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.

[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.

[Quikster]

This only happens to me when im really tired and mindlessly chasing mobs the cleric is kiting. Otherwise I usually move on and start killing something else. If I cant move on, I go afk till the cleric is done, then collect my loot :P

[Xyfiel]

Well my point was if the tactic was effective regardless of group quantity, and in the case of my cleric, I believe it is, why not do it? If we are referring to say my Ranger sneaking thru a quest, then no I don't do that in a group unless we need it. Please note I never disagreed with the theory, only the specifics relating to bb.

And General, AI can never be perfect. I will gladly stop using aoe spells like I do if casters can run out of spells, can be interrupted, and a cr 20 monster doesnt have immunities and 3k hps. Can you give a good rp reason why a monster wouldn't come after a PC even thru a harmful spell? We are in their home, trying to kill them. I still go thru traps and spells if I need to engage a threat on the other side.

[Kalari]

I get what your saying Garth but you have to realize this is the new DDO. Many people have the Solo mentality because thats what theyve had to do.

whether its self imposed due to not being able to put up with pugs. Self inflicted from being perma noobs (not new players just noobs who refuse to learn) Many playing ddo just have this "all about me mentality."

I think playing a cleric has many parts, healing is obvious but we do have other spells for a reason. It takes smarts or being wise (eh? hehe) to know when to utilize your spells for best effects.

Im sorry you went threw one of those "my blade barriers are better then you melee types." sadly I dont see this problem going away anytime soon. Too much of the team mentality has left this game outside of coordinated guild/friend runs and trying to get others to learn it will take a lot of work.

[moops]

But really, if Im grouping with people, I'm not going to play the same way I do when I solo, whats the point? And I think that is what Gaarth is getting at.

We all might be talking about different content here as well. In end game its not so easy to split your groups up, and despite being specc'd for damage as well as having Evocation Focus and Max Spell pen for BB I am not seeing 550 pts a tick in AMrath or Epic--maybe I just have bad luck.

I agree with the Cleric fight one group melee fighter another method, I used to do this all the time, but with DA its not as easy as all that anymore, esp in quests like Bastion and Sins--Red Alert is quite harsh but certainly a whole new fun challenge on a different level and I enjoy getting red alert on elite settings with my guildies, but not pugs.

I do pug alot, and I do see other clerics use ton of BB in Amrath (heck even inspiration quarter) and die all the time, and have maybe 2 kills for the whole quest, meanwhile out of mana and having to run back and find shrines-- if were even on Normal-- which slows quest down if you have to take them there or they can't live through respawns/wrong turns and have to go get them--my idea of grouping is that it goes a bit faster than if I solo or that I can sit back and chill and not have to do everything--just my small part, and maybe meet some new people.

While the people in this thread might be excellent at using BB and staying alive and taking down trash in a quick fashion without running out of SP, I think that it is misleading to newer players or newer clerics/fvs to make it sound so easy since many of you have been playing for almost 4 years and perhaps have kiting and SP management down to perfection. The amount Cleric/Fvs Deaths combined with running out of SP I see in pugs in AMrath are proof that not just anyone can use BB effectively.