Carefully Chosen thoughts

Now that the full game is out and running, I've been running around the Old World enough now to, imo, competantly comment on WAR. At least in it's early stages.

I'm now Rank (level) 15, Renown rank (RR) 13 so far on my main career (class), a Chosen. What is a Chosen you (didn't) ask? Read on.

To put it simply, Chosen are unholy frontline warriors. Kinda like Paladins, but in reverse on the morality scale. Where pallies fight for the light and to protect those weakest, Chosen crush the weak and serve Dark Gods (in this case Tzeench). While these two classes are at polar opposites of one another in terms of morality, they share some simple game mechanics together. I'll get back to this in a minute.

First, lets talk about the careers in the game. Think of these as WoW's classes. Unlike WoW where you can have a warrior be any race besides BE's, each career can only be played by 1 specific race. Bright Wizards (think pure fire mages) can only be empire humans. Shamans can only be gobbos. To complement this, each piece of visual gear that you wear (excluding weapons) has a visual look for your career. The goal of this is so you can visually recognize what is coming at you from a distance without clicking on the individual. You can easily tell a Squig Herder and a Shaman (both Goblins) apart based on appearance, as well as any other race/career. Additionally, to keep things fair, while each side has an 10 individual careers, each one is mirrored by another career on the opposite side. For example, a Black Ork (tank, uses a combo system for moves) is mirrored by the Elven Swordmaster (Elf, uses similar combo system for moves). While each career has a mirror, there is generally enough differences to make each unique. For example, a Squig herder is ranged DPS with a pet, and a White Lion is a melee DPS with pet.

The unfortunate thing about this is that, while different careers look distinctly different, players of the same career look largely the same. It also doesn't help that equipment within a given tier all basically look the same, with only gradual improvements as you get more powerful. To combat this, you can go to any merchant and dye your armor with a primary/secondary coat. You don't have to have your entire armor set match a scheme, you can go for a rainbow look if you want. There is also trophies you can wear to decorate yourself, but those have come far and few in between so far for me and are generally pretty small.

Getting on with my Chosen, here is a pick of what he looks like currently. IMO, pretty bad ass for someone who is an equivalent to lv 25-30 in WoW.



So, the Chosen. Simply put, he makes me think of WoW's Paladin class, except unholy. Chosen are a part of the destruction side, worshiping the Raven God, Tzeench. They are one of the two tank like classes the forces of destruction have. They wear heavy armor only. They can also equip a sword and shield or go with a 2 hander like I have above. They have a number of abilities that further assist in tanking and DPS, most often both. What reminds me of paladins is that the Chosen have auras. However, their auras not only benefit himself and his allies, but it also effects enemies. For example, Chosen has a buff that increases it's toughness level (think armor, but just reduces incoming DPS by a flat amount in addition to armor) by X amount. At the same time, any allies within range will receive the same buff. Any enemies within range will actually be debuffed by the same X amount of toughness, making it easier to DPS them. You don't see enemies loosing X amount of Armor in WoW should the Devotion Aura is up.

Playing as a Chosen is a lot like playing a tank. I have given up the two hander you see in the pic to a 1 hander + shield approach, even in PvP. You see, Mythic went to some trouble to ensure that people who enjoy playing the role of a tank have a place in PvP, and in my opinion they hit the nail on the head. One aspect of this is implementing collision detection in any PvP environment. That's right, you cannot just run through your enemies to get at the squishies. You have to go around them, and when you have someone actively getting in your way, purposefully using snaring abilities to slow your progress, it makes you feel good to be a tank. A Chosen also has the ability simply called Guard. All it does is place a buff on you and a friendly player, allowing them to split 50% of their damage to you, while you split nothing to them. Top it off with your not-insignificant-dps, and you can imagine this further emphasis that there is a place in PvP for tanks.

Lastly, lets not forget one of a tanks classic traits. Survivability. Unbuffed, in between my armor (currently reducing 42.7% physical damage), mitigation (27.2% between block, parry and evade(dodge), Toughness rating (-35% of all incoming DPS), and resistances (roughly 15% reduction to all magical damage), I can take a pounding. When buffed and actively twisting (more on that in a second), I increase my resistances to about 30 I have successfully warded off 4 melee classes charging for our flag carrier for a 1 minutes or so, despite being constantly beat on. Their damage was all under 100 per strike, I have about 3.8K health in RvR, and my shield will completely absorb all the damage on a successfull block. I also used a Moral Ability that increases my block percentage to 100% for 10 seconds, making me virtually immune to them. Plenty of time to pop a potion that has a HoT for roughly 1/3rd my health. After I reached 1/3 health the second time, both armies clashed at our location and with the help of a healer, I waded through the battlefield like an impenetrable tank.

Ok, last 2 things before you get bored to death. First, Chosen can "twist" their auras. When you switch to a different aura, it doesn't just shut off and the other one comes on like a Pally. Instead, the old aura lingers for 12 seconds, at the same time the second aura is applied immediately, giving you the benefit of 2 auras for 12 seconds. Combine the resist aura plus toughness aura together while I basically just stand there and take it, means I'm gonna take it for quite some time.

And for Moral abilities, think super powers. As you fight in battle (PvE or PvP), you gain moral. When you gain enough for the first tier, you get to use your t1 moral ability. You can save it and continue fighting and get your T2 ability and so on. Using any moral ability, regardless of tier, drains all of your morall and places a cooldown on all moral abilities, currently set to 1 min. Also, if your out of combat for any more than 3 seconds, you start loosing moral at a very rapid rate. I estimate you could lose a full 100% bar in about 10 seconds. Shield Wall is my T2 ability fyi (currently don't have any higher yet).

The drums of WAR are loud in my house....

I'll have to admit, I have neglected anything WoW related for the past few weeks and have been going whole hog in the Warhammer Online Beta. Not multiboxing it or anything, just running around as the forces of chaos, slaughtering the weakling Empire and the occasional elf or dwarf that stands in my way. It's gotten to the point where I am pretty much sold on the game, and have reserved it so I can get into the live head start on Monday. I have a few personal friends doing the same, so I will try to get on the same server as the rest of them.

That leads to WoW, which the decree from on high states I will not be paying for both WoW and Warhammer at the same time, at least not all 5 accounts. I don't know the path that I will take, but right now I am planning to cancel at least 1 account untill the expansion comes out. Grinding dungeons for loot or leveling up yet more people through the same exact content is starting to wear down my senses, and WAR brings a fistfull of excitement I haven't had since I have started multiboxing.

The real downside is that Mindy refuses to play. She tried the beta for about....10 min and decided it wasn't for her. It's going to hurt on the enjoyment when I can't play with her, running around the countryside pillaging defensless townsfolk for no reason.

Anyways, since It's been awhile, I wanted to make this huge ginormous post on the differences between WoW and WAR, both good any bad.

So.....lets start with the bad.

The BAD

1. The graphics. In my opinion, it's not as good as WoW. I am comparing the two at max detail. Of course, there is a chance that the graphics we have seen in the beta are not the finial graphics, those bieng unlocked for the full release. But as it stands now, it's not something that I would write home about. That said, WoW's isn't exactly Crysis quality either, but out of the two it comes out on top, mainly by having just better polish.

