Comparison of squads for 5 man dungeons

Hi all, I’m new to multi-boxing and have become quite intrigued after coming across ISBoxer and watching the plethora of vids online. I’m planning to multibox a 5 man crew for the challenge but also independence in farming endgame dungeons. My main for raids will be warrior so that role is set in stone.

The 3 crews I’m contemplating are:
-War/pally(healing)/mage/warlock/balance druid
-War/pally(healing)/3xmage
-4xwar and pally healing

The first is a nice balance of buffs, class utility and all ranged Dps (fairly easy to multi-class with castsequence macros in classic).
The second is pretty standard as far as ranged setups go and mages are very strong.
The latter I was pondering last night as I think clear speed with some decent gear could be fantastic and even have my main 2h arms tank potentially with 3 other warriors as fury (in endgame). The one thing I’m concerned about is how this would do through dungeons while Leveling. Would anyone with more extensive multiboxing experience have any thoughts or suggestions? As much as ranged sounds less problematic the idea of 4 warriors simultaneously charging in and cleaving/ww mobs sounds fantastic. Thanks so much!

I like the first team mainly due to Paladin/Warlock, making 2 lvl 40 mounts free with more money for the others.

However it sounds like, so far, that instances are easier then people 'recall'? I've seen a few videos on Youtube supporting this, so therefore if you plan to level this route, money may not be an issue.

The other main deciding factor for me (and it's always the deciding factor) which class can i get the most out of DPS-wise via 1 or 2 button macros. Haven't seen a lot so far and I only got to lvl 15 (which was max for Stress test) so wasn't able to test much there. Eg. I believe Hunters will probably get more dps then a warlock with a simple 1 or 2 castsequence macro? Mages may do better then both. Complete guesses by me though.

My options:
Alliance: Paladin(Healer/driver), Warlock, Mage, Priest, Warrior(Tank)
Horde: Shaman, Hunter, Mage, Priest(Healer/Driver), Warrior(Tank)

IWT worked so well with ISboxer and the Classic Wow client, so I like the idea of a few melee.

-War/pally(healing)/3xmage

Of the 3 you listed for PVE I would do:

War/pally(healing)/3xmage

Though I would consider swapping an Warlock for a Mage though for utility of summoning and stones/etc.

A lot of people are doing 3 Warriors and 2 Paladins so that they have 2 healers for Open World PVP.

For PVE they are planning on running the 3 Warriors in DPS mode only swapping to Sheild on a warrior who has high incoming damage.

You can review a summary of what people are thinking/planning here:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...Multibox-Teams

Much discussion in the various threads.

Thanks for the replies everyone. It seems caster wise mages are popular but some people like the lock utility which also seems good. the Two pallies option is interesting, that opens up blessing of kings and more healing as needed. I will have to look into that! :)

I'm also strongly considering the first group. It's what this guy in the video below uses to aoe pull massive groups in 5 mans. He says it's doable in only T1 tanking gear. It won't be possible to do stuff like this with a warrior/paladin only group. It could be done with the 3 mage group as well but without thorns and fire shield, tank threat may be an issue (but threat probably won't matter with blessing of salvation).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C0c...=youtu.be&t=63

Since I’ll be running straight dungeons more-so than open world stuff, would 4 dps warriors and a pally cut it in instances or would I have to run one as tank in prot spec or add in a pally in prot spec? I was thinking of rotating taunt into retal and mocking blow for dps warriors to handle nasty bosses. As much as the caster dps sounds easier there’s just something about 3-4 warriors that sounds so fun. ;)

Yeah with that first group you get might/retrib aura/thorns/motw/blood pact/fire shield buff wise on your tank which sounds fantastic for maintaining aggro. You also have the pally healing, balance druid helping as needed along with soulstone and Druid rez. It’s hard to base it on that vid as he’s naxx gear with TF but I get the jist of what he’s going for. That’s my conundrum with comparing 4 wars or 3 mages to that first group. Yes, you lose buffs and utility but you gain so much raw damage in place of it.

