Key Layout & Macro Help for my Mixed Group (long)

[Malgor]

I've copied most macros I think I need.

Group: Paladin-Prot, Mage-Arcane, Hunter-Survival, Druid-Resto, Priest-Shadow.

ISBOXER user: Keys used 1 through = and arrow keys.

Paladin:
1 nothing
2 avenger's shield
3 Holy Wrath
4 Hand of Recokoning
5 Macro: /castsequence reset=5 Holy Shield, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness
6 hammer of justice
7
8
9 ground mount
0 flying mount
- conjured mana strudel
= divinte plea

Mage:
1 follow paladin
2 nothing
3 nothing
4 nothing
5 nothing
6 /castsequence reset=5 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles
7 /cast Presence of Mind
/cast Arcane Blast
8 /cast Arcane Power
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Mirror Image
9 ground mount
0 flying mount
- conjured mana strudel
= Blizzard

Hunter:
1 follow paladin
2 nothing
3 nothing
4 nothing
5 nothing
6 /castsequence reset=5 Auto Shot, Hunter's Mark, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Multi-Shot
7 nothing
8 nothing
9 ground mount
0 flying mount
- conjured mana strudel
= Volley

Druid:
1 follow paladin
2 nothing
3 nothing
4 nothing
5 /castsequence [target=Rou,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,Swiftmend,,,,Lifebloom,,,,Rejuvenat ion,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,
6 Wild Growth
7 nothing
8 nothing
9 ground mount
0 flying mount
- conjured mana strudel
= nothing

Priest:
1 follow paladin
2 nothing
3 nothing
4 nothing
5 /castsequence reset=5 Vampiric Embrace, Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay
6 nothing
7 nothing
8 nothing
9 ground mount
0 flying mount
- conjured mana strudel
= nothing

The arrow keys I use for move up, back, strafe left/right.

I just tested the healing sequence for my druid, and it seems to not always work. I'm not sure where it's hanging up right now, but any suggestions will help me try and locate the problem. (As I just read this I may have found the problem with my healing sequence - there was a space in one of my spellings of my words, have fixed that).

I start pulls with my paladin by hitting 2 or 4 depending on whether I'm pulling a group or individual mob. I then mash my the 4 and 5 keys to start the healing on the paladin and to build up the tanking agro. After a few seconds of that I start hitting the 6 button every few seconds so that they can make sure they get their full casts of mind flay and arcane missles with my priest and mage. I ignore my hunter special ability of lock and load, even though it would be a bit more DPS and just stick with his sequence.

My problems mostly with instances is surviving when something is going on besides just your regular tank and spank fight. AE's like blizzard I can kinda work through with just hitting follow and running my tank and the followers out of blizzard, but there has to be a better way. Example is Grand Magus Telestra, Cyanigosa, or Novos the Summoner. The worst one is when Ingvar the Plunderer throws his axes toward the end of his fight. So movement is my issue. Also in Gundrak I can't even kill Slad'ran for some reason. He wraps up my tank, which I have never seen when I am in a pug group, and I'm not sure how to get him out of the wrap, while the other snakes kill off the rest of my team. I've tried it several times at different distances with the same results.

Anyway - all help toward making me better is appreciated!

Gearscores for my toons are: Paladin 5075, Mage 5144, Hunter 4783, Druid 3727, Priest 2905.

My goal with this group is to get down about 5 or 6 instances that I can complete no problem. Then when I random roll a group dungeon I have a better chance of getting one I can finish. In most of them I can finish at least a couple bosses so they aren't a complete waste while I wait for the dungeon timer to cool down. I've only completed Drak'tharon and UK so far completely. Others I'm up to the last boss, but haven't killed that one for one reason or another.

As always - thanks in advance!

Mal

[luxlunae]

You probably want a nochanneling on that priest macro or you're going to clip the mind flay like crazy. Also, why isn't mind sear on your setup with your other aoe?

my click macro is threefold, and I think is probably a little higher dps than what you're doing. if you never play with any dps but yourself you don't really need the set raid marker line.

/Click BT4Button49
/Click BT4Button50
/Click BT4Button51

Button one:
/cast [nocombat] avenger's shield
/castsequence reset=30 divine plea, null

Button two (9 second cooldowns): (the commas give the third button macro a chance to fire off)
/castsequence reset=8 holy shield, , , , , judgement of light, , , , , consecration, , , , , ,

button three (6 second cooldowns):

/castsequence reset=5 hammer of the righteous, shield of righteousness,,,,
/script SetRaidTarget('target',8);

[Malgor]

You probably want a nochanneling on that priest macro or you're going to clip the mind flay like crazy. Also, why isn't mind sear on your setup with your other aoe?

my click macro is threefold, and I think is probably a little higher dps than what you're doing. if you never play with any dps but yourself you don't really need the set raid marker line.

