Cross-Class setups: How do you manage it all?

[EvilSqueegee]

With my Vboxed shamans being 70 hordeside, I decided the time has come to finally start my drenai team. Always wanted to play a dreani anyways...

I kicked it up as a 4-box team: one paladin and three shamans. Seems to be a pretty tried-and-true setup, leaving out the doomkin for easier runthroughs and to play with friends. My question, however, falls into the keybinds department. I've only got one keyboard. How do those of you who cross-class box manage your keybindings? It's a lot more interesting in my eyes, keeping track of seperate sets of abilities and so on. I know some of you out there play on PVP servers as well, so any tips or info you might have on setting up the controls would be greatly appreciated.

Level 22 and counting. :o

[Clone]

Unless you have an amazing memory at remembering what keys are bound to what (I know I dont) I wouldnt go cross class boxing without one of these bad boys :
http://www.xkeys.com/xkeys/xkpro.php
The keys have caps on them which you can put the spell icons inside, this allows you to glance at the x-keys and know what spell you will cast without looking at the slave's screen and trying to read what key something is bound to.

Other than that Id say its just about making good macro's that allow you to get a decent damage spell rotation all by pressing 1 key.

[EvilSqueegee]

I've seen the thread about the keyboard-made-foot pedal, which leads me to believe there's a way to roughly re-prorgram a second keyboard. If that's the case, I'd love to save myself 150$. The lower the budget I run on, the better. I've got 5 copies of wrath to pick up soon, after all. :P

Anyone know anything about this?

[jurence]

Oh man thats a good idea. Like, get a racing footpad thing with 3 or 4 pedals, have each pedal assigned to a modifier (alt shift etc) ... brilliant!

as for the op, i have no idea. I'm going to be struggling with that myself here in a few hours. 2 shaman - 2 paladin team ATM at level 28. I have 2 level 70 shamans, and plan to do 3 shamans 1 paladin in the long run at 80... not too sure how its going to work out. Will probably make paladin the main. All shamans really need to have is 4 buttons (basically)

lightning bolt, earth shock, frost shock, chain lightning

Could add t-storm in there too I guess

Then the paladin just needs... paladin goodness to hold argo!

[uRabbit]

I'm running a Druid/Warrior team right now, and I don't use any addons or key cloners. I do use Healbot when it's working, but that hasn't been for a while. It's not hard for me to remember the bindings of two classes (which includes 1-6, F1-F6, alt+1-alt+6 for both toons). Druid is easy to remember, as I'm just spamming 2 and 3, and occasionally rebuffing with shift+1 and shift+2.

I imagine it might be the same when using multiple of the same class. Just keep all their bindings the same.

[Rigz]

I boxed a Paly, Druid, Mage, Warlock and Priest. At the same time.

It is not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. Just takes more setup time.

My advice is to stop thinking of them as separate characters and think of them as a single char doing several things at once, jobs if you will, like tanking, dps, healing, cc, ect. Consolidate as much of the same role, like tanking for example into as few buttons and macros as possible, then make buttons for dps.
With five seperete classes I managed to fit basic tanking and dps into three keys tops, and healing into 2 others.

Cast sequences are a must. you also want to make most of your macros as spamable as possible in my experience.

After you get the basics in you can make bind extra buttons for rarley used abilities and cooldowns you only pop for bosses.

[valkry]

For a 2 class set-up, you could try disabling hotkeys on your pally by using a bar mod or something and just click to cast spells. Use hotkeys for your shammies.

[jurence]

Well, you have to consider: What spell are you going to be spamming the most on your paladin? Make that the same key as lightning bolt.

Honestly I can set all of my shaman buttons i need (aside from totems which are alt + numbers ) to 1-6, then have the paladin for only letters and shift + letters

[valkry]

I have seen a mod where you click on a mob, and a pop-up window opens to the side of it with what spell you want to cast at it (all your instant casts mostly). Seemed fairly interesting but probably takes up too much foom for my taste. Shame I can't remember the name though.

[Solmaran]

I boxed a Paladin tank, Boomkin, S.Priest, Aff Warlock and a BM hunter at the same time.

