Detailed Analysis of HonorBuddy by a 7+ year User

Good Morning Everyone!

I've done things like this is in the past to try and help / educate people as to why some bans occur. This also helps to define some of the more risky methods of 'botting'.

**Note: This is my opinon, based around my own experiences within WoW while utilizing HonorBuddy. Any ideas, assumptions, and conclusions were reached completely on my own and without any raw statistical data.***

About Me: I'm a 33 year old database architect. I started playing wow in Alpha after playing every other Warcraft game since its inception. I've had 5 accounts since I started playing. I started with WoWGlider back in Vanilla and honestly played by hand for about 18 months after WoWGlider was shut down until I found HonorBuddy. Now, I've been a good WoW player and a bad WoW player by using the bot. I'll try explain below:

So what's good about HB and it's multitude of BotBases?

Well, to start with HB was cutting edge. It took what WoWGlider did, which was to provide a logical/customizable XYZ pathing system with radius targeting and fighting routines and make it so much more. You are able to select the type of botbase you want to utilize, such as Questing, Archeology, Gathering, etc... This made HB the most flexible and well recognized product for WoW botting on the market. Ontop of that, their 'TripWire' system has saved folks more than you'll ever know.

So what's bad about HB and it's multitude of BotBases?

Statistically speaking, everything comes down to data. If you start at XYZ and move to XYZ, then execute a repeatable pattern, millions and millions of times over millions and millions of accounts, you'll start to see a data pattern. This is what kills you on questing and why the majority of people using the bots now have moved to Custom Combat Routines without any movement. Custom combat routines are much, much harder to identify and can be customized to the point of individuality.

So in my experience, if you want to keep your accounts safe you have two options:

1. Don't bot. Nothing is 100% safe ever. Never bot on your main account is my rule.

2. Never use character movement routines like Questing, ArcheologyBuddy, GatherBuddy, etc. as these patterns are WELL mapped and can be sniffed out quickly by Blizzard. Instead, use non movement and non targeting bots such as LazyRaider. Also, invest in a high quality combat routine. Tuanha has been my favorite and it just works. Disable all click-to-move, and turn down your tick rate from within the bot. There is no need to be within 30ms of casting every single time. Also, disable your interrupts and only interrupt by hand. The combat routine will do TOO good a job at this, so be sure and disable this function.

Further Note: Never leave your bot unattended and disable continuous healing mode. Nothing screams botter than someone who stands in the same place casting healing spells on themselves over and over for hours on end because you forgot to stop the bot or log out. NEVER leave your bot unattended.

I've lost accounts - mainly to being stupid and not heeding my own advice. So please, be smart and understand that Blizzard uses 'Big-Data' to try and figure out who's doing what according to patterns. Be safe and be smart people.

Statistics:

WoW1 Account - Botted - Questing from Jan 6th, 2016 to Jan 12th, 2016 - Banned - 30% supervised

WoW2 Account - Botted - GatherBuddy from Jan 15th to Feb 3rd, 2016 - Banned - <10% supervised

WoW3 Account - Botted - ArchBuddy from Nov 27th to Jan 3rd, 2015 to 2016 - Banned - <10% supervised

WoW4 Account - Botted - Mix of LazyRaider and Questing from Nov 27th to Jan 12th, 2015 to 2016 - Banned - 50-60% supervised

WoW5 Account - Botted - LazyRaider - 2010 to Today - No questing, No click to move, No interrupts, ONLY COMBAT ROUTINE! - ITS ALIVE!!! 100% supervised.

You get what you put into the account.

Best Regards,
akassaw

 

Your comment about using profiles is true is some regards, but I've been using this bot for 3 years mainly for questing and dailies and haven't received a single ban, playing yourself every once and a while and within acceptable time limits are key

 

I disagree with some of these conclusions. first off, you completely ignore the BIGGEST issue with HB lately which are the 3 detection banwaves in the space of one year. Doesn't matter if you only used a CR for 10 min vs a target dummy, they got everyone.

2nd, the whole point of this bot is movement and questing and gathering etc. there are other bots for rotations only that are much safer period. I've had accounts FOR YEARS that gathered herbs and ore, ran 100s of hours of BGs, quested from 1-100, flew archeology for 500 hours, etc etc. no bans.

