AOE against boxer groups... really?

[heyaz]

What is it about multiboxing groups that makes people think AOE is the most effective way to fight them, especially solo? This happened a lot when I was lower level, and it probably made some sense (although last time nothing but AOE wiped my whole group was like level 59). I figured at 70 it would mostly stop...

But now it's only worse. Since I hit70 I've seen every single class with an AOE spam it on me, even by themselves. They are absolutely compelled, as if they treat me like an elite with 3 non-elite adds. Hurricane, Volley (lol), and of course arcane explosion are the favorites. My guys are in terrible gear and it still barely tickles (300-500 a tick... that's going to knock off 10k hp before you die from 14 dots?)

Not that I'm complaining.. I hope the alliance keep being that stupid to be honest, because it obviously doesn't work. Although some of them are probably smart enough to know in a team game they might as well do what damage they can, but I think a lot of these chuckleheads legitimately think some channeled aoe or aoe spam is the best way to fight 4v1

I'm just curious to know if any other groups notice this, or if I'm the only one that's treated like a bunch of ants that can be aoe'd to death (what do we have 2k hp, seriously)...

[nogbog]

Yeh.. seeing the hunter volley makes me lol on the inside.

Honestly, the noise from from the arcane explosion is what bothers me most.

[heyaz]

Yeh.. seeing the hunter volley makes me lol on the inside.

Honestly, the noise from from the arcane explosion is what bothers me most.What bothers me the most is that you apparently can't cast arcane explosion without jumping and changing directions constantly...

[maxcom]

i hate mages so much.. when i run stuff with a friend mage... i keep trying to target and kill him when he AOEs.... /shrug

[SuS]

I have terrible trouble with Arcane explosion it kills me every time, where am I going wrong?
I have a paladin to heal, 3 shammys and a lock (Locks my main to raid with) If I get one mage its hell if two run in its game over even with my lock pvp macro spaming fear and Howl of terror my team hits the deck.

Any advise?

[cepheus]

A few hints against jump-around-mages:

- Have keys for rotating your alts, this helps a lot for directional nukes. I use my MX revolution mouse thumb scroll for turning them left and right. Incredible helpful
- Use firenova first
- Cast Lightning shield
- Then shock
- Roundrobin Chainheal.
- Use Bloodlust then magma totem too if there are several aoe'rs and you can outheal 2-3 people aoeing with your chain heal while they are beeing eaten by the magma totem and your lighting shields.

If you have good practice with directional turning of your alts, CL also are great for taking them down. But it takes some time to get the hang of it.

[Tizer]

I have terrible trouble with Arcane explosion it kills me every time, where am I going wrong?
I have a paladin to heal, 3 shammys and a lock (Locks my main to raid with) If I get one mage its hell if two run in its game over even with my lock pvp macro spaming fear and Howl of terror my team hits the deck.

Any advise?Hi Sus, met you in the Arenas at the weekend i think it was :) First time i met a boxer :) Sorry if that was yout first arena game, i noticed you were on a 1500 rating :)

Your group setup isnt really doing you any favours and if you are playing them all yourself, which i think you are then you are going to suffer quite a bit against most teams. I know i couldnt play that many diverse characters at once anyway, fair play for having a crack at it though :)

[SuS]

]Hi Sus, met you in the Arenas at the weekend i think it was :) First time i met a boxer :) Sorry if that was yout first arena game, i noticed you were on a 1500 rating :)

Your group setup isnt really doing you any favours and if you are playing them all yourself, which i think you are then you are going to suffer quite a bit against most teams. I know i couldnt play that many diverse characters at once anyway, fair play for having a crack at it though :)

Yes and hello again ^-^

Its an odd combo I agree the Lock I wanted to raid with when not boxing as I help run a good guild and we are about to hit Sunwell and hope to clear b4 woltk.
I want to run heroics with my team the PVP is an after thought, hence a Paladin to tank and the rest shammys.

Think I need to boost a 4th Maybe 5th shammy >-< Just not sure I have the will to level/boost another 2 toon tbh just for PVP.

BTW I almost took 100HP out of one of your shammys!! ?

[Tizer]

BTW I almost took 100HP out of one of your shammys!! ?Just a flesh wound my man, just a flesh wound. xD

[Kel]

There's several reasons I can think of for the aoe spam, I've never met a boxer yet, but it's probably what I'd do too.

