10 box ICC

[Theradin]

Here are my present ICC successes. The fights are still pretty messy, but things were much smoother than they were my first week doing this. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to progress further or if I'll be able to progress further. For now all I've done is make a pair of unsuccessful attempts at Valithria Dreamwalker. I'll update this thread with additional kills should they happen.

Gunship Battle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu49n6yEcUA

Deathbringer Saurfang:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELIhnAUTiUI

Festergut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPHN8LqX14

Marrowgar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KQAyDZ_8-o

Lady Deathwhisper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg76oMExW1U

**some of the videos are still processing at the time of posting this, so their quality will be fairly poor

[MiRai]

This is insane man...you are a beast.

[Batato]

Amazing!!!!!

[zenga]

Very impressive. Just curious about your team make up. Do you use the same 'layout' for every fight or do you swap around toons depending on the encounter (provided you have more than one geared char per account)? Like melee on 2nd (lady d) boss for the ads that are immune to casters?

These are fights that several pug groups will fail to complete, however i can see some benefits in boxing several of the fights and having the proper macro's (saurfang fe.g.). Still it puts you on a shrine were other boxers will worship you.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Interesting. I like on festergut you only worried about the spoors on the first cycle. I might suggest that to our guild to up dps in the second half of the fight instead of running around.

[Zal]

Very impressive. Just curious about your team make up. Do you use the same 'layout' for every fight or do you swap around toons depending on the encounter (provided you have more than one geared char per account)? Like melee on 2nd (lady d) boss for the ads that are immune to casters?

These are fights that several pug groups will fail to complete, however i can see some benefits in boxing several of the fights and having the proper macro's (saurfang fe.g.). Still it puts you on a shrine were other boxers will worship you.
If you down the caster immune adds within 8 seconds they don't become immune to spells. I do this fight every week with no melee.

Also great job proving me wrong on the gunship fight.

[Theradin]

Very impressive. Just curious about your team make up. Do you use the same 'layout' for every fight or do you swap around toons depending on the encounter (provided you have more than one geared char per account)? Like melee on 2nd (lady d) boss for the ads that are immune to casters?

My main team is the only team that has the gear for ICC, save one lone additional character. A couple of characters in my team have multiple specs and the gear to perform adequately in that spec, but that's all I have for versatility at the moment. I do have other characters, but they're more at a Naxx/Ulduar level of gear.


Also great job proving me wrong on the gunship fight.

Thanks!

[booker]

Absolut amazing..i thought..never can do a single multiboxer this. Wow

[Toned]

LOL at the saurfang kill that's pretty good... Thus why I <3 multi-boxing your focus fire is perfect vrs hopeing 5-6 dps can pull their head out of their ass.

[booker]

Maybe you can tell me your Setup ? See 4 Ele Shamay..but the rest is to small..

[Nejcha]

See told ya you could get fester. That fight is pie and cake for multiboxers of any shape size or color : )

[outdrsyguy1]

that's totally amazing, hats off to you!

[Theradin]

Maybe you can tell me your Setup ? See 4 Ele Shamay..but the rest is to small..

2 paladins ( one tank/dps, one tank/healer )
2 priests ( full time healers )
3 elemental shaman
1 restoration shaman/elemental shaman
1 frost mage ( for replenishment, AI )
1 balance druid ( for mark, +spell damage buff, +hit debuff )

[Theradin]

See told ya you could get fester. That fight is pie and cake for multiboxers of any shape size or color : )

Easily technically, but I just, just scraped by the gear check on my first kill!

[Zugdud]

Theradin, really amazing work with your ICC progress, especially gunship :eek:

Looking forward to the Lady Deathwhisper video when you get a chance :D:D

/salute

[Theradin]

Lady Deathwhisper has been added to the list of videos at the top of the thread, but here it is as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg76oMExW1U

This was a really rotten attempt. Every mistake I could've made I did, from not paying attention to taunts, standing in the fire, errors on healing, targeting, movement - not a model video of how to do this. I shouldn't have won this attempt, but I barely scraped by.

