A few newb questions

Yet another player entranced by the thought of (ab)using Refer-a-friend...

1. In terms of time taken to level, how does dual-boxing compare to 5-boxing with 5 seperate classes? Levelling different classes is the point, for me, although I do somewhat relish the complexity of making 5 seperate classes work off a single set of keystrokes. Mostly I'm wondering if the speed with which I could level five at once would make up for the account + hardware costs involved.

2. Which will make a better main/tank, a paladin or a warrior? For that matter, do I really want a tank at all or just another (perhaps melee) DPS?

3. I'll want a shammie in as either the healer or ranged DPS, does chain heal make them the most valuable healers?

4. Would I be right in thinking a shadow priest is useful in terms of keeping casters going mana-wise?

5. My main PC is a 2.6Ghz CPU with a Geforce FX5900 and 3Gb of Ram, would that support 2-4 instances of WoW if I didn't care about the quality of the graphics on those toons?

1. Dual boxing is more like running one toon, with a little extra firepower - or a built-in healer or aggro reducer. (I used a paladin on /follow, and just had them cast buffs on my main for a long time, but I've found 2 dpsers are far more efficient.) 5-boxing will drive you nuts if you do many collection quests. But with 2 toons you can't instance or otherwise do much more than you could with one. 5-boxing opens the door for instance runs.

2. Paladin. Paladin. Paladin. Multiboxing is more complex already if you are performing tanking, healing and dpsing all yourself. My dpsers can't go all out as it is now with (better geared) other live warriors and druid tanks. But with my own Paladin tank I can hit instances with few worries. If you plan to 4/5 box and hit instances, you'll likely want a tank. On the other hand, those running 5 shammies do it somehow...

3. Personally I like a druid healer better, but chain heal certainly works nicely for a multiboxer.

4. In my dps 4-pack I've found the moonkin druid often runs out of mana. The shaman and mage almost never do. Personally, I'd take an extra shaman over a shadow priest, but that's me.

5. You don't mention if the cpu is single core, dual, triple or quad. While a single core *can* handle multiple instances, the multi-core processors will run them better. (The ideal being one core per instance of WoW running.)

1. From my experience leveling goes slower the more people you have in the party. When you begin to exceed dualboxing collection quests start to take more time than they are worth. They would be decent if you didn't have a group penalty for single mob kill experience, but you do so it sucks. Triboxing collection quests is manageable, but then you can't really do instancing without waiting for 2 more people to join up and then you have to hope they know what they are doing :(. Look at the bright side though, with recruit a friend I took a group of 5 from 1-15 in 52minutes without trying very hard at all. With this new feature leveling is just plain fast.

2. Paladin make the better multiboxer tank by popular opinion, and I don't disagree having experience with my well geared 70 paladin.

3. Shaman are decent healers, but chain heal isn't something you want to spam/use when you have a pally tank. A shaman will work fine, but I'd say a priest with Circle of healing and strong single target heals is best for a pally tank. You can't go wrong with either, but don't forget druids are also getting a great AoE bloom spell in WoTLK. Really, any healer will do, it's just personal preference.

4. No, shadow priests do not produce much mana at all in a 5man. That more of a raid utility. For the short term pulls you'll do in a 5man a warlock, mage, shaman, ect will not run out of mana during a pull unless you're spamming something you shouldn't be. Plus, it takes a lot of micromanagement to stay under the threat level and still produce decent dps as a shadow priest. If you're up for the challenge, then give it a shot, but yah the mana production isn't a decent reason for taking a spriest to a 5man. If you are just looking for what would work best, go for synergy. Shadow priest + warlock, or fire warlock + fire mage, or 2 frost mages for easymode, or moonkin + mage or shaman, ect. Look for stacking buffs like scorch and curse of elements and such.

5. I'd say no. Looks like it could manage 2boxing pretty well, but 3 boxing might really strain that system. A lot of people ask this same qeustion when all you have to do for the answer is create some trial accounts and see for yourself.

6.Good luck!

Just as a follow-up to this for anyone who's interested:

With the graphics settings turned down the (single-core) box described above runs 4 instances of WoW without complaint. Laptop makes five :)

I'm currently levelling a Pala (bluekiera), Mage (bluekieran), Shammie (blukran), Priest (blukira) and Hunter (blukirran) on the Bloodfeather(EU)/Horde PvP server. They're at 11 so far & it's proving good fun! Incidentally, "make some trial accounts and give it a go" was an awesome piece of advice :)