Twenty Totems

Boom is dead: "The Warrior Who Tanked a Server"

2008-06-07T21:51:00.015-04:00

There are two different groups of folks who visit this blog. Those who only know me as "Boom, who plays Twenty Totems" and the rest who know me as "Boom".

While this is really a Goodbye post for everyone, it will be directed mostly towards those who knew me as "Boom". Those are my friends.

I have left WoW. The short version is why, is this: My life has been full of wonderful change recently, and now it needs my attention. WoW has been a wonderful part of my life for four years, but it's time to move on.

This means saying goodbye to my guild, my friends, and my server... Argent Dawn. I love this server. The community is fantastic, and as I'm mentioned before, they have been nothing but supportive of even Multiboxing on both sides of the fence.

My main toon, Boom, is the guild leader of For Horde. Boom is fairly well known on AD for the RP events, and PvP I've been a part of. I have a long list of wonderful friends, and knew I couldn't just log out. So I decided to stage Boom's death.

That's easy enough. Have someone march me into Stormwind, and have at it. But that's no fun... how about the last person to land damage on Boom gets 5000 Gold?

Now you're talking.

It began as I logged onto Boom at 11:15pm last night. I was already held "captive" in a stable, just SW of Goldshire. A few Alliance found me pretty early, and they seemed to know what was happening. I got the first of many /hugs, /salutes and /loves I'd get that night.

Eventually my executioner arrived with his team. Center of Renamed. I /bow'd then /surrendered to him. They were all such great sports about this. I was so excited to see how this would go. Center dismounted, along with his crew, and we all /walked towards Stormwind. I had hoped there would be alot of people when I got inside, but I was in for a shock as I approached the gates...

They were everywhere. An enormous group of flagged Alliance, all waiting for us to arrive. They quickly gathered around and started walking with us. Unfortunately, as the guards started to beat me up, I autoflagged, and I was quickly wiped out by the crowd.

The plan was to have a group of Priests Mind Control me into the square out in front of the AH, but with all the people around, the Priests just couldn't MC me fast enough. We knew this might be a problem, so I simply ran back to my corpse.

When I arrived, there were even more folks standing around. One player took a census of Stormwind during the event, and found 1000-1100 players (Alliance side only) at any given time!

I knew it would be unlikely that the priests would MC me before I died again, so I instead found a quiet corner, rezed, popped a health pot, and mounted. Then I rode into Stormwind, and got to the Tree in the square, where an even larger crowd was waiting. I'd guess I lasted 2 seconds, but that's being optimistic. :)

The image above is one of my favorites... yes... that's a Frog on the back of a Spectral Tiger Mount, leaping over the mess. (close up here)

As I ran back to my corpse a second time, I got a whisper from the last person to land damage on me in the square... Molimo of Black Phoenix, and of M L H... one of AD's greatest Arena teams. (recently featured on WoWInsider.com)

Molimo was very nice, and said "Hey, I don't know how this works, but I think I just killed you, and everyone is telling me to contact you."

I explained that the plan was to wait until Center calls for the execution, and that he'd have to get back to his toon and wait. He could of complained, but instead was very understanding, thanked me for running the event, and went back to wait with everyone else.

Just before I got to my corpse, something epic happened. No... Legendary. I found out there were two full 40man Horde raids (plus some stragglers) waiting outside Stormwind, preparing to rush in and rescue Boom. (If you're into RP, don't miss the thread about this event on the AD forums.)

Before I could rez, they stormed the city, and ran head long into the giant mob of Alliance. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in game.

Just as I thought it couldn't get any better, a third group showed up. But they were coming from the TRAM! This was unreal to see.

*Thanks to Icharus for the image

The fight was absolutely insane. While everyone was dying, I arranged to meet Center and his team of priests in a small tavern where I could rez in safety... but when I got there, no one else was there. I whispered to our mutual contact, and asked where they were. Turns out we simply couldn't see each other. That's when I noticed I couldn't rez.

I ran back out into the battle (as a ghost) and noticed everyone had stopped moving. They were all animating... some running in place, others casting etc. But they were all stuck in one place. The chat channels exploded with "WE DID IT! WE BEAT STORMWIND! BOOM IS SAVED!

Then the server died..... I'll say it again...

Legendary.

I knew then my plan was flawed, and there was no reasonable way for me to get into town, and wait for Center to start the event. There were just too many people. But I wasn't about to let 5k rot on my account, so I decided to give it to Molimo. He didn't play by my rules, but he wasn't malicious about it either. I gave it to him because he did hit me last, and was nice about it when I told him he had to do it again.

There of course was some griping on our forums by a few kids, but it didn't bother me. As I told them...

This was for fun folks. The Gold wasn't the point. It was PvP... it was RP... it was WOW. If you spend the whole time whispering others about gold, who got it, who deserved it, or whatever, you were asleep for the party. The rest of us were having a GRAND OLD TIME! ^.^ (you can read my whole response here)

A while after the server came back up, I quietly jumped on Boom one last time, told my friends goodbye, then rezed in Stormwind. This time I ran to the tree I was supposed to be at, and stood there until I was dropped by the crowd that remained.

A small group of Alliance surrounded my corpse, and all knelt together. I was so touched. Not just by that small group, but by the response from this server... MY server. So many wonderful players, all in one place. If you're ever looking for a home for a new toon, you simply can't go wrong with Argent Dawn.

Then I logged off.

I've canceled all five accounts, and I'm moving on with my life. I want to thank my friends for being exactly that.. friends. Especially when I needed them most. Thanks for the fun and the laughter. Thanks for the hard work, and the effort you put into building the greatest guild I've ever been in.

Safe travels.

For Fun... For Friends... FOR HORDE!

Boom

From Shaman to Pirate in 2.5 hours: There be Pirates here!

2008-05-15T07:22:00.006-04:00

The Bloodsail Buccaneers. Oh don't act like you don't know who I'm talking about. You know them as well as I. You've forced them off the beaches of Stranglethorn Vale. You've fought your way onto their ships. You've passivly slain their sailors on your quest for more xp, and a few extra gold. And why? Because some stupid goblin in Booty Bay asked you to.

Maybe it was more than that. But I sincerely doubt it. Like so many other times, you chose to mindlessly slaughter those in your way, simply because someone with a yellow exclamation point over their head told you to. Bah.

The Twenty Totems are different. We do things... differently. (which is why we're so different) We, under the leadership of Thrall, seek a higher ground when choosing our fights.

Ask us to slaughter pigs and harvest their intestines? First show us guilty pigs. Tell us to poison Aldor soup? First prove to us it will actually work.

Ask us to murder countless guards in Booty Bay... First, kind sir, you must promise us a cool hat... one that summons a rare pet... and maybe throw in a sweet pirate outfit. Yeah. That would do it. FOR THE HORDE!

It's sadly true. Promise me something that looks cool, and I'll likely grind the same mob over and over, hours on end, just to look slightly cooler. Which was the first reason the Bloodsail grind intrigued me.

Second reason, came from a tiny note in a Bloodsail guide over at warcraftpets.com. Along with excellent tips and details, I found this gem...

FYI: For those who can dual-box (play two accounts at once), this grind is much faster. You can either earn Bloodsail rep with both characters (costing you twice as much to repair your Steamwheedle rep later on), or grind with just one character and use the other as a heal-bot. Just keep your healer ungrouped and she/he won't lose or gain any rep. (Of course, this option only works with healing classes.)

Hmmmm. So, if you "Dual-box", it's really easy... (/queue scary music and laugh manically)

I did some more research and learned a bit more about this grind before I got started. Here is what I learned.

The Bloodsail Buccaneers are typically passed by most players as another group of mobs you need to wipe out to clean out your quest log. But the Devs thought they'd bury a few treasures within their ranks. As it turns out, if you build up your reputation with them, they'll make you a pirate.

The pants, boots, shirt, belt and most of all, the Admiral's hat. The hat, is the real reason folks decide to join the Bloodsail Navy.

Besides being a very unique design, the hat is also the only thing in game tha can summon the Blood Parrot. I'd comment here that it's just another re-skinned parrot pet model, but come on... PIRATE HAT!

Now the only way to build up your rep with the Bloodsail Pirates is to slaughter their enemies. (seems to be a re-occuring theme in this world) So who are their enemies? Well, that would be pretty much anyone occupying Booty Bay. And right now, that's the goblins of the Steamweedle Cartel. No problem right? So what if we kill a few guards in Booty Bay?

Well, as soon as you start doing that, news will travel fast. Then you'll find it impossible to visit some of your favorite goblin hangouts. Specifically Gadgetzan, Ratchet, Everlook and of course, Booty Bay.

In the past, this was a bit of bad news for those who needed to travel.

And there are more than a few quests that are available only in those towns. And the only way to get back in the good graces of the goblins, meant a grind that was many times worse than the one to become a Pirate in the first place.

But times have changed. Outside of each of these cities you'll now find a Bloodsail Traitor, who, for the price of a few cloth, is willing to strut around the goblin towns, telling stories of how brave you are, and how you've done great things for goblin orphans, and that you've admitted publically that your... uh.. "courage" is alot smaller than any goblins. (small guys love it when you assume they're bigger than you)

After you hand over enough cloth, you'll be seen as a hero by the goblins once agian.

So now, the only real pain is the initial grind, involving the endless pull, kill, eat/drink, pull, etc. of Booty Bay Bruisers. My hopes were, that with 5 shaman, I'd be rushing through guards at a faster rate than most, and find my boys in pirate hats in the span of an evening. For once... I was right.

2.5 hours. Yup. That's it.

But it wasn't just my endless supply of whoop-ass in a can. It was also a side effect of the multiboxing grind. We very rarely quest. We spend most of our time in instances, burning through endless mobs, collecting sweet sweet blues from the bosses. So none of my shaman had done any questing out of Booty Bay, (they didn't even have the flight path yet) so my standing with the Bloodsail Pirates wasn't all that bad to start with. WOOT!

Using the guide from Warcraftpets, I initially setup by the blacksmith shop, and attempted to take advantage of the "endless spawn" that the writer told me to avoid. She was assuming I was there alone. I wasn't. I brought twenty totems.

I killed the first guard, but he didn't come back. So I moved a bit further in town, and killed somemore. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a sea of Bruisers. I discovered very quickly that these guys had the potential to kill me if I wasn't careful. So I simply focused my fire on the lowest one, and used CL whenever it was up.

A couple times I'd pull too many guards at once, start to get low, then simply pulled out five Fire Elementals, which promptly put them all to bed. That was always fun, and drew a small crowd each time.

I found two spots that worked fairly well, which I've illustrated below.

Here I planted my main where the Bruiser spawned, and left the rest of my team at a safe distance, insuring I didn't trigger a mass spawning.

Whenever the guard would stop spawning at the blacksmith, I'd simply turn around and camp at this spot on the ramp towards the dock. This would also trigger a short burst of bruisers for a while.

But to be honest, I should of simply kept moving further into town, stopping every time a large guard group was pulled. I don't doubt that if I did this again, I could of knocked another hour off my time. (let me know if you can do it quicker than I have)

After I hit friendly with the Bloodsails, I headed over to "Pretty Boy" Duncan, who sent me to Fleet Master Firallon on one of the ships off the eastern coast. There, I got my free pirate outfit, and a quest to kill 2 quest givers at the top of the Booty Bay Inn.

It took longer then I expected to fight my way there. For you hordies, I would suggest simply riding up to Grom'gol (be sure you have the Booty Bay flight path) and fly into BB. You'll be attacked by a bruiser or two when you land, but it won't be anything you can't handle. After that, the two npcs you have to knock off, are right next to your flight master.

After that, you head back and collect your Pirate Booty. (hehe... booty)

Luckily, there aren't alot of reasons to go back to the goblin towns now that you're hated. But if you really feel a need to talk to the goblins again, 200g-300g worth of mats will put you back in their good graces. And that's what, 2 days of dailies?

pfft.

For now, I could care less what the Steamweedle Cartel things of the Twenty Totems.

They didn't promise me a cool hat.

Boom

This is What Multiboxing Looks Like

2008-04-27T06:55:00.005-04:00

You know... I've never been quiet about the fun involved in showing off 5 Shaman at once, or 20 Totems for that matter. Or 5 dancing puppies, or 5 chain heals or whatever. It's cool looking. It's hilarious. It's fun. There's just something ridiculous about that many totems on the screen at one time.

Now I've seen my twenty totems on screen about 4 billion times at this point. But I simply wasn't prepared for our new "Family Photo" we took on Saturday.

Twenty Totems is proud to announce the names of our final two members. Torstien and Belec.

As you can see from our Armory listing, we are now 20 Shaman strong. Don't strain yourself, I'll do the math for you... that's 80 totems. BLAM!

Oh, and this is 20 Puppies. Who doesn't love 20 Puppies! We totally need to change our guild name to that.

We gathered for the first time outside of Orgrimmar. Turns out there are other people who use the front of Org (go figure) and at least one of them is a 12 year old guild leader, who thinks its funny to run his mount through our group for about 20mins until his rather mature guild member (a nice rogue I can't remember his name) convinced him to simply let us take our screenshots. Thanks rogue! If you want to be in a guild with decent people, you're welcome to come join For Horde.

After we got our front door shots, we decided to have a dance party. But come on! You can't have any decent kind of party outdoors in that weather! So we looked for a good place to "Drop Totem" and party down... So we lit up the AH. :) It was fun for us, and a good way to punish the heretics who insist on playing WoW with crappy video cards.

I know leveling 5 Shaman to 70 blows sauce. (moldy sauce at that) So I was really encouraged to see all 3 new members burn their groups up to 24+ in the first couple days. And while they admit it's not that fun, we all agreed that after getting together, we can't wait to do it at 70.

There are so many thing we want to try. MC, ZG, Kara, PvP both BG and World. There are just so many fun things ahead of us, and I truly believe I found the perfect 3 people to join me. Thanks again guys.

Boom

PS. I want to apologize to the poor shaman who kept following us around, and struggled to get /cast multishaman to work after I insisted that's how we did it. >.< /evilgrin

Ask the Twenty Totems: Some basics

2008-04-23T17:47:00.005-04:00

Beyond the comments, you'd be surprised how many emails I get. Many are still waiting for me to have time to respond. I assure you, I'll get to them all.

I was answering one this afternoon and realized I was creating useful content for a single person, when instead I could post my replies here for all to enjoy, absorb and shoot down (when I'm completely wrong).

So here we go. Our first letter is from Goodie.

Hello,

Hi.

I play a dwarf rogue on Nordrassil, and have gotten quite bored with the game, and I'm looking into multiboxing, and I was wondering about a few things.

Sure! Wasup?

Question one: is it possible to multibox without buying more than one computer? As in, having one screen open, and being able to click the buttons on one WoW character, and have the same abilities activated on the minimized window. (not sure if thats clear, if it isn't, please tell me and I'll try to not get so jumbled)

You sure can. As a matter of fact, I run 5 accounts on 3 machines. On the two machines that each run two accounts at once, I could simply minimize one as you suggest, or better yet, use a program called Maximizer, which allows me to split my screen in two, and have one copy running on the top half of my screen, and another on the bottom. There's more info at www.dual-boxing.com... just search the forums there.

Question two: is it possible to multibox with two different types of character, I was thinking shaman and paladin.

Multiboxing is just sending key presses to multiple copies of WoW. It doesn't care what toons you use, which class etc. However, you only really control the movements of your main toon, while the rest follow. That means that while your main can be a melee class (like your Pally), your "drones" need to be ranged DPS/Healing to work well. A Tankadin/Elemental Shaman group is actually pretty common. (if you're a coward of course... DPS4LIFE!)

Question three: if the first two are possible, is it possible to do them on my macbook? (no, I am not a gamer, and so I don not have a gaming computer)

On a what now? :) While I don't game on a Mac, I'm actually a huge Apple fan. However, I don't know exactly what programs are available to you on Mac. I know you can use Synergy, but I don't know about broadcasting your keystrokes to WoW. Maybe someone can answer this in the comments this week.

If not, just type "Mac" into the forums over at dual-boxing.com and you're sure to find the answers there.

Thanks for your help,
Goodie

Hey... I'm here for you. Just you. And well... the other person that reads my blog. /yell HI MOM!

Boom

80 Totems: The position is filled

2008-04-23T11:50:00.006-04:00

Well, I have to be honest... I was overwhelmed by the response to my last post. I asked for other multiboxers to submit an application to me, if they'd like to level up 5 Shaman with the Twenty Totems tag.

After going through each and every PM, I narrowed it down to two players who seemed to be a good fit for our little Shaman project.

Twenty Totems now has 20 Shaman! When I checked this morning, the three other groups were at level 20/23/28ish. That's amazing. We'll have an army of lvl70 Shaman in no time! :)

I'm hoping to get a screenshot with everyone this Saturday, at which time I'll post it here, and introduce each group. Check back Saturday!

Boom

Twenty Totems Gets a Bit Hotter

2008-04-17T07:51:00.005-04:00

I know many multiboxers take up the hobby as a way to separate themselves from other players. It works. Once you get your gear moving, even with 5 shaman there's very little in game I can't do outside of 10+ man instances. Even Heroics.

But I'm not one of those boxers. I love playing with other people. That's probably why you're more likely to find me in a BG or clearing out Goldshire than by myself in an instance somewhere.

It's true I run one of the largest guilds on Argent Dawn (www.forhorde.org) but because I wanted my boys to wear the tag, I'm rarely in guild chat anymore.

But I've been pretty happy with my setup so far.

This week, a Dual-Boxing.com regular, Zaedra, sent me a PM. She's been leveling a 3x Gnome Warlock team (yes yes, I know... Boom's favorite) and just acquired 2 new accounts. Most of her friends are on Alliance, but she shares the same love of AD Horde players as I do.

After a bit of negotiation, I welcomed her 5 new Troll Shamans into Twenty Totems.

Welcome Zaedra!
(and grats on lvl10 btw. That's 10 totems, with 10 more to go!)

Our hopes are that as she levels to 70, we'll be able to attempt even crazier things with 10 Shaman, than what I've been able to accomplish so far with 5.

This got me thinking. What if I welcomed in 2 more players, 5 shaman each. 80 Totems anyone? :) Half of an AV... a full multiboxed AB or EotS. Maybe we could clear Molten Core together. The possibilities are endless.

So here's the deal. If you are a multiboxer, and would like to roll 5 shaman, horde side, on one of the greatest servers this game has to offer, I'd be interested in giving you a home in TT. I only ask that you be 21 or older, have at least a few months of multiboxing under your belt, and come with an understanding that you're gonna get to 70 on your own. I'm not offering you any help. Just a home, and a hell of a cool tag under your shaman's names. (if I may gloat. :)

If you're interested, PM me over at www.dual-boxing.com

For now, I'm just glad to have Zaedra around, and look forward to the possibilities.

Multiboxing Alterac Valley: Earning My Hammers

2008-04-14T10:08:00.006-04:00

As any of the Armory trolls can tell you, the Twenty Totems have been running around in some pretty embarrassing gear. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere right? The worst being my weapons. Mainly the boys were still sporting the Azure Lightblade, a healing dagger from a quest in Nagrand of all places. Yes, the stupid thing has only 48 spell damage, and I'd be an Alliance Pally (total idiot) to actually enchant those things. So I didn't.

