Multi-Boxing WOW’s 5-Man Content

My tri-box leveling experiment in World of Warcraft has been moving along smoothly.  I have most of the kinks worked out for coordinating combat.  It’s less tool controlled and not as sophisticated as the setups I’ve read about on Dual-boxing.com.  Yet it works for me.  Now that I understand the underlying mechanics of multi-boxing, I might revisit my setup.

The quick nature of WOW combat hadn’t entered my mind when I decided to give multi-boxing a try.  It was comments from my previous posts on the subject made me nod my head in agreement – yes, WOW combat can be very fast, which makes multi-boxing more challenging.  Not paying attention when I was running the trio to Scarlet Monastery ended in a wipe.  I walked them right into a cluster of level 15 elite mobs that are on a parallel road to SM.  By the time I looked over and realized what I had done, I didn’t switch control off the dead main character in time to run away and save the other two.  Or the strange way Mind Flay sometimes gets cast on something other than the intended target, even though all the other attacks from the character just before Mind Flay in the macro landed on the right target.  This oddity with that one spell sometimes pulls adds that pound us into the dirt.  Yep, things can get out of control very quickly in WOW combat.

I’ve leveled three classes to max level (70 for TBC) – Warlock, Priest and Druid.  I’ve leveled another Priest, Hunter and Paladin into the 50s, where they were abandoned on PVE servers I’d rolled on to play with friends.  Unfortunately, those friends eventually left the game and my characters were stuck where they were, with no real reason for me to stay there anymore.  That's about to change soon and the, "never gonna happen" transfers from PVE to PVP will be enabled.  Between leveling the classes I wanted to play and re-rolling others to play with friends over the years, I've had more characters in WOW than all other MMOs I've played combined. 

Suffice it to say, I've leveled more than I'd care to in WOW.  Yet here I am leveling three more??? For me the multi-boxing isn’t about leveling more characters or playing new classes. I’ve already played the classes I had any interest in playing in WOW.  It was mostly a quirky thing to putz around with while helping a cousin who’d recently subscribed but left very quickly.  After her departure, I thought, oh well I’m here let me do something unusual while seeing some of my favorite zones - the lower tiered zones in Azeroth.  Thirty-six levels later on the Mage and thirty-five on the two Priests, I’m still here and I have a feeling this trio might hit Outlands.

The biggest thing that has propelled me forward is the unique challenge of coordinating combat across 3 characters for normal questing and a 4th when I do the 5-man content.  Obviously single pulls are face-roll for three linked characters.  Taking on +8 levels and elites aren’t and those are the interesting encounters to work out.  Even more fun are the 5-mans that I’m doing solo, 4-boxed for the most part.  I do it once to have done it then repeat a couple of times to upgrade gear across the trio.  My real goal is to solo all the 5-man content in Outlands and Northrend, provided I make it that high in level.

I didn’t see any of the 5-man content in WOW past Hellfire Peninsula.  Shocking isn’t it?  I was in a raiding guild even when I wasn’t raiding anymore.  When TBC released everyone wanted to race to level cap again to continue raid progression.  This was the focus and encouraged by the guild leaders – heads down and level.  The heavy hitters, my son included, hit max in less than 2 weeks and went back to raiding.  I didn’t but with a majority of the guild racing to max level, no one was interested in coordinating 5-man content.  I tried a few PUGs and ended up with experiences similar to the reasons I’d stopped PUG’g.  I decided that I’d just level and see the stuff later but later never came.

If these characters make it to Outland there’s a whole layer of content I never saw and an opportunity to challenge my boxing skills on normal and heroic modes if I choose to get that serious about it.  I’d also have to decide that I want to pay for 5 WOW accounts.  We’ve had that many in the past, all subscribed simultaneously, so it’s not foreign to my bank account.  I was even sub’d to EQ2 and EVE during long stretches bringing the subs at times to 7 or 8 MMOs per month.  Right now I have no subscriptions other than WOW.  I parked EVE again, along with W101.  The only other MMO I expect to spend some time in later this year is Runes of Magic which is free-2-play.

If I do make the run to 5-box all the Outlands’ 5-man content, I will add my Paladin and Warlock into the mix.  The group composition would be Protection Paladin (tank), Affliction Warlock (DPS), Arcane/Frost Mage (DPS/CC/AOE), Shadow Priest (DPS/utility) and Disc/Holy Priest (healer).

