DOGS OF WAR: A Melee Multi-boxing experiement

[Tdog]

[align=center]Project: Dogs of War
A Melee Multi-boxing Experiment


[/align][align=justify] As the title suggests I’ve decided to start up my own little experiment using multiple melee classes in an attempt to create a melee multi-box team to successfully complete instances at a very effective level. For anyone new to multi-boxing or to melee multi-boxing, there are a few obstacles that need to be overcome that caster groups simply do not need to worry about.

Some will ask why even bother to create a melee boxing team given some of the complications when there are already several proven caster team set-ups. The answer is simple, for FUN. For some, such as myself, melee classes are much more fun than caster classes. My favorite class/spec in the game at the moment is a Fury warrior which while my 5x shaman team is a blast to play, I still enjoy melee more.

THIS IS NOT A “HOW TO” MELEE MULTIBOXING THREAD!!! If that is what you’re looking for you are looking in the wrong place. This is a work in progress. As far as I know there is no such thing as of current. This is simply a fun experiment and a place for intelligent discussion on the possibilities that may hopefully open the way to a whole new aspect of multi-boxing. Constructive comments and suggestions are welcome!

Picking the Classes

First things first, team set-up and class selection. I actually had quite a large section here discussing the advantages and disadvantages that each melee class would bring to a melee heavy team. It is however taking quite a large amount of time to put together really well and to be honest would probably be longer than the rest of my post. For the sakes of getting on with my project I will simply say that after much thought and comparison I've decided to go with a 4 Warrior + 1 Shaman team set-up. Below is an example of some of the things I took into consideration with both warriors and shamans.

Warriors

Pros:
· Heavy armor, the ability to take hits will be important with melee teams due to the increased amount of hits you’ll be taking vs. caster classes.
· Lots of HP, again important for the above mentioned reason.
· Multiple mob attacks, while not very strong at lower levels the mid level open up Cleave, Whirlwind, Sweeping Strikes, some very powerful moves when used at the right time.
· Rage, using rage instead of mana keeps the warrior going indefinitely.
· Charges, Snares, and interrupts, all of which keeps targets in close range of the warrior again something very important in melee teams.
· Shouts, Battle shout, commanding shout, demoralizing shout, intimidating shout, piercing howl, taunt, thunder clap, etc... lots of buffs and debuffs that when used wisely would directly benefit the entire group.
· Execute, sexy ability with just one warrior, imagine the burst damage with Multiple synced executes.

Cons:
· Berserker stance debuff, certainly berserker stance is a great buff to the warrior, however their greatest DPS stance also makes them take 10% additional damage.
· No heals, save Bloodthrist
· Rather easily snared and kited

Shaman

Pros:
· Totems, Windfury, strength of earth, and a fire totem will make up quite a bit for not having a 5th DPS while Healing stream + Bloodthirst should help with some of the micromanagement on healing. Tremor totem, while not as vital with warriors will help out for fears which can be devastating to multiboxing especially melee.
· Resurrection and Reincarnation, One big down fall of druids as a healer choice is the lack of a constant resurrection. Imp. Reincarnation will give you wipe prevention every 10 mins.
· Chain heal and Earth Shield, healing stream, Blood thirst + Chain Heal should eliminate a lot of the micromanagement for healing.
· Mail armor + shield, may not be plate armor of a paladin but still makes for a non-squishy healer.
· Purge, Frost shock, Earth Shock, dispel, snare, interrupt
· Bloodlust/Heroism, increased attack speed by 30% for 40 seconds.


Cons:
· Lack of HOTs, not a huge deal for boss fights given some of the other passive healing however melee is constantly on the run and dropping totems all the time can be a drain on mana.
· Immobility of Totems, some of the best buffs the shaman offers are immobile. Even with a 30 yard range of Totemic Mastery totems usually only last a few pulls before needing to be redistributed which can also be a drain on mana and add to micromanagement.

Setting up the Team

After I had reviewed all the class choices I decided to go with a 4 warrior 1 shaman team. The temptation of WW, SS + Cleave combos with a side of WF to top it off was just too much to pass up. If this works half as well as I am hoping it will be like tossing a group of mobs in the garbage disposal and letting it rip! :evil:

Obviously there is a ton of class combos you could go with but again I love fury warriors and that is what I decided to go with.



[/align][align=center]Dogs of War – The Experiment
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Current Level: 42
Instances Cleared: RFC, SFK, DM, WC, SMlib, SMarm, SMcath
[align=justify]
I will be going up to at least level 30-35 with this experiment win or lose. The team I have decided to begin with, 4x Warriors + 1x Shaman, will not be twinked or out level the instance. I will be going into each instance with quest rewards and auction house greens. If this can’t be done successfully without having to over gear the instance then in my opinion this project will be a failure.

