5 Man Mixed Comp Suggestions

[redmosez]

So I upgraded my rig yesterday and I'm finally able to 5 box (was 3 boxing before). With the Blizz xmas sale on I figured why not try it for a month.

I'm having trouble deciding on a team composition. This is what I'm considering

Tank:
My tank will depend on my other toons, I don't really want to overlap classes if it can be helped, mainly thinking either a pally or druid right now

Healer:
Most likely go with a shaman or a monk

DPS:
I'm not sure if I should go for all melee or all caster or a mix. Personally I'd prefer a mix.

Melee: a plate wearer, most likely a warrior but would also consider a ret pally if I go with a feral druid tank
Caster: I have no idea which caster dps to go with, looking through their rotations it seems both the cloth users have pretty difficult rotations to multibox. Elemental shamsn seems manageable any suggestions?
Last DPS: I have no idea what to choose

Right now I'm thinking

Prot Pally/Healer Monk/Arms Warrior/Feral Druid/Elemental Shaman

OR

Prot Pally/Resto Shaman/Arms Warrior (might switch to DK at 55)/Feral Druid/???

Any suggestions?

[Chivalrous]

I assume this is for PvE? Do you want all 8 buffs or do you not care? I PvE and my team is Guardian Druid, Holy Paladin, fury warrior, enhancment shaman, and survival hunter. I get all buffs, plus hero and skull banner and the team syncs up well together with lots of utility that can be placed on same buttons round robin or pass through.

When I make a team for pve I consider what buffs they give and difficulty of movement. For me, melee is way easier than ranged. My team used to be prot pally, hunter, mage, ele shaman, resto Druid. I had a hard time moving and facing ranged (some don't IWT without using items, etc) and moving out of aoe on melee without being overwhelmed. I don't have this problem with melee, but whether you prefer Melee or ranged you'll have to learn for yourself.

My team I use the Druid tank for crit strike buff and brez. They aren't bad tanks at all.

i love fury warrior, buffs stamina and does great DPS. Also has Skullbanner

my hunter is my main, if he wasn't I'd probably replace him with a melee toon because he takes a small amount of baby sitting, but it's probably worth it. He buffs attack power and spell haste with sporebat pet. I keep him with my melee group most of the time, and he does great DPS and great burst.

my other toon isn't a DPS really, more of a support character. Enhancment shaman does mediocre DPS but amazing off heals. Ankh is nice, plus hero and purge. Healing rain is great, as is healing stream totem and other totem utility, plus lust/hero. Plus, she buffs spell power. Attack speed, and mastery.

holy paladin-love my holy paladin! Great healer for 5 mans, can easily aoe heal whole group, and does some DPS and debuff a if need be. Buffs stats for 8/8 buffs.

side benefit of this group Is I can practice on the target dummy with full raid buffs to see what I could actually do in raid. In 5 mans a lot of bosses I can pop hero and skull banner and burst the boss to execute range quickly... I miss my mage for ports and free food, and I'd probably rather have a pally tank over Druid, but I'd hate to give up crit. My hunter could buff crit, but the spell haste really helps my holy paladin out. All in all the team is fine... For me. Let us know what you come up with! Just make sure you're having fun,

im trying to put some vids of my adventures together, ill link them once I do if you wanna check out my teams synergy.

[Ualaa]

For PvE, almost anything is going to work.

For PvP, it depends on where you're going to be playing.
In normal battlegrounds, like PvE, almost anything will work.
In arena or rated battlegrounds, you're going to do better with fewer classes to manage.

The biggest question is, what do enjoy boxing/playing?

If you have casters/hunters on the team, your mechanic to deal with is using follow for facing.
You'll want to break follow, for those characters.
Possibly have a key, for the ranged to follow a specific ranged character so you can move them as a group without impacting your melee/tank positioning.

If you have melee on the team, you have to deal with the IWT/CTM and possible run-away toons as the boxing mechanic.

Ranged worry about resistances and spell reflect type mechanics, on a given encounter.
Melee worry about point-blank effects, auras surrounding a boss, and cleave type effects (getting behind the mob can help).

