Will Ulduar Be The End of Multibox Friendly Raiding?

[BigSmitty]

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/3p1/ulduar.xml

The only reason for the title is by reading the above link from the WoW EU site, it mentions various types of vehicles, etc. As my groups aren't high enough yet to have dealt with vehicular combat, from a logistics standpoint, wouldn't this be a bit of a MAJOR challenge? Motorcycles, catapults, etc?

Some thoughts from those of you doing the Naxx/VoA/Sarth with some current end game raid experience would be much appreciated.

[Soundeyes]

Good luck with that massively coordinated multiboxing battlefield action:

"You and your friends will have to use these vehicles wisely to break
through Ulduar's defenses. A mix of motorcycles, demolishers, and siege
engines will be at your disposal, each granting unique abilities to the
pilot and the passenger. Motorcycle drivers, for example, can create
pools of liquid tar that snare opponents and can be set on fire by area
effect attacks, while demolisher passengers can load themselves into
the vehicle's catapult so that the pilot can launch them into the
distance. If used judiciously, these and other abilities will help
decimate the Iron Army and any other threats lying in wait between you
and Ulduar."



Oh yeah and this sounds like it would be brutally hard to multibox too:

"One such threat is the Flame Leviathan. After you've plowed through the
innumerable ranks of the Iron Army, you will be confronted by an
enormous tank. Mimiron built the Flame Leviathan as part of the
V0-L7R-0N weapons platform, which means that it packs quite a punch.
Normal spells and abilities won't be enough to take down this
juggernaut, so you will have to rely on your siege vehicles to
outmaneuver and defeat the boss. After wearing the massive war machine
down, you will have to launch players onto the tank's back to destroy
its defense turrets and sabotage the Leviathan before you can move on.
Of course, if you'd like an additional challenge beyond this naturally
frantic (but extremely fun) fight, you can try your hand at one of the
Flame Leviathan's different Hard Modes (see sidebar)."

[puppychow]

Vehicle combat may not be too bad in ulduar, this is from a blue on mmo champ:



The first boss has you enter 1 of 3 different vehicles (Chopper, Demolisher, and Siege Engine) to fight your way through an immense Iron army to the Flame Leviathan and defeat him. After that, there's very little use of vehicles by players. We'll have the fight up on the PTR at a later date, but this fight isn't in the first wave of boss encounters to be tested. (Source)


So maybe just the first boss has vehicles and none after (although probably some bosses have vehicle phases like malygos).

Still, i'm guessing the difficulty, especially for "hard mode", will make multiboxing... challenging!

[BigSmitty]

News Flash - The sky STILL is not falling.

Seriously - Everything that we've been told that we CAN'T do - somebody here does. We will adapt. We will overcome. Pray to the multiboxing gods for the ability write more creative macros. :D

There was also a preview somewhere that said Ulduar will have 9 bosses. Only 1 will be optional and vehicle based. Obviously this has changed a little - but I don't think it'll be that bad... I personally just jumped into Naxx. Yes, its difficult, but I don't see anything that I can't do with some practice and dedication (and very understanding guildies)I was making the assumption that most multiboxers would see it as a very refreshing challenge, hence the title being multibox "friendly". According to the EU story, Uldar has 14 bosses, 11 of which have a "hard mode" type of challenge. Still should be fun to see. Would hate to have the slaves on /follow if I got tossed out of a catapult though... :D

[Bollwerk]

Personally, I like doing raids solo and instances 5-boxed. But maybe I'm alone in that. Raids are more of a social event for me with my guild. I like only focusing on one toon, so I can chat, etc. I like seeing Blizzard be creative with boss fights.

[Bena]

I don't think that it's the end of boxing but with the way raid/dungeons are being designed it will probably be quiet tricky to box them. It's not that Bliz hates boxers but rather they're trying to create interesting/challenging content which usually involves movement/vehicles/new mechanics based play. I've accepted the fact that mostly likely future content won't be 100% boxable; I plan to raid that content with one of my many toons 1 boxing. As the previous poster said.. single boxing is still fun if you get a good group. If it ever gets to a point that all I can do is run old content with my box teams then that would be time to think about packing it in.. so far still having fun though.

[Kaynin]

Vehicle boxing was fixed and is very possible since the last patch.

Oculus/Malygos, done all and survived to the kill.

The multiboxing sky will never fall. :>

[weeep]

NEWSFLASH: raiding NEVER was multiboxing friendly.

[Kaynin]

Well, it's definatly more challenging, but I wouldn't say raiding is multibox unfriendly. Maybe most guilds and acceptance of multiboxing is unfriendly, but not game mechanics.

But I disagree with saying it is multiboxing unfriendly. Having done all ten man content uncluding Sartharion with 2 drakes up. Working on 3 drakes, >In a casual guild!< At all times with at least 3 of my characters present. I'd say raiding is very multibox friendly.

