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It’s been a number of levels since I began dual-boxing, and though my class make-up isn’t necessarily ideal, it’s actually proven to be pretty effective. Indeed, a Hunter/Shaman combination may seem strange at first, but it gives me the strength of the former’s DPS with the healing satisfaction of a Restoration Shammy. More specifically, my Survival Hunter offers excellent crowd control, while Earth Shield covers the brunt of my pet’s healing needs. In this manner, a good portion of my Shammy’s mana is put into nuking targets via Lightning Bolt, which only speeds up my killing.

Admittedly, I’ve been pretty lax about dropping totems other than Mana Tide (which conveniently keeps the group moving), and I know I could gain some DPS and other benefits from dropping totems more, but thus far I don’t have any major complaints about the system. In fact, I’ve run into some nasty situations I didn’t think would be possible to survive, but my dual-boxing setup effectively gives me the classic triad of tank/healer/DPS at the cost of only two characters.

This is not to say that I don’t have complaints with the system. For one, pathing for the Shammy is sometimes annoying, and I often have to reposition the Shammy mid-fight such that I break the /follow command when the Shammy pulls aggro. This is not often, but in fights versus elites, where I’m pumping out the heals pretty quick, I need to get my Hunter away from the Shammy such that I can continue shooting from afar.

I’m also ignoring a lot of good Hunter gameplay because of the Shammy safety net. That is to say, if I’m forced to melee, rather than get back into range, I’ll often just dump a couple heals on the Hunter until the pet regains aggro. This is not to say that I’m ruining my playstyle by dual-boxing, but merely that I need to ensure these new practices don’t stick around when my Shammy isn’t around.

The extra baggage space is also nice. My Shammy happens to be an enchanter, and disenchanting greens in the field is convenient, not to mention that I’m not inclined to take up extra space with pots and such since the Shammy covers all my healing/mana needs.

Experience-wise, I’m taking a hit in Outland because I’m splitting experience between two characters, while I’m fairly certain that I’m not necessarily killing mobs twice as quick. Nonetheless, I’ve been able to avoid gankers because they believe there are two people playing, and in about a third of cases where they don’t care, I quickly manage to overcome, either because they spend too much time on the Shammy, else because my Shammy’s healing keeps my pet and I afloat.

I’ve been ignoring collection quests with my Shammy, however, because of how annoying and time-consuming it is. This means that my Shammy isn’t bringing in as much experience as my Hunter, and oftentimes gets shut out of quests because they’re chained to a collection quest. Thus far, this hasn’t left my Shammy behind, but that’s because he was at a much higher level than my Hunter when I started dual-boxing. If a time comes where my Hunter has surpassed the Shammy by two or more levels, I may have to play catch-up with the Shammy, else use him with another alt in a similar setup.

(Since I’m not running with ground epic mounts yet, I’ve also held off on buying one for my Hunter, since I need both characters to travel at the same speed; though I already have enough money to get my Hunter an epic ground mount, I have to wait until I can afford one for my Shammy as well.)

Nonetheless, my dual-boxing configuration is a relatively low cost method to enable henchmen in WoW, with the only in-game cost being an extra repair bill.

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