Mage/priest dual-box playstyle?

After much thought when rerolling on a new realm, I decided on mage/priest. I have a mage on another realm (solo leveled) that I did lots of AOE grinding on. I figured my priest would be a good teammate to a mage, keep them buffed, shielded and healed, able to take on more dangerous AOE situations, including situations which would normally cause spell pushback.

So with that said, having a 'partner' in classic is new to me. Would I still stick with the same frost AOE tree that I know and love? Do I make the priest disc, shadow or holy? If I stay frost, most of my damage comes before I get hit, a priest then doesn't get a lot of opportunity to holy nova.

I'd like them to be a little more then my pocket healbot. What about trying arcane, or fire AOE instead? This is all pretty new to me. My playstyle will be questing, but also trying to take on elite mobs. Maybe if I can push my way into things like deadmines and start clearing packs without too much difficulty, I may do some of my leveling that way. If I'm questing, and I see chances to pull 4-8 mobs at a time, i definately will. And in the 40s, the mage will carry the team with ZF leveling and the priest is just along for the ride.

At 60 I hope the priest can help me farm gold. I like dungeon farming for gold,but not necessarily boosting, even if boosting is "better" gold per hour. I don't like rounding up strangers and advertising in group chat to sell boosts. Just not interested in that. I may use the mage to boost some other characters of mine, but not much.

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Originally Posted by cerruption

After much thought when rerolling on a new realm, I decided on mage/priest. I have a mage on another realm (solo leveled) that I did lots of AOE grinding on. I figured my priest would be a good teammate to a mage, keep them buffed, shielded and healed, able to take on more dangerous AOE situations, including situations which would normally cause spell pushback.

So with that said, having a 'partner' in classic is new to me. Would I still stick with the same frost AOE tree that I know and love? Do I make the priest disc, shadow or holy? If I stay frost, most of my damage comes before I get hit, a priest then doesn't get a lot of opportunity to holy nova.

I'd like them to be a little more then my pocket healbot. What about trying arcane, or fire AOE instead? This is all pretty new to me. My playstyle will be questing, but also trying to take on elite mobs. Maybe if I can push my way into things like deadmines and start clearing packs without too much difficulty, I may do some of my leveling that way. If I'm questing, and I see chances to pull 4-8 mobs at a time, i definately will. And in the 40s, the mage will carry the team with ZF leveling and the priest is just along for the ride.

At 60 I hope the priest can help me farm gold. I like dungeon farming for gold,but not necessarily boosting, even if boosting is "better" gold per hour. I don't like rounding up strangers and advertising in group chat to sell boosts. Just not interested in that. I may use the mage to boost some other characters of mine, but not much.

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A solo blizzard-kiting mage is pretty much the best option for anyone not wanting to move up to a full 5box team and arguably if you master the huge number of mobs in "1 pull" attempts a solo mage can rival and possibly beat the gold a 5box team can make.

The blizzard-pathing-kiting play style doesn't lend itself to really more than 1 mobile character though you could buff prior or pre-position a 2nd character near the pathing point (I used my Paladin when learning the SM fountain pulls). The class that gives the most to a solo mage is likely Priest even if just from passive Fort/Spirit buffs and even more if you can pre-position the Priest near your kiting point to throw you some heals/shields. If the Priest can't get to your normal kiting spot (where you are leveraging pathing) then maybe a Soul-Stoned Priest can or maybe try a stealthed Druid.

Otherwise I don't think Duos will bring you much... Even a trio can't do many dungeons unless way out gearing the content.

Priest will be pretty useless, you can level them together if you want a farming character to help your priest but for outdoor questing stacking mages will be way better.

Hunter/priest will be a good option for questing and grinding without any downtime, get a Carrion Bird at lvl 16 from Westfall, Screech will ensure that your priest's heals don't pull aggro against multiple mobs.

Priest Holy Nova causes 0 threat - both when used offensively and as a heal. So when you're AOE pulling a mage and a priest on follow, you can put out a bit more dps and get some healing at the same time with 0 risk to your priest. Also PW:Shield does its aggro when cast - not when the bubble actually absorbs damage. It can be weird seeing your priest surrounded my mobs that they're killing, but still not attacking them. I found that helpful a few times when doing some open world and ZF zombie farms.

I actually realized that I wanted another priest after I'd already leveled my 1st mage solo, and then my 5-box team separate. I found it was quicker to level a Mage+Priest then it was to level Priest solo. But that still wasn't as fast as leveling a solo Mage.