Power Ranking All Classes for 5-toon Multiboxing PvP

Power Ranking All Classes for 5-toon Multiboxing PvP

I just recently began playing WoW again, having played a lot of HotS and Overwatch in recent months. I’ve only had a few weeks of playtime, trying out each class, and I am not yet maximum level. Therefore, my rankings are strictly based on the level 101-109 PvP bracket, and mostly Eye of the Storm and Alterac Valley battlegrounds. (My two favorites.)

Because I am not yet maximum level, I will only be discussing the normal talent trees and not the PvP Honor talents. Yes, the power rankings could change a bit once I am maximum level with every class and have more playtime with them. But for the most part, I think I have a pretty good idea where each class stands.

I have to be honest, as a whole, multiboxing has taken a hit. There is a lot less reliable burst spells out there, and a lot less reliable passive healing. The Hunter class has taken the biggest hit, and if you read my previous article on power rankings back in March, Hunters were an incredibly strong class to multibox. They had great burst, great AOE, and great survivability.

First, the disclaimers of my post:
- This ranking list is for PvP only; PvE rankings would be very different.
- This ranking list is for 5-toon multiboxing only, all of the same class, no mixed teams.
- I will not and cannot discuss my methods of follow in this forum.


1) Discipline Priest:

Discipline got a lot of nerfs. Atonement doesn’t mass heal raid members now, and instead you must target individuals for heals before you can start doing damage to things to atonement heal. On top of that, it doesn’t heal for 100% anymore.

Penance’s top line damage got a nerf and is no longer a healing spell, but you can make up for it with a first tier talent to either heal OR do more damage.

Glyphs are gone, so my favorite glyph in the game, Reflective Shield, no longer exists.

And to top it all off, you can no longer interrupt casters with Silence anymore.



Even after all of the nerfs, Disc Priests ended up on the top of my list, amazingly. It just goes to show how different this new xpac is, and the synergy that Disc has with multiboxing.

They are still the kings of survivability, and can still do plenty of killing in PvP.


My talent choices are Schism, Body and Soul, Psychic Voice, Power Word: Solace, Contrition, Halo, and Grace. The first tier talents is totally up to your playstyle because all 3 of them work well. I chose Schism for the damage bonus it gives, but I might change it to the extra Penance damage once I level up the artifact for more Penance damage. If doing a Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks, switch over to the healing Penance talent if you plan on carrying the flag.

Opening up with a Schism and then casting Penance kills most squishy targets. Against tanks or healers, you could start with Shadow Word: Pain, followed by Schism, followed by Penance, followed Power Word: Solace. That should kill even the healthiest of targets unless they are getting heals. You could also open up on a healer with a Shadowfiend if it is off cooldown.

If you want to use Light’s Wrath, the artifact ability, start by casting a Power Word: Radiance on your team to get a bunch of Atonement buffs, then Schism your target, then Light’s Wrath. Nothing can survive that combo. I’m just not a huge fan of the ability because of its long cast time and long cooldown.

Disc survivability is so good not only because of its heals, but also its absorb shields, and Focused Will, which gives you a 30% damage reduction when you start getting hit. Make sure to put Psychic Scream on a round robin rotation with ISBoxer, so you have 5 uses of AOE fear on a 30 second cooldown rotation. That’s a fear you can cast every 6 seconds on average to get melee off of you.


You’ll probably be tempted to try Shadow spec at some point. Take my advice and don’t bother. All of its burst damage that made it so great in Warlords got nerfed, and it is squishier than ever. Disc spec has about 5 times the survivability, with only a slight loss in PvP damage. Disc is the clear winner this xpac. Having the Silence and the Shadow Word: Death is nice, and I really wish Disc had them, but it still doesn’t make it worth it to play Shadow.

Also, I think it goes without saying, but Holy is bad for PvP. It has been for a while, and hasn’t changed this xpac.


2) Frost Death Knight:

Melee is strong in Legion. They have strong damage and good survivability. Frost DK and Fury War and almost tied for 2^nd place. I give a slight advantage to DK because it self-heals a bit better, has anti-magic aura which is great in PvP, and Death Grip works better than Charge.

Frost’s talent choices aren’t particularly strong, but I chose Murderous Efficiency, Freezing Fog, Avalanche, Abomination’s Might, Permafrost, Runic Attenuation, and Glacial Advance. Freezing Fog and Glacial Advance are probably the most helpful of the choices.


Not a complicated rotation, just Obliterate, Howling Blast, and Death/Frost Strike your opponent until he’s down. Open up with a Remorseless Winter if you have a few people around you, (or a healer that wants to run), and use a Glacial Advance when you need a quick dose of burst damage to finish off a foe.


Blood Spec is also very viable this xpac, and works almost as well as Frost. Unholy is not that impressive.


3) Fury Warrior:

Warriors are fun again, and are on par with the damage and survivability of DK’s. The one area that Warriors will excel over DK’s is Bladestorm. In areas where players are grouped up tightly, such as a horde tower in AV or defending one of the captains, Bladestorm melts things. This and Barrage are the two hardest hitting AOE’s in the game. Macro your Bladestorm with Battle Cry so you get 100% crits with it, and you might even want to macro it with Avatar if you took it as a talent.

