Back to boxing and want to try a new team...

A huge swath of downtime with work has brought the urge to box back, and I figure I might as well roll a new team as part of re-learning how to do everything after most of a year away from playing multiples.

Out of habit I rolled my old standard - Paladin + 4x Shaman, but it's so familiar to me having done that before. So, I'm thinking about spicing things up a bit, and would love some feedback on the following:

Tank: Druid - Very simple tanking rotation, has a battle-rez, and Mark of the Wild replaces the Blessing of Kings. Since I drive from the tank, this will feel a bit different than playing my paladin, which I'm looking forward to.

DPS1: Priest - I'm thinking I will go Discipline and grab Atonement. This won't be a very high dps slot, but it will add some more survivability in the form of passive atonement healing and shields. The stamina buff and spell haste talent are also quite nice.

DPS2: Shaman - Elemental, grabbing booming echoes for the party +crit & flametounge totem.

DPS3: Shaman - Elemental, skipping booming echoes, grabbing earthbind totem's boost.

DPS4/Healing: Shaman - Restoration when I need it, Elemental when I'm doing content where survivability isn't an issue.

With 3 shamans I can still get all the necessary totems out while also stacking the ones that are most beneficial, which will be nice, and I'm not overlapping much on the buffs they bring.

My thinking is that Cataclysm dungeons were much, much harder for me because of all the gimmicks that required some semblance of independent movement, but with 1.5 healers that might be more doable.

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

I would probably swap an arcane Mage for the second dps shaman. You get the dmg buff, Int buff, portals, and good dps.

The disc priest could probably heal the whole party and you could have the resto shaman dps with LB also (probably not a huge dps gain but with earth shield riptide, PW Shield, Prayer of Mending, and renew I doubt you will need too much healing).

As long as you can dual spec the priest and the resto shaman, I think you would have a very flexible group.

This is all based off of what Cata is like now. I have not really been following how this will all work out in MoP.

Hm, an interesting idea - the mage buff and portals wouldn't be bad to add to the versatility. And, since I would still have 2 shammies, and I very rarely have ever needed more than 2 reincarnations before one reset, I guess losing that wouldn't hurt.

The resto shaman will be dpsing with LB in order to at least recover mana, and I'll mostly heal with an "Emergency!" macro for situations where I need it. They would definitely both be dual-specced in order to allow for maximum flexibility in situations where I don't need the healing; I tend to have issues in certain kinds of fights where the extra survivability would be nice to have.

Thanks - I think I will swap out the 2nd dps shammy for a mage and see how it works!

you have an all ranged team there when you dual spec the druid as well.

any melee charging in gets bounced out by round robin thunderstorm and you can snare with mind flay and totems arrayed in a flower petal pattern around you. shamans have access to short cool down ranged interrupts too.

If your focus is PvE, 5-man content...

I'd likely go with the Pally.
But a Druid tank is close enough in power/ease, although missing some fairly strong tank specific toys until around 70th.

Consider:
1x Druid Tank
1x Disc Priest
2x Elemental Shaman
1x Destro Warlock

Or drop the Priest and go with another Shaman.
3x Elemental easily has the healing, but misses out on the full range of Dispels.
You could dual-spec one of the Shammies to Elemental/Resto.
I like the Priest, because she adds Fortitude, Shackle, and healing via Smite/Holy Fire, plus PW: Shield, Pain Suppression, etc.

The Warlock is there for the 8% increased spell damage, via the Curse.
You could get the same from a Boomkin, via their normal rotation and their Earth & Moon ability.
Or with an Unholy Death Knight...
But a Boomkin needs to manage Eclipse and a DK adds the complication of a melee to your team.
The Lock DPS is high enough, you get a pet buff, health stones, a soul stone for recovery, replenishment, and ranged aoe (ground-target) stun, etc...

