How’s your TBC multiboxing going?

[Murdertrain]

Wondering how everyone’s teams are doing?

I’ve been extremely busy so had relatively little time to play but so far mine has been a mess.

I planned to go PaLLMPr but realized I’m just too undergeared with a few Classic preraid bis and Outland greens. My Pally was getting destroyed.

So I did quests and got all the toons entry level Outland greens but it’s still been hit or miss. I decided to switch from aoe to single target and brought in my geared hunter but I’m still struggling to finish Ramparts. I wanted this combo to work since I plan to play some combo of hunter and mage in raids and was hoping to have a lot of attunement work done by 70. But so far it’s been an exercise in frustration.

I have 4 shaman parked and ready to go with PaSSSS but since I don’t plan to main shaman or pally, I was hoping to have my PaHLMPr group slog to 70 first. At this rate, though, I may have to reassess or just go full PSSSS sooner than expected.

Hoping others are having better luck (and more time!) than me!

[TheMias]

It's been a slow process with my original team plan (PSSSS). My toons were all woefully under geared (tank had dungeon blues), so my first venture into ramps was hilariously short lived after the first 3 guards made short work of my tank and the poor shammies folded. I ended up buying a bunch of AH outland greens as well - doubling his hp and massively upgrading his defense. This let me farm ramps up through the 2nd boss with relative ease (~48 minutes per run at the start).

Did Ramps until 61, then moved onto BF until 63. No major issues there.

At 63 I moved to SP, where I have lived since doing a mix of short clears (~80-90k/hr) up to the first boss (not killing him) and also full clears when I get bored of that (~75k/hr). I'm still here at 67.

[Murdertrain]

It's been a slow process with my original team plan (PSSSS). My toons were all woefully under geared (tank had dungeon blues), so my first venture into ramps was hilariously short lived after the first 3 guards made short work of my tank and the poor shammies folded. I ended up buying a bunch of AH outland greens as well - doubling his hp and massively upgrading his defense. This let me farm ramps up through the 2nd boss with relative ease (~48 minutes per run at the start).

Did Ramps until 61, then moved onto BF until 63. No major issues there.

At 63 I moved to SP, where I have lived since doing a mix of short clears (~80-90k/hr) up to the first boss (not killing him) and also full clears when I get bored of that (~75k/hr). I'm still here at 67.

Good stuff!

Since I'm relatively new to the multiboxing game, are you content with skipping bosses?

I feel like I need to kill everything to make it a success, even if I'm taking longer to do so. But is 5man multiboxing TBC dungeons more about cloth/boes/xp/etc than it is about getting those nice upgrades for each member after a boss dies? Just wondering what mindset the veterans have when approaching dungeons.

[TheMias]

Depends on what you want out of it.

For myself, I am ok with skipping during the leveling process if they are going to slow your progress to 70. You can always go back and do it at max level if you need an item from it. I don't farm them for misc stuff, that is incidental to the process and right now only serves to fund my 5x epic flying expenditures.

Ultimately, I am aiming to be able to clear all of the HC content, bring my team where it is needed for guild raids (so I'll need to do all the attunements), and ultimately exceed what I was able to do back in the OG TBC.

[nodoze]

Depends on what you want out of it.

For myself, I am ok with skipping during the leveling process if they are going to slow your progress to 70. You can always go back and do it at max level if you need an item from it. I don't farm them for misc stuff, that is incidental to the process and right now only serves to fund my 5x epic flying expenditures.

Ultimately, I am aiming to be able to clear all of the HC content, bring my team where it is needed for guild raids (so I'll need to do all the attunements), and ultimately exceed what I was able to do back in the OG TBC.

My thoughts are similar. Priority on leveling and less focus on gear while leveling and generally ignore bosses focusing on XP until you reach cap (70)...

I would only do bosses if they are particularly easy for your composition and/or if you they have a particular gear upgrade from that boss (and even then you can wait until you are toward the higher level range for the boss where you are still getting XP but clearing is pretty easy).

