The One Where It All Began

After reading various blogs and watching quite impressive videos of multiboxers completing instances on their own, I have decided to give it a try myself. In fact, I am not entirely new to multiboxing, as I already had another account and supported my main with a healer on several occasions. But now I decided to take it to the next level.

Before creating the multiboxing team, there is a bunch of stuff to decide, namely: the number of chars, faction, class, race, server and name.

Size

The first thing to decide is how many chars you want to multibox with. This can be anything from 2 up to 40. The most inexpensive and uncomplicated way is to simply play 2 chars simultaneously on the same computer. You wouldn't even have to setup special addons or macros if you have a healer alt follow your main. If your main is on low health, you can simply switch windows and throw out a heal.

The upper limit in World of Warcraft is the raid limit of 40. So far I've only heard of Xzin to try to accomplish that. Most multiboxers don't play more than 5 chars, as you can't quest in a raid, the XP per kill are reduced and also due to the costs involved concerning subscription fees and for the required hardware.

So, I also decided to go with 5 chars and hopefully I can convince my girlfriend to play a 5-char team as well so we can try to beat some 10-man content :)

Classes

Next thing would be the class setup of your team. What combination will be effective depends on the size of your group. As I stated before, a common 2-box setup is one tank/dps main followed by a healbot. With more chars it's easier to limit the number of classes as it would otherwise be very difficult to control all of them at once. Melee classes (warrior, rogue) are very hard to multibox with, except for 1 main char. Ranged dps classes are better for multiboxing as they don't have to be in melee range to do damage and some, like affliction warlocks, don't even have to face the enemy. In the end it depends on what you want to do with your multiboxing team. A team consisting of mostly mages would perform quite well in PvP due to the high amount of crowd control (sheeps, frost nova) and high burst damage (presence of mind + pyroblast), but would probably have some problems with running instances due to the lack of armor and healing.

I decided to go with a multiboxing “cookie cutter” group, namely 5 elemental shamans. They do ranged dps, can heal, ressurrect and have a fair amount of armor when using a shield. Also, some of their totems provide really nice bonuses for the group, like +15% chance to hit and crit from 5 totems of wrath. The downside of the shaman is that the class doesn't have any crowd control, only a snare in form of the earthbind totem. Oh, and they can't stealth, but that's something I will have to live with, I guess ;-)

Faction and Race

Prior to the Burning Crusade, only Horde could play shaman. Nowadays, Alliance Draenei can also become shaman. If you absolutely want to play a shaman team on the Alliance side, your choice will be insanely easy. If you answer your phone with “For the Horde!” or are undecided about the faction, the choice will be a little bit more complicated.

Let's take a look at the racial bonuses:

Draenei

• Gift of the Naaru: Activate to heal your target for 35 + 15 per Level over 15 sec - 40 yd range - 1.5 sec cast - 3 min cooldown. (At level 1 it heals 50 health, and 1085 at level 70)

• Inspiring Presence: Increases chance to hit with spells by 1% for you and all party members within 30 yards.

• Gemcutting: 5 point skill bonus to Jewelcrafting.

• Shadow Resistance: Increase Shadow Resistance by 10.

None of these racials are good for a 5-box shaman team. You basically only get a mana-free HoT every 3 minutes per shaman. For a non-healing class like e.g. hunter this might be a very useful tool, for shaman who have their own healing spells, it's just a little mana saver. Inspiring Presence is more or less useless as we get enough +hit from totem of wrath. Gemcutting and Shadow Resistance do not provide any good bonuses either.

Orc

• Blood Fury: Activate to increase attack power and spell damage/healing by an amount based on level/class for 15 seconds, decreasing healing done to the user by 50% for the duration. The cooldown is 2 minutes.

• Hardiness: Increase resistance to stun effects by 15%.

• Command: Damage done by Hunter and Warlock Pets increased by 5%.

• Axe Specialization: Expertise with Axe weapons increased by 5.

While Command and Axe Specialization are of no real use for an elemental shaman, do the other two racials provide some nice bonuses. 15% stun resistance from Hardiness is quite nice, especially in PvP and Blood Fury is essentially a free trinket for PvE. It's less useful for PvP due to the healing debuff.

Tauren

• War Stomp: Activate to stun opponents - Stuns up to 5 enemies within the area for 2 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.

• Endurance: Max Health increased by 5%.

• Cultivation: 15 point skill bonus to Herbalism.

• Nature Resistance: Increase Nature Resistance by 10.

Again, the last two bonuses are not really good, they merely provide a minor bonus to a profession and a little nature resistance. 5% more life due to Endurance is always nice to have, both in PvP and PvE. War Stomp truly shines in PvP, if you have a group of 5 Tauren, you can basically cast it every 24 seconds. Less usable in PvE but still nice as the shaman class itself lacks any form of stun.

Troll

• Berserking: Activate to increase attack and casting speed for 10 seconds. Speed is raised by 10% at full health, increasing as health is lost to a maximum bonus of 30%. 3 minute cooldown. Costs 7% of base mana.

• Regeneration: Increase health regeneration bonus by 10%. Also allows 10% of normal health regenerate during combat.

• Beast Slaying: 5% damage bonus to beasts.

• Throwing Weapon Specialization: Increase Throwing Weapon crit chance by 1%.

• Bow Specialization: Increase Bow crit chance by 1%.

Shaman use neither Bow nor Throwing Weapons, so the last two racials are, again, useless. Beast slaying might be nice to have, depending on what kind of mob is attacked. Most bosses do not belong into the beast category unfortunately. Regeneration is useless again, as shaman can heal. But the racial trait that really shines is Berserking. It's not for free and does cost some mana but it provides a nice buff with at least 10% casting speed increase. That directly translated into 10% increased dps for every troll in the party. Unlike the orc racial Blood Fury, it does not boost dps by a flat amount (and thus will stay the same all the time), but will scale with gear. If it gets better, so does the boost we will receive from this racial.

In terms of usefulness for a shaman 5-box team, I would say that Trolls offer the best racial traits, followed by Orcs, then Tauren and last Draenei (sorry Alliance).

Nonetheless, I decided to go with 5 female Orcs. Am I the only one who thinks that they are cute?

Server

There are multiple server types to choose from: PvP, PvE and RP. Being the carebear that I am, I would have chosen PvE if it wasn't for my girlfriend who is playing Horde on a PvP server. So, PvP it is and I am already looking forward to questing in Stranglethorn Vale... not!

Names

This was actually the hardest part. The best names are usually already taken, so depending on your naming ideas, you got to be a little creative here. I wanted to have Japanese style names, but most of the Japanese girl names were unavailable, so I ended up numbering them: Ichiban, Niban, Sanban, Yonban, Goban (=Number One, Number Two, Number Three, Number Four, Number Five).