a couple of suggestions for Med break and problems I see

L

Laksha

Dalayan Beginner
don't see the changes to med fufilling its purpose, infact it is just promoting people to use their mana irresponsibly and more med times than usual when people mostly should be medding through a battle. Thus what I have noted so far, and really made it hard for raids If the clerics or padders have low mana because they are probably not in the uber end guilds. However I will like to add a few suggestions.

1) your med is broken if you are in line of sight of combat, or mob AoE range, thus promoting tactics on where to pull to and where casters should be medding. This comes from the exdtreamly anoying part of grouping when you are done with a fight and sit down to med and puller goes off pulling again you are screwed without medding, and dosent makse sence if a puller goes and pulls from far from where your camp spot is and breaks your med, when you dont even know what agroed him/her.(this is the reason why change didnt made things faster It actually made things alot slower because everyone having to stop their job to wait for medders on a regular group basis)

2) Meditating trance should be like a special /s skill for casters or maybe an AA they can activate. meding should be back to what it was originaly so that people will be limited to the fast mana regen but still have its own and plan strategies on when it is best to use it. Then again this is promoting tactics and not slowdowns.

also another problem I noticed about the fast medding outside battle and the no mana during battle is that people including myself are going for large mana gear over mana regen gear, I think the formula is 50 mana per 5 minutes for ft1, most raid battles dont last that long thus making mana regen items useless, dont think those ft9 or 11 my druid had was doing much for her in a raid battle, not even with JB on.

And that is my opinion, everyone is entitled to their own, just bringing out things that are bothering me with med and sugestions to fix this. Thanks for reading.
 
1. wont happen to easly explioted

2. thats a nice begining to an idea but dont see the current Medaite being changed into this.

incloseing i dont know what class you are but in alot of cases even in the past people have tryed to get as much Mana items as thay can FT items are always nice bonus but lets say you get a 80mana item or a 25mana item with ft1 id still take the 80 mana over the ft and work on my aa's mental clarity,spell casting mastry, spell casting fury. any thing that would save me mana or the mental clairty over a single ft point
 
can you offer any suggestions on what can be done so we don't have med breaks so often? where pullers have to wait till people are done medding from the previous fight.
 
Laksha said:
don't see the changes to med fufilling its purpose, infact it is just promoting people to use their mana irresponsibly and more med times than usual when people mostly should be medding through a battle.
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Well, according to Wiz,
Wiz said:
In other words, there are is no longer ANY benefit to sitting on your ass in combat. If you want to be the most efficent, you should be meleeing or doing other things at all times. The intention of this change is to reduce downtime without unbalancing encounters and just making the game more fun in general, especially for healing classes who can now be an active part of their group instead of just sitting down and occasionally healing.
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I think the med change has perfectly fulfilled its purpose. Why do you think people SHOULD be medding through battle?

Laksha said:
Thus what I have noted so far, and really made it hard for raids If the clerics or padders have low mana because they are probably not in the uber end guilds. However I will like to add a few suggestions.
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I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here, but if you are saying that before these changes clerics and padders should have sat and meditated between heals you are wrong. If I remember correctly, there was already a delay of ten seconds after you sat down to when you gained meditation benifits, making it impossible for the chain to meditate between heals.

Laksha said:
1) your med is broken if you are in line of sight of combat, or mob AoE range, thus promoting tactics on where to pull to and where casters should be medding. This comes from the exdtreamly anoying part of grouping when you are done with a fight and sit down to med and puller goes off pulling again you are screwed without medding, and dosent makse sence if a puller goes and pulls from far from where your camp spot is and breaks your med, when you dont even know what agroed him/her.(this is the reason why change didnt made things faster It actually made things alot slower because everyone having to stop their job to wait for medders on a regular group basis)
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This is more an issue of communicating with your group and especially your puller, telling them your mana state and if you are good to go for more mobs or not.
Laksha said:
2) Meditating trance should be like a special /s skill for casters or maybe an AA they can activate. meding should be back to what it was originaly so that people will be limited to the fast mana regen but still have its own and plan strategies on when it is best to use it. Then again this is promoting tactics and not slowdowns.
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What "tactics"? Also, what time is "best" other than when you are out of combat, with no agro. I don't know, I think it would be pretty hard to sit down and meditate if there were a monster standing next to you beating on your friends.

