Spellcleave or melee cleave? for levelling and gearing mains

[Dangerhank]

Hey,

I'm going to main a warrior (and control the 3 dps) and have a friend on a priest dungeoning with me, our current predicament right now is should we go;

Melee cleave:
3 warriors, retri (or just another warrior) and priest
Concerns: Certain bosses, like baron rivendare and the effectiveness of their damage at a higher level with gear from dungeons only

or spell cleave:

1 warrior, 3 mages (or 1 warlock) and priest
Concerns: how effective will multiboxxing 3 mages while levelling, i have a feeling you won't be able to do the massive pulls consistently (i'm not a super pro multiboxer)

Our goal is to effectively farm all 5 man content for gear, and later on farming things like strat live and DM for gold

Any ideas / feedback would be highly appreciated

[FuriousFromage]

I'm considering a similar setup. I'll be boxing 1 war and 3 mages and may have a friend healing as pally if I don't box the healer.

Apparently spell cleave is superior exp/hr if you can manage some ridiculous pulls and blizzard/Nova kite. These pulls look really hard playing 1 char and I've tried boxing them with 3 mages and had a rough time. That's not to say it's not possible but will probably require practice and setup for every one of those crazy pulls. So I agree with you on this point unless you have some 1337 skillz.

I tested 4 warriors+1 priest on the stress test with IWT. TBH it feels clunky with IWT slaves sometimes running off. It's do-able but I found 1 warrior, 3 mage, and 1 priest to feel much smoother. This may be because the current stress test is capped at lv15 or because of the super high starting zone spawn rates (which blizz confirmed tapers off later on).

One of the big advantages of 3 mages is you can get away with arcane explosion spamming mobs. On a certain server I tested 1 war 3 mages and a priest in deadmines (believed to be harder than classic deadmines but I don't have #s) and arcane explosion clear speed was pretty good. Was able to hit 15-20k exp/hr in DM on the server that didn't account for the supposed easier mobs in classic or the bonus dungeon elite exp. AE spam is also relatively mindless so you can be a fairly effective warrior while AE spamming.

[Dangerhank]

Hey, thanks for the lengthy response!, got a little follow up question if you don't mind

When you do dungeons with the mages, how many mobs do you pull for AE nuke? and do you think this will stay viable all the way up to 60?

Thanks in advance

[FuriousFromage]

This is based on speculation and alternate servers but I highly doubt it will be viable at 60 outside of BRD and select packs in other dungeons (e.g. undead packs at the start of strat). I think for higher lv instances the team might have to switch to sheeping and focus targets. At 60 I've only tested 5 boxing BRD and it's pretty easy up to general angerforge. I have polymorph on a keybind that rotates between the mages so keeping 2-3 targets sheeped is reliable.

I only tested deadmines on an alternative server but I was doing 2-5 elites with a few non elites per pull. The characters were lv20. The highest exp/hr was before the foundry room where there are a lot of non elites and in that segment the warrior would run around using demo shout and thunderclap like a maniac and the group only stopped moving then a) the warrior need a heal or b) we had >3 elites and a pack of non elites aggroed. The 3 mage AE spam would melt the non elites in a couple casts and I would sometimes do a single target rotation on lingering elites.

[Dangerhank]

My bad, ment until the harder dungeons, like scholo and strat. But if 3 mages can get me to around 55 in decent pace, i'm happy thanks for the replies... tho i still wonder if melee would be easier/more consistent when you hit 20 with cleave