[Maxion]

Looks like youtube is still processing it atm, thanks for posting though! I'll wait to watch it until youtube finishes processing so I can actually see anything ;)

[Toned]

I wouldn't call that completely horrible you had a very clean phase one :P I've seen regular 10man kills sloppier than that lol.

[Darm]

Theradin --

Curious about which raid frames you are using? It looks like your raid frames has cast bars.

I'm trying to find raid frames that are like that, so far Pitbull 4.0, Ag_UF, Xperl and Perl Classic either don't have raid frames or have raid frames that don't feature cast bars.

[Theradin]

I'm using Pitbull 3.0 at the moment, while it still works. It was the only one I was able to find with castbars, at least when I made this configuration about a year ago. I think Shadowed Unit Frames also offers a cast bar.

[Darm]

Oh, didn't know Pitbull 3.0 still worked. That's very helpful, thank you!

If I find something else that also has cast bars for the raid, I'll give a shout.

[Sly]

amazing.. what is your setup? hardware? do you have multiple keyboards/n52's to control characters individually?

And how do you handle healing?

[Theradin]

Oh, didn't know Pitbull 3.0 still worked. That's very helpful, thank you!

If I find something else that also has cast bars for the raid, I'll give a shout.

Thanks, I'd appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with the different raid frames and knowing what else is out there.

[Theradin]

amazing.. what is your setup? hardware? do you have multiple keyboards/n52's to control characters individually?

And how do you handle healing?

I run on two computers, a quad core and dual-core, with a pair of 28" monitors. I use a Wolfking Warrior for input with just about every key bound to something useful, and then I use software to send key presses between computers.

With the Wolfking Warrior in mind, my priest bindings are as follows:

4 - 7: heal party 1 members
alt4 - alt7: heal party 2 members
b: priest 1 heal tank 1
altb: priest 2 heal tank 1
o: priest 1 heal tank 2
altb: priest 2 heal tank 2
F1: Divine Hymn
F2: Shadow fiends
.: holy nova
shift.: prayer of healing
shift,: circle of healing

And then for specific encounters some of the bindings will vary a bit, depending on what I need. This probably isn't optimal, and there are several improvements I could make, but I've been a bit lazy about making those improvements. Mostly I get by with raw AoE healing, which a priest pair excels at.

[zenga]

so mind giving us an update? progressed any further through icc? (a boxer solo'ing rotface would be insane :D)

[Myc]

im late but

D=
amazing.

(would like to see more also)

[Darm]

Thanks, I'd appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with the different raid frames and knowing what else is out there.



Thanks, I'd appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with the different raid frames and knowing what else is out there.


Well, I'm trying to make the transition from 5-man to 10-man. It's required a lot more thinking, which probably isn't a surpise to you.

I've taken a look at Pitbull 4,Pitbull 3.0, Ag_Unit Frames, X-Perl, Perl, Vuhdo and Grid.

1) Raid Casting Frames

The only addon of any of those listed that has a casting bars for your raid members is Pitbull 3. I like having this ability since it gives me a quick idea if all of my other toons are actually doing something useful. Of course, if a toon is casting an instant spell or using melee attacks that is not going to show up on these raid frames. Nevertheless, it's a quick way of monitoring

2) Raid targets

Again, Pitbull 3 is the only addon of those listed that can show you the individual targets that the other raid members have. Again, this is important for monitoring what your other toons are doing.

3) Healer friendliness

Perl doesn't really have raid frames, but the others do. In my opinion, X-perl, Ag_UF, Pitbull 4.0, and Pitbull 3.0 are all about the same as far as how healer friendly they can be. They all work well with Clique. They each allow for a fair amount of customization and perhaps X-perl might be the most "out of the box" ready for most raid healers, but again it doesn't have those very important features that I listed above.