2. Stability - I kind of wrap up this from anything from CTD's to unkillable mobs due to bugs to the game not loading properly. I haven't encountered a lot of this stuff. In fact, it's been pretty rare and it's gotten fewer and fewer as I have played on and patches made. The main killer right now is taking a flight between zones, where it occasionally won't load, forcing to kill the game and restart. Annoying.

3. PvE - By itself, with the questing, is fairly weak. The mechanics are basicly stripped strait from WoW.

The Good

1. It is different - Everything is something new to me. Sure, a lot of the mechanics are the same, such as "go to this, kill X to obtain Y, and come back". But while that keeps the gameplay familiar, all of the cosmetics are different. The classes are all different. The lore is different. What your fighting against is different. The enviroment is different. All done in a good way.

2. Public Quests - There are little area's scattered around the world where you can perform a Public Quest (PQ). In this area, as many people can participate and everyone gets a chance for some good loot. You do not need to be in a group to participate. Each PQ has usually 3 stages. First stage can be solo'd, and generally requires you to kill a bunch of mobs or destroy certain things. Once you hit the second stage, you have to start fighting Champions (think elites), making it very much difficult to solo with any class, but 2 or 3 people can do this without worry. The final stage is where a Hero (boss) comes and you got to take it down, and your going to need around 5 peeps to do it. Once you finish the boss off, everyone gets a score that is based off of how much they participated. That score is then paired up with a random dice roll. The final score determans who gets the phat loot from the boss, and usually your looking at like 4 people. The loot generally consists of Green quality gear that is above average quality than what you normally can grab at your level.

3. Influance. This goes with the PQ's above. Every PQ is tied to a chapter. Not every chapter has just one PQ, most of the time there is 2 or more. Anyways, when you kill mobs and participate in a chapter's PQ, you gain influance in the same way you get exp. There are 3 tiers of influance, basic (a potion), advanced (average equipment for your class) and elite (excellent equipment for your class). Once you gain enough influance to reach a tier, you can go to that chapter's Rally Master (inkeeper like guy, you set your binding (hearth) to him) and grab a reward. You can only have 1 reward per tier per chapter. So, basicly you can just grind the first stage for each PQ in that chapter and eventually get Elite, netting you some awsome gear.

4. RvR - This is a big point. The meat of WAR is it's PvP aspect called Realm vs Realm. This is done in a few different ways. First, there are seperate tiers (lv 1-11, 12-21, 22-31, 32-40 I'm guessing). Each tier has 3 scenarios (battlegrounds) that are tied to each racial paring (Empire vs chaos, Ork vs Dwarf, Elf vs Dark elf). Participating not only nets you experiance from killing players (unlike WoW), but you also gain Renown (think like another, parralel form of XP level). With Renown comes Renown points which you can spend (think talent points), and Renown gear you can buy (think Honor rewards). You buy this gear with regular cash, your renown level and your normal Rank (regular level) determans if you qualify to purchase it. There are generally two tiers of gear within each renown tier (so far).

Also, you have RvR spots scattered around the world. Entering them flags you as a particpant automaticly (like on a PVE server and flagging yourself PvP). Usually there is quests in there that you have to accomplish, making them generally populated with players. Unlike Scenarios, there is no balancing numbers wise. A horde of 50 orcs can come in and stomp all over your band of 1, and there is nothing you can do.

On the higher end (t2 and above), you have keeps and castles that are scattered about. These are also RvR areas that you must take, hold, and defend. This is important, because from T2 and on, if you want renown rewards, you have to purchase them in these keeps, and you can't do that if the enemy has them!

Lastly, every scenario, castle, keep, and player kill contributes to your side's war effort. Once it gets strong enough, you can assult the capital of the opposing force. Coolbeans.

5. Accessibility to RvR - This is what keeps all the neat stuff I just said neat. You see, unlike in WoW, there really isn't any level disparity in any RvR. Even as lv 1, you can enter a scenario and participate. Once in, you are buffed to lv 8. All of your abilites and stats are buffed to 8 (unlike WoW, your abilities/spells increase in strength in each level. ie: once you learn fireball, you never get a new rank from the trainer. It increases in power each time you rank up). The only think that doesn't level up is your equipment, which can be painfull since your now lv 8 with a lv 1 starter sword, going up against potentaily "real" lv 8-11 players who have decent quest/PQ/renown gear and more abilites than you. However, you can still kill them. It's nowhere near like a lv 1 vs a lv 11 in WoW. You will always be no more than 3 levels lower than the max rank in RvR. Even the open RvR areas like keeps or whatnot will buff you to the appropriate level if your below it.

Oh, and because you gain XP from killing players, there is no Twinking, or at least, no permanent twinks that remain in a bracket except the last one.

5. Lore - I'm a big fan of lore because it makes horrible games decent, and good games great. WoW has excellent lore, and so does Warhammer. It's not quite my favorite (Warhammer 40K universe is the best lore I have ever gotten into), but it's deep and rich with all kinds of stuff. The tomb of Knowledge is awsome that fills out everything that you do, and details anything and everything. It does a lot of other stuff too, but the lore portion is what sticks out in my mind.

6. The Races - Last thing that I like is the individual races of the game. Each one has a distinct personality and fills it's nich with reverent fevor. Take the orks for example. Unlike the Orcs in WoW, these beasts are virtually a complete opposite. Where WoW's Orcs are intelligent, honor bound, tightly organized and fiercely loyal, Orks are just crazy baby eaters who just kill until they are dead themselves. They are all pretty stupid, but smart in a preditory cunning kind of way. And they speak in a southern brittish slang and treat nothing seriously. If your dead, appearently your "lazy", and I've never cracked up so much seeing a big brutish ork say "Oi Oi Oi". The only thing that I think that is similar is that both favor Shamanism, but it's a loose connection at best.

Then there is the Chaos people, humans who worship the dark Gods for favors and power. In WAR, the player character's particular God is Tzeentch, the god of change. Evil to the core, all people that serve chaos are murderers who crave power. Unlike Orks, they retain (usually) thier intelligence. They use the undead, sorcery, and mutations to augment thier forces. Very nasty.

Lastly there is the Dark Elves that round out the forces of Destruction. Think what normally elves are, self centered and prude, then merge that with dark sorcery and sadism/masochism on a level that surpasses the chaos worshoppers.

And then there is the forces of order, Human, Elf, and Dwarf. But I could care less about them. For Chaos!

So, that raps up my look for Warhammer. I wouldn't say it's better than WoW, but it is different, and it gives a shock to the system I haven't had in a while. We'll see how things play out in the next few days.

My, Does Time Fly

I’ve devoted a large chunk of my Labor Day weekend plugging away with my team, and Ive gotten quite a few upgrades.

Cain has gotten the most significant, bringing his total defense up to 475 along with a total spellpower of 218 and 10.3K health unbuffed. Abyl is sitting at 1165 +healing, 318 Mp5 and 8.4K mana. The mages range from 629-666 +damage and 8.4K - 8.6K mana unbuffed. Slowly but surely, I am making my way to being sufficiently geared for heroics.

I even had the liberty of running a heroic as my tank for a little bit on Saturday. Some Guildmates tried doing a heroic run of ramps, but lacked a competent tank to do heroic ramps with. Specifically, they had some idiot warrior who ran in pvp gear and no shield. Could not keep aggro to save his life. So, since I was on, I decided to give it a whirl.