/Click BT4Button49
/Click BT4Button50
/Click BT4Button51

Button one:
/cast [nocombat] avenger's shield
/castsequence reset=30 divine plea, null

Button two (9 second cooldowns): (the commas give the third button macro a chance to fire off)
/castsequence reset=8 holy shield, , , , , judgement of light, , , , , consecration, , , , , ,

button three (6 second cooldowns):

/castsequence reset=5 hammer of the righteous, shield of righteousness,,,,
/script SetRaidTarget('target',8);


Are you using your mouse for those click buttons or creating a repeater region? I'm not quite sure what all that means.

I am new to a shadow priest so will add in the ones I'm not doing currently. Should I also put in no channeling for my mage since he casts arcane missles and shouldn't be interupted during that cast?

Thanks for your advice!

Mal

[thefunk]

- Maybe swap 5 with 6 on your druid so you're automatically healing the tank without thinking.
- Then have numpad 1,2,3,4,5 for an OHSH*T healz for each toon.
- Add a /stopmacro [channeling] at the beginning of mage and priest macros
- I would also have a separate key (say 5) where only pally attacks for building up or regaining lots of threat.
- you'll want to put innervate on some combination of keys for when you really need it, i use grid + clique for that. In fact, rebirth is also on one so you don't have to make 5 separate macros, you just click on the toon.
- Finally make arrow keys just move the slaves, this will REALLY help with fights like Forgemaster Garfrost, who is actually dead easy once you figure out the slave movements.

[Khatovar]

I just tested the healing sequence for my druid, and it seems to not always work. I'm not sure where it's hanging up right now, but any suggestions will help me try and locate the problem. (As I just read this I may have found the problem with my healing sequence - there was a space in one of my spellings of my words, have fixed that).

Also, you have a reset conditional of combat with an early spell on a 15 second cooldown {swiftmend}. This means if you cycle through and end combat on your Druid after casting Swiftmend, the sequence is going to start over with a spell that is still on cooldown if you happen to re-initate combat too soon.

Anyplace where you have spell you don't want stopped prematurely should use [nochannelling] .

I'm not really sure why you have half your spam buttons on 5 and half on 6.


5 Macro: /castsequence reset=5 Holy Shield, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness
6 hammer of justice

5 nothing
6 /castsequence reset=5 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles

5 nothing
6 /castsequence reset=5 Auto Shot, Hunter's Mark, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, Multi-Shot

5 /castsequence [target=Rou,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,Swiftmend,,,,Lifebloom,,,,Rejuvenat ion,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,
6 Wild Growth

5 /castsequence reset=5 Vampiric Embrace, Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay
6 nothing

You already have your tank "warm up" buttons separate, you should have no problem paring down your spam into 1 button for the whole team. The way you're running here, if your paladin druid and priest are spamming, your hunter and mage aren't doing anything.



My problems mostly with instances is surviving when something is going on besides just your regular tank and spank fight. AE's like blizzard I can kinda work through with just hitting follow and running my tank and the followers out of blizzard, but there has to be a better way. Example is Grand Magus Telestra, Cyanigosa, or Novos the Summoner. The worst one is when Ingvar the Plunderer throws his axes toward the end of his fight. So movement is my issue. Also in Gundrak I can't even kill Slad'ran for some reason. He wraps up my tank, which I have never seen when I am in a pug group, and I'm not sure how to get him out of the wrap, while the other snakes kill off the rest of my team. I've tried it several times at different distances with the same results.

Druids have the most ezmode heaing in the world. You have 2 sick AOE heals, Wild Growth and Tranquility. Make use of them and add [nochannelling] to the druid's spam heal button. Or nochanneling:Tranquility if you want to be able to toss out AOE to land some Hurricanes on easier fights, but still drop it instantly to go back to healing. Use WG all the time, druids are proactive healers, not reactive, so keep the WG up BEFORE the group takes damage and let it tick.

Learn to add targetting to your Macros. I have a rather complex macro tied to my Hand of Reckoning, but a simple means is just adding /tar whatever to your spam button :


/tar Snake Wrap
/castsequence reset=5 Holy Shield, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness

I usually do it only from my tank so I only have to add/remove it from one toon's macros as needed. This assumes that your DPS macros use [target=focus target]. You don't list that in your DPS macros, but you also don't list an assist macro, so unless you're DPSing willy nilly, I have to assume you're using something to get your slaves to DPS the proper target.

