New Multiboxer! Looking for class input.

[Sneijder]

Hey all,

After lurking the forums and reading the stickies, guides and threads I decided to join up. For this adventure I decided to upgrade my hardware. I doubled my ram to 16gb, purchased a second monitor and graphics card for it, upgraded to the G510 keyboard and G600 mouse. As for software, I'm going to be running with ISBoxer. After reading many reviews and seeing it's name pop up quite often here it seemed like a solid choice. Plus, with the guided setup for beginners and on-going features for the advanced user made it all the more better.

Picking a class is where I'm having my biggest debacle. I decided to start off I'm going to box two DPS classes(same class) and level through LFD. Initially I had planned on mages but I'm now also looking at doing dual boomkins, hunters or ret pally's. Out of personal experiences and with the changes in MOP which do you think would be a good starter set to go with?

In closing, I'm excited to start the adventure of multiboxing. I can't wait to get involved in this community, share my experiences and help out whenever possible! I'm looking forward to all of your guidance and input!


Cheers,
Sneijder

[JohnGabriel]

Welcome to the community.

Have you thought about using Recruit a friend? If you have an existing high level toon then creating 2 new accounts with RaF could be worth while.

The reason I mention this is because with RaF the leveling is so fast you would have a team of every class at 80 in a week or two.

Personally I would start with druids because they can rez/heal, tank, or dps. I would also wait to do a mixed team with melee such as ret palis until you've got the hang of boxing.

[Khatovar]

I'd suggest Druids because you can learn to tank, heal and DPS from the same toons, plus you can learn melee vs caster/ranged on the same toons.

[Sneijder]

Thanks for the timely responses! I'll start off with druids to get my feet wet with all of the different roles.

JohnGabriel, using RaF is part of my initial plan. I purchased an extra battlechest when they were on sale for $5 and it was part of the big push to start dual boxing. Although I think I'm just going to like the second account to my main account instead of two brand new accounts. I've done the whole boosting two characters with a max level toon and I get so bored with it. I would rather opt to play two characters through LFG instead.

Cheers,
Sneijder

Oh, Khatovar, I assume you moved the thread to it's appropriate location. My apologies and thanks so much!

[Cyphoner]

I'd suggest Druids because you can learn to tank, heal and DPS from the same toons, plus you can learn melee vs caster/ranged on the same toons.

Don't forget the invalueable combat ressurrect! Saved me quite a few times having that! :D

[Ualaa]

Druids and Paladins are great.
They can tank and heal, and DPS (both melee and ranged, in the case of Druids).

A lot of people love Shamans.
I see a fair number of Hunters and Death Knights around.
Not a lot of people go with Rogues or Warriors, although 4x Warriors with a Healer has been done for PvE stuff.

In general, tanking classes and healing classes are good to have.



Will your end focus be PvE or PvP related?
That's a big one on team composition.

For PvE, I'd likely go: 1x Paladin with 4x Shaman.
For PvP, something like: 5x Paladin or 5x Druid.

[Khatovar]

Oh, Khatovar, I assume you moved the thread to it's appropriate location. My apologies and thanks so much!

No need to apologize, that's just one of my many responsibilities around here, Sport. Now I do believe there is a spammer I must squash. Mama Khat, away! *strikes a superhero pose*


Yeah, too much coffee.

ò_ô

I lie, there's no such thing as too much coffee.

[Sneijder]

Haha, Khatovar, that was worth a good chuckle!

Ualaa,
To be honest I haven't thought much about my endgame goals yet. I've never been a big PvP guy so I may save that avenue for a rainy day or something. Originally I had planned on shooting a multitude of classes up to 80 while boxing with RaF and then making my way to 90 afterwards. It was largely going to be for maxed out professions. I was thinking last night that once I get the hang of everything I will most likely box a full group and do some of the harder mount runs and push my limits from there. I know that is a ways off though!

[heyaz]

If you wanna go all one class:

I vote paladins. Their tanking rotation is trivial and can be macroed, their melee DPS rotation is fairly easy and can be macroed, and healing is easy. And they're all in plate.

