[Question] What bot programs do people prefer?

[hampe007]

Hello people!

Like everyone knows HB has a bit of issues today..

My question is what bot program do you prefer except HB?

How long have you been botting without being banned?

Why do you think its less detectable then HB?

Thanks for all the tips!

Hampi

[Rumblefish]

Good question. I'd like to hear some input, too.

[Sklug]

I use ReBot, but be aware, nothing is ever safe. I am not even gonna say Honorbuddy is unsafe. The banwave didn't hit every user, just a portion of them. If HB was say, detected, I'd say chances are it would have hit almost everyone using it. But, that's not the case we are saying. But, there is something to consider... HB is a juggernaut in the botting world. Think of it this way, what's the more efficient use of Blizz's resources, to dedicate efforts to take out this smaller bot over here with 2000 users, or to focus on the guy with a few hundred thousand? It's not all that different from when people used to say some years back, "Mac's don't get viruses!!!" Well, in reality, programmers didn't feel motivated to spend all that effort and time writing a virus for something that had a 1 in 50 people had. Blizzard is just going after the big guy.

With that being said, sometimes they pickup other people on the side too. And, I am not saying they only focus on HB. But you see, this is one of those Risk/Reward things. HB, because it has such a huge community, also has the most expansive library of tools, plugins, profiles, and overall community support. I mean, you could have the best bot in the world, but if you didn't have tons of people dedicating effort to write profiles, it'd be worthless.

So, the question one should ask themselves is not "Which bot is safer" or "Which bot should I use to not get a ban?", but instead to be asking, "How upset will I be if this account gets banned?" Because, at the end of the day, sooner or later, the ban hammer will hit you.

You'll hear a lot of arguments for in-process and out-of-process bots, but guess what, I have news for people that think out-of-process is safe.... it's not! Why? Because, Blizz anti-cheat detection now is incredibly sophisticated and advanced. It's not just warden scanning for memory hooks, which these bots are pretty good about avoiding, it's behavior stuff. It's the ability of this software to use statistical analysis on player movement and behavior to determine a probability threshold the individual is a bot or not. Thus, I don't care if you are out of process, that can catch you. And what I mean by behavior could be extremely broad. Could it be that the person takes the same route within say one deviation of X amount of yards, over and over, or could it be that they can tell your combat rotations are just a bit too perfect 100% of the time? Or, a million other things. In reality, we just don't really know...

One thing you can be certain of though is that this type of software analysis is not being done on all players at all times. Why? It would be far too computationally expensive. Most-likely, they do targeted analysis. Is your IP pre-flagged as a known bot-address? Your Mac address? A lot of people think it's as simple as using a VPN. Guess what, I guarantee you just by using a known VPN IP throws you under review because a lot of people use the VPN, even moreso if it's like a shared IP. Not an auto-ban, but definitely a review. What if you did all of the above, new IP address, new MAC address, new Battle.net, and new email, but then you paid for the new account with a credit card you used on a banned account. I'd say there's a chance that might link you to the old account. There are so many ways to get flagged for review. Hell, I bet even opening up multiple accounts at the same time will do it. I am just talking about ways outside of being reported. Maybe some of the profiles you are using that some community user wrote has a lot of poor security practices, like the use of Global Lua variables. I mean, if that profile ever got popular and some Blizz anti-cheat guy ever looked at its code and saw some unique global variable names being used to store info for the bot. Well, guess what, that's an extremely efficient way to catch a botter. I'm pretty sure that's how that huge Archaeology ban happened a few years back.

So, there are many other things you can read about on how to not get flagged as a botter. Obviously going 24/7 is going to get you in trouble faster. BG botting is so easy to get dinged for nowadays. People are so passionate about reporting people for botting in BGs. It's just a matter of time there. Questing can be dangerous to do unassisted because no matter how good the profiles are, unexpected things can still happen. All it takes is 3 seconds of weird bot-like movement someone sees and some dude is reporting you. And many other things you can readup elsewhere.

I just want to emphasize for all to hear that if you are not ok with losing your account, DO NOT BOT ON IT EVER!!! Blizz is significantly more sophisticated and aggressive now. I used to be able to go years without being caught. Some of this likely had to do with the tech not being where its at now, and the processing power being so much more today, and cheaper for what you get, that they can actually use these advanced analysis techniques.

What I personally do is I have my main 11 year veteran account I never even hook the bot into ever. I am religious about never even attaching the bot or anything to it. It's important to me to lose that. But, I do have a separate botting account. This botting account I do all my fun with. I know it's not the ideal situation, but if you want the "safe" situation, that's your best bet, imo.