But jsut adds more layers and makes it all more challenging, and ore fun. More fun to me means it is more raiding friendly. :P

[weeep]

But I disagree with saying it is multiboxing unfriendly. Having done all ten man content uncluding Sartharion with 2 drakes up. Working on 3 drakes, >In a casual guild!< At all times with at least 3 of my characters present. I'd say raiding is very multibox friendly.
It just means that the other raid members are outgearing the encounter. Bring 5-box group to Naxx10 with everyone in raid wearing blues (as it is supposed to be), and we'll see how far you will go.
Also Sarth is not the best example, because it is retardedly easy encounter for DPS classes and everything there can be done on /follow.

[Bigfish]

Is it just me, or does this sound exactly liek the kind of guild-breaking roadblock that BWL's Razorgore presented? (then Vael directly after)

Now that you mention it, yes, yes it does.

[Bigfish]

Arguably, multibox raiding is easier the fewer roles you have. Walking through something with 4 shamans doesn't impress me that much. All you've really done is ensure 4 competent DPS with offhealing capabilities and some pretty impressive utility options. I'd be more impressed with someone concurrently tanking, offtanking, healing, spot healing, DPSing, and moving out of the fire.

[Kaynin]

But I disagree with saying it is multiboxing unfriendly. Having done all ten man content uncluding Sartharion with 2 drakes up. Working on 3 drakes, >In a casual guild!< At all times with at least 3 of my characters present. I'd say raiding is very multibox friendly.
It just means that the other raid members are outgearing the encounter. Bring 5-box group to Naxx10 with everyone in raid wearing blues (as it is supposed to be), and we'll see how far you will go.
Also Sarth is not the best example, because it is retardedly easy encounter for DPS classes and everything there can be done on /follow.

Me and my guild cleared naxx 3 weeks after wotlk launched, I was in quest items and some crafted stuff. The rest of the guild was too. I encountered no problems in naxx. Sure, 1600 top dps wasn't making it very easy, but it was still doable.

And I'd like to see you multibox sartharion with 2 drakes up. :P I dunno what you think is easy, but it is currently the second hardest encounter in the entire game. (Sartharion 3 drakes being the hardest.)


And lastly, what can't be done on /follow?
I've not met an encounter that wasn't doable with /follow or easy movement controls. Vehicle encounters included.


As for multiclass boxing. I've done it in tbc and didn't think it was much harder at all, it all depends on how serious you are taking your part in the raid. It just requires a slightly steeper learning curve, a little bit more work in movement and macro's, but otherwise just as easy as doing 4x dps at 100% of their potential. In fact, I personally find DPS the toughest spot to fill in a raid (If you want to give it 100%.).

Tanking, healing, they require focus yes, but they don't require perfection. DPS, argueably doesn't require perfection either. I'm sure you can clear naxx by just spamming lightning bolts and watch a TV show. But if you aim to get 100% out of everything you do. (Which I enjoy doing as that is hat makes it all the more fun.) DPS is the most intensive raidspot to fill in that regard. Every mili-second can be used to your advantage..

10-boxing aside, which I can imagine is a LOT harder in raiding. I'd love to do but I don't have the computer gear or will to level more toons to try that out myself. :<

[Bigfish]

Working on it.

Me too. Hoping to drop Archavon tonight. Have to work up a tank switch macro and bind some movement keys on my ranged characters.

Edit: Oh, and beef up my healing macros.

[Kaynin]

Anyhow, all I'm saying is nothing will ever mean the end of multiboxing.

I'm certain I can quite possibly make any box work in any encounter (I'd love to prove it but I only play like 3 evenings a week. I work the rest running 3 companies.). Some encounters just need more dedication, and therefor a bit more time, then others.
But 10-boxing on 4 different vehicles for example will definatly be possible. I'm sure of it. I'm not saying a 10-boxer will enter Ulduar and clear the place in a single day. Ofcourse not. But then again, if they would, what would be the fun in that? Sartharion is the only fun encounter for me in the game because it actually has a steep learning curve. And it keeps the game interesting. Naxx I was bored off after the third week already because there wasn't much of a challenge. A little bit on Grob, Thaddius, Heigan the first time. Saph was fun back when I was doing 1200-1400dps-ish in that fight. Running my ass off away from blizzards, our first kill took 15 minutes. But we still killed it on the 5th or so try. So, challenging? Nah, didn't find it that challenging.



The end of multiboxing -will never- come.

[Gares]

I did a 10 man Archavon this week with my team and it was cake. All you really got to do is watch your team when he jumps to them. Make sure you stand with your backs to a wall so you don't fly too far away or have your chars turned alot. If your MT'ing just make sure if that happens you round them up again or turn them at least and bring boss back in range. Pretty easy but you just gotta watch.

