Team Zaj - 5box - PVE - Mixed class group

[lacitpo]

Wanted to introduce my new 5 man group. I plan on posting some updates here as well as some more detailed posts on the blog (http://boxing.callmetom.net) I set up for them.

The Team



Paladin - Tank (to be rolled)
Druid - Healer (to be rolled)
Hunter - DPS (to be rolled)
Priest - DPS (lvl 12)
Warlock - DPS (lvl 12)

This is a clone of a previous team I got up to around level 64 before quitting the game and selling all my game accounts (sorry bout the TOS violation).

Reasons for my class choices are as follows


These are the 5 classes I enjoy most in the game.
Provides me with 2 cloth, 1 leather, 1 chain, and 1 plate making gear distribution much more efficient
Priest and Warlock compliment each other well
Hunter provides sustained DPS in fights where mana may become an issue.
Lots of 'Oh Shit' and wipe protection options. (Divine Intervention, Soul Stone, Battle Rez)
Duel Spec gives me some extreme variety since Druid can become tank, paladin can become healer, Priest can become healer.


Goals



This team is designed to be a fun PVE team. I've never been keen on PVP and don't think my position on that will change.
Explore solid group synergy through proper talenting and initial class selection
Run 5-man normal and heroic instances
Possibly find a way to participate in raid instances at lvl 80/85 but this is a long ways off for me.

Hardware Setup

Currently 2-boxing on a Macbook Pro upgraded to 4gb of ram. This will do fine for 3boxing and can handle 4boxing but things start breaking down at 5boxing. I'm purchasing a 27 inch quadcore iMac next week that will likely be my main boxing hardware.

Software Setup

I'm using Plexer which was well worth my $25. When I get my iMac I will likely experiment with using Synergy to broadcast keystrokes to both my macbook pro and my imac both running Plexer.

Leveling

I'm using RAF bonus and the community constructed multiboxer Tourguide profiel to level my toons. I've spent one night with them so far and have my Priest and Warlock sitting at lvl 12.

Whats to come?

In the coming weeks I plan on posting some followup with the following


Detailed information on my 'sticky' targeting system I use. Allows my main assist to cycle targets however he wants while my DPS continues to DPS a single mob.
Detailed macro breakdowns on each class by level. Well constructed macros with castsequences designed to maximize DPS vs elite and boss mobs, ideal for running instances.
Some UI information. Addons I use and UI layout tips.
Other crap.

Stay tuned.

[gitcho]

lol - i love it dude - you're just like me - you analyze things like crazy before you jumping in. I've been boxing for over a year now, and started with a pally, priest, 3xmage. I then levelled a 5x priest team to 80, then a 5x shaman team to 80, and i'm now at lvl 74 with my 5x druids. Given that your stated goals are mostly PVE, I think you are making a good choice. I am swapping my original team memebrs out to go with a fully mixed comp for PVE and raiding (pally, priest, mage, shaman, druid). The only thing I could recommend would be a shaman, as the DPS buffs you get from totems are huge (+280 sp for everyone, +haste, +crit etc).

I made this decision to drop 2 of my heroic mages for a shaman and druid, almost solely on the information I found on this site : http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/

[Coltimar]

Identical to my second team except that my druid is boomkin and my priest is disc. One limitation that I have found is that it's difficult to get the hunter to match the dps of your lock/drood :/ I went from Survival to BM for the ease of dps management but as my hunter's gear improves his dps isn't really scaling the way I would like.

I would still recommend it and I've decided to keep him because it fun to have him in there and I have something to do with all that dps gear that drops!

Have fun!

[lacitpo]

RE: Hunter DPS

I experienced the same thing. My hunter's DPS lagged well behind that of my Priest and Warlock. I think this was partially due to poorly constructed macros but equally just a limitation on multiboxing the hunter class. Despite this, having the pet as a free offtank, someone to give the chainmail gear to, and just plain enjoying having a hunter, I find I enjoy having him as my 5th team-member, even if he is a bit disfunctional.

[lacitpo]

Team is as follows.

Paladin - Protection (unrolled)
Druid - Resto (lvl 21)
Priest - Shadow (lvl 21)
Warlock - Destro (lvl 21)
Hunter - ?? (unrolled)

Been leveling with a friend and he is playing a paladin so for now I don't have a tank of my own. I'll probably bring the paladin and the hunter up together sometime in the coming weeks.

