Question - 12-18 Boxing raiding tips...noobie discussion

[an_image]

Howdy All. So i finally took the plunge and started 12-18 boxing some minor raid content and the 19th anniversary mission. It was a ton of fun, but I still felt a little clunky and slowly improved as I moved through it. Here's what I decided to do.

1. Set up two or three teams, each with a tank, healer, crowd controls and their respective caster/zerker dps.
2. Set-up the main tank, main assist for each team.
3. Found a place that seemed wide enough and issued come to me command on group 1 (PC 1) and used COTH on group two and three (PC2-PC1) to rally everyone quickly.
4. I then started using my strongest tank as puller to bring massive trains to my kill box...and the second/third team's tank and his respective crew would engage to assist off main tank puller.
   1. After a little while i realized I could use the bard on the first team to pull to both so I parked the tanks on tank mode then the swarms got chunkier and more controlled and things moved faster.

For context I'm using: CWTN Plugins for Cleric, Enchanter, and Berzerker. For Tanks and everyone else I'm using customized INI's based on the templates from the resources tab.

Overall great experience but would still love any tips of coaching on how the pro's do it. My main pain point was tabbing between my main rig (3 screens) and the laptop...that felt a little forced and hectic. I'd like to improve my flow and load all 12-18 on the main right and do it all on one PC. My main concern is using EBCS commands that would broadcast the wrong thing to all.

Cool observations:

• It was always a toss up DPS wise between the mages, rangers, and berzerkers depending on cooldowns. It definetely pays to have at least two of each in the raid.
• When the ranger's displiclines (Trueshot thingy) were up they would own all for a long while...which was not what i expected.
• The advantage of the zerkers class was less downtime (not dependent on mana) as the mages/rangers over time would get tapped out.
• During pet swarm (specially when abilities/clikies: Amulet of the Mariner, Vicious Rabbit, Cloth Cap, Rune of Tallon from POW on all chars) it was no contest the mages destroyed the zerker and rangers dps...so every 10 mins or so it was massive lag pet fest. Note: If you have not yet gotten all of these clickies on all your boxes and you play mages definetely make it a priority.

Thanks to the community for all your help getting me to this point, most fun I've had on EQ for a while.

 

[Szazor]

I am boxing 54..but im not sure i would class myself as a pro.

I use eqbcs2 (Seems to be less lag)

One of the biggest issues with boxing a raid force is moving everyone about.
I use 3 rogues to SOS to a raid npc, drop a campfire then Campfire an entire fellowship in, then drop a guild banner and Banner the rest of the raid force in.

I use IsBoxer to do my screen layouts, and set them up strategically so I can switch to Any character, or type of character easily.
here is an example of an isboxer screen layout (Only boxing 24 on this layout)

At first glance it looks like its all over the shop, but Each "Area" has a specific class.

I am driving from Screen 1, but a single click will swap to any toon i want. Since there are 24 - its easy to remember a toon by location.
I can easily switch to any tank, or any Healer with a single click.

I have recently moved from one pc to 3 different pc's.
I have my Tanks and clerics on one rig.
I have my Rogue and caster dps on another, and i have bards and zerkers on another.
Roughly 18, 18, 18 on each pc.

 

[an_image]

Makes a ton of sense, i was alt-tabbing a lot which creates strain on my already carpal tunneled crappy wrists. I love the layout, i was stacking/minimizing screens on top of each other to maximize performance the box got really hot a couple of times.

I know...mq2wire or whatever it's on my to get list...lol

 

[Free_Sid]

This is amazing...i am nowhere near this level but hope to be one day...still using 1 group.

 

[Sic]

This is amazing...i am nowhere near this level but hope to be one day...still using 1 group.

nothing wrong with 1 groupin!

 

[hellfyre]

My advice is to create channels in eqbc so you can separate your commands to not necessarily affect all your toons at once.

I currently raid up to 15 toons but I have other toons loaded at the same time on the same pc so I just have all my raiding toons join the raid channel I created in eqbcs so those commands only affect them and not the rest.

 

[dman2509]

Wow, that's a ton of boxes. I just started 6 boxing, up from 3 boxing. I've had some crashes when I try to run more than 6. Maybe it's because I don't turn down all my graphics. I notice when I bring up the map and all the npc's running around, EQ will actually stop displaying texts for things like armor and spells, but when I turn off the npc's names on the map, it will show descriptions again.

 

[Many_Whelps]

I notice when I bring up the map and all the npc's running around, EQ will actually stop displaying texts for things like armor and spells, but when I turn off the npc's names on the map, it will show descriptions again.

that's a limitation of the EQ client in that it can only display a maximum number of "things" on the screen at once. While MQ users notice it most often with the map, you don't even need MQ to overrun the max if you open up enough stuff.