4) Healer friendliness, part II -- Grid and Vuhdo

Each of these all you to have a bit more granular control on how your raid frames appears regarding buffs, heals, debuff, etcs. Vuhdo is probably a little more userfriendly in this regard. Grid is probably the least user friendly to setup but you can really tailor it to your specific needs.

5) Too much information problem

It is very easy for all of these raid addons to display too much information. The player's attention is the premium resource when you're 10-boxing, and there is some information that you don't need to know. X-Perl, Ag_Unit Frames, Pitbull 4 and Pitbull 3, can all fall into this camp and show you buffs and debuffs on your party members that is either a) not that important to know or even worse, b) outright distracting. With those addons, you do have the option to turn buffs or debuffs off whole-sale.

This is where Grid shines because you can fine tune which buffs and debuffs you want to know about. Vuhdo can do this too, to a slightly less degree.


So, what do I tend to do --



I tend to run two raid frames. I'll run Grid and usally keep that near the center of my screen so it is easiest for me to tell who is low on health, who needs a decurse etc. It's footprint can be made the smallest of all the raid frames without sacrificing readability or interpretability. After you get used to interpreting it's system of colored dots, you can react to it faster than any other raid frame in my opinion.

Then at the very bottom of my screen, I'll have Perl raid frames running with raid targets displayed. I don't need to scan this with my eyes as frequently as I need to see Grid, but just every now and then need to flick my eyes down there to make sure the DPS toons are on the right target and appropriate casting is happening.

[zenga]

darm, is it possible to include a screenshot of your main window in action?

[Mercurio]

Thanks for the review of what's out there Darm. I loaded up Vuhdu a few hours before I attempted Marrowgar and it was really helpful in that encounter. I'm amazed Theradin does all his healing with bound keys.

So I just run Vuhdu on my priest and Xperl on everyone else. Works for one boss, dunno if I'll have to change for the other ICC bosses - if work ever lets me stay home for more than a day I'll be able to try more out ;)

[Darm]

darm, is it possible to include a screenshot of your main window in action?


As soon as I wrote that message I became dissatisfied with my current setup. I'm rebuilding things, so I'll post something again soon.

It probably won't be pretty though. :)

[Theradin]

Thanks for the information Darm!

[Theradin]

so mind giving us an update? progressed any further through icc? (a boxer solo'ing rotface would be insane :D)

Rotface is dead. Aside from killing him, I haven't really had a chance for serious attempts at anything in ICC for the last two months, pretty much since posting my videos so I'm sitting at 6/12.

[zenga]

soloing rotface ... no words for that tbh

the only way i can imagine i would try it is leave the MT, dps & healing in the middle the whole time, heal through everything with all mitigation possible, play the kiter yourself, and have 9 different keymaps that results in a 'follow offtank' per toon, where the infected one runs straight away to the kiter ... though this can become a mess at 30%

simply beyond imagination

[Theradin]

soloing rotface ... no words for that tbh

the only way i can imagine i would try it is leave the MT, dps & healing in the middle the whole time, heal through everything with all mitigation possible, play the kiter yourself, and have 9 different keymaps that results in a 'follow offtank' per toon, where the infected one runs straight away to the kiter ... though this can become a mess at 30%

simply beyond imagination

You pretty much sum up the strategy I started with, but getting characters to the big ooze while maintaining healing was a bit too distracting. I ended up positioning my characters in a circle around Rotface and then holding them there, using my kiter to drag the big ooze to the appropriate character and cleansing at the right moment. When people see the strategy in action, I can't help but think they'll be disappointed as I handle the fight in the most inelegant, straightforward manner possible.

[Selz]

I got some error when im trying to watch them
the youtube links aint working :(

[Theradin]

I got some error when im trying to watch them
the youtube links aint working :(

They seem to be working for me. Was it a temporary problem? What particular error did they give you?

[Darm]

Theradin --


I'm trying to emulate your success with Marrowgar--

It looks like you kjeep your ranged DPS + healers grouped up and only move them for the cold flame ground effect. And that you keep them grouped at all other times including Bone Storm?

