Khat's Newbie Guide for Multiboxing Vol. 2

A Multiboxing Guide for Newbies - Vol. 2

This is meant to be the 2nd guide. The first one you should read is the Newb's Guide to Multiboxing.

This guide will go over various tips and tricks that you can use to move your boxing experience out of Newbdom and into the upper echelons of...Lesser Newbdom. Perhaps they'll even start you on the road to Facemelting.

I can't claim that this even covers a fraction of the more "advanced" techniques we use as boxers. If I tried to cover everything, I'd be writing for months. These are just some of the things you'll want to look at once you've gotten the basics down and are looking to get more refined.

While I'll mostly talk about WoW-specific information, it can also apply to other games. Especially things related to the actual multiboxing programs. There's been more than a few things I've figured out in one game that I later incorporated into my setup for another.

Characters

One of the most common questions we get is "What should my team be?" or "Will this team work?" There's dozens of different answers, and those answers can change at any given time. It boils down to the same thing. Your first team is going to be all about learning.

There's a good chance that the team you start with isn't going to be the team you stick with. I've been through about 2 dozen different team variations since I started. So don't get caught up in the idea that you have to pick the ideal team to start with. It's better to level up as many different classes as you can while you have your RAF bonus XP, so you can easily change things later. After playing with the RAF XP bonuses, it's very tedious to have to go back up and level at the normal rate.

Between that and the learning curve you'll face, the best thing to do is usually to stick to all the same class where possible. While leveling, especially if you don't spend too much time in dungeons, there's no need for a dedicated tank and healer. If you do want to be able to use the Dungeon Finder, you can always pick a class that can do multiple roles, such as druids, and use dual-spec to have a healer and tank.

Once you have the basics down and are comfortable with controlling your toons, you can start mixing it up. At this point, you can look at things like the synergy of the classes and specs. For example, Shamans and Paladins bring a lot of buffs to the table. Mages provide ports while leveling and food and water. Having a hunter for a pet offtank, misdirect etc can be very useful. Think about what you need or want and go from there.

You'll also want to look at how much actual work you want to do with your team. My team is Prot Pally, Ret Pally, Enhance Shaman, Resto Shaman and Unholy DK. I would never suggest this team to a new player. I probably wouldn't even suggest it to a seasoned player. This sort of team requires a lot of micromanagement in watching for procs, dealing with movement and tweaking the setup, never mind learning all the ins-and-outs of how each different spec and class needs to be played. If you're not a masochist who revels in that kind of tedious research and trial and error, a team like that could make you throw your computer through a wall. I'm not saying I'm brilliant and anyone who plays an easier setup is a drooling idiot. If I was brilliant, I'd be playing a team that does far better DPS and requires far less work.

But to tie in to that, always play something you like playing. I'm quite content not having the biggest numbers because I love my team. I've played all sorts of different groups and some classes I simply didn't like playing, no matter what they had to offer. They just didn't fit my playstyle. If you don't enjoy a class, nothing says you have to play it. If you want to try an unconventional setup, go for it. We all have opinions that we can offer, but at the end of the day, it's your group and you should play how you want to play.

Your UI

Your UI is a vital part of multiboxing. When you're playing solo, you might have no problem having a dozen different addons flashing all sorts of information at you, but that can become problematic with more toons throwing more information at you. As a multiboxer, you need to be able to find as much real information as easily and quickly as possible. You're going to have enough to try and keep track of without having useless information fighting for your attention.

Now, what some people call useless, other's call vital. Personally, I don't really care about seeing DPS and threat meters. All I care about is "Who's dying, me or the mob?" So, Omen and the like are useless to me. Other people are always watching their performance to make adjustments. That's how they roll. Doesn't make either one right or wrong.

Here's some links to screenshots of my UI setup.

In Combat
Out of Combat

It's going to be up to you to decide what you need and don't need when and only experience is going to let you know what you're missing and what has to go. But here's a few things that you'll want to consider.


Jamba

First and foremost is Jamba. It is the ultimate addon designed specifically for multiboxers. It does so much that it's almost obscene. Even if you don't use everything, there's still going to be several parts of it that you are going to find invaluable. I simply can't sing high enough praises for what Jafula has done for the multiboxing community with Jamba. I even have a handy guide that will walk you through everything.


