All stealth vs All casters vs Balanced Group

I have a 60 priest and 60 warrior on one account already, but I tasted the multi-boxing Kool Aid a week ago and then drank the whole jug a few days later. (5 accounts.)

I want to do two things:
--I want to be able to farm gold quickly.
--I want to directly farm at least one item of intrinsic value. That could be a lot of things, such as:
----Black Lotus (probably don't need to multi-box)
----Rich Thorium / Arcane Crystals
----Dark Iron
----Grave Moss
----Righteous Orbs
----Other herbs (DM East)

So I'm wondering what can be done with 4 rogues and a druid (or bear, tree, and 3 rogues)

or

4 mages or warlocks and a resto druid (already have a priest for max level)

or

A balanced group you'd actually find real people playing with, like maybe prot pally, warlock, mage, resto druid, rogue.

I'm not super in to twitch gaming and hate chugging consumables especially when farming. But I'm realizing that if I can farm gold 5-10x faster by spending a couple extra bucks it might make my life easy.

Also, what does it take to farm rich thorium deep in Silithus?

Thanks!

Most people I've spoken to multibox because they enjoy it. Pick a composition that you think you'll enjoy playing or will be successful in other aspects of the game like raiding or PvP.

If your goal is just to farm more efficiently then you're probably better off simply levelling a mage with mining and herbalism and following one of the Mara/BRD/DM farm guides on YouTube that can earn you 150+ gold per hour plus herbs, mining nodes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bT2vq81rSQ

The general consensus on Rogues is that, in addition to being squishy for a melee, it is hard to optimize their DPS for Boxing so generally it is best to have at most one in your boxing group and drive from it and maximize it's DPS (especially if you have a particular reason for needing a rogue like you want to main one).

Generally speaking the most balanced group to farm with is Tank+3Ranged_DPS+Healer and the fastest for farming is 4Ranged_DPS+Healer (typically avoiding bosses at least while leveling).

Generally speaking the best Ranged_DPS are Mages with Warlocks being second with pros/cons. Generally speaking it is best to go all the same DPS though, for the extra utility (summons, rez stones, health stones, stamina buff, etc), many folk will go with 1 Warlock and the rest Mages (2 or 3 depending on the party composition).

Considering you already have a 60 Warrior I recommend you level 4Mages+Healer to cap, with a Mage on your Warrior account, and then at cap you can substitute in your Warrior for the boss fights where you feel like having a Tank helps the fight.

If your 60 Priest is on the same account as your Warrior I would consider leveling a 2nd Priest on one of the other accounts as Priests (especially Dwarf Priests) are the best all around Healers and that would allow you to have Warrior+3Mages+Priest for boss fights. If you are Alliance a Paladin Healer can do much for a Warrior lead 3Mage team (and still help a 4 Mage team with blessings/aura on top of healling) and though I love Druids a Druid would be my last choice for a 4Mage (or Warrior+3Mage) team unless you really just want a Druid at cap and don't see yourself leveling a Druid any other way...

4Warlocks+Priest also work but if you go that route I would definitely do Priest as the AoE healing really helps Warlocks.

Edit: For leveling 4Mages+Healer or 4Warlocks+Priest I recommend you review the following link to help you get to cap the fastest:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=566752830

Lots of great info on the various tabs of that spreadsheet but in particular I would focus on the 2 links in light blue (cyan) on the 'Leveling' tab as they contain links to great guides leveling teams (especially mage heavy teams). Both are a little more Horde-centric so if you are Alliance I would use the 'Leveling' tab to get to Scarlet Monestary where the guides work fine for both factions...

I have farmed Strat Live and DM East with the following teams.

Druid tank, Holy Priest, Mage, El Shaman, Hunter

I don't use crowd control and kill things by single target tanking and AOEing some mobs. DM East is easy, live strat can get ugly with a bad pull. Battle Mages in strat can be difficult sometimes.

Currently completed DM east with the following team. 56 Prot Warrior, Holy Priest, Mage, El Shaman, 56 Warlock.
I think tanking with the Warrior is easier, even at 56. Being able to take a health Pot and/or healthstone is huge along with Shield wall. The Warlock using curse of tongues makes the casting mobs insignificant.

