What groups would you box first?

I'm waiting for my new box to come in so I can start up my RAF and get the ball rolling on my 5 boxing career, and I thought I'd ask what group composition should I do first. I'll be mainly boosting with my soon to 85 Dk on the alliance side, while I only have a 58 dk on the Horde side, just gonna have to learn with the horde one at a lower level. I'm thinking I want to do 4 of the same class for my first few groups, and also not wanting to do a melee group, at least not right away. Throw in my desire to have some healing and it looks like I'm gonna be doing shamans, druids or priests. That being said I know that priests can heal just fine as discipline or holy, and shamans can also heal ok with 4 chain heals or with a dedicated healer. Can balance druids heal? never really played a druid other than as a cat, always found most casters more gear dependent than a melee character, at least while leveling.

Can an 85 DK tank wotlk content without a healer? if so then that opens the door for mages and warlocks, as well as hunters. I've heard dk's can do some ranged as well, but not really sure how to play them that way. I figure after my first group or 2 I might start swapping toons around, but not really sure about that, or even how many groups i can get to 80 in 90 days.

My favorites as a first group have almost always been druids, simply due to having a healer, stealth/melee dps, caster dps and tank all in one class. Versatility means I've been able to use one of them to assist my other teams when needed to get past something difficult. Paladins are a close second but lack the stealth or ranged DPS that druids have.

NOTE: I pretty much skipped PVP except for the odd world PVP, so 99% of my experience is doing PVE stuff. If you're mostly interested in PVP, shaman and DK groups become very desirable whereas druids become less so due to a lack of CC/anti-CC utility.

Not really interested in pvp, other than a brief foray into arenas during TBC I'll do some av's, kill opposing capital bosses for the mount etc, but its not why i play. I did like wintergrasp as well, the more schmucks running around the better I guess, I've never played the best pvp classes in pvp, or had the gear where it was truly fun and I was on the same level as everyone else.

1 pally 1 restro shaman 3 elemental shaman
1 blood dk 1 restro shaman 3 elemental shaman

Four or Five Shaman, is a good group to start with.
The synergy is strong.
It's easier to box everything is the same.

If you want to do PvE stuff, consider going with either a Tank Druid (currently Feral; Guardian once MoP launches) or a Prot Paladin.

Tank: Druid or Paladin
Others: 4x Elemental Shaman



You can also mix it up a little.
More classes is a little more complicated.
But adds flexibility.

If your goal was/is PvE, dungeons too not just questing:
- Prot Paladin or Tank Druid
- 2x Elemental Shaman
- 1x Boomkin (if Paladin tank) or 1x Warlock (if Druid tank)... for the +Spell Power... and not overlapping buffs.
- 1x Healer of choice, Disc Priest or Holy Priest.

I did pally/4sham as my 3rd 5-box group; had an irl /jawdrop moment.
3x Chain lightning makes short work of all but the toughest trash (and we all know trash is harder than the bosses while lvling).
4x HSTs make aoe damage almost a non-issue, and earth shield makes tank incoming damage a non-issue.

Also, I'd suggest not boosting your first team. The whole fun of multiboxing is actually playing the team and its easier to learn on low levels (where dungeons are simpler). Boosting is fine for bringing up lots of alts quickly using RAF, but is itself a really not fun part of multiboxing.

Prot paladin + 4 shammies is probably the easiest place to start. Everyone wants to be a special snowflake, but there is a reason this is the default boxing group (some people say take a druid tank, but I prefer my happy shield-of-thrown-silence-bring-them-all-to-me spell, in general I like paladin tanks the most though). The synergy is strong and multiple chain heals can get you out of a lot of situations where another group just dies.

I don't personally prefer boomkins to try and heal with, I'd do four boom and one resto if you want to do druids (or 3boom, 1 resto, one tank) in dungeons. my attempts to heal with boomkins generally resulted in, first 3 oom boomkins and then one dead tank. Disclaimer, that group was 4 years ago during BC, I've only done mixed groups with druids since.

Are there any trades that each team should absolutely have? I was thinking make sure I have say mining and skinning on my tank (for the stamina and melee dps boost), and the rest all with alchemy, and enchanting and herbalism on at least one member of each team. Also is the tailoring cloth drop boost worth having a tailor, and do they have to have raised the tailoring level to get the drop bonus?

nvm

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Originally Posted by roddo

Are there any trades that each team should absolutely have? I was thinking make sure I have say mining and skinning on my tank (for the stamina and melee dps boost), and the rest all with alchemy, and enchanting and herbalism on at least one member of each team. Also is the tailoring cloth drop boost worth having a tailor, and do they have to have raised the tailoring level to get the drop bonus?

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I'd go enchant/tailoring on the tank (for convenience) and screw the rest until you're high level. If you level through dungeons, (and maybe even if you don't?) the amount of cloth you get in a 5 man group is enough to keep one tailor on the level, and the tailoring gathering bonus is best had on the toon that does your looting (for me this is the tank, always). Keeping tailoring up also lets you feed caster gear to all your casters (important at least until the armor specific stat boosts (level 50?), and if you're using incorrect armor class heirlooms (like say the cloth robes on your shammies) you might as well keep using a mix of cloth all the way up, as you only get the bonus if you are 100% in mail). Random dungeon greens and blues should be able to help you keep enchanting at-level (with perhaps some extra tailoring if you need a bit more dust in that level range. Being able to masterloot and DE things on the toon you drive with is really extremely convenient.

You won't have time to keep gathering professions up (except maybe skinning... maybe), so I wouldn't bother trying. I would however go back and take 3-4 hours to add herbalism to some/all of your toons whenever you purchase flying/epic flying (if you intend to purchase epic... which you shouldn't necessarily plan to do for EVERY toon). The mini heal/speed boost is a nice thing to have and you can level with the plan of getting an alchy levelling kit at the same time. I wouldn't recommend worrying about any other professions until end game, if ever.