Is formation fighting possible in Lotro?

[Xtremepayne]

I see this being done in WoW videos and keep thinking that if I could do this in Lotro I would consider rolling out a 3 or 4 character, Problem of course I always seem to run into is AoE hits because of the follow being to close. If I have time to setup I can put my Minstrel back far enough to keep out of range of those hits. If nothing else, just want to make my Hunter/Minstrel easier to do things on the fly.

[KrunkTheMadMan]

I'm currently dual-boxing in lotro. From all of the forum scrounging and in game testing I have done, I would have to say NO. It is my understanding that all in-game macrosing in LOTRO is limited to (crappy) emotes and the /follow command. I currently have a quickslot set up for /follow and one of the keys on my G11 keyboard is mapped to it (it targets the Fellowship leader also). Outside of that, there is no way to my knowledge to get it to work. On a little more positive side, a buddy of mine says there is a guy on the Landroval server that has 5 hobbits and runs them in formation. I can't confirm this since I'm still working my way to Moria and have never seen the guy. If I can get the guys name I'll ask him how he does it. If you're on Landroval send me a PM and I'll give you my char names.

[Xtremepayne]

Mine is not to far different then yours except I use F2 to target leader and then usually will use the mouse to reset /follow, I really should make a quickslot for it. My hope is that if I can formation fight that I can get my minstrel far enough back that he doesn't get hit by AoEs when fighting. I don't have a character on Landroval, But I could always make 2 to play on that server incase the server I am on goes down for a while. I am currently on Melendor and go by the character names of Martrina and Xtremepayne. I also wouldn't mind seeing those 5 hobbits in action :)
For my keyboard I use the G15, the one with the M1,M2,M3, keys. Thinking seriously about the G19 when it releases.

[Lax]

If there are key binds for strafing LOTRO, you can use movement formations. I thought this question was more about whether it is possible to "fight" in such a formation, and less about whether you can move

[KrunkTheMadMan]

As far as formation goes, I usually drop my minstrel within buff/heal range and then move on with the champ and pull the mob. I guess you could use this strategy if you wanted to run, say 1 champ/guard and 4 ranged (maybe 4 rune keepers?????). This relies on the hold aggro, so the others can hit strategy. There's a youtube video of someone running 3 hunters and laying out mobs before they have time to get to the hunter group.... As far as strategy goes, I think that's as far as it really gets with LOTRO due to the limitations of the ingame macros system. I have done quite a bit of searching and key binding strafe in LOTRO cannot be done, to my knowledge. Also, because of limitations in LOTRO, HotKeyNet has trouble sending movement to the 2nd pc/window last time I checked. If these problems didn't exist you could use your G15 to say, strafe left 2 seconds on the second character....
I don't know the uses/limitations of innerspace (I really like HotKeyNet), but it may not have trouble sending movement keys in the same way. Anyway, food for thought, hope it helps.

BTW I have two lvl 3 characters on Melendor, I made them when the servers were down the other day.

[Xtremepayne]

My thoughts Lax was more in being able to push the alts back away from the tank for instance so that the alts are not affected by the AoE's of the main target. I was thinking that if I could just tell the 2nd or 3 windows depending on how many someone is running that if they could be instructed to just back up but yet keep stay on assist of main that it would make playing it on the fly much easier. Like walking around a corner and finding a troll there, kinda hard to switch and back up 2nd character. If I could back up the minstrel in my case, from the hunter, I have no issues keeping my hunter up in the Foundations of Stone against trolls there. The idea would to be simply apply it to a key that the movement only goes to the 2nd window. Is that possible with IS? Also to setup follow after the fight, using Keymapper? It would be for nothing more then to move the healer out of AoE range. Doing this to all but current window would be what I am looking for, just not sure how to do it as Keymapper is new to me still.

[Lax]

I was thinking that if I could just tell the 2nd or 3 windows depending on how many someone is running that if they could be instructed to just back up but yet keep stay on assist of main that it would make playing it on the fly much easier. To do this, you would make a Mapped Key, with the Hold option enabled, that presses your "back" key (e.g. S if using wasd) on whichever windows you like. You can definitely do that.

The idea would to be simply apply it to a key that the movement only goes to the 2nd window. Is that possible with IS? Yes. You can direct your keystrokes to any Target, which may be any one or more characters.
Also to setup follow after the fight, using Keymapper? Yes. If the game provides a way to hit a key to auto-follow, you can set up a Mapped Key through ISBoxer to send it (which configures KeyMapper as you mention).

[Xtremepayne]

Thanks Lax that helped. I am now able to back off the main just putting it out of AoE range. However, when I do so mouse repeating is becoming enabled and the first time I right click rolls the other IS window. I have tried to map keys for enabling and disabling mouse repeating but everytime I hit that key the mouse enables. The key I am using is "Num /". Reason I am using that set of keys is that my minstrel's abilities heal abilities are ran from that keypad.

For follow it looks like I will have to do that by mouse right click, Lotro doesn't have a mappable follow that I saw in game. If I am incorrect could someone enlighten me?

[KrunkTheMadMan]

Follow can be mapped to a slot. To do it you need to type /slot (the slot number) /follow and press enter. The slot numbers are "Normal_____1 - 12
Ctrl________13 - 24
Alt ________25 - 36
Shift_______37 - 48". So on mine, to slot the /follow command to Shift+9, I type in "/slot 45 /follow" and hit enter.

On another note, I appear to have been wrong about HotKeyNet being able to send movement commands to the 2nd pc (healer). I made a change to my script last night and now the up,down,left, and right arrow keys control my 2nd character. In the Logitech G-key settings I created a macros that will hold down the back , left or right keys for 3 seconds. This proved very useful when fighting AOE enemies last night. Once the healer moves back though, I still have to hit the follow key to get him back in line after the battle.

[Xtremepayne]

Thanks Krunk, I didn't know that you could do that, that is what I have been looking for and will solve the issue of putting follow back on once I back up the minstrel out of AoE range and the fight is over. Now I just have to do some arranging on the quickslots trying to keep as many of the minstrel's controls on bar 4. I will have to share this with a freind that turned me onto dual boxing, I don't think he knows about that either. Thanks again for the information.

[Xtremepayne]

I tried /slot but it didn't work, But then I went out and googled and found it. Its /shortcut 57 /follow. Thought I would add the correction for anyone else who is looking for this information. Still thanks Krunk works great. Now just need to figure out why my mouse repeating keeps enabling when I hit the key to back up the character in IS2.