Comparison of squads for 5 man dungeons

[Gala]

That depends on the encounter. Some encounters melee just stack and DPS while ranged have to deal with more movement and decursing.

Ofc every boss encounter is different and makes one role easier than another
Nonetheless it's generally easier to multibox range damage dealer in a raid than melees.

There is no encounter in any classic raid tier that can't be easily managed while boxing. I would think mages would be a great class choice with this in mind. Stacking 6-8 mages in a raid is great with ignite stacks and decursing plays a big role in a lot of fights.

It seems like we agree on that point...

[Apatheist]

It seems like we agree on that point...

Sure but not because range are easier than melee. That is definitely the case in other expansions but in vanilla melee is frequently the easier role, not having to deal with any of the movement, CC or support functions casters do.

If his intent is to box as part of a raiding guild then the only two real options are mages and warriors since it's not viable to stack any other class heavily. Bringing 8-12 warriors and 6-10 mages is standard. All of the other DPS classes are limited to 2-4 slots.

[Gala]

Sure but not because range are easier than melee.

Then pls elaborate the reasons why you believe that mages are the better choice for raiding. It's a bit contradicting to what you actualy say here because according to you warriors would be easier to control in boss encounters and deal more dps than mages.
That are both solid arguments to pick warriors over mages for raiding as boxer.

[Tsazao]

I'm surprised how many people are doing melee's. IWT was added in WotLK, did they keep it for Classic? Old school melee boxing is pretty painful.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'm surprised how many people are doing melee's. IWT was added in WotLK, did they keep it for Classic? Old school melee boxing is pretty painful.

It was in the beta/stress, yes.

[nodoze]

I think I missed this thread while I was traveling and found it a really good read with lots of great points from many different people from many different angles.

The rage generation also depends on how much dmg you take. The warrior who is tanking the mobs in a dungeon will have significant more rage than the other warriors. Using the same dmg rota on all warriors sounds suboptimal since they won't have a similiar amount of rage. ...

This is a good point assuming "all Warriors being equal" but I don't see this as being a big issue depending on whether you have a "main" and what character you "drive" with...

In my case I plan to have one primary "main" Warrior who will get all the best Warrior gear/drops first in my group and I plan to "drive" from that Warrior. Our "main" Warrior is also the only Warrior I plan to be taken into Raids (at least until some Raids are on "farm") so likely that "main" Warrior will always be significantly ahead of the other Warriors on Gear/DPS/threat and thus should be taking the most/all of incoming damage. Anyone running a 3+2 setup in a similar manner can likely have a more simple rotation on the 2 extra/background Warriors as each should have similar rage build/expenditures because the "main" foreground warrior will be the one with the most variability. Initially you may need to be swapping defensively more on the "main" Warrior but over time as that Warrior gets higher Tiers of Raid gear he should be able to face tank more and more content in max DPS spec (especially with 2 Paladin's flash healing him) and thus you really should only need to be micro-managing & optimizing 1 Rage bar in that approach... Even if you find Threat ping-ponging aggro/damage more than you would like you may be able to use ISBoxer to quickly switch to the incoming damage Warrior and optimize his rage bar yet always send reduced rotation commands to the out of focus Warriors in the background.

Note that the above assumes that you would be only taking 1 Warrior to Raids and it is exciting to hear that maybe all 3 Warriors would be welcome in Raids at some point (at least to raids on "farm" and/or to raids for helping folk catch up on lower tier gear) as it would help the other 2 Warriors not be too far behind...

One question I have regarding maybe multiboxing multiple characters in raids:

If you were bringing 1-3 Warriors to Raids (maybe only the raids on "Farm" or what not) would it make sense to also bring at least 1 Paladin that stays up in melee range with the DPS?

My thought would be that Paladin could be keeping smite/judgements up on the primary DPS target and flash healing himself and the DPS melee (and rebuffing them periodically) and maybe be a backup healer for the Tank. It makes sense to me but I don't know if having one or more Paladins up with the melee DPS group was a thing in Vanilla or not. I also don't know, regardless if that composition was a thing, whether that group [1 Paladin+3 Warriors] would be something a semi-competent boxer could/should safely bring to the raid...