So when I started PvP this last weekend, I had one goal in mind. 25,200 honor. That, and 20 Eye of the Storm Marks, would finally get me my Gladiator's Gavels. Now THAT'S worth enchanting. :) Speaking of, now that we (as enchanters) can merge 3 small prismatic shards into 1 large, I had just enough mats to enchant all 5 Gavels with Major Spellpower. (for the bean counters, that's about 1500g in enchanting mats based on AD prices. My wallet hurts.)

The 25k honor didn't turn out to be the problem. It was the tokens. I hate EotS. As I've discussed here before, any BG besides AV, due to the number of players, is really rough on multiboxers. But I wanted my maces. I tried two matches, and lost huge, and got screamed at by my own team. (of course) I had to try something different.

I decided it was time to hit the trade channel and ask for pvpers. I got two. Both of whom ended up running MANY rounds with me. I warned them up front that I was running EotS, and that we would be losing today. We never lost once. I'll go into the strategies we discovered in another article, another time.

Not only did I get my maces yesterday, but I also realized each Shaman had about 30 Alterac Valley Tokens IN THE MAIL. That means they each had 100 in their inventory. So I decided it was time to change mounts, and grab one of Thrall's. (Thrall was the War Chief of the Frostwolf Clan... learn2lore noob)

I want to thank the players who jumped in and went pvp'n with the Twenty Totems on Sunday. I have their names written down at home somewhere, and I'll post them when I find them.

They helped me realize that with a little communication, AV doesn't have to be me only source of pvp fun. Heck, maybe I'll sneak back into WSG someday soon...

By the way

The very talented Boylston over at Lightning Overload (one of my favorite multiboxing blogs) wrote up an excellent BG guide for multiboxers. Check it out here. It's worth the read.

Multiboxing Escape from Durnholde: Thrall's Pissed

2008-04-09T07:09:00.012-04:00

As I've noted before, I'm currently further ahead in game than I am here on the blog. In "reality", I've already hit 70, conquered wow and won the intertubes. But I took notes and screen shots along the way, and I plan to share those missing stories with you.

This... is one of those stories. (Queue Scary Door music)

Please find enclosed, per your request, 5 humans. Blond hair, rugged good looks and terrible porn star mustaches. Why? Cause the Bronze Dragonflight thinks Thrall will freak out if 5 level 70 Orc Shaman come rescue him... so they made us look like Bo Duke. That should put his mind at ease.

There's a pretty cool story behind Old Hillsbrad, which is the instance we're going to talk about today. If you've read the book Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden, you know this story already. For those who haven't, allow me to recap.

Thrall was captured when he was a baby. His parents were on Azeroth, working on some low level quests when their accounts got hacked and they were killed off. The total douche responsible, took their baby in hopes of raising him up as a trained pet. (Thrall = Hunter Weapon!)

He named his new pet "Thrall" which means "Slave". (it also means The "Close to the back door of Orgimmar so Alliance can farm him and feel important" Guy in other dialects.)

Thrall was educated in all sorts of combat and military strategy, because his master figured he'd eventually use him in the Arenas. He also thought that after Thrall got his Arena Rating up, maybe he could slide himself onto the roster, play 3 quick games each week and be rolling in full Vengeful in no time. (hack)

The relevant part to this is Thrall's eventual incarceration (due to a very bad attitude and unwillingness to sell arena points), and his inevitable yet brilliant escape from Durnholde Keep due in no small part to a very sexy diversion caused by Taretha Foxton, Thrall's "Little lady friend".

But what would happen if a group of dragons with sand in their who-whos decided to use the magics of The Caverns of Time, and went back to screw over Thrall as he escaped? Unhappy... that's what would happen.

That's where we come in. The Bronze Dragonflight, known to us in game as the Keepers of Time, have asked us to go back in time to accomplish a few things:

1. Create a sexy diversion
2. Help Thrall escape from Durnholde Keep
3. Reunite him with Taretha
4. Make sure George McFly takes Lorraine to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance
5. Get Back to the Future. /phew

I first did this instance at level 67. And while I barely took down the first boss, Lieutenant Drake, (no idea why he was wearing this kilt, but we took it from him) I simply wasn't able to keep up with the marathon of fighting that starts right after you let Thrall out of his cell.

So I totally bailed on Thrall and came back when we were 69. This time I was all stocked up on Jesus Juice™, so I could get some mana back between spawns. I also discovered that things got WAY easier when I would run into each spawning group of mobs, drop Stoneclaw Totems to keep the melee busy, and then focus fire on the one or two casters.

Eventually we got to Captain Skarloc, who thankfully has the mannerisms of a Bond Villain, and his theatric banter gives me time to drink my way to full mana for the fight. I suggest you kill his two minions first, as they drop super quick. Don't let Thrall tank, unless you're setup to heal him. I simply drop an Earth Elemental, and he does the dirty work just fine. (horray for plate gear /sigh)

Once Skarloc is dead, Thrall submits to his basic instincts and steals the dead man's horse. We mount and follow as he leads us to Tarren Mill where he hopes to find Taretha. Thrall stops right outside of town, and waits for you to talk to him before going in. Don't. Take your team on a tour of the place first, and wipe out all the guards that patrol town. This should make the next part easier.

After everyone's dead, head back and talk to Thrall, and he'll lead you to a barn. Go ahead and follow him in, and you'll get to watch Thrall bitch slap a horse for failing to keep it's mouth shut. A small but appreciated gift from the Devs.

You'll fight a small spawn in the barn, the church and finally a small group in the inn. That's where you'll find Thrall's BFF, only to be interrupted by the verbal abuse of a gigantic dragon outside.

That's where the final showdown with Epoch Hunter begins. And it sucks. Here's what you do.

Get outside FAST, and get setup right out in front of the entrances of the Inn and the Church. You'll see Epoch hovering in front of you. He'll start the fight by sending in three dragonkin. One mage, and two warriors. Do what you'd expect...

Keep the melee busy with Stoneclaws, and your Grounding Totems should keep the casters fire from hurting anyone. Burn the caster down first, then burn into which ever Melee mob that Thrall has taken it upon himself to pull off your Stoneclaws.

After that group drops, you're gonna have an identical group spawn to your LEFT. Rinse and repeat. But then the third and last spawn will appear below Epoch, and this time you'll have 4 mobs. Two are casters that will burn through your Grounding Totems pretty fast, so make them a priority.

If you get in any trouble with these waves, drop an Earth Elemental. But remember, we've already burned two on the first two bosses, so you only have 3 left. And you'll need at least two for Epoch.

Once Epoch heads in, drop whatever Elemental tanks you have left... then RUN. Get AWAY from this dragon. He has a terrible aoe silence, and a knockback that will send your group in a billion directions. Once you're a few steps away, pop your nukes and go crazy. He WILL kill your elementals, so focus purely on burning him down.

It was scary the first few times I did this, but after I got used to simply dumping everything I had into him, I realized he'll drop pretty easy. And if you're lucky, he'll be nice enough to leave you a Time-Shifted Dagger which has some excellent stats for that level. (I'm still sporting two of these on my team while I grind to my pvp mace.)

Overall, I really enjoy this instance, multiboxing or not. It's fun to be so involved with a WoW Hero like Thrall, and the story is a fun one. An added bonus for those of you who enjoy Lore (stupid nerds), Blizz put in a bit of narrative in the town of Southshore, which you can access after you beat the boss. I don't want to give anything away (*cough* Ashbringer *cough*) so go check it out for yourself.

BIG BADDA DING! Multiboxing to 70

2008-04-04T14:05:00.008-04:00

"Come on Boom! UPDATE THE BLOG you pompous jerk!" Fine... :P

First off, I apologize for my unexplained absence. In the last few weeks my life has been turned upside down. First, let me get this out of the way.

I'm getting married.

wait for it....

in 29 days.
^.^

My girlfriend and I had discussed getting married this October, but a whole bunch of things happened that made a May 3rd wedding not only possible, but enormously beneficial. (biggest reason being I love this girl to death and can't live another day without her by my side.)

SO... the consequence of that has been that my free time has been cut down to an hour each morning. And with 2.4 going live, I've been all too willing to spend that time in game, instead of writing about it. But the good news is, I've been taking notes. (And screenshots!)

So lets get caught up for a moment, shall we?

I went to the Caverns of Time and successfully reunited Thrall with his lady friend many times.
I figured out how to master the crazy fights in Sethekk Halls and farmed the heck out of it to prepare for the Rep/PvP gear in 2.4
DING! The boys are 70!
I saved questing until 70 so I could make enough money for 5k worth of flying mounts. It took one afternoon of questing to get the boys in the air! -->
I killed the first two "fake" bosses and the first "real" boss in The Mechanar the first time I went in.
I COMPLETED Botanica on my first try, in insanely crappy gear.
I created a test 5v5 Arena team for fun, and to farm even a few Arena points. Today I'm 5-33. LOL! But it's been fun as hell even losing.
2.4 hit... I wooted. (excuse me)
The Rep/PvP gear is fabulous, and if you mix the sets you DO get a double dose of +35 Resilience, bringing each Shaman to something like 194 Resilience all together. Not a bad start.
The Shattered Sun Offensive quests are a blast, but my immediate goal is no longer to get the blue Spell Mace from SSO rep. Why? Cause the new AV ROCKS. The Horde are winning again in the Ruin Battlegroup, and the honor is fantastic. So now my goal is to get about 18k more honor (a few days work) then grab myself a Gladiator's Gavel, slap the Spell Damage enchant on it, and boost my Spell Damage by nearly 200 over what I'm at now.
I decided I wanted to do my own enchants, so I raided my guild bank LOADED with mats, and burst up to 365 enchanting in one sitting.
I found a talented healer with a neglected level 63 Pally, who dedicated himself getting to 70 JUST to do Arenas as my dedicated healer. Today he's 69, and we've gotten his rep up on 3 of the 5 factions he needs for his Baby Gladiator Gear.
Did I mentioned I'm getting married? WOOT!

So there ya go. That's where I've been the last 3 weeks. And now that most of the (panicked) wedding plans have been put into motion, I'll have time to get this blog back up to date, and share with you the amazing things I've discovered while multiboxing at 70!

I'll have more details up about each thing I just mentioned asap. Stay tuned!

Boom

PS. I love you Jenny. Thanks for loving me back, despite my crazy hobbies. :)

Preparing for 70 and Patch 2.4 (Part 1)

2008-03-12T12:06:00.008-04:00

Now that I have my team of tanks, I've been staying off the quest trail (as planned) and found myself flying through whatever dungeon I encounter. I'll be writing about each one in the near future. For now, I want to focus on the changes coming in Patch 2.4, and how they'll effect my plans as I inch closer to the big 7-0.

The problem with hitting 70 this late in the game, is that PvPers are already geared. Heck, we're coming up on the 4th Arena Season! This means that when I step into the BGs as 5 brand new level 70 Shaman, I'll likely be in level 90-100 Blues at best, while others are in level 146 Epics. Yikes.

I'm going to miss this once I hit 70s BGs.

The most painful part will be my lack of Resilience, a stat that reduces your chances to BE crit, and reduces the damage you take when you ARE crit. You have exactly zero resilience in your base stats, so the only way to build it up is to get resilience gear. That's easier said then done.

Up till now, with the exception of a few raiding rings, you could only get resilience gear by pvping, but you need it to pvp competitively. So the only option for you is to run BGs, in terrible gear, and save your honor until you can afford to buy the gear you need.

After Season 3 came out, the original Season 1 (S1) gear became available for bulk sums of honor. This is great! But when you add up the honor you need, you'll be stuck pugging through BGs for many months before you've got the gear you need to survive in Arenas.

This is where 2.4 comes in. Blizzard recognized this gear gap, and decided to make available a set of Blue quality level 115 pvp gear, complete with resilience, and even a +35 resilence 2 piece set bonus. So how do you acquire this fabulous new wardrobe? PvE.

In the expansion, Blizz decided to reward us with faction quartermasters. These are NPCs who offer you fabulous gear for rock bottom prices, based on the level of reputation you hold with their faction. So they're using these quartermasters to distribute the new pvp armor, an I couldn't be happier.

WoWInsider posted a wonderful little spreadsheet pointing out what factions you need to get, in order to get the gear you want. They spread the gear out over five factions: Cenarion Circle, Thrallmar, Keepers of Time, Lower City and Sha'tar.

As you can see from the chart, there are three types of Shaman gear. Elemental, Enhanced and Resto. Each is of course itemized around it's spec, and each one has it's own set bonuses. The Elemental set, which I'm obviously looking to, has a pretty stupid 4 piece bonus: 2% crit to shocks. This is frustrating because you're rarely in range to use shocks as an Elemental Shaman. What i'm more interested in, is the 2 set bonus that each set shares.... +35 resilience.

The thought here, is if I replace two pieces of Seer's Mail (Elem), with two pieces of Seer's Ringmail (Resto) I would only lose +10 spell damage, but get a total of +70 resilience bonus. Woot! And within a few minutes of the patch going live, all five of my boys will be wearing 5 pieces of level 115 blues, packing 151 resilience and a heck of alot more armor. All for the price of about 100g per toon. (chump change)

So how do I get there? Well, I just need to run instances and complete quests that build up my reputation with the 5 needed factions. Normally, this is hard. Because after you run any available quests, you're left needing to run instance, which requires 4 other "good" players... not if you multibox. :)

So I'm choosing instances that pay out the rep I need. How do I keep track of that? By using one of my favorite WoW sites of course! WoW Reputation Calculator. (www.wowreputationcalculator.com)

Punch in your toon's name, your server and your region (US or EU) and BAM! The dishes are done! The page will build a beautiful bar chart showing exactly where your reputation is with all of the important TBC factions. But wait... it gets BETTER!

When you click on each one, it actually shows you where and how you can build up your reputation, and even calculates how man mobs you need to kill, quests you need to finish or instances you need to run to reach the next reputation goal. WOOT! This makes it incredibly easy to keep track of my Reputation TO-DO list. I'm already well on my way to being Honored with all five factions long before the patch gets here.

I can't wait!

The patch also brings us a NEW faction to grind, the Shattered Sun Offensive which brings a pile of new dailies, server based progression and a pile of sweet new epics when you hit Exalted. I'll go over all of that, and my SSO plans in my next post.

Shortly after that, I'll be sharing my experience in Sethekk Halls (oh man the first boss blows), my party with Thrall in the CoT, and even the Big Ding! It's all right around the corner. Stay tuned.

Boom

Multiboxing the Mana Tombs: Pandemonium

2008-03-10T12:04:00.006-04:00

Auchindoun was originally a holy burial ground for the dead of the Draenei. But the Shadow Council decided it was a great place to hold an epic kegger. They hoped to summon a pimptacular uber demon, and be the first to apply for "BFF" status with the new bad boy on the block.

But as with all the other parties the Shadow Council threw, this one didn't go well. They succeeded in summoning Murmur, the first stereophonic boss in WoW, but the spell also caused an explosion that destroyed Auchindoun and half of Terokkar Forrest. Ah well. Ya gotta break a few eggs...

Auchindoun is now home to 4 different 5 man instances. In order of difficulty, Mana Tombs, Auchenai Crypts, Sethekk Halls and Shadow Labyrinth. Going against all logic and traditional conventions, I chose to start with the easiest one. :)

Mana Tombs was the next logical instance progression for me. It's labeled 64-66, so at 65 I figured it was time to take a shot. By this point I've discovered that while I don't need to drink while raiding (Water Shield + Elemental Focus + uber crit from ToWx5 = Infinite Mana, and some embarrassing mana leakage.) However, I DO need drinks for wipe recovery. And when you're learning a new instance, it's fair to assume you'll be wiping. I did. Bring water.

There are only 3 bosses in Mana Tombs, the first being a gigantic void walker named PANDEMONIUS! (sorry, I just can't say his name without yelling. Go ahead, try it yourself.) Once again I figured my ego was all the "instruction" I'd need to kill this guy, and totally forgot that 10 seconds or so into the fight, he turns on a spell reflect shield. Turns out it was EXACTLY my ego that came flying back into the face of my shaman, and we all died to the wrath of our own lightning.

I recovered, drank, and took another shot. This time I stopped casting when his shield came up, but still died to his awesome melee powers. Why? Because I didn't have shields equipped. Equip your shields when in instances. K?

So I recovered, drank, put on my shields, and took another shot. This time he died... taking three of my shaman with him. This doesn't exactly encourage me to proceed. But I do.

Luckily, as if to say "Hey, you remembered to equip your shields that time!", Pando left us a beautiful new Shield of the Void. That rocks, and sucks. It rocks because it's an upgrade. It sucks, because now I have to kill that jerk over and over until I get five of them. :)

The trash mobs were falling into the typical pattern I've become accustomed to from previous instances. You get a few melees, a few casters and usually one mob that really hurts. Once you figure out who is who, you kill the hard hitting one before they even get to you, then use grounding and stoneclaws to finish off the rest.

The second boss is a walking stalagmite named Tavarok. (And yet another name that rocks... get it? No? Never mind.) He hurts. He hits freak'n hard, and has an AoE stun that does 2400 damage over 3 seconds. Yikes. While I was busy casting a group chain heal, he stomped on one of my guys and he simply dropped. But he still wasn't strong enough to outlast my DPS, and he died after 2 of my boys did.

And what did we get for our troubles? Lightning-Rod Pauldrons! These babies use the same model as the crazy "Antennas of doom" Pauldrons of Elements, part of the Shaman's very first Dungeon set back in Pre-TBC days. Of course, this rocks... and sucks. Now I need 5. /sigh

Working my way to the last boss, I started to notice just how much fun I was having in an instance. This is great! I'm seeing cool content, at my own pace, and when things go bad, I have only myself to blame. It makes it much easier to laugh at a wipe, trust me. Multiboxing is fun. You should totally do it too. And while you're doing what I tell you, post about my blog on your guild forums. :)

Finally, I was faced with Nexus-Prince Shaffar. He starts with three Ethereal Beacons (sparkling bawls of doom) that if not killed, turn into humanoids that cast hurt on you. The prince will summon additional Ethereal Beacons every ten seconds. So the smart thing to do would be destroy the beacons right away and be sure to focus on the adds every ten seconds.... that is, IF YOU'RE A MERE MORTAL!

Being the invincible Twenty Totems, I simply dropped trou, popped some trinkets and let loose the wrath of the heavens. This doesn't always work mind you... but it did today. :)

The prince dropped in less than 30 seconds, and I quickly dispatched his summoned adds while their prince rotted on the ground in front of them. Good fun.

For all our trouble, the jerk left us a crappy set of plate bracers. But I could care less. Why? Because as the great prince fell, my team began to DING! 66 baby! And you know what that means... time to recruit me a couple of tankss!

Boom

Update: Showing Off

2008-03-07T16:13:00.001-05:00

I mentioned long ago that I was encouraged (as a multiboxer) to show off a bit whenever in town. Of course, this appeals to my ego, as it would to any of yours, but it actually serves a more social purpose.

