Comparison of squads for 5 man dungeons

[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...

[waddles]

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.

I don't think lying to your raid, especially if the raid is all other members of your guild, is a smart long-term strategy. You'd be much better off being honest with the raid/guild leader. If they need bodies and you can bring two that you can play competently, I don't think they'd care if you are playing both. If they find out you've been lying to them, to the whole raid/guild on an ongoing basis, well I don't think you'd get invited back.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't think lying to your raid, especially if the raid is all other members of your guild, is a smart long-term strategy. You'd be much better off being honest with the raid/guild leader. If they need bodies and you can bring two that you can play competently, I don't think they'd care if you are playing both. If they find out you've been lying to them, to the whole raid/guild on an ongoing basis, well I don't think you'd get invited back.

+1 (Insightful)

[Apatheist]

I don't think lying to your raid, especially if the raid is all other members of your guild, is a smart long-term strategy. You'd be much better off being honest with the raid/guild leader. If they need bodies and you can bring two that you can play competently, I don't think they'd care if you are playing both. If they find out you've been lying to them, to the whole raid/guild on an ongoing basis, well I don't think you'd get invited back.

You're underestimating the irrational dislike for boxers many people have. Just mentioning you're boxing will get you kicked out of many PUG's. Or they wait until after the boss is dead and try to pull the, "you only get to roll on one drop playing two characters" or some such nonsense. I've found it's better to just not mention it. As long as you pull your weight, it's not an issue.

Raiding with a guild is obviously a different story. If you're in a guild for a while people will notice you boxing whether you tell them or not.

What is the highest dungeon that has actually been cleared in Classic WoW so far with 4+1 with none of the warriors ever switching to defensive stance with shield?

All dungeons on private servers can be cleared using a tank in DPS spec/gear so the same should be true on retail considering private server dungeons mobs are significantly overtuned. There may be a few situations where having a macro to swap to a shield and defensive stance will be useful. For example, to pop retaliation, AE taunt and then BoP. In general though, as long as you're pulling sensibly you don't need a shield equipped or defense gear. In fact, you don't want defense gear because it reduces your enrage uptime.

Something to consider is that, since all of your warriors will act as both tank and DPS, it will impact your preraid BiS choices. You don't want too much leather/mail gear on a character that will be taking damage regularly. In classic all you really need to tank is effective health and threat.