5-boxing CoT: Durnholde - 4x shaman 1x paladin

[Vyndree]

My 4 shaman and prot paladin taking on Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde. I try to only fraps my first or second runs of an instance - after this video I ended up running Durnholde a couple more times... Need to get my rep up for the pally tanking sword. Not sure when I'll be ready to take on Black Portal, but I hear that gives great rep as well.


Stage6:
http://www.stage6.com/user/Vyndree/video/2066909/5-boxing-Caverns-of-Time:-Durnholde

Links here: http://v-boxing.net/blog/videos.php/2008/01/26/durnholde

[marvein]

My 4 shaman and prot paladin taking on Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde. I try to only fraps my first or second runs of an instance - after this video I ended up running Durnholde a couple more times... Need to get my rep up for the pally tanking sword. Not sure when I'll be ready to take on Black Portal, but I hear that gives great rep as well.

Stage6: http://www.stage6.com/user/Vyndree/video/2066909/5-boxing-Caverns-of-Time:-Durnholde

dark portal (ie black morass) gives very good rep but it is considerably harder to do than durnholde(even with 5 decent players lol) so I wish you luck on it :)

[Vyndree]

Suvega hasn't cleared it yet, so I don't expect to. However, we're both going to need it for Kara attunement soon. ;)

[marvein]

Suvega hasn't cleared it yet, so I don't expect to. However, we're both going to need it for Kara attunement soon. ;)

Yes whenever I run that for other people with that purpose I fear for their kara clear lol.. Ive seen better geared people in desolace than I have in some of my BM pugs lol. With a tank it should be a lot easier but coordination is the key here (multibox or not) since you have to tank the mob, burn the portal gaurd and take down the adds it can get messy pretty quickly if you let too much slip by. And You will definately want to save your beacons for the 2nd boss and the last two portals. Remember not to drop the beacon FOR the last boss because blizz nerfed it a while back and he will one shot them, use it on the adds after he is dead. Good luck ;)

The plus side is shaman are one of the best classes for that instance.

[Vyndree]

I remember doing it with my ele/resto shammy, who was 30/0/31 after I dinged 70 (wanted to go resto, still wanted to be able to farm). I went 0/0/61 once I actually got myself attuned and geared for Kara.

Anyway, I remember that Stoneclaw worked well, and so did my elementals (fire/earth) if adds got out of hand. At this point our guild is geared enough that we just save all the beacons for the last boss, just for kicks and because we never need to use them. There's usually a couple minute lapse between portals because we kill stuff too quickly (overgeared).

It'll be fun to try it when I'm not decked out in epix and I have to multibox all the chars. I might pull in my 70 resto shaman though -- not sure if the ele's will be able to have any mana left if they're using their heals. That's the big mana killer right there.

[marvein]

I remember doing it with my ele/resto shammy, who was 30/0/31 after I dinged 70 (wanted to go resto, still wanted to be able to farm). I went 0/0/61 once I actually got myself attuned and geared for Kara.

Anyway, I remember that Stoneclaw worked well, and so did my elementals (fire/earth) if adds got out of hand. At this point our guild is geared enough that we just save all the beacons for the last boss, just for kicks and because we never need to use them. There's usually a couple minute lapse between portals because we kill stuff too quickly (overgeared).

It'll be fun to try it when I'm not decked out in epix and I have to multibox all the chars. I might pull in my 70 resto shaman though -- not sure if the ele's will be able to have any mana left if they're using their heals. That's the big mana killer right there.

When my guild first did it for our kara key we didnt have much in the way of 'phat epix' either and it wasnt very bad at all. We had 1x prot warrior, 1x resto druid, 1x ele shamman, 1x BM hunter(me), 1x something...I think it was an ice mage. Shaman was on adds the rest of us burned the place down didnt have any problems and plenty of time to drink between portals. After we had gotten much better gear we ran if a few more times for rep and to help new guildies with the quest chain, it was just plain laughable. When you get it done Id be very interested in a video on it. Im not sure I could do it with 5 shamans though so Id probably habve to bring in my druid to tank it.

[Slats]

Your video editing skills are improving greatly.

I see that you fraps off one of your clones, I assume this is because you run a 'main' PC with a monitor running at a very high resolution - so frapsing off one of the clones running at a smaller resolution off another PC is less load and gives better results?

