[WoW] A little advice on some more advanced stuff

Anybody who has been reading my previous posts will know I started boxing around 4 weeks ago for the first time.

I'm running 1x Holly Pally and 4x Blood DK.

So far, with casual play I've got the whole team to ilvl 850 and slightly under and even managed to clear a DHT on Mythic+ :D

My current setup/style sees me play from one of the BloodDK and my Pally simply has a cast sequence, offers very basic AoE healing;

- Ligh's hammer
- Holy Prism
- Light of Dawn

With DPS fillers in-between their cool-down. It tops off the BloodDK's a little but they seem to look after themselves unless the main tank takes a hammering. IF anything the Pally is the toon who dies as simply doesn't have the suitability however he is often middle of DPS!

This is working OK but I think I could do with running the Paladin as a healer rather than DPS-Hybrid style Healer. I have a flash of light focus key-bound to both target and macros but I have problems due to spamming IWT for the blood DK. This means to heal I currently effectively need to halt my DPS as the IWT spam will stop the cast on the Pally.

I know this is not the way to run the team (although it's worked ok!) and so feel like I need to get some advice and try the pally as more of a stand away and heal.

My Questions

1. Does anybody have some simple advice on a battle-res macro? I have 4x battle res and currently have them tied to a ALT+Key and whilst this works OK this doesn't help in PvP as with the current damage in wPvP by the time I've clicked my raid slate and Alt+Key I've stopped too much DPS/CC and have a major disadvantage.

Is there any way I can have a simple macro that cycles through dead toons and casts Raise Ally?

I have tried (and failed with);

Code:

---

/castsequence [@party1] Raise Ally,[@party2] Raise Ally,[@party3] Raise Ally,[@party4] Raise Ally,[@party5] Raise Ally

---

Assuming spam pressing it 5 times will res anybody that's dead but unfortunately has mixed results usually ending with the DK having the "select target" blue haze on the mouse icon.


2. This is the big one. Can anybody give advice on the best way to play from the Pally or make the Pally more of a dedicated healer?

Currently I play my DK manually with a key-bind for each ability, I'm assuming the best way would be to cast-sequence their DPS / DPS with self-heal? and have the CC etc as normal on a bind?

If I managed to do that, what is the most efficient way of casting healing from the pally? I think I would need to play from the Pally for the simple logistical point of view with positioning. As the DK are melee 100% they can chase targets around whereas the Pally would benefit standing-back a little bit and not being part of the brawl!

MY second thought is the pally actually does do a half decent amount of DPS and so would is also be worth exploring the possibility of simply looking at if I can have a key that breaks his current action and heals?

For example, at the moment I have 1,2,3 as DPS/Heal cast sequences and these 3 keys mirror the BloodDK main DPS abilities and I have IWT on all.

The pally then has an action-bar with heals for each of the team on Num1,2,3,4,5 etc.

To heal a single target (say DK1) at the moment I need to Alt+F for my toons to break, wait for them to stop moving then spam the heal key. Once a flash of light cast is going, I can continue to spam both the DPS keys and heal keys together and the Pally will continue healing.

This kind-of works, it would work very well if I could simply hit Num1 and that cause the Pally to stop whatever he is doing and cast the heal.

Just looking for any advice/options on how you guys run your healers and is it possible to run him as DPS-Hybrid and then pull off to top off healing if/when needed?

The problem with your ress macro, if I'm not mistaken, is using a castsequence. A castsequence will never "skip" casting a spell in the sequence, so it'll just get stuck trying to ress your Party1, even if it is not dead. However, what we can do is use conditionals to make a simple /cast macro that will only try to ress dead characters. Something along the lines of:

Code:

---

/cast [@wubsíe,dead] Raise Ally; [@wubsìe,dead] Raise Ally; [@wubsie,dead] Raise Ally;

---

This is hardcoded with exact names, but I assume Party1-5 would work fine as well. Atleast with a quick test I did, the macro skipped over the first two toons since they were alive and automatically ressed the third (which I dropped from a mount).

As far as the healer... It's down to preference really as there are a multitude of ways you could choose to set it up. Naturally the most efficient would be to control each ability of the Paladin manually, IF you can do that while handling everything on the DKs as well.