DM east also have two, sometimes three rich thorium nodes at the end. I jump down with the mage(slow fall) and priest(levitate) and AOE the non elite pack with AE and HN. Not even close to dying with just these two toons. Then I jump down with the others.

I'm pretty sure the general consensus is that nothing even comes remotely close to MMMMP / MMMMM for power farming instances. They're also extremely easy to gear since only 3 stats matter for arcane explosion spam (crit, int, and stam).

I think WWWWS or WWWWPa has the potential to outscale it in t1/t2 gear, but yea...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by strokes

I'm pretty sure the general consensus is that nothing even comes remotely close to MMMMP / MMMMM for power farming instances. They're also extremely easy to gear since only 3 stats matter for arcane explosion spam (crit, int, and stam).

I think WWWWS or WWWWPa has the potential to outscale it in t1/t2 gear, but yea...

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TY all

The first multivoxer on my server to 60 told me pretty much this. And I was thinking, there just doesn’t seem like there’s anywhere worth stealthing to that 4-5 mages couldn’t just kill their way to in roughly the same time. (At leadt that’s my best guess.)

So right now it’s between 3 mages and lock or four mages. The healer tank os gonna br a pally though, I want to have him as a buffbot if needed for raids.

For Strat you will need at least 1 char to clear all the diseases you get. If you are just farming orbs I would say MMMMP is fastest. I would also say:

1. Horde is way quicker to reach 60 due to easy SM access and Gorshak farming. I pretty much leveled from 53-60 no risk easy peasy on Gorshak. So much so that I gave up on my plan of an alliance team.
2. Prices on Ally side are lower. I probably shouldn't give this away though. :)
3. If you are grinding world mats like essences, I would think a hunter team is fastest with the least down time. The biggest reason hunters kind of suck for instance farming is the deadzone, which doesn't come into play in world farming at all.
4. Mixed team are harder to manage. Something like LMMMP will give you soulstone and summons, it's much easier to manage MMMMP.

with a balanced group

tank / mage / mage / mage or warlock / healer

you can farm every instance and boss except full UBRS.

I do most of my time DME for arcane crystal, additional I get herbs and disenchanting materials.
If you get bored you can switch to any other instance which you like.
Sure some other combinations are faster for some specific farm spots, but you have diversity to do different things.

For DME I recommend a shaman as healer, because his totems makes the boss mechanics non existing.

Now that my 4xwar shaman team is geared I'm loving it more than any of my other combos. 3xearthshakers with mace spec means all trash is stunned and my 4th war has ashkandi. I dont use typical dps gear when boxing. I try to have all plate gear so I unquip devilsaurs and truestrike mantles and such for plate. Shaman got 8/8 t1 from pugging. Originally this comp was hard compared to mages but with gear you just own any 5 man. Mage comps still clear faster is my guess but not by much once geared.

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Originally Posted by Shadowcc

Now that my 4xwar shaman team is geared I'm loving it more than any of my other combos. 3xearthshakers with mace spec means all trash is stunned and my 4th war has ashkandi. I dont use typical dps gear when boxing. I try to have all plate gear so I unquip devilsaurs and truestrike mantles and such for plate. Shaman got 8/8 t1 from pugging. Originally this comp was hard compared to mages but with gear you just own any 5 man. Mage comps still clear faster is my guess but not by much once geared.

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Very cool and thanks for sharing.

I would still love to see an 8/8 T1 Paladin supporting 4 Warriors geared the way you indicate. Could be Energizer bunnies with little drinking downtime between the great mana efficiency and and the set bonuses of +10% Judgement of Light heals and on hit chance for AoE heals of the party.

The DPS increase from shamans is a lot more than from paladins. You really can't beat windfury totem in a PvE cleave party.

I just like paladins better for world PvP. Freedom is amazing. Even with 5 boxes, trying to fight a single half decent mage is a nightmare unless you're willing to spend 6g+ preemptively using 5 FAP's every fight.

I've been playing my warlocks a lot more lately. Mages are strong but I just prefer the warlocks for end game dungeons and general world PvP. There's something so satisfying about stacking 8+ DoT's on a player and watching them melt.

