Mixed class dual box help

[Anemo]

I have just been sucked into the dual boxing phenomenon thanks to the crazy RAF bonus. I have only just started playing WoW this month (a little late I know) and currently have a level 60 feral Druid as my main. My current goal is to use the RAF bonus to level a character up to 60 which will then end up duoing with my Druid.

At the moment I have rolled a Paladin and Priest combo and got to level 14 in a few hours but I am finding the masses of skills rather difficult to assign keys to etc Even with my Druid I managed to struggle for buttons to bind within reach of WSAD nevermind two characters at once.

To get around this I think I will need to basically stick to playing the Paladin and keep the Priest almost strictly as a healbot but it does seem to be a bit of a waste. Does anyone with expirence with a similar setup have any suggestions on what spells/macros would be useful to minimise the number of buttons required.

One of the major issues is setting up a macro to not only heal my Paladin but also to self heal the Priest. I'm not sure the best way of doing this, I'm currently using F2 to heal target and shift + F2 to heal self but is getting pretty messy fast.

I was thinking of just having a macro to assist > cast SW: P > wand and then a few more buttons for renew/heal and maybe shield.

Another actual question is what spec should I use with the priest depending on how i end up going. If there is an easier way to control the priest and lots of spells where I can actually use Mind Blast/Flay I guess shadow would be the way to go but strictly as a heal bot would Holy be the best option?

I know that wall of text is barely a question but any input would be appreciated. I know key binding is heavily based on personal prefrence but I wouldn't mind hearing what others use as it may give me some idea's.

</wall of text>

[maqz]

I'm getting back into multiboxing myself, thanks to the RAF. I used to play five characters, now I'll have two or three. The reason I quit multiboxing was that it was too many details. My advice is to start simple. Focus on the main. Have for instance these six functions keybound: Accept macro, follow macro, stop (strafe), buff, heal, and nuke.

Heal and nuke could have modifiers, like shift for mana burn, otherwise smite. I like macros that forces the follower to stay on a target until it's dead, then assist the main. Something like this maybe (main is the focus):
/target [harm,nodead][target=focustarget]
/cast Something

Buff should be a castsequence so that you can hit it a couple of times and get Inner Fire for the priest and PW:Fort for both, to minimize the number of buttons needed. There are plenty of macros around here.

Instead of healing the priest, practice getting and keeping aggro with the paladin. You can rez him later if you need to. If really wanted, you could have the priest heal focustarget if friendly, then try to heal focus. That way, when the paladin has a hostile targeted, the pala would be healed. If the pala has a friendly targeted (for instance, the priest), the priest would heal that.

This leaves you with plenty of free keys to play your main character.

[ElectronDF]

Crap I hate repeating this 67 times.

I started off with a mixed group. I use focus on my main. I use:
/cast [target=focus-target] DPSSpell for DPS
/cast [target=focus-target-target] HealSpell for healing

I HATE targeting anything. So I let the mob tell me what to do. It doesn't matter who has aggro. It doesn't matter if you have no one targeted at all. It just heals whoever the main's target is targeting. If someone weird pulls aggro, they still get healed with one macro, instead of making a macro for each person.

You can probably just make 3 macros for every chars, which is 3 keys/buttons. Attack, heal, misc. For my priest:
(attack)
/castsequence [target=focus-target] reset=combat/15 Shadow Word: Pain, , !Shoot, , , , , , ,
(heal)
/cast [target=TankName, nocombat] Power Word: Shield
/castsequence [target=focus-target-target] reset=combat/15 Renew, Flash Heal, Flash Heal, Power Word: Shield
(misc)
/cast [target=focus-target] Dispel Magic

Just thinking since I don't have a pally main that I worry about much.
(attack)
/startattack
/cast Judgement
/click ButtonName --------------so I can change seals and not have to change macros
(heal)
/cast Seal of Light -------prepare to judge on start of fight
(misc)
/cast Mana Tap (or /use Ez-thro) --------used to pull

You can use dummy commands (commas) to line up spells so they go off at the same time. You can use resets to work around cooldowns:
/castsequence reset=31 SpellThatHas30SecCooldown, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
That way you won't cast the spell again until the cooldown is up. You can use classes that have mostly instant casts (works best for me). I used hunter (for pet and just start him and you can not have to mess with him), warlock (to stop runners, summons, imp-blood pact), warrior (great agi/str before 60 since pally needs +spell plate that I couldn't find before 60) and priest (stam/spirit buffs, simple DOT damage and wand for free DPS).
Good luck and hope things work out for you.

[Isparson]

I also run a pally + priest combo, though in my case it's 1 pally, 2 priests. The pally is spec'd Ret, and the priests are a Holy/Disc Smite based build, and they're quickly pulling up on 50 now. Yeah, laugh now - lolret & lolsmite, two of the most ridiculed builds out there. But they perform well together, and Sancticty Aura seems like it was made for just such a group. The basic stragegy when 'soloing' is that the paladin will act as a tank/melee dps hybrid, holding aggro while the priests burn or, as nessesary, heal in a caster DPS/support healing role. In a larger group, I can tank myself with the paladin, or use focus to designate someone else as the tank. If I'm also being asked to main heal, I'll do so by using both priests in a dps/healing hybrid role. (Good in that I'm doubling up heals, and hence healing twice as fast in dire straights as a single healer, and in that I can dish out extra damage on light healing fights, but bad in that I tend to burn myself out of mana too quickly on endurance fights)


You can conserve a lot of your actionbar real estate by combining skills according to function. As an example, parts of my setup:

Righteous Defense + Fade bound to the same key - this functions as a 'get aggro back on the paladin' key.