Imagine you are a valient little alliance mage, you enter Galv's room and are confronted by 5 identical Shaman and a sea of totems. The rest of yuor team is unfortunately cave defending or attempting to deplete your resources as quickly as they ca whilst avoiding any possible actual game objectives, so you must face them alone (so painful death is inevitable).

The reasons I'd pick aoe over single target are:
1. Aoe doesn't get eaten by grounding totems, you'd have to do a lot of ice lances to clear the forest before you could even start trying to kill something.
2. Unless you vastly overgear the multi-boxer you probably don't have the capabilities to kill one before the others have a) healed it up or b) nuked you to oblivion. Aoe probably lets you do the most damage to the group as a whole before your demise, whether this serves any purpose depends on whether your team mates pull their finger out and do something useful (unlikely).
3. Instant aoes can't be earth shocked. Locking down of the frost school would not be fun or profitable for our budding mage.
4. Jumping whilst using AE is probably a throw-back from back when the range of AE was increased whilst moving, this got fixed a little while ago, but most people probably are in the habvit of jumping without really knowing why.
5. Gnome + Jumping + AE = Win
6. Standing still in front of the MB is probably not a good idea as it will make you an easy target, if you are doing a pbaoe you can try to be out of los to at least some of the toons.

4v1 is never going to end well for the one, so you might as well go out with a bang.

[bodefeld]

Gnome-AoE-jumping is a pain indeed. I counter that with warstomp rotation, nova and magma totems until they blink, ice block or die.

[bodefeld]

- Cast Lightning shield

Does lightning shield discharge off AoE attacks?

[Havelcek]

- Cast Lightning shield

Does lightning shield discharge off AoE attacks?
Yes but there's like a 2 second CD between shield discharges, still worth it.

[Icetech]

When my sham team hit 70 there was a 70 mage that made it his job to make me cry.. i never ONCE killed him and he killed me anytime he tried... made me friggin nuts.. alot of it was gear and he was pretty skilled, where as i am lazy and relied on my 5x power:)

[Vyndree]

Actually, depending on how the AoE is executed it's actually a decent tactic.

For example, if I ever, ever ever let Suvega into AoE range of me when we duel, he most undoubtedly will win. Granted, he has 4 mages at his disposal, but this has been my experience.



He knows that I hate melee "circle strafing" because it forces me to turn around. He exploits line of sight by jumping THROUGH me and my shammies, making getting off anything with a cast time near impossible.
He knows that to get into melee range, he has to enter my frontal cone, which is very dangerous. He refuses to enter this area, and will play the waiting game against me if he can not find decent line of sight to sneak close. If he can get close enough to run in and aoe before I can get a cast off, he goes for it.
Yes, fire novas hurt. But he knows he has decent AoE heals (he specs his priest CoH). He knows he can heal through it. He also knows he can iceblock and uses it to negate my minor burst once he enters melee range.
He knows that circle strafing makes it difficult for me to pick, and stick with a target. It also helps him identify which mage I'm "bursting", because the damage doesn't hit them within a fraction of a second anymore. It basically comes in waves of shocks with 6 seconds in between. He can easily Shield/ProM/Renew through my minimal damage.
He knows that, unless he has 4 frost pets to help, he's not getting through my grounding totems. So he doesn't even bother trying.
Sp-p-p-pe-pe-pe-l-ll-l-ll-P-P-u-u-sh-sh-b-b-b-a-a-a-a-c-ck (4-piece PvP set bonus anyone?)
When he is specced frost, he uses his pets to eat my grounding totems and to distract me -- giving me more targets to "tab" through as he's bouncing around with a Nova+AE+AE+AE rotation. This prevents me from turning around faster than a keyboard turn.
When he is specced fire, I can pretty much call it a loss. He opens with dragon's breath, blast nova. I consider myself lucky if I am able to get one preemptive fire nova totem set off, and MAYBE one set of shocks before I die.


When I do arenas against "normal" teams, AoE like Shadowfury hurts the most. I also prioritize dangerous melee, since I know (once they enter melee) it's harder for me to target and kill them. I typically prioritize warriors first, since I can see them preparing to charge in and start off a nice long casted LB+CL+NS+LB+Shock+Fire Nova. AoE is generally not a problem when it's not organized, but if they abuse LoS while doing it and use AoE that hinders your movement it's actually a decent tactic.

