WotLK progress and checking in with other manual boxers.

Just checking in to see how everyone is doing and if there are any manual boxers left. Just completed the second group Glory of the Hero red proto achievement on another Alli team. If you want a massive challenge, go for this achievement doing everything manual. Moving each character one at a time, mechanics and doing each achievement was a major pain. Brann, Consumption Junction, Drakes in Oculus, Dehydration and a few others were really tough.

Anyway, I worked out strategies for all of them and can share with any manual boxers going for it.

I know this was all done 15 years ago with ISBoxer by the majority of people here, myself included. Doing it with no software, mousing over each screen and manually doing it all is incredibly fun once you figure out how to do it.

I've seen a few YouTube videos of people still using ISBoxer to run heroics. I hope that is working out. Would love to know if you had any warnings yet or are still active. Can be a PM if that works.

Hope everyone is doing well.

That's awesome. I like just using WoWOpenBox and EMA, but I can never settle on a team and give up after RFC. You said you had a two teams? Can you give advice on what comps work the best for manual multi-boxing? I was thinking about doing one Mixed Team and a Paladin Priest x4 Team. I saw a video of a Death Knight, Priest, 3 Hunter team that looked good too.

Hi ostill82,

Pally or DK tank works great, as I'm sure you already know. 3 dps all the same class makes things easier, however, with the right macros, you can mix and match them pretty well. Mages, Shamans and Balance Druids can get pretty close to peak DPS with a one button macro, while throwing in their dots on another button.

3 Shamans for dps were the easiest by far. You can't beat the instant poison, disease, fear, sleep removal. This is especially important while manually boxing since we can no longer use frames to do everything from our mains.

3 Fire Mages have the best burst dps and can take down large groups in a few seconds. I've got 3 Hunters (one to 80) and an 80 Rogue. They're just not as easy to play in a manual group and do less dps.

Ranged DPS is the way to go. Start with a Pally or DK tank. For me, the Priest is still the easiest healer for boxing. You can heal the tank with one macro and just group heal for everyone else. With Dual Spec, you can make a Shadow Priest with a one button macro that also does well with a nice AOE for large groups.

With Clique, you can spot heal with the Priest. Shamans can throw in a Chain Heal and beef up healing for when you need it.

Some things that worked for me.

1. Questing is a pain since you probably want to play 1, 2 and 3 max in certain situations to avoid having a big train on follow. Dungeons are boring but they work and you can play all 5 Characters.

2. If you have the money, get a travel mammoth and a chopper. Then you can have all 5 characters with you traveling normal. 3 on the mammoth and 2 on the bike. This is how I get around Dalaran once they hearth back to turn in dailies. Way easier than one at a time. The mammoth also lets you sell stuff, has all the reagents you need and can repair. Makes leveling in dungeons much more convenient.

3. Get one leatherworker to max or just buy the Kings and Wild drums. Then you can have the Pally buff and Druid buffs on. Same for Great Feast if you have a cook. When you do dungeons you'll get plenty of free Northrend Supplies on the tank and healer that have healing, mana and flasks for the group.

4. Get your tank geared up as best you can. He/She can also be a few levels higher to make dungeons easier.

5. Once you get an 80 Team, take the lower levels to Ahn'Kahet. You'll get full xp for 70s and with Joyeous Journey, Heirlooms and rest xp, they'll level up quickly.

It all comes down to what you like to play. One thing to consider is mixing classes makes it nice for loot. For example a Pally or DK tank, Shaman, Druid, Mage and Priest let you use most of the decent Plate, Mail, Leather and Cloth drops.

Take advantage of Joyeous Journey being back. It looks like it will go until just before Ulduar is released.

Thanks for the detailed write up. Extremely helpful. I've decided to go with the same mixed team of Pally, Mage, Druid, Priest, and Shaman. Planning on questing to 14ish solo/duos and then staying in dungeons. Any recommendations on leveling professions for this team in particular? Outside of just taking Dis-Enchanting on all of them and maybe tailoring. I can't see myself being able to keep up with skill ups much.

For money, you can still make quite a bit from a few professions and with Ulduar coming, some will be more lucrative than others.

Tailoring should net some nice profits for cloth. With Ulduar comes some new patterns for Spellweave that will be BIS for a few caster classes. The belt Sash of Ancient Power specifically, which hopefully means Spellweave and Ebonweave will be big sellers.

Check the prices on your server for Titansteel, Titanium Ore, Dragon's Eyes and Heavy Borean Leather. Titanium Ore will probably skyrocket once epic gems are available since you can prospect epic gems from it. Buy a bunch now or get mining up and find as much as you can. Dragon's Eyes still sell well on my server (185g or so) and I can make a few a day.

For enchanting, you only need one to 375 I think. Then you can DE all epics from that point on. Use what loot you can, then just let the enchanter loot the BoP gear to DE it to sell or use the mats for enchanting. The Abyss Crystals still sell well, however with Heroic+ coming, they will most likely go way down in value.

