this is a work-in-progress guide from a loooooong time ago that was intended for general consumption but was never finished i found it on my old hard drive while looking for the XP mechanics guide that I posted the other day it might be a fun read for others, who knows! so i'll throw it on here for now does it belong in general discussion or flames? not sure LOL at this preface what a nerd this guy is that's it! i guess the biggest thing that is missing is a section on ergonomic keyboard hotkey mapping to achieve optimal APM from a boxing perspective - this is a topic that no-one ever explained to me and i had to figure out for myself via games like starcraft 2 - tldr since any hotkey can be arbitrary defined, cut out (nearly) all mouse usage, minimize all hand movement - tldr biggest example is don't be a sheep and use (the osx spaces default) of ctrl+1 to ctrl+0 for absolute character switching since the physical disparity between 1 and 0 is huge additionally, while glancing through this i see that some of the info isn't correct anymore, notably: - layonhands told me he was able to successfully page on Windows (what a badass), although he never explained exactly how - totalspaces is nearly as fast as VD now due to a performance upgrade in 2013, which changes what the optimal OSX version would be (maybe)
To be honest that is a lot of work, I just have my screens laid out like I do in WoW as a 4x4 where I can freely click the window I need to use and it switches for me via that mouse click.
I prefer to have a second monitor I am not really 'using' for web-surfing etc. Outside of that, as many toons on one PC, full screen w/ absolute switch = win. Example of 6 wizards, make hotkeys so they cast 5 times for each keypress, profit. Oh, 4x4 sounds terrible. Unless you're on like a 48" monitor their screens are too small
It works, but, like Zamiel says in his guide you lose a lot of efficiency switching between keyboards and mouses.
During combat you don't really need the mouse. And consider I can cover 2 keyboards with 2 hands - I can take 2 actions simultaneously, something someone alt tabbing can't achieve without keybroadcasting.
Yes, two physical boxes with dual mice/keyboards/monitors is a large advantage. Try doing this with just one box:
good post is this guy Bazula? lol Hi Torven! I've seen the few videos that you did on EQMac. They are pretty cool, especially considering mostly no-one on Al'Kabor made any videos whatsoever. As for your quote, (nerd mode engage) it seems pretty hollow, as the only supporting evidence you present is essentially, "It is easier to maintain an active kite with two keyboards." However, this is a fair argument, so we can deconstruct it briefly. First off, the Tactics pit specifically is a pretty bad example for this scenario. I know you haven't played on the server for all that long, but as Layonhands mentioned, since the pit is so large, the skill required to keep a kite going is relatively low; I've been able to do it easily with one keyboard ever since I started practicing boxing in 2010 (as have a handful of others). A better example to illustrate this point would be a scenario in which the kiting confines are a lot smaller than the pit. However, I can't really think of a practical example. The only thing that comes to mind is kiting the 3 bees in the BoT earth tower while the boss is killed elsewhere (a strategy that Fanglore and I came up with, as I recall =p). But that strategy was largely obsoleted once it was found that the boss itself is single pullable. So, in the practical sense, there are very little (or none?) situations that require one character to maintain a kite in a enclosed area. But the idea has merit, so we can examine it in a theoretical sense. In the scenario where the boxer has two keyboards and one character is required to be constantly (or frequently) turning, it would seem the proper choice for the first hand to be on the arrow keys of one keyboard and the second hand on the other keyboard. If the scenario requires the character to perform approximately one turn per second, this method essentially saves two context switches every second over a single keyboard setup, which would be roughly 120 APM. Of course, a problem arises when we consider how to best play the characters assigned to the second hand. In any normal setup, character hotkeys and context-switch hotkeys will be ergonomically implemented to fully utilize both hands. This is intuitive, since it is much faster to type with two hands instead of one. This means that now we know have a choice: 1) Play the characters assigned to our second hand inoptimally, since we will have to use one hand to play in a setup specifically designed for 2 hands. 2) We can permanently play with a hybrid hotkey setup that is a decent for two hands but also decent for one hand. 3) We can permanently play with a setup that is specifically engineered to play optimally with 1 hand. 4) Assuming our context-switching program has this functionality, we can toggle all of our context-switching and EQ hotkeys to a 1-hand mode for the duration of the kite. The problem with #3 is that, in a completely general context, I would argue that the APM of 2 hands boxing 4 characters is higher than than the APM of 1 hand boxing 2 characters multiplied by 2. This is because of the exponential increase in hotkey complexity that two hands allows for - you can be much more specific with any arbitrary action. Subsequently, if we cannot perform #4 above, then this means that now we incur an APM penalty for all situations that don't specifically require one character to be constantly turning. In order to make a value calculation, we need to ask the question: what is the percentage of the total time playing on Al'Kabor that I will be in a situation that requires one character to be constantly turning? The answer to this question is probably somewhere in the region of 1% or lower. This means that a gain in functionality 1% of the time is not worth a penalty for the other 99% percent.