Consecrate + Holy Nova - works as both a 'focus aggro from any extraneous mobs/repawns/pats/etc. onto the paladin' key, and as an emergency spammable AoE burn, while at the same time doing minor 'topping off' level healing to all three. ( VERY mana intesive to spam, though)

Smite + a Judge & reseal castsequence macro - this is my standard DPS spam macro. I use this on two buttons, one which retargets the priests onto the paladin's target, and one which keeps them spamming at their current target until it falls over, then has them follow the paladin's lead.

Bubble + Bubble - set so that the priests both try to bubble, in order of preference; the paladin's target if that target is friendly, thier preset focus, the paladin, or barring all that (everyone of those choices is an enemy or dead), themselves. The paladin will also bubble, if she's got an allied target selected that isn't herself or her focus. ( I use the focus function to designate a tank in 5man situations where my paladin will be DPSing instead of tanking )

Cleanse + Dispell Magic + Abolish Diesease - you get the picture



As for healing, you'll never have enough keys to prepare for every possible configuration of healers, spells, and targets, so the key is to condense all those heals into a handful of keys that will easily do your most nessesary/ most commonly used heals, but can also be manipulated into casting less used combinations. One good way to do this would be to set a key to heal each of your characters (say, F1 = Pally, F2= Priest ) with a simple, quick heal, and using Alt/Shift/Control modifiers to select various larger heals as nessesary. Or, go the other way and bind a few keys to specify heals ( say, 5=Flash Heal/Flash of Light, 6= Holy Light/Greater Heal, 7= PW Shield, etc), using the unmodifed form to heal one toon, and a modifier ( Alt/Shift/Cntrl) to heal the other.

I have all my healing condesed to 5 keys:
The first has both priests cast renew on a series of target options much like the above bubble macro: first choice is my paladin's target, in case I need to specifically heal one person, second is a predesingated focus, for situtations where someone else is tanking, third and default is my paladin, since that's where most of the incoming damage will go when I'm 'soloing'. If I need to heal one the priests with this, I simply target them with the paladin lead and press away.

The second healing key has the same preferance order in targeting, but has one priest use Flash Heal, the other use Greater Heal. The idea here is to get both a quick emergency heal and a slower powerful heal out at once. The Flash heal helps to insure the target survives long enough for the Greater, and the Greater provides catch-up power that doubled Flashes wouldn't.
These two cover most all of my healing needs .... if I need to heal someone, I target them on my paladin and press the button. If I'm not targetting anyone, It'll heal the tank (set using focus), and if I haven't set the focus (not in a group), the heals will default to the paladin.

The other three healing buttons are an earlier remant version, each button is set to heal one of my characters by having both priests cast renew (or Alt- Flash heal), these are now relegated to a mostly unused portion of my keyboard. I still occasionally use them to pass a quick double renew to one of the priests without needing to target them on my main, but I could easily do without ever using these 3 buttons again. ( in PvE, at least, PvP they're kinda handy )

Now, I know that I'll probabaly need to rework that healing setup some once I get into the BC healing spells (Prayer of Mending, Binding Heal, maybe Circle of Healing), but I'll cross that bridge once I get there.

As for buffs, I have 3 keys set up for that. The first has each toon cast self-buffs ( Righteous Fury & Holy Fire ). The second and third keys have all 3 toons buff my main's target, one priest with Fort, the other with Divine spirit, and the pally with Blessing of Wisdom/Might depending on the key. I like this setup because I can target someone running by, hit one key, and BOOM! lay every buff I have onto them.

All of my priests other dps spells (SW Pain, Mind Blast, Holy Fire) are set on a macro with Alt/Shift/Cntrl modifiers to select. I don't use these all that much, I'm a Smite junkie, what can I say?

All the other stuff has no comparable function on the alternate class, so are bound to keys that are blank on the other clients. It means some panic-button skills aren't as conveniently placed as I'd like, but that's a part of the price you play for controlling 2 classes at once

[Vyndree]

I just wrote this blog post up that might be helpful to you. The macros are a bit simplified but should give you some insight on pairing abilities between multiple classes.

[Sanic]

Yesterday, i set up the same team. Pala+Priest.
But i got one problem.
The Toon follows me very close when i want to go into melee range.
I want to stop him about 15yards before i go into the fight.
Is there any comfortable way/addon to do this or do i have to write a macro for this?

[Anemo]

You can't macro movement but what I do is have "F" as a movement key on the Priest but nothing on the Pally. You can then just tap F before you run up to melee and leave the Priest at casting range.

[Shadraak]

my current team is shammy ( master ) priest ( slave ) haven't gotten much responses to it but maaybe not many have tried it. Don't know if priest should be a healbot or shadow to help with dps and mana regen. Still getting the hang of it though