 

5 accounts botted since early Glider.
Quested litterally 30-40 chars to 100 using questing. A majority of them have never ever been manually played and they have all been botted alot unattended.

Not One Ban.

Your logic is flawed.

My herbers and miners have been litterally running gatherbuddy for 4-5 days 24/7 when I was abroad on work.
It all comes to down to setup - if you spend some time with the setup and fix stuff that will fark up - you are golden.

What I do not do:
BG's <- thats a banwish
Flooded the AH <- I bot to provide for my main (I also bot on my main account).
Sold gold

Edit: I have been really lucky twice. Around TBC when Blizz did something with the wow.exe that HB didn't catch I was on a long vacation and the second banwave I took a short hiatus from wow.
Edit2: Oh - I have been reported numerous times for dual/multiboxing - that I do as well and is why I have 5 accounts. I have had GM's watch me play several times (this was back when GM:s actually gave a f*ck). But since multiboxing is legit no worries there,
Edit3: I am also within the Blizzard "Friends & Family" and my main account have been active since early Beta. No idea if that has anything to do with it. But maybe - because I really should have been banned -. I have done some farked up stuff. Farmed some areas rather extensive... then on the other hand - when I did play WoW hardcore I did play ALOT .. so that my account is active 24/7 is nothing odd.

 

I can attest that my logic for botting has been very aggressive.

Since creating my account, LK Account:
16 Toons 100 Full Conquest, PVE etc.
Every mount shy of Ashes.
Bought gold and sold gold, to friends IRL.
I actively abuse the economy on the AH.
I level all new toons via Kicks Profiles till 15 and use Dungeon Buddy to level till 100.


I have done the following to remain safe:
I bot BG's on weekends with BGFarmer <- what I do is manipulate settings off the default to something more realistic
I believe it is vital to stay within healthy playing patterns as well.
I use Report Spam Add-on, often.
I farm a ton of content, with HB - I update my status hourly, not to provide social media but to exhibiting healthy playing patterns.
I usually quit using HB the Monday morning before a new patch.
I don't use HB until 48 hours after new release.
If I notice a hotfix, I will abide by the 48 hour rule again.

 

If you have used honorbuddy for more then 2 years the only reason you havent been hit in a banwave is pure luck. The ban wave mid-late last year HB itself was literally detected so all of the points that you all just made are rather false. I've been botting wow with honorbuddy since it was released despite my rather freshish forum account and I was never hit in a banewave untill the one that happened last month. The only reason I survived for ~8 years without hitting any of HB's banwaves is because I just happened to be taking a break from the game at the time the detections and the wave was sent out.

 

Fun fact:

I was botting during that wave. Two of my friends got banned. They botted less then me.

 

Like he said, pure luck nothing else

 

If you can provide some URL links stating from Bossland that they were indeed, without denial, with no shame self-admitted detected, I would believe that. I went over 10 years on my main account with no issues at all - Quested, BG's, the whole spiel...

I still think the largest factor is data and player reports. I've never seen a single post that says, "We were detected and you lost your accounts because of us." Then again, I recall them saying at ONE point that they forgot to update a tripwire or something.

 

Then you're the exception to everything I've pointed out. Still - flaunting this ability only leads others down the not-so-safe path.

As I said in the opening few lines of my post - these are my own observations and may be completely wrong. Basically - its an opinion, just like an ass-hole. Everyone's got one.

 

What was your friends botting habits? What bots did they use? How long did they bot for? What areas did they bot? All these factors play a huge role in the result.

 

That banwave was from a detection.

 

Nobody said it was safe, just that a lot of the flaws with honorbuddy can be rectified by the user with healthy botting habits.

 

Blizzard will not ban you because you use a pattern some one else botted on. 10,000 bots run to xyz . trouble is that 500-1000 normal players run to xyz the same way. so blizzard will not risk it . some patterns might red flag you at best . if your toon ran the same quest 1000 times the same way each time (gold farming same dungeons 1000 times or farming ore herbs for days). i can see them catching you but not on a single quest or leveling . Unless you were reported from some reason.

the first big ban waves were from player reports they built up over time. blizzard posted about a Huge ban coming up in the next week. it was a plan to make a big deal out of it .

last few ban wave were because blizzard found ways to detected the bot attaching to the wow memory. they can not scan your files. they can scan the memory wow is using. blizzard catches a botter ...then they work hard to detect the bot on that users account. thats what tripwire does. tells HB someone is trying to detect them. if we are lucky it does work and no one gets caught. if not a few might have to pay the price to save the rest

 

I've got 15+ toons never been banned and their all maxed out.

