Amava Knows Box, Part 3

Welcome to the season finale of my three part series about multi-boxing. In Part 1, I covered some basic two-toon action, and in Part 2 I explored the proper way to avoid seeing Azeroth, namely boosting your toons with a level 70. Today's edition returns back to a more realistic playing scenario where two toons become a tightly integrated fighting force.

I'll repeat my disclaimer from Part 2, and apologize in advance for the lack of macro examples in this article. When Blizzard switched over to server-side macros, they deleted all my existing ones, and the server transfer and mad dash to 80 (ding, btw) has pretty much disctracted me from multi-boxing. Sorry :-(

1. Part 1: Two toons, one healbot


2. Part 2: Three toons, one lvl 70, two babies along for the XP ride


3. Part 3: Two toons, seamlessly joined up and working together as if two humans were playing

Now we're down to the real meat.

Before I bamboozle you into reading further, I'll totally discredit myself by saying that I've only done this through about 25 levels. If you're looking for a One Person / Ten Toons clear of Karazhan, sorry, I'm not your guy. If you want to stand in TP and dress your 5 shammies in pirate outfits and press one button and shock an attacker to death instantly, also not your guy.

But if you want to struggle through a variety of technical issues and the tedium of macroing every damn thing you do, then read on.

Before you get started with playing a tightly integrated team of two multi-boxed toons, you've got some things to take care of first.


Choose your classes

The very first is to pick out your classes. There's a variety of ways to make this decision.

Playing two identical classes can make some of the setup easier, but it can also reduce your flexibility.

Playing two identical toons can confuse enemy players because the won't quite know what they're looking at if your two toons are standing right on top of eachother. But it can also fool you. I confused myself time and time again playing two little Draeni beauties, but then again, I'm not the sharpest hammer in the toolbox.

Playing two melee classes is...well...just say no.

I've done some fiddling with the following combinations: Shammy/Priest, Mage/Priest, Pally/Druid

All three of them are pretty nice. Even once my toons are "highly" integrated, my playstyle still sort of revolves around one primary and one secondary toon, and I love having a secondary toon with an instant cast HoT so they can heal while mobile.

Develop a shot rotation

Once I picked out my classes, generally I'd start off with the healbot mentality I described in Part 1 of the series. As I got comfortable with the pairing of toons, I'd slowly add in some small attacks from the secondary toon, but still mainly use her as a healer.

Then I became curious to see how much more I could join them up and pretend I was two people. My therapist is helping me with that, but...well...Roses r red, violets are blue, I'm schitzoprenic, and so am I.

So I sat down to plan out a "shot" rotation.

For example, when playing Mage/Priest, here's the thought process I used.....

1) I'd like the two toons to enter combat as close together as possible. This means that either both toons open up with instant cast spells, or choose spells that have the same cast time. Single button press and both toons enter combat simultaneously.

2) Pick which toon you want to generally have aggro. For this pair, I want the mage to have aggro as much as possible, which will allow the priest to cast heals uninterrupted as often as possible.

3) Make sure that the first two attacks in the rotation end up generally putting more threat on the toon you want ot have aggro. Sure, crits and other effects are random so this might not work out 100% of the time, but generally I'd choose spells on each toon for the first and second salvo that would normally end up with the Mage delivering more damage and thusly more aggro.


4) Plan out your macros.

Number 4 is when it really sucked for a while, because I probably took it too far.

I wanted the pair of toons to be fully functional and not dependent upon eachother. I also wanted to be able to have them kinda function as though two real people were playing.

Little things like buffs. I'd macro it so I could easily buff eachother. Press a button twice and both toons end up with Fortitude and Intellect. However, a random passerby would drop Blessing of Wisdom on the girls, and I'd kinda be handcuffed and unable to buff them back. So tweaked the macros to allow me to target with the primary toon and have both buff him with a single press.

Same for heals. I made a few different buttons to allow me to easily heal either toon without having to rely upon fancy modifiers. Although it was very confusing at first to remember all those buttons, with time and practice, it became second nature.

All this was before patch 3.0.2, so managing all these macros, action bars, and key bindings across (at the time) two accounts and two computers was brutal. Patch 3.0.2 stores all of these settings on the server and makes this process exponentially easier.