Personally I use a combination of multiple different methods and am quite happy with how it's working. My healers respond to the same keys that do my different DPS rotations (AOE, single target, applying dots, etc), but they all trigger the same "basic" healing rotation. Then I use virtualization actions to change that rotation to a different one, such as AOE Spam, TargetOfTarget, Slow PVE Healing, Fistweaving... All of the rotations are built using a combination macros, all of which have conditional [@focus,exist] line at the start, so that if I set a focus target on them, they heal that target rather than whatever they were previously doing. Setting focus is simply done with a repeater region (essentially an area of your screen where mouse clicks/movements are sent over to the specified target) over my raid/party frame and a click. Dropping focus I have keybound, same as larger healing cooldowns. If any of that was unclear, I (badly) demonstrated the basics of my setup here.

Thanks for the quick reply :)

Would /cast simply go through them all or would it need to be pressed like the sequence?

Am currently at work but will have a look @ the video and think I understand the concept, basically pally would DPS leaders target as normal but as soon as focus is set he runs healing rotation on them?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mrdsp

Thanks for the quick reply :)

Would /cast simply go through them all or would it need to be pressed like the sequence?

---

While I don't know all the nuances of the macro system, I believe it would work from a single press. It should simply ignore the previous parts as the conditions for them are not met. Atleast that's how it worked for my simplified test.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mrdsp

Am currently at work but will have a look @ the video and think I understand the concept, basically pally would DPS leaders target as normal but as soon as focus is set he runs healing rotation on them?

---

If you chose to set it up like that, sure. You could have it so that if you don't have a focus target, the pally does DPS spells, but if you set a focus, the pally does healing spells on it instead.

A very simple example would be:

Code:

---

/cast [target=focus,help] Flash of Light
/cast Judgment

---

If focus is available (and is friendly), cast flash of light. If not, cast judgment.


Again, this is in no way the one and only way of setting things up. It's all down to preference. How you choose to do it might vary greatly base on how much control you want over the character, how much you wish to rely on your "system" and how much healing/dps you want it to do. It's very hard to give an all inclusive answer to how one should set up their teams, as not everyone will wish to use the same types of setup.

Thanks wubs, that res method works perfectly.

Implemented the simple focus macro on just the pally and that works really well when I'm in control of him. Just need to work out how to stop the IWT spam on his window before my action-bar press when he has a focus. Is this something ISBoxer can do? It's catch 22, he needs the IWT to do DPS and follow the target but it's breaking his heal casts.

If it's a difficult one, it's working perfect as-is for PvE if I control from the pally, is more forgiving.

Doing a little more wPvP (procrastinating!) and got some good fights around Grom'Gol. The Pally is the weak link at the moment. Am tempted to gind some AP and then re-spec him protection and see how that works out, don't think the DK's will miss the heals to be honest.

My approach to multiboxing is how to get the most effect out of the least brain power--Ie, with healing I want a system that takes no thought when I'm under low to moderate pressure and takes as little input as possible in an emergency healing situation.

The broad strokes of my setup are four macros that go to my Paladins. If you arrange them top-to-bottom in ISBoxer and use 'World of Warcraft Macro Actions' instead of sending keystrokes and having the macros in-game, the characters will execute them in order, flawlessly. Here are the four macros:

/castsequence [@focus,exists] reset=3/combat/alt Light of the Martyr,nil
/cast [@targettarget,exists] Holy Shock

/cast [@focus,exists] Holy Shock
/cast [@targettarget,exists,noharm] Bestow Faith

/cast [@focus,exists] Bestow Faith
/cast [@targettarget,exists] Holy Light

/cast [@focus,exists] Flash of Light
/cast Light of Dawn

Over my health bars I have invisible clickbars such that if I left click on a character, it sets that character as the Paladin's focus. If I right click, it sets them as the focus AND activates that character's defensive cooldowns. As I DPS, the Paladins will prioritize Holy Shock, Bestow Faith, Holy Light, and then Light of Dawn. If they have a focus, instead that character will get ONE Light of the Martyr from each Paladin, then it prioritizes Holy Shock, Bestow Faith, and then Flash of Light on the focus target AND will skip casting Light of Dawn while they have a focus. I have a keybind I press to clear focus on all of the characters, and every time they change focus they reset their Light of the Martyr castsequence.

It's not perfect, obviously. If my target is stunned they drop target, and so the Paladins won't heal. Also, if the target isn't targeting one of my characters, I will do very little healing (in a PvP situation they'll sometimes be targeting other people). Also, when there are lots of PvP targets at once, the character who is taking the most damage may not be the one targeted by who I am DPS'ing, and therefore healing.

That all being said, it's pretty fucking elegant :) It takes zero thought for 90% of my play time, and when a toon is taking a lot of damage I just click their name and POOF, they're back to full health in one global.