40 man team... for the giggles

I'm pondering a 40 man team of my own, (my wife and kid are willing to step in and take control of 1 char each on difficult fights to help out).

How far do you think it's possible to make it? I think MC would be pretty doable with the right comp, but to make it easier you'd rely mainly on a metric ton of mages, right? Since they just frost bolt endlessly for the most part.

If any of you were for some reason going to attempt it, what would your 40 man team look like? Also trying to keep in mind leveling them in 8 separate 5-man groups, which is a bit awkward because if I remember correctly, you only really needed 3 tanks max for MC, so doing dungeons with each team might be out? Depending on how many druids are leveled and if Shamans can tank all the 5-mans.

Sorry, rambling now, but either way, what would your comp look like? Again, I'm assuming a hilarious amount of mages, but I could be dead wrong.

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Originally Posted by fenerous

I'm pondering a 40 man team

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I've seen this done on private servers with the old API that allows you to macro a significant amount of decision making and automate healing, decursing, etc. With the newer API and having to micro everything yourself I doubt it. Even a relatively simple raid like MC has a ton of movement required, spreading characters out or into stacks, decursing, taunt swapping, CC and add management, etc. Simple mechanics when dealt with alone but trying to manually manage everything by yourself or even with two people would be rough.

Also, casters deal pretty poor DPS in early tiers. Most of the fights in MC benefit a ton from having stacked warriors and rogues to cleave adds. Stacking mages would make things easier from a movement perspective but it would reduce your DPS considerably and make many fights a lot harder. According to DPS logs recorded in vanilla preraid BiS warrior in MC averages around 480DPS compared to 360DPS for mages. That's largely due to being able to cleave/WW adds.

Mages are brought in MC mostly for decurse and polymorph (which is also very difficult to track from multiple mages with no focus target.)

Healing would for sure be a challenge, don't have much time to reply, will do so later. But for now;

Didn't decursing in vanilla work without a target? I swear it was a one button press up until 2.0 or something, which is a big factor on pulling off an MC run or not.

There's some light dancing that needs to happen (which should be doable with different /follow groups... In theory) and the hardest thing to figure out is things like the Baron's fire bombs, since I'd have to quickly switch and run away, or pre-plan by spreading WAY out and kiting him through the tunnel to my spaced out group. Hrm.

Either way, I'll try my best to detail each boss tonight and see if someone here can hopefully help me notice things I'm missing before I attempt such a silly feat.

Thanks for the reply!

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Originally Posted by fenerous

Didn't decursing in vanilla work without a target? I swear it was a one button press up until 2.0 or something, which is a big factor on pulling off an MC run or not.

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The ability to do what you're referring to was changed during Vanilla, and has never returned (as would be expected). Regardless, Classic is using the modern API.

As for wanting to try 40-man raiding... I say go for it if you have the resources and time. Personally, I'm all for wacky-and-wild PvE gameplay, but I don't think this path is one that will be easy.

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Originally Posted by MiRai

The ability to do what you're referring to was changed during Vanilla, and has never returned (as would be expected). Regardless, Classic is using the modern API.

As for wanting to try 40-man raiding... I say go for it if you have the resources and time. Personally, I'm all for wacky-and-wild PvE gameplay, but I don't think this path is one that will be easy.

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hrrrm, so that's something that will be updated? Damn, that makes it super hard for a few of the fights, lol.

And yeah, it's not going to be easy by any means. As long as people think it's plausible then I want to 100% try it. But it's it's not even possible to do MC, then there's no point and it's a giant waste of time.

Right now I'm trying to determine if it's even possible to pull off.

I'm only looking at MC because BWL is impossible for only two people controlling chars I think and anything beyond that is not even worth considering.

But hey, MC is fun and there's two legendaries in there, if there's a chance, I want to try!

One of the simpler bosses in MC is Lucifron. Ignoring healing and tanking, the encounter is mostly about dispelling the constant magic and curse debuffs asap. Even a mechanic as simple as this will be difficult while boxing 40 characters. Manually clicking a dozen raid frames to remove every debuff will be time consuming and not dispelling them in time will cause a wipe. The curse might be manageable with a /targetparty macro if your raid DPS consists primarily of mages, but there are multiple magic effects also and you won't have a priest in every group so some manual dispelling will be required.

Then you have more complex fights like Majordomo that require independent interrupts on several targets, managing multiple CC's, movement, monitoring buffs on each target so you don't kill yourself on the shields, etc.

