5 boxing - focus or FTL? Keyboard turning vs Mouse?

[Owltoid]

I'm sorry because I'm sure this topic has been covered ad nauseum.

If using a tank, 3 DPS, and a healer, do you use FTL or focus based macros?

With 3-boxing moonkins I used an FTL system. However, I also had pretty much every moonkin ability keybound and macro'd in some function. With my move to 5 boxing I'm not sure I have room for all the spells I used when concentrating purely on one class. So, I'm left with redesigning how I play and I'm questioning the FTL system.

I often use shift with my keybindings (for instance "a" is moonfire while "shift-a" is insect swarm). This was never a problem with 3-boxing FTL system because my modifiers to tell who current leader used ctrl, alt, and ctrl-alt. Will I need to stop using shift and reserve it for the FTL system?

Also, I turn with my mouse and use my keyboard for abilities (not a clicker). This was not natural for me a year ago (I used to turn with the keyboard and click many abilities), but after doing fairly high level arena and becoming tired of being called a clicker, I transformed to the "proper" way. However, with the multiboxing videos I've seen, it looks like many turn with their keyboard and likely don't have a hand on their mouse for the boss fights. Do many of you 5-boxers use primarily the keyboard for everything?

[olipcs]

Hi,
I also have a "1tank, 3 dps, 1 healer"-setup (with 5 different classes) and I'm using a modified ftl-system (modified, because it uses an target-and-hold-mechanism, so its not targetless).

So I will try to answer your question:

Will I need to stop using shift and reserve it for the FTL system?

Well you need to use a third modifier to differentiate between 5 different possible leaders, and naturaly ctrl,alt and shift are used therefor.
But this doesn't realy mean, that you can't use alt,shift,ctrl as in your normal keybindings, because if i recal correct you are using HKN as your keybroadcaster and with HKN you can differentiate between left and right ctrl/shift/alt.
So what I do in my setup is:
- I use rctrl,rshift,ralt as the modofifers for identifying the leader in an ftl and so I can use lshift,latl,lctrl as normal modifiers in my macros.

Do many of you 5-boxers use primarily the keyboard for everything?

-I honestly never was a real 'mouseturner' but also not a 'clicker'. But scince I multibox a 1-3-1-team I do the following:
- Controll the Tank-Abilitys only with mouseclicks
- Controll the DPSers with broadcasted keys (mainly a big dps-keybind (2) and some for dots and other special abilities
- Controll the Healer via broadcasted keys (Main Tankheal) and Mouse-Over-Healing via Mousebroadcasting

[Catamer]

for me, when traveling or moving non-combat I use the mouse, the side button is a run as well as holding two buttons down at the same time. I do my best to move like this.
as for combat, I try to move my team as little as possible and use my tank to pull to the team.
if the team isn't following the tank around then I use the keyboard and they all move at the same time.
this is a kind of limited move such as a small move to get out of aoe area. this frees up my right hand to push buttons on the keypad or use the arrow keys to run the team left/right.

I have special keys on the keypad that I have mapped to function, like keypad-7 & 8 are for totem drops keypad-9 is water shield and keypad-1 & 2 are for healing a main tank or an off tank.
The only time I kick-to-play is solo boxing a healer in a large raid, here I use healbot and left or center click people on the healbot buttons.

[Kaynin]

I have a topic here around somewhere where I posted some info on my then FTL set up. Since wrath it's majorly improved, but in the thread I addresses the shift issue, as well as FTL spreading and alt turning.

Should be somewhere in macro forum, can't find it. :<

[Owltoid]

Hi,
I also have a "1tank, 3 dps, 1 healer"-setup (with 5 different classes) and I'm using a modified ftl-system (modified, because it uses an target-and-hold-mechanism, so its not targetless).

So I will try to answer your question:

Will I need to stop using shift and reserve it for the FTL system?

Well you need to use a third modifier to differentiate between 5 different possible leaders, and naturaly ctrl,alt and shift are used therefor.
But this doesn't realy mean, that you can't use alt,shift,ctrl as in your normal keybindings, because if i recal correct you are using HKN as your keybroadcaster and with HKN you can differentiate between left and right ctrl/shift/alt.
So what I do in my setup is:
- I use rctrl,rshift,ralt as the modofifers for identifying the leader in an ftl and so I can use lshift,latl,lctrl as normal modifiers in my macros.

Do many of you 5-boxers use primarily the keyboard for everything?

