Please let us know what you came up regarding the botting scene nowadays.
It's pretty clear they have changed their banning approachs. I got 5 accounts banned + my main who never botted, never traded gold and never shared the same PC with the bot accounts (shared IP though). He had alts in botting guilds and that was enough to perma him, it seems. Furthermore, some people have been reporting quite odd bans lately, just sitting in the garrison doing nothing, just using CR or been banned within minutes.
It would be great it the buddy staff gave a "state of botting" thread with what they think is happening, but that is really unlikely.
so far, and this is only my personal experience and what ive filtered though anecdotal evidence.
yes, blizz is coming down harder on instance farming, and i believe its from the fallout over the stonecore video that went viral last month. if we remember back, wow was being ravaged by these bot armies in the cata instances. when the stonecore video was released, it instantly went viral and was posted on hundreds of websites/forums/blogs. I think one of the key components of the video which really caught the eye of blizz staff was the very end showing the characters using noclip to reenter the instance. noclip/wallhack/collision detection disabling is in whole different class involving hacks/exploits and just plain breaking the game.
here at honorbuddy we focus more on automation and outright cheating/hacking/exploits are frowned upon, restricted and a bannable offense. this alone moves instance farming to a whole other category of bad. i truly believe the hacks plus the video itself going viral is what caused blizzard to go full blown retard on the instance farmers.
of course as stated by Ayzul in one of his posts, 'some Ayzul profile users may have been targeted as a result'. in effect, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is not to be confused with plain old player reports which we are in constant danger. bothunters and coin farmers outside of instances are a constant threat and should be considered dangerous and not to be interacted with. as a general rule, you are more likely to be reported if you confront the enemy rather than just leaving the situation without bringing attention to yourself.
to address your issue of your main being banned just by having alts in your botting bank. if your botting bank is determined to be just that, a botting bank, then any association with that bank can be a 'link'. you may well have been banned for your alts association and having nothing to do with botting on your main.
as to the other topic of botting with CR's and getting banned in your garrison. i was recently suspended in such a manner. knowing all the details of my account, i can only assume they had no solid evidence whether or not i was botting and i was only assumed to be a botter, perhaps because of a player report, or multiple reports and i was given a suspension as a stab in the dark. i have received many many bans over the last couple years and never once had one overturned because they always had hard evidence to prove their case. i have gone through the appeal process and the information ive gathered from multiple encounters with blizzard staff is 'yes, we have definite evidence you were using third party software and your ban will not be overturned.' as far as others who get their bans overturned, i cant speak for their circumstances. that is why i question people for details when i see posts like these.
another fact i know, blizz does not always ban instantly, sometimes they do, but most times, they wait. the exact reason is not always the same. patch days, resub days, and oddly enough around the 1-2 of the month. ive spent many many hours reading the ban forums. going back a couple years. there are patterns to the bans. there is a 5 month span a couple years ago, most every ban was on the 11th of the month. very non-random. pattern? who knows, but its suspect in the least.
It would be great it the buddy staff gave a "state of botting" thread with what they think is happening, but that is really unlikely.
it would be very difficult to produce a 'state of botting' report. many times the patterns arent apparent for weeks, months, or in some cases, reviewing a years worth of ban reports. how would people have reacted to the statement 'more bans are happening on the 11th day of the month' if we didnt have months of proof, not prejudiced by claims of why bans were happening at that moment.
and we would rather have no information/statement, rather than wrong information/statements.
Disclaimer--take this how you want, if you disagree, then i urge you to put together your own opinion of why things are how they are. maybe we can hear your version next month.
Thanks for bringing this up, I didn't know that....