Another tread on team selection + profession question

[Seldum]

First off, nice forum and thanks for all the efford and help you guys give and share!

[align=left]Inspired by this great site, I have spend the last two weeks reading up on multiboxing, and found out I want to go with a software approach to multiboxing.[/align]
[align=left]Last night I created and got 2 more accounts (trial) up and running. Im totally in love with my main character who is mage, so I created 3 undead mages to tryout multiboxing. And I had a blast with them![/align]
[align=left]Here’s my question 1:[/align]
[align=left]I want to be able to run instances by my own. I have the hardware to setup another computer beside my main (Main, quadcore, Geforce 7950GX2 1Gb DDR3 ram + 2 GB DDR3 ram on motherboard), so that wise I can do 5 boxing without to much trouble/lag.[/align]
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[align=left]I’m not into pvp, for this I have my main mage char. My goal is to be able to solo a lot of the instances out there.[/align]
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[align=left]Which characters should I go with?[/align]
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[align=left]1) 5x shammy?[/align]
[align=left]2) 1x priest, 4x mages?[/align]
[align=left]3) A mixed team? Tank, healer, 3 dps? (this seems rather complicated to me).[/align]
[align=left]4) 5x mages?[/align]
[align=left]5) 5x locks?[/align]
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[align=left]Im seriously considering the mage/priest setup like Xzin. 1, I have extensive expirence with the mages, and I have a lvl 53 priest also. 2, dps ftw! Also considering having the same types of characters seems like a good choice, and easy to use. I was also thinking about going 5x mages and just AoE nuke everything. But this won’t do for instance runs I think. I would probably get killed.[/align]
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[align=left]Shammys looks fun. I have never played a shaman before, so I would have a learning curve.[/align]
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[align=left]Here’s my question 2:[/align]
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[align=left]What about professions? The optimum would be a mix and including all gathering profession in the team, but are there any macros to help you skin corpses, mine nodes etc? or do I have to do this manually all the time?[/align]
[align=left]If there’s a macro or something ill find it myself, but so far I haven’t looked deeper into this.[/align]
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[align=left]Thanks for the help guys![/align]

[Fuzzyboy]

Q1:

If you're going to do PvE only, go with a holy trinity setup (tank, healer, 3xdps). While you can some instances with uncoventional setups, a holy trinity setup is much more future proof and will cause you less headaches. I'd suggest paladin for tank (easy to manage), any healer will do (I prefer shaman, but different healers have different strengths), for dps, make sure you cover some of the important buffs. Mage/balance druid/shaman could work well, as well as 2 shaman / balance druid, etc. etc. - basically you can mix and match, just keep an eye on buff/debuff synergy.

Q2:

There is no auto-mining or auto-herbing, but you can "cast" skinning so to use your main to target the mob that needs to be skinned. If I could redo my professions I'd lose my gathering professions, since 95% of my income is from dailies / looting / disenchanting. Just pick the professions you have most use for. I have engineering/blacksmithing on my paladin (main) and a mix of other professions on my other chars: JC, Inscription (skip this, it isn't very useful tbh), Alchemy, Tailoring, LW, Enchanting, Mining, Herbalism. Going with Engineering on all chars could be nice for mount/headpiece, but that's really a matter of preference (and gold) :-)

It can be a good idea to select the professions relating to the armortype of the char (tailoring for clothies, LW for leather/mail etc), but keep in mind that once you replace the BoP epics from the crafts, they don't have a lot of use. Theyre nice to gear up with.

