Multibox ZG (last character for team- input appreciated)

[nodoze]

Glad to help and for me it allows me to live though it somewhat vicariously as I just don't have time to level tons of characters... That and your 20box team is closer to what I was thinking of doing since as Alliance we don't have Shaman which makes multiboxing Warriors more difficult (don't like the idea of trying to heal tons of Warriors in melee range without Chain Heal).

Be a little careful with my feedback as much of my input is just theory-crafting on how to flexibly do a 20box as Alliance...

A couple additional thoughts/recommendations:

- I agree you may be light on DPS so I would get a Warrior spec that allow your Warriors be strong tanks but also be good DPS and try to use the Prot pally 11/31/9 as a main tank unless the boss has Threat Wipes and/or needs Taunts. For the 2nd Tank spot try to use the Hybrid pally 21/13/17 and let the Warriors help with DPS. So for the ZG fight that had 4 bosses tanked separately I would likely try to kill targets in order of Warrior1, Warrior2, Hybrid, Prot and that way the Warriors can switch to max DPS weapons/stance on as the bosses go down. Through trial and error you may also find that your Warriors can not just swap to DPS weapons but maybe could swap a few pieces of tank armor for DPS armor. This may help with your lack of DPS a little and get more out of the Paladins as likely the 3 Priests, the Resto Druid, & the Holy Paladin are enough dedicated healing. If not focus the Hybrid Paladin more on healing and that could be the first target you kill (though he can be no-push-back healing regardless with Concentration Aura).

-Buff-o-mat is great and due to some bugs in SmartBuff I switched to Buff-o-mat awhile back... It will likely handle almost all your buffs though I can't remember if I got it cast Fire_Shield reliably on my tanks or not. Regardless I already had a macro for that I used right before pulls (same button put on my Paladin: Imp_fire_shield+Priest_shield+regular_Sanctuary as he starts running to do pulls) and I use that even though I also have Buff-o-mat as I want those only only cast right before pulls. Also having your main tank Paladin put Greater Salvation on all Paladins (including himself and the Hybrid Paladin) allows him to go back and replace Greater Salvation with regular Sanctuary (for dual Sanctuary stacking Regular and Greater) and I am not sure if you can set that up in Buff-o-mat or not (it may keep trying to overwrite each other).

-Playing ISboxer: You hit the nail on the head that in the end much of your success will depend on how well you setup ISboxer to handle groupings and scripting... You will need to be able to toggle (ideally on the fly from your main foreground client) which characters stay on their own targets and which ones join in on the main raid's focus fire DPS and likely script some things like rotations and rolling HoTs/etc. I remembered a video showing this when we were discussing 20boxing raids and the 4 boss fight so I did a search and found this thread for you which I would read in depth and watch the related videos multiple times:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...-you-all-think

I checked out the channel that had some of the videos and noticed that that 20boxer (ZooBoxing) recently totally redid his ISboxer setup so you likely should review the before/after setups for ideas.

Best of luck and please both report back both progress and lessons learned.

[Dilb]

I've got a lot of experience with ZG. I have a 10-man team that's 4/8 in ZG. (I've done Hakkar with +3 humans helping and all bosses with 1 friend).

If you're willing to go full-mixed, you should bring one hunter. Their damage is extremely good while being safe and providing a lot of utility. Hunters don't parse well in big raids, so people think their damage is bad. Really, they're just bad at carrying worldbuffs. They don't scale well with crit, can't use melee attack power, pets essentially can't carry worldbuffs, etc. etc. But unbuffed they consistently will do top damage while bringing trueshot aura and screech. The mathematics of screech are a whole topic, but suffice to say, it's *way* more effective than the tooltip indicates.


You can probably do Venoxis and Marli right now with your 9 man.

Venoxis isn't that bad, and it's more fun to do when it's a challenge than when you just roll it with 20.

Mar'li has some tricky positioning, but you can cheese it with BoF (or have a second tank). I don't think it's possible to tank Mar'li with a paladin, as there's a PBAoE threat wipe.

[Multiboxforme]

@Dilb thank you so much for your reply! Hmm so I was thinking hunter as well as I was going through this exercise because 1. Different loot set which is nice as I have a lot of toons to distribute cloth to 2. Brings some utility I'm lacking (traps, pulls with FD) and 3. Can still perform a level of dps even without mana unlike my caster heavy team.