Goals: Take the largely dismissed idea of Melee Multi-boxing and successfully figure out a way to not only complete but conquer instances, especially the melee unfriendly boss encounters.


*This next portion will be in a journal format based on every few levels and each instance I encounter.

Level 1: Just started the team and now it’s time to figure some of the basic macros and placements. Every time your alts land a melee attack they will automatically stop following. A member, whose name I cannot remember, mentioned a few weeks back that he puts a /follow command at the end of each of his melee abilities to have the alts constantly following. Having tried this out myself I find this to be very useful. I have yet to lose an alt using this method with the exception of extreme lag.

Taking this idea a bit further I have come up with this macro…

Melee Assist
#showtooltip Attack/assist party1
/startattack
/follow party1

Shows the current item equipped in your main hand, assist’s the party’s leader so you can have a target to start attacking, turns on auto attack, turns follow back on if your alt as stopped following you.

*NOTE: You can simply replace /party1 with /focus if you wish. Some prefer to use /focus for pvp purposes.

Now that we have our alts in constant follow we have another problem to address. The range on melee attacks is only 5 yards. Simply running up to the mob and begining to attack on your main will not work as /follow will keep your alts just out of range causing them to receive a "Out of Range" message. This means we must adjust our main's position in order to get all the alts in pursuit to be in melee range.

Simply running straight through the mob with your main and turning around so that your main is facing the mob and your alts are at the mobs' back will eliminate probably 80% of the problem...



On occasion the mob will move off to the side instead of staying in place, to counter this move your Main making an angle like so...






[/align]

[Tdog]

On rare occasion however a mob will be extremely difficult with you and will insist on staying on one side of you which usually ends up being on the opposite side of your alts. For these annoying mobs simply walk backwards with your main till the mob and your alts line up, basically like the first scenario but in reverse...


These 3 tips should have you landing 95% of your autoattacks right as the swing timer resets. There are other techniques to get your alts in melee range and facing the right direction. However rather then trying to explain it all I'll simply just suggest that you practice, practice, practice. Also worth mention that sometimes standing inside the mob help quite a bit.

Level 2 - 13: For my melee abilites I have decided to design most of them after this format...

Ability
#showtooltip (Ability)
/assist party1
/cast [target=party1target] (Ability)
/startattack
/follow party1

Example:

Heroic Strike
#showtooltip Heroic Strike
/assist party1
/cast [target=party1target] Heroic Strike
/startattack
/follow party1
Even though I have /assist in the macro I still use [target=party1target] just in case of lag or whatever reason the alts aren't targeting the correct target. For some however I don't use /assist because I want the alts to use the ability on a target other than the MA target without switching targets. For example...

Rend
#showtooltip Rend
/cast [target=party1target] Rend
/follow party1

Since warriors at low levels don't yet have any multi mob attacking abilites, and TC imo is a joke for aoe aggro generation, I will often start the alts attacking on the mob I want to die first, change targets with my main, hit rend which with this macro will not make them change targets, and switch back to the MA target.

Rage Fire Chasm: Well the first couple of times I went throw RFC tbh was a wipe fest. Mobs living longer giving them more time to move about and be annoying. The real reason behind the wipes however was me fussing with my alts, not paying attention to the mobs beating on the shaman, split dps trying to gather up aggro, losing my healer, and wiping.

First things first, As far as getting the mobs to do what you want them to do just simply takes practice, patience, and keeping calm. However one new method that I have learned to put in practice which has helped immensely stemmed from a method MikeB mentioned in post #23 of this thread. He mentions that he simply runs up to a mob and has his alts inch forward to the main and begin dpsing. Trying this myself I found it to be good however, one thing I did notice is that sometimes due to lag some of the alts might move forward quicker than others putting only some of the alts into melee range while the others were just a bit too far outside. If you continued trying to inch them forward at that point the front alts may pass your main causing them to turn around if you are using /follow commands in your macros such as myself. However it then occurred to me to simply inch my main back instead. Basically the same concept but takes lag issues out of the equation. Just make sure to not back up too far or again your alts will turn around facing away from the mob.




This has helped out quite a bit in that mobs are not moving all over the place, I am able to start in on my dps much more quickly, and things overall are just much less hectic.

Next issue I was running into was keeping aggro off my my healer. Given the fact that I'm not using a formal tank in the party and warriors have no multi-target attacks yet I had to think up some different ideas. Instead of just running in w/o a plan like I was orginally doing, I came up with the following plan for groups of mobs...



