New 3x Boxer (Paladins)

Hi there!

Just wanted to introduce myself really. So last weekend (Saturday or Sunday I think) I was in Alterac Valley with my level 80 Blood Elf Hunter, when along comes a night elf hunter who has 4 copies of himself fighting alongside him (kind of like that one boss in the Nexus. I forget her name but she's incomprehensibly annoying). I see people in the chat talking about "multi-box man" and am flummoxed. My first thought was maybe it's some kind of spell that creates decoys, or mirror images of yourself temporarily, but then I realized if hunters had any such ability I'd have it too by then. So I figure maybe it's a trinket, and do some searching on wowhead.com and google, and eventually found this site.

I have to say I'm pretty amazed at the whole concept, and have started to try it out. Overall I like it, on the other hand, there are a lot of people out there who prefer to play a game competely without any "unfair" advantages. I have ot say it was kind of unbelievable how that one person pretty much made it impossible for us to win that AV battle. The up side is that most people don't have the money, skill, particular kind of intelligence or patience required to do it (particularly many of the younger or rude/lazy people that many people complain about).

So anyways, I've made two new accounts, and plan to set up four multi-box teams to start. Right now I'm keeping it pretty simple, so it'll be Team 1: three paladins, Team 2: three hunters, Team 3: three priests, and maybe Team 4: three death knights later. This is mainly because there are only 4 toons I really care about on my main account: My 80 blood elf hunter, my 41 blood elf paladin, my 41 troll priest, and my 62 blood elf death knight.

I do want to experiment with mixing classes later, but for now I just want to get the basics down. I'm using Keyclone but there are several things about it that seem quite limited, so I'm going to try ISBoxer instead. I got it all set up last night and created macros for my main paladin and one of the clones, just to test things out. Created the third account today. I'm hoping IS Boxer will allow me to simpilfy things a bit more and maybe even be able to do away with the /follow focus and /assist focus macros.
Right now I have five basic macros set up, one to set the focus to each character, the main and each of the clones, in case one of them dies and I have to switch leaders, and then /follow focus and /assist focus. Most of the buttons on my action bars have been replaced with macros, except the ones that are self cast only, like the seals. The others are all macrus that cast the spell with [target=focustarget].

A couple that may be interesting, that I've set up for the paladins are:

#showtooltip Judgement of Light
/castsequence [target=focustarget,exists] [] reset=target Hand of Reckoning, Consecration, Judgement of Light

I have two macros identical to this one that cast the Wisdom and Justice Judgements at the end, instead. The three macros take up slots 3, 4, and 5 on my main action bar. My main pally's only level 41, so there are a lot of abilities I don't have yet, and my setup will no doubt change as he gains new ones.
The main problem with this is, it starts over at Hand of Reckoning every time I change targets, so I never get to Consecration, let alone the judgements, if I'm in a low level area (which I am at the moment, since the 41 is boosting the other two and so keeps one-shotting everything). Not sure how much of an issue this is really. I made this sequence to consolidate so I wouldn't have to use as many different buttons, but I think I'm going to get rid of it, as it's more useful to be able to use these abilities independently (particularly consecration for AoE farming).

Hammer of Justice is of course on round-robin, as are the bubbles. I also set up /castsequence macros for the two bubbles that can be cast on other players. The best one takes 5 minutes to cool down, and if you use it and the second one right afterwards on another target, the time from when you cast the second to when you can cast the first again is about 2 mins (I think) so that's what the reset is. I'll double-check this when I get home.

The blessings are kind of annoying. I have them on do not pass, because otherwise both paladins cast the same blessing on the focus target. I could set them up to always cast a particular blessing on the same toon, but I want more flexibility than that. I think what I'll do is remove the key from the DNP list, and just put a different blessing in that slot for each paladin. That way when I have my main selected and I push the button, Pally1 will cast Kings, 2 will cast Wisdom and 3 will cast Might (or something like that ^_^). Oh yes, and 10min durations :mad: ugh.

