considering 5 boxing, advice on my intention?

Hi
New to the forums, and multiboxing, and was thinking of giving it a try when i return home soon. I was wondering if the people here could give me some advice, on whether my intention is realistic, and how to maximize my performance whilst leveling and learning the ropes.

MNy intend setup is as follows:

5 Boxing, using one machine, with dual monitors (one for 4 slaves and one for my main). Using a logitec G19 keyboard
Pretty sure my system will run all five instances of the game.

Intending to play:
1)Dwarf Warrior. Alchemy and herbalism (will switch to human prot pala at 80)
2)Dranei ele Shaman. Alchemy/Skining
3)Night elf oomkin Druid. Alchemy/Mining
4)Human Mage. Alchemy/Enchanting
5) Night Elf Priest. Alchemy/Enchanting

Intention is to level to 80 and run some heroics to gear up my chars before perhaps PvP or raiding with them solo.
The main aim of my professions is to aquire mass amounts of gold through gathering, disenchanting and transmutes (not too suire if this is the most effective setup though)

Appreciate im jumping in at the deep end fiove boxing with different classes, however i could do with the challenge, and these are the classes id like to play.

Any advice on any changes, classes, professions, setup etc, or any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Playing on one machine, you'll need software to box with.
I've personally used Keyclone and InnerSpace.
Popular free software includes HotKeyNet and Octopus.

I'll recommend Keyclone of these, as its the easiest to set up.
However, InnerSpace has a lot of features which have really sold me, but it took a while to get it configured.
Keyclone is $20 as a one-time fee for lifetime use.
InnerSpace is $36 for a one-year subscription (usable on up to 5 computers should you semi-hardware box eventually).




Once you decide on a software option to broadcast your keys, you'll need to decide on an assist method.

The easiest is Focus based.
Each toon has one hotkey per other toon in the team.
When the Warrior is leader everyone presses his key, which makes him everyone elses focus.
Similarly, the Shaman becomes everyone's focus when the shaman leads.
Then all of your spells will cast at the focus's target.

If you want to leave focus free for PvE crowd control or PvP focus targeting...
The "No Focus Manifesto" is probably the strongest simple assist method which works in all aspects of the game.
This is essentially a target based assist method.

Leader based assist works too, but only for PvE play.
You are essentially promoting each active toon to party leader, and assisting the leader.

An FTL (Focus Free, Target Free, Leader Free) system is the strongest, but kind of harder to set up.
For serious pvp play, or even battlegrounds now and then, this is by far the best PvP system you can use.
InnerSpace has an automatic FTL set up, via its wizard.




You'll want to configure some keys which affect only the slaves/secondaries.
For example the arrow keys, so you can move the slaves independent of the main.
You can also use these to break follow etc.

I'd research "click castsequences", as these are extremely powerful as far as semi automating DPS.

Your tank will likely have either a castsequence which is static, or use a few keys for threat/survival moves.
I'd put the DPS click sequence on each of these keys, so no matter what the tank does the DPS kills.

The healer will want at least one spam key where they have a DPS key and one without.
That way you can assist in kills when its easy stuff and not be casting when you need to be healing.

For the level up process, you won't need a healer much.
Although they do reduce downtime a bit.

Most of us need healer types for heroics, down the road.

Of your toons, I'd go with a Discipline/Holy Priest as healer for heroics.
But level as Shadow most likely.

The Shaman and the Druid are excellent healer options, but Elemental or Balance is far superior dps to Shadow.

I'd personally change the tank from a Warrior to a Paladin.
With a 96969 macro, the Pally is far and away the easiest tank to multibox control.
Not saying a warrior or druid or death knight cannot work, but the pally is the easiest to box.
They have passive AoE threat and great single target threat too.

The Pally brings Kings or Sanctuary to the group, which is a strong buff.
You'll already have Fortitude and Mark of the Wild from the party, which is almost all essential raid buffs.