What I didn't account for was screech. I did some reading and that's super interesting and I have a debuff spot to spare. I haven't rolled my final toon yet as I'm finishing up the others, but I'm back on the fence between hunter or another mage with a slight preference towards hunter now.

If you don't mind me asking which 4 have you downed with your ten man team? Jeklik, Veoxis, Mar'li, and Arlokk or something else? That's super impressive and congratulations. Do you have any setup or fight tips/tricks you've learned along the way? I do have two warrior tanks in their 50s now I'll be bringing for the Mar'li fight regarding the aggro drop you note. I love pallys but aggro drop makes them non-viable for some things.

Thanks so much for the thoughts! I really appreciate the input.

[Dilb]

I've done Jek'lik, Venoxis, Mar'li, and Mandokir. I think I could do all the non-Hakkar bosses if I sat down, but I haven't done solo ZG pulls in a while. My new project was leveling up another group of 5. And since I'll have to do a ton of ZGs with them anyway, I'm going to wait until they're at least 50.

Arlokk is a good guess. She's probably the second easiest boss for a 20-man, but she has a strong enrage mechanic that makes her tough for shorthanded groups. During the second night, the number of panthers approximately doubles and continues there. Also there's a spawn of 3~6 panthers that seems to happen randomly. It *can* happen during the first night (kinda rare), and it always happens during the second night. Anyway, you can kill her before the second night with 3200-3400 dps, which is definitely plan A for any group. When she comes back, there's an aggro drop and she tunnels someone. Without taunt that person is probably going to die, but I'm not sure.

Most of the bosses are similar to how you'd do them in a group.

I think the lack of taunt on your MT will only be an issue on Marli and Mandokir. Thekal has gouge and blind in phase 1 (Zath does to be technical). I think there's an aggro drop. It might be a problem if your paladin gets gouged, but I think you can just spread out the three and it's fine.

Mandokir you can drop the Oghan stacks with BoP. I think I mentioned this, but the fight is extremely easy if you're abusing this. Mandokir himself has an aggro drop.

Jek'lik has an enrage mechanic in phase 2 where she drops AoE bombs faster and faster. If you have 2600 dps, it's pretty comfortable if you spread out, and if you have 3400~3600, you don't even get bombs at all. The important thing is to make sure there are no bats up when you transition her to phase 2. She also has a silence, I'm not sure how that affects Paladin tanking, but you can just hold off on DPS and build a big lead heading into phase 2 anyway.

Jin'do you can ignore all his mechanics. Park your raid in the mosh pit and tank him in front so the teleport doesn't do anything. Decurse the curse of jin'do. The curse does more damage than the shades do anyway. You are on a clock, because eventually the shades will pile up and wipe you, so you have to clear the totems efficiently (I set up specific totem rotations), but with <300k HP, he shouldn't be any problem for 20.

Everything in AQ20 is a huge step up in difficulty.

[Multiboxforme]

That is amazingly useful info and I really appreciate hearing the perspective of a boxer that has done this. Not only done this, but has done it without a full raid group.

Thank you so much for being willing to share. You and Nodoze have been generous in providing some thoughts. Think I've landed on hunter as the choice. I have the rest of the team in the 40s/50s now so getting there! I'll share here once I start giving some things a try in there.

For AQ20 I think everything except the first fight seems like it would be difficult.

[Multiboxforme]

@Dilb Oh and one last thing. How do you handle the threatening gaze from Mandokir and do you off tank the raptor or just kill it first? Was curious how most boxers were handling this.

[Dilb]

I set up a keymap that disables all keymaps, and then I can assign that keymap to a character. There's a button to disable it, and/or when I assign it to the next character, it automatically drops the keymap on the prior character.

If you're using the BoP trick there's no reason to kill Oghan. He doesn't hit very hard until the target has you know, at least 3+ sunders, and then you just drop stacks. Killing Oghan first isn't that bad. You'll take a lot of deaths, but if you stay focused and keep grinding/mitigate as many deaths as possible, he'll stop enraging eventually (1 minute) and then you can clean him up. Since you're alliance, there's no reason to risk this method, though.