Yet another new 5-boxer. Looking for feedback.

First post. Great forum. I'm about to jump head first into it, likely buying my newest comp in a few days.

I really wanted to run my plans by everyone to see if anyone had any feedback (especially of the form "oh, that's a really bad idea, you really need to do X").

My primary goal is doing as much 5-man content as I can, up to and including heroics. I am far less interested in PvP. That being said, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna roll my characters on Magtheridon because, all other things being equal, seems like a good place for tips and what-not. Even though I'm interested in PvE, every server I've ever played was PvP so I don't really have anything to gain by being on a PvE server (gonna be a totally new reroll, either way).

I plan on getting a quad-core machine (core2 q6600), with 4GB of DDR2 ram. I'll probably get a 8800GTS vid-card using 2 monitors with 1 main and 4 quad-screened. I may buy a second cheap vid card to render for the second monitor if I have framerate problems. I have an older comp to dump an account (or two) onto if I need to.

As a proof of concept, I got 2 warlocks and a mage up and running on this comp (an archaic 1.7ghz machine), and got them to level 5. I got keyclone working. Got all my macros up and running. I ran at about 20-25 fps when the other two were minimized and dipped into the low-teens with them all up, but it worked.

Here's my first question: why do people install multiple copies of WoW? It seemed to work great with just running the same executable 3x. The only reason I came up with is that you can have diff. video-settings for diff accounts.


Since I'm most interested in 5-manning instances, I've put an inordinate amount of thought into my party make-up (and read every thread here and elsewhere) on the issue.

Here's my thought process. I need a priest, a tank, and 3 dps. Priest is a no-brainer, for me.

For DPS, obvious choices, are: Magex3, Warlockx3, or some combination.

For example, a hybrid approach gives a huge amount of utility... portals/summon/food/water/soulstones/etc... but is it worth the hassle? The way I see it, you'd have to pretty much treat either a lone mage as a gimpy warlock or a lone warlock as a gimpy mage.

I know absolutely nothing about hunters nor how viable they'll be as part of a multibox with the 2.3 changes. Do they bring enough to the table to think about putting them in the mix for dps?

Tank: Warrior, Paladin, or Druid. From my reading and experience, warriors require alot of micro (a bad thing) and aren't as good with large pulls (a really bad thing, as I see it). Plus, I have a friend who stopped playing with a 60 warrior I can swap in, at the end, for 25$. So, for me, warriors out.

That leaves me with Paladin or Druid. This is a tough call for me but I'm leaning towards druid for the simple fact that for most of the game, you don't need a tank. In all those cases, I can use a druid in caster form adding in dots and rooting and things like that.

Here's the group I'm leaning towards: Druid (main), Priest, Warlock, Warlock, Mage.

Anyone got any thoughts on druid v paladin? How about mages x 3 vs warlocks x 3 vs WWM (or even WMM?). Anyone have any worries about my hardware for running 5xWoW on a single comp?

Short answer: You're probably best off sticking with MMM or WWW. If you decide you later want to change one it shouldn't take too long to power level one character up.

WMM vs MMM: The warlock brings summons which probably won't get used much, and sometimes a stamina buff or a half-tank. Soulstone is good for when you're learning as you're probably going to wipe a lot. You lose a sheep, but you still have two, and 1/3 of your easy damage dealing, which is significant. If you can control and make good use of the warlock utility I would say go with WMM over MMM, but if you don't want to play every detail in advance and put in three times as much effort then stick with MMM.

MWW vs WWW: The mage brings water, int buff, good CC, portals, and a whole bunch of good stuff you'll probably never use. You lose 1/3 of your dots, which get replaced with direct damage. You lose a pet, but you still have two so you can still keep blood pact and a backup tank. I'd go with MWW, but it does require more attention. The lack of CC with WWW might become a problem with some pulls.

In both comparisons, your aoe damage changes significantly. 3x arcane explosion/3x that warlock aoe that damages theirself, either of them are easy to manage, but when you have 2/1, it becomes much harder.

I am currently leveling to try out a pally/4 priests combo. I am hoping vamperic embrace and touch alone will be enough healing and mana regen to keep the fight going. If it's not I can always pop out of shadow form with one of my priests and heal manually.

In another 6 levels I get vamperic embrace and I can decide to keep going from there. 4 Shadow priests aren't exactly the best for dps, but it makes healing (hopefully) a non issue, if he gets low on health that means spam MB and shadow word death :).

I am VERY worried about agro however. I think in the end it might be easier to just cyrcle through an entire group putting vamberic touchs, embrace and shadow word pain on every single person in the pull, that way there is not too much agro pull on any single target, but crap loads of healing going on. don't know if the pallie can hold agro againt VE, VT and SWP with just consecration. That last shield ability talent though that throws a shield which bounces around will help with that too.

