A new 5-Shaman multiboxers run in with Ragefire Chasm

Hello all,

Well, my Shaman team went into RFC for the first time and I though I'd share my experiences around a little because (i) these forums seem to be very good and supportive and (ii) there seem to be a lot of us new multiboxers around at the moment and we need all the help we can get...lol.

Team Race and Class:

My team is an all Tauren, all Shaman team, all speccing Elemental (which doesn't say much as they are only level 16, so have barely begun to spend talent points).

Macro Setup:

As I said, I'm a very new multiboxer so my macro set up is probably laughably simple, but for what it's worth I have the following:

Party up macro, Asixz invites the others, the others accept. I also use this for sharing quests.
A heal me macro times 5. In case one of my guys gets into trouble, a macro that tells all 5 to heal him. As I said, one macro for each guy, across all 5 Shamans.
Beyond that my only other macros are to insert /follow's and /assists into the front of the normal spells, a la:
/follow asixz
/assist asixz
/cast Lightning Bolt();

Entry Level Requirements:

So, I first went into RFC @ 14. I felt 14 was the first really appropriate level to try a dungeon because of 3rd level lightning bolt, and of course Ancestral Spirit (at 12) and Flame Shock (at 10).

Screen Layout:

Main (asixz) on first 22". The four followers each on one quadrant of the second 22".

My Run:

I found the most effective method for single mob pulls was to pull them with a 5-bolter Lightning Bolt, drop 5 lots of Flame Shock on them as soon as they were within range and then melee them down using my big 2h-maces the Shammies have. Typically this dispatched even level 16 Elite mobs within a few hits and well before my main got into any sort of trouble. I found I could repeat this process four or five times before needing to stop to heal or mana up again (with typically only asixz my main needing the heals). Typically Totems weren't needed at all for single mob pulls.

For multiple mob pulls, I would drop my totems. This was a Stoneskin, Earthbind and Stoneclaw totems plus two Searing Totems and I'd also ensure Lightning Shield was up on all Shammies (as well as Flametongue Weapon). The first mob would be dealt with as normal, a 5x Lightning Bolt to pull it, then 5x Flame Shocks before a melee swing or two (times 5) finished it off. I'd then turn on the second mob and drop Earth Shock on it and melee it as well. If there was a third mob I would typically need to heal the main before finishing it off.

The hardest pulls were 4 mob pulls, involving a Warlock, his Void, and two other mobs. In that case, I'd drop the totems and lightning bolt the Lock, followed by Earth Shock and a second Lightning bolt to finish him off. I'd then turn and Flame Shock one of the attacking mobs, followed by a heal for whoever needed it, before meleeing down the mob I had Flame Shocked. The void would be next and a single group hit of Earth Shock will insta-kill that, and then I could turn my attention to the fourth mob.

There were two deaths during my first run, once of my main (boy, doesn't that complicate things when the main dies...lol) and one of a follower. Total clear time was just over an hour and a half, but this included some macro re-working.

On the second run my guys had all hit 15 and my macros were a little more useful, and I think I was getting the hang of it. Two more deaths only, and a quicker run. My third run through and by this time my guys were dinging 16, only 1 death and a clear time of about 30 minutes. At 16, even boss pulls were getting quite easy, the only death I suffered was a brain-block on my part.

So all in all, I really fun time was had. I'd been looking forward greatly to my first opportunity to test my guys out in a dungeon and felt it had been both a fun time and also a good learning experience for me.

I expect to level up to 18 inside RFC, with maybe a quest or two, and then turn my attention to Wailing Caverns.

Comments and suggestions always welcome.

Will give some advice here on macro's based on experience that will hopefully prove useful for you :)

For the first 50ish levels my team ran with a very similar macro for dps of /assist Smara, /cast lightning bolt/fireball/smite and I had 5 healing macros, 1 for each character.

This changed after reading the macro forum here and playing around with focus, and that's how I roll now and find it much easier and quicker to react (plus there is slightly less delay in casts since the assist isn't needed to be parsed by the game)

First thing I did was make sure focus frames are enabled on all characters. Then I created the macro that's listed in the forum to set focus to the first character in the macro list that isn't dead and using bongos mapped that to each key I use for BOOBS (eg I have that macro keyboard to F6, F7, F8, F9, F10 which correspond to each of the BOOBS hotkeys in keyclone) so that if my main character dies I can quickly bring the next character into fullscreen and have them immeadiately as the focus target for everyone else.

I then changed each of my dps macros from /assist Smara, /cast to just /cast [target=focustarget] <spellname>. This has the benefit again, that if Smara dies it doesn't screw with casting as everyone already has a new focus character and will start casting at their target. Under the old system as soon as Smara died everyones macros were screwed and I'd need to also have the spell icons available.

My healing macros went from 5 to 1 as I changed from a macro of /target <char name>, /cast healing wave for each character to /cast [target=focustargettarget] healing wave. What this macro does is cast healing wave on the target of our focus target or in simpler terms, the person the mob the tank is targeting is attacking. This macro change means that I never had to remember which G-key was for which character to heal, now i just press the key and whoever currently has agro will get healed...much easier in the heat of the battle.

