Why are Shaman so popular for multi-boxing?

[David]

4x fire elemental 8o

[Tdog]

Honestly it goes back a bit to when 5x Shamans could just annhilate everything. Yes today 5x shaman are still completely viable but they aren't quite the OMFGWTFPWNJOONOOBS powerhouse they were in BC.

Also if you only tried them to a low level like 10 then yea they would suck at that point as they don't really have any abilites, I would imagine most classes would suck at level 10.

[Fat Tire]

Their ability to do caster type DPS while having the ability to heal. The DPS/utility buffs they bring along with easy management without having to micromanage.

[heffner]

If you run paladin/DK and elemental 4 shaman you can have 4 awesome DPS and "1" satisfactory healer. It's like having a party of 6.

No procs to manage therefore you will always get the best DPS just by button smashing macros.

They are easier to gear up. They can use mail, leather, cloth.

Great utility through totems + bloodlust.

Too bad I only have 1! I'd probably put at least 2 in my group next time.

[Momo]

yeah its the hybrid factor in my opinion.

Being able to spec heals...no worries.
Being able to spec ranged dps...no worries.
being able to spec melee dps..no worries.

Can get a lot out of the toons so you really do get bang for your buck.

My shams are only babies but they are freakin awesome.

[Tonuss]

This is what I had posted on my blog in December of '07 about shaman teams. This covers the entire leveling experience, not just the higher levels.

Armor: Shaman start out able to wear leather armor and eventually mail armor, but they can also use shields from the start. This allows them to mitigate a fair amount of melee damage even at low levels and with less-than-ideal armor ratings from the rest of their gear.

Damage: Shaman can damage mobs from a distance via spell-casting, or up-close with melee attacks. With a group of five shaman whose actions are synchronized, you can unload a lot of damage before a mob reaches the group, and can continue to do decent damage once it gets within range. They have weapon buffs that add to their melee damage, as well as instant-casting damage spells.

Heals: Shaman can heal both via spells and with their Healing Stream totem after level 20. What's more, the Healing Stream totem's effect stacks. Five of them on the ground at level 20 will return 30 health to the group every two seconds. At later levels they can cast Chain Heal, which is great for dealing with situations where more than one character in the group is being damaged (multiple mobs attacking, or casting AoE effects).

Totems: Shaman totems provide lots of utility. With five shaman in a group, you now have the ability to stack totems of the same or varying types. As I said above, Healing Stream totems stack. While many other totems of the same specific type do not stack, you can place various totems of the same element for a very useful synergy. For example, you can place your five Healing Stream totems in order to provide health regeneration. Or you could place four Healing Stream totems and one Mana Spring totem, to provide both health and mana regen. You could place a Stoneskin totem (to reduce melee damage taken by the group), an Earthbind totem (to slow the movement speed of mobs), and three Stoneclaw totems (which cause mobs to attack it instead of you, and can occasionally stun the mob that attacks it). The Stoneclaw totems "stack" in that the mobs will destroy one of them and then move on to the next one. Searing totems also stack, and can provide a nice bit of added DPS during a battle.

With the recent change that allowed items with +healing to also provide additional +spell damage, a group of shamans in gear that is primarily itemized for +healing can also do respectable spell damage as well. The extra healing will make their Healing Stream totems more potent, while the extra spell damage will allow their fire totems to do more damage. This is in addition to the obvious benefits (more damage from spells, more effective heals).

I don't know if all of this applies today, what with changes to the class. But the flexibility that they have gives you lots of options for dealing with many different problems. As someone else said above, druids have probably surpassed shaman since they can do all three group roles (tanking, healing, DPS).

[Duese]

Stacking Healing Stream Totems... basically a perma-renew on everyone in your party throughout the whole fight.

[Owltoid]

All have been mentioned before, but in my opinion the biggest reasons (in order) are:

1.) Protection from fear - guarding against the biggest threat to multiboxing, losing control of your toon and becoming disorientated
2.) Healing w/o sacrifice - druids/shadow priests have to shapeshift, shamans have the ability to AoE heal while being a pure DPS spec, healing totems for passive splash damage

There are other great abilities that shamans have, such as grounding totem, but in general their ability to heal and protect themselves from fear are the biggest reasons.

[KvdM]

Historical reasons probably. Most people here probably made their shaman team during the time that most totems still stacked and bloodlust only caused a 2 minute debuff.

[Toned]

People still multi-box ?? I stopped after naxx 25 been focusing on 2v2 and ulduar (YOGG MUST DIE THIS WEEK!). BC shamans were amazing... WOTLK shamans are free kills especially with all the cleave teams that just zerg you down. However, if I were not raiding I'd probably still be multi-boxing. TBC was awesome because there was no bloodlust nerf, Totem of Wrath Stacked, earth elementals were viable tanks for bosses, etc... 4-5 ele shamans in pvp is just too much fun I'd like to try druids if I get back into multi-boxing.

The ability to PEW PEW and Heal = amazing...