question to 5box tank/healer/dps setups

[griffin01]

I have watched a few videos on people 5 boxing heroics with shammies and a pally, or whatever else setup there is. My question is, does the person boxing use the tank as the main, or the healer as the main... i could see it being somewhat hectic to heal as a slave, and at the same time, tanking as a slave. Healbot would make it a ton easier I would imagine to heal the tank and group if needed... but than there is the trouble with tanking.

Anyone with experience please chime in :D

[razorbax]

Though I don't 5 Box PVE, I think you will find it is generally accepted that the Control Character is always the melee one. It is very hard to have Melee slaves. Healing is surprisingly easy as a slave, you just need to plan your macro's well and learn from your mistakes;). Pallies are the easiest for this because of thier AOE Tanking. Healing wise, Priests and Shammes are prefered since they have group healing abilities.

[yarr]

razor's got it.

I do this setup, and have the tank as the master. The DPS and healer are the slaves.



The way I do it is i have the main dps button (2) hitting with the left hand. I use the mouse to move/ reposition the paladin. I use a key closer to the mouse (7/8/9) to handle heals. When I need heals I take my hand off the mouse and hit 7 (greater heal on tank), 8 twice(PoM then renew castsequence on tank) or 9 (shield then renew castsequence on tank's target, used for spot heals). If i need aoe heals, i hit alt+4 which is prayer of healing. If i need small AOE heals, i hit alt+3.

In PvP I give my priest (healer) a slightly different set of keybinds. 2 (main dps button) casts circle of healing, basically a spammable aoe party hael. 4 (secondary dps button) casts smite on the tank's target. This way I can get the preist to dps if needed, or to just spam heals otherwise.

[Ton777]

I'm still new to multiboxing, but at the moment, I'm running A prot pally, Frost mage, Ele Shaman and holy priest. They are all level 19 right now, but I'll be adding a balance druid to the mix at 31 (I have one waiting).

I use my Pally as my main character, with the others as slaves. I have frost bolt/lightning bolt/mind blast all on '2'. It's my main DPS button. I have instant casts like, Judgement/fire blast/earthshock all on '1'. I have a macro set up that will cast a heal on my pally. I'm not great with macros, so it's just something like, /tar pally, /cast heal.

So far things are pretty good. i've killed all the bosses in SFK with these four, except for arugal. I would highly reccomend using the tank as your main and the others as slaves.

The thing that I'm still trying to work out, is how to handle spot heals. I need to be able to write a macro that targets my pallys target and heals it. RIght now I just have my pally target whoever needs a spot heal, and then I usually have to wait 1-2 seconds (or it wont work), then hit my assist macro on my healer then cast the heal. I know there are macros that go something like /cast heal [target=pallys target]. But i'm hopeless with macros, so I'm going to need someone to write one for me :P

Anyway, I've started rambling. I suggest using the tank as the main. I can't imagine doing it the other way. =/

[griffin01]

In those spot heals Ton, I am hoping to track down a macro that heals a party memeber based on health. I am not sure if it exists, but basically you press the macro, and it will cast a heal on any party member below 70% for example. If that type of macro does not exist, than i guess there is always the priest's prayer of healing that heals all group members.

[Sanctume]

I set my tank as focus of everyone.

I reserve U I O P for healing.

U = Heal the main tank. /cast [target=focus] heal spell
I = heal self (if healer) except tank.
O = heal my target; or target's target. /cast [target=focustarget,help] heal spell; /cast [target=focustargettarget,help] heal spell;
P = AoE Healing.

Ofcourse my main healer has those filled.

For DPS
U = is the same as 1 or 2: /cast [target=focustarget, harm, nodead] nuke spell
I = any agro reducing, of self preserving skills. Ice Barrier, Water Shield.

If I need more heals for an encouter, I would have a 2nd healer cast heal on tank for the U key.

[zarocks]

For healing, I use the Function keys F1-F10. F1-F5 tells my Priest to heal party members 1-5, F6-F10 tells my Shaman to heal party members 1-5. It has worked out very well for me.

I usually have my Priest cast renew on the tank every time he casts Holy Shield as well. I've used different tactics here (Renew when casting Consecration, Judgment, etc.) so I'm still getting used to this better.

[yarr]

depending how un-lazy you are, you may just use prayer of healing for spot heals. That's what i've done, and so far its worked pretty well. If one of the alts are getting hit hard enough that it warrants more healing than Prayer of Healing can cover, i have another button (3) that /assists main, and /casts heal, on 4 of my slaves (main does not cast heal, becuase when he is casting he can't dodge/parry/block). This way the person who is taking the major heat gets a flash type heal (flash heal on priest, lesser healing wave on shamans) from 4 sources, totaling about 5k healing in 1.5 seconds. Disadvantage of this is that my master (pally tank) has to re-target off of the mob he was tanking, wait 1 second for the slaves to "get" which target he has, and then hit the heal button. A bit more of a delay than is optimal, but still better than having the slave die =)

[Knytestorme]

In those spot heals Ton, I am hoping to track down a macro that heals a party memeber based on health. I am not sure if it exists, but basically you press the macro, and it will cast a heal on any party member below 70% for example. If that type of macro does not exist, than i guess there is always the priest's prayer of healing that heals all group members.

Decision making abilities were removed from the scripting language back around patch 2 (was done to get rid of mods like decursive and ones doing what you want) as they took a lot of gameplay elements out of players hands, eg how to prioritize heals, etc, and basically automated boss fights.

The way I do heals for my group is to have shaman and priest cast second teir heals at the same time on focustargettarget for single target heals (basically allowing me to reduce mana useage and spread threat better than a single big heal from the priest...but I have to start testing if I'm causing fights to go too long doing this and removing shaman dps for those 4 seconds per heal) or to have priest cast PoM and shaman cast chain heal on focustargettarget....this allows me to have 2 hotkeys for all my healing needs but does mean I can't do character specific healling, for that I also have non-macro renewal and heal on my priest keybank (non-keybouand) that I will manually click and click target as needed.