Power Ranking all Classes (For 5-toon Multi-boxing)

[Vegasboxing]

Frost Mage:

Overall Ranking: 3^rd Single Target Burst Dmg: 3^rd AOE Burst Dmg: 2^nd Survivability 6^th

The Frost Mage’s biggest advantage comes from their lvl 75 Ice Nova talent. There is an equivalent talent for the other two specs as well; the frost one seems to hit a bit harder but the Arcane version is neat because it lifts them up in the air for a second as well. Without this talent, this class wouldn’t rank #3 on my list. It’s a must have.

Single Target damage comes from Frost Bolts, Ice Lance, and your Water Elemental pet. Macro a /petattack and a /cast Icy Veins with your Frostbolt hotkey, and you’re good to go. Not much to this class, you know the drill. Frostbolt + Frostbolt + Ice Lance usually takes out a target.

AOE burst damage comes from the Ice Nova talent, the level 100 talent Comet Storm, and Frozen Orb. Note that you can use all of these AOE spells on a single target in a pinch, such as on an extremely annoying tank that has taken a fancy to you and won’t let go. Ice Nova hits hard, about on par with Mind Blast for SPriests, but with the added bonus of being AOE.

Survivability is in the form of Ice Barrier, Ice Ward, Blink, Ice Block, and Greater Invisibility. I chose the Evanesce talent in the first tier, so I can go immune and run away at the same time. Greater Invisibility is great for getting away from an enemy group, or being able to sneak up on one to take out a key healer or AA carrier in Ashran… (Or a flag carrier in a battleground.)

Legion Thoughts:
Most of the mechanics and spells already in the place will be largely untouched in Legion, which is good for the class. A lot of the PvP talents look pretty interesting as well, Ice Form for example, increases Frostbolt damage by 50% for 12 seconds, as well as providing immunity to stuns and knockbacks during that time. Very good talent to have. Prismatic cloak also sounds nice for survivability.

In addition, there is a new lvl 100 talent called Glacial Spike that is a 3 second cast but a huge single target burst spell, on the order of magnitude of a Chaos Bolt. All in all, the future looks bright for Frost Mages.


Balance Druid:

Overall Ranking: 4^th Single Target Burst Dmg: 4^th AOE Burst Dmg: 5^th Survivability 8^th

The Balance Druid is one of the most fun classes to play, mostly because of Starfall hitting everything in sight passively for 10 seconds after you click the hotkey. (Of course you need the Glyph of Untamed Stars.) This was also the class that was the most fun to level up.

Single Target bursts come from Starsurge, which can be boosted up by Celestial Alignment and the lvl 60 talent, Chosen of Elune. Take the glyph of Celestial Alignment so it lasts longer, and while it is active you can cast really strong Moonfire/Sunfire combo hits. In large battles, you want to Moonfire spam everyone in sight so you get procs of Shooting Stars which give you more charges of Starsurge/Starfall.

AOE comes from Starfall, which you want to have 100% uptime on during large battles. Starfall doesn’t do a lot of burst damage, but it keeps a lot of constant pressure on your enemy healers to keep their team up if you learn to keep it up 100%. After 30 seconds of the entire enemy team taking Starfall damage, they are going to be hard pressed to keep up the healing. Because of the way Starfall AOE’s everything in a 40 yard radius, this would be the greatest spell in the game to take advantage of if you were 10, 15, or 20 boxing. Or even as a 40-boxer who just did World PvP, I can imagine 40xStarfalls just wiping out everything in sight in seconds. As a 5-boxer, however, I’ll just take the constant uptime of being able to pressure the enemy team. This constant pressure AOE is very similar to the tactic of the Death Knight, which I will cover in a bit.

For survivability, Ysera’s Gift is one of the best passive healing talents in the game, even better than a Hunter’s Spirit Bond because it can heal nearby injured teammates passively as well. If, for example, your lead toon is taking damage and your other 4 toons are at full health, the lead toon will get a 20% heal every 5 seconds! Cenarion Ward is the other choice in the lvl 30 talent tree, which can be a better healing spell for pinch heals when taking heavy damage, but each has a different playstyle so it is up to you.

Other talents I like to take as Druids are Feline Swiftness, Typhoon, Incapacitating Roar (this and Typhoon are good for getting melees off of you), Dream of Cenarius or Nature’s Vigil for more self-healing, and Euphoria.

If you get trapped by members of an enemy team and you need to keep yourself up, one tactic I use sometimes is switching to Bear Form and spamming Thrash. I have Thrash macro’d with /cast Frenzied Regeneration, so that it will constantly keep self-healing in Bear Form every time you Thrash. This can buy you valuable time if you are waiting for your teammates to catch up to you, for example. This works even better in Resto spec, but I will go over healing specs in a later section.

And if one of your toons dies, don’t forget about Rebirth. If you have the Ashran Book of Rebirth, you can instant cast Rebirth 5x among your toons to bring dead ones back to life quickly. Get the Glyph of Rebirth that brings them back with full health.

Legion Thoughts:
The mastery stat will now increase damage to Starsurge and Starfall, which is good. There is a PvP talent that increases the damage of Starfall by 30%, which is great. The difference will be that there will be a resource meter for Astral Power now, instead of a flat 3 charges. This means Starfall or Starsurge will no longer be able to be used as an opener because you have to build up Astral Power first. Not a great change, but hopefully the damage increase will be enough to offset this disadvantage. There is a pretty awesome level 100 talent that increases the radius of Starfall by 30%, damage by 20%, and allows you to cast while moving in the Starfall. This seems like it will be a pretty mandatory talent.

A level 10 passive called Astral Influence will increase all of your spells ranges from 40 yards to 45 yards, and with the 30% increased Starfall radius, this means Starfall will be hitting at 58.5 yards? I’m excited to see this in action.

Also a PvP talent called Twin Moonfire will Moonfire a second target passively while you cast on the first, which sounds pretty nice for more AOE damage.

Overall, it looks promising for Balance Druids.