Including either element in your team, is essentially one mechanic needed to play.
And a different mechanic to be aware of while playing.
With both elements on your team, it is two mechanics to use; not necessarily harder, just more to be aware of.

The configuration of your system, making it work for each type of encounter... that can be as fun as actually playing the game.

[Owltoid]

For PvP, it depends on where you're going to be playing.
In normal battlegrounds, like PvE, almost anything will work.

I don't agree that for normal battlegrounds anything would work. For the longest time I thought it was my skillcap, but it's clear to me now that most multiboxers struggle to contribute to random BGs (AV/IOC is different). You need a valid composition, gear, and skill to succeed more often than bringing your team down. New boxers should not think that just because you have 5 toons you will be a force to be reckoned with in BGs - quite the opposite; without the right stuff you will likely be the reason for the loss.

[Ualaa]

If you're five of the ten toons in a 10-man BG...
It almost doesn't matter what you have or how well geared you are.
Your team almost never wins, with 50% of the group always in one place.
As 50% of the battleground, your gearing and skill means a massive amount.
You can win WSG/Gilneas, if the other five guys are good enough to hold one point or return a flag... but usually these are losses; I've had WSG matches where all ten of the other side were easy to kill with my five, but I couldn't both guard my flag/intercept their carrier and capture their flag with the useless teammates who contributed nothing.

If you're five of the fifteen toons in a 15-man BG...
You comprise 33% of the battleground, so your gearing and skill are less important.
But with at least full honor gear, you can make a positive impact in many of the BGs.
EotS favors 5-boxing, where you just run to whatever they hold and take it, repeat ad nauseum.
AB is a little harder, because you have to stay in place for a time until the flag caps... which negates the advantage of being able to blow up almost anything once you're geared; I've had ABs where my five can consistently kill their 15, but our 15 cannot hold more bases then their 15.
SotA is crappy boxed, because on offense your team is split which often leads to being stuck on the beach... an inherent disadvantage to boxing this BG.



If you're five of forty players in a 40-man BG.
You comprise 12.5% of the battleground, so your gearing and skill are the least important.
You have the ability to blow up large groups, and if you do it holding an objective or recapturing one that can contribute to a win.
As a small portion of the BG, when you're starting out you want to be here so your team still has a chance to win.
When you have a lot of gearing, this is still the best BGs to be in as a 5-boxer, because having 12.5% of the team always in one place is not an inherent disadvantage.

When I refer to battlegrounds as a 5-boxer, it is almost always referring to AVs and IoCs...
Almost anything is going to work, because it is largely a PvE event except for mass numbers vs mass numbers at certain objectives along the way.
When it comes down to a 10-man, you can win 100% of the battles and never lose a toon, be the highest in damage/heals/honor-kills/killing-blows/etc and still consistently lose; that is the reality of the smaller BGs.

[Owltoid]

I don't agree - with gear, skill and composition a multiboxer can be the driving force to winning 10-man BGs. If new multiboxers have PvP in their sights, they really need to think about group composition. I guess it depends how serious they are for both PvE and PvP. If someone's ultimate goal was raiding 10-mans, nobody would suggest all shamans. Similarly, if someone wants to play BGs and win, then nobody would suggest mixed melee and ranged of 5 different classes. The difference is that with PvE I believe the bar is set lower and many are satisfied with heroics. For PvP, very few enjoy losing random BGs and many get sick of the 40 mans (where is the skill/challenge there?) so if they want to PvP then they need the right group.

[Chivalrous]

The title reads 5 man mixed comp, 5 man makes me think of pve/heroics, but maybe I'm wrong. I wouldn't recommend 5 boxing random BGs unless your toons are really well geared, gear seems more important than ever. I took my team into AB with blue pvp sets and was rocked and slightly embarrassed. I am not good enough yet to pull my weight, so I don't try, maybe one day. If you do want a pvp mixed team, I.. Wouldn't do it, and can't offer any advice except have fun, but help your team win, don't give us 5 boxers a bad rep. :)

[Ualaa]

I'd 5-box AV/IoC, at any level of gearing.
And would do, some other BGs as 5-boxer especially EotS.

