2-box botting on WoW

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Having noticed not caring about the WoW in regular game style one bit, I decided to try botting. My second WoW CD key hasn't arrived yet, but I've planned to play 2 characters, at least one of them being a bot.

So far I have been successful in setting up a hunter bot; it acts very naturally and efficiently. My paladin has moved in a bit robotic way, tho I'm hoping to fix it.

A bot can be set to solo mode, or in leader/member mode. I'm experienting with different setups, tho not having 2 accounts yet is a bit restricting.

I think I'll enjoy this new aspect of the game, if it allows me to develop while not spending inordinate amounts of time on it.

If I decide to play one of the characters manually (i.e. without a bot), there's the option of quad-boxing that character, i.e. using 1 keyboard manually and having the keypresses repeated on 3 other characters. That way, one person can control 4 players. (the 5th being a bot).

I guess it would allow much more variety in character classes than what you would have from 5-boxing and manually controlling them all. Not all classes are easily controlled by keyboard only.

So, what would be your favorite class combination for 2 bots?
I think fighter+some healer, or paladin+some dps/boost type. Perhaps both survivable. Paladin + shaman?

1 bot and 1 person?
I think I would control the leading person, and have a healer or dps to back me up. Perhaps control a warrior and have a druid back me up?

2 persons with a dual box setup?
Having to control 2 persons manually, both should be easy enough to control. Perhaps I would like the second player to be a straightforward, easy dps class, like a hunter. Autoshot ftw! First class would be someone I would really like to level, like a priest, paladin or warrior. If I would use a priest+hunter setup, I would order the pet to attack first of course.

1 bot and 1 person controlling 4 group members manually?
Perhaps a healer bot, I would control a main tank (paladin) and 3 dps class, like mage?

 

[SolitaryPenguin]

Most of the times when I have seen bots, they will not perform nearly competently enough to keep you healed, and they pretty much stink as DPS. Most of the farming bots I have run into across Outland so far have been running in a triangle pattern, auto attacking every mob they run into, and sometimes barely surviving it.

Unless they have much more advanced bots than I have seen, I wouldn't count on them much more than just being able to farm for you.

As far as multi-boxing goes, I have always found that with dual boxing (I play mine and my son's account most of the time) I have a lot better time when I use two of the same class. Once you start mapping keys on one keyboard that you want to control both characters, it gets difficult if their skillsets are entirely different.

When I play with my son's account, I run with two elemental shaman. The quick burst damage makes short work of pretty much anything, and it cuts my farming time in half. I haven't tried it in PvP, but I have run into a few dual and triple boxed elemental shaman on my rogue in Battlegrounds, and I usually run away, quickly.

Oh, and if it is Glider that you got involved with, I would suggest testing it out and getting a feel fro it's real capabilities and limitations before you commit to it. I wasn't impressed the one time I used it.

 

[Orangey]

So, what would be your favorite class combination for 2 bots?
I think fighter+some healer, or paladin+some dps/boost type. Perhaps both survivable. Paladin + shaman?

Paladin + Druid (Resto)

 

[Didums]

Bots are easiest to use when they are Warlocks or Hunters.

 

[absoluteuncertainty]

A more involving thing to do than botting would be straight up dual boxing. Dual-boxing.com has a lot of great information regarding this . Dual boxing is better than botting for a few reasons:

1) It's 100% legit, will never get you banned
2) You're in control!
3) It's VERY involving and fun!!

I've dual boxed war/paladin and mage/lock, and it's a very fun way to relearn the game. You start thinking of different ways to approach problems. Dual boxing also makes leveling a LOT more fun!!

Hit me a private message if you want more information

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I've only got 1 bot now, so I've played one manually / having one to follow up. Too bad the chars don't get appropriate skills until lvl 10-20, so I've had kind of a torso bot then.

Anyways, controlling pala and having shammy bot worked great. The heal is so-so, I can't figure out why it battle heals so randomly. It shocks nonstop as ordered, follows well, fights well. I'm very happy. It's almost better than a real player.

2 Huntards didn't work well. Of course I start without a pet .. but the other hunter followed badly, didn't find fights, targetted wrong monsters and tried melee instead of shooting. I'll get them to pet level so I can see if they need a pet to work properly. (Edit: used my different hunter. It worked from awesome to bad. When I got the hunter to use pet properly.. and shoot well, it worked great. Really awesome performance. But somehow it doesn't always walk into the correct distance, and there are many variables to take care of. Probably I won't make a hunter bot. I have no use for a hunter player anyway, except to lvl up others. Why not level up something I care about? )

Next I'm trying 2 mage. First, I finish this test with a higher level ranger I have. (edit: test done, see above).
Ok, party follower mode makes the mage to wait until the leader has blasted a target. This will make the leader and the follower blast out of sync, with the leader often consuming a lot more mana. Other than that, it worked in an awesome way. The kills were blazingly fast. The mage drank all the time, too. I still like it better this way.

Ok, I should combine mage with a melee character. The first mage suffers too much casting time loss upon being attacked.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Duh, I should decide between two things. Do I want to have a dual character combo that's real good grouping with 2 and leveling, or do I want something that's most useful after they've been leveled up?

On the servers I've been to, healers and tanks have been most sought after members for PvE.

Often someone in the group complains loudly if the tank isn't of warrior class. This may jeopardize the whole party.

Likewise - although less so - they complain if the healer isn't of priest class. Druid, pala, shaman are quite good in their opinion. varying how experienced the players in the group really are.

I like shaman for the extreme amount of melee dps it can do when well geared. It would be an awesome dps class to lvl up with, despite other opinions. I don't think people have usually used their melee shamans to their full extent. When I want to party with it, I respec it to healer, no prob. I wanna try shaman for arena pvp as well. So yeah, I'm gonna roll another shaman after the one lvl 70 I sold

For the tank player, I guess I should choose a warrior tank. I'll make it dps orientated while leveling.

I guess there will be great synergy from having 2 very survivable classes, both of which can run almost endlessly. Other will throw the occasional heal. Both can benefit from same kinds of totems.

A paladin would benefit the shaman in a different way than a warrior. Guess I'll have to test both combos, war-sha and pal-sha

From botting perspective, melee shocker shaman was almost similar to a backup-mage. Neither have to be set up in a particular position and they can follow near. Both engage the main target without trouble, and don't tend to attract any unwanted addons.

.. and I'm on my way to new WoW addiction

Edit: I've not tested warlock, but I guess it would suffer from same kind of pet issues than hunter+something. Rogue? I don't want to have one. Druid? I suspect trouble with the various forms when botting. Priest? Hm, somehow I don't like the idea.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

A more involving thing to do than botting would be straight up dual boxing. Dual-boxing.com has a lot of great information regarding this . Dual boxing is better than botting for a few reasons:

1) It's 100% legit, will never get you banned
2) You're in control!
3) It's VERY involving and fun!!

I've dual boxed war/paladin and mage/lock, and it's a very fun way to relearn the game. You start thinking of different ways to approach problems. Dual boxing also makes leveling a LOT more fun!!

Hit me a private message if you want more information

Thanks for the advice. I dropped botting soon after, and went for 5-box.

But then, I noticed how nice it was to make the leader of the group a bot