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View Full Version : What classes/specs are surprisingly easy to box?



kate
04-21-2020, 08:33 AM
For me, I always avoided boxing rogues because I felt like they were a bit fiddly to manage their rotations - combo points and finishers and situational stuff. I didn't think they would do well when boxed, but I did make one to level along with a friend a week ago, and I do enjoy the whole "sneaking up on people, picking their pockets, and then murdering them" assassination rogue class fantasy.

After getting it to max I ran a few dungeons to check my DPS and work on my rotation, which is a variant of the Icy Veins Easy Mode suggestion. I'm not well geared at all - maybe 420 ilvl, and my weapons are 370 and 400. I was doing a bit over 26k DPS according to meters, without buffs - a sim said I should be doing around 26-27k, so, yay, playing it reasonably well I guess.

Then I decided to stop manually managing my rotation and instead try to set up a priority system in ISBoxer so that I can basically roll into a fight and just mash my 1 key. A bit of tinkering and then testing it out and my dps... stayed more or less the same (about 200-400 DPS less)!

Next up will be trying something similar for a feral druid rotation.

What other classes/specs seem difficult to box but turn out to be pretty easy?

Lyonheart
04-21-2020, 08:56 AM
Based on the fun I have had with 5 druids.. im guessing it would be fun to do all rogues. Not much use for anything but open world stuff anf BGs ( you can get them the hive mind mount for getting around in BGs ). My druids are balance, but they can "prowl" and stalk the enemy and blow them up before they knew what hit them. I only PvP for the CTAs or if someone attacks me. I keep war mode on for the 25% extra rewards I get ( im on under-represented alliance side PvE realm ). With any other team, my 5 pals for example, I cant hide so i get ganged up on all the time. Its nice on the druids to be able to quest and use prowl to stay undetected so i can finish WQs and assaults faster.

kate
04-22-2020, 07:51 AM
I rolled a new all druid team yesterday (horde this time as I haven't played horde all expansion), and wanted to make a mixed spec team specifically for dungeons because that end-dungeon bonus from dungeon finder is insane with the 100% buff now. Previously I'd been irritated that I couldn't just roll through with 5x guardians (I have a very well tested ISBoxer setup for that), but based on what Lyonheart said, I decided to try my hand at setting up boomkin.

The GREAT: Went from 20 (highmountain tauren) to 52 in about 6 hours - about 2 of that was spent just fiddling with configurations when I started. After the first couple of dungeons, which took a bit of time but also let me get a feel for how to handle the team, I just started prowling directly to dungeon quest objectives and required bosses. Dungeons that would have taken me 30-60 minutes if I had to fight ALL THE TRASH were getting finished in 5-10 minutes. I did an accidental almost complete tribute run in Dire Maul because I just snuck past everyone, and even the wing of DM with the stupid imp was super fast to do all the quests whereas normally it's a slog.

The Good: My Resto druid picked Balance Affinity, my Boomkins and guardian picked Resto Affinity, so now I basically have 4 boomkins who are fairly robust to take a beating themselves, a bunch of passive healing, and the ability to lay 4x regrowth onto anyone who needs it.

The Bad(?): I don't think my boomkin rotation is very optimal. Some fights took longer - like Lilian Voss in Scholomance, I got to the phase where her soul got separated from her body, and I don't think I've had that happen before. I could use some advice there.

My boomkins are set up with a priority: single target it tries to cast starsurge, then it does both of the dots (only once per target), and then it alternates between solar wrath and lunar strike, which I believe should let me take advantage of procs every other cast. For AOE, I replace starsurge with starfall at my druids (we just stack), but keep the rest the same. I thought about starfall on a cursor macro, but that's more micro than I care to do, so @player it is.

Is there a known good setup people are using? Do boomkin just take a bit longer to come into their own? They aren't like SUPER SLOW or anything, but it feels suboptimal.

Anyway - this is a surprisingly fun comp, mostly due to the skipping all the trash thing.

Ellay
04-22-2020, 08:54 AM
I'm not sure how it is leveling but starfall at 120 is not optimal to use unless there are 7+ targets. You just tab/dot. the reason this probably works better at higher levels though is Sunfire is already aoe and moonfire will apply the dot to another target if talented.
Your rotation seems pretty accurate. They don't start pumping really good dps until you get the azerite traits for streaking stars at 120.

Wizeowel
04-22-2020, 01:34 PM
What other classes/specs seem difficult to box but turn out to be pretty easy?

Playing classic now, but I did manage to macro a demo lock in retail last year. I can't even remember what the abilities were called but I used certain spells with cooldowns to delay castsequences. Ultimately you need something that is shard neutral, and only uses demonic cores when they are sure to be up. I made a spreadsheet to guess-timate an ideal rotation and it worked. Sub-optimal talents but you use what tools you have. It was a single button rotation that was (ironically?) easier to get reasonable dps than any mage single button solution.

smk
04-30-2020, 03:00 PM
I have been playing around with trinity groups. I am right now debating a single class group myself. I am looking at warlock, druid or hunter group. I was thinking all hunters, just seems that an all hunter or druid group would be most interesting, i was curious i might have missed it, has anyone run all guardian druids? I am referring at 120?

kate
04-30-2020, 04:23 PM
I'd been running all guardian at 120, though not doing more than mythic 0's just to finish off quest lines with them. The only struggle I had was with mechanics that usually benefit from multiple people doing different things, but that usually just translated to things taking much longer to clear. I'm experimenting with a trinity team of druids now that I've got a pretty good boomkin setup.

MadMilitia
05-27-2020, 10:47 PM
Just be aware of what strengths and minuses play well together. Warlocks are turrets with more durability than most ranged, so rolling them with BM isn't really a good choice. Because there will be fight or flight times you need to choose and someone is probably going to die.

As much as I hate my warlock team in BFA you can sort've play around with some of the fire mechanics by just walling everyone and using spirit link. Though what really murdered this team in BFA was poison.