BOXability of SWTOR

[Niley]

I'm on that server as well.dark side Baby!

well i do have a bounty hunter named rade'k on the sith side too, haven't played him much yet

[Multibocks]

I'm a terrible beta tester. I've logged in maybe 6 times and my highest is level 6.

[MiRai]

I'm a terrible beta tester. I've logged in maybe 6 times and my highest is level 6.

As a terrible beta tester, it is your duty to pass along your beta account to someone else.

[Mosg2]

Preferably someone with a red name

[ZooljinX]

so tempted to 4box at start.. 4 Bounty hunters would rock!

[Mokoi]

OK, so some of the information from Revenant has come from me, and I apologize for not sharing it here as well.

Boxing in SWTOR

possible, and doable in certain situations.

PvE - no problems. questing, easy and really good idea as a boxer. Instances should be easy enough with a boxer group. think...

PvP - also ... doable.. BUT with the caveat that, because BGs are 8v8 a 4 boxer has a huge amount of responsibility, and it could be difficult to coordinate with the other half of your team to effectively hold your node, or the ball, or the flag etc.

in swtor, there are a TON of CC abilities, even more than in WoW, and some of them suck. almost every class seems to have an aoe knockback ability, which is usually instant cast, similar to thunderstorm. for any ranged class, this isn't so bad, as you can still kill that person after being knocked back, and it prevents them from being able to aoe you down.

HOWEVER.. in games like Huttball, which is a large, complicated blades edge arena, where you MUST carry / pass a ball to the enemies defensive line, it will be almost impossible to effectively be a ball carrier, as everyone on the other team can split you into 4 parts of the map almost at will. that will be very.. suck.

AGAIN HOWEVER... you get a lot of EXP and currency for even a loss in BGs, and so if you are intent on just getting gear, you can cheese your way to gear by just sitting in a flat part of the map while the raging jedi / sith race towards what they perceive to be free kills and watch them burn as the other 2 people on their team win the match.. so you will lose, but as long as you get the match "achievements" finished, you still get a good amount of currency. PvP gear is pretty easy to get, and for some BGs boxing would be fine. There is a map where you need to defend bomb sites, and attack bomb sites, and I think having 4 coordinated toons would be useful there, maybe even 2 boxers to attack and defend one side each would be really nice.

Anyway.. im not sold on 4 copies of the game, but I WILL be buying 2, so as to lvl effectively (there are a bunch of heroic quests that you can probably 2box with good companions) and then see how PvP is at higher levels when the game comes out.

-Dan

[Mosg2]

@Mercbeast:
Ditto Esca's question. Also, there is an autofollow your target button that works on enemies?

If so, maybe melee *will* be doable. It's like IWT but better.

Now, I've been accused from time to time of being a Negative Nancy (Tm) and of being intentionally argumentative for no good reason, but...

You're the second person that I trust that cited knockbacks as basically a show stopper for boxing in BG's. I appreciate where you guys are coming from--You do BG's as a solo toon and get CC'd and knocked all over the place. I also appreciate that (after watching many hours of BG gameplay) Huttball is a really complicated map. At the same time...

I remember when I first saw Thunderstorm, and Typhoon and Death Grip and I thought "Wow, boxing is dead." Of course that was an overreaction but the idea was the same--I was convinced that these would hamstring boxing enough that it wouldn't be fun spending half your time collecting your guys. It isn't, but I don't spend half my time doing it. I spend just a bit of my time doing it.

~~~

One of the differences I've seen between Sith Inquisitor and any WoW caster is how many more insta cast abilities the SI has. As long as you don't get knockbacked onto another level of the map (I'm looking at you, Hutball) then you should be ok. Knocked into a loose formation? Cast the insta heal or the dot while you run back to the main. /shrug

I just feel like it's too early to throw in the towel and say "4 boxing will be way too hard at launch." Some of the brightest people I've ever known are active here on this site and I'm positive that with all/many of them working on these problems (follow, assist etc) we'll have an entirely workable setup for 4 boxing within the first week.

I guess we'll see, but for now I've got super excited face on

[Mercbeast]

@Mercbeast:
Ditto Esca's question. Also, there is an autofollow your target button that works on enemies?

If so, maybe melee *will* be doable. It's like IWT but better.

Now, I've been accused from time to time of being a Negative Nancy (Tm) and of being intentionally argumentative for no good reason, but...

You're the second person that I trust that cited knockbacks as basically a show stopper for boxing in BG's. I appreciate where you guys are coming from--You do BG's as a solo toon and get CC'd and knocked all over the place. I also appreciate that (after watching many hours of BG gameplay) Huttball is a really complicated map. At the same time...

I remember when I first saw Thunderstorm, and Typhoon and Death Grip and I thought "Wow, boxing is dead." Of course that was an overreaction but the idea was the same--I was convinced that these would hamstring boxing enough that it wouldn't be fun spending half your time collecting your guys. It isn't, but I don't spend half my time doing it. I spend just a bit of my time doing it.