The mage brings some nice utility to the party.
Portals and food/water are very nice.
However, Fire is hard to manage, as you need to watch for procs.
Arcane, like fire puts out strong DPS, but you'll burn through mana faster then anyone else on the team.
Frost is very mana efficient, and gets the party Replenishment for mana regeneration. But Frost is by far the worst DPS spec for a boxing mage.
I'd personally change the Mage to either a Warlock or another Shaman.
The Warlock if you want 5 different classes; they're a strong choice with utility and high damage.
The Shaman probably gets your group more, with easy DPS macro's and 4 more totems.

Any group will work, especially if you work at it.
Arena is about the only aspect of the game where certain compositions have a possibly insurmountable deficiency.
But I'd really recommend a Pally tank and a 2nd Shammy over the mage.




The Jamba addon is almost essential for boxing.
I cannot recommend it enough.

You have a good class setup for future solo play. When you get to 80 and start gearing up in Heroics you may want to switch the class roles of the priest and shaman. It is much easier to manage a shaman healer (IMO) than a priest healer in a multibox setup.

May I suggest doing the Draenei starting area with your whole team. I hear it is has much better starter rewards than the others, much like the BE starter zones.

If you don't have the other major professions already I would suggest adding them in so you can make your own leg armor/gems/glyphs etc. I am not a fan of overloading one profession for max profit because all it takes is one nerf from blizz to ruin your economy model. At least with tailoring and LW you can DE your products for personal use or sale (depending on market forces).

good luck

Forgot to add...

You can do trial accounts, which will allow you to test how many wow's your system can handle.
Also, you'll want to set up Recruit a Friend, which is a huge boost from 1st to 60th.

If you're not boosting (ie, leveling all 5 together), probably chain them together.
A - B - C - D - E.

thanks for the response.
Are there trial versions of keyclone and innerspace available to use before deciding which of the 2 to invest in? Its always good to try before you buy i guess.

Ill do some research into assist methods and click castsequences to get a feel for things before experimentiong when i get home.

Regarding my tank, the intention is to level to 80 with a warrior tank. Once i reach 80, ill switch the warrior with my pala main and use him for tanking. Although im not too sure whats meant by a 96969 macro, some clarity on this would be much appreciated.

Regarding the mage, I decided to go for a mage mostly just because i enjoy playing them, although i only ever played one to 60 prior to any expansions being released. As i intend to go on to solo pvp or raiding once iv had my fun with heroics, im not too keen on the idea of having more than one of the same class, leaving a warlock as a viable alternative. How great are the benefits of a warlock compared to a mage? As i stated, i like the mage class but im willing to swap it around if it makes life easier (i can always level the mage solo at a later date). Im also a very big fan of not having to fill my bag with water as i can get it on tap, as its pretty annoying when i run out of bag space because im too lazy to empty them.

The minor problem regarding the draeni starting area is of course, all 5 accounts will need BC. I was intending to use my main account and 4 trial accounts withoutr any expansions just to geta feel for things and decide whether this was a commitment i wanted to go through with.

On professions, its a good poi98nt regarding putting all my eggs in one basket. What profession combinations will result in the highest g income?

Many thanks for your advice.

Yes good class setup for sure.
Keep in mind though, that a mixed group will require a bit more work in respect to macro writing.
The most gentle introduction to multiboxing is in my humble opinion the classic 1*paladin & 4*shamans.

I don't believe there are trial versions of Keyclone.
Lax can give you a one week trial of InnerSpace, you just need to apply on his site.

Both programs are of good quality.

Basically Keyclone defaults to always broadcasting every keystroke.
If you press 1, on the active/hot window, all the others press 1.
You can Black List certain keys so they're not broadcast (I had F1, Tab and NumLock).
You can alternatively White List so only certain keys are broadcast.
There is an option to broadcast mouse clicks, but it feels slow.
You can PiP swap between toons (swap hot/active regions), but its 1-3 seconds.
The non-active regions are rendered at their physical size (small windows), which slows the PiP swap a bit.
With Keyclone you'll need to pick an assist method, you can do any with this program.

