Does multiboxing in Battlegrounds require less skill?

I've thought long and hard about posting this, it's not an attempt to troll, it's just something that's been preying on my mind for some time and I thought I'd put it out there for discussion.

I feel that it takes less skill to multibox my 4 shaman in battlegrounds than it does to play solo in battlegrounds.

The shaman can just stand stock still plant some totems and blast away. I might need to ghostwolf to get out of AOE or to avoid a bladestorming warrior, but I can heal through an insane amount of damage whilst my magma totems burn someone trying to kill me. I've effectively got 4 times every wonderful ability a shaman has - which does a lot more than increase my ability to survive and kill by 4.

I see a lot of multibox pvp'ers saying how they one shotted someone. But at the back of my mind I'm thinking - No you actually 4-5 shotted someone just all at the same time.

I then compare that to playing any of the classes I play solo and I feel I require a greater level of skill to survive and do well.

Then I think about it in another way - The reason i feel I am more skilled as a solo player, is because I'm generally not getting the support that the shaman have. I can't rely on getting healed so I have to be more survival focused, picking targets taking them out and relying more on CC etc to try and even odds. i may even need to avoid certain classes depending on what class I'm playing. When I do get in a group that runs together and that is healing then I notice that the skill level that I need drops and I can just stand there and pump out damage.

So, when I think of it that way multiboxing is like running with a good group all the time. And I know that battlegrounds are about never being in a fair fight.

I guess to remove my doubts I should pick one of my shaman and play it solo for a while, until I'm happy with the level I can play an ele shaman solo (I've played enhancement solo and was happy with the way I played that). This would remove any of my self doubts and i would be able to multibox without the awful feeling of being a pvp fraud (on the shaman anyway) :)

Does anyone else have these doubts when it comes to multiboxing and pvp?

Should I just shut my mouth and enjoy the ownage regardless?

You are right if you meet one/two/three/... guys in a BG and "os" him/them. It requires not more than a button press.

You're less right when you make a stand with only 3-4 more players at Galva and make 20-30 alliance wipe there, which is 8 out of 10 times :). This is just a typical situation but there's many others like recovering/attacking a tower crowded with enemies, making a stand to def something you just tagged and they come in swarms. This is how all my avs look like and tbh, still after several hundred avs going up a horde tower it's damn hard with alts following xD.

What I also think is that boxing BGs is much easier than boxing Arenas mostly due to los issues and most of us being casters that can really run after them.

I say, enjoy the ownage :), you're being a great help to your side and at least in AV/IOC/EotS having a multiboxer on your side, playing the game can really help winning it.

I'm happy with my performance in AV with a group of shaman, but I suck at solo elemental pvp.. However, I don't play solo elemental in pvp so I'd expect that.

I don't compare my skill with that of solo shaman as that's not what I play, and the lack of boxing groups in my AVs makes it hard to gauge any kinds of personal skill level.

My talents/macros are for PVE and I use focus and target, so no ghost would or finely tuned I-win button and everyone can see who I'm aiming at. So as pvp multiboxing goes, I lack the more advanced stuff, thus you can happily consider yourself more skilled than me :)

I suspect any non-seasoned multi-box would fare well in AV against a pug, so yeah I think it requires less skill, but one can still become skilled at it. :)

The comparison is sort of flawed, because you need the same context in order to properly compare. If you, as a solo shaman, grouped up with 3 other shaman and a healer, then you'd probably find it to be a lot easier to play solo (as in grouped) than to play five :-)

The reason that it feels easier, is because noone takes BG's seriously enough to come up with good strategies and be tight in their playing style - or in other words, it's a lot less efficient to be running around alone than running with a group. Thus, it's also harder to play alone. It'll be a different situation with rated battlegrounds I think :-)

Yep - I'm trying to compare apples with oranges again :)

I have done BG's with a group of friends before - and that does seem to take even less skill than multiboxing :)

I thought that playing a solo elemental shaman might solve things - then remembered that I much preferred the far more aggressive enhancement playstyle for solo pvp.