Then I slowly added in more and more of the tasks that I'd do on a normal basis.

Create mana biscuits. Trade biscuits over to priest. Shoot stuff and deplete mana. Drink.

So I made macros to help with the trading and also the drinking.

Accepting group invites, setting focus, following, spreading out into a formation.

Then through practice, I would tweak the shot rotations. This varies hugely from class pairing to class pairing, so you'll have to play around to find what works for your selection.

For instance, for the Mage/Priest, I found this kinda nice...

Opener: Mage Frostbolt, Priest SW:P
Second shot: Mage Fireball, Priest Mind Flay (hit this button twice quickly, since SW:P would only need a GCD and Frostbolt would need some cooldown time, that lets Mind Flay start channeling and then the fireball start casting on the second press)
Third shot: Mage Fireball, Priest PW:S [target=Mage]

And so on. This sort of routine would generally end up with aggro on the priest immediately (but at ranged distance) because SW:P is instant and Frostbolt has a cast time. But by the time the mob got hit by the Frostbolt, Mage would grab aggro, and generally retain it through out the pull.

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot more advice I can give on this, because that's the extend of my experience. The only recommendation I can make is to pick your classes so you have ones you like playing but also have some synergy in being together, spend a little bit of time planning out your basic tasks and attacks with a pencil and paper, and then practice like crazy.


Thus brings an end to my Multi-Boxing Mini-Series!

Amava Knows Box, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my three part series on munching box. In Part 1, I covered what I think is the simplest boxing concepts that I started out with, and progressed into gradual tweaks to the level of integration and synergy between the two toons. Today's edition goes in a different direction and explores using a high level toon to boost lowbies and grind out XP.

Ok, so there was a small delay in the posting of this second article. One could blame that delay on the WotLK. Or, better yet, one could blame it on Death Knights, which have become my go-to whipping boys for anything that's wrong or inconvenient with the game, or with life in general. Or, even better still, one could blame one's self, and take personal responsibility. Pish posh. I'll blame Blizzard. I wanted to include example macros in these articles as much as I could. When patch 3.0.2 hit, they moved macros onto the server. In the process, they dropped many existing macros. My fancy boxing macros are gone :-( So, I'll apologize on behalf of Blizzard (*) for the lack of substantial macro examples in the next two articles.

1. Part 1: Two toons, one healbot


2. Part 2: Three toons, one lvl 70, two babies along for the XP ride


3. Part 3: Two toons, seamlessly joined up and working together as if two humans were playing

Three toons, one lvl 70, two babies along for the XP ride

Pretty basic situation here, play your level 70, put your babies on /follow, and go to town. This is only really useful for power leveling. Doing this technique, I had babies following for 60 levels, without even allocating their talents or giving them action bars. I'd put both their mounts on one action button, /follow Amava macro on another button, and maybe drag a heal onto the action bar if they were a healing class. Obviously, the toons weren't in very playable shape during this process, but whatever, they were only grinding XP not actually playing.

As the dungeons got tougher, I added in some macros to easily buff my pet, since she was tanking lots and lots of mobs. BRD has some 7-pulls that were dicey at times because lowbies pull aggro by simply showing up in the room, and a Mark of the Wild, Thorns, and Blessing of Might thrown on Condoleezza (and then Bubbles after the patch) made a nice little boost to her ability to hold aggro and consequently, allow me to burn them down fast enough for her to survive the pull.

I've done this on one computer/one monitor, two computers/two monitors, and two computers/three monitors.

Playing three WoW's on a single 24 inch monitor was kinda brutal. Using keyclone's maximizer, I setup Amava's window to be most of the viewable screen, and each baby would have her own small window along the right hand side of the screen. Eye strain was bad. However, my little mule of a PC easily handled all three versions fully maxed out on visual and sfx settings.

So, then I put the two babies on the laptop, next to the main computer.

Much easier on the eyes, and a little simpler, since I didn't use any keyclone on the main computer at all. Keyclone was used on the laptop to allow for single button /follow or mounting for both babies.

On the laptop, I use keyclone, but I don't use the maximizer feature for this, I simply start up WOW and allow keyclone to recognize the program name (wow.exe) and spray key presses out to both wow's.