Also, still don't see why they haven't made the seals toggle abilities like Righteous Fury and the auras, since they work in the exact same way. Okay, ranting done. Moving on. (There's more? Yeah I know)

I have a little bit of programming knowledge, enough to understand how to create if/then/else commands pretty well if I know what symbols have those meanings in the programming language. All in all though I'm not very good at it and can mostly just do simple things, with much referring to guides.

Also made a sequence for that casts Flash of Light first, then Holy Light, and resets on changing targets:
#showtooltip Holy Light
/castsequence [target=focustarget,exists] [] reset=target Flash of Light, Holy Light

The resetting on changing target seems to work better for this one. Lets me move on if the target doesn't need a big heal, and gets in a quick, small heal first, kind of an emergency bandaid, followed by the big one that takes longer to cast, all with the same button.

The empty brackets on the /castsequence macros, and the exists bit, are so the spell will still self cast if the focus doesn't have a target selected.

Anyway, I look forward to meeting you all. Thanks so much, your posts and the wiki have all been immensely helpful in getting started. Any thoughts on what I've set up so far? I'm particularly interested in the reset issue, and what abilities to combine into one button, if any. I combined HoR, Judgement and Consecration because they all have an 8 second cooldown, are essential to just about every fight, are all on the global cooldown, and are all offensive abilities, but on the other hand I don't like not being able to use them independently now.

PS: Any idea why my banner is getting cut off down there? xD

Welcome to dual-boxing.com and to boxing in general.

IS Boxer should simplify things a fair bit, compared to Keyclone.
The wizard will get you automatic FTL on the default action bar.
That means you don't need to worry about Focus, and can save it for other things.
Just place macro's (or drag spells from the spell/ability book "P") and assist is done by IS Boxer -- no need for wow based assist macro's.
Plus you can mouse broadcast much more so then with KC - which can be good for Mass Dispel, Volley, Death & Decay, and other ground target AoE's.

If you haven't done RAF - Recruit a Friend, I'd contact billing and see if they can let you use your CD-keys for RAF accounts.
RAF is basically 3x experience for kills and quests, from 1st to 60th.
And a bunch of other bonuses.

Greater Blessings are down the road, but they'll hit everyone in your party/raid of your same class.
The mana cost is a lot higher, but the buff lasts for 30 mins.
With 3x Paladins, you could go 3x Greater Blessings.

I highly recommend the Jamba addon.
It is absolutely amazing for boxing.

For the banner I'm guessing there's a limit on the size of images.
Or possibly on the total size of a signature.

Wow thanks ^_^ Yep I've got Jamba and did the RAF. I linked the two clone accounts to my main account, as I want all the grantable levels to go there.

Here's one other one I did. It's designed to find and rez the first dead member of the party each time you cast it. It's on round-robin of course.

#showtooltip Redemption
/cast [target=focustarget,help,dead] [target=party1,dead] [target=party2,dead] [target=party3,dead] [target=party4,dead] Redemption

No one in my party was dead at the time, of course, so I modified it like so to test it:

/cast [target=focustarget,help,dead] [target=party1,nodead] Flash of Light

Seemed to work.

I got this trick from Zzxxzyx's original No Focus Manifesto...

(Toon A)
#show Ancestral Spirit
/target [dead] [target=ToonB, dead]; [target=ToonC, dead]; [target=ToonD, dead]; [target=ToonE, dead]
/cast Ancestral Spirit

And then stagger them for each extra rezzer...

(Toon B)
#show Ancestral Spirit
/target [dead] [target=ToonC, dead]; [target=ToonD, dead]; [target=ToonE, dead]; [target=ToonA, dead]
/cast Ancestral Spirit


The first [dead] allows the macro to fire off, by targeting any corpse.

