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.
Keymaps.JPG

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/1153009...eat=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