-I honestly never was a real 'mouseturner' but also not a 'clicker'. But scince I multibox a 1-3-1-team I do the following:
- Controll the Tank-Abilitys only with mouseclicks
- Controll the DPSers with broadcasted keys (mainly a big dps-keybind (2) and some for dots and other special abilities
- Controll the Healer via broadcasted keys (Main Tankheal) and Mouse-Over-Healing via Mousebroadcasting

I'm pretty sure it does, but for clarification, does WoW recognize the difference between left and right shift? Would I have to have something like [nomod:lshift, mod:rshift] or will [mod:rshift] work?

Do you have a passthrough to your current active window for when you're soloboxing?

You mentioned Mouse-Over-Healing. Does this mean you're usually playing your healer as the master when 5-boxing or is there a way to control mouseover healing when using your tank as your master?

Thanks!

[Kaynin]

Kaynin's advanced FTL set up with more! [quad shaman]

There it is. Maybe you can get some ideas from that.

[Owltoid]

Kaynin's advanced FTL set up with more! [quad shaman][/url]

There it is. Maybe you can get some ideas from that.

Thanks! I already have a systsem like that setup, though. You also use shift as a modifier and I'm hoping to avoid that in my FTL system since it takes away about 1/2 of my possible buttons. It looks like you use the keyboard for turning (A an D). I'd like to avoid that, but since I'm so new to 5-boxing I'm not sure if I need to turn my slaves often. If I can, then I'd rather just get away with using the mouse to turn and using the arrow keys to turn my slaves when needed.

[Kaynin]

Kaynin's advanced FTL set up with more! [quad shaman][/url]

There it is. Maybe you can get some ideas from that.

Thanks! I already have a systsem like that setup, though. You also use shift as a modifier and I'm hoping to avoid that in my FTL system since it takes away about 1/2 of my possible buttons. It looks like you use the keyboard for turning (A an D). I'd like to avoid that, but since I'm so new to 5-boxing I'm not sure if I need to turn my slaves often. If I can, then I'd rather just get away with using the mouse to turn and using the arrow keys to turn my slaves when needed.[/quote]

Actually, A and D are on my do not pass list. I'm using the keypad on my N52 to turn, and have set up keymaps from the keys I assigned to the keypad on my N52, to the keybinds A and D on wow. As you can only assign two keys per movement inside of WoW, this is a nice way to avoid filling that up. As I want to use A-D for the main and also keys for spreading out and such that may use those movement keys. + seperate turning of alts for dynamic situations. Which is already 3 for one key. Keymapping makes that all possible. :>

If you can live with a-d removed for your main, then that would work too. Personally, I need a-d functioning for the main for kiting/strafing etc.

[olipcs]

I'm pretty sure it does, but for clarification, does WoW recognize the difference between left and right shift? Would I have to have something like [nomod:lshift, mod:rshift] or will [mod:rshift] work?

Yes WoW recognizes the difference.
For example one of my macros could look like:

/assist [mod:rctrl,mod:rshift,nomod:ralt]Talaria;[mod:rctrl,mod:ralt,nomod:rshift]Thandriel;[mod:ralt,mod:rshift,nomod:rctrl]Numeri;[mod:rctrl,mod:ralt,mod:rshift]Genesiss;[mod:rctrl,nomod:ralt,nomod:rshift]Thalindor
/cast [mod:lshift] Moonfire
/cast Wrath

here ralt,rctrl,rshift were used as ftl-identifiers and lshift as an normal modifier...

Do you have a passthrough to your current active window for when you're soloboxing?

Don't know exactly what you mean, but since i have no special setup for soloboxing, i would say: no ;)

You mentioned Mouse-Over-Healing. Does this mean you're usually playing your healer as the master when 5-boxing or is there a way to control mouseover healing when using your tank as your master?

No, I nearly allways play the tank as my active toon. The mouse-over healing works with a combination of standardized Unitframepositions and -order on all of my windows (using pitbull) and broadcasting the current mouse-position to my healer with hkn with this code:

<Hotkey F12>
   <SendLabel healer>
   <ClickMouse NoClick NoRestore>
   <RestoreMousePos>
   
<HotkeyUp F12>
   <SendLabel healer>
   <Key F12>

and a macro like:

/cast [target=mouse-over] Flashheal

bound to F12...

[Owltoid]

Oh, very interesting! I like your idea of broadcasting the moueclick to your healer for mouseover healing, but I'm not sure my current laptop could handle it (my AoE spells seem to be finicky when they actualy cast on the slaves and when they don't). Maybe I'll try your idea but instead of F12 I'll use button5 so that I don't have to take my hand off the mouse. I could use button4 for a different healing spell but still use the mouseover functionality... I like the ideas you've presented!