You see, on some servers, multiboxers are spit on. All the time. Everywhere they go. The GMs know them personally due to all the reports. (even if a GM has already verified that you're not breaking the ULA, they HAVE to follow through with every report.) They are corpse camped everywhere they go. People hate them.

This used to be the norm, but that's slowing changing. Here's a good reason why.

Boxers realized that when they made their exploits (bad choice of words... no?) public, it gave a chance for the "nice" people to get involved... You fan out in Org, drop 20 totems on the ground, light up your shield, pop your dps trinkets (to light up your fists), turn into 5 doggies and start to do the doggie dance with your front paws on fire. People LOVE it. It's fun.

You immediately draw a huge crowd, and very rarely does anyone say anything nasty. And when they do, at least in my case, about 12 folks speak up and say "Shut up man! He's not cheating! That's Boom. That's the Twenty Totems!" :)

You're bound to piss people off when you either ruin their day in a BG, or worse, you find them flagged while doing quests, and hit them with 5 simultaneous CLs from behind, melting their gear to their flesh, and sending them off to have a conversation with the GY Angel. But if you've built up a good relationship with your server's community, they'll come to your rescue when someone decides to get mean.

After 65 levels, I have to agree. This plan worked insanely well. My group has become beloved by both Horde and Alliance. I went out of my way to help anyone who looked like they needed it, Horde or not. Being a nice guy, and putting on a show once in a while does wonders.

If you plan to multibox, "Have fun when in town" is some of the best advice I can give you to ensure you enjoy yourself each time you log in.

Boom

Multiboxing The Ring of Blood

2008-03-06T11:34:00.002-05:00

Anyone who has a 70, knows what the Ring of Blood is. But for those of you in the cheap seats, it's an arena found in Nagrand, that's watched over by a little goblin named Gurgthock, and his prized warrior, Mogor the Ogre.

You see, Gurgthock, being the enterprising goblin he is, has decided to use the abandoned arena to hold some gladiator style grudge matches, and you're his latest challenger.

After talking to the goblin and accepting his first challenge, you're warned to get your butt into the ring asap. After a few moments, the first boss appears. You fight, you win, you talk to the goblin, he gives you gold and lewts. Then you head back into the ring for another fight. This goes on for a total of 6 fights, including a final showdown with Mogor the Ogre.

Everyone loves this quest series because of the payout. In 6 quick battles, you end up netting 60, 66, 10x [Super Healing Potion] and 10x [Super Mana Potion], and your choice of 6 pimptacular weapons. The weapon of choice for Elemental Shaman is the Battle Mages Baton.

There's a healing mace (Mogor's Anointing Club) but by that time I already had a damage mace with more +spell on it, and the staff works great for questing, where you rarely risk physical damage, requiring a shield.

The Ring of Blood quest series isn't available until you hit level 65, so as soon as I did, that's exactly where I went. Now as a 70 Warrior, I get tapped by my guild mates to tank the Ring of Blood on a regular basis. The fights are tough enough to justify a good tank, and a dedicated healer... I had neither this time. I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to do it, but for that staff, I was willing to give it a try.

It's a regular event to find another group already doing the Ring of Blood, and this visit was no different. When I arrived, a group of Alliance were fighting the last boss. Following my own advice, I immediatly spanned out the boys, dropped totems and let loose the wrath of nature. It was fun. The boss suddenly took a huge hit, and after a couple lighting bolts the boss fell.

I was suddenly surrounded by a group of cheering Alliance from the guild, SI Kaldorei. I cheered them back then took a risk with a /wait emote. I ran to the quest giver and started my first fight. Sure enough, their tiny gnome warrior named Longstreet went rushing in to tank for me. He was supported by his healing and dps support, Alardoren, Corrann and Leonidise.

They were gracious enough to stay around and help me finished all 6 fights. THANKS SI KALDOREI! :)

So with my Battle Mage's Batons in hand... I headed back to the instance grind. It was time to hit up Mana Tombs.

Boom

Boom

Multiboxing the Slave Pens: I Need a Bath

2008-03-05T12:58:00.007-05:00

Seriously, as a guy with more than his share of allergies growing up, nothing makes my skin crawl more than Coilfang Reservoir. Don't get me wrong. I love the place. It's bright, upbeat, entertaining and creatively designed.

But when you're killing mobs with moss and gunk hanging off them, and running around in murky water full of crazy looking mushrooms, I just can't help reaching for the Benadryl.

The first 5 man instance in Coilfang is The Slave Pens. It's rated at 62-64, so I figured at 64 I'd do ok.

I buffed the boys up with some Water Breathing, and dove deep into Serpent Lake where we found the nefarious subterranean pumping station, operated by the sinister Naga. The place is rumored to be operated by none other then Lady Vashj herself. But we won't be seeing her today. (thank Thrall for that.)

The Slave Pens are maintained by three bosses. The first one I ran into was Mennu the Betrayer. I almost pulled him not knowing he was a boss, as he's just a tiny Broken Draenei, and doesn't look very imposing. Turns out, he isn't.

He's supposed to be difficult, but at 64, my DPS just melted him down. We looted, and moved on.

Next up was a ginormous Makrura named, Rokmar the Crakler. The dude's a giant crab, but with a name like that, I was more likely to wear his t-shirt then kill him. But as it turns out, he wouldn't give us any phat lewts unless we did.

Brimming with ego from the quick work I made of the first boss, I just dropped my totems and pulled. I forgot about this guy's crazy bleed. It ticks for 900 per second, and won't stop until the poor sap gets a FULL heal. So I noticed a shammie taking damage and did a quick CH, but that didn't top him off, so the bleed continued. I eventually dropped him with 4 shammies left alive, only to watch a second one die from the bleed a few moments later.

Ah well.. He did drop a pretty cool looking healing mace, the Coilfang Hammer of Renewal, which I'll someday display on a shelf in my player housing. :)

The last boss is the reason I came here. He's a giant Bog Lord named Quagmirran. Admit it, the dude looks sweet. (He's in the banner image at the beginning of this post.) When you get to his room he's submerged in a deep pond, assumedly wrinkled as a prune by now.

Before you throw a stone in the pond to get his attention, I suggest first you talk to a Night Elf who's trapped in a cage. If you free him, three Naga will come rushing in, which are easily dispatched. After that, the NE will grant you a buff that gives you +110 to Nature Resist, and +5% to all stats! WOOT! This is important, because Quag has a nature based AoE and Poison.

After setting up I wandered just close enough for the beast to know we were there. This is my favorite part... you see, I love theatrics. I love the power in dropping twenty totems in front of a mob, just before I blow his insides out with lightning. It's fun. And Quag, when activated, doesn't just run at you, he walks up this huge underwater ramp, slowly revealing just how freak'n huge he is. It's beautiful.

The fight was a quick one. The NR buff really paid off, and I was able to just burn him to a crisp... but not before he stomped three of my boys. >.<

Slave Pens wasn't much of a challenge, but I couldn't help but giggle each time I took down a boss "on my own". Multiboxing really shines in instances. You'll remember running them in the past as a "normal" player, and each part where you previously wiped because that pug you picked up was afk, or where someone's pet went running off and decided to bite a bosses ankle before you were ready. You never deal with that when you multibox...

Unless you're the one who does the biting. :)

Boom

Blizz Cast Episode 2 Online! (Blizzcast)

2008-02-28T15:08:00.004-05:00

The latest episode of "Blizz Cast" (blizzcast), the official Blizzard audio podcast, was released today.

Click the image above to listen in, read the transcript or to see some of the new screenshots.

Epic Mounts x 5 (Once again, Mountacular)

2008-02-27T11:51:00.002-05:00

Pimp'n ain't easy, but it show do look good. BLAM! The boys are finally riding in style.

Boom

Ding! (64), Nagrand and Questing

2008-02-27T11:19:00.004-05:00

64 was an important ding for me. First off, I took the opportunity to find out if anyone would still need me, or feed me. (no, I'm not old enough to remember the Beetles, I'm just a dork.) Turns out no one did, so I continued feeding myself.

Second, this opened up the quests in Nagrand. I love Nagrand. Unlike every other zone in TBC, it's beautiful, and very calming to play in. There's also alot of "go kill eleventy of this and eightyteen of that, etc." quests which Multiboxers LOVE. Why? Because mobs are like butter to us. And we're.. you know... the knives or whatever... right.

So anyways, Nagrand has a pile of excellent quest line, many of which end up with spectacular gear rewards. I decided not to be picky, and simply grab every quest I ran across. Even if I had to collect a ton of drops, I still did the quests. The xp was good, and the loot was better.

It's Nagrand where we run into our old pal, Hemet Nesingwary, a dwarf with an itch for killing critters. We first met him in Stranglethorn Vale, where he had us hunting a wide variety of wildlife. But when TBC came out, Hemet felt it was time to level to 70, and find more challenging game in the Outlands. So he handed over his STV operations to his son, Hemet Nesingwary Jr., and setup camp in Nagrand.

He once again offers us a series of Hunting quests, which are just great for multiboxers. And the best part is, that each series ends in a fight with a higher level elite, which normally stops solo questers in their tracks. But not us! I easily dispatched every mob in the entire series at level 64. It was great fun, and paid out in xp and gear upgrades. Don't miss it.

I've stated before that I'm trying not to quest too much in outland. That rule goes into effect right at this point. Once I was done with Nagrand, I started to move into instances for my xp, so as to save as many quests for 70 as possible.

We have alot of initial expense at 7o, being our flying and epic flying mounts. Quest, once you hit 70, are an insanely easy way to make a pile of cash, especially as a multiboxer. We can blow through quests so quickly, and the payout is the same for all 5 toons. That adds up quick. Some quests that pay 9g before you're 70, pay out over 22g after. So it's in my best interest to save the quests for later.

I chose to do Nagrand for two reasons.

1. The gear upgrades would help me get into higher level instance.
2. The quests would give me the money I needed to get my epic ground mounts.

It did both just perfectly. This leaves Blade's Edge, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley unmolested, and ripe for the gold digging once 70 gets here. We'll see how that works out.

Boom

The Blood Furnace: Cake

2008-02-26T09:20:00.002-05:00

The Blood Furnace is the second wing found in Hellfire Citadel. It's labeled as a 61-63 level instance, which places it second on the TBC instance list, right after it's little brother, Hellfire Ramparts.

After I stormed through the Ramparts (minus the last boss), I wondered just how far I could go. So I naturally headed into the Blood Furnace to see what kind of damage I could cause.

I was once again amazed at how effected 5 DPS focused toons (with mail armor and shields) are in 5 man instances. And this time, I was sporting my new Water Shield, which adds a ton of mana regen, even in combat.

I found myself quickly chain pulling the place, and the first boss (The Maker) fell quickly to nothing more than focused DPS. It wasn't until the second boss that I had a problem. Broggok, as it turns out, is a big softy... it's his friends who suck. All sixteen of them.

When you first clear the room before Broggok, you'll find him floating on the other side of a gate, with a huge leaver in the ground in front of it. Hmmm... this seems easy. Pull leaver, let Broggok out, kill Broggok. Nope.

An observant eye will notice four cells around the room, each gated up and holding 4 Fel Orcs who look like they're missing their prom. When you pull that huge leaver in front of Broggok, the gate in front of him stays closed. The gates holding back the orcs however, open. One at a time, but still.

You'll suddenly find yourself scrambling to manage 4 elite mobs. This means repositioning the group, and fast. Something I don't yet pride myself on being able to do. As soon as the last of the four is down, the second cell opens and releases another 4, who come from yet another direction. /ugh

I of course had forgotten about this fight, so I didn't setup a strategy ahead of time. Instead I did what most DPS people do when they panic... NUKE!

While I managed to barely keep my group up, and take down all four teams of orcs, it left me with exactly no mana as the previously mentioned gate, in front of Broggok, opened. Broggok found 5 Shaman, with no mana, and oddly dressed in identical clown gear, standing over the bodies of this 12 favorite buddies.k Not good.

He floated in while I was frantically standing perfectly still, and thinking good thoughts. (I've heard this helps you regen mana faster... not true.) It was this point where I finally admitted to myself that setting up a button to drink water might just pay off.

We got smooshed.

Luckily this 16 buddies didn't respawn. We came back in, dropped twenty, and blew him away. The next time I went in, I managed to focus fire 3 of the 4 orcs in each group, and tank the 4th while my boys regen'd mana. It worked great.

The rest of the instance was even easier. The mobs didn't last long, and the final boss dropped almost immediately.

Blood Furnace was actually alot of fun. I enjoyed figuring out how to take down Broggok. But it was still a bit easy at 63. So what does this mean... can I do Slave Pens already? What about the Underbog? This has real possibilities. I'm getting cool blue loot, and the xp is nothing short of spectacular.

I know I need gold. And instances are not the way to get it. Quests are. But I'm trying to think ahead... If I wait and quest when I'm 70, the gold more than doubles for each quest turn in... and when I'm 70, I'll need 5k just to get BASIC flying mounts... not to mention the 25k for epics. ^.^ So maybe instances are where it's at.

We'll see.

Speaking of mounts... my ground mounts are feeling really slow... We'll have to fix that next.

Multiboxing Basics: Accept Macro

2008-02-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

When you're trying to manage two or more toons in World of Warcraft, it's the little things that make you want to kick puppies. Like quest givers. Moving your mouse to 5 different screens to click on an NPC (assuming the camera stopped in place that allows you to see the NPC) then choosing the next quest, and accepting it can be very tedious. (what difficult lives we live. /sigh )

Anyways, a macro I've grown to love is the Accept Macro, found at dual-boxing.com.

/script AcceptGroup();
/script AcceptQuest();
/script AcceptTrade();
/script RetrieveCorpse();
/script RepopMe();

Now, whenever my main gets a new quest, I simply "share" it with the group, then hit this macro. Boom! All 4 other Shaman instantly accept the quest. You'll be shocked by how good this makes you feel. It really shouldn't. Helping an orphan reach the cookie jar doesn't feel this good. It's amazing.

This really shines when you come to a new quest hub and pick up 5 quests at a time.

You can start holding your breath...

2008-02-25T09:33:00.004-05:00

There's alot going on here at Twenty Totems headquarters. (We sit in a circle behind Thrall's Throne and pretend it's our headquarters.)

I've got upcoming articles on Alterac Valley, The Blood Furnace, The Slave Pens, The Mana Tombs, Nagrand Questing, Ring of Blood, Eye of the Storm, World PvP (in the bone wastes), several macro/add-ons, a bit of fun with Holidays and a whole lot of DINGS!

WoW has become so exciting, it's been hard to put it down long enough to blog... but it's all still coming.

Boom

Alterac Valley 2.4: "Join as Group" is BACK!

2008-02-15T11:14:00.004-05:00

Our friends over at World of Raids are reporting several undocumented changes found on the PTR. Most are trivial, but one caught my eye... JOIN AS GROUP is back in AV!

Up till now, we've had to use in game mods (I use AV Enabler) to get all of our toons into the same AV, and it's not always successful. That all changes in the next patch!

Totem Talk over at WoW Insider

2008-02-14T16:24:00.002-05:00

Just a quick recommendation to my fellow Shaman. WoW Insider, and excellent site for WoW news and original content, has a regular column about Shaman called Totem Talk. I've been following it for a while now, and while some of it has a very "we didn't have anything to really talk about this week" feel to it, several of their past entries have been full of useful Shaman content.

Go give it a read, and leave me a comment with links to other Shaman resources you think I should link to.

Boom

Into Hellfire Citadel

2008-02-12T06:44:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned previously, I've decided to move on from 60, and start the sprint to 70. I began by cleaning up the quests in Hellfire, only to end up with my first TBC Dungeon quest, Weaken the Ramparts found in Hellfire Citadel.

This quest took me into the first TBC Dungeon, the Hellfire Ramparts. The Ramparts are designed for toons in the 60-62 level range. When TBC first came out, I remember going in there the first night with 3 other 60s, and a level 58 Priest. We steam rolled the place. We didn't know anything about the mobs or the bosses. We just paid attention, and were rewarded with our first Rare TBC gear.

But that first trip was with some excellent DPS, a well geared tank (myself) and a young Priest with a "Devil May Care" attitude, and a heart of gold. We were all seasoned raiders, so success was simply part of life. (As was impressing our friends with our undeniable humility.)

So what chance did I stand in there with 5 DPS Shaman? Well, it didn't hurt that my previous AV aspirations had already lead to a complete set of TBC gear for each Shaman. Let's get in there.

The Ramparts were always a favorite instance of mine. It was our first taste of expansion raiding, and gave us our first truly cool gear. It also gave us a sign of things to come. No longer were we faced with 4-6 hour instances such as the infamous Blackrock Depths. The Ramparts could be tamed in less than an hour even when we didn't know what to do.

I decided it would be safe to sneak the Twenty Totems in at level 62. As I entered the instance, I realized I hadn't be in there for nearly a year at this point. I got excited all over again, but my focus was on the first two mobs I had to pull. They were melee. This is good and bad. It means I can split them up using Stoneclaw Totems, but that also means I'm going to be getting pounded on.

When I'm fighting a caster, I can virtually guarantee I'll never take ANY damage due to Grounding Totems, but with Melee, I can only delay them. Once I do any damage to them, they're going to be beating on one of the boys, until they die. Luckily, thanks to TBC they actually have Mail armor, and fairly nice shields. (Ancient Draenei Crest)

I dropped my totems, and focus fired on the first mob. (raid tip: remember, when you have a melee toon you need to CC, never use Chain Lightning. You need to keep your threat on that target down so your Stoneclaw Totems can grab them.) He died before he got to the group. I freaked. I had no idea how overpowered I already was for this instance.

There are several trash mobs in there that can cause problems in the past. Specifically the Bleeding Hollow Scryer. This jerk would give you x number of seconds to kill him before he yelled for backup. If he got his scream off, his "backup" would come running, and social agro whatever other groups they'd run past. That usually meant death, or at least a short run to the entrance to reset.

But he died in two casts. It was great. Then I turned my attention to his two guards (both melee), keeping one busy with Stoneclaws while I burned the other down.

This ended up being the standard practice for the trip. If I had melee, stoneclaw. If I had casters, grounding totem while I burned the melees down. It was cake.

I got to the first boss in notime. The creepy Watchkeeper Gargolmar. (Didn't this guy used to spend his time torturing innocent tiny blue people with his cat Asreale?) He has two guards, both healers. I knew I couldn't just focus fire the boss down, or his entourage would simply heal him. So I had to hope that even a Boss would be hypnotized by the undeniable lure of truly sexy Stoneclaw totem. He was.

While the boss beat my totems, (why do I cringe and cross my legs when I say that?) I burned down his healers, and finally turned my attention on him. It was all going well until he decided to knock us all back. I've always been a sucker for theatrics, which is why I love the Shaman. But this means I often spread my guys out into formation when I didn't need to, just because it "looks cool". This time being spread out meant my boys all got knocked back in different directions.

