Noob Starting Groups

I have just read the Class Suggestions post in my search to try and answer this question, along with a few other topics on the subject. The latter of which however mostly seemed to focus on dual boxing. From everything Ive read it seems the general consensus is to use as few different classes as possible to make the managing of them easier. So I am just wondering what is a good 5 man group when focusing on just wanting to ease into having to manage all of this information and reactions too it. I was originally (just like ten min ago (Synergy wont let me hit the one key)) trying a paladin main and four warlocks. This has left me with out a healer aside from the paladin. Unforunately the slow heal times and the low health of the warlocks at this level has hindered me a few times so I am seeking guidance. Should I consider varrying my group a bit more? Maybe a Paladin/Shaman tank, a Priest or Druid healer, and then just 3 straight up mages for DPS? Maybe the locks w/ pets would be better (I didnt do the Imp quest with them yet).

Anywho, thanks as always for any sort of input. Consider any insight given as an investment on the WOP wiki page I am attempting to build out between frustrations of learning to multibox effectively :)

if you want it simple, then go with 4 shamans and tank (pali or DK)

If your willing to go the hard route,
mage (whatever spec u thinks the best for u)
druid ( ele)
shaman (ele)
priest (heals)
palidan (tank)

Thanks again Ogloo :)

The most common choice for mostly one toon type seems to be:

5x Shaman
4x Shaman and 1x Paladin (or other Tank).
5x Paladin
5x Druid
5x Death Knight

If you have aspirations towards PvP, the fewer classes present the closer to optimal you can play them.

During RAF, I leveled Druids (Balance), Hunters, Priests (Disc) and Shamans.
Already had a dozen or so toons at 70th, to fill in here or there.

A mixed team brings a lot more to the table, but the macro's and optimal control are harder to attain.
Look towards the castable buffs and proc buffs they bring to the team.
Look towards the type of loot they'd like.

A Disc Priest, Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Feral Druid could work, but 3 of them are fighting over the same cloth gear, and 2 on leather.
A Paladin (prot), Shaman (resto), Druid (balance), Priest (shadow) and say Hunter.. will waste a lot less gear.

If you're doing a mixed group, your focus is probably PvE - Heroics and maybe boxing raids.
That doesn't mean you cannot do BG's, World PvP or some arena for points.

Anything you'd like to try will work to a degree.
With the "Click to Move" and "Interact With Target", melee groups actually work fairly well and much more easily then previous.

hey,

what i did is just link my a account to a new ( b ) account.
raffed as much as i can in the time,my a account now counts 10 classes 60+,
my b account counts 3 classes 60+.
Now ilinked my b account to my c account.
and soon i will have 2 accounts with every class tbc ready.

and i made sure my 3rd account has classes like ( shaman / mage / warlock / paladin ) 60+

my excuus for not dualboxing x3.

i already raffed before i knew dual boxing excisted...so yea that was tobad.

but this does mean i can switch class if i dont like my current setup.

You can always change classes so I am not sure I am seeing what you are really asking here. For RAF'ing you need to have -very- similar levels in order to get the benefits, but what class they are does not matter. When all said and done however, you can make a team of three from one character from each account. If you are willing to pay a bit of cash and have room on your accounts I believe Blizzard will even let you move characters between accounts you own (Been a while since I looked at that so I might be wrong).

If one of these doesn't answer your question, feel free to ask again and Ill try again :)

Thanks for the info Ualaa. While I think going all 5 shamans would have been a bit easier I went with the second option, one paladin as the main and then 4 shamans. Unfortunately 3 of the 5 accounts I have are new (And while upgraded to TBC already two of them are still in 'trial' mode) so the 5 Death Knights is not possible, though I think I will find it amusing to multibox their noob area (though the flight part has to be done one at a time if I Recall from when I rudementarily dualboxed it)

I am interested in both PvP and in PvE and in the end I hope to have 2 groups minimum for each of those endeavors. I mean a group of five mages, warlocks or hunters sounds pretty neat for over world PvP (Not really meaning the places like WG, just the running around and reducing a town to faded corpses). But I really want to be able to run a Heroic dungeon on my own. That is the goal of the multiboxing for me. To that end I know I have to get complicated groups runable and not to mention I probably have a fair number of classes to learn as I pretty much have stuck to druids shamans and rogues since WoW came out.

Overall however, this post was asking to reduce the two learning curves as much as possible so I could focus on overcoming one of them at a time. While I have been running around with two accounts for well over a year now I have never actually dualboxed before, its always been I have one high level character boosting a low level character through its quests. So what I wanted here was to have a group that would let me get used to having to pay attention to those alt accounts, grown from one to four now, instead of being overly confused by a slew of macros. Basically I have put together a hodge podge of all the forums and wikis I could find to get to where I am. RIght now that is Really Really basic, hehe. Pretty much my Paladin uses keys 1-= and my shamans all use keys shift+1 - shift+= while general setup keys are on the side bars bound to the function keys. My setup is focus based but I do have an assist macro for making life SO much easier with the interact bindings.

I look forward to getting into the complexity of a more true to form PvE group but for now I am still getting the multibox issues worked out.

I personally started with 5x Shaman.
During RAF, using that experience, I leveled to 60.. Hunters, Druids and Disc Priests.