I'd suggest looking at the macros in the Wiki and the boards for better means of cast sequences :

Wiki - Macros (http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Macro)
Wiki - Click Macros for every class (http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Macro:Using_Click)
How to use /click (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=18539)
The Macro Compendium (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=26161)







/Click BT4Button49
/Click BT4Button50
/Click BT4Button51

Button one:
/cast [nocombat] avenger's shield
/castsequence reset=30 divine plea, null

Button two (9 second cooldowns): (the commas give the third button macro a chance to fire off)
/castsequence reset=8 holy shield, , , , , judgement of light, , , , , consecration, , , , , ,

button three (6 second cooldowns):

/castsequence reset=5 hammer of the righteous, shield of righteousness,,,,
/script SetRaidTarget('target',8);


Personally, I have AS, SacShield and DP all on a separate button, which allows me to use it as needed instead of making it dependent on my spam. My slaves use that time/button to prepare for combat {assist, follow, shields, HoTs, certain buffs, debuffs} so they are ready to tear it up once I engage DPS, instead of having to "ramp up" in combat.

Using [nocombat] on AS means you can't recast it to pull more until you are out of combat, which means you can't use it while staying IN combat {for ex. pulling a patrol while still engaged with the last mob of the previous pull to keep DP going, grabbing agro off backspawns on your healer}.

What do you gain off running tankadin spam off a broken up click over a standard 9696?

[Malgor]

Thanks, thefunk and Khatovar - those are very helpful suggestions and will try them out today.

[Malgor]

I'm not really sure why you have half your spam buttons on 5 and half on 6?

The reason I did this was because I wanted to actually establish some agro before my DPS group started in. So I have my tanking stuff all on 5, except for pull, taunt and stun spells. I pull with either a avenger's shield if a group of mobs or Hand of Recokoning if a single target.

Then I'd start my tank rotation by hitting button 5, wait a few seconds then start my dps rotation by using button 6, which also starts the wild growth button so it's always up when it refreshes. I recently added the healing sequence into the 5 button so the druid is constantly healing the tank even while the tank is building up agro. I think I'll take swiftmend completely out since it will screw up that rotation.

I'll keep tweaking and ask if I get stuck again as I continue to learn to five-box these instances.

[Khatovar]

You have a hunter, if you're worried about not having enough agro after AS, then include Misdirect after Hunter's Mark. Or drop consec. before spamming. But really, if you're not losing agro to your healer or shadow priest, then you shouldn't have too many problems.

[luxlunae]

"Personally, I have AS, SacShield and DP all on a separate button, which allows me to use it as needed instead of making it dependent on my spam. My slaves use that time/button to prepare for combat {assist, follow, shields, HoTs, certain buffs, debuffs} so they are ready to tear it up once I engage DPS, instead of having to "ramp up" in combat."


I also have them places I can click them, but generally I want to use AS if I'm on a new pull so I leave it as part of the regular sequence.

To the OP, a /click macro simulates clicking on multiple buttons right after each other, unlike doing this with a g11 keyboard, however, it's both legal and will hang if it clicks something that is on cooldown. You put the main "/click A /click b /click c macro on your normal spam button"

[Malgor]

I took out swiftmend and I am wasting a ton of mana. I added more commas but still over healing and wasting mana. Any ideas?

Would beast mastery be a better spec for 5 boxing?

[shadewalker]

Malgor, Can you post what you have now? Have you timed your click speed and added enough commas so you are not casting over you existing HoTs?

If you don't need all the HoTs up all the time, you could have a second key that just rolls rejuvenation and lifebloom.

I run a BM hunter in one of my mixed teams just because the pet is a good amount of DPS that i don't have to micro manage, and the BM rotation is simple to click macro.

[Malgor]

Shadewalker - I am on my break at work posting from my phone, but will paste in my druid heal macro when I get home tonight.

[Malgor]

Just got home here is my druid healing macro:

/castsequence [target=Rou,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,Li febloom,,,,,,,Rejuvenation

I seem to be way over healing to the point in each trash fight I have used 1/4 of my mana. So I have to drink after each pull, which seems like overkill to me.

The commas act as a click correct. So if I'm clicking my button every second - it's tied to my paladin's tanking macro - it gets mashed a lot.

I also have wild growth on another button, with my DPS group (mage, hunter, priest) so that it gets triggered every time the cool down is up.

[Zub]

Hand of Recokoning


i guess it's just a typo on the forum and not in our macro, but it made me smile :-)

[Malgor]

Lol

[Khatovar]

Just got home here is my druid healing macro:

/castsequence [target=Rou,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,Li febloom,,,,,,,Rejuvenation



You are casting 2 Rejuvs in a row when you cycle this macro, that right there is a waste of mana.