While I panicked to get the guys facing the boss, two of my boys fell to his mighty melee awesomeness. I struggled to keep the Lightning Bolts flowing, and only barely finished the jerk off with two of my guys left. Phat lewts for all! Well, for the Paladin in the group anyways. (Light-Touched Breastplate)

After he fell, I worked my way to the second boss... Omor the Unscarred, which is a name that just BEGS for a beating. Hi guys, I'm new to the school. My friends call me "Rob the Unweggied"

Omor is such a cool looking boss. He looks like he could simply "think" my boys to death with is endless supply of awesome magics. But that's actually his only weakness. He's only a caster. Which means everything he throws at my boys, can, and is eaten by Grounding Totems. Horray for caster bosses!

So he fell before even one of my boys took damage. We were rewarded with a belt named after one of my favorite bands... The Tenacious Defender. Ok... still no loot for Shaman, but there's one boss left.

Vazruden, and his Netherdrake Mount, Nazan. Now this fight is a bit more involved, and I knew that going in... but I'm the unstoppable Twenty Totems, so I simply decided to pull.

The pull actually starts with two guards (melee), who stand ready at the end of the ramp to Vazruden's area. Above us, Vaz is circling around on the back of Nazan. As soon as the two guards die, Vaz jumps off the Drake, and comes running towards us. At that point, Nazan flies back up, and randomly sends a fireball at one of my boys.

As Vaz came running at us, I charged up the nuke and sent enough lightning at the man to bake an omelet on an icecube. I kept a steady flow of lightning bolts burning through his face, and he fell rather quick. SUCCESS! We're unstoppable!

Then Nazan landed and started storming towards us.

This is a gigantic dragon. And unlike most dragons you've heard of, for some reason this one breathes fire. Everywhere.

We started burning him down, when he suddenly decided to burn our robes off with a volcanic sneeze. In an instant every one of the boys was at 20% health. Ouch. He sneezed again, and we died. All of us.

I realized I'd have to actually figure out how to tank the thing, and force him to face away from the group, and somehow hold agroo off the other "Identically geared" Shaman. Bah. Too much work. I'm outta here.

Maybe I'll come back later.

Boom

The Spell Caster's Trinket Macro

2008-02-07T12:12:00.002-05:00

I promised you last week that I'd post my nuke macro and explain it. Then RL happend, and I got busy. But I'm ready to share it now.

All Elemental Shaman have a DPS buff called Elemental Mastery. It's a talent that when used, guarantees your next spell will be a crit. The cooldown on this talent is three mins.

As an Orc Shaman, we also have the Orc Racial Blood Fury, which gives you a temporary boost to your Spell Damage based on your level. At my current level, it adds around 120ish.

Then there are the caster trinkets. These became notorious back before TBC, as mages used them in conjunction with talents to produce insane burst damage, creating the Three Minute Mage. An Elemental Shaman can do the same, and it just so happens that there are TWO caster trinkets that are easily accessible in early TBC questlines. The Ancient Crystal Talisman, which grants 104 spell damage, and the Vengeance of the Illidari which grants 120 spell damage.

Caster trinkets used to be stackable "back in the day", but this simply became way too overpowered. So now when you use a caster trinket, it causes any other trinket to start a small cooldown, keeping you from stacking them.

So lets review what we've got available to us.

Blood Fury 120 Spell Damage 2min cooldown
VotI 120 Spell Damage 2min cooldown
ACT 104 Spell Damage 2min cooldown
EM Guaranteed Crit 3min cooldown

At the time of this post, Thunduh (my main) is at 338+ Spell Damage.

Now that we have the numbers, lets talk about how much win this is. Blizzard will let us make a macro that will cast a different spell each time we hit the button. (using /castsequence) But we only need to do this IF the spell/item causes the global cooldown (GCD) to cycle. Buff trinkets don't. Either does Blood Fury or Elemental Mastery... you following me?

So I made this very simple macro:

/cast Elemental Mastery
/cast Blood Fury
/use Vengeance of the Illidari
/use Ancient Crystal Talisman
/cast Chain Lightning

Now remember, the two trinkets can't be used at the same time, so what this macro does, is trigger off whatever it can, then immediately cast Chain Lightning. All in ONE key press.

KACHOW!

So assuming all cooldowns are up, the math goes like this:

338 Spell damage base

+ 120 from Blood Fury

+ 120 from VotI

+ Guarantee Crit

= 578+ Spell Damage, 2280+ Crit Chain Lightning.

Oh.... TIMES FIVE SHAMAN. ^.^

Joy of joys.

I setup a row of oversized buttons on my screen with all 4 of my damage boosters, so at any time I can see what's available. It couldn't be easier, and it couldnt' be more fun.

So if you're a caster, get those trinkets asap, and get your macro setup. You'll love every moment. Did I mention how cool it looks too when it tries to cram in all the different buff animations from Blood Fury and the trinket? /evilgrin

Boom

The Need to Proceed

2008-02-07T11:57:00.001-05:00

Power is a fairly evil thing. No doubt that's a big reason why we multiboxers do what we do. I've been boxing for several months now, and I can't tell you how many times I've launched off 5 simultaneous Chain Lightnings. Yet every dang time I smile.

I did complete my lvl 60 gear, and spent some time in Alterac Valley. It was amazing. After struggling to help push the offensive, I decided to try defense for a round. I'll tell you what... Shamans were meant to stand still, next to their totems, and wait for the next unfortunate soul who dared stumble into range. That's what defense is. At least in AV.

The Horde base in AV is surrounded by an impassable wall. The only opening is between two towers, and about the width of 5 Tauren shoulder to shoulder. That' quite a bottleneck. That's where I made my stand. There's a hill just before the opening, that the Alliance have to climb. It's small, but it keeps the average user from seeing ahead. Perfect.

I fanned out the boys about 20 yards from the bottleneck, dropped my totems, and waited. Everytime a clever mage with giant brass bawls decided it was his turn to rush the base, he found himself promptly plugged directly into the powers of nature. I can only imagine the parts of his body that melted together before his soul gave up and left.

It was pure win. Everywhere.

In our battlegroup (Ruin) AV is dominated by the Alliance right now. They rarely lose. They won the two previous games (by a good margin) before I decided to try Defense. But once I did. We won. We won BIG. For the first time ever, I was being cheered in a BG as a multiboxer. :)

This went on and on. No matter what they did, the Alliance couldn't get past me. They started sending in pets, and I'd kill them before they got to a toon. Mind you, I had a good group of others that were helping me. There's no way 5 Shaman are going to hold back 30+ Alliance. But it was still a sight to see.

I was anxious to save up the Honor I'd need for the two HWL items I wanted. The spellblade and the shield. But I was disappointed at the returns I was getting. I was going to have to sit in AV for a LONG time for that to happen. And Power was calling me....

I couldn't wait any longer. I wanted to see what else I could do. How far I could go. So we ding'd 61, and put PvP on the shelf for a while.

I headed into Outlands to clean up the quests I had skipped in Hellfire, because they didn't give me gear I wanted. It was beautiful. The XP was flowing, my power was growing, and with each quest I'd glance over at Hellfire Citadel wondering if I could go inside.

As it turns out, I could.

At 62, I took 5 Shaman, no dedicated healer and no tank, into Hellfire Ramparts. I was shocked by what I found.

... to be continued.

Ding! (60)... And so it Begins!

2008-01-29T18:11:00.002-05:00

DING BABY!

You might be wondering where exactly I've been. I can tell you. Alterac Valley. Why? Because my plan worked perfectly, and my boys are now rolling with 280+ spellpower. But that's not all. I still have yet to get the HWL Spelldagger (+72 spellpower) and enchant them with +40 spellpower. For a grand total of 380ish spellpower. (I'll lose the 12 damage on my current dagger.)

But even now, this has got to be the most fun I've had yet as a multiboxer. Let me tell you exactly what I did.

First, we need to discuss the gear change that came with last year's expansion, The Burning Crusade. You see, when the expansion came out, we had previously spent nearly two years at 60, and to keep us interested, Blizzard had to keep adding more and more powerful level 60 gear.

While we didn't ALL have this gear, they couldn't exactly release a new expansion, raise the level to 70, and add gear that wasn't as good as Tier 3 some players already had. So instead, the new gear had an enormous jump in "item level", making the new gear much more powerful than anything seen before the expansion.

This also meant they had to up the power of mobs at early 60s levels. So what to do about players who haven't been at 60 for two years? What about players new to WoW when the expansion came out. How would they get over the level bump at 60? Easy. Give them a slew of early quests that provide new (enhanced level) gear. How early? Why, level 58 of course. :)

So when I hit level 58, I spent some time at Thottbot.com, and mapped out a series of quests that would completely gear my Shaman in identical TBC gear. My only fear, would be that I would level to 61 before I completed them all. And while I have one quest series left (to get bracers), I still have a few bubbles of xp left to pull it off.

The only reason I haven't done the bracers yet, is because it's a REALLY annoying quest series called, Thick Hydra Scales. The short version is, Kill a billion Hydras that are widely spaced, until you collect 60 scales (12x5 Shaman). Ugh. But I'll get it done tomorrow, assuming it doesn't level me to 61. If I get too close, I'll bail.

Why don't I want to go past 60? Well, that's because of the unique 51-60 Alterac Valley Bracket. All of the other battlegrounds push you into a new bracket at 60. (60-69) But AV is different, and AV is a multiboxer's paradise.

So I mapped out all the quests, and got them done in 3 short gaming sessions. And sure enough, the xp was amazing, and it pushed me from 58 to 60 in no time.

Of the quests, most were available at level 58, while the last 4 required me to hit 60 first. If you're going to do this, do yourself a favor and don't sleep in inns. The Rest XP will make it harder to complete them all without going over.

With the new gear equipped, I headed into my first AV, and wasn't disappointed. I have NEVER had this much fun in WoW. I typically had a mob of 4-6 players who not only followed me around, but were thrilled to heal my boys and keep the Thunduh Rolling!

I'll have some AV pics for you soon. The first few times I was in there I didn't even think to take shots.

Part of my questing including aquiring two new trinkets, both of which have a "use" that boosts spellpower. Tomorrow I'll show you how I made a "Nuke" macro that allows me to stack up to 527+ spellpower, and cast a Chain Lightning of death, all with one press of a button.

FOR HORDE!

Questing Rules All

2008-01-25T08:42:00.001-05:00

I was right. Because of the ToW effect, I can easily down even elites that are many levels above my boys. So the magic turned out to be finding quests that were many levels above us. That wasn't hard. I did a few in Winterspring, but ended up spending most of my time in Western and Eastern Plaguelands.

Quests were completed before I even knew I had them. The "Cauldron" quest series was awesome. They took less than 10 mins each, including travel time, and payed out 14k+ xp. At one point, the boys were averaging over 80k xp per hour. It was great.

Eventually I found myself with the quest everyone tucks away, and never gets around to... Araj's Scarab. The reason this gets dropped, is because after doing a long series of level 55-57 quests in Andorhal, you're faced with taking down a level 61 Elite, (Araj the Summoner) who happens to be surrounded by an army of level 60s who pull in huge groups. So you skip it.

We didn't.

As you can see in the banner pic, we took Araj down without any health loss. The key to that of course, is the fact that Araj only attacks with spells, which means everything he throws at us, ends up in a Grounding Totem. :) Good lord I love Shaman. We were even able to take down all of the 60s around us, and we were all level 55 (well Thunduh was 56) at the time. It was great fun, and enormous amounts of xp.

I'm actually surprised to be enjoying questing so much. I fully expected to be in instances this whole time. Guess I was just spoiled by the carebear runs with Boom. But this is actually pretty fun. As a side bonus, questing lets you interact with other players too, which is incredibly fun! (on my server at least)

Before I knew it.. the boys were 58. Wait... FIFTY EIGHT! We all know what that means. It's time to hit the Portal.

But I'm not ready to just rush in and get to 70. I have a stop along the way. That stop is Alterac Valley. There are two AV brackets, 51-60 and 61-70. I plan to play in the first bracket, until I can afford two specific Honor Rewards. And I plan to do it in TBC gear, tweaked to the tune of 340+ spell damage. I'll show you how in my next post.

Blackrock Depths = Repair Bills

2008-01-24T09:12:00.001-05:00

Ahh... those wacky, wacky Dark Iron Dwarves. Always running around in humongous groups, just waiting for over confident multiboxers to come along and start a fight. We'll I have a surprise for them! Watch me as I drop all Twenty Totems, channel the very powers of nature and burn these silly little men to a...

(thunduh dies)
(thundah dies)
(thnudah dies)
(thundoh dies)
(thundeh dies)

Hmmm... Ok. Something went wrong. Lets do that again. Luckily all 5 of my boys can self rez once and hour, giving me wipe immunity up to once every 12 minutes. So lets just rez Thunduh and..

(Thunduh dies)

Hmm... Ok. These fellas have a rather large agro radius. No worries. We'll just release and run back. Again. And again. And again. This is how it went on for almost 4 hours.

My pulling process from The Sunken Temple worked fine. The problem was the sheer number of mobs. Sometimes a single pull, with up to 7 mobs, was just a bit too much, but normally I wiped because of pathing groups. I learned, I slowed down, and I prevailed.

I ended up completing the Dark Iron Legacy quest to get the Shadow Forge Key. That will allow me to move around the instance much easier.

After doing my first Ring of the Law, I was pleasantly surprised to find the epic mail chest piece, the Savage Gladiator Chain! While it's stats had nothing to do with and Elemental Shaman, I was proud to wear it. I ended up getting the legs and boots as well.

I was able to eventually down every boss in the instance besides the last two. Before you get to the stone guardian who guards the Emperor, you come to an enormous room called The Lyceum. This room is famous for causing headaches, due to the 30 second respawn rate of the groups of 10 or so non-elite dwarves.

You have to pull a group, down them, and move to the next one very very quickly. I could do this, only with Magma Totems. The problem is, they cost 500 mana each, and I didn't have drinks with me. I just couldn't keep up. I tried several techniques, but there simply wasn't enough mana. So I called it a night.

I decided the boys earned a mug of Dark Iron Ale, so we headed to the Grim Guzzler to celebrate a hard days work. While we settled into a table and ordered a round, I noticed something. I had just about cleared the largest 5 man instance in the game, and my xp was pitiful. The problem was, I wasn't really overpowered in BRD. As an all DPS group, I played differently, but the pace was just about the same as any other normal group. It was obvious I wasn't twinking anymore.

I then thought about making many, many more runs through BRD, and it gave me a headache. Maybe instances won't be my grinding place as I finish my run to 70. Maybe they will be a single day of challenge, before I go back to questing where the real xp is. Time will tell. Till then, I think I should head to some high level questing areas, and see what kind of progress I can make.

WoW Hits 10 Million Subscribers

2008-01-23T11:15:00.001-05:00

Blizzard announced today that they recently hit a major milestone by reaching 10 Million subscribers. But lets be honest. Only 9,999,996 count, seeing as I have four extra accounts. ^.^

Playing in Un'Goro

2008-01-23T08:30:00.001-05:00

After strolling through The Sunken Temple, I decided I would boost my boys a bit with quests. Being early in my 50s, I couldn't help but think of Un'Goro Crater. I always loved that place. If not for the closely cramped quests, then for the beautiful scenery.

I avoided "collect crap" quests, but found a pile of "go kill a pile of these" quests. Those go incredibly fast when you multibox. They all went fine, and the xp was piling up at a decent rate.

The ToW effect was evident again when I chose to do one of the "collect crap" quests, and ran into the Stegosaurus looking Diemetradons, who were surrounded by a giant Elite version called, the Plated Stegodon. I the past, you just avoided these guys, but with the ToW, they took just about the same damage as their non-elite brothers. The difference is, they have a bit more health, but they give nearly double the xp!

One of my fondest memories of Un'Goro has to be the sudden screams of "HOLY CRAP A GIANT T-REX IS KILLING US!". The Crater is patrolled by Tyrant Devilsaurs, which do look like giant T-Rexes. And they love to bite off the heads of players when they're not looking. They're 54-55 Elite mobs, so for most players in there, they mean instant death. In the past, my experience was no different.

But today was different. I was there with the Twenty Totems. Each time we got jumped, we easily dispatched the giant dino with a few volleys of lightning. It was quite satisfying to see them drop after killing me so often in the past.

Before I knew it, I was 54, and felt the itch to try out something more challenging. That's when I remembered Blackrock Depths. The problem is, 54 is a good level to go in there, with a tank and healer... I had neither. But of course, I had a pile of DPS. But I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Side note: I want to apologize for promising a "Formations" entry, but two things happend. First, the ToW came up, and re-energized my efforts to grow, and I forgot about formations. Once I remembered, I decided it would make a much better video than a write-up. So I'm working on the video now. I'll be sure to post it here first when it's done.

Raiding: The Temple of Atal'Hakkar

2008-01-18T07:42:00.001-05:00

Long before TBC was released, Blizzard decided to use a new class based reward series to encourage players to head to the swamp, and explore The Temple of Atal’Hakkar, more affectionately known as The Sunken Temple. The quests series becomes available to each class once you hit level 50, and is given by one of your trainers.

Each class has to venture deep within The Sunken Temple, and kill a series of bosses. Once complete, they each have a unique choice of rewards to choose from, that won't be found anywhere else. For some classes, the items are all quickly replaced by gear found in the lvl 58-60 dungeons. But a few end up with a reward that can still be seen in use at 70. The Shamans fall into the second group.

The Shaman's Quest is called Da Voodoo, and considered a level 52D quest. (The D means you'll need a group to head into an dungeon/instance) There are a series of 6 Troll mini-bosses that must be killed, and a feather collected from each one.

While two of the three reward options are simply "nice" gear for a level 50, (Azurite Fists, Wildstaff) it's the third option that nearly every educated Shaman grabs... The Enamored Water Spirit.

This trinket, when used, acts exactly like a normal Water Totem. It even takes up your Water Totem spot, and will be wiped out immediately if you drop another Water Totem.

The thing that makes this special, is that the mana it gives you is more than double that of a Mana Spring Totem at that level, and still nearly 30% more than a Mana Spring Totem at level 70. The difference of course is that A: it takes up a trinket slot, and B: it only lasts for 24 seconds then has a 3min cooldown.

For any Shaman, this is obviously a very valuable item to have. For a multiboxer playing five Shaman, it's priceless.

I'm working on changing my healing totem macro to have my 4 alts drop their Enamored Water Spirit instead of a healing totem every 4th use. The reason I don't use my main, is becuase of the cooldown. Up till now, when I drop healing/mana totems, my main drops the Mana Spring Totem, while the other four each drop a Healing Stream Totem. I do this because the Healing Totems stack, while the Mana doesn't. By rotating a Water Spirit Totem through each of my 4 alts, I end up losing a healing stream, but gain significantly more mana.

The other issue is the short lifespan of the Enamored Water Spirit which ends up going away before a fight is over. So I keep dropping a normal Mana Spring Totem, which last 2 mins. So when the Water spirit dies 24 secs into the fight, the Mana Spring takes over until I drop totems again. It works great, and my mana issues are gone. I can just about chain pull (no CL pun intended) :) through instances.