I have been doing SO much speculation though, I simply won't know till i try it, and even though not until I hit 70 since through talents things are going to change.

If 4 priests do such a good job of healing alone with vamperic embrace then I may swap him out with a warlock for the soul stone and CC and off taking with his pet. not to mention health buff.

yeah, I been thinking lately 1 pallie, 3 priests, 1 warlock may be the way to go.

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Originally Posted by kalih

I may buy a second cheap vid card to render for the second monitor if I have framerate problems. I have an older comp to dump an account (or two) onto if I need to.

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There had been discussions about a second vid card for the second screen because it often slowed the system. The best way seems to get one good vid card and activate vertical / horizontal span to span both monitors to one big desktop. A good vid card should handle this without any problems.

take a look here:
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?t=877

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Here's my first question: why do people install multiple copies of WoW? It seemed to work great with just running the same executable 3x. The only reason I came up with is that you can have diff. video-settings for diff accounts.

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- different configs in the addons,
- different settings in the wow maximizer (you don't want to have each screen on top of the other - they shall be placed next to each other)
- you won't have problems with the temp files

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Here's my thought process. I need a priest, a tank, and 3 dps. Priest is a no-brainer, for me.

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eh, sry, I'm from Germany - what is a "no-brainer" ?

Pally tank is nice for tanking because you don't need that much focus on your tank so you can handle the healing and the damage. Got several problems with fear and caster mobs but it's playable.

Warrior is nice for tanking but need lots of focus - especially when you got more than 2 mobs :(

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For DPS, obvious choices, are: Magex3, Warlockx3, or some combination.

For example, a hybrid approach gives a huge amount of utility... portals/summon/food/water/soulstones/etc... but is it worth the hassle? The way I see it, you'd have to pretty much treat either a lone mage as a gimpy warlock or a lone warlock as a gimpy mage.

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3 Mages are an excellent combination for PVE. You got lots of humanoid mobs so you have 3 sheeps and they're still the king in AOE :)

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I know absolutely nothing about hunters nor how viable they'll be as part of a multibox with the 2.3 changes. Do they bring enough to the table to think about putting them in the mix for dps?

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Their pets can't tank bosses or heroics, they need a line of sight, they got a deadzone where they can only attack with their mainhand weapon and their CC ain't that easy to handle. I wouldn't prefer hunters.

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Tank: Warrior, Paladin, or Druid. From my reading and experience, warriors require alot of micro (a bad thing) and aren't as good with large pulls (a really bad thing, as I see it). Plus, I have a friend who stopped playing with a 60 warrior I can swap in, at the end, for 25$. So, for me, warriors out.

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Warriors are great for tanking - but only if you play them solo. You still got a healer and 3 DPS Classes which need attention to get the Boss down so I'd prefer the paladin. Never played a druid :(

Paladins blessings are nice to have and you still got the godly intervention which can take your healer out of combat which saves you from a corpse run or a blessing of protection when you've accidently added some mobs which starts running towards the healer.

WMM is a great idea. The only reason I didn't do it is cause my main is a warlock. I'll have to see when I get to 70 if I can include it, it's got tier6 stuff tho, so threat might be an issue. I'd level a new lock were it not for the class specific quests taking some time. Mages are great that way - just level up and go.

The synergies in a WMM team are top notch. Fire specced mages and fire(destruction) specced warlock. Specced fireball with 3.0 sec cast time, and incinerate with 3.0 sec casttime as well. Bring Curse of Elements and scorch into the mix and you have +25% damage right there. Even without dots the warlock will make up for the loss of that one mage with CoE. The loss of 1 polymorph is nothing, the gain of 1 banish is very valuable. If you rely on 3 polymorphs in any situation, you're probably in way over your head and should turn around and flee =)

As for aoe in a WMM team it's quite easy. The mages would simply /cast arcane explotion. The warlock could for example /castsequence reset=8 hellfire,,,,,,,,, or something like that. I use something similar on my shammy healer. /castsequence reset=20 fire nova totem,,,,,,,,,,,,

I'd go priest with a Druid tank for disspell. But remember, next patch Fear Ward will be nerfed to 3 minutes cooldown, 3 minutes duration (virtually useless in a boxing scenario). And this is especially gonna suck with a druid tank. With a warrior tank I'd also go Priest for dispell, but in this scenario you have fear breaking capabilities on the warrior. But I elected the third approach. Tanking with paladin gives me the magic dispell my mages and shaman cannot provide, and my shaman healer provides the group-wide fearbreaking abilities (tremor totem) that my paladin lacks, and a priest could not have provided.

