Too good to be true?

[wowunderachiever]

I decided to try dual-boxing again. (I tried once back in BC then left the game)

First few days - literally lots of headaches. I need to finish a paladin and shaman I was leveling with my son before he lost interest.

My intuition told me to play the paladin tank and slave the ele shaman. I just had a lot of problems. Between getting software to work, getting Jamba set up correctly, goofing with macros and keybinds, I was about to give up. The final straw was that half the time when the caster would run up behind me, it'd get turned around, faced the wrong way, etc. By the time I got it fixed fight was basically over anyway.

Then I saw one of the posts here talking about how to solve the problem. Its in the stickies. That didn't seem to work well for me.

Then I decided to try playing the caster and use the tank as the slave. I use IWT and assist. To my astonishment this is actually easier and more reliable so far. Its basically like controlling a hunter pet only with more pet abilities and better aggro control.

Is this how many of you do it? (those who control a tank among their team) Is this going to stop working for me at some point?

Why can't I get ranged classes to turn around and run toward a hostile target with IWT? That's what the sticky says works best for situations where team members get turned around or jumped or whatever.

I'd like to get that part figured out - I might take a pair of hunters to the bg or something.

Anyway, just also wanted to say this is an excellent community of players and this site has amazingly helpful guides, stickies, and forum members. Helped me out considerably. Things have come a long way since I tried this back in BC.

[Ualaa]

Almost everyone who plays with a tank and others, drives with the tank.
That's not essential, but you'll frequently have procs that you can "click" on the tank without those being on a keybind/hotkey, and therefore can manage them very well without interfering with the playing of the rest of the team.

I've seen people drive with their healer, and use IWT/CTM for their melee component, which can include a tank.

For IWT to do anything, you need to have CTM (click to move) enabled on that toon.
You can do this via (Escape - Interface Options - Mouse Options), and check CTM on.
You can also toggle this with (On: /console AutoInteract 1) or (Off: /console AutoInteract 0).

If you're just playing two toons...
You might want to spec the Shaman as Resto.
Having both a tank and a healer can make instances much easier to do.

If you want a ranged class to face their target.
They need to have Click to Move enabled.
You would then press their IWT keybind.
And then any movement key (such as down arrow), to break the movement.

If your software is something like IS Boxer.
Or anything that uses "Steps".
You can set a key to execute a step on "Press or Release".
And have the IWT keybind on Step 1.
And the down arrow, to break the movement on Step 2.
Make sure, "Hold Keystroke while Hot Key is held" is enabled.
Then you push the hot key (and hold it), and once all the desired toons are facing the target and moving towards it, release the held hot key.
This is an excellent "fear" recovery tool, as IWT has a much larger range than Follow... so you can regroup a team that has scattered fairly well.

You can only IWT towards a friendly NPC (quest giver, merchant, flight master, inn keeper), or towards a hostile (attackable) enemy NPC or Player.
You cannot IWT towards someone on your own faction, such as your tank.

[wowunderachiever]

If you're just playing two toons...
You might want to spec the Shaman as Resto.
Having both a tank and a healer can make instances much easier to do.

Oh heavens I haven't even considered doing any dungeons yet. That's light years away for me. I'm just doing quests. I wouldn't subject a group to running with me while I play two any time soon. My shaman is ele. I don't think it makes much difference questing.

I have not problem playing the tank. I probably wouldn't have any problem keeping myself healed. Where I fear I'd run into issues is healing the rest of the group while staying out of the yuck muck and peeling adds and all the other stuff that has to happen.

If you want a ranged class to face their target.
They need to have Click to Move enabled.
You would then press their IWT keybind.
And then any movement key (such as down arrow), to break the movement.

If I hadn't done exactly that I don't see how it could be working so well for my paladin. I thought I mentioned above that I'd already seen the IWT instructions, followed them, and it worked for the melee but not for the ranged. I'll double check. Maybe I fat fingered something. It looks to me like ranged respond differently than melee.

If your software is something like IS Boxer.

Macintosh.

So far I'm not completely happy with any of the software options I've tried. Plexer, MultiLaunchBox, and Clonekeys. MLB seems to be the best of the 3 choices. I like it because I can see at a glance whether I'm broadcasting or not, but don't like that I can't hotkey the on/off thing. The keybind the author claims does it won't work.

Plexer has a keybind that works but there's really no good way to see whether I'm broadcasting.

Minor issues I guess.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So, just to recap some of the general quirks with multiboxing (forgive me if you know some of these already):

• latency will cause rubber-banding, which may cause characters to reposition repeatedly, sometimes ending up with them facing the wrong direction.
• Hammering your CPU (causing each client to fight with the others for thread priority) may cause rubber-banding, same as above.
• Slow disk access (read or write) may cause stuttering and Ye Olde rubber-banding again.
• IWT+CTM sends the toon to the spot where the target was at the time you clicked the IWT button. What this means is that if the target moves, the next IWT keypress will attempt to reposition again. All of the above factors can greatly increase the waypoint "wobble" (usually observed as the IWT toon running away and/or running in circles around the target).
• Spamming the follow, IWT/CTM, and other movement keys can back up the queue, especially if you are on a populated server or in a heavily-populated city or area, resulting in the above rubber-banding and follow-breaking, etc.

