My PvE 5 Box Blog

[Xzin]

Very nice! Hehe @ G15 kb - those things are huge!

Don't get much more instant than synchronised macro casts. Tab, 1, 2 and some poor schmuck has 19 insta-cast DoTs on him and is feared. I can only imagine the poor joy of running around spamming 10 arcane explosions by just pressing 1,1,1,1,1,1,

Yes, I will give you that I am not talking about going up against a single target or spamming AoEs though. (Although there is a time and a place when thats fun - hi 2 u AV) I am talking about arenas or large scale PvP when you might have multiple targets engaged at the same time - and multiple effects going off on you at the same time to boot. Which also sometimes happens in PvE - in which you can't just spam stuff and expect to stay alive.

[hapiguy314]

Does the G15 Keyboard work with the Vetra multiplier if you get the USB to PS/2 Adapter?

[Xzin]

No. I really really doubt it would. Not saying I am 100% certain though as I have not tested it.. but I really don't think it would work.

I wish it would - it would make it much easier to multibox and MUCH cheaper.

But due to the nature of how they work (different signals, signal clocks, etc) and the fact that the USB to PS/2 is a host based device, I highly doubt it.

[Flight]

To be honest I haven't had the chance to test the G15 with any kind of multiplier, but I doubt it would work easily.


I've got most of my macro's done now. The BC macro system is very new to me so feel free to offer advice through this thread, on alternatives or ways of doing things better.

Focus target is new to me. For those who don't know it, it sets a secondary target which you can reference.

This is useful for healing while fighting, without changing melee target, amongst other utlitity abilities.




For example, on the Pallie (main tank) I have set a macro for each character in the party using this to heal them, mid fight.

/focus Alight - sets Alight as my focus target, without losing my attack target

/cast [target=focus] Holy Light - casts Holy Light on my focus target



Its extremely useful for using the new Paladin taunt ability, Righteous Defense. This is a targeted spell, that taunts three attackers off your target and on to you. It also recalculates the aggro table and puts you on the top. Without focus target we would need to change target to use it, but with Focus we do :



/focus Clight - sets Clight as focus target without losing attack target


/cast [target=focus] Righteous Defense


This instantly taunts the attackers off one of your party without having to lose your attack target.


This is a good place to mention the #show command. Put at the top of a macro it defines the icon your macro will be displayed at if you select the question mark icon. Its useful initially to not have to look through many icons to get the one you want, but later it is essential for more complicated macros.


So our Taunt macro is now :


#show Righteous Defense
/focus Deelight
/cast [target=focus] Righteous Defense


This sets Deelight as our secondary target, keeps our attack target and instantly taunts the attackers off of Deelight and puts us at the top of the aggro table.

Again, I have a hot key for each member of the party. Together with aggro alert addons, this is invaluable for 5 man tanking.

[Flight]

You can see the 4 hot keys for Righteous Defense, one for each party member by name, at the bottom of this screen shot. They are the four buttons in the bottom centre left of the main body of spell icons.




At the bottom right are 5 Holy Light keys, one for each party member, including the Pallie (the blue cross icon hotkeys - I didn't use the default Holy Light icon as it was too hard to see the name texts on them).


I've taken Xvins advice and I'm going to try some limited mouse broadcasting. The bank of twelve keys off to the right are shared with the Shaman and the bank to the left are shared with the 3 Warlocks. Each of these can now either be cast by a hot key or by quickly switching the mouse to broadcast and clicking on the icon (the mouse does not permanently broadcast to all PCs - this can be instantly turned on or off by key press).


The bank of Shaman keys are all heals, targetted by party member name.

You can see in the main bank of keys, in the top two rows, that each Pallie attack is in both rows. The top row is shared attacks. What that mean is that they are assigned a hot key. This is broadcasted. The centre row are now. This means that in each case I can choose to either attack from all members of the party at once, or choose to just use those attacks on the Pallie.

[Flight]

Here you can see the Shaman UI, complete with macro's. The top row of the centre bank are hot keyed to synchronise attacks with all members of the party, when needed. The bank of 12 heal macro's can be seen off to the right hand side, synchronised with the same keys on the Pallie screen.

The top left of the main bank are simply, follow Elight (Pallie) and assist Elight, for targetting.

Further macros will be added to enable different party members to become main assist and for placing the party, as skills develop through the levels.

[Flight]

Two very helpful introductions I found on macro's are the WoW Wiki macro write up and a post by Bitten on the official forums :

http://www.wowwiki.com/HOWTO:_Make_a_Macro


http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....83118355&sid=1


Macro and Scripts FAQ :

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...11381238&sid=1

[Runiat]

Don't forget:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...02812453&sid=1

After reading this I haven't been able to find someone who knew enough about macros to answer any of my questions.. oh well.. LUA next, I suppose.

