5-boxing Instance Mechanics

[Gallo]

For those of you 5 boxing out there, I am about to enter the Deadmines, and would love to hear a little insight into how you did instances with your groups.

My group is 1 priest, 1 mage, 3 locks, much like Steph's setup.

I know that Steph said in his/her(?) blog that he would position his mage and locks, then pull with his priest. Is that the best way? Wouldn't you want to pull with your Voidwalkers? I'm wondering if you could /petattack on one of the groups of mobs, then hit /petfollow to have them back up toward you a little, then resume /petattack.

I'm also curious to how exactly the voidwalker's taunt works. I've only had him for a few levels, and not in an instance setting, so I don't know how it works. If I /petattack all 3 of my voids onto 1 mob in a group of mobs, will those voids keep aggro on all of the mobs? Is it an AOE taunt?

Any other instance pointers would be great. I'll be adding my progress to my blog.

[Kyosakana]

I don't think the initial voidwalker taunt is AOE, although one does become available at some point.

When I was running my hunter group, I would assign each pet to a different mob to get in a few hits and generate some aggro beyond "add aggro". If pulls are 3 or fewer, you could pull with any of your characters and send the voids in to grab aggro mid way through the pull.

[Bunny]

The voids do have an aoe taunt but i am not sure at what level they get it.
I use my priest as my main to assign targets etc.
For me it is usually:
1.) assign sheeps to my mages
2.) send in void and sheep
3.) nuke the hell out of the voids target
The first couple of times you will be killed because you have to get used to where you assigned which commands on your keyboard. Do not be discouraged, after a couple of tries you can clear the instance without wipe.
At level 30 you get hellfire on your locks and group heal on your priest. Thats when the real fun starts

Bunny

[Steph]

I know that Steph said in his/her(?) blog that he would position his mage and locks, then pull with his priest. Is that the best way?

His, definitely his. I did that back in the deadmines, yes. These days I walk into casting range, and kill the targets one by one with concentrated damage. The average instance elite mob is down in one or two salvos. That is approx 5-6 seconds.

The felguard's charge makes them arrive on target and aggro before the 2 second shadowbolts are hitting. With grouped mobs this will result in the mobs converging on the felguards. Three felguards cleaving means the mobs are entertained for a bit. I work my way down from the most dangerous mob to the least dangerous one by one. If heals are needed before I arrive at the last mob of the group I use Holy Nova since it is threat free.

AoE hellfire/blast wave/arcane explostion/prayer of healing/holy nova nuking can be a good alternative, but it means you are going to sit and drink after the mobs are down. :wink:

[trigemina]

I'm only 3-boxing, but have a similar setup, Priest/Mage/Warlock. If you're in a situation where you should be pulling, (e.g. SM Cathedral) it's probably not a good idea to send in the voidwalkers.

I also pull with my priest. The way I do it is to pull, attack with the voidwalker, then fade. (Actually my petattack and fade macros are mapped to the same key.) Even with the AoE taunt, you still might need to change targets to get mobs off the priest after the pull.

Since I'm only 3-boxing It takes a bit of time to burn down elite mobs so I have to be careful not to aggro.