Noob Questions before I take the plunge

[Zork]

Hi, firstly I'd like to thank Khatovar, MiRai, Ualaa, Luxlunae, lax, and Alge as their posts/tutorials/vids/etc. came up repeatedly when I "google-fu'd" questions re: multiboxing and brought me here.

Secondly . . .
Goal: WOW PVE, solo 5 box dungeons regular/heroic up to current content and perhaps team up w/another 5 boxer and 10man raid in a distant future.

Software Plan: ISBoxer, Jamba, grid/clique(heals w/VideoFX.) Start with "wizard" and set-up Pro-Config virtual combat, keymaps, steps, etc. from there.

I have one account with 3 open toon slots, some others are lvl 90 tanks warrior, pally, druid, DK, and a frost mage.

Any input on the following would be helpful. Apologies for following wall-o'text:

1. Planning on RAF, but a bit hesitant because I believe playing the team up from lvl 1 would make me a better boxer end-game; therefore, I may boost potential classes on a main and level one (noob friendly) team after other slots are filled out. I think learning/tweaking ISBoxer will burn valuable RAF minutes. Thoughts?

2. Possible teams: Tank: I'd prefer warrior tank as this is my main (I've never healed or DPS'd) and I dread drinking blue-juice on pally's at low level and the lack of mobility, but I could be talked out of it if it will just add grief to a noob boxer. I currently don't macro much on the prot war and button mash as needed, so I don't know how well this would carry over to 5-boxing.
Other Slots: either 4-disc priests or 2 disc-priests and 2 arcane mages/ or maybe Ele-shammys (all casters whatever the mix)

I realize drops are better utilized with more diversity but, for newbie-ease I want a team that poses as little a challenge as possible and can hopefully face-roll dungeons the first time as I think multiboxing will be enough to learn. (although, a mage would be handy for ports) Thoughts?

3. Buttons and keybinds: This is where I'm having trouble picturing how this will work out. I use a Logitech G-13 gamepad and a G600 12 button mouse. I currently keybind everything so I'm worried I won't have enough buttons as well as changing my bindings for when I solo my main toons. From reading it looks like the following will be keybound
a. DPS rotation
b. AOE DPS rotation
c. Activate Proc(s)
d. Interrupt
e. Stun/sheep
f. Ground AOE/ with mouse targeting
g. CD's
h. Panic/ Oh Shattrath! button
i. Pull (charge on warrior)
j. Taunt/mock banner
k. IWT/click to move?
l. follow/break follow
m. move casters back/out of bad stuff.
n. mount/dismount macro
o. mouseover intervene macro
p. everybody jump button (maybe a mod key macro set to my regular jump button?)
Am I missing anything or including something I don't need here? I think I can keep existing binds and use a couple modifiers for other 4 toons combined with macros and grid/clique, unless I'm completely clueless. Maybe a pally is sounding better

4. Macros: I've read these will eliminate a lot of buttons using cast-sequence, but are these macros multibox specific or can I use any mage/priest macros?

5. Hardware for 5 boxing: i7 930 2.8GHz, 18GB DDR3 ram, ATI Radeon (Sapphire)HD5900 Series 2GB, SSDrive, single monitor, nothing is overclocked. From what I've read it appears this rig will run 5 accounts fine, but will I have to adjust the slave windows' image quality down? I currently max graphics for main and can hopefully keep it close to that. I was planning on allocating cores/vcores thusly: slot1-1,2; slot2-3,4; slot3-5,6; slot4-7,8; slot5-5,7 per a posted recommendation.

Now that I read the above I believe that multiboxing must be edging closer to insanity or at least The Darkside

Thanks for any replies/advice on any of the above,

Zork

[Khatovar]

1. ISBoxer's Quick Start Wizard should have you running with the basics in no time. RAF Leveling is very, very fast and repeated boosting can lead to burnout if you're they type that feels stress under self-imposed time limits. Finally, you can always power level later and you can always tweak later. IMO, if you want to start multiboxing, then I'd multibox a team not boost one.


2. My pally hasn't even looked at a mana potion since Burning Crusade was released. They have absolutely no issue with mana as long as they are getting hit and not trying to spam heal themselves. They also don't need to remain still at all. They can get speed boosts every time they judge, they can place Consecration wherever they like or leave it unglyphed to cast at their feet. I can't say I've ever felt immobile on my paladin. Paladins were the #1 tanking choice for multiboxing forever and is still a popular choice. That's not to say don't use the warrior, especially if you enjoy them, but I think your pally fears reflect the vanilla class, not the ones we have now.

