DOGS OF WAR: A Melee Multi-boxing experiement

[Tdog]

Project: Dogs of War
A Melee Multi-boxing Experiment


As the title suggests I’ve decided to start up my own little experiment using multiple melee classes in an attempt to create a melee multi-box team to successfully complete instances at a very effective level. For anyone new to multi-boxing or to melee multi-boxing, there are a few obstacles that need to be overcome that caster groups simply do not need to worry about.

Some will ask why even bother to create a melee boxing team given some of the complications when there are already several proven caster team set-ups. The answer is simple, for FUN. For some, such as myself, melee classes are much more fun than caster classes. My favorite class/spec in the game at the moment is a Fury warrior which while my 5x shaman team is a blast to play, I still enjoy melee more.

THIS IS NOT A “HOW TO” MELEE MULTIBOXING THREAD!!! If that is what you’re looking for you are looking in the wrong place. This is a work in progress. As far as I know there is no such thing as of current. This is simply a fun experiment and a place for intelligent discussion on the possibilities that may hopefully open the way to a whole new aspect of multi-boxing. Constructive comments and suggestions are welcome!

Picking the Classes

First things first, team set-up and class selection. I actually had quite a large section here discussing the advantages and disadvantages that each melee class would bring to a melee heavy team. It is however taking quite a large amount of time to put together really well and to be honest would probably be longer than the rest of my post. For the sakes of getting on with my project I will simply say that after much thought and comparison I've decided to go with a 4 Warrior + 1 Shaman team set-up. Below is an example of some of the things I took into consideration with both warriors and shamans.

Warriors

Pros:
· Heavy armor, the ability to take hits will be important with melee teams due to the increased amount of hits you’ll be taking vs. caster classes.
· Lots of HP, again important for the above mentioned reason.
· Multiple mob attacks, while not very strong at lower levels the mid level open up Cleave, Whirlwind, Sweeping Strikes, some very powerful moves when used at the right time.
· Rage, using rage instead of mana keeps the warrior going indefinitely.
· Charges, Snares, and interrupts, all of which keeps targets in close range of the warrior again something very important in melee teams.
· Shouts, Battle shout, commanding shout, demoralizing shout, intimidating shout, piercing howl, taunt, thunder clap, etc... lots of buffs and debuffs that when used wisely would directly benefit the entire group.
· Execute, sexy ability with just one warrior, imagine the burst damage with Multiple synced executes.

Cons:
· Berserker stance debuff, certainly berserker stance is a great buff to the warrior, however their greatest DPS stance also makes them take 10% additional damage.
· No heals, save Bloodthrist
· Rather easily snared and kited

Shaman

Pros:
· Totems, Windfury, strength of earth, and a fire totem will make up quite a bit for not having a 5th DPS while Healing stream + Bloodthirst should help with some of the micromanagement on healing. Tremor totem, while not as vital with warriors will help out for fears which can be devastating to multiboxing especially melee.
· Resurrection and Reincarnation, One big down fall of druids as a healer choice is the lack of a constant resurrection. Imp. Reincarnation will give you wipe prevention every 10 mins.
· Chain heal and Earth Shield, healing stream, Blood thirst + Chain Heal should eliminate a lot of the micromanagement for healing.
· Mail armor + shield, may not be plate armor of a paladin but still makes for a non-squishy healer.
· Purge, Frost shock, Earth Shock, dispel, snare, interrupt
· Bloodlust/Heroism, increased attack speed by 30% for 40 seconds.


Cons:
· Lack of HOTs, not a huge deal for boss fights given some of the other passive healing however melee is constantly on the run and dropping totems all the time can be a drain on mana.
· Immobility of Totems, some of the best buffs the shaman offers are immobile. Even with a 30 yard range of Totemic Mastery totems usually only last a few pulls before needing to be redistributed which can also be a drain on mana and add to micromanagement.

Setting up the Team

After I had reviewed all the class choices I decided to go with a 4 warrior 1 shaman team. The temptation of WW, SS + Cleave combos with a side of WF to top it off was just too much to pass up. If this works half as well as I am hoping it will be like tossing a group of mobs in the garbage disposal and letting it rip! :evil:

Obviously there is a ton of class combos you could go with but again I love fury warriors and that is what I decided to go with.



Dogs of War – The Experiment

Current Level: 42
Instances Cleared: RFC, SFK, DM, WC, SMlib, SMarm, SMcath

I will be going up to at least level 30-35 with this experiment win or lose. The team I have decided to begin with, 4x Warriors + 1x Shaman, will not be twinked or out level the instance. I will be going into each instance with quest rewards and auction house greens. If this can’t be done successfully without having to over gear the instance then in my opinion this project will be a failure.

Goals: Take the largely dismissed idea of Melee Multi-boxing and successfully figure out a way to not only complete but conquer instances, especially the melee unfriendly boss encounters.


*This next portion will be in a journal format based on every few levels and each instance I encounter.

Level 1: Just started the team and now it’s time to figure some of the basic macros and placements. Every time your alts land a melee attack they will automatically stop following. A member, whose name I cannot remember, mentioned a few weeks back that he puts a /follow command at the end of each of his melee abilities to have the alts constantly following. Having tried this out myself I find this to be very useful. I have yet to lose an alt using this method with the exception of extreme lag.

Taking this idea a bit further I have come up with this macro…

Melee Assist
#showtooltip Attack/assist party1
/startattack
/follow party1

Shows the current item equipped in your main hand, assist’s the party’s leader so you can have a target to start attacking, turns on auto attack, turns follow back on if your alt as stopped following you.

*NOTE: You can simply replace /party1 with /focus if you wish. Some prefer to use /focus for pvp purposes.

