Looking for dual-box combo suggestions

[myrddin]

I have been contemplating starting up wow again - wondering about suggestions for a 2char leveling combo - I have only ever multiboxed in a raid / BG environment, so my experience doesn't really help me too much.

I have been debating between the possible duo's of lock / druid / DK - I have a bt/sunwell geared druid and lock that I used to play together as healer/dps in our raids, and leveling a DK wouldn't be too hard to catch up and then pair with one of them as an alternative maybe?

Playing before, I used to find playing a healbot with a ranged dps char was fairly easy - main-screen was the healer, and I setup threat meters to show my warlock on the druids screen (so it was very easy :P) *but* the idea of leveling up a DK to tank, and then leveling via instances as "dk tank+ druid healer lf3m dps" has its attractions too.

Really, I want something that will get me to 80 relatively quickly, and be a viable combo to use for most raids - whatever spec works best. Any recommendations?

[Ualaa]

Druid + Warlock will definitely work well together.

For leveling, I'd consider speccing the druid Balance.
Even if you don't bother to manage Eclipse procs, it will be faster leveling then Resto.

Down the road, Resto + Warlock, will get you a pretty decent team for 2's arena if you want that aspect of play.
Or run them in battlegrounds together.

Pretty much almost any combination of two toons will work.
Quite a few would go with the Healer + Tank option.
A Felguard can easily tank anything pre-heroic, during leveling up.
Not positive on normal instances... it will likely survive, but not sure that it would hold threat.

[Gormand]

Any tanking capable class + Any healer capable class I think will always go the quickest. But level them both as DPS spec and if you have the cash Duel spec at 40.
So
Spot 1
Arms Warr, Feral Druid, Ret Pally (I wouldnt really bother with DK boosting but you may want to switch once you hit 58)
Spot 2
Ele shaman, Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Ret Pally

You wont usually need the heals in battle but it will reduce your downtime. Pallys work well as you can just judge & Seal wisdom to keep your mana up so your downtime is almost 0.


you wont get many bites on your DK+heals pre lvl 60 as most people I imagine will just use the new dungeon finder tool which your DK wont be able to.

The other toon I would maybe suggest is a mage instead of a tank. You gain portals, food & drink. Which makes everything that little bit faster.

[myrddin]

I should probably clarify, my focus is much less on pvp, and more on just seeing everything before its out of date - I missed naxx and AQ the first time around, and regretted it - so I will probably just be playing for a few months at least with a pure pve focus - after that time, if wow has hooked me again, I can level a pvp-fotm for filling in time - thats how I initially got the druid anyway :)

I imagine 55>70 would be mostly solo on the DK until I was grouping with the druid for wrath content, since all of the quests are aimed at filling in the DK talents etc for that gap? or is that just a level 55>60 thing? I am kind of torn - I had been tempting a friend to come back and tank for me, which was making me lean towards doing druid-lock as we all leveled, but he has decided to stay in eve for now, which is pushing me back towards leveling a dk to 70 and pairing from there - that would be fairly successful at tanking once into wrath content yes? its just the pre-DK content isn't designed for DK tanks?

[Ualaa]

DK's have their own phased region.
Other DK's at their same stage of questing can interact with you, but those behind or ahead cannot.
Once they complete the quest line, for the final battle.. they are out of phase from those who have not done so.

Basically a DK starts at 55th, and will be late 57th or early 58th, as they leave their starting area.
At that point, they will have the correct number of talent points for a toon of their level.
But the get an epic mount free, and know all pre-Outland flight paths, etc.
And have very cool looking armor, which is quite decent for upper 50's or lower 60's.

[myrddin]

I started a DK last night to get some practical experience before deciding one way or the other

So far, seems like playing a warlock, the pet feels like my felguard, I have dots and double deathcoil ^^, only downside is I have to be in melee range to apply dots - but now I have a bigass axe, and plate =D

Thinking about it, I can do all my outland leveling with the druid healing me but not grouped - benefit of being less gankable, and minimal downtim, and no exp penalty - looking to min-max talents to be efficient from a damage output perspective, rather than efficiency of damage / regen. Still researching that, gone unholy for now.

What is the state of 5mans with reguard to healing complexity? Unless its unmanagable with a DK mainscreen, I think this might be my favourite duo of the options.

[Ualaa]

If you're using IS Boxer, there is a feature called Repeater Regions.
Basically an area, which when your mouse is in, the clicks are broadcast to the clients you choose.

If you combine that with Grid/OpenRDX + Clique, Healbot or Vuhdo, you have a clickable frame for your party/raid, where clicks are interpreted by your healer to be heals. You just need to make sure your sorting is either a fixed order or an alphabetical order, so the each box is the same on every toon. Repeater region healing has to be the easiest and best method of heals.

You can go with assist based macros as well.

#show Rejuvenation
<Insert Your Assist the DK Method Here>
/cast [help] Rejuvenation; [help, @TargetTarget] Rejunvenation; [help, @TargetTargetTarget] Rejuvenation

You'd do this for your main spells, such as Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth, Swiftmend and Healing Touch. Wild Growth is your group heal, which you'll probably have on two keys, one for assist so it heals the tank and anyone nearby, and another on yourself so you can heal casters who are not in melee but outside of the Wild Growth area.

