4 shamans and....a prot pally?

[Vyndree]

2 points to make that are totally off-topic, but you wanted to dig into them, so here they are:

I swapped between a warrior and a prot pally at 40 and noticed ZERO difference. I've also taken over a month's break at 45 and had to re-do ALL of my macros at 45 when I picked it back up again a few weeks ago. There was little if no learning time involved. When you know the classes inside and out, this is not difficult. Suvega spent his entire time leveling in instances -- as in 60-70 ONLY instances. He already had a 70 mage, 70 priest, 65 warrior and knows the class (which is why he rolled 3 more mages). He ran ramparts more than once. I think he had time to "figure out" the 5-boxing scenario.

Raid leading ability does convert to multi-boxing ability because it's an example of how well a person is able to multi-task. Just like rubbing your belly and patting your head, or however that goes. Not a strong argument, I agree, but I'd suggest you stop attacking people's ability and start focusing on facts from now on, and I'll do the same.

In the end, if you put 2 people with same multi-tasking abilities (good) and you compare a "balanced" group and an "unusual" group, you'll see that "balanced" group has more options available vs "unusual" group.

1x prot pally 4x ele shammy:

• 1) 4x earth shock interrupts can take out a caster forever
  2) Frontloaded threat means instant dps (ever hear "wait for sunders?"). A pally can avenger's shield + judge righteousness and the dps can instantly jump in on that target without worry of pulling aggro.
  3) AoE threat means you can keep your pally focused on one target. This is particularly useful in 5-boxing since a warrior will often "tab-sunder" in order to make sure multiple targets aren't running after his priest. Due to lag with multiboxing, this can cause problems where your dps won't "pick up" the new target and will start fireball'ing your secondary target (pulling aggro and then dying).
  4) Ranged taunt > melee taunt. No chasing after mobs that are already killing your squishies. This helps multiboxing particularly since movement on secondary toons is difficult at best.
  5) Salv means more dps before pulling aggro, which means mob dies faster, which means tank takes less damage. Everyone is happy! Meanwhile, wisdom for long fights means less oom-ness. Kings (+devo aura) for the tank is great for boss fights, and boSac (+ret aura) for the AoE pulls turns your tank into a dps class
  6) Need a dedicated healer? No problem, just use one shammy. Not taking enough damage and the healer is bored - you're instantly running with 4 dps. Considering that the prot pally is almost dpsing at the same rate as normal dps classes means you're running with ~4.5 dps instead of 3 dps, a tank, and a healer.
  7) Agi/Str can up your tank's dodge and block. Windfury helps with threat. Mana keeps your tank judging more often which means more threat. Healing stream stacks and is like a teeny hot that's always ticking. Poison cleansing and disease cleansing totems are better than clicking a decursive button that's not on your main screen. Grounding totem x4 makes up for the fact that your tank doesn't have shield reflect. Stoneclaw is your secondary CC (not that you need it with a prot pally, but it helps with the 2nd boss in ramps). Stoneskin and Windwall are pretty stupid totems, but even they help make up for the fact that pallies take more damage (having spent some itemization on spelldmg for threat). Even Totem of Wrath helps those judgements turn into crits, and helps keep them from getting resisted.
  8) AoE heals in the form of chain healing off yourself (or the tank) and healing stream totem. Not really a "true" aoe heal, but I've found it's more than adequate.
  9) Targeted "aoe" -- chain heal -- not a true aoe as it only hits 3 people - helps keep that mob away from your casters/healers. Magma/fire nova/searing totem if something goes terribly wrong -- and those totems work great while you're chain healing off yourself as you can still dps while healing.

How about the 3x mage, 1x war, 1x priest group? And let's forget that the priest was overgeared and the warrior was 65.

• 1) 3x sheep -- a good CC, but once it breaks it's gonna run straight at your mage
  2) shield slam + counterspell -- good interrupt/silence, BUT earth shock counts as dps too and has a 6sec cooldown unspecced.
  3) Fort buff
  4) Int buff
  5) aoe dps that either has to be clicked individually in order to be ranged, or requires mobs be literally on top of the mages. This means if (or should I say WHEN, since we're talking about a warrior tank) the mage pulls aggro with arcane explosion the mob only has to take two steps to kill it. Mobility on secondary characters is hard to do, so kiting during aoe periods is not easy.
  6) "true" aoe heals (circle/prayer of healing) and hots
  7) Warrior threat is backloaded ("wait for sunders"), whereas mage dps is frontloaded.
  8) Spell reflect. I wish the pally had this, but at least she has bubble (you can macro this so that you don't drop aggro for too long) plus 4 grounding totems and 4 earth shocks.

Can you tell me where a warrior/mage/priest team has "more options" than the pally/shammy team? I would say they're about equal, but I enjoy the playstyle of pally/shammy better. I also believe pally+shammy is better for multiboxing for most situations due to the reasons above.

Hybrids perform best with other hybrids, which is why I believe my group makeup outshines the balanced group due to the vast amount of buffing that shaman and paladin can do for each other (which makes up for their downsides, which are mostly noticable in single-player scenarios).

But the Shaman set will have advantage in pvp vs pve environment. Pros/cons to both sides, what you do in the long run is the question. Some groups will have more trouble then others in different environments.

Agreed - although I'd like to add that it's my personal opinion that both can do adequately in both pve and pvp, though each team requires more effort in one of those two categories.

All in all very fair trade-off.

Play how you want to play, comparing or, I guess "rubbing" in someone's face doens't really prove how good you are.

Absolutely. I believe actual achievements and real world experience prove how good you are.

[aetherg]

No matter how good your guild is (I used to raid lead the top guild on the server), there are at least a few people in the raid who have absolutely no clue what to do. They either don't use boss mods, or are too distracted to look at them. So they never have any idea what abilities the boss is going to use and when.

I've found that when I talk everyone through the fight on vent, as it's happening. "Whirlwind in 3, back off...okay come back in", etc, the run is an order of magnitude more successful. I've actually done experiments where on some nights I talk them through, on others I don't. The nights where I walk the clueless ones through are unbelievably more successful.

Raiding is a lot more about the strat than the ability to press buttons. So I'm effectively playing their characters for them. Multiboxing is exactly like leading a raid, except that my group has 100% attendance, and there is no drama

[Remote]

Raiding is a lot more about the strat than the ability to press buttons. So I'm effectively playing their characters for them. Multiboxing is exactly like leading a raid, except that my group has 100% attendance, and there is no drama

Do you give your group DKP for loot distrobution? :P

It's like in I Am Legend where he started talking to the mannequins as if they were real people. After a while, you start getting pissed at your characters as if what they did wasn't your fault.

THATS A @#%ING 50 DKP MINUS!!

[aetherg]

Haha yeah this one time Aecra ninjaed some polearm that I told Aedra to DE. Serious DKP Minus, let me tell you. Last time that girl got any blues for a long time! Multiboxing really gets you geared out though, with the loot distribution being so fair.