T
[TNN]Aardvark
Guest
I dug this up over on the vn boards, couldn't find an albion specific one, so this is my theory on how to make up a pbaoe group, based on the classic hibernian method.
Edit: when I say based on, I mean based on. 90% of the words here come from the aforementioned vn thread.
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A PBAoE party is the opposite of a mez group. In a usual mez group, the monsters are mezzed, then killed one at a time in SERIES until they are all dead. This is safe, effective, and ponderously slow. A PBAoE party has one tank (tanks are anyone who can taunt and take several hits, or armsmen, paladins, mercenaries, friars) on each mob taunting each mob and drawing them into a tight group where they are PBAoE'd. Since PBAoE can in this situation kill all of them at the same time, you are killing in PARALLEL and your experience rate goes up by the number pulled. Once you have been in a good PBAoE group, you will find it hard to go back to the old mez method.
The ideal PBAoE (for a 4 pull)group has
3 tanks
1 theurgist
1 PBAoE
1 cleric in healing mode
1 minstrel
+ 1 other character
at least one guy is protecting the PBAoE, one guy protects the cleric, and if you have a 3rd, they can protect the backup healer. Guard is set on the PBAoE or to another tank who is taking a beating. You know you will and should be close to the PBAoE guy, but you may not be close to the tank.
These are all necessary elements. The 4 tanks pick up a mob, one each. The nuker nukes. Minstrels run mana song full time. Friars backup heal as needed. The cleric buffs and heals. We will assume here that the tanks are (A) high enough level to consistantly hit the monsters in question, and (B) they are high enough level and armored enough to stand several hits.
Note there is room for 1 other character. Almost always this is filled by a tank to increase the odds of everyone getting their assignment.
Here is how it works.
1. All tanks go out front. I don't know how many times I have seen tanks wandering around in the healers. You are out front to (a) see the mob soon and clearly pick up your assignment, (b) to be in front of the healers so they can heal you, and (c) make it more likely the mob adds on you rather than the healers or nuker. If there is a clear group of you out front, then people know where to drag their mobs.
2. The tanks make their mob assignments. This can be done either by (a) order of arrival, or (b) by position on the line. In method (a) the puller takes the creature pulled, and then each tank picks a number of a mob before the pull and picks that guy up after the pull in the order they arrive, so the guy on '2' takes the 2nd mob to get there, and '3' takes the 3rd, etc. Method (b) has tanks line up in a front of 3 with one trailing, ie like this
MOBS
T1_P_T2
__T3__
P=puller
T1 = left tank
T2 = right tank
T3 = backing tank
The puller pulls. He sticks with the creature pulled and taunts it. Tank 1 picks up the mob on the left, tank 2 picks up the one on the right, and the backing tank picks up the 4th or assists where needed.
On the pull we assume that you are actually facing the mobs. If you are looking at a healer or something, you will miss your assignement, and it will go kill the nuker or a healer. Often a mob or two will flank way wide and you must be paying attention to see this. Face front. Also we assume you do not go AFK. If you go afk, you say so and the party waits.
3. Tanks pick up their mobs. The order is to /stick, then taunt. Once you have hit it, you back up while taunting and drag your mob on top of another one. If your mob got through the tank ranks and into the healers, well you got to drag him back out front. Why front? Well distance reduces the agg your healers draw healing you, so keeping the monsters away from your healers in distance is desired. The faster you do this right, the better things go. If you take a long time to get the mob to the rest of the mobs, then your healer has to heal too much (from time) and your nuker has to double mana expended on nukes. All of this means a greater likelihood of death and increased downtime.
Note you are using taunt. Unless you can hit 4 monsters for more than the nuker, your damage is insignificant. Taunt. You must hold agg. You must. Its as simple as that. For finlis, I do 300-400 in a tight group each blast with the 2nd highest PBAoE, and this is to each in the group.
You do not assist. If 4 came on the pull and you are hitting the same one as someone else, It is YOU who have missed your assignment.