~~~

One of the differences I've seen between Sith Inquisitor and any WoW caster is how many more insta cast abilities the SI has. As long as you don't get knockbacked onto another level of the map (I'm looking at you, Hutball) then you should be ok. Knocked into a loose formation? Cast the insta heal or the dot while you run back to the main. /shrug

I just feel like it's too early to throw in the towel and say "4 boxing will be way too hard at launch." Some of the brightest people I've ever known are active here on this site and I'm positive that with all/many of them working on these problems (follow, assist etc) we'll have an entirely workable setup for 4 boxing within the first week.

I guess we'll see, but for now I've got super excited face on

There is no IWT and autoface only works if you have LOS when you begin casting a channeled or casted spell, so this is good news for Mercenaries/Commandos and Inquisitors where their primary DPS ability is casted or channeled. Once you initiate the attack everyone will track and if you time it perfectly they will continue start right into their next attack without losing LOS. Problem then becomes once you get blasted via knock back, you have significant down time as you gather everyone back up line someone up and start DPSing again.

The reason why I think Scoundrels and Operatives might very well be the best 4 man PvP team is for this reason.

With the way autofollow works when tied into a DPS rotation, they will swing and then follow you. Each down stroke breaks autofollow, but each keystroke up turns it back on. Operatives have a bag full of tricks. First they have stealth and vanish. They have self shield, healing/hots. They have the ability to long duration mez out of stealth, but they also get short duration AOE mezes. They have CRAZY burst damage that only snipers/gun slingers can really hope to match.

Sages and Inquisitors really have low DPS, in fact they might have the lowest DPS of any class in the game. Take for example a level 50 Mercenary spamming tracer missile. This is a 1.5s casted ability. The GCD is right around 1.5s, I think it might actually be 1.5s. So what you have with tracer missile is a reverse weighted GCD ability because by the time it executes it is ready to be cast again.

Inquisitor burst is based off of force lightning combined with procs that make their next casted ability instant. Force lightning for example at level 50 is going to do about 1500 damage if memory serves over the channeled time which is 3s (I think, it might be more, I haven't played a Sorc since last build over a month ago! ;p ) Tracer Missile hits for about 900-1200 non crit every 1.5s and crits are 1600-2k (Both characters in fresh level 50 pvp gear). Mercenaries can also through a railshot or a heart seeker instantly right in behind tracer and these abilities hit as hard or harder than tracer. Best case scenario for a Mercenary is a 4-5k burst in one GCD. Best cast scenario for a Sorceror is probably half of that in a 1.5s GCD. The difference is, Sorcerors and Sages can DPS forever. They have essentially no fall off in terms of DPS output whereas a Mercenary has to keep their heat level in an optimal zone.

If you run 4 characters, I think that looking strongly at commandos and or mercenaries is going to be a very good idea. They have much higher front loaded damage, they rock tank level mitigation once their DPS is humming along and they can all heal. Additionally, if perspective locking ever becomes possible with the camera in game, you gain access to the absolute beastliest AOE's in the game. Death from Above and Mortar while unusable currently while boxing due to the perspective drifting are probably the best abilities in the game. Four of those sync'd up will kill *EVERYONE* caught in them for the full duration.

I got off point, I wanted to talk about Operatives! Ok, so the way follow works in game right now makes me think melee will be easier to manage and keep on target for PvP. A group of 4 operatives will mow through people lightning fast and the follow range will keep them DPSing on the target. Basically I see it working basically like this. Go up the melee tree, get ranged snare 100% 2s immobalize, work that into a round robin spam every 4s. This means that 6 out of 12s your target will be stuck allowing you to line up lacerate bursts. Throw in your melee stun on top of that and your 4 AOE mez's and you have all the disables you need to line up lacerate bursts which will blow people up.

For you specifically Mosg2 if you are dead set on running 4, consider running a BH powertech or Trooper Vanguard with 3 Sorcs or Sages. The PT/Vanguard is a range based tank, better yet for you however is that this class has a pull which has obvious implications for PvP. You can yoink people off of your Sorcs to set them up to get DPS'd. With a 4x Sorc/Sage setup you are going to struggle in flashpoints and many 4 man heroics that have bosses. With 1 PT and 3 Sorcs, you have probably the best PvE squad in the game.

[Apps]

yup. reading is hard. I missed that comment. Tkx Crum

[Crum1515]

<3

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