Now that we have our alts in constant follow we have another problem to address. The range on melee attacks is only 5 yards. Simply running up to the mob and begining to attack on your main will not work as /follow will keep your alts just out of range causing them to receive a "Out of Range" message. This means we must adjust our main's position in order to get all the alts in pursuit to be in melee range.

Simply running straight through the mob with your main and turning around so that your main is facing the mob and your alts are at the mobs' back will eliminate probably 80% of the problem...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/m180.png

On occasion the mob will move off to the side instead of staying in place, to counter this move your Main making an angle like so...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/m45.png

[Tdog]

On rare occasion however a mob will be extremely difficult with you and will insist on staying on one side of you which usually ends up being on the opposite side of your alts. For these annoying mobs simply walk backwards with your main till the mob and your alts line up, basically like the first scenario but in reverse...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/mReverse.png
These 3 tips should have you landing 95% of your autoattacks right as the swing timer resets. There are other techniques to get your alts in melee range and facing the right direction. However rather then trying to explain it all I'll simply just suggest that you practice, practice, practice. Also worth mention that sometimes standing inside the mob help quite a bit.

Level 2 - 13: For my melee abilites I have decided to design most of them after this format...

Ability
#showtooltip (Ability)
/assist party1
/cast [target=party1target] (Ability)
/startattack
/follow party1

Example:

Heroic Strike
#showtooltip Heroic Strike
/assist party1
/cast [target=party1target] Heroic Strike
/startattack
/follow party1
Even though I have /assist in the macro I still use [target=party1target] just in case of lag or whatever reason the alts aren't targeting the correct target. For some however I don't use /assist because I want the alts to use the ability on a target other than the MA target without switching targets. For example...

Rend
#showtooltip Rend
/cast [target=party1target] Rend
/follow party1

Since warriors at low levels don't yet have any multi mob attacking abilites, and TC imo is a joke for aoe aggro generation, I will often start the alts attacking on the mob I want to die first, change targets with my main, hit rend which with this macro will not make them change targets, and switch back to the MA target.

Rage Fire Chasm: Well the first couple of times I went throw RFC tbh was a wipe fest. Mobs living longer giving them more time to move about and be annoying. The real reason behind the wipes however was me fussing with my alts, not paying attention to the mobs beating on the shaman, split dps trying to gather up aggro, losing my healer, and wiping.

First things first, As far as getting the mobs to do what you want them to do just simply takes practice, patience, and keeping calm. However one new method that I have learned to put in practice which has helped immensely stemmed from a method MikeB mentioned in post #23 of this thread. He mentions that he simply runs up to a mob and has his alts inch forward to the main and begin dpsing. Trying this myself I found it to be good however, one thing I did notice is that sometimes due to lag some of the alts might move forward quicker than others putting only some of the alts into melee range while the others were just a bit too far outside. If you continued trying to inch them forward at that point the front alts may pass your main causing them to turn around if you are using /follow commands in your macros such as myself. However it then occurred to me to simply inch my main back instead. Basically the same concept but takes lag issues out of the equation. Just make sure to not back up too far or again your alts will turn around facing away from the mob.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/MobBackup.jpg


This has helped out quite a bit in that mobs are not moving all over the place, I am able to start in on my dps much more quickly, and things overall are just much less hectic.

Next issue I was running into was keeping aggro off my my healer. Given the fact that I'm not using a formal tank in the party and warriors have no multi-target attacks yet I had to think up some different ideas. Instead of just running in w/o a plan like I was orginally doing, I came up with the following plan for groups of mobs...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/m3group.png

This particular scenario has a caster at point 1 which is why I charge in. If I was in the 30's I could just simply charge the caster and start cleaving and whirlwinding to get aoe aggro. However given the lack of any real aoe aggro this has worked for me just fine assuming that the group wasn't in aggro range of another group. If the group is in range of another group you'll just have to pull with /shoot and los the caster. If the whole group is melee is actually makes it really easy, just pull the group, use MikeB's or my version of his movement method and tear 'em up.

Other than that there isn't anything too terribly hard in RFC that I was running into. The 1st Demon boss in the zone does a fire nova but it doesn't do enough dmg to even worry about and the second boss is merely a slightly tougher version of the other warlocks in the zone. Having run this instance about 10 times in total I entered the zone at 13 and left at 17. In the end I was clearing the zone with ease and it took me roughly 30 mins.

Level 17- 42 I decided to do one last entry to summarize up the inbetween levels as I'm not too sure just how interested people were on my little experiment. I will share what I did learn though for the few who may have cared.

I went on to clear SFK, DM, WC, all of SM except the GY.

For the most part I didn't learn anything new with the exception of another movement method specifically for aoe boss fights. Basically I have 2 /follow commands. One is for following the tank the other for following the healer. Right before an aoe move comes up I simply hit the /follow command that is set to the healer and all the melee runs out. Once the aoe is over I hit the /follow set to the main again and run back in. For example, the Herod fight and his WW...

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn225/KillerTX/mHerod.png

Also for caster bosses LoS is sometimes the easiest way to go such as Argual in SFK, when he teleports you can simply LoS him and make him run back to you although with a full melee group cloth wearers don't last long at all. He never teleported or MCed me more than once. Also at level 38 when you get pummel casters are a joke. Unless they are interrupt immune they should never get a casted spell off ever.

Also on a side note 4x WW, Cleave+SS, WF is everything I hoped it would be and more :D Nothing like charging into a group of 4 elites and destroying them all in 10 seconds.

Conclusion: Sucess

Multiple Melee Multi-boxing imho is not for beginners to multi-boxing. I'd highly recommend starting out a caster group at first and just get the basics down. Then perhaps even clear an instance till you can easily run it without any wipes. This should give you the oppurtunity to have time to getting use to controlling multiple characters and the theory crafting behind your macro creations and placement choices.