[weeep]

And lastly, what can't be done on /follow?
I've not met an encounter that wasn't doable with /follow or easy movement controls. Are you sure you've ever done Thaddius or Grobbulus? ;)

[Kaynin]

And lastly, what can't be done on /follow?
I've not met an encounter that wasn't doable with /follow or easy movement controls. Are you sure you've ever done Thaddius or Grobbulus? ;)

Thaddius(25) is very easy with individual strafe keys for each char.
Thaddius(10) is the easiest fight in all of naxx, because enrage timer won't be a problem even if you spread out 10 yards and just stand and dps. (We did it this way back when we did 1600-2000dps already).

Grobbulus I use follow, Breaking off the ones with injection with mouse movement and instance swapping. Might be that my ftl set up makes it a lot easier for me, but if your macro set up is the problem, I suggest changing that. I killed Grob with 4 chars present on our 4th or so try the first day I was in naxx.

Any other fights? :P

[weeep]

BTW, I have to agree that WotLK raids are so retard-friendly that even multiboxers can participate in them. It is also the reason why I'm not seriously raiding now. I've done full BT\Hyjal before all those easymode patches in TBC and these encounters were challenging. You had to pay attention, you had to react and when you finally downed a boss, it was the *real* achievement, not this stupid window that pops now. And now all you do is spam
/follow leader
/cast Pew-Pew
/loot epics

[Kaynin]

X(


BTW, I have to agree that WotLK raids are so retard-friendly that even multiboxers can participate in them. It is also the reason why I'm not seriously raiding now. I've done full BT\Hyjal before all those easymode patches in TBC and these encounters were challenging. You had to pay attention, you had to react and when you finally downed a boss, it was the *real* achievement, not this stupid window that pops now. And now all you do is spam
/follow leader
/cast Pew-Pew
/loot epics

Try sartharion with 3 drakes up on 10 man then. I find it very challenging! As I said, I only got to sartharion with 2 drakes so far, and heck, it might still be weeks before I down sartharion with 3 drakes up. But I'm sure as hell gonna try it. :P (Sometimes just wish I had more time for it, but on the other hand being in a very casually laid back guild counts for a lot as well. :) )

[weeep]

Thaddius(25) is very easy with individual strafe keys for each char.
Sorry, I don't believe that you can do Thad25 without all other raid members seriously outgearing the encounter.

[Kaynin]

Thaddius(25) is very easy with individual strafe keys for each char.
Sorry, I don't believe that you can do Thad25 without all other raid members seriously outgearing the encounter.

Is thaddius an easy fight on 25 man? No. It requires 80k+ raid DPS.
Does multiboxing make it a much harder fight? No. It just requires setting up some macro's/movement keys and a addon that makes it easy to point out which of your chars have a charge change.

The average dps a dps'er needs to bring is about 4200 if I am not mistaken.
I can reach 5k+ dps pretty easily since 3.0.8.
Before 3.0.8 I was doing 3500ish, which, granted, wasn't enough and needed other raid members to compensate, however was that due to multiboxing? No, it was due to elemental dps being shit. :P

[puppychow]

My guild has Sarth 3 drakes (10 and 25) on farm now, I do think it'll be doable as a multiboxer but only as a DPSer -- no way you could control tanking, DPS, and healing it. The hardest parts of the fight are the tank/healers jobs, DPS just has to move out of void zones (strafe ftw), avoid lava walls (follow ftw), and DPS the right targets, and take portals at the right times (drake 3).

imo healing multibox is actually one of the hardest, unless you control 2-3 guys who are just spamming the MT, because target selection is a huge part of healing. Just spamming CoH/PoH/chain-heal-on-self is not a great healing strat and fails in many encounters. When I play my resto shaman I usually am #1 on heal meters and I use Grid/Clique, and probably make 10-15 "heal decisions" a minute, don't really see how you could effectively do that as a multiboxer. Of course boxing a healer who spams heals on the MT works great while your other guys DPS.

[Kaynin]

I think sartharion 3 drakes will be near impossible or at least very very hard for a boxer of more then 5 characters, simply because even if you have all dps and healers on follow, you would constantly get the void circles on top of your party. Maybe some day when we far outgear (or outlevel) the instance. :P

But then again, it's a fight most guilds won't be able to do. It's a prestige encounter.

But take 10-boxing with one drake up (shadron if you got a DK tank) will be doable imo. The problem I see arising with multiple drakes up is that you're running from the void zones too much to be able to deliver the dps required for anything more then one drake up. Only one drake up will allow you a lot more time though. Having druid and priests as healers would help too here. If you 10-box solely with holydins, you can probably forget it. Need instant healing and hots to heal-box sartharion with drakes up (due to the amount of movement required).