The later conditions allow me to click the macro for rez's, without bothering to select one of my toons.
And if more then one toon is dead, by having this on the one hotkey, each dead target is rez's in turn.
Or if two toons are dead, then each dead toon will have at least one target rez them on the 1st rez click.
All five of my toons can rez (Pally + 4x Shaman).

Ohh that's clever! ^_^ I do believe I shall modify mine to work that way, instead of having it on round robin.

Meanwhile I've set up IS Boxer. Does work much better than keyclone for many things, including mousing on all windows at once. Kinda giving me headaches though. I think the keymaps are interfering with repeater when they're both on. Do I have to map every single key I use in WoW to use a keymap, and turn repeater completely off to make it work right?
For some reason when I try to use the "Alt+Shilf F12" or "Ctrl+Alt+Shift F12" shortcuts to get my characters to follow the toon in the active window, they all end up following the wrong person.

Also I use the Bartender 4 addon, which gives me 10 action bars. I have F1-F12 bound to slots 1-12 on one of the bars (in WoW's Keybind Settings), and Shift F1-F12 to another, Ctrl F1-F12, Ctrl+Shift F1-F12, and Shift 1-12, but no combinations involving Alt. Dunno if that may have something to do with it.

I'll keep fiddling with it and take a closer look at how those shortcuts work in IS tonight and see if I can't figure out what's going wrong. Not really understanding how IS/Jamba pick who to follow. Doesn't seem to make sense. My clones end up follow strobing each other and my main follow strobes one of them, until I turn off repeater and use the shortcut that turns off follow strobing on him, but that still leaves my other two bumping into one another and going nowhere. Eventually if I keep trying the Ctrl+Shift+Alt F12 it focus them on my main and once I turn follow strobing off for my main, we can get going again, but it's a very slow way to get it done, and in combat or pvp would get me killed before I could get them all oriented.

Really the only reason I'm using keymaps at all is because of those shortcuts to get my clones to follow me and stuff, and to put certain buttons on round robin.

Hmm, also kind of wondering if I should still be setting the currently leading character as the focus, for targeting purposes, or if IS eliminates the need for that.

To get the most out of IS Boxer, you'd want to run with Keymaps on and Repeater off, as your default setting. Mapping everything is a good idea. Keymaps can be as simple as direct broadcast, sending the trigger hotkey to every window, but they can do a whole lot more too.

If both Repeater and Keymaps are on, anything which is a hotkey for a Keymap does whatever the Keymap has been configured to do, and is not broadcast 1:1, like the other keys.

I don't use Alt Shift F12, so am not sure what you're referring to. I have noticed if I turn strobe follow on, then switch toons, it still wants to strobe follow whoever the hot toon was, when I switched. However, if strobe is off and you switch, it should do whatever you configured during the wizard set up. And you can change your choice by going to Character Sets (top pane), clicking on a character set, then on the left pane click on the numbers under Slots.

My follow settings are:
(Checked) When I switch to this character.
(Selected) Do this mapped key.
Keymap = Control
Mapped Key = Follow/Jamba Master

This means, when Keymaps are on -- switching to a new toon has the others auto follow the new toon. I can disable the auto follow by turning keymaps off, and then doing the switch.

With FTL, IS Boxer knows who the leader is, and with Jamba it should automatically set the correct follow for you.

You'll probably still need Focus for vehicles. Enter the vehicle, /Focus Party1 (or /Focus ToonName) and then /Follow Focus.

But as far as normal movement goes, you don't need Focus at all.

If I want strobe to turn on, I have to do so manually. And then turn it off manually as well.

And the targeting is automatic too, via the FTL. You can use macro's just fine, but don't need any form of assist in a macro. I still use things like:
/cast [help] Renew; [help, target=targettarget] Renew... but don't need any type of assist for offensive spells, the FTL does it for us.

