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Table of Contents Lesson 1: How to be a Caster at a Raid Lesson 2: An Introduction to the Plane of Air
How
to be a Caster at a Raid
As a caster, you have the power to kill swiftly. You have the ability to lower the mob's abilities and boost your allies abilities to an insane degree. You can Buff/Debuff/Heal/Nuke/DoT your way to major aggro in a very very short period of time. You also have the worst hitpoints and AC in the game. So how do we balance this? Not an easy task, here are some things to remember when raiding and aggro is a problem. 1. Baubbles. This summoned item from a Mage is invaluable to managing hate at a raid. Trying two identical raids, the only difference being the Baubble, Teroth discovered how important this item can become. using the same spell timing with the same spells, on the same mobs, teroth took damage at one raid and didn't at the other. Care to guess which one he didn't take the damage on? Several Manaskin/Steelskin spells into the one without the Baubble it was quite apparant that this one item can turn the tide on hate. Make sure you get your mage to summon one, or you will have hate issues. 2. Timing. Slow? Malo? Tash? Cripple? Snare? Misc necro Spells? All high hate spells that require expert timing to land without getting whacked. If you are getting hit, you cast too early. It is as simple as that. "But if I wait until the mob is at half we will never see experience." Too bad. Raids are not about experience-and caster groups at raids with a Necro landing his DoT's right can still see experience without deaths(See Teroth's group for the last several raids.) Wait until the resistance debuff is called out (which we should see more of) before casting your high hate spells, so that they are more likely to land, and thus avoiding the added hate of a recast. 3. Pets. Sometimes pets are not appropriate. Depend on your pet for a good portion of your damage? Gonna have to bite the bullet on this one and go without at least until the raiding party is stationary - for some raids, you are to never make a pet. "Why?! My pet does so much to help!" He also cons much lower then you. The reason there are level restrictions on raids is usually about aggro ranges. Your pet most likely falls under this level restriction for any raid you will go on. If you are allowed a pet and he disappears on you...Camp! Camp fast and announce it to the Raid Leader. Necros can FD and go linkdead - the rest should just camp right away. When that pet dies, whatever he ticked off is coming looking for you. If you are planted in the middle of the raiding party, this will most likely spell W-I-P-E-O-U-T. 4. Spell Stacking. When your spells don't take hold, find out what is conflicting. Odds are your are flip flopping with another caster on his or her line of spells. The mana gets spent in full when the spell does not take hold, and not even Specialization lowers the cost. It can be pretty costly to have half your casters wasting 300-400 mana every fight. With the added component of Disease to slow spells, this makes stacking any other Disease based spell trickier. 5. Resists. When a mob resists your spell, DO NOT CHAIN CAST UNTIL IT LANDS! Call out a resist and wait for the aggro to shift again before casting. Casting Slow on a mob 5 times in a row is a sure way to hold the aggro and die. That is right. I said DIE. Casters survivability in an up close and personal encounter with a Raid level mob...well I think we have all figured that out the hard way at least once. 6. DO NOT RUN. Casters who get aggro'd and run endanger the whole raiding party. No one person is so vital to the success of a well built raid that his death will cause a wipeout. If you run, you can pick up adds. Adds return to the raiding party and will most likely kill them, or in the least cause more deaths. Our instincts tell us to cut and run when being attacked for 250 points of damage, but dying on the spot is better then causing adds - ANY day of the week. High level rezzes make the recovery from such a death minor, so take your medicine and use what you learned about the timing of your spells when you return to the raid. Short of the Invulnerability spells from a Necro or Cleric, Rune spells and the Shieldskin counterparts are invaluable to keeping you alive - once. Do not recast while being swung at. These are all major taunt spells, because seemingly mobs hate it when they cannot do damage to you. Invulnerability works like an Evade and the mob will shift aggro, just wait the full duration of the spell or you may get hit again and that spell will not be available for quite a while. This is just a primer, and I will be adding more info to this category.
