seems talk of boxing mages is dead.

[natex]

Ok, so im looking around these forms and it seems everyone is talking about boxing shaman.

I understand they have high armor and can heal, but it seems to me that mages would be a more powerful choice for battlegrounds just because of the cc/stay put moves they have.

So are shaman really that worth it?

[Xaedra]

Most like the Shaman setups (x5 Shaman/x4 shaman + 1 Paly) because they are viable in both PVE and PVE. Can you instance as 5 mages without heals? Very unlikely. You can, however, do it with Shaman (or a well-balanced group). I am sure a x5 mage group would be awesome in PVP/PVE w/ out instancing. But personally, I'd much rather PVP 5 Warlocks :)

[Skuggomann]

If you wana own BG go for 4x lock 1x priest. Shammys are the best becoru of the totems + armor + heal + CL + Heroism x5

[Ughmahedhurtz]

A lot of us abandoned the squishies because they just die too damn fast. There's a balance in there somewhere between utility, survivability and DPS and shammies do a fair job of all 3.

[Zaelar]

Smart use of anti-fear totem > wotf.

[Emo?]

Well i dont like that everyone play shaman, takes away the kind of "rareness" from Multiboxing. But if they are best for pvp and pve.. well keep playing them. I enjoy my mages Every single day, and i can always laught my ass of when i play. Imo, choose what classes you whant (imo you should choose casters) and go with them, im sure you will find a fun way of playing them. :D Good luck

- Mages is not dead! - :)

- Emo?

[Quix]

I love my mages, they just don't hold up too well in arena (Probably related to My playing, not the mages). For everything else I want to do (BG, World PVP, Dailies, Heroics with a live tank friend)they rock.

But the shammies are wayyy more survivable in 5v5.

Overall i'd say my 4xmage 1 priest group is more fun than my shammies, but since my goal is 5v5 & I personally can't figure out how not to get Roflstomped on them in 5v5, I spend more time on the Shams.

[natex]

Well i dont like that everyone play shaman, takes away the kind of "rareness" from Multiboxing. But if they are best for pvp and pve.. well keep playing them. I enjoy my mages Every single day, and i can always laught my ass of when i play. Imo, choose what classes you whant (imo you should choose casters) and go with them, im sure you will find a fun way of playing them. :D Good luck

- Mages is not dead! - :)

- Emo?

I agree completely. Everyone boxes shaman, I kind of want to be unique. When i think of the 4mages/1healer team or 5mages I imagine someone flying around Outlands.. then out of nowhere... Fireblast, POM-quad pyro!! slowfall. Now that is destruction.

The main reason I want to stay away from shaman is because there are two guys on my server who box them and I have seen, on many occasions, two mages knock them all out with arcane explosion. I think If I were doing sunwell dailies and someone jumped me, quad trinket / POM pyro or Arcane explosion would be WAY more effective then trying to cast CL and earthshock. If I saw 5 shaman I would be way more inclined to mess with them then if I saw, lets say 4locks or 4mages +healer.

anyways. I hate being indecisive.

Edit: ohh just imagined the possibilities of having 4 SL SL locks,a deathcoil round robin chain and stacked dots (do the dots stack? if not seems to be a lot less of what I want in arena.)

[kllrwlf]

My Mages are just too squishy. Nice fire-power from a distance and for PVE.

For PVP, they die pretty quickly.

[keyclone]

well.. if you'd like a challenge, and do something very few have tried.. you could try 5x warriors :D

http://solidice.com/keyclone/screencaps/zerg_theboys_level13_03apr2008a.jpg

the boys @ 13 ...

[Silly Gooooose]

I personally just hate the mage class, lol.

But yes, if you sit down and think about what class is best suited as a starting class, so you can do either pve or pvp. Well that class needs heals of some kind, so pally, priest, shaman, druid or maybe warlock. You also want them to have a bit of survivability so cloth is out. Plus, what class stacks better with multiple of it's self? Priest, other than having them different specs, don't stack at all. Druids can stack, but once again you need different specs. Pally's can stack, but.... we all know pally DPS is a joke, and they have to be melee, or lolshock spec.... (yah....) Now shamans, totems stack awesomely. They have pretty close to the direct target damage of a mage, though no CC or aoe.

I say it's not so much that we are all jumping on the band wagon, but more than ellay picked one of the best starter classes for keeping it simple, while still having fun and learning a lot.

Plus I wanted to roll a shaman for my next class, lol.

[OzPhoenix]

Well, I have to admit, I chose Shaman for my 5-boxing because of my reading here but I'd also never played a Shaman before, so for me at least, it's been unique.

