What groups would you box first?

[luxlunae]

Also, while you're asking for more "what can I plan before I start" ideas I'd suggest deciding how you want to set up your teams. I chose to mix and match multiclass teams so that every class I wanted to play would be in the mix. If I had it to do over again I would have prioritized having one of each kind of tank on slot 2, all my healers on slot 1, and dps accordingly. You probably want the same slot to be the same account for each team as well, saves a lot of unnecessary confusion.

I also wish that rather than trying to be creative with my names (I have a WhoxWhatxWherexWhenxWhyx team), I'd simply gone with complimentary names so that I wouldn't have the situation that I have right now where I did one team based on seasons... and then changed around half the characters. I have Autumni (from a "seasons" team name) and "Tuesdayi" (from a weekday themed name) on the same team now.

The last 15 toons or so I named all simply start with Vii, and are generally names/ideas that start with Vi. That simple spelling change means that most any word I want to use is actually available, and it lets me swap toons between groups without feeling like I am messing things up.

Silly problem but one of those things you can think and plan for. (the planning is half the fun).

[roddo]

i use Rod in alot of my names, roddo for my first character, a hunter. My warlocks a gnome named bigrod. My dk is roddk, not very original, but easy to remember. I was already planning on having my tanks all on one acct, and my healers on another, with the dps in the other 3. was gonna go acct1 on the chain tanks, with 5 the healers, but that doesn't seem like such a good idea now, i can get more levels on the second acct in the chain and be more likely to ensure having 1 of each healing class at max level if i get after it like I should.

[Khatovar]

Are there any trades that each team should absolutely have? I was thinking make sure I have say mining and skinning on my tank (for the stamina and melee dps boost), and the rest all with alchemy, and enchanting and herbalism on at least one member of each team. Also is the tailoring cloth drop boost worth having a tailor, and do they have to have raised the tailoring level to get the drop bonus?

Keep in mind, herbalism and mining provide XP every time you use a node, and that XP is NOT negligible. I have several sets of heirlooms for my teams and I've found that herbalism and mining on my main gave enough XP to keep her caught up with the slaves, each wearing 2 pieces of +XP heirloom gear. If you don't have heirloom gear to make up for the gathering XP, the toons that have mining or herbalism will very quickly and permanently outlevel the rest of your toons.

Enchanting is always a good option, as is tailoring. This way you can DE all the junk you get leveling up, plus you can feed all the stuff the tailor is skilling up on to the enchanter to DE. Even if you don't have a cloth wearing slave, it's good to have a tailor for the extra cloth at higher levels.

IMO, anything else you can pick up later and blast through it at max level instead of trying to keep up with it as you level.

[JohnGabriel]

I like to level skinning on all toons (except when boosting). Its very easy to level it while questing.

Constantly spam IWT and all toons (can) get the skill level up for each mob you skin. They broke it somewhat in one of the patches when I started getting a "target is tapped" error, but if you keep spamming IWT eventually all toons skin the mob.

[roddo]

Ok starting to lean towards doing a mixed group then, pally tank, 2 shammies, a mage and a priest. will roll instances with 1 shaman healing, 1 elemental, and the priest as discipline to help with the heal load. should work pretty good.

[JohnGabriel]

One more thing related to naming your toons.

One time I named my toons something like Sin, Sina, Sinb, or something similar. None of the targeting works anymore, doing an "/assist Sin" would target Sin or Sina, whichever is closer, its not an exact match.

[Homer]

Take my opinion with a grain of salt I have barely been boxing two weeks. But five years of theorycraft.

I have been against a 1 pally 4 shammy or 5 shammy group since well as long as I have known about boxing I HATE using FOTM things, With all the new advances in boxing and changes in WoW in the past year I did not want to make a mixed team so I went with 1 paladin 4 shamans.

I am only 24 atm but I am having a blast doing just instances. The things you can do with them are just so fun. Like 4 healing stream totem+earth shield+word of glory and let the healer dps the whole fight with stopcasting just in-case he needs a heal. 4 interrupts, 4 purges, Searing totems firing off. It does not matter who dies if one survives they all have res and I have not even made it to the fun of things like. Chain lightning, Chain heal, Anhk, My minds a blank but many more I am looking forward to.

I played a mixed group 4 years ago to level 40 and I did not find that as fun although not to much harder. I believe that's because I was not used to noticing everything from 5 class's at once yet so I was not getting the same enjoyment. Which also says to me a mixed group would be harder to play these days (Since best dps has changed form rotation to priority)

[luxlunae]

Ok starting to lean towards doing a mixed group then, pally tank, 2 shammies, a mage and a priest. will roll instances with 1 shaman healing, 1 elemental, and the priest as discipline to help with the heal load. should work pretty good.

I'm a little surprised that you chose this as everyone here is saying to not do a mixed group your first time out.

Oh well everyone wants to be a unique snowflake. my first to 85 team was pal/dpriest/mage/mage/boom and it put out some very pretty dps but everything was a lot harder than it is with chain heals and healing totems all around.

[roddo]

Got my box today. Still thinking about group combos, probably going to do 4 druids until they can group with my 47 feral druid and then go to 80. my horde team will probably be my 70 dk and 4 shaman. After those two teams are leveled I'll decide what I want from there.

[smalltanker]

One of the common things to do is to aim for a plate, mail, leather and cloth to use any drop... a good example would be pally, 2 shaman, 1 druid, and a priest, mage or lock. Locks are kind of light on damage but gives some nice benefits. I know when I was doing a mixed team on a PVE realm I ran fury warrior, paladin, priest, shaman, boomkin. Later I changed it up to drop to do tol barad as all ranged by ditching my warrior for a arcane mage... so the team was Arcane Mage, Shockadin, Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest and Boomkin. Lots of great buffs, lots of potential healing (only one pure DPS class) and it is hard to be picked out as boxing with the diverse classes and races. My current team of 5 DKs makes me fly to instances by not having a heal class (paladin or druid). When I started leveling my shamans I used a boomkin to queue as a tank spot... once I hit late LK content I just four boxed and pugged a tank.

On a different note for new boxers. To avoid some grief look at picking different names. My shaman (5 elemental/resto (IOC and AV)) never get called out when we do big forty mans with multiple boxers from the Zerg. The DKs and 10 box shaman/hunters get called out but no one ever notices the five resto shaman (Ziegvolk, Mellifer, Hexenbiest (main), Jagerbar, and Blutbad) that look like identical female trolls... much easier to fly under the radar.