InnerSpace can enable mouse or keyboard broadcasting, but the default is for these to be off.
When keyboard broadcasting is on, its the same as Keyclone's default state.
Mouse broadcasting can be enabled for specific clicks (ground targets spells are easy) or just on/off too (click bonfires/pumpkins etc).
You have the option of Black/White lists, but I'd just stick with Keymaps.
Keymaps are hotkeys with a trigger and effect, which apply to the windows you choose.
Even with broadcasting off, Keymaps can run.
They're very customizable, you can have arrow keys go to everything other then the active window (move the slaves independently, regardless of your current window).
The smaller (slave) windows are rendered as if they were full size, which allows for instant PiP swaps but is more of a strain on your system - not a huge issue with even a half decent system, and the swap speed is extremely nice.
With InnerSpace, the wizard will automatically set up either FTL or Focus/Assist method, just drag the spells from the spellbook as is.





If your protection paladin puts 1 point into Improved Judgements (in Retribution), they have three abilities with a 8 or 9 second cooldown. You would not want to glyph consecration in this case.

That gets you Judgement of choice, Consecration and Holy Shield with 9 second cooldowns.
Call them A, B and C for ease; each could be any letter, but I like Holy Shield first and Consecration last.

You also have Shield of the Righteous and Hammer of Righteousness as 6 second cooldowns.
Call these D and E for east.

You can macro a castsequence: A, D, B, E, C, D, A, E, B, D, C, E....

Very easy macro to mash, each spell is ready as you reach it in the sequence, so they're constantly applied as available or as they expire.

The warrior will definitely work as a tank, just felt obligated to mention the paladin is so easy to macro (read control as a boxed toon) to play effectively.





As far as Mage vs Warlock, either will work.

From a boxing point of view, a warlock is easy to set up with a click castsequence.
They can go any spec, and put out reasonable damage.

The mage is easy to macro frost (which is lower damage) or arcane (which is a mana pig).
Fire is hard to box, because your dps requires you to manage procs and cast certain spells at specific times.

As a single toon played by a single player, this is very easy to do.
Chances are, if you're raiding you'd go with a Frostfire spec, or a variation thereof.

Either toon will raid well.
Either toon will solo/heroic well.
But the mage, in a boxing environment is harder to play at close to maximum dps.

The mage brings an intellect buff, sheep (more useful in pvp, not required much in heroics), food/water, portals, strong one-box dps.

The warlock brings Sta or Int buff (pet dependent), banish (similar usefulness CC), healthstone/soulstones, summon ability, strong one-box or multi-box dps.

Both are high utility.
The mage is a nuke based class.
The warlock can spec to be nuke based, pet based or dot based; more flavors but not necessarily stronger.

While boxing (if you decide on the mage), I'd go Frost. You can spec mortal strike, extra strong snares, freeze chance and your team gets replenishment. Two hotkeys for optimal dps. Frostbolt and Summon Water Elemental.




I like to have each gathering profession... Skinning, Herbalism and Mining present on my team.
I also like to have at least one Enchanter, so heroic/instance loots are never wasted.
I also like to have the usual team leader be a tailor, cloak enchants are ok for anyone, but you get more cloth on loots in Wrath and beyond.

An addon like Mappy can make your minimap window huge on a slave.
And can have the resource type you track strobe yellow/blue, which is easy to notice.

Alternatively, put herbalism and mining on the main toon, and toggle between the two.
In Cataclysm we'll be able to track two types at once, so this will be easier.
You'll lose the extra cloth, unless you have your tailor slave interact with every corpse (slow process).

Jewelcrafting is a decent profession for gold.
Do the daily, which is easy even on multiple toons.
Then sell the Dragon gem.
Cutting gems and prospecting are both money makers too.

Alchemy transmutes are good too.

Inscription gets a slightly stronger bonus (shoulder bonus vs faction shoulder bonus) then most professions.
And it allows you to dabble into the Glyph market.





From your main account - account management.
Send out an RAF invite to your own email.
Use the RAF code to create a new account.

You can repeat this three more times if you like.
That would be an RAF set up of:
A-B
A-C
A-D
A-E

That means when you pay for a month on B-E, each credits A with one month.
And when B-E pays for a 2nd month, A gets a Zhevra mount each time.
B-E will also be able to grant free levels to toons on A who are lower then the toons on B-E to a maximum of 60th level.

