MiRai wrote:The devs themselves multibox
LOL ?
Anyway, nevermind, I'll take it like a man and restart. I still have all the gear from one of my accounts, since they can't count from 1 to 6... I'm not sure how they locked all the account at once, surely it's not a difficult thing for a programmer (well they missed one). Anyway I wasn't hiding, my characters were named amenaxar_one, amenaxar_two, amenaxar_three, amenaxar_four, amenaxar_five and amenaxar_six, so that shouldn't have been too hard.
The good point is, I was about to buy some stuff via microtransactions (premium tabs), now obviously I won't.
This is the exact post that I made in their forums. Since it's a long post, I did in in OpenOffice first, that's why I still have it. This is what you get when you spend time to do some long text in english (which is not my native language BTW). Good reading LOL. And tell me if I said something against their ToS
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Yes, i'm multiboxing, and...
I know there are some threads about multiboxing in the forum, but, as far as I know, none of them have been written by real multiboxers. Instead, some people are asking for explainations, and others just declare that they hate multiboxers.
So, let me write a few lines so that I'll explain how it works, since I'm multiboxing... I mean multiboxing REALLY (not just farming some act 1 boss). However, I'm not some farming guy with a website selling orbs for dollars or such thing, I'm only multiboxing because I find this challenging. I'm not even trading in-game what I loot, at least for now (maybe I will later).
First of all, PoE is not « multiboxing friendly ». It's not only about technical problems, it's about the game mechanics. At this point, I'd like to point out that PoE is a free game, and it's working incredibly well for a free game ! Of course there can be a bug here and there, but GGG is very reactive, generally does what has to be done, and with small delays. A thing to remember... Before whining in the general chat or forums, like some people using « s » words about PoE just because they goof.
So, the main problem about game mechanics is that characters don't stack out of towns. When you try to move them all at once, they just bump in each other and finally they can split pretty fast. This is not done to annoy people, it's just one of the key features of a game : can you go through people and monsters ? Or can they block you, bar doors, etc. GGG made the second choice.
But there are also positive points in multiboxing PoE (compared to other games), like no monster can fear, so you can't have your team completely scattered during a fight. I hope I'm not giving some ideas to GGG in the process
Let's talk about team and strategy. I'm running 4 templars, not sure I'll pick this if I have to do it again, but let's see how I got there... First of all, I wasn't in Closed Beta, so I'm relatively new to this game, and did a lot of stupid things while experiencing characters and templates. I won't detail here since I don't want to embarass myself
My first crew consisted in one witch, two rangers and a one templar. This was a complete failure, first because characters weren't moving at the same speed, and also because I frequently got stuck in corners by my own arrows. I mean, when you shoot arrows at monsters, a lot of them end on a wall somewhere, and when the team goes close to that wall full of arrows (for regrouping purposes), with characters pushing each other, you finally get one of them stuck in the wall and you have to log it off.
Then, I started another team with Templars. I wanted to go for a Freezing Pulse team, because with LMP you can hit things widely and it matters less if the team is not closely packed, and there's the freezing part which makes fights more forgiving. This worked averagely well in the beginning, but with the game getting harder in Cruel mode, I couldn't kill things fast enough before one character eventually got engaged by monsters, and die. Also, some monsters combinations were really hard to handle, like archers in act 2 with their explosive arrows or poison arrows.
So I evolved to not only casting Freezing Pulse, but also summoning skeletons and using Ice Spear spell totems, with one of my characters casting decoy totem. Eventually it made me aware of the great potential in using totems.
Then I moved to the dual-totem thing, and my team now (which is in the 76-77 level range as I'm writing this) consists in :
3 Dual-Totem Templars with 5L : Spark / Spell Totem / GMP / Faster Casting / Item Quantity.
1 Dual-Totem Templar with 5L : Ice Spear / Spell Totem / LMP / Blind / Elemental Proliferation.
And yes, I already found 3 GMPs (I need one more). And no, I haven't got or manufactured any 6-Links yet, but the 6th link will be Item Rarity for the 3 main dps dudes, and probably Knockback for the Elemental Proliferation guy. Also I tried Freezing Pulse totems instead of Ice Spear for that 4th guy, and it seems to be less effective.