[puppychow]

Btw Thaddius25 has 30 million HP and a 6 minute (360 second) enrage timer, which means you need 83.3k raid DPS. if you take 6 healers and 2 tanks, that leaves 17 DPS, each of who needs to do 4900 dps to beat his enrage timer (if you have 7 healers and 3 tanks, you need 5555 dps from the 15 dpsers). The stacking buff increases your damage quite a bit (10 stack is +100% dmg, so if everyone stacked you'd only need 2450 "personal" dps pre-buff). Even in my guild, which has 10 man Undying achieve and 3drakes25, we still lose 4-5 people every Thaddius25 fight (lag, not paying attention, etc) so that makes it even tougher. Also the DPS numbers are a bit misleading, since every 30 seconds a ton of people are moving around due to polarity shift and doing no damage, which means there is 10 secs every minute of "dead time".

[Kaynin]

we still lose 4-5 people every Thaddius25 fight (lag, not paying attention, etc)

That's your guilds problem, not the encounters problem. :P

The point was that thaddius 25 man is easily multiboxable. Despite I've only ever pugged 25 mans (without much or any problems, most raid pugs are about 90-100k dps on thaddius on my server) I did say Thaddius itself is a pretty tough encounter. I just said multiboxing doesn't overcomplicate the encounter if you just take the time to set up properly for it. :P

[Bigfish]

I try not to argue what is theoretically impossible, just because someone may just turn around and do it.


I did a 10 man Archavon this week with my team and it was cake. All you really got to do is watch your team when he jumps to them. Make sure you stand with your backs to a wall so you don't fly too far away or have your chars turned alot. If your MT'ing just make sure if that happens you round them up again or turn them at least and bring boss back in range. Pretty easy but you just gotta watch.

See, thing is, I'm not running a tank, 4 shamans, and 5 other people. I'm controlling all 10. 1 of each class. Suffice it to say, its not a matter of me pulling my DPS weight and keeping an eye where I'm standing while everyone else handles the details. The details get you killed.

In short, I have to:

Keep my 6 ranged classes spread out but in range, and mobile in case of a cloud.
Keep my MTs back to a wall.
Hold Aggro with the off tank when MT gets picked up.
Keep the OT positioned correctly so the MT gets thrown at a wall and not across the room.
Switch back to the MT when aggro wipes from the throw.
Keep everyone healed, which can be really difficult with how quickly the boss switches targets.

10 boxing is an entirely different beast from 5 boxing.

[puppychow]

fwiw I've been in a raid on the PTR (solo on my mage) and I think its definitely a step up from naxx in terms of difficulty. I'm not going to ruin anything since its fun to experience new fights for the first time, but there are fights where mobility is huge (think KelThuzad supercrazy mode), one fight has you split up the raid similar to Gothik, etc. So far none of the bosses are anywhere near what I'd call tank'n'spank level of challenge. Which is great, it'll definitely be fun playing solo, lots of "rubber bands" to tweak the difficulty as your raid sees fit (the harder you make it, the better the loot). Don't wanna say either it'll be impossible to multibox, since I don't think it will, but you definitely will find it hard!

Mana/Totem springs still haven't been combined, hope they haven't forgotten that :( the lust nerf kind of hurts, since most boss fights are currently in the 6-10 minute range, you only get 1 lust now though per boss try (but it is available faster if you wipe!).

[Iceorbz]

Btw Thaddius25 has 30 million HP and a 6 minute (360 second) enrage timer, which means you need 83.3k raid DPS. if you take 6 healers and 2 tanks, that leaves 17 DPS, each of who needs to do 4900 dps to beat his enrage timer (if you have 7 healers and 3 tanks, you need 5555 dps from the 15 dpsers). The stacking buff increases your damage quite a bit (10 stack is +100% dmg, so if everyone stacked you'd only need 2450 "personal" dps pre-buff). Even in my guild, which has 10 man Undying achieve and 3drakes25, we still lose 4-5 people every Thaddius25 fight (lag, not paying attention, etc) so that makes it even tougher. Also the DPS numbers are a bit misleading, since every 30 seconds a ton of people are moving around due to polarity shift and doing no damage, which means there is 10 secs every minute of "dead time".This is exactly why you *CAN* Do it multiboxed. Put 2 guys on the ledges before they jump @ corners to DPS. Then you can just work with 2 guys using charges, not to hard really . If its still to difficult move the 3rd out.. hes still putting out dps during changes and everything else so you really only lose a small portion.

And who does naxx with 6 healers ? we usualy run 5 max, 3 protection spec tanks, but we are getting away from that and doing 2 prot tanks and one dps spec / prot gear.