Hello world, new guy here.

[XATM]

Hello everyone,

Great forums you have going here, I've been trolling around for about three weeks. I decided to give it a shot and I'm starting with a mixed team.

Shaman, Priest, Druid, Hunter, Paladin (master & tank).

I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself here. If anyone else is boxing on Alexstraza drop me a line sometime!
Here's a shot of them at 25 in SW.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=RGalleryImageWrapper&itemID=607&type=page&from=user

[Fef]

Welcome ! :)

And congratulations for being so ambitious : 5 different classes is not the easiest thing, especially for a first group.
Let us know how you are doing.

[keyclone]

howdy XATM and welcome to the forums!

you already got them to 25? nice. good work there. running more then 2 classes is definitely tough. kudos!

drop us more pics in the screenshots section so we can watch your crew grow up. it would also be helpful if you described your keyboard layout and how you coordinate your characters

[Sychosys]

Wow, very nice. I am still doing single class leveling but I am finding it fun. Love the names of you characters though!

And since keyclone left it off

Welcome to the addiction :)

[XATM]

Since keyclone asked : ) and since I love to share, here's the low down. If you're trolling forums at work like I do sometimes it's a long read! If you get tired easily, probably best to move along and avoid the wall of text.

My setup is VERY basic in that I'm only using a single key to control all the dps right now, it's a work in progress and as they get to 50+ I'm going to add in more involved macro's and abilities.

I'm using RAF for xp gains. My main was leveled from 1-80 since 2004 through vanilla, BC, and WotLK... as a holy priest. So I'm used to living inside instances and that's how I'm running these, just skipping from Deadmines, to Stockades, to Black Fathom Depths and now setting up for SM Graveyard. Since they are leveling around 4-5 times a day I only plan reseting their "DPS SPAM" macro's every 10 levels or so, at least that's the plan until they gain some new ability I just have to add. All 4 of the casters (including hunter) are using a one key cast sequence macro. Later I'll be adding in more abilities as they come available and if stuff isn't dieing fast enough. Here's the setup so far using as few and as basic abilities as I can get by with. Luckily these are "bread and butter" spells and they get upgraded every few levels to a new rank!

"Macaroon" action bar set up for [bartarget=focustarget] with all casters using the pally as focus. Essentially it's the same as an /assist setup.
Hunter is a /petattack -> /castsequence reset=target hunter's mark, serpent sting, arcane shot, arcane shot, arcane shot, serpent sting, arcane shot, arcane shot
Druid is using /castsequence reset=target wrath, moonfire, wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath, moonfire, wrath, wrath
Shaman is using /castsequence reset=target lighting bolt, flameshock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, flameshock
Priest is using /castsequence reset=target holyfire, smite, shadow word: pain, smite, smite, holyfire, smite, smite

The reset=target allows for restarting the sequence on a new mob when you switch targets. I burried the shadow word pain behind 2 casts so it doesn't go off unless i'm fighting elites or bosses normally, trash dies before that. Same for moonfire and the wrath's between them as a buffer allowing for a full dot tick from it & serpent sting etc... These are all bound to my hotkey 2 as is my judgement of light, this way I can spam it nonstop and use click casting (I know it's not as efficient but i'm new) for my tanking abilities. Thankfully paladin tanking is far simpler than warrior tanking IMO. Retribution aura, a nice shield spike, Concecration and Thorns go a VERY long way toward simplifying the tanking.

For the pally I'm just using one macro command right now and that's for Righteous defense, for anyone that doesn't know it's like a taunt but pulls up to 3 mobs off a friendly target so you have to drop the mob target & target the ally for it to work. This is bad because it can reset your castsequence on the dps guys so I have it macro'd to just /cast [target=targettarget] righteous defense. Since i'm using target of target frames (Isn't everyone?) it simplifies this a lot. As soon as I see the mob target one of my squishies I just hit the Righteous defense macro if my taunt is down, ez sauce.