While melee multi-boxing may take longer to get use to then a caster team, once I did get the handle of it, I personally felt as comfortable with my melee team as I did my caster team. In fact there were certain situtations in which I perferred my melee team to my caster team. For example places with lots of LoS issues such as stairs and caves are a pain in the ass for casters as they do not get the advantage of having full range on their targets prior to engaging such as the stairs in most of SFK or the caves in DM just as a couple of examples. With my melee team it is no problem at all. Another big thing is the lack of set-up that caster teams seem to have and no mana to worry about which at times allowed me to move faster than I did with my caster team.

In the end a caster team is still probably a little more multiboxing friendly in an overall view, however a melee team should not be dismissed as non viable by any means. It does take a bit longer to set-up and get use too, but given enough paitence and practice a Melee team is more than doable and quite fun. :)

This is the end of my experiment and even though I have decided to continue playing this team i will no longer be posting in this thread. If you have any troubles multiboxing multiple melee characters and would like some further tips please feel free to PM me and I'll give whatever advice I have to offer.

[Tdog]

reserved

[Tdog]

Reserved.

[keyclone]

funny.. i have my 5x orc warriors and was considering dropping 1 for a shaman to get the windfury totem and healing

[Tdog]

funny.. i have my 5x orc warriors and was considering dropping 1 for a shaman to get the windfury totem and healingYea I saw the thread yesterday that you'retalking about and it inspired me to go ahead and start posting this thread. I almost posted it several times but it needed editing and I wanted to get at least RFC cleared before I started in on it.

[keyclone]

so far... i'm having loads of fun. i like hitting charge and riding the freight train into the target... then watching all the axes flying around. just too much fun

[Lyonheart]

what about 4 bears and a shamy!

[Tdog]

so far... i'm having loads of fun. i like hitting charge and riding the freight train into the target... then watching all the axes flying around. just too much funYea when I first got charge at level 6 I wasn't sure how well it would work multiboxing, but it actually works very well :) I started the group as a 5x warrior up to lvl 6 just for fun and OMFG 5x Heroic Strikes takes down a level 8 instantly :D . Unfornately warriors start off slow on their offensive ablities but having 2 70 warriors myself I know the kind of abuse they can deal later down the road and I'm just drooling for the 30's :)



what about 4 bears and a shamy!I thought up about 20 different class combos and multiple feral druids was definitely one of them. However something to consider about shaman healer is that WF totem does not effect bear and kitty attacks. :(

[Xzin]

Hmmmmmm

4 Warriors and a Shammy you say......

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x45/Xzin-WoW/scaredgf9.jpg

[Lyonheart]

lol..what class combos have you NOT tried Zin ?

[Tdog]

Well after searching through all 4 armories and coming up with no profiles for any of those names, the pre-bc gear, and the lack of you ever mentioning putting together a melee team I'm assuming that this photo is a model changer :) Scared me though for a second, I was like, "did I just waste all the time putting this together when someone has already done it?"

[Gurblash]

Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.

Bingo.

But grats to the both of you, KC and TDog for playing around with Melee. I hope all goes well for both of you in your endevours... your probably gonna need it + patience.

[Lyonheart]

I have a feeling the best team to melee box with will be the DK..im going to try it for sure 8P

[Tdog]

Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.

Bingo.

But grats to the both of you, KC and TDog for playing around with Melee. I hope all goes well for both of you in your endevours... your probably gonna need it + patience.Patience is an absolute must I'm finding rather quickly :) It takes a bit sometimes to master the techniques to get the gd alts to stand in the right posistion :cursing: But once you start getting comfortable with it, you find that it's really np at all. I'd recommend perhaps starting out with 2x melee to get the hang of which way your alt is facing, then 3x melee to get the hang of multiple melee alts, then go ahead and start your 5 team. That's what I did anyways.



I have a feeling the best team to melee box with will be the DK..im going to try it for sure 8PO I will for sure be messing around with DK's that's for sure :)



Its a PTR team.

If I recall correctly, it was also an epic fail.I find having the shaman as a main to be a pain in the ass. Having a warrior as a main and the shaman in tow I find to be a better set-up. I'll explain why in my next section including using the charge ability.

[Xzin]

Correct, this was a PTR. Part of it was not knowing how to box warriors and part of it was lack of a "proper" setup. But man oh man this setup was terrible compared to mages, shammys, warlocks, etc. Viable? Sure. You can get to 70 with it. Fun? That's so subjective. I am not going to tell you how to play. But was it fun for me? No way.

[Bigfish]

The chainsaw effect is pretty fun to play around with. I've run 5 paladins up to 22, and I'm currently running a Paladin, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Lock Group. Not full melee, yeah, but I came up with similar macros and movement notions. I powered them up through 60, but I've run the first 4 instances in BC without too much problem. The Paladin is tanking and is 70, so its not necesarily a normal group, but melee is very easy to manage on large bosses. The biggest complications I've had are AOEs, which can be quite nasty without a healer.

[Sanctume]

I have a mix class group when I do my IQD dailies.

Prot pally does not even bother with 1h/shield, and just use a 2H atm.
Arms warrior charges and spams Slam and MS.
Frost mage just spams Frostbolt and Icelance.
Holy/Disc just throws a Prayer of Mending and is lucky to hit with Smite before the mob dies.

Combat Mace rogue is useless, but gets in melee and just stuns the mobs to sillyness; but shares the same account as the
Holy Pally who is just there for Sanc aura and holy shocks.

If I were to redo, I'd make the rogues Sub for Shadowstep and easier time to position; but stun maces is a nice auto attack, low micro ability.

Priest is all I need to healing via PoM.
Holy Paladin is easier to micro heal since it's just spamming Holy Light (but no ae healing).

But I can't run a team without a mage. I love the food and taxi service too much.

