Characters you also solo play

[Perrigrin]

Guys,

I've been boxing for a long time now, but this anoys me still and I have no good workaround.

I have 2-3 chars I also play solo, all of them in at least 2 specs and raid environments - Right now it's a lot of manual work to swap between "box" mode and "solo" mode, in terms of buttons and replacing macros (in solo I use very few macros).

This is specially difficult on characters that are played as slaves when boxing.

What addons / tips / tricks do you guys use? Right now I'm simply moving buttons around to support it.

Thanks!

[Zugdud]

I use an addon called Macaroon which allows you to save and load keybinding/macro profiles on a whim. Great addon, though sadly the original author Maul has lost interest in WoW so future support seems kind of up in the air. I haven't been able to find anything else out there which offers the ability to save and load keybind and macro profiles

[Perrigrin]

I tried getting that working a while back, but couldnt seem to get it to float - and if it isnt updated I rather not swap to it -- any other ideas?

[Toc]

i jump between both all the time, solo and box mode. all i do is keep one action bar free, and use the standard blizz ui,
So that when i want to solo play all i have to do is hold shift + mousewheel down and hey presto. my solo setup.

[Perrigrin]

Yea Toc, that's what I've been thinking - Main issue then is that I tend to use many more buttons than that...

[Talos]

try out this addon, Action Bar Saver 2
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8075-ActionBarSaver2.html
ive used it in the past, quite usufull in saving and restoring preset bar's

[Niley]

I have the same problem!
I raid solo on 2 toons, and 2 box warlock/shaman combo for a 3rd raid. I absolutely hate switching between solo/box mode.
I need to try all the suggestions here.

[heyaz]

I mostly eliminated this problem by switching to ISBoxer, since most of the essential macros are defined in ISBoxer and hidden in the interface (and the actual hotbars are just the spells without macros in many cases). When I play solo, ISBoxer and Jamba are disabled in my main config.wtf so they play solo just fine. For some uses I just use the second hotbar (for example one that doesn't have wind shear bound to every key like I use in arena).

I also moved away from macros with named characters, or ones without a target fall-through (having open brackets at the end). That helps the spells cast even if the other toons or targets aren't present.

[Gormand]

It depends how many bars you need to change. On my healer main (Solo play only) I have dominos as my bar mod and setup quick paging on my bars, then I have a macro that switchs my bars around (Same as shift + mousewheel) This switchs me between my solo spells and my healing macros. Only switchs 2 of my bars but could do more.
With dominos you get 10 bars, so if 5 is enough for boxing and 5 for solo then you can have 1 button that switchs the entire bar to solo mode.
When it switchs the bars it keeps the keybindings.

[Smoooth]

I do the same thing that Toc does. Action bar 1 is my boxing bar and 2-4 are always shown for both boxing and solo play. I just shift-5 to change bar 1 to bar 5 for solo play.

[Sajuuk]

FTL, isboxer and macaroon work wonders.

[Knytestorme]

I just have my WoW install for my solo play and then have 5 symlinked directories (Clone1-5) that I fire up for boxing efforts. This keeps my solo UI seperate from my boxing UI and means no need to worry about reseting things each time I switch from doing one to the other.

[Niley]

its not as much as ui thing, since i also have separate Uis for my raiding toons. Its the keybindings.

[Knytestorme]

its not as much as ui thing, since i also have separate Uis for my raiding toons. Its the keybindings.

Yeah, I knew I should have worded that differently when I posted. Keybindings were the main part I was getting at as well, but I see them as all part of the UI so I just put UI in my rush.

I just find it so much simpler to keep my boxing and my solo play as seperate as possible and so having one directory for solo and then the symlinks for boxing means I never have an issue with getting them mixed up.

[thinus]

I just have my WoW install for my solo play and then have 5 symlinked directories (Clone1-5) that I fire up for boxing efforts. This keeps my solo UI seperate from my boxing UI and means no need to worry about reseting things each time I switch from doing one to the other.

I mapped mine the same way. The new Jamba macros are also great. You can setup your macros in Jamba with keybindings. You just can't drag it to bars.

[Perrigrin]

FTL, isboxer and macaroon work wonders.

Care to elaborate on how FTL and isboxer helps? Can macaroon store keybinds as part of profiles?

On a separate note, I might use the Christmas raid break to fix my UI, and most specifically, my keybinds, to work better when swapping between solo and box.

[Dramoth]

I cheat...

I have 2.6Tb of hdd space in my games computer and I just have a solo instance of wow for when I want to solo (also use it when I just want to boost a second toon with one of my level 80's) and I have another partition on a separate drive where I have my 5 instances of wow for my 5 box team.

The solo instance setup has all the standard bars and buttons while the 5 box instances have a separate UI setup.

[Perrigrin]

I cheat...

I have 2.6Tb of hdd space in my games computer and I just have a solo instance of wow for when I want to solo (also use it when I just want to boost a second toon with one of my level 80's) and I have another partition on a separate drive where I have my 5 instances of wow for my 5 box team.

The solo instance setup has all the standard bars and buttons while the 5 box instances have a separate UI setup.

However, that doesn't address if you have different keybinds, does it? Those are saved on the server? Or at least the 'standard wow ones' are?

If this is a solution I suppose I could do that as well, either linking it on the SSD or having the "solo" wow on a normal HD.

But you are saying that, for example:
On disk A, I could have a WoW install for account X that keybinds forward to the standard A and arrow up keys
On disk B, I could have another WoW install, which when I log on account X there keybinds forward to 2 completely different keys.

I think I tried this, and turns out most keybinds would be carried through even on 2 completely different machines.

[Overpowerdin]

I just bit the bullet and dual specc'd the toons I want to solo play. Completely swaps out bars, etc, and works pretty well for me.

[shaeman]

Disclaimer: I'm at work, can't view most sites due to a firewall and haven't tested this.

I did however find an addon called keyprofiler that from the brief description I was looking at seems to suggest that you can save keybindings under different named profiles.

I'll be checking it out myself as I put off multiboxing some of my characters as they are setup for soloing.

[falsfire3401]

What an interesting question! I've just made a temporary switch from being a boxer back to a solo-boxer for the time being.

On my protadin, no changes necessary to solo-box...tanking while boxing vs tanking while soloing in instances is just the same thing :)

On my holy priest, well, I had set my macros up anticipating some solo play. They sorta look like this (going from memory):

Helpful (healing) spells:


/cast [target=mouseover,nodead,noharm,exists] Renew
/cast [target=target,nodead,noharm,exists] Renew
/cast [target=party1,nodead,noharm,exists] Renew
/cast [target=player] Renew


Offense spells:


/cast [target=party1target,harm,exists,nodead] Shadow Word: Pain
/cast [target=target,nodead,harm,exists] Shadow Word: Pain



So, my healing spells, by default will try to cast on my mouseover target (I heal with Grid and mouseover the target I want to heal). Otherwise, it will try to cast on my current target, if they're friendly, exist, and aren't dead. If none of that is true (ie I have a hostile selected), then it will default to casting on the party leader (usually the tank...however if I'm in a group where the tank isn't the leader I make a quick change to the macro). And the final line, for when I'm soloing, will just cast the healing spell on myself.

Offense spells, by default will try to assist the party leader (again usually the tank). If that target is not selected or hostile, then it will cast on my current target, provided it's hostile.


By setting up your macros in such a fashion, you don't have to worry about swapping/changing anything when you switch between soloing and boxing.