Again, I personally use ReBot over Honorbuddy, as I prefer the aesthetics of it better, but I am also biased as I enjoyed it so much that I started writing profiles for ReBot for fun on the side. From a programmer's perspective, it is so much more enjoyable to write stuff over on ReBot. But again, is ReBot more safe? Well, they had a tiny banwave not that long ago too (the same was as Honorbuddy like a week ago). Now, I had 3 accounts using ReBot and only 1 got dinged, so it wasn't hugely widespread banwave it seems, and this HB banwave seems to have missed ReBot for the most part, but again, it goes back to my point that it isn't always safe.

So, if you aren't botting to make a living and make money, you are likely botting to save you time. Focus on that aspect. Are you having fun? If your account gets dinged and you gotta make a new one is it going to kill your spirit? If so, botting might not be for you. At the end of the day just make sure you are having fun with whatever you decide to do.

[hampe007]

Thanks for a answer!

Ive have been botting for over 5 years now, i have never been banned.
I have even used HB on my main but that was before the storm whas brought down over HB.

I was lucky yesterday, i just setup my bot account and everything yesterday for the first time in over 6 months and i was lucky and was not banned.

But like you said, they are being focused server-sided and does bother me, it feels like HB need some of a better way to work around it.

I will check out rebot and see how it goes from there.

Thanks!

[aamlord]

Blizzard can also be terrible when it comes to finding the right account to ban. I've botted on and off for oh about 5 years and just last week they banned a new 1 week-old account that has never botted because they don't know how to check details such as comparing the last botting evidence to account creation date.

I used to use Rebot but it's been a while and the creator hadn't posted update on the thread for a while. It is possible it's no longer updated and is now open to warden so I'd hold off using Rebot until the creator chimes in.

[gtiii]

Blizzard can also be terrible when it comes to finding the right account to ban. I've botted on and off for oh about 5 years and just last week they banned a new 1 week-old account that has never botted because they don't know how to check details such as comparing the last botting evidence to account creation date.

I used to use Rebot but it's been a while and the creator hadn't posted update on the thread for a while. It is possible it's no longer updated and is now open to warden so I'd hold off using Rebot until the creator chimes in.

Except they did ban the right account. You botted on the exact same bnet.

Maybe Learn wtf ur talking abut before spouting BS

[freeloading]

I'm been thinking, could it be the rotation portion of the bot that is being detected and not the farming, flying, moving, etc? Soapbox, PQR, etc all have been detected by Blizz. I don't know much about programming, just a thought.

[aamlord]

Except they did ban the right account. You botted on the exact same bnet.

Maybe Learn wtf ur talking abut before spouting BS

No, not even the same Bnet. Different email address. As I mentioned in another thread about GM being idiots, I created some new accounts on *different* email in case I decided to get rid of it.

Blizzard banned one of them. That entire Bnet account was only 1 week old when it was banned. The IP address is only common connection to my existing Bnet that I used for botting and a another Bnet account that has my all of my non-botted characters.

Blizzard fouled up this one somehow. Wrong account, wrong Bnet account, didn't even bother to check the time of offense against the account creation date.

You ever wonder why they won't share any info when they suspend or ban. 99% of the time it's to keep real bots from figuring out what went wrong but that 1% innocent account they wrongly suspended or banned, they cover up their mistakes.

[Soapbox]

I'm been thinking, could it be the rotation portion of the bot that is being detected and not the farming, flying, moving, etc? Soapbox, PQR, etc all have been detected by Blizz. I don't know much about programming, just a thought.

Not exactly. The people got caught that were using my 32 bit version at some point, which has been removed, as well as player reports. 64 bit which is available still is and has always been secure. Additionally, it was a very small amount of people, just hit something the 32 bit side that other 32 bit bots used.

[Dream Eater]

I'm been thinking, could it be the rotation portion of the bot that is being detected and not the farming, flying, moving, etc? Soapbox, PQR, etc all have been detected by Blizz. I don't know much about programming, just a thought.

I can tell you for sure that the soapbox 64bit was not detected at all. Let me explain why i am so sure:

I usually multibox with 2-3 accounts at once and SBR helps me a lot to make things more simple since my only thought is to manage the movements and targets.

December 9, 2015 I was browsing the HB forums and I noticed a new multiboxing botbase with a free trial and i said "let's try it".

Free trial purchase on HB store


I installed honorbuddy only to give a shot to this botbase with a short test on one of my slave accounts while master and the other slave were using my multiboxing tool + SBR.

Test duration


Two sessions, 51 minutes for the first, 59 minutes for the second.

December 16, 2015 the account, on which I had used HB, has been banned (18 months suspension since it was caught in the May 2015 banwave). The other two have not been touched at all, though they were used simultaneously with the banned one.

That's my experience. I am very sorry for those who like me has been banned and even more sorry for the honorbuddy team, this last banwave has seriously undermined the trust of their community.

[xcureanddisease]

64 bit Soapbox user here, was also not banned and I was using the bot the day of the banwave.. Still going.