Clean up your interface on your clones. Hide your bags, fubar etc etc to give the cleanest interface as possible. I know I'm lazy as hell with mine, because I only glance at them, I have shit all over the place - but because one of them is your camerman(woman? omg so unpc) your large array of totem buffs got in the way of some of the fights.

If you look at both Xbox and Ellays interface, they have one row of buttons with the rest hidden (I assume all hotkey'd) the ones visible are the spells which have a cooldown and in each magic tree so you can see if you are locked out of a tree.

This means you can see school availibility, range on your target, spells with cooldowns - but have all the other clutter hidden away.

Loving that you use Stage6, makes for clean crisp videos.

Show us more PvP - these are the ones that get people happy in their pants. :) Maybe look at the General Forums and modify your Parrot/SCT slightly so you see your damage on all characters and how impressive it might look in a PvP video.

-Slats

[Vyndree]

Your video editing skills are improving greatly.

I see that you fraps off one of your clones, I assume this is because you run a 'main' PC with a monitor running at a very high resolution - so frapsing off one of the clones running at a smaller resolution off another PC is less load and gives better results?

Clean up your interface on your clones. Hide your bags, fubar etc etc to give the cleanest interface as possible. I know I'm lazy as hell with mine, because I only glance at them, I have shit all over the place - but because one of them is your camerman(woman? omg so unpc) your large array of totem buffs got in the way of some of the fights.

Yes, I had the buff mod turned off for a while and then realized that some other addon was eating away the standard blizzard bufflist. Until I get that figured out, I'm keeping this one.

Part of the reason for me making the videos is that I want a running history of what I've done and I want to be able to see EXACTLY how I've done it. Without a readable buff list, how will I know 2 weeks or 2 months down the line that I was using grounding totems to "tank" some of the caster dragons?

Anyway, I'll figure out a prettier solution for 70, but I like my mess at the moment. ;)


If you look at both Xbox and Ellays interface, they have one row of buttons with the rest hidden (I assume all hotkey'd) the ones visible are the spells which have a cooldown and in each magic tree so you can see if you are locked out of a tree.

This means you can see school availibility, range on your target, spells with cooldowns - but have all the other clutter hidden away.

I think that's part of the problem. I watch Ellay's videos and they're amusing, but I learn very little about how to actually apply them myself. This is another reason why I hate people who use a nonstandard icon on their bars. Nothing more confusing than seeing the "Hunter's Mark" icon being jammed and lightning bolts flying out.

My buttons are all #showtooltip so you can see exactly what's being pressed. And the bufflist is actually readable (though takes up half the screen >.<) so you can see which totems are being placed.


Loving that you use Stage6, makes for clean crisp videos.

Show us more PvP - these are the ones that get people happy in their pants. :) Maybe look at the General Forums and modify your Parrot/SCT slightly so you see your damage on all characters and how impressive it might look in a PvP video.

-Slats

I <3 stage 6... except when it errors out in "processing video" and I have to upload it twice. Suvega has banned me from uploading videos during the day, since WoW is essentially unplayable while I'm uploading...

I haven't hit any decent PvP recently... I'll start queueing for BG's when I ding 70. 1 more level to go. :)

[Hippieman]

Yet another awesomeo flick

[Ellay]

Great job Vyndree :) if you ever want we can sit down and talk strats some day to see if we can pick up any tips from each other.

[Mart]

I'm not sure if anyone else get this but, I seem to have a big green bar running up the side of my screen, I'm pretty sure its just the codec but anyone else have such a problem? :(

I did enjoy the videos, looks like Vyn is getting really good at this :o
I enjoy it greatly!

[Slats]

Green bar is definetly your codec mate. :)

[Lokked]

Vyndree,

You are using XPerl Unit Frames, correct?

There is an option in the "Player" tab which sais "Use old Blizzard Buffs" or something to that effect, and is by default UNchecked.

If you didn't change this, it could be why the blizzard buffs are missing.

Lokked

[unionjack]

dark portal (ie black morass) gives very good rep but it is considerably harder to do than durnholde(even with 5 decent players lol) so I wish you luck on it :)

yea, you get a big 8000 chunk of rep just for finishing it the first time you wont want to miss.

[Vyndree]

Vyndree,

You are using XPerl Unit Frames, correct?