For reference part of the reason I don't know if that would make any sense is because my brother and I were not big Raiders in Vanilla because we mainly did our Paladins in BattleGrounds and focused on PVP gear instead of Raid gear...

[Apatheist]

bringing 1-3 Warriors to Raids

One issue that's just occurred to me is that warriors are often expected to tank in raids. Even as DPS, you'll be asked to off tank quite often. That's one reason why warriors receive so many raid slots. Might cause issues if you're boxing warriors and aren't prepared to tank. Paladins are generally assigned a tank to heal anyway so dual boxing 1 warrior and 1 paladin and healing yourself should be familiar enough to manage.

A decent raid will have 4 paladins (for 4 blessings) and all will be holy. There's really no reason to bring a ret paladin to raids. Where your paladin positions depends on the raid encounter and raid comp. Sometimes you'll be stacked with the melee depending how many ranged characters are in the raid. In heavy melee cleave raids (MC speed runs, etc) you'll be spread out at range to minimize the number of boss mechanics that target the melee stack.

[nodoze]

One issue that's just occurred to me is that warriors are often expected to tank in raids. Even as DPS, you'll be asked to off tank quite often. That's one reason why warriors receive so many raid slots. Might cause issues if you're boxing warriors and aren't prepared to tank. Paladins are generally assigned a tank to heal anyway so dual boxing 1 warrior and 1 paladin and healing yourself should be familiar enough to manage.

A decent raid will have 4 paladins (for 4 blessings) and all will be holy. There's really no reason to bring a ret paladin to raids. Where your paladin positions depends on the raid encounter and raid comp. Sometimes you'll be stacked with the melee depending how many ranged characters are in the raid. In heavy melee cleave raids (MC speed runs, etc) you'll be spread out at range to minimize the number of boss mechanics that target the melee stack.

All great points. I like the idea of starting with just my Paladin main and getting the feel of things and maybe from the beginning try to get the raid leader assigning me to be up with the melee group and ideally focused on those that typically stay with the melee core. Then once pretty comfortable & on an easier raid where we are short a Warrior maybe step up to also bring a single Warrior (duoing with the Paladin) and work up from there if things go well. If you are well known to the raid leader and show consistency and are clear up front with each other on the things we can safely do then things should have a good chance to go well. Until I got much more comfortable I would want to try to stay away from either main tanking or off-tanking while multi-boxing at first. Maybe I am over worried about that as off-tanking with a duo Warrior+Paladin may well be easier than running a full 5man team in a dungeon where you are doing all the DPS in addition to Tanking and Healing...

[Apatheist]

If you don't name all of your characters really obvious goofy names like bobone, bobtwo, etc. and just bring one healer and one DPS the raid probably won't even notice you're boxing. Play your main until you're comfortable enough with the raid and then just try to get your "friend" invited.

[nodoze]

If you don't name all of your characters really obvious goofy names like bobone, bobtwo, etc. and just bring one healer and one DPS the raid probably won't even notice you're boxing. Play your main until you're comfortable enough with the raid and then just try to get your "friend" invited.

Good point. Yeah my brother and I have very distinct names for our mains as they are our original character names from back in our D&D/AD&D days growing up. The other 3 characters also have distinct names that mean something to us from years past as well. Odds are we both may be coming to raids some but with his health issues he likely can't be as consistent as me (plus he only wants to PVP and he is not one to grind or repeat stuff too many times so he maybe would do a progression raid until we conquered something new and then a few more times but likely he wouldn't want to keep coming back). I thus likely can do it for both of us pretty seamlessly when he can't/won't. I probably could work in a natural transition where they were used to my brother and I and then I could start by just taking over here and there and would just likely whisper to the raid leader something like "my brother had to go AFK so I am multi-boxing his character for now so please keep my Paladin and his Warrior together on the same team"... Over time that may allow it to naturally become the norm with my brother just showing up for the new raids and PVP...