[Guilo]

I'm Dualboxing 2 Feral Druids. The diagrams you've shown is exactly how it has to be done.
The benefit to it, and dual druids with similar specs/gear is that we trade agro around alot allowing me to just do white attacks and shred for maximum dps.

We're only level 42 so no mangle yet but that should be fun too.

On a side note, I'm also leveling an Enh Shaman to pair with my 70 paladin (will respec to ret when he catches up)

The synergy between the two is amazing. WF + Strength + Bloodlust and Blessings + Auras + Judgments is really incredible.

I consider each one about .75 dps and .3 healing... Well combined I feel like they're 100% of a dpser and about .5 a healer leaving me with 2 solid dpsers and a healer out of my two man team.

I'm bring this up because, 1) I cant imagine any melee dps multibox group without a Shaman (except for 5 feral druids maybe... since goa < wf imo). 2) Any Shaman would be significantly more powerful with a Paladin in tow.

So to me the optimal 5 man melee DPS setup would be Arms, Fury, Fury, Enh, Ret. I just did some quick math on it and the fire and forget healing (healing stream + judgment of light) would be about 616 healing for the group every 5 seconds. (This is not including WF and is assuming a 3 second weapon speed for everyone so the real numbers would be a fair ammount higher). So 5x might/kings and 5x str (from shaman) and double spell resists from auras/totems or crit aura from the pally... All in all i think its a much more solid set up than 5x or 4x warriors.

/end rambelings

[BobGnarly]

While my 4 shaman are elemental, from time to time, just for kicks, I'll load them up with windfury weapon and melee some stuff.

What I've found to work best is just go in with the main (paladin), and then back up. The reason is, as you mention and I'm sure we'll all aware, wow mobs have this annoying habit of playing this reposition game if you move around. However, the *don't* do this if you just back up, they just follow. I've found that if I just back my paladin up to where the shaman are, they all hit the mob just fine. This actually works a lot better than I originally expected, which is why...

When I get to level 40 I'm going to respec them all to enhancement and see how it goes! ;)

[Guilo]

Another thing about 3 Warriors + Pally + Shaman is that even if you make the pally or shaman a designated healer, you've still got a solid dps setup.

Additionally, you could make the Paladin a healer, the Shaman Elemental and let them do their thing from range while keeping the Warriors moving with the target. This would, of course work with 4 Warriors/Shaman, but it might be nice to have the ability to have a magic user on some fights where you obviously couldn't do that with the Shaman main healing.

[mikeb]

I've been boxing melee characters for about 5 months, using 1 warrior + 2 holy paladins. There are two ways to solve the 'follow' problem, either have your main back up a little, or bind the forward key to your key broadcasting script (for your alts use a different key than your main's forward key). I prefer the latter method because if you use the former method, your alts might run past your main when you back up too much and not be able to attack with direction issues. I have way more control with the forward key bound to the key broadcasting script (I use AHK). Even if your alts are facing the wrong way, you just make them follow you again and then press forward key once or twice to get them attack again. For every fight what I do is have the warrior charge, and as my alts run to my warrior I do the usual thing with seals, judgement etc. Then as they come close to the warrior I press forward once or twice then they will be in melee range.

If your target moves just move your main with it and have your alts attack from the sides. I find that my alts are more likely to attack from the sides as I move my main. All it takes is practice then it just becomes natural. Keep in mind though you will be pressing keys a lot and jumping and turning with your characters.

[Khazrael]

While I'm doing a 5x shammy team, two of them are actually enhancement. One of them my primary for a "tank" (as much as a shaman can be one at least) while the other is straight for dual wielding and dps. The way it works for me at the moment is I just have my primary damage button (with lightning bolt for my elem guys) mapped to a macro button on my other enhancement shammy. So every time I go to fire off a volley, my enhance shammy moves into position.

This works pretty well for me actually, and I find that he's a good consistent source of dps, and realy follows through in long fights, or mob chaining, where my elemental shammy's might run out of mana. The only problem I've had with it so far is with bigger bosses that you try to tank, sometimes he follows up too close to my main and the mob isn't in a position he can attack. This is troublesome. Otherwise, I find it quite effective. Only level 41 though, but I've gone through SM and RFD runs this way.

[Tdog]

I'm Dualboxing 2 Feral Druids. The diagrams you've shown is exactly how it has to be done.
The benefit to it, and dual druids with similar specs/gear is that we trade agro around alot allowing me to just do white attacks and shred for maximum dps.

We're only level 42 so no mangle yet but that should be fun too.

On a side note, I'm also leveling an Enh Shaman to pair with my 70 paladin (will respec to ret when he catches up)

The synergy between the two is amazing. WF + Strength + Bloodlust and Blessings + Auras + Judgments is really incredible.

I consider each one about .75 dps and .3 healing... Well combined I feel like they're 100% of a dpser and about .5 a healer leaving me with 2 solid dpsers and a healer out of my two man team.

I'm bring this up because, 1) I cant imagine any melee dps multibox group without a Shaman (except for 5 feral druids maybe... since goa < wf imo). 2) Any Shaman would be significantly more powerful with a Paladin in tow.

So to me the optimal 5 man melee DPS setup would be Arms, Fury, Fury, Enh, Ret. I just did some quick math on it and the fire and forget healing (healing stream + judgment of light) would be about 616 healing for the group every 5 seconds. (This is not including WF and is assuming a 3 second weapon speed for everyone so the real numbers would be a fair ammount higher). So 5x might/kings and 5x str (from shaman) and double spell resists from auras/totems or crit aura from the pally... All in all i think its a much more solid set up than 5x or 4x warriors.

/end rambelingsWell for now my current plan is to use the aggro ping-pong method between the four warriors. It's be working decently well. However after having completed RFC I'm thinking that once I get to the levels that druids have swipe and paladins have conscreation + imp RF. I'm going to pwr level up a paladin and a druid to try out the 3 different set-ups.

