5 Man Mixed Comp Suggestions

[redmosez]

So I upgraded my rig yesterday and I'm finally able to 5 box (was 3 boxing before). With the Blizz xmas sale on I figured why not try it for a month.

I'm having trouble deciding on a team composition. This is what I'm considering

Tank:
My tank will depend on my other toons, I don't really want to overlap classes if it can be helped, mainly thinking either a pally or druid right now

Healer:
Most likely go with a shaman or a monk

DPS:
I'm not sure if I should go for all melee or all caster or a mix. Personally I'd prefer a mix.

Melee: a plate wearer, most likely a warrior but would also consider a ret pally if I go with a feral druid tank
Caster: I have no idea which caster dps to go with, looking through their rotations it seems both the cloth users have pretty difficult rotations to multibox. Elemental shamsn seems manageable any suggestions?
Last DPS: I have no idea what to choose

Right now I'm thinking

Prot Pally/Healer Monk/Arms Warrior/Feral Druid/Elemental Shaman

OR

Prot Pally/Resto Shaman/Arms Warrior (might switch to DK at 55)/Feral Druid/???

Any suggestions?

[Chivalrous]

I assume this is for PvE? Do you want all 8 buffs or do you not care? I PvE and my team is Guardian Druid, Holy Paladin, fury warrior, enhancment shaman, and survival hunter. I get all buffs, plus hero and skull banner and the team syncs up well together with lots of utility that can be placed on same buttons round robin or pass through.

When I make a team for pve I consider what buffs they give and difficulty of movement. For me, melee is way easier than ranged. My team used to be prot pally, hunter, mage, ele shaman, resto Druid. I had a hard time moving and facing ranged (some don't IWT without using items, etc) and moving out of aoe on melee without being overwhelmed. I don't have this problem with melee, but whether you prefer Melee or ranged you'll have to learn for yourself.

My team I use the Druid tank for crit strike buff and brez. They aren't bad tanks at all.

i love fury warrior, buffs stamina and does great DPS. Also has Skullbanner

my hunter is my main, if he wasn't I'd probably replace him with a melee toon because he takes a small amount of baby sitting, but it's probably worth it. He buffs attack power and spell haste with sporebat pet. I keep him with my melee group most of the time, and he does great DPS and great burst.

my other toon isn't a DPS really, more of a support character. Enhancment shaman does mediocre DPS but amazing off heals. Ankh is nice, plus hero and purge. Healing rain is great, as is healing stream totem and other totem utility, plus lust/hero. Plus, she buffs spell power. Attack speed, and mastery.

holy paladin-love my holy paladin! Great healer for 5 mans, can easily aoe heal whole group, and does some DPS and debuff a if need be. Buffs stats for 8/8 buffs.

side benefit of this group Is I can practice on the target dummy with full raid buffs to see what I could actually do in raid. In 5 mans a lot of bosses I can pop hero and skull banner and burst the boss to execute range quickly... I miss my mage for ports and free food, and I'd probably rather have a pally tank over Druid, but I'd hate to give up crit. My hunter could buff crit, but the spell haste really helps my holy paladin out. All in all the team is fine... For me. Let us know what you come up with! Just make sure you're having fun,

im trying to put some vids of my adventures together, ill link them once I do if you wanna check out my teams synergy.

[Ualaa]

For PvE, almost anything is going to work.

For PvP, it depends on where you're going to be playing.
In normal battlegrounds, like PvE, almost anything will work.
In arena or rated battlegrounds, you're going to do better with fewer classes to manage.

The biggest question is, what do enjoy boxing/playing?

If you have casters/hunters on the team, your mechanic to deal with is using follow for facing.
You'll want to break follow, for those characters.
Possibly have a key, for the ranged to follow a specific ranged character so you can move them as a group without impacting your melee/tank positioning.

If you have melee on the team, you have to deal with the IWT/CTM and possible run-away toons as the boxing mechanic.

Ranged worry about resistances and spell reflect type mechanics, on a given encounter.
Melee worry about point-blank effects, auras surrounding a boss, and cleave type effects (getting behind the mob can help).

Including either element in your team, is essentially one mechanic needed to play.
And a different mechanic to be aware of while playing.
With both elements on your team, it is two mechanics to use; not necessarily harder, just more to be aware of.

The configuration of your system, making it work for each type of encounter... that can be as fun as actually playing the game.

[Owltoid]

For PvP, it depends on where you're going to be playing.
In normal battlegrounds, like PvE, almost anything will work.

I don't agree that for normal battlegrounds anything would work. For the longest time I thought it was my skillcap, but it's clear to me now that most multiboxers struggle to contribute to random BGs (AV/IOC is different). You need a valid composition, gear, and skill to succeed more often than bringing your team down. New boxers should not think that just because you have 5 toons you will be a force to be reckoned with in BGs - quite the opposite; without the right stuff you will likely be the reason for the loss.

[Ualaa]

If you're five of the ten toons in a 10-man BG...
It almost doesn't matter what you have or how well geared you are.
Your team almost never wins, with 50% of the group always in one place.
As 50% of the battleground, your gearing and skill means a massive amount.
You can win WSG/Gilneas, if the other five guys are good enough to hold one point or return a flag... but usually these are losses; I've had WSG matches where all ten of the other side were easy to kill with my five, but I couldn't both guard my flag/intercept their carrier and capture their flag with the useless teammates who contributed nothing.

