Paladin 5x team

[zayin]

Hi all! I'm fairly new to the game itself and my main is a Hunter, which I don't intend to multibox with.
On the meantime I decided to try multiboxing as I find it fun to experiment with things, scripts and so on.
I've started a 5x Paladin team, which are almost level 11. The first thing that I noticed despite I started just 2 days ago, is that multiboxing works in a such way that you end up learning the class more deeply.

In other words I think that multiboxing has some didactic vaule, and this is my first question: what is your experience with multiboxing in this respect? Did it made you an overall better player outside of multiboxing itself?

My second question is someway related to the first one. I want to learn to play well my Paladin team, but I wonder what's the best spec for the 5 toons.
On one side I want to play all 3 specs in order to learn the ins and outs of both retri, prot and holy.
But on the other side I understand that this would overcomplicate things, especially with the holy paladin, because as for now I have 1 main paladin which attacks the target, and the other 4 just assist it. With the addition of an holy paladin I would need to keep him at a distance while I attack with the tank and assist with the other 3.
So what are your thoughts on that? And what about when I'll reach level 80 with my toons? Would then a holy paladin be a must? Will it be a requirement to have a dedicated healer for heroic dungeons (especially FOS/POS)?

Thank you in advance!

[dailybs]

Prot Pala and 4 rets once you reach art of war talent can be good I hear and after that you get divine storm healing and with t10 set bonus even more of it, imo that's the best team comp for 5 pallies right there.

[Repc]

For keeping distance with holy you can setup keybind: while pressed IWT+CTM or follow main and when released move backward (use this before pull). You can also setup different keys move backward, left, right while pressed and forward while released etc. Also setup some nice mouse broadcast click to heals before joining lvl 15 dungeon.

[zayin]

Thank you very much everyone for the suggestions!

I've reached level 12 today with all 5 toons, I can't wait to start dungeons as random people insulting me for multiboxing is startomg to get a little boring :D

Any suggestion for healing? What kind of steeps should I implement once I do mouseover?
Should I use mouseover to select the target that I want to heal, and then use a key to heal it? For example, mouseover on tank will make the healer target the tank, and then I need to press alt+1 for holy light, alt+2 for flash of light and so on?
Or should the mouseover do everything in a single step: select the target and heal him?
If the latter, how do I manage to choose which action to perform on the target? (Cleanse, holy light and so on)

[xandor]

Since you want to have a holy paladin then you can probably just send a different spell on based on which mouse button you use, so left click on health bar = Holy Light, right click = cleanse etc.
In isboxer I think you could use Grid + clique and then just mouse broadcast.
In hotkeynet or anything similar I think you could check what coordinates was clicked and then send a keypress to trigger a macro to the client based on what coordinates was pressed and which mouse button was used.

Paladins are the most fun multiboxing team in my opinion. It really feels like a team that work together and not just stacking a bunch of characters and the combat feels great.

I have leveled many teams of paladins, with and without changing the main character to a dk when it becomes available. (if you want to pvp with the team then you kinda want a dk leader since it gives slow, death grip, attack speed buff, attack power buff, str and agi buff, water walking and other things. It is no fun having 5 paladin chase a mage or hunter that is kiting you with no way to slow or pull them toward you)

Personally I prefer to play as all characters being retri all the time although a retri tank is a little squishy late game.
I don't think I actually played the dungeons after UK/nexus with only paladins, I think I only did it in the teams with dk+4 palas but UK and nexus normal is doable with 5 retri paladins at the intended level and most heroic dungeons is easy to do with dk+4 retri paladins.
With 4 repentance it is easy to do FoS normal as a fresh team of level 80 without buying any gear or anything, maybe 2k GS. Need to manually walk into the dungeon since the requirement is much higher.

I split up my Grid health bars into multiple parts.
Each health bar is split up into 4 parts so top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. When I press top left of first health bar, then it means paladin 2 uses holy light on paladin 1. When I press bottom left on 5th health bar it means paladin 4 uses holy light on paladin 5.
Using this way I can make sure that I can heal different targets with each paladin, or multiple heal same, and that the mana usage gets spread out on all the paladins.

Another healing method I use is to setup numpad to heal with like Numpad0 = holy light on paladin 1, Numpad1 = holy light on paladin 2...
This also is on a round robin so if I press Numpad0, Numpad0, Numpad2, Numpad4 then paladin 2 and 3 uses holy light on paladin 1 and paladin 4 uses holy light on paladin 3 and paladin 5 uses holy light on paladin 5.

Another key for just "use holy light on yourself".
Also a few other things and also fol handling but that is a little harder since then art of war procs need to be handled, good to use stop spellcasting on a fol macro to use a instant heal with anyone that has art of war proc but not try to heal with anyone else.

All paladins can have Seal of Command with Glyph of Seal of Command for a lot of mana regen, the paladins never need to drink. Glyph of Seal of Command isn't needed with Judgement of the Wise talent but it is great with both to allow Consecration to be used more freely.

