4 or 5 shaman?

[Kaynin]

I have 6 accounts.

Account 1:
- Level 70, male tauren enhancement shaman
- Level 68, male tauren elemental shaman
Account 2-5
-Level 66, female tauren elemental shaman (one each account)
Account 6
-Played by a friend, I don't use the accoutn at all, I reckon I won't be bothered for account sharing this way. Technically it's not shared.

I want to know if it's worth going through the trouble of rotating my level 68 elemental shaman together with my four other shaman, and I might consider going 6-box in WotLK even.

But I can't quite make up my mind. What are the positive sides about 5-boxing shaman instead of 4? For arena 4 is best. In bg's, well, in wsg 4 is probably better then 5. In AB the difference isn't that much, and well, in AV I guess the more the better ofcourse. But that's just AV. And PvE wise it seems that more then 4 shamans is only limiting you further. Right?

I just figure, I already have five accounts. I just have no idea how to best make use of them. Oo

quad boxing just seems more practical. *shrug* Just wanted some feedback from 5-box shaman players on this. Why do you play 5 and not 4?

[Bravo]

I don't know why people on make 4 chars instead of 5... big dreams of arena that will fall short when they realize they're not ellay? I chose not to go with different classes because it was my first time multiboxing, I wanted 5 so I could run instances and not depend on someone else being around, and just wanted to keep the commands the same. but after 5 months I can run almost all of the heroics and have given pve a rest after spending 500+ badges and play around in AV when I have some spare time in RL.

[Kaynin]

Well, 4 shamans isn't just to 'be' like Ellay, kudos to Ellay for being successful, but it's not like he invented winning on his own and therefor is the only one worthy .

To me it seems 4 is a nice number to multibox and always leaves room for a friend, whilest at the same time being set on arena as it's simply better with a second mind on a healer there.

Whilest playing with 5 will limit the ability to party with a friend, in pve most of all, in PvP to the point of having to resort to rotations and such.. I fear that might be boring in time. Playing entirely solo is cool when you venture into new content. But after 2 or 3 times, I reckon you've had enough from that part/instance.

Mmh, the more I think about it, the more I'm edging towards just keeping 4 myself.. That should offer a more dynamically environment that won't bore as quickly I think.

[Ellay]

Ya, too much credit goes to me on some occasions I think. Anyone else can be as successful as I am in Arenas, it just takes practice

As for your setup, I would suggest 4 or 5 and not 6, a full group is just enough. You can always run 5 and then drop 1 if you ever need to for various activities. I think that would give the most options, but if you have 5 it's harder to tell one to stay at home while you bring someone else. Each toon has feelings you know!

[Silly Gooooose]

I don't know why people on make 4 chars instead of 5... big dreams of arena that will fall short when they realize they're not ellay?

Why not try for it? Plus isn't half the fun trying.


Plus I personally enjoy having a friend in the group to tank things for me, pve wise. Yes it's a pain finding them on at the right time, but that's what my main, a prot / holy pally is for, lol.

[Boylston]

4 is...
...easier to run on a single box configuration (esp. dual-core)
...the perfect number for 5v5 with a healer partner
...arguably better for WSG and maybe AB/EOTS (balance of killing power vs. not being too much of the force at one spot)
...great for heroics if you run with a partner

5 is...
...easier for PvE, although 5xShamans and Heroics requires some truly heroic tactics!
...25% more DPS
...arguably best in AV
...also 4 shamans, or 3 shamans, or even 1 shaman

I have 4 Shamans because my initial CPU setup couldn't quite 5-box (I can now), and I already had a Paladin character I could consider moving to a 5th account for a Pally+4xShammy setup. To be strict, I was actually 3xShammies when I started multiboxing and caught these new guys up to my pre-existing L70 Shaman.

[Nitro]

5 for 5x the dailies gold!

[Boylston]

5 for 5x the dailies gold!

This argument rarely makes sense. You still have 5x the upkeep needs.

Certainly, you can argue that you might have all your needs met at some points and then start raking in disposable income x 5, but anything you want to spend that on in the future just gets to be 5x more expensive... I dunno, I don't ever think "Multiboxing = Get Rich" is a great argument for Why to Multibox? or Why to 5x vs. 4x?

[Kaynin]

Thanks for the replies!

Seems it's quite preferential. On one hand I could use the 5th in some situations. On the other hand, I'll have to drag him around the rest of the time. I love multiboxing but I'm also a very social player, I'm pretty famous on the server from before I started multiboxing and have plenty of level 70's willing to help me out in instances. So 'easier to do instances' won't really matter in my case. xP

Av, yeh, AV rocks upto the number where it doesnt matter if you have more shamans or not, you will at some point one shot everyone anyhow. So after that, the more will just make it worse.

Hmm, okay, so 6 is overkill, I didn't quite feel like even trying that anyhow. Oo
The only positive side about that is making cool light shows. But that's not why I multibox. xP

I could go 5, I'll have one male and four female tauren shaman. There is possibility for arena trickery there. Which might be interesting to explore. I've often used trick tactics in arena before. Retridin equipping healing shield+mace at first trying to draw attention, me being enhancement that worked quite nice upto 1800+ rating. (if the retridin is focused, chances of succes would go up immensly.) Stuff like that, obviously doesn't work multiple times against the same teams though, but made a lot of fights easy for us. If I have four female and one male, I could have the male 'pose' as my main character, while really be maining from one of the females. Enter arena witht he male running in front, but swapping to a female without moving. Having the male walk back just prior to battle. So the male draws the attention, and I'll have less risk of my actual main being killed first if a char dies. (Thus improving my chances as I won't waste time swapping mains.) But, in a way, I can do that as well without the male. It's just that male taurens are more easily clickable. And also more easily chooseable for opposite parties. Which will also make it easier for my healer, since he can be ready to heal the male asap, as the most likely target to be focused.

So, there might be potential there I suppose. *ponders*

But battlegrounds might be (apart from AV) slightly harder, due to having a rather large portion of the raid in one spot. While really needing to be in many places. (And everyone knows, when you walk around wsg with 4 or more players. The freaking whole raid on your side seems to be following you just to watch! Argh! xD )
I really don't think I want to grind bg's that much to do that in rotations. I want to get the gear asap, then play more casually. But if I want the 5th in rotation for arena, I'll need to gear him in bg's too. That's the biggest downside I can think off.

The descisive factor would be wether or not it's worth doing all the extra work for, just to do the arena trickery. I don't really want to swap out a female shaman either. Those four belong together. xP

[cepheus]

Some weeks ago I started a new team with 4 shamans. Leveled them to about 20. Then I realized that since I have the hardware to run one more it was just silly not to level one more so I started over from lvl 1 again (I wanted to change names and races on all too).

Now I'm soon lvl 50 with my new 5-box team and I do not regret this desicion yet. I also think that leveling 5 chars goes faster than levling 4 since you both can do instances faster,and often I find that I can oneshot mobs with my 5-box where my 4-box would have had to nuke one more time(causes more downtime)

If I want to switch to 4-box later I could allways just retire one of my accounts, but if I had started out with just 4 I would have to level all the way from lvl 1 once more :P