It's really not that hard. I made a macro with a castsequence in it on each of the characters and bound them all to the same key.
On the tank I play normally, and when I want dps I just jam the castsequence button. I also have a castseq button for heals.

[heffner]

Might consider a Logitech G11/G15 keyboard - the one with the 18 hotkeys on the side. I like mine so far, but I haven't really done anything remotely challenging. I run five different classes so I put CC, healing and totem macros on it.

[Kulzor]

I don't hit a button to cast each spell, I mash a single button on my main PC, which uses a macro on each of the toons to do their actions.

Tank uses castrandom for holy shield, consecrate, hammer of righteousness, and judgement of wisdom
Healer spams lifebloom and rejuv
Shaman uses castrandom for lightning bolt and chain lightning
Arcane mage uses castrandom for arcane blast and arcane barrage
Hunter uses a shot macro for steady shot and kicking off kill command and dust cloud

One button does it all.

[TheBigBB]

I have a 10 box team set up now. I do NOT use one key to do it all, I maintain control over everything possible, and it works. I play with all but 2 classes regularly, and the two I'm missing (warrior and rogue) I actually have sub-ins for in case I need them. I got a rogue set up to replace my second tank on any fight where I don't need two tanks, and a warrior in case I ever need a spell reflect. So, yes, I am playing a very much multi-class team.

Melee classes always go on the main window per screen with their own mouse. I have two screens and two computers. Everything is based off of the tanks or melee. I would only use a max of two melee at one time. The tank in "party1" is the priority tank who gets assist, but the tank in group 2 has his own mouse to tank another mob elsewhere. This requires occasional splitting of attention, but once the mobs are positioned I can tank and heal easily and using one keyboard for everything.

DPS all have a short castsequence on "1" which does their main "cast bar" moves.

DPS all have various instant cast moves set up on 2 3 and 4. 4 is mostly used as an interrupt button. Earth Shock, counterspell, etc. If applicable. This is staggered in case I need multiple interrupts. I have alternates set up when I hit shift, like the warlock will blow soulstone moves when I hit shift with 2,3 or 4.

F1 is used for the DPS' "BEST" spell for when I pop their trinkets, which is set on a remote key, = and -. The tanks also use F1 for hammer or execute when the mob is low on health.

Shaman have totems set up on F3-F7 keys. No one else uses those keys at all.

7 and 8 are AOE moves. I have a lot of targetted AOE, which I can click each window and cast within a few seconds because of how I set up my windows.

The number pad is my main healing section. I have all sorts of healing macros on these, mostly for my tanks. My priest healer uses AOE heals to keep the team up when everyone takes damage, but I also have keys for EACH member of my raid set up on the U-P keys in case any one person alone needs a heal. I have EMERGENCY healing keys on the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down Keys. These will cast Lay on Hand on a tank OR make the elemental shaman do a /stopcasting and chain heal.

As stated earlier, all tanks have direct mouse click control, but they also have keys on Z to / keys along the bottom of the keyboard. So no matter which tank I'm focusing on, I can still hit those keys and effectively tank or DPS with the others.

QWEASD also moves the main tank, but arrow keys can move everyone else.

I remember all of this off the top of my head, so I guess I have a good memory. :)

[Toned]

If you setup hotstrings and plan your macros / bindings well it isn't any different from a single class setup. I have an xkeys pro sitting on the side of my computer that I've yet to use. I started setting it up and then just lost interest in it I guess. I just use my g-11 keyboard and it works out fine.

[EvilSqueegee]

I've since pushed the shamans and paladin to 34. I haven't finished setting up all their abilities yet (had some alliance friends who were pumped to have a multiboxer for wrath, lol - powering the CRAP out of me) but I've since furthered my goals for how I want the controls set up:

1) I need to be able to maintain as much control as possible over the toons. That is to say, I need the ability to react to situational problems as they arise and without having forseen them. In PVE, I throw myself recklessly around because I *know* it's going to kill me, and I want to survive it. A pull gone bad is where you see someone's true skills in PVE, in my humble opinion. I like to know even when things go bad or otherwise not according to plan, I can recover from them. Thus, I need a high level of control and access to things that otherwise wouldn't see much use. Another reason for this is (not that I see it being very arena valid) I do like PVP and will throw almost anything into the BG's or at someone on the world map, and I hope the paladin-shaman setup makes PVP more interesting for me in that regard.