Amount of toons one PC can easily handle > switching to 2 PC's. With a powerful mac and good set up(total spaces?) with G15 set to each character for specific switches, i.e. G1 was my cleric, G2 my bard, etc. I could switch to that character and make a key press and switch back to the other character just as fast as I could switch my hand to another keyboard. When I was boxing that many characters I don't think I ever looked at any one screen for more than 5 seconds unless I was pulling. I'm pretty sure the only way to switch between characters on PC was alt + tab, and that was buggy in that sometimes you had to do it twice(?). In that case yes, two keyboards and two mice would probably outweigh that alt tab silliness. Macs were by far the best way to box on mac. The PC client was utter shit when it came to boxing, and a mac simply handled the game 'better'. On AK I had 8 on my cleric mac, then I had my main mac which ran 9 iirc. Plus then I ran my rangers on PC's for autofire. So total, during raids, I was usually running 4 computers.
Accusations and rebuttals You missed one key activity in the video: I was also spamming my invis to animals item while I was kiting. I would agree that anything more than two boxes is not desirable for most cases simply because if you need to make snap decisions in a crisis, you need to be able to not think about which keyboard mouse and monitor to jump to. But from my boxing experience, two physical machines is highly desirable. If you have a freakin' 4k monitor and you can have multiple windows on the same screen at once then sure, it's not going to help you nearly as much, but having two windows on the world to view combat from two vantage points alone is a significant advantage. If you don't set up software so that you can bring up a certain character on a keypress then you're really going to have problems alt-tabbing and finding the characters you want, and in that case multiple machines is vastly superior. Even if you are some superhuman multiboxer and can pull off anything you need using one machine, you will increase the likelihood of error. In the tactics pit for example, if you mistimed your context switching even for a few seconds, you could die. If you merely got too close to Glykus you could get snared and die. If you trained Glykus over your enchanter/druid/mage because you turned too early and got them snared they could die. If charm breaks and you need to kite on your enchanter to recharm it (keeping in mind the pet will basically one shot you because it's hasted and quadding) it's going to make it harder to switch window focus and turn at precisely the right time because you're kiting two characters at once. It's simply much easier with two boxes. If you claim you can do that for an hour on one machine without dying I'd probably call you a liar.
1) Yeah I missed the spamming invis to animals - I used other means of snap aggro for my kites - I never lost aggro either. I guess you can say there is more optimal ways to solo the pit boars. 2) It's been done. When you spend so much time in PoTactics, you get used to the space you work with, so mistiming a turn or getting too close to Glykus is highly unlikely. Dealing with charm breaks is super easy with all the kite space in PoTactics. With a cleric on standby to instantly stun on charm break reduces the enchanter wiping. The enchanter shouldn't be getting one rounded either with runes and buffs. Zamiel is right when he says you get a significant difference in Action per minute with a solo box. I cannot see how 2 separate computers can compare.
The other time yo uare leaving out when it is of great use to have 2 physical monitors are fights that blind. Being able to manuever a blinded tank from the vantage point of a support toon is another advantage. Of course I never found APM to be much use in a game where you can achieve nearly the highest dps using a well timed "drinking bird". Of more relevance (to me) is boxing however you are comfortable - which will probably lead to fewer mistakes in the long run and allow one to enjoy him/herself to the greatest degree.
Two+ separate computers is sweet when you only have to look at one, the other(s) being muscle memory for spell casting. Tank on the main box with cleric/nukes/other crap on the other PC is relaxing. I look like a TNG officer fingering multiple LCARS consoles. Doing a bunch of shat without having to switch around. Additionally:
What the heck? I never knew Kurtis got his Plane of Fire flag. I must have really stopped paying attention to my accounts there near the end.
I've been boxing for literally tens of days on this server, so I know what I'm talking about. I swap to my Mage and press 4 (pet attack) once the monk pulls. I press 2 on my Monk sometimes to kick. Also sometimes I switch to the Shaman and heal or have him sit because I forgot to sit him. Kind of a big deal.
Lol sounds like a general boxer! I've been boxing since forever! Like a year after I started playing. I did at one point try the 2 monitor thing with windows split, but I couldn't deal with it. It felt to weird! I have never tried the whole 2 machine thing and although I can see the benefits (especially with like the invis animal spamming) I just feel I can do the same time time it takes me to shuffle hands as I can alt+tab do it. I used to box between 4 and 6 on Combine. I was once boxing in Griegs end; A ranger in group - Chain pulling and snare agro kiting (baring in mind that means perma spamming Flame lick while back peddling like a boss pinging them shots) A Cleric out of group, healing as people took damage A shaman In group Doting and patching 2 mages out of group for l33t dps (nukes included) A Enchanter in group with a charm pet (granted under snare is easier to manage but with the rest of the situation, still a factor) No purely, If I had a tank in that group, my life would have been made a lot easier. However, I found I was only able to do all of that through practice and mnemonic retention (I don't play the piano either). But comfortable key binds to switch windows and remembering which windows were for which binds. Also dependant on the class combo, it could be easier or harder. Could I have made my life easier with 2 mice and 2 keyboards? I genuinely don't know. But I don't think I could have? As noted above. Kind of a big deal
