Hello, all
Yes, it's the new WoW fad: multiboxing. I happen to decide to try it out because I moved to a time-zone that makes it tough for my friends and I to play together. I've also always played with a very small group of 3-4 players and wanted to see if I could give us the chance to see the 10-man content. A few months later, and I've got 5 accounts, 4 80s, and about 15-20 65s. Here's a quick recap:
I used the RAF option blizzard offers and daisy chained accounts. So, account A invites account B, account B invites account C, etc. There are many benefits for doing things this way.
- First, you can chain summon the whole group to one spot if you get either the first or last toon there. If you had one account invite the other four, you'd only have one summon every hour (i.e. your first account could summon one of the other four and then would be on cooldown, I think... I may be wrong about this so someone can correct me if I am).
- Second, you can chain level-grant. If you can the fifth account to 60, that toon has 30 levels to grant the fourth account that invited it. Those 30 levels count as levels gained, so that toon now has 15 levels it can grant the third account. It cascades down to the point where my first account had so many free 60s, I moved some of them to the fifth (the only account which never benefits from level-granting, obviously).
- Third, every account gets the free mount this way, each get the free month (excluding the last in the chain, of course), and you only have to have any two of the accounts playing together to get the RAF bonus. So, if your main 80 booster is on the first account, you can have two level 30s from accounts D and E with him/her and get the bonus. If you invite all accounts from you first, you always have to have a +/- 5 level toon from the first with the rest to incur the bonus.
- Use a DK or pally tank. My main is a warrior and I've tanked as a druid and for boxing purposes, consecration and death and decay are irreplaceable for picking up newly spanned adds that have no aggro built on them. Sure, you can swipe, you can thunderclap, but I'm telling you, I have mana or runes on cooldown always, but I don't always have rage (especially early, when I'm just gearing up).
- Keep things simple. I have 3-4 buttons I use every fight and that's it. I have an assist macro so my team takes my target, a DPS macro which is the same key as my tanking macro (my spam button for most of the fight), a healing button, and a freak-out button (everyone blows their cooldowns, trinkets, etc). That's it. Now, two things to point out: first, I'm not very good at this. So, don't take any of this as Gospel. These are just my thoughts and experiences so far. Second, I do have macros and keys for totems, targeted cleansing, CC, group healing, mounting, drinking, following, spreading out, AOE, and panic moments. I also have dance and vanity pet keys. I just add them as I go along. But my main combat is very simple and so far has been effective. Case in point, I have a completely ungeared group of 4, mixed 79s and 80s, and I rolled through the first two bosses of UP normal last night. Not a breath taking achievement, I know, but 4-manning an instance above me seems like I'm not totally underachieving.
- Use the Click-to-Move and Interact with target one-two punch for quest-taking and that sort of thing. Look it up over at dual-boxing. It's fantastic. In brief, just switch on click-to-move on all your toons under settings, bind the interact-with-target key to something (I use F12, and a separate one for my melee classes, but about that some other time) and then walk up to a quest-giver or flightmaster, have everyone assist you and take your target, then press the interact key. Everyone will open up the dialog with said NPC and Jamba will take care of the rest for group accepting and mirroring of your main.
- Use Jamba. See above. It really does kick ass. Also, once you have Jamba, make the big-button macro that this guy suggests. I love it.
- I love keyclone and I have no problem supporting someone a bit who makes a great product like this. It's $20 for life, works great, the guy who runs it has gotten back to me when I pm him very quickly, and there are a ton of tutorials and support guides for it. There are free alternatives (autohotkey, etc) but when I was reading about software solutions for multiboxing, this one seemed the easiest to work with. I have no experience with the others. Honestly, though.. if you're going to multibox, don't cut corners here. It's a mildly expensive hobby but I dropped more on the steak I'm going to grill tonight for dinner than I did on keyclone which I've already used daily for two months.
- Pick the classes you want to play. I use all mixed teams because I fucking love putting new gear on. I love it so much that doing it five times more in an instance run and never wasting any drop really makes me euphoric. Mixed classes are harder though, as each DPS macro becomes less efficient (my lock macro for non-boss fights is just a shadow bolt spam). You can also take four shaman and a DK and still spread out loot quite well. Here's the thing: a DK and four shaman seem ideal for heroics. Mixed classes seem better if you might push on to do 10-man raid stuff because of the overlapping buffs and increased utility you actually need in them. Everyone says ranged is easier than melee for boxing, and that is true of course but I started with a rogue in my group and it really isn't a big deal. I use the click-to-move action mentioned above to get my rogue on my target and voila. So, in short, do what you want and figure it out later.
There's more, and I'll get to it, but for now, I think I might want to go play some. Here's a kill shot from last night's UP run, btw.
Enjoy your day and talk to you soon. Next post I'll put up armory links to my teams.
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