Going to focus also then freed up characters targeting for me which gave extra benefits. On escort missions I can now target the NPC with my priest and heal them independently of the group without having to untarget and retarget them during fights where I have to heal group members on the quest. It also freed up target for my mages to independently target seperate NPC's for cc during fights if needed. This was possible under the old way too but more clumsy as I had to have macro's specifically for casting poly or heals at the focus, whereas now my macros are only for mobs being tanked and these things don't use macros at all, just straight spellcasts so they are slightly faster.

Making the change and redoing all your macros and spending the time to get the working right can be annoying at the start but I think nearly everyone would agree that it's a more effective system in the long run, and I'd suggest given the early level of your group that you look into it now rather than near the end :)

Thanks Kyntestorme, some extremely good advice.

I had been reading up on the focus macros but hadn't started using them yet as I had reached a level high enough to be pushed into it by continual deaths. However, having read your posts, I expect I'll be spending some time tonight reading the macros now rather than later so that I learn the focus-method from the get-go rather than having to switch to it.

Thanks again, some very valuable feedback for me there. :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'OzPhoenix',index.php?page=Thread&postID=59225#pos t59225

but hadn't started using them yet as I had reached a level high enough to be pushed into it by continual deaths

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That was what forced me into it :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Knytestorme',index.php?page=Thread&postID=59227#p ost59227

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'OzPhoenix',index.php?page=Thread&postID=59225#pos t59225

but hadn't started using them yet as I had reached a level high enough to be pushed into it by continual deaths

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That was what forced me into it :D

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Yep, I can well imagine.

Thanks again for your advice. You know, Proudmoore was my original server to. I figure'd we'd just about trained the vendors to sell Vegemite and Meat Pies as food options before the Oceanics opened up and a lot of us Aussies moved off there.

Yeah, I started with Aurora Noctum on Blackrock but we all pretty much got fed up with the gankage when we were around level 30 so moved over to PM and restarted....now most of them have gone back to Blackrock and seem to be doing it well but I just can't be bothered too much to restart seriously so I just stay on PM. I think a few people got misled regarding the Oceania realms so I was never in a rush to worry about them.

Grats on RFC :)

I have a similar setup to yours but I'm crippled if my main dies which is why I want to move to a more dynamic system such as that outlined by Knytestorme. The difficulty I have is with movement. My main is on WASD and my alts are all on the cursor keys. I only use the cursor keys to break /follow as any more use leads to problems because the alts are invariably pointing in different directions.

So if anyone has a mechanism for replacing the head of your snake when he dies that takes into account both targeting and movement, I'd appreciate a link.

Maz, if you use keyclone, just enable the PiP functionality in there, bind each region to a different key (again, I use F6-10 just for ease) along with this macro

/focus [target=tankname,help,nodead]; [target=secondname,help,nodead]; [target=Thirdname,help,nodead]; [target=Fourthname,help,nodead]; [target=Fithname,help,nodead]

and use bongo's (or your keymapper) to assign that macro to all the keys you have set in keyclone for your PiP regions.

Now, when your main character dies you will just need to hit the Function key that corresponds to your next most tanking character and their screen will pop onto your main monitor using the PiP functionality and the focus for all your other characters will be set to your second name character through the use of the macro, and so on down the list until you are all dead :)

Doing this works fine for me, but it does require mouse-driving rather than using keys, because of the issue you outlined of movement getting screwed up if all clients use the same movement keys so you may have to get proficient in it if you aren't already but other than that I find this setup is fine...I just am still not quick enough with it in arena's so once Smara goes down I just ignore the screens until I need to exit the arena :D

Hi Knytestorme.

Unfortunately, all of my alts run on a second machine. I could use the mechanism you describe on my alt machine though if I were prepared to rotate my body 45 degrees or if I used a KVM. I'm looking into buying a new desktop to bring all of my toons together for just this reason.

Woohoo!

I added Multiplicity (see sig) and now I can have a setup just like you describe. I just mouseover to whichever toon I want to take control (still no PiP), hit a function key and all the others line up obediently. I've rewritten all my macros to use [target=targettarget] and [target=targettargettarget]. This has really speeded me up :)

My Shaman team hit 20 tonight (after clearing WC at 18).

Now I've got my Ghost Wolf (was dying to try that out), I'll be re-writing all my macros and enabling PiP as per the instructions.

I'm hopeful this will greatly increase my flexability as WC showed me I cannot continue having my main as such a single point of failure (though he collected nearly the whole of the "of the Fang" set today...lol).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Maz',index.php?page=Thread&postID=59661#post59661

Woohoo!

I added Multiplicity (see sig) and now I can have a setup just like you describe. I just mouseover to whichever toon I want to take control (still no PiP), hit a function key and all the others line up obediently. I've rewritten all my macros to use [target=targettarget] and [target=targettargettarget]. This has really speeded me up :)

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Cool to hear Maz. The only thing I'd suggest given what you have posted here is to make your main your focus target and change your macros to [target=focustarget] and [target=focustargettarget] instead. The main reason for this is in limited situations but it does help, for instance on an escort quest you can have the escort targeted by your healer, then when you get ambushed your macros work as usual but if the escort needs to be healed you can just hit a heal button (I typically just have heal and renew up on my preist as well as my heal macros for focustargettarget) to heal them. If you have your main as your target then it becomes harder to do the escort heal, though still doable I guess.