PvP without destroying multibox reputation

[IkYiolul]

Hey guys, I am completely new to the multibox experience and feel I've just about mastered PVE but PVP is a tottally different story. My technical expertise is excellent (work for an ISP) so just dish it out if you've got it. Or point me in the right direction of course. Although I have not FTL setup yet, I will set it up today but its sort of confusing on the wiki.

Some major issues I'm having:

1.Facing toward the target....Is there a way to do this in a FTL setup? I would love a way to have the slaves focus on the target and not move until interact target. Recommendations?

2.I tried WG last night @ lvl 19 and it was a disaster, lets just say after my main died, I looked like an idiot and felt like an jerk taking up 3 spots for nothing. Am I correct to assume FTL (and practice) will fix this?

3.I see all the posts with melee being a problem, however this is actually my strong point with 'interact target' spam, gets me back to problem 1: how can I make casting/facing target w/o movement easier. Is there a way to get slaves into range and cast?

4.I find I have to mash my focus and assist macros to get them to complete, in other words, pressing it once does not work the way you would expect. All I have in the 2 macros are:
/focus toonA
and
/target focus
/follow
/assist

5.Healing, lol
I have Healing Wave set to a roundrobin key, as well as my shocks and war stomp. All thoughts on paper, maybe I should remove my shocks from roundrobin or have an alt key for face melting.


My current setup:
4x shamans, negligible quality quest gear, on a 2.4ghz core2duo 4gb ram, nvidia 9600gt (its a stuidio XPS laptop lawl, I like the mobility) My big rig is much faster 3.2ghz 8gb 8800gts 512, but I have yet to see stability/speed issues on the laptop.

After I realized leaderless is extremely important in PVP, I setup each account to set focus when the maximizer hotkey is pressed.

Minor: I am new to shamans, and having trouble finding the city to get the totem quests (just a city is all im asking on this one)

Of course pvp is pointless @ lvl19 quadbox and RAF bonus lol, but since I'm new and 2 accounts are on trial, of course I'm going to question going all the way...

Thanks for the help in advance!

[IkYiolul]

And another thing, Is Melee no good when dualboxing? It seems like it would be awesome on a shammy...

[Schwarz]

All in all I know pvp is pointless @ lvl19 quadbox and RAF bonus lol, but since I'm new and 2 accounts are on trial, I'm starting to question going all the way...

Thanks for the help in advance!

I remember when I started up my team. I was all excited got them up to around level 8 and headed to the instance in ORG. First pull we did fine. 2nd pull some earth elemental owned me and my whole group. I kept wipping on this one spot. I started to think "What did I get myself into. I see people do ____ Heroic and I can't even get past a freakin earth elemental. Man I wasted soo much money trying this out".

Doing a little research I figured out that the NPC was immune to nature damage. So my lightning bolt spam wasn't doing it. Once I figured that out I was able to down the whole instance.

So don't give up to quickly. I am responding to this from a PVE perspective. I know when I first started playing I had problems with some bosses but after doing them 100's of times they became simple. PVP has to be somewhat of the same. If you put the time in then you will be good.

I haven't used FTL (for the loss) but I do understand what people are trying to do. If you base all your macros off of one toon then you will fail once that toon dies. Just by having FTL implemented doesn't mean you are going to recover automatcally once you die.

All players have to find a way to deal with deaths/fears. FTL is a scheme to make it easier to switch control on the fly.

[Siaea]

Facing your target:

Learn when to spam your follow key and also have a movement key only bound to your clones so they can stop moving to cast. When you need to change your clones' direction, hit /follow, walk a few inches and you can make your clones face any direction you want. It takes a little practice, but once you get it down it's second nature. I'm always insta-ghost wolfing and moving backwards, then make my main run through my clones to turn them around. It's a handy skill to learn.

FTL will fix your clones just standing there. With FTL, when you mouse over to the other window, that character becomes your 'main', and all remaining clones will move and cast based on that 'main'. On another related note, if I lose toons (especially in AV) I usually suicide and take as many Alliance with me as I can, that way all my girls rez at the same graveyard and same time.

Healing:

Since people think if they take the main out a boxer is worthless, They're always going after my 'main'. I have Lesser Heal bound to F1 and Chain Heal bound to F2. When I hit F1, all 5 toons lesser heal my main (Siaea). When all toons are taking damage, just make them all chain heal.

[IkYiolul]

Facing your target:

Learn when to spam your follow key and also have a movement key only bound to your clones so they can stop moving to cast.

The simplest fix evades me, I actually thought about this for a second but figured it would be pointless. But I've come to the conclusion on how to do it properly and now it amazes me.
Thanks!

Just waitin to hear if melee is worth it now..

[IkYiolul]

You did all of RFC @ lvl 8? Holy crap, I couldnt 4man it @ lvl 16
I knew about the earth elemental and that wasnt the issue. I prolly just need practice, I'm kinda going in there and thinking hahaha I've got 4 shammies, fear me! and then I wipe. I tried with a lvl 12 tank when my group was @ 14 and still was a no-go. @ 80 a tank wont be an issue cause I'll have a friend do that for me, props to all of you that have a nuclear 5man group cause that would take some serious skill.

[Mubox]

1.Facing toward the target....Is there a way to do this in a FTL setup? I would love a way to have the slaves focus on the target and not move until interact target. Recommendations?

