Tri-boxing Wow; Seeking software / macro language for three roles

[MDGreengenes]

Greetings and Hello.

This forum seems to have a wealth of knowledge and before I 'reinvent the wheel' trying to search or do something that has already been done, let me ask the experts.

My goals (most important to least):
Solo-questing with three accounts/dailies
5-man Dungeons with two other dps help
UNcompetitive Pvp: just honor from Battleground pvp and arena points

My plan (I currently have a 70 of each class already):
Tank-healer-dps setup philosophy or agro magnet-off DPS-heavy dps
Paladin, Shaman, Mage
Warrior, Druid, Hunter
Deathknight, Priest, Warlock
Rogue non-associated with groups

I leveled every single one of these 70s solo, but I'm looking for more. I finally have a nice desktop system, and I want to frankly be more efficient about leveling these characters and have fun playing 3 characters in 5-man's. Let me be clear I don't expect to 3-man dungeons, but that I can simply bring 3 characters and only need 2 friends to dps to fill in the rest. I'm NEVER planning on expanding to 5 boxing or adding more hardware. I want to make 3 accounts (tank-healer-dps setup) work with one computer and am looking for help and advise as to how to do that best with the groups listed above. Any advise you can offer I would greatly appreciate. If there is already a thread that outlines exactly what I'm talking about, please point me the way, but individual advise is also welcomed.

EDIT: I guess I should have been clearer on the background to this question. The computer is bought. The video card and chip aren't going to change or be upgraded. I do plan on upgrading the RAM but not within the next year. Simply put, the hardware isn't going to change. Given this background of the system, I'm looking more for insight about recommendations and advise on software and macro language to deal with three distinct rolls: tank, healer, dps. The reason this question is important to me is that the majority of multi-boxes I see described are either the same class x3 OR two dps and a healer. Is there anyone out there with experience of combining software and macros to both hold agro on one character, DPS/CC on another, AND heal on a third. I appologize for the inital wording implicating an analysis of the hardware.

[bugilt]

This setup will work for 3x. Start out at the lowest settings and adjust from there.

I run a Core 2 Duo e6850 3gb ram 8800gt with 5x and it runs fine on the lowest settings.

[entoptic]

My only concern would be your video card. I heard that the 9600 series is not that good but I could be wrong. Just start at 800x600 and low settings, work your way up from there.

I fried my 8600GTS with a 5 box single system. It handled 2 boxing just fine.

Just make sure to clean your system at least once a month as just a little dust can screw up your system big time. It's subtle and over time it will destroy your system.

IMO I would do a quad core with at least 4 gigs of ram. I would steer away from a dual core as both cpu's are now working overtime to support a game and all the resources that are running on your system. You need more memory!!!! Wow takes half a gig to run one instance of it. Then you have windows running as well. All together that is a huge strain on your memory. I suggest getting 2 more gigs since its cheap and you might as well hit the roof on memory requirements for XP.

I would also use msconfig and kill all running apps under startup.

[Groovy]

My only concern would be your video card. I heard that the 9600 series is not that good but I could be wrong. Just start at 800x600 and low settings, work your way up from there.

I fried my 8600GTS with a 5 box single system. It handled 2 boxing just fine.

Just make sure to clean your system at least once a month as just a little dust can screw up your system big time. It's subtle and over time it will destroy your system.

IMO I would do a quad core with at least 4 gigs of ram. I would steer away from a dual core as both cpu's are now working overtime to support a game and all the resources that are running on your system. You need more memory!!!! Wow takes half a gig to run one instance of it. Then you have windows running as well. All together that is a huge strain on your memory. I suggest getting 2 more gigs since its cheap and you might as well hit the roof on memory requirements for XP.

I would also use msconfig and kill all running apps under startup.

I'd go for a 8800 GT, works fine for my 5 box. I'm guessing the 9k series are just a little bit more expensive but pretty much the same as the 8k series.

[shodan]

Personaly i am as well 3 instancing on one comp and my set is warlock/mage/priest
That makes me a loooong road quesing team without any need to enter the cities with 15 16 slot travelers backpacks to increase that time to maximum
The reason why :
Drenei mage - water,food / intellect buff / sheep / some croud control
Human warlock - healthstone / soulstone(for priest) / void walker pet (no armor durability good survaval and taunt spell) /croud control / DOTS
NightE priest - healing / buffs / shields

That makes me a perfect questing team wich is lvl 22 (for a present moment) in 4 days without boosting or power lvling and not full play day.
I have only entered a city about 2 times in general
Not to mention that i enjoy the gameplay.

[Littleburst]

I got the 8800 GT and the same proccessor and 2 gig ram as MDGreengenes. I can run 4 WoW's smooth on it, aslong as i stay out of cities. It needs to load a few minutes untill it get's pretty smooth with 20 fps and some laggspikes in the 4 major cities.

I'm not a pro, but if you'd get the 8800 GT you're good.

[Techtroll]

I've been tri-boxing a 70 Prot warrior (Main), a 70 Shadow Priest and a 70 Enhancement Shaman for a while now. These characters have been levelled separately, and was only quite recently teamed.

I do not run instances with this trio, I only group them to do dailies and quests in zones that I've not cleared. Beyond doing dailies and completing quests in the various zones, I do not intend to tri-box these characters much.

For this purpose I do not need many macros on the characters, generally this what I have:

1. A invite macro on my main (unbound)
2. A Charge macro on my warrior, bound to ALT-1
3. A Tanking macro on the warrior, bound to ALT-2
4. DPS Macros (castsequence) on Priest and Shaman, bound to ALT-3
5. Renew macro for Priest on ALT-4 (only heals tank)
6. Greater Heal macro on Priest on ALT-5 (only heals tank)
7. A Shield macro on Priest on ALT-6 (only shields tank)
8. A follow macro on ALT-7
9. A Flying mount macro bound to ALT-9
10. A Prayer of Fortitude macro on ALT-0
11. A Land mount macro bound to ALT-=

All I really need to to is hold down the ALT key and mash 2 and 3

(I do not have the machine available at the moment so I can't give you the exact macro's)

The Charge macro swithces stances and uses any of the charge abilities in either stance, depending on what is available.

The Tanking macro is very simple... /cast Devastate. I could probably weave in more abilities, but for now it does what I need, and the TPS is good enough to keep ahead of the 2 other DPS'ing

The DPS macro's are not very complex either, they only consists of a /assist <Main name> and a /castsequence <Ability1>,<Ability2> etc.

That's really all I need to grind dailies and quests, as I do not need to worry about being attacked by the other faction on a PvE server. I could certainly expand a lot on macro usage, but I see no need as what I have serves the purpose for this group.
One of the drawbacks I have with my setup is healing. I'm normally only able to heal the tank easily, so if any of my other characters die, the other 2 may be seriously disadvantaged, this is generally not a problem when questing, but would become a problem in instances. This does not bother me much as I do not intend to bring all 3 into instances at the same time.

For my 3 lvl 8 mages, I use (or will use) many more macro's than I use now, as almost every ability will be macro'ed on the 2 'passive' characters.

I also intend to level another trio of different classes at some time. The trio I got in mind is currently a lvl 8 Paladin, a lvl 20 warlock and a lvl 40 mage that I never really felt like levelling solo