Multiboxing Tips: What was the one thing that really helped you move from a good multiboxer to a great one?

[luxlunae]

I just wanted to ask, what was the one thing you started doing (or mastered doing) that really helped you "step up" your multiboxing game? (It doesn't have to be good to great, I'd accept "mediocre" to "ok" as well :) ).

For me it was either when I really got comfortable interrupting on round robin to the point where it's automatic or when I finally started using Ualaa's (apologies if I'm misattributing) tremor and thunderstorm totem rotations in pvp.

[valkry]

Healing and moving at the same time with spirit walker's grace

[Sam DeathWalker]

When I invented focus fire on June 27th, 2001.

[Alge]

Setting up Click Healing so I could DPS with one hand and heal with the other.

[Khatovar]

My multiboxing game is always stepped up when I have to play something that's not WoW. That's when I'm forced to think of new ways to do things, and that always results in my picking up some neat new tricks.

[Truelle]

Switching to ISBoxer really helped me out although I am still not using it to nearly its full potential.


When I invented focus fire on June 27th, 2001.

Sam I am not sure if you remember this but I do. On the Sullen Zek PTR I was multiboxing three Mages with their pets and saw you coming out of the Dark Elf area. This was before you were boxing. Needless to say my Mages chewed you up pretty quickly lol. We use to play Age of Empires together too back in the original AoE/RoR days I went by Pacman23

[kate]

I don't think I'm a "great" multi-boxer by any means, but I think being constantly willing to try different ways of doing things has helped me get pretty good!

[JackBurton]

Its tough to only name one or lay some kind of turning point.

-moving from numpad side of the keypad to AWSD and its modifiers
-When overhauling my profile i cant stand it when i don't have my movement control setup right.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Switching to ISBoxer really helped me out although I am still not using it to nearly its full potential.



Sam I am not sure if you remember this but I do. On the Sullen Zek PTR I was multiboxing three Mages with their pets and saw you coming out of the Dark Elf area. This was before you were boxing. Needless to say my Mages chewed you up pretty quickly lol. We use to play Age of Empires together too back in the original AoE/RoR days I went by Pacman23


I remember your name pacman23, from aoe lol ... good old days.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The obvious answer for probably everyone here is, becoming a member of the dual-boxing.com community. We have such a rarity among the interwebs here, it's hard to imagine having evolved the sport of multiboxing as far as it has without all the helpful developers, mods and generally damned fine folks around here.

As for specific things I learned, my biggest hurdle was wrapping my head around FTL setups. Without EZmode FTL like ISBoxer+WoW gives you, it really takes some understanding to make everything work well regardless of which character is leading and which ones are dead.

Second place probably goes to understanding the goal of minimizing micromanagement for everything but edge cases. This sounds awfully vague but I suspect most folks who've ever cleared a heroic/expert dungeon "solo" or won a BG will understand what this means completely. The hard part in communicating this to new folks is that there is no one-page answer that explains how to execute this. It depends so much on your keyboard setup, your hardware, your GUI layout, and probably most importantly, which game you're playing. (sorta reinforcing what Khatovar said about non-WoW experience)

[daanji]

Learning to manage wife aggro. The best tip I can offer you is to take out the trash, do the dishes, and clean the house BEFORE she asks. As a bonus, rub her feet or shoulders without her asking. It goes a long way.

Finally, if she asks you to do something while you are playing - drop what you are doing no matter what it is. 1% left on the final boss? Stand in a fire and die and pay attention to your wife, no matter how trivial of a question it is.
She wants to know she is more important than the game and if you continue ignoring her...you'll find your multi-boxing time will be severely hindered.

[Khatovar]

Good advice for the guys with non-gaming wives, Daanji. Here's the other side. ;)

Learning to manage wife aggro - by The Wife.

The best tip I can offer you is to take out the trash, do the dishes, and clean the house so I don't have to step away from the computer to do it. As a bonus, don't rub on me while I'm trying to play, unless it's going to be bow chicka wow-wow time. Breaking my concentration makes me PMS-y.

Finally, if I ask you to do something while I am playing - drop what you are doing no matter what it is. I've probably been sitting on my ass so long that my legs are numb and if I try to get up to do it, I'll probably fall over. And you don't want to feel all guilty that I hurt myself because YOU didn't step up and do what I asked, now, do you?

Of course, you're more important than the game, but you wanted a gamer chick, so suck it up, Buttercup.

*runs and hides* :D

[JackBurton]

Sam I am not sure if you remember this but I do. On the Sullen Zek PTR I was multiboxing three Mages with their pets and saw you coming out of the Dark Elf area. This was before you were boxing. Needless to say my Mages chewed you up pretty quickly lol. We use to play Age of Empires together too back in the original AoE/RoR days I went by Pacman23
I was also on the zek server. I was in ascending dawn. I boxed a monk named harrington weber, a gnome cleric named thufer hawat, and a bard named korbon dallus.

[3box]

learning to manage wife aggro. The best tip i can offer you is to take out the trash, do the dishes, and clean the house before she asks. As a bonus, rub her feet or shoulders without her asking. It goes a long way.