Hmm, sounds like I'm making things too complicated maybe. That should help immensely. I think I'll reset most everything to the default settings, as far as Jamba and IS go, except for the few keys I've mapped to round-robin certain abilities, and start over by mapping all the keys I use in WoW, and running with repeater off. Should make things simpler, even if it takes a while.

So, as far as targeting goes, does that mean the dupes will always automatically target whatever the hot char is targeting without my doing anything extra? Or do I need to be pushing a hotkey for /assist?

I've also been reading some of the threads about melee multi-boxing, and they bring up the issue of your characters running off in random directions when you use interact with target. It looks like people use the back arrow to stop them, but I have all the arrow keys set to only work for the hot character. When I try to move everyone at once with the arrow keys, they all run off in different directions, so I'm thinking I probably need to bind a secondary key to "move backwards" for the dupes, so I can still run backwards with my main without affecting the others, but also have something to stop the "melee sugar rush"

EDIT: Oh der....Just realized I can disable either the wasd or the arrow keys for the dupes :P That click to move glitch is still annoying though.

I hope I'm not annoying anyone with all these questions. I'm trying to do as much reading as I can, but it helps to have somewhere to bounce ideas off of and see if I'm understanding things right.

One last thing, when I use interact with target, it screws up my camera angle in WoW. It basically turns camera following off, so that when I turn my character, the camera no longer turns with him. For my hot char this is an easy fix (although it would be much nicer if I could avoid the issue altogether), as I just right click somewhere on the ground (click to move is turned on) and that gets things working again, but for the dupes, unless I PiP switch to them and do that for each of them, their camera angle is always messed up thanks to this. Anyone know of a way to get around this, or what's causing it?

Edit: Okay, so I set up a keymap with almost all the important keys WoW uses, so that I could turn 1:1 broadcasting off. Trouble now is, spacebar is mapped to send spacebar to all windows at once, but when I press it, no one jumps. This is with keymaps turned on and repeater (1:1 broadcasting) turned off. Also, I mapped num pad 8, 2, 4 6, 7 and 9 to send up, down, left, right, strafe left and strafe right to all but the current window, so I'd have a way to move my other toons without moving my active char, since I like to use both the arrow keys and wasd, depending on the situation. num pad 4, 6, 7, and 9 work like they're supposed to, but 2 and 8 scroll through action bars instead of moving the characters, as if shift were held down, but it's not. And when I press 1 through =, it cycles through my auras (I have Shift + 1 through = bound to the stance bar, not 1 through =). :(

Edit again!: Okay, so it turns out the FTL modifier for my character slots was set to Shift, so each time I used any mapped key that was set to use FTL modifiers, it broadcast shift + whatever the key was, which is why some of the keys were acting like I'd pressed shift. I've set the FTL modifier to Right Alt, hopefully that'll fix it.

*sigh* now it's broadcasting R L and B to the other windows with keymaps and repeater all turned off...

Okay, so it turned out I had the general settings for each keymap set so that if use FTL Modifiers was set to default for a mapped, key, it would use the FTL Modifiers. I turned that off for keys like space, and num pad 2 4 6 8 etc, and on for the keys that trigger combat abilities. Everything finally seems to be working. I just got rid of L B R and some others I don't need to be popping up on any but the hot char's screen. The autofollow when I switch screens is working now.

Buttons still aren't working. When I press 1 nothing happens, because I don't have anything bound to Alt+1 in WoW. Going to try setting all the use FTL Modifiers settings on mapped keys to default.

Mostly working now, but the others still don't target what I'm targeting when I use the key for "interact with target" which is ` or when I use Ctrl+Shift+F8 through F10 (which are the keys for the blessings). What should happen is one of them should cast might, one kings, and one wisdom, all on whoever my lead char has selected.

Nothing seems to work for this. No matter what I do they all just self cast, and only the hot char attacks when I use interact with target, but when I press 3, they all use judgement of light on the hot character's target. Dunno why that one works and the others don't. They're all set up exactly the same way, except that they use different keys.