Quest Tracking

You will want a quick way to see how your team is progressing through quests. Most use Jamba, since it does so many other things that multiboxers need anyway. But you can also use things like Carbonite or another questtracker. I use tomQuest2.



Unit Frames

You can stick with the default frames or you can go with custom frames, but either way, they are the place where you can keep track of things like health, mana, buffs, debuffs, casting and so on. No matter which route you go, you will want to make sure the information is easy to see and interpret at a glance. A dark health bar on a dark background may look sweet, but it's not going to be very practical if you can't immediately tell how much health your toons have. Being able to see all your buffs in one place might seem like a good idea, but you'd probably get more mileage out of filtering your buffs down so only vital ones are tracked.



Macro Extender

Blizzard's default macro interface is not exactly the most effective system. Since we require so many macros doing so many things, we need as much macro space and as many characters per macro as we can get. Being able to sort and order them is also useful. Many multiboxers make use of macro addons like BindPad, SuperDuperMacro or Jamba-Macro.


Buffing

A buffing addon makes life so much easier for multiboxers. An addon like SmartBuff will not only save you work, but it'll also save you macros. Once you configure SmartBuff, you can simply add /click [nomounted] SmartBuff_KeyButton to your follow macro and every time you press follow, you'll also reapply any buffs that are dead or dying.


Bar Mods

The default bars work just fine but, I'm a fan of bar mods because they are so configurable. I enjoy being able to scale them and change the shape or number of slots. For example, I set up a Dominos bar to look just like my Naga's number pad. I also have certain bars hidden in certain situations, such as a bar that only shows with a modifier for my crafting skills. They're also easier to set up keybindings for.


Cooldown Timers

With so many things to keep track of, you'll want an easy way to see timers. I have two things I put under this category. The first is Cooldown timers. This would be something that can keep track of who cast what when and how long until they can use it again, like Bloodlust. For this I use Deadly Boss Mods with the Spell Timers addon. This gives me a nice visual set of bars that count down whatever I decide to track.

The other is a way to enhance the cooldown spiral on icons. I use OmniCC for this since it will work on just about any frame, so I can add a cooldown spiral on my party frames to let me know when various party member buffs are going to expire, like water or lightning shield.


Scrolling Combat Text

Getting a good, configurable combat text mod can really help you keep track of things you might forget about. I've used MikScrollingBattleText for ages and in so many different ways. I've used it to look for procs, cooldowns, expiring buffs, anything that I might miss in the heat of battle can pop up right there in my face.


Of course, there's many more addons that people use, but I'm focusing only on the things that will effect your multiboxing. Auction mods and things like that are great to have, but they aren't going to give you any vital information in combat or information that helps you keep track of what is going on with your slave toons.

Advanced Macros

One thing you should never have to worry about is macros. No matter how complex a class is, there's ways to simplify it and break things down into a handful of manageable buttons.

The first thing most people do is look for someone else's macros, but I'm a proponent of doing the research. I spend a lot of time lurking around sites like Elitist Jerks to try and get a good breakdown of what I should be doing. While I might not be able to min/max like the pros and I am 100% fail at math, I can still pull out a lot of info that I can work with. This way I can build the most effective macros possible instead of just trying to faceroll everything & hoping for the best.

Taking the time to study a little bit on how a class should be played lets me break up abilities into chunks that I can build into various macros, for example, here's a thread where I discuss how I built my Enhance Shaman's macros.

By spending some time to research some of the mechanics of the class & how the top players play it, I was able break down the abilities into simple, macroable chunks that took advantage of as much as possible, giving me significant DPS increases.

Castsequences Revisited

We've already seen how to use a /castsequence to string together a repeatable group of spells and abilities, but there's still more we can do with them, but let's look at some other things you will find useful.


Lock-ups

I also mentioned locking up a castsequence. I find this incredibly useful for classes that have spells they need to use that fall outside of a standard rotation, such as DoTs or long-term debuffs. It'll look a lot like the macro above, but instead of the sequence part being able to automatically reset once it gets to the end, we use a fake ability to prevent the sequence from completing.

