messy af windowed boxing team

[simpletom]

Hey guys, been a long time since I've made a post on here but have been wanting to come back to boxing for over a year now, basically since Classic launched. I didn't have a whole lot of time to play at the start of classic and nearly every time I started playing would lose interest as it always felt like a catch up to the people already farming AQ40.

Few months ago a discord group came up with idea of picking one of the quietest realms and everyone moving over en masse to create a 'fresh' realm. It was a great success at the start but unfortunately now nearly everyone has left. When I check who 1-70 I quite often make up to 25% of my realms horde characters. So this is where I'm currently multi boxing with my team, I've literally encountered maybe 5 other players in my teams journey to 31.

So I'm running Bear Druid, BM Hunter, BM Hunter, BM Hunter and Resto Shaman.

My old TBC teams always used to be Shaman but with the lack broadcasting options I really didn't want to depend on this set up moving forward. So I picked BM hunter as my DPS as I feel even with pets and auto shot should still sustain decent DPS.

My shaman is a boosted 58, (I decided against boosting the hunters as I didn't want this team just handed to me on a plate I wanted to work up to getting through outland dungeons)

My Tank druid is my solo main, who I'm undecided on, the synergy of having motw and leader of the pack is great with the hunters but feel could run smoother with Prot Paladin.

I've been mixing up leveling through just grouping the hunters together and running quests to boosting through dungeons and a mix of the two where I'll just have the druid run the hunters through an entire zone of quests in a couple hours. Its not the fastest way to end game but it's the least monotonous way to level.

Heres a screen grab of my team wiping SM Lib when some mobs reset and caused havoc: (I deemed this a bigger achievement than anything else):

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2477&stc=1

And here's me doing who 1-70 on my dead server:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2478&stc=1

I know these shots aren't interesting its mostly just to show the set up I'm using with the windows and yes I'm playing on a MacBook. So far its been fun and great to have the challenge of boxing again, its going to be nothing short of a major acomplisment if I get this team to 70 mostly because of how little time I can play these days.

Will keep this thread alive with updates how the teams doing, I'm on the fence about leveling up a Prot Paladin to take over from the Druid? I might just do both and see what I prefer as I need a Blacksmith in order to make an arcanite rod for my shaman chanter (this is how dead the realm is)

Any tips or words of encouragement appreciated.

[nodoze]

Glad to see your progress and hope it continues to go well.

Awhile back, when theorizing teams that could do OK with the new policies by not requiring "spammy" play that could look like broadcasting/mirroring, either 4Hunters+Healer or Tank+3Hunters+Healer were combos recommended specifically for the reasons you delineated (petattack and auto-shot giving decent DPS).

I think Paladin Tank would be overall better but, between Misdirection, feign death, and not doing true AoE on your DPS you likely can be OK with Druid Tank and 3 Pets.

Would be great to see updates and in particular am interested to see if you are able to clear dungeons at cap (especially Heroics).

[simpletom]

I decided to add the paladin to the group, so just managed to close the gap with the paladin at 32 now and the hunters at 34, will head over to Dustwallow Marsh and hit some quests and a bit of Murloc farming in-between. I really can't just stick to one method of leveling as I find grinding too boring. Not in any rush to hit 70 but ideally would like to be in outland with the team by the end of August.

Been trying to find a reliable focus follow mouse option for Mac OS no luck yet, have considered investing into a gaming laptop but seems excessive considering it would just be for multi boxing as I need the Mac for work.

anyway here's a little screen grab of the team together doing some kill quests. Looking forward to getting stuck in with this group have unfortunately not had the time to be able to invest into it lately.
https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2479&stc=1

[nodoze]

I decided to add the paladin to the group, so just managed to close the gap with the paladin at 32 now and the hunters at 34, will head over to Dustwallow Marsh and hit some quests and a bit of Murloc farming in-between. I really can't just stick to one method of leveling as I find grinding too boring. Not in any rush to hit 70 but ideally would like to be in outland with the team by the end of August.

