Duo Leveling Class Comps

[Morganti]

Since /follow in BG's is probably a lost cause I've been thinking of just rolling two toons to level/farm together and then main one for PVP. Stumbled across Kargoz video's and I was impressed at some of the things he was discovering/being told about. A few of these comps are obvious, and a few not so much. I enjoyed watching it. Makes me legit consider Pally/Lock when I was 99% sure I was going to go Rogue/Druid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_rHqqYnh18

[pobdoq]

I think 2 mages are nice because it makes AOE farming so damn easy. Though I'd be following joanas guide and barely do any AOE. For single target grinding I love playing double melee. 2x feral druid would be great once you hit lvl 20 and get cat form and Feline Swiftness.

For mixed classes, I'd say playing hunter/feral would be sweet. I'd play from the hunters perspective, and use the feral as a 2nd pet.

[Purpleflavor]

I think 2 mages are nice because it makes AOE farming so damn easy. Though I'd be following joanas guide and barely do any AOE. For single target grinding I love playing double melee. 2x feral druid would be great once you hit lvl 20 and get cat form and Feline Swiftness.

For mixed classes, I'd say playing hunter/feral would be sweet. I'd play from the hunters perspective, and use the feral as a 2nd pet.mage aoe farming was efficient because you were solo and it also required a lot of skill with kiting, boxing two for aoe sounds like a clumsy mess to me, and not very optimal as a boxer. If i were going to aoe farm as a boxer i'd just go a warrior/warlock and a healer.

[Apatheist]

Warrior + healer (paladin or shaman) would be my choice.

Warriors are unstoppable with a healer supporting them. If you get ganked, paladins and shamans are both very tanky and freedom/dispels from paladins ruin anybody trying to kite your warrior. It's also generally fast to pug a few DPS when you want to do dungeon quests.

[Lewsifur]

I had a lot of succes duo boxing my wifes rogue with my druid. Could tackle a lot of things including some dungeons.

[Morganti]

Lewsifur: were you going bear on the druid and basically tanking the mobs while the rogue did the damage? I'm very curious about this combo.

[FuriousFromage]

I'm planning on dualboxing warrior-mage and have been practicing some rotations. I think that the kargoz videos are just scratching the surface and that it will require actual testing/practice to figure out which combinations are a) optimal and b) fit your playstyle.

With warrior-mage I find I don't really need a healer. Mobs die pretty quickly and hamstring+Frost Nova kiting and aggro volleying results in taking much less damage. I've been working on mostly single Target rotations and find that to get the most out of warrior-mage you need independent movement controls on both toons. Being able to pull while the other character is drinking/eating is important. I have some recordings if anyone is planning on running a similar setup and is interested in some techniques I've identified.

[Lewsifur]

Lewsifur: were you going bear on the druid and basically tanking the mobs while the rogue did the damage? I'm very curious about this combo.

World / quest was cat and rogue stealth quest stacking. Shift to bear for aoe killing.
prowl stealth to backstab quest nameds.
distract past when competition was around.

in dungeons was bear mode for trash, with rogues stuns to shift heal then back to bear.
named bosses woukd rogue tabk at start, heal, then shift to best and taunt off for rogue bandage.
sometime would stealth /distract past dingeon trash to reveal, bear mode discvered, sprint to named and shadowmeld.
ne rogue did the same.

world pvp would have the druid as bait, the rogue would do sap combo from behind, then druid follows with feral stuns etc and kill.

utility was great, druid needed some gesr, but both lesther meant druid did skinning and herbing rogue did skin and leather, gave herbs to alt for alch.

had roots, stuns, and brez, so rogue coukd die x2 on some fights. Rogue gear was specced to give up some dps for tankyness.



hope this helps

[Skybar]

I was dead set to do a 5-box, but trying it out for a bit it's just not for me. So I'm going to dualbox instead, but the biggest problem I'm having is choosing the second class. The first will be a mage, but the other classes all bring something good so it's really hard to decide. Whenever I think I've chosen one, I start thinking "hmm but wouldn't that be nice" and then I go back and forth. The main reason I want to dualbox is to have options what to main at 60, so I don't want mage x2. It might help wedge both of them into raids at the same time as well if the second class is something that's needed (healer/class in demand).

At the moment I'm choosing between mage + priest/warlock/hunter/paladin/druid (typing this, yeah I realize thats almost all of the classes.. it's tough!).

Mage feels good with everything it seems and that's why it is hard to choose. It would be easier if I wanted a warlock because that narrows it down to a healer at least (life tap). But yeah.