Here's one I use for my Death Knight

Code:

---

/castsequence [nochanneling] [@party1target] reset=combat/alt Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, null
/cast Dark Transformation

---

See the "null" at the end? This can be anything. Some people use nil, some use cake - as long as it is not the name of a spell you can actually cast, your macro will lock up at the end because there is no way for the game to process the command. At that point, it will fall through to the next line, which is Dark Transformation in this case. It can also be a full castsequence instead of just a single spell.

I actually have all of my DK's DPS macros set up with that same sequence.


Duplicating Castsequences

Yup, you read that correctly. I use the same nulled castsequence across all my DK's DPS macros. It's a nice little trick I employ to make sure that I'm applying my diseases before I do anything else. What this allows me to do is make sure that my diseases are applied only once at the beginning of a fight so I don't end up wasting time and resources reapplying diseases to targets that already have them.

If you use the exact same sequence in multiple places, WoW advances all of them at the same time, no matter what button it was called from. Why would I do that instead of just putting it on its own button? SO I can make use of


Multiple Steps and Priority Casting


Originally, I had a whole breakdown of setting up Multiple Steps, but now we have another means of simplifying things as well, and it would take too much editing to cover it all here. So instead, I'll point you to the MoP Macro Library were I cover both setups. Here I'll just cover the actual duplicated sequences part.

Here we see a collection of macros using duplicated, nulled sequences. Using steps or using a priority setup, the duplicated sequences will play out pretty much the same way -

Macro 1

Code:

---

/castsequence [nochanneling] [@party1target] reset=combat/alt Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, null
/cast Dark Transformation

---

Macro 2

Code:

---

/castsequence [nochanneling] [@party1target] reset=combat/alt Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, null
/cast [nochanneling] [@party1target] Scourge Strike

---

Macro 3

Code:

---

/castsequence [nochanneling] [@party1target] reset=combat/alt Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, null
/cast [nochanneling] [@party1target] Festering Strike

---

Macro 4

Code:

---

/cast [nopet, nomounted, nochanneling] Raise Dead
/castsequence [nochanneling] Horn of Winter, Pestilence

---

This puts up my diseases before doing anything else. Once it hits the null, those sequences lock up and the game moves on to cast the spells on line 2 of each macro. I also have 2 reset conditionals to reset the nulled sequence, so if I leave combat, they will reset, or I can manually reset them using ALT.

Healing and the Like

Every new boxer has questions about how to manage healing without wasting mana on simply spamming heals all the time, or how to let their healer join in DPSing when they don't need heals.

There used to be a time when it was all about more buttons. More than a few people had reserved their entire number pad or slews of modifiers {or both!} to a collection of healing macros.

Now we have tons of options. You could, of course, stick with individual buttons or make your healer the master, but some programs have some very nice features that allow you to heal with ease.

ISBoxer has VideoFX

Or you can use Repeater Regions or Click Regions
ISBoxer Repeater - ISBoxer Click
HotKeyNet Mouseover Regions - HotKeyNet Clicks



By making use of setups like these, you can free up your healer to only heal when needed and do something else {or nothing else} when healing isn't required.

But you're not restricted to simply using those setups for healing. You can set up anything you'd want to use party targets for, such as casting various Hands from Paladin slaves, Death Coils from DKs, single-target buffs, etc. I even use these setups for things like rezzing, curing and setting up CC. While it may take some time to set up, it can save you a lot of headaches down the road and make a lot of things more manageable when you have fewer buttons to think about.



Round Robin

Round Robin is a bit like multi-step macros. The first time you press your key, it does A, the next time, it does B and so on. However, while a multi-step setup has every one of your toons doing something, a Round Robin is for one toon at a time.

This sort of thing is used for any kind of situation where you want something done one at a time instead of all at once. For example, spell interrupts. If you need to interrupt a spell cast on a mob or an enemy player, you don't want everyone to do it at once because then everyone will have their interrupt on cooldown and most of those casts would be wasted. It's better to stagger who does it so you always have someone with their interrupt off cooldown.

But, it can be used for all sorts of things. You can use it to stagger totems or heals, rezzes, cures, taunts...

RR in ISBoxer
RR in HotKeyNet
RR in Keyclone - It's about halfway down.