In short, I was able to hold aggro much, much better. Instead, my main problem is health, as I had roughly 10.5k unbuffed at the time. Regardless, I was still able to tank the first two bosses. It felt very odd playing just the tank, as I found my self smashing Ctrl-1 (my fireball keybinding) almost after every pull.

Nazan, however, owned me. Fire damage for 4.7K? Yikes. Time to start building a FR set. We even brought in Amanda with her more epicly geared pally tank, and still lost.

That said, this run again reminded me why I don’t like pugging. Immaturity was the main thing. People pulling stupid things when they shouldn’t be pulling. Using aoe abilities when surrounded by CC’d mobs. Things like that. In short, I felt out of place not being able to control every aspect of the fight. Guildies not excluded.

Besides my heroic run, I was able to add some more bosses to my personal progression. I cleared Steamvaults solo on Friday, and again on Sat, making it my first lv 70 instance that I can do entirely solo. I also did the 1st and 3rd bosses in Mechanar, and the first boss in Botanica. 2nd boss in mech requires just way to much individual movement, combined with lots of threat reducing abilities makes her impossible for me. The second boss in Botanica wasn’t as hard, but more of a gear check. By the time he does a second tranquility, my mages have no mana and are unable to burn down the adds.

This was all before I got revered with Shattered Sun and got a major upgrade for everyone’s weapon. Now I just need to get a good offhander for my casters and I’ll be set.

Now, I am wondering how to proceed a bit in terms of what to buy first with my money. Right now, I have two money sinks. 1st, is my epic flying mount skill which I am more than 1/5 done (cain’s has been bought). 2nd, and less expensive, is the Battlecast hood that my Priest can make. I already bought it for Furfur, and it provides a significant boost and is probably the best helm I can get prior to Badge or heroic gear. The problem is that it costs nearly a grand to make in materials (8 primal might’s each, ouch).

Personally, I am leaning to putting a hold on the mount skill and purchasing the materials for the helm. With the helm means I can finish putting the needed gems in my caster’s gear, which will close the gap they currently have and bring them all towards 640ish +damage, up over 100 damage since last weekend. It will make instances that much easier to progress through and one piece of gear that I can scratch off my list.

Time to Adapt

Big post incoming, reader beware.

So, time has passed and now I’ve upgraded my gear a little bit. I am sitting at 426 Defense on my main along with a combined 33% dodge/parry/block stats, 937 +healing for my priest, and 515ish damage (while buffed) for each mage. Not great, but I’m getting somewhere. Keep in mind I still have sockets to fill and enchants to place, but I am waiting until I get some good gear that will last a while first.

Lately I haven’t had time to play lately other than the occasional daily to get some gold. It takes me about 1 hour to do 14-16 dailies and that yields about 150gp per toon in quests alone. After getting rid of all the crap that comes along with it, I get about 50-100 more GP. Not to shabby in my opinion.

I’ve been also taking a look at my configuration and trying to see how I can improve it. Right now I have 3 limitations that I really want to see if I can get rid of.

Individual movement

Specifically, when trying to move while doing other things simultaneously. It may seem like a no brainier on paper, but it’s very difficult for me to tank the boss, heal my crew, DPS the boss and/or adds, debuff as needed AND move individual toons out of the way when they are targeted by a random AOE.

Thespia is a perfect example of this. She casts a random lightning cloud on a random toon at 30-40 second intervals. This cloud will guarantee a dead toon should they remain in it for more than a few seconds. The first boss in Shattered Halls does the same thing, but instead has 3 little aoe circles going at once, requiring constant movement.

Now, before I would just keep all my toons on follow and just move around the room, stopping occasionally for DPS and heals, and was good to go. This doesn’t work on these bosses as I lose way too much DPS/Healing needed to survive, so I’ve had to adapt. For both of these fights, I need to spread out my team before hand in a specific order so I know from a distance who is where. Once I pull the boss, I then reverse my main’s camera so I can see my team behind me. Should an aoe get cast, I manually move to the one who is affected and move them out of it. This is what’s worked for me so far and while I’m getting used to it, I don’t like it. There has to be an easier way without automation.

I have tried binding a separate forward move key to each toon, but I am already looking at over half my keyboard used for all 3 toons and I don’t really have a place for 4 more keys to be added, much less memorized. I tried just moving them all forward at the same time, but that doesn’t work as well either since it cripples my DPS/healing output like before (why move the healer when she’s not the one taking damage?). I also tried out the “move on right click” feature in the menu, but that’s an abortion in itself. So right now, I’m running out of ideas.

Multiple targets

Specifically, attacking 2 or more targets simultaneously without using AOE. Right now, and since I’ve started, everything is based off of my tank. What he sees is what my mages attack. There are other advanced macros that I can try, such as if the mage has a target, it will continue to use that target until dead. If dead/nonexistent/friendly, it will use whatever my tank is targeting and continue. Helpful, but not when I need them to change targets quickly. There is also the possibility of making /target macros for each boss fight for one toon. This works for boss fights that have the same named add or whatever that constantly reoccurs that must be beaten down, such as the warlord fight in Steamvault. This doesn’t work well in encounters that have multiple different adds, such as the opening of the dark portal.

So, now I’m trying to figure out better ways to get around these limitations. Thankfully, I can still do a lot of the boss encounters even with these problems, so it’s not too bad. My major stumbling point is learning the encounters in general because all of this is still new to me. But again, it's been like that all my way through Azeroth.

Adaptability

Mainly, removing people from my group for other toons, such as when Mindy wants to play.

Currently, all of my macros are very specific. Target off of caine, cast heal on Furfur, dispel Furfar, etc. Not only is it specific, but they are in a particular order on my toolbar that's been committed to memory. Swapping out one person takes everything out of whack. New macros need to be made to accommodate, the placement is generally jacked up, and the "feel" of how well my toons are doing goes down the tubes. This is particularly hard on Abyl, who is practically maxed out on common and toon specific macros.

My only solution to this is to go in and redo all of my macros to possibly consolidate them all. Instead of having /assist Caine, have it /assist party1. Instead of /heal caine, have /heal party1 and so on. This way I can swap the macros around and whoever I have in my party will be covered, without needing to make new macros. It's just going to take some time to do it, and I hate doing macros.

In a way, it's like how I went through my first "real" instance, Wailing Caverns. I had never done WC before in all my years playing WoW, and to top it off, I didn't know how to multibox through an instance. Simple stuff like healing macros for other toons, having fade readily available, and decursing/dispel macros mapped were alien to me. I learned the hard way through brute force what I needed to have, and it took me a while to have those abilities actually sink in. Now it's second nature to dispel and decurse any toon in my team at a moment's notice. Now that I'm 70, the bar has been raised just a bit more, and it's time to adapt yet again.

Pics, Pics and more Pics

So, I've been running around a bit, trying out some instances and doing some dailies. I haven't progressed very far in anything because there is a whole lot of stuff I need want to do.

That said, I have completed the first instance in Caverns of Time all the way through. I tried the Opening of the Dark Portal, but without Mindy to assist with the adds it's very, very difficult. In addition, I tried Steamvaults and cleared the first two bosses, and also completed the first boss in Shattered halls. So far I haven't done any other instances yet.

