Anub'Arak Heroics, Culling of Stratholme  Heroics 24 min drake mount run, and Trial of the Champions Heroics were all cleared in the last two weeks.

  



I'm too tired to write anything about it right now but the good news is that I frapped the Culling of Stratholme run and will post that asap as well as the ToC Heroics Writeup.

Call of the Crusade

Trial of the Champion (5 man).

Macroing the jousting gave me a headache. Took about 200+gs in repair bills before I figured out a viable solution. makes me think twice about the 18,000Gs I spent on that 3 seater vendor Mammoth!



Don't have the time or the strength to try it on Heroic. Will maybe prepare flasks and do that over the weekend.

Cleared the Normal version and did NOT get the tanking trinket. =(

 

Stage 1: Jousting. I backed everyone up into a corner with fresh mounts nearby when my tank needed it. Finally cleared it, zoned out and rebuff, re-equip and the boss was easy.

Stage 2: Make sure shadow resist aura is up. Need to regroup after fear. Not sure if staggering fear totems will work, will try next round (I didn't expect to get feared!)

Stage 3. Wiped 4 times before I figured out the fight. make sure Shadow Resist, Cleasing totem is up. The boss comes back 3 times. 1st death, easy. 2nd death harder, he summons adds and shoots some spell. Keep grounding totem up. By the third phase all the adds come into play, they explode so I drop rock elems and strafe away and DPS them down with popping chain heals and avoiding the AoE from Boss. It wasn't easy to Box for me.

 

Wrath of the Lich King Heroic Dungeons - WoW 5Boxing

Utgarde Keep

 Just drag Prince Keleseth behind this ledge/hallway and cramp everyone in there. Your fire totems should take care of anyone getting "frost-cubed". If not, I usually dps it down with my tank but usually don't have too. All the adds will get picked up by the Tank AoE. Makes the fight much easier.

 

 I like to keep the shamans spread out in the center area against Ingvar. But the main thing here is Tank needs to strafe and go around at the right time and have decent enough gear. I've also wiped quite a bit when my DPS was lower and couldn't get him down before he starts tossing his Axe. At about 2300 buffed DPS on the shamans, the Axe was no longer an issue.

 Utgarde Pinnacle

 After getting Skadi's fight down pat (see previous post on non-heroics/same strat), everything else is just smooth sailing.

 Halls of Lightning

 For Halls of Lightning, there are a few things to consider. The first boss in heroics hits like a mac truck but still pretty much a tank and spank. Second rock boss is trivial but the third boss (the Arcane one) is difficult until I started spreading out the Shamans against the right corner wall. I needed to stay alert and heal my way through the add phases (mostly using chain heal) but it still wasn't easy. For the final boss, Loken, I piled everyone together and summoned all the rock elementals and just DPS him down. 

 GunDrak

 Gundrak is my routine Heroic Badge run dungeon since it's a quick run with 5 Badges. Most of the bosses are so easy so it's not woth mentioning except for the 2nd boss (the rock and water elemental tag team). I ended up lining up my shamans in a line and strafe whenever we got "purple-grounded". I always try to save my tank CDs in preparation of the "Boss exchange" since they reset their aggro list on every exchange. Make certain that healing totems are up and nature resist as well. For the final boss Galdarah, i just go line up all the Shamans against the wall on the right side and tank and spank. I'll summon the Rock Elementals to help tank as well. The fight gets easy as my DPS goes up.

 Drak'Tharon Keep

 No difference in strat from the Normal. Also an easy Heroic Dungeon to 5Box.

 The Culling of Stratholme

 The Culling of Stratholme Heroic is not much different from the regular version. Most of the bosses are Tank and Spank. The only tough Boss is the final one where I always keep my distance, use Pally's shadow resist and pop chain heals regularly.

 The Occulus and Nexus

 The Occulus is one of those instances I don't think I will be clearing as too much macro customization is needed to be worth the trouble (since we fight on drakes). So I went in and killed the first boss and left it at that. The Nexus was an easy full clear which I will upload some screenshots later. The only other instance I have not been able to complete with this 5Box setup is Heroic Halls of Stone. The escort event's third phase Fire Lasers owned me big time. I'll try again when I've saved up enough gold for a hefty repair bill as wiping once now costs me close to 75Gs (all 5 characters).

