Well, it's been quite some time since I was able to multi-box; I reactivated my old Rogue and Paladin after taking a small break from WoW and have since gotten the urge to box up a team again. I know a lot of this will probably be common knowledge, but I felt that this may help some beginners (including myself) new to the MBing community to understand this a little better. Please, if you have any input at all, please reply. I would love to know what others think about this grossly verbose set-up.

I've been _slowly_ leveling a 5xShaman team (FotM, I know) and it's been rather rough. After perusing Vyndree's site, I saw mention of the fact that she used a Warrior until 40 to tank for her. That got me to thinking about swapping in a Warrior as well. I figure I'll deck the Warrior out using runs with my Rogue/Paladin (haven't decided) to keep him ahead of the gear curve on my Shamans and to make my time in instances easier. I think I'll keep the Warrior Protection to ease things a little (Spec at 40: WoWHead Warrior Talents ) That being said, it seems I have to be slightly higher than the median level for an instance to do it successfully.

At any rate, I've been slowly agonizing over my Shaman team and the virtual brick wall I think I have hit at level 15. I cannot do VC quite yet solo (then again, I don't have the Warrior in the team yet). I think I am going to individually make each toon hit 20 then rejoin them as a team. Shouldn't take more than an afternoon or so for the whole team. Once they hit 20, I'll take them back to VC and see if it's a drastically different story.

After all this, however, there still remains one problem: keybindings. I am a keybindings fanatic; I refuse to click hardly anything with the exception of extremely situational abilities (e.g.: resurrect). I macro what I can to other abilities (my Rogue's Abacus of Violent Odds is macroed to my Blade Flurry since it doesn't consume a GCD and the cooldown is the same 2 minutes as BF is).

Now, my typical set-up is using 1-5, Shift+1-5, Q and E with Shift and CTRL as extra modifiers, then Z, X, C, V, and B. That's plenty of buttons to handle my Rogue and Paladin. However, that's not nearly enough to keybind all the totems and spells the Shamans will have at 70.

So, my keybinds for spells are as follows:

Code:
1 - healing macro for toon1
2 - healing macro for toon2
3 - healing macro for toon3
4 - healing macro for toon4
5 - healing macro for toon5
Shift+1 - Lightning Shield
Shift+2 - Water Shield
Shift+3 - Windfury
Shift+4 - Ghost Wolf
Shift+5 - Mount
Q - Lightning Bolt
Shift+Q - Chain Lightning (macroed for trinkets later)
CTRL+Q - Purge
E - Earth Shock /castsequence macro
Shift+E - Frost Shock
CTRL+E - Flame Shock
Z - Elemental Mastery
X - Totemic Call
C - Heroism
V - Ancestral Recall
B - Gift of the Naarru (B is typically my racial spell)
So, just considering abilities, I will bind the spells as follows:

My solution is rather simple. First, let's assume that I will never use Tranquil Air, Windwall, Sentry, or Flametongue Totems. I won't even put them on my bars. Furthermore, since some totems do not stack, it's not worth putting some of them on all 5 toons and just let them be placed by predefined "sets". Totems in this category include Strength of Earth, Mana Spring, Windfury, Frost/Fire/Nature Resistance, Stoneskin, Earthbind, Wrath of Air, and Grace of Air Totems. These will all be "one-of"s included in a set on one Shaman each.

So, that leaves me with the following: 12 totems and 4 keys (one for each type of totem) using stacked modifiers to achieve multiple totems on the same key. Now, I like to be organized, so I will bind them on a sequential set of keys according to element (so Fire totems all on one key, etc.). This leaves me with a few choices. I can unbind more letters on my keyboard and rearrange some functionality of WoW (Honor pane, Rep pane, Skills pane, etc.) or I can use the six through zero keys above my letters. The hyphen and equals key are already used for bag and character panes, respectively since I am using the B and C keys for spells on my toons. I want to refrain from using the NumPad since I occasionally play using my laptop.

So, for the curious, the 12 remaining totems (of 28 total) are:

Earth: Stoneclaw, Tremor, Earth Elemental
Fire: Searing, Fire Nova, Magma, Totem of Wrath, Fire Elemental
Water: Healing Stream, Poison Cleansing, Disease Cleansing
Air: Grounding

Note that none of the Shamans will be Resto, so Mana Tide is not included.

So, 12 totems to 4 keys (6-9) is extremely easy, especially using Shift, CTRL, and ALT to modify casts in a macro. However, we're not done yet.

Since Tremor, Disease Cleansing, and Poison Cleansing Totems only stack when staggered, they require separate /castsequence macros. So that leaves 9 totems for the normal macros. However, as you may have deduced from the list above, Air does not require a macro anymore since it's only one totem. With the removal of Disease and Poison Cleansing Totems from Water, that leaves one totem there as well. So, I only need two macros for the remaining totems.

Earth Totem Macro
Code:
/cast [modifier:shift] Earth Elemental Totem
/cast Stoneclaw Totem
Fire Totem Macro
Code:
/cast [modifier:ctrl][modifier:shift][modifier:alt] Fire Nova Totem
/cast [modifier:alt] Magma Totem
 /cast [modifier:ctrl] Fire Elemental Totem
/cast [modifier:shift] Searing Totem
 /cast Totem of Wrath
The Fire Totem macro may exceed the character limit. Testing will see.

Grounding and Healing Stream Totems will be keybound normally.

The staggered totems will be written into /castsequence macros on each toon. An example follows for Tremor Totem.

Shaman 1:
Code:
/castsequence reset=20,combat Tremor Totem,,,,
Shaman 2:
Code:
 /castsequence reset=20,combat ,Tremor Totem,,,
Shaman 3:
Code:
 /castsequence reset=20,combat ,,Tremor Totem,,
Shaman 4:
Code:
 /castsequence reset=20,combat ,,,Tremor Totem,
Shaman 5:
Code:
 /castsequence reset=20,combat ,,,,Tremor Totem
Repeat for Disease and Poison Cleansing, if desired. Personally, I think I will be including them as a Water "one-of" set.




Now to define my Totem Sets.

Totem Set 1 will assume normal combat with no special abilities on the part of the enemy. This is likely to be trash mobs in an instance.

Earth: 1xStrength of Earth, 1xStoneskin, 3x Stoneclaw
Fire: 5xTotem of Wrath (post-50) OR 5xSearing (pre-50)
Water: 4xHealing Stream, 1xMana Spring
Air: 1xGrace of Air, 4xGrounding (replace one Grounding with Windfury if using a Warrior tank; replace a second Grounding with Wrath of Air at 64)


Totem Set 2 will assume that there are several casters to handle. In this set, I replace the Stoneskin and Stoneclaws with staggered Tremor Totems and the Grace of Air with a 5th Grounding. I also include the resistance totems as a failsafe.

Earth: 5x staggered Tremor
Fire: Frost Resistance, 4xSearing
Water: 4xHealing Stream, 1xFire Resistance
Air: 5xGrounding OR 4xGrounding, 1xnature Resistance

These sets will be achieved using /castsequence macros on each toon. These sets will be bound to the G key (Shift, CTRL, ALT + G), allowing up to 5 sets (possibly 7). I have yet to come up with those other sets, however. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to post them here. All input will be considered.



I think that about does it for my write-up here. Comments and the like should be posted and I encourage you to do so. Thanks for the read and I appreciate the efforts of all of you.

EDIT: Decided on X being Totemic Call. Also moved LB and CL around and decided on healing macros. Thanks, Kaynin!