Mouse Management

The very first thing to understand is that multiboxing is about 95% key broadcasting. It is simply not efficient to depend on your mouse while trying to multibox. But that is not to say that you should just forget about ever being able to use your mouse. Most programs out there have a means of allowing you to send your mouse to all of your screens, and this can be a great boon to your gaming.


UI Use

New multiboxers always ask about setting up their User Interface so it looks the same on all of their toons. This can be one area where mouse broadcasting can be very useful. Programs like ISBoxer and HotKeyNet have options to set your mouse broadcasting to always on, which will keep duplicating your mouse clicks as long as it is toggled on.

ISBoxer and Repeater

HotKeyNet Version -

For HKN, I added two Hotkey definitions so that if my Scroll Lock is on while using my mouse, it will broadcast my left and right mouse button clicks to every window. If Scroll Lock is off, mouse actions only go to my main window. {Keep in mind, my normal broadcasting uses Caps Lock, not Scroll Lock like the default script. Adjust the below code accordingly.}

Code:

---

<Hotkey ScrollLockOn LButton> 
        <SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
                <Clickmouse %TriggerMainKey%>
                <RestoreMousePos>

<Hotkey ScrollLockOn RButton> 
        <SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
                <Clickmouse %TriggerMainKey%>
                <RestoreMousePos>

---

If you don't have an always on option in your program or don't want to use it, you can still use the copy and paste option from here.



Popup Use

Another common use for mouse broadcasting is for various popup options. Jamba will take care of many of your needs for things like quest dialogues and purchasing, but sometimes you run across things Jamba doesn't handle. Purchase confirmations for example. Every program out there should have the ability to pass a single mouse click so you can broadcast your mouse for these. While not terribly exciting or game-changing, it will save you from having to swap screens all the time.


AOE Use

Who doesn't love AOE? Being able to use your AOE damage and healing spells is vital to certain classes and many of those spells require you to manually place your targeting on the ground. Using your program's mouse broadcasting will make this as easy for a multiboxer as it is for a solo player.

HotKeyNet AOE
ISBoxer AOE
Keyclone AOE

Every one uses the same style macro

Code:

---

/script SetView(4); SetView(4)
/cast AOE SPELL

---

The only difference between the 3 is how you set up sending the mouse click to place the targeting rectule on the ground.

Understanding the SetView stuff - about halfway down the page under Part 2 - Camera Angles

Movement Issues

I'm not talking about just running around and doing quest stuff. Long-term movement should always be manged through the follow command. While you can, and in some cases should, "pass" movement keys to all windows, even the slightest variance in latency, position or facing will cause your toons to get progressively more scattered. But, since most things won't just stand still and let us kill them, we have to adapt. So here's some common issues you are likely to run across and the usual solutions multiboxers employ.


Facing

Issue - You got fearbombed or the mob moved and suddenly your slaves are stuck facing the wrong way.
Solution - There's actually several options.

1. Have your slaves follow and then break follow. Just a standard roundup where you quickly tap your follow hotkey and then quickly break follow. Drawback - Follow doesn't have a terribly long range. You may end up running all over the place on your main to round everyone up.

2. Focusing Lens macros. Very simply, a macro that makes your slaves use a Focusing Lens. The Focusing Lens will automatically turn you towards your target when it casts. Drawback - Focusing Lenses are crafted items, and while they have a lot of charges, you will still need the materials and someone to make them for you. They also have a very long range, so you may be facing the right way, but be too far away to actually get back to attacking.

3. Interact With Target. You'd use this just like you would with option 1. tap your IWT key and then quickly tap another movement key to make your slaves stop running toward the target. Drawback - Can't really think of any. IWT has a much further range than Follow and triggers movement. It's the best of both previous options with none of the drawbacks.



Hurty Stuff

Issue - Pools of shadowy death. Walls of fire. Spikes of stone. Everyone knows by now that you have to get out of the hurty stuff. Easier said than done when you're dealing with more than one toon.
Solution - There's few things you can keep in mind to make stuff like this easier.

1. Moving backwards is SLOW. Don't try to backpeddal out of things that hurt. Move forward or strafe out.

2. Follow means delays. Just because your main is running to safety doesn't mean that your slaves are. They're going to stand around in the owie stuff until they tether and start following....usually through the hurty stuff that your main is running away from. Sometimes it's better to just push forward with the arrow keys or strafe.

