Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2013 20:46:04 GMT
**This thread contains game spoilers. Do not open up spoiler tags unless you wish to see them.**
I routinely witness poor playing styles on Level 55+ runs that I'd like to address in this thread. Nobody is perfect, but I do expect everyone to have a certain level of competency when they come on runs (unless you are new and just lack some experience, of course).
If you are unfamiliar with an end game run, you can always check out the wiki page for the run summary and bestiary beforehand.
DM Vichya has developed and generously shared a tool called HGX (Higher Ground Extender) which not only logs runs to see how you are doing but also overlays monster information to help you out. You can find out more here.
With that said, here is a non-exhaustive list of common issues I observe, in some loose order of importance:
1. Helping disabled party members
Every class has easy access to player tool 2 to pick up knocked down characters and either a demistore rod, scrolls, or stoneater rings to unstone people. When a pit fiend jumps in the air people should be aware of who gets knocked down, especially when people are right in front of them. Look out for your party members and not just yourself.
Bards who want to focus on support can actually use the Q and E keys (sidestep) to prevent themselves from going flatfooted while at the same time be able to immediately pick up a party member that gets knocked down without having to wait 6 seconds.
2. Why do I keep dying?
Most common answer #1*: You were flatfooted.
This is especially true for casters. Casters ideally should be casting one spell after the other nonstop until their job is done. Going flatfoot of your own accord will get you killed. If you are a druid, don't be standing still for 2 seconds in a spawn before and after you cast NB. If you have to position yourself, at least sidestep using Q and E to prevent yourself from losing a lot of AC. You should be queuing spells before or immediately after the last one finishes. In my experience, using the WASD keys tend to frequently leave you flatfooted but using the mouse to move is generally safer.
Finally you can use defensive casting mode. I have this bound to F1 on all my casters. Sometimes it is hard to get activated due to bioware bugginess but usually if you activate it right before starting to queue spells it will work. This will prevent monsters from making attacks of opportunity on you, increasing your survivability.
Most common answer #2*: You were wearing bad immunity rings. In hells you should gear up 70%+ magic and all elements (can skip slightly on sonic); abyss you should gear up all elements and 70%+ div on az/gm/than, gear up div/pos on shed and gear up 70%+ pos on zio.
Another word on immunity rings: always wear breach immunity in hell excepting dis/malb. Otherwise you most probably will lose your buffs and most probably will die.
Also realize that inflictions decrease your immunities until you become restored, so it's a good idea to restore yourself often. Many people die because their fire imm is at -500% or something at the end of a spawn and then they go on without restoring.
*These answers aren't guaranteed to be correct.
3. SR = Spell resistance
Learn the SR of every mob. As any caster your spells will not reliably work on anything with an SR > 80 (unless you are a PM/pariah). Look if the monster(s) are green (denotes NB) or have a red sign above their head (denotes bestow curse) BEFORE wasting spells on these high SR targets. On that note: saves are equally as important. Sorcs should be using energy drain to lower save (of a level-drain vulnerable monster) instead of trying to disintegrate something with 55 fort as an example; more on clerics below.
Handy tip: Turn off all combat logs. Use !filter saves and !filter sp, which will then display only save and spell penetration checks. This allows you to more easily understand what is happening when you cast spells.
4. Clerics are not just implodebots
It's important to prayer every spawn to decrease saves/AB by 3. Ideally the situation should go something like this:
tank/bard runs to draw aggro/curse
Druid follows behind and lands NB
Cleric should start casting prayer a split second after druid starts casting NB to get maximum effectiveness out of prayer
Obviously sometimes you will get a slacker druid that doesn't diligently NB so you will have to prayer on mobs without SR reduction, which sucks but is better than nothing.
If you are an evil cleric, use enervates on tougher monsters to drop their imms unless you have a good PM or lash in the party.
Finally, a cleric needs to be aware of which monsters are turning yellow (meaning they are affected by battletide). Ideally, all mobs should be yellow and prayered every spawn. This means a cleric should be in the middle of the spawn at basically all times. A cleric staying in the back of the party casting nothing but implosions is missing out on a large part of the class.