Been trying to find a reliable focus follow mouse option for Mac OS no luck yet, have considered investing into a gaming laptop but seems excessive considering it would just be for multi boxing as I need the Mac for work.

anyway here's a little screen grab of the team together doing some kill quests. Looking forward to getting stuck in with this group have unfortunately not had the time to be able to invest into it lately.
Thanks for sharing and I hope Paladin ends up helping you quite a bit.

Interesting that Mac OS doesn't have focus follows mouse.

After reviewing this thread (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5/how-can-i-make-focus-follow-the-mouse-cursor) it seems like various people have added that functionality over the years but then the projects stop being supported. When reviewing the thread it looks like this one may have it and may still be supported:

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

One note I saw was: "... Follow the README.md instructions to download, and then enable "Focus Follows Mouse" in the Misc. section of the Settings view. ...". Then the following note: "... Amethyst works nicely but doesn't seem to have support for Focus Follows Mouse without Autoraise. ..." (not sure what that means).

Let us know if that helps or not.

[TheMias]

"... Amethyst works nicely but doesn't seem to have support for Focus Follows Mouse without Autoraise. ..." (not sure what that means).

With Windows 10 you can have focus follows mouse and not bring the newly activated window to the foreground. This can be handy if you have a bunch of overlapping windows. So I've pretty sure that is what the comment referred to.

[simpletom]

Wanted to give you guys an update on where I'm at so after a long ride through Azeroth I'm finally at Outlands, I made the decision to skip questing for now and try dungeons to 70, mostly to save on losing Reputation on quests and also give me a great way to make gold at 70. As mentioned before my realm is now nearly completely dead, there's not a single Horde guild doing any raiding, there's more bots than actual players. The bots are the ones actually keeping the AH alive. Occasionally they mess up or something and list 80 stacks of Knothide leather at 20s buyout, its kinda bizarre. I've joined the paladin into a guild I wasn't sure what the reaction to me boxing would be I was very discreet about it but it came down to people asking how on earth I could find groups for dungeons on our dead server. I've also joined into it with my 70 Druid and helping guilds where possible. Its a very and I mean VERY small community but at least its friendly.

Clearing SM with Paladin as Tank (having a level 58 Resto shaman helps, can't use ES till target is 40+ though)
https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2486&stc=1

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2485&stc=1

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2484&stc=1

I leveled 30-58 through questing and doing a dungeon run at least once for the quests, it kept me sane and wasn't too grindy and has been a lot of fun.

When questing I was just leaving the Shaman out of the party so that the xp wasn't nerfed too hard but could still be useful and get familiar with the set up. I started bringing the shaman back into the group around Ungoro level 53ish it just made sense to pick up the extra XP where possible, Shaman hit 61 as the others hit 58. Then I decided to have a go at Ramparts, my paladin found parts of BRD a challenge so I was pretty sure Ramparts would be impossible at fresh 58 so I decided to bench her in favor of the 70 Feral and ran Ramps,



https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2487&stc=1


there was still some learning curves, funny enough I've been reading some old posts from 2008 on here I'm not surprised by how many people struggled with Ramparts. I did BM solo on my druid to help out some guildies, I think given how fast that instance flows it will be very nearly impossible with my set up, will save it for 70. My goal is still to clear every dungeon with this team. I am really hoping that the hunters DPS really increases either when they hit 60 or when I get steady shot at 62 or this is going to be painful, as you can see the druid is basically carrying the group at the moment.

Will keep you updated more frequently as the challenge has started to ramp up (pun get it?)

Cheers

[nodoze]

Wanted to give you guys an update on where I'm at so after a long ride through Azeroth I'm finally at Outlands, I made the decision to skip questing for now and try dungeons to 70, mostly to save on losing Reputation on quests and also give me a great way to make gold at 70. As mentioned before my realm is now nearly completely dead, there's not a single Horde guild doing any raiding, there's more bots than actual players. The bots are the ones actually keeping the AH alive. Occasionally they mess up or something and list 80 stacks of Knothide leather at 20s buyout, its kinda bizarre. I've joined the paladin into a guild I wasn't sure what the reaction to me boxing would be I was very discreet about it but it came down to people asking how on earth I could find groups for dungeons on our dead server. I've also joined into it with my 70 Druid and helping guilds where possible. Its a very and I mean VERY small community but at least its friendly.