3. Follow Strobing can be your friend. If you use Jamba, you can enable follow strobing through a macro command. In high-movement fights like the jousting event in TotC, I'll turn on follow strobing and use it to launch my slaves via charge and Jamba's follow strobing will kick in and rubberband my slaves back to me. For the first two bosses in Heroic Tol'vir, I put my whole team on follow strobe and kite the boss around backwards so that my tank is hitting him from the front and my slaves are hitting him from behind while moving, keeping them out of the way of bombs and fire trails.

4. Click to Move can also be your friend. With Click to Move on, you can quickly move over to the appropriate screen and just click on a clear area, or even turn on your mouse repeating to click for everyone.


Phasing

The most common gripe about travel is hitting a phase line and losing all your slaves. Not much you can do about that, unfortunately. However, you can make it a little less painful.

This is another task for Jamba's Follow Strobing. My mount macro automatically turns on strobing so when I'm traveling, I don't have to worry about follow breaking.

Anytime I cross a phase line, I press my forward arrow to push everyone through it. Jamba's follow strobing will then kick in again and everyone is back on follow.

Phases themselves are usually accompanied by a subzone change. Whenever I'm in an area that I know uses phasing, I'll keep an eye out for the new subzone to flash on my screen. That's my signal to use my forward arrow and hold up for a second to make sure everyone is through the phase and back on follow.

Jamba also has the ability to send alerts when you lose follow on your slaves, which can be configured in Jamba > Team > Follow. Or you can use the team display to show follow status. I have my team window set up right next to my mini-map, so when I'm running around looking for nodes to gather, the follow status is directly in my line of vision.


Movement Speed

Several classes have passive speed boosts to either normal movement or mounted movement. This is something you will want to take into consideration as most don't effect your whole party. Spending points in movement-boosting talents might seem like a good idea, but it's not really saving any time if you have to constantly "wait up" or go back and pick up a toon who lost follow because your main moves faster than they can. Or worse, watching them get stuck on things or falling off cliffs because they try to cut corners to keep up with the main.

In cases like this, people will sometimes opt to lead with a slave while traveling. You can also opt not to take speed boost on your main or you can use speed-boost enhancements like boot enchants, riding crops or mithril spurs. Druids and shamans can also drop into travel form to keep up with a main on foot. Finally, you can use multi-person mounts and have the slower toons pair up with the faster toons so they don't get left behind, which is especially useful if you are using a high-level toon to boost a low-level toon since mount speed is inherent now and you can no longer "downgrade" your mount to get a slower speed.

Gathering, Collection Quests and Other Annoyances

Collections

Just about anyone who's been doing this for a while will tell you that collection quests are the bane of our existence. They aren't even that fun as a solo player. They are downright brutal for a multiboxer, since WoW doesn't like to share quest drops among party members very often. The good news is, you usually don't have to do them. Unless you're obsessive and can't imagine leaving a zone with quests undone, you can usually just skip collection quests. WoW almost always has 2 zones that you can level in per bracket, so you should never have an issue with not enough quests. And if you do, you always have the option of going to the other zone or doing dungeons or Battle Grounds to supplement your XP.

That said, sometimes you just have to suck it up and do them. Certain collection quests are needed to advance questlines that you can't or don't want to skip. The only tip I have for those is don't drive yourself crazy. Spend a little while doing the quest, then go off and do another quest and come back to it.

If possible, check out a leveling guide or do a search for the mobs or mobs in the area on wowhead to see if there's going to be other quests tied to those same mobs or locations. I always do this first because nothing sucks more than spending 45 minutes on a collection quest only to find out that the next step to a totally different quest was going to send me right back out there.

And always, always, always make sure you make everyone loot. Some quests actually do share questdrops for the whole party, but if you use Assist/IWT to loot on everyone at the same time, only one will pick it up and everyone else will get "that object is busy". Usually your master will win out on the lootgrab and you won't see that message, so always double-check.


Gathering and Professions

At first glance, you might think the best thing to do is take all the professions you could want across your team from the start. Usually, this is not a good idea. Most of the time, you are never going to be in the sweet-spot where the stuff you craft is going to be useful. It will either be too low, too high or you will outlevel it in hours anyway. Most likely, you will outlevel the areas you need to gather the mats from too fast to gather all the stuff you need to keep a crafting skill up to date.

