Help on watching squad

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.

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 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 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.