5. Druids are not just shuntbots
One of the most important abilities of druid is casting nature's balance (NB), level 8. It's a good idea to keep at least 20-30 of these slotted. Make sure everything in a spawn is green (the visual effect that NB applies to monsters) unless it has really low SR (like 72 or less). Make sure to queue up spells and don't go flatfooted. One good tactic is to use the mouse to direct yourself to a destination, then right before you stop moving click your NB hotkey to avoid going flatfooted. Right after NB finishes you should already be sidestepping/clicking away or queueing more spells to avoid going flatfooted.
Druids can lesser restore (level 2) themselves once per round as a free action to get rid of inflictions. This is a useful ability and as a result I quickslot lesser restore to F4 on my druid.
Finally you should be aware of the druid duties after you are done with NB on any particular run. In general, this means:
- Drowning trash mobs (particularly Kocrachons, almost every humanoid in Azzagrat, and also Abyssal Ant Swarms)
- Stoning (Jovocs, Rakshasa, Infestiarchs, Excruciarchs, Flesh Jellies, Resinous Geysers, Abyssal Zombies (if no imploder))
- Crumbling (most constructs and stoned monsters, also Narzugons)
- Desert Sirroco (level 2) - Instakill fume-like monsters such as Pyrexic Fume, Living Cold, Blood Wind, and Abyssal Sunbeam (If you have a cleric in the party, it's generally a good idea to leave this job to them as they get a much higher DC on implosion)
- Defoliating (this is basically only for viper trees in Azzagrat and Zionyn but you can also defoliate Bone Moss in Thanatos and Phycomids in Shedaklah, among other things)
- Poisons (mainly in hells - you can throw this on stuff that a shifter uses iron golem breath on)
- Direct damage (Harms, Firestorms, Fissures, Ice lances, Call lightnings)
- Creeps for boss fights (if you have any illusion foci- alternatively, can get some from items)
- Some heals if you go to abyss or Nessus
6. Bard Support Duties
Other than general support failures as per point 1, the main problem I see with bards is failing to bc mobs with a poor druid or no druid. Slot regular and extended bestow and learn to use them on anything with SR >= 80. Your cleric and sorc will be eternally grateful. If you don't have a cleric in party use wail of doom on monsters with low SR (fume, to drop their saves/AB).
Please also quickslot taunt(which should be set to persuade mode using !opt tauntpersuade) and persuade all the high-sr monsters. NB is not nearly enough SR drop for many paragon monsters in the mod to reliably land spells on, so it's important for the bard to have 127 persuade and continuously persuade high-SR targets (examples: ichor, brood serpent, advespa, jovoc, arcane ooze, alkilith, ekolids, death knight) even after they get NB'd.
Also realize that 1 curse sometimes does not curse all monsters in a spawn (due to possible backspawn, randoms, or summoned monsters).
Finally, please give out displacement to people that don't get innate conceal (primarily from EV/empty body) or have high hide skill (this means they can gain high conceal from camoflage). In general this means give displacement clerics and str tanks (excepting ranger/assassin). If you see a barbarian or cleric or paladin, for example, they shouldn't have to beg for displacement from you every rest.
7. Prioritizing targets > Mass damage spam festival
If you are in a run with very high priority targets, in my experience the run goes much smoother and faster when these get taken out first. E.g. in thanatos, artaaglith needs to go first, almost no exceptions. Even now I still see fumes, machines, and raks routinely dealt with last. In general these tasks are left to the cleric and arcane, though tanks for example make good artaaglith hunters (WARNING for thanatos: double spawns common, be careful if you don't know the spawn points well).
7. Tanks should not be lemurehunters
Tanks should be taking out non-crittables/non-instakillables first*. Unless you get a cleric/druid/arcane that is so terrible that they don't know how to take out imps or ice reavers, there is no need to attack those first. They will die to instakill spells and therefore it is more helpful to leave the instakillables to the instakillers. Please for the love of pelor don't attack an osyluth before a pit fiend (osyluths are vulnerable to death magic, stoning, ability damage, aren't as dangerous, etc).
