Heroic dunegons and 5m setup

[nodoze]

I have a small update.
I have decided to go with pala + 4 x ele sham. So far I have level 42, but I bo0sted them to 40.
Right now I am leveling them as a team in SM and soon will move to ZF.
There are few things which bothers me and I am not sure about future of team.
1. Without any software and even addons (beside follow me) I decided to make 1 macro for shamans which combine castsequence for LB, CL, totems etc. I am trying to AoE pulls like 10-15 mobs in SM and it is not easy to control everything with window focus binded to mouse scroll.
2. CL + LB is strong, but I am not intrested in small grp pulls, i want to make fast and smooth aoe pulls which is difficult with shamans as they lack in good aoe (only 2x fire totems which are nice aoe but not even close to mages / lock aoes)
3. Shaman`s aoes are not enought to kill humanoids which run away when low and targeting em with pala and switching windows with focus and scroll is annoying so I ignore it simply and sooner or later they come back sometimes with company.

I still manage to clear sm armory + cath in ~20 mins, but I dont like lack of aoe during leveling, maybe in herocis when you pull 3-5 mobs it would be perfectly OK to simply cast totems and spam LB / CL, but at least during leveling it is annoying. Furthermore, utility, there are no portals, no food / water, either u buy it or create by own mage and trade it, which over long period of time can be also annoying + lack of buffs.
Compared to any other team, u would still need to target mobs etc, unless you decide to go with mages / locks, where you still have to switch focus windows and scroll mouse constantly, but you do not have to care about targeting mobs at all (in AoE fights) as you just spam AE / Blizzard / FS / RoF / HF - it is up to u whetver u decide to spam AE / FS or simply cast blizzard / HF/ RoF and done for few seconds. I see huge improvement in life quality with such setups and if u add up priest with circle healing / holy nova etc it might be so easy - at least in aoe pulls. Plus on top of that so many utilities, like food / water, portals, many different buffs, summon. So I am still strugling with chosing proper team, I will level shamans + pala to 60 and see the performance at high level, if I dont like it, i can always change to mages + priest and boost one lock to 58 and still be ready for tbc.
But my longterm aim are heroics and in I do not see possibility to AoE pulls, like 5+ mobs, so mage / lock team is falling behind I think compared to shamans.

Any remarks to those set ups? Advices? Considering no software/ hardware and just window focus with scroll mouse bind

I personally found 5boxing TBC Heroics pretty hard back then at least until the later phases when I had raid gear. Paladin+4Shaman always seemed the most balanced team with good AI but to your points I often was doing pulls as small as I could until the later phases. My initial goals were just to complete them and get badges though as my gear got better and better I did start to do larger pulls and go faster (but I was never trying to do crazy large pulls)... That being said I did all of that when Input Broadcasting was allowed and spammy play wasn't potentially dangerous (and I didn't have carpal tunnel pain back then) so casting chain lightning over and over was OK...

If you really want to do larger pulls in TBC you likely should go with true AoE and also likely should move to (pun intended) a kiting playstyle by leveraging a Mage's Blizzard or a Shaman's Earthbind totem (or both if they stack). As a TBC boxer I never really played leveraging kiting but lots of people make it a core part of their "spell cleave" AoE team for which the Paladin Tank is great because dragging the mobs though Consecrate while the 3DPS AoE works really well...

After the recent policy changes my recommended approach would be the same as yours (no additional software nor hardware) and I would also try to get rid of any spammy playstyles that may look like input broadcasting which means I would not make my normal DPS based on chain-lightings nor Arcane Explosions... For non-bosses I would move to an all AoE team that only needs to interact with each of the Tank+3DPS once every 8 seconds as discussed in this post and the follow-on posts:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...l=1#post434484

For a low input all AoE team I would go with Paladin plus at least one Mage and at least one Warlock (and the 3rd DPS could be a Mage or a Warlock though I prefer 2 Warlocks for the reasons I typed). If you really want to do large pulls and leverage kiting then, if Earthbind AoE slow stacks with Mage Blizzard AoE slow, I would try to go with a Shaman over a Priest healer (though my preference is Priest for true AoE healing). With your Tank dragging the mobs through slows you shouldn't have to worry much about runners but as long as you have 1 Lock you can easily Curse one or more runners with Recklessness to get them to come right back...

[Kraxx]

Thanks for all the detailed information.

@nodoze @Purpleflavor another question about Sham-Teams (1 Pala + 4 Ele or 5 Ele):

Were Sham-Teams with the self crafted Netherstrike set viable in heroics or is this bursty playstyle only possible with ele-shams in raid gear?
So do I have to raid before bursting heroics?

[nodoze]

Thanks for all the detailed information.

@nodoze @Purpleflavor another question about Sham-Teams (1 Pala + 4 Ele or 5 Ele):

Were Sham-Teams with the self crafted Netherstrike set viable in heroics or is this bursty playstyle only possible with ele-shams in raid gear?
So do I have to raid before bursting heroics?

My 4 Shaman were first in mainly gear from Dungeon drops and then upgraded via Badge gear and some from AH &/or crafting. I also had a 5th Shaman with pretty much the same gear but it felt better for me to run with my Paladin tank than 5Shaman though to be fair my my Paladin was in Raid gear with max enchants/gems/etc and the Shaman were not totally maxed... If I did have raid gear on my Shaman it was BoE from the AH (can't remember off hand). I could be wrong but I don't think I really raided with my Shaman until WoTLK...

Note that I wasn't really 5boxing at what would be our Phase 1 and think I started focusing more on 5boxing dungeons around Hyjal/Black Temple (Phase 3?) so the badge gear, crafted gear, and BoE gear from the AH for me was likely better than we have in Phases 1 & 2.