5 enhancement shaman is the most fun i had ever had!!!

[Kiljaedon]

I know alot of people detest the idea of playing 5 melee characters at once but just recently I went from elemental spec to enhance spec on 4 of my 5 shaman and I never had a blast destroying the competition in bg's and world pvp. If you have an assist attack macro and just run real close and swirl around with your main and keep pressing the assist attack I was able to be in melee range on my 4 enhance shaman itleast 80% of the time. But huhu the rest of the time when I was stunned aoe to death and everything else you will learn real easy how nasty 8-10 feral spirits can be. Ive never felt so alive in steam rolling everyone in bg's with 8-10 feral spirits and the focus melee fire was not an issue to me. I think you can play 5 enhance shaman and be quite viable now in bg's. I even have several focus fire macros set up with the feral spirits and escape has never been an issue with me using the ability that removes all impairing effects on your shaman with feral spirits. Im starting to feel like a pack of druids with my ability to escape and or mow down runners with the feral spirits and shocks.

[Multibocks]

lol sounds fun, make a video, cuz I want to see!

[Tsunami]

it must be difficult your poor victim to target something. 4-5 shaman + 8-10 wolves brings new meaning to a dog pile.


enchan shaman have gotten some nice talents.

[Kromtor]

Melee boxing is a blast. I'd be leveling my 5 enhancement shammy's right now if the servers were up. I've got too much nerd rage to play my ret pallies anymore.

[algol]

I know alot of people detest the idea of playing 5 melee characters at once

Yeah, and a lot of people used to "know" the Earth is flat, too. We don't detest it, it's just extremely problematic to control multiple melee characters with in WoW. It can be done to some degree (in PVE anyway...in PVP, it largely relies on your opponents being either greatly outnumbered or complete idiots).

[Kromtor]

it relies on you having a reliable way to root/stun/snare your target and knowing who to kill first to avoid being AoE'ed to death. it also requires low latency - sub 100 is preferred if not necessary. 5 ret pallies can man handle most AV's with good healing macros... unless they run into a 5 boxing shaman. assuming you can repeatedly prevent the motion of your intended target then you end up with the same synergy that a 5 caster group gets in terms of focused fire plus generally more tankability and simply more exciting gameplay.

you also need to have an addon intelligently re-following, simply spamming it multiple times per second can cause problems and having it as part of your spam key can cause you some arthritis

[Kiljaedon]

It is not even problematic from what I have seen. Even if your opponent is intelligent enough to have a focusing counter for it right now I have my characters still equipped in elemental garb and chaining slightly longer cast times on my lightning bolts and chain lightnings have not been a big deal. I use foot pedals to help with the assisting and yes I do have to constantly respam the auto follow/assist macro but I for the time being do not engage in arena which may change as it is a required part of pvp gearing in wotlk but in the battlegrounds that I have been in my ability to defend the two alliance towers and graveyard in the middle has been easier for me with this setup. I am still viable in the ranged focus fire department with spell gear having a great synergy at the moment with talents from enhancement. I look at my personal dps meters and still see the pitifully geared alts clearing well into 800-1100 while I am pushing 1400 from melee damage in caster gear. I think that a method could be developed to improve on this like elemental has just you will have to find it. Using foot pedals helps immensely though for me.

[Kiljaedon]

I know alot of people detest the idea of playing 5 melee characters at once

Yeah, and a lot of people used to "know" the Earth is flat, too. We don't detest it, it's just extremely problematic to control multiple melee characters with in WoW. It can be done to some degree (in PVE anyway...in PVP, it largely relies on your opponents being either greatly outnumbered or complete idiots).

Lighten up. I was just making small talk about how alot of people have given their opinions on making melee oriented box groups over elemental. And yes alot of people do detest it as keep targets in your frontal arc and making sure your guys are in range without suffering from the counters of jump happy aoe mages as an example. Our feral companions give us great mobility in closing the distance and 1 rounding even season 4 toons and moving on in ghost wolf form without missing a beat.

I have seen myself run up in ghost wolf form to a paladin with 13k hp and between the stormstrike hit doing a huge chunk of damage in one around from the shaman followed by an earth shock melt them before they even had time to respond. Maybe it will not stand up to the test of an elite bg9 group but I think I can live with being able to hold my own against 80% of other groups I come into fighting with. Between Maelstrom weapons procing almost instant chain heals and 30% damage reduction in rage i have been able to withstand some decent gank squads come up to try to take me down with a protection warrior constnatly shock waving me and clapping me with an ice mage trying to aoe me down and 2 ret paladins trying to divine wind my guys to death. Ignored the warrior and went straight to the paladins forcing them to bubble while popping fearl spirits on the mage. I had more then enough haste to my spells to keep me healed through several focus fire attemps with maelstrom and the synergy that enhance works well with even elemental gear.

[EvilSqueegee]

Bear with me, I have a point to all of this.

I'm a roleplayer. Have been since long before WoW - done it all from Dealands to d20 to Whitewolf, shadowrun, 1st & 2nd edition D&D, etc.

When you're designing a character for Whitewolf's Werewolf: the Apocalypse, you need to chose your character's moon-zodiac. One of the choices available are the Ragabash characters: Those born under the new moon. The lore behind these characters is that the break the ebb and flow of what is considered the norm. They buck tradition and go out of their way to be abnormal, to do the unexpected and be unpredictable. The way the book I have describes it, "They are the outcasts of today and the traditions of tomarrow."

Nowadays, the general consensus is that multiboxing melee toons is abnormal. It probably is like that for good reasons - melee breaking autofollow being one of them. Latency with autofollow being another, and so on. However, this is merely an obstacle. This is just something that gets in the way, and if there's one thing I've noticed about multiboxers of all kinds (particularly the ones who frequent this community) is that we're the types who find a problem, and overcome it. If we weren't, nobody would have ever dual-5boxed karazhan. Nobody would have taken Gladiator titles with multiboxed teams. The list goes on and on.

I view multiboxing as a chance to *be* that ragabash role in the development of WoW gameplay. The evolution of technique and strategy will never really end so long as changes keep being made to WoW, or new tools emerge to play WoW with. Sure, most people 'detest' (if by detest, you mean aren't interested in or can't focus on anything but the problems inherent in) melee multiboxing. I can see why - the challenges and obstacles that get in the way are pretty much a pain in the ass to overcome. But I look at those challenges and obstacles as what they are: something to BE overcome. Come wrath I'm going to be kicking up a quad-boxed DK team specifically because melee boxing is supposed to be very difficult to manage, so I can explore the issues and work my way through them as nescessary.

Naysayers be damned, I've got an inner Ragabash chomping at the bit to give this a shot.