Clearing SM with Paladin as Tank (having a level 58 Resto shaman helps, can't use ES till target is 40+ though)

[deleted pictures to save space]

I leveled 30-58 through questing and doing a dungeon run at least once for the quests, it kept me sane and wasn't too grindy and has been a lot of fun.

When questing I was just leaving the Shaman out of the party so that the xp wasn't nerfed too hard but could still be useful and get familiar with the set up. I started bringing the shaman back into the group around Ungoro level 53ish it just made sense to pick up the extra XP where possible, Shaman hit 61 as the others hit 58. Then I decided to have a go at Ramparts, my paladin found parts of BRD a challenge so I was pretty sure Ramparts would be impossible at fresh 58 so I decided to bench her in favor of the 70 Feral and ran Ramps,

[deleted picture]

there was still some learning curves, funny enough I've been reading some old posts from 2008 on here I'm not surprised by how many people struggled with Ramparts. I did BM solo on my druid to help out some guildies, I think given how fast that instance flows it will be very nearly impossible with my set up, will save it for 70. My goal is still to clear every dungeon with this team. I am really hoping that the hunters DPS really increases either when they hit 60 or when I get steady shot at 62 or this is going to be painful, as you can see the druid is basically carrying the group at the moment.

Will keep you updated more frequently as the challenge has started to ramp up (pun get it?)

CheersGot the pun and glad to see the team and grats on progress. Druid is easier to gear and can be a pretty simple brute force tank but I think your Paladin will be better pure tank at cap when you get toward BiS gear though the Druid may give the team more DPS with talents...

I do hope the 3 hunters as DPS work well at cap (looking forward to hearing once at 70 with 4 piece set/etc as some have reported lackluster from boxing classic TBC hunters).

I like that you have 3 Hybrid options between Paladin, Druid, & Shaman as that lets you contrast/compare multiple tanks and healers (and at least in theory some DPS options).

From your willingness to help folk run dungeons and what not I think someone like you would be a great team member for any guild.

[simpletom]

Hit a major wall in Slave Pens, the hunters have hit 62 so noticing substantial DPS increase with steady shot. Annoyingly though it breaks follow, so think I will need to invest into an add-on to get around that and have them strobe follow. Probably get EMA up and running.

The damage they pump still wasn't enough to bring down the second SP boss, upon enrage just too much spammy healing needed to be able to damage and heal on multiple windows. I think unless you are seriously out-gearing or out-leveling the dungeons without broadcasting its not going to be a smooth run.

I feel a little deflated by the sub par results in SP, I was able to 4 man it with a guild group of people as low as level 60. Essentially the only DPS was my paladin and a mage as the level 60 shaman just missed so many of his attacks.

I even started to have a look at broadcasting options on a Mac, like plexor and the other, fortunately/unfortunately they are all dated and nothing works with the current OS, but it was out of frustration something I was considering resorting to. With broadcasting this would be very easy, I need to helm the group from the resto shaman, while still sustaining the damage on the hunters. I feel that the paladin takes very spikey damage, I wonder if the druid would fair better in the long run with as much dodge as possible or just as a soak tank.

I understand why 4 elemental shaman was the go to set up, chain lightning, constant 4 healing stream totems, chain heals, magma totems. It's annoying that broadcasting is gone and never coming back. Its even more annoying considering how lax the stance is from blizzard on bots right now.

[Teslah]

Hi Simpletom,

I filmed a quick video, although sloppy of Heroic Slave Pens using 3 Hunters a Priest and the Pally tank.

Slave Pens Heroic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYFd2aeIhk Pally, 3 Hunters, Priest.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYFd2aeIhk

Since the announcement, I have not used any software or hardware assistance. Only a couple of mods and manually do everything (as you can see in the video) one screen and one action at a time. I leveled every team in instances, except for the bis quests for gear. Playing this way with no software reminds me of before ISBoxer became popular and doing heroics like this back in 2008.