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Originally Posted by nodoze

Of the 3 you listed for PVE I would do:

War/pally(healing)/3xmage

Though I would consider swapping an Warlock for a Mage though for utility of summoning and stones/etc.

A lot of people are doing 3 Warriors and 2 Paladins so that they have 2 healers for Open World PVP.

For PVE they are planning on running the 3 Warriors in DPS mode only swapping to Sheild on a warrior who has high incoming damage.

You can review a summary of what people are thinking/planning here:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...Multibox-Teams

Much discussion in the various threads.

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I also plan to main a warrior, and I had been planning war/priest/mage/mage/lock (principally PVE). These multi-warrior threads by nodoze and apatheist have convinced me to consider war/war/war/pally/druid. Similar flexibility to the 3/2 war/pally setup, but gives me a stealth miner and LOTP. Leveling plan is bear tank/pally healer, and warrior cleave/ww fest. I’m testing out on retail now to see how IWT feels (I’m new to it, but it works really well so far). I suspect just having such a large % of dps coming from passive melee autoattacks is going to reduce the dps micromanagement and lead to faster dungeon clears. I’ll miss the food/ports/summons, but I think I’ll level a caster team after the melee team.

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Originally Posted by Compton

I also plan to main a warrior, and I had been planning war/priest/mage/mage/lock (principally PVE). These multi-warrior threads by nodoze and apatheist have convinced me to consider war/war/war/pally/druid. Similar flexibility to the 3/2 war/pally setup, but gives me a stealth miner and LOTP. Leveling plan is bear tank/pally healer, and warrior cleave/ww fest. I’m testing out on retail now to see how IWT feels (I’m new to it, but it works really well so far). I suspect just having such a large % of dps coming from passive melee autoattacks is going to reduce the dps micromanagement and lead to faster dungeon clears. I’ll miss the food/ports/summons, but I think I’ll level a caster team after the melee team.

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Interesting take on the bear tank, it does give some variety. LoTP is nice with 3 melee, that makes sense. You also gain an alternative armour type while leveling to capitalize on drops. Personally I like that more than double pally as I’m not planning to world pvp much. Yes, the melee autoattack train cleaving and shredding everything just sounds so fantastic. I’m going to setup a melee team on retail to get better with IWT use. This is great peeps thanks for all the feedback/ideas :)

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After thinking about this more, I don’t think I’d do bear tank as I intend to play warrior main and I feel like I’d end up wanting to play on the bear’s screen since he would be tanking. Do you think you could set-up the bear tank as a slave fairly easily and still be able to maintain threat on most things? If not then I’m leaning more toward 4 wars in that case as I can go prot on my main closer to 60 and get used to being efficient as that. Otherwise I’d probably just aggro bounce between dps warriors at lower levels (if feasible). Love to have people’s feedback about this though!

Just found a decent YouTube video outlining dungeon grinding that contains some useful information for boxers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9frydWyhL8

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Just found a decent YouTube video outlining dungeon grinding that contains some useful information for boxers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9frydWyhL8

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This is great. Thank you!

A followup video from the same author. Pretty useful info. Particularly about the dungeon XP bonus -- 250% XP for elites inside of dungeons rather than 200%. I wasn't aware of that and it's not documented anywhere I could find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrJ56pzDExc

Triple mage dps 10000%. The more mages you have the more damage each individual mage will do in both fire and frost. Fire mages can stack ignites together and overall have higher dps but frost mages have frostbite (15% chance on frost damage to freeze target for 4 seconds) and shatter (50% crit against frozen targets). I was leaning towards triple frost mage because 50% crit sounds amazing, but you can’t freeze bosses; and on trash you can just spam arcane explosion to do crazy aoe damage.

