The best beginner 5-box for WoW?

Been looking through the forums and checking out skills and talents for all classes. Thinking thinking and thinking..
The only conclusion I can come up with is to use 5 shammies since "all" you have to do is copy the main and add some variety when you throw totems that aren't stackable. Atleast that's how it seems to be in theory.

I guess the cons about this setup is that you cannot really do much if you hit a wall. I mean respeccing is out of the question so it comes down to macros and skill if you are to succeed.. right?

The 4 warlock 1 priest setup looks pretty nice but I really dont like the idea of wearing nothing but cloth with no shield.

What to do? :)

4 locks and a priest is good for leveling & "solo-ing" but i doubt you'll be able to do high lv instances with that. even tough you got crazy dps

I tried 5 shammies. Yeah, it's neat with all the possibilities with chain lightning, totem stacking, heals, etc. I got bored with it fast though, maybe because I played a shaman for 2 years.

4 locks + priest, I'm interested to see how that group fares in lvl 70 instances.

I opted for a pally, warlock, priest, and 2 mages setup. Lot more of a hassle to set up, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. If I decide to swap classes, I have plenty of toons I can transfer and put into the mix later on.

thinking about 3 locks a priest and a warrior. But I want to do some heroic farming later on, and without cc that will be very annoying I guess. Could go with 2 mages a lock a priest and a warrior/pally but would love to get some input on the downtime of the mages. Is it very big? or due to the fact you have 3 hard dpsers and mobs burn down faster that the down time will be sig. less?

That's why I made my group the way it is, I want to solo heroics when the time comes. The way I see it, I need a moment or two to set up targets/CC for each pull, and that should be enough time for the mages to mana up. Paladin tanks need a little extra time to hold aggro anyway. Or at least it seems that way.

Yeh we sometimes take pally tanks with us to raids, and as long as you take some time for him to take agro you can go nuts on a target

Compared to my 'locks, I couldn't imagine leveling up the mages again. They are far too squishy. Locks are amazing, leveling wise. Soulstones every 8 minutes... 4 "tanks"... mana efficient DOTs. The list goes on and on. SO much faster, partly because I remember the instances but a good amount from their inherent abilities. I hit level 29 with no real gear at all, and the gear I have is all red. Also using level 22-24 spells. It's just nuts how fast I tear through elites. 3, 4, 5 sometimes 6 at a time. Mages could AoE at 30, which helped, but still... running back sucks. Plus, it seems questing is faster anyway, pre 60.

It's a bit tricky, but even with 5 shammys, you still need to DPS and heal. Not sure 5 shammys would be THAT much easier.

The main reason I went with 2 mages is for crowd control. Warlock dps is good, better than a mage's, but I'll settle for a little less dps + reliable CC. There are instances where 2 warlocks would be better than 2 mages, but I have a backup warlock for those situations.

decided to go for 2 mages lock pally and priest, combined should be easy, can always switch my lvl 70 lock to this group to replace the pally