DOGS OF WAR: A Melee Multi-boxing experiement

[Lyonheart]

lol..what class combos have you NOT tried Zin ?

[Tdog]

Well after searching through all 4 armories and coming up with no profiles for any of those names, the pre-bc gear, and the lack of you ever mentioning putting together a melee team I'm assuming that this photo is a model changer Scared me though for a second, I was like, "did I just waste all the time putting this together when someone has already done it?"

[Gurblash]

Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.

Bingo.

But grats to the both of you, KC and TDog for playing around with Melee. I hope all goes well for both of you in your endevours... your probably gonna need it + patience.

[Lyonheart]

I have a feeling the best team to melee box with will be the DK..im going to try it for sure 8P

[Tdog]

Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.

Bingo.

But grats to the both of you, KC and TDog for playing around with Melee. I hope all goes well for both of you in your endevours... your probably gonna need it + patience.

Patience is an absolute must I'm finding rather quickly It takes a bit sometimes to master the techniques to get the gd alts to stand in the right posistion :cursing: But once you start getting comfortable with it, you find that it's really np at all. I'd recommend perhaps starting out with 2x melee to get the hang of which way your alt is facing, then 3x melee to get the hang of multiple melee alts, then go ahead and start your 5 team. That's what I did anyways.

I have a feeling the best team to melee box with will be the DK..im going to try it for sure 8P

O I will for sure be messing around with DK's that's for sure

Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.

I find having the shaman as a main to be a pain in the ass. Having a warrior as a main and the shaman in tow I find to be a better set-up. I'll explain why in my next section including using the charge ability.

[Xzin]

Correct, this was a PTR. Part of it was not knowing how to box warriors and part of it was lack of a "proper" setup. But man oh man this setup was terrible compared to mages, shammys, warlocks, etc. Viable? Sure. You can get to 70 with it. Fun? That's so subjective. I am not going to tell you how to play. But was it fun for me? No way.

[Bigfish]

The chainsaw effect is pretty fun to play around with. I've run 5 paladins up to 22, and I'm currently running a Paladin, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Lock Group. Not full melee, yeah, but I came up with similar macros and movement notions. I powered them up through 60, but I've run the first 4 instances in BC without too much problem. The Paladin is tanking and is 70, so its not necesarily a normal group, but melee is very easy to manage on large bosses. The biggest complications I've had are AOEs, which can be quite nasty without a healer.

[Sanctume]

I have a mix class group when I do my IQD dailies.

Prot pally does not even bother with 1h/shield, and just use a 2H atm.
Arms warrior charges and spams Slam and MS.
Frost mage just spams Frostbolt and Icelance.
Holy/Disc just throws a Prayer of Mending and is lucky to hit with Smite before the mob dies.

Combat Mace rogue is useless, but gets in melee and just stuns the mobs to sillyness; but shares the same account as the
Holy Pally who is just there for Sanc aura and holy shocks.

If I were to redo, I'd make the rogues Sub for Shadowstep and easier time to position; but stun maces is a nice auto attack, low micro ability.

Priest is all I need to healing via PoM.
Holy Paladin is easier to micro heal since it's just spamming Holy Light (but no ae healing).

But I can't run a team without a mage. I love the food and taxi service too much.

[Guilo]

I'm Dualboxing 2 Feral Druids. The diagrams you've shown is exactly how it has to be done.
The benefit to it, and dual druids with similar specs/gear is that we trade agro around alot allowing me to just do white attacks and shred for maximum dps.

We're only level 42 so no mangle yet but that should be fun too.

On a side note, I'm also leveling an Enh Shaman to pair with my 70 paladin (will respec to ret when he catches up)

The synergy between the two is amazing. WF + Strength + Bloodlust and Blessings + Auras + Judgments is really incredible.

I consider each one about .75 dps and .3 healing... Well combined I feel like they're 100% of a dpser and about .5 a healer leaving me with 2 solid dpsers and a healer out of my two man team.

I'm bring this up because, 1) I cant imagine any melee dps multibox group without a Shaman (except for 5 feral druids maybe... since goa < wf imo). 2) Any Shaman would be significantly more powerful with a Paladin in tow.

So to me the optimal 5 man melee DPS setup would be Arms, Fury, Fury, Enh, Ret. I just did some quick math on it and the fire and forget healing (healing stream + judgment of light) would be about 616 healing for the group every 5 seconds. (This is not including WF and is assuming a 3 second weapon speed for everyone so the real numbers would be a fair ammount higher). So 5x might/kings and 5x str (from shaman) and double spell resists from auras/totems or crit aura from the pally... All in all i think its a much more solid set up than 5x or 4x warriors.

/end rambelings

[BobGnarly]

While my 4 shaman are elemental, from time to time, just for kicks, I'll load them up with windfury weapon and melee some stuff.

What I've found to work best is just go in with the main (paladin), and then back up. The reason is, as you mention and I'm sure we'll all aware, wow mobs have this annoying habit of playing this reposition game if you move around. However, the *don't* do this if you just back up, they just follow. I've found that if I just back my paladin up to where the shaman are, they all hit the mob just fine. This actually works a lot better than I originally expected, which is why...

When I get to level 40 I'm going to respec them all to enhancement and see how it goes!