Thinking of 25 boxing WoW - Not sure about a lot of things

[Otlecs]

I heard from a couple people that it is bandable.

I'd like to see an official source on that - a WoW forum search and my old mate Google both say the opposite, though with no explicit blue comment.

Some of these mods have been around since 2006, are still maintained, still work, do nothing more than synchronise calls to a public LUA function, and the closest I found to a credible comment on their legality is an ollllllld post from an MVP and a European thread from a while ago.

The European thread sees somebody asserting the legality of one of these mods, some.. erm.. "discussion" (*cough*) ensuing, and a blue closing the topic due to the flamefest without contradicting the intial assertion.

In short, I have no reason to believe these mods are in any way illegal, but I wouldn't want to rely on them to get a full 25 man team into AV simply because they're not THAT reliable

[Drizzit]

Thanks for the clear up Otlecs. It was just hearsay that i heard it from, like realm chats and bg chats. I would probably open a forum, email, or open a ticket before i would try it though just in case. To get 25 toons band at lvl 51 or higher would really suck.

[Jorai]

concerning priests, i would also add that in the x-pac the 51 point holy talent is "guardian spirit" - basically throws a guardian spirit on your target that increases healing to said target as well as preventing them from dying by sacrificing itself and giving them 10% of their life. could be interesting.

[Nixi]

I've gotta say running 10 characters is a full time job. I actually read all 7 pages worth of comments, but i'm gonna go ahead and say it again. Wow is built around the 5 man party and you're going to be forced to micro-manage your guys 5 at a time.

I've tried 10 boxing the battlegrounds. It's really not fun. I blame part of it on my class setup, (and i keep myself awake at night thinkign about 10 mages) but you're going to lose pretty much every single battleground because you can't complete the objectives. It's fun for awhile 'oneshotting' people, but it gets old. Fear will ALWAYS be a multiboxers worst nightmare and the only way out of it is shamans.

People have already talked at length about a shaman's viabilty to heal. I haven't personally tried using my shamans to passively heal like I use my paladins, but it is micromanagement. A priest is the best multiboxer multitarget healer where a paladin (imo) is the best single target healer.

The best setup I've seen mentioned (for pvp since i think you've already said PVE is out of the discussion for now) is the priest, shaman, mage setup. But with only 1 shaman per group fear -will- become an issue at some point. it pulses every 3 seconds, so there is time for someone to run out of follow range, or worst case someone kills one totem protecting a group and then it's gameover for those guys. I think someone else made a good point about fear having a maximum number of targets, so it might only happen once in a blue moon that a fear hits an unprotected team member. The other problem is your using 3 classes so you're multiplying the available abilities by 3. Everytime you add classes you are adding micro management.

You know, if you're just doing PVP and the number has to be 25 (24?) then why do you need mages for firepower? It's been mentioned several times that most of the mages will just be firing at corpses. Maybe you can take one of the weaker DPS classes and by using a huge amount of them you'll still have that insta-gib effect but with more utility than a mage brings.

25 paladins holy shocking? Consecration? what rogue could stand in 25 consecrations? how long? 25 priest holy novas? (fear is still an issue with these classes)
Maybe 10 Shamans + some other class.

I'd only 25 box for PVE bragging rights, and in the current state of the game I don't think it's possible to kill any 25 man raid bosses. I can't even take down netherspite. That encounter is just asking 3 people to act independently and it's just soo hard to do it solo. I cant imagine an encounter that demands more than 3 people to be awake.

[badashh]

I'm confused

Thinking of 25 boxing WoW - Not sure about a lot of thingsAs you know I am the 24 boxer From EQ. As I already have all the equipment in place I am thinking of 25 boxing WoW but I know nothing about the game. I do know that there are 62 WoW players for every 1 EQ1 players and it seems it might be time for me to go where the majority is.

I think my machines can take 5 instances of WoW each, as they work on 4 instances of EQ NP. If I have to upgrade Ill do so.

The way I work in EQ is I have 6 monitors and 6 computers and flip through each group starting an in game macro or social. I can go through all 4 groups in under 2 seconds.

Not sure if that will work in WoW, but it should.

I played a mage in World of Warcraft since its release. After seeing the alpha talents for mages in WotLK and seeing the damage out put of my mage versus warlocks in inferior gear in Black Temple, I opted to reroll. I have since leveled a warlock and warrior to 70; primarily due to the leaked WotLK alpha talents. If my mage is ever to be touched again, Blizzard has some serious overhaul work to be doing. I have to say it's pathetic that already a warlock in tier 5 can out DPS a mage in tier 6... if WotLK talents stand as they are now... mages are to be a thing of the past. My form class has been ignored so long and faced so much degradation, that I've finally chosen to just reroll and become a warlock and or warrior since Chaos Bolt and Titan Grip are so superior to "annoying sparkler" or any of the other pathetic mage treats. I highly recommend rerolling my mage brothers, because frankly, we've been ignored since day 1.

So have you played before or not?

[Sam DeathWalker]

No that a quote from the wow forums from some guy complaining about mages.

Well the above posters sure make a very very strong case for having shaman/priest/3mage groups. Gonna have to really think it over again. I think one tank is overall worth it, maybe i have to do some 5 or 10 man content at some point who knows? The Orc Shaman and female undeads is a great idea also heh.

Boy thats bad news about AV might not get in all 25 ... dang. I guess I really have to wait and see how http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?zone=4197 wintergrasp works out. Seems like that and cities are my only options. Kinda sad really.

