Looking at Duo or Tripleboxing. Comp ideas and logic. Anyone with exp care to help?

[Thatsssfuego]

Yo, what's up guys. First thread.

For the past year I've been planning on playing pally during classic launch. My goal was to take the week off and blast through leveling because after that week, I won't have much free time to level and it would probably take me a year to hit 60.

Recently (even shared herein the forums) a streamer named Kargoz posted a video and breakdown of duo leveling. One of the top tiered duo groups was Pally + Lock.

Free mounts, same speed, imp/aoe/heal/mana regen/ spell synergies. It looked super appealing, so for a few months I've been searching for a duo partner that could keep up with my pace. No luck there yet.

So I decided I might dual box since I ran 4 mages back in WOTLK.

The plan was to dot pull things with the lock using corruption and drag them all back to the holy/prot pally for consecration. If I needed to use a void for certain things, pally could heal.

BUT then, I thought about adding a third for better aoe and the ability to summon anyone to an instance. Spam LF tank or healer, summon them, win.

I've debated on adding a mage or a priest.

Priest would give me holy nova spam heals during aoe pulls, fear bombs, plus double the dots and a bubble. Warlock shadow synergies for single target, and a tank + healer for dungeons.

Mage would give me blizzard and chill effects ( might be bad for return damage pally since mobs hit slower). free food, PORTALS, arcane explosion, intellect buff, etc.




Now, 4 mages was ezmode. Spam one button for frost bolt and gg. Learning how to pull mobs back to a pally and then aoe everything down will be interesting.


Does anyone out there have previous experience with this sort of combo? I'm trying to plan out certain macros to use for pulls.

[nodoze]

My easiest Duo was Druid + Hunter with a Tanky pet as either by itself is known as a fast leveler and as a duo is great for clearing instances if you are overlevel/overgeared and can stealth/feign death to avoid mobs and get straight to bosses to farm them. The druid could go kitty for moar DPS and suppliment heals on the hunter pet when needed (especially if shifting anyway for higher DPS). If things go south the druid can also go bear when needed and battle rez. The hunter can feign death and shadowmeld eat/drink (if NE).

Adding a Paladin to that Druid+Hunter gives you multiple options:

-AoE Tank Paladin;
-offTank Hunter pet;
-DPS Hunter(offTank healer);
-Healer Druid;

or

-AoE Tank Druid;
-offTank Hunter pet;
-DPS Hunter(offTank healer);
-Healer Paladin;

The 2nd group is likely more mana efficient due to the Tank not really needing Mana and Paladins being the most efficient healer. The first option is better at handling more mobs and significantly better for dungeons with undead/demons.

Your Warlock+Paladin to me seems potentially similar to Hunter+Druid as your Warlock Pet can semi-tank like a Hunter pet though likely with slower leveling and no stealth option. Unlike Druid who would have to shift to self-heal, the Paladin can serve as a decent self-healing Tank if the content isn't too difficult.

The Priest opens up tougher content by giving yourself a real Tank and a real Healer with utility from the Warlock. Since you have a Tank & Healer you can likely recruit 2 DPS that won't compete on drops and use your Warlock to summon them to your Trio. As you mentioned the Priest is also flexible and able to do some DPS as well so in content where the Paladin can be a self-healing Tank you can contribute that way. The downside is you don't have portals and all 3 of your classes use mana (though the warlock can lifetap). Unfortunately with only 3 accounts you likely can't use a group of Warlocks to give yourself full portals to key locations as I think you need at least 4 accounts to pull that off...

The Mage bridges some of those gaps but closes options for you as you no longer have a real tank and real healer (full Trinity) option.

While not having self-ports nor food/water is a pain that last point for me would be the kicker (losing a real tank+healer+DPS "Trinity" option) but then again that is me, not you. To mitigate that you could have a Mage port you and sell in bulk water/food when you start any extended sessions. In the end you will have to decide what are your goals & priorities.

[Thatsssfuego]

The 2nd group is likely more mana efficient due to the Tank not really needing Mana and Paladins being the most efficient healer. The first option is better at handling more mobs and significantly better for dungeons with undead/demons.

Your Warlock+Paladin to me seems potentially similar to Hunter+Druid as your Warlock Pet can semi-tank like a Hunter pet though likely with slower leveling and no stealth option. Unlike Druid who would have to shift to self-heal, the Paladin can serve as a decent self-healing Tank if the content isn't too difficult.

