Smuggler/Operative boxing

[pox67]

I have just started up boxing a Jedi Guardian and Smuggler Scoundrel. Guardian seems pretty straight forward but there seems to be two ways of boxing the Scoundrel.

1. I can use the Scoundrels ranged abilities - at the start of a fight put them in to a crouch/cover to gain access to all abilities. This is pretty easy as the crouch key can be put at the start of the DPS rotation.
2. Use the melee range abilities (4 - 10m) and make sure the Scoundrel is dragged in close to the fighting.

What have people found to be the best approach?

On the other hand I am not sure if I should just role Sages to be the healer companion for my mains. I noticed that the Scoundrel doesn't get anything like the Sage's Shield. Shield is just insane, properly used only minimal healing is needed.

[blackshifter]

My first two box team was a Sith Warrior and Imperial Agent. Personally, I think IA's are better healers than a Sage because of TA but they are very demanding. Meaning you have to keep track of your TA count and Kolto Probe counter. Sages are very simple to heal with.

I would use 2 because the crouch position is kind of a pain in the butt, especially because you have to manually get out of the crouch and can't just auto follow or hop into a speeder after a fight.

[Riiker]

So the ranged abilities on ur scoundrel are gonna be very powerful at lower levels and should be used to maximize DPS. You also need to use ur melee ability to earn upper hand early on as well.

Here is what I suggest: keep ur DPS spam using only melee abilities (non cover abilities). Make a separate mapped key for the higher DPS cover abilities. No here is the complicated part, make sure that ur DPS spam is used in conjunction with an auto follow (I prefer Mercbeast framework type). Separate from the auto follow, make another on demand follow mapped key that will break cover for ur scoundrel (strafe or jump then follow). This way if you need more DPS u activate the cover ability and when done u manually follow and the scoundrel will break cover and begin using auto follow.

This all very complicated I know, but I'm all about finding solutions to maximize the potential of my toons.

Good luck!

[pox67]

Cool, I just read through the Mercbeast Framework thread. Very enlightening. I understand it all and will implement the close range option at first with autofollow after each ability. I am comfortable building in a keymap switch to change between long range and short range DPS.
What about channelled or abilities that have an activation time? Won't the immediate autofollow break them?
(as an aside Vanguard was great for that - if your healer was casting a heal or other timed ability and you hit follow the character would walk until the ability was completed, very cool)

[Riiker]

You have to come up with a way to diable the auto follow during those abilities.

The easiest way is to set up an action target group for your toons. You then set up the auto follow to only send "follow" to members of the action target group. Now when you begin say a 3 second channelled ability, u have ur toon leave the action target group and rejoin in 3 seconds. This way the follow command will never be issued to that toon and he will complete the channel.

You can also do this for your DPS abilities so that you can continue to press ur DPS spam button but none of the commands are issued to the toon currently channelling.

[pox67]

Good suggestion Riiker.

Yesterday I redid the entire ISboxer setup for SWToR based off the Mercbeast/MOSG2 forum posts. I didn't get to test it yet though as was stuck at work last night.

As I only dual box I didn't go with ATGs but I do have DPS key maps for each character so I can turn those off for the channel duration.

As I couldn't test last night I do have one question that is confusing me. I hope my explanation is not too confusing, I have included a diagram.
843

So when I hit ^ it does keymap DPS1 Follow Which in step 1 does an Assist keymap and then calls to each character slot for their specific DPS keys. So far all these are passed to Window Current.

Then the character specific Keymap DPS1Char calls the actual button pushes for the abilities. I did that so that in each abilities keymap (like 1 ) I could put on the Do not pass time for dots etc. Now I currently have each of these keymaps being passed to Window:Current as well. I think that might be wrong though and I need to actually pass it to the specific character?

[Riiker]

Pox, the concept of what u described sounds perfect! Your character specific DPS key map sends each key bind to the specified toon or slot. When you call that key map (like you describe doing) you set the target as "current". Should work perfectly.

Let me know how it goes.

[pox67]

Pox, the concept of what u described sounds perfect! Your character specific DPS key map sends each key bind to the specified toon or slot. When you call that key map (like you describe doing) you set the target as "current". Should work perfectly.

Let me know how it goes.

It works awesome!
It took a bit of fiddling to get it to work. At first I didn't have the character specific maps in the character set so it didn't work.
Now I can add wait times to any of the DPS abilities. Along with all the new click bars I put up means DPS has gone up along with survivability.

I have linked a screen shot of the new setup.
https://picasaweb.google.com/115300929047700938836/SWToR?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJ7E1IqU_4aotQE&feat=directlink
Two characters, one full screen and one a VideoFX window in the bottom right corner.
I have two maps up so I can see resource nodes for both characters, again a VideoFX window.

The right hand hot bars are all for utility stuff and mostly mapped to the click bars. The rockets and vehicle click bars are very useful, the rocket one turns on rockets for both characters and then does a follow for the secondary character. Click bars like the Shield one shield the character on left click and companion on right click. Heals have a left click instant and right click big heals mapped to them.