I have all 7 auras. I'm not using Eldritch Battery as most solo character do. It's ok with 2 auras per character (only 1 for the Clarity supporting dude) with Reduced Mana.
I'm using Elemental Weakness of course, and I might test double debuff one day with that nice unique ring that I found, but with a non-negligeable quantity of monsters being immune to curses in maps, I'm not sure it's worth it... We'll see.
My overall DPS is pretty low, mainly due to my template, and to the fact that I chose to use Item Rarity gems in place of some damage-adding ones. However, I'm not in a hurry when doing maps, actually my only concern is casting totems faster than monsters can destroy them. Most of the time, I can cast my 8 totems, debuff, and then start looting during the fight, so I gain time here... Well, I also died some times in the process, like when I haven't noticed that all my totems were gone, and monsters are eating my team
But, most of the time, with monsters being incapacitated by freezing and blind, they just can't kill my totems. Sometimes I can eventually loose some energy shield, this is when I know that I have to fall back and recast my totems.
Also I formerly had one guy casting Decoy Totems. It's just a waste of dps, since the monsters are attacking the dps totems anyway.
I completed all the acts, the most difficult was Merciless Vaal, with countless deaths, plus I crashed at 10% Vaal's life and had to do it all over again. I was worried about Merciless Oak, but he got humiliated in seconds. Merciless Piety wasn't as difficult as I thought, but it's probably because I had more training at this time, plus I waited until the team was like level 70 or so.
I'm doing maps now, and with time and experience I figured out which maps are easy, and what to avoid (those skeletons immune to curses and resisting lightning are just boring). Also, about map drops, I don't think that multiboxing helps. I believe that there is a given probability that a map will drop and it's not modified by the number of people in the team, so solo or a team of 6 seems to be the same. However, the difficulty of the map seems to be important, like when you are doing a map with « 85% more items » on it, you get a lot more maps from it. I read this somewhere on the forums, and this is how it seems to work, at least from what I experienced.
So, no, multiboxing is not way to drop maps like it's raining. Maps are rare... Actually I already dropped more unique items than maps LOL. It's not a joke. I really did (at least for now). Most of uniques are useless junk tho, and no, I haven't dropped any Kaom's as of yet. However I already got 2 of those nice wands made for spell-casters using electricity. Cool.
With multiboxing I obviously drop a lot more rare items, and whatever orbs and « brown-named-stuff ». I get tons of Chromatic Orbs, mostly by selling 3-links multicolor stuff. I get more Alchemys and Chaos than I need. Also, I sell the 60+ useless rares to vendors for Chaos, so I can use them on maps. However GCPs are still very, very rare, even with re-selling to vendors the « superior » gems that I find. I only got one Exalted ever, and very few Blessed and Divine. I can find a decent amount of Fusings, I made 5-links chests for my characters out of them. But I have yet to achieve a 6-link, and I already used A LOT of Fusings (like everybody else, obviously).
I run a team of 4, I could run a team of 6 but I don't for several reasons. First of all, maneuverability. With a team of 4 I still can outmaneuver monsters. Here I need to point out that it takes some skill to do it. If you decide to multibox PoE just for a try you'll probably end punching your keyboard or screen. But still, with a team of 4, using corners or borders, you can do it. With a team of 5 or 6, the character collision thing really gets worse, and I just spend too much time repacking my team... and when it gets tough I can have one (or more) character dying before I figure out which window I had to interact with.
Also with a team of 4, using Item Rarity gear and gems, and with map difficulty multiplier, I already get my screen covered with loot when I kill a map boss, or a pack of « blue » monsters. With a team of 6 I just don't want to read everything.
Then, there is also a limitation to what you computer can do. When I cast my totems it only takes seconds before my screen is entirely covered with Sparks, and with 6 dudes doing this, one of my windows will obviously crash (if not all of them). And it gets more and more ressources consuming with your team progressing in the game, with the use of GMPs instead of LMPs, Faster Casting, etc.
My computer can handle 4 high-end dudes without too much problems. I have SSDs and 24G RAM. I could use a newer video card (I'm running an ATI Radeon HD 5800), but well, I'd rather have 2-3 going out to the restaurant with my girlfriend for the same amount of money
To finish with reasons of a team of 4 rather than 6, let's consider that if I crash a character doing maps in a team of 4, I still have 2 portals left to come back (game mechanics), but if I crash one window in a team of 6, I 'm done. And if I crash the « Clarity dude » in a map that already has 50% slower mana regeneration, then I'm really done.