Is anyone else going dualbox with mage+something? What will you do?

[Apatheist]

I was dead set to do a 5-box, but trying it out for a bit it's just not for me. So I'm going to dualbox instead

Other people might have different opinions but I don't feel like mages are the most optimal character to 2box. About the only thing I can think of is having a disc/holy priest with power infusion on follow to keep you shielded and healed while your mage AE grinds. Which isn't even necessary. Mages already excel at solo farming and AE grinding. Having a second character tagging along is only going to slow you down.

I've already stated above but I feel like having one character capable of tanking and another capable of healing is the best duo comp. It makes forming groups for dungeon quests simple and heals make melee classes exponentially stronger. If you absolutely want to play a ranged character rather than melee, priest/warlock or paladin/hunter would be a more optimal choice than mage. Pets can tank any quest elite and warlocks/hunters can grind indefinitely with a healer. You'd even be able to solo DM tribute runs by yourself with a bit of gear.

What is it about 5boxing that put you off that you feel won't be an issue with 2boxing? Once you get your setup streamlined there's honestly not a whole lot of difference between managing 2 characters and managing 5 and the payoff is a lot higher being able to farm dungeons without having to share loot.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Other people might have different opinions but I don't feel like mages are the most optimal character to 2box. About the only thing I can think of is having a disc/holy priest with power infusion on follow to keep you shielded and healed while your mage AE grinds. Which isn't even necessary. Mages already excel at solo farming and AE grinding. Having a second character tagging along is only going to slow you down.
I don't think that "Mages already excel at solo farming" thing is going to apply like people think. In Classic, there were a few spots where grinding was viable, and those were eventually patched (e.g. slimes in Maraudon). I recall the issue with mages was mana, especially when fighting in busy areas; this is classic -- people didn't have nearly infinite mana like they do today. Evocation was on an 8-minute timer, and I don't recall mana stones being all that useful.

[Apatheist]

In Classic, there were a few spots where grinding was viablel.

There are guides available with the best spots for frost grinding in each zone. Anything with large packs of mobs, fast respawns that don't have ranged attacks is fine.

Once you get 50+ with reasonable gear you can AE grind DM:E drop runs, trash in BRD, etc. It's much faster than questing and you can pick up 40g or more per hour depending on luck with blues/epics, recipes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeBA0D1LJY

[Skybar]

Other people might have different opinions but I don't feel like mages are the most optimal character to 2box. About the only thing I can think of is having a disc/holy priest with power infusion on follow to keep you shielded and healed while your mage AE grinds. Which isn't even necessary. Mages already excel at solo farming and AE grinding. Having a second character tagging along is only going to slow you down.

I've already stated above but I feel like having one character capable of tanking and another capable of healing is the best duo comp. It makes forming groups for dungeon quests simple and heals make melee classes exponentially stronger. If you absolutely want to play a ranged character rather than melee, priest/warlock or paladin/hunter would be a more optimal choice than mage. Pets can tank any quest elite and warlocks/hunters can grind indefinitely with a healer. You'd even be able to solo DM tribute runs by yourself with a bit of gear.

What is it about 5boxing that put you off that you feel won't be an issue with 2boxing? Once you get your setup streamlined there's honestly not a whole lot of difference between managing 2 characters and managing 5 and the payoff is a lot higher being able to farm dungeons without having to share loot.
Mage+something might not be the most optimal but I really want to play mage though. Healer+tank sounds very nice in theory, and I might try that for an alt-team, but it won't hit the spot for the first round. For AE grinding a priest could help with holy nova, a paladin could hold aggro, warlock/hunter pets could gather the mobs up etc. It wouldn't necessarily make it more efficient, just more safe. On that note I didn't do a single bit of AE grinding 14 years ago with my mage, but that is mostly because I was scared of it :)

I reckon a mage+healer/tank could get into dungeon groups fairly easy as well. Also with any partner the mage could hit those elites fairly safe too. I see it more as a mage+helper rather than a super optimal duo, but I can't decide which helper would be the best one.

It's not so much about the amount of characters per se, but rather how the game plays and feels. I miss the feeling back in the day when you "were" your character, you felt so connected to it, while exploring the world and doing quests. With 5 I just don't get that, it feels more like a top-down game where you are commanding units rather than playing a character. But I still want to multibox to make life easier for myself, so a dualbox is kind of a middleground I guess.

[Apatheist]

dualbox is kind of a middleground I guess.

That's fair enough. I stopped thinking about characters decades ago since I haven't played a game I can't box since DAoC. I just became addicted to it and you're right, I do view it more like a type of strategy game.