*Assassins and rangers get some leniency in this department.
8. "Required" schools
I use the term required in quotation marks because you can still complete runs with casters without having these schools that I list below for each caster; hence these schools are not really required. However, in the interest of completing runs as quickly and painlessly as possible I list the following guidelines below.
Arcanes: Evocation, Illusion
Clerics: Evocation, Divination, Necromancy
Druids : Evocation, Transmutation
Bards : Enchantment, Illusion, Transmutation, Necromancy (if doing abyss)
9. General Shifter Advice
In general I see shifters do a good job compared to tanks and casters, which is nice because they are a very powerful class. However some shifters might still be confused as to what they are good at.
First, the most important thing: If there is no bard in the party, you are basically expected to harpy curse. Curse is a huge boost to a party's effectiveness, and it's a shame to not use this powerful shifter ability when a bard is not present.
Please, please take construct form. Learn which targets to use iron golem on. You should also be using medusa on targets like raks, kocrachon/infestiarch, crystal ooze (from aboleths), flesh jellies and basilisk on high-SR death vulnerable targets like advespa, narzugon, osyluth, yuan-ti and tieflings.
It's a good idea to beg for GR from the cleric if you are in a run where you know you will be using iron golem a lot because it's one of the most dc-dependent abilities in the mod.
Marut grapple is useful for several monsters in the mod, including: orthons, lagathti, aboleths, draudnu, babau (other less-important targets too but these are the main ones).
Also realize that using dragon form is a huge annoyance for the party due to its size. For this reason I recommend against taking dragon form altogether. Humanoid, undead, and outsider forms are all good complementary form foci to construct in different situations.
Pt2 does work while shifted.
The best advice I can give someone who wants to become a fast and efficient caster is to learn your quickbar hotkeys. Memorize F1-F12, memorize the spells and other things you place in the three quickbars so you don't have to keep looking to see what's there. Never use the mouse to select a quickbar slot as this will slow you down.
Edited to add more advice, change title and clean up a bit.
I routinely witness poor playing styles on Level 55+ runs that I'd like to address in this thread. Nobody is perfect, but I do expect everyone to have a certain level of competency when they come on runs (unless you are new and just lack some experience, of course).
If you are unfamiliar with an end game run, you can always check out the wiki page for the run summary and bestiary beforehand.
DM Vichya has developed and generously shared a tool called HGX (Higher Ground Extender) which not only logs runs to see how you are doing but also overlays monster information to help you out. You can find out more here.
With that said, here is a non-exhaustive list of common issues I observe, in some loose order of importance:
1. Helping disabled party members
Every class has easy access to player tool 2 to pick up knocked down characters and either a demistore rod, scrolls, or stoneater rings to unstone people. When a pit fiend jumps in the air people should be aware of who gets knocked down, especially when people are right in front of them. Look out for your party members and not just yourself.
Bards who want to focus on support can actually use the Q and E keys (sidestep) to prevent themselves from going flatfooted while at the same time be able to immediately pick up a party member that gets knocked down without having to wait 6 seconds.
2. Why do I keep dying?
Most common answer #1*: You were flatfooted.
This is especially true for casters. Casters ideally should be casting one spell after the other nonstop until their job is done. Going flatfoot of your own accord will get you killed. If you are a druid, don't be standing still for 2 seconds in a spawn before and after you cast NB. If you have to position yourself, at least sidestep using Q and E to prevent yourself from losing a lot of AC. You should be queuing spells before or immediately after the last one finishes. In my experience, using the WASD keys tend to frequently leave you flatfooted but using the mouse to move is generally safer.
Finally you can use defensive casting mode. I have this bound to F1 on all my casters. Sometimes it is hard to get activated due to bioware bugginess but usually if you activate it right before starting to queue spells it will work. This will prevent monsters from making attacks of opportunity on you, increasing your survivability.