Re- not using macros, I suggest you learn how to. You are not going to be able to efficiently manage a team by trying to line up cooldowns on single buttons, especially since pretty much every class runs on a priority sequence these days.

For the other slots, priest have been popular and are probably a fair place to start for a first team. It will allow plenty of healing so it will be more forgiving as you learn to manage multiple toons. Mages and Shamans are also good DPS and I'm sure you'll end up with at least one of each at some point. Especially the Shaman - self rez is very useful in a 5man PVE team. And if nothing else, a high-level mage makes travel and feeding teams a breeze.

Drops really, really aren't that big of a deal. They aren't all that random. You'll get decent gear that's already itemized for your spec from a lot of the quests and you can run dungeons over and over for specific drops until you outfit everyone if you need to, but with RAF don't be surprised to find yourself hitting level 60 and still having grey or white gear in some slots just because the leveling goes SOOOO fast.

By the endgame, you're pretty much running for points to buy your perfect gear - drops are stopgap gearing in most cases.

3. You'll find that you may set up a lot of buttons, but there's very few that you consistently use. Jump and movement will already be configured through the Wizard when you set up ISBoxer. A good amount of that stuff you probably won't even get a chance to use until your at or near max level.

4. Take a look at the Macro Library. While there's a lot of classes without macros listed, you should be able to get a good idea of how macros are set up for multiboxing from posts 3-6 {and the links in those posts}. Once you see the how the setup works, you can use or modify whatever macros you have/find.

5. As far as I'm concerned, there is never a need for high-quality slave windows outside of ego. You can up the settings with a swap macro if you need to run a slave as primary, but IMO, beyond that the higher settings are just eating up your system resources for no added benefit. If the settings are too high, not only is it no benefit, but you're hurting your overall performance. My slaves run at the lowest graphics settings {except for view distance} and 13 background FPS.

[MiRai]

Khat beat me to much of this since I was slacking on replying, but...

Welcome to the d-b community. It seems that you've given this some thought, and I'll try to give some quick and short answers here.

1) If you're going to be leveling multiple characters and classes, you're most likely going to want to use RaF. You'll have plenty of time to get 'good' once your RaF runs out and you're stuck leveling at a regular pace or busy gearing up at top-level instances.

2) If you plan on leading from the tank (which is probably wise as a young multiboxer), then I'd suggest playing a class that you're comfortable with; but I also agree with what Khat has to say about Paladins, though. My personal choice of tank while multiboxing is either Paladin or Warrior.

3) While it's nice that you've planned this far ahead, you should probably get yourself in game and learn how to cope with handling 5 characters before you start worrying about 50 different key binds -- All of this will come in time.

5) Probably going to need to drop the slave windows down in order to get the performance you want on your main.

5. As far as I'm concerned, there is never a need for high-quality slave windows outside of ego.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, woman. I like my video settings running at high quality all day, every day; and my machine can handle it. /ego

[Ualaa]

Welcome to boxing!

I'd go with RAF, and get several combinations... you never know what you'll want to play down the road.
Classes that can be several roles (spec DPS, Heals, Tanking) are more flexible.
Classes that can spec DPS (or ranged DPS in particular) are going to be easier to level.
I liked Shamans and Druids a fair bit.

Everyone has their own preference.
My favorite PvE (5-man content) group was: Protection Paladin, Destruction Warlock, 3x Elemental Shaman (one of those was dual-spec, Resto).

Some classes don't get all of their tanking tools, until down the road.
Druids in particular are missing tools for a lot of the lower level dungeons, making those a bit harder to do.
But by maximum level (or 20 levels under cap), everyone has the tools... and it's a question of the flavor you enjoy.

You can drive with just about anything.
In general, this is going to be the tanking toon.
You can switch between toons, for perspective quite easily.
Independent slave movement keys, will break follow for you, which is good so the casters stay well back of the tank.

I've found it very nice to have a Shaman on the team.
A Resto Shaman is an easy healer to have, between Chain Heal, Riptide and Earth Shield.
The self rez (if you're far enough back from whatever kills the group) is nice.
If you have an Elemental/Enhancement Shaman on the team, the Resto obviously adds a bit less... similarly, if you have another class that can provide the equivalent to Heroism/Bloodlust, that reduces the need for a Shaman too.

