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.