Most common answer #2*: You were wearing bad immunity rings. In hells you should gear up 70%+ magic and all elements (can skip slightly on sonic); abyss you should gear up all elements and 70%+ div on az/gm/than, gear up div/pos on shed and gear up 70%+ pos on zio.
Another word on immunity rings: always wear breach immunity in hell excepting dis/malb. Otherwise you most probably will lose your buffs and most probably will die.
Also realize that inflictions decrease your immunities until you become restored, so it's a good idea to restore yourself often. Many people die because their fire imm is at -500% or something at the end of a spawn and then they go on without restoring.
*These answers aren't guaranteed to be correct.
3. SR = Spell resistance
Learn the SR of every mob. As any caster your spells will not reliably work on anything with an SR > 80 (unless you are a PM/pariah). Look if the monster(s) are green (denotes NB) or have a red sign above their head (denotes bestow curse) BEFORE wasting spells on these high SR targets. On that note: saves are equally as important. Sorcs should be using energy drain to lower save (of a level-drain vulnerable monster) instead of trying to disintegrate something with 55 fort as an example; more on clerics below.
Handy tip: Turn off all combat logs. Use !filter saves and !filter sp, which will then display only save and spell penetration checks. This allows you to more easily understand what is happening when you cast spells.
4. Clerics are not just implodebots
It's important to prayer every spawn to decrease saves/AB by 3. Ideally the situation should go something like this:
tank/bard runs to draw aggro/curse
Druid follows behind and lands NB
Cleric should start casting prayer a split second after druid starts casting NB to get maximum effectiveness out of prayer
Obviously sometimes you will get a slacker druid that doesn't diligently NB so you will have to prayer on mobs without SR reduction, which sucks but is better than nothing.
If you are an evil cleric, use enervates on tougher monsters to drop their imms unless you have a good PM or lash in the party.
Finally, a cleric needs to be aware of which monsters are turning yellow (meaning they are affected by battletide). Ideally, all mobs should be yellow and prayered every spawn. This means a cleric should be in the middle of the spawn at basically all times. A cleric staying in the back of the party casting nothing but implosions is missing out on a large part of the class.
5. Druids are not just shuntbots
One of the most important abilities of druid is casting nature's balance (NB), level 8. It's a good idea to keep at least 20-30 of these slotted. Make sure everything in a spawn is green (the visual effect that NB applies to monsters) unless it has really low SR (like 72 or less). Make sure to queue up spells and don't go flatfooted. One good tactic is to use the mouse to direct yourself to a destination, then right before you stop moving click your NB hotkey to avoid going flatfooted. Right after NB finishes you should already be sidestepping/clicking away or queueing more spells to avoid going flatfooted.
Druids can lesser restore (level 2) themselves once per round as a free action to get rid of inflictions. This is a useful ability and as a result I quickslot lesser restore to F4 on my druid.
Finally you should be aware of the druid duties after you are done with NB on any particular run. In general, this means:
- Drowning trash mobs (particularly Kocrachons, almost every humanoid in Azzagrat, and also Abyssal Ant Swarms)
- Stoning (Jovocs, Rakshasa, Infestiarchs, Excruciarchs, Flesh Jellies, Resinous Geysers, Abyssal Zombies (if no imploder))
- Crumbling (most constructs and stoned monsters, also Narzugons)
- Desert Sirroco (level 2) - Instakill fume-like monsters such as Pyrexic Fume, Living Cold, Blood Wind, and Abyssal Sunbeam (If you have a cleric in the party, it's generally a good idea to leave this job to them as they get a much higher DC on implosion)
- Defoliating (this is basically only for viper trees in Azzagrat and Zionyn but you can also defoliate Bone Moss in Thanatos and Phycomids in Shedaklah, among other things)
- Poisons (mainly in hells - you can throw this on stuff that a shifter uses iron golem breath on)
- Direct damage (Harms, Firestorms, Fissures, Ice lances, Call lightnings)
- Creeps for boss fights (if you have any illusion foci- alternatively, can get some from items)
- Some heals if you go to abyss or Nessus
6. Bard Support Duties
Other than general support failures as per point 1, the main problem I see with bards is failing to bc mobs with a poor druid or no druid. Slot regular and extended bestow and learn to use them on anything with SR >= 80. Your cleric and sorc will be eternally grateful. If you don't have a cleric in party use wail of doom on monsters with low SR (fume, to drop their saves/AB).