If you cascade the granted levels...
A refers B, B refers C etc.
The new toon on E gets to 60th, and can grant 29 levels to D.
The new toon on D gets to 60th, and can grant 29 levels to C. (Etc)
However, D was granted 29 levels from E, and because of these 29 levels, can grant 14 levels to C as well.

If you're unlikely to keep the accounts after 60th.
IE, transfer the four toons not on the main account to the main account.
Create the shaman on the existing (keeper) account.
And you won't need BC on the other accounts.
But once they reach 60th, you'd be one-boxing them 60-80, one at a time.

If you'll likely keep them, battlechests are only a little more then the classic game.
And get you BC as well.
So the shaman can be on any account, and you can level in the Draenei area.
Also, the team can reach 70th instead of 60th, even if you're transferring and not keeping the new accounts.

I'd personally tend to think if you try boxing, and give it a chance to make some macro's...
Ask questions if you need to.
You'll likely continue to box and keep the 5 accounts.

thanks for all the input. Im looking foward to experimenting when i get back. Youv been a great help answering many of my questions.

I was inspired today, by a friend, to attempt a multibox combo with numerous of the same class, and a second player as a dedicated healer. We did a bit of theorizing and basically, the plan we came up with was as follows:

Link the RAF accounts A-B-C-D-E
Level the previously mentioned pve team to 80 for heroics. This will give B C D and E the ability to grant 30 levels to there linked accounts.
Level 4 chars on A B C D to 30, before using the grant a level to raise them to 60.
Rendezvous with my friends 60 shammy.
Level the 4 + 1 healer to 80 via pvp (if viable)
This, on papwer seems to work (and i would know nothing about this, so correct me if its wrong).

Now, the million dollar question: What class?

I appreciate, 5 shammies is apparantly, pure amazingness. However i'll have a shammy in my pve team, and i like variety so i was hoping for a different class. So in other words, ideally, id like a class i dont already have (ie either a mage or warlock, depending on what i use for my pve team, a hunter or a rogue).
Would any of these combos work? I could also switch a class out of my pve team for one of the above if thats viable.
If its really not worth it, i can always get yet more shammies. feels like a bit of a waste though as ill have 5 shammies, 2 on the same account, and my friend will have his healing shammy too.

Any input and suggestions would be cosmic

Many thanks you truely wonderful peeps.

5x Shaman is probably the easiest class combination to 5-box.
They have a lot of synergy with each other.
And the fewer different classes together, the easier.
I believe 4 or 5 players have been over 2000 rating in arena with 4x Shaman (and a friend on the healer).

If you have any intention of every doing heroics or instances in general.
Drop one of the shaman's for a protection paladin.
Level the pally retribution until you have at least Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary.
This gets you a team that can do any heroic.
And you can easily drop the Pally for your friend to heal your x4 Shaman team.

Quite a few people used Death Knight x5, when Wrath was first out.
The team has Death Grip on round-robin, which brings any target to you.
This overcomes one of the largest weaknesses of melee toons.
Blood also gives passive heals just by doing dps.

An all druid team will be very fun to play. I'm actually working on one now.
Balance to level and quest. But with dual spec on two...
We have Bear + Tree + 3x Moonkins for heroics.
There are a ton of video's of "The Moo's" in the video section.
Moonkin have a lot of fun toys and abilities, but are lacking burst to go far in arena.
They are a powerful choice for questing, raids, heroics, world pvp and battlegrounds.

Solo retribution paladins have lately become the flavor of the month.
Boxing an all melee group is certainly possible now with click to move and interact with target.
5x Paladin is not flavor of the month, the shammies or shammy/paladin is the proven combo.
Still, there's a DK + 4x Paladin team over 2000 in our forums, so the team has potential.

I'm very tempted to go 4-5x Affliction Warlocks as a new team.
5x is simpler, but 4x would allow for a druid or priest healer on the team.
Very mobile and does not require facing to cast their dots.
Most players hate rogues because of stuns and warlocks because of dots.
I'd love to regularly place 15-20 dots on the other faction in BG's.