Some of the expensive BoEs, like Surge Needle ring will drop from Heroic+ bosses, so those should also drop in price.

Alchemy doesn't make a lot of money right now. It will be great once Alchemists can transmute epic gems after they are released in phase 2. If you are a transmutation master you can get up to 5 epic gems per transmute. This is very rare and you might only get 1 extra gem every 5 days or so. It happens, just not often. Once you learn Cardinal Ruby (this will take 4 days from the quest with the 20 hour epic gem transmute cooldown) just make those. I am guessing they will sell for 500 to 750 at first each.

Your own teams will be able to use the gear, elixirs, potions and items all professions can make, so they won't go to waste.

Also, you get the same XP whether in a raid or group. You can't do quests in a raid but if you are running dungeons to level, you can form a raid, then invite other characters, buff up with those not in the dungeon and keep the buffs. For example, if your group is a DK tank, 3 Balance Druids and a Shaman healer and you have a Priest, Mage and Pally alt, you can invite them, buff your team, leave them in the raid and you keep their buffs on even though only 5 of you are in the instance.

nice one mate congrats on achievement very impressive to get that down in phase 1, I'm sure ill be able to brute force it later phases but for now I'm yet to clear a heroic on my team, I do my daily norm and I'm sort of just focusing on increasing my GS on all the characters, I would say I'm about 3500 now average my tank and healer slightly higher than my 3 dps. I will let you know when I finally get a heroic cleared.

Thanks. I'm sitting at about 3,700 on all characters. No 25 Man stuff on any of them and just 2 or 3 Naxx 10 pieces or Heroic equivalent gear on them. Happy to get it done!

Let me know as you progress. You're about there for gear to start trying some of them.

Hey Teslah, if you wouldn't mind when you have the time, maybe sharing your talent specs?

I'm pretty much going by the WotLK Classic, pre-raid, BIS builds on Icy-Veins. Here is the Arcane mage build as an example. It also has gear you should get, rotations examples and some other stuff. Most of this is common knowledge, but for classes you don't play all the time, it's excellent to get started.

https://www.icy-veins.com/wotlk-clas...talents-glyphs

If you want another class, just look on Icy-Veins or type in "beastmaster hunter wotlk classic pre raid bis." or whatever class you are looking for.

I only have a few changes to some talents, like the fire mages I have 2/2 for Firestarter, they have 1/2.

any dungeon spam for money make in wotlk? i rememebr in calssic it was Stratholme , in TBC it was BOTA or Kara trash farm.. what u guys doing for gold in WOTLK? i didnt find smthg good so far , i can make solo with mage or paladin around 1k gold /h outside dungeon , i wonder if smthg better i can farm as multiboxer inside dungeon, thx!

or maybe some quest item farm like it was with e'kos?

Happy update, managed to one shot heroic gundrak and COS with my paladin 4 shaman, I respec'd one shaman Resto and assisted with damage, wasn't a challenge like it is on my dk priest and mages team. I'm fairly convinced this is because of how op paladins are, they just take so little damage. My paladin is pretty well geared at this point, the shaman are just in pvp gear from hopping into wintergrasp every time. Will give some more heroics a shot now I know it can be done.

Pretty happy with this I never got a single heroic down in tbc. Will look to mix up the teams a little bit find out what makes the smoothest run. I didn't realise at the time how it really isn't a dps race to clear a heroic as the shaman for sure do less damage than my pve geared mages. Will look to respec my dk to blood away from unh see if that helps.

Keep you updated

Edit: just hit VH for lols see how it would go, no wipes but lost a couple of shaman have to love reincarnation, had shadow boss and water boss, seemed easy enough might of just been lucky. Water boss wasn't easy to down all the adds, had another portal open on me when I was taking him down. Got really lucky with the hit trinket dropping, just need another 3 now haha. Also hit HOL because that was the daily, really messy wipe on the last boss just running away too slow but got him and also did Gundrak with no issues.

Paladin is OP as a tank, it self heals just by whacking the target, holy shield is kind of so much mitigation that you can sort of forget about the tank while you burn targets down with the dps. I really wanted the DK to be my main boxing tank, its just not as strong as paladin. I will bench the paladin and Resto sham for the DK and disp priest with the 3 ele sham in a couple days see if that makes a big difference. At the moment it really feels Shaman > Mages just for the passive healing. My DK is a bit ghetto geared though subbing a lot of def stats for resilience and gemming stamina, so pretty natural for the paladin to feel far more tanky.

I have also leveled my 5 Boomkins to 75 (wondering how well these would do in heroics plan is 5 boomies on trash, trinity set up on bosses, 5x star fall is hilarious), 4 hunters at 72 will try to get that lot to 80 before the end of the xp bonus. Kinda wondering what the next team to level should be?

Anyone cleared any of the heroic + yet?

Teslah - for your Pally, mage, druid, priest and shaman, which specs are you running for each? I was having trouble with this diverse of a squad. Particularly curious about the priest healer spec.