Help on watching squad

Ingway - Sanctuary

I remember you... Girl who wants to do RBA right?

Okay. To your question...

LeLelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've noticed that sometimes the person taking the most agro is going to be the first one to pick up a poison DOT. I am wondering if it would be worth it to automatically hit this first person with 2 or 3 IH's, even before I know they need it.

Depends on how fast the mob drops. If it drops real fast, I wouldn't bother healing and purify only after mob dies. If it's just one guy fighting that thing (slow kill), one IH is usually enough to undo the DoT dmg. If it stacks, purify. It's more effective killing the mob yourself though.

Now for a more general question.

LeLelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

I see that I spend a lot of time with my eyes glued to the health display. Sometimes its the only way you can tell what is going on.

But I am wondering if there is more I can do to anticipate what is going to happen to the squad? It seems like sometimes I look at the fighting, its a mess and I can't tell who is taking agro, and who is going to need healing. By the time my eyes make it back to the health display, someone is already 80% dead and there's a 50/50 chance that I wont get a heal on them fast enough. Yet another dead squad member.

So I'm wondering if there are any tips, tricks, techniques or patterns that folks use to keep an eye on the squad.

I spend the first 5 minutes of the run looking at the overall personality of the squad. In the case of a good squad, mobs drop fast, and even if the squishies get a hit in, Wellspring is enough. Since there are more average and below average squads, the below 5 points impact my healing a lot more.

Class Type: Barbs and BMs definitely survive longer. Archers can take hits quite okay, while psychics and wizards almost always need to be instant-healed in a pinch.

Armor Type: This is directly relative to the mob they're engaging. If an AA wiz draws aggro from a Harpy, I'm not too concerned about placing him as a heal priority, versus a Barb under 4 Harpies' attack.

How fast mobs are dropped: If the squad is practically sweeping mobs, there's no real reason to 'predict' and heal people under aggro. I tend to toss in a Wellspring after they're done, and keep everyone's HP at max. If for example, an archer habitually takes aggro, can sustain dmg, but won't be killing the mob within the next three hits, casting 2 or so IH would be good.

How well each member takes hits: This is highly important in the way I prioritise my heals, especially in a chaos. An AA wiz who gets aggro from a physical mob is likely to suffer a 1/3~1/2 HP damage, so if this wiz at least starts kiting, I'd cast a Wellspring before stacking IH (or stack IH on onset). I wouldn't spam IH on a barb engaging 4 generals the way I would on an archer doing the same thing. Most of the time, every random from a certain class will take about the same amount of dmg, so if someone isn't taking hits well, might wanna check if he's wearing backdated armor and scale heals accordingly. And finally, consider if they have self defensive measures (e.g. archer who uses Winged Shell in a pinch) and see which heals are most effective.

Heal power: Since I can estimate my own heal powers, I use that to estimate how much people are taking damage and how much I'm overwriting the damage. Basically it's just math or something. (And mostly to do with mana preservation.)

In the case of all squad members under attack, the above considerations have almost always formed my decisions for heals.

Everything else, I think people have already mentioned.

Hope that helped.

Solae - Raging Tide

eep, so complicated lol x]
like mysti, i've played a healer many times
but in every game, there are different types of healing skills and all, and its different
example;
flyff the heals are super quick, long range, little mp cost and yu practically just hold the key for it down the whole time. super easy lmao
eso the heals take longer and heal for a mid chunk and also take a good chunk of yur mp, similar to WS here.

no game i've played really involved DoT healing as a main heal. i like to keep things real quick and simple, so what i do is i position myself in a place where there are no aggros around me, and make sure everyone is in range of my IH. if everyone is attacking at once, then i let them all attack first, then IH (IH is my f3) everyone on the squad bar, unless theyre a cleric or just someone who wont have to take any damage. i've learned to predict how much each wave of IH does for a certain amount of HP, and when i see that the damage taken is more than one shot of IH, i'll WS quickly. the IH lasts 15 seconds, and most likely they wont be killing a single mob for longer then that. usually the one IH is enough for the mob, but in cases where they have two on them, i'll just cast twice, and let it be until the damage taken is more then what is healed.
pretty simple. im all about saving pots and mp, so i just IH when i need to
it worked for me, and i've managed to keep everyone alive, and the only times where someone dies is if they do something awfully stupid. as a pure mag cleric, i heal enough so i dont have to worry about stacking 2 or 3 for everyone
even for a boss, i like to keep it at maybe 2 or 3, but then again during a boss, usually the tanks the only one taking dmg

i guess the only real tip to say is make sure yu know yur IH and WS buttons, mine are f3 and f6
i keep my ring finger on f3, and index on f6, and keep a good lookout for approaching aggros and make sure everyone has at least 1 IH on them


havee fun healingg le~

Engeli - Sanctuary

the way i do it is...