So it's obvious why I'd want to get these ASAP. So when the boys all hit 50, I grabbed the quest, and headed directly to The Sunken Temple to see if I could survive in there with 5 Elemental Shaman, and no dedicated healer or tank.

Holy cow was that fun.

My very first pull was of a pair of lvl 48 Elites, who both died before they got to my group. I actually LOL'd. (Is there an acronym for that? Something like "ALOL!") I proceeded quickly upstairs to try and drop the 6 Troll Mini-bosses I needed to finish my Shaman quest.

The hallways are filled with fairly large groups of mobs, which make for some crazy pulls. There are also one or two pathers, who love to throw their wrench into things if you don't keep good tabs on them. Each group included 3-5 Elites and 4-5 non-elites. That's a big pull. What eventually worked best, was to isolate the different groups.

We have 3 types to worry about. Elite Melee, Elite Casters and non-elites (all melee). The casters are the easiest to handle. They die last. Why? Because of the irreplaceable Grounding Totems. They give each of my Shaman a buff, which acts as a diversion for spells. When one of the caster mobs sends fireball (or any other spell) towards one of my guys, the spell gets rerouted to a Grounding Totem, and kills the totem instead of hitting a Shaman.

The beautiful thing about this, is that if the two casters target the same fella, and cast at the same time, (which mobs do) then both spells can be eaten by a single totem. With five of these on the ground, they can pretty much empty their mana bars into totems. When their misdirected spells wipe out 4 of my 5 totems, I simply drop a new set.

The non-elites are easily diverted too. I drop a pile of Stoneclaw Totems which keep them busy long enough for me to kill the Elite Melee mobs. After I drop all my totems, I focus on the first Elite Melee, and send 5 Lightning Bolts their way. (I can't use Chain Lightning, or it will grab too much agro from the non-elites, and they end up ignoring the Stoneclaw Totems) At this level, a second volley will likely drop them. So a pull goes like this:

Drop Totems
Target Elite Melee 1
Channel Lightning Bolt (the Bolts start off towards the mobs)
Soon as they cast and head towards the mob, channel a second Lightning Bolt
As soon as the second channel starts, select the second Elite Melee. (There is a delay between the time my main selects a target, and the time when my alts can /assist that target, so I have to change targets ahead of time.)
By the time the first Lightning Bolts hit the first Elite Melee, and pulls the group, I /assist my main, and each Shaman has the second Elite Melee targeted.
The second volley heads off towards the first Elite Melee, and I start casting on the second Elite Melee even before a mob gets to my group.
The Elites die, I wipe out the non-elites with either CLs or maybe five Magma Totems
Then finally I fire off at the Elite Casters, who at this point are still trying to cast at my Shamans, only to have their spells eaten by the Grounding Totems.

This worked amazingly well.

I quickly found myself peeking around a corner at the first miniboss. I was pretty nervous about this. I had no idea how hard he would be. So I filled the tiny hallway with twenty totems, popped EM and BF, then sent a storm of lightning his way.

He dropped before he got to the group. I ALOL'd.

I worked my way to all 6 Trolls and got the items I needed to finish my Shaman quest, but I was WAY too hyped up to go turn it in. I wanted to see how far I could get! So I headed to the basement to trigger the 6 Snake statues, and fight my next ST Boss, Atal'alarion. He dropped quickly too, and I figured I needed to head upstairs and fight something bigger.

I found my way to the Draconian area, where the pulls include swarms of Whelplings and a few Dragonkin. The first pull was a wakeup call. These guys hit hard, and I didn't have a tank. I lost two Shaman on my first pull, but survived. I changed up my strategy a bit, and found dumping Chain Lightning into the elites after pulling the whelplings, helped up the DPS.

I had a quest to kill Jammal'an the Prophet, and I really wanted to see if I could pull it off. The groups of Trolls that guard his room are notorious for fearing groups of pugs into other groups, and quickly wiping everyone. Knowing this, I first started pulling them all the way into the previous room, which is a tactic used by most experienced players... but I noticed really quickly that I was killing them really fast.

So instead, I stayed in the room I pulled them from, kept a Tremor Totem up just in case, and ended up DPSing them down before they could fear. It was great fun.

I was nervous about fighting Jammal'an, because the other bosses up to this point were "mini-bosses", which this was the real deal. I read strategies on him, and discovered the Troll that pulls with him (a second boss) is a caster. /evilgrin

So I dropped a pile of Grounding Totems for the add, and proceeded to down Jammal'an the Prophet before he even got to us. Beautiful.

After that I continued on towards the final boss, but found myself facing 4 of his Dragon minions, who turned out to be immune to Nature Damage. This means no lightning bolts, no chain lightning, no earth shock. All I have is Flame Shock, and some fire totems. It was terrible. I wiped many, MANY times while I worked out position, spells, etc. But eventually I made Shade of Eranikus.

Eranikus hits very hard. VERY hard. But I hoped I could DPS him down before he got to my group. I dropped the totems, fired up the boys and woke the sleeping Dragon. He was immune to Nature. He hurt us. He hurt us like he was enjoying it. I think I saw him smile.

I decided that was enough, was thrilled to get this far on my own, and called it a day. The only boss I didn't face was Hakkar, only because you have to do a quest before hand to summon him, and I've yet to do it. Ah well, I'll be back.

Boom

Questing and Multiboxing. A Match Made in Heaven

2008-01-15T16:33:00.001-05:00

With the realization that my ToW enables me to kill mobs 4-5 levels above me with ease, I started looking at quests again. I started by searching Thottbot for armor, that comes from quests, that's blue quality, and has +spell damage on it, and only in an item level range of 48-58. (click here for the same search.) Note, that item level and "required level" are completely different.

Once I find something I like, I follow the quest chain back, and get my boys moving! Last night I found the Royal Highmark Vestments, cloth, I know, but a great upgrade that would look great too. :) I was pleased to discover the quest chain was the "Poison Bottles" chain from Hinterlands. It's a fairly long chain that takes you to Zul'Farrak eventually, and finally back to the Hinterlands where you summon a "Spider God".

I remember loving this quest because the spider you summon at the end, is the size of a small building. It's freak'n huge.

(I never miss an opportunity to light up the bottom of a Zeppelin with my Disco Totems.)

So I gathered up the guys, ran the quest chain, and got to Zul'Farrak. I was in and out of there in less than 10 mins. I'm telling you, the ToW is just insane. I love being able to run just about any quest in game I want, and never need to get a group together.

The chain came to a rather anti-climatic end, as the "Giant Spider God" was summoned, and came out of the water. He was tiny. No bigger, if not smaller than the regular spiders all over the Troll area where you summon. I was so bummed. As it turns out, the Devs "fixed" his size quite a while ago... ah well.

I did however get my robes, and the boys are looking good.

Those with sharp eyes, or links to the Armory will notice the TTs are sporting the Helm of Exile, which is a quest reward you get from downing Jammal'an the Prophet in the Sunken Temple! I also finished the lvl50 Shaman quest, and got my Enamored Water Spirit which when used properly, is keeping all 5 Shaman topped off most of the time.

So as it turns out, questing may not give me the xp I get from grinding Instances, but the rewards are wonderful!

I'll post some pics and details of my trip to the Sunken Temple tomorrow.

Boom

Ding! (50)

2008-01-14T10:24:00.001-05:00

As you likely noticed in the previous post, I chose to move forward, and dinged into the 50s! (if you cheat, and check the armory today, you'll see my boys are already 51 and on their way to 52.)

Totem of Wrath was totally worth it. Last night I took my boys to Maraudon, without Boom. Just the Shaman... and I TOTALED the place. Even the Princess, who is IMMUNE to Nature Damage. I'll write about that later this week.

I also used the ToW to take the kids to the Temple of Atal'Hakkar. (aka: The Sunken Temple) I tried to complete the level 50 Shaman quest, at level 50, without a tank or healer. I'll tell you about that too, in another post.

WOOT!

Boom

What will the Totem of Wrath do?

2008-01-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

After posting the previous article about the Totem of Wrath, I realized I had done some bad math. But instead of simply changing the math in the post, I figured I could use the opportunity to talk about, and hopefully explain the difference between Melee and Caster damage, crit and hit.

First, lets talk briefly about melee. When you attack something in WoW, the server has to decide the outcome of that attack. Assuming you're attacking from the front, and hitting with a melee weapon, you have 8 possible outcomes:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (only players and pets versus mobs)
Block
Critical
Crushing Blow (only mobs versus players and pets)
ordinary hit

/phew.

Blizzard chose (wisely) to utilize an "Attack Table" to determine what happens when you attack with a melee weapon. This is how it works:

For the sake of keeping it simple, we're only going to talk about Hit, Miss and Crit.

Lets say we have a 5% chance to miss, and a 10% chance to crit. The server will then create an Attack table with every possible outcome on it, then roll a single random number. Whatever that number lands on, is what happens.

Lets illustrate it. Below we have a table of 100 possibilites. 5 Boxes are colored to Miss, 10 boxes for Crit, and the rest to hit.

After the server rolls a random number between 0 and 1, and gets .79, it would be like hitting the #79 box on our chart, and scoring a normal "Hit". The reason this is important to know, is so you understand how +Crit and +Hit items work for Melee players.

If you put on a hat with +1% to Crit, the new crit box REPLACES a HIT box. So the change looks like this:

+1% to Crit
-1% to Hit
+0% to Miss

You're chance to miss stays the same, while your chance to get a normal hit is lowered to match your new chance to get a crit.

However, if you put on a hat with +1% to Hit, the new Hit box REPLACES a MISS box.

+0% to Crit
+1% to Hit
-1% to Miss

Now for the pain-in-the-neck part. Melee and Spells are handled COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

When you cast a spell, there can only be 3 outcomes. Hit, Miss, or Crit. No dodging, perry, crushing, etc. That's not a big deal. The real difference is the Attack Table. There isn't one. (note: After a hit/crit is landed, resist is calculated, which can lower the damage, but that's another conversation.)

Spells are actually handled with TWO rolls. First to see if you hit, then to see if you crit. This sucks. Why? Because my current 6% chance to crit is really only 6% of the times I hit, and I don't hit all the time. So my 6% is really 5.64% when I have a 94% chance to hit.

Now on to the part about my math being wrong in my last post. I want to warn you that this is going to get very nerdy, so if you don't care about numbers, skip the rest of this post, and just know that having 5 Totems of Wrath is worth alot more to me than I thought, as it's value goes up significantly when I'm fighting mobs 3 levels above me, as I am in instances and questing.

When I first posted my numbers, they were based on fighting an equal level opponent. This is what it looked like:

(I'm assuming 100 casts, each doing 100 damage base, while crits do 200 because of talents)

First, my toons with their current 6% crit.

Before against equal mobs
6 (miss) 0
88.36 (hit) 8,836
5.64 (crit) 1,128

Total 9,964

ToW against equal mobs
1 (miss) 0
78.21 (hit) 7,821
20.79 (crit) 4,158

Total 11,979

This equates to a 20.2% increase

You see, I only had a 6% chance to miss in the first place, so adding +15 Hit can't improve things by anymore than 5% due to the cap of 1% chance to miss. You can't do better than that. But when I go up against a mob 3 levels above me, this all changes. Because I start with a 17% chance to miss, so the ToW drops that to 2%!

Before against 3+ mobs
17 (miss) 0
78.02 (hit) 7,800
4.98 (crit) 996

Total 8,796

ToW against 3+ mobs
2 (miss)
77.42 (hit) 7,742
20.58 (crit) 4,116

Total 11,858

A dps increase of 34.8%!!!

Blizzard keeps you in "level" check, by using the hit/miss mechanic. If you try to quest too high, you miss too much to be effective. 5xToW fixes that. There's no reason I can't do level 54 quests right now, and get full quest xp! (sometimes up to 11k xp per turn in) All because of one little talent point. WOOT!

So to sum up, the ToW is a nice stackable totem, and helps alot against equal level mobs, but the further you go up in mob levels, the more return you get.

Boom

To Ding, or Not to Ding

2008-01-12T08:20:00.001-05:00

Alright here's the thing.

My guys are all 49, and about 10 mins from 50. I stopped running quests in Felwood just before I rolled over, and went back to the battlegrounds.

I had another great night of pvp, and decided I liked AB better. I won my first match (WOOT!) then lost the second because I had 4 (FOUR!!) Oooglers following me around on their mounts taking screenshots. It was painful.

But I'm starting to feel like there's not alot more to gain from pvping in the 40s. I got each of my boys their Battle Healer's Cloak from Warsong, and they're about half way to their Insignia of the Horde pvp trinkets. But there's something special dragging me closer to 50. The Totem of Wrath.

The Totem of Wrath:
Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the chance to hit and critically strike with spells by 3% for all party members within 20 yards. Lasts 2 min.

If you're read my Stackable Totems Guide, you already know why this little totem is so desireable. IT STACKS.

That's right... the 3% Crit and 3% Hit is applied to each member of my party, PER ToW I drop. Therefore, when I drop all 5, each Shaman will gain 15% Crit and 15% Hit. Just typing that makes me want to quit my job, get home and level to 50 asap.

Lets talk about just how good that is. First, lets focus on the +Hit. If you take a look at this Spell Hit Chart I grabbed from WoWwiki, you'll notice we have an inherent chance to miss of 4% when fighting either players or mobs our own level.

Seeing as I quest and raid against mobs up to 3 levels above me, my chance to hit them with my spells is dropped to 83%. So by dropping 5 Totems of Wrath, I've instantly moved them to a 98% chance to hit. Bam. That equals DPS kids, pure and simple.

Then there's the crit. My guys are all hovering around 6% chance to crit with "decent" blue gear for their level. The ToW will put them all at 21% instantly. After doing a bunch of really ugly math I'm sure you don't want to see, I came up with these numbers.

The increased hit and crit, will add 21% damage to my group. That's like adding a 6th Shaman. That's nuts. Just from one little talent point. And that's not all.

Each of my Shaman have a Talent called Elemental Focus. The description reads:

After landing a critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature
damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage spells by 40%.

So with crit going from 6% to 21%, I'll have Clearcasting up more often, reducing the cost of my spells. After some more ugly math, I figured out that I'll essentially gain nearly 20% more mana on my Shaman.

So you see why it's so tempting to roll over to 50? 21% damage and 20% mana. I'll be storming Mauradon in no time. Up to this point I haven't been able to get past the first boss without Boom. But this would mean no more PvP for a while. Then again, AV becomes available at 51... oh man I am SO going to level when I get home.

Think I'm making a good choice?

Boom

Struggling to Multibox in Battlegrounds

2008-01-11T12:40:00.001-05:00

A few days ago I told you all about my first real attempt at Battlegrounds since the disaster in the teens. I mentioned that my first WSG was a rousing success, and that I couldn't wait to go back in.

I've since run around 10 more matches... and have yet to win again.

First off, I'm a good player. I don't claim to be the best of anything, but I feel I can safely say "I know what I'm doing". I was a successful FPS (First Person Shooter) player and I held spots on several respected Counter Strike teams. WoW PvP, being significantly easier than FPS, is very within my range of ability, and I truly enjoy it. Multiboxing however, is taking time to learn.

Rarely are you picked out by the entire other team and rushed over an over when you play one toon. Once you're playing 5, you are SO worth it. :)

But there have been other issues. The "oogling effect", where players simply stay mounted and follow you around to take screenshots. It's terrible. Because the rest of the players blame me for them not helping.

Then when one of your toons die, you can sometimes spend alot of time recovering, trying to get your toons back in a group.

I was also victim to the terrible "Fear Bomb". As a multiboxer, FBs are your worst enemy. Demending on which directions your guys run, and how fast, you may never recover. As Shaman, we have two defenses to this.

Always have a Tremor Totem or two on the ground to break fear as soon as it hits.
Use your PvP trinkets.

The PvP trinkets are seriously expensive (2000+ Honor) which is easy to farm at 60, but takes much longer at 48. So my guys don't have the Honor to buy them just yet. The Tremor Totems have GOT to be a hotkey. And for whatever lazy reason, I still haven't set that up. I have them in my Totem dropping macro, but when you see a Priest or Warlock rushing you, you may not have 6 seconds to cycle through all your totems.

So tonight I'll put Tremor Totem on my Nostromo in a slot of it's own... then again, maybe I just need two different Totem macros.. one for Tremor and Grounding Totems (my panic defenses), and one for the rest. That way I can switch up the order as needed, and still only take up two slots... yeah. I dig that. I'll let you know how it goes. (can you tell I type as I think?) :)

Anyways, as I said, I did terrible. I tried to get a group of 5 buddies from my guild to come with me, but there just are not enough players who have lvl 40ish toons sitting around. There's not a whole lot of reason to keep a toon in the 40s.

Dispite the hate tells, I persevered. I kept going back in, and kept modifying my macros. It was tough to keep going, but I wanted to pvp.

Last night I decided to queue up for Arathi Basin, to see if my pvp improvements would show up where they failed me before. I was pleasently surprised. I took some advice I got on the forums over at Dual-Boxing, and I spoke before the match started. Here's what I said:

"Hey all. I'm multiboxing 5 Shaman. I'm new to this, so I may make mistakes, and I apologize ahead of time. Just hollar and tell me where you need me."

I was suddenly surrounded by players, saying "Cool!" "Holy crap check this out!" and even a "Don't worry about it bud, you'll get better. Just keep trying!". I was shocked. With this new team behind me, I set out and had a GREAT match. I was playing significantly better than I did before.

After taking the Mill myself from 4 other toons, they decided to rush my guys. But this time I was ready. I managed totems, I kept Bloodfury and Elemental Mastery up, I targeted the right players, and my boys only died once each the whole match. It was incredible.

I was multibox/pvping. I found my groove and was feeling success. We actually ended up losing the match, but only by... wait for it... ONE TICK. (10 points. 2000/1990) It was a fantastic game and great fun.

I unfortunately had two "Oooglers", which didn't help. So I did alot of traveling to keep up with the Alliance surge. Several of their players were either pissed, or just found it fasinating to attack me. After I'd swoop down and take the Mine from 3 players, they'd come back with 4 or 5, over and over, no matter how many times I'd kill them all. (I had a helper)

They kept trying new strategies, but I'd simply adapt. After they gave up, I ended up traveling around to find the action.

The point of this post is to encourage you. First off, avoid the BGs till the 40s. Second, avoid the BGs unless you have excellent blue gear on all your toons. (carebearing will do this for you.) Last of all, don't let the jerks discourage you, like they did me. Stick with it, and get in as many matches as you can. You'll figure it all out eventually, and when you come out, you'll be shocked by how easy PvE is. :)

Boom

Blizz Cast Episode One Online! (blizzcast)

2008-01-10T16:10:00.001-05:00

The very first episode of "Blizz Cast" (blizzcast), the official Blizzard audio podcast, was released today. It starts with an excellent interview with Samwise Didier, one of my favorite Blizzard artist. He's currently the Art Director and Concept Artist at Blizz. The Transcript includes several examples of his artwork.

After the interview, Drysc (Community Manager for US forums) and Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan (Blizzard Lead Designer) both discuss the next (and assumed final before WotLK) patch, 2.4 featuring the Sunwell Plateau Raid Instance. SP will include a new, top end 25 man raiding instance, as well as a 5 man instance.