Often times, players who have the ability to form static groups or are part of amenable active guilds, don’t understand how much solo players, duo players or players who can’t subscribe to the rigor of raiding, still have a strong desire to see the instanced content.  The reason some have continued to ask for solo, duo or trio instances is NOT because we want welfare epics.  It’s because we want to see the content too.  So if they can scale it from 25 to 10 (coming soon to a patch near you), along side flipping the difficulty, one day I hope they consider sliding it to 5 or 3.  They can remove the damn loot and just give nice XP.  Perhaps have a one time only quest reward and the other times after it’s just XP.

I rolled on the Illidan server day one of my time in WOW.  Illidan Stormrage is my favorite lore character.  I read the War of the Ancients trilogy just to learn more about Illidan and his decent into darkness.  Yet for all that interest, I’ve never stepped foot in Black Temple.  I never saw the lore character I would have loved to see above all others because I wasn’t interested in maintaining my 2nd job, WOW raiding.  I think it’s sad how few players saw those encounters and how many instances are dormant now.  They could fix that by letting people just get leveling XP and scale them down.  But I’ve digressed to a tangent.  If I fork over for 5 subscriptions again for WOW, it will be to see all the 5-man content I missed in Outlands and a guaranteed seat for them in Northrend.

Comments

[Hudson]

This is when I knew I was done in WoW. Crazy experiments like this. I used RAF to really power level some horde toons and then realized "what for?" but I understand the draw of the challenge at first.

Same thing in Everquest 1. near the end I was a pro at power leveling in Paludal Caverns with a druid. The game became less of playing the game and more of thinking up crazy ways to level.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Hudson - Excuse me, did you just call me crazy? :-)

[Mallika]

Saylah, I just realized you had quite a few posts beneath the "shingle-hanging" one. I hadn't really looked down below it -- I didn't know it was a sticky-type that would always stay on top.

[Iggep]

In BC there was a definite need to revisit each of the 5-man dungeons in order to grind each rep for each faction. Initially you needed to get to revered in order to then access the heroic versions, but they eventually changed that to honored. Still, there were many items like specific weapons, or recipes that required exalted rep and you simply needed to run each dungeon dozens of times in order to get that rep up. Or if you were lucky, have the money to buy rep turn-in items to do it/supplement. My main up to WotLK was my Druid and I needed the two-handed mace from Cenarian so I ended up running Steam Vaults close to 30 times before I got to exalted.

The biggest difference between the 5-man content in BC and WotLK is that the 5-man content post-raiding means even less now than it did then. In BC there were still items that were very useful from the factions that greatly helped you in Karazhan. That really isn't the case in WotLK and is the reason behind the upcoming emblem changes in patch 3.2. They're trying to give people more of a reason to run the 5-man content again (does that really make sense right now with the instance population problems??).

Anyway, the only real reason right now to run instances at all is to rep grind, or for the achievements. There is plenty of gear attainable outside of the dungeons to get you into Naax.

The problem with the Black Temple was largely the same problem with the original Naax. Or more aptly, it was the "problem" with linear raiding. BT required you to have cleared a great deal of previous raid content prior to the "nerf". Prior to the change that enabled you to walk in without the "key" there was a very, very, small percentage of raiders that were actually able to get into BT. That changed after the "nerf", but that was well after you had stopped playing. You can see how Blizzard addressed that type of problem in WotLK by designing a series of raids without keying requirements (except EoE). I think that is not only good for individual raiders, but good for the game in general. Instead of forcing players to jump through specific hoops to get into the next raid, the key factor instead becomes gear (wasn't it always though?). Also, the raids now overlap more than they did previously. You don't really need to fully clear the previous level of raid content before you can start on the next. Similiar to what we first started experiencing with SSC and TK.

I went off on a tangent here.... :)

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Mal - Hmm, maybe I should just take it down. I'm posting more than I originally thought I would. You're probably not the only person who hasn't realized there are posts.

@Iggep - What you've described is part of the reason I stopped raiding and left WOW. There was always a gear-check then you had to do the key-check, run them repeatedly mastering them, run them repeatedly to get gear for the next gear-check and farm continuously for gold to pay repairs and comps. After a while I just didn't find any of that fun or entertaining. I would like to see all the 5-mans though and it would be cool to "solo" them.

