New to MB'ing - moving from 2 to 3 to....

[Brocher]

Greetings all, I am looking for a little advice, nothing too in depth, so that I don't make any horrendous errors and end up wasting a lot of time.

After coming back to WoW from almost a year in WAR I decided to dip my toe into MB'ing and roll new characters (not that I have any uber-pimped mains anyway, pretty casual game style) and after reading up on MB'ing and being a little apprehensive I decided to walk before I could run and do a simple pally + priest dual box on the same PC using keyclone. I've actually found that it's not as complicated as it seems upon first sight and I am actually quite enjoying making up the macros and trouble shooting problems.

Anyway, I've decided now is the time to start jogging so I've started a third account which I will make DPS to complete the holy trinity. I'm thinking it may be best to make this a hunter as I can just set auto attack and concentrate on the other two. I've also thought about making a mage but am unsure which will less problematic.

Another factor that comes into play is that I have a second PC (both are similar spec, 4GB RAM, quad core, GTS 8800 / GTS 250 graphics, either can be upgraded as required) that sits on a desk next to my 'main' PC (second PC is actually the wives but she also has a laptop she can be relegated to - only uses it for facebook and photos anyway :D ) and I'm thinking that in the not too distant future I'll start another 2 accounts (running 4 on slave PC and 1 on master) so I can 5 box and do 5 man instances. Will the pally / priest / hunter combo make it unfeasible to add another 2 accounts or.....? Or maybe when I do go 5 box I'd be better off starting again from scratch with a new group? I see a lot of posts here extolling shaman groups but I've never played a shaman beyond 20, not sure if this will matter or not, it's not like MMO's are the most demanding of beasts.

Anyway, if anyone has been in a similar situation I'd love to hear of any problems and pitfalls you encountered along the way so that I can learn from your mistakes (rather than not learning from my own which is my forte!).

As to how I'm playing at the moment I'm using keys 1 to = on top of kb for pally and numpad keys for priest (as well as alpha keys for 'common slave' functions), not sure if this is a good way to go about things or not. Am thinking if I add a third (different) class to the mix I'll go shift + numbers on top of kb. Any advice good / bad re. this way of doing things also appreciated.

[Pallarfo]

Hi,

I run a pala,priest, hunter 2x mage combo.
I've tied a rotationmacro for the pala on the same key i've binded rotationmacros for the hunter and mages.
So when i hit that key, (these are examples) the pala does concentration, hunter vipersting, mages fire a frostfire bolt.
Priest has set up her own keys, 1 key for (greater) healing the tank, 1 key to (greater) heal herself, 1 key to greater heal the hunter and so on. Circle of healing and some other usefull spell on another key.
I started with the Fkeys for the pala, num keys for the mages and normal keys for the hunter, but that plainly sucked big time.
Since Ive binded them to the same key, things are much easier :)

Hope this helps a bit.

[Ualaa]

You can bind a 96969 macro for the Paladin, to whatever key or to several keys.
Basically, you want 1 point in the Retribution talent to decrease Judgements by 1 second.

This gets you 3 abilities with an under/close to 9 second cooldown.
Consecrate, Judgement and Holy Shield.

You then have 2 abilities with a 6 second cooldown.
Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous.

Then you mix them in the preferred order.
Always going a 9, then a 6, then a different 9, then the other 6, then the last 9.

I choose Holy Shield first, as Block is the way a Pally survives and generates threat.



I personally don't like the Hunter as a DPS toon.
Two reasons: a) When a mob closes to melee, the hunter switches to melee which breaks follow; b) for me, pets seem to consistently have a mind of their own, if petattack is in the spam-macro. If it's not, then I either need to leave them on defensive which means they delay their attack a few seconds or manually attack with them, which is annoying.

But many have hunters on their teams. They are consistent dps vs both single mobs and aoe targets.
I leveled hunters to 60 during RAF, but they've stayed there since.

Most of my dps, I attempt to build Click Castsequences.
The original thread is here: http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=18539&highlight=click+castsequence
One button spam, which calls several other castsequences.
Each of the spells you'd like to cast, as they become available or you wish to cast them.




As Pallarfo has done, my healer has a hotkey to heal each member of my team.

In addition to this, I run macro's where the healer assists off of the tank.
The macro is:

If you're using the tank is focus, go with:
/cast [target=focustargettarget] or /assist focus.

If you're using target=targettarget, go with:
/cast [target=targettarget] or /assist.

If you're using tank is party leader, go with:
/cast [target=party1target] or /assist [target=party1]

/assist tank (use assist of choice)
/cast [help] Flash Heal; [help, target=targettarget] Flash Heal

Mine looks like this:
/cast [target=targettarget, help] Lesser Healing Wave; [target=targettargettarget, help] Lesser Healing Wave.

