DOGS OF WAR: A Melee Multi-boxing experiement

[wougoose]

Thanks for doing this experiment Tdog. I love seeing people trying things that are out of the norm, and I'm glad you took this project on. Not only is it doable, but you enjoy it! If you are done updating this thread, do you mind me PM'ing you occasionally to see how the project is coming along?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My shammies are 42, enhancement specced. DW + Windfury = walking tornado. It's a sight to behold. And with totems, things are just sick. Cleared RFD at 40, which was about +5 to the trash and +3 to the bosses, and had no issues. Gonna try uldaman tonight at 42 and see how it goes. Casters are cheese with grounding totems and melee are almost cheese with 5x healing stream + str/agi/AF. :P

[edit]
My biggest thing I love about 'em: zero downtime. Sub-30 (i.e.: pre-windfury) they were sucking pretty hard. Couldn't kill 'em but they took forever to kill anything else. Nice being able to take down +6 stuff, though.

The few experiences I've had in PVP lately have been over in seconds. They'd die without me ever having to re-/follow the alts. /rofl

[edit2]
Oh, and regarding /follow and mob positioning issues. With shammies being basically auto-attack plus Stormstrike every 10 seconds, positioning is not a big deal at all. So much so that I'd not worry about it. For rogues, this is different due to positional styles.

[Havelcek]

Good idea about /follow bouncing between the leader and the healer...I like that.

[Tdog]

My shammies are 42, enhancement specced. DW + Windfury = walking tornado. It's a sight to behold. And with totems, things are just sick. Cleared RFD at 40, which was about +5 to the trash and +3 to the bosses, and had no issues. Gonna try uldaman tonight at 42 and see how it goes. Casters are cheese with grounding totems and melee are almost cheese with 5x healing stream + str/agi/AF. :P

Ya it's basically the same thing with WW+WF+ Cleave/SS. Just oblierating stuff...

[edit]
My biggest thing I love about 'em: zero downtime. Sub-30 (i.e.: pre-windfury) they were sucking pretty hard. Couldn't kill 'em but they took forever to kill anything else. Nice being able to take down +6 stuff, though.

The few experiences I've had in PVP lately have been over in seconds. They'd die without me ever having to re-/follow the alts. /rofl

Exactly the same with me on the downtime thing. Even in instances I could chain-pull for quite a bit before having to stop and regen my shammy's mana real quick and then continue whooping ass. It was more or less the same for warriors pre 30s although cleave did help a bit.

[edit2]
Oh, and regarding /follow and mob positioning issues. With shammies being basically auto-attack plus Stormstrike every 10 seconds, positioning is not a big deal at all. So much so that I'd not worry about it. For rogues, this is different due to positional styles.

Even though I made quite a few comments about positioning, once you get the hang of it, it really isn't a big deal at all, you eventually don't really even think about it and just automatically react.
I mostly put the several charts in to help ease people concerns about positioning who hadn't tried multiple melee too much and to give a few tips to those who had.

Good idea about /follow bouncing between the leader and the healer...I like that.

Ty, and just a side note, if you run into an encounter where you want your tank to stay still you can simply make a 3rd /follow macro that makes it so only you dps runs to the healer instead of the tank as well. I'm not actually using a tank yet in this set-up so I haven't actually worked on that macro yet. Either way this helps to take the micromanagement out of running your melee all around.

Thanks for doing this experiment Tdog. I love seeing people trying things that are out of the norm, and I'm glad you took this project on. Not only is it doable, but you enjoy it! If you are done updating this thread, do you mind me PM'ing you occasionally to see how the project is coming along?

Sure, I still haven't figured everything out that there is to figure out melee multi-boxing but if you run into a snag feel free to drop me a PM and I'd be willing to share any advice or experiences I may have had.

[Bunny]

Great thread full of information and good idea to try the project.
As mentioned in another thread I was toying around with the idea of setting up a stealth team of druids and rogues with 1 healer, 1 tank and 3 dps to be able to skip most trash. As i already have two rogues i whould simply need to level 3 druids but I have motivation problems because playing those druids is rather slow and powerleveling them with one of my rogues in instances is boring. Maybe on the testrealm someday...

[d0z3rr]

Thanks for the writeup Tdog, lots of good info. You have inspired me to try a 2x Warrior, 2x rogue, 1xshaman group!

Can you also explain your keyboard/bindings layout? Do you use any peripherals?

People always go over their macros, and it seems like they have alot of macros, I'm just wondering where they're finding the space on the keyboard to fit them without it being a cluster. I myself use 1,2,3,4,5, wsadqe for movement, r,f,c,x,z,v,t. And all those are taken pretty much right away. So most of my macros I wind up clicking.

[Con7ent]

Triple melee could be really good, honestly I think the best triple melee set up would be warrior rogue enhance shaman. You could use the warrior as a tank, the rogue and shaman as DPS so all three will have windfury, so not only will your melee do crazy DPS but your warrior will generate insane aggro. The big plus of the rogue would be that you could pause KC, run ahead and sap CC a mob then macro him back to the melee group for the more difficult pulls. You could just have like a mage and paladin for the other two clones and that would be like a pro heroic group. ONLY keep in mind that with harder hittings instances, there are many packs of mobs that do a lot of kinds of AE, whirlwind, cleave, fire nova, etc. that would mean more overall damage to your melee clones since they are in the line of fire instead of back with the caster camp. I find that a group with 2 CC's, unless your like a shaman gib group works best. Melee owns DPS in high-end WoW now tho with all the armor pen :thumbup:

[JD50]

Great thread, thanks TDog!

[OzPhoenix]

Excellent thread and a really enjoyable read.

I often melee with my Shammies cause they're low enough to have little good +spelldmg gear and I hate wearing cloth, so I've been doing some of what's in this thread.

I look forward to future installments of this all-melee team.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So I just finished Uldaman at 42. Man, did they nerf the crap out of Archaedas or what? Very easy run. No deaths, hell only had to drink once. I'll see if I can get it down to manageable size video. :P