i keep looking at health bars in squad.
also i tend to place myself so, that i can see whos tanking and everyone else, if the boss should suddenly attackt another i can see it quick. wellspring surge for me is also a good heal, if you need to heal fast, and you are down on time.

if the squad suddenly agro a whole load of mobs, and everyones health bars get low (like in BH59 where u agro drake and the mobs there), i put up BB. hmm what else. can't remember more at the time... im a lil tired here. xD

LeLelle - Sanctuary

Ingway - Sanctuary wrote: »

I spend the first 5 minutes of the run looking at the overall personality of the squad.

The other day I looked at someones armor. May have been kitty's, I don't remember. And I can see the usefulness in your suggestion.

It's a shame you can't see people's stats. For instance: the epic minded, attack oriented assasin who overspent on dexterity, cutting himself short of vitatlity. He would probably have nice armor when you looked at it. It wouldn't be until this person died inappropriately that you would suspect there was a problem.

Ingway - Sanctuary wrote: »

How fast mobs are dropped: If the squad is practically sweeping mobs. . .

Two parts to initially evaluating a squad then? Looking at ther armor, then noting how they do.

Ingway - Sanctuary wrote: »

How well each member takes hits: This is highly important in the way I prioritise my heals, especially in a chaos. . .

And for my current dungeon, BH39, I have a reference mark. The exploding reverex shouldnt reduce HA by more that 15 - 20% of HP. Any more then I know I have a problem. I will have to come up with similar benchmarks for LA & maybe AA.

These are some good suggestions indeed. BH39 is long enough and sometimes hard enough to justify the extra effort.

Thank you for your time.

Roxiann - Heavens Tear

LeLelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

It's a shame you can't see people's stats. For instance: the epic minded, attack oriented assasin who overspent on dexterity, cutting himself short of vitatlity. He would probably have nice armor when you looked at it. It wouldn't be until this person died inappropriately that you would suspect there was a problem..

You can check how much health and mana they have by looking at their bars in the squad window. I do this often, to see how things are going to work out. I've had barbs with very low health for their level and other classes with almost no health at all which means I really need to watch out for them.

LeLelle - Sanctuary

Helr - Sanctuary wrote: »

Another useful thing to do is to keep an eye one which way the mob or boss is facing, they will always look at who they're hitting. Seeing them turn gives you a bit of extra time to react when they start attacking vs only watching the squad window. It may take a bit of practice, but its definitely worth it.

This one you kind of do instinctively, I think. But to do it consciously, with purpose, I can see the benefits.

Im remided of how I always got in trouble for my character facing while playing table top minis. . .

Padixeric - Sanctuary wrote: »

-->watch out for poison stacks on heavy armor though, they can go down fast ... purify, ih

This one, yeah. Unfortunately this one I think you have to learn by doing. b:sad Like those shruchken in BH39, I try to run ahead of the tank, get in to range, and get ready with the purify. Those are the ones with the blue flame DOTs that suck out all of ones mana.

LeLelle - Sanctuary

Paramedic - Dreamweaver wrote: »

. . .
watchin wats going on just by hp bars wont work too well if ppz gets hits for 50% hp. . .

There are times where the team display is not reliable.

Frijolero - Sanctuary wrote: »

. . .
However, on contrary to abnormal status, HP damage tends to appear 1-2 seconds after the member got hit, so you need to split your watch between the squad windows and the main screen.

1-2 seconds or more. I'm beginning to think it actually updates on the next hit. And I'm pretty sure this is a client issue. Gotta love it.

Picture: Dead squadmember

Aydamn - Lost City

I feel I'm a little late to this thread, but thought I might as well add my views. Generally I watch who has aggro, and the hp/debuffs of the squad on the left hand side. If the mobs or bosses turn you can generally tell who's pulled and react accordingly.

Qingzi - Harshlands

@LeLelle considering BH39 and Reverexes.

The thing is, those exploding guys do both physical AND fire damage.
So they hurt both HA and AA "very" hard.
When I venture into that place, those suckers still boom on me for ~800 damage.
And on my Psy, they explode for ~1300, I have 900 and I don't die.