So, in addition to casting on any member of my team, with a hotkey, I can cast at my tank's target as well.
If this is a friendly, the heal goes off. If its a hostile, the heal goes to the target of my tank's target. Basically, if my tank is fighting a hostile, it goes to whoever the mob is hitting.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

I agree with Pallarfo...

Binding all of their abilities to different bars defeats the purpose of Keyclone. You want them ALL to take an action when you hit ONE key. You don't want to have to hit [1] + [Num1] + [Shift 1] just to start combat.

Create macros for everything, and bind them to specific keys. Have your "tank-and-spank" macro bound to the [1] key. Bind your DPS-button-mash macro bound to the same key, so that while your tank is "tanking"... your DPS is "spanking"

You will want your healer to be on different buttons for most of the time. You can do what Palla said, and bind heals for each toon specifically, or you can set up different mouseover or focustarget macros. There are TONS of macros with the proper coding.

Another problem that I see with your setup, is that you are not using your mouse. Things can sometimes be done a lot faster with your mouse, than with a keyboard.

Example:

My main is a Protadin, and I have healbot set up, so that left-click is Righteous Defense, and it will show me who has agro (red outline like Grid does). This way, while I am tanking, my mouse is just hovering over my healbot frames. If I lose a mob, or a PAT adds onto my Healer, I am one click away from pulling back. The same can be done with Clique and Grid, but I prefer healbot... so that is what I use.

Also, as is suggested in most places here... don't use a dedicated healer until you HAVE TO. You can spec your priest as shadow, your pally as Ret, and then with 3 more accounts just MELT things. 5 DPS players doing "kill quests" is lol. With my current trio (leveling a Druid to add to my team)... I have a huntard, a shammy and a druid. They are only level 8, but most mobs don't eve make it TO them... let alone do enough damage to need dedicated heals.

Now... to your actual question:
Hunters are fairly common as ranged DPS... not as common as shaman, but they are a good class. One nice thing, is that you could get a bear-pet, and then let THAT tank, while everyone else on your team is DPSing. If you had 3 hunters your team could be comprised of:

3 tanks (bears)
3 ranged DPS (hunters)
1 Melee DPS (Pally)
1 Healer


Not bad for a 5-man team. My end-game (read: Heroic-farming) team is going to be 1x Protadin, 3x Shaman, 1x Tree. I like the fact that all 5 of my team are "utility" class... and anyone can heal anyone. Add to that the Ank/Battle-res abilities, and it's a no-brainer.

[Barelan]

My latest 2 teams include a hunter - why - automatic off tank. I also have 2 droods and 2 shammys in my current team - why - flexibility.

I define hunter pet attack as one of my CC spells. (I also have to druids with entangle). I can then allocate a 3rd "CC" target and when I hit my CC button, the pet starts off tanking a mob while the droods entangle.

Makes multi pulls much easier.

For easier kills, I transfer my tanking druid to my DPS group (have that on a button) and let him cast. I also run with healers set to zero most of the time, and just burn everything down, but should things start going downhill, I have still have the option to transfer up to 3 toons to my heals group (main healer is drood, with 2 shammys as backup) I frequently switch leaders at this point and let the hunter take point. His pet can tank, and he can take more hits than a clothy if things go pear shaped.

In answer to the question, I thank I'l always take one hunter, but not sure about more than 1 (healing would concern me, but I'm a cautious player)

[razor]

You can also try this for Cast Sequence Macro's.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=22177&highlight=excel

[jak3676]

If you are looking at a mage - go Frost (18/0/53). I'm still raiding solo as a Frost mage. It's pretty much 1 button spam - Frostbolt. On my last raid I was 79%frostbolt, 21% blizzard. Blizzard is only really there for AOEing trash. Yes, there are higher dps mage builds, but none with higher 1 button DPS.

[Brocher]

Thanks for all the great advice - I can see that going with 3 sets of keys is a non-starter, I really need to nail down castsequence macros, that's something for me to read up on and play about with. The other part of macros I have been neglecting is the conditional macros so I need to get reading up on the expressions in the square brackets.

As far as team make up goes, from reading the replies and other threads on here it seems like almost any grouping can be made to function well (rogues and warriors are notably absent, rogues for obvious reasons, warriors as they have less AoE taunt than palladin I suspect).

I did try running 3 concurrent instances on a single PC last night (using the maximiser window program in keyclone) but it was very laggy - suspect RAM is the issue - so I will be purchasing another copy of keyclone and going to the 2 PC setup, time allowing this weekend too.

Thanks again for the helpful posts, really helped a newbie out/