For cleansing I have a round robin that changes who they cast on, each press rotates who the paladin uses cleanse on so I can spam a button without selecting any target and they will all be cleansed and even if someone is dead they will still cleanse. If one character has multiple debuffs then it also means that several paladins with help cleanse that character by spamming the button.

Was kinda funny when I leveled on frostmourne and I joined a guild with some multiboxers and some regular players and the regular players complained about how every group got disbanded and their dungeons was a mess while I was running dungeons nonstop with no drinking and no wipes :)

[Repc]

First make ui layout and then repeater from tank to healer https://isboxer.com/wiki/Repeater_Region. If you st dps key is 1 and 2 is aoe. On holy you can eg. set 1 and 2 to spam hl or fol mouseover. So when you main tank cursor is top of tank layout, holy keep spamming hl or fol while rest team doing dps. mousescrollup for cleanse, down for some insta heals etc. (change mouse default zoom for eg. ctrl+mousewheelup/down) I have mmo mouse with many buttons, I keep mounts, follow, heals on mouse and dps, bjurts, interrupts on keyboard. alt+1 sounds too complicated try setup heals so you can dps and heals same time, add some oh sh*t button eg F5 or F6 for bubble insta heals for tank.

For art of war procs heals on button release stopcasting, jump or move backward.
On pressed jump and on released cast art of war procs heals should work too. without adding delay.

[zayin]

Thank you very much for the suggestions, even if I didn't have much time to play I feel that I improved a lot :D
I've dome a mouseover healing as you suggested and I was so excited when in dungeon the mobs started attacking the tank and I was able to heal him with my healer while I kept dpsing with the other toons!
After a while though 5 mobs attacked me and it was too overwhelming, then one of them lost interest in the tank and went straight to the healer!
I was able to save the healer but then a Shaman attacked me from distance and when he was almost dead he ran away to call for backup, and my team was dead soon after!
The tank is lvl 13 and it was hard to keep the aggro, I wonder when will he learn some useful spells to keep aggro on him? I hope soon :D

On a sidenote, something strange happened... I played for 1 or 2 hours, and within that timeframe my first character disconnected from the server two times. The first time when I was still in Orgrimmar trying to make the mouseover work, and the second time while inside of dungeon.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the new rule about multiboxing. I'm sure it wasn't my connection fault because only the first client disconnected, and then I was able to login again in a matter of seconds. Usually when I disconnect and I try to reconnect, I need to do it three or four times before the "a character with the same name is already logged" goes away.

[xandor]

Dungeons seem a lot harder at the start, upon reaching lvl 20 they start to become easy.

If you use a holy and prot paladin then you need to drink but with retri paladins you don't (after lvl 20), but around level 41 your prot paladin should be getting mana from healing received so probably not too bad, you could also spec your tank into Seal of Command since it deals holy damage to 3 enemies so it is great for tanking and with glyph of seal of command you regen mana.
I am not sure what spec is best to go for, but if I used a prot pala I think I would probably still go for 11 points in ret first to get Seal of Command early to really help with tanking.

I think progress kinda goes like:
<20 - very hard.
20-40 - not too hard but don't want to pull too much.
40+ - Can beat 2-3 packs of mobs at the same time without any character dying.
That is with 5 ret paladins btw, with a prot it might be easier if you can avoid a bunch of the damage. The main issue is if the enemies can kill you before you can get heals off.

At 14 you get your first taunt.
You get Righteous Fury at lvl 16, it gives more threat from holy damage.
You also get Hand of Reckoning at lvl 16 which is a taunt with 8 seconds cd that also does damage if the enemy is not currently attacking you, so 4-5 Hand of Reckoning deals a lot of damage, at lvl 80 4 Hand of Reckoning is enough to 1 shot a non elite.

At 20 you get Consecration, Blessing of Kings and Exorcism.

Level 16, 20 and ~40 is the most important levels where you see your power really increasing.

For the connection issues, I think that was just today on icecrown. Seen people write about it but I haven't had any issues on Lordaeron which I mostly play on.

[zayin]

Thank you for the replies! In fact I play exclusively on Lordaeron and it seems it will take a lot for me to reach 80 with all my chars!

In the meantine I've installed a local server on my computer to test my multiboxing team freely.
I've made 5 insta 80 paladins and configured my multiboxing software of choice (I'm using HotKeyNet).
I've configured everything, comprised mouseover healing, I've tried my first normal dungeons, and thanks to your suggestions it seems that everything work as expected!

I've dressed my team with full heroics for the purpose, but now I want to try a more plausible setup: I want to dress every team member as I would likely end up once I reach 80 in Lordaeron.
Do you have any suggestion about this? For example as a weapon I can choose one of the rewards from "The Champion's Call" quest in Zul'Drak Arena.
What about armor, jewelry and trinkets?

[xandor]

A huge thing for doing dungeons I recommend is to setup so you can easily use repentance on 3-5 enemies (depending on how many paladins you have and how many are ret).
On ctrl + z I use round robin on the paladins and assist my target and set it as focus. Then when I press Z all the paladins use repentance on their focus target.
This is fast enough that I can setup focus target while moving from 1 group to another and then repentance, without really having to stop.

