Speculative Multiboxing

[Soreen]

I currently have very limited bandwidth and computer access is limited to 30min chunks so I have to feed my WoW habit with theorycrafting for another month or so. I've read the wikis and faq's as much as I can so I apologize if I'm rehashing old material. I'm trying to plan out my pve 5box attempt. I currently have a lvl70 priest and mage (and a rogue whose pretty much in retirement) on a single account. Going with the standard trinity: tank, healer, 3 dpsers. I figure I can use the mage to boost the new chars for several levels and then have the priest follow questing and instances at higher levels. The pally tank seems an obvious choice, but I'm torn with the dps class selection. Mostly with deciding between locks and mages or getting the balance. I've read several mentions of a cookie cutter group: pally, priest, magex2, and a lock (faster imp scorch stack, and CoE, and sheepx2) and conversely but more limited, locksx2 and a mage (multiple curses, ISB stacking, not sure how the mage fits here should it be locksx3?). Now having a mage on the healer account available for ports and water provides that utility, but it should also give me the option of having 4dpsers and tank for trash clearing (4 mages? 3 locks and a mage?) Is mage CC that superior, is it even necessary? Which AoE is easier to perform? (Seed of Corruption?) Burst damage vs higher dps? All the mage forum QQing has certainly got me torn and my ignorance of the warlock class certainly isn't helping. I would certainly appreciate any help, I'm off to contemplate my professions. Thanks.

[OzPhoenix]

I've levelled multiple mages from day one, and they don't seem any better or worse to me now than they were then, just seems to be more QQ on the forums about them.

I'm no longer too familiar with locks now either, so I guess my question to you is, have you considered a 5 by one-class sort of team? 5 Warlocks I would imagine could kick around a lot dungeon mobs.

[Soreen]

I imagine I would eventually try a single class group, but I have several reasons to focus on the trinity. I occasionally play with my brother-in-law or my father, whose skill, availability or gear (still in greens /boggle) usually tries the patience of pugs and guildies alike. If I held down the other 3 or 4 slots they could swap in with their dps toons and see content they otherwise wouldn't, and I guess the same goes for my sister, with a two-year old she'll never be able to level a toon to play with the guys so she could use one of mine. Secondly, my priest is my main. Though it's been a year or so since I've raided (casually as it was) and I plan on starting back up so he'll be fairly well geared (full primal mooncloth and whitemends currently). And with the expac at some point in the future I want a group I can level the priest with...holy all the way.

I see that you have your trinity group on hold, what was the decision to play the shamans? I admit I'll be interested in trying a 5 druid group, though I know melee slaves are a bit difficult. Off to work, going to ponder that one for awhile.

-S

[OzPhoenix]

Putting my Trinity group On Hold was basically my way of adjusting for my relative newness to multiboxing.

With an all Shammy group it greatly simplifies many of the issues you'll encounter in multiboxing, and I need this simplification at the start, because I rather suspect that multiboxing five characters - ANY five characters - is a good deal harder than face planting your keyboard and rolling your head around...hehe.

So with that in mind, I wanted to make the learning curve as relatively easy as possible. Once I feel more in tune with multiboxing (and my Shammies are blowing through Heroics) I'll level the Trinity Group.

[BobGnarly]

There are a bunch of different combos, each with their own ups and downs. Really, it's going to come down to what you want to play, but I'd seriously consider the extra effort and lack of cohesion each different class will bring to your setup. Having 2 mages 1 lock might sound great on paper, and might be great in certain situations, but is it worth the extra effort of managing separate keybindings for the class or suffering through things like different spell cast lengths desyncing the slaves? Again, you have to make this call, but most of us have concluded that no, it isn't worth it. This is even more true (IMO) if you plan to pvp.

Given that, I'd recommend that you consider all 3 dps class as the same (that still puts you managing 3 diff classes). Given that, I'd go 3 mages. One thing that helps mitigate the extra mental overhead of multiboxing is that fact that you can blow shit up fast. Mages are, as I'm sure you know, generally better burst on demand than warlocks. Also, if you can give up the notion of the holy trinity (I know it's hard), 1priest 4mage is a compo known to be effective in lots of places in the game (especially world and BG pvp). Running solo instance won't be your forte tho. Nor will arenas.

Lastly, don't bother with the forums. In my other WoW life, I play a mage as my main, about equal parts pvp and pve. I won't claim they're without issues, but the bottom line to me is that they are fun to play, and if you don't suck can be competitive. The forum whining comes from groups of people who saw some mage wind up a ap-pom-pyro combo once and gib somebody and figured that's what playing the mage was all about, so they rolled one. Now they're all bent out of whack because it actually takes some effort to kill somebody, I guess. In any event, the class isn't broken, I expect it will get some (more) help in the future to be more in line with others, and most important (again), it's fun - what else matters?

P.S. I know you want your priest in the mix, but there's a reason so many people run 4-5 shaman. The synergy and simplicity of 5 of them just isn't equaled for m-boxing, IMO.

Anyway, hope that helps some. Good luck.

[Mak]

Putting my Trinity group On Hold was basically my way of adjusting for my relative newness to multiboxing.

With an all Shammy group it greatly simplifies many of the issues you'll encounter in multiboxing, and I need this simplification at the start, because I rather suspect that multiboxing five characters - ANY five characters - is a good deal harder than face planting your keyboard and rolling your head around...hehe.

So with that in mind, I wanted to make the learning curve as relatively easy as possible. Once I feel more in tune with multiboxing (and my Shammies are blowing through Heroics) I'll level the Trinity Group.

Hmm, so maybe I should do the same and level my 5x shaman crew. I'm running a 5 class crew (Pally, Priest, Druid, Mage, Lock) right now and from what I've read that's complicated and probably not best for a new boxer like me. Even though I am leaning towards my Druid crew. Oh, so many crews....so little time.

[OzPhoenix]

Putting my Trinity group On Hold was basically my way of adjusting for my relative newness to multiboxing.

With an all Shammy group it greatly simplifies many of the issues you'll encounter in multiboxing, and I need this simplification at the start, because I rather suspect that multiboxing five characters - ANY five characters - is a good deal harder than face planting your keyboard and rolling your head around...hehe.

So with that in mind, I wanted to make the learning curve as relatively easy as possible. Once I feel more in tune with multiboxing (and my Shammies are blowing through Heroics) I'll level the Trinity Group.

Hmm, so maybe I should do the same and level my 5x shaman crew. I'm running a 5 class crew (Pally, Priest, Druid, Mage, Lock) right now and from what I've read that's complicated and probably not best for a new boxer like me. Even though I am leaning towards my Druid crew. Oh, so many crews....so little time.

Mak, I know the feeling. I wasn't easy to put my Blood Elf team on hold, but from what I've read from the more experienced multiboxers, homogeneous class groups are far far easier to deal with. I can already see that just in the short space my own shammies have been levelling, in that I can simply duplicate their action bars and the bulk of my macroing is done right there (apart from inserting /assist in front of the spellcast actions etc). I needn't worry about variable spellcast timers and cooldowns, talent speccing across multiple classes or any of the other things that multi-class 5-boxers must contend with.

I have no doubts whatsoever that my Blood Elf team will be levelled, but I'm equally sure that by the time I do start levelling them, I'll be experienced enough with multiboxing to do it properly.