I brought my group of 3 together for the first time at lvl 12 without much trouble. There isn't a lot of need for much more than a nuke macro when you are questing with a 4 man team. Mobs die fast and mostly it's just a struggle to keep your mana up.

Also, with the RAF bonus, the team is starved for gold. I'm getting enough to train essentials but it will be nice when I'm no longer so poor.

Some points of interest

1 - Addons are key. Going to be looking around for something to handle automated buffing. I've been out of the wow scene for a while and don't know what's best anymore. Suggestions are welcome.

2 - Healers are useless outside instances. I already knew this but my playtime tonight confirmed it. I also wasn't able to quickly get the new auto-interact macro stuff to work to get my druid to engage mobs automatically in beast form. Wasn't a big deal but it would be a nice thing to have.

3 - There are ways to minimize it but.. Avery couple of levels, especially at the landmark levels 20/30/40, expect to spend some time in the city. Training, Talenting, Itemizing, and revamping macros takes time. Since I've done this some in the past, I was able to do what might have been an hour worth of work in 20-30 minutes.

It's pretty late and I'm tired. Going to put up current macros tomorrow and update the blog with some more detailed info. Instance notes coming in a few more days maybe.

[vorticone]

I like mixed teams, leveling up one myself at the moment (and it is my first team).

Anyways, for your buff addon I would recommend SmartBuff. I use that on my team and with a single broadcasted key I have all toons cast all their buffs. Just spam that key till all say "Nothing to do." :)

[lacitpo]

Just got done configuring ZOMGBuffs from wowace. I think I remember using smartbuff on my previous team now that you mention it. Same type of setup. Spam a key and it buffs everyone.

[Sethra]

I'll make a suggestion here.

I know you like hunters and all, but I really think you ought to add a mage instead, especially since you haven't rolled it yet.

Hunters requre more babysitting than other classes. Gotta keep them full on ammo, gotta keep feeding your stupid hungry pet, and gotta make sure your pet doesn't aggro a whole room when your team jumps off a ledge and your pet walks down the long way past a few packs of elites.

Mages feed your group free food and water, and once you hit level 40 your group gains a ton of mobility with the portal spells, so you're never a slave to your hearthstones again.

[Khatovar]

I haven't had hunter problems like that since Maraudon was the place to be.

Ammo stacks to 1000. I went through 2 stacks of bars 2 weeks ago to make Saronite Razorheads and I don't expect to need more for several more weeks.

Pets all have talents one way or another to gain happiness from attacking, the only time I have to feed my pet is if I've left my toons standing in town for 2 hours while I do nothing in particular.

Ledges? Dismiss Pet (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=2641), Eyes of the Beast (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=1002) and Stay have been in game forever.

As a matter of fact, my hunter is the toon that requires the least attention. She has nothing special she has to do, no procs to manage, and comes with the ability to CC, boost my aggro with Misdirection, "purge" mobs with Tranquilizing Shot (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=19801), can offtank and continues to DPS on the move.

It's all well and good if you want to offer the benefits of a certain class, but don't overblow the "problems" with another class to do it. I might have agreed with you if our endgame was still Dire Maul, but it's not.

[lacitpo]

I'm toying with a couple of options. Here's my current team status.

Paladin - tank (unrolled)
Druid - resto (lvl 30)
Priest - shadow (lvl 30)
Warlock - destro (lvl 30)
???? - dps (unrolled)

I've been toying with a few things. I am really inclined towards a hunter or a shaman simply because of the gear distribution. Having a chain wearer means more drops are useful to me. In the end I'll end up going with what I like and that's what's important to me but I'm doing some pro's and cons type stuff. The shaman has begun to look more appealing to me but we'll see. About 1-2 weeks before I roll my last 2 toons so I have time to decide.

That said, I began a 3 mage team for funsies last night and was spoiled by the simplicity. Some of my thoughts.

OMG, so much damage
Free water is amazing
3 Mages is soooooo simple compared to every team i've ever rolled.


I'm afraid I spoiled myself.....

New on the Blog

Level 20 impressions, including priest and warlock macro breakdown (http://boxing.callmetom.net/node/19)
Hastily written article on what i've termed my 'sticky targeting' system for slave targeting. (http://boxing.callmetom.net/node/20)

Hope you enjoy.

[lacitpo]

WOW!!!

I just found this post in the macros forums

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=18539

I'll be doing major rework on all my cast macros. This solves so many problems I've had trouble hurdling when it comes to spells that have a cooldown or dot timing.