If you're five of the fifteen toons in a 15-man BG...
You comprise 33% of the battleground, so your gearing and skill are less important.
But with at least full honor gear, you can make a positive impact in many of the BGs.
EotS favors 5-boxing, where you just run to whatever they hold and take it, repeat ad nauseum.
AB is a little harder, because you have to stay in place for a time until the flag caps... which negates the advantage of being able to blow up almost anything once you're geared; I've had ABs where my five can consistently kill their 15, but our 15 cannot hold more bases then their 15.
SotA is crappy boxed, because on offense your team is split which often leads to being stuck on the beach... an inherent disadvantage to boxing this BG.



If you're five of forty players in a 40-man BG.
You comprise 12.5% of the battleground, so your gearing and skill are the least important.
You have the ability to blow up large groups, and if you do it holding an objective or recapturing one that can contribute to a win.
As a small portion of the BG, when you're starting out you want to be here so your team still has a chance to win.
When you have a lot of gearing, this is still the best BGs to be in as a 5-boxer, because having 12.5% of the team always in one place is not an inherent disadvantage.

When I refer to battlegrounds as a 5-boxer, it is almost always referring to AVs and IoCs...
Almost anything is going to work, because it is largely a PvE event except for mass numbers vs mass numbers at certain objectives along the way.
When it comes down to a 10-man, you can win 100% of the battles and never lose a toon, be the highest in damage/heals/honor-kills/killing-blows/etc and still consistently lose; that is the reality of the smaller BGs.

[Owltoid]

I don't agree - with gear, skill and composition a multiboxer can be the driving force to winning 10-man BGs. If new multiboxers have PvP in their sights, they really need to think about group composition. I guess it depends how serious they are for both PvE and PvP. If someone's ultimate goal was raiding 10-mans, nobody would suggest all shamans. Similarly, if someone wants to play BGs and win, then nobody would suggest mixed melee and ranged of 5 different classes. The difference is that with PvE I believe the bar is set lower and many are satisfied with heroics. For PvP, very few enjoy losing random BGs and many get sick of the 40 mans (where is the skill/challenge there?) so if they want to PvP then they need the right group.

[Chivalrous]

The title reads 5 man mixed comp, 5 man makes me think of pve/heroics, but maybe I'm wrong. I wouldn't recommend 5 boxing random BGs unless your toons are really well geared, gear seems more important than ever. I took my team into AB with blue pvp sets and was rocked and slightly embarrassed. I am not good enough yet to pull my weight, so I don't try, maybe one day. If you do want a pvp mixed team, I.. Wouldn't do it, and can't offer any advice except have fun, but help your team win, don't give us 5 boxers a bad rep.

[Ualaa]

I'd 5-box AV/IoC, at any level of gearing.
And would do, some other BGs as 5-boxer especially EotS.

5-box can as easily refer to a dungeon group.

Or even a group that will run both PvE and PvP aspects of the game.
I'd assume most boxers play both aspects, but some prefer one or the other and a smaller subset play one exclusively.

[Lyonheart]

I'm warming up to mixed group comp myself. I used to be dead set against it. ATM i have a lot of 85s i gained via RaF and can do any comp I want. I had an oddball of an extra warrior/DK/rog that i made a trio out of. I went to lazymacro forum and got some quick lazy macros for them. ATM the trio is the best DPS i have seen out of 85s. My rog is combat speced and was bursting on an 85 target dummy to 21k and does 13k sustained dps while questing, all 3 of them sya in the 10-13k range. My end goal is to have a team that can burn through heroics and has a great chance of getting silver challenge modes. SO whatever comp that ends up being, great!

[MadMilitia]

Lazy Macro is an awesome site.

I run a WAR/ DK / SHM / HUNT * 2 for a 5 man and I will give some advice on how I do this.

Firstly, these are the usual macros for my melee in PvP or Tank in PvE.

#showtooltip
//Your stuff here
/stopmacro [@target, nodead, exists, harm]
/targetenemy

* Note above I still have an ASSIST ME hotkey to be sure if a kill target is required they are all on the same target.

Next, I have an assist of this for my hunters:

#showtooltip
/assist [@tank, nodead, exists] tank;[@melee, nodead, exists] melee;[@healer, nodead, exists] healer

The above ensures they will assist someone in particular with the healer having the lowest priority and tank having highest priority.


Next in IsBoxer I have the primary mousewheel keybind that does 3 important things.

1. Assist
2. DPS Key
3. Positions

It's vitally important that hunters always be facing appropriate targets and melee always be stationed as close as possible without continuous runoff.

3 Steps are required in the key. The first does all the assist, IWT, DPS key, AE/ST dump and finisher first (execute, kill shot). You'll want the finisher applied first in case it's up and you have the resource for it. This step has a 1.0 delay with unlimited keypress. The second key is responsible for setting up the appropriate control on hunters. I use /follow to do this. So second key is a 0.5 delay and a /follow on a macro similar to the /assist macro. Tank priority, then melee, then healer. Step 3 is a backstep for all DPS and tank, but a backstep + jump for the hunters. So melee don't runoff and hunters are 99% of the time facing the enemy but not in melee range.

You can tinker with this a lot. I haven't used it in a bit so the timers may be off. I've found it to be especially awesome for the hunters.

Next up is the AE / ST dump keymaps. These are basically keymaps you'll create to handle the specific resource dumps each class uses like slam, frost strike, rune strike, arcane shot, etc. I put a click bar icon for these on an image blue (ST) and red (AE).

Other than that there isn't much you need to do. You may not like having your mouse wheel dedicated to button spam so fool around with what you like the most. Lazy macros though are going to be absolutely necessary. Also keep in mind the flexibility of having multiple keys on a single key. This is going to be the most beneficial thing for you.