I started out as a ranger in 1999, then switched to a rogue. From just playing the rogue, I slowly grew to 6 accounts by 2005 (only melee being my rogue, so he was tank). Stayed like that till 2008 and then I popped up to 9 accounts and shortly after I was at 10. The jump from 6 to more was when I found out about X-keys, Vetra's and Multiplicity, none of which should be a problem with SoE.
My 10 box team is:
Shadowknight: I went warrior first. Holy trinity was pounded in my head from the beginning. Only problem is, I rarely have deaths because I wasn't able to heal my tank (be it warrior or when I only had my rogue as "tank"). I usually got a toon dead or even a wipe of various degrees because of agro issues. So I switched to shadowknight and let me say, the SK is great at agro in all ways compared to the warrior. Hard targets will be harder though as the warrior's /disc for defensiv was great fo things like that. Still open to switch back to my warrior as only tank though as I think wit better gear he'll be more effective.
Rogue: He is my main and is better geared then all my other toons, although that is changing fast since the last time I actively raided him, the guild I was in was farmign Solteris and MMM. Although the raid dagger I have on him still exceeds group gearing, that will probably change with the next expansion. For now, he practically out DPS's all 80% of all my other accounts combied. I keep the rogue, that won't change.
Druid: He is almost lvl85 now. Got him to be nuker normally, DoTer when mobs have tons of hitpoints and secondary healer when needed. The flight of eagles, instant shared group invis and transports is nice, but not a must have. I find I don't really use him to secondary heal the tank much, but I do use him to hel my other none melee accounts....especially the cleric...if they grab agro since I have X-keys set-up on him for healing anyone of my accounts easily. Open to changing him out, although doing will greatly increase the chance that when my leric grabs agro, he dies.
Cleric: Yes there are mercs, but they can't go everywhere. Cleric is there for obvious reasons.
Shaman: Almost lvl85. Useful buffs for hitpoints and melee DPS. Every buff he has has a group version, so easy to buff all my toons. Not sure how beastlords compare. Not sure if I'd want to change out.
Enchanter: He is a buff bot and a weak nuker (almost lvl80). Every now and then I use him to pacify my rogues target for hard pulls. Works well and if he gets agro, he eats the death. I just about never use him to mez. I can reliably root mobs with the shaman easier. I really do like having his buffs on demand, but am open to changing him out after I get him to 85 and all AA's and gear to extend his buffs. Then can move him to a logical account where I can jus log him in for buffs when needed.
Mage (x4): 1 at lvl83 rest @78. I was impresse with my first mage. Having 4 is useful. My tank eats it on regular exp. mobs, the pets take over. Just wish I could give pets a permanent name like they do on EQ2, so that I can make a pet heal hotkey. Have not really worked on any of my mages healing ability and I don't really use mercs unless I have to. Maybe add more mages?
That's ten boxing, been doing that for a while and it's not too difficult. I like it in that, I think of myself as a melee player really, so I always have kept my tank and rogue in the kill group. I think even if I wasn't, it'd be logical to keep the tank advancing in levels/AA's. As for the rogue, if I consistently backstab, pretty much whatever goup he is in is the kill group. This set-up is not too bad to level up all toons. I simply switch out the other 4 spots depending on Lesson of devote being up or which class needs levels/AA's to balance em out. Currently, priority is to get my buff classes to lvl85 and extended buff AA's.
I hate to admit it, but I added two more accounts to be 12 in a zone for MM. This won't be useful much longer, but I am considering staying at 12. Certain classes can be made to mirror inputs of classes I already have off the control set-ups I use.....like more mages or a wiz or two. So adding two of either of those classes, will be almost no increase of difficulty to control for me.
Right now I added these from my other accounts:
Bard: lvl76. He is useful for hard pulls, although my rogue plus mage coth could already do alot of hard pulls and that was before they gave rogues Smokescreen disc (basically set a trap, pull mobs into to trap where they get mem wiped and then dazed for a short time, then pull a single mob from there. Usually works) or I can use SK to snare a mob away from pack, then coth with mage...so pull wise, I can live without having a bard. Bard also adds /melody and some of the songs would greatly increase melee and caster DPS. Not to mention mana songs. Open to switch out.
Warrior: This is the tank I went with first. His defensive /disc makes more things possible. Without his disc,he tanks about the same as my SK, maybe a little better. However, he is a bit behind in single target taunting and not even in the ballpark for AoE taunting comapred to my SK and in a big box team, that makes all the difference. It would be usful to also have a warrior as well as the SK. I can see doing some lower end raids where I have my warrior mindlessly repeating all of his normal taunt stuff via a G-13 gamepad auto-repeating his hotkeys with defensive running keeping the interest of the boss mob, while I rung around with SK killing adds. However, alot of those raids also through other crap in there like.....ducking according to an emote, getting a cure for a death touch by running to X NPC to hail or some other shit that I think is not possible for me to do. So it is likely that the warrior will be mostly unused for anything other then hard to use weak DPS. Open to switch out.
Controlling them: I run everything except my rogue and warrior off of one X-keys hooked up to a vetra.
For the 4 mages, cleric, shaman duid and enchanter, I basically hit one key and they all do various things, ranging from cleric doig two non agro heals on tank while the shaman malos or the shaman slows, while the enchanter weakens and the druid snares and then all do their nukes. I have keys for using 2 different nukes as well as keys for DoTs. Under normal conditions, controlling all ten of those is like controling one. They all also have individual X-keys for a more personalize controlling and if need be, I can move my mouse cursor to their screen to do mouse and keyboard control on em.
The rogue and tank is controlled either mouse/keyboard and or G-13 keypads. I haven't started really using the SK yet, but when I used my warrior, what I did was have him continously hitting taunt, kick, bash (maybe more?) via toggling on/off a G13 key. I'd pull with the rogue and run straight towards my warrior. Hit assist on warrior via the G13 gamepade and the warrior would start shooting arrows at mob. That is almost always enough forthe mobs to run straight to the warrior and be in perfect position for the warrior to tank. Once mob is near, I hit another G13 key and the warrior will start meleeing as well as do a /disc incite line. I had various endourance dependent /disc linked to the G13 if needed as well, ranging from more agro stuff to defensive stuff. The rogue I either play normal keyboard/mouse or I can also hit his G-13 keypad to have him toggle backstab on/off. If needed, I hit a G13 key that will have him evade and then go back to meleeing.
Controlling two melee's and 10 others is not too hard this way. Adding on more melee's would make it fairly difficult for me. I can see the warrior being useful for some stuff, but outside of that he'd be a 5th wheel. The bard would be nice to have, (I love their run speeds) but is primarly using him for /melody really useful over say another mage or maybe even a wizard? I can probably move him about to also have him assist the tank lke I do with my rogue, but that will take more input on my end and I doubt I'd always do it.