Click the image above to listen in, read the transcript or to see some of the new screenshots.

I can quit anytime I want.

2008-01-10T07:48:00.001-05:00

I swear. I can. Look at that pic... what's in the middle of all that WoW crap... that's right... a pic of me and my beautiful girlfriend. HAH! Told you I'm not addicted. Multiboxing is a totally normal addiction...

Boom

Edit: WAIT! Not addiction! I meant to say it's a totally normal addiction. /phew

Ellay Quad Boxes Eye of the Storm

2008-01-09T08:40:00.001-05:00

Ellay, of Dual-Boxing, posted one of his multibox pvp videos. He shows us a complete round in the Eye of the Storm, and it really gives you a good looking into what mass pvp looks like with multiple Elemental Shaman.

Thanks Ellay!

Boom

PeeVeePee

2008-01-09T06:54:00.001-05:00

Well, I hit 48. With all five Shaman. It's time to PvP.

As you may remember, I first attempted to multibox PvP back when the boys were 19. I headed into Warsong Gulch with 4 of my Shaman, lead by my 19 Twink Rogue. It was a disaster. Here's a quick recap why: Twinks.

A Twink is a low level toon that has been maxed out on gear and stats. This is done by strategically dragging him/her through instances, getting them the best gear possible, and then abusing the hell out of the ability to enchant low level items with high level enchants. The end result, super powerful toon for their level.

This effect is magnified the lower you go. So a level 19 twink may actually have nearly triple the health your 19 does, and the melee twinks can likely kill you in 1-2 shots. Melee, is actually where twinking shines at low level. So seeing as my Shaman are casters, I was tossed around WSG like a bunch of beanbags. This twinking effect becomes less of an issue as you go up to higher brackets.

The 40s, I figured, would be a good place to try PvP again. I wanted to wait until everyone was 48, because that's when we get Chain Lightning Rank 2. So here I am. Before I headed into combat, I knew I needed to look at my interface and macros a bit closer. But I didn't. I wanted to PvP, so I queued up.... wonderful.

After 28 minutes of getting my bearings, we won 3-0, and my boys held 5 of the top 7 spots on the killing blows charts. I was freak'n out. This was what I was waiting for. Bliss.

The actual gameplay was rather interesting. When players first saw me, they wouldn't hesitate to attack. I don't think they could tell how many toons were there. But after dying to 5 simultanious Chain Lightnings, they learned their lesson. Most folks simply ran the other way when I came up a ramp. Hilarious.

At one point, I followed a teammate into the Alliance Flag Room. There were 4 guards. I killed them all within a few seconds. I did so by first coming in to "Tier 2", the level between the flag room floor, and the roof, and dragged my guys along the edge of the drop off. This allowed me to target one of the Alliance standing guard, and send 5 Chain Lightnings down into the room, which proceeded to kill the first guy, and seriously mame the two next to him. A few Lightning Bolts later, everyone was dead, and my guys were left untouched. Beautiful.

As I followed the flag carrier outside, he headed towards the Alliance Ramp, and I followed. I noticed that all the guys I had just wiped out were rezing, and two mounted to follow us. I dropped off my own mounts at the top of their ramp, and started dropping totems. I fanned my boys out into formation, and we were quite the sight... if I do say so myself. The two mounted pursuers stopped dead in their tracks... walked backwards for a few steps then turned around and ran. Joy.

Everything just seemed to work out. As with any WSG match, you'll be more effective if you pick your fights, and avoid rushing into a melee fest. So I did. I stayed back, and went in when I knew I could safely unleash some damage. When one of my boys would die, I'd leave them at the GY until I was done with the current fight. Then I'd have the one at the GY mount, then autorun forward. I'd meet them half way, tell them to follow, then head back to the battle a full team again.

My Totems were all wrong. I was still using a group macro which was dropping totems designed for PvE, not PvP. So I decided to setup a new PvP Totem Macro. I started dropping Grounding Totems first, as they wipe out any and all casters by absorbing everything they cast. Then my healing/mana totems, to help sustain me. Then Earthbind, Tremor and Stoneskin totems. And finally some Searing Totems for good measure.

This worked ok, but it became evident that I need quick and easy access to Earthbind for catching those who choose to run away, and Tremor because sometimes you need it to stop those kamikaze Priests who figure they can just aoe fear me to death. So I added these to my Shift-x keys on the Nostromo.

Then I headed into Arathi Basin... it didn't go too well. For three reasons.

1. Killing a Multiboxer is fun.

Why? Because if you're playing against one, you've likely died to him several times already, feel he's cheating, with you were him, and seeing him die just might make you feel better about being you.

The problem is, you need several guys to kill one, and it's hard to organize enough when you're playing with only 9 other pugs. But in AB, you're playing with 14, so it's easier to form a lynch mob and head after the multiboxer.

2. Multiboxers are cool.

This guarantees you have at least 2-3 fans follow you around to watch the magic. Therefore, at any given time, I'm responsible for 8 of 15 players being in the same spot. It's just too hard to hold 3 flags.

3. Rotating Graveyards.

In AB your spawn point is rarely the same, and if a flag is captured while you await resurrection, you may even move to another yet. At one point, I had guys at 3 different GYs, and it took a LONG time to get them all back together again. That means we have 3 players out of 15 that aren't doing anything for the team until I can get to them. It sucks.

So we didn't win, and I decided AB can wait.

I went back into Warsong late that night, fully expecting to rule the roost again... but it didn't turn out so well. But that's another story... stay tuned.

Boom

Patch 2.3.2 Goes Live

2008-01-08T11:31:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, the Public Test Realm was closed. And today, Patch 2.3.2 goes live on US servers!

The only real changes for Shaman are to our elemental shields. Here's how the patch notes look:

Shaman

Lightning Shield mana cost reduced.
Water Shield now restores mana periodically regardless of how many charges remain. Duration increased to 10 minutes.

The Water Shield change is the most significant to us Shammieboxers. But before we get to the changes, lets review it's history.

There are two ranks of Water Shield, one found at level 62, and the second at 69. For the same of comparison, we'll be only discussing the full blown, rank 2 at level 70. (the returned mana would increase with level.)

In the beginning, it was a 10min shield, that held 3 charges. Each time you got hit, you got some mana. Woot. Mind you, at the time it cost mana to cast.

Shortly after that, it was upgraded. You would get nearly 200mana when hit, and it only lasted a minute. If at the end of the minute, you had any charges left, they each paid off at once. (ie if you never got hit, and the shield expired, you'd instantly get 600+ mana.) Bliz looked at what it had done and said, "This is mediocre."

The bonus to mana was a welcomed change, but the need to refresh this shield every 60 seconds was quite frankly, rediculous. So in 2.3.2, we're getting a buff again, and I think they finally got it right.

In the new version, we now get a buff that grants 50mp5 simply by having the shield up. PLUS, we still get 200 mana when we're hit, up to 3 times. PLUS, now the shield lasts 10 mins! So now, it becomes a 10 minute blessing that continues to make it easier for Shaman to maintain mana levels.

The only thing that sucks about all this... my boys are still 14 levels away from it. :)

Boom

Don't worry Princess, I'll kill you!

2008-01-08T06:51:00.001-05:00

Zul'Farrak was fun. It was quick. Some of the lewts was good. But I figured I could do better. So I packed up the boys, and worked our way to Maraudon.

Maraudon was actually the first instance to be added to WoW after release. It came in patch 1.2. (12/18/04... good lord we've been playing this game a long time.) I remember the release. At the time, I was hardly high enough level to go there, but I remember watching some of the hardcore players post the gear they got from it.

Maraudon was a fairly creative design. As you can see in the map, it's broken up into 3 major sections. The Orange Zone, the Purple Zone and Lower Maraudon. Both Orange and Purple are on the same level, each has it's own entrance, and they eventually meet as you head toward the Earth Song Falls. After completing a quest, you can obtain The Scepter of Celebras, which allows you to warp from the entrance, directly to the falls, and essentially start at the half way point.

When I went in, I was still 45, and I took Boom. The mobs were still easily dispatched, and the xp was wonderful. The gear was fantastic, as most of it required level 48, so it was something to look forward to.

I've been trying to loot most mobs, if anything, for DE material and enough cash to train these 4 financial black holes. Ever since I started that, I've found 3... THREE world drop Epics. This blows my mind quite frankly. The first, the Fiery War Axe was actually a great find, and gave me 200g towards the lvl40 mounts. The next two, The Ring of Saviors and the Icemail Jerkin you see here, are worthless. But fun finds none-the-less.

By this point, my boys are actually putting out some real damage. So I found myself contributing to boss fights, and even some mob pulls instead of just watching Boom beat them down. This is turned out to be really fun, and gave me a peek into what's next... instancing with all 5 Shaman.

The bosses all dropped really quick, and I was able to complete three different quests, including Corruption of Earth and Seed, which gave each of my boys their Resurgence Rod. The regen stats are fantastic for PvE and PvP both. That, and they look pimp, which is by far the most important thing.

I found myself actually enjoying the grind through. The bosses are fun, but so are the mobs. I started having some hilarious flash backs to the first time I came in here. I was with a group of low levels (my friends) and one guy who was a high level warrior (think 52ish) who was essentially twinking us through. Anyone else remember the giant slug butt that constantly gave birth to more slugs? :)

We eventually got all the way to the end of the entrance, and were granted audience with the Princess.

About the Princess... um... HOTNESS!

I almost couldn't kill her. My boys found themselves in a trance as they watched this thing of beauty strut her stuff. (Those hips... Those Thighs... They've got me Hypnotized) Despite her obvious beauty, she's actually quite the pain for a normal group at a normal level. She has this ridiculous ground stomp that sends your group bouncing backwards, and if you're not careful, over the falls. But Boom slapped her around pretty soundly, and loot was had by all. (well, it was had by one, but that doesn't sound as cool.)

Maraudon is such a beautiful instance, that it's almost relaxing to run. Everything is bright, pretty and huge in scale. This makes for some plesent grinding. But the XP almost came too fast... Before I knew it, I was 46. That's good right? Well, sure. But that also means all 5 of my Shaman are the same level. I had to face the fact that Boom was going to have to step out. It was time for the Twenty Totems to unite like a green, magical Voltron, and take on the world.

Hey, this means we get to try PvPing again! WOOT!

Boom

Shamans come in last in Arenas

2008-01-07T13:24:00.001-05:00

SK-Gaming.com recently added a "Global Player Ranking" built with data pulled from the Official WoW Armory. They do an excellent job of manipulating the data into some useful info. Something that stood out was the lack of Shaman in the top 100 players group.

3 percent.

I read some more about Shamans in the Arenas, and I'm starting to understand why. First off, these numbers are based on the average Arena Rank of a given player, including their ranks from all three Arena Brackets. (2v2, 3v3 and 5v5)

While just about every top Arena Team in the 5v5 bracket has a Shaman in it, the 3v3s and 2v2s are a different story. Shamans can either head into an Arena ready to heal, or drop crazy burst DPS. Healing isn't normally an option, because the other healing classes simply have more to offer.

That leaves burst DPS. While Shaman can do this well, once again there are much better choices for DPS when you have such a small team as you do in 2v2 and 3v3.

I plan to play in all three brackets when I hit 70. I'll likely follow in Alley's footsteps and take 4 of my boys in at a time, and bring a 5th dedicated healer. But I hope to run 2v2 and 3v3 on my own, and see if I can't make some progress.

I don't intend on even hitting 1800 in the lower brackets, but I plan on having fun. :)

Boom

Ding! (48)

2008-01-07T13:23:00.001-05:00

Why choose to Ding at 48? Well, several things happen at 48. The most notable would be rank 2 of Chain Heal,(actually came at 46) and more importantly, rank 3 of Chain Lightning, both important in PvP.

The next reason... you guessed it, PvP. Ever since I stepped in WSG at 19, only to be cut to tiny shreds, I dreamed of hitting 48 where I figured I'd be able to compete with the twinks. And as you'll see later this week, I do.

Boom

Happy New Year!

2008-01-07T00:54:00.001-05:00

Well, the break is over. Back to work. :)

Ok, this isn't exactly work. But I do have alot of grinding to do. This week we'll be covering a few different things, and along with that, will come a new format for Twenty Totems: The Blog.

Starting this week, I'll have a new post every morning. Instead of trying to fit a post into my normally busy workday, I'll be building a weeks worth every weekend, and post them daily throughout the week. This also means I can give you a sneak-peek each Monday, into what we'll be talking about that week.

Here's what you have to look forward to. We follow Boom deep into Maradon, and fall in love with a Princess... We own WSG, then it owns us... I pause, look around the room and wonder if this hobby is actually an illness... and in our Friday "How to Multibox", we'll be looking into basic Formations.

Woot! Amirite?

So come back every morning for more Shaman/Multiboxing/Egotastic/Spectacular!

5 Shaman, 5 Wolves, Mountacular (that's a word)

2007-12-25T23:31:00.001-05:00

It is a word... Mountacular. It has to be. It's the first thing that came out of my mouth when I saw all five of the Shaman on their wolves. Bam. There it was. And no one in the room complained. Has to be real.

When I got the kids to 40, I realized they were all dirt poor. I haven't been questing, or gathering anything to sell. The money I get from vendoring the many, many, many blue items I get, barely covered the training costs.

So I took a break for two days, and used my limited playing time to run dailies with Boom. I also sold a world drop epic that we found on High Inquisitor Whitemane after one of our 4 billion SM runs. The glorious Fiery War Axe. Gained us a quick 200g, and the dailies did the rest.

The mounts are already proving a time saver in Zul'Farrak. Woot for instances you can mount in!

Boom fortunately had the Mallet of Zul'Farrak, which is used to summon Gahz'rilla. Getting the hammer is a HUGE pain, so it was nice to already have it. This allowed me to quickly finish the quest "Gahz'rilla" so each of my boys is now sporting the Carrot on a Stick... high speed fun! Now to get some glove enchants and spurs...

Multiboxing Zul'Farrak, full of useful win.

2007-12-25T23:05:00.001-05:00

As I explained before, Uldaman was great fun, but way too low on the XP meter. So I called Boom back in, and he took the boys to the great city of the Sand Trolls. Win was all over the place.

Boom is still entirely overpowered in there, and didn't even require healing from the Shaman. So I just had them stay back, and drop 4 simultaneous CLs whenever it seemed cool. (this was rather often as it turns out) The totems didn't hurt either. :)

The XP was fantastic, and remains so at level 42. The best burst comes from the infamous Divino-matic Rod event.

For those not familiar with the nightmare that is the Divino-matic Rod, it's a quest/event that places your party at the top of a pyramid, where you free a band of NPCs from their cages, only to turn around and find a small army of trolls at the bottom of the pyramid. Over time, they all end up rushing up the stairs in your direction.

While this sucks huge in a low level pickup group, a level 70 tank and 4 highly focused Shaman just end up having fun. The XP flows, the Trolls die, fun is had by all.

The rest of the bosses are quite trivial. I have to admit, more than once I made the same mistake here that I originally did in SM, I pulled too many mobs. Once I worked that out, I didn't need to heal, and I kept a good pace.

I figure I'll end up here until the boys hit 46, where they'll finally match the level of my fifth Shaman, Thunduh. Who know what I'll be doing then... maybe quests... >.<

Thrall help me.

$2.50 per day

2007-12-20T12:29:00.002-05:00

I loved the Holidays... in the past. These days they just keep me from multiboxing. I have images of my boys in Zul'Farrak, on their new mounts, and even running around doing some pvp. But I can't find the hour it takes to get them organized and write a worthwhile post. So I haven't.

As it sits today, I haven't had a moment to even log in to see the boys for almost a week. And its killing me. It's not just the holidays, but my job too. We've got something huge brewing, and I'm in charge of it.

So the terrible truth is, I won't be able to log in again until next Wednesday, December 26th. But when I do, I'll be sure to take the time to get caught up here, and continue to bring you guys with me on my trip to 70.

Thanks so much for the emails. I'm not missing, I'm just missing WoW! :)

See you all shortly.

Boom

Into Uldaman

2007-12-11T09:16:00.001-05:00

I got a bit tired of SM... go figure. And now that the boys are getting closer together in level (4x39 and one 46) I decided I wanted to take all 5 into an instance and try to CC mobs. So what better place, then Uldaman.

The great Dwarven city of the Titans, where the very origins of the Dwarves is kept secretly away, under the guard of the mighty Archaedas. This should be fun.

Mind you, with the new patch, the last boss tops out at level 40. So with a level 46 Enhancement Shaman leading 4 39 Elemental Shamans, I was hardly in over my head. (or heads) :)

But the experience was worth the effort. I had a great time!

My first challence was taking down Ironaya, the giant guardian of Uldaman, who's widely known as the "Indiana Jones Boss" due to the clever way you summon her. (no spoilers here! Get in there yourself and see!)

I got my boys setup, and planned to use my 46 as a tank, which worked perfectly. She went down without a problem, and I paused for my first group "kill shot"... but the guys were a bit excited with their first kill, and couldn't stop dancing, and the only shot I got off had Thunduh (their fearless leader) in a less-than-flattering position. >.<

Once we tackled her, I figured the rest of the instance would be cake, and it was... right up until Archaedas himself. Arch (we're on a nickname basis) is a giant stone guardian (like half the other bosses in this instance) who likes to talk alot of talk... but as soon as you start kicking his butt, he chickens out and starts summoning friends... LOTS of them.

My goal was to hammer him as hard as I could, and try to beat out his adds. I setup a separate button just to summon more Stoneclaw Totems, so as the adds came, I could hopefully keep them busy with Totems instead of beating on my casters. As it turned out, this worked great! By the time we dropped him, there were a PILE of mobs on the screen, and no one from my group was in danger of death.

After a more civilized kill shot, I decided to take inventory of the experience. Great fun. Great loot. Great Experience... wait. Never mind. My guys only averaged 6k xp per hour. (yikes) I'm sure I could boost that now that I know what I'm doing. But not by much. At that rate, I'll need 10-12 hours to get another level! Screw that.

So what do I do now? Take Boom with them to Uldaman and speed things up? Is that the right instance... wait a tick. What about Zul'Farrak? Dare I enter the great city of the Sandfury Trolls? At this level? /evilgrin

Stay tuned.

Boom

Ding! (39)

2007-12-10T16:44:00.001-05:00

I can't believe how fast this is going. Thanks to the new XP curve (patch 2.3) and a 70 Warrior, I've pushed the boys to 39. That allowed them to equip all the cool new gear they got from SM. Go ahead... try to tell me they don't look like the coolest thugs you've ever seen. :)

Boom

The Saber Squadron

2007-12-10T16:37:00.001-05:00

My "second main" toon, back in the first year of WoW, was a hunter. I loved Tuc. I love him because I've always loved to play with pets. So you'll understand why I paused to read the entire blog over at The Saber Squadron. This guy is Five Boxing a group of Nelf Hunters!

Throughout his blog he shares his experiences both in multiboxing, and the social issues that pop up for multiboxers. He's leveling his hunters on a PvP server, which I still think is nuts. :)

Anyways, if you like Twenty Totems, I think you'll love his site.