3 hot bars in the centre of the screen are actually only 2 hot bars, the lower one is a VideoFX from the other character with click pass through. I probably don't need that anymore with the current setup. I am thinking of extending the click bars next to the characters with buttons set off med packs.

Because I run 3 monitors in portrait surround the UI looks squished in the middle but actually sits on the centre monitor between the bezels. I like having everything nice and close like that for monitoring. There is a key map to turn on off all VideoFX and click bars for cut scenes so it isn't so ugly.

[Riiker]

Sounds like you've gotten the hang of it! Nice work!

[pox67]

Sounds like you've gotten the hang of it! Nice work!

Thanks for the help Riiker.
I just had another play session and very happy with the set up :)

[zhurt]

hey pox would you mind sharing your setup?

[pox67]

I am happy to do that Zhurt.

It will take a couple of days though as ISBoxer is a mess with older bits of SWToR and also other games.

Also I have not implemented the Scoundrel follow/halt and crouch yet. I was originally thinking of turning off the follow keymap for that character for a specified time but not sure if that is the best idea yet.
What I might do is have 2 DPS keymaps for the Scoundrel - one that follows and uses the Scoundrel at close range and the other that drops them in to a crouch and uses ranged abilities. It is pretty easy to make a key that makes either one of them active depending on the situation.

[zhurt]

That would be great thanks a bunch and no rush

[pox67]

Okay, on to the configuration:

http://www.privatepaste.com/653aa36f60

There are two set ups:
1. Duo 1 - Shadow/Sage. Pretty easy setup. Need to press the follow key to get the sage to follow.
2. Duo 2 - Knight/Scoundrel. More difficult as I wanted to Scoundrel to follow the Knight after each DPS action. That doesn't work though as it breaks healing - when a 2 second heal is going off and the DPS key is hit the Soundrel then follows and breaks the cast. So follow is removed from that at the moment...working on a good solution.

There are no fancy timed actions in this setup although something like that will be needed to stop the DPS follow from breaking the Scoundrel heals.

Other things you need to know, hotkeys:
Buttons Actual
DPS NUM /
AOE NUM *
Taunt NUM -
Channeled NUM +

In Game Controls
Hotbars
Hotbar 1 1 - =
Hotbar 2 ALT+1 - ALT+=
Hotbar 3 Shift+F1 - Shift+F12
Hotbar 4 CTRL+F1 - CTRL+F12
Assist F11
Follow F12

Companion select F9
Group Companion1 F10



Hotbar key placement
Main hotbar
1 DPS
2 DPS
3 DPS
4 DPS
5 DPS
6 DPS
7 DPS
8 DPS
9 AOE
0 AOE
- Taunt
= Channeled

Side hotbar, SF1 = Shift+F1
SF1 Heal Instant
SF2 Heal Little
SF3 Heal Big
SF4 Heal HoT
SF5 Clean Effects
SF6 Shield
SF7 Slow
SF8 Short Stun1
SF9 Short Stun2
SF10 Interrupt
SF11 Meditate
SF12 Vehicle

Second side hotbar, CF1 = CTRL+F1
CF1 Run
CF2 Rescue
CF3 Break Root
CF4
CF5 Special1
CF6 Special2
CF7 Special3
CF8 Special4
CF9
CF10 Rockets
CF11 Buffs
CF12 Speed

[pox67]

Finally got some time to sort out the Scoundrel issues.
The Sage healer never presented a problem - as a long range class I just park them at the edge of the fight and reposition if needed with the follow key. Nothing special is needed for their heals as well as even if they receive a DPS command during a heal they will continue on with the heal. Same with a channelled ability I believe.

The Scoundrel was the problem character. I wanted the Scoundrel to be a close range class which means a follow command is sent after each DPS command. Luckily all the Scoundrel abilities are instant (so far). The problem came to healing as even though they would continue a started heal if given a DPS command the resulting follow command would break the cast on the heal.

With some research I found this:
Key Map State Action (http://isboxer.com/wiki/Key_Map_State_Action)
and
Action Timer (http://isboxer.com/wiki/Action_Timer)
So now when a heal is sent the DPS rotation Key Map is disabled only for the Scoundrel for a certain amount of time. That is 2 seconds for a normal heal and 3 seconds for a channelled heal (only have those two at the moment).

It took some figuring out but I got it working. Basically I have a two step action to fire the heal:
Step 1
- Target the healee
- Keymap State Action - turn off DPS keymap for Scoundrel (no timer set)
Step 2
- Cast Heal
- Keymap State Action - turn on DPS keymap for Scoundrel with a timer set for the heal time.

So far this is working very well although I only got about 30 minutes to test last night after setting it up.

This isn't a very modular solution as requires calling to the specific character and the Action Target Group method is more flexible but this was relatively simple to do.

New Pastebin (http://pastebin.com/5QSMrYfF) with these changes.

[zhurt]

Thank you for tanking the time to post this and exsplaining it

[pox67]

No worries zhurt.

I imagine it would be quite confusing working from someone else's config. Let me know if I can clarify anything.
Yo help understand what was happening I drew out some rough flow diagrams of the keymaps and what I wanted to happen. It crystalised it in my mind and helped me understand what what I wanted to do and how to achieve it.