For healing I just have three simple keys set up, anything that isn't covered by that I just pickup the slack with the pally doing self healing. The three are mapped to numpad 8,9,6 so that they are close to my mouse hand.
8= druid & priest both cast. Druid Rejuvenation and priest shields. They are macro'd using /stopcasting -> /cast [target=focustargettarget] "Spell" so I can interrupt their dps spam and pop them off quickly, as soon as I hit it I can keep spaming my 2 key since it's not tied to a "stopcasting" command. Since the pally is the focus, his target is the mob and the mob's target SHOULD be the pally so he get's the heals. If I lose agro and my taunt is down I have no way to heal the pally unless I can find a mob that's targeting him... it's not perfect but as long as the tanking is good it works.
9= same cast setup for druid and priest but using their instant HoTs, Renew & Regrowth.
6= Just the priest so far with the same macro casting "heal" at max rank. I may add another caster into this keymap later once tank HP is high enough to warrant two larger heals at once.

I use a bear pet to assist tanking, he is a big help. I have the mend pet set up on the hunter for shift+1 and feed pet macro set up for Ctrl+1 /cast feedpet -> /use "insertfoodhere".
The shaman has a reset=combat macro for totems so they can be refreshed as needed bound to the + key. The fire totem is first so it normally only get's one press (45 sec on that totem), but I hit it again if my Strength totem has expired(5 min on it) but I normally move up to a new pulling spot before that one even expires.

The only other macro I use is a standard set focus & follow macro bound to "F" and I'm using Jamba with the follow strobing OFF. I like to be able to control the follow myself & haven't found any benefit to the strobe yet. No auto follow after combat either since I'm living in instances. I just put them in formation and pop out my totems.

I use "Smartbuff" for buffing on all the toons. This is a fantastic mod that is a MUST have if you are running multiple classes IMO.

MANY thanks to everyone that adds to these forums. Everything I've put into these guys in the last two weeks is based on what I've found and searched for here. I'll keep updating with new pictures as they grow up :)

[Acerak]

Wow, that's pretty impressive. I haven't taken the plunge to five different classes yet, and have dual-boxed 3x teams, four-boxed 1x, and am now planning on five-boxing. I was planning to do a mixed team at some point but now I want to try it!

One-key HoT+PW:S is awesome. Now that I think about it, I like one-key for lots of things...I seem to have this need to make a whole bunch of keys, but admittedly I lose track sometimes so maybe more one-keys makes sense.

And, I need to get smart buff..I've been doing it manually with my 4-pally team, which is silly.

Anyway, welcome!

[Sychosys]

Wow, nice read (And yes I am trolling the forums at work, slow day for me as I start in on a new project).

I started with a Pally + Shammy x 4 set up and I know down the end of the line I want to run heroics so I will be looking at somewhat of a mix. I guess they key really does seem to be writing the nice macros, right now my setup is very simple (and 5 shamans) actually with any sort of staggering of totems and the like actually just being done because of the bar setups being like that. I did not want to get into it too far with 3.2 changing how totems can be dropped.

This does make it seem to be a bit more possible however and I am actually looking forward to branching out a bit after I get as many different classes to 60 as I can.

Very nice and very informative, welcome to the forums :) (again)

[XATM]

Double posted and it won't let me delete this one*

[XATM]

I was messing with the idea of the shaman group, something like pally / priest / shaman x3. Are you using round robin for the mana stream? I was thinking about that and I had an idea that may be helpful. Since I only have two accounts with BC upgrade I can't do this yet though, I'm alliance and can't Shaman it up without more upgrades to Burning Crusade. I was thinking instead of round robin you could just insert a null in the cast sequence to save keyboard real estate.