Druid: Lotp for the 5% crit and Imp. LotP for the extra healing. Also bears use rage as well which eliminates mana worries, and also there are alot of similar moves between bears and warriors for easier macro placements. They also deal quite a bit of dmg for a tank.

Paladins: Consecration+imp RF is the best aoe aggro generator imo. JoL, especially awesome for Dual weilders, Blessings are very versatile and can be switched up between BoSalv and BoM depending on wether or not the alt is pulling too much hate or can easily stand to do more dmg. Aura resists help a fair amount for aoe fights. While paladins also deal quite a bit of dmg for a tank in my experience druids deal alittle bit more.

[BobGnarly]

Oh yeah, I had a question: Did you cry havoc before you started? :P

[Tdog]

I've been boxing melee characters for about 5 months, using 1 warrior + 2 holy paladins. There are two ways to solve the 'follow' problem, either have your main back up a little, or bind the forward key to your key broadcasting script (for your alts use a different key than your main's forward key). I prefer the latter method because if you use the former method, your alts might run past your main when you back up too much and not be able to attack with direction issues. I have way more control with the forward key bound to the key broadcasting script (I use AHK). Even if your alts are facing the wrong way, you just make them follow you again and then press forward key once or twice to get them attack again. For every fight what I do is have the warrior charge, and as my alts run to my warrior I do the usual thing with seals, judgement etc. Then as they come close to the warrior I press forward once or twice then they will be in melee range.

If your target moves just move your main with it and have your alts attack from the sides. I find that my alts are more likely to attack from the sides as I move my main. All it takes is practice then it just becomes natural. Keep in mind though you will be pressing keys a lot and jumping and turning with your characters.Hmm...I actually like the idea of simply having my alts inch up to the mob rather than trying to create angles and such. I think I would still use the /follow at the end but either way I'm going to try this out. Thanks for your input :)

[Tdog]

UPDATED: Added in the RFC section. Discussed a new movement method for alts and mobs and a simple strategy for gathering up aggro.

Current Level 20 and cleared SFK.

[bugilt]

This thread makes me think about the mechanics of the arcane missile or other similar channeled spells. When I end up running out of mana and meleeing with my shaman I sometime get the followers way out of sync. If warriors had a similar type channeled cast they could turn from up to 90 degrees to the target. I don't mind the run through solution, but it seems to be hit or miss. I'd hate to see parried WFs.

[Tdog]

This thread makes me think about the mechanics of the arcane missile or other similar channeled spells. When I end up running out of mana and meleeing with my shaman I sometime get the followers way out of sync. If warriors had a similar type channeled cast they could turn from up to 90 degrees to the target. I don't mind the run through solution, but it seems to be hit or miss. I'd hate to see parried WFs.Actually at the point I'm at now it's not hit or miss at all anymore. I land pretty much every hit on my main and alts even if the mobs are moving all about. Definitely takes more practice than casters do but tbh that's the whole point of why I started this little project up. I wanted to see if I could get to a point where I'm not just half assed running throw a zone but hitting the mobs in a much more precise consistent manner. So far I've actually been rather successful, though at this point I've only cleared RFC and SFK. I have some ideas for how to handle melee unfriendly fights where the melee needs to run in and out but I'm not planning on posting them till I have had an oppurtunity to try them out a number of times and see what works best.

As far as you mentioning the run through solution, that's just one soultion among several. There is no ONE solution to this tbh I'm finding out. It's simply learning to recongize which "movement method", as I've been calling them, is best for which situation. The best thing I can tell you at this point is that lots of practice is what it is going to take to really get comfortable with handling melee alts.

[Tdog]

Updated: Added in Level 7-42 section
Added in Conclusion Section

Due to a seemingly lack of interest in the thread I decided to simply make one last post for the few who may be interested. In a very short summary I found Multi-boxing Multiple Melee characters to be more than PVE viable given enough time to get use to the mechanics of a Melee team vs. a Caster team.

Not to mention quite fun ;)

[wougoose]

Thanks for doing this experiment Tdog. I love seeing people trying things that are out of the norm, and I'm glad you took this project on. Not only is it doable, but you enjoy it! If you are done updating this thread, do you mind me PM'ing you occasionally to see how the project is coming along?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My shammies are 42, enhancement specced. DW + Windfury = walking tornado. It's a sight to behold. And with totems, things are just sick. Cleared RFD at 40, which was about +5 to the trash and +3 to the bosses, and had no issues. Gonna try uldaman tonight at 42 and see how it goes. Casters are cheese with grounding totems and melee are almost cheese with 5x healing stream + str/agi/AF. :P

[edit]
My biggest thing I love about 'em: zero downtime. Sub-30 (i.e.: pre-windfury) they were sucking pretty hard. Couldn't kill 'em but they took forever to kill anything else. Nice being able to take down +6 stuff, though.

The few experiences I've had in PVP lately have been over in seconds. They'd die without me ever having to re-/follow the alts. /rofl

[edit2]
Oh, and regarding /follow and mob positioning issues. With shammies being basically auto-attack plus Stormstrike every 10 seconds, positioning is not a big deal at all. So much so that I'd not worry about it. For rogues, this is different due to positional styles.

[Havelcek]

Good idea about /follow bouncing between the leader and the healer...I like that.

[Tdog]

My shammies are 42, enhancement specced. DW + Windfury = walking tornado. It's a sight to behold. And with totems, things are just sick. Cleared RFD at 40, which was about +5 to the trash and +3 to the bosses, and had no issues. Gonna try uldaman tonight at 42 and see how it goes. Casters are cheese with grounding totems and melee are almost cheese with 5x healing stream + str/agi/AF. :P Ya it's basically the same thing with WW+WF+ Cleave/SS. Just oblierating stuff...