Question 1. Learned awhile ago that Tashan is a high argo spell - who would have thought. But of course it is needed so that other spells land so what do you do??? Do you cast it get an argo then wait for fighters to get the argo back? Do you wait until a certain amount of hits points are gone than throw it - say 1 bub of health? I assume you should notify the group once the Tashan has landed - should they not cast until it does in order to avoid lots of failures? 2. How does memory
blur and reoccuring amenisia play in? I've been scared to use memory
blur since it seems like the idea is for Radalas to work really hard
at gaining the argo and I don't want to wipe the slate clean so that
his hard work becomes undone. Reoccuring amensia clears the hate list
every 6 seconds. Is using these a good or a bad thing? I've 2. Aggro will happen, but the goal is to lose the aggro right away. In one raid, Teroth was summoned by 12 mobs in a row and took no damage. The reason he took no damage, is that by the time he was summoned the main assist had taunted his way back to the top of the hate list. I think in one instance I went invulnerable because I was expecting the hate (5 dots will do that ;b ) but I took that into account when I started casting and had a plan to evade. In some cases I will run at the main assist when I know I will have aggro, so he stays in range for taunt. Just try not to pull the mob around too much or the tanks cannot taunt it off of you. Trust the taunt. Love the taunt. 3. Mem blur spells - at a raid, not a good idea in my opinion. This is a great line of spells for avoiding a fight, but in the case of heated raid level combat it is bad - very very bad. Here is why: DoT's become the top of the Hate List. Evade from the rogue is negated at the point of blur. Taunts are forgotten. Recurring Amnesia+DoT death=no loot. That is right. DoT kills that yield no death are always the reult of a mem wipe or aggro wipe. As long as I appear on his hate list, I will have a corpse to loot. As soon as the list is empty and he dies from an existing spell effect the corpse disappears. Here is the problem (and I think that VI can fix this if they would just bother to,) DoT damage and death comes before hate. This means that the mob will die before the DoT puts me back on the hate list. As a result, the mob just dies outside of combat - which yields no corpse to loot. They have corrected the pure DoT kill bug, where the corpse was popping unless melee damage or DD spell damage was done - but not in the case of one tick before death the mob gets mind wiped.
A big thing that Teroth didn't mention which most of us just natural understand and accept is that Shammies, Enchanters and Bards DIE. We die a lot, more so Shammies and Chanters as Bards (those bastards) get to wear some HP+ armor :P Course Bards are mostly useless til they get Occlusion of Sound at 55 but :P Folks used to ask me why as a Shammy I didn't have more Wis Armor than AC armor and my answer was so I don't get hurt so much when I get hit and so I can cast thru being hit. This is also why at certain times you swap out to resist armor for when the AE spells are doing a lot more damage then melee on you. AC or Resist is your friend not just that extra Wis or Int. +1 Wis/Int = 10 more mana till post 200. What can you do with that 10 more mana if you are Dead? The bottom line as a caster or any class is Managing Your Aggro which is a matter of judging WHEN to cast your spells and knowing what sort of heat you are going to draw. Does Mob X really need a Tash, Malo or Slow? or are the tanks taking it down without it? Sometimes casting it on every mob is just a pointless drain of mana as if you get a weird uber pop you are now useless no? Did the spell bounce twice? is it really needed or is it a luxury? Do I think it will stick the next time because if not, don't bother. An Enchanters primary debuff is Tash, but the first spell cast after the Mob is pulled is going to be Malo or more likely Slow from a Shammy. If Slow sticks Golden, if not Shammy is gonna try a Malo on it during which beat or between the beats you can pop a Tash as the Shammy or main Assist is gonna own the Hate List. Your Tash bounced? No Problem a second or two after it lands the Shammy or Main tank gonna re own the Mob as long as you don't pull it away from them. Take a hit and back away a step, the mob should turn back to the main Assist. Taking that step or two back generally moves you out of the 'I am standing closest to Mob' aggro as well as that not insignificant spell aggro you just dropped on it. If you survive the next blow step away again, if you haven't lost aggro by the second step then stand still and pray a heal is incoming. Tash, however, is primarily for those after half Health Nukes that kill the mob before it CH's or Heals itself or before it Gates. Rarely is it MUST have but in those instances KNOW you are gonna own some hate and pray that your support healers can keep you alive. These instances are generally Boss / Uber Mobs and remember that the 2 or 3 main Tash / Malo folks are all gonna be chain casting it til it sticks so aggro wont stay long. Mem Blur is an interesting and dangerous thing. As Teroth said DoT's don't go away though the Hate List does and if the DoT's kill it the Servers treat it as an NPC killed by an NPC leave no corpse kill. Mem Blur is for those critters you are Mezzing and Parking. Mezz, Root, Mem Blur or Mezz Mem Blur. Generally if the critter is still close to the main mob it will look for Social Assist and attack on the Main Mob Hate List, but sometimes it just looks for 'Closest Tidbit to Me' Aggro. Sometimes, however, it will path back and grab friends and sometimes it will assist main and call for friends on the /social Aggro chat channel. This might