Right now I am trying to figure out what to tackle first to gain rep. A lot of good gear for all my toons start becoming available at revered for most factions, so I've been grinding away at the instances. I am thinking grinding at the Caverns of Time first, then Cenarion Expedition....or maybe the other way around. I don't know.

Anyways, here are some pics that I have been taking but not putting up.

My toons in flight

The first boss in Steamvaults. Took me at least 15 tries to take her down. See, I'm not very good at individually moving my toons to avoid killer AOE. It was very messy there for a while.

2nd Boss in Steamvaults. Not as hard as the first, but I did wipe about 4-5 times. Once I said to hell with it, all out DPS the boss all the way, I was good to go.
1st Shattered Halls boss. Only wiped once. Thanks to Thespia, I now have a method in place to move my toons individually for boss fights.

2nd boss in part of Thrall's escape. Easy Tank and Spank.
Last boss in Thrall's questline. When I was coming through at lv 68, this was near impossible for me. Now at 70 with slightly better gear he was doable after the second try.

The Journey Comes to an End.

The road to 70 I mean. All of my toons are now 70 with their respective flying mounts and endgame abilities. Now that I don’t have to worry about leveling, I can run around and focus on all the little stuff that I have wanted to obtain.

1 - Undead mounts for all my toons. I am already revered with undercity.
2 - Get me some rep with all of the outland factions. Mindy and I have been looking at the list so far and there is some pretty decent tanking gear that is obtainable.
3 - Money! I need roughly 25K gold to get all epic mounts. Dailies should bring me roughly 1K combined every day I do them.
4 - GEAR! I need a lot better gear than what I currently have to be able to handle heroics. I hear that 490 is the mythical number for defense needed for tanks and 1200 healing for priests. Don’t know what dps casters need, but I am sitting at around 500 + damage on each. I imagine I would need more.
5 - Instances. Now that both of us are 70, Mindy has expressed intense interest to run instances with me to gear her toons and for rep (she has the majority of the non-gathering professions). While I will be doing some instances solo, there will be many that I will do with her.
6 - Go to the Sunken Temple and beat up the Shade of Eraknus. That noob has it coming.


And that's the short list.

One thing that is going to be a major hurdle right now is gear. Most of mine is still fairly low, some of which I obtained when I was rummaging around hellfire when I turned 60. Now I am going to be heading up against lv 70 elites and bosses? Yeah, I'm in for some pain.

Fortunately, I gathered a list of stuff that I want to make for my toons. It's roughly half off of bosses, half from reputation and a handfull from quests of some sort. All stuff to get me ready to perform in Kara regardless of which toon I bring. I figured if my toons are geared for Kara, then they are geared for Heroics. We'll find out.

Phase 1 complete

My grand plan to become master of all mutliboxing blogs was set in motion today. Indeed, it is a cunning plan to force all other blogs who even occasionally dabble in the activity crumble beneath my feet.

First "real part" of my master plan (besides starting out, trying to mingle with people, gather a readership, make some content) is to get good with another multibox blogger so I can put a guest post on their blog. The entry would consist of such profane and horrible writing that they would lose all their readers. This in turn will demoralize the blogger, giving in to depression and finally abandons the blog. Over time I will infiltrate other multibox blogs and have them fall before me, leaving me with the greatest one of them all through sheer attrition.

Cause, you know, I can't do it the good old honest way.

Anyways, poor Razorbax at Three Druid Noob will be the first to fall with my devious guest post.
Poor sap will never know what hit him.

Besides that...I got nothing. The team is 69 now, and the level grind is almost complete. I can't friggin wait to be at max level so I can focus on just instances and other stuff I never did.




Oh, and I just got an invite into the beta this morning. That is all.

A little public service announcement

With the Recruit a friend program granting the much coveted triple xp and that you can just give levels to one of your alts, more and more people around the bog sphere have been looking to give multiboxing a whirl, even if it's for a few months. The goal for most is they want to use up the time that the promotion lasts and level up as many 60's as possible, then transfer them to their main and then close the extra accounts. The fastest way to do this, of course, is to multibox.

But, how do you multibox?

My video intro doesn't really show you how to set up your own setup. It wasn't meant to be that, but since people want to know how to do it, I am going to lend a hand.

First off, you should know that the dual-boxing community has put in tons of time making various guides and tips to help you ease your way into this new play style. I mean exhaustive work. It would be a shame if you didn't read it. The community is generally friendly and helpful, but reader beware, if you are going to ask a question, please read the stickies in the new multiboxer forum first! A lot gets answered in those posts, or from the links within them. If your going to dive in questions first and read later, I suggest you bring your flame retardant britches. This is where I started learning how to "really" multibox. Before I went to this site, I was only doing 2-3 toons simultaneously using nothing but Alt-tab (I do not recommend) for about 8 months.

Next up is Vyndree. She has her own blog which covers a ton of multiboxing basics. She is a very helpful person and you will probably see her on the duel-boxing forums.

Lastly, your going to need to learn how to macro. This part I personally hate the most, mainly because I have to do it to 5 toons usually whenever I have to change something (or create new characters, ugh). In addition to the Dual-boxing site, you can check out Wowwiki's multiboxing macro entry. A lot of the basics that you will need are here, and you can use them to branch off into other macros that you feel you might need. There are also some advanced macros here should you need to use them for anything.

Those are the main links that, should you read through them, will give you all the knowledge on how to set up your own rig, be it 2-5 toons or possibly larger if your psycho.

As far as just starting, just remember that this is going to be completely new to you and very difficult at first. Reading everything there is to read won't magically grant you experience on how to do it in real time. It's frustrating to start. Think of it like when you first started playing WoW. Everything was new. You didn't know where Ogrimmar was, or what talents were, or how to "play your class". Your going to go through that all over again, because multiboxing is going to require a different mindset than just singleboxing. You will NOT be able to use all of your abilities for all your toons to cover for all situations. The more classes you want in your group, the harder it will be to use all of their abilities.

And for my final bit of advice, start small. Do NOT take 2-5 lv 70 characters and try your hand at this for the first time. You will be overwhelmed by abilities and you won't know where to start. I am talking about personal experience here. Start small and create new toons for you to try it out. That way there is only 1-2 abilities that you need to worry about, and you will grow out from there. This will make life much easier for you and increase your chances in succeeding in multiboxing.

Rant time

Now lets forget all about multiboxing for a bit. Lets talk about something else instead. No, lets rant about something else. Indeed, lets tackle that proverbial Internet question that, to this day, the answer escapes me. Lets write the word lets about a dozen more times.

Lets lets lets lets lets lets lets lets lets lets lets lets

And if you don't like swearing or generally aggressive language, I suggest you stop reading now :)





So here we go…

Why do people, given an audience and anonymity, act like friggen cockbags? Inquiring minds want to know. Xbox live, PSN, WoW, whatever the platform or game, there is always some of these dingleberries running free in the wild, ruining it for the rest of us. I’m not talking about cheating, stretching the rules, or hell, even spawn camping. I’m talking about those special individuals who just act like cocks for no damn reason. Maybe they want to be stroked, like a….. kitten. Hell I don’t know.

For imaginary bonus points, why does this happen especially during a team like activity? Say like….an instance run?