Boom

Into the Monestary

2007-12-10T15:09:00.002-05:00

I decided it was time we headed into Scarlet Monestary. Home of the infamous Scarlet Crusade. (Excellent history by the way. Worth the read.)

I tried to take my boys there at level 20, but didn't have much success with my 70 Warrior. I found myself pulling large groups (Like I have so far in other instances) and being beat into the ground. I got frustrated and left, only to return again now that my kids are 33. I hoped they could keep my warrior healed this time. Turns out, they didn't have to.

The problem before, was that I was simply pulling too many at a time. Instead, I'd pull maybe 6-8, and quickly burn them down. This meant I hardly ever took damage, and never needed to stop. Before I knew it, I was averaging over 30k xp per hour with NO sleep xp! The Dings just kept coming.

Sure, it was a blast tearing into Scarlet Commander Mograine with 4 Chain Lightnings, but it got boring. Very quickly. But thanks to a Tivo full of old Simpsons episodes, the time passed.

When you're in there that long, you end up collecting just about every blue you want. Before I knew it, each of my 4 Shaman had a Triune Amulet, Whitemane's Chapeau, Aegis of the Scarlet Commander, and my personal favorite (though pointless for an Elemental Shammie) Mograine's Might! Arguably one of the best looking 2h Maces in the game! Don't they look pimp on my boys?

And then there were Twenty...

2007-12-10T14:25:00.001-05:00

I finally took the time to finish the Air Totem Quest... why didn't anyone tell me that the devs put as much time into this as they did the "Mount Quests" for Pallies and Warlocks? As in... you talk to an NPC, and you get your totem. lol

Anyways, when I did this, I realized I could finally live up to my name, and drop Twenty Totems at once! Of course, I promptly headed to Thrall's throne room, and entertained him with a bit of theatrics. :)

Ding! (33) and some fun in Orgrimmar

2007-12-06T13:39:00.001-05:00

Hate Mail is something every boxer has to live with. PvP is of course the most obvious source, as no one likes to be killed by another player with NO hope of winning. But we also get /reported all the time, assumed to be gold farmers, assumed to be cheating etc., but it's something you live with.

It's worth it, for those moments when someone says "COOL! How are you doing that?"

Over on my favorite forums, someone recently suggested a solution to some of the bashing we take... show off. He said he found that when he strolled into Org/IF and started to do formations, buffs, etc., that he made a ton of friends. So when folks started bashing him in /general, there were always several folks who would step in to explain what he was doing, and defend him!

I took this to heart last night, while hearthing into Org to get some training. A group of players (all from the same guild) all came running to see what was up. I had just hit 33, so I had equiped my guys in their Robes and sweet shoulder pads from Doan in SM. Wow, what a visual!

I noticed them all staring, and one suddenly said in /say "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

I decided to put on a show... I pulled my guys out of the inn, got into formation, buffed myself with lightning shields, and dropped 15 Totems on the ground (I still have to go get their wind totem. They LOVED it.

Folks from all over Org came running, and it turned into a huge dancefest. Everyone was really nice. Several had questions, which I answered in /say for all to read, and it couldn't of gone any better.

I've used this "PR" tactic with my guild, For Horde. When we were still young, I forced all of our raiders to start each raid in Orgrimmar in a huge circle of 40 mounted players, then yelled out "FOR HORDE! THRALL HAS ASKED US TO TAKE THE MOLTEN CORE FOR THE GLORY OF THE HORDE!" They would all scream back, and we'd head out to our raid. Every time we got a flood of tells asking about our guild, and how they could apply.

This just might work for Twenty Totems. I plan to put on a play each time I head back for training, in hopes of building a healty reputation with my server. (it helps that I'm Boom... Most people know me and my guild, and think highly of us.)

I'll let you know how it goes...

Now to think up some cool macros for these "plays". Maybe a single button script that goes through a funny dialog between the 5!

Boom

Laying Waste...

2007-12-06T13:20:00.001-05:00

I know I started carebearing... then felt I was missing out, so I started questing with all five Shammies, including my 46... but something happend when I got to the Salt Flats. I took 6-8 new quests, and every dang one of them were collection quests. (ok maybe not every one, but close!)

When a quest tells you to collect 10 Boar Bawls, that really means you need to collect 50. And if there were 50 Boars in the same area, and they dropped their Bawls every time, this wouldn't be bad at all... but that's never the case.

Sometimes you're lucky to have 10 mobs to kill, before you have to wait for respawn. And even then, sometimes only 2 of those 10 will drop their Bawls. This makes collection quests an incredible pain for Boxers.

So I decided to log out of my 46, get Boom back (a well geared 70 Fury Warrior) and take my boys (at 28) into Razorfen Downs. The loot was cool (high 30s stuff), the layout was quick and fun, and most importantly, the XP was flowing.

Before I knew it, my boys were 32. CHAIN LIGHTNING TIME!

I read some more about carebearing, and I think I have a good leveling schedule. I'll stay in RFD until 36... then off the the SM till 43... then Zul'Farrak! Soon after that, my 4 lowbies will catch up with my 46 Shaman, and I'll start questing again. (along with some challenging instances)

I'm still really digging this. I was worried I would never make it to 20, and now I'm 32. I'm on my way.

Boom

My First Totem Macro

2007-11-28T15:41:00.001-05:00

Twenty Totems... think of it... in 5 more levels, I'll be able to live up to the name, and drop 20 of the little buggers at a time. Besides the useful game mechanics involved with that many Totems, just think of how pretty it will be! lol

But how do I manage 20 totems at once? In a word, macros. Well, two words.. macros and Keyclone. As I've stated before, Keyclone is so far, my Boxing Killer App. I bought a copy ($10) for each of my 3 machines. This allows me to use my main keyboard, which broadcasts to Keyclone on my 2 other machines, which then broadcasts them to the two instances of WoW running on each.

So each time I hit a button on my keyboard, I can drop a totem on each toon. But I don't have enough buttons to assign one to each type of Totem, nor would I want to have to hunt through that many buttons knowing I have a set of Totems I use 99% of the time. That's where macros come in.

If you don't know how to use macros at all, spend some time here: WoWWiki Macro Guide

Assuming you do, lets talk about /Castsequence. This script allows us to "queue" up several different spells, and execute them in order, one key press at a time. Here's an example:

/castsequence Tremor Totem, Searing Totem, Mana Spring Totem

When you drag this macro to a button, it will first cast a Tremor Totem with the first button press, then Searing with the next, and finally Mana Spring with the last. Hit it again, and it would start all over in the cycle.

Knowing I can drop one Totem of each element on each toon, I can write a custom macro for each Shaman, and end up dropping a wide variety of Totems with one key. For Fire, I might want all Searing, so I add Searing to every toon's macro. But because some Totems don't stack, I might want a variety. Earth as an example. I currently drop one Stoneskin, one Earthbind, one Tremor and two Stoneclaws (for CC). So each toon's macro will have a different Earth Totem in it, but they all drop together.

The other feature of /Castsequence, is the Reset. You have many options to choose from, when it comes to resetting the sequence. The options are:

Number of seconds: literally choose a number of seconds after the first keypress before it resets. This works great for spells with specific cooldowns
Change Target: Reset the sequence each time you change targets
Combat: Reset the sequence each time you leave combat
Shift/alt/ctrl: Reset the sequence each time you press the macro button while holding shift, alt or ctrl.

The cool thing is, you can stack these veriables. Here's what I ended up with:

/castsequence Reset=combat Searing Totem, Healing Stream Totem, Tremor Totem, Grounding Totem

Of course, each toon is slightly different. They all drop the same Fire Totem right now, but they drop different Earth Totems. As I gain more spells, I'll have to constantly re-evaluate. I then place the macro on the same action bar (which is tied to a button on my Nostromo) and it becomes my "PvE Totem Button".

When I get ready to enter combat, I simply hit this button 3 times, and all my totems are down. In case I end up hitting it again during combat, the Reset=combat will always reset the button on each toon as soon as I leave combat. It's pretty sweet.

Let me know if you're using any specific macros for multiboxing!

Boom

Ding! (25)

2007-11-27T14:07:00.001-05:00

We're moving on up! This is starting to feel a bit more Galvanized. (see: HomeStar Runner) My boys hit 25 last night, and are currently sitting just under 26. I stopped power leveling them with Boom, and instead teamed them up with the 5th and last member of the group, my 46 Shaman, Pugh.

Last night I paid the $10 to have Pugh's name changed to Thunduh. So now he's matching his brothers.

I spent some time writing my first totem macros, so I now use one button to drop 15 totems. (3 hits) It took some time to get it just right, but I'm thrilled with the results. I can't wait to get them to 30 where they'll get their Air Totem, and I can finally live up to the name of the guild.... Twenty Totems.

I'll try to post tonight with the details of my first Totem Macro.

Boom

Stackable Totems (A Guide)

2007-11-27T10:42:00.001-05:00

Multiboxing with all Shammies is fun. Period. Why? Because Shammies get so many cool tools and toys, meant to buff a group of other classes. So when you stack those buffs with muiltiple Shaman, it gets really fun. (not to mention cool to see!)

I've been digging for a while to figure out exactly what totems stack, and which don't. I finally found the info I was looking for, where else, but at Dual-Boxing.com.

My favorite Shammieboxer™, (that's right, I coined a phrase!) Ellay, who runs Dual-Boxing.com, clarified most of the Totem details in a post. Here's a visually pleasing summary. (as I know you kids love to be pleased visually.)

Earth Totems

	Earthbind Totem Slows enemies		Does Not Stack
	Stoneskin Totem Reduce melee damage taken		Does Not Stack
	Stoneclaw Totem Taunts mobs		STACKS! Dropping multiples does wonders for CC. After one dies, the next will grab the mob.
	Strength of Earth Totem Increase Strength		Does Not Stack
	Tremor Totem Remove Fear, Charm and Sleep effects		STACKS! Each totem "pings" at a given rate, so when you stagger your drops, you end up with more coverage.
	Earth Elemental Totem Summon Tank-like Earth Elemental		STACKS! Not really a "stack", but 5 x Tanking Elemental = AwesomeSauce™

Fire Totems

	Searing Totem Shoots fireballs at enemies		STACKS! They each do their own damage, so they stack just fine!
	Fire Nova Totem Single AoE explosion after a few seconds		STACKS! Same as Searing above
	Magma Totem AoE / DoT		STACKS! Same as Searing and Nova. Dropped close together, and you have some very decent AoE!
	Frost Resistance Totem + Frost Resist		Does Not Stack
	Flametongue Totem Enchant weapons with +melee (fire) damage		Does Not Stack
	Totem of Wrath +3% to Spell Crit and Hit		STACKS! 5 totems = +15% crit AND +15% to hit. So just about no need to spend any item points on +spell hit gear.
	Fire Elemental Totem Summon DPS Elemental Pet		STACKS! Not really a "Stack", but 5 x DPS Elemental pets. WOOT!

Water Totems

	Healing Stream Totem HoT to party		STACKS! Drop 5 of these and you just about don't need to heal your group.
	Mana Spring Totem MoT to party		Does Not Stack
	Poison Cleansing Totem Remove 1 poison every 5 seconds		STACKS! Can "stack" if you stagger your drops.
	Disease Cleansing Totem Remove 1 disease every 5 seconds		STACKS! Same as Poison
	Mana Tide Totem + 6% of total mana every 4 seconds for 12 seconds		STACKS!
	Fire Resistance Totem +Fire Resist		Does Not Stack

Air Totems

	Grace of Air Totem +Agility to party		Does Not Stack
	Windfury Totem Enchant Weapon to recieve chance of extra hits		Does Not Stack
	Grounding Totem Immune to next spell cast on player		STACKS! This is incredibly powerful vs. caster opponents
	Windwall Totem Reduce Ranged Damage taken		Does Not Stack
	Sentry Totem Security camera you can place anywhere and view through		Utility totem. You can place them at different positions to watch over a flag in pvp.
	Nature Resistance Totem +Nature Resist		Does Not Stack
	Tranquil Air Totem Reduce threat by 20%		Does Not Stack
	Wrath of Air Totem +101 to Healing and Spell Damage		Does Not Stack

Ding! (20)

2007-11-18T15:04:00.001-05:00

The boys just wanted to show off the new guild tabard, and of course, celebrate hitting 20!

Twenty Totems meets Thrall

2007-11-18T14:48:00.002-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I do love to Role-play. I enjoy setting a story behind the characters I play, and the Twenty Totems would be no different. I just finished reading Rise of the Horde, by Christie Golden. And excellent story about the downfall of the Orcs, as told by a "present day" Thrall. It's entertaining, and inspiring.

The book does an excellent job of conveying Thrall's regret for the choices his people made, even before he was born. It also shows the true "spirit" behind both Shamanism, and the terrible Warlocks they became. These days, Warlocks are kept around out of nessesity, while Thrall's true wish would be that every Orc would seek the ways of the Shaman. So there's my story.

The Twenty Totems are an elite group of young Shaman, who were trained in the Shamanistic Arts by Thrall himself. They were put together, and charged by Thrall to be an inspiration to the Orc race. A group the Orcish children could aspire to be. Heros.

In the tradition of Orcish Brotherhood, Thrall didn't want any member of Twenty Totems to stand out, so he gave them new names, all very similar. (heh)

Anyways, tonight I finally created their guild, (Twenty Totems of course), and celebrated by taking a moment to meet Thrall. It was good fun, and I drew a small crowd in the process.

Another player had just turned in the Outland quest that causes Thrall to animate, walking down from his thrown and kneeling. I used the opportunity to get this excellent screenshot of Thrall Kneeling before the Twenty Totems. We kneeled back of course. :)

We then followed Thrall up to his throne to recieve our orders, then headed out to spread the Shamanistic Arts.

It feels official now that we're wearing our guild tag. So far this multiboxing thing has been incredibly fun. I just can't wait to get them to 45, where they'll join the 5th Shaman, and we'll finally be a pvp team.

FOR HORDE!

Boom

Never Five-Box PvP in the Teens... Ever.

2007-11-18T14:11:00.001-05:00

I read in the forums over at dual-boxing, that multibox pvp'ing in the Teens was "tough". They were setting me up for a terrible joke.

I took the 4 kids into WSG last night, lead by Popular, my 19 Rogue. While setting up my buttons, several players found me on the side of building, and started asking questions. Eventually they asked to bring their 19s in with us, and I gladly agreed. They knew I was only going in to try things out.

As everyone who has ever pvp'd in their teens know, the teens are an anomoly in this game. You see, due to enchanting, it's possible to improve your health and DPS by over double what's expected at that level. And it's done every day specifically for PvP. It's called Twinking. You spend an enormous amount of gold to improve your low level toon. The results? One shot pvp. Good fun, but I'm not about to twink out 5 toons.

What does this mean? Well, imagine at 70, heading into a WSG with Tier 4 gear. Then finding everyone on the opposite team has Tier 9. Imagine opponents with TWICE your health, and weapons that can one shot you. Not fun.

So it was as I entered WSG. These days, every Battle Group has a large Twinking community, so the majority of the Alliance Team was twinked. Even when I did get a Quad-Lightening Bolt off, it would maybe take off 20-30% of their health. And by the time I finished channeling a second one, three of my guys were dead.

So after one terrible WSG, I thanked my new friends, and headed back to the grind.

Boom

Ding! (16)

2007-11-16T13:30:00.002-05:00

I finally found some time to pop on and run a few instances with the boys. Now that Patch 2.3 has been released, there are all kinds of new goodies to go hunting for while we grind.

My first clues to the new found fun, were the green quality robes my boys were wearing from RFC, Robe of Evocation . Before the patch, they were green, and had +3 Stamina, + 4 Intelligence. Seeing as there is very little in the way of "leather" spell items, cloth will have to do for now.

When I logged on this time, the robes were now Blue quality, and were upgraded to +4 Stamina, +5 Intelligence, and +5 Spell Critical Strike Rating ! WOOT! Just what I need for pvp. Only 3 of my boys had the robe, so I made a couple more runs through till I got a fourth. Everyone was happy after that. So I decided to move on.

On to Shadowfang Keep

My boys followed Boom to their first Zepplin ride, and we headed to Shadowfang Keep. Once again, the loot has seen a serious upgrade. Every boss drops a blue. I even happend across a Rare Spawn (Deathsworn Captain) who dropped Boom a very rare sword for his collection! (Haunting Blade)

I made three complete runs, and I'm going to continue them until each of my boys ends up with a Robes of Arugal, Belt of Arugal, Feline Mantle and a Commander's Crest.

Then it's on to Deadmines.

There is one other item I'd like to get around this level, but it's only found in the Stockades, (Kam's Walking Stick) which as most of you know, is located in the middle of Stormwind. Last I checked Folks in Stormwind don't take kindly to folks like us Hordies. Wondering if it will be worth dragging 4 sub level 20s through Stormwind. That can't be fun.

Boom

Missing out.

2007-11-12T08:24:00.001-05:00

Well, it was a great weekend. I had a great series of birthday celebrations, spent time on a trip with the GF, and landed Guitar Hero 3. (I therefore, Rock.)

I managed to sneak in an hour here, and an hour there with the Twenty Totems. As planned, I pushed them to level 8 on their own (gaining them access to Rage Fire Chasm) then promptly retired Thunduh, who I made on my "main" account. I replaced him with Boom, my level 70 warrior, and headed in to RFC to start the Carebear process. It worked exactly as advertised.

I would drag the 4 orcs behind Boom, while I decimated everything in sight. The XP was simply rediculous. A full run through the place took me around 15min, and would give them each over half a level. Before I knew it, they were all level 12. I ran them to a trainer just to grab Ancestral Spirit, which allows me to revive anyone I might lose when Boom missess a mob.

When I got there, I was a bit taken back by the sight of a full box of abilities available to my Shammies. I didn't even think about that fact that I had skipped training since level 6, in the name of power leveling. I suddenly had a pile of abilities, and I wasn't even going to set them up. I don't use them. My Shaman simply follow a meat cutter through a cave.

This got me thinking. Am I missing out on an important part of the 5 boxing experience? Should I be struggling to get through RFC with only my 5 Shaman, and slowly learning how to do it? How to use their spells?

My plan still, is to Carebear these 4 up to the 40s, where they will eventually join Pugh, my 46 Shaman Orc. Pugh will be renamed to join the group, and from then on out, I'll be running with 5 equal leveled toons. I just guess that once I get them there, I'll have to spend alot of time learning all the abilities they get from level 6-46.

So what about pvping in the teens? Twenties, etc?

Well, if I continue this course, and skip these brackets all together, I've decided I'll make a set of 5 mages, and level them the old fashion way (if multiboxing is old fashion) and pvp with them in the teens. But my main goal remains, to play in the Arenas with my 5 Shaman. So I'll gladly take any route that will get me there quicker.

Boom

The First Few Mods

2007-11-09T08:12:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned before, my schedule is going to keep me from making any real progress with the TTs until Sunday, so I won't have much to report on. However, I figure I'll use this down time to discuss some other useful information for aspiring Boxers.

