try everything until I'm satisfied ;p

[Paradima]

The number 1 question is.....how good are you at multi-tasking!!!! :)

I'm getting better at it ;)

[caldvn]

Part 1.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gMaDUFgxbgk
Part 2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akQBFLLq0Kw

Off day, 3-4 wipes, good day no wipes, average run 1-2 wipes with second group farming.

Primary group, 1-2 wipes at most on average.

[Steph]

Impressive Caldvn! Thanks for posting those videos.

I leveled my warlock/mage/priest team with the priest as stick leader. When I benched one of the warlocks and used my main, a prot warrior instead I had a few issues, mostly because I tend to hammer whatever button I want to use impatiently while I wait for the skill or global cooldown to end, and this interferes with the warlock/mage quite a bit and needs me to change my control setup down to the action bar layout. Being busy with raids, I didnt really get to play around with it enough to overcome that bump in the road.

[pomo]

wow nice video . doesnt the ++ and -- Debuff cause a little troble on heroic .

[caldvn]

Create macros with the cooldowns, warrior will have shield bash, revenge, shield block, sunder. Keep in mind that you can also use cast sequence. One button can also spam for the other toons to scorch, fireblast, fireball, fireball, fireball. Cast Sequence....

With Multi-box don't expect to get the most out of individual characters, if you try too hard you wind up gimping somewhere else. In my case, the mage is just a firemage, and the warlock is just a destruction warlock that casts one curse and fireballz and once in awhile may land a conflag.

The debuffs aren't an issue, tank stands where I stand, the other 4 toons are out of distance from eachother. The secondary toon will be the one in the middle to jump between other characters to pickup the -- or ++.

Debuffs come every 30 seconds, so you can move the secondary toon to safe spot for the next transition. Don't focus on the buffs, it's not necessary to kill the boss, but it helps speed up the process a little. Once you get better at it, you can use your secondary to jump to get buffs, and the healer to get buffs.