This past weekend while I was out and about saving San Diego’s data centers in the same way Arthas saved Stratholme from the plague (WotLK refrence, boooo), Mindy decided to take her hunter with some guildies to do some lv 70 instance. She did not take her mage and priest, as she doesn’t have her toons set up to do instances together. They needed a tank and healer to round out the setup, and got a feral druid and a holy priest.

Now the druid, nobody had any real problems with him. Sure, he was 69, relatively new to tanking and very undergeared. But he had a heart of gold and practically screamed “I think I can I think I can” through the run. From what I am told, the poor guy was intimidated a bit by the bosses, not knowing if he could handle it. I know it must get a little frighting, stepping up to the dance floor, looking at your 30ft dance partner with razor sharp teeth, ugly as sin and whispered “He’s all yours” by your 4 closest friends. But hey, you’re the fall man tank, you knew what you signed up for.

The priest, on the other hand, acted like some snobby rich fart from uptown. You know, like the guy who fantasises himself as holier than thou, lord of the ladies, a blessing to us scrubs with his mere presence. While back in reality we try to distance ourselves from him due to his foul smell, sailor moon cosplay dress and possible white spunk in his hair.

So anyways, after forming the group and getting all the way to the instance and establishing who does what, the priest crosses his arms and proclaims “I only do raid heals”.

I’m sorry, What?

Turns out “raid heals” actually means only group heals. Now, I am not the best priest out there. I wouldn’t even consider myself really as one since Abyl is more like another cog in a greater machine than an individual. That said, I always took healing as a sort of digitized whack a mole, in reverse. Make sure the moles stay up while getting beat down and occasionally, whack them all at once if the situation called for it. But no, mr fancy pants is too good for it. Instead, he chooses to just use the big mallet during the instance.

And he couldn’t even get that right.

To further add some salt to the wound, he would insult his teammates during the run. As the shaman changed gear and picked up the spot healing, he would remark how much he could outheal him if he wanted to. He would insult the mage for being 2nd in dps next to a hunter, claiming that even he could outdps him if he wanted to. Even the newbie tank was not immune, constantly ridiculed for not having better gear, not knowing the bosses, and just general douchebaggery.

In the end, they never completed the instance since it took to long due to frequent wipes.

Why do people need to act like this? Is the need to have a digital epeen in front of a bunch of strangers so great that common curtisy goes out the window? On that same note, why do others tolerate it? I don’t pug, but even if I did I would have booted this hobo to the curb the moment he put on his asshat. I just can’t stand that crap, and neither should you. If we all just never grouped with these brain children in the first place, didn’t invite them into respectable guilds and generally didn’t tolerate their crap, they might, die off somewhere in the vast digital wilderness.

Of course, they could always just stop playing and instead troll the WoW forums, turning it into a cesspit and IQ draining experience. Oh wait, they already did. That’s a rant for another time.

Editor's note: This rant was written roughly one week ago by a starving, caffeine saturated being who was up for approximately 27 hours at the time. No excuses given for putting you through this crap

What would you do....?

I got a side little project that I am working on currently that will take some time, so in the meantime, I decided to pose this question to you (and only you as your probably my only reader):

With everything else taken care of (money, hardware, software, macros), what kind of multibox team/teams would you create in WoW?

For PVE, what would you choose? Generally in this setup, you want to have the "holy trinity", which is a tank, healer, and DPS. 3 different classes is a good base to start off with, but it's a mere guideline and doesn't necessarily have to be the rule.

Would you make a somewhat diverse team like mine, capable of doing instances? Maybe you would put a spin on it, and say, make a Warrior, shaman, and 3x warlocks? You could even make 5 druids, spec 1 feral, 1 resto, and 3 balance and get the damn near the same result. Maybe a druid and 4x shaman?

Now for PVP, what would it be? PVP is generally fast paced and relies on high burst damage, so you generally don't want to bring a lot of different classes as it would be hard to co-ordinate them all. 2 classes at most, but again, more of a guideline than a rule.

You can go for the clone army look and make them all the same class? If so, which class? Most of the DPS classes can output insane damage when stacked, just take a look at any of the shaman video's out there. Stacking 5x mages would bring you incredible single target DPS, while 5x warlocks have a bit more flexibility with dots and pets. You could always try 5x shadow priests, or 5x hunters :). Maybe through in a melee, like a warrior, and back him up with mages or locks? Hell, you could always respec your all druid PVE team and make them all Boomkin.

Anyways, leave a comment or post on your own blog what you would do if you multiboxed 5 accounts!

...round and round...

Dinged 66 this past weekend and gave Mana Tombs a whirl, and the poorly made video below is a result. And for a poorly made video, it takes forever to make one.

Work hindered my first attempt. After reaching the Prince's area, I got called for a case I couldn't postpone, so I had to come back several hours later to wrap him up. The hardest part in the fight is to take down the 3 orbs that are with him before they turn into casters. I must have fumbled with about 6 diffent strategies in my head as to how to get them down, then keep any additional ones down. Thoughts such as custom macros for each mage, trying to focus switch constantly mid combat, etc. Then I said to hell with it, run in and AOE them down, then proceed to kill the boss. And it worked.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are best :)

Lastly, I opened up the comments section so anyone can comment. No need to register to blogger anymore!

Video mirror: Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egrlg3wmhVM

A Video Demonstration

So, as promised, here is my little video I cooked up that gives you the gist of how I operate. I've been multiboxing for months so it's gotten pretty second nature when it comes to my PVE team.

Depending on responses and suggestions, I might make another one on another topic, like a boss fight or something.

*edit I have a few guildies asking me for that already, so I will probobly do a run of something this weekend after hitting 66 and try to make it a bit better*

Alternate Mirror: Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo-58zmcmSM

Sorry for the lack of updates

My work, by it's nature since it's revolves around break fix activities, hit's high points and low points. This week has been a high point meaning I've been coming in early and leaving late. I've gone ahead and messed up my sleeping schedual to boot so now I sleep when I normally play.

On a good note, I am almost done making a video giving a brief explanation of how I controll 5 toons at once. It's my first video so I would like as much feedback as possible.

Also, Mindy's toons dinged 70 tonite! I now I got a team of 70's who got my back untill I hit 70.

More importantly, this means she can go ahead and start grinding for gold. Gold that I will eventually steal to purchase my mounts when I reach 70 :)

And now for something completely different...

So, I dinged 65 with my team and have been steadily progressing to 66. Been focusing mainly in Nagrand, and I love it. Nagrand is such an awsome place with some really cool mobs to fight. I particularly like assisting the Mag'har and meeting Garrosh. Bieng the huge lore nerd that I am, and since orc lore specificly strikes a chord with me (Hellscream, Broxigar and Ogrim FTW), I will go ahead and declare Nagrand as my favorite Outland zone. Sure, Garrosh is acting like a hissy schoolgirl at the moment but it all changes once you complete a lengthy epic questline.

Anyways, overall it's been good, but the double XP is gone now and leveling slowed to a crawl. As much as I want to do instances, I equally want to get to the level cap as soon as possible so I can really focus on nothing but instances, tradeskills and reputations. Doing instances now, while enjoyable, have 2 large negatives to it. 1st, even with double XP, it slows down my leveling speed a ton. I have to learn each instance from scratch, so it takes me hours to complete something that takes a normal group 50 min. 2nd, it's time consuming. I often don't get huge chunks of time to play uninterupted, so doing an instance run typicly means weekends.