There are a few very important talent choices. My choices are Fresh Meat, Double Time, Wrecking Ball (although Avatar is a viable choice), Furious Charge, Frothing Berserker (although Carnage is a good choice), Inner Rage, and Bladestorm.

Inner Rage and Bladestorm are pretty mandatory talents, as they improve your damage output dramatically.


Arms is a good alternate specialization, but the reason I prefer Fury is that it doesn’t require rage to use its primary damage dealers. Bloodthirst is free, Raging Blow is free, (with the talent), and hits really hard. Whirlwind is also free to cast, with no cooldown, and that is amazing. You can spam it to pull rogues out of stealth, protect flags from being capped, and it does great AOE damage, especially with the Wrecking Ball talent. The only things that cost rage with Fury spec are Execute and Rampage, so you can just save all that rage for the finishing moves.

The problem with Arms spec is that nearly everything costs rage, Mortal Strike, Overpower, Slam, even Whirlwind costs rage. (Why Blizz made Fury Whirlwind for free while Arms costs rage, I don’t know…) The only thing that doesn’t cost rage is Colossus Smash, which doesn’t hit very hard and is really just a setup ability.

Fury also has a 15-20% health pool increase over arms, but when you’re enraged you take more damage, so that kind of offsets itself. Fury can also heal itself in combat with Bloodthirst while Arms has to get out of combat before Second Wind starts healing it. (And DoT’s will prevent Second Wind from activating, which is terrible.)


Don’t bother with Protection spec, it does terrible damage with bad survivability. Somehow, Fury has better survivability in PvP than Prot. It probably has something to do with the 25% extra damage tanks take after a recent patch.


4) Affliction Lock:

Affliction is one of the few classes that got a major buff this xpac. It has a lot of damage output with good healing. Drain Life/Drain Soul will be your primary damage and healing, and one of the few specs in the game that can heal by doing damage other than Disc.

Also get the Siphon Life talent for more damage and healing, Absolute Corruption and Phantom Singularity for more damage, and Demon Skin for survivability. Demon Skin is pretty freaking amazing btw… it gives you a 20% HP damage shield that constantly recharges on its own.

Affliction’s only downside is it’s a bit weak when you get 2-3 melee on you that are CC’ing you as well. But if you avoid the big fights, focus on killing ranged first and fearing melee off of you, it’s a pretty good battleground spec. You can put Howl of Terror on a round robin rotation for AOE fears just like with the priests.

5) Marksman Hunter:

Hunters took a huge hit this xpac. In my previous power rankings post I made about 8 months ago, I noted that Hunters were going to lose Spirit Bond in Legion, and this was going to dramatically impact the class… and it has. Spirit Bond was the best passive healing talent in the game, and it was what gave Hunters their good survivability they had in Warlords and MoP.

To make matters worse, they lost a lot of burst. Chimaera Shot is crap this xpac, Aimed Shot is an absolute joke, and Kill Shot has vanished. Their only saving grace is the talents. Take Lone Wolf, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, and Piercing Shot. The choice between Murder of Crows and Barrage is a tough one, and it depends on which battleground you are playing to make a decision. Barrage is usually the better choice in general if you can’t decide.

Piercing Shot is the only single target burst that is on par with what Chimaera Shot used to be. But it has a 30 second cooldown, vs. a 9 second cooldown with the old Chimaera. And it costs a hell of a lot more focus. It does one-shot people though, so it is strong.

Explosive Shot is great for bursting down melee that are on you. Just hit the toolbar button for it twice in a row and it will explode for damage around you, and usually one shots melee on you. It is also hindered by a 30 second cooldown however.

Camouflage works a little better this xpac, and is good for healing up, but still has some glitches where you come out of stealth for no reason at all. They have never fully fixed this ability. It also doesn’t start its cooldown until you come out of stealth, so keep that in mind when using it.


Beastmaster spec still suffers from the same problem it did in Warlords… a lack of burst. The only BG where I found BM useful was Temple of Kotmogu, where you can just hide behind a wall and sic your pets on orb holders… it’s kind of fun. It also could work in AV if you don’t like climbing those horde towers, you could just make your pets climb up there and kill things for you :)

Honestly, I haven’t tried Survival, but I can’t imagine it being much better. It probably does good sustained dps like Feral, but it still doesn’t have any combat heals for survivability.


6) Havoc Demon Hunters:

A little lacking in the survivability department with little to no healing, these guys do put out some good damage. If you play conservative and don’t get into any big brawls, you can kill players fast enough to pick stragglers off and take some objectives.

Good talents to get are Fel Mastery, Demon Blades, Bloodlet, Soul Rending, Fel Eruption, and Master of the Glaive. Master of the Glaive coupled with Bloodlet allows you to put some amazing ranged pressure on people with bleeds.