It's very, very easy to waste a lot of time crafting. If you have RAF ticking away, you don't want to be spending hours upon hours in a city trying to level crafting when you could be out earning XP. Especially since you may not like the team you have at high levels.

It's usually a better idea to just take gathering professions while you're leveling and either sell the mats you gather to make money for things like mount and spell training, or store them for later use. Most people take mining and herbalism on their mains and skinning on an alt. This is a good standard to go by since it's a lot easier to go back and gather what you need at max level or simply take all that money you earn and buy what you need off the Auction House.

One thing to keep in mind is that gathering skills reward XP. Taking herbalism and mining on a main can cause you to rather quickly outlevel your other toons, so you might need to get creative to keep everyone close in level. You can either skip a few quests here and there on your main, try giving everyone "equal time" with gathering skills, try level locking your main {I don't know if that actually works} or in a case where you have a higher level toon on one of your accounts, you can put heirloom gear on the toons that don't get gathering XP or do a few rounds of boosting using a max-level toon in place of the one that's too far ahead.


Me personally, I also like to include an enchanter so I can DE drops in dungeons and other BoPs as I level up, since some of those mats can bring in some good money. You might also want to include a tailor or leatherworker since most cloth and leather doesn't sell for much {at least on my server} compared to the DE mats. This does 2 things. First, it allows you to feed your enchanter so they are always able to DE what they get. Second, it allows you to turn those bulky stacks of cloth or leather into bolts and upgraded leather, saving you precious bag space. Since I already have several teams leveled, I just send off my cloth/leather to one of my high-level tailors/leatherworkers to craft and send those to the enchanter to DE as needed.


So, what do you take when you're all leveled and ready to do tradeskills?

Alchemy - always a popular choice. Most multiboxers have several alchemists because transmuting is a pretty consistant moneymaker. I myself have 8 I think, most of them on alts I don't play, but I still have 2 on my main team. The flasks are a nice buff to have and it's hard to ignore the profit or savings in being able to transmute gems and special metals.

Blacksmithing - I always like to have BS on my tank. The extra sockets are always nice especially combined with JC only gems, and I'm sort of addicted to skeleton keys since I don't have a rogue. It's also pretty useful since I have 3 plate wearers on my team. Being able to craft plate gear takes a little pressure off getting drops, especially if I can gather my own orbs, and BS always offers some very nice weapons/shields even if you aren't a team full of plate wearers.

Jewel Crafting - The JC only gems are always a welcome boost. Prospecting is a pretty good money maker, too, either selling raw gems or cut ones. Even if you don't sell the gems, you'll save money cutting them for your team instead of having to buy them off the Auction House.

Enchanting - Just like Jewel Crafting, you'll save and/or make a lot of money with disenchanting. With several toons who are always going to need enchants, you don't want to be throwing away money on the Auction House every other day. You should be able to pull in a constant flow of enchanting mats from dungeons and questing. And there's always the stuff you're not going to be able to sell on the Auction House, like all those greens you make while leveling things like JC. Plus, the ring enchants are sweet.

Tailoring/Leatherworking - Just like Blacksmithing, they can be great choices for helping to gear your team up. Both offer nice bonuses. Personally, I have these on alts and not my main team, just so I have someone who can do them. Things like bags, cloaks, threads and armor kits are nothing to sneeze at, but I didn't feel like they offered enough for me to level them all over again on my main team. Blacksmithing, on the other hand, would allow me to make weapons and shields for everyone using BoP orb drops, so I thought that was reason enough to relevel it. But that's my personal preferance. If you've got a lot of cloth/leather/chain wearers on your team, you would get a lot of use out of having a LW or Tailor who can grab the orbs and make gear for them.

Engineering - this is an iffy one. People seem to either love it or hate it. People even bounce between loving and hating it. People like me. On one hand, I love it. Things like gas clouds and the like for bonus elementals is awesome. There's a lot of cool toys, the tinkers are nice enough and I love throwing bombs. But I also often feel like it's pretty lackluster for the amount of effort and money I put into it. It's never something I'd give up Alchemy, BS, JC or Enchanting for and so far it's one of the only skills I've refused to level again. It just doesn't offer anything incredibly useful to my team as a whole.

