5 boxer having issues with 5 mans looking for tips, mods, and macros.

Its been awhile since ive posted.

These forums has been real helpful!

Ive been boxing 5 guys on Elune PVE Realm, Alliance side (American server)

3 frost Gnome mages Krillinn, Squishylarz, Polymorpheus.

1 Resto Dranei Shaman Larzcanheal

and

1 Protection Paladin. Imnotblueirl.

Ive leveled them all the way to 71 but ive hit a brick wall...

5 mans have been clobbering me since level 68 and i dont want to level them anymore until i can do 5 mans again..

My goal is to get these guys to 80 and transfer them to one account and or... maybe in the future box them with a friend of mine and attempt some 10 mans.

The macros ive been using are fairly simple.

The paladin is my main char tank, shaman heals, and mages of course dps..

Il list the macros for each char, hopefully that will be a little less confusing..

Imnotblueirl (paladin tank)

none:

Larzcanheal (shaman healer)

/target imnotblueirl
/follow imnotblueirl

/assist imnotblueirl
/cast lighting bolt

/target krillinn
/cast healing wave

/target imnotblueirl
/cast healing wave

/target polymorpheus
/cast healing wave

/target larzcanheal
/cast healing wave

/target squishylarz
/cast healing wave

/target imnotblueirl
/cast chain heal

/target krillinn
/cast chain heal

/target polymorpheus
/cast chain heal

/target squishylarz
/cast chain heal

/target larzcanheal
/cast chain heal

/assist imnotblueirl
/cast lightning bolt

I also have Calle of the Elements, Totemic recall bound and trinkets bound to keys.

Squishylarz mage dps (All 3 mages have exactly the same macros(with of course different names since different toons... if that makes any sense at all...) and things bound to keys so ill only list this one.)
All my mages are almost identically specced into Frost

/target imnotblueirl
/follow imnotblueirl

/assist imnotblueirl
/cast frostbolt

I have summon water elementals bound to keys, and trinkets bound to keys.

Icy Veins is bound to keys

Im using Jamba and keyclone, with a few other mods that dont have anything to do with multi-boxing

All my chars have left arrow key bound to side step right to break the follow, this way i can position the boss away from my dps and healers with my tank... The problem is AOE.. Because i dont have a way to move my other 4 toons around without walking up to them and pressing the follow macro, i end up wiping... Is their a macro that will automatically move my 4 toons to points around the map? What if I need to change positions thoughtout the fight?

What about the fight in Utgarde Keep where you have to dps two bosses at the same time?, I have no way of focusing everyone on more than one target at a time.

I have some useful abilities on my mages, that im really clueless to how i can incorporate them into fight properly..
Like Counterspell, focus magic, invisibility, polymorph, spellsteal, fireward, etc...

and other abilites on my shaman...
Thing is, i can easily come up with individual macros for everything.. but that would take up way more keys than i have on my keyboard..

Sorry for the novel!!!

Any tips and tricks you can offer can will be greatly appreciated! And donations will come! :D

Not sure what your problem is. Are you dying from AoE attacks?
or because you have a loose boss that goes and whacks on your dps/heal?

There are 2 sets of keys defined by default to move a character. The cursor arrow keys, and the WASDQE keys on your keyboard.
A common trick is to use one set for the main (and not pass those keys to the slaves) and the other set (or whatever keys you chose) to move the slaves.

For example, you need to move all your slaves out of some poison/lava then press Q and all your slaves will strafe left. You shouldn't have to come back with your main to make them follow again.
I see you are using Keyclone, and i believe some keys are set to "do not pass" (DNP) by default.
make sure you DNP the movements keys of your main, and allow the keys of your slaves.
This should helps with reaction times and fight movement.

regarding macros, frost mages are very easy, and a simple frostbolt macro can do wonders.
I woudl suggest getting the glyph for permanent elementals.