Finally, if she asks you to do something while you are playing - drop what you are doing no matter what it is. 1% left on the final boss? Stand in a fire and die and pay attention to your wife, no matter how trivial of a question it is.
She wants to know she is more important than the game and if you continue ignoring her...you'll find your multi-boxing time will be severely hindered.

qft.

[Truelle]

I was also on the zek server. I was in ascending dawn. I boxed a monk named harrington weber, a gnome cleric named thufer hawat, and a bard named korbon dallus.

Good vs Nuetrals vs Evils... I miss those days. I would love to see WoW really shake things up and add a third faction. I think that would breathe alot of life into the game.

[cmeche]

Learning to manage wife aggro. The best tip I can offer you is to take out the trash, do the dishes, and clean the house BEFORE she asks. As a bonus, rub her feet or shoulders without her asking. It goes a long way.

Finally, if she asks you to do something while you are playing - drop what you are doing no matter what it is. 1% left on the final boss? Stand in a fire and die and pay attention to your wife, no matter how trivial of a question it is.
She wants to know she is more important than the game and if you continue ignoring her...you'll find your multi-boxing time will be severely hindered.
Reading this made me lol...... To which my wife looked at me with that "wth are you reading look". But like they say great comedy has some truth behind it.

[Ualaa]

For me...

Moving from four computers, each with its own keyboard, mouse and monitor...
To software boxing, with everyone on a single PC.

[roddo]

I used to 4 box in everquest, with 2 comps, and 2 accounts on each and alt tabbing between accts. Had no software help, just manually performing all tasks on one toon at a time. Was slow, and not very effective, but it worked. When I tried 5 boxing WoW with keyclone on one pc it was alot easier, although when i 3 boxed on a pvp server that wasn't so good when someone got bored and decided to mess with me.

[valkry]

I used to 4 box in everquest, with 2 comps, and 2 accounts on each and alt tabbing between accts. Had no software help, just manually performing all tasks on one toon at a time. Was slow, and not very effective, but it worked. When I tried 5 boxing WoW with keyclone on one pc it was alot easier, although when i 3 boxed on a pvp server that wasn't so good when someone got bored and decided to mess with me.
You should try it when everyone finds out you are lvling a 2nd team via quests after becoming one of the most hated gankers on the server. Although that does make for some awesome world pvp

[Shodokan]

What made me a better boxer?
Simply grinding out ISBoxer and learning the ins and outs and how to apply it to mimic how i'd normally PVP as best as i could on a single character so that it felt seemless to go between multiple characters to singles. Other than that it was just getting use to my new keybinds and understanding just how to use all of my abilities on a round robin setup and tracking their cooldowns effectively. By doing this I became the top rated PVP boxer in the world in cata... last season getting glad on all 4 dks (though i did sell these before i quit, looked down upon here so i obviously didn't make an "OMG LOOK AT ME!" post and yes that was dual-boxing two of each in 3's)

Also people's dislike for me fueled me to be better than them :P

But I've since quit a second time I obviously have kept my accounts , but I likely won't be returning. Few months into quitting and no desire to play.

[JohnGabriel]

I haven't finished learning yet. Still plenty of ways to improve my boxing game.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I remember Ascending Dawn heh... I think wow was wise to have only two factions, with three one will always be gimp.

[Kojii]

But I've since quit a second time I obviously have kept my accounts , but I likely won't be returning. Few months into quitting and no desire to play.

So what have u replaced wow with?

[candlebox]

We should start a log when people quit and come back. I realized how much money i was spending on crap for my yard, and going out. I spend less paying for 10 accounts then i do when we go out for a couple nights.

Apparently the more videos I watch, the worse I seem at boxing. Hell i haven't even figured out how to non cast sequence heal yet. Now my gf is boxing now, I have to learn how to heal. Healing rain only heals so much you know.

[Alge]

Hell i haven't even figured out how to non cast sequence heal yet. Now my gf is boxing now, I have to learn how to heal. Healing rain only heals so much you know.
I apologise if I am telling you how to suck eggs...

Here's one method: http://isboxer.com/index.php/videos/102-wow-video-dual-box-healer

My preferred method: http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/33614-ISBoxer-Click-Healing-without-addons-(IMAGES-ADDED-by-REQ) (http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/33614-ISBoxer-Click-Healing-without-addons-%28IMAGES-ADDED-by-REQ%29)

There are a bunch of other options here in the WoW section: http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides

[Nikita]

Going through my spellbook on my PvP team. Learning what to cast, when to cast. Also playing tons of 2v2 and 3v3 helps alot.

[MadMilitia]

Macroquest2 was it for me. I always wanted to box back in those prime EQ days. And I did to a limited extent alt-tab my way through boxing. Then Macroquest changed it all. Completely!

IsBoxer/Innerspace does capitalize on that to a great extent but will never be Macroquest. You can't replace fond memories of running complete heal chains, totally automated during the GoD/OOW eras. Those were the days!

I'm a bit meh on the way multiboxing works or rather, is allowed to work today. I think we can still get away with a ton but it is definitely harder to be alert on all. Especially so if you like having a varied comp and like to do arena.

