Posts filed under 'Melee Team'
After playing my horde paladin (65 currently) I’ve been forced to reconsider my decision to have my druid tank for my team.
I chose the bear tank, primarily because trying to DPS as a feral cat seemed to require watching too much at the same time. This meant I would have to spec my pally as retribution.
One i decided the paladin would make the better tank it was now a case of figuring out a way to get decent feral cat dps whilst multiboxing.
1. The problem.
Feral cat dps relies on a priority of abilties. Add combo point watching to that and it would take much needed concentration from my situational awareness.
2. The solution.
I found out about an addon called Mik’s combat scrolling text. I can modify certain of the triggers in this add on to watch for ability procs on members of my party, not just my main character. So with this in mind I’ve decided on the following.
i) Set up a trigger in MSBT that lets me know when the cat has 5 combo points. I will have one macro that will trigger either ferocious bite, or rip based on which key modifier is pressed.
2. I will set up a trigger for Berserking and the tiger’s fury ability coming off of cooldown. Depending on how much time remains in the fight i can decide if i want to trigger these abilities or not.
3. Set up a trigger for Savage roar dropping off. Savage roar is a huge dps increase, so it’s vital to keep this up at all times. Normally a 2 combo point savage roar will outlast trash mobs, but on a boss fight will need refreshing.
4. I’ll get the mangle glyph for my cat. Solo play I might want to be behind the target but with the positional problems of multiboxing I’ll have a dps macro consisting of mangle, with the odd rake put in there to keep bleed effects going.
I think the pally is easier to play as a tank than the druid (certainly whilst multiboxing) and this will free up quite a chunk of concentration to watch for MSBT proc reports.
I’ll probably turn of 90% of the notifications from MSBT so that I only get druid procs, and the shamans 5 stack of maelstrom weapon.
I think this should result in acceptable dps levels on the cat without compromising the team.
I’ve heard of other addons (such as parrot) that may allow you to assign audible cues as well. I’ll try with MSBT for now though.
April 27th, 2009
Finally, my poor little priest has hit 70, and I instantly respecced him to Holy so that my melee team has a dedicated healer.
So my team is now ready to set foot in Northrend instances, and the process of learning how to get them working together as one big unit will begin.
Will having 3 80’s in the group make it easy mode, or will my poor little priest be swamped trying to keep the tanks 30-35k health topped up. I don’t know but i’m looking forward to trying it out.
I’m just not sure when I’m going to get a chance to try it out though. My guild’s heroic and Naxx runs mean I have very little time to actually multibox now (and I wouldn’t have it anyother way).
April 14th, 2009
So, my first melee team isn’t quite ready yet and here I am talking about creating a second melee team. (and after I said I wasn’t going to change my mind again).
In all honesty, I haven’t really changed my mind (really, truly, cross my heart hope to die), at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
So how did this second team come to be? I was thinking about my first melee team, it came about by reviewing what characters I had and goes against common advice - it’s a mixed class team and all melee dps. Most of the characters are of high level and I will be starting them in Northrend instances. In the back of my mind I don’t feel like a proper boxer, because this team wouldn’t be doing instances at the right level (till much much later). Would this make it easy mode, would I not have earned my boxing stripes? At the end of the day I’m the only one judging myself and it sort of felt like a cop out.
I could have resurrected my dormant horde 1 pally / 4 Shammy team but I am now as diehard an alliance player as I used to be horde.
So I sat there figuring that there wasn’t much I could do.
Then it occurred to me - Death Knights are the answer. I’ll have to create them on a different server but I’ll have an outlands viable team the second they are out of the starting area.
If i transfer a level 60 druid across and respec to Resto I’ve got a viable healer.
At the same time I’ve got a hankering to try this all on a PVP server. I’ve tended to stick to carebear servers, but as this is a secondary team I’m thinking I’ll try my hand on a PVP or RP-PVP server.
I’ll be a free honour kill x 5 for a while, but look out when I get my abilities together.
April 3rd, 2009
You’ll be glad to hear I’ve not decided to change my final team composition yet again.
I thought I would just post a quick update to how things are progressing.
I’m taking a rather odd route building this team. Rather than working them up through the levels together I’ve been soloing. This isn’t due to some master plan - although I was tempted to suggest that I was soloing each of the members of the team to get a better idea of what their core abilities are making it easier to gel them all together at the end.
The simple truth is, that I’m enjoying soloing at the moment. I’m very active in the guild i’m in and my guildies are altaholics too so we tend to swap 80’s in and out depending on who we want to gear up.
Anyway down to the progress report.
I swapped my elemental shaman to enhancement at 76. After an initial period where I really wasn’t liking it (his dps dropped to about 700-800 dps soloing) I figured out how to play him (okay I just went to elitistjerks and read up on playing as enhancement). I can honestly say that I now love being an enhancement shaman.
A few days ago the shammy hit 80 and I decided to at least try a bit of melee multiboxing with my druid.
This was make or break time. If i couldn’t cope meleeing with 2 there is no way I could handle 4 melee and a healer.
A couple of quick macros later (namely a follow macro) and a dps macro I started out trying some icecrown dailies with the two of them.
Initially there were some positional issues. The druid fairie firing to pull tended to work well, the shaman was generally in range for melee.
It was more when I was running in on a mob. The shaman would get in to range start attacking and melee would break follow. The mob would move a little and the shaman was no longer in range for melee - so all he was doing was earthshocking.
The solution wasn’t too difficult. Just wait a little bit for the druid to swipe a couple of times and the mobs stopped moving and then tap follow to bring the shaman in to range, then start dpsing again.
This will be exactly what I’ll be doing in instances. I need to wait for the druid to gain initial aggro anyway, so this will work out perfectly.
I need to work on handling certain procs on my slaves. e.g I need a way for 5 charges of maelstrom weapon on the shaman to be reported to the druid so that I can throw an instant lightning bolt (or chain lighting). I tried an addon called tell me when, but couldn’t even get it to tell the shaman that maelstrom was up.
I have heard that Mik’s combat text may do this, but haven’t looked into this as yet.
Now there’s a few things i love about enhancement - Feral Spirits. That is just insane. Summon two wolves that come and do some rather nice damage - but also heal you loads too. Shamanistic rage to gain mana back when meleeing and my drinking times remain quite low. Being in close on melee means that I tend to use the aoe of Magma totem more. I’m really looking forward to when the team is fully formed. Magma totem, death and decay and consecration all doing lovely damage while we work on taking the current mob down.
My deathknight is now 74. My retribution paladin is now a 77, so will be the next to join the team.
Unfortunately I’ve had no time to level my 64 priest so that will hold the team back for a while - but I suppose I could always try getting a guildie to heal for a few runs.
All in all this taster of melee multiboxing hasn’t put me off at all, quite the contrary.
March 19th, 2009