You're not really going to need a Mage for Portals... especially with Dungeon Finder.
The flexibility is nice, don't get me wrong.
But if you have a Tank character, a different character who can Heal and three more... you can do gear/level appropriate dungeons, without ever leaving your home city.
Once you've done questing, to maximum level... dungeons are a major occupier of your time.
You can do Dailies or Faction or whatever... and having extra mobility there is nice.

I'd stick with the basics for now.
You don't really need a million hot keys.
The G600 mouse gets you a lot of mouse buttons.
You can use the Keyboard too, especially say Alt + KEY and Ctrl + KEY and Shift + KEY.
That's a lot of combinations, without needing Alt + Ctrl + KEY.

An attack key, a follow key, and a break follow key... that gets you started.
The wizard will easily provide you with those.
As you need to overcome something, in your boxing quest, think of an option that would help you... then add that to your setup.
The AoE, Panic, Burst, etc... are definitely things to think about, but you're not going to need them initially.

You could have your healer assist off of the mob.
And do either an AoE or Single target heal.
That would cover a lot of your healing.
#show Chain Healing
<Insert Assist... or include in the Combat Keys from IS Boxer>
/cast [help][help,@targettarget] Chain Healing

The Grid/CustomLayouts/Clique... or Healbot or Vuhdo (each a stand-alone option instead of three addons) gets more flexibility, which is worth looking at down the road.
You can also use Full Screen Stacked, as your window layout... and then have Video Feeds and interact with those... as another means of heals.

Macros are great.
Start simple... and go from there.
There are a lot of resources on the site for macros.

[Zork]

Thank you everyone for the advice and taking time to post it, it is helpful.

Understood: bind/macro/step as it evolves. Thx.

Cool on Video: hah, not ego at all, older eyes for reading text /. As long as main focused window is pretty (albeit, I like pretty-vidy everywhere, but like does != need, per wifey.) ;o)

One Question (albeit wordy):

1. I'm uncertain as to the best use of RAF and 5 man dungeon finder teams, because I only have 3 open slots on existing server(for gold/craft help/assisting main-alts.)

Essentially, I have 3 empty main slots, so I could level up 3 teams (maybe 4 if I deleted a lvl 80'ish squishy rogue) and then I would either:
a: delete one of the main slots and re-roll that toon for as many levels/teams as I can get.
b: instance boost 4 lowbies w/main
c: quest 4 lowbies up w/main

Whichever above would be most efficient, I'm guessing deleting a tank and keep running dungeon finder.

My plan was RAF: A->B->C->D->E

I like the tank + priest, shammy combo ideas. My current plan is to make as many mixed teams as I can (caster or melee dps only), tank + priest/shammy/druid, throw in a mage/warlock/hunter with each of the first teams then melee teams with either priest/shammy/druid heals. Try to get one of each on each account, along with one pally tank and warrior tank to gear main account dps/heals. Initial goal is to have the least challenging, maxed level, 5-man farming team to equip/level future teams and main/alts.

Are there any suggestions from those in the community that have solved a similar situation with regard to RAF and/or suggested teams for what I'm trying to accomplish? or TLDR: If you had a RAF "do-over" how would you do it differently or what suggestions/changes would you make to my above RAF plan?

TIA

[Sam DeathWalker]

I am not a fan of shammy anymore at all, I am trying to do real raids and movement is critical. Disc Priest with attonment is the way to go.

If you are stationary then chain heal is good but if you can't ground target and lose healing rain and have to move and can't use chain heal well your two best heals are gone.

I am happy with my current set up cept for the shaman. Mage for dps and Priest for heal. Tank as you prefer.

Talk to invisiheals about dk's though as blood dk can heal, dps and tank.

[Zork]

Thanks Sam. I appreciate sharing your experiences. DK's are definitely on the 'to-do' list for melee team.

What spec are your mage(s)?

I have a hunch self-rez will be helpful to me in the beginning, perhaps a dps shammy just to lessen the corpse runs .

Sounds like I need to stop overthunk'in it and 'just do it.' RAF as many toons as possible and see what works best for me when I get there.

Cool forum, thanks again everyone.