Might be possible but I wouldn't bet on it. I would guess 4 players boxing with 10 characters each and with a proper raid composition might be able to manage it. 8 With 5 each should be able to clear most of MC quite easily. Again, assuming they organize their class composition properly in advance.

It's not that the mechanics are hard, it's just that there are too many actions per minute required for one or two people to keep up in a 40 man raid.

I am 100% sure that molten core and onyxia are doable in a multibox if you bring the right comp. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time theory crafting comps/strategies for 40boxing raids over the past year and I can assure you the old auto healing API stuff is not needed for the early raids. You are right about stacking mages. Another poster mentioned something about warriors doing ~30% more dps than mages but that is almost completely irrelevant. Mages have practically infinite mana with evocation, mana gem, and mana pots. They have fire ward to absorb fire damage, they have an innate threat reduction, they are ranged, they are less gear dependant than most dps classes and they have decurse. None of the bosses will be a dps race so all the utility massively outweighs any dps they lack.

You’ll have to get creative with raid healing. You could have a button to have the entire raid health pot, one to healthstone and one to bandage. Have your frostbolt spamming button also have a bunch of healers spam heals on the main tank. (I could go on forever but I don’t want to write an essay right now lol)

My ultimate goal is to clear BWL by 40boxing. I’m not sure if I have enough fingers to pull it off but I’m certain it’s possible.

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Originally Posted by MrPeakyBicepsMan

I am 100% sure that molten core and onyxia are doable in a multibox if you bring the right comp. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time theory crafting comps/strategies for 40boxing raids over the past year and I can assure you the old auto healing API stuff is not needed for the early raids. You are right about stacking mages. Another poster mentioned something about warriors doing ~30% more dps than mages but that is almost completely irrelevant. Mages have practically infinite mana with evocation, mana gem, and mana pots. They have fire ward to absorb fire damage, they have an innate threat reduction, they are ranged, they are less gear dependant than most dps classes and they have decurse. None of the bosses will be a dps race so all the utility massively outweighs any dps they lack.

You’ll have to get creative with raid healing. You could have a button to have the entire raid health pot, one to healthstone and one to bandage. Have your frostbolt spamming button also have a bunch of healers spam heals on the main tank. (I could go on forever but I don’t want to write an essay right now lol)

My ultimate goal is to clear BWL by 40boxing. I’m not sure if I have enough fingers to pull it off but I’m certain it’s possible.

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I theory crafted BWL as much as I could. Thankfully I do have two people in the house willing to each tank for me, so at least tanking and an off-tank is off my shoulders sometimes (or Hell, one can be on decurse duty/healing or whatnot)

For me, BWL goal would to be able to get up to Firemaw (I think?) so I can get the ingot drops.

If you want to or are willing to, want to slam our heads together and see if we cannot help each other out and see if we missed anything? I'm still working on my comp a lot trying to make adjustments each time I read up / watch fights in MC and BWL just to be 100% prepared.

Also, gearing I don't think will be a massive issue, as you said about mages plus we "only" need 40 chars. Every other guild needs 60+ because not all of them go on the same exact raid, so I think we will gear quicker than a lot of people realize. Hell, even if it's a lot of MC trash clears for a while.

I'm rambling a bit now, but glad to see I'm not alone in trying to figure this out!

Also, things I think that will be harder to manage when doing MC (please correct me if I'm wrong, trying to not miss anything)

Again, this is NOT saying it'll be easy, just looking for the bits that are extra hard for any of us who want to multi-box the raid ourselves or with 1-2 other people.

Bosses:

1. Lucifron - dispelling/decursing

Might be macro dependent or just a massive click fest and hope for the best?

2. Magmadar - fire ground effects

Keep totems down for MC and keep moving raid out of ground effects

3. Gehennas - decursing and aeo stuns if fighting the guards together

Not much from first fight, other than a few extra annoying bits

4. Garr - Weeeeeelll the firesworn control might be a bit tough, lol.

4 warlocks being taken to banish 4 of them, multiple ways to tackling this encounter, not sure what would work best here.

5. Geddon - exploding raid members

With mage heavy builds the melee range abilities are not too much of a worry, but people turning into a bomb and needing to run off might be a challenge to swap and run away quick enough

6. Shazzrah - Teleporting to the raid and losing threat off the tank

Not sure on the best approach here, maybe a hunter behind the tank on the opposite side of the raid cluster to help pull aggro back to the tank?