Inscription - This is the only other skill I refuse to level again. A lot of people swear by the money-making potential of it but I don't think that's bonus enough to keep it leveled on my main team. I'm happy enough to have it on a dusty old alt somewhere.

The Gathering Skills - I always keep Skinning, Herbalism and Mining on my main team so I can gather my own mats to use or sell. I usually split them up between my DPS because I want the bigger bonuses that come from the crafting tradeskills on my tank and healer. I always figure a stronger tank and healer makes things easier when gearing up, so I have BS and JC on my tank for the extra sockets and JC only gems and Alchemy and Enchanting on my healer for the flask, Alchemist Stone and ring enchants. Then each of my DPS slaves have a crafting tradeskill and a gathering tradeskill. In case you missed it all the way down at the bottom of the other guide, here's how I manage gathering from the slaves.

Super Awesome Useful Macros

A Better 1-button Mount Macro

Code:

---

/use [button:2] Traveler's Tundra Mammoth; [swimming] Abyssal Seahorse; [flyable] Headless Horseman's Mount; Headless Horseman's Mount
/dismount [mod]
/script VehicleExit()
/jamba-follow strobeonme slave

---

So, thanks to luxlunae's comment, I revisited the mount macro to make better use of conditionals for multiboxers.

If you click using the right mouse button, you'll summon the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth for a multiperson mount for boosting or the vendors. If you use the keybind normally, and you are in swimmable water, you will summon the Abyssal Seahorse. If you are someplace where you can fly, it will summon your flying mount. Otherwise it will summon your ground mount. Change mounts as applicable.

If you are already mounted, it will dismount you. Adding the [mod] conditional will make it so you need to trigger the macro with CTRL, ALT or Shift in order to dismount. Or you can specify a particular modifier. This way if some of your guys mount up and some don't on the first press, the guys that are mounted will stay mounted and the ones who aren't will try to mount again.

If you are in a vehicle, it will exit the vehicle.

Finally, it will enable Jamba's Follow Strobing.


Looking For Dungeon

Code:

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/click LFDRoleCheckPopupAcceptButton
/click LFGDungeonReadyDialogEnterDungeonButton
/run MiniMapInstanceDifficulty:Hide() MiniMapInstanceDifficulty.Show=function() end

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Accepts the role ready check and enters the dungeon. The last line also hides the little instance difficulty flag, since I generally already know what I queued for.

Code:

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/run LFGTeleport(IsInLFGDungeon())

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This one ports you out of the dungeon.


Invite Etc

Code:

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/jamba-team invite
/click [nomounted] SmartBuff_KeyButton
/jamba-follow strobeoff all
/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();

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This is the Master's version. It invites your Jamba Team to group, uses Smartbuff to buff your group {only if you are not mounted}, turns off Jamba Follow strobing {I only use strobing when mounted, normal follow is enough for just running around} and hides the annoying errors text.

Code:

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/click [nomounted] SmartBuff_KeyButton
/cast [nomounted, nocombat] Totemic Recall
/follow party1
/clearfocus
/script SetView (4); SetView (4)
/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();

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This is the slaves version. It also uses SmartBuff and hides the errors text. It also sucks up the totems from my shamans, makes my slaves follow my tank, clears my focus {I use focus for CC} and adjusts my camera view.


Targeting

Code:

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/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/castsequence blah, blah, blah

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If you currently have a hostile target, it will drop down to do your cast sequence. If your target is not hostile or is dead, it will target the next hostile target and then let you cast.


If you're looking for class specific macros, head on over to The MoP Macro Library.

Good stuff.

I'm always fascinated to hear how people deal with common situations (I for example insist on using two separate mount and dismount macros because "4 toons mounted,one toon didn't, now we're all playing the mount/dismount game" bugs me). I really really like the way you're manipulating the duplicated cast sequences, definitely gives me something to think about. You also just caused me to switch my follow key to the capslock button. Might as well make the damn thing useful for a change!