 

 

5Boxing Old School Content

 Karazhan was not only fun but money-making to 5Box. Lots of green drops from D/Eing to sell, including I think they changed the mongoose and other rare enchant drops to 100% from the bosses so I had to make a trip. I had to skip the Dragon room with the Green/Red/Yellow rays and the Chess room gave me a headache but I soon found that if I just type /tar king and DPS him down, it makes everything on easy mode.

 Onyxia was also a fun run without any difficulty at level 80. I heard some are even soloing it at this point so just watch out for the whelps and DPS her down. I like the ony Bag drop which I previously forgot about!

 

         Molten Core was actually really fun. It not only brought back memories but a full clear shouldn't run more than 60 mins since you can walk up to the bosses without aggroing the mobs at level 80. I actually 6 boxed this with my Warlock cause at first I was worried about DPS but in the end it wasn't necessary. 5 Boxing it would have been enough at level 80 Heroic Gear. There were some minor complications and adjustments to normal strats though. Such as for group of 5 core hounds before magmadar needed some practicing to perfect and kill them off at the same time (with 5boxing, my buttons are all linked and thus hard to DPS evenly). I didn't have a mage to decurse for Lucifron and Shaz so just needed to heal through. Baron Geddon was tough since we needed to run away from the "bomb" and lots of hand-eye coordination. Sulfuron Harbinger had to be dealt with by using a whole different strategy. I couldn't drag single mobs away from the group due to the nature of my key setup and 5boxing and only 1 tank. So i ended up just AoE tanking for minutes and wait for the 4 healers to go OOM before I could start taking them down. It's a mana/regen test since if we don't DPS the healers, they won't need to heal, and the only way to drain them was to DPS them while preserving enough mana to heal my tank. I had to pot and drop mana totems just to barely get through. Who would've thought? The major domo encounter's just all reflexes. Moving guys out of the damage crater if ported, keeping aggro on all mobs and mana management.

And finally, there's Ragnoros. The first time I did it, I had to deal with a wave of Sons. As I got my Shaman's DPS up to around 2500 buffed, I was able to take him down before the Sons. Oh, the Eye of Sulfuras dropped my first time there (I was in 80 dungeon blues back then). Just FYI it sells for 20g.

Wrath of the lich king Dungeons 5Box - Normal Mode

 Azjol-Nerub was attempted first when I was level 73. It definitely wasn't too difficult but  some movement was required to avoid poison/disease against the second boss. I had to make sure disease dispell and nature resist and healing totems were up and just heal through the final encounter against Anubarak.

 

The Fallen Temple of Azjol-Nerub was difficult to box and I couldn't didn't do a full clear until 74. The final boss has a MC (mind control) and I would be running around 5 screens trying to heal/attack each individually.

 

Drak'Tharon Keep was attempted at level 77.  The first boss was trivial. The second boss  required moving the shamans if they got AE'ed by blizzard, usually I find that sending in the rock elementals occupies the boss and just go max dps. The third boss (the Trex), I like to fight him by the stairs and stagger 4 anti-fear totems. This usually does the trick. For the final boss, I just make sure I send in the Fire elementals and keep up the healing totems.

 

Violet Hold was not too easy. Lots of movement required to box this instance. I had to wait to try it at level 80 to clear it.

 

     Utgarde Pinnacle was hell in newbie 80 blues. I must have spent over 200gs in repair bills here. The first boss was just a DPS race, I ignored whoever got sacrificed and DPS'ed down the boss. The second boss as a tank equipment test and I just barely passed. The next boss Skadi was a nightmare. There's really no easy workaround here. It's just learning the encounter and fine tune your reflexes. It's easy now, but working out the strats was a pain. I always first aggro Skadi and run into the previous room to reset the encounter. Then, I stand all my characters including the tank behind the first ledge near the cave where the adds come out. I send a shaman to aggro Skadi and begin the encounter. Then I pally AoE + stoneclaw totems + magma totems to take down around 20 or so adds at the same time, I'm running my Shaman back from aggroing Skadi to begin the encounter. The frost strikes from Air doesn't hit the ledges on the right so keep the shamans in the nook. Then it's just going through killing 6 harpooners and getting 6 harpoons and shooting them off at Skadi when he's "in-range" (not just anytime). Once he lands, you will probably have 1 or 2 adds still alive with him. Regardless, first try and keep your tank alive, quickly finish off the adds while maintaining max distance between your tank and the shamans. Once he goes into a spin, it takes him longer to reach your group. Once the adds are down, make your you have your anti-poision totem up, Skadi has an attack that kills you if you don't dispell quickly. Then it's just max range tank and spank except he hits hard. Everytime he starts spinning, let him go after the group, and just taunt him back when he's almost there - kind of like kiting him. Rinse and repeat and that should do it. I must say, it is difficult to get used to when 5Boxing. The final boss (Ymiron) is a joke compared to Skadi.