I know that you're running two priests, but I seem to be having a real nightmare with some of the healing. I'm using a druid + shaman, so maybe the druid is part of the problem. Although Wild Growth is really nice.

I presume your priests are spamming Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and the casted group heal (name escapes me) ? That is you don't have time to micromanage things like Flash Heal and single target healing?

[coglistings]

when I tried it with another 5boxer, you really don't take to much damage if everyone stays together, its when they are in different locations and the flams from a different bs drop point comes to your new location that you take bad damage and the movement becomes a dance dance party. it really is a nice strat he uses, though i cant get it to work for my purposes :(

I didn't see much coh but pom is a godsend most of the time for most encounters with raid wide damage, esp if it is damage that doesn't tick at same time

[Theradin]

Theradin --


I'm trying to emulate your success with Marrowgar--

It looks like you kjeep your ranged DPS + healers grouped up and only move them for the cold flame ground effect. And that you keep them grouped at all other times including Bone Storm?

I know that you're running two priests, but I seem to be having a real nightmare with some of the healing. I'm using a druid + shaman, so maybe the druid is part of the problem. Although Wild Growth is really nice.

I presume your priests are spamming Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and the casted group heal (name escapes me) ? That is you don't have time to micromanage things like Flash Heal and single target healing?

I've changed my strategy a bit since posting that video - but for what you see in the video:

- I keep the party grouped at all times, moving to avoid cold flame, and spamming holy nova during the bone storm.
- During a bone storm, I realign the party by having them follow one of the healers, and then moving that healer forward a bit. If I don't do this, the party becomes a bit too disorganized and bone spikes/evading cold flames become problematic
- My heal strategy is to use a prayer of healing followed by a circle of healing, which is why the circle of healing is tough to spot.
- In the video, my gear scores were in the 4400 level (healers) to the 4900 level (tanks). What you probably can't see in the video is that I've equipped a few pieces of frost resistance gear in order to mitigate some of the frost damage. The frost gear is stacked with stamina gems. It eases healing a lot, good for learning
- I don't use PoM. I should, but I've been a bit too lazy to set up a keybinding for it and I've come this far... but I really should make a binding for it
- I use a third healer, a shaman with a macro, to keep the tank topped off. Only rarely do my priests need to heal the tank. I don't recommend multiboxing Marrowgar with only two healers without much practice or without your tank heavily overgeared for the fight. I still use the third healer with my tank's GS at 5300 and the ICC buff at 15%, though I probably don't need to, it keeps things safe
- Flash heal only when somebody is bone spiked or if something goes horribly awry

As to what's changed:
- I no longer stand at a distance, save at the start of the fight, until the first bone storm. I now clump up on the red circle that appears when you have him targeted. Doing so means no more cold flame dodging, a lot less movement and a lot less damage to heal
- I stopped wearing FR gear as my raid gear score crossed 5k, with the ICC buff at 5% ( I think, can't quite remember ), but it still makes the fight easier

Mercurio took on Marrowgar successfully without a priest pair, but instead using a single priest and two restoration shaman. For that reason, he might be the better person from which to get healing tips. What I can really recommend is persistence. I wiped quite a bit while becoming accustomed to ICC damage levels, more than I'd care to admit.

[Darm]

Thank you for the reply, a lot of helpful information in there.

I'm a little chagrined to see how well do you did despite having most of the gear scores < 5000. Plus the Hellscream buff wasn't quite as large as it is now. I guess that just goes to show you important execution is.

It sounds like 3 healers might be the way to go. 3 healers + 2 tanks, +5 DPS.

Right now I'm running:

1 resto shaman, 1 resto druid
2 pally tanks
3 elem shaman
1 hunter
1 warlock
1 shadow priest

So maybe I'll should give some thought to switching the roles of the priest and druid. The tips on frost gear and positioning are also helpful, thank again.

[Theradin]

I'm a little chagrined to see how well do you did despite having most of the gear scores < 5000.


