Dual-Boosting... Class/Spec selections.

[rasmuskl]

Hey

Been pondering a bit these few days. Am leveling a paladin on a second account, he's currently level 45. I have a 70 druid so I AOE tanked SM up to around 40, but druid tanking is quite slow for AOE, so I'm trying to take a quest route now.

I want to control the paladin as main, since lots of the Azeroth quests are gather / pickup. Now I have to choose the character that's easiest / most beneficial to control on the side and to do most of the killing.

I have a 70 hunter and a warlock to choose from. The warlock has superior pve gear by far, hunter is mainly in pvp epics. Currently I'm running with the hunter in BM spec, which is okay, but he does get a lot of problems with monsters coming up to him and I expect this will only get worse as I progress higher up.

As I see it there's 4 alternatives.

BM Hunter.
Pros: Aspect of the Pack (super nice), Pet is good damage
Cons: Cant move while doing damage, Close range sucks when not controling him as main.

Felguard Lock (20/41/0).
Pros: Pet is good damage, Good survivability.
Cons: Pet doesnt regen as fast as hunter pet, maybe mana issues.

Affliction Lock (41/20/0 probably).
Pros: Uninterruptable drain life with conc aura, dots can be casted while moving, dark pact helps mana issues
Cons: No pet damage

SM / Ruin Lock (0/21/40)
Pros: Huge nukes, no interruption with conc aura from paladin.
Cons: Probably mana issues.

I'm leaning towards Affliction Lock or Felguard maybe.... What'd you do? Any experiences / thoughts?

Thanks! :-) (I am using keyclone from an earlier multibox experience, so setup doesn't have to be super simple).

[Gadzooks]

The lock to me has a slight edge, for fear and AOE and resurrection, along with soul stones. The hunter can be very powerful too, especially if you just tank the pet with the Pally and let the hunter stand back and range fire or trap. Me, I'd go with the lock, because I love locks. :) Dot 'em up, send in the pet with the pally, and shadowbolt until dead. Could be a pretty lethal combo. I'm thinking your BM hunter would be too much of an aggro magnet with a lowbie Pally.

One thing you can play with is to "drop" your secondary off, so they have range - what I do is run up to the mob(s) I'm targeting, hit the hotkey for /assist, and then hit a strafe button for the secondary(s). With 3 toons I swap the keybindings for Q and E, so if I hit E, the two sidestep in opposite directions, and then they stop following, and my main runs in for the fight, along with the lock's pet, depending on which one is out. Occasionally one of the secondaries will grab aggro, but if you manage aggro well it's never really a problem. Works pretty well for my druid/mage/lock team. It's a low-rent formation technique, really. They kill fast enough that losing aggro is a minor thing, and the druid in cat form usually catches and kills before any real damage is done. Just get ready to tag the mob, drop the secondary off by sidestepping, hit the /assist hotkey, and charge!

Also, consider running the team without a group, and ONLY use the lock or hunter's pet, as long as the pally tags the mob first - you'll get 100% exp, instead of the reduced exp. you'll get grouping with a 70.

[Turenn]

For Carebear quest boosting it doesn't really matter which class or spec the booster is. The hunter will kill everything with the pet and auto shoot in seconds. But since your lock is the best geared I'd just spec him destro and sac the felhunter for mana regen or the void if you prefer to Life Tap.

[mikekim]

I have run a Protection Pally main and Affliction Lock on follow through the Shattered Sun Dailies, both are now Exalted.

I have even swapped it around and run the lock as the main for fun and used the pally on /follow and just setup basic (healing gear- still prot spec) and used heal macros when needed (scarily enough, the mobs died quicker, with less downtime).

The choice is yours but I am very happy with the dual lock / pally combo

[Lazzadorabcd]

I used my 70 lock to boost my shaman to lvl 40 or so. It was really easy. I could have easily go to 60 or so i bet. I was felguard spec and I just hit everyone with curse of agony and set my felgaurd to defend. He destoryed everything with the cleaves he does.

The only 2 things to remember:

1: you lock has to agro not the pet - otherwise your alts dont get XP from the kill. I did severl runs before i realized this.
2: use demon armor - the armor bonus goes a lot farther than the +dmg bouns. I found that I went faster when I did less dmg but took less damage and didnt need to heal as much.

GL

[rasmuskl]

Hm

I think I'll go with the lock, actually I'm considering a build like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IVzriRfkVtbZdxczIbz

That is Aff / DS.. (40/21/0)... I know it sounds like a weird build, but then I have the option to use Dark Pact if there are phases where mana is a problem and then I can DS either succubus for Affliction with +15% shadow damage or Void for increased health regen. I like my booster to cast instant spells, so I probably won't miss UA too much anyways.

[Naysayer]

I'd suggest that you spec and gear as holy on your pally.

Use the Felguard lock since they still have a couple powerful dots and the Felguard can manage itself pretty well. This will free up most of your focus for the pally, and only need a few button presses to get the lock to take everything down. You should only really need a button setup for /petattack, corruption, lifetap, and Agony. That will kill pretty much anything you come across while leveling and do it easily.

Specing your pally holy will give him lasting power and help make sure your lock can lifetap consistently with no problem. You should have no downtime with this combo and even as holy your pally can still contribute to the dps whenever you feel like it with holy shock and Righteousness. You basically play this combo as if the felguard were your paladin's own pet, and since the dots have no casting time you can consider them your paladin's spells as well. Your warlock will just sit on follow and you can almost get the feeling he's not even there.