First, Awesome guide. Second, the mount macro is interesting. I acutally use F7 to mount and created a key map in ISBoxer that sends F7 to all toons. This works great for me, but judging by your post there is a mount issue with multiboxing. Could you elaborate on what it is so I can judge if I need to make a mount macro?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by luxlunae

I'm always fascinated to hear how people deal with common situations (I for example insist on using two separate mount and dismount macros because "4 toons mounted,one toon didn't, now we're all playing the mount/dismount game" bugs me).

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Coming back to this a little late, but I just started playing solo on some old alts to waste some time and I remembered this comment while I was remaking all the defunct macros. So I went a-searching...

/dismount can use conditionals, so that should solve your dis/mount issue.

Code:

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/use [nomounted, swimming] Abyssal Seahorse;  [nomounted, flyable] Blue Wind Rider; [nomounted] Ochre Skeletal Warhorse
/dismount [mod]
/script VehicleExit()

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With this, you can mount up and pressing the macro again will not dismount anyone who is mounted, but anyone who IS NOT mounted, will try to mount again. No one will DISMOUNT until you hit the macro with CTRL, ALT or Shift. Of course, you can also specify the modifier you want to use as well.

does your target macro override FTL? say my main has acquired a target, are my alts going to potentially grab a different one?

My target macro should only kick in if you have no target, a friendly target or a dead target. My slaves all actually use

Code:

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/assist party1
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]

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So they will prefer to assist my main but if they can't {main is mind controlled, different phase, too far away...} they will pick their own target. So you should be able to get them to work together without issue.

You could remove the FTL Assist Me.
And replace it with a similar macro, to Khat's in IS Boxer:

/assist {FTL}
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]

Should it be [nodead] ?

No, it basically reads as "target an enemy if my current target cannot be harmed or is dead." Nodead would try to target a new target even if the current is still alive, just like using tabtarget.

Khat, you're the man! Appreciate you =)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Refugeelcci

Khat, you're the man! Appreciate you =)

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Actually, I'm The Woman, lol. ;) Thanks, glad it was helpful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Khatovar

Actually, I'm The Woman, lol. ;) Thanks, glad it was helpful.

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To say the least, you put a lot of effort into that. If you didn't, you're very good at convincing me that you did. I find that all the questions I have, you've pretty much covered them in one thread or the other.

I read in another thread that this forum was against the guy from Pwnboxer. That Pwnboxer isn't a program that was used here. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind telling me why? I subbed to him on youtube before I found this site. After watching his gold making vid a few times. I'm not convinced about him, something isn't right. Was hoping you maybe had that bit of info =)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Refugeelcci

I read in another thread that this forum was against the guy from Pwnboxer. That Pwnboxer isn't a program that was used here. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind telling me why? I subbed to him on youtube before I found this site. After watching his gold making vid a few times. I'm not convinced about him, something isn't right. Was hoping you maybe had that bit of info =)

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Well, because this does come up every so often, may as well make it part of a sticky somewhere. If other mods want to chime in or edit this post down or out, have at it. I'll try to keep it as flameless as possible, but some of us know how that tends to go.


The person behind that program used to be a member here. He was banned a long time ago for causing strife within the community, attacking members of the community {especially the creators of other boxing programs}, lying about his own product being "Blizzard Approved", spamming community members with advertisements, spamming his ads on other people's videos, using other people's videos without permission and claiming they were using pwnboxer, or at the very least allows affiliates to do so, claiming that competing software violates the ToS, more stolen videos and even posing as different users to poo-poo one user's methods just to plug his own product.


There's other issues that have taken place over the years, but I think that gives a pretty good idea of why he's permabanned here. Many of the other issues are not public knowledge and it's not my place to address them.

The program itself has only recently been "cleared for discussion" because people often come here for assistance with it and information on it. Rather than just closing the threads, it was agreed that it was more responsible to offer the chance for users to hear from other people who have used it and to hear about the alternatives. So, we will allow discussion in the interest of fairness, but advertisement - in any form, not just specific to this one program - is heavily moderated.

Lastly, it's not so much that we are "against" anyone or any product. It's that we are for the multiboxing community. That means we are strongly in favor of following the rules of the games and maintaining a positive and knowledgeable community that puts our hobby in a good light so that we can continue to multibox. The environment created around that product and that person was not conducive to that.