Something like this having them all bound to the same key allowing a rotating mana tide while keeping up a max number of Healing totems.
Sham1 /castsequence reset=combat Healing Stream Totem,,,,,Mana Tide Totem
Sham2 /castsequence reset=combat Healing Stream Totem,,,Mana Tide Totem,,,
Sham3 /castsequence reset=combat Healing Stream Totem,Mana Tide Totem,Healing Stream Totem,,,
Sham4 /castsequence reset=combat Mana Tide Totem,Healing Stream Totem,,,,,

So first press would get 3x heals & a mana tide, 2nd get's a replacement for the first mana tide with healing stream and drops the next guy's mana tide, 3rd press get's a replacement for the 2nd mana tide with healing stream again and makes the next shaman drop his mana tide totem and same for the 4th. If I have this set up right the next press would restart the order or just reset when you enter combat again. If someone knows about using the extra , to null a cast please let me know if this is correct. My thought is that above would cause the rotation with mana tide starting at 4, 3, 2, then 1.

I would think you could use the same concept for the various totem schools too, but my first ever shaman is only 28 so I'm just starting to learn about the various cooldowns and stacking abilities for totems. I know it would be nice to keep an earthbind down with though, and you could use null entry to keep just one of them dropping that while keeping Stoneskin and Strength of earth up.

Stoneskin,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Strength of Earth,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Earthbind,Earthbind,Earthbind,Earthbind etc...

I would appreciate your input on how you worked out your totem farms and your thoughts.

=D Thanks for the welcome!

[EaTCarbS]

Welcome to the addiction!

oh, and nice FF8 avatar :D

[Sychosys]

Because I am taking a hydra approach to the game I can play any character, there is no main in my setups. To that end I have been trying to extend Keyclone's formation examples to cycling of the totems like you mentioned at the start. Pretty much whoever is in the Main window will drop a mana totem when I hit Alt-0 with everyone else in the slave windows dropping a healing stream totem. The first one doesnt stack the other 4 do, it works out really nice. Same goes for Earth Bind and the Stone Claw totems for a 'Run Away!!!!' button, I drop one earth bind form the main window and 4 stone claws from the slaves Pretty much guarenteeing I can get away from whatever was chasing me... though honestly I use this most often when I am just done with a quest and I dont want to take the time to weave around things.

From what I understand I am not breaking any rules of WoW as one key press is pressing one key in WoW... But I am wondering if doing this hasnt moved me to a more shady area of multiboxing since its like the key bindings change depending on who is rendering in what window.

From what I know the macros you listed below should work just fine except you are missing a restoration of the Healing Stream Totem for Sham2 after its mana tide... or there are just too many ,,.. I am assuming you want to time it so you can refresh a mana tide with out having to refresh a healing stream as well.. otherwise I would get rid of the nulls and just

/castsequence Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Mana Tide Totem
/castsequence Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Mana Tide Totem,Healing Stream Totem
/castsequence Healing Stream Totem,Mana Tide Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem
/castsequence Mana Tide Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem,Healing Stream Totem

This is probably just me again but since this is a straight solid setup (Ive never had to recast the totems in combat, they are always done) but I can not see a need for reset=combat.. Who cares where you are in your sequence, the results are the same. Only time it would muck up is if one of the shams didnt do anything.

But anywho, The sequences above are what I am mimicing through keyclone. Just in the game I have the Mana Totem bound to 9, for example and the HST bound to 0. Through the keyclone map the main window translates 9 to 9 and sends it through while for the slave windows it translates 9 to 0.

Hope that made sense as I am pretty new to this and getting it all working right is still taking some work... Not to mention as soon as I get 5 (edit, yes I can subtract 55 from 60 .. just takes me a couple of tries!) more levels with my shamans I will be swapping to a new class.. Warlocks probably since my DKs which I just played for an hour are almost 60 already with out being out of the noob area. Since my key setups are keyclone dependent I have to swap out the keymaps when I change classes to get my hydra approach to work, hehe.

[XATM]

That's awesome, I didn't realize you could set up keyclone to mimic a key with an alternate. Like you say actual 9 = mimic 0 for the slaves. This is something I'm going to have to play with a bit more.

