I may have gotten the WoW itch, tell me what's happened in the past 2 years.

[Ellay]

What is Bajheera's model? I have seen Reckful streaming, he is on quite a bit.

[Lyonheart]

Any flavors of the month right now with the new xpac?

Should get a better feel after the patch.. lots of burst getting nerfed. You should do RaF and level 5 of everything ( or 4 if thats what you do still )

[Ellay]

that seems good, but I'd rather keep my characters and their names. Planning on 5, but not sure if Shaman is the key This new talent layout is quite different!

[Fat Tire]

What is Bajheera's model? I have seen Reckful streaming, he is on quite a bit.

Bajheera has been streaming for a couple of years now and Reckful has been streaming for a month and a half, not to mention he streams for 15+ hours at a time. Very unhealthy and is just begging for burnout in the near future.

Bajheera makes videos from his streams and edits them together for youtube vids, think he has 80k subs on youtube. He is not even close to the best player unlike reckful who is probably the most well known wow player and the thing is Bajheera doesnt have to be a top arena player, he understands that the entertainment factor is most important. Its the interaction with the viewers that plays and pays biggest part. Bajheera also has a secondary topic in which he interacts and that is bodybuilding, while not a huge guy there are alot of fat whimpy teenagers/people out there that play wow and they ask him training questions.

Here is the thing about streaming nowadays, if you are just going to stream your wow without constant viewer interaction dont expect alot of viewers. You have to webcam and interact with them and not all people can do that.

[Ellay]

That's awesome, great insight. Time to do some more research!

Is druid still the best class for throwing out heals with no cast times for a group or is it someone else?

[heyaz]

Ele shaman are about the worst pvp spec in the game at the moment. Stacking them doesn't seem to overcome their limitations. All their spells hit like wet noodles, assuming you actually get a chance to cast, but with all the aoc CC and no way to be immune to it on shaman, you usually don't get to cast at all.

Lot of people still doing melee comps, 4x DK 1 holy paladin is pretty popular. Although given the way arenas are going at the moment, lots of warriors and hunters dominating 5s I don't know of anyone doing serious arena while multiboxing.

Kruschpak called it pretty early on elemental shaman and just geared out enhancement and continued to do 5s but with limited success it seems:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uschpak/simple

--

IF you can forget about competitive arena at least for this season, there is a lot WoW has to offer that it didn't in the past.

- World PVP is constant, 1-85 due to cross realm zones, and at 90 due to dallies being both lucrative for gold/gear and necessary for the hardcore types. There are always people to fight. The next patch is supposed to add even more with the new faction. Certain lower level zones are full of 90s and are cross realm, so that's 24/7 action.
- Regular BG PVP is about the same as it was before, boxers can still mow through everything although you do have to deal with some annoying CC and broken classes like warriors 2 shotting things.
- LFR gives you the option to see all the raid content and queue your multiboxing team. It's not the top gear but it's still fun to do.
- The PVP stats (pvp resil and pvp power) do not carry weight on the item and are free; so you not only get the same stats for that ilvl as pve gear but bonus pvp stats.

[Kromtor]

As far as 4 and 5 boxed PvP goes, I've found everything Shodokan has said to be unfortunately true. 5's arenas are definitely not gladiator viable for 5 boxed melee and I'd have to guess the same will be true for ranged. Mass CC and peeling is far too effective that any smart team will devastate you. One of the biggest new issues that Shodokan brought up was the fact that in arenas the opposing team can see your team make-up from the very beginning and they have plenty of time to change talents to maximize their classes AoE capabilities. 5's in general just suck, they are so underpopulated they are ripe for off-hours win-trading. The logistics and politics out of the arena perhaps play a bigger portion than inside the arena. If you want to get to the top that way you might be able to but that's lame. Maybe play 3 and get two friends but that doesn't interest me at all.

The PvE is fun, but it's essentially the same old stuff. The heroics are just very easy compared to other expansions. I thought the timed instances might be fun (they at least are quite hard - far harder than heroics) to try to get some competition going, but I'm afraid that's mostly going to be a kiting competition.

[Ellay]

Loving everyone chiming in, really do appreciate it. Even in the prime pre Season 5, 5v5's were still tough to find competition if it wasn't in prime time hours. With further pvp options I can only imagine it's less played since it's easier to make a group for 2 or 3's and Rated bg's.

What are you guys having fun with? I have read BM hunters are decent on the dps (will those pets eventually scale down as time goes on?). As well as DK's. It looks like Ret Paladins lost their awesome storm aoe heal/damage move.

I guess what it boils down to for me really is for some reason I watched my own video that I haven't seen in almost 3 years, and it inspired me. How does that even work? But it made me want to play again and do more. Technology for gaming has advanced so well. It is totally feasible to live stream everything I do in a much more balanced state. 4 years ago I sacrificed a lot of frames just to even record or stream barely and the quality was terrible.
Multiboxing is the meta game of the meta game. It's reverse inception, and after multiboxing Diablo 3 for about 5 months I've capped out. (it's definitely not the easiest game to multibox) but love that challenge.
I made a deal with the wife and even with a hectic schedule I think I can give this mmo another go and enjoy it.
That's just my rant, hope I'm not coming across as an old timer - you guys are way more advanced than me in the Wow - boxing - fu.

Also Heyaz and Kromtor what are you guys playing. I see your sig shows 1 DK and 4 Ret paladins, is that still a doable build?

[Fat Tire]

I guess it just boils down to what your goals are and what you want to accomplish with your time.

As others have said if you are looking to become glad lvl in 5s, I think that ship has sailed for everyone. Kromtor mentioned the politics outside of arena and he is spot on. Kids these days dont mess around, if you even got anywhere even close they would wintrade,snipe and ddos you. Not to mention these days only top 2 or 3 in 5s get glad.

[heyaz]

So I hadn't boxed since wrath. I had the 4x ret + dk team at the end of wrath as well, and my four shaman. Shaman looked so good on paper (especially with ascendance) in MoP I went with them.

I leveled 4x 90 shaman and a druid (pve tank) right when the expansion came out. It became clear very quickly that elemental was weak in pvp, in fact the weakest I've ever seen it (worse than beginning of wrath). I tested enhance on one shaman and decided not to box it. Anyway I continued to gear them thinking they'd hit critical mass as some pvp power percentage but they didn't get much better. At the moment I mostly play them as 4x resto, just healing - that spec is actually quite strong and stacking them has significant advantages: huge passive healing, no issue with fears (4x tremor totems a minute or 8x with the talent), raid-wide freedom-like totem (windwalk), 4x spirit link and ascendance resto duplicates all healing across the team. it's fun but, it's healing... not blowing stuff up.

I'm leveling 5x DKs (almost 89 now). They're fairly strong in PVP, have their share of aoe-cc (check the 90 talents), can death grip twice in a row, and have several other benefits. With tech being so cheap I'll be building out a new machine and add in my other guys for a 5x DPS 3-5x healer comp I'll use in world PVP and battlegrounds.

Arenas - I'm not planning anything serious this season. If DK's stay strong I'll probably go with 4x DK + dedicated healer or try the method of leading with the healer; if neither my resto shaman nor resto druid are viable I'll bring up a paladin.

I'm also considering swapping in a warrior for one of the DKs to add in shockwave, AOE fear, skull banner, etc. as it would probably add more to the comp than a 5th DK.


tl;dr
-I have 4x shaman + 1 druid at 90, and the shaman suck
-leveling 5x DKs to add to them
-adding in a warrior later