Im going to be running prot pally+ Resto druid that will go straight for imp thorns + triple fire mage for dungeon farming. Mages will have two points in arcane subtlety for 40% reduced arcane threat so with ret aura, thorns, consecration and the 40% decreased threat from arcane and the 30% reduced threat from salvation my mages will never pull agro while aoeing. I will also melt bosses by just spamming fireball and stacking ignite. At higher levels I’ll use a /cast at player macro with flamestrike to get the dot from it up before spamming arcane explosion.

I'll be doing 2 war 2 paladins 1 priest, or 3 warriors 1 shaman 1 priest. I'm also debating for the horde side, 4 warriors 1 shaman.

I expect it will blow through 5 mans effectively. The only downside of this group is, it's not going to be able to finesse when it's a little bit on the low level side. So no real CC. The upside is, it's just going to be an AOE melee cleave.

I had considered warriors with a shaman and priest but priests are just so squishy in vanilla that mixing a priest into that group you might as well paint a target on its back for every enemy player you run into. Point of having two healers is to increase the tankiness of the group which isn't achieved by including a clothie that can be gibbed by a couple of rogues before you can even get a heal off.

For just straight dungeon farming as a melee group if you don't care at all about PvP then I don't think there's any doubt that 4 warriors and a shaman have the highest cleave potential. At least once your shaman gets a decent enough mana pool to be able to keep them alive.

I'll be sticking with my original warrior/paladin concept.

Okay pretty sure my team will be: Pally (tank), 2 Warriors, Warlock, Priest. Purely for PvE leveling via 5 man instances. One warrior specced in improved Demo shout the other Battleshout. Thinking about doing 1 with improved Rend as I'll be 'dotting' up everything with Warlock. But gotta spend more thought on the Warrior builds to cover all the good stuff. If I manage the Warlock he'll never be OOM and can move around and cast better then any other class. Plus the utility and Stam pet.

This comp gives my group two free mounts, and Priest are the bests heals at any level.

I'll be doing some sort of melee cleave, but my main might be a hunter. Melee cleave is just so much more efficient in vanilla than a caster group until Dire Maul is implemented, where good CC play finally becomes necessary.

the melee cleave video helped finalize my first team thoughts. I am going with:

Warrior, Warrior, Rogue, Shaman, and Priest.

In case of a melee cleave with +3 warriors, I'm curious how you guys are planing to manage the dmg rotation on multiple warriors in terms of rage.
As far as I know the aoe rotation of a fury warrior looks smth like: Whirlwind > Bloodthirst > Cleave
WW requires 25 rage, BT 30 rage and CL 20 rage.
I can't think of any way to set a single button smash mapped key up that would execute those 3 abilitys in the mentioned priority. The warrior that has aggro might have the rage to to execute WW, BT and CL in between but the other warriors would most likely rage starve. They would sink all their rage on CL and don't have anything left when the other abilitys are off CD. Having one DPS key for WW and BT and a second one for CL also doesn't sound very effective. Some warriors would have enough rage for CL while other warriors don't. It seems to me like it's not possible to manage a flawless DPS rotation on multiple warriors.

How do you intend to set the DPS rotation on multiple warriors up?

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Originally Posted by Gala

How do you intend to set the DPS rotation on multiple warriors up?

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I have been struggling with this same issue. I planned on running a melee cleave team after testing some mixed teams with mages which I originally believed would be the most efficient. My issue is with doing solid DPS on my warriors and rogue. Everyone seems to have this warrior trick down and maybe I'm missing the rotation?

I also need to decide if the Prot Pally is the best choice or if I should just scrap the second Paladin and go 3rd warrior or maybe druid tank for the LoTP bonus.

Main issue with the warri rota is that cleave and heroic strike are rage dump abilitys. So with multiple warriors some will have the rage for CL/HS while others rage starve when these abilitys are used.
Not sure if there is a solution to that...