4. Nuker positions and nukes. I like to position by rotating the camera angle so it views directly down from above, as this lets you get to teh spot where you can have the most mobs close. I do not rotate the camera until I see the tanks have their mobs. You should wait til you are certain each tank has hit one of their mobs, else the mob that wasnt picked up will then be agg on you, and all you can do then is quickcast stun and hope the stun doesnt fizz and the tank can find the free mob. Note that you can pretty much do this with any AoE nuke, but PBAoE outdamages them all and is very mana efficient.
5. Healers keep everyone up. You must have a cleric because only a cleric has a strong enough heal to bring a caster back. Intercept on the caster can be a good thing. If they start chewing on the PBAoE guy, well you got about 2 blows before he is dead. If you have a friar, leave the post combat HoT to him, and save your mana for during combat heals.
Some standard problems
(1) not enough tanks- you can deal with this by having a pet engage one and draw it far off from the blast zone. Generally it is a good idea to have at least one tank per creature pulled, but in practice having an extra tank means one guy can screw up and you will still do ok.
(2) healers have to heal too soon. This happens if the tanks get lag or miss alot or just blow their assignment. Then the mob is on the nuker or the healer and they have no choice but to draw further agg by healing on a mob not picked up. Get your mob, and get it away from the healers to the blast zone.
(3) the leech group- this group fights too. The whole leech group concept is that there should be a pool of people waiting on standby to replace those who leave the main group, and this group should have characters of use in the main group. In practice this group has been many things. I have seen a group entirely filled with stalkers, which is just tehre to leech off of the main group. I have seen low level characters in this group here to be powerleveled. The best leech group resembles the main pull group, IE has a PBAoE guy, some tanks, a healer, a ment/bard... This lets you keep up nonstop. The problem is people in the leech group if they do too much damage, piss off the main group as the main group is taking all the risk and not getting much xp.
The whole leech group is a sore subject for many. If you have 8 solid guys who will play for a while and you can handle it on your own, then you are better off without a leech group. But if it is marginal, then a leech group can give you added firepower. The main rules which you should assist on are (A) the pull group gets the best PBAoE, and (B) the pull group can draw anyone from the leech group into their group as needed.
I have seen groups attempt to balance the experience between the pull and leech groups by adding more nukers to the leech group, but often those guys in the leech group nuke with no protection and die. Experience is so good in a PBAoE party that often even a low share in hte leech group is enough for many.
Other issues
I. AoE spells- PBAoE in albion is either from ice spec wizzies or smite clerics. Ice wiz gets 325DD, 3s cast time, 300 radius. Smite cleric gets 130DD, insta cast on 15s timer, with 120 radius. Basically, smite clerics can never be the main PBAoE char. Useful additional damage, but too weak to cope alone.
PBAoE has its damage rolloff with radius to zero at the radius limit of the spell. This is why it is so critical drawing them in tight. 4 monsters right on top of each other is perfect.
Agg for PBAoE is strange. It is distributed evenly among attackers, which is why you want a lot of attackers in your group. The only way I draw agg with it is if the tanks miss/dont pick up their mobs. Tanks of appropriate level who taunt and hit usually hold agg well enough for me to function with one person protecting me.
Other AoE spells do not distribute agg in this fashion. They can work. For instance I have used the AoE DoT to good advantage in a party, but again, you will die alot if your tanks do not know what they are doing or if they are having connection problems.
So that is all I have to say about PBAoE parties. They are very lucrative in terms of experience. It is very risky learning this. When I first started doing this, I was dying once per bub. Tanks have a BIG job, but the reward is HUGE. I went from 42 to 44 in one heavy day of xp doing this, since you get group bonuses each pull, and kill the stuff in far less time than a mez method.
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So there you have it. I do worry that albion might not be as effective for pbaoe groups, as only one class/spec has the spell, and we don't have a warden equivalent to pbt/tank w. taunt/backup heal. Minstrels may be able to tank, which may help. And of course, you're not limited to 1 pbaoe in a group
Its dangerous, yes. It WILL get you killed when you start out learning the technique. But you'll get the xp lost back in around 10mins, which I feel is more than worth it. Only problem is the complete lack of ice wizzies in the realm atm.
