Best Teams for no broadcast multiboxing

Considering the current situation I figured I would start a thread to consolidate ideas on which teams would be the best for multiboxing that doesn't rely on broadcasting to multiple game clients simultaneously (by either software or hardware)...

Some ideas to start with:

• 5Hunters: Beast Master pets doing most of the work and the Hunters mainly auto-attacking;
• 4Hunters+Healer: Similar to the above but swapping one hunter for a Healer;
• Tank+3Hunters+Healer: Similar to above but swapping a 2nd hunter for a Tank;
• Paladin+3Warlocks+Healer: All AoE team; Paladin AoE is ~8 seconds between refreshes and Warlock's AoE is 15 second channel so manually switching between windows could be viable...
• ? other ideas ?

Reserved...

Hunter 3, 4 or 5 hunters was my thought. They're top dps with a 1-button rotation anyway, right? Try to heal with HoTs?

I was also thinking about a way to shuffle through which window has focus manually, and then binding that next screen button to mouse wheel or similar. Such that you'd be mousewheeling to manually cycle which window has focus while spamming your regular attack buttons. A programable keyboard with a special button for "alt-tab" may work also - such that your attack sequence would always be a combination of 2 keys hit in rapid succession. (think: 121212 where that's actually doing alt-tab, /cast fireball, alt-tab, /cast fireball, etc)

Perhaps 5 shadow priests? Infnite aoe due to mind sear, dots ticking, etc. nice heals.

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Originally Posted by jak3676

Hunter 3, 4 or 5 hunters was my thought. They're top dps with a 1-button rotation anyway, right? Try to heal with HoTs? ...

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Hunters could just be switched to "on target change" to start both Auto-Shot and pet attack and then just let them run... I guess pets could also be set to aggressive once the fight starts and then be able to switch targets automatically if you can't get to them as fast as you would like. You could periodically switch to a given hunter for a little bit to unload all the Hunter's mana and then leave them auto-shotting with pet attacking while they regen mana while you switch to the other clients.

Warlock AoE seems pretty easy as it is just 1 button every 15 seconds to damage any/all targets in range unlike Mage Arcane Explosion where you have to keep hitting instants over and over and can only do it per client each time with no broadcasting...

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Originally Posted by jak3676

... I was also thinking about a way to shuffle through which window has focus manually, and then binding that next screen button to mouse wheel or similar. Such that you'd be mousewheeling to manually cycle which window has focus while spamming your regular attack buttons. A programable keyboard with a special button for "alt-tab" may work also - such that your attack sequence would always be a combination of 2 keys hit in rapid succession. (think: 121212 where that's actually doing alt-tab, /cast fireball, alt-tab, /cast fireball, etc)

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EDIT: This are some great ideas and areas that needs focus. I initially put my thoughts/research down in this thread but realized we had another thread that was more fitting to discuss this in so I moved my response to this thread at ~2am on 11/06/2020.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Perhaps 5 shadow priests? Infnite aoe due to mind sear, dots ticking, etc. nice heals.

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I haven't tried Shadow Priests. Can you do all their stuff pretty quickly and move on to the other windows and not have to come back that priest for awhile?

I like how Warlocks can be left alone for 15 seconds and how Hunters could be doing damage on a boss from start to death with no input (just auto-shot and beast attacks) and just come back periodically and burn all the mana.

So far with my Video FX method that I've talked about on the Discord, I am running Paladin - Hunter - Mage - Warlock - Priest just fine. This comp will not work if you remove ISBoxer entirely, as it relies very heavily on the VFX feature. I want to go into detail but it's better to do that once I've made a video to show an improved setup from the first one I made.

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Originally Posted by nodoze

I haven't tried Shadow Priests. Can you do all their stuff pretty quickly and move on to the other windows and not have to come back that priest for awhile?

I like how Warlocks can be left alone for 15 seconds and how Hunters could be doing damage on a boss from start to death with no input (just auto-shot and beast attacks) and just come back periodically and burn all the mana.