There is an option in the "Player" tab which sais "Use old Blizzard Buffs" or something to that effect, and is by default UNchecked.

If you didn't change this, it could be why the blizzard buffs are missing.

Lokked

Yea, I noticed this when I was messing with my mods this afternoon. I got the UI cleaned up a bit, kept CT buffmod (I like seeing the buffs below xperl as well, so I kept those but fixed them so they now wrap within the frame).

Anyway, the next time I make a vid, you should see a prettier UI. ;)

[Slats]

If you want a similar looking buffmod but Ace2 (you should Ace2 all your mods ease of updating them via the updater and performance boost)

Its called ElkBuffBars

[Squiggoth]

I loved it, but the second fight was hidden almost entirely by your totems. I really really wanted to seeee it. =(

Have you considered using tank perspective? Believe it or not, using a tank perspective, and rotating the camera (so you get it from the mob's point of view) might work better.

Either way awesome job and keep up the great work.

[Vyndree]

I loved it, but the second fight was hidden almost entirely by your totems. I really really wanted to seeee it. =(

Have you considered using tank perspective? Believe it or not, using a tank perspective, and rotating the camera (so you get it from the mob's point of view) might work better.

Either way awesome job and keep up the great work.

Yea, the camera got fubar'ed with the escort -- little time to catch up to Thrall (aka Leeroy) so I wasn't paying attention to the camera.

I'm still doing Durn for CoT rep, I'll see if I can get a better angle.

[Bueller]

Just wanted to throw out a big "Thank you!". I really appreciate you taking the time to upload your movies. I enjoy watching them and picking up little tips here and there.

[Kyudo]

Another great vid. Thanks. Just one pointer, I've turned off guild names and player titles in the UI on all my screens, you might consider doing the same if only for videos. Makes it look a lot cleaner. I can still mouseover if I need to see those details on a player.

[Xaero37]

Would you mind explaining what totems you use in instances and why? I can't quite make out what you use in the videos you've posted due to quality. I am also wondering why you use Devotion Aura over Retribution Aura. I understand the extra armor, but wouldn't RA hold aggro a bit better? Thanks

[Vyndree]

Would you mind explaining what totems you use in instances and why? I can't quite make out what you use in the videos you've posted due to quality. I am also wondering why you use Devotion Aura over Retribution Aura. I understand the extra armor, but wouldn't RA hold aggro a bit better? Thanks

After a certain point, holding aggro is not a problem. I've switched from my former spec which included reckoning for a more mitigation-based spec with Ardent Defender. Basically, the longer I can go without needing a heal, the smoother the run goes. This is why I use Devo aura. Ret aura is really the most useful for questing/lowbie instances when you don't have Avenger's shield to frontload threat. I also use a Sporregar rep shield which helps with aoe threat as well. Pre-60 it's also hard to get some spelldmg on your gear to help with threat, which isn't a problem in BC.

As for totems, this is my typical setup:
Water: 3x healing stream, 1x mana -- except where disease/poison cleanse take up 2 of the heal streams situationally
Air: Wrath of Air (yum), Windfury, Grace of Air, Nature Resist Totem (lawl -- you might not want to use this, but Windwall isn't much better)
Earth: Tremor Totem x2, Strength of Earth, Stoneskin
Fire: 4x Totem of Wrath (alternately in some fights I'll use magma/searing -- fire nova in pvp)

[Vyndree]

I've switched from my former spec which included reckoning for a more mitigation-based spec with Ardent Defender. Basically, the longer I can go without needing a heal, the smoother the run goes.

Have you spec'd one of the shammies in your group resto yet? I took your advice and did so, and "smooth" doesn't quite explain how "smooth" things go now.

Many pulls in various instances I can completely ignore the pally tank, allowing my resto shammie to jump in on the DPS game, due to Earth Shield. Its just incredible. And mana tide totem helps quite a bit with the tank's prot-based low mana pool.

Earth shield doesn't give prot pallies mana, so I'm not sure how much I like that. I already have a 70 resto shammy in ssc/kara gear if I really need a dedicated healer. I suppose mana tide helps with the mana issue from using ES though.

All my shammies are ele still, haven't run into any snags yet.

Basically taking AD I don't start healing until 1/2 health, and AD keeps me from taking much damage while the heal is being cast. AD makes it so I don't spam heal - I reactively heal. Works pretty well :)