The one thing I still haven't fully worked out is using spells like the warlock Conflagarate. The spell hangs if there is no ability to consume so I hesitate to ever add it to a castsequence because immolate might get resisted causing my lock to stand there like a moron for at least some period of time.

[Ualaa]

Build a warlock /click macro.

It will attempt to execute every spell in the click at once.
With a priority system, Immolate will fire off before Conflagrate attempts to.

Baring resists, you will never attempt to Conflagrate, without Immolate being up.
Similarly, the fall through Incinerate will always have Immolate up too.

While leveling, maybe 2 or 3 mobs in 100 will resist any given cast.
So you're not really losing all that much.

And once you are 80, hit gear is fairly easy to come by.
You don't need a whole lot of it, to be hit capped for heroics.
And if you can do heroics with your team (you will with tank + heals + dps), you can get hit capped for raids, if you want to raid.

Once you are hit capped for your content, your spells will always land every time.

[Khatovar]

http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Macro:Using_Click#Destruction

While my warlock macro was a little different the only thing you really should do is change this line:


/castsequence reset=combat Immolate,,,,,,,,,{etc}

to


/castsequence reset=combat/ctrl Immolate,,,,,,,,,{etc}

Changing the reset to include some sort of modifier means you have the ability to re-attempt the Immolate cast if you don't land it.

All sorts of click macros in the wiki http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Macro:Using_Click

[lacitpo]

Team still sitting at the lvl 30 mark. I ran SM graveyard tonight with my 3 rolled characters (Druid, Priest, Warlock) all still with basically the same macros they've had since level 20. It was a fine run and a good opportunity to find areas of my interface and macro/keybind strategy that are weak or all together missing.

I payed special attention to noticing my approximate keypress rate on my DPS spam macros.

After the run, I went to work implementing the /click macro setup and I think I'm really happy with the result. Let me outline some of what I came across.

Timing is much easier

First thing I noticed was that adjusting the timing of my macros was much easier. Previously, I used a single, LONG cast sequence which required careful planning, and a 'Least Common Multiple' approach to ordering abilities based on cooldowns and how long dots lasted. A major problem with this method was for things that don't ever need to be re-applied to a target since cast sequences will tend to cycle eventually.

Now, I can notice that my Curse of Agony is being refreshed sooner than it needs to be and just jump in and add 4 more commas to the end of the delay section. Same for if something isn't being refreshed fast enough.

Things are modular

This setup makes things module. I've made my own click macro for targeting, so if I adjust my stock targeting line, I don't have to do it across 3-4 macros anymore. It also makes constructing new DPS macros with slightly altered spell contents easy. If I decide I want to take 'Devouring Plague' off the lineup for whatever reason, I just remove the /click for that macro or construct a new one quickly without that line.

I no longer need to sift through my long cast sequence and manually remove each instance of a spell to remove it from the overall macro.

Adding Modifiers is great

There are some great things that can be done by adding [modifier:ctrl] or something similar to one of your clicks. I've done so on my warlock life tap so that rather than having a separate key for lifetap, I simply hold control while I click my DPS macro and he life taps.


Other Updates



Check out my post on 'Sticky Targeting' - http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=26656
Planning to take my team to 40+ this weekend so stay tuned.
I'll probably post a full breakdown of my DPS macros before my sprint to 40
Blog has some of my impressions on my first single class group of 3x mages - http://boxing.callmetom.net/node/21

[lacitpo]

Wanted to post an update to my team's status.

I'm currently running 3 teams of 3. I've got a brand new iMac in the works that should be here in a few weeks but until then I'm on my macbook pro which runs well with 3 clients. Teams are as follows.

Primary


Druid (resto) - lvl 39
Priest (shadow) - lvl 39
Warlock (destro) - lvl 39

This team has been played with a friend of mine on a paladin as my tank. We finished Cathedral tonight, after doing all the other wings of Scarlet Monastery. We've 4 manned everything so some runs have been a bit slower than they should. My priest has the most mana problems of the two. I think I have some more tweaking to be done on the click macros and my overall targeting to squeeze some more mana efficiency out of both of them.

Auxiliary


Paladin (??) - lvl 20
2 x Shaman (elemental) - lvl 20

I began this team today with the arrival of the $19.95battle chests I ordered over thanksgiving. The Paladin and Shaman(s) are meant to be added in to my primary team at later levels to form a self contained 5 man group for when I don't have friends online to play with. The added shaman is more of a 'why not' type of thing. Leveling 2 is the same as leveling 3 with my current setup.