So, I decided to change it up a bit and have some fun. I rolled 5 shammies and went at it.

It's.....ok. Sure, shamans end up pretty damn powerful, but when they start out, they are weak as all hell. Plus, both Orc and Tauren starting places are horrible for boxers, with Tauren bieng the worst (mainly collection quests there). I have 5 Orc shaman, and the quests in Durotar are just killing me. I feel like I am leveling so slow since there isn't a lot of quests. I was going to go to silvermoon to do level there, but then I remembered they don't have a shaman trainer, so I didn't bother.

After spending about 4 hours on those guys, I saw this pic (from WoWinsider). I want you to take a good look at it. In fact, to ensure you looked at it, here it is:

Now, picture 5 hunters with that exact pet, all chasing after the same guy. Specificly, some Gnome.

Needless to say, I immediatly made a 5x Tauren hunter team, and they are awsome. They are only lv 9 now, but it just feels so much better to play as than with the shamans. Smoother would be a better word. Autoshot kills basicly anything before it reaches me, and I don't have to spam the key since it..well...auto shoots. If I want it to die quicker, 5x Arcane shot plus a regular Auto Shot puts anything out of it's misery at the moment. Unlike my shamans, I don't have to wait on mana and just keep going. I also can do quests in Silvermoon, which is a major plus because it's so much better than Mulgor or Durotar. Plus, I get pets in one more level, and I like pets.

In short, all 3 teams are fun to play, but for different reasons. My main team can do instances at a moment's notice, which is fun for me when I want to do instances. My shamans will be for pvp arenas should I get them up high enough (right now I need to get them over the hurdle of it's just sucky leveling them in starter zones). The hunters are just for fun really, no real ryme or reason other than I really like the hunter class but never bothered to play it.

And on a side note, after playing 3 classes through instances and whatnot, playing just 1 class is a breeze. Seriously. No real fancy binding or segregating your keyboard out. Push 1, and everyone autoshoots. Push 2, everyone Arcane shoots. Push F1, all pets attack current target (coming soon). Nice and simple, just the way I like it.

I'll put up pics when I can.

FACT: It doesn't matter as long as the boss dies

If you read World of Matticus, then you may have stumbled on one of Wyn's recent posts. Basicly, as you can probobly guess by his title (which mine is paroding), he points out taking an additude to not put out 100% in a raid or basicly any lazy/greedy behavior is NOT justified by eventually killing the boss. Now, to a degree, I agree with him as he puts up some pretty strong evidence. Increased repair costs, increase costs for pots (and damn that shit ain't cheap), takes longer than necessery, and possibly most important, increased stress on a ton of people that really didn't need it. Also, the vibe I'm getting is that he is talking about mainly content that's on "farm", but I guess it could be applied to progression bosses.

Update: Changed to Wyn to give credit where credit is due.

Now, I don't have the raiding perspective that he does. At least, not anymore, that time has passed over 2 years ago.

That said, I don't agree with his myth, but I am also looking at it from a different perspective.

1st. I'm not raiding

2nd. I am not grouped with anyone but myself.

3rd. All costs in any mats are entirely my own.

4th. I want to do it because I want to say that I can do it

5th. Of course, phat loot. When it drops of course.

Case in point, now that I'm 64 I decided to give Underbog a whirl to the end. Hungarfen dropped without a problem this time, giving me this useless thing.The pulls to Ghaz'an were a pain but doable. I wiped the first attempt of Ghaz'an, but I got him the second time. I got myself the Talisman of Tenacity for my tank, so it's all good. Unfortunately, I skinned it before I took a pic because I wasn't paying attention.

Now, everything was going smoothly untill I met up with this guy. Boy, was this fight a pain. I thought he was going to be a pushover, but no, I wiped easily a dozen times or more. I wiped so much I had to stop, repair my armor, and come back only to wipe some more. Let me tell you, corpse runs to this instance suck almost as much as BRD.

The key problem I had was after his freeze trap. See, I would have everyone on follow to keep them within the 8 yard raidius so I don't have to worry about ranged attacks. After his freeze trap, mabye 2-3 seconds after, he punts you a fair ways back. The punt itself wasn't the problem, it was that I wasn't getting any heals after it and that was killing me.

Then it dawned on me, my guys were on follow, and when I got punted, they followed, stopping any heals or dps, and often they got stuck behind a mushroom, forcing them to run in place. Yeah, I slapped my head in shame after that realization. The very next try I kept the guys just outside his alcove, and tanked him against the wall. No problems whatsoever. Once he was down the bear was a pushover. Sadly, for all that work, he dropped some POS that got sharded.

The last boss, The Black Stalker, was equally hard. His levatate ability is what messed me up the most, moving people around so they got hit by his chain lightning. This fight all came down to positioning. I ended up having the priest just inside his cavern, with the mages in front, everyone spread out. I tanked him near where he would reset. He didn't really hit hard, it's just that the fight was awkward. Fortunately, if you run out of his room, he resets, so I didn't do many corpse runs, but I probobly wiped just as many times as with Musel'ek. This time I got me the Pauldrons of Brute Force for my main, which is all good.

While I was there, I found the Slave pens and gave it a whirl. Overall, it was definitly easier to progress through than Underbog. Mennu was a cinch. Seriously, I am astounded by how easy he was. Just walk him in a circle to get out of range of his totems. Sadly, another sharded item.



Next was Rokmar the Crackler, and again, easy fight. The trick is to fight him at absolute max range. I stood at the limits of my priests healing, and I was between the boss and my team. His AOE attack never hit anyone but Caine. Again, I got a fairly lackluster Runed Fungalcap, another item to be sharded.



And, that's as far as I progressed. By this time it was almost 12:20am, and I had started at 7:30pmish. I did reach Quagmirran, but the NPC that provides the nature buff (which I badly need) died when the naga came after his release. Quagmirran beat me down pretty bad pretty quick, and I was too tired to continue.

So, this isn't exactly the fastest way to level, but the satasfaction of making that boss kill is all worth it. Of course, if the content was on farm I probobly would be pissed.

Anyays, I'm off to Nagrand and Terrekor for quests to try to level as soon as I can before I attempt any more dungeons. My mages are respec'd again, this time with the typical 3 min mage build (PoM, Arcane Power, and Pyroblast), with more talents into arcane for more damage. In short, each mage has roughly 400 +spell damage now and when i pop my cooldowns, I do the damage of roughly 4 equally spec'd mages. Does wonders for the would be ganker.

Revenge is a dish best served HOT

Now, I'm a pretty lenient guy. Even though I don't like being ganked, it's not that big of a deal. I don't particularly fancy world PVP either, but hey, Mindy's friends are on one, and I don't want to play alone, so here I am.

But the one thing I cannot stand is corpse camping. I hate it. Aggravates the hell out of me. Ganking is one thing, but the when you corpse camp your intentionally just trying to be a dick and ruin someones day.