I did this fast, as I have a meeting to get to. As you can, I made some big mistakes. I left the mote collecting goggles on the pally and hunter, as well as a riding crop, so his dps is not as good as it should be. I also forgot to get the 110 nature buff at the end from the guy in the cage. I let him out, just forgot to get it! Shows you can do it without it, however it is easier with it.

For the second boss that you asked about, I did not use drums in case you do not have a leather worker.

Some easy simple tips.



Heal yourself along with your healer to get the debuff off.
Make a Divine Shield macro to quickly activate and turn it off. That will wipe the debuff too.
If you haven't done it. Change the mouse over activation setting in the registry. You can get it to activate a window almost instantly from the default 1/2 second. Makes rolling over them much easier.


The team has a couple pieces of badge gear. The rest is BIS blues. Hunters have 4 piece Beast Lord, trinket from Arctraz, Kurenai rep quiver, neck from Botanica and they all have the Wrathtide Bow from Steam Vaults Heroic.
Wait until you try the second boss in Steam Vaults with no software to strafe everyone. Manually moving each character out of her storm is a nightmare. Other two bosses are fairly easy.

Anyway, keep trying. Hunters are great in SP because they can ignore the Defender shields, you have 3 stuns for the soothsayers and enchanters and do some pretty decent dps.

I can burst above 1K on the Hunters. With drums and heroism, a little higher of course. Shaman group does consistent 1.6K to 2K, Mages are about 1.2K to 1.4K dps. Hunters are the lowest. They are fun though and get the job done. Still working on a decent macro for them to max their dps and get closer to the other teams.

I also don't have all my macros setup yet. I hate clicking spells, had to here since I don't have eveyrthing created yet. I'm trying to not use anything that might seem like streamlining.

I have all heroics down at this point and am running different teams. Starting to do Kara, which isn’t too bad so far!
Have fun and let me know if you need help with any other instances.

Everything is of course much harder than before. That said, it is really fun when you get Heroics down with different teams. Also, knowing the multibox population is near zero on most servers is pretty cool too. You are doing something unique that not many people are doing anymore.

Good luck and have fun.

[simpletom]

Hi Simpletom,

I filmed a quick video, although sloppy of Heroic Slave Pens using 3 Hunters a Priest and the Pally tank.

Slave Pens Heroic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYFd2aeIhk Pally, 3 Hunters, Priest.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYFd2aeIhk



Cheers Teslah for taking the time to put this together, very nice and effective set up. I've watched the video a couple times now and it has given me the reassurance I needed to continue with this team. The idea of getting heroics down felt like a pipe dream.

One restricting factor that I really wish I didn't have was Macs lack the ability to do that hover focus window thing that you do. Sadly I have to manually click each window. I like your screen set up, its something I hadn't really thought about might be hindering my team ability but I quite often lose track of my paladins health because that window is buried under others.

Have taken a great deal away from watching you video, most importantly it confirms that it is possible if I am persistent with this. Boxing a team is a huge time sink somewhere in the area of 12+ hours per level at this point. I'm not in a rush but its just another factor to the burnout.

Thanks again, if you can share any of your other runs I would be really interested in seeing them, likewise for comparison I'm sure others would be intrigued to your other team set ups.

[Teslah]

I tried a few different window setups and this worked best for me. Long term it's easier on the wrist to move left to right for dps, versus up and down. I wish it all magically fit on the screen nice (I know I can change resolutions), however, like everything, you get used to it pretty quickly. Now that I've been doing it for a few months, it is of course harder, but not as bad as I thought it would be.

Even though their boxed dps is lower than the other teams, there are some Heroics that are way easier with Hunters. Defintley keep them.

Arctraz final boss is much more doable with hunters, as he seems to focus more on the pets with his mind control and fear. Make sure to use snake traps too, they count as pets for him to attack. On a good run, the team is barely touched as he focuses all the pain on the pets.