Fun Team


3 x Mages (fire) - lvl 26

This team was begun just to screw around one day but as it turns out, I loved playing them so much I just kept going. Everything dies fast, they never need to buy water. I can pull a bunch and AOE them to death. It's great.

Long Term Plans

Assuming all 3 teams hit 60, I'll have a large number of granted levels to hand out. I'll likely add 2 x more shamans and 1 x more mage for sure, allowing me to have 2 x 5 man single class teams I can play around with. My goals have never been to PvP or do too much hardcore stuff so gearing up 2-3 full 5man teams doesn't bother me. The hardest part will probably be taking them from lvl 60-80/85, as I know that once RAF is gone the leveling process is going to feel a lot more daunting.

I'm hoping that Outlands goes by relatively quick. I'll enjoy revisiting all the instances I did so long ago but I'm mostly looking forward to experiencing wrath content. I haven't been in the game since Wrath was released so it's all going to be new for me. I'm really looking forward to it.

Technical - Click Macro Comments

The switch to click macros was the single best adjustment I've made for my setup. It's eased my macro adjusting and tweaking process immensely and incorporating new abilities is easy, where it used to take time and effort. If you haven't done so already, I really recommend checking out if click macros are right for your setup. They aren't perfect for everything but they sure are great for a lot of things.

[lacitpo]

Boosting FTW

Friend of mine broke down and xfered his lvl 70 mage from BC over to the server we're playing on. Had him run auxiliary team (paladin + 2xshamans) through RFK. Went from lvl 20-22 with 2 full levels worth of XP in a single clear. It was not the cleanest run since it was his first time back on the mage in a year with a sloppy talent spec and hastily placed action bars.

Really convenient and fast leveling that way. Wishing we had a paladin to do it with but the mage is sufficient for now. Also finished lvl 4/10/20 (earth, fire, water) totem quests for my 2 shamans and I officially hate them. Really the worst quest lines ever. I have fond memories of vanilla wow but I think I'd loath going back and actually playing it again.

Team Zaj out.

[lacitpo]

Team Status


Druid - Restoration - Level 59 - Armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&cn=Xaj)
Warlock - Destruction - Level 58 - Armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&cn=Zej)
Priest - Shadow - Level 58 - Armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&cn=Zaj)


Dinged 58+ on my team last night. Tanaris -> Hinterlands -> Western Plaguelands felt like cake from level 50-58. I'm not the fastest or most efficient leveler but it all went pretty smooth and felt pretty fast.

Regarding Macros

I found out about Click Macros when my characters were about level 30 and they have been the single best improvement I've made to my team's setup. The simplicity click macros lend towards rewriting and revamping macros is simply amazing. I think the term I've used before is modularity. Timing is separated into a spell by spell basis so you can tweak spell rotations in a much more controlled method.

I still have some residual problems to work out that maybe someone out there has tackled.

First would be easy AOE. I have a few AOE spells at my disposal right now, primarily Hurricane, Holy Nova, Rain of Fire, and Hellfire. Hurricane and Rain of Fire are both area targeted spells, while Nova and Hellfire center around the caster. With the removal of map ping targeting these require manual targeting unless someone has devised a slick method to handle this. Nova and Hellfire are decent but require my guys to be in the middle of the fray, AND, Hellfire requires a chunk of healing to maintain. I'm just not sure the best way to acomplish easy to dish out AOE without it being clumsy.

Second, my rotation on my priest is also not as perfect as I'd prefer. I don't like having my DOT refreshes interupt mindflay but I can't figure out a way around it. The [nochanneling] modifier is nice but it prevents my click macros from progressing through the timing commas.

A lot of my problems stem from laziness. I've intended on really fleshing out my action bars for a long time. Currently I don't have much going on on my druid if I shift to kitty or bear and those macros could use some real love. Same with my priest and her ability to heal at all. All the spells are littered on bars but I don't have any setup to allow me to quickly swap to my priest for backup healing. The housekeeping that goes along with mboxing is daunting sometime when you just want to hop on and play. It's part of what I love about it, but there are times that it grates on me.