In that case, I'd say a priest is probably your best bet. Power Word: Shield will help with your pulls and holy nova has no threat and will help with healing and DPS. You just have to be careful not to frost nova with your priest on follow behind you or all of the mobs will switch to the only character in melee range.

[Moorea]

What is it about 5boxing that put you off that you feel won't be an issue with 2boxing? Once you get your setup streamlined there's honestly not a whole lot of difference between managing 2 characters and managing 5 and the payoff is a lot higher being able to farm dungeons without having to share loot.
I don't know about OP but my experience 5 boxing has too often 1 of the 5 going wrong (long time to get last drop, stuck in staircases, missing one quest, etc....) much less likely/aggravation in duos

[Ughmahedhurtz]

There are guides available with the best spots for frost grinding in each zone. Anything with large packs of mobs, fast respawns that don't have ranged attacks is fine.

Once you get 50+ with reasonable gear you can AE grind DM:E drop runs, trash in BRD, etc. It's much faster than questing and you can pick up 40g or more per hour depending on luck with blues/epics, recipes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeBA0D1LJY
Ya know, I remember those guides. In early vanilla they were extremely viable. I remember in later builds the problem became mobs resisting your slows and roots, and there was a time IIRC in the middle where they had introduced resistance RNG but hadn't yet introduced the spell pushback -- it was still a complete interrupt. There was also a time where Blizzard would not immediately break roots; that was subsequently nerfed. That said, this was back when I was still frequently soloing my frost mage, and I didn't play mages again for quite a while once I switched to multiboxing. I suppose that this would work much better in terms of forgiveness with multiple Blizzards.

Anywho, it'll be interesting to see where the Classic servers fall in terms of those mechanics. I hope we get enough time and accounts in beta to confirm that's still workable. And how they progress through the buffs/nerfs/DR/RNG changes.

[Apatheist]

They're using itemization and talent trees from 1.21 so mages will have access to decent spellpower and hit rating talents right from the start. Will make farming even easier. Tailoring alone gives you access to like 60 frost damage worth of gear you can wear starting from level 20-ish.

I still prefer warlocks personally. Especially for boxing. The only reason I plan on leveling a mage is to get it to 60 for portals and water and then replace it with another warlock.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Tailoring alone gives you access to like 60 frost damage worth of gear you can wear starting from level 20-ish.
Now that is a good point.

[Generalbrock]

I'm trying to figure out the best duo for classic. I always drive from the healer, so I'm trying to decide on a good class to pair with a druid or priest.

Hunter seems like a bad option with the food management and dead zone. Warlocks also don't seem great with all their soul shard stuff.

Assuming CTM is in the game, maybe a warrior or Paladin would work? Or even a rogue?

Any thoughts on a good pairing for these classes?

[Fat Tire]

Assuming CTM is in the game, maybe a warrior or Paladin would work? Or even a rogue?




CTM and IWT are in the beta. No reason they wouldnt make it to launch.

[Generalbrock]

CTM and IWT are in the beta. No reason they wouldnt make it to launch.

Thanks for the info. I didn't have a chance to check out the beta.

[Runamuck]

Warrior/Priest Zero downtime. Hunter/Hunter Zero downtime plus the main hunter can spec BM and have a tanking pet other Marksmanship. That's what you want when dual boxing. What's the least amount of down time. I can out kill mages with a 2 hunter setup, your not AOEing your just grinding the mobs faster and non stop.

[Apatheist]

Warrior healer is great but out of all the healers, priest is probably the least optimal to pair with. Shield prevents rage generation and priests don't have any buffs that increase physical damage. All of the other healers get stuff that reduces armor or buffs that are more helpful to a warrior.

As for hunters, it's personal preference but I'm not a fan. The dead zone is a pain to deal with in PvP or when pulls get messy (add spawns) and mobs get too close to you. Hunter playstyle requires a lot of micromanagement and movement with kiting, feigning, traps, scatter shot, etc. They also don't synergize particularly well. Hunters are great soloers but two hunters can't do much more than one hunter solo. If you pair a hunter with a healer (druid is great for stealth runs whlie your hunter feigns to lose agro) you could do stuff like solo tribute runs, Maraudon farming, 2man BRD emperor, etc.

[Generalbrock]

Warrior healer is great but out of all the healers, priest is probably the least optimal to pair with. Shield prevents rage generation and priests don't have any buffs that increase physical damage. All of the other healers get stuff that reduces armor or buffs that are more helpful to a warrior.