Tonight, I was running through Terokkar Forest trying to get my main to 64, and two gnome locks from Sandwich no Jutsu show up. I wasn't expecting a fight, but then again I don't remember if I started it or if they did. Anyways, we fought, and I won the first round. I barely scraped by as they were higher level than me and did some AOE fears (any multiboxer's bane right there). So, I start killing the monsters that aggro while we fought, not expecting at all to fight again. I was very, very wrong. They surprised me by rezing pretty quick and got the better of me. By the time I got back, they decided to camp my bodies. I try again to rez and fight, but at half health/mana, I couldn't bring them down since they were fully buffed. I actually brought one of them down to 3%, but ran out of mana on all my mages.

So, I asked Mindy if she would like to lend a hand, even though she just shut her PC down and was about to go to bed. She hops on, but by the time it boots, she sets up, logs in, and starts flying to the base the gnomes leave. I'm still frustrated from being camped, so I suggest we run around and try to kill allies in spite. Her team is a lv 67 Hunter, 67 Mage, and a 67 Priest. We mount up and comb the entire zone. Found one hunter who is lv 70, but she was able to slip away by keeping her distance from us very, very well.

About 10 min later we were about to call it a night when we saw a draenei paladin. We gave chase, and look at that, we found the same two fuckers that camped me earlier. Both were just finishing up a fight, roughly half health each.

This one starts to run, but I got Crusader aura bitch, you can't outrun me. I catch up to him, dismount and cast 3x PoM/Pyroblast, and down he goes. The other one decides to fight, and started to dot up my mages. I promptly turn around and Fire Blast him, bringing him down to 10% ish, then finish off the rest with arcane blast. The fight was so quick Mindy didn't have a chance to dismount and lend a hand.

After that, I felt soooo much better. We went to the entrance of Shattrath and took logged for the night. As much as I wanted to, and Mindy was willing, we didn't corpse camp.

In a way, I almost don't like what we did. I don't like leveraging 5 toons (technicly 8 with Mindy) and go try to World PvP against 1-2 guys. But then again, I remember Stranglethorn vale and the lv 70 warrior and druid that had nothing better to do than camp lv 30 lowbies, or the warlock/hunter lv 70 pair that followed me from the air, constantly sniping my clothies then flying off when I tried to close the distance. I remember trying to go to Ramparts and have almost a dozen 70's camp me.

When I remember those things, I feel like what we did tonight should be just the start of some random world PvP pillaging. I don't know if I want to go down that route yet, but we'll see.

A reminder as to why I multibox

Ever been a part of a pug? Especially one that sucks? Well, this guy has, and just reading about it makes me feel $75 a month is 100% worth it.

It does make for funny blog entries though.

Hungarfen falls before me

I am still pretty exhausted from Comicon and taking my son out for a swim, so I didn't try to do a full clear of the instance on my first go. Instead, I just kinda waded in, nervous as hell since I don't know what to expect, and make my way to the first boss.

I wasn't expecting to go to Underbog first. I thought Slave pens was listed as easier, but I didn't have any quests for it.

Anyways, in my opinion, this instance was fairly easy compared to when I first went into Ramparts, and about the same in difficulty as Blood Furnace so far. Unlike BF, I can't really perform any crowd control, so I have been pulling the groups of 2-3 and just tanking it like I did back in Azeroth. They hit hard, but I had no problems maintaining aggro and burning them down. It was like this all the way to Hungarfen.

Now, this gigantic bog lord for a boss, apparently guarding some gigantic looking pube sticking out of the ground, was a pain. Specifically, I need to constantly move my guys to ensure the spores don't ruin my day. It is extremely challenging to add individual movement to my already stressed out multitask list of tanking, dps, and healing. I tried it twice to move them when a spore got close, but it just didn't work right, or I'd fumble and wipe.

So, I said fuck it, kept all my toons on follow, and just ran with it. I would run up and tank, cast 2 fireballs and move when my health got topped off. Rinse and repeat. Moved out of range at 20% and re-engaged when he was finish doing...whatever bog lords do when they reach 20%. The rest is history.

And for all that, he drops some POS leather glove piece that joined my growing collection of small prismatic shards.

I'll try a full run tomorrow when I don't feel so tired.

Update:

Went to Comicon, had some fun. I met the makers of Penny Arcade and mentioned the whole PAA thing. They said they had stopped playing WoW roughly a year ago and are no longer in it.

To be honest, I pretty much expected something similar in response, which is fine. I really, really don't want that many people to notice me, as it would make it near impossible to level or do dailies without getting raped.

Lv 63, Zangarmarsh, and the PAA

Finally dinged 63 will all my toons yesterday, and let me tell you, it sucks. This team consists of the highest leveled toons I have ever made, so I was anxious to port back to town and scope out my new spells. All I got were:

Shadow Resistance Aura
Greater Heal
Mana Burn
Mind Blast
Amplify Magic
Arcane Missles
Frostbolt

To quote Dr. Evil: "Whoop de fricken do."

Anyways, past that, I don't like Zangarmarsh. First off, it's a swamp. I hate swamps. Sure, it looks otherworldly and has these massive creatures on 3 legs that scare the shit out of me, but it's still a swamp.

And where there is a swamp, there are trolls, and I just don't like trolls. I don't know why, but I do. I think it has to do with their voices.

Lastly, I have started to run into more and more would be gankers or just crazy smucks thinking I'm an easy kill. I can see a lv 70 swooping down when I'm on a mining node, staring for a few seconds, then opens fire. But when a lv 62 Shaman attacks me with no backup, I start to wonder about his sanity. 5vs1, and he chooses to pick the fight.

Normally, I leave people alone as I run about. Er, well I used to. Going from Hellfire Peninsula to this swampland has increased the amount of world pvp I do by an unhealthy amount, and now I regard all Alliance members from the other side of a 3x pyroblast. This change was made necessary after a lv 61 mage tailed me for about 10 min, waiting for a lv 70 warrior for reinforcement. They didn't survive, but dammit I can't leave any of these gnome lovers alive now because I fear it's going to bite me in the ass.

Personally, I blame the Penny Arcade Alliance. I don't hate them, no, they are playing the game and having fun just like I am. But they are legion. Most of the alliance that I come across are in one of their guilds, and these guys are the ones ballsy to attack solo. I never noticed these guys until now. I'm kinda hoping they don't notice me, as I don't want legions of multiboxing hating 70's coming to prove a point.

Then again, since I have changed my world pvp view to a more slash and burn perspective, I feel that my wishes and actions will counteract one another.

Oh well. I'm going to the San Diego Comicon today, and the makers of Penny Arcade will be there. I personally love their comic so I'm going to stop by and say hi, and maybe mention something about the PAA created in their name.

PVP and boxing

One thing that I have learned so far as a multiboxer is that you gain a lot of attention you otherwise wouldn't have gotten. To you, seeing 4 toons who look the same follow another same looking toon is normal. To others, it's a freak occurrence that needs to be investigated. And for the opposite faction looking in, it's just safe to assume their bots. And boy, does everyone hate bots.

I was fortunate while I leveled up as I had instances to hide away from the majority of players who get their hard on making sure lowbies continue to dread Strangelthorn Vale. Mindy was not so lucky as she only 3 boxes, but she had Amanda assist her most of the time.