Edit: Thanks for noticing the avatar! Nobody recognizes the name as being from FF8 as well. That's just the actual spider XATM from the game. I've been using that handle online since around 2001 or so.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

@ XATM,

Why not just use a 1 button tanking macro too... then you don't even need to click-cast. Something like this should work:

/Castsequence reset=combat Judgement of Light, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecration, Shield of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Light, Shield of Righteousness, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield, Shield of righteousness

This should give you a good start on your 9696 tanking rotation, and because it is run twice, it will automatically reset (i.e. if you manually run the 9696 rotation twice, it starts over). Tanking rotation solved... lol

You can use this addon if your macros are too long for the standard interface:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10496-SuperDuperMacro.html
Found that ^ addon in another thread on this site (can't remember which thread).

[Sychosys]

Here ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=206599#post206599') is the post about using region (pip) based keymaps that gave me the initial idea to do it this way.

Edit: Oh, I saw your picture/name and knew where it was from, but as I recall I hated that spider thingy so I kept it to myself ;)

[XATM]

That's a good idea on the tanking macro. I find tanking to be the most enjoyable role in instances, so for now I'll probably keep the cast sequences off my pally. Once I have all those abilities on my new pally I will probably set something like this up though, right now he just doesn't have very much at 29.

Thanks for all the input, if anyone else sees this and plays any of the classes I have in my team I'd welcome ANY lessons learned or advice that is out there. You never know when that nugget of wisdom you take for granted will blow someone's mind!

[Ualaa]

I like to use this format for my heals.

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help] Renew; [help, target=targettarget] Renew; [target=player] Renew

You can vary that according to your form of assist.

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help, target=focustarget] Flash Heal; [help, target=focustargettarget] Flash Heal; [target=player] Flash Heal

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [help, target=targettargettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth




Theoretically, you're either targeting your master toon (target=targettarget) or are assisting them.

The first condition will then target the master's target, and if they're friendly it will heal them. So your master toon can target any of the slaves, themself or another friendly for an easy heal.

The second condition comes into play if the first fails. That is, if the target of your master is hostile, then it attempts to target the hostile's target instead. This will almost always be your tank, but could be whoever took aggro foolishly.

If both of these conditions fail, then target=player directs the heal to the caster of the heal spell. You could change this to target=focus or target=Tank's Name.

[Aarelan]

I'm running 5 different classes - It's great for all the extra capabilities (buffs, decurses etc) - and of course it's great fun - I suspect my DPS isn't as good as tank + all the same setup, but I can cope with lots more stuff.

I don't PVP, but I think that's where 5 classes would be a real headache.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

;
That's a good idea on the tanking macro. I find tanking to be the most enjoyable role in instances, so for now I'll probably keep the cast sequences off my pally. Once I have all those abilities on my new pally I will probably set something like this up though, right now he just doesn't have very much at 29.

Thanks for all the input, if anyone else sees this and plays any of the classes I have in my team I'd welcome ANY lessons learned or advice that is out there. You never know when that nugget of wisdom you take for granted will blow someone's mind!

ROFL... I didn't realize that your tank was so low... you won't be able to use that macro (to full effect) until level 75. You can't train Shield of Rightousness ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53600') until 75.

I like to use this format for my heals.

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help] Renew; [help, target=targettarget] Renew; [target=player] Renew

You can vary that according to your form of assist.

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help, target=focustarget] Flash Heal; [help, target=focustargettarget] Flash Heal; [target=player] Flash Heal

#show
<Insert Assist Method>
/cast [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [help, target=targettargettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth




Theoretically, you're either targeting your master toon (target=targettarget) or are assisting them.

The first condition will then target the master's target, and if they're friendly it will heal them. So your master toon can target any of the slaves, themself or another friendly for an easy heal.

The second condition comes into play if the first fails. That is, if the target of your master is hostile, then it attempts to target the hostile's target instead. This will almost always be your tank, but could be whoever took aggro foolishly.

If both of these conditions fail, then target=player directs the heal to the caster of the heal spell. You could change this to target=focus or target=Tank's Name.

You sir, are AMAZING!!!! I now have a one-button heal to go along with all my other one-button macros!!!!

Granted, it won't work ALL the time, but being able to select my target with my tank, and then hit my "one-button-heal" should work ~90% of the time.