The Priest opens up tougher content by giving yourself a real Tank and a real Healer with utility from the Warlock. Since you have a Tank & Healer you can likely recruit 2 DPS that won't compete on drops and use your Warlock to summon them to your Trio. As you mentioned the Priest is also flexible and able to do some DPS as well so in content where the Paladin can be a self-healing Tank you can contribute that way. The downside is you don't have portals and all 3 of your classes use mana (though the warlock can lifetap). Unfortunately with only 3 accounts you likely can't use a group of Warlocks to give yourself full portals to key locations as I think you need at least 4 accounts to pull that off...

The Mage bridges some of those gaps but closes options for you as you no longer have a real tank and real healer (full Trinity) option.

While not having self-ports nor food/water is a pain that last point for me would be the kicker (losing a real tank+healer+DPS "Trinity" option) but then again that is me, not you. To mitigate that you could have a Mage port you and sell in bulk water/food when you start any extended sessions. In the end you will have to decide what are your goals & priorities.

This is exactly the type of reply I was looking for.

My main issue with the healing trinity is that I've only rolled mages for boxing. I don't have a full grasp of how I would heal myself and tank at the same time. Pulling with a warlock into a pallies consecrate, then using a macro to Blizzard/RoF on top of the pally would be easy as hell. Pally with Spiritual focus and Concentration aura can literally heal through any hit without push back, so all he has to worry about is consecration and staying alive. Arcane Intellect from the mage and Blood pact + fire shielf from imp would help here greatly. This would eliminate the need for my own personal healer since I can general fall asleep as I aoe tank as a pally with self heals.

I honestly think the free food/water, no need to buy from vendor, ports to different cities whenever I want, free summons and the idea that at end game, I don't need two healers wins me over for the mage. I'll use the pally or the trio for instance aoe farming and raid heals. The lock with herb/alch for Maura mushroom farming and flasks or raid dps. The mage for raid dps and tailoring and enchanting since all three can use cloth SP gear. Having three toons feed my mage cloth will level his tailoring and enchanting super fast.

a Holy/Shadow priest combo would be easy to pull off dps wise with both a lock and a priest having a dot and beam attack. It would be a cool trinity too.
Holy pally
Holy/Shadow Priest
Shadow Lock

In the coming month I'm going to practice boxing this combo, atleast to level 30/40, and see how well
I can handle it.

[nodoze]

This is exactly the type of reply I was looking for.

My main issue with the healing trinity is that I've only rolled mages for boxing. I don't have a full grasp of how I would heal myself and tank at the same time. Pulling with a warlock into a pallies consecrate, then using a macro to Blizzard/RoF on top of the pally would be easy as hell. Pally with Spiritual focus and Concentration aura can literally heal through any hit without push back, so all he has to worry about is consecration and staying alive. Arcane Intellect from the mage and Blood pact + fire shielf from imp would help here greatly. This would eliminate the need for my own personal healer since I can general fall asleep as I aoe tank as a pally with self heals.

I honestly think the free food/water, no need to buy from vendor, ports to different cities whenever I want, free summons and the idea that at end game, I don't need two healers wins me over for the mage. I'll use the pally or the trio for instance aoe farming and raid heals. The lock with herb/alch for Maura mushroom farming and flasks or raid dps. The mage for raid dps and tailoring and enchanting since all three can use cloth SP gear. Having three toons feed my mage cloth will level his tailoring and enchanting super fast.

a Holy/Shadow priest combo would be easy to pull off dps wise with both a lock and a priest having a dot and beam attack. It would be a cool trinity too.
Holy pally
Holy/Shadow Priest
Shadow Lock

In the coming month I'm going to practice boxing this combo, atleast to level 30/40, and see how well
I can handle it.

Note that no single character acting as a self-healing Tank will be as strong as a dedicated Tank+Healer.

Of the 3 Tank options the one that has the best chance of pulling it off is Paladin and you would likely need to be on the higher end of the spectrum of recommended levels with solid gear.

On the Paladin I suspect you need to be careful and get gear that helps both Healing & Damage (like on the Judgement set) and not just +Healing gear (like you see on the Lawbringer set).

Certainly interested in how far you can take this and I and others may be able to help do some testing as well. Please report back your findings as you get things going.

Running a Trinity type setup isn't that difficult if you are using a tool like ISboxer with VFX regions.

Do you use any Boxing tools and if so which one(s)?