Auchenai Crypts second boss, Shirrak The Deadwatcher is just about impossible now with casters becuase of the stacking debuff that slows casting speed. The hunter team made this much easier. I couldn't do it with all casters. I ended up skipping him with the caster group by running past and reincarnating with the Shaman.

Shadow Labs is another one. Second boss was easier with Hunters. One trick is to lay Freezing Traps at the start. Then when he mind controls everyone they trap people for a few valuable seconds. When playing mages for this boss, their burst dps kills everyone or gets them all very low on health when he mind controls. Shamans aren't much better.

One last thought on Hunters. Since we are doing everything manually one screen at a time now, the auto shot of Hunters helps get bosses and trash down. With mages and Shamans, you need to constnalty be pressing their attack macros. There are times where I am focused on healing and staying alive and the caster teams are not getting attacks off, where the Hunters would still be attacking, at least with auto shot.

I'll start recording a little more and posting here. Good luck, keep posting progress. It's fun to know there are a few of us left.

Any chance you could get a Windows machine? They are pretty cheap now and you can run 5 clients easily on a decently priced machine.

[nodoze]

Thanks Teslah & simpletom for the good conversations and I am glad some folk are still boxing.

Teslah, I subscribed to your YouTube channel and enjoyed the video. Looking forward to more!

[Celosar]

Are you using a steady shot macro for the hunter? I went away from using steady shot because of how awkward it is trying to time it so that there's no clipping.

[Osop]

So I'm running Bear Druid, BM Hunter, BM Hunter, BM Hunter and Resto Shaman.


Have you considered replacing the resto shaman for a resto druid? the heal over time effects are more easier to manage just place hots and forget rather than having the resto shaman target/click and having to pay attention to HP. Basically, resto druid helps with current AND future damage the target might receive.

[simpletom]

Thought I would throw in a long overdue update on this team

I took bit of a break from this, largely due to my work I don't always have access to the best internet connections.

That said I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to land myself in a position where I had to quarantine for 14 days in a hotel room. A lot of free time on my hands my focus was to get the team to 70 and start hitting up dungeons. I leveled to 70, completeing all quests in Nagrand, blades edge mountains, shadow moon valley and quite a large part of Netherstorm before finally hitting 70.

My realm has completely died now, there's practically no-one left playing there. Its quite amazing really.

As soon as I hit 70 I with pretty decent green quested gear I thought I would try my luck on Seth Halls, try and get my paladin the limbram off the first boss and get my hunters the pole arm from the quest, it went horrendously. I could do the first boss, messy as always but could do it blowing all cool downs and ignoring the spawned adds. Couldn't even get to the final boss. I went back to focusing on finishing the group quests and get the best possible quested gear I could for the team and make sure paladin was defense capped (I'm sure that the paladin was def capped for Seth but yeah better safe than sorry)

At this point, I put the failing down to perhaps I need windows for the mouse over focus window, so I put bootcamp on my Mac to play, and my word what a difference it made, my play style was far more streamline and I was able to start doing SV, the first boss gave me a lot of issues, far more than anything else in the dungeon the AOE was just too much for my extremely glass cannon hunters, my hunters had around 6k hp. They would be 2 shot by the aoe. I realized I needed to spend some time and bump up their HP before I can get SV on farm. I got really lucky and cleared SV once it felt like a huge achievement, scoring the cloak and necklace for my paladin in one run was very happy.

I have tried OHB to no luck, just messed up the paladin boss and forgot to do a full repair before so got 2 tries on that and called it.
HH dropped and because of the timezone difference I was playing in HH went live around 4am and so I got in 2 runs on the first day. I wiped on the 5th attempt just was too focused on downing the head and he remounted. But have it down pretty well.

I haven't been spamming HH everyday simply because Bootcamping my Mac opened up a load of new problems for me that left me without a computer for the last 2 days of hotel quarantine. I now have my Mac up and running and have ordered a separate ssd to bootcamp onto for future. Keen to keep trying with this sadly with my realm as dead as it is I think I might focus on the gearing up the tank on another realm as a solo. have to wait and see, but overall have had a lot of fun with this during my lockdown.