Hm, these are all interesting. Some comments:

Everyone who can play 2 roles will be dual-spec - druid will be Feral/Boomkin, Priest Disc/Shadow, and the shammies will all have ele/resto specs in case I need to cheese some fights by simply soaking up gimmicks and healing through them. I also like the idea that I can dispel pretty much anything with that team. And yeah, Jack - Wind Shear is amazing and extremely useful, a round-robin for using that was the second thing I set up!

I'm not sure about a warlock - I don't really "get" them, but I would like to be able to field any class eventually. With a DK, I did originally start with 5x paladins, back in Wrath, so I don't mind doing melee, though it gets a bit more complicated in some ways I guess.

Mostly this will be a PvE team, but I might do some PvP, though with PvP I really like to run 5 of the same class just for amusement's sake, so that would probably be a different team.

Thanks for the ideas - I hope to start putting them into practice once I manage to level some groups up!

I myself did the same thing. Picked up 2 new ones and have been 4 boxing w/ my Frost DK running them through. Mages just hit 80. DKs just hit 65 in bout 4 hours. i am doing all the Heroics for the guild though. Keeps it interesting. I am leveling all classes to 80, and will decide my comps from there.

Yeah it sucks, but i have been in the "Dont want to level without RAF" about 6 times with 5 boxing. In turn i now have around 32 accounts. Never to touch most again.

What I have noticed is that with RAF instance questing is amazing. I had no idea about Scholo though, untill I went there at 58 and found that it was level 46's (Very depressing as now i am alliance, and its a long flight from SW).

BTW hit 60 before you go to outland. Then hit all the dungeons in order (Group finder), and you shouldnt have to run them more than once/maybe twice. Do all the 60+ dungeons on Heroic for the extra XP.

Same goes for WoTLK. 70 hit Utgarde, Nex and so on. Dont forget the RoB's at the x5 mark. Questing is faster than grinding. So if you can kill some easy quest to boost the next instance (74-75 mostly, No dungeon for 74.) Till you hit Dalaran's.

PvP is divided into smaller brackets now.
x0 to x4 -and- x5 to x9.

If your toons are 24th, 29th, 34th, 39th, etc...
You will be extremely strong, even more so because of boxing.
If you can win more than half of the BG's, that is a decent leveling method too.
And supplements your other leveling.

Plus, if you have any interest in PvP, being able to buy a couple of pvp items at 85th immediately is decent.
Even if you only plan on PvE stuff, the 2 minute trinket is worth having.

Well, after completely redoing the way I handle my keybinds to work on a more first come, first serve basis, I ought to have a much better handle on mixed teams with different cooldowns etc. I did get a druid, priest and mage up to about level 23, and at some point will try to level them a bit more so I can fold them into my Paladin+Shaman group (or, actually, I guess fold 2 shammies into the group with them). Or I might stick with the paladin - but since I drive from the tank I kind of want to play around, and I do like the druid style.

With leveling, I totally don't mind running dungeons like mad. I'm getting my guild leveled up in the process, they're easy loot and very fast xp, and no worries about gathering quests. When I get bored I'm switching out to a solo character to farm points, and if I get bored with that I guess I'll try some BGs. It's slowish, but I guess not as bad as it could be.

I won't be buying more accounts - RAF is really nice, true, but I have to draw the line with this somewhere, and I 5 will have to do for now. The only way I see that changing is if I go crazy and decide to 10-box raids or something, but I will probably talk myself out of it :D

Im trying to get my gf to start boxing tanks...then i think we will run our own 10 mans. : )

try looking into mercurios 2 step macros... I havent played a lock properly since Season 3, I have 2 locks in one of my grps and just use 2 step macro

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Im trying to get my gf to start boxing tanks...then i think we will run our own 10 mans. : )

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ahhah my fiance his main is prot pally, so 1 tank is great as I handle the dps and heals... though I was thinking of the same thing, to get him to 2 box tanks and maybe a healer or 3 so we can do our own 10 mans between us for fun of it.