Tanks, tanks and more tanks!

Just remember that your level 80 boost tank will not give the experience boost to your newly minted toons. I think the RAF paired toons need to be within 5 levels(?) of each other to get the experince boost from each other.

So if your using two accounts you will get the RAF (both toons are same level), but will not be able to boost (one lvl 80 and one low level). The triple experience in instances makes level 10 to 60 go really fast, I think average time for teams is around 24 hours of play to get up to 60 with a lvl 80 tank booster. So speed of leveling is kind of moot... compared to days played for a solo effort.

At a minimum you need to get 2 more acccounts to have a high level tank drag the 2 new lowbies through and get RAF bonus exp.

After reading your orignal post it seems to me like you need to decide if you want to multibox or not. It doesnt take any time at all to gear out one toon at 80 with the random heroics. Tanks and Healers right now dont have any wait time in the queue. I think about 2 min is the longest ive ever gone with my paladin queued as a tank, however I have waited 40 min queued up waiting for a tank to show on my shamen...

When 3.3 launched I spent about 5-7 hours. (felt like 5 prolly was 7 or more) and ran about 15 random heroics and walked away with 96 badges on my paladin so you can get 5/5 T9 in a weekend if you wanted.

If you do multibox with 4x shamen, I would keep the tanks all on the same account. Once you gear the first tank, the shamen will be geared as well and it will make gearing up the next tank even easier as they curb stomp everything.

Also I would level the shamen up to 80 the whole way with one tank, then take the 4x80's group with the new tank and just slaughter everything and quest from 60-80 in record time. I did this a long time ago w/o RAF when I had a prest and 4mage group. Needed a tank so I started one and with 4 level 70 spell casters in the group 1-70 flew by. Arcane mages were so OP for this. Kill and gather quests were nothing. Round up the mobs and one hit of arcane explosion from 4 mages killed everything.

I think the central question is... Do you really want to multibox, or are you looking for a way (With RAF+multiboxing) to get a few more L80 tanky characters in your solo stable.

It's still not clear to me what your ultimate objective is!

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Originally Posted by offive

Hmm XP 64bit was problematic, but VIsta x64 was fine, and Win7 x64 seems to be fine as well... Also enterprise/work "bugs" could range from out of date applications to ancient hardware that would be defined as bugs of the OS. My guess is you have more up to date hardware and software at home than you do at work. Most gamers do. I mean I just ripped an old dumb terminal controller out at a client site just last year... check your work site, if you see thick net and vampire taps in use, it's probably safe to upgrade your home computer to Win7 X64 :p

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You know what i didn't think of that :D. True that my work places have old computers and old programs. Hell they still have old school mainframes that they are using and old programs that will not work on 64 bit. I just got a new computer this year too, been working here for about 2 years and people where getting new computers and i told them that mine was 8 years old and they didn't believe me until they looked it up. 2 weeks later i get a new computer and i tell you it is night and day.

Anyways, i have been lagging a ton in the main city, so much that i now hearth to shatt (now a ghost town) to lvl up my tailoring and enchanting. I heard great things about windows 7, again my work doesn't like change, but my boss is trying to push to 7 because it is so great. I just have to double heck to see if i have a 64 bit chip (i think i do), if i do then it is time to get 64 windows and 4 more gigs (hopefully they still make the same memory, i really don't want to mix and match).

Hmmmm... just looked up my chip and motherboard. I couldn't find my video card on the site, but worse case i can just buy a new one. The only shitty part is that i cannot use my old memory i have to buy 4x2g :(

@kalrok2, don't forget about the money issue. Each transfer is going to be $25. Just something to consider too. I also think that you can transfer a toon from an inactive account to an active account.

I'm kind of with Starbuck on that.

Have the tanks on the same account, so they are interchangeable.
You can plug them into the group with shammies, and gear them through heroics/badges as desired.

However, I would change the composition from 4x Shaman to 3x Shaman (all Elem.) + 1x Warlock (Destruction).
That gets you the 13% spell power buff, and the warlock will be similar dps to the shammies.
3x Elemental can heal through anything you'll face in 5-man content.
And you'll kill a lot faster then 1x Resto (shm) or not having the warlock on the team.

Hey guys

Well I went ahead and decided to try the RAF thing out and try the multi boxing thing out. In the end I opted to try boosting and was so impressed with the results I boosted all the way to 60 via dungeons. It took me 23 hours /played to level 4 chars to 6 (well 5 actually with granted levels since both my RAF linked account were refered from my main account). If I were to do this a 2nd time I'm sure I can get this to sub 20 hours now that I know what I'm doing and where to go etc.

Coming back to the question which I was unsure of, do I want to multibox or just if I wanted to boost a bunch of toons quickly, now that I've seen how much time I've saved by creating 5 chars in 23 hours I really can see the benefits of multiboxing if you want to have multiple chars.

Also thinking about if I wanted to have multiple 80s the amount of time saved by gearing them all out in heroic gear at once is immense that it outweighs the extra costs involved. So I've decided try out multiboxing properly.

Seeing as I already have a druid and warrior at level 80 with full epic gear, I've decide on the following setup up:
Tank : Warrior (80 full epics)
Healer : Paladin (60 crap gear)
DPS1 : Boomkin (80 full epics)
DPS2 : Death Knight (level 66 alt)
DPS3 : Due to my RAF experiment I have a lvl 60 of each class. I'm thinking Shaman would be the best bet due to totems and heroism? Any suggestions for this DPS slot?

To level my 3 non 80s, I'm guessing instance boosting is not viable after 60 without RAF? Seeing as my 2 60s will have crap gear, should I use my Death Knight to multi box with the 2 60s (as he will get some basic XP as well) or should I just boost the 60s with my Feral Druid until they are the same level as my DK? Another option is just to use rested XP and boost in instances with Rested XP seeing as I will be working soon (hopefully if I find a job!) and would only be able to do 3 or 4 sessions a week?

As for hardware and software, my laptop seems to handel 5 instances of WOW fine and keyclone seems to meet all my basic requirements, is that all I need to multibox heroics effectively?

Thanks

Instance boosting, is basically running a toon through, with another toon for whom the content is pretty trivial.
If you can two-man, between say Warrior Tank + Boomkin Healing...
Not sure how far you could boost, but certainly the lower Burning Crusade instances are an option.

If you enjoy playing the whole team, then boxing will be fun.
Whether its PvE (dungeons/heroics/dailies) or PvP (world/battleground/arena).

paladin healer is somewhat unconventional (for boxers its' typically shaman (because of tank+4 shamans setup, + earth shield is awesome) or druid (nice group heals; hots; less maintenance) or priest) but let us know how it goes; and you can always respect your druid (or shaman) later

Thanks for all the replies. Based on some of the advice I've received I've now decided to level a 5 man team of shammies. It seems a tank and 4 shammies is the best set up to run heroics, both in terms of setup and being easy to multibox. Once I have all my chars geared up I will try my idea of a mixed class heroic group made up of the 4 tanks classes and a shammie.

Don't bother with 5 shammies, perhaps. Just do 4. You can use an existing tank to rapidly powerlevel them, and you'll find that Tank+4xShammies is a great PvE setup. 4xShammies plus a healer buddy will also serve you well in Arena.

For BGs, I vastly prefer 4xShammies over 5xShammies for all maps except Alterac valley. 4xShammies is enough firepower, and leaves another crucial slot to be filled by another player for maps like AB, WG, and EotS...