Who's the 26 BoXoR RoXoR?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Progress has been zilch. RL takes one week a month when a worker comes from another city to help out. Did some car bondo and lots of plumbing work and roof truss photo's. Anyway thats done now and I have a few weeks to play wow mostly. Have to do some EQ stuffs (make 2 items for 700K plats lol), and then hopefully will get to log into wow finally.

[glo]

Hahaha!

You seriously need to set up a mogulus stream or something. I wanna SEE this shit =)

Just a few more tips. When playing 26 characters, a tank is just a waste. Especially a slowass paladin =D
26 pets (26 felguards for example), all set to aggressive would mop the floor with everything instantly. You'd just have to keep running. (Note: You wont get loot or xp if pets kill mobs, but at maxlevel who really cares, it's all about killing the other faction then).

Good luck. I bet you're having a blast!

Edit: The real fun will start when you can deny raiding guilds access to their raid instances ;)

If a 25 man raid can't take out a 26 boxer they were going to fail anyway ;)

[glo]

I just tossed in any 5 guys for the group unit frame. Although the main will be first person all the other 5 monitors will be with the surround view. And all the other 5 will have group leaders on them (I have 2, 4, and 4X5 groups) so everyone will be visible all the time.

This is a good UI, I can see mine and the mobs health very easy as well as tot and group health.

I think a tank is really necessary. There is no law that I can't do 5 and 10 mans (or 25 mans), so who knows.

You definately want a tank. If you are working with that many accounts you should have every class and some of them in different specs. I'll make a quick list of what I would try for if I was ever going to do a project of this size.

First you want a pally tank, if you are planning on attempting any 25 man content you will want more then one for buffs. Any beyond the first will be healers but there is nothing stopping you from gearing one ret and re-speccing later.

Pally x1-3

Shaman you want 5, that let's you put one in each group for totems. Even funner is blowing through 5 man content with them. You will want to gear them all elemental while collecting heal gear on one or two and enhancement gear on another for maximum versatility.

Shammy x5

Mage is pretty much the best CC for raid level encounters and their portals and free food/water will save you alot of time and money. I'm going to say 5 mages as well, with that many you may be able to grind on some nice raid trash. Currently there is the sunwell plateau that you could do with 5 mages and there will more then likely be something similar in the expac.

Mage x5

Druids for stealth runs. You'll want one tank, one heal, and three dps. For this class I might collect healing gear on a couple of the DPSers as well.

Druid x5

Rogue is my least favorite class and from a 25 boxing perspective I don't see much use for them other then the single one you may need for evasion tanking. Maybe for some PVP fun?

Rogue x1-2

Hunter is another I don't enjoy playing and don't think will fit all that well with a 25 man boxing group. You will want one for pulling in raids, possibly another for PVP but once again you can always collect the gear and respec as necessary.

Hunter x1-2

Warrior isn't going to help much with boxing even though it's a fun class to play. You will want a warrior tank for some encounters and another for PVP fun. If you can 25 box you can probably run your pvp warrior and a pvp healing druid up pretty high in 2v2 arena.

Warrior x1-2

Deathknight appears to be playing a big part in the expansion and I would expect to see an encounter or two that they excel at as tanks. Again throw in one for PVP if it sounds fun.

Deathknight x1-2

Warlocks are just plain fun, powerful, and useful. With their pets and abilities they have some off tanking ability, CC, and alot of DPS. For raiding I would say at least 3 probably 4 and definitely one for PVP. A project that will only take you a few hours once you are used to the game is to make level 20 locks on each account and spread them all over the world for an unrivaled transportation system.

Warlocks x4-5

Priests for main heals.

Priest x1-2

That makes 26-31 characters which leaves 8-13 slots. My favorite picks for these slots would be more mage. World PVP with that much aoe damage and CC would be pretty insane. You could make a full raid with the Shaman, Locks, and Mages that will be disgusting in world raids.

This is all assuming you want a shot at doing 25 man content at some point, if not just get a tank and make the rest whatever ranged dps class you like.

[aNiMaL]

Deathknight appears to be playing a big part in the expansion and I
would expect to see an encounter or two that they excel at as tanks.

If everything works out as blizzard intends there will be no need for a specific class tank in the expansion.
(then again, they intended siege battles at launch)

Also, if indeed all healing power and spelldamage is converted to spellpower soon,
you probably won't need 2 sets for any caster toon.
I wouldn't bother about gear that much in this stage.
Just quest the way up in lvl and gear,
and start worrying about specific gear once you're getting around 10 lvls near max lvl.

[Sam DeathWalker]

When running 26, the one main can be up to his full potential but everyone else is limited to two spells. Shaman is best cause one spell is offensive (at 30 range) and the other defensive. When coming up with all these other classes remember (cept for buffs) that in combat is 2 spells max. If I get the current crew to 60 by end of 90 days Ill be working on some other classes but if not welll ...

[glo]

When running 26, the one main can be up to his full potential but everyone else is limited to two spells. Shaman is best cause one spell is offensive (at 30 range) and the other defensive. When coming up with all these other classes remember (cept for buffs) that in combat is 2 spells max. If I get the current crew to 60 by end of 90 days Ill be working on some other classes but if not welll ...

Where does this arbitrary 2 spell limit come from? I don't know about EQ as much but wow you aren't going to get the full potential out of any of the characters.

You do realize if it takes you 90 days to hit 60 with the RAF bonus it's going to take you about a year to hit 80? After a year and a half of leveling you then get to start gearing. At this point you will realize you aren't going to be able to box much if any 25 man content so you have to work on the groups 5-10 at a time. This is a huge project for someone who has never played the game!