You only say that because you don't know exactly how many times I wiped. > > It was definitely not a "walk in there and kill him" event. It took a number of different runs to work out a successful strategy and each of those runs involved many wipes. Pure stubbornness rather than skill on my part.

I may have had one or two characters just a bit above 5k gear score, I can't remember at this point, though that would have been before equipping the low ilvl FR gear. I may also have equipped stamina trinkets on all party members while learning, but again I'm not certain.

One thing I forgot to mention: I put a /targetexact bone spike into my DPS macro, that way I did't have to worry about targeting it manually.

[Mercurio]

For another perspective on soloing Marrowgar, see the thread I posted on it here:


http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=29883 (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=29883)

I included the write-up I made for myself on how to do it and what key binds I changed to get it done.

I can attest that following that well-documented strategy works pretty well - I tried it from scratch on team #2 yesterday (they have GSs around 5K) and downed him on my third attempt.

Got another tanking mace that one of my pallies was wishing for, too. :o

[Toned]

Theradin ^^-

Don't think I can really critique you but it is more of a question. Why don't you have a reset=target on your shamasn flameshock macros? It looks to me like you are using a click sequence on all of your dps. The only reason I'm asking is I've watched a lot of your videos and the majority of your fights where you have to change targets (Deathwhisper specifically) Your lavabursts are hitting un shock'd targets A LOT.

[Maxion]

Probably so it won't lock up when he has to change targets a lot and it'll get on cooldown.
Especially if he uses focus based targeting instead of having the dps target the mobs (in which case the reset=target won't happen anyway).

[Toned]

Probably so it won't lock up when he has to change targets a lot and it'll get on cooldown.
Especially if he uses focus based targeting instead of having the dps target the mobs (in which case the reset=target won't happen anyway).

If your dps macros are /cast [@focus] or /cast[@focustarget] and the focus changes or your focus changes targets the reset=target fires :)

Because really you are getting the UnitID of whatever unit and when that number changes it fires the reset target.

[Maxion]

If your dps macros are /cast [@focus] or /cast[@focustarget] and the focus changes or your focus changes targets the reset=target fires :)

Because really you are getting the UnitID of whatever unit and when that number changes it fires the reset target.

Has not been the case in any tests I have done. I'll try it again soon to check if it was fixed.

[Whowantstoknow]

i believe reset=focustarget works

[Theradin]

Theradin ^^-

Don't think I can really critique you but it is more of a question. Why don't you have a reset=target on your shamasn flameshock macros? It looks to me like you are using a click sequence on all of your dps. The only reason I'm asking is I've watched a lot of your videos and the majority of your fights where you have to change targets (Deathwhisper specifically) Your lavabursts are hitting un shock'd targets A LOT.

I plead laziness.

It's actually a pretty complicated question, but the short of it is I made these macros a long time ago (3.1 or maybe early 3.2) and haven't tried to tweak them since. When I made them, I was only getting under a 10% DPS loss from not having FS on a target, and that non-FS time was still a relatively low difference next to when I put a reset=target into my FS macro such that the effects on DPS became nearly negligible. Adding the reset=target, though, came with two main liabilities:

On low hitpoint mobs, I was finding it actually increased the kill time. I had to delay the FS a bit in order to prevent DPS lockups while waiting on the FS cooldown ( as Maxion mentioned ) , which meant FS/LB combo would come near the end of a kill, extending the kill time slightly.

I was also still heavily running instances at the time - having the big FS/LB attack at the front of the macro would usually mean I could further disregard the mob I just attacked, speeding up runs a bit. ( At least they felt faster! )

That was my reasoning at the time. I'm not sure how much of it is applicable now.

[Multibocks]

Havent played in a while, but is the zone wide buff up to 10% now? Maybe some later fights are easier such that you can beat them now as one 10man team.

[Whitz]

15% afaik

[zenga]

15% afaik

tonight it was indeed still 15%