In my opinion combo's that act like this are the absolute best since it's almost like playing a single character with major firepower. You don't get that clutter feeling and you don't feel overwhelmed at having to micromanage too much. I think it's as hard or harder to dual most class combinations as it is to play five of the same.

Now this isn't to say affliction (40/21/0, you won't have time to stop for UA's) would be a bad choice, since the lock can dark pact and siphon life will somewhat compare to the felguard dps, but you'll find your pally having to drink as Ret/protection. You could seal wisdom as protection, but you'll lose aggro to the warlock without having at least 200+ spell damage. That isn't the big problem with the efficiency of this combo though, the real problem with the synergy is the fact that as affliction you'll be dotting 4-5 mobs at a time and you'll find your pally to simply be used as a looting mule. If I spec'ed into affliction on the lock, I'd personally go Ret on the pally and just deal with drinking often or sticking to auto-attack. This way I'd at least not die of boredom, and I'd feel somewhat useful whacking things even if they are dying to dots anyway.

Too bad you don't have a shaman. Windfury on a pally is so sweet.

[shaeman]

Personally if my lock was just going to be a booster I would go felguard spec. (if the pet kill thing works). Your build was intriguing at first, but probably overkill. A pure affliction lock wouldn't strugge with mana or health regen.

For the felguard spec I would max out mana feed - if your felguard hasn't got mana lifetap and it's got a big chunk again. For solo play I put about 2 points in there 3 would keep it pretty much full. Health funnel him back up to full health if need be (or insta summon a new one).

Does the being out of group and the pet only damaging trick work with just one player? I remember trying an experiment before I heard of this where I was in the group with my low level rogue and would set the pet and of course it didn't help. I'm not sure if i tried the combination where I was out of group and just let the pet kill.

If it does work then you would tag the mob with your lowbee and then pet attack on the felguard. Your lock would do nothing other than maybe fear a mob off if you are struggling or soulstone/healthstone you.

[rasmuskl]

Actually I do have a 70 shaman too, but the paladin is level 46, so his damage output isn't really viable anyways - even with windfury.

Btw. With my 40/21/0 I wouldn't have UA, (is 41 in aff)... But felguard may still be the best way to go. Just seems that affliction with either dark pact or felhunter DS would be less mana-micro-management than having to watch both warlock and felguard mana for life taps etc.

Still not really settled on what I want to do :-)

[rasmuskl]

Personally if my lock was just going to be a booster I would go felguard spec. (if the pet kill thing works). Your build was intriguing at first, but probably overkill. A pure affliction lock wouldn't strugge with mana or health regen.
I tried it with the hunter and it didn't seem to work, but I didn't try for very long.

[Biomehanikka]

if u wanna go the "run into sm and aoe the hell out of everything" route, go demonology with the lock but do not use the felguard, they have gimp hp, their damage is nice but they cannot take a beating like the voidie can.

what i did when i used my lock to boost myself a while back was send voidie and make sure they hit the target at least once, then pick some mob that is far away but has mobs inbetween u and the target, have the voidie hit that one, then pick another have the voidie hit that one, etc etc till u got a good sized group. depending on spell damage and how many mobs there are and whether or not yer voidie is almost dead, make sure they are all relatively close, pick a target /cast seed of corruption /petattack(or w/ev it is to make a pet attack) and repeat. keep going until the first seed procs then hope to god u got enough seeds off before they come and rape the lock. it took me some practice and after 2 failures from pulling too many guys i got it into a science.

my pulls in sm for example in the armory consisted of 3 rows of mobs. when u go down the stairs of the armory theres one row of mobs, then u go thru an entry way into another row, then again into another row where theres a set of stairs to allow u to continue, i basically pulled that with the voidie got off 5 seeds before they aggroed to me from the first one proccing, then they all went off. great success, destroys yer mana pool, and its very risky, but i found no greater success even with my mage friend who boosted my shamans, he could do one row or two at a time. depending on gear and how much hp yer voidie has(mine had only 8.5k) u could pull more

on the other hand if u wanna kill things one-three guys at a time, hunter or destrolock or affliction would be just fine. my locks gear, while not like t6/t5 gets me 7k shadowbolts, thats plenty to single target some guy and then start on the next. but with affliction w/o UA u just cast Sl corruption CoA on everythign u see and keep casting it, the healing from SL +damage and fel armor should be more than enuff to keep u alive for most instance trash up until id guess ST?

[rasmuskl]

I go even go aff/demo hybrid and use a spec like:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IVMriMckVdZfxczIrzc

for extra lol effect. Would loose instant howl of terror, but my dark pact / life tapping would be INSANE... Since the imp will get 100% of the mana I gain from life tap, the efficiency of life tap would actually be doubled. Then combined with improved imp for extra hp buff goodness (keep paladin (or other lowbie) alive longer).

Dark Pact + Mana Feed = Nasty.

[Naysayer]

I've been quest boosting my 64 shadowpriest the passed few days with my affliction lock 70 and I've found it to be a bad form of leveling tbqh. Tracking experience per hour with titan i find that my experience is reduced by around 50% even with only a 6 level difference. The slightly faster quest completing doesn't make up for the reduced experience per kill. I think I'll have to resort to kicking my lock out of the group and just tagging mobs with improved curse of shadows for the 13% bonus damage. Hope that works, I'll have to see when I get home.

I don't plan to boost within the group anymore unless it's for instances. As for boosting out of the group, a melee class like a ret pally, warrior, enhancer, rogue, ect will certainly still do great with a healer.

Also, dark pact + mana feed is really a bad way to go. You lose out on the really good deep Demo talents when they are considered the only reason to go that deep into demo in the first place.