10 boxing Theory Crafting: One of each class

So having recently upped my setup to 10 boxes and cleared Moroes in Kara, I figure its about time to re-evaluate my set up. The basic premise of my configuration is that I have one of each class. I currently have my "spam" key set up to put up HoT rotations on the main tank, which has me wondering if I really need to have a dedicated healer spec in the group.

The spec I was considering go as follows:

Prot Pally
Elemental Shaman
Balance Druid
Shadow Priest
Fire Mage
Fury Warrior
Beast Mastery Hunter
Combat Rogue
Affliction Lock
Frost Death Knight

What I'm trying to keep in focus is maximizing raid DPS while maintaining certain buffs. For example, I need a mana regen class, and given I'm not going to spec my pally out of Prot, that leaves me with either the hunter or the priest to do it. I also plan on leaving the priest and druid out of their respective forms to maintain their ability to cast heals.

I currently keep Riptide, a refreshing Lifebloom (gets re-applied before the final tick), a Renew, Prayer of Mending, and Power Word: Shield on the tank. I can throw a rejuv and regrowth in to the mix if necesary. It really depends on what the DTPS ends up being.

Edit: Oh, right, Riptide is talented, isn't it? That throws a kink in to things.

I don't agree with not having dedicated healers. Kara, in particular, is easy to work through with non-ideal setups at this point, but if you're going for theory here, the amount of content you could clear as a 10-box with no specced healer is much lower. In Kara, I was 5-manning the first few bosses in just questing blues a month ago! I did have a dedicated healer to do it, and that's why it was possible. I could hold out for a very long time to make up for only 3 DPS. Your way will work out for this content because your DPS will be so good and because the bosses aren't tuned well anymore with all the changes. Come 80 content, you better be planning on having a healer. It would have been completely unheard of when this content was fresh to not bring specced healers along.

If you want to always have the option of all-out DPS, you should make a separate DPS key just for the healers in case you don't need them to heal. Like, my holy paladin judges wisdom with a separate key that no one else uses. My priest has a key to do a castsequence of DPS spells, but no one else uses that key either. If I need to save mana and just heal nonstop, I can do so any time. Also, with the change to spell power now, all your healers would have decent spell power for DPS casting when needed even if they were dedicated.

One more thing, there's no reason the healing should be on the same key as the DPS. Just put it on different keys like as if you were playing one character. There's nothing complicated about setting up different sets of DPS keys and healing keys. Only push the healing key when you actually need heals. My healers spend 90% of the time doing absolutely nothing, but I appreciate that they have full mana whenever something goes awry.

I don't see why I shouldn't have HoTs set up to go off "automatically", unless I'm drastically overhealing. Particularly, the hands free HoTs allow me to actually utilize the things instead of just waiting to hit a heal button, which can still be done, but seems grossly inefficient outside of having a stand-around healer, which is appropriate at times, but seems kind of a waste since I have a perfectly good DPSer just standing there.

Also, I'm not using Kara as a measuring stick. I'm aware its been nerfed to hell and back. 3 boxing Attumen is quite a kick. Its still one of two places 10-boxing really applies, and at this point figuring out how to drive the group is my priority. I have been noticing, however, that for as long as I've been boxing my healers spend more time DPSing than they do actually healing. Seems to me speccing them DPS is going to help more than it hurts.

Sole exception being the Shaman, who just flat out gets too much from the Resto Tree for me to spend too much time pew-pewing into a tree that offers what is still sub-par DPS.

I'm assuming that you're talking about this to set up your group for the expansion. If this is not the case, please correct me. For old content you don't even need a dedicated anything anymore.

If you do new content that's challenging, you will need a dedicated healer. If this is ever not the case, I will want to quit playing. You used to need a dedicated healer in Kara - at least two even!

If the new content is well designed at all, you will quickly reach a point where having as much control as possible will be very important. Being able to choose exactly who to heal and when to heal them is important because there may be times when you need no healing, and hopefully some fights will be endurance fights. I think most multiboxers never reach far enough to see content like that, but that content is (or, was) in the game. And it still helps push progression even in normal content. You'll down things at a lower level of gear.

For me it's like playing a drum. You have three or four limbs each hitting their own drum at once, bass drum, hi-hat, snare, toms, etc. So I could keep HOTs going with my right hand while I tank with my left thumb while I DPS with my left ring finger. This is something anyone could do. I don't use a druid healer because I don't want to maintain a HOT stack, so I guess this factors into it.

I think it's great that you're running all those classes and I'm not trying to put you down. I swear I'm trying to offer my two cents to help you out. Good luck!

I know, and I appreciate the feed back. It defenitely looks like I'm going to end up with at least one healer in the Shaman, and the Druid MAY cross over, since he's not going Boomkin form, and I can potentially get the 13% increased magic damage debuff from the lock or DK. My experience with healing thus far has me generally smacking my tank with a bunch of high powered slow heals, which works fine, but I get too many close calls for my liking. And its not like the option isn't still there to do that (my whole numpad is a fine tuned healing board).

For the most part, I'm still tuning things and finding out what works and what doesn't. I want this HoT thing to work out, but I won't really know til I run Kara tonight.

Bottom line, til I hit 80 and dive in to the stuff, nothing is really final. For the most part I'm brainstorming and working on where I'm headed. I do consider one of the greater advantages to multiboxing to be our group oriented mind set. Off healing and such works so much better in our groups, because its not one person having to make a judgement call on what others need any particular second.

I would like to again reiterate the fact that I think you're very smart to try running so many classes. I strongly believe in the synergy being important. Those % damage increases here and there really stack up. Just make sure you need or want to manage all the melee, but I'm sure you're well aware of the downsides of melee by now. :)

The Melee are actually performing quite admirably. There may be some issues when the DK gets up and running and reworking how positioning works, especially on large bosses (dragons in particular come to mind), but hands down their best quality is the fact the keep whacking away with their constantly refilling fuel supply, and fears don't mess them up nearly as bad as casters. My 3-man of Attumen worked largely in part due to the fact that my Warrior just kept whacking and building rage while my Shaman and Paladin (who was tanking) took turns healing the tank.

Edit: and because I came home to down servers, I'll elaborate. Casters win hands down on front loaded damage, They start a fight with a full bar of mana bar, typically with cool downs to blow. Rogues and Warriors and Deathknights have to work up their combo points and poison and rage and shouts and runic power, but once they get going they don't have to stop to evocate or life tap or slow down becuase they went OOM at 5% left on the boss. Similarly, out and about in day to day activity, the guys who get that first hit in are going to naturally pull ahead on whatever damage counter is used.