groups: what mobs to fight?

[Lorthania]

Would like to hear your thoughts on this:

I don't group very often, but when I do, it appears to me that most people are only interested in taking on red or purple mobs and I still fail to see why.

It takes ages to get them down, you stand a fair chance of losing a group member and even if you don't, you need downtime after almost every single mob. I don't see the fun in that, when I play DAoC, I want some action . Where's the fun in sitting down half the time just to be able to take a high-level mob down? On top of this, adds are usually lethal and because you can't chainpull, you don't get too many drops either.

Personally, I prefer yellow/orange mobs, because they don't have all these disadvantages and you xp just as fast (if not faster). I could be wrong though, so I'd appreciate your two cents on this...

Lorth

 

[Urme the Legend]

If you got alot of downtime take easier mobs.. that simple.. some groups can chainpull red/purple mobs easy.
Depends on the group.

 

[VodkaFairy]

As said it depends on the group, if you have mainly melee classes than it doesn't matter much what you kill. Slow red/purps or fast yellow/orange. However if you find a few mages (ice wizards preferably) you can kill 3 red/purps in one pull very fast.

In albion the 'pbaoe group' isn't much used I think, but it's a very fast way of getting exp.

 

[Nightchill]

pbaoe on alb/pryd has started taking off it was the rage in Avalon City (40-50) when I was there and seems a fair few wiz's respec to Ice at 40. soon soon..

 

[Archeon]

About time you albi's started to figure it out. I've seen 3-4 PBAE wiz's compared to the legions that are at hib and mids desposal, this is on excal though. Probably the fire wiz's don't want to lose their 1337 bolts

 

[Lorthania]

Tnx for the first replies . Indeed, I do realize that the group you are in makes a big difference. The point I was trying to bring forward (wasn't really clear in my first post) is that sometimes, ppl go for reds and purps just because it looks l33t to be killing mobs way above your level, even if the group isn't up to it... Nevermind, maybe I'm just being too practical

 

[Twiz]

If you can find 1-2 pbaoe wizz's and 2 healers, and a few tanks, you should be able to chain pull red/purple without much trouble.

Remember to raise the morale a bit when in group. In mid, you should have 1 berzerker in the group, just for the morale. Nothing more fun wathcing a hamster dance or doing some other emotes instead of useing hamster mode against the mobs

-T

 

[VodkaFairy]

Originally posted by Lorthania
Tnx for the first replies . Indeed, I do realize that the group you are in makes a big difference. The point I was trying to bring forward (wasn't really clear in my first post) is that sometimes, ppl go for reds and purps just because it looks l33t to be killing mobs way above your level, even if the group isn't up to it... Nevermind, maybe I'm just being too practical

Agree with you here, there is a dungeon called 'Coruscating Mines' in hibernia and people always want to do tougher and tougher mobs. Even though there is no advantage from it and a high death risk

 

[old.tRoG]

Originally posted by Twiz
If you can find 1-2 pbaoe wizz's and 2 healers, and a few tanks, you should be able to chain pull red/purple without much trouble.

Remember to raise the morale a bit when in group. In mid, you should have 1 berzerker in the group, just for the morale. Nothing more fun wathcing a hamster dance or doing some other emotes instead of useing hamster mode against the mobs

-T

Or you could hire Trubadur, the all singing, all dancing, Skald!

... Please.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Good group = chain pull purps = fast exp = levelgrind relaxed a bit.

If you're in a group that wants to kill purps 'cause it looks 31337 then you're in a wrong group. Unless you want to look 31337 but then you wouldn't whine here about group wanting to kill big mobs but would be whining about why your class s00ks monk3hbaals.

 

[Arnor]

whatever you kill, its xp pr hour thats important, xp pr kill can be crap, but you can still be getting uber xp etc

 

[old.Jable]

and pull stuff that baffs!!! pulling single purples is sooo boring - id rather take a camp of yellow/orange stuff than sit and single pull purps.

 

[Validus]

a statisticly good group is bound to fall apart quickly with no morale anyway

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

If with peeps I'm unfamiliar with, I start a group out on something easy, to see how the players work together and to gauge what we can handle. Often, its something I can solo just to find out if peeps are basically awake. I work it up from there.

If with peeps I've grouped with a lot, its straight to the action wherever that happens to be.

Rough guide I go by is:

1-2 peeps, yellow/orange mobs. Red for occasional fun if we are up for it.
2-3 peeps, orange, specific reds known to be vulnerable to attack types or that we have an effective tactic against.
4-5 peeps. Reds, occasional purple. Baffing reds preferred to purp since with cc they won't stress the healing.
6+ Depends on lineup. With healing types in group red and purple. If we got pbt as well, its purple all the way.

I think one of the problems with coruscating mines is that the pit areas are almost impossible to get back out of once you are in unless you know where the wall bug is or have a group to get you out, so peeps are stuck with the people they have and the mobs close to them.

It is funny to watch greedy people of course. Their groups are usually short lived, and end explosively

 

[old.Tohtori]

Pre-Edit: I was going to say something slightly against Roo in a detailed thing but decided against it.