Wanting to experience heroics too, I've migrated a Paladin into the Shaman group.
So 1x Paladin and 4x Shaman. This is pretty easy too.

Basically, I have the shaman dps on 4 keys, not using castsequence or castrandoms.
The Paladin I'm messing around with a macro, haven't found a final one yet.
But the Pally macro is on all four keybinds.

Through a lot of content, most of the game actually, 4x Elemental will be plenty of healing.
For heroics, a lot of people go with 1x Resto, 3x Elemental and 1x Protection.
I've dual-spec'd my last shaman to resto, but they've not done too many heroics yet.
On harder mobs, such as elites 4-5 levels above me.. that I refused to go around.. the resto makes the fight so much easier.
I can imagine heroics will benefit from 3 toons that chain dps, 1 that tanks and 1 that heals.
Some prefer 4x dps, where they all drop dps to heal momentarily, others like constant dps and a healer, its preference.

An all druid team is another strong initial team to go with.
5x Balance will level very easily.
5x Rejuvenation and 5x Regrowth make a toon immune to damage, or close enough.
Add in Lifebloom down the road, Tranquility on round robin...
You have a massive amount of AoE.
Down the road, you could dual spec one to Feral (tank) and one to Resto (heals) if needed.

My problem is having to learn all the specs, hehe. Right now the 1 Pally and 4 Shams is going along fine, but I have not spent any talent points yet. I hear like a Ret Pally is good for AOE grinding for instance and maybe its a faster way to level, and yeah 4 ele shamans seems to be a nice DPS back up.

I am also considering a 5 Druid group at some point in time. It seems just that the flexibility with the different specs would give me a nice set of options and they are specs I am generally familiar with.

Let me ask ya this though.. Now this is not in pvp (well not really, would be awesome if it worked but players tend to move around, hehe). With my Pally and Shamans I have found when I am OOM with the shamans I do my normal pally deal with melee and some procs but I then walk backwards through my alts until they are behind my target and facing it, then I have them melee as well. This is working really well right now, espeically with the midsummer festival procs that can happen. But what if this was applied to say the five druids in cat form doing the 'backstab' type attack. I move in with the main tank druid and do a normal back stab opening then I back up and get the other 4 druids into position and have them open up with the attacks. I dunno, just a thought.. Lots to learn still :) I did figure at the end that my make up for heroics would be Pally/Druid tank, Shaman/Priest healer and then 3 ranged DPS of some sort of make up out of a mage/warlock/shaman/hunter.. With maybe considering the pet classes a bit higher just for the extra bodies around. anywho, lots to learn lots to consider :)

Prior to Holy Shield, I'd level the Paladin as Retribution - Big two-hander weapon, Retribution Aura, Seal of Command; I'm not an expert but something like this: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...31300000000000

Once the paladin can go deep enough in Prot for Holy Shield (Level 40), Weapon + Shield, Stamina/Intellect/Defense gear (drop Int gear once you have Divine Plea + 2/2 Guarded by the Light), switch to: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...00000000000000

Progress the Paladin towards: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...00000000000000

For leveling Shaman's I'd go with something like this... Elemental to Thunderstorm being prior to Enhancement (On an all shammy team, possibly instant ghost wolf, before Elemental): http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...00000000000000

Down the road, if you want to respec one of the shammies to a Resto build for heroics (or use the Dual Specialization option), go with something like this: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...10551122301251



*Edit*

Under Interface options, enable "Click to Move". On the slaves for sure, on the main if it doesn't bother you there.
Under Keybindings, bind something to "Interact With Target".
You'll also need a key for the slaves to assist the main.

With Flametongue weapon, the Shammies can melee for a rather decent amount, even when out of mana.
Once you get Water Shield, this will be the Shield the Shammies should have up at almost all times.

For the druids, I'd assume if they were Feral, one would be Bear form to tank, the others Cat to dps.
You get fairly close and then break follow.
The bear charges in, turns the mob so its back is to the cats.
You click your assist the bear key, and then interact keybind.
The cats "interact" with the mob, by moving to it and starting to melee.
You then click your specials, ideally a key is both bear tanking and cat dps.

Same principle on the shammies. Break follow. Have the Paladin move into melee.
Or at least close enough to pull the mob(s) towards them.
Shammies nuke as the Pally melee's.
Once a shammy is out of mana, they can interact with target, same as the cats.

Between Water Shield and one Mana Spring Totem, mana won't be much of an issue.
3/3 Unrelenting Storm should be a priority to get while levelings, it will help tremendously.
Once you're higher level, you might untrain that for a more useful talent - I kept it on my space girls, but others move the points.
Kings is the blessing of choice for the Shammies.
While you're Ret, probably Blessing of Might, when you go Prot, Blessing of Sanctuary on the pally.
In 3.2, Blessing of Sanctuary will also include the Kings 10% stat boost, so they'd likely all want that.
Blessing of Wisdom does not stack with Mana Spring, and you'll always have at least one shammy doing Mana Spring.

Wow, Hey thanks for all the specs and different options to work at. Is melee combat something I should be actually doing on purpose? I was more of just doing what if wonderings with all that.. I would think for multiboxing things that do damage from far away would likely be easiest :)

for most groups, you will only melee on the straglers and adds. If you are melee heavy of course you will, but ranged should never get hit.