Basic Mods

Multiboxing creates many unique problems. As thanks to a matured community, there are plenty of options available for overcoming these problems. You just have to decide what works best for you, and your application.

I've found some incredibly useful WoW Mods, that are making these first few steps much easier. Here they are:

1. Bartender 3

Now I use this mod even on my main. It's a brilliant Bar mod that removes the standard WoW interface, and instead gives you access to all 12 action bars, allowing you to arrange, scale and place them wherever you want. Being a Nostromo user, this allows me to lay my buttons out on screen, in the same layout as my Nostromo (4 across, 3 down, 12 buttons).

For Multiboxing, this allows me to scale the buttons up to a huge size on my Alts, so I can easily see and use them on my Maximizer squished screens.

2. Improved Camera 2

Managing multiple toons in follow mode, is alot easier when you're camera is zoomed out. This beautiful mod allows you to extend your "max camera angle" out twice as far, so you can see your surroundings, and your team.

3. Twoboxtoolkit

Here's the first mod specifically for Multiboxing. This is an Ace Mod, so you'll need Ace to go with it. Ace is an excellent development platform for Mod Makers, so there are an excellent number of mods that take advantage of it. Grab it.

Features

Messages relay: Able to relay messages the Bot gets in Whisper,Party,Guild,Raid and transfer them to your main via whisper.
Follow: The bot will follow you upon using the /followme emote on him.
Sticky Follow: Follow will be automatically resumed when the fight is over.
Follow warning: The bot will warn you if he stops following.
Pass Loot : The bot will auto pass on loot random window.
Buff Warning: The bot will warn you when he loses a buff. (Durration for a buff to be warn can be set in options).
Low Life Warning: The Bot will warn you when it health goes under a pre defined %.
Low mana warning: The bot will warn you when it mana goes under a pre defined %.
Mini map icon: With Options UI.
Fubar compatible.
Relay to channel : You can have the bot relay vis whispers or a defined channel

When you have 5 Shammies, and you're all pretty much named the same, any of them could get the hate tells and the "Woah!" whispers. So instead of watching all 5 screens, you can have your Alts forward any and all whispers to you. This is incredibly useful.

And then there's the /followme and Sticky Follow features. It's nice to spread your toons out before you attack your mob, but then you have to remember to ask your toons to follow you again, as moving breaks follow. With Sticky Follow, as soon as your toons drop combat, they follow you again. Very cool.

3. Automation

I'm still working with this mod, to figure out exactly what it can do for me, here's a list of what I'm using it for:

Automatically accept group invites
Automatically accept rez

There are a pile of other mods I'm looking to add when I have time to play again. Froolo's Autoaccept quest options appears to wipe out alot of my questing issues. I'm forced to right click on all NPCs with each toon in order to initiate conversation. This mod would automatically accept any new quests, and turn in any completed quests as long as I don't have to choose a reward. That would rock.

I'm learning really quickly that running around in a 5 man group doesn't dish out too much xp (I can't start the instance grind till level 8) but running level 11 quests when your group is only 7, wow... the quest turn in gives you almost half a level! I'm wondering if this will be true in the 40s.

Have a great weekend all.

Boom

DING! (2)

2007-11-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

And so it begins...

2007-11-08T08:22:00.001-05:00

I arrived home to find my Amazon box unmolested by my two faithful readers. (thanks for not stealing it off my porch. lol) Rushed inside, and dove right into my Gruul raid. It went quick, and I couldn't be happier. I just wanted to bring my team of Orcs to life!

Here they are. The Twenty Totems.

Holy cow was it fun. It took a while to get buttons setup, and I haven't developed any macros yet, besides the standard /assist and /quest stuff. I use mods designed for multiboxing that assign a "leader" to the group, so when the leader says /followme everyone with the mod follows.

I ran around doing the starting area quests, and of course got several players who didn't want to say anything, but just followed me around for a while.

I finally stopped at midnight (I have to leave for work at 6:45am every morning) and parked the team in the nearest in to start building up sleep. :) As much as it kills me, I won't be able to play with them for a few days. My birthday is tomorrow, so there's a family party, then my girlfriend is taking me away for two days. (She won't tell me where we're going just yet.) So I won't be able to really sit down with the Orcs until Sunday. /ugh

But the point is, I've done it. I took the leap. I have five WoW accounts of my own, an excellent setup, a great community of Boxers to guide me, and a ton of fun ahead.

For Horde!

Boom

UPS: DELIVERED

2007-11-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

It's true. The boxes are sitting on my porch. Don't any of you dare run over and take them. They're mine! I can't wait to get home. :)

Boom

The future of TwentyTotems.com

2007-11-07T10:13:00.001-05:00

Besides an aspiring five-boxer, I'm also a graphic designer and webdeveloper. I threw together this blog when I first decided I would try Boxing, and now that I'm established, I decided to take a harder look at my blog, and where I want it to go.

I started by designing a proper logo for the group:

I'm currently working on a new theme for my blog that will match this new look, along with a eePanels skin for WoW, so I can sport my new logo and custom interface in my multibox movies.

The totem you see in the logo is a Totem of Wrath. At the suggestion of a buddy, I'm going to also design 3 friends for him (water air and earth) and use them throughout my interface for the site.

Let me know what you think! (I'm talking to Jon, because he's the only one reading this.) :)

Boom

Today is the day!

2007-11-07T08:33:00.001-05:00

It's true gang... UPS has sent their fastest truck (seen below) to deliver my last three copies of WoW. Of course I won't be home to pick them up, so I'm hoping they slow down long enough to hide them on my porch.

You can track my package here! (no jokes Jon) It's fun to play along!

So tonight, after my Gruul's raid, I plan to get my new Orcs setup, and try to push to level 10! It all depends on how much time I have. I can finally stop playing at 4am. I was doing that so I could "borrow" three accounts for setup and testing.

I also plan to tell my guild what I'm up to, and link them to this blog finally. I haven't till now, because I know it will cause alot of hype, and I didn't want to do that until I was SURE I was going to five-box.

HURRY UP UPS!

- Boom

The Equipment (Being a cheap boxer)

2007-11-07T07:57:00.001-05:00

I'm not the cheapest guy around. I have nice toys, and I'm not afraid to spend money on quality stuff... but for some reason, I'm doing everything I can to spend as little as possible on this project. Why? Well, dispite the fact that most folks around here spend 7-12 bucks on lunch, when they hear I have 5 WoW accounts, they freak out. I freak a bit too.

$75 a month isn't much of an entertainment budget. (Let's not talk about how much my girlfriend costs.) :) So I don't know what the big deal is, yet, I can't help but shudder whenever someone says "Uh dude, that means you pay $75 a month for WoW." Then again, I also pay almost $20 a month for my guild website! /bah. Lets get on with it.

In an attempt to spend as little as possible, I've been experimenting with running 5 WoW's on 3 machines. As I mentioned before, I'm using Maximizer to "squish" the games vertically. Here it is at work on my setup:

This has worked fantastic. I have a beautiful 24" widscreen for may main toon, and the two 17s are just fine for when I need to mouse over and right click to loot quest items. (we'll talk about "gathering" quests while multiboxing, later. ugh.)

The two "sub" computers have AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processors, and one machine has 1gig of ram, while the other has 2gig. This was working fine, but the machine with 1gig was alot chunkier than the one with 2gig. (which was relatively smooth with all graphic options turned down)

But then I took my "Test Taurens" into Orgrimmar. Yikes. The lag on the 1gig machine was so bad, I would lose /follow, and had to go back and get a toon multiple times. That's bad. I can't have that. So after doing some research, I found out that RAM is by far the biggest player when running multiple instances of WoW on a machine.

So I'm going to push them both to 2gig, and when I'm ready to pvp, i'll push them both to 3.

I use a logitech G15 keyboard for my macro/broadcasting. See the 18 customizable buttons to the left of the main keys? They can all be assigned to a button on one of my 12 bars, and with two shifts, I actually have quick access to 54 extra buttons. To the left of the keyboard, you'll see my N52 Nostromo gaming pad. That's where my left hand sits while gaming.

The other two keyboards are there for when I screw up Synergy, and have to reset everything. Once I have more confidence, I'll move those to the floor.

Why I'm going with Orcs

2007-11-05T11:50:00.002-05:00

Well, I've decided my team of five Shammies will be Orcs. And there are three reasons...

1. Blood Fury

This Racial ability is considered by most players to be an additional "Trinket". Why? Because there are a series of trinkets in WoW that essentially do the same thing. When you use them, you get a DPS buff that lasts 10-20secs, and then the trinket is on "cooldown" for 2-3mins before you can use it again.

In the past Blood Fury would only give you a Melee damage buff for 15 seconds, AND a 50% Healing DEBUFF for 25 seconds. In 25 seconds, I can loose a toon in PvP without good healing, so that would of been bad. Let alone the fact the DPS buff only effected Melee, which is something you just won't be doing with Elemental Shammies.

But Blood Fury has changed. It now offers +Spell Damage in addition to it's Melee buff, (282ish at level 70) and the debuff only lasts as long as the buff does now. (15 secs) This makes Blood Fury much more valuable to me as a PvP Elemental Shammie.

2. Carebearing
There is an excellent thread over at dual-boxing.com about Carebearing, which is the act of powerleveling lower level toons with a single level 70. (AKA Twinking) Folks have successfully used a single level 70 to power level 4 low level alts at a time. Their numbers are staggering. Enough so, that I'm considering it.

The problem then becomes my accounts. If I'm using a level 70 on my main account, that means I can never twink the shammie on that account. So I could powerlevel 4 toons, but the 5th would be left behind.

This process only really works up to level 45ish. I just so happen to have a level 47 Orc Shammie named Pugh. I've always wanted to get back to him, and this seemed like the perfect excuse. So I'll make 4 new shammies on my new accounts, use my 7o warrior to twink them up to the 40s, then drop Pugh in (with a paid name change) to start pushing them as a group to 70.

3. RP
Yes, I'm a role-player. I don't do it often, but I find I enjoy the game way more when I have a story behind my character. My 5 shammies are going to be an elite group formed by Thrall, quested with the goal of spreading Shamanism throughout the Horde. Can you tell I just finished reading "Rise of the Horde"? :)

I'll be talking about my equipment setup in my next post.

Till then... FOR HORDE!

Boom

Preparing to Box

2007-11-05T11:25:00.001-05:00

I love multi boxing. I've finally got all three machines running, and got to level 5 test shammies up to lvl8. There are few things in WoW as satisfying as 1 shotting (with 5 earthshocks mind you) mobs while you are questing. It really is quite fun, and I see myself enjoying this for some time to come.

As previously mentioned, I have two WoW accounts already, and I'm borrowing 3 others while I tried it out. I didn't want to drop the cash on 3 more boxes until I got 5 toons running at once, and decided if it was worth it... ITS WORTH IT. :) at least so far it is.

I have 3 more accounts in the mail, and should arrive by the end of the week. And I just received 4 90-day account cards from a buddy for my birthday, as a way to help me get started in five boxing. I can't wait to get those last 3 accounts and get my team going!

Until they arrive, I still have plenty to do out of game. Five boxing is actually two hobbies in one. First, the obvious, is playing WoW a new and interesting way. The second, is the semantics involved in multi boxing. The hardware, the software, the macros, the timing... it's a game within the game.

I'm currently using an "original" G15 Logitech gaming keyboard. I have 18 macro keys to the left of the board, and three shifts, bringing them to a total of 54 customizable keys. So while I wait for my boxes to arrive, I'll be working on a long term strategy for assigning those keys, and writing my macros based on my recent in game experience.

I also have to decide on my race. I thought I had it figured out, but something else has come up... I'll talk about that next time.

Boom

Taurens Vs. Orcs Vs. Trolls

2007-11-01T16:06:00.001-04:00

Well, I got Maximizer working last night, and it's fantastic. I'll go over my equipment spec in another entry, for now, I have a pressing issue I need help with.

I need to choose the race of my team.

If you're first thought is Draenei, I will kindly ask you to leave. Alliance are evil. They are a blight upon our imaginary world and must be wiped out... that leaves the Glorious Horde.

Because I'm going to run all Shammies, my choice is limited to the Taurens, Orcs and Trolls. Here's a quick rundown of their racial benefits:

War Stomp (lots of potential)
Activate to stun opponents - Stuns up to 5 enemies within the area for 2 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.

Endurance (lots of potential)
Max Health increased by 5%.

Cultivation (n/a)
15 point skill bonus to Herbalism

Nature Resistance (n/a)
Increase Nature Resistance by 10.

Blood Fury (wow... this would rock)
Activate to increase attack power and spell damage/healing by an amount based on level/class for 15 seconds, and decreases healing done to the user by 50% for 25 seconds. The cooldown is 2 minutes.

Hardiness (great for pvp)
Increase resistance to stun effects by 15%.

Command (n/a)
Pet melee damage increased by 5%.

Axe Specialization (n/a)
Increase Axe skill by 5.

Berserking (not bad at all.)
Activate to increase attack and casting speed for 10 seconds. Speed is raised by 10% at full health, increasing as health is lost to a maximum bonus of 30%. 3 minute cooldown.Costs 10 Energy, 5 Rage, or 7% of base mana.

Regeneration (wow, not bad either. Depends on regen gear)
Increase health regeneration bonus by 10%. Also allows 10% of normal health regen during combat.

Beast Slaying (n/a)
5% damage bonus to Beasts.

Throwing Weapon Specialization (lol)
Increase Throwing Weapon skill by 5.

Bow Specialization (more lol)
Increase Bow skill by 5.

Now, I thought about making a mixed team... but I can't do that if I plan to compete in Arenas. Part of the benefit of running a team of all shammies, is that when your opponets sees you, they yell "get the shammie!". Then when they realize you're all shammies, they say "Get Thundah!". That's why I named my shammies:

Thundah
Thunduh
Thundoh
Thundeh
Thnudeh

At first glance, not only do they look the same, but they all seemed to be pronounced the same. This confusion makes it very difficult for your opponent to focus fire, which is critical for success.

Back on topic, this means I need to choose one race and stick with it. I'm leaning towards the Taurens, purely for the +health and 5xWarstomp. With the right macro, I can keep a peskey rogue busy for quite a while.

But the DPS buff from both the Orc's Bloodfury and the Troll's Berzerking is tempting too. A Shammie PvP team is all about burst damage.

Last thing to consider, is pure entertainment. There's nothing cooler than seeing a group ride into town, dismounting, then splitting into formation. This would look incredibly cool with 5 humungous Taurens, with huge shoulder gear and weapons due to scaling.

I'm using Taurens right now on my test setup. I'm still borrowing accounts for now, but I have my last three copies of WoW purchased, and on their way. (ordered online in order to use a gift card) When they get here, I'll be ready to start with a clean slate, and need to have my racial choice ready.

Hardware or Software

2007-10-31T09:19:00.001-04:00

There are two ways to multibox. You can either run multiple instances of WoW on a single machine, or run a single copy on multiple machines. (or a crazy combination of both) While the obvious advantage to software is the cost, (1 machine cheaper than 5 machines) the disadvantage is in performance. Unless you have a screaming quadcore beast (which I don't) then running multiple instances can slow you down. And any slow down is bad when trying to manage multiple toons.

I originally ran three instances on my main machine, and was disappointed in how difficult it was to manage toons by tabbing through instances. (macros can't make your toon loot, you have to right click) So I decided to try hardware.

I have a stellar game machine, and two decent workstations I bought for my old company, which isn't using them anymore. That gives me three great machines for WoW. I setup the three boxes and used a modified version of Synergy to broadcast my keystrokes. It worked GREAT. Using Synergy meant I could simply slide my mouse to the screen of another toon, click to loot and slide back.

Feeling so good about hardware multiboxing, I started digging around for a few more machines. I found two more that used to be gaming machines (about 4 years ago) that had thier video cards removed. So I called a buddy with more pc parts than God, and he hooked me up with some ram, a couple powersupplies and two AGP video cards that would get the job done.

Last night I took apart the first box, got it all put back together, only to discover it has a fresh install of Windows Server 2003. Ugh. I forgot at one point this machine was going to be a "development" server. I don't know anything about managing WS03, so I coudln't get it to see the other machines (which I need for broadcasting). And of course my MS Action Pack was at work, so I couldn't put XP on there anyways, so I let it sit another night.

Today, while trolling my favorite multibox forums (Dual-Boxing.com) I learned some more about a great little program that would allow me to launch multiple instances of WoW, in custom resolutions called Maximizer. Better yet, I found Keyclone, which not only includes Maximizer, but also will allow me to broadcast keystrokes from one machine to multiple instances on another machine.

Maximizer at work

So here's the new plan. Tonight I'm going to install Keyclone on my three best machines. On pc2 and pc3 I'm going to run two instances of WoW each, in 1280x512 resolution. (a horizontal screen split) If this works, it will mean I can run 5 accounts on 3 machines, and 3 monitors, and easily be able to slide my mouse to any screen for looting.... sounds too good to be true. :)

We'll see.

Boom

One man... Five boxes... What now?

2007-10-30T13:13:00.001-04:00

Ok I'm going to get this out of the way first. Who am I, what exactly am I doing, and of course... why? First, the who. My name is Boom. For the last several years I've enjoyed playing a few MMOs, most recently, World of Warcraft. I play a Tauren Warrior named Boom, and run a guild full of amazing people, called For Horde.

I've played just about every class to at least 40, and have spent alot of time learning the ins and outs of both PvE and PvP. But recently I've been looking for something more. And I think I found it, in Multiboxing. Multiboxing is the act of playing multiple charaters at one time, either using software or hardware duplication. How did I stumble on to this? Well, it happend VERY fast.

I was playing another round of Arathi Basin (a WoW Battleground) and ended up alone at a flag, when I was jumped by 3 Alliance jerks. (they're all jerks) This normally spells instant and complete doom, and this time seemed to be no different than any other.

But just as the group of aggressors were about to finish me off, a priest came riding up on a wolf, followed by what looked like a crowd of players running in unison. The priest dismounted, and the group behind him promptly followed. Then the most amazing thing happended. The group came to a stop, split up into a diamond formation, then all proceeded to cast a Pyroblast at the same time.

In a matter of seconds, this perfectly syncronized group wiped out every Alliance player, and I was at full health. That's when I noticed the names. It was the Zins. I had read about them... or should I say, Him. These five toons were all controlled by one guy, using five computers, five accounts, and one brilliant mind. I was hooked. I had to try this.

So here I am.

Searching for information on Zin lead me to a wonderful website called Dual Boxing. There is a wonderful group of multiboxers sharing ideas, solutions, stories and more, all in the name of furthering this "Hobby". If you're interested in Multiboxing, I highly recommend you start there.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be posting images, movies and documenting my adventure in multiboxing. I hope you come back and follow along.

Am I nuts, lonely, living in my parents basement, girlfriendless, ugly etc? These are all things Multiboxers are assumed to be by those who can't afford to share our hobby. For now, I can claim none of these names, and I hope I stay that way. (don't think my GF is too fond of my 5 gaming machines keeping my attention, but we'll work it out.) :)

See you on Argent Dawn.

Boom