10 Boxing - Dual Boxing Two Zins Arrays - Ideas?

[Xzin]

I recently purchased the hardware to dual box 5 more characters. So I should, in theory, be able to 10 box - dual boxing two 5 boxes.

I plan on starting up 5 new accounts and moving my existing warlocks over.

I plan on going 1 Priest 4 Mages + 1 Priest 4 Warlocks.

4 Pets, 6 Instant Cast AoE Fears, 10x AoEs, 6x Dots, Somewhere around 25k instant damage (PoM Pyros, Deathcoils, etc) - Cross AoE Heals - Water, Portals, SOULSTONES, Summons, 4x Sheeps, etc etc etc.

This setup is not for the faint of heart. It required an 8 port KVM, 10 keyboards, 10 wired mice, 10 wireless mice receivers, 7 vetra multicasters, 12 y-mice, 5 x-keys and of course 10 computers and the monitor arrays to view it all.

Which means I need to plan all sorts of things that most people never think of- power consumption, heat dissipation, even bandwidth use.

This is not really the 40 man project I was thinking about before but hey.... maybe 15 is the next step Probably not though

But I enjoy this hobby and I have updated everything for BC.... so this should be.... interesting.

I suppose I have to be to spend $150 a month in subscription fees and the $400 just for the expansion. It's.... a bit extreme but hey.... this is for fun.

Anyway, the point of all this is not "omg look at my setup" but to solicit suggestions for things that I might have missed or not thought about. I have the ability to select any individual machine, command a single team or all 10 at the same time - instantly. I expect this to be "no more" difficult than multiboxing with the Zins but ramped up a notch or two. I obviously can only do 5v5 arena matches but world PvP should be..... interesting. Some (not many) 10 man dungeons are available.... and there is always AV.

One thought I had was to use the same X-Keys pro to control the Zins and Control the Warlocks but use a foot pedal as a kind of alt or control key.

A sort of hybrid chording system if you will - press nothing and the mages are active. Press button 1 and the warlocks are active.... so I can instantly swap between them - perhaps even set it such that both are connected and both cast.... not too difficult to setup really and the warlocks and mages share a great many spell "types" (AoE, Instant Cast, "Fireball", etc)

Any thoughts or suggestions on what odd or strange things have changed in the game since around January? While I have thought a great deal about this, I know I have not thought of everything. What things might I be missing with this setup? Any suggestions or comments?

[shockbeta]

I can't think of anything specific. Just normal changes done overtime, balancing tweaking. I'm pretty sure you don't use to many addons or scripts of sorts. That is the major thing since TBC came out. They changed a lot of the functions you're allowed to use and what macros can and cannot do. From what I've seen you do, and what the rest of us do. I really don't think that will effect you at all. I do like the foot pedal idea to toggle between sets or teams within your group. Make sit more micro managed. Able to utilize all of the keys for all characters, and as a foot pedal makes it a real slick way to swap what ones to control. I'm sure you've put a lot of thought into this and am sure it will be close to what you think it will be like. A few things to get used to with your new setup, but once you get a handle on it.... Death and destruction will follow.

The only thing I've been thinknig about is with that many people at your control you may really want to think about how you're going to target. I doubt you want all 10 focus on one target. I would think 5 would be enough. I'm not sure if this was in before or not, but you're able to use mouseover to cast spells and the such. I haven't tried it, but maybe mouseover a target hit your target key, and said group leader targets him, then mouse over next and said group leader targets him. Then just use your standard /focus or /assist macro to have the rest of the group support their leader. I'm sure I'm rambling on with useless info at this point as you've most likely looked at the new changes and addons to the macro and scripting system. I'm sure you've got a lot more worked out then I could come up with in one sitting.

[Xzin]

I bet a LUA script could be made that would sync targets - something that would target based on priority or just with different targets selected - PoM sheep 4 players at once or something.

The cast on click sounds neat - and /focus is in now - I know about the new TBC UI changes as I played a little with the beta TBC but never got really involved in fixing my UIs. I use some UI mods. Nothing extreme but a few custom made ones. WTB decursive though

I have thought about the basics and know what to expect but I have already picked up a few good ideas from this board and figure there may well be more good ones waiting in the wings.