For true fun, and nerdy paradise, I also rigged up another monitor to the laptop. Windows Vista easily allows you to expand your desktop to span across both monitors, so I'd fire up one WoW in windowed mode, drag it to the other monitor, and then fire up the second WoW and leave it in place on the laptop's native display.

Having all three large screen monitors next to eachother, each with its own toon running is quite a sight to behold. Especially when one of the toons shows up naked for no reason.

Standard disclaimer applies: those baby toons were useless other than for following and leeching up all available XP. Most of the talent points and class training was totally ignored up until level 50 or so, unless there was a specific spell I was going for (rez, ftw). Managing quests was a little bit of a pain in that I'd have to use the baby toons for looting quest items. I only did that during some of the dungeon runs, but generally just got the 300% XP from the RAF bonus, rather than doing too much questing.

Note about following

Picture this. A level 70 with two level 30's following. Mounted.

Unless you want to leave the babies far behind in the dust, you better remember to mount up on your non-epic land mount, which prior to patch 3.0.2, you had to search your bank bags unti you actually found your non-epic mount.

And, make sure you don't install your Riding Crop, which Outfitter is setup to do automatically.

I didn't want to fiddle with Outfitter, since I wanted to ensure my Riding Crop was properly equipped while I was playing without the babies. However, it became royally tedious to remember to unequip the damn crop every time I mounted, so I wrote a macro to make the process easier. Hit it once to mount up (at which point Outfitter will automatically don the crop), and once mounted, hit it again to equip the Bloodlust Brooch which will doff the crop and allow you to run with your babies.

If you find yourself slowly pulling away from your babies while traveling mounted, first check your trinkets to be sure you don't accidentally have a crop or a carrot equipped, and then if you're still pulling away, check your talents. You might have a talent that gives a slight boost to mounted travel speed. Pain in the tush to keep stopping every 30 yards or so to let the babies catch up.


That wraps up Part 2 of the series.

In the next installment, I'll go back to the world of playing two toons, of equal level, but instead of pure healbot, the secondary toon gets much more fully integrated into the action.

(*) Editor's Note: The author of this blog has no authority what-so-ever to make any statements on behalf of Blizzard, or any corporation for that matter. If you've got time to kill, go scour Blizzard's various websited to read for yourself about their official policy regarding Amava's qualifications to make statements on their behalf. Let me know if you find anything.

Amava Knows Box

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the title.

Multi-boxing. Some frown upon it because they claim it makes the player/toons too over powered. Others think its a hoot, and love running around totally over powered and blasting every single-boxer they can find. Regardless of which camp you're in, Blizzard officially sanctions the practice, because lets face it, one player paying multiple software license fees and multiple monthly subscription fees is pure win at the corporate boardroom.

In the inaugural installation of Ask Amava, Rysteranch from Musings of a Nutjob writes:

I was wondering if you could expand on your dual boxing set up. Do
you use one computer or two? Are there any addons that you would
recommend to make things easier? I only found two posts on your blog
from the search function that related to dual boxing.


Lets bump that number to three posts, shall we? This one is long-ish, so if you have no interest in multi-boxing, scooty scoot and go read about the new President-elect or something.

From a multi-boxing perspective, I've mainly done two things: 1) a pair of toons, one doing the playing, the other following around as a healbot, 2) a trio of toons, one being played, and the other two simply collecting insane masses of RAF XP in low level dungeon run throughs, and 3) a pair of toons seamlessly joined up and working together as if two humans were playing together.

So lets take a look at these, starting from the simplest setup, up to the more complex ones.

The post grew way too long, even for my wall-of-text crit TL/DR tastes, so this one will be rolled out over a three part series.

1. Part 1: Two toons, one healbot


2. Part 2: Three toons, one lvl 70, two babies along for the XP ride


3. Part 3: Two toons, seamlessly joined up and working together as if two humans were playing

So, welcome to Part 1, the story of Two toons, one serving as a healbot, the other playing as a normal solo toon who's got a pet healer.


I'll start off by saying that there's lots of addons and software out there aimed at helping make multi-boxing easier. I used no addons, although I really would like one that helps manage quest accepting and completing, because that was a big pain. In some of the scenarios that I'll describe, I do use Keyclone, so if you're using this as a guide, you might want to pick up a copy. Its inexpensive, and works pretty nicely for me. Also, I read a bunch at Dual-Boxing.com.