[Fef]

I use that set-up for healing too. It mostly works great.
The only issue is when several mobs hit on several group members. Then the tank has to actually select a team member for the heal to go on the right character, resulting in a drop of FPS (since the caster DPS don't have a correct focustarget anymore). This is however rare enough for me not to try and find a workaround.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

If you had an AoE healer (or chain-heal-ftw)... would that help minimize the problem? You could just create another button that dealt with group-wide spells.

Basically what I am "thinking-out-loud" is that you could have these buttons:

Button 1 = DPS one-button macro
Button 2 = Healing macro above
Button 3 = AoE healing macro... same as above, just insert chain-heal or that Priest-saves-all spell (don't have a priest yet).
Buttons 4-= are specific abilities for each toon (taunts/Mage-I-win/tricks-of-the-trade/etc)

Is this a reasonable workaround... or are there better ways to do it?

[Fef]

Chain Heal is indeed my current workaround, it works well enough, but is also results in a drop in DPS.
A real workaround would be to change my targeting setup completely, perhaps to switch to a leaderless focusless setup of some kind. But this is too much work for me right now, so I will have to accept losing a character once in a while :)

[Aarelan]

I just have one button heals on each toon. F8 for main -> F12 for toon5 My offensive one button stuff is on F1->F5, so I can put one hand on each. That way I can keep up the DPS and heals.

[Ualaa]

I've got a few configurations.

1x Paladin (dual spec, Prot main spec, Prot/Holy off-spec).
3x Shaman (Elemental)
1x Shaman (dual spec, Elem/Enh main, Resto/Enh off-spec).



For the most part, I'm running with:
- Prot Pally + 4x Elemental Spacegirls.

In this configuration, button 4 is Lesser Healing Wave, assisting the Paladin, using my macro from earlier in this thread.
Button 9 is Chain Heal, which targets the Paladin, and then jumps from there.
Water totems are either 3x Healing and 1x Mana or 1x Healing, 1x Mana and 2x Cleansing (keybinds for each).

Basically 4 is my... ut-oh button. And 9 is my AoE heal, assuming 3x Healing Stream isn't enough.



For more challenging PvE stuff (heroics), I run:
- Prot Pally + 3x Elemental and 1x Resto.

In this configuration, button 4 is Lesser Healing Wave, but only the Elemental shammies, again assisting pally as above.
Button 9 is Chain Heal, same as above.
The Resto has Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave on 5 and 6, and Earth Shield on a G-key. Assisting the pally, as above.
I also have G-keys for Riptide and Healing Wave to specific toons.

Again 4 is my ut-oh button for DPS to help with heals. 5 and 6, are dedicated healer heals.
9 is the same chain healing hitting the pally. Same water totems.




Last configuration is for pvp's.
I run 1x (Prot/Holy... 19/52/0) and 4x Elemental.

The spacegirls are the same as my default Elemental set up from above.
The pally has Grid, and via GridCustomLayouts always has the spacegirls visible.

I'm still messing around with my Clique set up. Thinking something like...
Alt-Left Click Flash of Light, Alt-Right Click Holy Light, Ctrl-Right Click Cleanse.




I use target=targettarget for my assist method, so basically use the Paladin to target.
The spacegirls cast at the Paladin's target.
And the Pally can heal, via mouse-over of a unit frame without changing targets.

Via Click castsequences, Pally has the 96969 macro on 1, Shammies have Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Macro also on 1.
If I alt-click 1, the Pally does nothing... conserves mana, when nuking things not close to us.

2 is Chain Lightning for AoE on the space girls, or Holy Shield alone when Pally is on the Holy spec.
3 is the burst Elem Mastery, Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning.

Other keys are individual totem groups, 1x ToWrath and 3x Magma, 4x Grounding, etc.. or Purge etc.

[Eoras]

Hello XATM and welcome.

I am completely new around here but it is a very nice thing to see that someone pops in to say hello and you guys get 2 pages of replies with hellos, suggestions and macro examples.

I am really impressed with you lot :thumbsup: . Will try to emulate XATM and give a little bit more information on my personal settings and .. how much I struggle with movement events :P