As for hunters, it's personal preference but I'm not a fan. The dead zone is a pain to deal with in PvP or when pulls get messy (add spawns) and mobs get too close to you. Hunter playstyle requires a lot of micromanagement and movement with kiting, feigning, traps, scatter shot, etc. They also don't synergize particularly well. Hunters are great soloers but two hunters can't do much more than one hunter solo. If you pair a hunter with a healer (druid is great for stealth runs whlie your hunter feigns to lose agro) you could do stuff like solo tribute runs, Maraudon farming, 2man BRD emperor, etc.

I hadn't thought of that issue with a priest and warrior. Maybe druid and warrior would be a better choice.

[Apatheist]

I hadn't thought of that issue with a priest and warrior. Maybe druid and warrior would be a better choice.

Vanilla is a lot more time consuming than most other versions of WoW so you might as well pick classes you enjoy. Especially if you plan to raid. There's no point choosing a class based on leveling speed if you're not going to enjoy playing it at 60.

If you prefer priest, play a priest. It will work fine. I just meant that if your only interest is maximizing your DPS output in a duo, the other healers provide stronger buffs for melee. Windfury totem in particular is a huge DPS increase.

[Boostab]

They're using itemization and talent trees from 1.21 so mages will have access to decent spellpower and hit rating talents right from the start. Will make farming even easier. Tailoring alone gives you access to like 60 frost damage worth of gear you can wear starting from level 20-ish.

I still prefer warlocks personally. Especially for boxing. The only reason I plan on leveling a mage is to get it to 60 for portals and water and then replace it with another warlock. I am thinking this as well I was also thinking of a rouge and druid I have not still made my mind up quite yet still waiting on any one who boxing ..

[laxxle]

2x Night Elf Hunters

I plan on doing world pvp. Stealth at a choke point, some poor unsuspecting toon runs by and gets opened by two aimed shots + pets.
One hunter will be kinda dormant while the other I main will be running around kiting those focusing the slave toon

[Fat Tire]

Follow is most likely disabled during pvp combat and for sure in bgs so this limits what I would play(I have had the beta for a week and still havent made a character). I would be available for isboxer testing if needed.

Alas, I would play double rogue if I was going to play duo and play them hemo sword spec. Eviscerate damage is not based on gear so not being as gear dependent suits me. I probably wouldnt raid that much and just play for pvp mostly. Pick pocketing for gold in brd for example is decent gold per hour and there are many ways for rogues to get gold because of stealth.

Although, boxing three has always been my sweet spot and I personally wouldnt go more than that ever again honestly. Also, there is something intriguing about double warrior/shaman with windfury and their many, many fear escapes.

[stubbadub3000]

I'm loving this discussion! And I totally forgot that disc shields stopped warrior rage gen :/
I'm pretty close to locking in Warrior/Shaman/Mage, with the Mage being my raiding 'main'
Not sure which would be the best master would be, going to need to test that but I assume the mage with the other two toons doing melee IWT

[laxxle]

Hunter + Druid sounds interesting to me as well.
cheetah/cheetah - HoTs + Roots; for example would allow this combo to be rather mobile

[Moorea]

Follow is most likely disabled during pvp combat and for sure in bgs so this limits what I would play

Follow does work in pvp in the classic beta so far (see my thread/video)

[Runamuck]

Hunter + Druid sounds interesting to me as well.
cheetah/cheetah - HoTs + Roots; for example would allow this combo to be rather mobile

This is what I decided on as well. Get bird for screech go BM throw thorns on pet and he can tank like crazy and hold agro. Hunter is easy to remote control and I can do macros for the rotation.

Was going to 5 box but decided against it. Can do dungeons with this comp as well even with other people.

[Runamuck]

Messed around on a good private server which doesn't have any isboxer support. Was a clunky setup and using 2 hunters killing stuff. Easily out kill mages grinding not sure how much fun that would be. Went one BM one Marks need the distance marks gives at 20. Single target health bars melt away and these where mobs 2 to 5 levels higher. Kiting was funny with 2 pets attacking while mob was chasing me.

Make sure your main hunter has Spirit going to need the mana regen... Also get some mana plus food for no downtime.

Also did hunter with druid which is a good combo as well. A lot of synergy. I was just using druid as heal bot and buff bot. Still going through mobs pretty well. Never any downtime either. Druid was adding dot, healing and the occasional wrath.

I would do skinning and alchemy for professions while your grinding to 60 and both setups benefit from it.