Please also quickslot taunt(which should be set to persuade mode using !opt tauntpersuade) and persuade all the high-sr monsters. NB is not nearly enough SR drop for many paragon monsters in the mod to reliably land spells on, so it's important for the bard to have 127 persuade and continuously persuade high-SR targets (examples: ichor, brood serpent, advespa, jovoc, arcane ooze, alkilith, ekolids, death knight) even after they get NB'd.
Also realize that 1 curse sometimes does not curse all monsters in a spawn (due to possible backspawn, randoms, or summoned monsters).
Finally, please give out displacement to people that don't get innate conceal (primarily from EV/empty body) or have high hide skill (this means they can gain high conceal from camoflage). In general this means give displacement clerics and str tanks (excepting ranger/assassin). If you see a barbarian or cleric or paladin, for example, they shouldn't have to beg for displacement from you every rest.
7. Prioritizing targets > Mass damage spam festival
If you are in a run with very high priority targets, in my experience the run goes much smoother and faster when these get taken out first. E.g. in thanatos, artaaglith needs to go first, almost no exceptions. Even now I still see fumes, machines, and raks routinely dealt with last. In general these tasks are left to the cleric and arcane, though tanks for example make good artaaglith hunters (WARNING for thanatos: double spawns common, be careful if you don't know the spawn points well).
7. Tanks should not be lemurehunters
Tanks should be taking out non-crittables/non-instakillables first*. Unless you get a cleric/druid/arcane that is so terrible that they don't know how to take out imps or ice reavers, there is no need to attack those first. They will die to instakill spells and therefore it is more helpful to leave the instakillables to the instakillers. Please for the love of pelor don't attack an osyluth before a pit fiend (osyluths are vulnerable to death magic, stoning, ability damage, aren't as dangerous, etc).
*Assassins and rangers get some leniency in this department.
8. "Required" schools
I use the term required in quotation marks because you can still complete runs with casters without having these schools that I list below for each caster; hence these schools are not really required. However, in the interest of completing runs as quickly and painlessly as possible I list the following guidelines below.
Arcanes: Evocation, Illusion
Clerics: Evocation, Divination, Necromancy
Druids : Evocation, Transmutation
Bards : Enchantment, Illusion, Transmutation, Necromancy (if doing abyss)
9. General Shifter Advice
In general I see shifters do a good job compared to tanks and casters, which is nice because they are a very powerful class. However some shifters might still be confused as to what they are good at.
First, the most important thing: If there is no bard in the party, you are basically expected to harpy curse. Curse is a huge boost to a party's effectiveness, and it's a shame to not use this powerful shifter ability when a bard is not present.
Please, please take construct form. Learn which targets to use iron golem on. You should also be using medusa on targets like raks, kocrachon/infestiarch, crystal ooze (from aboleths), flesh jellies and basilisk on high-SR death vulnerable targets like advespa, narzugon, osyluth, yuan-ti and tieflings.
It's a good idea to beg for GR from the cleric if you are in a run where you know you will be using iron golem a lot because it's one of the most dc-dependent abilities in the mod.
Marut grapple is useful for several monsters in the mod, including: orthons, lagathti, aboleths, draudnu, babau (other less-important targets too but these are the main ones).
Also realize that using dragon form is a huge annoyance for the party due to its size. For this reason I recommend against taking dragon form altogether. Humanoid, undead, and outsider forms are all good complementary form foci to construct in different situations.
Pt2 does work while shifted.
The best advice I can give someone who wants to become a fast and efficient caster is to learn your quickbar hotkeys. Memorize F1-F12, memorize the spells and other things you place in the three quickbars so you don't have to keep looking to see what's there. Never use the mouse to select a quickbar slot as this will slow you down.
Edited to add more advice, change title and clean up a bit.