Battlegrounds are easy if I have a dedicated healer come with me - in that case we can effectively steamroll everyone. The strategy amounts to simply staying in the rear and "one shotting" people with lightning bolt + chain lightning - I generally don't bother with lava burst in BGs because people typically aren't in full relentless like arena and the LB+CL is enough to burst most people down.

If I'm running them by myself then its another story -- if I have to heal myself then I can't kill anyone and melee will swarm me (with a healer I can drop totems and take out the ranged while my totems kill melee).

Once I start losing shaman I generally just stop on the rest until I'm completely dead so I res togather - I feel pretty weak as a solo shaman or even with two shaman -- our set up is built entirely around burst which is severely degraded with only 1-2 shaman.

-Clov

Bleh, i keep going till the last mans standing. Simply but in a BG we are rape... with or without a healer.

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Originally Posted by shaeman

I've thought long and hard about posting this, it's not an attempt to troll, it's just something that's been preying on my mind for some time and I thought I'd put it out there for discussion.

I feel that it takes less skill to multibox my 4 shaman in battlegrounds than it does to play solo in battlegrounds.

The shaman can just stand stock still plant some totems and blast away. I might need to ghostwolf to get out of AOE or to avoid a bladestorming warrior, but I can heal through an insane amount of damage whilst my magma totems burn someone trying to kill me. I've effectively got 4 times every wonderful ability a shaman has - which does a lot more than increase my ability to survive and kill by 4.

I see a lot of multibox pvp'ers saying how they one shotted someone. But at the back of my mind I'm thinking - No you actually 4-5 shotted someone just all at the same time.

I then compare that to playing any of the classes I play solo and I feel I require a greater level of skill to survive and do well.

Then I think about it in another way - The reason i feel I am more skilled as a solo player, is because I'm generally not getting the support that the shaman have. I can't rely on getting healed so I have to be more survival focused, picking targets taking them out and relying more on CC etc to try and even odds. i may even need to avoid certain classes depending on what class I'm playing. When I do get in a group that runs together and that is healing then I notice that the skill level that I need drops and I can just stand there and pump out damage.

So, when I think of it that way multiboxing is like running with a good group all the time. And I know that battlegrounds are about never being in a fair fight.

I guess to remove my doubts I should pick one of my shaman and play it solo for a while, until I'm happy with the level I can play an ele shaman solo (I've played enhancement solo and was happy with the way I played that). This would remove any of my self doubts and i would be able to multibox without the awful feeling of being a pvp fraud (on the shaman anyway) :)

Does anyone else have these doubts when it comes to multiboxing and pvp?

Should I just shut my mouth and enjoy the ownage regardless?

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I'll bite. Apply I-Think-This-Is-Really-A-Troll caveat...

You're comparing far too many different types of fruit here. Solo is easier any way you slice it. You wanna ultra-cheeze-EZmode BGs? Get on vent with your raid or even just your group, come up with a plan and actually execute your plan. Unless you're a halfway decent solo player and have good multitasking abilities, you will suck WORSE as a multiboxer in just about anything except measuring your sucktastic DPS on the target dummies.

solo and boxing both require skill to work well. It's a somewhat different skillset, but skills none the less.

solo you'll need to watch your back, pick your fights, survive etc.
boxing you'll need to manage your n toons, control their actions, survive etc.
(only examples of course)

solo while part of a group of 4-5 if again another skillset, that requires team skills, knowledge of other classes (friendly) abilities and what the other players in the group intend to do etc.

difficult to compare all of those.

heck it's difficult to compare to solo players of different classes

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Originally Posted by shaeman

The shaman can just stand stock still plant some totems and blast away. I might need to ghostwolf to get out of AOE or to avoid a bladestorming warrior, but I can heal through an insane amount of damage whilst my magma totems burn someone trying to kill me. I've effectively got 4 times every wonderful ability a shaman has - which does a lot more than increase my ability to survive and kill by 4.