Obviously there are some advantages to multiboxing, such as using more stash tabs, and GGG seems to be ok with that (and with the whole multiboxing thing by the way). Also, everybody knows that you have to check vendors for stuff whenever you gain a level, so with x characters, I have x times more opportunities for good stuff. Of course, this is time-consuming, but well, I'm not the always-in-a-hurry kind of guy
Also, you can have some gems easily, let's say LMP for example. Use one high-level character, 5 mules, and with some portals, teleports, and easy boss kills you get can get 5 LMP gems from the act 2 early quest...
One main drawback of multiboxing is that you have to downgrade graphics to something really ugly. I run all 4 windows displayed on my main screen with low resolution, graphics and effects... it's also possible to run the game in high resolution but with windows on top of each other, but I don't find it very convenient. Some people do, however.
I'm playing on Softcore. I gave a few tries to HC with a team of 2 only (Marauders with rain of Arrows), and gave up (for now) in Cruel Ledge when one of the characters died in some lag. Maybe I'll try to do it again when I have better knowledge of the game, and figured out what team can really prevail there. Even so, I'll probably have to do Merciless Vaal with one character at a time, giving Fusings to some level 90 dude so he can kill Vaal for me...
As a conclusion, I stated that if I had to do it again I wouldn't pick the same team. Well, it depends actually. I'd maybe go for a team of 4 witches with Dual Totems and Chaos Inoculation. However, I haven't played this, so it seems fine, but has probably some flaws. Obviously the dps would be higher, but still, as I mentionned before, I'm not in a hurry. I can see on twitch TV some people destroying everything in no time, I'm not like this. I'm much slower... But... Not 4 times slower:)
I'm rather happy with my 4 Templars, they can survive some hits (they are seldom hit), and chaos damage is not too much of a problem, even though I gave up gathering stuff with chaos resistance. I'm running my team with like -40% chaos resistance, I just have to be reactive when chaos damage comes... Knowing that, most of the times, the totems are targeted first.
Here is the link for my build at level 76. I picked some health and life regeneration, aura buffs, not too much dps increase unfortunately, some intelligence nodes for high-level wands and intelligence-based auras, and then I went down right in the passive tree to get some dexterity nodes that I need for GMP/LMP, Haste and Grace aura etc.
[url="http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUBBVuLjOFz7SBG113G3fO2hmBtfVOdgIM4FE0Es6IA8B-BbwJxnjxN2Ix2OtjsOClPGjjkIoKbp4QabJBVna4ZhcAapwgkqlnz2t2PRriTNumsqlor0NAMfeNqJ-0sp89l_c8Qf8T2GS6j8lXGxp48LdSPFm_Grrndtz7yL-8OerjnUq6TVEluql8_Pyf2SCpN1BWMzxUgUFAs6Vhj3Q3G2Fuv_MUY22egdPGHdiFgSn1AoAUtkApgS3rvdO0="]Passive skill tree build[/url]
I didn't want to waste too many time calculating what amount of dexterity I needed on gear for each character, so that's the reason I went down right on the passive tree to get dexterity (and health and regeneration nodes in the process). Actually, about my characters, I'm just checking that I have all 3 max resistances (except chaos), some health, and Item Rarity or Quantity on gear.
Otherwise I could get rid of the entire down right part of the template, and go to top right to get some dps boost around the Witch tree. The 22% « Totem Life » node, located in the center, is important however. I also went there to pick the « Iron Grip » node just close to it, since I have some strength as a Templar, but this doesn't apply to magical projectiles. Damn.
Each character is using 2 wands, no shields, I don't really need them. They are geared with chain mail for armour and energy shield, with team buff they have an average of 3,3k life, 1k+ energy shield, maxed resistances and a decent physical armour. I have Hallowed Life Flasks in all slots, which I seldom use anyway, I don't need Granites or Mana, and I wouldn't use Quicksilvers
Well that's a long post after all... I hope this clarifies things a little about multiboxing.