I wouldn't bring hunters in as dps, as they are quite micro intensive (if you want decent dps). You could have 3 hunters with auto-shoot, but you wont be tearing through any instance anytime soon.

If Heroics are you ultimate goal (and most PVE 5-boxers it is), then I would highly suggest going Mage,Mage,Lock for the DPS.

2 sheeps and a banish/enslave is probably the best combo of CC for a heroic out of the combinations of mages and warlocks that you can get. Many of the mobs will be sheepable and only a few will be able to be banished or enslaved... this makes an arguement to have more mages than warlocks.

Honestly, you may think that having all of 1 class would be easier for DPSing, but it really isnt. All you're going to be doing is mashing a "DPS" macro button for all 3 anyways. Fireballs and Fireblast for the mages (early on), and shadow bolts and a couple dots for the warlock.

As far as tanks go, I would suggest a Paladin over a druid, just for ease of use. In the later stages (namely heroics) a paladin has better pulling abilities (avenger shield), better AOE tanking ability, and better mitigation than a druid. Not only is the "ease of use" better for a paladin, but his effectiveness is as well.

I'm currently running with a Paladin, Priest, Mage, Mage, Warlock group. Now, I just essentially started, with them all being at lvl 15 (except the lvl 30 paladin whom I already had leveled up), and things seems to be going ok. I've been facing the usual problems that a new boxer faces when going into an instance for the first time.

-my 2 copper

hey guys, thanks for all the input. I think you've convinced me to switch from WWM to WMM.

I'm still really torn on druid v paladin. I've been waffling back and forth on which is best. Your paladin argument is making me waffle again.

Anyone else have any thoughts on druid v paladin for tanking?

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Originally Posted by kalih

hey guys, thanks for all the input. I think you've convinced me to switch from WWM to WMM.

I'm still really torn on druid v paladin. I've been waffling back and forth on which is best. Your paladin argument is making me waffle again.

Anyone else have any thoughts on druid v paladin for tanking?

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Like I said, in multiboxing, a HUGE factor in your decision has to do with the question "How easy will it be to do X?". Paladin = Righteous Fury (extra threat from holy damage) + Consecration (AOE holy damager) = grab aggro on lots of mobs.

Druids main AOE-like aggro is generated from Swipe which is pretty dependent on angels and how close the mobs are to each other.

I actually have a lvl 70 warrior that is prot specced, and never put much thought into Pally tanks.... but they are surprising me every day. Our guild has a pretty solid pally tank that puts out way more threat per second than our MT warrior.

I am currently running a warrior, priest and MMM setup and hit 60 this weekend.

One major adavantage about having 3 mages is the sheer power of AOE's.
Dragon's Breath, Blastwave followed up by AE spams while the priest spams PoH/CoH really is amazing epecially if things go unplanned.

Substituing a lock does add some versatility, especially soulstone is really nice since wipes are unavoidable and can be really frustrating (BRD corpse run anyone *sigh*).

This is my first 5-man multi-boxing group. Having 3 mages gives me spells with identical cast times and keeps things a lot more simple even that means losing some versatility.


Regarding tanking, I actually regret having taken a warrior. My first choice had been a paladin but since I play horde a tauren warrior just beats a Belf paladin by the looks big time.

Warrior, as mentioned, are really mico intensive especially if things go unplanned like a bad pull, sheep breaking early etc.

Besides a warrior does not add much to a pure DPS group in terms of useful buffs.

I regularly play instance with a prot paladin and it is really quite impressive
as long he is not getting oom.

Druid's swipe has been slightly nerfed since BC if I recall that correctly but it still is far more viable then anything a warrior has imo.

It all comes down to personal preferences to some extent but I'd say a prot paladin is probably the best choice.

I pulled the trigger today and bought my PC. Got out with a quad-core, 4gb of memory, and 2x video cards (spent about 200$ combined, on them... 7600GS and 8600GT. I didn't want to spend alot because I have spares and other crap that provides alot of flexibility) for just a hair over 1k$. Hopefully by this weekend I'll have it built.

I think you guys have convinced me to go Paladin, Priest, Mage, Mage, Warlock.

I have one last major question.. PvE server or Magtheridon. I really have no real desire to any world PvP so the only reason I'd choose Magtheridon is because there's alot of other multiboxers out there.

My old server, Arthas, is an option, but it's also PvP and most of my friends have left and I recognize almost none of the names in my old guild.. so for a PvP server, Mag seems like a better option.

Any of you PvEers out there want to recommend your server?