2) I do not yet have any additional keys over the standard keyboard. A friend of mine is coding a modified, custom keyboard driver for me - so I can plug in a second standard keyboard to one system and use it's numpad & arrow keys as extra keys, much like the X-keys (but a lot cheaper.) Of course, this means I'll have to find a spot for a third keyboard on my desk, but hey...

By this point, I've realised cast-sequence totems are a *MUST HAVE.* I have one macro for a totem setup geared towards PVP (IE, staggered tremors and plenty of grounding totems), and one macro for totem setup geared towards PVE in the same macro (using modifiers to keep two macros on the same button). However, I still will need some of these totems without prior knowledge that will have to be dropped immediately - such as Earthbind, Stoneclaw, or Firenova (handy anti-melee PVP goodness.) So I will dedicate hopefully no more than 5 or so keys to totems, total.

In closing, one of my concerns (and I'm not even sure it it's based on anything other than unfounded paranoia) regarding cast-sequence macros is that if, say, I put LB/LB/CL in a cast sequence macro and then I don't put CL/LB on their own individual keys, I won't have CL exactly when I need it - say, when I see the primary opportunity to CL a group of targets, or what have you, or when I need the lower casting time to hit a target that's running away - and that lack of precision in my choice of what to cast worries me. Does it honestly make that much of a difference in a PVP environment?

[Frosty]

Castsequence is your friend for these groups. I have a main, spammable button for each DPS all tied to the same key.
In addition, I have another button that I use for taking out trash mobs. (No need for DoTs because mobs die too quickly).

If you are using a Paladin as a tank, check out the tanking macros for them in the Wiki, or do a search on Google. I fit the bulk of my tanking spells/abilities into 3 keys/macros.

My shaman (resto) is the only one that has it's own keys set up for individual heals.

I'm also using the FTL setup, so it frees up my focus to do CC with the Mage, Warlock and Priest if needed (rarely).

[Ken]

Some things that I can think of (and are written down above me also):
- Grouping spells: Putting similar spells from different character on the same button. Group everything that can be grouped so you have the least keybinds as possible. This is very important.
- Using modifiers to do alternative casts, like ALT for doing AoE or Shift for DOT(curse, flame shock, poisoned shot). So besides grouping a specific combat action(healing/dps/buff) you can make differentations like single target vs. AoE or single hit vs. DoT, etc.
- Use ESDF instead of WSAD so you have more surrounding keys around your movement keys. This allows you to use more keybinds that are easily available (so you have to move your hand less).
- Avoid clicking, using the keyboard is MUCH faster. Clicking is only okay for very rare occasions like resurrecting/summoning people.
- Use castsequences for specific classes that have a certain rotation for casts. If you have many mana-based DPS'ers, then you have to consider the mana consumption of those sequence casts versus their total mana, because you don't want 1 of them to have deplated his mana while the others are still at 50%.
- Use castrandom for classes that have spells on cooldown: castrandom will ignore all spells that are on cooldown until they are available. E.g. "/castrandom lightning bolt, frost shock, frost shock, frost shock, frost shock, frost shock" will almost always cast a shock whenever it can, but will only use lightning bolts when the frost shock is on cooldown
- Consider your keyboard layout VERY carefully. I have mine over here: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2138/2511460900_ecbb107ab2_o.png (although I use more keys then are marked)
- Weigh the pros and cons of your setup: do you want 1 button(with modifiers?) for healing which allows you a simple setup yet you have to select a target to heal each time you want to (or have your targettarget healed) OR have 5 buttons for healing where each button will heal a specific character.

Most of it is personal preference of course.

[dancook]

I don't play anymore, but I occasionally still read about progress of boxing on WOW.