Hey Collanaro,

Did you ever get your camera issue fixed? My issue is similar where the camera switches to the front, so I'm facing the front of my main toon. I have to log out and back in to correct which is getting annoying, anyone else having this issue?

Yep. In WoW's Interface options, under Camera, I set the camera following style to Always, and under Mouse, I set the camera following style to Locked. No more issues with that.

Still can't get any of the beneficial spells to automatically target my hot character's target like the offensive combat abilities do. It works for Judgements and stuff, but not for Blessings, Purify, or Flash of Light.

For now I guess I'll just write some macros that'll have each character cast the spell on a certain party member. Like /cast [target=party1] Blessing of Kings, set to say F1 on character number one's screen, but on character two's screen, it would be /cast [target=party1] Blessing of Wisdom. F2 would do the same thing, but on party2.

Well, with those macros I've gotten the buffs working. Last problem, and it's a big one, is that interact with target isn't broadcasting to the other windows. Everything else does and it's set up the same as the other keys like it, such as 0 through =, but when I press it, only the hot char responds. I set ` as the key for it, in IS and in WoW. Nothing else uses that key as far as I can tell.

Still can't fix that, but I've added broadcasting ` as step 1 to all the mapped dps keys for melee abilities, and that seems to be making it work, so good enough. Maybe now I can finally start actually levelling. By the way Ualaa your guide to IS has been invaluable. Thanks.

With the FTL in IS Boxer, you don't need to use assist type macros.
Just drag the spells from the spell book, onto the action bars.
When you press 1, they all do whatever is on 1, at the target of the active character.

You can still use macros on 1, if you want to do something other then a normal cast.
Like make a spell which is attack on a normal press, but does something different on an Alt + number.




As far as WASD and the arrow keys go, by default there are no keymaps for either. This means, they work for the active toon and do nothing for the hot toon. In my guide, I've shown how to send keys to the slaves only (by copying the slave jump keymap). I choose for the arrow keys to move the slaves, but not the active toon, because you can still move the active toon without moving the slaves, via WASD (although they might still auto follow).



By default, there is no keymap for jump. So spacebar has the active toon jump, whether repeater is on or off, and whether keymaps are on or off. Also by default, control space makes only the slaves jump, and since this is a keymap, it sends to only the slaves and not the main when keymaps are on. If both are on, keymaps supercede the basic repeater. If keymaps are off, the control space does nothing on the slaves (unless repeater is on) in which case, the control means nothing for either active or slaves, but the space should make both jump.




The modifiers that you pick for FTL should not impact you anywhere else. They are only used on three keymaps and do not apply anywhere else. You should have "Use FTL Modifiers" enabled for these three keymaps and nothing else. All other FTL actions work, by calling on the three Keymaps which use FTL. They are: FTL Target me, FTL assist me and FTL follow me.

You want all FTL settings on default for every keymap other then the three above.



For interact to do anything, you need to have them assist you first.
You can set a hotkey for the already existing keymap of (FTL target me).
I have mine set to F, which means I cannot use the F key in typing etc, while keymaps are on.
But I can press F with keymaps on, and the non-active toons target whatever the active toon targets.
Once they have a target, Interact will do whatever.



Once the FTL is set correctly (default on everything else), FTL on for those three keymaps.

Then anything on the default FTL keys (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, -, =) should have the alts cast their same buff/spell/nuke, at the target of the hot character. I show you how to set this for any key you want, in the example of FTL Buffing on Shift J (but any hotkey you want works).

Yep. In WoW's Interface options, under Camera, I set the camera following style to Always, and under Mouse, I set the camera following style to Locked. No more issues with that.

That did it thanks for your help, I was getting frustrated with the camera switching and having to log out and back in. It'll take a bit to get used to using the CTRL to view but eh, better then having to logging out.

instead of logging out you can also just rightclick once next to you char.

this will make the camera follow you again when you move with WASD :)