1) Interact with Target
2) Tap a Movement key (such as back)

2.I tried WG last night @ lvl 19 and it was a disaster, lets just say after my main died, I looked like an idiot and felt like an jerk taking up 3 spots for nothing. Am I correct to assume FTL (and practice) will fix this?

FTL isn't necessary to be effective in PVP. I use a leader-based play-style, I switch toons and tap a leader key, another keybind lets me set leader-target, another key lets me set focus-target. I rarely use the focus target, and prefer the toon-based targeting. Some would argue that the extra keypress is a problem, so far I've decimated every BG i've joined.

3.I see all the posts with melee being a problem, however this is actually my strong point with 'interact target' spam, gets me back to problem 1: how can I make casting/facing target w/o movement easier. Is there a way to get slaves into range and cast?

The problem with melee is following the enemy as he moves. Strafe-happy rogues, for example, will own at melee. Tapping "Interact with Target" keybinds repeatedly are as good as it gets. For this reason I don't multibox melee.

4.I find I have to mash my focus and assist macros to get them to complete, in other words, pressing it once does not work the way you would expect. All I have in the 2 macros are:
/focus toonA
and
/target focus
/follow
/assist

The problem with Focus is that it has a delay from the time focus changes, to the time it updates on the client. There is also a delay on focus targets. Thus, when you change focus, there is a delay for the change. As the focus target changes, there is another delay. Putting focus + assist/target in the same macro will have problems due to these delays, and to compensate you will find yourself double/triple-tapping your macro.

I prefer the toon-target approach because it eliminates the focus and focus-target delay. e.g. "/target ToonName-target"

HTH

[GS4Clagg]

For me I have a set order that if my main dies, I go toon2, if that one's dead I go to toon3. I use this macro for my following/focus. Lets say this is the toon3's follow macro.

/target [target=toon1, nodead, help, exists]; [target=toon2, nodead, help, exists]; [target=toon3, nodead, help, exists]
/focus target
/follow focus


So that way if toon1 dies it defaults to toon2 to focus off of.

I use different dps button sets for pve pally, druid and three shaman vs the pvp ele shaman and four boomkins. I use /click based for the pve set I'm sure you can find the /click castsequence set up on the site here.

For the pvp slaves I'm doing:

/cast [target=focustarget, harm] [] wrath on one key
/castsequence reset=4/combat/target [target=focustarget, harm] []insect swarm, moonfire on the other key

I have flame shock overlapped with the moonfire/insect swarm one and lb overlapped with the wrath one.

I also have a starfire one set up with chain lightning on it but I rarely use it.

Those are on the four following boomkins. If the shammy dies, I pick up toon2 and by using the [] on the dps macro allows it to "cast through" not sure how else to explain it. I've left it off before and it doesn't allow toon2 to cast that spell. So pretty much renders you useless.

Also, with including toon2 within toon2's follow/focus macro, if toon1 dies I can switch to that predetermined toon2 and toon2 will focus himself and any remaining toons will also then focus him.

Not sure if that helped. But I like it the set up. I used to use /cast=targettarget, harm] but I like the focus better. If ppl don't know your main, which normally they do, they could click the slave and see who they were targeting.

Ivas, Kildo, Plate, Dishe, Spoone lvl 80's
Fork, Straw, Haye, Graass, Bailer lvl 70 pvper's.

[Mubox]

I find that in battlegrounds eventually there are people who believe that if they kill the main they kill the group. Nothing says "represent" when you auto-run then switch to a slave as you take your first hit, then drag your group a new direction, drop a DoT, auto-run, rince-and-repeat.

In my setup I will sometimes enable mouse clone for a moment and right click on the battlefield to cause my group to "disperse", as they disperse I switch toons and drop some DoTs, then hit my leader key to cause them to "converge" on a new leader. By the time the new leader is recognized it's usually too late for them to compensate.

I also have my cursor keys setup to multicast, so I can hit them to break auto-follow. A tactic I've used is to break auto follow leaving your group behind, right click on your target to make your master run into the fight, then switch to a slave and start running into the fight, then tap my auto-follow keybind to coerce my old master into joining my group again. It's a sacrificing move, but if you know you're going to lose your leader anyway it's a good tactic.

Sometimes a little misdirection is enough to compensate for anyone who is "getting smart". If all else fails, and I'm going down too fast to misdirect, I'll simply stop and drop an AoE, switch to my healthiest slave to wreak havoc as quickly as possible (fears on anyone looking to join the fight, bandage my slaves, etc.) Once clumped it's pretty hard for attackers to figure out who the leader is.

I don't use an FTL setup (yet) because it seems like a pain, and so far my PvP interactions have been mostly succesful with a leader-based target-based (or focus/assist-based) approach. Using both toon-target and focus-target approaches I can take on two attackers with relative ease. Fear one, retarget, fear the other, retarget, DoT, retarget, DoT, etc. I may find an FTL approach most useful if I need each toon to retain an indepedent target. So far I haven't needed it.

[Trick]

The problem with melee is following the enemy as he moves. Strafe-happy rogues, for example, will own at melee. Tapping "Interact with Target" keybinds repeatedly are as good as it gets. For this reason I don't multibox melee.

I multibox DK + 4 Ret Pallys. Jamba's follow strobe feature is the only way I got it done. Plus, it tends to freak people out when my main drops Chains Of Ice on them, and then runs THROUGH them. A quick 180 on the main, and the target is sandwiched nicely between a few slices of pain. Fun to see what 4x Crusader Strike + HB/Oblit/SS can do.