If I was starting over, I'd make a party of paladin, resto shaman, elemental shaman, balance druid and a mage. This way you'd have a nice buff/debuff synergy, very nice utility, excellent CC and effective looting (1 cloth class, 1 leather class, 2 mail classes and 1 plate class). My current setup (see signature) works well also, but there is no definite answer - try some different classes out and see what you like. Keep in mind that a lot of classes have different playstyles in the later game than in the early game. I'd stick to gathering professions and worry about the rest once I was level 70 and had a bunch of gold :-)

[Fuzzyboy]

Oh, and btw, relating to Q1 - don't worry about tank, healer, dps seeming complicated, it's just something to get used to and it's not as complicated as it seems. You're going to put in a lot of time playing your team and you'll have all this figured out once you hit 70. The first dungeon is harder that if you had 5xchar team, but it's a matter of a few extra hours to learn

[Tynk]

Fuzzy has it pretty much all down there.... but another thing to keep in mind is that Blizzard is making the line between roles for hybrid classes a lot thinner.
Right now I am running

Prot Pally = Tank
Fury Warrior = Melee dps/back up tank
Elemental Shaman = Main Heler/DPS
Balance Druid = Back Up Healer/DPS
Arcane Mage = DPS

With this I also can use the druid for a back up tank. Gives a lot of versatility to compensate for the more complicated setup.
While questing I use them as full dps and a tank, while instancing the shaman goes full healing.

I just got these to 60 last week and am working on trying to find my next team make up. (Gota make full use of my RAF :) )
I was thinking about doing the full druid make up. This will give me a simpler set up as far as control and macro's go will giving me a extremely versatile team.

[Seldum]

Thanks for the nice feedback. Eventually professions etc. all boils down to what you like etc. For me its more a question of putting together a good team for instance runs etc. because profession can always be dropped, thats not possible with the classes unless you have to much time on your hands hehe.

I think I could try out the party you selected as it seems a bit more versatile than just going full out with 5 mages hehe, even though that would be fun aswell. In the long run, I think 5 mages woulden't get as far as with a more balanced group, just like you said yourself.

When I start out on a server, I usually pickup skinning and mining/herbalism as its a good gold generator to begin with, and easy to lvl. But with 5 characters, you could cover them all (nearly) I guess. Makes me considering 5 duids hehe.

Does anyone else have something to add?

*Edit: Typos

[Seldum]

Tynk - Excactly what im thinking aswell. Even though a full druid setup would miss some of the kewl buffs offered by the other classes, it would definetly be easier to play. And to my knowledge, druids geared as tanks is doing a good job at that aswell as being able to also be geared as a good healers.

But I don't have enough expirence, to be able to say if druids is good enough to be able to fill all the roles (if specialized)?

[Fuzzyboy]

One last thing of note - melee characters are a lot harder to box. If you have a rogue/fury-war/retri-pala in addition to your tank, there's another learning curve and some movement issues on some bosses/mobs.

[ILikeTwins]

I love the idea of playing a 5 druid team. One feral bear spec, one resto spec and either 3 balance specs or 1 feral cat spec/2 balance. You would miss out on some of the synergies of having a more balanced group but the payback is that they could all tank/heal/dps in a pinch. I generally two box but this would make me want to five box

[Seldum]

would look nice to creap up in stealth and attack a mob or whatever and puff - one bear, one healer and 3 Moonkin muhahaha! Or 5 dire bears, just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe

[Tsunami]

seems hard not to want to take advantage of all the cool things that an all shaman team can do. 20 totems, thunderstorm, chain lightning, chain heal, hex @ 80. lets not forget 5 elemental earth or fire totems for boss fights. but if you don't want to be limited to only one class than i would say that 1 pally/ 4 shammies would be the next best thing.

preist/4warlock or priest/4mage would be able to dish out a ton of damage but ultimately they don't have armor. individually controlled their survivability goes up but when 4 boxing slaves your ability to multitask 5 toons goes down exponential.(hope that makes sense) if they get feared, stunned, cc'd this group dynamic doesn't seem the best for recouping from a bad situation. plus with one healer if they are killed than your s.o.l.

the all druid team very interesting with all the possible combination, plus with blizzard allow duel spec you could change the group mix without having to change toons and lose experience or rep with your main group of 5. 5 druids on a pvp server would be alot of fun to play.

i would go with survivability as the main deciding factor for your group.