I think people are always getting confused about what the bot being "detected" actually means.
I got about
1000 Accounts banned in total over the past 6 Months - and I can tell you this much:
What happens during the 6 Month-Ban-Waves is related to client-side "mass-detection" - Meaning blizzard is able to push some changes which can actually detect every single Honorbuddy running at a given time or over a period of time. Rumors were saying they monitor your PCs connections to other IP-Addresses - which would be illegal in Europe - So I'm not going to speak about that.
So now about detection:
Can blizzard detect the bot once they look at you or your client specifically?
YES - 100%
There are usually 3 types of bans you get:
Suspensions (6 Month etc) - These are most likely automatic or due to reports by other players.
Perma-Ban by Realm-GMs - These are by teams of GMs searching on specific realms only. Usually these appear between 3 and 4 AM.
Perman-Ban by Global Teams - These are being applied by detection patterns across all realms (movement patterns, gold selling patterns, ip address patterns, hostname patterns, vpn's, etc) - Usually appear between 9 and 11PM, late at night or in the Mornings.
It is pretty simple - If your accounts get's flagged for a review by a GM - and you are using Honorbuddy - you WILL get banned 100% and the GMs detect HB.
If they really detect it with some kind of magic button or check - or if they just look at the mesh navigation, interrupts, singular specifics, or whatever they look for I can't tell you.
I would call it something like a "soft" detection they have going on for HB right now - if the server side detection flags you by a combination of various patterns, you will get a manual review, and if they "detect" HB in the review you get hammered.
Best practices to avoid getting stomped if you are actually running many bots:
- Spread your VPNs accross as many hosting providers as you can - Blizzard WILL monitor your hostname so if you put 50 bots on Digitalocean VPN boxes they will eventually check all Digitalocean hostnames at once and drop the big hammer on all your toons.
- Don't use cheap common VPNs - You will get flagged faster - if you use a VPN, get yourself cheap Cloud-VPS Boxes and install an OpenVPN server quick and dirty.
- Try not to trade off big chunks of Gold at once - keep it at about 25k or you will get flagged.
- Don't level with Kicks profiles 100% unattended - rather level 5 Man RAF in Dungeons and try to sneak to level 100 with trying not to get stuck in Quest profiles too much.
But in the end, if you are botting, you will most likely get banned.
If you are suicide botting - everything above 20 days is a good bot