There are various other things that can exacerbate the above. You might do some poking and prodding at your CPU usage, thermal profile, process/thread affinity and priority and disk activity and see if you notice any areas where things are exhibiting inconsistent or wildly variable performance. I'd give you some specific things to poke at but I'm not a mac nerd.

[edit] One thing you might try if you haven't already is manually clicking/pressing keys on your slave character and see if you see the same problems you see while using broadcasting software. If not, then it's something to do with the software itself, or maybe that your processes are fighting with the game clients for CPU cycles. If you can do it, you might try setting all the game clients to LOW priority so they free up things every so often.

Good luck!

[wowunderachiever]

I don't know how I can explain this any better. The whole IWT thing works great for me. It works fine. So far no rubber banding, no weird stuff, the slave does exactly what I want - stops what he's doing and runs directly at the mob. If he gets turned around because the mob moves or throws him, I tap the IWT key again and the slave faces the mob again and goes back to fighting. It all works great.

*************************
***Except with the hunter***
*************************

I double checked everything and tested it again. If the hunter slave is already facing the mob, IWT will cause him start auto-shooting. But if he is not already facing the mob, the IRT does nothing except cause him to start auto shooting when another action of some sort on my part causes him to face the mob.

Hunters will not face the mob in response to IRT unless *maybe* they are in melee range, but I haven't tested that because I don't want mine to melee if I can avoid it. In fact, avoiding them being in melee is the whole point.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the class, not my hardware. I'm getting decent FPS - often up around 100 with both clients running.

[Ualaa]

Because it is only the Hunter that you have the issue with...
Which would have helped to know earlier (assumed this was the Elemental Shaman)...

I'll assume it has something to do with the Hunter option to auto shoot.

Checking my configuration...
If I have (In Options - Combat Options) "Stop Auto Attack" checked, then everything works fine.
I have a mob targeted, and its in range to be attacked, and I'm facing the wrong way.
I press my IWT keybind, and my Hunter turns towards the mob and starts to shoot it.

When I uncheck "Stop Auto Attack", and have the Hunter facing the wrong way.
Pressing my IWT keybind doesn't do anything for me.
Even though CTM is enabled, etc.
As soon as I turn to face the mob, the auto attack turns on.

Check that, and see if that is the culprit.

[jstanthr]

on your hunter, are you sure the IWT command is being broadcasted? I really really suggest trying out keyclone or isboxer, they are both great boxing apps, each have their own stong points and weak points. The next version of KeyClone (release TBA) prolly in the next month or so, will be more pvp oriented from what im hearing, with mouse broadcasting and some other custom queing bg releated features. ISBoxer rocks, the setup can be confusing if you let it be, but if you watch any of the million videos out there, you'll be pwning in no time. I apologize for being OT, jst thought id throw that out there.

[wowunderachiever]

I'll assume it has something to do with the Hunter option to auto shoot.

Checking my configuration...
If I have (In Options - Combat Options) "Stop Auto Attack" checked, then everything works fine.
I have a mob targeted, and its in range to be attacked, and I'm facing the wrong way.
I press my IWT keybind, and my Hunter turns towards the mob and starts to shoot it.

...
Check that, and see if that is the culprit.

I checked that, it was unchecked and I fixed it. Still doesn't work.

However...

The functionality works fine if its a NPC or corpse. It will turn around and run to a corpse to loot it but won't turn around to shoot.

I thought for sure you had told me the solution, but I checked stop auto attack, relogged, etc and no joy. Still the same behavior on hostile targets.

Could it be a difference between WoW clients for Mac and PC? doesn't seem like it would have anything to do with the game client...

[Ualaa]

Really not sure on that.

Does your IWT/CTM stuff work for a ranged class other than the Hunter?

You said it works for the melee characters.
Does it work for your Shaman, when you're Enhancement spec but not Elemental spec?

If you want to try PC boxing software options, as Jstanthr suggests...
I believe you can use "Bootcamp", or something with a very similar name to boot windows on a Mac.
I don't think the Mac client would be different from the PC client, but there are much better PC boxing software options than Mac boxing software options.

[Khatovar]

Hunters are the exception to the rules because they are the only class who's "autoattack" is always ranged.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/4...nters-vs-mages

If you do move to using Bootcamp and use something that can easily do steps like ISboxer or HotKeyNet, you can configure the hunter to use follow or a focusing crystal macro as the first step of IWT to insure that the hunter is facing the right way, then IWT.