Here's and old image to explain how I used to do it.

http://www.findcheapdvds.co.uk/puremacro.jpg

[Schwarz]

TheBigBB are you using 2 hands on the keyboard when you are doing boss fights. I like the idea of using the num pad as your healing stuff but I don't see how you can do everything and still control a mouse.

[Kulzor]

Hmm, I suppose I should amend my above statement and note a few extra keys I have mapped. For the most party, it's a one key deal (spam 5 and everyone does their sequences).

Here are the exceptions for my group:
1. My "main" is my hunter, NOT the tank. This gives me some "oh s--t" control in case someone hits a mob without enough aggro or such. In those cases I hit Numpad-4 to break the dps/healers from following the hunter, and can run her around separately for positioning, traps, intimidate, etc.
2. Alt-E casts Lifebloom on the tank. I use this before the pull only.
3. Alt-T casts Wild Growth on the healer (and thus also on the dps team). Great for those situations where we get bombed, or otherwise AoE'd. Also useful for that rare hit or spell reflect. Though most of those I use the healer's mouse (on his PC), and do a lifebloom.
4. Alt-W drops a freezing trap
5. 2 hits an instant spell on the shammie (Earth Shock), it uses /stopcasting to ensure it goes off, and interrupts spells for those bosses that you need to have it on.
6. 4 is my multi-shot, chain lightning (only if it is available), and spell steal button. Used mostly just for the multishots, but sometimes I'll hold off to ensure I get off the spell steal.
7. Alt-V is for volley. Unfortunately, I haven't worked out a way to get the mouse click matched on both the hunter and the mage (different screen resolutions, but I haven't tried hard either I guess) so both use an AoE.
8. 7 kicks off specials (bestial wrath, arcane power, avenging wings type thing).

I actually use all but the trap fairly often, if not every single fight. However, none are NEEDED, because the main macro can hold down the majority of fights.

[EvilSqueegee]

- Consider your keyboard layout VERY carefully. I have mine over here: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2138/2511460900_ecbb107ab2_o.png (although I use more keys then are marked)
- Weigh the pros and cons of your setup: do you want 1 button(with modifiers?) for healing which allows you a simple setup yet you have to select a target to heal each time you want to (or have your targettarget healed) OR have 5 buttons for healing where each button will heal a specific character.

Most of it is personal preference of course.Okay. So, the time has come to break me of my horrible keybinds. After looking at it all, I need a more efficient method of accessing spells. My current setup is clunkier than a coal-powered wheelchair with square wheels.

CLICKED SPELLS: Blessings, rezzes - and divine shield for some reason. O.o;;

TOP ROW
Tilda (the one right next to the 1 key): Grounding Totem for the shamans.
One: Purge for the shamans (god I love purge - PVP SPAMSPAMSPAM)
Two: Lightning Bolt
Three: Chain Lightning
Four: Earth Shock for the shamans, Excorsism for the paladin.
Five: Flame Shock
6: Frost Shock for the shamans, Judgement of Justice for the paladin.
7: Water Shield for the shamans. Currently Seal of Command for the paladin (seal of righteousness when the spec changes.)
8: Chain Heal for the shamans. Holy Light for the paladin.
9: Lesser Healing Wave and Flash of Light.
0: Currently in the air. I don't use it much - until very recently, this was the earth totem setup (stoneskin, Strength of Earth, and Earthbind.)
-: Water.
=: Gift of the Naruu. (always used racials on =. Dunno why, needs to change.)

Ctrl+4: Hand of Freedom
Ctrl+5: Hand of Protection

Other keybinds of note (prepare for FUBAR bindings):

Q: Follow macro. Very accessible. Constantly smashing it.
E: Nuke. EM/CL.
R/T: Thunderstorm buttons (R for roundrobin, T for EM-Thunderstorm simultaneously.)
Backspace: PVP trinket.
Shift-Backspace: Totemic Call.
Ctrl+Backspace: Hearth & Astral Recall.
i: Magma totems.
O: Round-robin Tremor totems.
P: Healing Stream Totems.
Shift+P: Mana Stream Totems.
[: Fire Nova & concecrate
]: Stoneclaw
\: Searing Totems.
Numpad Delete: Mount
Numpad 0: PVP Totem-Farm Cast Sequence
CTRL+Numpad 0: PVE Totem-Farm Cast Sequence
Nupmad 5: Spread macro (one shaman moves back, one to the left and one to the right. Breaks follow, also handy for showing off.)