Laksha said:
also another problem I noticed about the fast medding outside battle and the no mana during battle is that people including myself are going for large mana gear over mana regen gear, I think the formula is 50 mana per 5 minutes for ft1, most raid battles dont last that long thus making mana regen items useless, dont think those ft9 or 11 my druid had was doing much for her in a raid battle, not even with JB on.
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Flowing thought is still a very important aspect of grouping and raiding. I play two characters, and I notice a huge difference between ft10 and ft4. My cleric will always be full mana faster than the wizard, even though the cleric has a much larger mana pool.

Once again, I lend my full support to the med changes. They really have helped to increase the enjoyability of playing a caster.
 
Gtoo just summed up why these retarded arguements about changing the new med system back need to stop.
 
Don't count on ever seeing a style similar to what you suggested. Firstly, casters don't get styles. Secondly, the goal was to improve downtime. Through playing a caster(and watching folks), downtime for a caster is much improved.
 
well personally I dont think it was an improvement,really good points where made, althou are you suggesting in raids healers should also attack the mob thus switching targets back to back? to my understanding healer+melee=paladin, since healers main job is healing the tanks and people in raid their small DPS from their melee is not going to do much in that battle, and thus I have noticed that raiding certain mobs has been hindered(not all raids but think about adepts where peoplr dont have that much mana gear). to Answer your question people should be medding through battle to make the fight experience more balanced. And if you want to bring real life arguments the clerics will be healing people not fighting the monsters as the logistics in a battle will be working on the computers and communication and the grunts will be in the filed fighting and cooks will be cooking, they are both soldiers but they both have different jobs, it is not the caster's job to be meleeing because they depend on their spells so therefore they need to med to recover that mana that makes them useful. Personally as my dark elf cleric and mage I dont care if the group is getting beat up, they dont consider anyone "friends" If they have to med they will med to get the job done. If you want to roleplay a stress caster that can't med when one of his "friends" is on combat you have that option to get up and go melee it too. However I do Agree they do make the downtime from buffing up alot better, and raid cases it is very usefull. That is why I was suggesting for it to be triggered. I think the change is good in alot of areas but I still think that it could use a few more touch ups.
 
Laksha said:
can you offer any suggestions on what can be done so we don't have med breaks so often? where pullers have to wait till people are done medding from the previous fight.
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I'm new to SOD, but this is what caused me to switch from a Wiz to a Mage. My RL friend plays a Necro, and at low levels (not sure how it looks higher up), I was simply holding him back. He couldn't sic his mob on anything, because that would interfere with my medding. I felt somewhat guilty about slowing him down, since he can't play as much as he'd like, so I switched over to a Mage.

I'd just feel too guilty always asking folks to hold off on the next pull, because I was low on mana.

Note: I'm very good about rationing my mana, so it's not like I was a "spray and pray" type Wizard.

My only suggestion would prove to be insanely overpowering to high level casters, and min maxers, but would there be a way to med in combat providing some penalty were assigned to it, such as being stuck behind a full sized spell book (like the bad ol days), or maybe having an ability called trance, that put some negative buff on you while medding up?
 
Well.. first. Ft 18 or 20 = LOTS of mana, specially combined with MC. And, to achieve FT 18 or 20, EVERY SINGLE POINT helps. Now, raids don't last longer than 5 mins... lemme inform you: Some raids encounters (doto, Versikol, Ghaz, Dey, Ulaz, Earthen, zadrak/kadrak, Thas... Last up to 10 mins, or, in some cases, even more. So, in those cases, FT 1 = 100 mana. Try and beat that!

