Your thoughts 5x paladin

I was playing the other day and after watching what I can do as a single prot spec paladin pulling a group and killing 10+ mobs at a time it got me thinking what if I tried to box 5x paladin group? Has anyone ever tried it and been successful, It would be more for PvE purposes as annoying people in arena until they give up is not my idea of success. It seems like this kind of group would be virtually immune to death. Here is what I was thinking...


1x Prot spec
4x Ret spec

later on in life you can spec one holy if needed for instances.


Benefits
Plate armor for survival
One of the best multi-boxing tanks
bubble heal
free mounts
rez
wipe recovery

Drawbacks
Melee attacks
lower burst dps
Paladin jokes


Any feedback is welcome,
Thanks
Docsis

Doesn't have Ret Paladins the insanest Burst of them all?

Hm, I would mix it only Paladins isn't that great in my Opinion, 3 Shamys 2 Pally or vice versa.

Made a Poast like this half a year before :)

Well, you'd have all of the Pally buffs you could want.
The Prot pally needs to be hit to function, but with only one that's fine.
One of the Ret pallies would need to have a fair bit of Holy, as you progressed to more difficult content.

Three Ret pallies provides decent damage and a lot of utility.
You can round-robin cast a Hand of Protection, by assisting the active tank... something like "/castsequence [help] Hand of Protection,,; [help, target=targettarget] Hand of Protection,,". Preface the castsequence with the assist method of choice to target your active toon. So any toon takes aggro from the tank, and the group has 5x BoP which should put aggro firmly back upon the tank.

I don't like multiple melee as your dps, but for PvE this is much less of an issue then it is for PvP.
A holy pally is an excellent single target healer, but can be lacking for healing AoE damage.

IMO, a PvE group should be diverse in desired gear.
As in, Plate x1, Chain x1, Leather x1, Cloth x1, and one duplicate.
With all your toons capable of wearing plate, you could equip them in whatever dropped, so gear won't necessarily go to waste.

I'd recommend Enchanting and Skinning on a secondary toon, and Mining/Herbalism on the usual leader toon. You can macro skinning, via a targetlastenemy macro, but mining/herbalism you need to actually click the resource. Enchanting will ensure your BoP drops aren't wasted if no one is using them. Engineering is a good option for your active toon, Pallies are somewhat lacking in the ranged damage department.

All in all, not necessarily the best composition, but definitely workable if you want to do it.
Bottom line, will this be fun for you?

i have this setup at level 70, you tear through normal BG's and instances. Heroics on the other hand become a real mess. You get wrecked by AoE stuff and cleaves, 4 or 5 divine storms are not enough to heal through it even with your instant cast heals used intelligently. For farming and having fun in most BG's its an awesome group.

Pretty much the scenarios which are hardest on us boxers is heroics/raids and arena.

As far as heroics go, the best composition seems to be: Tank + Healer + 3x Range DPS.
If the healer and the 3x DPS can be the same class, this makes it easier.
Ranged dps is a little easier in that they're not in melee range for cleaves and such. Also ranged toons don't turn on melee, which means they maintain follow if you need to move them.

Arena would not work at all, for multiple melee toons, as follow breaks when melee is started.

I suppose it will depend on what your goals are for your Pallies.

About 2 weeks ago, I got my 5x dwarf (stoneform vs DKs)retardins to 70. They are insanely easy to play, and pvp with. It is unfortunate (for paladins, not for anyone that faces them) that avenging wrath now triggers the cooldown on divine shield (forebearance), but eh.

Anyway, I have 2 macros setup, 1 for single targets that uses crusader strike to save mana, the other uses divine storm for groups I want to plow through. I use 1 retribution aura, 1 crusader, 2x devotion (different ranks) and 1x concentration. I use seal of command on all characters, and then have 2x judgement of wisdom, and 3x judgement of light. The thing is, that ALL characters that hit with melee, (when the target is affected) get the +heal and +mana from each paladin. I need to put up secreenshots ( at work now, sry), but I get SCT spam from all the heals from melee hits. It's not uncommon to be healed for over 1000 just attacking things.

For the future, I'll switch to the 1prot, 1holy, 3ret for heroics, but thatll be much later on after I get 2 more teams to 70.

That could be/sounds like a lot of fun.

I've been running 5 paladins for a while now, just dinged 68 yesterday evening, before I dinged I was attacked by a pair of rogues - one at 67 (and not a problem) and the other at _77_ (Scarshield Legion EU: Cubone and Blizna) - I defeated the 77 with 3/5 deaths - and for the remainder of the evening both rogues avoided me like the plague!

My setup is main protadin, 2 retadin, shockadin, and a healadin - probably sub optimal and only equipped with quest reward kit.

With some of the new talents that increase judgement range to 30 yards there's never any problem pulling and using melee DPS is just a matter of practice.

If you quest then you don't have problems with kit as there are plenty of plate rewards in outlands, doing a bunch of instances would get me blue kit to improve on but I've been concentrating on levelling.

For macros I have one key for judgments, one for righteous hammer/crusader strike, and one for holy shield/divine storm/holy shock, plus F for follow and T for assist using a focus based setup and 5 boxing on a quad core PC.

Just a quick fyi to anyone worried about boxing with melee and breaking follow.

I do it and haven't had an issue with follow. I bound:

/follow focus
/assist focus

to wasd for all the slave toons.

As soon as you have to move they're coming with you. Also by being melee and not having a cast time you can do this while running and spamming your abilities.

There is also no reason not to put /follow focus and /assist focus infront of some of your ability macros.

I've just levelled 5 ret pallys to 43 and it's been a BLAST. So much damage and I haven't even gotten into the interesting stuff. The tourguide RAF guide is an amazing way to zip through the lower levels and seems made for ret pallys. I know things will change as I near 60 and I haven't done any of the instances that require skill, but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents to show that some are trying it :P