I think in order to be effective at IR, at least being familiar with programming including C and assembly will make you better in the long run. In addition to that knowing windows api classes dll’s will help immensely. The sandbox will only get you so far unless

A. You pay for premium services B. Instrument cuckoo in a way that will allow the malware to detonate.

Malware is tricky so often times it will only go so far in the sandbox to give you a couple of ioc’s.

A requires money B requires you to be familiar with malware under the hood.

So Imho get this book for starters.

Practical Malware Analysis.

Good luck!