Not yet sure if it will be better to target 1 pick off 1 or target 2 pick off 2 slower. 4x insta cast fire blasts + 4x shadowburn + 2 shadow word deaths = a lot of hurt. Well... about 6k damage base before talents, gear, etc. Instant cast (cooldowns though).

Maybe just toss the pets around randomly, throw some dots in and gib the rest. Not sure yet - different situations will call for different strategies and the whole point of this setup is to be as flexible as possible.

[shockbeta]

I'm not sure about targeting in script anymore. Well I'll jsut say targeting specific stuff. I'd give a once over the change list for the macros and scripts. I beleive that made a lot of stuff not able to be done in script anymore to off the one button smashers. One buttons with a script that thinks for them. I'll look into it a little bit see if I can confirm it. I haven't done much scripting for WoW though so I could be completely wrong on this. After thinknig more I really like the mouseover idea. I tested it and it's really easy.

[code:1]
Here's the mouseover focus...
/focus [target=mouseover]

and this sets your target to mouseover.
/target [target=mouseover]
[/code:1]

I'm sure you could do somthing with it more, but that's the basics for it. Like you said prioritizing and synching would be the issue.

So where you thinking ideas like that? or Other things as well? I can ramble on all day about some stuff...

[Xzin]

Yep, exactly stuff like that. Especially the newer stuff and how TBC will impact this. E.g. is world pvp dead, do people still do bgs, how have mounts changed the rules of pvp, etc?

[shockbeta]

There's some "new" things you can do to people on flying mounts. my favorite being a druid(insta cast flight form) is to knock them off their mount mid flight. plummet to there death, 5 secs.. out of combat, shift to flight form go about my business...

I really don't do much pvp unless I see someone attacking quest givers in a town. I used to pvp a lot, but I find it more fun just leveling. that's just the type of player I am. level 70 brought a whole new bracket to pvp. The gear you can get is insane, and the amount of people you can take on is equally crazy. This all depends on how well equipped the other people are. I'll leave the PVP tips to someone more knowledgable on the topic then I.

I do know PVP really depends on what server or battlegroup you're in. There's times where there is always world pvp happening, and then there are stretches where I don't see any. This could just be where I am at the time, but I would assume it's always there.

I'm curious as to how you're planning on implementing the foot pedals to toggle what to broadcast to. Do you really use all your keyboards at once, or is it more like a hardware versino of multibox or synergy? Making me brew some ideas of new features for multibox. Grouping computers... shortcut keys to toggle which group is active. Would help for micromanagement of parties. I guess only if you had multiple of one type. like 2 mages, priest, 2 hunters, or something. I also think I'm gonna try to figure out how to do the mouseover targeting to send to my party I use. I don't use it, just knew you could do it. Wonder if it would be possible to create a script that could utilize it. I"m not thinking to choose what to target, but if you told it what to... hmm...

[trainwr3ck]

Well, to save a little money, you could go with six month subscriptions instead of paying month to month. If my math is right, it would save you something like over $200 a year doing that since you have ten accounts. Time it so that they don't all need renewing at once though.

[Gallo]

My major question would be, what do you plan on accomplishing? I mean, the prospect of being able to run Kara on your own is pretty awesome, but that instance is pretty damn finnicky when it comes to class ditribution. I dont think you could do it with warlock pets as tanks, and I'm not sure you could do it without a rogue to do some sort of interruption on bosses.

If you're simply looking to make an army of Zins... then awesome. Honestly, I'd aim to attempt an actual 10man group. Maybe something like

2 priests
2 warriors
4 mages
4 locks

at the very least. The 2 warriors could to the interrupts that you need, and could be outstanding tanks for bosses.

[Xzin]

The whole point of this setup is to PvP. PvE will be fun for a bit but thats not really the focus of this setup.

The foot pedals will just act as alt/control/shift modifier keys that will change the command being sent.

I figured I could kill anybody on a mount. Drop out of mount, PoM / Pyro them and then slowfall Not sure what to do about the warlocks though Pretty sure the priest slowfall is self only....

I mainly use a single set of X-keys and a keyboard but I have the ability to shift to any single input or toggle it to send keystrokes to any machine or combination of machines I need. I find it quite elegant actually but damn it's hard to learn

[Ellay]

Not to be negative nancy but warlock and mages are polar opposite in terms of how they kill. One is burst other is DoT. Why not 8 warlocks or 8 mages?