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

A followup video from the same author. Pretty useful info. Particularly about the dungeon XP bonus -- 250% XP for elites inside of dungeons rather than 200%. I wasn't aware of that and it's not documented anywhere I could find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrJ56pzDExc

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXPu3jEZ0-I these videos are very good ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gala

Main issue with the warri rota is that cleave and heroic strike are rage dump abilitys. So with multiple warriors some will have the rage for CL/HS while others rage starve when these abilitys are used.
Not sure if there is a solution to that...

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I can think of a few ways to handle heroic strike and cleave. None of them will be flawless but they should be good enough for grinding dungeons.

A two step ISB action with a castsequence macro would be the simplest option.

Code:

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Step 1
#showtooltip
/cast [nostance:1] Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

Step 2
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6/combat Mortal Strike, !Heroic Strike

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Haven't tested with the new API but this should automatically use overpower whenever it procs, pool rage for MS/BT and then use one cleave or heroic strike while your primary skill is on cooldown. If you get to a point where you're frequently pooling too much rage you could add another HS to the castsequence. It depends on your gear level and weapon.

Goal: 5 man “raidtrash” farming


Survivability is foremost focus. -majority of party should be able to resurrect or soulstone
then “ease” of rotation
overall hit points/avoidance/mitigation is third in importance
quality of life (ie summons, maybe mage water/food) is fourth


Speed of DPS is important as well but is last because my experience shows the previous four things make you get the most gold/hour by decreasing time played per dungeons clear


average playtime in game to get back and forth to repair vendor and recover is lowered by summons/plate wearers


My possible combinations

1 lock 4 Pallys (slow aoe)


2 lock 3 Pallys (medium aoe)


3 lock 2 Pallys (above average aoe)


1 lock 1 Mage 3 Pallys (Nice average of what I want, one paladin can holy the other 2 BOTH tank!)


2 lock 1 Mage 2 Pallys (Really goodAOE)


1 Lock 2 Mage 2 Pallys (Best AOE)


I think the healer should be pally due to wearing plate and mana economy


I need good AOE farming, but also need to survive top preraid last dungeon bosses and most importantly “raid trash”


Any thoughts?


My previous attempt in The Burning Crusade I only got my 5 man mixed team to level 65 in dungeons

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ANG853

Goal: 5 man “raidtrash” farming


Survivability is foremost focus. -majority of party should be able to resurrect or soulstone
then “ease” of rotation
overall hit points/avoidance/mitigation is third in importance
quality of life (ie summons, maybe mage water/food) is fourth


Speed of DPS is important as well but is last because my experience shows the previous four things make you get the most gold/hour by decreasing time played per dungeons clear


average playtime in game to get back and forth to repair vendor and recover is lowered by summons/plate wearers


My possible combinations

1 lock 4 Pallys (slow aoe)


2 lock 3 Pallys (medium aoe)


3 lock 2 Pallys (above average aoe)


1 lock 1 Mage 3 Pallys (Nice average of what I want, one paladin can holy the other 2 BOTH tank!)


2 lock 1 Mage 2 Pallys (Really goodAOE)


1 Lock 2 Mage 2 Pallys (Best AOE)


I think the healer should be pally due to wearing plate and mana economy


I need good AOE farming, but also need to survive top preraid last dungeon bosses and most importantly “raid trash”


Any thoughts?


My previous attempt in The Burning Crusade I only got my 5 man mixed team to level 65 in dungeons

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5 man raid trash = ZG and AQ20 ?

For trash in raid zones, the best of all my teams was 5x paladins in legion using pro healing system. Slow kills but unkillable. Not sure how that has panned out tho in Classic

You can't "tank" raid trash as a 5man in vanilla. The only way to farm trash (the trash that can be farmed) is by kiting it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjDnlpznMtg&t=112s

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

You can't "tank" raid trash as a 5man in vanilla. The only way to farm trash (the trash that can be farmed) is by kiting it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjDnlpznMtg&t=112s

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48 minutes for a single pack... I think I'd rather watch reruns of Ow My Balls.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

I can think of a few ways to handle heroic strike and cleave. None of them will be flawless but they should be good enough for grinding dungeons.