7. Sulfuron - Probably the easiest boss?

Need to separate the healers, applying poisons/curse of tongues

8. Golemagg - Endurance fight

I think we can handle this one with no added headaches?

9. Majordomo - 8 pulls with him

Keeping targets sheeped, dealing with reflective shields and the tank on Domo himself being teleported to the coals and losing threat is what needs to be tackled here, will be a lot of moving parts that need to be executed

10. Rag - splitting members, grouping then splitting again

I think the hardest part for us will be end of phase 2 and start of phase 3. You want to burn down all but one of the spawns to buy yourself time to set back up for phase three, so can't kill 'em all at once and then getting spread out along the rocks again might be hard to do.

challenge part I imagine: you have 4 or more beast computers? and you can already 40box bfa client with no DC, lag, etc?

No idea about BFA, wouldn't play that trash, so I only have one active account right now (was praying for beta).

No idea what the requirements would be, I might have to steal a few Radeon VIIs from the ETH rigs, lol.

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Originally Posted by MrPeakyBicepsMan

Another poster mentioned something about warriors doing ~30% more dps than mages but that is almost completely irrelevant.

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It isn't irrelevant though. 30% More DPS means, you're able to cleave adds and clear significantly faster so you have less time to make mistakes and have to deal with fewer mechanics. Healer mana is the problem, not the mages' mana. Particularly in preraid gear.

In addition to their lower personal DPS, mages will have to be within Lucifron's curse radius in order to do DPS which means the majority of your raid will be cursed every 15 seconds, requiring your mages to spend at least 3-5 seconds (assuming your macro functions perfectly) out of every 15 decursing.

How you would manage the magic debuff I'm not sure. Alliance would have an easier time with this since you at least get paladins along with priests for dispelling but even so, macroing magic dispels will still be very time consuming without multiple priests in each group, which you won't have. Even with 8 priests, which is still too many, it would take each priest 7.5+ seconds to dispel their entire party. Macros are never 100% effective so you will inevitably see impending doom detonations on each cast which will probably result in deaths.

Again, these are just the issues with one of the simplest bosses in MC. Some of the other encounters are much more micro intensive and require CC, interrupts and movement on several targets all to be microd at the same time while tanking and healing 40 characters. Particularly without /focus, I just don't think this will be possible for a single person to manage. Interrupting or CCing the 4 healers on Majordomo alone would be a challenge to box even if that was your only job.

Something else to consider is the sheer amount of time it would take each week to farm the necessary consumables for 40 characters. I don't think there are enough hours in the day.

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Originally Posted by fenerous

No idea about BFA, wouldn't play that trash, so I only have one active account right now (was praying for beta).

No idea what the requirements would be, I might have to steal a few Radeon VIIs from the ETH rigs, lol.

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you can try the setup with trial accounts (though you'll need 5 new bnet accounts) and while classic is a bit lighter than bfa it's about the same code client side (just fewer/simpler textures etc so less GPU load and less memory used)

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Originally Posted by Moorea

you can try the setup with trial accounts (though you'll need 5 new bnet accounts) and while classic is a bit lighter than bfa it's about the same code client side (just fewer/simpler textures etc so less GPU load and less memory used)

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Good point with the trial accounts, thanks! I'll give it a few test runs and cry when it fails, lol

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Something else to consider is the sheer amount of time it would take each week to farm the necessary consumables for 40 characters. I don't think there are enough hours in the day.

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Trust me, I know I'm asking for one massive headache to try this.

This is also why I'm trying my hardest to find the perfect comp, because just the time alone to level 8 groups to 60 is insane. The LAST thing I want to do is spend all of that time, farm all the gear and mats, enter MC and then learn I messed up bringing a few of the wrong classes and then have to level yet another group to 60.

But googling perfect MC comps is impossible, since everyone says "bring any 40 people" and people who had their rosters back in vanilla were not building the perfect comp, instead trying to just find the 40-60 people required.

Aaaaand I want to go mage/ranged heavy to remove a lot of the work from things like Geddon and whatnot. I know warriors do more DPS so it's a shorter fight, just wondering if it'll be harder to control?

So it's a weird situation to be in, my 40 man will have a 100% attendance, of course, cause it's me! But choosing that is not easy and that's the biggest time waste if I mess up by even a few chars =/