mean a call on the Z-axis which means above or below you as the Server does not check Line of Sight on Monsters just on players. If a critter is within the set x,y range then it MIGHT assist. However this is why you play a chanter ehh? You wanted to learn these things and play crowd controller :P Nothing to see here move along.. that spot well it was a chanter :P So you dropped a high aggro spell and wanna DIE? Sit down IMMEDIATELY. Yeppers you might have lost that aggro back to the Main Assist or the next Nuker but heck sit down and teacher will call on you again. Sitting down is treated by the server as a major modifier to the hate list. This is why we don't sit on pulls and why you should stand for a few seconds or rounds after you cast that Call on Me Next spell. And finally, if you drop below a full bubble of Health you might be standing but you are DEAD. If you are a healer and heal yourself well hopefully when you get hit as the heal lands it will leave you above a Bubble so that the Hate list will get checked again for who is next otherwise expect that LOADING PLEASE WAIT... You did train Bind Wounds didn't you? because that does NOT get treated by the server as sitting down and at 201 you can bind for 100 points up to 70% of your Health or at least 50 points up to 50% of your Health at 200. Klothe
Primer
on Plane of Air
Here is a brief run down of what to expect in the Plane of Air. When I say brief, I mean that it is not complete. For those of you who know me better, I don’t do anything briefly =) Transportation to and From Air: Zone in is simple-get
a ride form a Wizard. There is no other way in. Call of the Hero Call of the Hero is not allowed in this zone, but summon corpse is. This means that there is a more expensive way to get someone to the deeper part of the zone without keys then a simple CoH chain. This will take a camp out cleric parked at the zone (or a volunteer to take a ride with the wizard when he goes to pick up the late comers.) A necromancer with Conjure Corpse (preferred for the stackability of the coffins and price as well.) The Wizard for rides in (of course.) and finally a rezzing cleric with the raiding party. The group should be made of the Wizard, Necro, and if needed the cleric for zone in rezzes. When given notice that it is time to pick up more, the Wizard leads the group and invites the Necro (and if need be the Cleric.) The Wizard jumps down to EFP and picks up the passenger(s) before porting to PoA. At this point the cleric should also ride along if not parked at the zone in already. The passengers will need to die at the Zone In island. Do not duel, as this could aggro the Quest hall. Do not use AoE spells, as this could aggro the Quest hall. Do not attack the Keymaster, as moving him out of place can fubar the ability to get keys from him for the Quest Hall. Go tap on a fairie and take your hits like a trooper. When you die, the rez should be incoming as you finish zoning. Once rezzed to Island one, you will need to leave your corpse available for summoning. You can either leave something on the corpse, or you can ‘freeze’ it there. Freezing requires that you loot your corpse of all items and stay in the loot screen until it times out. Do not hit the Esc key, or the Done button. Just sit there and touch nothing until you automatically stand up. This is another good reason not to duel. If you duel, your rez timer may not be long enough for this screen to timeout. Once timed out, consider your corpse (‘c’ ‘/con’ or right-click) and notice how the rot timer continues but the rez timer does not. Now you have a corpse that can be summoned again and again. Once your corpse is ready to be summoned, the Necro who has been hiding in your group this whole time will summon your corpse to the raiding party. A cleric there will rez you and you will join the party. This is what is known as “Ghetto CoH”. The cost of the compoinent to port to Air, and the coffin combine to almost 100pp if you travel alone, so timeliness and ownership of keys is very important if you wish to vist here often. Keys to PoA The Keys have recently stopped rotting the moment you zone out of the Plane of Air. As a result, you can now collect and save your keys for future use. Keys up to Island 4 require only a single good group to obtain them. Though the more the merrier, getting these four keys will help you in the long run. I recommend getting them when you get the chance. On Island 1, you have the choice to go to the Nobles, the Quest Hall, or Island 2. The key to each of these places can be bought from the Keymaster. Since fighting on Island 1 can mess up the ability to zone safely in if you aggro the Quest Hall, just buy the key to Island 2. Obtaining a key from Islands 2 and up requires killing the main mob and turning in a specific Nodrop piece that drops off of all of the island’s Mobs. When you kill the main mob, Sirran the Lunatic will spawn in his place. Hand Sirran the key loot and get the key to the next island. Sirran the Lunatic Sirran will make or break your trip to PoA. He quad hits for 2000+ and will aggro everyone he sees once you tick him off. Hails or anything else in the /say channel may provoke him, so it is best to not use Hails or say anything in the /say mode the whole time you are in Air. Island 1: Mobs: Fairies and
Keymaster Island 2: Mobs: Azaracks and
Protector of Sky Island 3: Mobs: Gorgalosk Island 4: Mobs: Pegasus and
Griffins Island 5: Mobs: Spirocs Island 6: Mobs: Killer Bees Island 7: Island 8 – Have not been there yet (final island) Some other useful links for more detailed Planes Information: www.eqenc2000.com/POS.txt – Meann’s Guide to PoA everquest.allakhazam.com/db/qsearch.html?zone=70
- Allakhazam’s Quest List for PoA
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