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Just to clarify, this is for retail, you can have all dots within 1 button (damnation) or aoe (1 button) and then mind sear 1 button, and you're done for next 10 sec or so, so roughly you can do insane aoe cleave.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Just to clarify, this is for retail, you can have all dots within 1 button (damnation) or aoe (1 button) and then mind sear 1 button, and you're done for next 10 sec or so, so roughly you can do insane aoe cleave.

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Thanks for the clarification and likely best to keep this sub-forum focused on Classic (with at most some look-forward to classic-TBC). That being said your example is GREAT as any class whose game client can be left un-attended for 10 seconds yet still full-fill their role may really have the upper hand when trying to be in keeping with the letter of the law (as well as the spirit of the law)...

My assumption is that with the new rules having to somehow switch between windows & do actual input per window will be necessary (or at least dedicated keys per client) so fulfillment of any roles that can be done every so often and maintain decent performance of the role will be preferable otherwise you are pushed toward hardware broadcasting or having to continuously push keys for upto 5 windows on upto 5 keyboards/keypads (assuming we are focusing on 5boxing for now). For now at least I would like to assume not using hardware mutliclient broadcasting and think of what classes can fullfill which roles without multiclient broadcasting (either of the software or hardware versions). Unless someone comes up with a better term lets call that something like "periodic rotation" for a given role and define those rotations in terms of things like:

• - how many keystrokes per rotation per client (and what are the abilities);
• - how many attentive seconds (in that client) to effect those keystrokes (taking into account global cool-downs etc);
• - how many seconds does the rotation last (and how many are left after you initiate all steps in the rotation);
• Does the rotation care about target/mob death or other factors (for example does it need to actively switch targets to keep up DPS)?

For example:

Warlock AoE DPS periodic rotation:

• - how many keystrokes per rotation per client (and what are the abilities): 1 keystroke for HellFire;
• - how many attentive seconds to effect those keystrokes (global cool-downs etc): 1 second or less (no need to wait for any GCD);
• - how many seconds does the rotation last (and how many are left after you initiate all steps in the rotation): 15 seconds per rotation initiation and 1 second or less per instantiation so you should be able to be AFK on each the Warlock at least 14 seconds;
• Does the rotation care about target/mob death or other factors: NO;
• Note: That at some point (~3 hellfires at cap?) to continue the rotation you will need to lifetap and/or drink health/mana pots/runes which adds keystrokes and likely some GCDs; If a typical fight or boss fight can't be finished in that number of rotations then that should be factored in and it may be helpful to define what that looks like;

Tankwise looking for a "Tank Periodic Rotation" this kinda pushes setups toward Paladins which can maintain aggro on unlmiited mobs via concecration and Holy Shield every 8-10 seconds (will try to define the rotation more percisely when I have more time).

Healerwise, as Jak alluded to above, looking for a "Healer Periodic Rotation" kinda pushes you to HoTs (or shields) but my intuition was that no periodic rotation may not be enough which is why in the other thread I was thinking I would need at least 2 hardware devices and PCs (something like Tank+3DPS or 4DPS on current PC & Healer with 10keypad or foot-pedal on 2nd mini-PC). That being said a Priest macro'ed to shield/Hot the tank and then cast an AoE heal may work OK as a periodic rotation for many fights or when grinding 5mans (especially if you spend most of your time avaialble time on your Paladin and can work in Paladin Tank self heals as well). Druid doing HoTs and a deep heal may be able to pull it off but without AoE will require more attention and likely multi-target switching/focus which would at least be a lower Quality of Life (and maybe not doable for some folk like myself for an extended period)...

I would think hunters and a healer are the only real option. Hunters can do most of their damage with autoattack and pet.

Though not sure why you would want to put yourself through the pain and expense when you can just single box a mage and farm instances much more efficiently than any hunter group.