Lets get on with the show...


Two toons, one healbot, two computers

This one can be as simple as you'd like it to be. Simply log into one account on one computer, the other account on the second computer, and have at it. Put looting on Free-For-All, and have the toon on the primary computer do all the looting. Put the healbot toon on the secondary computer and have her /follow all the time.

Using this method, I make sure the healbot is targeting the primary toon, so its simply a matter of reaching over to the other keyboard and pressing a heal button as necessary.

This steadily became tedious, because sometimes the target would switch if the healer got attacked. Also, for some quests, you need to reach over to the secondary computer and do some looting for quest items, and then you've got to remember to re-target the primary toon. Using the /follow method of movement, you also need to make sure you hold the primary toon still while the healbot is casting a spell, because if you move too far, it'll interrupt the heal and start running to follow you.

So, pretty quickly, I macro'd the main commands to hardcode the primary toon as the target, for example...

/cast [modifier:alt,target=player] [target=JoeMama] Renew

I think that you can do this much more easily with a /focus and the new 3.0.2 changes that allow you to specify a modifier that targets your focus for all spells, but my multi-boxing was before that was available, and I always forgot to focus on my primary toon, so I hardcoded the toon name.

I generally create 2 or 3 of these macros to cover a HoT, one direct heal, maybe a shield or buff or something nice like that.

I also ended up adding a macro so I wouldn't have to keep right-clicking the unit frame and choosing a menu option to follow...

/target JoeMama
/follow

That's pretty much it for the simple example. No special software, no special hardware (besides needing 2 computers), no addons, no nuthin.

Two toons, one healbot, one computer

I went on a business trip, and only had one computer with me, and for giggles, I wanted to try doing this same routine on a single computer.

Keyclone to the rescue!

Relatively easy to setup. Made even easier by following this guide.

In this scenario, you use Keyclone's maximizer feature to open up two copies of WoW on the single computer. It also takes keyboard input and sends commands to both WoW's simultaneously.

This was a mix of good and bad.

GOOD: No switching of hands from one keyboard to the other. I simply mapped three of those healbot macros and the follow macro to 9, 0, -, = keys at the right hand side of the action bar (and kept the rest of the healbot's action bar blank), and also kept those same spots blank on the primary toon's actionbar. So, if I needed a Renew to be cast on the primary toon, just hit =, and if I needed a Renew on the healer hit alt-=.

BAD: Even on a 17 inch laptop display, which is pretty big as laptops go, the two screens made the viewable area brutal. Very straining on the eyes to play like this. However, my laptop was easily powerful enough to run both copies at maxed out visual and sound effects.

NOTE: in either of these situations (either one or two computers), the pair of toons is pretty much useless for playing with other players, its only useful for you to play by yourself, actively working the primary toon, and only making minimal use of the other toon for some very basic healing.

Two toons, one healbot that does a little damage output

The pet healer deal works very nicely. You've got no idea how much more aggressive you can be in pulling mobs and advancing towards your quest goals with the simple addition of a healer. Priest is a very nice choice. Playing an Enhancement Shammy, doing nothing else with the Priest besides Power Word: Shield and Renew, you just blast through all leveling content. It really is quite fun.

After doing this for a bit, I found that I had lots of down time where the follower-healbot was doing nothing. To help speed things up, I added in a couple more macros to allow the healer to easily do damage....

/target JoeMama
/cast [target=targettarget,harm] Shadow Word: Pain

Made it very easy to have the primary toon doing all the work, but whenever I wanted a mob to burn a bit quicker, I'd reach over to the other keyboard and trigger the SW:P or Mind Blast or whatever else you want. Its not hugely flexible, but it does allow you a little extra firepower without adding too much complexity.

Again though, without making the macros more sophisticated, I'm left with the healbot toon being setup exclusively for working paired up with a very specific toon, and not much use outside of healing or assisting that toon.


So for the basic setup of playing two toons together, that's about it. You can become much more advanced in how the two toons are played, but generally, that's how I got started out. Play one toon as if she were solo, and have the other throw out a heal as necessary to allow you to tackle more mobs at a time and maintain a faster pace between mobs.

In the next installment in the series, I'll explore using one mama toon to boost a pair of babies.