A two step ISB action with a castsequence macro would be the simplest option.

Code:

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Step 1
#showtooltip
/cast [nostance:1] Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

Step 2
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6/combat Mortal Strike, !Heroic Strike

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Haven't tested with the new API but this should automatically use overpower whenever it procs, pool rage for MS/BT and then use one cleave or heroic strike while your primary skill is on cooldown. If you get to a point where you're frequently pooling too much rage you could add another HS to the castsequence. It depends on your gear level and weapon.

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After thinking about it I see 2 potential problems with this.

1.) if you are only generating minimal rage then you are losing dps by forcing a heroic strike instead of waiting to MS again. Heroic strike use means less white hits = less rage coming in = less damage going out, which is why at higher levels it’s only used when you have excess rage
2.) the other problem is the opposite. If you are getting too much rage then you’ll need to bind heroic strike separately because you can’t dump enough rage as you want. I don’t see this being as big of an issue as the first one

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

48 minutes for a single pack... I think I'd rather watch reruns of Ow My Balls.

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True but the payoff is pretty huge. https://classic.wowhead.com/item=232...aced-servo-arm

2.8 Speed one handed mace that's pretty close to anything outside of KT weapons. Also not unique so you can DW them. The fact that you can solo farm these weapons is pretty ridiculous. MMO Players are a lot "wiser" than they were during vanilla. I suspect stuff like this will be common knowledge and we'll see a ton of players who have never even killed a Naxx boss running around with these equipped.

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Originally Posted by Hksix

After thinking about it I see 2 potential problems with this.

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That's why I mentioned you'd need to adjust the HS/cleave depending on your gear level. Your rage generation is dependent on how good your gear is. Better weapons generate more rage. Once you have two decent one handers and 8%+ hit you will almost always have at least enough rage to weave one cleave between whirlwinds or heroic strike between bloodthirsts. No solution is going to be perfect. That's the trade off when you box games. Your rotation is rarely going to be executed as flawlessly as a character being actively controlled.

In PvP I wouldn't bother with cleave or HS at all. I'd pool rage and actively MS/WW/execute on all characters for maximum burst.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

True but the payoff is pretty huge. https://classic.wowhead.com/item=232...aced-servo-arm

2.8 Speed one handed mace that's pretty close to anything outside of KT weapons. Also not unique so you can DW them. The fact that you can solo farm these weapons is pretty ridiculous. MMO Players are a lot "wiser" than they were during vanilla. I suspect stuff like this will be common knowledge and we'll see a ton of players who have never even killed a Naxx boss running around with these equipped.

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we gave 2 of these to our enh shammy. I main'd a priest in vanilla. Pretty fun to healbot him in bgs. I forgot about naxx trash farming. Thanks for the reminder :]

Some useful info here about resetting dungeons to farm/grind efficiently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuEzXay-PbA&t=550s

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Some useful info here about resetting dungeons to farm/grind efficiently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuEzXay-PbA&t=550s

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Thanks, it's not in the video (or at least not at 550s) but it is in the description:

Here is how to do it!
1: Join a group with a friend who is questing/farming in the world/or can chill in a party while you farm! THEY NEED TO BE LEADER!
2: Solo clear your dungeon!
3: When you are ready to reset tell your party member you are logging out and ask him/her to reset the dungeon as soon as you go offline.
4: logout and wait for your party member to reset the dungeon, if you are not in direct communication with them give them 20-30 seconds to reset before logging back on.
5: Once you log on the dungeon will be reset and you will find yourself back at the start!
TIP! - some dungeons that have multiple entrances may put you back at the start of a different entrance portal (Mara runs) If you are at the wrong portal, zone out, and run to the correct entrance - it won’t count as multiple resets as you are entering the same dungeon lockout but just at a different location.