5-box can as easily refer to a dungeon group.

Or even a group that will run both PvE and PvP aspects of the game.
I'd assume most boxers play both aspects, but some prefer one or the other and a smaller subset play one exclusively.

[Lyonheart]

I'm warming up to mixed group comp myself. I used to be dead set against it. ATM i have a lot of 85s i gained via RaF and can do any comp I want. I had an oddball of an extra warrior/DK/rog that i made a trio out of. I went to lazymacro forum and got some quick lazy macros for them. ATM the trio is the best DPS i have seen out of 85s. My rog is combat speced and was bursting on an 85 target dummy to 21k and does 13k sustained dps while questing, all 3 of them sya in the 10-13k range. My end goal is to have a team that can burn through heroics and has a great chance of getting silver challenge modes. SO whatever comp that ends up being, great!

[MadMilitia]

Lazy Macro is an awesome site.

I run a WAR/ DK / SHM / HUNT * 2 for a 5 man and I will give some advice on how I do this.

Firstly, these are the usual macros for my melee in PvP or Tank in PvE.



#showtooltip
//Your stuff here
/stopmacro [@target, nodead, exists, harm]
/targetenemy


* Note above I still have an ASSIST ME hotkey to be sure if a kill target is required they are all on the same target.

Next, I have an assist of this for my hunters:



#showtooltip
/assist [@tank, nodead, exists] tank;[@melee, nodead, exists] melee;[@healer, nodead, exists] healer


The above ensures they will assist someone in particular with the healer having the lowest priority and tank having highest priority.


Next in IsBoxer I have the primary mousewheel keybind that does 3 important things.

1. Assist
2. DPS Key
3. Positions

It's vitally important that hunters always be facing appropriate targets and melee always be stationed as close as possible without continuous runoff.

3 Steps are required in the key. The first does all the assist, IWT, DPS key, AE/ST dump and finisher first (execute, kill shot). You'll want the finisher applied first in case it's up and you have the resource for it. This step has a 1.0 delay with unlimited keypress. The second key is responsible for setting up the appropriate control on hunters. I use /follow to do this. So second key is a 0.5 delay and a /follow on a macro similar to the /assist macro. Tank priority, then melee, then healer. Step 3 is a backstep for all DPS and tank, but a backstep + jump for the hunters. So melee don't runoff and hunters are 99% of the time facing the enemy but not in melee range.

You can tinker with this a lot. I haven't used it in a bit so the timers may be off. I've found it to be especially awesome for the hunters.

Next up is the AE / ST dump keymaps. These are basically keymaps you'll create to handle the specific resource dumps each class uses like slam, frost strike, rune strike, arcane shot, etc. I put a click bar icon for these on an image blue (ST) and red (AE).

Other than that there isn't much you need to do. You may not like having your mouse wheel dedicated to button spam so fool around with what you like the most. Lazy macros though are going to be absolutely necessary. Also keep in mind the flexibility of having multiple keys on a single key. This is going to be the most beneficial thing for you.

[Lyonheart]

Can some of you post what kind of DPS your toons are doing in these mixed groups? I was solo running some RDFs yesterday to get a few toons to 86. I was shocked at how bad my dps with my boxed toons is compared to solo players. For example. I thought i was all bad ass being able to burst DPS with my rog to 21k and sustain 13k, at level 85. Well every DPS in these runs, level 85-87. were doing 20k+ it seemed..DKs..Shadow Priests, balance druid ( he was 87 and doing 30k ). My Shamans at 90 averaged 18-21k when they first started heroics.. and now they do 25-31k ( various gear levels ) Now I know that its virtually impossible to match a good players DPS with your boxed toons.. But i know from experience that you can be very close. Back in the days of "/cs ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,," I would often top the dps in raids with my mages..shaman..hunters, while boxing them. I have spent hours between the many classes I have at target dummies trying to squeeze out the most DPS i can from each class i play.