You might want a few keys for party specific heals. Could go with Numpad keys corresponding to [@party1], [@party2] etc.

[myrddin]

That sounds very similar to how I used to do things with keyclone, but the technology has improved since then I see :)

What is the legality with IS? Keyclone I am comfortable using - since there have been enough blue confirmed 'its ok' statements - but my only memories of IS involve some disposable D2 accounts doing things I would never admit to :) - is it legal if you aren't using it to actively break tos? I would think it would be on wardens watch list? :S

[Ualaa]

The version of Keyclone which got an ok, is much older then the current version. The current version has added mouse broadcasting, PiP swaps, key remapping which allows FTL etc, these features have never received an ok.

That said, all of the major software options are fine to box with. It is a preference on what you prefer, one or another. There are numerous players using IS Boxer on this site, and I have yet to hear of one being banned for using it. The same goes for Keyclone, HKN, GC-Pro, PB, Mojo, AHK etc.

In my opinion, IS Boxer is by far the strongest boxing option, although everyone has their opinion on this.

You have the option of "action target groups", which are preconfigured groups of toons and can add or remove toons from these on the fly. ATG's can be the target of mapped keys or repeater regions. Let's say, your repeater region is broadcasting clicks to all members of the "Healer" ATG, similarly your click spam macro is sending the clicks to all members of the "DPS" ATG. You could have a mapped key, which removes the Priest from the Healer group and adds them to the DPS group. Then continue to nuke stuff, and maybe switch back on the last boss.

You have repeater regions, which are areas of the screen where mouse broadcasting is on, if the mouse is in the area, and off as soon as it leaves the area. You can use this for Grid/Vuhdo/Healbot healing, but also to click spells or macros on all your bars. I use this for my hearthstone, jamba item bar, a few macros useful for dailies and of course the Grid frame for healing.

You have mapped keys, which can have a hotkey to activate, target toons by name or slot or action target group and have actions which can be macros or keybinds. But you can have a mapped key enable/disable another mapped key, call another mapped key (depending what it does), or do a lot of other options. On my caster teams, when I switch toons the new active toon runs a mapped key which disables mouse click to move on the active toon and enables it on the followers. You can manage Eclipse procs, while mashing the same DPS key etc.

Through mapped keys, we have automatic FTL. When you press a DPS key (1 through =, by default), a mapped key runs behind the scenes. The input is "1". This mapped key, runs another mapped key which causes all of the other toons to assist the active toon, and then it sends "1" to all windows. You can switch to any toon on the fly, and the others will automatically assist the active toon. You don't need wow macros to do this, just drag spells right out of the spell book.

You have the option for sending "next mouse click". I have this enabled on three of my keys: "4", "5" and "Shift + A". I have created three action target groups, one named for each key. And have then added my Druid toons to the "4" group, since they are the only ones who I want to mouse broadcast on a "4" press. When I press "4", each member of that group receives my next mouse click -- I get a mouse target circle in each window which moves as I move the target circle on my main screen. On my mixed team, only the druid on the team (1 druid, 4 other casters) has the circle, not the others. After one click, it turns itself off automatically.

You can PiP swap from one toon to another, literally instantly. The changes are as fast as you can press the hotkeys for each window. You can enable the followers/slaves to automatically follow the new leader on a switch, to strobe follow (a jamba feature) or to not follow at all. I've added the click to move on slaves and taking it off on the main for caster teams, but leave it on for all toons on melee teams.

The sky is the limit. If you want to do it, chances are IS Boxer will let you. The only limitations are, that it has to be doable with either a wow macro, a wow script or a wow addon. At a basic level, the wizard will get you started quite quickly. But you can configure and tweak to an amazing degree, to end up with the configuration that you want.

Take a peak at the guide I have linked in my signature. While it is lengthy, it gives you an idea of what you can do, and how to do it.

[jinkobi]

Tank+healer or DPS+healer is what I'd suggest. I found the best thing about dual boxing which I did for a long time is have a healbot.

Running 2 druids is also a good choice and gives you lots of flexibility. I ran my 2 druids as boomkins but could have easily switched out to any role since druids can fullfill any role.

Now I run a pally tank 1 resto druid+3 boomkins.

[myrddin]

I have set this up now - gone with DK+druid support. Using the old version of keyclone that I know was ok'd - (only clones keys, no smart-clicking or anything - but thats not too much hassle, I have a triscreen setup for them on a screen each, and wowhead on the other :))

I have the DK at 69, druid at 70. If I wait for DnD cd's before each pull, I can get away with playing from the druid perspective (I haven't had pugs pull agro from dnd yet :p - so long as they don't hit first) - but thats getting risky for when stuff goes bad.

I have been having trouble setting up my healbot UI so that I can play primarily from the DK tank side of things while healing. For now I have specced a funny hybrid boom/resto build that is just built around dots+spam, rather than optimising eclipse procs, or ideally healing. Healing + tanking gets me instant queues, Healing+dps or tanking+dps gets me 5+ minute queues, and dps+dps gets me 10+ :(

For now, I have also swapped to questing instead of doing 5mans since I hit northrend content - my DK was getting crushed and crit to peices trying the first instance.

Still all in all - much preferable to solo :D