Vengeance spec is good in theory, especially since it has better self-healing, but in practice it doesn’t kill things fast enough, and it doesn’t seem to have any more survivability than Havoc.


7) Retribution Paladin:

Ret spec is actually really good against other melee classes. If you’re up against a bunch of melee on the opposing team, you are golden and will do well that BG. It does good close combat damage and has a really good heal if you get the Word of Glory talent. The only drawback to Word of Glory is its long recharge time.

It’s a bit of a different story when you’re up against a bunch of ranged. With no gap closer like Charge or Death Grip, you are stuck with running after players. Your two best friends in this scenario are going to be Blessing of Freedom and Hammer of Justice. Put Hammer on a round robin with ISBoxer so that you have 5 of them to use, because you’ll need it to pick off hunters and casters.


I tried Holy and Protection spec as well... neither does good damage this xpac and not really worth playing in PvP.


(Tie) 8 & 9) Frost Mage and Balance Druid:

I gave these classes a tie for 6^th because they have similar damage output mechanics and similar survivability. Melee tends to give them a lot of trouble, and because this is a melee meta, they have issues with actually being effective in battlegrounds.

The Frost Mage can do some great instant cast burst with Ice Nova and Comet Storm, and Ice Block and heal up (with the Cold Snap talent) when in trouble. Glacial Spike does good single target burst, but you have to build up to it and it takes a 3 second cast time. Not usually necessary for multiboxing, because it would be overkill. If it didn’t take a buildup of icicles and were instant cast, like Comet Storm is, then maybe it would be worth using.

Balance Druids best offensive spell comes from the artifact weapon, the New/Half/Full Moon spell, and when it gets to Full Moon it’s pretty much one-shotting anything. Go with the Restoration Affinity for some good healing spells, and use the following macro with Starfall:

#showtooltip Starfall
/cast [harm] Celestial Alignment
/cast [harm] Astral Communion
/cast [@player] Starfall

This macro will make it work somewhat like it did last expansion, and the [@player] modifier makes it so you don’t have to click the ground with your toons. (This is also helpful with other click ground type spells, such as Metamorphosis with the Havoc Demon Hunters.) You might have to click the macro twice to get it to work, and also make sure you are targeting an enemy to make it work.


(Tie) 10, 11, & 12) Shaman, Rogue, Monk:

Solo players may have good results with these classes, but for a multiboxer in PvP, they just don’t work well. Enhancement Shamans would be good if Ascendance were a passive, not a 3 minute cooldown spell. None of these 3 classes have any reliable burst, which makes them not so desirable for my PvP game.

If you like healing, Mistweaver Monks actually make a decent raid healing team. Just don’t expect to win many 10-15 man BG’s with just healing when you are taking up 5 spots. They were nice in Ashran for raid healing, and could also be fun for raid healing if you like to PvE.



Closing statement:

If someone out there has good experience with a particular spec that I haven’t covered, or believes it should be a higher ranking on my list, please let me know. I am perfectly willing to give it another shot. I still need more playtime on the different classes and specializations and am open to suggestions for how to play them differently.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vegasboxing

- I will not and cannot discuss my methods of follow in this forum.

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This statement right here makes this thread useless, no? You're saying that you know that people can't possibly multibox in battlegrounds using any traditional method because of the removal of /follow, as well as the previous tricks that were used (e.g. interacting with pets), but you have a "secret method" that you cannot discuss on this forum. The only reason you wouldn't be able to discuss it here is because it'd be considered cheating, right?

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but what are people supposed to gather from this thread? The rules of this forum state that we'd like to keep things legit around here so that we can stay in good standing with game publishers and developers, but I see one of two things that will come from this thread:

1) Repeated posts asking something along the lines of: "How do you multibox in battlegrounds?!" With your reply being, as it's always been, "I can't talk about it." This is not helpful to a single person.

2) Other people, who also use your "secret method," chiming in and adding to your thread, which would just end up being a thread where people who cheat/bot/hack have a place to talk about it and exchange ideas. Again, not helpful to anyone who wants to play by the rules, and it makes this forum look as if we're okay with people hacking/botting as long as you don't mention anything by name.

For those of us who don't want to cheat the system, what benefit does this thread bring, and what message does it send?

It's a good question Mirai. The purpose of the article is to provide some information for those that need it. If you don't need it, presumably because you don't do instanced PvP anymore, then don't read it. I know that there are still people multiboxing in battlegrounds, because I see them. I don't know if they are reading these forums, but if they are, I am trying to communicate with them.

Be careful where you take this line of thought... we already can't discuss methods of follow in this forum, and now you are basically saying that we cannot discuss instanced PvP at all.

You are beginning to set a NEW precedent... and if so, then you mind as well rename this forum from "PVP Discussion", to "World PVP Discussion (Do not discuss instanced PVP)".

So, I am going to ask you point blank. Can we discuss instanced PVP in these forums, yes or no?

It's rather obvious you're doing something against the rules of this forum since you're unwilling to discuss your methods. If you want to break the rules that is certainly your prerogative but you will find no support here.