5 different classes: some questions

[Piecemaker]

i just started my new multiboxing group, been thinking about the setup for a week, and this is what i've come up with:
prot paladin
shadow priest
mage
balance druid
resto shaman

purely PVE offcourse
main reason for this setup: lots of buffs!
any comments or suggestions on this setup?

the paladin, priest and mage are blood elves, the druid and shaman are taurens.
now how would i start leveling them?
all together in the same area? i was thinking of bringing the druid and shaman over to the blood elf area, but there aren't any trainers there, and they can't do the class specific quests
what about leveling them all in the orc starting area? Orgri has all the trainers right?
or should i split them up and level the races in their own area? and at what level should they merge?

[lacitpo]

SO glad I read your post because I hadn't thought about the lack of trainers in certain areas. I'm planning a 5 class group (Paladin, Druid, Priest, Warlock, Hunter) and would love to know someone's advice on those first levels. Recommendations on the best way to start them off?

I really don't wanna do 1-10 on all 5 toons separately but if it must be done it must be done.

[Wilbur]

Good luck guys. All the micro-management will be insane. You'll have quicker fingering than a concert pianist once you've mastered 5 chars.

[Meeo]

In terms of response and key combinations, i use and xkeys pro and 128 and i would still find it hard to do a setup like this. So many different combinations for available abilities, timing them together and getting them assocated to the right keys would be very impressive.

[Marathon]

I love the idea of having 5 different classes. But ....

All the micro-management will be insane

Keeps me playing my shammies :thumbsup:

[blast3r]

I find it a pain in the butt to keep up with one class and one race. I can only imagine how hard it would be to do with this setup. I don't know about the Priest or Mage but the others will have their own Class quests and I assure you they will be a pain in the butt. The Shaman totem quests suck. The druid quests below 20 are horrible as well.

I guess if you are more concerned about the endgame experience and realize the pain that will be involved you are a tougher person than me!

To your point, though. I always hit most of the starting areas myself anyways. With Horde it is easy to get to all the starting areas (unlike Alliance!). I would just pick one starting area and move your toons there. Do the quests needed then go to the next one and start over. It will take a while but I imagine it will actually help you get to level 10 faster than focusing on one area. I always move my toons to each starting location (except for Tauren area because I hate it) and do those quests. Then I bounce around in the same fashion as I level up.

[lacitpo]

Have not done this in practice yet but....

Using an Xkeys pro and an Ideazon Fang as my hardware setup.

I've got a killer focus/targeting setup that I think is going to be extremely effective and very automated with little need for micromanagement.

My main will be my tank, with 4 slaves (druid healer, priest/warlock/hunter as dps). Almost all abilities will be cast via macros.

Healer Target Priority: Focus-target-target, Focus-target, Focus
Tank Target Priority: Focus, target
DPS Target Priority: Party2-target (healer target which will be same as healer focus), Party1-target (which will be tank's target)

DPS focus will be reserved for crowd control situations with all crowd control abilities cast via a macro auto targeting their focus. All the DPS's Damage abilities will be targeted towards the targets listed above in that priority, and cast via a spam-able castsequence macro. With well made castsequence macros, it DPS should be good, though not perfect.

In normal, non-instance mode, all characters will have my main as their focus. When my main aquires a target, I spam my DPS macros and my tank tanks, my healer heals, and my DPS dps all on their correct targets without the need to pass any targets manually to my slaves or anything like that.

In instances, my paladin will AOE tank of course. I'll have a single key that passes a target from my main to my healer's focus. All my DPS will be set to DPS the healer-focus and so during combat, I AOE tank on paladin, and pass DPS targets to my healer as the previous one is DPS'd down. My healer autmatically heals the correct targets since at all times heals should be landing on whichever of my characters the DPStarget is targeting. Plan to have a backup key that drops heals on my tank as well assuming my targets get split.

Most abilities that require indepenent targeting such as silence will be bound to cast to my tank's target and have their own key on the xkeys pro. Although passing targets can be frustrating, I think it will be kind of like playing 1 character with 5 classes ablities and a fucked up sense of global cooldowns. I know it won't be prefect, but the challenge is fun to me. I still have some streamlining to do with my setup but I'm planning to blog my journey and document my macro's, layout, and process so that others can use the information to make their multiboxing lives easier.

[lacitpo]

Oh, and I'd love to hear from someone who's actually done this.

[DarkslayrX]

My current group is Pally (67/Prot), Priest (67/Holy), Druid (67/Balance), Shammy(70) and Mage (70/Fire).

I had been running my mage (70) as my main before I stumbled on boxing.

I started with dual-boxing (shammy + druid) and had a blast. Like many before, dual-boxing lead to quin-boxing.

Once I started quin-boxing, I began leveling the 4 drones (pally+druid+priest+shammy) switching between boosting from the mage (which gets boring) and questing (without the mage in the group). As the team was different levels, I did this until each char reached 58 (when a char hit 58, it was left out of the group - building rest xp).

Once they were all 58, I started into outlands again questing (without mage) and running ramps, etc. (with mage). The shammy hit 70 ahead of the rest given rest xp (I also wanted a melee dps to run with my mage for dailies, so shammy as enhancement got some extra tlc). I hope to finish getting the rest of the group to 70 in next few weeks.

Setup - some people have said it takes crazy micro-management to run such i diverse team. I do not feel that is the case.

When in a full 5man group - pally is the main using the standard action bar (1 to = and the occasional mouse click). I use "A" to assist pally on the 3 ranged dps (mage, druid and shammy) and "s" to cast. I use F1 to F5 to heal, with F6 as an AoE heal. So basically, i have three main things to think about. Other keys are setup to shiled priest or drop totems (but nothing overly complicated). I look at it more like i am tri-boxing then quin-boxing - tank/heals/dps. Things like follow, mount, etc. are typical of any team.

[Oatboat]

I've got a PVE group in my sig of Prot pally, Holy priest, Fire mage, Destro Warlock, Elemental Shammy. They are just as easy as 5 of the same class once you get the initial setup and configuring done.. I'm having a blast on them... and a bonus... when i did Princess in Maraudon.... i just changed macros on the holy priest to dps and the elemental shaman to heal for last fight.... since shes nature immune... worked like a charm and took like 1 minute to write the new macros....

So i would say go for it... and at the end.. you have a 70 of almost every class Ports/free food/summons/buffs. Its all good from there on out