Edit: when I say based on, I mean based on. 90% of the words here come from the aforementioned vn thread.
--------------------------------------------------
A PBAoE party is the opposite of a mez group. In a usual mez group, the monsters are mezzed, then killed one at a time in SERIES until they are all dead. This is safe, effective, and ponderously slow. A PBAoE party has one tank (tanks are anyone who can taunt and take several hits, or armsmen, paladins, mercenaries, friars) on each mob taunting each mob and drawing them into a tight group where they are PBAoE'd. Since PBAoE can in this situation kill all of them at the same time, you are killing in PARALLEL and your experience rate goes up by the number pulled. Once you have been in a good PBAoE group, you will find it hard to go back to the old mez method.
The ideal PBAoE (for a 4 pull)group has
3 tanks
1 theurgist
1 PBAoE
1 cleric in healing mode
1 minstrel
+ 1 other character
at least one guy is protecting the PBAoE, one guy protects the cleric, and if you have a 3rd, they can protect the backup healer. Guard is set on the PBAoE or to another tank who is taking a beating. You know you will and should be close to the PBAoE guy, but you may not be close to the tank.
These are all necessary elements. The 4 tanks pick up a mob, one each. The nuker nukes. Minstrels run mana song full time. Friars backup heal as needed. The cleric buffs and heals. We will assume here that the tanks are (A) high enough level to consistantly hit the monsters in question, and (B) they are high enough level and armored enough to stand several hits.
Note there is room for 1 other character. Almost always this is filled by a tank to increase the odds of everyone getting their assignment.
Here is how it works.
1. All tanks go out front. I don't know how many times I have seen tanks wandering around in the healers. You are out front to (a) see the mob soon and clearly pick up your assignment, (b) to be in front of the healers so they can heal you, and (c) make it more likely the mob adds on you rather than the healers or nuker. If there is a clear group of you out front, then people know where to drag their mobs.
2. The tanks make their mob assignments. This can be done either by (a) order of arrival, or (b) by position on the line. In method (a) the puller takes the creature pulled, and then each tank picks a number of a mob before the pull and picks that guy up after the pull in the order they arrive, so the guy on '2' takes the 2nd mob to get there, and '3' takes the 3rd, etc. Method (b) has tanks line up in a front of 3 with one trailing, ie like this
MOBS
T1_P_T2
__T3__
P=puller
T1 = left tank
T2 = right tank
T3 = backing tank
The puller pulls. He sticks with the creature pulled and taunts it. Tank 1 picks up the mob on the left, tank 2 picks up the one on the right, and the backing tank picks up the 4th or assists where needed.
On the pull we assume that you are actually facing the mobs. If you are looking at a healer or something, you will miss your assignement, and it will go kill the nuker or a healer. Often a mob or two will flank way wide and you must be paying attention to see this. Face front. Also we assume you do not go AFK. If you go afk, you say so and the party waits.
3. Tanks pick up their mobs. The order is to /stick, then taunt. Once you have hit it, you back up while taunting and drag your mob on top of another one. If your mob got through the tank ranks and into the healers, well you got to drag him back out front. Why front? Well distance reduces the agg your healers draw healing you, so keeping the monsters away from your healers in distance is desired. The faster you do this right, the better things go. If you take a long time to get the mob to the rest of the mobs, then your healer has to heal too much (from time) and your nuker has to double mana expended on nukes. All of this means a greater likelihood of death and increased downtime.
Note you are using taunt. Unless you can hit 4 monsters for more than the nuker, your damage is insignificant. Taunt. You must hold agg. You must. Its as simple as that. For finlis, I do 300-400 in a tight group each blast with the 2nd highest PBAoE, and this is to each in the group.
You do not assist. If 4 came on the pull and you are hitting the same one as someone else, It is YOU who have missed your assignment.