This particular scenario has a caster at point 1 which is why I charge in. If I was in the 30's I could just simply charge the caster and start cleaving and whirlwinding to get aoe aggro. However given the lack of any real aoe aggro this has worked for me just fine assuming that the group wasn't in aggro range of another group. If the group is in range of another group you'll just have to pull with /shoot and los the caster. If the whole group is melee is actually makes it really easy, just pull the group, use MikeB's or my version of his movement method and tear 'em up.

Other than that there isn't anything too terribly hard in RFC that I was running into. The 1st Demon boss in the zone does a fire nova but it doesn't do enough dmg to even worry about and the second boss is merely a slightly tougher version of the other warlocks in the zone. Having run this instance about 10 times in total I entered the zone at 13 and left at 17. In the end I was clearing the zone with ease and it took me roughly 30 mins.

Level 17- 42 I decided to do one last entry to summarize up the inbetween levels as I'm not too sure just how interested people were on my little experiment. I will share what I did learn though for the few who may have cared.

I went on to clear SFK, DM, WC, all of SM except the GY.

For the most part I didn't learn anything new with the exception of another movement method specifically for aoe boss fights. Basically I have 2 /follow commands. One is for following the tank the other for following the healer. Right before an aoe move comes up I simply hit the /follow command that is set to the healer and all the melee runs out. Once the aoe is over I hit the /follow set to the main again and run back in. For example, the Herod fight and his WW...



Also for caster bosses LoS is sometimes the easiest way to go such as Argual in SFK, when he teleports you can simply LoS him and make him run back to you although with a full melee group cloth wearers don't last long at all. He never teleported or MCed me more than once. Also at level 38 when you get pummel casters are a joke. Unless they are interrupt immune they should never get a casted spell off ever.

Also on a side note 4x WW, Cleave+SS, WF is everything I hoped it would be and more Nothing like charging into a group of 4 elites and destroying them all in 10 seconds.

Conclusion: Sucess

Multiple Melee Multi-boxing imho is not for beginners to multi-boxing. I'd highly recommend starting out a caster group at first and just get the basics down. Then perhaps even clear an instance till you can easily run it without any wipes. This should give you the oppurtunity to have time to getting use to controlling multiple characters and the theory crafting behind your macro creations and placement choices.

While melee multi-boxing may take longer to get use to then a caster team, once I did get the handle of it, I personally felt as comfortable with my melee team as I did my caster team. In fact there were certain situtations in which I perferred my melee team to my caster team. For example places with lots of LoS issues such as stairs and caves are a pain in the ass for casters as they do not get the advantage of having full range on their targets prior to engaging such as the stairs in most of SFK or the caves in DM just as a couple of examples. With my melee team it is no problem at all. Another big thing is the lack of set-up that caster teams seem to have and no mana to worry about which at times allowed me to move faster than I did with my caster team.

In the end a caster team is still probably a little more multiboxing friendly in an overall view, however a melee team should not be dismissed as non viable by any means. It does take a bit longer to set-up and get use too, but given enough paitence and practice a Melee team is more than doable and quite fun.

This is the end of my experiment and even though I have decided to continue playing this team i will no longer be posting in this thread. If you have any troubles multiboxing multiple melee characters and would like some further tips please feel free to PM me and I'll give whatever advice I have to offer.

[Tdog]

reserved

[Tdog]

Reserved.

[keyclone]

funny.. i have my 5x orc warriors and was considering dropping 1 for a shaman to get the windfury totem and healing

[Tdog]

funny.. i have my 5x orc warriors and was considering dropping 1 for a shaman to get the windfury totem and healing

Yea I saw the thread yesterday that you'retalking about and it inspired me to go ahead and start posting this thread. I almost posted it several times but it needed editing and I wanted to get at least RFC cleared before I started in on it.

[keyclone]

so far... i'm having loads of fun. i like hitting charge and riding the freight train into the target... then watching all the axes flying around. just too much fun

[Lyonheart]

what about 4 bears and a shamy!

[Tdog]

so far... i'm having loads of fun. i like hitting charge and riding the freight train into the target... then watching all the axes flying around. just too much fun

Yea when I first got charge at level 6 I wasn't sure how well it would work multiboxing, but it actually works very well I started the group as a 5x warrior up to lvl 6 just for fun and OMFG 5x Heroic Strikes takes down a level 8 instantly . Unfornately warriors start off slow on their offensive ablities but having 2 70 warriors myself I know the kind of abuse they can deal later down the road and I'm just drooling for the 30's

what about 4 bears and a shamy!

I thought up about 20 different class combos and multiple feral druids was definitely one of them. However something to consider about shaman healer is that WF totem does not effect bear and kitty attacks.

[Xzin]

Hmmmmmm

4 Warriors and a Shammy you say......