[edit]
My biggest thing I love about 'em: zero downtime. Sub-30 (i.e.: pre-windfury) they were sucking pretty hard. Couldn't kill 'em but they took forever to kill anything else. Nice being able to take down +6 stuff, though.

The few experiences I've had in PVP lately have been over in seconds. They'd die without me ever having to re-/follow the alts. /rofl Exactly the same with me on the downtime thing. Even in instances I could chain-pull for quite a bit before having to stop and regen my shammy's mana real quick and then continue whooping ass. It was more or less the same for warriors pre 30s although cleave did help a bit.



[edit2]
Oh, and regarding /follow and mob positioning issues. With shammies being basically auto-attack plus Stormstrike every 10 seconds, positioning is not a big deal at all. So much so that I'd not worry about it. For rogues, this is different due to positional styles. Even though I made quite a few comments about positioning, once you get the hang of it, it really isn't a big deal at all, you eventually don't really even think about it and just automatically react.
I mostly put the several charts in to help ease people concerns about positioning who hadn't tried multiple melee too much and to give a few tips to those who had.


Good idea about /follow bouncing between the leader and the healer...I like that.
Ty, and just a side note, if you run into an encounter where you want your tank to stay still you can simply make a 3rd /follow macro that makes it so only you dps runs to the healer instead of the tank as well. I'm not actually using a tank yet in this set-up so I haven't actually worked on that macro yet. Either way this helps to take the micromanagement out of running your melee all around.


Thanks for doing this experiment Tdog. I love seeing people trying things that are out of the norm, and I'm glad you took this project on. Not only is it doable, but you enjoy it! If you are done updating this thread, do you mind me PM'ing you occasionally to see how the project is coming along? Sure, I still haven't figured everything out that there is to figure out melee multi-boxing but if you run into a snag feel free to drop me a PM and I'd be willing to share any advice or experiences I may have had.

[Bunny]

Great thread full of information and good idea to try the project.
As mentioned in another thread I was toying around with the idea of setting up a stealth team of druids and rogues with 1 healer, 1 tank and 3 dps to be able to skip most trash. As i already have two rogues i whould simply need to level 3 druids but I have motivation problems because playing those druids is rather slow and powerleveling them with one of my rogues in instances is boring. Maybe on the testrealm someday...

[d0z3rr]

Thanks for the writeup Tdog, lots of good info. You have inspired me to try a 2x Warrior, 2x rogue, 1xshaman group!

Can you also explain your keyboard/bindings layout? Do you use any peripherals?

People always go over their macros, and it seems like they have alot of macros, I'm just wondering where they're finding the space on the keyboard to fit them without it being a cluster. I myself use 1,2,3,4,5, wsadqe for movement, r,f,c,x,z,v,t. And all those are taken pretty much right away. So most of my macros I wind up clicking.

[Con7ent]

Triple melee could be really good, honestly I think the best triple melee set up would be warrior rogue enhance shaman. You could use the warrior as a tank, the rogue and shaman as DPS so all three will have windfury, so not only will your melee do crazy DPS but your warrior will generate insane aggro. The big plus of the rogue would be that you could pause KC, run ahead and sap CC a mob then macro him back to the melee group for the more difficult pulls. You could just have like a mage and paladin for the other two clones and that would be like a pro heroic group. ONLY keep in mind that with harder hittings instances, there are many packs of mobs that do a lot of kinds of AE, whirlwind, cleave, fire nova, etc. that would mean more overall damage to your melee clones since they are in the line of fire instead of back with the caster camp. I find that a group with 2 CC's, unless your like a shaman gib group works best. Melee owns DPS in high-end WoW now tho with all the armor pen :thumbup:

[JD50]

Great thread, thanks TDog!

[OzPhoenix]

Excellent thread and a really enjoyable read.

I often melee with my Shammies cause they're low enough to have little good +spelldmg gear and I hate wearing cloth, so I've been doing some of what's in this thread.

I look forward to future installments of this all-melee team.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So I just finished Uldaman at 42. Man, did they nerf the crap out of Archaedas or what? Very easy run. No deaths, hell only had to drink once. I'll see if I can get it down to manageable size video. :P

[Tdog]

So I just finished Uldaman at 42. Man, did they nerf the crap out of Archaedas or what? Very easy run. No deaths, hell only had to drink once. I'll see if I can get it down to manageable size video. :PA vid would be uber uber leet! I would love to show off my warriors sometime but that would require me figure out how the hell to do it and to get the software to do it :S

I have however gotten a few more PMs and responses then I was expecting and perhaps more people are interested in melee multiboxing then I was thinking. I'll probably add in a few tips and tricks as I figure them out and would love to have anyone who figures out new tricks or perhaps ways to improve my old ones to feel free to post them up.

Although I am past the level 35 mark which was my orginal intention for this experiment and have determinded that melee multi-boxing to be quite instance viable and the experiment concluded, I've been having so much fun with it that I've decided to ge to 70, and gear up for Heroics, and see how well I can handle some of the more melee unfriendly zones and boss encounters.

[Tdog]

Thanks for the writeup Tdog, lots of good info. You have inspired me to try a 2x Warrior, 2x rogue, 1xshaman group!

Can you also explain your keyboard/bindings layout? Do you use any peripherals?

People always go over their macros, and it seems like they have alot of macros, I'm just wondering where they're finding the space on the keyboard to fit them without it being a cluster. I myself use 1,2,3,4,5, wsadqe for movement, r,f,c,x,z,v,t. And all those are taken pretty much right away. So most of my macros I wind up clicking. At the moment I haven't gone into great thoughts about my keybinds and keyboard layout due to the fact that I rewrite macros kinda frequently to try out new ideas, see how they work and adjust from there. For the most part I'm just using 1-6 and F1-F6 for the time being. Eventually when I really start to get comfortable with my macros and really like what I'm using I'll focus a bit more on my key board layout. 1-6 is just fine for me but F1-F6 gets to be too far of a reach at times. I perfer it if my left middle finger never has to leave the w,2 keys while in combat and I'll most likely use the r,f,c,x,z,v,t keys as well in place of the function keys.