[Marious]

For the most part with RAF you will outlevel all your gear within hours, gear wise at 60+ (Outland) you will get most of yours stuff from quest rewards anyways, and yeah should only take you about 2 days played time maybe more since you have a large crew with you but no more than 4 I would say to get to 60 and after the new patch comes out 60-70 should be a breeze for you.

Enjoy your Raid crew. If you can afford it and have the time to do it, hell why not.

[Rin]

For the most part with RAF you will outlevel all your gear within hours, gear wise at 60+ (Outland) you will get most of yours stuff from quest rewards anyways, and yeah should only take you about 2 days played time maybe more since you have a large crew with you but no more than 4 I would say to get to 60 and after the new patch comes out 60-70 should be a breeze for you.

Enjoy your Raid crew. If you can afford it and have the time to do it, hell why not.

The only problem I can see is that any boss beyond the 1st 'Gatekeeper/Gear Check' boss (pick a 25 man instance) will literally do the Death walk on our friend Sam. Also, I'm not sure about your 2 key maximum spell limitations that you're placing on yourself. I run 10 characters, and they all have the full array of spells/skills to them at any given time (~3 different options per click combination x 12 basic keys, 36 skills/spells/potions available). I also am running them across 3 computers now, as movement is one of the critical issues that you'll run into in the later instances. One auto-follow command is simply not enough when you need to be able to position Group A on the left side, Group B on the right, and your tank from Group A (or B) turning the boss away from your guys; surely without a proper movement setup, you'll get eaten by the effects (think Netherspite or the infernals during the Prince event). It's much more effective and efficient to be able to have certain controls move certain characters in a response time of < 8 seconds. I use 8 seconds as a baseline marker because in a raid, when people mess up ,it usually takes them a couple of seconds to realize that they've done something wrong, and a few more seconds to listen to what you've just told them to do (e.g. through a live chat server like Ventrilo).

Also, I'm curious, how are you planning on leveling your team? Instances don't really seem like a viable option with 26 (5 characters per group / 26 characters would be 6 runs per ~1/2 level). Consider the fact that even with R-A-F, you're still looking at 1/2 of a level at best per group per run - unless you're dealing with higher level instances - e.g. Zul'Farak, which again will be a real 'gear check' if you're only running it with the shaman... 4 shaman and a paladin should be able to handle that instance no problem though).

Good luck.

[kayb]

If a 25 man raid can't take out a 26 boxer they were going to fail anyway

Well, I've taken out a whole SSC raid with my 5 shammies and a couple of friends. Granted, they were taken by surprise, but it's just as easy to hide with 26 as with 5.

About taking on (current) 25-man content alone. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: NO WAI! Sure, as level 70 group you can probably solo most the raidbosses from back in classic, but this is mainly a nostalgia thing. The gear from bwl/mc/ony etc is crap and totally worthless today. It's gonna be the same story all over again with Wrath of the Lich King. SSC/TK gear will be worth zippo. There is one 25man raidboss I'd consider doable with 20-boxing for instance, and 2-3 tanks and a couple of healers singleboxing, and that's Magtheridon. You can just brute force him by healing through his nova, and if you have enough dps it's probably possible to 23-box him with a Pally tanking 3-4 adds on the other side of the room with a top level restodruid healing his ass. As you all probably know Magtheridon has been done with 10 people or less, but these have been highly geared people.

I've played some other mmo's in my time, but none are even close to WOW when it comes to raid encounters. A game like Age of Conan, only just released, plays pretty much like Asherons Call or Everquest. It's a zergfest, and 25 10-year-olds would be as successful as a top raiding guild.

I've done all the instances now in WOTLK beta, and have started on heroics and Naxxramas raiding with my level 80 Death Knight tank, and I'm planning to do a blog entry on all the instances, so you can read my thoughts there. Nothing is final yet, and heroics are being tuned as we speak, some have been easy, others have been nigh impossible. There are great challenges coming both for 5, 10 and 25 boxers. If Wintergrasp world-pvp zone gets popular (It's been lagging like hell so I havent tested it much), thats the arena for Sam and other large-scale boxers. Hopefully it will be possible to gear characters through pvp in this zone, however it wont be top-shelf gear, since that gear requires both honor and arena points. Gear makes a huge difference in the current expansion, in the next expansion its taken to the extremes. I got almost 30.000 hit points buffed now, and 22.000 armor wielding a 2hander, and I dont have a single epic item yet. Ok, ok - so I'm geared for tanking, but I still see rogues in blues running around with 20.000+ hp.

Bah, I'm ranting...what were we talking about?

Edit: Oh yeah, leveling. Well you take your pally and 4 other toons, level them to 70. Then you use the pally to boost the other 5 groups. Then you spend RAF levels on some groups (Level 55-60 for instance), and all 26 should be level 70 in a couple of months when you start seriously playing (after all setup and learning is done away with).

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well level 75 is coming and 80 next year ... take da long term view. As to two spells, I prefer to keep it simple, but I can also, with 4-8 seconds get full control of any ONE character, but only one at a time (and I have full control of main most all the time). We'll see how it plays out as time goes on.

I'm doing ok now, it does seem that shocks are a lot better then non instant spells.... mobs are dieing instantly right and left, no time to loot. Didn't get rez yet but ...

Got all my professions also (some guy lent me one gold woot begging skillz).

Oh well back to do grind.

For trash levling I have one key to the leader of the group that gets the exp so he attacks first. Then one key to all for the killzor. So I can level a group up then switch to another group etc. Mana is spread out a lot that way and mobs die fast and there is little down time.