BTW.. i make sure all my toons are fully equipped in MoP greens as soon as they get to MoP. A few of them have some nice BoA rare weapons as well. I'm just wanting something to compare to and to aim for. There is a lot of discussion on how great everyones setups/macros are but not the numbers there are getting. If a team is successful at accomplishing the goals you set max numbers are not the most important, but for me its "kill shit faster so you can GTFO of here and do something else". I asked this here because this pertains to mixed classes and the possibility of me running a mixed team as a main group at some point.

[MadMilitia]

Back when DS was the thing I would run the 5 man heroics just to see how I'd do. The hunters came in at DS era so the heroic 5 mans were a test for me.

Peroth'Arn the hunters tended to destroy. With the firelands xbow and a sprinkling of PvE gear (thinking ilvl was about 370) they were doing 28k-30k. Warrior is never a problem on DPS (also consistently 26-30k) unless he's stuck or it is in the air. DK was a bit more sketchy as the tank. Driving from heals tends to make such things with the tank though but it still wasn't bad. 18k DPS for the DK tank.

None of my toons were over 380 ilvl at this time. Most around 372. Healer best geared.


Some other fights where everyone has to move a lot and help on interrupts like Echo of Tyrande, the DPS was understandably much lower but not far off what players can do.

I think the hardest thing to do with 5 boxing is PvP. Mainly because you can't gain advantages with the macros so easily. Still, I've had very good DPS in the matches where control wasn't off the charts.

[redmosez]

Thanks for the replies guys, I should have been more specific.

This team will mostly be for 5 man dungeons, hopefully get as far as possible with them including heroics (and maybe challenge modes) in MoP

For PvP I prefer to take only 3 characters, because I'm not a fan of the 40 man bgs and 3-boxing doesn't hamstring my team by having 5 guys in 1 place at a time in the smaller bgs.

For PvP, I'm currently playing 2 teams,

2 Feral Druids + 1 Resto Druid
2 Arms Warriors + 1 Disc Priest

I'm finding that I enjoy the druids more, from my experience so far in the pre 60 brackets, feral druids do a lot more damage and stealth on all 3 characters is awesome. The Warriorx2+Priest team lives longer though, I'm finding the priest heals super strong compared to the druids.

As for my 5 man, It'll mainly for the challenge of boxing a mixed team (including a mixture of ranged and melee)

Still not completely decided on classes but will most likely go

Plate Tank/Warrior, Ret Pally or DK/Feral Druid or Rogue/Caster/Healer

Hardest thing for me to choose right now is the caster and healer.

[MadMilitia]

Hunter update:

Just downed Possessed Taran Zhu on my 5s team. That was a pretty hard encounter seeing my guys are around 400-430 ilvl and level 87. Healer is 90 and one DPS is 90 but both are around 430-440 ilvl. So still a tough fight.

I revised the steps to the following, being more clear on how they work:

Step 1 is DPS mash, 1.0 second wait for next step.
Step 2 is Face, 0.5 second wait for next step.
Step 3 is Step back - melee AND hunters.

This will effectively keep your hunters leashed and facing the tank, using the macro comment on the prior page. It will also prevent runoff of the melee. I strongly suggest a similar setup for anyone running a mixed comp with hunters team. Or even just anything with melee in it.

[redmosez]

So my groups finally hit 60 (haven't had much time to play)

Been running with

Prot Pally, Disc Priest, Arms Warrior, Feral Druid and Elemental Shaman.

Have to decide it I want to keep the warrior or switch out for a DK. I've never played a DK before but if I switch out for 1 I believe the group composition will give me all buff.

Anyone who has played both have any advice as to which is better dps/utility?

[EaTCarbS]

I've done mixed melee with considerable success in pvp. Hell, at one point I had casters and melee (h pally, 4 ele, 4 dk, 1 feral). Mixed teams work in pvp if you can put that synergy to your advantage.

