How do you have your bot cast/assist you

[Taiglin]

Couldn't come up with a better subject line. Basically was wondering how you multi-boxers have your hotkeys set up. I have a boxed druid with 3 hotkeys set to target can cast on me, 4 to cast on who I am attacking/targeting, and the last is succor. As I am getting into more and more group and PoP situations I am wondering if I should rethink my hotkey setup. I have 2 computers so am using 2 keyboards. Isn't all that hard to reach over to hit the appropraite key but requires a bit more effort if say I am in a LDoN situation as the MH.

Anyway, just curious.

[Utqnia]

From memory, and I this is in "practice" because I have yet to run all three together.  However I set mine up standard across the 3 classes

First of all almost all the keys look like this

/assist Beastlord
/pause 5
/cast #
/pause 80
/sit

The next thing I did was try to standardize everything possible...  For instance

1=Nuke
2=Special (BL=Slow, Dru=Evac, Mag=GATE)
3=Swap
4=DOT
5=Swap
6=BL/MAG = Pet Buff   Dru=Swap
7=BL/MAG = Pet Heal  Dru=Fast Heal BL
8=BL/DRU = Best Heal MAG=Swap

I tried to keep all the common functions (they can all nuke, dot and heal) on the same spell gems, this helps in not having to think about what char you are on, if you want to kill something fast, they all need to kill 1.

The other thing I did was set ALL the hotkeys to simply cast that gem after the assist.  This helps ALOT because if you want to cast on a different person/monster, you already know what spell gem Heal is, you just have to target correctly.

So my first 8 basically are all /cast # icons

For the rest, I do 9=Sit/Stand  0=BL=Kick Dru=Forage Mag=(hmm i forget)

LIke I said before, I have yet to play all three together, I have been working on just the MAG/BST combo, and it works well, I am going to add the druid to the combo once he levels enough.

[Giledorm]

I have an assist key:

/assist Giledorm

an autoFollow key:

/target Giledorm
/pause 5
/follow

and a forage key:
/stand
/pause 5
/doability #
/autoinventory
/sit

The rest are done through the F2-F6 keys for group member targeting, or straight spell gem hotkeys.  That's what I've found to work best for me.  YMMV...

[Taiglin]

Sorry, wasn't real clear. What I was really wondering is if you had most of your hotkeys set to assist your main or target your main. In my case I have two heals that are set to target my main but with grouping that can be an issue if my main isn't the main damage taker. Part of the problem the physical space I have to work with. My laptop (bot machine) is on my right side and becuase of the way I operate it is more natural to use my left hand to hit f1-6 and then use the mouse to click the spell gems which are on the right side of the screen. That involves either reaching over my right arm or twisting my chair...or buying a desk that wrapped to the left I spose. If it is just a matter of hitting keys 1-10 I just do it with my right hand (fire and forget if you will) and continue paying attention to my main screen. Think the best solution for me since I really just want one bank of keys for the bot 90% of the time is to change them to assist Taig and then just target myself when I need a heal, DS, regen, etc.

[Giledorm]

Ahh.  Sorry, I'm normally duoing when dual-boxing, so i don't take my attention off the main.

[Dhantes]

not sure i understand exactly what your asking but when i 2box my cleric he is always boxed on the same comp as my main. I find it easier to box a healer on the same comp then use a healer on a 2nd comp. I 90% of the time have my sk targetted when i form groups  i make sure my sk is always leader so is f2 my clerics is always 2nd to join (f2 to my sk and everyone else and f1 to himself of course) anyways then when i need to heal i just hit alt+tab + f2-6 then push 1,2, 9 or 0 (cheal, quick heal, hot, SL) it works fine. Oh and on all my hotkeys are group messages casting such and such on %T ... so i know i pushed the hotkey... though i run with pc and npc spells on also so i can see that way too..

[Utqnia]

Grouping is never going to be easy while boxing.

In that instance I would take the time to set up a healing key for each person in the group, much like an /assist button on your main tank.

Set up the names to match your F2-F6 players on your main box.  When one needs a heal, you see  F3 - Warrior on your group box, so you know hotkey 3 is healing him with the type of heal he normally needs (CH in this case), however healing say a mage is probably a fast heal.

This is how I would set it up, it would be a bit of work, but once set up, you are really limiting your "thinking".

[Hereki]

Too much messing about with hotkeys for my taste.  I only ever use F1-F6 for targeting.  My heal hotkey heals whoever is targeted, and announces the heal.  I often use alt-n for spell casting, too.

I have a nostromo, too, which basically hits the hotkeys for me - but I keep the mouse and keyboard close, and use them as much if not more than the nostromo.

[Oiingo]

I have recently started doing more and more grouping with my beastlord and druid (with the druid as main healer) and found it was easiest to set my assist key to the beastlord since I focus more attention on that character.

It's easy enough to use the function keys to target other group members, especially after you've done a few heals and get ``in the groove'' with the main tank and target.

Only problem I have is that I don't like using hotkeys to do all my casting and sometimes miss when something fizzles.  Wish the EverQuest client had some sort of macro code built in so I could do:

1: /tar SuperTank
2: /cast heal_spell_gem_slot_number
3: /if NOTCAST go to 2
4: /g Big heal bomb inc %t, baby!

Guess it'd really dumb the game down for many, but I two box every chance I get and fizzles and being unable to cast (for whatever reason) really make this beastlord mad, even if I'm the only one to blame.

On that same subject, whatever happened to autostand when you begin casting while sitting?  Was that a bug?  Pretty moot since most of my XP time is spent in outdoors zones and my druid has a pony, but it was nice indoors.

[Hereki]

Autostand is there - it's in the Options panel under General.

If you want a simple antifizzle script:

/cast n
/pause 2
/cast n

And tune the pause interval.  I find that if I just wrap it around some other action that provided enough of a pause, as with:

/cast n
/g healing %t
/cast n