Ye, you will probably use the weapon from Zul'Drak arena (De-Raged Waraxe), it is easy to do it. I forgot which items you will have but there is a few items from group quests mainly in icecrown I think that is a little better.

On my team on Frostmourne that I haven't played too much after reaching 80 and it was in an early phase so couldn't do ICC dungeons, couldn't get relentless gear and also I don't think I got all the quest items since it is faster xp, I have these items:
Faceguard of Punishment - 187 ilvl from Utgarde Pinnacle quest.
Furious Gladiator's Pentant of Victory - honor item.
Spaulders of the Giant Lords - The Sons of Hodir Revered, you won't be able to get these on Lordaeron because of slower rep.
Furious Gladiator's Cloak of Victory - again honor item.
Battleplate of Unheard Ovation - 183 ilvl chest from a quest in icecrown.
Battlescar Spirebands - 174 ilvl bracers from a quest in icecrown.
Deadly Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets - again a honor item. You can buy Relentless gloves for 8000 honor + 440 arena points so if you lose some arena over 2 weeks then you get a decent item.
Belt of the Singing Blade - some conquest marks item I got, probably got it because I had a really low ilvl belt.
Snaptooth Legplates 154 ilvl, really bad item.
Furious Gladiator's Greaves of Triumph - another honor item.
Signet of Baron Sliver - 174 ilvl ring from a quest in icecrown.
Band of Motivation - 175 ilvl ring from oculus quest.
Chuchu's Tiny Box of Horrors - 174 ilvl - ap/crit trinket from - from quest in icecrown.
Crusader's Locket - 174 ilvl - ap/expertise trinket - from quest in icecrown.
Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Justice - the flash of light libram is great when using ret paladins for healing, if you use a dedicated healer then you wouldn't use it but if you use a ret team then you should get one, but furious of course. The libram only costs 12k honor, you get a lot more from doing wg weekly quests so you can get a libram right away.

Based on these items I think you can get 154-183 ilvl items in each slot from questing.

I can't see what GS I have but I have at least gotten 73 Emblems so I have done a bit of dungeons with this gear.
Completed Heroic UK, Nexus, AN, Old Kingdom, Drak Tharon Keep with this gear.
Normal mode with this team I did all except for Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning. (and TotC and ICC dungeons but those wasn't out when I played on this team)
The easiest dungeons are Heroic UK and Nexus, although I think Forge of Souls are about same difficulty and much more rewarding and I think Forgemaster Garfrost in Pit of Saron is doable with 2k GS so can get 219 ilvl weapon quickly after reaching 80.

Halls of Lightning, Oculus and Trial of the Champion is the hardest dungeons for a melee team. Last boss in Pit of Saron is also really hard.
I beat Halls of Lightning heroif for the first time some day ago on my 5.7k GS team, it was a really close fight against Ionar. I have beaten Oculus normal but haven't tried heroic (I think it took ~10 tries on normal to beat last boss so didn't want to do that again...). I haven't bothered with Trial of the Champion because it needs settings things up properly to do it but should be doable.

[zayin]

Wow thank you very much for the detailed reply!
I'm definitely saving this for future use :D
A little update: I've tried FoS normal and I was unable to kill the second boss, the gigant head. When he started to put the purple holes on grounds and all adds spawn, I was dead in seconds :D
As for gear, I've dressed my team with the best BoE items that usually are sold on AH.
I think it would be very hard to beat that boss because I need to move every toon away from damaging ground.
Any suggestion about that? :D

[xandor]

When Devourer of Souls uses Well of Souls you need to move as quickly as you can.
Normally I just use follow and move my leader and my other characters get out of the effect but if you don't have enough health to have time to survive it then you might need to use some key to move all characters forward or walk to the side to get out faster.

The boss does a leap onto one of the characters when using Well of Souls but it is really hard to see when you are standing on top of it so you have to be really careful and try to react instantly when it happens.

Oh ye, one thing I didn't think about when playing 5 paladins is that you lack interrupts so that makes things a little harder, Hammer of Justice should still work to interrupt but it has a much longer cd.
Since I use a DK as tank I can interrupt Phantom Blast which hits pretty hard.

[mier]

I'd replace one paly with a DK tank.
Make the DK blood/frost hybrid.
Having https://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=55610
and https://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=53138 is just too good to skip.
And in case you wanna do PvP you'll need that deathgrip and slow effects.

[fdbsfhe4rfar]

5x pala is second best team imo. dks are better in every thing.
palas are good for beginning multiboxing, though. once you reach 55 create a dk team.

5x rets can solo dungeons you dont need a tank/dedicated healer. use art of war talent and flash heal its good enough. 5x wings also ;)

[mier]

5x pala is second best team imo. dks are better in every thing.

Why would you choose a DK team over palys in PvE?
Even 4 DKs and a dedicated healer aren't as good for dungeons as 1DK 4ret.