My primary boxing setup is SK/cleric/ranger with 3 rogue mercs. For years, my "main" was the cleric, but I now prioritize the SK with regards to gearing up. All my guys are primarily in ToV T3 gear, with the odd bit of T2 or chase loot gear here and there. I don't use 3rd party software to box...just alt-tab it. I was just curious if anyone else boxes that combo and if you have any tips to make it run smoother, like hotkey/macro setups. I don't typically have an issue on T1 trash mobs, but named and T2 tends to stress me out trying to tank and heal. Any tips or advice to make it "less" stressful would be appreciated.
Are you using multibinds in an efficient and effective manner? I too skew away from 3rd party stuff to box, those are going to be alot more effective though require a much much higher APM given all 3 of those classes has high APM. That's about the easiest way to really step up your game, using shield flash and deflect to give you breathing room so you can get a rhythm until you are accustomed to screen flipping 3 times per global cooldown. Outside of that, you picked 3 of the worst classes to macro with (which is why I am not suggesting it) you are pretty much going to have to screen flip and cycle remedies/summers/and frequent taps to be able to really get the most out of your chosen classes.
My main is a cleric, with SK box, i rarely heal with my cleric at all, and usually if im doing more than 2 i use a cleric merc to save my bacon a little more, if im in a group setting with guildies, my cleric basically sits there while my sk heals itself and dps just does their dps thing.
I can't really offer advice on the SK, but I roll with a war + clr and also alt+tab. My main advice would be trust your tanks aggro. Lock it good to start and if you need heals just play the healer after locking things up. The mercs should not out aggro you so you can just worry about keeping the tank up.
First of all, thank you to everyone that responded...I appreciate it. (I'm not in game, so I'm going from memory here) On the SK, my multibind is Dire, 2 Touches, Fang, Vulak's, Rending blade, Thwart, and Vicious bite. I've spread them out to try and not have any cool down time inbetween button mashes. I've tried to put a Terror and Protest into the mix, but they seem to gum up the works to the point where I'm mashing my keybind for 4 or 5 seconds before anything will start casting again. I cast those and Bond manually. On the cleric, I go with 2 remedies, 2 interventions, a renewal, and the Composite spell, again spread out to try and limit the lag time between castings. I've made a hotkey macro that casts three (I think) healing spells to try and give myself a cushion to get things under control with the SK, but I hate locking the cleric into a macro, even for just a short time. The ranger's keybind is as good as I can get it between spells and abilities. As long as I'm "driving" that toon, he's constantly casting without any lag between castings and activations. I only use one keybind, so no matter which toon I'm on, I'm just mashing the same button. If I replace the cleric with my rogue, the dynamic of the whole group COMPLETELY changes. There's way less stress in that setup, but having studied how and what healer mercs cast over the last couple of expansions, I don't know if I could trust a healer merc on a named mob. I will say than in ToV, the cleric became mostly a paperweight once I got the SK geared up. In that expansion, I basically cast a HoT spell, a direct heal to trigger Abundant Healing...and then just wait until I need to cure Restless Ice. I'm hoping that once I get the SK geared in CoV stuff, I'll have a similar situation.
I'd lean towards using Ward + Promised (for PI proc) on the cleric and Flash on the SK if you need cushion to get into your rhythm. And yeh theres alot of stress in boxing 3 toons that have really high APM.
Manually before a named, that buys you time after flash drops it will eat the first round while you are still establishing your rotation of heals on the cleric and getting aggro proper locked and getting your deepus rolling out on the ranger. That extra 2/3 seconds can be really helpful In a highly frenetic situation. Once geared becomes much less a concern and it gets alot more ho hum pewpew the named, but before your tank is adequately geared it could make or break the fight.
Make sure you hit Celestial Regen and Focus'd Celestial Regen on named or whenever its up, free heal over time that's pretty big that stacks with spell version, on a lot of named fights or big pulls i throw both of those on and sk is usually okay.