Now that I am 62, I have enough experience with my setup and my few encounters in World PVP to be more than a match for most small groups my level, and also take down the occasional lv 70 ganker. But, that is the extent my group can go I'm afraid. Prot Pallies and Holy Priests aren't known for their DPS, and 3 mages can only carry so far.

So, I decided to try to start a team that is what most people in the general forums complain about. 4-5 man teams of multiboxers, all Shamans.

Why Shamans? Versatility my friend. 5 Shamans brings 5x the totems, enough to buff the entire party with everything a shaman can bring for a PVP fight. They eventually wear mail, making physical attacks easier to handle. They can heal, always a plus. They do great burst damage, and at lv 70 they can bring the dreaded Elemental Mastery + Nature's Swiftness + Chain lightning x5, basically creating an "I win" button not only against a single opponent, but also against his two closest buddies.

BUT! I don't like doing what everyone else is doing. Sure, all the cool kids are boxing with shamans, but I kinda want to do something different. Mages are out of the question as I already have 3. So.....what about 5 warlocks? 5 felguards can do ruin anyone's day, and I can dot up people for lots of damage. I can be undead for their awesome racial. I would even have some survivability with soul link and whatnot. My only problem that I foresee is lack of burst damage. Maybe I won't need it?

So, here I am, torn between 5 shamans and 5 warlocks. I made a shaman team just in case, to try out for a while this tried and true build. I'll let you all know how it goes.

The wheels of progression go round and round..

Earlier today, I decided to do a serious stab at Blood Furnace as my quests in Hellfire wind down dreadfull collection crap.

I cleared the instance without really any problems. I only wiped once on the last boss, trying to gather all the channelers in one spot at the gate before taking on the boss himself. Big mistake. On the second try I kept my mages at max distance and tanked all the channelers at once. Much easier. Past that, the boss was easy as cake.

Next up, lv 63, Zangarmarsh, and the Slave Pens!

The Toons

Here we go, my time to show off my team!

First up to bat is my main man, Caine. A prot pally through and through, he is the toon I play as my "main" and virtually everything is based off of him. There has only been one boss so far that I have failed to tank as him in my quest to conquer 5 man content (and that fool is Shade of Eranikus, and as soon as I ding 70 it's payback). Having a pally as a tank greatly reduces how much I have to focus on when I go through instances since I can pull multiple mobs and retain aggro on them all very easily. He is also my #1 toon on all upgrade descisions. If something can benifit the tank or benifit someone else, it goes to the tank.

Next up is Abyl. As you can probobly guess, these two names are based off of the biblical Cane and Abel. I know, soooo origional. Anyways, Abyl is the priest for the group. Great all around healer and occasionally throws in some shadow word: pain or holy novas when things get dicey. Frail as a feather though, her defense is only 272, which is rediculously low for a lv 62. Any mob or player that hits her is practicly guaranteed a critical or crushing blow. Additionally, she is #2 when it comes to upgrades, making her the best caster I have.

Rounding out the rest of the team is my trio of mages, Furfur, Furfir, and Furfar. At the time I was searching for names, I came accross this wikipedia entry of demon names, and Furfur was one of them. So, I rolled with it for no real reason, and made slight edits for the other two. These 3 get the shaft end when it comes to gear, specificly the latter two. That said, all produce decent (imo) DPS for thier level since they are all a mix between fire and arcane. Like Abyl, thier defense is pitiful, all well under 300.

Right now my progression has gotten me to Blood Furnace. So far I have completed the following Instances at thier respective levels. And by completed, I mean every boss killed.

Ragefire Chasm - lv 14

Wailing Caverns - lv 19

Shadowfang Keep - lv 20

Blackfathom Deeps - lv 21

Razorfen Kraul - lv 24

Gnomeregan - lv 28

All of Scarlet Monestary - lv 30, 33, 36, 38

Razorfen Downs - lv37

Uldaman - lv40

Zul'Farrak - lv 44

Maraudon - lv 46

Blackrock Depths - Lv 55

Hellfire Citidel: Ramparts - Lv 62

I have tried other instances, such as Scholo and Strat, but Outlands is just too irrisistable for me to ignore. And to grind through these and get gear that's going to be immediatly replaced by Outland quests.

As a side note, while I have owned and played WoW since release, I have never leveled any toons to 70. In fact, the highest toon I have is my origional gnome warlock Vincenta, and she sits at 62. My Team just dinged 62 recently, so I have just about hit where I have left off since BC came out. Everything from this point on is completely new to me, including all outland instances and quests. I am fucking excited.

Well, that's it for this one. I'll leave you with a pic of my victory over Vazruden and Nazan, by far the hardest boss encounter I have ever had to fight so far.

The Setup

Well, to dispell any myths about multiboxing, you do not need multiple comps to run multiple instances of WoW. I personally don't have that kind of upfront cash to spend, so I go with a software solution. Here is my typical setup.



Nothing too fancy as you can see.

For the specifics, I have the following specs for my PC:

Hardware:
2gb of RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GT w/ 256mb of RAM
Generic 80gb 7200rpm Hard drive IDE
Maxtor 200gb 7200rpm hard drive IDE
Envision 19" widescreen monitor (left)
Dell 19" widescreen monitor (right)
Onboard 10/100 NIC

Software:
Windows XP Home (set to horizontal span)
WoW + Expansion x2 (physicly installed)
Keyclone

And that's about the meat of what I use to play 5 copies of WoW. With this setup I can play with my main character with near max visuals, while my other 4 alts are all at thier lowest settings and capped at 15 FPS. I generally get 30-60 FPS on my main, except in major cities or places with a lot of NPC's. I haven't tried dialing down my main's graphics yet so there is still room for improvement.

On the software front, I don't have any mods to assist me with anything. In fact, I don't have any mods at all. The vanilla interface has done it's job well enough for me these past 4 years that it doesn't warrent a replacement in my opinion.

Now, why only have 2 copies of wow installed as apposed to 5, or just 1? Well, with 5, that's 5x the storage space and it increases the load time for each instance of wow exponentially. I tried this origionally, and zepplins/boats became my enemy. When it finished loading me to the other continent, quite often I had to make a mad dash off the vehicle because it would be already on it's way back! Not fun.

Having everything out of one folder wasn't too great either. Sure, load times are a breeze now since everything is loading from the same folder.However, all of your visual/sound/interface settings would also all be shared. Fine if you have everyone at the same settings, but my main has different settings than my alts, so I would either need to reset him each time, or reset my alts, depending on what my comp wanted to save when exiting. So I use 2, one for my main's settings, one for my alt's settings, and I get the best of both worlds.

Lastly, lets talk about keyclone. Keyclone is a simple 3rd party program that does one simple yet essentail job for any multiboxer, it broadcasts keystrokes to all instances of WoW. Without this, I probobly wouldn't be multiboxing. For $20, it's a damn bargin. It is incredibly simple to use and install, basicly just unzip it and go. It will automaticly detect any WoW's your running within seconds of startup and start broadcasting keystrokes to them only if your currently using one of them. This means I can open a web browser and surf the net and not have to worry about my keystrokes going to my toons. It also doesn't require any scripting knowledge, or have any scripting elements to begin with, so I don't have to worry about slipping into the botzone trying to make a legitimate script to broadcast yet it end up bieng something against the EULA.

So, that's all I use to play 5 toons simultaniously.