Dual-Box Tanking AND Healing a 5-man (heroic maybe?)

So I've been reading a lot about 5-boxing and the many options available there, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion about plain ol' dual-boxing.

More specifically, I'm wondering if anyone here has been able to simultaneously tank and heal a successful instance with great proficiency (dare I dream about a heroic?).

I'm curious about how you divide your various action categories amongst input devices/methods. Such as:

- Character A's Movement on keyboard 1
- Character A's Skill-use on keyboard 1
- Character A's Mouse cursor on mouse 1

- Character B's Movement on keyboard 2 supplemented by voice command
- Character B's Skill-use on keyboard 2 supplemented by G15 macros
- Character B's Mouse Cursor on mouse 2

Here's a Heroic Mech run done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaDUFgxbgk

Would be cool to see a setup for that.

Think it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Xbox has posted videos on You Tube of five shammies doing Heroic Mana Halls (and great fun it looked too), the above post also has a video of one person doing a heroic. TBH if you have the skills and patience I doubt its that hard.

However I got the feeling you want to dual box a tank and a priest (or healer) with the remaining three characters controlled by other people. That would be IMO much harder. For two reasons: 1)Unless they know exactly what you're doing and support you in it, they won't understand if something goes wrong in a script and you fail to heal or lose agro. 2)Whilst dual boxing is great fun and great things can be achieved whilst doing it playing two characters as well as you can play one is IMO virtually impossible. Especially if those two characters are totally dissimilar.

Bottom line is for normal runs three people are relying on you to do your job just right, if you feel capable of that great.

I've always found WoW's gameplay to be painfully simple, and I believe it's possible to play two characters to capacity (at least in PVE encounters).

So has no one here tried something like this?

It is pretty hard though when you are 5-boxing an instance since you must pay 100% of attention. For me it is tanking several enemies with my drood, placing right totems, dpsing with shamans and ofc not forgetting to heal the tank and shaman themsselves/

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I'm curious about how you divide your various action categories amongst input devices/methods.

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One of my teams includes a Tankadin and a Priest.

I actively play the Pally, because positioning is so important, and have my Priest as a drone. I use QWEASD to move my pally around (in conjunction with the mouse of course).

I use the arrow keys and a couple of KP keys on those rare occasions that I need to move the Priest around in some fashion other than just /follow. That's mostly just getting out of a blob of fire or something though. Typically, once he's in place he just stays there.

I have three sets of Priest healing macros:

- One for the FOCUS target (who is usually my Pally)

- One for the MOUSEOVER target (I have a trackball dedicated to the Priest machine so I can position the pointer over a (very large - three cheers for X-Perl!!) health bar without fear of moving it when I throw my mouse around the desk in a fit of Pally action!)

- One for the TARGET, which goes to my target's target if my target is hostile (i.e. if I target a mob, my heals go to whoever has aggro).

It so happens that I currently use an X-Keys stick for tanking and an X-Keys Pro for healing, but since tanking is a 4 button affair right now (one cast sequence, one hammer, one consecrate, one to BoP my target's target), that's over-kill.

The healing macros would lend themselves well to G-Key macros, but I've had mixed experience with my G-Keys - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't - so have completely stopped relying on them.

In your terms, then, I have:

- Character A's Movement on keyboard 1
- Character A's Skill-use on keyboard 1
- Character A's Mouse cursor on mouse 1

- Character B's Movement on keyboard 1, broadcast to machine 2.
- Character B's Skill-use on an X-Keys Pro.
- Character B's Mouse Cursor on mouse 2, which happens to be a trackball.

What will distract you most isn't healing, but removing magic / disease. I use a (very large - three cheers for SmartDebuff!) SmartDebuff window for that, which means I just need to roll the trackball and left or right click in the right place, but it's still a distraction.

I suspect the reason you don't see much about two-boxing is because there's not really much for you to do with just two characters together.

Personally though, I see no reason at all why you couldn't successfully play two characters in a PuG.

Assuming you're on the ball with both, the only give-away will be that your Priest follows the pally in a very suspicious fashion when you're moving between encounters ;)

Some encounters outside of 5 man instances need a great deal of mobility, which you may not be able to do effectively, but Heroics? Sure. Why not.

I've 2boxed in 5,10 and 40 man raid environments, rogue and priest.

I counted a lot on one of m y other healers knowing I was doing it in the 40 man because of all the movement involved. I'd put an autofollow loop into play and stick to the faster casting and isntacast hots (a druid would rock for this).

With RDX for my healing interface I could easily and effectively heal, dispel and stay mobile (as long as my other healer buddy didn't die).

I had a buddy in the guild who would twobox his priest/shaman combo and was so good at it that many times people would not know he was twoboxing. One guy was telling his main how much of a loot whore the alt was...

Ooh, this is great. Thanks for the responses!

I really like the idea of a trackball for the second character. Might also make it a little less confusing when grabbing for the mice in a hurry.

I've thought about the X-keys pro as well, but I'm still not sure if I should go USB or PS/2, since there's still a good chance that I may end up hardware 5-boxing somewhere down the line.

Things are up in the air until I can try out a Death Knight/Priest combo, and see what the 70-80 shaman changes are like.

And the funny thing is, I already play my paladin and priest in a way that most people think I'm two totally different people.

Are there any more stories/experiences about 2-boxing?

I hate blizzard because they are gonna add non-ranged heroic class :< Gief heroic 5-box ;)

yeh thats kinda hard, but tanking+healing+dps is still possible after some time of learning :)

hmm, that's true... if i get a rogue or mage that likes to pull aggro i'd probably just let him die XD

i avoid pugs like the plague and play with my guild most of the time
so i think that won't be too big of a problem ^_^

the main thing is that we have a shortage of tanks and healers
so if i can get that combo going for instances
i can help out a lot of the DPS folks