For druids: tanking rotation is trivial and macroed, healing is easy, but both of the DPS specs have resources/procs/etc. to manage that make it difficult to maximize potential dps and effectiveness in pvp. I'm sure some of the more experienced boxers have methods to get this working well in pve... but I solo boxed a feral druid through most of cata and I wouldn't even think of boxing feral. Balance, not totally sure how much having eclipse out of sync affects your dps. Be that as it may... there is still something awesome about a boxing team that can all stealth... I just never figured out how I'd get the most out of them once I was out of it :)

[Sneijder]

Boxing two druids I'm going to start off with balance. I was curious about how the eclipse rotations were going to work out. It'll be fun to experiment with while questing up to 15 and see how it all goes. Paladins are definitely on my to-do list. I have always wanted a max level paladin and so far just never got around to making that happen. That will chance soon enough!

[Ualaa]

My Ferals (in Cataclysm) used a simple macro:

#show
/castsequence reset=target Mangle(Cat Form), Rake(Cat Form), Mangle(Cat Form), Mangle(Cat Form), Rip(Cat Form)

Until you get Rip, you'd use the Ferocious Bite.
Pretty easy, one button mash.
Along with sending IWT.

In MoP, you'd want to modify your rotation to always have Savage Roar up, when killing something that will be there for a while.
When questing, the initial Mangle x5 would drop just about everything.
Also the four non-finishing moves, prior to the finisher, would almost always kill anything so the rotation was less important.
However, testing on a target dummy... four moves, with one combo point per move and two on a crit, is almost always five combo points before the finisher.

Druids had (and have) a 20% chance per combo point, for their next Nature spell (of under 10 seconds, base cast time) being instant cast after using a finishing move.
You'll either have four combo points or five, with the above rotation.
With a 30% crit rate, which isn't all that high, you have better than a 95% chance of having the instant cast.
The issue mainly is, almost nothing is still alive after five moves from five druids.

You can glyph Savage Roar, such that it can be used without Combo Points for a 12 second duration.
I'm not sure if that's a DPS loss, compared to a different major glyph, as one of your three...
But that certainly simplifies the rotation... amend it to: Mangle > Rake > Mangle > Mangle > Rip > Savage Roar.
Again, not sure if that's optimal, but most of the time... if things are dead before you reach the fifth move, then you don't need it...
But it is automated, as in will go off without your needing to concentrate on using it... just DPS away (the five move rotation, is close to every 10 seconds... and 0 Combo Points is a 12 second duration).
You could experiment, and move Savage Roar to the initial position (before the first Mangle).

Nature's Swiftness, every minute on each Druid (without dropping DPS Form), certainly increases the effectiveness of the composition whether Feral or Balance.
With five Druids, that is five Healing Touches every minute (approximately every 12 seconds).
With ten Druids, that is ten Healing Touches every minute (approximately every 6 seconds).
If you need Healing, Glyph of Cat Form increases heals received (while in Cat Form), by 20%.

I like both Feline Swiftness and Displacer Beast.
Feline Swiftness increases Cat Form from 25% to 40% increased movement, all the time.
Displacer Beast, is essentially Vanish... allowing you to pick and choose your battles even more so.

Incarnation, allows the use of Stealth abilities without Stealth.
And removes the positional requirements on Ravage, meaning Ravage without Stealth and from any direction.
Incarnation is 30 seconds, every 3 minutes.

[Nikita]

Welcome to the community :)

[Ualaa]

While you have RAF, level lots and lots.
It's relatively fast and a lot less painful now, then it will be to add another set of toons down the road, when the RAF is gone.

[candlebox]

Ualaa cried when his raf ran out. I remember it well...

[Sneijder]

Ualaa, thanks for the feral druid knowledge! I've never played feral spec, only balance, so that is extremely helpful! While I have the RaF I plan on taking every class to 80!

I still haven't started boxing yet but it should be happening by the end of the weekend.

[candlebox]

Dont wear yourself out though...make sure you stop and rest...leveling everything to 80 has been the bain of all multiboxers, and in turn has lead to burn out.