4. Nuker positions and nukes. I like to position by rotating the camera angle so it views directly down from above, as this lets you get to teh spot where you can have the most mobs close. I do not rotate the camera until I see the tanks have their mobs. You should wait til you are certain each tank has hit one of their mobs, else the mob that wasnt picked up will then be agg on you, and all you can do then is quickcast stun and hope the stun doesnt fizz and the tank can find the free mob. Note that you can pretty much do this with any AoE nuke, but PBAoE outdamages them all and is very mana efficient.
5. Healers keep everyone up. You must have a cleric because only a cleric has a strong enough heal to bring a caster back. Intercept on the caster can be a good thing. If they start chewing on the PBAoE guy, well you got about 2 blows before he is dead. If you have a friar, leave the post combat HoT to him, and save your mana for during combat heals.
Some standard problems
(1) not enough tanks- you can deal with this by having a pet engage one and draw it far off from the blast zone. Generally it is a good idea to have at least one tank per creature pulled, but in practice having an extra tank means one guy can screw up and you will still do ok.
(2) healers have to heal too soon. This happens if the tanks get lag or miss alot or just blow their assignment. Then the mob is on the nuker or the healer and they have no choice but to draw further agg by healing on a mob not picked up. Get your mob, and get it away from the healers to the blast zone.
(3) the leech group- this group fights too. The whole leech group concept is that there should be a pool of people waiting on standby to replace those who leave the main group, and this group should have characters of use in the main group. In practice this group has been many things. I have seen a group entirely filled with stalkers, which is just tehre to leech off of the main group. I have seen low level characters in this group here to be powerleveled. The best leech group resembles the main pull group, IE has a PBAoE guy, some tanks, a healer, a ment/bard... This lets you keep up nonstop. The problem is people in the leech group if they do too much damage, piss off the main group as the main group is taking all the risk and not getting much xp.
The whole leech group is a sore subject for many. If you have 8 solid guys who will play for a while and you can handle it on your own, then you are better off without a leech group. But if it is marginal, then a leech group can give you added firepower. The main rules which you should assist on are (A) the pull group gets the best PBAoE, and (B) the pull group can draw anyone from the leech group into their group as needed.
I have seen groups attempt to balance the experience between the pull and leech groups by adding more nukers to the leech group, but often those guys in the leech group nuke with no protection and die. Experience is so good in a PBAoE party that often even a low share in hte leech group is enough for many.
Other issues
I. AoE spells- PBAoE in albion is either from ice spec wizzies or smite clerics. Ice wiz gets 325DD, 3s cast time, 300 radius. Smite cleric gets 130DD, insta cast on 15s timer, with 120 radius. Basically, smite clerics can never be the main PBAoE char. Useful additional damage, but too weak to cope alone.
PBAoE has its damage rolloff with radius to zero at the radius limit of the spell. This is why it is so critical drawing them in tight. 4 monsters right on top of each other is perfect.
Agg for PBAoE is strange. It is distributed evenly among attackers, which is why you want a lot of attackers in your group. The only way I draw agg with it is if the tanks miss/dont pick up their mobs. Tanks of appropriate level who taunt and hit usually hold agg well enough for me to function with one person protecting me.
Other AoE spells do not distribute agg in this fashion. They can work. For instance I have used the AoE DoT to good advantage in a party, but again, you will die alot if your tanks do not know what they are doing or if they are having connection problems.
So that is all I have to say about PBAoE parties. They are very lucrative in terms of experience. It is very risky learning this. When I first started doing this, I was dying once per bub. Tanks have a BIG job, but the reward is HUGE. I went from 42 to 44 in one heavy day of xp doing this, since you get group bonuses each pull, and kill the stuff in far less time than a mez method.
-----------------------------------------------------------
So there you have it. I do worry that albion might not be as effective for pbaoe groups, as only one class/spec has the spell, and we don't have a warden equivalent to pbt/tank w. taunt/backup heal. Minstrels may be able to tank, which may help. And of course, you're not limited to 1 pbaoe in a group
Its dangerous, yes. It WILL get you killed when you start out learning the technique. But you'll get the xp lost back in around 10mins, which I feel is more than worth it. Only problem is the complete lack of ice wizzies in the realm atm.