Look, it's simple. If you have a group that wants to kill big mobs and can. Do it. If you have a group that likes to kill lower level mobs all the time. Do it. It's all about what the people want to do.

Ocfcourse if they have adapted you as their group leader(and sometimes even if they haven't) you need to take control and say: "Ok, that's it. No more of this silly blue bashing, time for something thta makes the blood rush through your veins!"

And pull a purple.

That really wakes people up and usually they scream, run, hazzle but when it's all done, and you're standing ontop that big tinglers body, they say it was KEWL or whatever they prefer as their eleet word and want a new one.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Toh, go for it matey. I have no problem if I've missed something or said something wrong that peeps correct me. Rough guides are exactly that... rough guides.

I've been in groups with 1 other person and done baffing reds and purples. I've been in groups of 5 that can't handle a single red. There's nothing written in stone.

Its one of the things I like.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well just was gonna say something about group sizes and what to kill but..it's all 'bout the group as you stated so, no real reason to correct

 

[granny]

Seems to me people are blinkered by their xp caps. If people aren't getting near to their xp cap per kill in a group chances are someone's gonna say very shortly "we should do tougher mobs". Which as often as not will shortly be followed by them saying "so should we release or what?".

Wish more people would learn the xp/hour > xp/kill thing :/

 

[lairiodd]

A few rules of thumb.

1) If you are ending each battle with most people less than 50% mana the mobs are to tough, probably better to try something easier so you are always getting the improved mana regen speed that being above 50% gives. This is true even when you have mana regen in a group.

2) the are 2 main things that draw mana, healers and nukers. These are reasonably independent and what important is the total mana available to both pools. Even, if for example 1 nuker was lom, you could probably still pull if other nukers in the group were full ... its probably not worth waiting for just 1 nuker to regen ( however if all of one type are oom then dont pull ). Obvious and really more for leading into next point.

3) You need to examine where you are hitting mana probs. healers always the one you are waiting for mana to regen, then you are healer low same for nukers

4) another thing, if one char always seems to be lom, then it might be better for that person to try not cast if they are the lowest on mana in the group ( or more accurately their type of char ) so everyone ends above 50%. This applies more to healers than nukers as ( assuming nobody is about to die ) then it doesnt matter who heals you or when, whereas for nukers its normally important to kill the mobs as fast as possible. However, if the healers have loads of mana then maybe a slight decrease in nuker mana use might work out giving better exp over time.

5) any form of ae counts as a nuker mana multiplier. If you kill 2 mobs one at a time then the nuker must use enough mana to kill 2 mobs. If you use ae you can probably kill both with maybe the same mana needed to kill 1.5 mobs. Assuming perfect mob positioning and pbaoe timing ( no nuking until mobs are perfectly placed ) then you kill the 2 mobs with the mana required for 1.

6) use of ae doesnt improve heal efficiency. Assuming you kill 2 mobs, they both stay alive for the same amount of time as before so both cause the same damage as they would have if they were killed one at a time. In fact as you will probably end up using a weaker tank for the 2nd mob, it puts even more strain on the healers.

Main points are that to get ae based killing working you need to have pretty good healing. If you are sitting in a group which is doing singles and are thinking of trying to move to ae based killing make sure your healers are having less mana probs than your nukers.

 

[Xandax]

Originally posted by granny
<snip>
Wish more people would learn the xp/hour > xp/kill thing :/

IMO a very big problem in daoc.
People often tend to look way to much at exp per kill instead exp over time.

Sure it can be fun to get XX exp for a mob - but if you can get two times as much by taking low level mobs I fail to see the fun.

People are to focused on the frontload of things (same with damage - how often have we heard meele players say they hit for 500 damage or so - when they hit like 3 times slower then somebody hitting for 200 )

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

This afternoon, 4 of us: 38 skald, 41 skald, 39 bonedancer, 34 warrior went to Vanern and had a whale of a time. Chaining orange mainly, the odd red for fun, no camping, lots of running around. Don't think anyone got close to cap at any point but everyone had a lot of fun. It was the first time I think that the peeps I was with had been out there since its quite far to get to.

Camp bonus and no downtime unless caught off-guard by bigger baf than usual. Marvelous

Oh yeh, the xp over time was fine since we moved around a lot.

 

[lairiodd]

Wish more people would learn the xp/hour > xp/kill thing

Pity theres no way to get daoc to tell you that. They really should implement something that logs it for you ... could probably be dont easily with a log parse I guess

 

[old.Tohtori]

Want to make someones day? Easy. Was killing mammoths and invited a level 4 with me.

"Stay there and craft or something."

The guy dinged nearly three levels when in solo he would've dinged perhaps one. That was one happy camper until the moment i said:

"Well i'm logging now, got stuff to do."

"FFS u leave me here to exp low exp!?"

Well...

Want to make someones day? Don't.

 

[Flimgoblin]

response to that is:

"Since when were you paying my wages? Ungrateful wee shite."

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well actually i suicided with about 5 mammoths so...*grins*

 

[Lorthania]

I'd like to thank you all for the replies - I don't group very often and when I did, it usually resulted in little xp compared to the effort we had to put in. I have now realized that I was just getting in the wrong groups. My experience this weekend was very different - it just depends on who you meet.