[Chivalrous]

If I were in charge of the above group I'd change the cat to bear, the paladin to heals, switch the priest for the DK. Reasons--paladins are great 5 man heals and they are resilient. Cats have to be behind target all the time for maximum effectiveness, which takes extra babysitting. The DK is tougher and gives melee attack speed and attack power, the warrior can buff stamina and gives skull banner. Tw shaman buffs spell haste, spell power, mastery, and gives lust/hehero you'd end up with stats, mastery, attack power, melee haste, spell haste, spell power, crit, and stamina plus skull banner and lust/hero plus two toons capable of battle Rez. That's what I'd do!


but, to answer your question if you just want to switch warrior out for DK it's up to you. I wouldn't, I like my warrior, but DK probably easier to macro up. Frost is good easy DPS. Also, fury warrior seems way better to me than arms. But that's opinion only

[redmosez]

If I were in charge of the above group I'd change the cat to bear, the paladin to heals, switch the priest for the DK. Reasons--paladins are great 5 man heals and they are resilient. Cats have to be behind target all the time for maximum effectiveness, which takes extra babysitting. The DK is tougher and gives melee attack speed and attack power, the warrior can buff stamina and gives skull banner. Tw shaman buffs spell haste, spell power, mastery, and gives lust/hehero you'd end up with stats, mastery, attack power, melee haste, spell haste, spell power, crit, and stamina plus skull banner and lust/hero plus two toons capable of battle Rez. That's what I'd do!


but, to answer your question if you just want to switch warrior out for DK it's up to you. I wouldn't, I like my warrior, but DK probably easier to macro up. Frost is good easy DPS. Also, fury warrior seems way better to me than arms. But that's opinion only

Thanks for the suggestions, I ended up sticking with the warrior because I started the DK start area and got bored :P

I'm actually finding the warrior pretty easy to manage with isboxer and macros. The only thing I haven't been able to work out is a way to make it so she only thunderclaps every 15 secs (for the debuff). Right now I have a macro

#showtooltip Thunder Clap
/castsequence reset=target Thunder Clap, null

For single targets I don't use Thunder Clap so it's not an issue, but for AOE I find that it generally only helps a little. I've been considering glyphing Thunder Clap so the cd is increased to 9 secs that way she'll cast it less often.

As for the priest, I love priest healers, they've always been my favorite so I'm a little biased when it comes to them. So far the healing with the priest has been super easy but the content hasn't exactly been hard.

You're right about the druid, I found a way that kinda allows me to have her attack from behind but it's a lot of work. For AOE I pretty much just keep thrash up and spam swipe, if she ever gets 5 cp (rarely happens) she'll Ferocious Bite.

For bosses I have a specific single target cast sequence designed to keep rip and rake up as well as keeping herself buffed with savage roar. I find if the boss remains stationary attack from behind is easy seeing as her charge gets her behind the boss. As soon as there is any movement I have to either position the boss so she's behind or position her so she's behind. Unfortunately she provides the crit buff so its hard to cut her for another class.

If there was a class that provides crit and attack speed that I could swap her for it's be great, I'd lose the brez though.

How are Ret Paladins for dps?

[Chivalrous]

Awesome man, it always boils down to play what you want! The only other classes that give crit buff is rogue and hunters that I know of. I think ret paladins can be good DPS if you can figure out how to keep inquisition up without lowering the actual buff time with a lower buff time (that is so annoying)

i did a castsequence macro that is for holy power dump and it worked well. DKs and warriors could do way more DPS than my ret pallies though. Maybe it was gear, not sure.

[redmosez]

I might give ret pally and bear tank a try for a while, i'll have to try figure out how to keep inquisition up

[Lyonheart]

I might give ret pally and bear tank a try for a while, i'll have to try figure out how to keep inquisition up

I took Holy Prism talent and did this "/castsequence reset=5 Holy Prism,Inquisition", its on a second step.. holy prism cooldown is 20 seconds.. with other abilities firing off in between.. it seems to give inq to me almost perfect at full stacks ( lasts 30 seconds with 3 HP ) .. sometimes inc drops off for a few seconds, but I have found no other way to make sure its up 100% ..without wasting too much holy power on it by over spamming it.