[Vyndree]

There are still people successfully boxing mages, they're just not very vocal.

*jabs Suvega*


Shaman are popular due to their versatility.

[Sun]

shamans for survivablity...I cant tell you how many times I have been ganked by higher level groups and survived. Even after being feared. Usually go for the mage or priest who feared me with CL and LB to wrap it up. Then finish off the pally/warrior who thinks they got me on the ropes. I picked the Shamans for the very fact they got Chain Mail. Once you see what 5 Earth Elementals can do, you will be surprised. I cant wait for my Fire Elementals. ooo yea. If I was going to try another class it would be locks...I love those 5 DOTs that locks can do. Never played a lock but I have seen a lvl 70 5 box in action.

[Xzin]

Don't expect to win any arenas with 5 cloth. It just doesn't happen.

Mail + shield + 5 healers + totems + NS + wolf form + LO + 5 anhks + 5 rezzers >>>>>> 5 cloth in arenas.

In AV? Mass world PvP (like the new siege battleground?).... 4 mages shine. 5 and no healers? Bad idea. But 4+ shammys have so damn much going for them in arenas that the combo just WORKS.

Since arenas are the new leet gear spot, most people are choosing shammys. Not to mention you really can't do heroics with 5 cloth.

If mages didn't die in 2 hits and run OOM so damn fast, maybe they would be viable in arenas. Until then, forget it.

That's why you see so few people boxing mages. Warlocks? Much more popular but DoTs can be dispelled and people with DoTs and pointy things don't stop poking you. 4+ Shammy is the best combo for arenas in the current state WoW is in. That's why they are so popular. Jack of all trades master of .. nearly all.

[mrmcgee21]

I honestly cannot see any other class being succesful in highend pvp. Shamans are (1) sort of broke when you stack 4 and 5 in one group and (2) you simply cannot cc them if you alternate tremor totems. Any other class is going to get wtf owned 5 boxxing ( or 4 ) because of the CC issues. Your group will get spread out seperated and owned. I'm sure with practice you'll sit around 1500-1600 with other class makeups, but I really would like to put a challenge up for anyone else to break 1800 using anything other than the *sigh* shaman pewpew train. Hunters possibly due to BW but I forsee a lot of issues there also. Take away tremor and shamans would be just as useless as the rest imo. Maybe theres already multiple 1800+ teams out there that arent mostly shamans, but I doubt it ( speaking strictly in terms of 5 boxxers .. or 4 ). In PVE theres a million different ways to be succesful, gotta have at least some heals though and some resemblence of a tank for certain situations that will arrise in nearly every instance.

-Mike

[Maxion]

As for the question about dots stacking, yes, you can have one of each dot per warlock on each target.

[Tdog]

A lot of us abandoned the squishies because they just die too damn fast. There's a balance in there somewhere between utility, survivability and DPS and shammies do a fair job of all 3.Meh...I'm actually liking my warriors quite a bit now. And Melee unfriendly fights are not anywhere near as big of a pain in the ass as I thought it would be. For AoE abilities that the bosses use I have a /follow button for my main obviously but also I have 2 /follow buttons for my healer whom I have sitting at max range of /follow. One of my healer /follow buttons runs just the melee out, the other runs the tank out as well. Basically just ping pong my toons back and forth w/o much mirco management at all.

My 5x shaman team is still fun but I'm digging the melee more atm. I may switch back to the shamans at some point though who knows...

[Los]

Actually have been busy with levelling some mages. Just of and on and still very low level (22ish atm). I do hope to get them to 70 one day and would love to comment on how they where doing :). But I must admit prematurly, grinding = FUN on mages :P

[Suvega]

We're here, just we don't have the "OMG LEWK AT ME!" mentatlity that the SHAMAN HORDE HAS.

I keed I keed, I've been using my 5 box team mostly for a farm team atm. 1.5k gold per day for dailies is pretty nice, albeit it takes 3 hours.
I'll post more when I do somethign interesting.

[tigger2577]

I started out 3 boxing 1 priest 2 mages loved it went to 5 hbox and went 5 shaman I do not enjoy them as much as the 3 box so I went a different rout that I love
1priest , 2 mages, 2 locks I love this make up

[Sanctume]

What I was based on 2-box to 3-box at the time.

Account 1: Prot Warrior 70, Rogue 70, Prot Pally 70.
Account 2: Priest was 62 for the longest time as a healbot.

Then I got a 3rd account, and moved my Prot Pally there.