Also you only get 21 macro spaces so you do have to get a bit creative at times. I try to macro as many abilities as I can into my spam button as I can to help take away some of the micromanagement, for example...

Warrior Alt Button 2
#showtooltip Bloodthirst
/assist party1
/stopmacro [noharm], [dead]
/cast blood rage
/cast beserker rage
/cast 13
/cast 14
/cast blood fury
/cast [target=party1target] Bloodthirst
/startattack
/follow party1

Shaman Alt Button 2
#showtooltip Attack
/assist party1
/startattack
/follow party1
/stopmacro [nomodifier:shift]
/castsequence reset=15 windfury totem, strength of earth totem, healing stream totem

This basically allows me to spam button 2 to assist my main, pop buff abilites/trinkets, cast Bloodthirst, start auto attack, constantly renew /follow incase I need to reposition my alts, and finally shift+2 start my totem sequence while allowing me to continue casting bloodthirst. This allows me to constantly renew my buffs w/o thinking about it, throwing up totems, keeping my alts in constant tow, all while keeping my dps up and allowing me more time to think about other stuff. It also saves on alot of button space.


Now as for beserker rage and blood fury being in the macro that's just for now due to the fact that blood fury casted at the wrong time can wreck you and berserker rage is a warrior's fear immunity. Thus far it hasn't been a problem and it allows me to push the dps just a bit more :) Once I need to I'll take em out.



Edit: I have no clue what is up with the font hopefully it's not too distracting. Either way it's late and I need to go to bed :)

[Sovereign]

My first idea to multi-box was rogues. I was going to make 3 rogues and level them. Then I attempted to play them and realized why I hadn't seen anything like it done yet.

I obviously upgraded to 5 toons and went with something more traditional, but I wonder if I couldn't make some party with rogues work. This project has inspired me, I think.

I can't stop thinking about what 3 or 4 (5?) ambushes would do to an elite.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My first idea to multi-box was rogues. I was going to make 3 rogues and level them. Then I attempted to play them and realized why I hadn't seen anything like it done yet.

I obviously upgraded to 5 toons and went with something more traditional, but I wonder if I couldn't make some party with rogues work. This project has inspired me, I think.

I can't stop thinking about what 3 or 4 (5?) ambushes would do to an elite.The first one is always easy. It's his 3-5 friends that are the problem.

[Tdog]

Just incase anyone was wondering I had to start over with 3 of my accounts as they were in my old roommates name. Long story short when I first bought the game my roommate was the one who installed the first account and w/o thinking about it he put it in his name which I didn't learn about till much later on. So to avoid possibly being banned I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet now and go legit.

Atm my new warriors and shaman are level 20. 3 of the warriors are tauren this time and so is the shaman. Reason being is because while bloodfury was nice, used at the wrong time meant me usually losing a toon or two. Warstomp has actually proven thus far to be much much more useful then I was first thinking it would be. I basically can run in and lock down an entire pull for 8+ seconds every couple of mins. In which time I can usually take down 1-2 mobs not to mention not having to heal durning that time nor do casters get any spells off durning that time. Really helps when it's needed which isn't often, but that also means when I do need it it's up.

I'm going to be revising this thread a bit once I get back up to the 40's as well as adding in tips and tricks I learn along the way to 70 and Heroics.

[Bena]

question.. is your main a war or the sham? Also what's your specs? Right now I'm doing wars fury and shamy enhance but thinking of going resto. The shamy keeps pulling agro and dying :( Thinking of using a war as main and shamy follow.

[-silencer-]

So I just finished Uldaman at 42. Man, did they nerf the crap out of Archaedas or what? Very easy run. No deaths, hell only had to drink once. I'll see if I can get it down to manageable size video. :P
You know.. I always thought he was harder than now, when I ran my Pally/4xShaman team through him at lvl 40. The last time I took him down with a comparable group was probably a few months after the release of WoW. :)

[Tdog]

question.. is your main a war or the sham? Also what's your specs? Right now I'm doing wars fury and shamy enhance but thinking of going resto. The shamy keeps pulling agro and dying :( Thinking of using a war as main and shamy follow.I've actually taken a bit of a break from this team as I'm trying to level up a couple of utility teams in an attempt to get ready for WOTLK. However I had a orc warrior be my main and my followers be Tauren. I also had my shaman as resto as I was mostly doing instances with this group and the 4 fury warriors + WF totem was more than enough dps. The reason for my followers being tauren is because Tauren have a 9 yard melee range ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=69310#post69310') while every other race has a 5 yard melee range.

Edit: Not that you can't sucessfully do an all melee team w/o Tauren followers but it makes it a ton easier.

[Bena]

cool.. thx for the info.

[Jafula]

Bump; because this thread has a lot of good melee boxing strategies lots of pretty pictures and some folks might be interested.

[Redbeard]

Necro!!!

But yeah definitely some good info here, I read it before starting my melee madness.

[neux]

necro again!?! 8|

NO, I don't believe there such term as "necro" on DB.com, because it is all is pool of information, and I also would argue that it deserves a sticky 8)

but my reason to open this post again, because I also wonder how DK and Feral(WF affects them now) would perform in all melee team in this time and age?

[Multibocks]

There are quite a few threads on all DK teams. I used to run one and I believe Zerocool and Furystrike still do.

[Zerocool2024]

As of right now, my Build got ate by the “Blizz Stick”.

