What to box with a Rogue

[sfdd]

Hi all,

I apologize in advance for the book - I appreciate your patience as you wade through this post .

I am setting up a 2nd account to box with my Rogue. The two primary builds that I use with the rogue are my melee and ranged roles.

My first thought is that it would be good to pair him up with a healer of some sort, but one that can switch between one soul that can heal well and put out ok DPS (so he can heal the Ranger pet when it is taking a beating) and one that can dish out some good DPS and heal a bit (for when the pig is tanking no problem). But then I start thinking more and I wander down a path of, hmm, maybe it would be better to build a more versatile cleric (like this one) that can wade in and take some beating from the mobs while my rogue melee build whoops on the back of the mob. And then I start wondering how this will work to box these two characters (having had a tough time in EQ keeping melee types on the mob as it moved around). And then I start thinking....

So it goes, and goes, and goes - I get so wrapped around the axle that I can't make a damned decision .

PLEASE HELP!!

I like the current roles that I have for my rogue, but I am open to suggestions there. In the end, I am looking for a good 2-box setup that consists of a rogue role (or two) and some other class role (or two). A couple of other background tidbits:

- I pretty much spend my time soloing, thus the reason I want to find a good pairing for the rogue. I am looking for not only a good class/role pairing, but also a pairing that won't drive me nuts trying to box them.

- I am in a guild, so I occasionally do instances, groups, and will likely do occasional raiding. I would likely play one character or the other in those kinds of situations (unless playing both becomes pretty smooth between using ISBoxer and the Rift macro'ing system).

- I currently play only PVE, but I am not against giving PVP a whirl at some point (I have never tried it...).

- I have a Logitech G13 gameboard and a Logitech mouse with a few programmable buttons on it - thus I have plenty of programmable keys in easy reach (I also have acccess to the Logitech macro'ing functionality on top of what can be done with ISBoxer and Rift). Hopefully this combo of things will make boxing a workable (enjoyable?) thing.

- Not that it really matters I suppose, but I am planning on each character being run on a seperate computer (neither of my machines works well with two sessions open unless I crank the graphics way down and I don't really want to do that if I don't have to).

Any help and/or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

I played a Rogue tank (rifstalker?) plus a melee cleric duo up to about 11. Worked well but I didn't really see enough taunt ability in the rogue tank. I ended up getting a third account and going the classic Warrior/Cleric/Rogue. That is a blast

For a second (or more) melee character fights need a bit more work from the tank char (assuming you are controlling the tank char). What I do is run through the mob to the other side, that way the followers are brought in to melee range and the back of the mob. When the followers are ranged classes I run straight up to the mob and that leaves the followers at range.

You will need to drag the melee chars around a bit with the tank in messy fights to make sure everyone is hitting what they are meant to be.

I have made macros for all the followers that go like this:
cast cooldown melee ability
cast instant melee ability
cast cooldown ranged ability
cast instant ranged ability

That way the followers can either do melee or ranged combat.

I think it would be very difficult to play a positional rogue though unless that is the char you are controlling all the time. Then the followers are going to get dragged all over the place while you get in position though. There is probably a way of doing it if you think about it for a while.

I would suggest starting a couple of character sets and see what is fun.

I use a Fang keyboard and also a Logitech G15 keyboard - the more customisable keys you have the easier life will be