[Solidstate]

@Saylah, is a multi-class 5-box setup such as you describe the usual?
It's my understanding that having 5 separate chars each with a different skill set is considered too hard to control- that's why you see stuff like 4xMages usually.

However if you are going for a multi-char setup...

"Protection Paladin (tank), Affliction Warlock (DPS), Arcane/Frost Mage (DPS/CC/AOE), Shadow Priest (DPS/utility) and Disc/Holy Priest (healer)."

I would look at going for more synergy, heavy nuking and survivability (in case a mob decides to go after a dps or healer before you have time to react with your tank).

Tank: yes paladins are great but DKs are even better. A tanking unholy DK will give you: +13% spell dmg on target (Ebon Plague), improved survivability vs. spells for self and group, even better AoE tanking than Paladins (well for now, who knows in 3.2...)

DPS: Moonkin, Shaman (Elemental), Mage or Lock (destruction). Battle-rez from Moonkin, Heroism+totems from Shaman, and all 3 caster types will benefit from the DK's Ebon Plague and from the same type of shaman totems and all 3 can AoE although you do lose a bit in that department compared to the setup you suggested.

Plus if I'm not mistaken Moonkin gives +hit on target, same as s-priest. Plus in a pinch, the moonkin can OT and both the Moonkin and Shaman can off-heal.

Healer - tough call, but if you're going for 5-man content anything should work well. Sure, why not a priest :)

Everything I'm writing btw is not from experience, I don't have the financing to multi-box. So take what I advise with a grain of salt :)

Best of luck,
Solid

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Solid - Yes, I think the route I'm attempting is less common than 5 of the same class using different specs. I had a devil of a time coordinating in the Paladin to tank. His behavior and timing is different from the 3 caster types but was easier to integrate than a druid tank.

My line-up is based on what I have available already sitting at 70 that can join in the group. I have three 70s with great gear - Warlock, Paladin and Druid. I don't want to level up anything other than the trio I started out boxing. Had I started off with the idea of 5-boxing upfront, I might have chosen differently. At this juncture I decided on the 5-man of convenience.

When the trio hits Outland I'll have two 70s boxing in with 60s. This will give me the luxury of learning to 5-box the higher end content with a slight advantage. By the time I have five 70s and move to Northrend, I should have my act down.

One advantage I should consider from your comment is Moonkin DPS. A downside is that Moonkin DPS from what I know is VERY gear dependent, much more so than any of the other caster classes. However, having 3 characters that require cloth can be troublesome. Using a Moonkin would allow me to have on less cloth wearer when trying to divide the gear/loot.

As far as the Druid dropping to OT. I don't think my prowess would allow me to survive that situation. The coordination and preparation for swapping out like that would be hard to box. If all goes bad, I'd just wipe and with the Warlock soul stone, the Priest or Paladin will just rez the group.

[RomaGoth]

Too bad you didn't roll on my server (Durotan). Yes, I decided to start playing WoW again about a month ago. This coincides with my new job that is 2500 miles away from my family, thus I have too much free time until next summer. So, I got my warlock to 80 and have raided Naxx a couple of times. I also have a 70 hunter/70 rogue/72 Death Knight/27 paladin. I would love to run some stuff with you, never really got the chance to do so in ROM. What server are you on/going to be on for Outland and Northrend?

Roma

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Ah the way from family work assignments. Been there and done that for a couple of years, many moons ago. Definitely a good time to have a love MMO. I wasn't playing MMOs back than. I spent a vast amount of time reading.

I'm on Whisperwind which is where I'll be staying. Today's post explains that I've moved even my personal 70s there so that's where the boxing will commence. I'd be more than happy to drop one of my characters for a real live body in 5-mans. Keep tabs on me and you'll know if and when the trio hits Outlands.

[RomaGoth]

@Saylah

Drop me an email with your characters names and faction (I assume alliance?).

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Roma - My information is
Whisperwind
Alliance
Main trio character: Alysiaa (only one whose chat I'd see)

Level 70s bopping around that you might see on when I'm crafting stuff for the tri-box: Vellora, Baalbek or Aylissia.

[EverQuest Accounts]

I believe all sorts of experimentation can be done after you become adept at something. This is quite a detail and comprehensive posting on Multi-Boxing WOW.