Currently I am rebuilding my DK team and doing what I can to get anywhere near the DPS I was putting out before the 3.1.put.you.in.the.closet.and.touch.you.in.naughty .places patch.

I realize that my Blood/Frost build with Howling Blast was hitting all mobs (Test Dummies all three) and that gave me more DPS because of it, but I really was not pulling out as much DPS as I should have been (Hit is ass, like 95).

Right now I am working on 4 Builds trying to get the right one that gives me the best of both worlds (Tanking/DPS).

One Build is dead, so that leaves me with only 3 left.

Previous build:

DPS was around 2K+
Current build DPS around 1700 or so.

Hardest part is coming up with the perfect castsequence that will give all the benefits of the builds… Some require two hotkeys others, just one.

In the end, it comes down to how you like to play the classes and how much you like button mashing, and living on the razors edge between dying in one hit, or living with a nicely planned Rune Tap.

This weekend is where I will have my spec(s) down and ready and a video(s) to go along with it.

I have a lot on my plate with work/female/house/car/motorcycle/WoW.

With WoW, it’s because I have many Box-sets that I’m currently trying to build up. Most are at the point where I will need to start dispensing the Box-sets into mixed groups for Dungeons to get them all to 80. Then add in the Trade Skills across the toons sets…

[Mukade]

I've been running a team of Prot pally + 4x enhance shammies through instances (mostly enhance at this point, talents for faster heals and more intellect from the other trees). At least with shammies I have the option of starting a pull with a big ranged hit (and the beauty of multiboxing is the DPS can start the pull with a cast, then the tank can use an instant aggro spell before the DPS finish casting).

RFC, DM, WC and SFK completed so far.


I was wiping like crazy in DM until I had the set-up configured right (and went back at 18, 16 was too low and ended up pulling too much as I walked past). I changed it to cycle through earth shocks instead of casting at the same time on all 4, which now allows me to interrupt every spell a single caster tries to throw at me, just with the shammies, (and the paladin can stun and silence too), before that the casters in the patrols were doing too much damage.

I was trying to melee my way through the goblin foundry, but the 'hunter-class' engineers in there are a pain to pull into melee range, without picking up every other mob around them, so I just held back and nuked them down with lightning bolts and shocks. None of the bosses were particularly hard. I nuked down adds first on Smite, Greenskin and Van-Cleef.


The only boss in WC that was any kind of a challenge was Verdan, simply because he hits so hard, and has a lot of health, so I was using a lot of mana for healing.


SFK was kind of interesting, seeing as half the group had at least 1 curse on them at any time, but being able to pick the right set of buffs from the pally and totems helps tailor the group to the encounters. Wailing Guardsmen silencing the healers was a bit close, but it wore of quickly, and I then I cast about 3 lesser healing waves on the tank at the same time. Dropping all the totems in the doorway to an area, then pulling mobs back to them with ranged spells then LoS works really well. It also forces them together so I can use the fire nova totems.

Arugal MCed the tank and started on one of the shammies, but I'm using Hotkeynet to pass click-healing targets to the slaves from the main window's party unit-frames, cycling through all 4 shammies as healers, so if any one of them gets hit, it can have 4 lesser healing waves on it very quickly. The tank has it's own button on the mouse for heals, and the button next to it is for each member casting a heal on themselves, in case of AoE. Arugal was at around 25% when he jumped across the room, to the top of the stairs, but exorcism, judgement, 4x lightning bolts and 4x earthshocks finished him off when I'd run to the bottom of them.


I could definately see myself sticking with enhance for as long as it's viable. 4x ghost-wolf sure will make short work of bosses. If I really need better multi target attacks, and a dedicated healer, I could always dual spec for it, but at the moment the melee and burst from enhance shamans makes pulls end very fast, even on bosses. Right now the forward key on the master sends /follow to the slaves, so every time I move forwards it picks them up. If i want to move the master on it's own I can always use the mouse to move forward, and I can move the slaves seperately with shift+WASD in case they need to be positioned better, or just to break follow.

[Allokra]

I went to Ramparts last night with my melee team. Level 62 Rogue, 64 Warrior, 61 Death Knight, 68 Feral Druid, and 64 Resto Druid. It is definitely tougher than the 4 x Death Knight 1x Druid Team. Death Knight, Druid, and rogue DPS are decent - the warrior is difficult (DK is my main tank because I had him already set up as a tank before and it seemed easier - might have to rethink that though).

Warrior DPS sucks at the moment and it is quirky the way I have it set up. It was my first time out with them together so it will take some time.

[Tdog]

I went to Ramparts last night with my melee team. Level 62 Rogue, 64 Warrior, 61 Death Knight, 68 Feral Druid, and 64 Resto Druid. It is definitely tougher than the 4 x Death Knight 1x Druid Team. Death Knight, Druid, and rogue DPS are decent - the warrior is difficult (DK is my main tank because I had him already set up as a tank before and it seemed easier - might have to rethink that though).

Warrior DPS sucks at the moment and it is quirky the way I have it set up. It was my first time out with them together so it will take some time.Multiboxing a warrior as a follower is honestly a pain due to the simply reason of rage being their resource for dps. Rage is so unpredictable that you can't just simply put up a /castsequence and expect them to do great dps. I did alright with my 4x warrior 1x shaman team back in the day but that was probably only because I had all the seperate abilities assigned to each key instead of clumping them all together in a /castsequence. I'm not sure if you will ever be able to get a warrior to come close to their full potential as a follower.

If I were you I would just use the warrior as the tank, as prot warrior can do some dang good dps, not to mention that sunder is awesome for melee teams. DK's are a alot easier to use as followers since a majority of their resources rely on rune cd's with a smaller portion on runic power. You still probably won't be geting your DK to full potential as a follower due to runic power being much like rage but it will be alot closer being that DK don't rely solely on runic power like warriors do on rage.