 

The amount of misinformation in this thread is deeply concerning for new HB users.

Blizzard can detect the injection that HB makes into the WoW client by scanning the memory the not operates in. Once detected they flag your account and put you on a list. when the next banwave rolls out the whole list gets banned.

Never does Blizz even look at

a) how frequently you bot
b) what your botting or why
c) do you pay a subscription with real cash or wow tokens

And also in reply to the friends and family argument. a close friend of mine was suspended for 6months for fish botting for no more than an hour or so a day. She has been friends and family since burning crusade as her brother works at blizz.
She cannot appeal to her brother to try get her unbanned from a GM as blizz states this is grounds for termination of employment.

 

Clearly nobody can say "x equals y" regarding botting and anyone stating so is not reading what people are experiencing. Some people get banned and some don't. I've botted since Glider and have once been caught. It was during a banwave and only one of my several 24/7 accounts were banned. I have previously botted during most of the banwaves and have never noticed anything. I was actually kind of a loner with the botting thing and didn't even know about the banwaves until a couple years ago.

I don't see this logic some has with "Inject once and you're banned". I also don't see the logic with "Just do it quietly and nobody will notice".
We can argue all day about this, but it wont change the fact that some of us have loads of banned accounts and some of us has none. If we spent time gathering statistics about this then maybe we could find out a pattern as to why and how people get banned but until then this is just a clusterfuck of non-verifiable arguments and personal experiences we cannot take in account when making a statement about this.

To anyone new or wondering, there are no definite answer to if you're going to get banned or not. It might as well be as random as anything else in life.

There tend to be a general rule to botting and that is to never bot on a account you care about. It's worth to spend 15 bucks or euro on a RAF account to level up easier instead of doing it AFK with a bot and have a potential ban. It's worth avoiding it if you still care about the game and your account. Invest in one or two accounts to farm mats for you and pay the gametime with gold. You'll easily make the gold back.

If you're more interested in making a gold-making empire then this shouldn't be a issue for you. You should(in my opinion) see every account as banned after ~30 days and every unbanned day after that is just some extra gold. Invest in cheap keys during sales on various website where you can buy copies of any games. I am far from experienced in this so I'm sure you can find loads of more experienced people to ask advice from but I'm fairly certain some will agree what I've said is good starting grounds.

We're basically in a relationship with Blizzard and we're cheating, keep it silent and away from your personal life and you'll get away with most of your belongings intact once shit hits the fan.


EDIT: I have absolutely no doubt Blizzard can detect if you're injecting HB into the client. What they decide to use that information for is another question.

 

either way banwave is every 6 months and usually the first offense is a 6 month suspension so you get your accounts back so it doesnt really take anything away while your new accs play a new 6 months until another wave hits while my accounts break even the 4th day they run thats including leveling and gearing (3 days) so 6 months is a bargin im always happy when they last a month and if im not doing any auctions and botting safer areas my accounts only get hit on waves and thats fine with me.

 

Whats the point of this post? Is there anything new in it, that hasn't been posted dozens of time here on the forums?

 

Well, i don't find it really usefull at all, i mean what's the point to bot if i have to watch / manually play ? I'm using the bot to do the boring stuff ( leveling, daily, garrison aka farm in general)
If i've to move manually the bot ( aka movement disabled ) there's no point to use the bot... Can't you follow a simple dps rotation / Healing priority ? ( ofc you probably will lose some dps in raid couse you aint get 100% uptime / reaction like a bot... but srsly why play the game at all if you need someone to push almost all the button even when you are in the game ? )

My 2 cents, regards.

Edit.

You will be banned 100% now or later, it's just a matter of time..... so keep your main account safe, and use a second account to bot, i've got like 5 account banned since i started with glider ( like 8+ y ago... 3 where on my main account battle.net the other 2 in a new .net account ) but my main ( the one i play manually never got it by anything ), just farm shit with bot account linked in battle.net, use guilds with ppl to trade money and be safe.... get achive mount and shit from bot account linked in the main battle.net and farm money with spare .net account. That's it!