solo vs group rant

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

so I was happily soloing quests to get to 18 and I saw a group come up and thought 'hey - how bad can it be?'

People: please learn that playing solo is different from playing in a group

when you are running solo, then it's fine to lay down 5 blade barriers and kite the mobs through while trying to keep yourself alive.

when in a group: running around in a circle with the 4 dps speced melee trying to chase the mobs you're kiting while you're doing 10% of the damage the melee could be doing is not constructive.

yes - have fun when you're soloing but please note that tactics when you're in a group are very different from tactics when you're soloing so please adjust them.

Garth

[Visty]

stop chasing the mobs, stand in a bunch, hackaway and let him drag the mobs into you

youre his 6th bladebarrier then

[RATRACE931]

Hard to disagree with either of you, though i lean more towards Garth, it is very irritating to see a caster/clr/fvs kiting a multitude of mobs through an AoE when i could rip a hole through it in 1/8 of the time. Though i have noticed that the idiot casters "AI" seems to bug out when you body block whatever they are kiting and they usually take a massive amount of damage seemingly as if from nothing... this is also fun.

[samho]

If the group lack the ability to CC (i.e. no intimidate, no caster's web / dancing) AND it cost less to lay down a blade barrier to clear up a whole room's monster than heal those so called DPS speced melee, you could bet what we would do.


It's not about the said cleric / fvs want to have fun or own the kill count or not, it's all about spell point effectiveness. It's also one kind of tactic. (Not that melee swing their weapon was not the only sound tacitc in group scenario, mind you.)

[moops]

Aw Gaarth your just spoiled because the person who plays their cleric most in QE does not use that method Of course, I dont use BB because you guys tear through anything better than BB can and you all don't need much healing. Even many pugs are duel wielding lightning 2s these days and can take down mobs faster than BB without much damage.

I agree BB is boring, and it takes much longer than a *good* group making a combined effort.

Also, I think it lends to people getting to high levels and flagged for raids without actually knowing how to play their alts, or what their alts can do when a Cleric/Fvs/CAster does all the work. Im sure We all know people on our servers whom drag their guildies through all the quests by killing everything themselves, meanwhile their guildies don't have the first clue when they join pugs, and tend to be a burden on the party if doing harder content where they need to keep up and contribute a specific role without dying.

[Xyfiel]

so I was happily soloing quests to get to 18 and I saw a group come up and thought 'hey - how bad can it be?'

People: please learn that playing solo is different from playing in a group

when you are running solo, then it's fine to lay down 5 blade barriers and kite the mobs through while trying to keep yourself alive.

when in a group: running around in a circle with the 4 dps speced melee trying to chase the mobs you're kiting while you're doing 10% of the damage the melee could be doing is not constructive.

yes - have fun when you're soloing but please note that tactics when you're in a group are very different from tactics when you're soloing so please adjust them.

Garth

I shall continue to kite, screw the melee. I do more dps then them(300+dps per mob), have better ac/saves/defenses then them, and get mana back when I get hit. If they wanted a healbot, they got the wrong cleric. They should be happy I decided not to solo the quest, it is normally faster.
Although, I am sure my cleric is in the minority in capability. Only wish my other characters could say the same.

[moops]

I shall continue to kite, screw the melee. I do more dps then them(300+dps per mob), have better ac/saves/defenses then them, and get mana back when I get hit. If they wanted a healbot, they got the wrong cleric. They should be happy I decided not to solo the quest, it is normally faster.
Although, I am sure my cleric is in the minority in capability. Only wish my other characters could say the same.

There are other more effective ways a cleric can kill while in group---In most grouped quests A zapper can kill faster and more than a BB cleric. I am by no means a healbot. I see nothing wrong with zapping stuff, while my other party members entertain themselves meleeing stuff, and QE rips through content fast anyway--Your BB will not always do 300 a tick in end game content and really does not match the DPS of even medicore groups.

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

I shall continue to kite, screw the melee. I do more dps then them(300+dps per mob), have better ac/saves/defenses then them, and get mana back when I get hit. If they wanted a healbot, they got the wrong cleric. They should be happy I decided not to solo the quest, it is normally faster.
Although, I am sure my cleric is in the minority in capability. Only wish my other characters could say the same.

hey I've nothing against the cleric who wants to solo the quest, but if you're going to solo then solo, no need to bring melee along who are just going to get frustrated because they can't hit the mobs you're running around.

All I ask is that people play more than one samey 'tactic' all the time and adjust their tactics when they need to be adjusted. Don't play in a group like you play solo.

And your BB doesn't do more dps than a single melee, let alone 4 of them.

Garth

[Samadhi]

hey I've nothing against the cleric who wants to solo the quest, but if you're going to solo then solo, no need to bring melee along who are just going to get frustrated because they can't hit the mobs you're running around.