I'm also leveling a mixed team at the moment.
No huge desire to play any of the toons, except they were all already 70 by the end of BC.
It's an extra team to do dailies with, which mean an extra 1100-1200g a day, when I feel motivated enough.
Disc Priest, Arcane Mage, Feral Druid, Elemental Shammy and Affliction Warlock.
Nothing wrong with them, just more into the other teams at the moment.

Anything you want to work will work.
For high end arena, the only proven teams are Shammies or Pallies.
But the game constantly changes, so anything can succeed.

I really enjoy my lowbie 3 x mage 1-lock 1 priest team.

One mage goes in shield up grabs a group of mobs Iceblocks and than they all AOE. Insanely fun to watch a large group of mobs drop in seconds. The combination of hellfire and holy nova is nice. One leeches life the other heals.

I think my next team to 80 will be all druids with interact target I can see 5 stealth feral cats being fun in World PvP. Dual specced they should be able to Heroic just fine.

I'm running a team very close to yours - Pally tank, Holy Priest, Destro Lock, Boomkin Druid, and Arcane Mage.

Leveling is VERY easy. Set up simple trash macros that take it easy on mana, and you should be okay. I leveled my team most of the way to 80 with three - the lock, the druid, and the mage, and had no problems outside of instances. The Lock tanked with the Felguard as a Demon spec.

Later on, you'll need to study all of your toon's abilities and weaknesses, and macro with the other toons in mind, in terms of key hit rate (I use a simple one...two...one...two beat and time my macros to it.)

Your casters will be aggro magnets if you're not careful - the mage especially - but with 5 most mobs will die before they reach you (non-Elites). With the AOE potential in your group, you should be able to take out large crowds of mobs.

Study up on /click macros, they almost doubled my dps when I switched to them, Fursphere's thread on them is excellent.

Just know this - the team you're proposing will take a lot more work than a tank/shammy team, as you'll be learning 5 classes at one time, and keep their abilities straight, and then learn how to build their talents, their gear, and their gems/enchants. With that many casters, I would HIGHLY recommend you train a tailor, even your Boomkin will wear +spellcloth over leather gear.

I love my mixed team, as much as it would be nice to have 4 shammies (and I will eventuall), I love teh synergy and utility of 5 different classes, with buff and talents, multiple ressing makes wiping a little easier, I have healthstones and free food and portals...and when the team is running right, they're pretty awesome.

thanks once again for the input. It seems now that deciding my teams is going to be harder than actually playing them :confused:

Is a 4 mage 1 healer team not viable for arena? I was kinda hoping the sheer burst damage of 4 x arcane mages would be enough to destroy anything that moived, and then just work from there, but i guess its more complicated than that.

My current scheme of maneuver is as follows:

1) Level PvE team of Warrior, shammy, druid, mage/lock, priest
2) Swap the warrior with my main 80 pala for pve team. (already leveled)
2) Level PvP team A) 4 lock/mages (whatever i donbt have in pve team) to 30. Use RAF levels to get them to 60
3) Level 3 Shammies to 30, use RAF to get to 60
4) Level a priest n shammy to 30. RAF to 60.
5) Transfer shammy to account 4 (to join my recently leveled 3 shammies and my pals 60 shammy to make a 5 shammy team with 1 dedicated healer, unboxed) level these to 80 via pvp.
6) Transfer Priest to friends account to group up with 4 locks making 4 lock 1 dedicated healer team. Lvl to 80.
7) Transfer 80 Warrior to account 5, to PvE with 4 shammies for gear for PvP. Can swuitch one shammy witrh my friends to help him gear up.

Working this out has given me a serious head ache. Any problems?

#6 could be a problem.

You can only transfer toons to another account with the same name on the account.
Unless your friends account is in your name, or your account is in his name, you cannot do that transfer.

Ideally, you'd want every one of your accounts in your own name.
We get a lot of attention as a boxer.
Quite a bit of it is negative, and aside from being funny at times, can get us reported.
One of the things they check, is if all of the toons are ours.
The names on the accounts are how they do this.