I mean, if you were a caster in a group with decent AoE abilities... and you went up against a 4-5 grounding totem shaman team... what would you do? ;)

[BobGnarly]

He knows that to get into melee range, he has to enter my frontal cone, which is very dangerous. He refuses to enter this area, and will play the waiting game against me if he can not find decent line of sight to sneak close. If he can get close enough to run in and aoe before I can get a cast off, he goes for it.

Not sure if this will work for you, but you might try something I've been working on lately to help with this melee weaving los issue. I detailed it here ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=11527'). Definitely has helped me against this type of tactic.

[heyaz]

I dunno, I just haven't had a huge issue with AOE except for a few extreme cases like berserking fire mages or groups of them. Priests have 5 sec silence all schools, by then they have a million dots and bubble, i mass dispel, then fear them and finish the job.

Only time it really works i when there are 4 or 5 people doing it at once, but then again, they could've just killed 1 at a time

[Akoko]

My main is an arcane specced mage. I haven't lost to a single shaman 5boxer in any BG and I can usually take any of them alone. I dump trinket, arcane power, icy veins, troll berserking racial so that my GCD is only 1 sec. Arcane-specced arcane explosion has MASSIVE crits and critical strike chance. (Clearcasting is also almost a guaranteed crit). I fire ward, blink inside them, frost nova so they can't move. If they trinket out of the frost nova I cold snap and frost nova again. (40/0/21 spec). I can kill any shaman 5 boxer in a few seconds, using PvE gear. I've had a few boxers leave the BG in anger because one stupid troll AoE's them to death.

This is of course, only if I can get to them alone. They tend to work alone though, since especially in maps like AB and WSG even clueless teammates tend to spread out more and avoid being near him, seeing that the 5 boxer is actually one person using 1/3 or 1/2 of the team's entire resources in one place. My mage has a grand total of 23 resilience and 7.5k hp, but with 1.2k spell damage and around

Really, people have no choice. Trying to CC, fear, or nuke down a shaman multiboxer individually is impossible. The only way to do it is to jump inside them and spam AoE.

Note: this is when I'm 1 boxing vs. a 5 boxer. My clones haven't seen 70 BG's yet.

[BobGnarly]

I'm not saying you haven't done this, and I think it's a viable strategy. I will just say that, after your AP and IV is purged, which it should be immediately, it's a whole different game. And if you use a setup similar to what I outline in the link above, you will be nuking the mage the whole time, as well.

This is all assuming he didn't see you coming. If he did, you wouldn't even get to him.

[Dominian]

My main is an arcane specced mage. I haven't lost to a single shaman 5boxer in any BG and I can usually take any of them alone. I dump trinket, arcane power, icy veins, troll berserking racial so that my GCD is only 1 sec. Arcane-specced arcane explosion has MASSIVE crits and critical strike chance. (Clearcasting is also almost a guaranteed crit). I fire ward, blink inside them, frost nova so they can't move. If they trinket out of the frost nova I cold snap and frost nova again. (40/0/21 spec). I can kill any shaman 5 boxer in a few seconds, using PvE gear. I've had a few boxers leave the BG in anger because one stupid troll AoE's them to death.

This is of course, only if I can get to them alone. They tend to work alone though, since especially in maps like AB and WSG even clueless teammates tend to spread out more and avoid being near him, seeing that the 5 boxer is actually one person using 1/3 or 1/2 of the team's entire resources in one place. My mage has a grand total of 23 resilience and 7.5k hp, but with 1.2k spell damage and around

Really, people have no choice. Trying to CC, fear, or nuke down a shaman multiboxer individually is impossible. The only way to do it is to jump inside them and spam AoE.

Note: this is when I'm 1 boxing vs. a 5 boxer. My clones haven't seen 70 BG's yet.

If you start to make the boxer angry what stops him from shocking you and use his NS+CL ? Not to mention what the guy above said about purging? Wth if you have 7.5k hp he could drop novas and shock you basicly.

[Jdizzle]

Yeh.. seeing the hunter volley makes me lol on the inside.

Honestly, the noise from from the arcane explosion is what bothers me most.What bothers me the most is that you apparently can't cast arcane explosion without jumping and changing directions constantly...LOL same goes for when zoning in an instance you have to jump