All I ask is that people play more than one samey 'tactic' all the time and adjust their tactics when they need to be adjusted. Don't play in a group like you play solo.

And your BB doesn't do more dps than a single melee, let alone 4 of them.

Garth

It's not about how much damage it does - it is about how much it takes.

Sure, if I have four well built and well paid melees, I can hit the afk button and they will take care of things just fine. For even average melees in difficult quests, however, it can be considerably more mana effective to BB than to keep them alive.

[Dragonhyde]

There are ways to make the stuff stop chasing the cleric thru a BB. If the meelee are getting really bored or it is taking way too long, I have been known to start dancing mobs so the meelee can clear them out

[jcoffey]

A caster with Firewall or Banshee can usually kill a herd of mobs easier and quicker than a group,I know and see it done all the time.This is level 10+ of course.

[Lleren]

Don't chase the player flying a kite
Stand in thier kite path, or be a Turret in the center of thier path.
Classic mmorpg tactic.

Now the countertactic is to just go pull more groups of mobs to the those damaging area effect spells. You don't want to waste the mana they spent on them after all.

[Dragonhyde]

A caster with Firewall or Banshee can usually kill a herd of mobs easier and quicker than a group,I know and see it done all the time.This is level 10+ of course.

But those aoe spells can work whether the mob is able to follow the caster or not.

[Dozen_Black_Roses]

Back to the OP....

I hear what you are saying Gaarth completely. I recall a week or so ago in ,(if memory serves me correctly), Let Sleeping Dust Lie--we had an assassin rogue in the party. He goes off on his own doing his thing. Now, he was managing fine, not dying or anything like that, not raising the DA level. But the whole time, I am wondering why join a group if you are just going to go off and solo things. When I am on a caster I dont go and finger every mob, I tab target, and try my best to get the ones the melees are not going after. But, hey that's me, and if I want to solo, I solo and then maybe throw an lfm up if ppl want to come in for the end chest or what not. But I dont join pugs with the intent of running off or casting in a manner that centers around myself. ~shrugs~

[BigNastyMP]

You are getting soft. What would Kirris say to this rant? Yah, that's right, noob points.

If you cannot pull agro from a caster, arcane or divine, that's your problem.

[MrCow]

And your BB doesn't do more dps than a single melee, let alone 4 of them.

That depends highly on the monster in question and how their pathing works. I remember back in module 5-7 when the pathing was such that if you placed a blade barrier in a specific spot for Litany of the Dead (Cholthulzz side), Cholthulzz would take 10-12 hits per second because he would spasm back and forth in one of the corners, causing him to perform collision hits against the blade barrier rapidly.

Now-a-days with non-humanoids and non-casters, you can usually get them to weave in and out about twice a second, sometimes more, sometimes less. That is generally more damage than a single melee's damage output if the cleric has a good DC vs. the monster in question along with maximize and empower.

[Ghoste]

It's not a question of collective melee dps vs caster dps, it's a question of whether you should even stick around. If the cleric is managing one group of monsters just fine, move on a kill the next group. If you can't manage one encounter without the cleric (who can clearly manage one without the rest of you - not saying the whole dungeon, just one encounter), then it is your tactics that need refining.

[Xyfiel]

I just wanted to add my cleric also has 60 intimidate. I don't want to heal melee whether mediocre or not. It is a waste of sps. I can kite them or intimidate them, and I have 70+ self buffed ac, all saves 35+, evasion, and quickened self healing. I want them to hit me, I can heal the minor damage taken, and sometimes get the sps back anyway. More sps for nuking and insta death. Either using bb or turtling the damage taken is minimal. Wouldn't you want the cleric to be adding dps and speeding the quest? Why would anyone want to sit there and babysit 4 dps melee when you can do so much more? Note I am not referring to epic either.

An even funnier story is sometimes when melee are taking too long, I cast a bb then run over and intimidate them off the melee to kite them.

Funny, someone didn't like my first post. If some of you want to stay in disbelief over the dps a Cleric can do, have fun. If you can think of a good quest to have a challenge, I am game to prove you wrong. How about madstone elite? Me soloing vs 4 dps specced melee and you can only use dps. It is a dps challenge after all.

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-bb, it's a good tactic, the point of my post was that people need to adjust their tactics depending on the group they are in. The example of the assassin rogue a few posts above was good - I mean yes that's a tactic you would use solo but in a group it's not going to work, because people simply zerg too much.

Another example is charms, if you're soloing then they're really useful to help you complete the quest, but who hasn't been in that group where the caster charms a mob and you have to wait for it to uncharm to continue (not a problem now because of dismiss charm, thankfully)

Garth

[GeneralDiomedes]

If you want to kite stuff through BB and be the king of bad AI, more power to ya, but don't expect a group to think it's cool.