Anyway to have a bot controlled character follow you as a pocket healer/DPS'er? Exactly what your ingame companion character does now.
Absolutely! You have to use multiboxing software such as Isboxer/Innerspace. Then simply run BW on your Slaves/followers. Do a search for more info.
Thanks! IsBoxer looks like it'll work perfectly. Does group healer work well for buddywing? I've read a lot of posts where people have had problems, lots of old posts though. Looks like the combat routines have been updated beautifully since then, least for dps.
You asked about a pocket healer which is why I said not possible at this time. If/when healing is fixed this would be much more viable. However as Praline pointed out (I'm not sure if he's actually used or tested this recently) Isboxer would theoretically work by giving you additional companions to follow you and be pocket healers or dps but I'm not so sure about the following and controls of the actual additional player. It would be great if someone with recent experience in this could jump in and possibly save you some time or money.
You will love Isboxer and their support is amazing. They recently had a great patch making setup with Swtor even easier. I don't use my "slaves" as healers though because BW is broken afa healing goes, but works perfectly otherwise. Instead I run a 4 man group consisting of a tank and 2 dps toons and run my Sage for heals manually. My slaves will attack/assist whatever I target as per Isboxer setup and configuration. If you want to run bigger groups for OPS, you will need a VMware setup, or separate computers because BW does not like more than 3 instances running - or at least I have not personally been able to run more than 3 and only have a license for 3. Good luck- it is fun to multibox with BW.
Just tried it out and I have to say... ITS SO MUCH FUN!! Soo easy to set up too. Opened up an entirely new way to play. I'm so happy you wrote about it.