[redmosez]

The only other I could see it working is if you had a cast sequence to generate 3 holy power and cast inquisition and bound it to a key and then make a separate key for your normal rotation without inquisition.

If you have any addons that let you track buffs on allies you can monitor it's up time with your master and use the inquisition bind when it's duration is getting low.

[Khatovar]

I use a castsequence to kick off Inq within my normal rotation.


/castsequence reset=5 Judgment, Crusader Strike, Judgment, Inquisition, Templar's Verdict, Templar's Verdict, Templar's Verdict

[Longshot17]

I've only had one non-mixed team (first team, the favorite Prot Pally, 4 shammy) since then I've had 4 different mixed teams (all ranged, I've not had much success mixing melee with range). I enjoy the mixed teams more. Easier for loot, fun to have them compete against each other :)

Having said that!!! I've fallen in love with Survival Hunters, and am seriously thinking about lvling 2 more hunters (Pandas anyone!) along with some monks, with the goal of forming a Blood DK, Disc Priest, 3x Survival Hunter. **Side note, I lvled from 80-85 in less then a weekend last weekend (started friday night, was 85 Saturday night, and I had a full 8 hours sleep in there to!, without RAF, but with Guild and all Heirlooms).

[redmosez]

I've only had one non-mixed team (first team, the favorite Prot Pally, 4 shammy) since then I've had 4 different mixed teams (all ranged, I've not had much success mixing melee with range). I enjoy the mixed teams more. Easier for loot, fun to have them compete against each other :)

Having said that!!! I've fallen in love with Survival Hunters, and am seriously thinking about lvling 2 more hunters (Pandas anyone!) along with some monks, with the goal of forming a Blood DK, Disc Priest, 3x Survival Hunter. **Side note, I lvled from 80-85 in less then a weekend last weekend (started friday night, was 85 Saturday night, and I had a full 8 hours sleep in there to!, without RAF, but with Guild and all Heirlooms).

My first 5 man team has been mixed ranged and melee, using Prot Pally, Disc Priest, Ele Shaman, Feral Druid and Arms Warrior.

It's worked out pretty well throughout all dungeons up to the first 2 MoP ones (only heroics I've done are the cata ones for JP). For most fights the 2 melee dps are fine without any babysitting. If I need them to get out of something quickly I use intervene and wild charge (in caster form) targeted at my priest. I also have 2 follow keys for just the 2 melee dps set to follow my pally or my disc priest.

With that being said it does seem that MoP dungeons are fairly melee unfriendly so far, and it can be a lot of work trying to manage a tank, healer, melee dps and ranged dps.

I'm starting a new team now that my first is 85, you're right 8-85 went by so fast just spamming dungeons.

I think for my new team I'll try all ranged, I'm thinking a DK tank, Mage, Hunter and I have no idea for the last dps and healer. I wanted to have access to as many classes as possible and seeing as I have the classes I mentioned above I'm thinking I'll try and make the last two classes something I don't have.

Any suggestions?

[Khatovar]

With that being said it does seem that MoP dungeons are fairly melee unfriendly so far, and it can be a lot of work trying to manage a tank, healer, melee dps and ranged dps.


I'd disagree with MoP dungeons being Melee-unfriendly, I'm having a blast with my melee team in MoP dungeons. The only thing I had any real issue with was Vo'jak in Niuzao Temple and Sha of Violence in Shado-pan Monastary, which is a huge breath of relief after the abuse I took on them in Cata.

Granted, I've been multiboxing for quite some time now so I'm pretty comfortable with micromanagement, but in a PvE context, I've never really noticed much difference between my caster teams {what I started with in BC}, my mixed ranged and melee teams {what I was running through Wrath} and my straight melee teams {what I've been running since the end of Wrath}. If anything, I've liked ranged less because I have to pay more attention to what's going on behind me to make sure no one is standing in something, behind something, facing the wrong way or out of range...

That said, you have to play classes you enjoy playing, otherwise you're not going to stick with them long enough to learn how to make them work. And there's nothing saying they have to all be different classes, you might find different specs is all you're looking for.