[Apatheist]

Main reason I mentioned hunter/druid was for stealth runs. You can stealth the druid through and then run to a safe spot with your hunter and feign death. This way you can skip trash in most dungeons and farm bosses. Makes for pretty quick gearing.

You also don't really need to go full BM. 8 Points into BM for thick hide is all you really need to make your pet tanky enough to farm just about any dungeon boss. Get yourself an owl with screech, growl and natural armor. Owls have more balanced tanking stats than any other beast that can learn screech -- which is the best TPS ability your pets have access to after growl.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/hunter/A6wwMAQ_TNzQAA

If you like you could take a couple of points out of hawk eye and put them into improved mend pet to dispel fear and disease effects that your druid can't remove.

[nodoze]

... Hunters are great soloers but two hunters can't do much more than one hunter solo. If you pair a hunter with a healer (druid is great for stealth runs whlie your hunter feigns to lose agro) you could do stuff like solo tribute runs, Maraudon farming, 2man BRD emperor, etc.For farming BRD Emperor, how much faster is the duo stealth/FD approach compared to 4warriors+healer (or 3 warriors+ 2 healers)?

In the duo stealth/FD approach roughly how many times does the Hunter have to feign death to get to the Emperor?

[Mercbeast]

Warrior + healer (paladin or shaman) would be my choice.

Warriors are unstoppable with a healer supporting them. If you get ganked, paladins and shamans are both very tanky and freedom/dispels from paladins ruin anybody trying to kite your warrior. It's also generally fast to pug a few DPS when you want to do dungeon quests.

At launch me and a buddy did Shaman/Warrior. Keep in mind that I was the 2nd shaman to hit the cap world wide, and he was like the third or fourth warrior world wide to cap.

It was a terrible combination. Neither of us had great DPS, anything that involved a lot of killing was quite slow. For classic I would not recommend a warrior + healer duo unless you're dedicating yourself to a lot of instancing and picking up DPS to pug.

Duo picks I'd put as top tier, would be, any combination of, Hunter, Shadow Priest, Warlock, Mage, and maybe rogue (rogues start off slow, and then become absurdly fast as they start to round out their abilities and talent points in an ambush build). To be fair, I never played my shaman as elemental, I was using a 2h'r and windfury to help my warrior bro get the most out of his abilities, and elemental shamans were objectively better DPS back then.

Duo shadowpriests can do things like, just run dotting everything and psychic screaming whenever the mobs pile up too much. Can do what are essentially enormous AOE pulls like this, even though you're not really using any AOE abilities.

(edit) Disregard what I said about warriors, I was under the assumption classic was going to be an early version of vanilla, not august 2006. I have no clue about the state of warriors in that patch, though my suspicion is that they are strong.

[Apatheist]

At launch me and a buddy did Shaman/Warrior. Keep in mind that I was the 2nd shaman to hit the cap world wide, and he was like the third or fourth warrior world wide to cap.

This seems to be a contradictory statement. If you were both top 5 in your respective classes worldwide to hit the level cap as a duo I don't understand how it could have been a terrible combination.

Warriors are killing machines that can grind through a ton of mobs non stop as well as tanking elites and dungeons in any spec. The only limiting factor is their HP, which having a class that can throw a heal every now and then, as well as provide useful buffs and DPS of their own will counteract. The more damage you take, the faster you can spam cleave and whirlwind. You don't want to go elemental on the shaman because you need your mana to top the warrior up. OOMing yourself every second mob casting lightning bolt defeats the purpose.

Anyway, when I refer to top tier leveling picks I don't really care about leveling speed. I'm talking about complimentary buffs, efficiency, the ability to do elite quests and dungeons easily and so on. Rushing to 60 is wasting the classic experience IMO. Though I think a warrior and paladin/shaman are still a lot faster than shadow priests or rogues. I don't see a reason to duo with warlocks, mages or hunters. They level faster solo.

[Shadow-g]

I'm planning on dualboxing warrior-mage and have been practicing some rotations. I think that the kargoz videos are just scratching the surface and that it will require actual testing/practice to figure out which combinations are a) optimal and b) fit your playstyle.

With warrior-mage I find I don't really need a healer. Mobs die pretty quickly and hamstring+Frost Nova kiting and aggro volleying results in taking much less damage. I've been working on mostly single Target rotations and find that to get the most out of warrior-mage you need independent movement controls on both toons. Being able to pull while the other character is drinking/eating is important. I have some recordings if anyone is planning on running a similar setup and is interested in some techniques I've identified.


I was thinking about doing a rogue + caster but I'm sure I'd run into challenges. I'd like to see what you got and compare :D