Sometimes now I find just playing one or two complex classes will satiate my desire. Or even one, in another game such as Dark Souls.

[JohnGabriel]

What do you find more fun, the getting started/setting up of building a team or the playing of the team?

[Apps]

One word.

"Mosg2"

[luxlunae]

What do you find more fun, the getting started/setting up of building a team or the playing of the team?

I get excited about new innovations, some new key bind that takes care of a need I didn't really know I had. I expect to feel this excitement when I implement saved camera views and interact with mouseover later this week.

[MiRai]

What do you find more fun, the getting started/setting up of building a team or the playing of the team?
Setting up and configuring teams in ISBoxer is sometimes a lot more fun than actually playing the game.

[JackBurton]

•The more advanced configs are hard to teach. One thing one of my favorite teachers said is that you really know something well if you have the ability to teach it. Thats one of the reasons thier isnt alot of documentation of the advanced stuff.
•Move from lurker to poster. I met new boxer guidie the other day that knows about db.com but never posted. feel free to ask questions but be aware that your question may have been answered a week ago already and thats why people arnt falling over each other to answer your post.
•To be honest the guides i post are not really guides but a call for help. I rather show my work when im stuck so that it doesnt look like im asking for a free handout.
•I like to kinda reverse engineer stuff by looking at videos and asking myself how they did that.
•Sometimes while im playing i get these great ideas for improvements. Try to find some way to record these ideas so i dont forget them. I do the same for snags or bugs in my profile.
•study the boards every day. alot of good guides are burried in these boards. and if you miss a day you may not notice a great guide. Alot of times right after i post a question to the forums I find it myself burried in the forums. use google search becaues its better than the forum search using the format: site:dual-boxing.com +keywords
•save nuggets of information you see on the forums. You can use that information to inteligently answer new questions and you will be able to summon it fast. For example while you remembered the spirit of an old post you probally wont remember what keywords you'll need to punch into google to bring that thread back up. Google Docs is the free cloud server i use.

[Shania]

I just wanted to ask, what was the one thing you started doing (or mastered doing) that really helped you "step up" your multiboxing game? (It doesn't have to be good to great, I'd accept "mediocre" to "ok" as well :) ).

Comes down to a few different things like:

1) This site & the Community within.
2) Isboxer - With out a doubt!
3) Merc's 2 step macroes!!
4) Persistence, trial and error.
5) Again this site, the invaluable guides, info, helpful responses from others, helping each other etc!!

[luxlunae]

•save nuggets of information you see on the forums. You can use that information to inteligently answer new questions and you will be able to summon it fast. For example while you remembered the spirit of an old post you probally wont remember what keywords you'll need to punch into google to bring that thread back up. Google Docs is the free cloud server i use.

You know I love documentation jack (I still have a copy of your keybind worksheet on my usb drive). What kind of stuff is on your docs scratchpad?

[candlebox]

I apologise if I am telling you how to suck eggs...

It's not that I don't know how, I have had a pocket healer so long that i didn't need to : )

It is a lot more for the brain to process. Gives you a lot more room for error having a healer though.

[moog]

For me it was the video feeds and click through healing of ISBoxer - what a staggeringly, amazing product that is!

Before, in WoW, I needed octopus arms to heal my mixed group - with a variety of function keys, alt-function keys, ctrl-alt functions keys etc, to do different sized heals on different members of the group.
In big/stressful fights, it was easy to get it wrong and lose chars/wipe.

When I saw the posts showing how you could combine video feeds, clicking through and and in-game addon like clique (IIRC) to allow 'proper' healing of the whole group, it changed my mixed team into a dungeon stomping team of death! :)

[JackBurton]

Remembered what Apps said about MOSG. Made me remember something i saw..


Now this is why I come to these forums. People coming up with creative ways to do new things rather than the same old, same old.

[Apps]

Remembered what Apps said about MOSG. Made me remember something i saw..

Not really sure if this is a compliment or... lol

I said Mosg2 because of the following:

Mosg2 showed me how to setup ISBoxer from scratch, and do it without the assistance of the wizard. I found this to be invaluable. The wizard does SO much for you, but at the same time, sorta limits users somewhat. Granted 90% of the users fit the aspect of the wizard, so im NOT knocking it.
He taught me, when he didnt have to. He helped me when it may not have been convenient. He got on skype (which I never used before) and walked me through it like I was a 5 yr old. Hes spent countless hours working on manifestos for everyone. No benefit to himself... he already had it all worked out. He showed me how to use repeaters in a way I hadnt even considered. He showed me how to set up using quick swap keys, and load entire new key map sets at the same time. He showed me how to box a game that wasnt easily boxable at the time.

Most importantly, he (by example) led me to want to help other people too, now armed with better knowledge and understanding of the ISBoxer software.

And not just the software specifics. He as an individual within a massive community, took the time to 1 on 1 with me. Ive sent PMs here and there... some get answered some dont. Of everyone, he was the most impressionable and absolutely left a distinct mark in my learning. I was at a point where I thought "this was it" for boxing, and was bored... having felt as if I had mastered it. Boy was I wrong.

If ever there was a Mosg2 Cheering squad. Id be in the front row.