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This is what I like to call the brute force style of play and I place myself squarely into that category. With a healer backing me up I am like a demi-god. Going up against top geared players with healers backing them up I still get roflstomped.

Then you come up against this other multi-boxer in a BG that completely redefines your view of hwo good you are. They always seem to blindside you, take out 1 or 2 of your team and then they are gone again. Extremely mobile, extremely deadly and damn hard to kill. I think a lot of those skills come from serious arena experience. I've only come up against one boxer that plays like this and I am in awe of their skill.

to be completely honest, i find Bgs harder than arenas ;0, in arneas well its setup to kill eachother, Bgs i get rogues tagging behind me going down each of my 4 guys sapping 1 by one so i cant move or do anything... or other crap
sooo.. i dunno just me, i guess because its been so long since ive done Bgs

IMO BG's seem easier becuase its usually a case of 5 prefectly co-ordinated toons taking on groups of people who have never played together before (they don't play to their strengths or coordinate thier attacks), and given the cross-server nature of BG's, will most likely not play together again. Pre-mades are the exception to this of course.

I find WG to be a bit better...since you get more 'regular' players, even guild groups that occasionally participate. The overall co-ordination level seems to be quite a bit higher, and makes for more challenging games. I've had my team neatly picked apart in WG multple times by groups of toons playing well together (most recently by a group of warlocks and mages - the locks took turns of AoE stunning me, mages would nova or blizzard me ) - it keeps you on your toes.
The other benefit of doing WG is that if you play enough, you get to know the other regular players and they will usually be more inclined to help you (e.g. raid leader putting all your toons in the same group, or someone pocket healing you for the battle)

Cheers,
S.

I think the problem is that I was too narrow in my definition of what I considered to be skills.
I was focused on all the stuff I have to do solo and viewing my shaman group through those eyes.
I ended up thinking like a non-multiboxer.

Removing those blinkers, I can see that it's more a case of completely different skillsets.

With multiboxing, you are looking at the big picture, rather than focusing on one toon. You have to monitor the health of all your players, their position. I'm not just dpsing I'm looking at healing the group, other players around me.

And of course - even though I'm not sure it's a skill as such, it's the ability of being able to affect the course of the battleground. Sure you might not win it, but you have enough of a group to go off and target key tactical points.

I would have to say it takes a different amount/variety of skill.

As a boxer, we blow people up, but that's because it is frequently 5 vs 1.
Even in arena, when it is two players against five players, we have synchronous attacks.
Which is a massive advantage over even 5 different players.
But it is also a massive disadvantage in the number of different actions we can do at once.

Our skill is more with setting up macros and keybinds to coordinate the team, even when people are playing as individuals against us.
We have a lot of firepower and resiliency compared to a single boxer, but five players can do five things at once, we have to coordinate our team with one set of hands.
In general, a large portion of the player base does battlegrounds as a means to get gear; and a lot of players both our allies and our enemies are undergeared -- we run BG's for gear too.

It is easier to kill 1 person as a 5-box team, then to kill 1 person as a 1-box solo player.
But in a battleground its not 1 vs 5 all the time, but sometimes it is.
In AV, 5 players in one place and moving as a group is a drop in the bucket.
In WSG, 5 players in one place is half of the team, and potentially a disadvantage.

We are the zerg rush of strategic attacks, overwhelming the unprepared but easily opposed by a wiser enemy.

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Originally Posted by yaki

We are the zerg rush of strategic attacks, overwhelming the unprepared but easily opposed by a wiser enemy.

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Exactly. A good player will turn a multiboxer fight from a one vs five fight into five separate one vs one fights. Luckily not many players know how to do this.

I have never been killed buy one guy even when i 4 box.