Not a lot of unique input over the above. My WWWWS team stopped at 57 and I switched to MMMMP. I will say that the first ~20 levels were a LOT faster with the warriors but after that the mages being able to just AoE stomp everything made them far and away the easiest team to level. The mages are now 56 and starting to slow down a little as things are hitting harder. I notice as an Arcane/Fire setup, the longer the fight lasts the more likely you are to die, whereas the warriors never slow down until the shaman runs out of mana. They are also much more susceptible to cleave death and getting double-crit by bosses. (Yes, even moreso than DPS warriors.) I may fiddle with specs when they hit 60 but for now they are pretty straightforward. I'm by no means the most efficient player at it, but it's looking really good for just general farming. I'm not flush with loot but I got mounts at 42 on the first group and 40 on the mages, and if I need to go farm money or cloth, they are super easy.

As a comparative anecdote, my warriors had a lot of trouble with Uldaman on the four golems in the pedestal room due to the fire AoE, and a lot of trouble handling the adds on Archaedas. Things got a bit better with some strategy changes but the warriors require(d) a lot of micromanagement with positioning and saving rage at times. The mages were stupid easy by comparison. The golems were just a long single-target fight. Archaedas was single-target spam (he has a lot of health but hits soft and slow) until the adds and they just died in a couple of Arcane Explosions. This has generally been my experience with everything so far up to the Shade of Eranikus in ST, which I tried last night and died with him at about 25%.

My hunters are level 22 but they have real issues with deadzone, especially in boss fights where adds happen. The really bad part of that is that the healer usually gets aggro when that happens and things go to hell fast after that. They are superior for straight-up single-target DPS fights or where keeping aggro on the pets is easy, and for just general run-around sparse-spawn farming.

It'll be interesting to see how the mages do at 60 but based on other folks and my past experience, I don't anticipate anything being too terribly hard to farm once I get some gear. My instance level cap will be a bit lower perhaps just due to them being generally squishy but it'll be fun to see how far I can get with them.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

Not a lot of unique input over the above. My WWWWS team stopped at 57 and I switched to MMMMP. ... The mages are now 56 and starting to slow down a little as things are hitting harder. ... It'll be interesting to see how the mages do at 60 but based on other folks and my past experience, I don't anticipate anything being too terribly hard to farm once I get some gear. My instance level cap will be a bit lower perhaps just due to them being generally squishy but it'll be fun to see how far I can get with them.

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It sounds like you will have the best of both worlds and have both MMMMP and WMMMP options.

Interested in your thoughts if you try both groups. I know some folk like Soc on the ISBoxer discord has both and both configs have high DPS & crowd control but adding the tank makes things more relaxed with tank and spank and high DPS...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nodoze

It sounds like you will have the best of both worlds and have both MMMMP and WMMMP options.

Interested in your thoughts if you try both groups. I know some folk like Soc on the ISBoxer discord has both and both configs have high DPS & crowd control but adding the tank makes things more relaxed with tank and spank and high DPS...

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Having the tank does help with some things, though the level of micromanagement needed when e.g. the fight requires a lot of movement increases dramatically the more roles you have in the group. It's one of the reasons that hunters do so well in many areas (automatic, revivable pocket-tanks).

I have both of the teams you are asking about in Classic. I started with Warlock + 4 mages which was great to level. I used them for a while to farm BRD but after dying a lot in phase 2 PvP I decided to try a 5 x NE rogue team. This was a great decision and wish I had done it as my first team. Leveling was so much fun and I got to 60 a month from when i started. Then i went crazy with world PvP including sneaking around Ogrimmar killing horde.

I got a lot of my pre-raid BiS from stealth running Mauradon and have lately been doing lots of BRD stealth runs (Angerforge and Coffer runs) I've killed angerforge 70 times so far and got 3 HoJ. I've also been raiding with my master rogue so he is very well geared now which helps.

Now i'm starting to get interested in my mages a bit as well as i'm liking the idea of farming trash in ZG. I only wish could target blizzard and flamestrike on all of them at once rather than being restricted to FN CoC and AE.