I kinda dont understand the world will have say 3000-4000 enemies in it at any one time, I'll be on a pvp server and there is no where I can go where I will run into them? They all going to be in instances? Isnt there some kind of enemy stronghold or something? Is there a popular spot where there are lots of instances that people ususaly buff outside of? I see they are safe in their own territory lol ..

The 15X15 BG's are also que 5 at a time? LoL ...

[Jezebel]

for someone who has boxed as many characters as sam has (in any game) im sure hes aware of the difficulties and time involved.. having to res/repair targets and regroup after a while, for example. people that play single characters might say the same thing to us about playing 5 or 10. its all about perspective and what you enjoy. sam obviously enjoys pushing the envelope =P

as for tremor totems.. he's planning on starting after WoTLK. at which point totems will be raid-wide. 5 staggered tremor totems will completely eliminate fear within their radius.

micromanaging 5 shamans, 5 priests and 15 mages wont, i think, actually be all that difficult (aside from general boxing issues like lag, losing /follow, etc) as long as you keep things simple.

hotkey: castsequence/reset to cycle your totem field.
hotkeys: (example) alt+1 through 5. target groups 1 through 5.
hotkey: (G15, set to toggle on/off) spam r1 chain heal/CoH. obviously, this would have to have an in-game keybinding to trigger casting.. but switching heals on/off with a G15 allows you to start your heals and only have to switch targets depending on which group is being targeted, and theyll start getting healed. you can cast low rank CoH/chain heals all day long.. i cant see mana being an issue unless youre in combat for 10+ minutes straight, with no break to stop and drink.

then, your standard 1-9 keys are purely reserved for DPS/sheep/counterspell, etc with the mages.. which is exactly like playing a single mage, only multiplied by X.

so.. effectively, youre playing your entire healer setup with two buttons. target a group, toggle heals on/off. very simple.

[badashh]

I bet if you ran into a major city and bombed the auction house a few times that would get their attention.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Because my groups are on 5 different computers I have basically perfect autofollow. Of course I can only move one group at a time. So like my leader toon (shaman) will be on the main computer and the 4 followers will be on seperate computers. Autofollow has problems when the leader and follower are on the same computer. I think Ill have little problems with the hardware/control part (just ordered 2 more HP 2335 1920X1200 monitors, so I have 4 of them now and 2 that are 1650X1080 or whatever).

Ya keep it simple is the key for sure, I was reading about macros and scripts all last night and except for buffs I doubt i gonna hardly use them, I just going to target with warrior, then assist arcane barrage, cycle from group 1 to group 5 untill the target is dead. If not dead then do the same again, because only 3-4 mages will attack at one time I won't waste mana.

Lets say its 1Prest/1Shaman/3Mage per group for simple. Because cool down is 3 seconds Ill switch between group in 3/5ths sec each (I can do 3 switch in 2 seconds now)

Start: 3 mages hit
.6 seconds later 3 mages hit again
1.2 3 more
1.8 3 more
2.4 3 more
3.0 first 3 again after cool down.

If target is dead after say 9 mages then I just cycle to the first gorup again, target someone else and repreat. Basically I wont even use macros or scripts, at least for non healing offesive. Thats kinda why a warrior is needed for targeting, Once I lose my assist Im kinda hurting. On the other hand if they are targeting the warrior then they arnt attacking the cloths lol ...

So press one key to cycle between groups, and one key to cast arcane barrage. Then just alternate untill target is dead. Also same thing staggers the totems perfectly.

[Jezebel]

i wouldnt bother cycling your targeted nukes. sure, you may conserve a little bit of mana.. but you also give your targets a chance to run out of range (will happen often, anyway. people will generally see you and run, regardless if youre targeting them or not).. or be healed. since you have 15 mages, one nuke from each mage will nearly always instakill a target. since each mage only needs to cast once per target, you will rarely have mana issues unless youre forced to resort to AoE spam.

i run 5 PC's, also. 2 clients per. moving one group at a time wont work. it will kill your response time and give you that much less time to DPS. just set your /follow on your focus target and switch it between your mages, changing the lead mage frequently to throw people off trying to "kill your main" which many people seem to think will stop a boxer. since all the mages should be set up identically, switching between mages as your lead client shouldnt cause much problem. have two separate follow keys.. one for all your toons, one for mages only. when youre about to engage, stop moving on your main. your alts will stop in a perfect stack behind you. drop your totem field and hit your >Sit hotkey. this will drop all your characters out of follow, and your healers will stand up again automatically as soon as you start your heal sequences. then hit your mage-only /follow key , target your lead mage group with your healer focus hotkey and start your heal macro.

personally, i wouldnt even bother micromanaging heals except, obviously, to change which group is being healed. just start the macro and forget about it so you can focus your full attention on killing with the mages. downloading a good UI with a clear raid bars will help a lot so you can see straight away who in the raid is being targeted by hostiles (the bars turn red) and change your healer focus to anticipate damage. dont worry too much about conserving mana. circle of healing rank1 costs 300 mana. my priest has 11,000 mana and regens 160 mana/5 sec, plus you will have mana spring totem. youd have to be spamming r1 CoH for literally 5+ minutes straight to run OOM. if you havent wiped out any opposition inside of 5 minutse with 15 mages, something si wrong.

So press one key to cycle between groups, and one key to cast arcane barrage. Then just alternate untill target is dead. Also same thing staggers the totems perfectly.