New to Multiboxing - Mage vs. Warlock Trio

[badonkadonks]

I've spent the last few days getting into the community, learning things, and I've super excited to give multi-boxing a try.

I'm still super new at things, so I'll be keeping it simple and playing 3 of the exact same class - maybe 4. I very much enjoy mindless farming in the open world, so my intent is to use this trio for mostly that to make money. I'll grind the entire way to 60 on my little PvE server, just to see how much money I'll make along the way. I've narrowed my choices down to Mages or Warlocks, but It's been absolutely ages since I've played Classic WoW. So I'll explain my rationale here and hopefully someone with much more experience can poke holes in my logic or point out my wrong assumptions!

Mage: Mages seem like a dangerous bet for me. They obviously do an insane amount of damage, can port and will save a ton on water in the longrun. I fear that I may never be skilled enough at multi-boxing to efficiently AOE dungeons or packs in the open world. Am I'm also worried about mana consumption and constantly having to drink, especially since only one character will get gear past 60.

Warlocks: Locks have acertain attraction for me! It seems like there's a larger margin for error with their pets being able to pick up the slack if I pull too much. Being able to dot-dot-tab-dot-dot also seems like a very easy way to grind out the levels, and make gold at 60. My only real concern is if 3 Lock dots are enough to chunk down most in-world monsters without me having to stop and reapply? All in all, I'm definitely leaning towards Warlock, but hopefully someone with much more experience can tell me if I'm being ridiculous or not with my assumptions here.

Hunters: In all the discord conversations I've perved, and all the threads I've read here, I've never seen anyone talking about multi-boxing hunters. I fear it may be a silly question to some, but why is this?

[Lanser84]

I personally would go warlocks in a heart-beat. I love the affliction play-style. And, as you said, they have a huge margin for error (pets, fear, death coil, drain life, soul stone).

With a single lock, I was usually able to juggle 2-3 mobs between pets, dots and drain-tanking while leveling.
2-4 warlocks will be VERY effective in open-world PVE content.

Can you kill without reapplying DOTs? Yes.
1. Based on my memory of classic, Agony+Corruption from 3-4 locks should kill any non-elite mob without a problem.

2. That's from memory. What does math tell us?
Damage: Let's test using only two instant-cast dots in the mid-level range. Rank 4 corruption and Agony (lvl 34,38 respectively), 1 application of each does 828 raw damage over 24 seconds.
Mob Health: Rumbling exile (lvl 38-39) seems a fair enough test case. I haven't been able to find authoritative classic wow mob health numbers, but retail wowhead says 2,015 health, classicdb says 1,600-1,700 health.
Either way, 3 sets of agony+corruption kill it with lots of room to spare (with no: gear, talents, pet damage, wand damage, drain life, etc.).

3. In Mirai's video from the classic demo where he plays 5 warlocks, he's killing elites rapidly (adding immolate as well).

RE: Hunters: Most multiboxers shy away because of having to manage the hunter dead-zone between melee and ranged, particularly in mixed-class parties. (Independently moving characters isn't efficient) 3 DPS+pets should keep things at range 95% of the time, though. The other issue I see is that they don't scale up to multiples as well as your other options because their forte is focus-fire (rather than AOE like mages, or multi-DOTing like affliction warlocks).

[nodoze]

Priest + Warlocks would be fun and pretty forgiving to me (Dwarf Priest+Gnome Locks likely best overall for PVP). Life tapping with AoE heals would be pretty much non stop (especially if the priest had strong mana regen).

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EDIT: I agree with Lanser84's great comments above & with Peregrine's great comments below.

EDIT2: To me a lot of it comes down to whether you ever want to do battlegrounds and what class(es) do you want to play in the BattleGrounds. For me some of the funnest times I have ever had in any game is guarding the Flag in WarSong Gulch as a Night Elf Shadow Melded with a Prowling cat pet...

If you have any interest in Hunters (or in pushing any extreme content with a solo character) Hunters are one of the best solo classes and they can do some things better than any other class in the game. Multiple Hunters in a group are often sub-optimal but I would NOT shy away from having 1 Hunter in a group especially if you are a Ranged group and plan to drive from the Hunter. A hunter can actually add stability in that case due to Distracting Shot, traps, & other tools... Hunter pets can be the best Tank pets in the game (self heals & auto-cleanses) and a Hunter can do amazing things with Feign Death and ShadowMeld. Personally rather than 3 Warlocks+Priest I would have WAY more fun with:

• - Hunter (PVP/PVE: Night Elf or Orc/Troll);
• - 2 Warlocks (PVP/PVE: Gnome or Undead or maybe Orc);
• - 1 Priest (PVP/PVE: Dwarf or Troll);

[Peregrine]

Let me add my input:

Mage trio: extremely good for making money food and water wise, most potent aoe farm class for lower level dungeons. Can wipe a group of stacked people without any issue if you know what to do (vs medium potent pvpers). Can one shot people with fireblast or arcane missles (with 5/5 interrupt talent) , can't stop it so bascially, you're shooting 15 arcane missles in a single go plus 3x instant fireblast.

Hard to manage if you're not exped boxer. Extremely mana dependant. Cloth wearing so any good rogue will disable 3 mages at same time and 1 shot mage.
Require alot of skill to play properly in pvp. Fast leveling.

Warlock: best class to level in boxing setup in world. Easy to manage trio, dot n run requires almost no focus regarding follow interaction. Squishy versus melee as well, unless you know how to counter melee as lock. Most potent synergy with priest. 3 pets make you able to properly do dungeons, can do nice dmg with proper setup.

Slow farming dungeon, before p2 you will be dummy if caught single. Susceptible to dispells. Requires top gear to be effective to max.

[zipzip]

Question to piggyback this thread: would 3x warlock be okay to use in a traditional tank/dps/healer dungeon setup? I would be okay with the talents being single target oriented or AoE oriented -- I'm mostly wondering how they might compare to mages (even if they are worse, how much worse?).

The thought of 3x warlock is appealing to me since they have so, so little downtime. Free water is great, but not needing to use water is even better. Even if my healer needs water and I have to pay for it, it ultimately feels like paying for faster leveling which is an okay trade-off to me. No time lost making water, no time lost consuming water.

edit: I almost forgot - I also like the small benefit of paying a little less for mounts for the group on the way up.