What's Next

I've got 2 teams of 3, one with 3xMages, and one with 2xShamans + 1xPaladin that I'm about to start boosting to lvl 60. When all teams are lvl 60, I'll do some level granting madness to fill in each team of 3 to a 5man team. Current plans are as follows

Team A - Paladin - Druid - Priest - Warlock - Shaman
Team B - Paladin - Mage - Mage - Mage - Priest
Team C - Paladin - Shaman - Shaman - Warlock - Warlock

I'll be sure to spread the classes out in such a way that no account has 2 of the same class which allows some mixing and matching.

I've got my new iMac on the way which should arrive around Xmas/New years at which point I'm hoping to be ready with 3 full 5man lvl 60 teams ready to start grinding through outlands and then northrend someday when I actually get there. I'll likely do them 1 team at time since a single lvl 80 team will be very beneficial to lower level teams.

How's your team doing? Any suggestions?

[lacitpo]

Forgot to mention that I'm going to try and incorperate Jamba-Macro into my setup at the next revamp. I requested the feature way back when Jamba first got released and I'm not even using it now. I haven't needed it since my teams have been so static, but now that my leveling is gonna slow down a bit and I'll be mixing and matching a bit more, I'd like the mix/match process to be smoother.

[lacitpo]

I created a presentation to explain my targeting system to anyone interested. Let me know what you think. I also posted this under the macros forum in my "Sticky Targeting" thread, so sorry for the double post.

http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AeFX7tgw_Ki2ZGM4OGtmNHdfMTEyZHRwY2Q0Yzc&hl=en

[Slayde]

Thanks for the post and the nice little presentation. I may try this method out for my next 5 man group. :)

[lacitpo]

So my new 27 inch i7 iMac showed up yesterday. Popped my extra 4gb of ram to get it up to 8gb and omg, what an improvement.

Previously, traveling through Ogrimmar on my group while 3-boxing was almost impossible. Now I have zero lag and can run my clients on much higher resolutions and graphical settings.

Playing in groups is much more enjoyable now. I'm able to react better to high need situations. I can respond quicker when needed and overall my DPS has gone up. It's a major improvement. I'll start with all 5 sometime soon.

I just dinged 64 on my main 3.

Armory - http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Sen%27jin&n=Nantekotta&p=1

Zaj, Zej, and Xaj

[lacitpo]

New computer has opened me up to a few more things. I'm not plagued by graphics lag anymore so I'm free to refine more important parts of my setup. Most importantly is the slow binding of extra keys to simplify my day to day grind. I'm compiling a long click magro to use as my 'big-button' macro to accept trades, greet items, enter random dungeons, etc. Also, I'm about to do some DPS tests on target dummies now that i'm almost leveled high enough to get legit results. I know I have timing problems on my click macros and I'm hoping to resolve some of that soon.

Leveling has been fast and as dedicated as I was to doing quests, random instances have proved the most consistent, fast, and gold earning thing I've done. Really impressive.

[lacitpo]

So here is a quick update.

As anyone who's familiar with my setup knows, I multibox with a friend running one of his character's solo. My teams are as follows, and were not exactly planned this way, but more of what came about based on what accounts I had available and whims I was feeling when I rolled them.

Here's my guild Nantekotta (http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Sen%27jin&gn=Nantekotta)

Team A
Xaj (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Xaj) - (healer) Druid 67
Zaj (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Zaj) - (shadow dps) Priest 67
Zej (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Zej) - (destruction dps) Warlock 67

Team B
Xoj (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Xoj) - (tank) Paladin 60
Zoj (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Zoj) - (elemental dps) Shaman - 60
Woj (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Woj) - (elemental dps) Shaman - 60
Xej (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Xej) - (destruction dps) Warlock - 60

I leveled Team B primarily with a lot of granted levels from team A and a lot of boosting with the help from a friend. At 48, I hand leveled them with instances the rest of the way to 60. There were a couple of levels there around 50 where my gear was shit, or all together non-existent, but on the whole it was a learning experience.

Shamans are a new class for me. I've played all of the other classes I'm using pretty extensively at some point or another, but Shamans are a whole new ball game. The totem quests blow, but on the whole, they do great DPS and are pretty easy to manage. I'm still kinda lost as to how to go about dropping my totems before each combat. Most of the time I just don't.

Dinged Team B lvl 60 last night and successfully cleared all 3 bosses of Ramparts with a pug druid healer with the LFD tool. Outlands gear is helping get my guys up to par, and I'm looking forward to finally being able to combine Team A and Team B and do 5 mans alone again.