For each of your classes I would put together an gearing plan and thus know in advance which bosses you care about... The following is the one I put together for Protection Paladin and it is purposefully NOT copy protected specifically so you can copy it to your local google drive and adjust if/as needed and track your progress:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=570079838

The spreadsheet also has blank template tab and put in contents for other classes and has highlighted in green a link to a spreadsheet of options to consider for all classes so you can populate your targets:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=224377198

If you end up building some target tracking lists for specific classes/roles and want to share them please send me the links to your spreadsheet and I can look to add/copy those tab(s) back to mine.

[Aoxomoxa]

Let me preface by saying the reason I am multiboxing is I have 3 rl friends who are interested in playing, but with summer just hitting no one wants to bother with it right now. I try to play mostly at work (I do get interrupted with calls, and I have to run and afk at a moments notice, sometimes for longer than 20mins).

I am new to multi boxing, and I have had a rough time. The most multi boxing I did prior to this was just leveling a warrior and priest up (real life friend quit on the priest). So my experience was just casting ~3 spells from the priest while my warrior killed stuff. I quit before I did any real raiding.

With the release of TBC I decided to give it a go, and I am trying the Paladin - Priest - Mage - Lock - Lock set up, and its been a struggle. Everything was basically boosted (except the priest, but it may have well been (very poor gear). I am using wow open box, and I am just Blizzard and rain of fire AOEing. Gear was the issue at first, but after I bought a "of the champion" green set for the paladin its been easy enough to clear the trash in ramparts.

Currently I am sitting at level 61 on all the characters, and I have a hard time with the bosses. I can do the first boss in ramparts (can not get down the other two bosses, though I think if i had a proper dps macro instead of just spamming shadow bolt and frost bolt, I could probably get it done. ( maybe another level also).

Blood furnace has been rough, I got the first boss down on the first try, but have since wiped 2x on it (Paladin keeps getting mind controlled). And I ran out of mana on the waves part of the first boss ( been buying some AH gear as I see it cheap for the other group members). The trash hasn't been a breeze, but that is mostly because I got lazy with positioning and the summoner/technician can aoe my guys down currently in a flash.

Right now, I am kind of waying my options on what I should do. My skill level really isn't there yet to do too much on these guys (I can do the rotation of the aoes pretty easily, as long as the paladin doesn't look aggro, but I'm not perfectly in tune to all these guys abilities.

two options im considering right now are:

1) Leveling the Paladin to 70 solo, and seeing how things go in these dungeons afterwards.

2) Switching to a team that is easier to handle. The Paladin and 4 shamans seems like its an easy rotation with much more survivability. but I don't really want to level 4 shamans up right now either. (I have never done a paladin leveling boost or mage leveling boost).


Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[nodoze]

Let me preface by saying the reason I am multiboxing is I have 3 rl friends who are interested in playing, but with summer just hitting no one wants to bother with it right now. I try to play mostly at work (I do get interrupted with calls, and I have to run and afk at a moments notice, sometimes for longer than 20mins).

I am new to multi boxing, and I have had a rough time. The most multi boxing I did prior to this was just leveling a warrior and priest up (real life friend quit on the priest). So my experience was just casting ~3 spells from the priest while my warrior killed stuff. I quit before I did any real raiding.

With the release of TBC I decided to give it a go, and I am trying the Paladin - Priest - Mage - Lock - Lock set up, and its been a struggle. Everything was basically boosted (except the priest, but it may have well been (very poor gear). I am using wow open box, and I am just Blizzard and rain of fire AOEing. Gear was the issue at first, but after I bought a "of the champion" green set for the paladin its been easy enough to clear the trash in ramparts.

Currently I am sitting at level 61 on all the characters, and I have a hard time with the bosses. I can do the first boss in ramparts (can not get down the other two bosses, though I think if i had a proper dps macro instead of just spamming shadow bolt and frost bolt, I could probably get it done. ( maybe another level also).

Blood furnace has been rough, I got the first boss down on the first try, but have since wiped 2x on it (Paladin keeps getting mind controlled). And I ran out of mana on the waves part of the first boss ( been buying some AH gear as I see it cheap for the other group members). The trash hasn't been a breeze, but that is mostly because I got lazy with positioning and the summoner/technician can aoe my guys down currently in a flash.