What is the most efficient way to do the dungeon reset as a multiboxer?

Based on the description I assume that the most efficient way would be to:
Make a raid.
Login on another character on 1 of your account and invite it, so 6 characters online from 5 accounts.
Clear dungeon.
Logout with all except for leader and login on the other character.
Pass leader to the other character.
Logout on the last character in dungeon.
Reset with the character that isn't in the dungeon.
Login again with all the characters in the dungeon.

Or for farming easy low lvl dungeons to not have to relog so much:
Leave 1 character outside dungeon.
Logout with all characters in dungeon.
Reset.
Login.

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Originally Posted by Moorea

Join a group with a friend who is questing/farming

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In the video he also says you can do it with an alt.

Create a raid, invite your 5 main characters plus a random alt (can be level 1.)

When you want to reset log out your party, log in your alt and reset. When you log your party back in all of the characters that were inside the dungeon will be at the entrance. The only downside to this is that you can't complete quests while in a raid group so if you're leveling you'll have to do it the old fashioned way. At least for your first clear.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

That's why I mentioned you'd need to adjust the HS/cleave depending on your gear level. Your rage generation is dependent on how good your gear is. Better weapons generate more rage.

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The rage generation also depends on how much dmg you take. The warrior who is tanking the mobs in a dungeon will have significant more rage than the other warriors. Using the same dmg rota on all warriors sounds suboptimal since they won't have a similiar amount of rage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

No solution is going to be perfect. That's the trade off when you box games. Your rotation is rarely going to be executed as flawlessly as a character being actively controlled.

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Well, on many classes the PvE dmg rota can be executed flawlessly as a multiboxer. Especially in classis wow where the dmg rotations are much less complex than in BFA.
Warrior is here rather the exception because rage makes their dmg rota harder to control than on other classes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gala

Warrior is here rather the exception because rage makes their dmg rota harder to control than on other classes.

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If you adjust your macros appropriately the DPS will be close enough to make little difference. Heroic strike accounts for around 30% of your overall DPS as a warrior. Missing a few might reduce that by 5-10% at most.

Suboptimal warrior DPS is still better than mage DPS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

If you adjust your macros appropriately the DPS will be close enough to make little difference. Heroic strike accounts for around 30% of your overall DPS as a warrior. Missing a few might reduce that by 5-10% at most.

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Missing cleaves on mob packs sound like a rather huge DPS loss though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Suboptimal warrior DPS is still better than mage DPS.

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In case of raids I believe that multiboxing multiple mages would be more efficient and easier to control than warriors.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gala

Missing cleaves on mob packs sound like a rather huge DPS loss though.

In case of raids I believe that multiboxing multiple mages would be more efficient and easier to control than warriors.

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That depends on the encounter. Some encounters melee just stack and DPS while ranged have to deal with more movement and decursing.

While cleaving packs you're going to be using cleave, whirlwind and/or sweeping strikes. Cleave uses a lot more rage than heroic strike so there's less opportunity to pool too much between cleaves. As a percentage of your total damage done, missing a cleave every now and then isn't going to make or break you.

Even frost mage with a 1 button rotation is impacted by not being able to manage movement efficiently. If your cast bars aren't perfectly synced and one mage moves while frostbolt was 75% cast, then repositions and begins casting again, that's 3-5 seconds you've done zero DPS. As I've said, you won't be able to execute any classes rotation flawlessly regardless how simple because you won't ever have the same level of control as a single player.

The nice thing about vanilla is that doesn't really matter. None of the raids are that difficult that you're struggling against enrage timers as long as everybody is at least competent.

If you're that concerned about micromanaging hs/cleave you could always make a bar swap macro to manually manage when each of your characters dumps rage. I just think the DPS increase will be minimal versus the extra effort.