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Originally Posted by KvdM

Exactly. A good player will turn a multiboxer fight from a one vs five fight into five separate one vs one fights. Luckily not many players know how to do this.

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lol ok.... Or the boxer sucks ass.

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Originally Posted by Budkin

I have never been killed buy one guy even when i 4 box.

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I did once, but it as a higher level hunter abusing LoS that slowly picked off all my guys. I couldnt keep him in LoS long enough to due enough damage to kill him (this was pre-insta LvB). Now I know better than to approach a hunter that has a tactical advantage of the higher ground without insta-death ready.

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Originally Posted by KvdM

Exactly. A good player will turn a multiboxer fight from a one vs five fight into five separate one vs one fights. Luckily not many players know how to do this.

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That...doesn't happen so much.

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Originally Posted by yaki

That...doesn't happen so much.

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A pally did this to me once in AV outside a Horde tower. He kept running in whacking me and then LoSing me around the tower. With his three lives he managed to take out my entire team.

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Originally Posted by thinus

A pally did this to me once in AV outside a Horde tower. He kept running in whacking me and then LoSing me around the tower. With his three lives he managed to take out my entire team.

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Get better gear and then learn to either make pallies waste their cooldowns first or gib them before they realize they need them?

Or just roll a ret team and laugh when the other pally starts screaming hax and running for the hills...

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Originally Posted by yaki

Get better gear and then learn to either make pallies waste their cooldowns first or gib them before they realize they need them?

Or just roll a ret team and laugh when the other pally starts screaming hax and running for the hills...

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My gear was crap and the pally was in relentless. Just saying, it has happened to me. Didn't know there was a gear clause.

more wow forums nonsense posts

this one should have had a poll too

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Originally Posted by heyaz

more wow forums nonsense posts

this one should have had a poll too

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Hahahaha. /cast white guy high five.

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Originally Posted by Budkin

I have never been killed buy one guy even when i 4 box.

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Not even before the FoK nerf?

I took my paladin team into a battleground at level 49 and couldn't even kill one person. I swear, there were like 5 priests fear bombing me. We got 5 capped.

My druids seemed to do better in BG's because of the element of surprise (stealth) and the shamans could at least stand back and blast things and be protected by a sea of totems. I don't understand how you melee multiboxers do it! Spamming interact with target really throws off my ability to do anything else other than swarm with sub-par DPS castsequences.

quadboxer vs1 does indeed take less skill then 1vs1
quadboxer vs 4 single players takes more skill then 1vs1.

Also depends on how retarded the people are you play against. Since most randoms are quite clueless, thus die fast, which is good :D

I think you play your sole char better when you have boxed a full team. I have learned so much boxing my 5 team. I'm a total noob and still learning every time I log on, but i'm improving both in pve and pvp.

I have only played a handfull of AV, a couple went really well, and a couple went horribly wrong. I also got killed by one or two guys at one point. I was mostly in ilvl 187-200 blues. Even had some 15x on as well, and I had never pvp'ed... so going into a battleground at lvl 80 is a wakeup call lol - but good fun.

It's a differen playstyle. I find in WSG that it can be a lot harder to box as a druid flag carrier with a mage or priest back-up can avoid you quite easily no matter where you are. But it is nice being able to defend a node in AB/EotS whereas if you were playing solo, you would need to convince others to stay and help you.

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Originally Posted by KvdM

Exactly. A good player will turn a multiboxer fight from a one vs five fight into five separate one vs one fights. Luckily not many players know how to do this.

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Originally Posted by asonimie

lol ok.... Or the boxer sucks ass.

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/fixed

... ok if the boxer is completely undergeared 17k life ect and you enemy has almost high end gear or even best inslot you will loose

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Originally Posted by shaeman

I feel that it takes less skill to multibox my 4 shaman in battlegrounds than it does to play solo in battlegrounds.

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hm ... no, youre taking 4 bg slots, so there are three people missing in the battleground so you don't have any time for standing around and leeching