I rolled a Holy Paladin in Account 1, and at 60 I ran:
>> Holy Paladin, Shadow Priest, Prot Pally
Sure I can survive huge aoe pulls but the DPS was not there from the Shadow Priest (poorly geared tho)

After I got the Holy Pally and SPriest to 70, I got a 4th account and xfer my Warrior to the 4th.
>> Holy Paladin, Holy/Disc Priest (I abandoned Shadow spec), Prot Pally and Arms Warrior.
It's a lot of micro to allign the warrior to be in melee range and do his Slam + MS rotation with occasional shouts.

Anyway, I decided to power level Mages and Shamans using this setup:
Account 1: Frost Mage & Elemental Shaman
Account 2: Elemental Shaman & Frost Mage

Account 3: Prot Pally

Account 4: Resto shaman



I had my healer from account 4, and 2 dps. I paired 1 Frost Mage + 1 Elemental Shaman as I levelled up. It worked great because I was getting totems and Blizzard in my AoE instance boosting.

But come level 60 and clearing Blood Furnace, I find having 3 shamans easier than having a "level" mage in the mix. It was not long when my Shamans were levels 62 and the Mages were 60. I then decided to just level the Shamans to 70 asap and work on the Mages later.

So I guess I'll see how the mages play out since I just finished levelling the 3 shamans to 70 last night. :)

[yarr]

@ those who want to try something non-shaman-like but don't want to get owned, you may want to try 4x hunter + (healer), you get chain mail like shamans, you get a tanking pet, and the dps is decent. Especialy since the last patch that buffed hunters, they took out the hunter deadzone so ranging isnt as big an issue. Plus you can't argue with 4x big red hunters & pets ^_^

@ Xzin, cant use ankh in arena, sorry =P
other than that, correct though =)

[zanthor]

2 mages, 2 priests and a pally... i LOVE my 5 box team...

They suck for arena's, they aren't viable for 10/15/20 man pvp either... I'm pretty solid in AV but who isn't... I am very solid at PVE however and a gold farming machine.

[Jaws5]

for aoe instance farming nothing gets close to 3-4 mages with a holy priest healing.makes daily collection quests sooo easy. :)

[Djarid]

Ironically I have given up on my pve team for a while and have gone old school... 4xlocks and a priest... I like to play with class synergy ;)

[Jorai]

i started with 2 mages but decided to focus on warlocks mostly for pets - pets, engineering pets, non combat pets...3 boxing a little circus is fun!

mages are great , in my opinion do whatever you like, if you are into it enough you can make it fun. (i should note that i'm not going for arena with the locks so i'm not worried about that aspect)

[Falkor]

Shaman setups (x5 Shaman/x4 shaman + 1 Paly) because they are viable in both PVE and PVE

Dont you mean PVP and PVE :P

[Zoroaster]

I made 3 mages and am happy with them so far. My PvE setup is warrior/shaman + mages though, so I got them mainly for the CC and free water/food is always nice. Really it all depends on what you want to do with your team. I work nights and have a few hours every morning after I get home to do dailies, heroics, etc. However it's very hard to find a group, much less a good group at this time of day, so I made my own 5-man group. I don't PvP very much on the mages, got them their 1h Gladiator swords and Vindicator bracers, mainly for PvE use though. Been having fun doing alt T5 raids with the 3 mages and running lots of heroics for badges.

[Jubex]

Im using 3 shaman 2 mages we just hit 62.... i have frost nova on 1 key and blast nova on the same key for other mage and vice versa on another key. It works well...then chainlightning with arcane explosion! is like pow.

In 5mans
I setup focus keys for my mages to have two seperate focus targets for sheeping but it takes a bit to setup the initial pull then you just rape each target in turn. I can still usually leave a caster up as 3 grounding totems usually enough to eat each spell cast. 3shamans compliment two mages real well.

Best thing about shamans is there buff's like omg 5x totem of wraths is awesome. 15% to crit 15% to hit. Plus heroism plus trinkets...plus a tank that can hold aggro...no wait f*ck we're all dead bugga.

[aNiMaL]

I'm boxing 4 mages and a CoH priest,
The priest is one of the 70's I already had and the mages are only at lvl 48 atm,
they grow up fast tho :)

I love playing with them, but then again, i'm fairly new to 5-boxing.
I created these after my fiasco of the 5 different classes setup (I thought I had it under control after 2boxing shamans /doh)

Shamen have better survivability, but since I 2boxed them i wanted something different.
Creating one big water machine was just to mock all the mages in my guild.

I'm having doubts about starting a 5x shaman team or going 5x druid to create my own forest, last one seems very interesting to play, especially the stealthruns.
But hey, I want my current team to get to 70 first.

So many things to do,
so little time. ^^