[shadewalker]

Just for example, i click around 5 times a second so each comma would be about .2 seconds (1/5) of delay and the Global Cool Down (GCD) before any haste would be 1.5 seconds, ....soooo....


/castsequence Rejuvenation,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,Li febloom (,,,,,,,Rejuvenation) remove this as it is 2 rejuv's in a row
____________1.5_________1 __1.5____1 ___1.5 ___1_____1.5
____________1.5_________2.5 _4_____ 5___ 6.5____7.5___9

with this example your Rejuvenation would be refreshed every 9 seconds or so, I think the duration is 15 seconds so you would be loosing 6 seconds of the spell.


However... I think the macro will continue to click through your commas even if you are on GCD. So what is actually happing may be something more like this

/castsequence Rejuvenation,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,Li febloom
_______________1.5_________1.5_________1.5________ 1.5
_______________1.5_________3__________4.5_________ 7
and you would be re casting Rejuv after only 7 seconds and losing half the spell and your mana. You may want to just stand out of combat and click thru your macro while watching the HoTs on you tank and see when Rejuv is being refreshed.

You may want to try something more like this

/castsequence Rejuvenation,Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,, Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,, Lifebloom ,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,, Lifebloom
________________1.5______________2_____2__________ __2 __ 2____________2___2______1.5
________________1.5_____________3.5____5.5________ ___7.5_9.5___________11.5__12.5___14

Of course all the commas would need to be adjusted for your clicking speed.


Sorry for the lengthy post, I hope this helps you out.

[Malgor]

Thanks khatovar and shadewalker, I'll look into this on my next day off. I think rejuvenation was the problem.

[Malgor]

Okay I set out today, my first day off, to see about tweaking that healing macro.

I didn't want to waste time doing bosses I know I can't do yet so I started my random cycle so that I could gain emblems of triumph to help upgrade the druid and priest.

I got Halls of Stone first, and since I hadn't played since the patch there were a lot of things wrong with my game and it kept crashing so after a couple of deaths I logged off, took all my add ons out of my wow folder, did a repair from the wow folder and then put my add ons back into the folder.

Then of course everything was wrong and had to put all my X_Perl settings, Healbot settings, Dominos, and UI Layouts for all five toons. There is probably an easier way to do this since this was time consuming and took about an hour.

Everything worked good after that so, hit the random dungeon finder again and got Halls of Lightning first.
Killed General Bjarngrim, Volkhan, then wasted time killing some trash so I could use the random dungeon finder again. I can't kill Ionar yet so don't want to waste time attempting.

Next dungeon was Utgarde Keep, Cleared it completely.

Next dungeon was Utgarde Pinnacle, which I've been able to easily do everything up to Skadi previously. Today I thought I'd try Skadi again with the bug method so I could get my toons in and positioned correctly before the adds all start pouring out the door. Parked my toons behind the chained fence on the right, just before the last section where all the adds come out and left them there, with my tank in front. Ran my hunter down to reactivate Skadi and ran her back and parked her with the other toons while the adds started their first waves.

Though the fight was long, becuase I can't seem to get those damn witch doctors to come to me without nuking my druid a lot, and it took about 8-10 minutes to finish the fight. NO DEATHS! I think I have this fight down now and will do it in less time in the future.

Next was King Ymiron. I forgot about the ball of death that he sends out after one of his stuns/runs and that killed my druid and priest, but everyone else survived. I'm guessing I just run from that in the future. But, the point being I did kill him and I think that this is one of the dungeons I can now complete each time I get it as a random.

>>> This is all due to those who have been very helpful here! A BIG thanks to the suggestions and help everyone has offered, it's been a tremendous aide in getting me better at five boxing these heroics. <<<

Thanks again,

Malgor

[Khatovar]

I can't seem to get those damn witch doctors to come to me without nuking my druid a lot

Use Avenger's Shield on the Witch Doctors. Or Counterspell. Or mana drain them. If they are silenced or otherwise unable to cast, they should come to you. If not, just spam Hand of Reckoning/Salvation/Sacrifice while your DPS takes em from range.

[confusedtx5]

Something else you can try is to have shift/ctrl/alt modifiers.
eg.
/cast [target=Rou,nochanneling,mod:shift] Rejuvenation, Lifebloom
this will cast Rejuv when shift+5 is pressed, and lifebloom when just 5 is pressed.
or you can have a button that is tank heals only, and use the modifier casts or castsequence without the comma gaps.
another example; I have '3' set to do PW:S on press, and shift+3 Prayer of mending.
shift+4 is binding heal, and 4 is flash heal. I have G2 as penance, but ctrl+3 could do it just as well.