Right now, I am kind of waying my options on what I should do. My skill level really isn't there yet to do too much on these guys (I can do the rotation of the aoes pretty easily, as long as the paladin doesn't look aggro, but I'm not perfectly in tune to all these guys abilities.

two options im considering right now are:

1) Leveling the Paladin to 70 solo, and seeing how things go in these dungeons afterwards.

2) Switching to a team that is easier to handle. The Paladin and 4 shamans seems like its an easy rotation with much more survivability. but I don't really want to level 4 shamans up right now either. (I have never done a paladin leveling boost or mage leveling boost).


Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I did some boosting with my Paladin and it was pretty painful/slow so I went back to 5boxing (I leveled the team up to ~35 with a 60 Paladin and then replaced my 60 Paladin with a ~ level 35 Paladin so all my characters were essentially the same level and things seemed much better after that)... Note that this was before the TBC prepatch so I can't speak to how efficient it is now with TBC. You could instead level 5 shaman as a team in dungeons but either approach (boosting 4 shaman or leveling 5 shaman) from level 1 will likely be a slog compared to where you are now.

My thoughts are to stay on your current path and try to focus on XP and leveling and generally avoid bosses until you reach cap as I discussed in my previous post as they just slow you down. Do dungeons where the mobs are relatively easy for you and focus on kill counts and maximizing XP/hour while leveling... If you do particularly need a boss then level up to where the boss is easier but still giving XP. Don't beat your head against a wall on anything while leveling and if something is hard that you want to do then gain a level, train up if appropriate, and try again (and if still overly hard just focus on getting another level and retrying, rinse-repeat)...

Having your tank more beefy/higher level generally can help but I don't know that you need to go all the way to 70 as even just a few levels should help. I am not sure what XP penalty, if any, you would have if you level your Paladin to 70 and then regrouping with the 4 level 61s.

EDIT: While I think the kiting through AoE approach can be good for clearing trash in dungeons (which don't cause havok when kiting due to fear or AoE of their own or whatever), you should also have for each character a good single target DPS option (and likely some CC keybinds). Instead having a bunch of keys bound for single target DPS on each character you may want to look at putting together a DPS rotation via something like Gnome Sequencer Enhanced (GSE):

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addon...dvanced-macros

Also if you have the gold then I would try to get everyone in the party a set of basic inexpensive TBC Greens on as many gear slots as possible (personally I prioritize the Tank then Healer then the DPS). With all the people leveling, especially since you are behind the rush, there should be some inexpensive options to get every slot to at least basic TBC green levels which should make a significant difference...

[TheMias]

I concur. Focus on the XP aspect of it over trying to down bosses in the early phase of your leveling. Alternatively, you could dual box quests with your tank and healer to 70 which will give you a serious leg up for leveling your DPS.

MC can be a serious problem that (mostly) comes down to luck of the draw and your teams gear and thus survivability.

For the 2nd boss of Ramps I don't even bother with tanking it due to the knock back and let my casters do that. With shamans I use grounding totems to take basically no damage. My tank thus just picks up the felstalkers.

[Aoxomoxa]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, I think the macros will help me out a lot. I think spamming firebolt and shadowbolt is causing a lot of my issues. The recast is too fast with an under-geared group, and I end up losing all that dps when shit starts hitting the fan.

How has slave pens been for everyone? That seems to be the next dungeon on the list

[TheMias]

I curse the Slave Pens dungeon, for no reason but that it has been a really simple clear that I was grinding to get to 68.

Main issues you will run into are Horror effects, Fear effects, and MC.

The Horror effects cannot be removed afaik, but the creatures that do it die quickly and the effect is ST.

For fears, I just used tremor totems to remove it after a tick. Keep the Champions away from the rest of your group though if you are running a tank, the range is limited.

For MC you can remove it but best to just burn down that creature asap.

I'll note that there is not a single group where you have more than one of these three effects present.