Since I *will* be switching to an FTL system, I need to -not- use alt, shift, or control on targeted spells (I think. Just because I use it now doesn't mean I remember how the hell I got it working in the first place, lol.)

As you can see, I, uhm... well, yeah. I suppose a large part of the problem is that, never having played a paladin (well, I did - but it was a while ago) I don't know the whole spell list or what I'll need on-the-fly on-demand.


I'm not entirely sure if the way I've been actually controling the mouse and keyboard is efficient enough - I use the mouse to steer, but I use WASD to strafe and run around. I leave WASD on do-not-pass to keep the slaves from breaking follow.


Let me explain a little further about the cast-rotations and interfereing with a needed spell - When I find myself in a situation where the pull goes bad (or I make it go bad, I start the second pull before the first one finishes because I know I can handle it if I play it right, etc) or if I attract some world PVP to my doorstep unexpectedly, I want to operate at maximum efficiency and with as much precision as is possible. I have no problems in a fourbox group hitting the buttons 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4 instead of hitting a LB, LB, CL, ES macro. I have more precision like that - I know exactly what is being cast by who, at what, and when. That way I don't have to worry about finding mana-efficient rotations, or whether an ability is active or not for a macro. I already *know* what's on cooldown and so on, because I manually hit the buttons.

Manual control of as many abilities as possible is my goal.

That isn't to say (if I have room for it) I'm against macroing castrotations and so forth for bosses and so on, to make things run a little more smoothly - I agree, having your threat-generation castsequence macro on the same button as your DPS rotation and healing rotation makes things very very simple to manage. But what I'm after is precise control over what's going on with each toon, but to have that precise control on a global scale if you will. I really don't know how else to say it. =/

I'm pondering setting up a healing macro for each individual toon. As of now, I'm clicking unit frames in my main UI to heal individuals. I'm looking for, again, more precise and efficient control of my team. The only difficulty with that is that the toon names are all Curvy. Each toon uses a different accent over the U. I have no idea how unit frames prioritize this, so I have no idea what order the characters will be in when I look at my UI, and thus no idea how to associate the different healing buttons with the different toons.

[Dorffo]

I'm actaully planning on buying some foot peddles to "strafe" my alts around.

I've tried controlling the tank solely with my mouse and using QWEASD to control the alts, but I have been unsuccessful so far - Its really hard to break old habits. :)

I've got some foot pedals waiting for me once I get settled into the new place and back online for exactly that - if I recall from a few months ago it seems like we were using almost identical keymaps for the pal/sham setup. One of the things I was experimenting with before I was offline for the summer was a USB 10-key sitting to the left of my keyboard for ALT movement but I found that it didn't really buy me any response time in comparison to just stacking keyboards.

[Marious]

Good lord Evil you have a whole lot going there. Sorry but I cant see how you need to have all that, I have something similar but not nearly as chaotic as I see yours, for the most part its
1-CL, 2-LB 3-TS 4-Totem Castsequence 5-Totem recall 6- /dance (I know I forget to stop having that there FOR DPS Group only running shaman since that is what I am leveling.

1 Att(this is kind of screwy since when I do CL it stops attacking need to fix that) 6-Concecrate 7-SoR 8-HoJ 9-JoW --A.Shield/ =-HoR/watershield

Q-Follow E-Accept Macro Shift+F-mount Shift+G-Ghost Wolf Shift+H=Heart/Astral Recall

Shift+Q= Spread out Macro, Shift+1=drink/eat

Num1, Num2, Num3 heal macros.

And thats about it. I am sure I am missing stuff and I can combine some stuff but for the most part this is what I have. Seems you have way to much going on in yours, to me at least, I cant imagine what some of the other guys have going.

But if you know your system and can keep yourself alive then why change it? I tend to still strugle even with my own set up, healing is what kills me, I tend to let myself be killed because i just DPS everything. You probably do better than me even having all that you have going on.