Shamans, prepare for hex in WOTLK

[magwo]

I'm going to create a low level mage team just to nail down lightning fast techniques for multiple polymorph/hex. Will post results and descriptions when I'm satisfied.

[Naysayer]

Sweet.


I was going to borrow Vyndree's raid icon trick she used in her hunter video, but if you find something better I'm going to steal it.

[Elektric]

I currently started 4 mages and im enjoying the recruit a friend buffs.

I used 2 old accounts to refer 2 new accounts. When Im done leveling I'll just transfer them right on over. I recommend this for anyone interested in leveling new alts. After I get these mages up, Ill do locks. Having my shammy on my 4th account chain heal while out of group would be insane. Zero down time.

Back to the subject of CC. I have found that using the keyclone round robin feature isn't sufficient for sheeping as well as the general WoW game mechanics. I need to be able to "/stopcasting" and set them as my focus and "Polymorph" on one button. Having Stopcasting and Polymorph on two different buttons in round robin scares me. Having them on one button won't work. 1 keypress you stopcasting. 2 keypresses you have just moved to the next toon. Is there a feature to round robin every second keypress?


Also sheeping a target and setting them as your focus makes chain cc ez. I use the /follow focus setup and losing my main to assist would definitely cause some probelms. Might have to take another look at the no focus manifesto.

Maybe there will be some more attention to Multibox CC now that Shaman are picking up Hex.

I'm sure the community will find a working solution.

Just my 2 cents...there must be a way.

[ElectronDF]

I don't do CC, so I am probably wrong about this. If you have focus on your main. If your alt has NO target at the time. Then you cast:
/cast [target=focus-target] Frostbolt
on your alt, do they pick up a target or do they just cast on the mob? If they don't pickup a target, then you can just target the guy you want to CC, and then just assist your main. When ready, cast sheep on your normal target and go back to casting on the mains target. Again, sorry, I don't CC, so I don't know if this works.

[Elektric]

I don't do CC, so I am probably wrong about this. If you have focus on your main. If your alt has NO target at the time. Then you cast:
/cast [target=focus-target] Frostbolt
on your alt, do they pick up a target or do they just cast on the mob?

This is a question I have about using the "/follow focus" mutliboxing method. With my shammies how do I set a focus with my main and have my alts do the same while still following the leader and assisting his target?. (ie. /cast [target=focusfocus?] The benefit of nuking a target in arena while never targeting them really puts a hurt on whats healable. I've actually been switching targets manually and it works but it would be so much easier to set a focus and nuke it at will. This was asked in a another post to Ellay but I dont think it was addressed directly.

Are people just using a "/target focus /cast nuke" macro on their main? and keeping the "/cast [target=focustarget] /Nuke" on their alts? I really need to free up focus on my main. I can't believe I've done so well without it. Feel noobish for not knowing how to execute it, hehe.

Back to the rest of ElectronDF's post. If I just assist my main and cast sheep it makes cc incredibly hard in arena.

This is how I imagine my CC stratedgy playing out. I set each of my toons focus to a different toon on the opposing team. I have Polymorph focus keybound to a different button on each toon. Assuming all 4 players from the opposing team stay in LoS, I could Polly the entire team in 4 keystrokes (a different key for each toons poly). Lets then assume that two of them pop their trinket while I'm in the middle of casting a fireball on the 5th player. I then quickly hit my stop casting macro on those toons and the keys bound to their polymorph and resheep them while still casting 2 fireballs at the target. Notice I never had to retarget the unsheeped players, their set as the focus so I just stopped casting and my toons poly'd their assigned target.

I can imagine this amount of cc just being ridiculous. But I dont see it being possible without being able to set a focus for each toon.

[Mosg2]

I use focus-less follow for my Shaman team and I'm excited about Hex... But I don't think it's going to really be *that* useful multiboxing unless you have each of your toons set a different focus target. My first thought was, is there a way in arenas to automatically target a different toon on each of your followers? Is there any API that could help with this? Possibly an addon that could be developed? Any way other than manually using your main and then setting it up with an assist followed by a focus? It just seems like that'd take way too long especially against a teamthat'll rush you.

[Naysayer]

I use focus-less follow for my Shaman team and I'm excited about Hex... But I don't think it's going to really be *that* useful multiboxing unless you have each of your toons set a different focus target. My first thought was, is there a way in arenas to automatically target a different toon on each of your followers? Is there any API that could help with this? Possibly an addon that could be developed? Any way other than manually using your main and then setting it up with an assist followed by a focus? It just seems like that'd take way too long especially against a teamthat'll rush you.

There's a trick that Vyndree used with her hunters that had each hunter target a different raid icon, so that she could just mark things with star, skull, square, circle, ect and each hunter would send their pet to tank the icon she had them macro'ed too. I see no reason why this couldn't be done in arena with hex.

[Mosg2]

Mmmmmm, that would work. You could just target with your main and give'em symbols. I'll have to check the API page to see if there's a macro to mark someone with a raid icon or not.

[ElectronDF]

You can't target things with raid icons, that has been asked like 1000 times in UI forums. You can put marks on them, sure, but you can't say /target [icon=star]. If there is a trick, it just looks like they are doing it.

[Alemi]

I see no reason why this couldn't be done in arena with hex.

Unfortunately raid icons are disabled in arena for anyone on the opposing side. You can mark your team all you want, but enemy players. No.

The big question here is whether or not hex will most likely be trinketable. It will, however, have the standard 10 second duration and be subject to diminishing returns, and sits on a 45 second cooldown. Locking out multiple players will be highly unlikely. Unless this is changed, you'll probably want a "Set Focus" macro on all your characters, and then round robin Hex on that focus target. At the moment with theorycrafting with the way the spell is designed currently, you could lock someone 1 person out for the majority of the fight, (assuming a trinket on the first Hex), you'd still get a good 10 second lockout - even better if you wait 15 seconds after the trinket and then you could lock them out for 18 seconds.

I'm more interested to know, however, if 1) this spell works on druids since it specifically says that it works on beasts and druid forms have not been changed to include "Immune to Hex", and 2) What the chance to break on damage is - the current wording of Hex says "Damage caused MAY interrupt the effect" and 3) It's not a loss of control of the character - it's an inability to cast spells or use abilities, silences and school lockouts aren't trinketable.

Again, all a mystery, and spells and talents are changing daily. The whole elemental tree is whacked out - and making my head explode with all the changes to existing talents.