If you set your DPS to focus on your paladin (/focus Imnotblueirl) you can then use very simple macros like this:

Code:

---

/cast [@focustarget] Frostbolt

---

this will make your mages attack your paladin target all the time.
you can add

Code:

---

/use 13
/use 14

---

anywhere in that macro to automatically activate trinkets.
for special abilities (ice block, invis) you'll need to set other keys for emergency actions.

your healer has very simple macros, i would suggest changing them to incorporate earth shield on the paladin
Maybe you can use something like

Code:

---

/castsequence [@focus] Earth Shield,,,,,,Healing Wave,,,,,, Healing Wave,,,,,, Chain heal,,,,

---

or something like that. the comas will make sure you don't spam the heals too much (adjust their number to the speed at which you click that macro)

Make sure you gear your tank up first, it's the founding stone of any group.
regarding that fight in UK, your tank should be able to tank both, just dps one at the time.
remember to use your special abilities too (fire elemental, heroism etc) you might want to add them on a special key too

The reason your playing all the same class for dps is to reduce twitch.

Your might be introducing more "twitch" than is needed into your frost mages. Just use someone's '/use /use /cast iv, /pet, /cast frostbolt' and tie that to assisting your tank, maybe another button for assisting your healer if you want to quickly toggle between targets.

If you really want to keep ic/pi/mi separate tie them all into a 'itsgotime' macro and have your shaman do the same with heroism/bloodlust and your paladin with avenging wrath. and then you can pop that when you want. You also want a round robin counterspell, "prep" manashield, "chug" /use gem, /use crappy potion.

I think dpsing the two mobs separately might might a mistake. Where you would have a toggle setup between the assist of your tank and healer for example ever other frost bolt.

I'll have to setup on a dummy, but I am sure this adds some significant delay, though I am not sure really how much I did this trying to get rid of lava burst x4 overkill on mobs, but it looks damn cool. You surely want no delays when under heroism/bloodlust or iv/ap/trinkets.

As others have mentioned set up some combination of keys for slave movement versus main movement (for myself I use the arrows for my main and WASD for my followers).

I can't think of any boss in UP that requires you to focus on two different targets, but anyway, in such a situation, you could use IWT (and CTM for melee). IWT is "Interact with Target" and allows you to set a target for a subset of your group (easily done with ISBoxer, don't know about other software) and have that subset attack it if it's a mob or chat/trade with it otherwise. CTM is click to move, which melee will need if they're to use IWT properly.

It also sounds like you're using a focus-led setup, and this has issues I think. A focus-less setup is much more versatile.

Investing in ISboxer would also make your life much easier. It's the dream machine of boxing software. I probably sound like a broken record since I bring it up in so many posts. It's just that good and solves so many problems.

Such as healing. I don't think I could live without my ISboxer mouserepeater regions and my healing addon-Healbot.

It's also very cheap 10 bucks for 3 months and it's updated often.

Elune was my original ally server. Went to Burning Blade(alliance) and Jeadanar (horde) for pvp.

Not to push one tool over another, but alot of your macros would be unnecessary using ISBoxer (focusless, targetless, leaderless) setup. Plus with healbot add-on, that wipes out the need for even more of your buttons. (Look into the /click macros too, I used the ones on this site's wiki)

For group syncronized movement, I setup a formation (a simple star formation). The one I use, the longer I press the key combo, the more they spread out. Plus (and I've only done BC so far) most of the Boss fights let you setup prior to the fight?

I'm new to 5 boxing (started in May/10) but I find it way easier to 5-box the 5-man and heroic instances then doing them as part of a PUG. I can run them faster, with less waiting in between. (And I'm a borderline WoW noob).

As mentioned above the main key is to focus on gearing up your Paladin. Makes everything easier.

My guys are hitting 71 now, so I'm moving on from the BC heroics into the WoTLK content.

My group is Prot Pally, 3 elemental shammys and a BM hunter, and I got plenty of healing + DPS to do the easier heroics. Nice having the BM pet to help off-tank too :p