The account is in my name, as my friend never had as debit card bacjk in the day when it was setup, so i paid for his account with mine and hed give me the cash. The inability to change the name of the owner of the account has resulted in him keeping an account in my name. Probably a bannable offense, but bit late now.

It looks like you've put a lot of thought and research into your decisions, and I commend you on that. I also thank you for not just rolling in here with the "lol i wanna bot help me rofl" standard faire.

I just have two comments, which are just that, so take them as you see fit:

1. I advise everybody's first boxing team to be either 5 of one char, or the 1 tank 4 heal/dps combo like 1 paly 4 shaman. The reason is simplicity. It's not that you can't figure out how to get them all to work. I like to think of it like your brain has only so many cycles to spend every second, and if a portion of those are "hey, i've gotta press this button every 5 seconds because my one druid over there needs to refresh lifebloom" or whatever, it leaves less time for observing, analyzing, and reacting to your environment. This is especially true in pvp. The simpler your team dynamics, the more time you have to spend reacting to the game instead of trying to manage the various rotations. This can be somewhat mitigated by clever macro and key overloads, but it's still very important. I've been boxing for quite a while, and I still tunnel-vision myself into mistakes.

2. 5x alchemy is certainly understandable in today's climate, but i wouldn't rely on that cash cow to continue. It might, but the prices might drop or who knows what changes might come by the time you're 80. It's a gamble, just wanted to bring it up. Also, I don't see the need for 2x enchanters. Not a lot that two can do that 1 can't, am I missing something?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BobGnarly

2. 5x alchemy is certainly understandable in today's climate, but i wouldn't rely on that cash cow to continue. It might, but the prices might drop or who knows what changes might come by the time you're 80. It's a gamble, just wanted to bring it up. Also, I don't see the need for 2x enchanters. Not a lot that two can do that 1 can't, am I missing something?

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Frost Lotus are going to be purchasable in 3.3, so the flask market is going to tank, hard.

Two enchanters, the only benefit are the ring enchants.

I agree, a mixed team is a LOT of work, if you're just starting out. I'd have preferred a 1/4 team, but the way I grew into 5 accounts, I had no choice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moosejaw

You have a good class setup for future solo play. When you get to 80 and start gearing up in Heroics you may want to switch the class roles of the priest and shaman. It is much easier to manage a shaman healer (IMO) than a priest healer in a multibox setup.

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Priests have so many AOE healing options it's ridiculous. No class can spam heal up your entire team more easily than a priest, and you have the biggest single target heal in the game for when your tank is taking all the hits. You have an AOE "oh shit" healing button, an AOE mana regen button, Prayer of Mending which will bounce around the group, a HOT which heals instantly, inspiration, and three AOE heals, two of which are instant cast. I can't even imagine the argument in favor of a shaman healer over a priest. People use the shaman healers because we on this site tend to gravitate towards the class in general for overall play in PVP and PVE. If he's just doing PVE, priest all the way! I know it's just an opinion, but I feel very strongly about this. To me it's like someone arguing that 5x mages is better than 5x shamans in 5v5 arena team.

Nothing against a priest healer.
They provide strong single and aoe heals.
They add a strong buff to the group.
Discipline adds extra mitigation to a team.
Holy adds extra healing power.

A resto shaman is also a strong healer.
Earth Shield on the tank makes a lot of encounters much easier.
Totems are a configurable buff, adding more as you have fewer shammies in the mix.
Riptide gives a HoT, but compared to a priest, mobile healing is definitely weaker.
Chain Heal and Healing Stream Totem are strong group heal options.
Mana Spring Totem, Water Shield and Mana Tide are great mana regeneration options.
The toon is much less squishy then a priest.
And can wear healer cloth, leather and mail, instead of only cloth.


I wouldn't necessarily say, one over the other, as an automatic decision for healing.
And if I had a Priest and a Shammy in the same team, one had to heal and the other dps...
An Elemental is further ahead of Shadow, then either class is ahead of the other healing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raigirin

Keep in mind though, that a mixed group will require a bit more work in respect to macro writing.
The most gentle introduction to multiboxing is in my humble opinion the classic 1*paladin & 4*shamans.

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Quoted for thruth.