[Flight]

I've now done my first instances a few times each, Wailing Caverns and The Deadmines. Everything is going smoothly (zero deaths).

In a number of obvious ways, the Pallie/Shaman combo is inferior to Warrior/Priest. THE major pain, as expected, is no ranged pull from the Pallie. Less HP hurts - both from the Warrior having more HPs anyways and missing the Priest buffs. Group heal will be missed once the Warlocks start using Hellfire.

On the other side of the coin, there is a lot to be said for the Pallie/Shammy. Both classes have mana regen buffs (totem from Shammy Blessing of Wisdom from Pallie), Shammy healing and utility is stronger than expected, with limited multiple person heals and ae totem HoT. I was originally worried about crowd control, but this party set up is actually very strong, in this respect. Succubus is one recourse, but what was really surprising is how useful the Shammy taunt totem is in a party. I have it hot keyed to lay down at the start of every elite fight.


In summary at this point ( remembering I know Warrior and Priest inside out, but have never played Pallie, Shammy or Warlock before) :

i) Paladin has no ranged pull; I'm going Prot spec so this will change at lvl 50 when I pick up Avenger Shield talent.

ii) Paladin has less HP than Warrior.

iii) I was expecting to have problems with CC, especially early on. I have been surprised at how powerful the taunt totem is. Together with Succubus, CC will certainly not be a problem for this party.

iv) Its a lot easier to generate and keep aggro on the Pallie than on a Warrior, right from the start of the fight. I can lay down 9 DoTs on a mob right at the start of a fight, then go to town with wands or dd, with zero chance of pulling aggro. The only thing that does pull aggro is if I lay down a Healing totem right at the start of a fight.

To help facilitate this, I'm going full Affliction talents on the Warlocks, full Prot on the Pallie and full Resto on the Shaman. Once I get Blessing of Salvation (reduce threat generated by 30%) on everyone, from the Pallie, this will only be stronger.



As an aside, I've taken peoples advice and have enchanting, jewellerycrafting, tailoring, mining and herbalism in the party. From the little I can tell, its not worth raising armorcrafting again, just for BoP crafted gear, but its very much worth doing tailoring on all cloth classes.


I have dropped all mouse broadcasting; it just doesn't work for me.



Copying the latest UI setup for completeness :






1. Focus target - I use this for a lot of things

2. Four targetted hot keys, one for each party member, using the Paladin iinstant ability Righteous Defence. This taunts up to 3 mobs off a targetted party member. Because the ability is used by targetting a party member, I'm using focus as target, so I don't have to change my attack target.

3. Five targetted hot keys, one for each party member, doing Pallie heals. Again uses focus target.

4. A bank of hot keys linked to the Shammy, doing targetted heals.

5. This add on displays which party member has aggro, amongst many other things.

6. An add on that tracks how much aggro each party member generates.

7. Two banks of hot keys linked to all PC's. I'm using keyboard broadcast but not mouse broadcast, so if I use the mouse then only the main PC (Paladin) abilities are used. If I press the hot key then all PC's use their relevant abiltiies at the same time.


At this instant, you can see from 5 and 6 in the screenshot above, that Deelight (Shammy) has aggro. I need to click on the Deelight hot key in 2.
This hot key will instantly set Deelight as my focus target and use Righteous Defence on my focus target (Deelight). This taunts the mobs off of Deelight and on to my Pallie and resets the aggro table, putting the Pallie at the top.



I can recommend All Deuce UI; its a compilation of Addons that gives the majority of the functionality I use, plus it works with the one click updater app. The guys over there put a lot of work into it.

http://alldeuceui.osgamers.com/forums/

[hapiguy314]

Hmmm - Just wondering.

Rather than using the /focus XXX /cast target=focus Heal or Righteous Defense, have you considered just using clique?

In my set up, If I need to heal with my pally rather than my priest, I just Shfit LeftClick for Holy Light and Alt Left Click for flash heal and alt right click on any guy being agroed for Righteous Defense.

I then just use AHK for constant renew using numberpad key from priest to heal pally. First page of priest (all controlled by number pad 1 - 0) are set up with Gheal, Renew, Shield for pally, and flash heal for all 5, and PoH/PoMending.

page 2 is just Gheal for everyone else (though I rarely use it) and some buffs.

You probably have a wide array of hot keys and a great X-keys set up to be able to heal using a different keyboard. I'm more curious how you heal with your shammy than how you play the pally