World Of Warcraft - 5Boxing

I started playing WOW (World of Warcraft) back when it first started years ago. I remember 40 main raids wiping in MC (Molten Core) because our assigned (insert class here) forgot to "kill the adds" popping out from the Fire Elementals. Then, our guild progressed as Blizzard intended through MC and BWL. It was fine until I decided that I would give up all my epics for better internet connection (playing at red latency was no fun anymore). Just then Blizzard announced that they were going to officially have TWOW (Taiwan Wow) , I gave up my GM position back on U.S. Bonechewer/Horde and jumped onto a local Taiwan Server and started my new WOW life there.



And it was different... From the trading in orgrimmar to guild raids of AQ40... it was apparent that I was an outcast. An outcast because I was using a US interfaced UI of WOW so all my links popped up in english (imagine trying to LFG or WTB), cultural differences,  Chinese typing, and most definitely the age group on this server seemed quite young compared to my guildies back in the States.

So I decided to give 5Boxing a try. What is 5Boxing? It's referring to a gamer that controls 5 characters at the same time.

So first I did my research, it seems that for PVE (which was what I was into mostly), a paladin with 4 shamans would be the easiest to box. So, while my Twow guild was trying to down C'thun in AQ40, I gave up my T2lock and spent most of my WOW time leveling the pally+4shammies to level 60. Then to 70 during TBC. The Heroics were fun and good learning experiences.  Some boss encounters required movements, macro adjustments, and or a variation in typical strategy just to down by 5Boxing (unless you had enough dps). I would call myself a "casual" 5boxer now and even though my toons are all level 80s, I no longer raid with Guilds and just do 5man content casually on weekend nights. I've been able to do most of the WoTLK 5man heroic content except for halls of stone (event) and occulus (too lazy to really reconfigure all the macros for the drakes). Here's my Twow Armory. The entire guild is myself so feel free to browse the characters, I found it easier to manage inventory with a Guild Bank when 5boxing. http://tw.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dreadmist+Peak&n=Kaiyo

I've made some friends online and some told me that they are interested in following what I've done so I created this page. I dare not bore all my other friends by flooding my facebook with too much Wowtalk.

There are many ways one can 5Box, I think I've read on dual-boxing.com that now there are people even courageous enough to 40box (or was it 36?).

5 Boxing for me is more of a challenge/hobby than a necessity. I've tested with various setups (oh please don't remind me of things that didn't work, my KVMs and mice are still sitting idle in some box) and this seems to work best for me. There are many ways out there, I haven't tried out all the newer ways so I can't say which is the best, but this works for me.

1. Keyclone (software) for key duplication. I remap the keys in wow to work with the software a bit, also the round robin feature is very useful for a software repeater.

2. I have 6 monitors on a monitor arm. Yes, I've tried to do it on 1 or 2 monitors and I didn't enjoy the experience and didn't like the hard drive access wait time. So I splurged. 6 computers and 6 monitors. Here's some photo links.

 



 



3. Multiplicity (Pro Version - support 6 machines). My all time favorite. I was having problems with synergy and using Multiplicty eliminated those headaches with moving from screen to screen with one mouse.

Summary: So I'm down to 1 keyboard and 2 mice (1 mouse for main screen, 1 for 4 shamans mostly quest clicking - very rarely used) and 6 screens (5 screens for boxing with one spare for thottbot or  another box, yes I do six sometimes). It's a pretty clean setup now compared to the 3 keyboards 3 mice I had a year ago.)

My Play: Mostly, I use /castsequence macros and cut the normal fight down to 2 buttons and a heal button. It's actually rather easy.

I'll find time to record a clip of how easy it really is once it's set-up. I've seen and recorded/frapped game-play but I rarely see actual video footage of gamers operating their "Boxes".

I'll also send in screencaps and my experiences of 5Boxing the WoTLK Dungeons to share. If you are interested in older content, during TBC I frapped some clips onto Youtube for those dungeon bosses on Heroic but it's outdated Level 70 stuff. Here's the link to my Youtube Page:

http://www.youtube.com/5boxhk

Happy Boxing!