Medding... Unless you're chain pulling mobs a lil too hard, you don't need 100 % of healer's mana. Ideally, you'd need 20 %, or less. This mean, than, without med, you'd be able to do 5-6 mobs, then sit for 3 mins or so, and do another 5-6...  which means almost no downtime. In raids, take only 4-5 mins to get everyone FM, so still no downtime... No downtime, SINCE YOU'RE NOT USING 100 % of mana... now, if you are... better try something easier, will be better net xp. For example, a cleric 65, with HPB (or Risen) can be chain killing wyrms for an hour efore needing to sit out a few mins. Still no downtime. I was soloing with my pally (52) in DFS, and she was back to FM in less than 2 mins... no downtime, at least, no real downtime. So... sure you need tostop medding sometimes, but... since you recover your mana FAST... well... you see my point.

Now... healers and DPS... It may not be well known, but there are 3 types of healers. Shaman, who, besides healing, do slow, and other debuffes, also they have a pet, and have some serious dots. Druids, who, besides healing, have a pet, and have some dots/nukes. Clerics, who, besides healing, have a joke of a pet, but they have this cute spell called Yaulp VI, and this cute proccing hammer that allows them to deal serious DPS in melee (I parsed myself in average 130). Now, 130 DPS may be a joke for a DPS class... more even considering I'm fully AA'd, and have pretty sweet gear... But, the point is that, even when I had no gear at all besides some Cmal armor, and had only yaulp V, I was usually asked to melee by my usual groups, since they KNEW I was decent DPS. Healer DPS won't come from melee, that's for sure. our melee damage is laughable... But still, we can add dps, shamans, in the form of dots, druids in the form of DDs, and clerics in the form of procs.  Heck, clerics can even outtank if group's not doing heavy stuff (eldenals entrance, for example, or Dragon necropolis, or similar zones... most clerics could outtanj there, long enough for someone to go and root/mezz). Also, take note on this... EVERY single HP dealt to a mob, is a single HP less you have to deal... so, every little bit helps, again.

Now, healers on raids... Well, depending on how heavy is the raid, healers can be either chaining heals, or casting a heal, and waiting 6-8 secs for next heal. More people just wait their turn standing there, but I prefer, if raid's soft enough, just go and melee... once I even managed to dealt killing blow to an eternal statue. Crits for 728 will do that... Sure we don't get to those 80 k that a wizard can do, not even to the 40-50 K a pally can get to, but we still can score 20 k, which, imo, is sweet, and hlps saving casters some mana... And yes, recast times allow you to melee even having to chain. In a perfect world they shouldn't, since our heals have no recast, but, in real world, we have to wait till our spell gems refresh, and, in that time, we, with Yaulp VI, and hammer of the gods, can score 2-3 procs, if lucky. Druids and shamans, if raid's soft enough, can do some damage too...

On another note... healer + melee = paladin? false. Tank + heal = paladin. As I said before, a cleric can tank MINOR stuff. A paladin does the real tanking job. A druid... well... don't think a druid can tank very well, Shamans can do it a little better... clerics are plate user, that's why they tank some stuff succesfully (pure AC... plate armor is generally more tank oriented than leather or chain). Again, as I said, a cleric could tank, for example, eldenals entrance, but I have problems seeing a cleric tanking Sepulcher of Darkness... at least for more than 10 seconds. Healers, however do HAVE a weapon. meleeing is FREE, doesn't cost mana... and, anyway, you wouldn't be able to med, even if you were sitting... so, go and use your time meleeing. 10 dps is better than 0 dps.

Let's consider now the fact that meditating in combat is just wrong. EVEN if this is a fantasy world, there are some basic rules, rules that make the fantasy world more solid. Meditating requires concentration... and, it's REALLY hard to concentrate when a guy in plate armor is dancing around you... just think on the noise, not to mention fearing for your life. Note that, in original game, meditating required to open your spellbook. this represented quite well that you wasn't paying attention to your surrondings. So... you EITHER meditate, or pay attention. SoD staff has decided that characters have some basic survival instint, so they pay attention, hence, they aren't in trance when there are problems near... heck, I wouldn't be in trance, either.

I will, however, agree on a point. It's silly to "enter combat" just cause the monk agroed something half a zone away. I mean, you (a caster) don't even know what's going on, and that's interrupting your meditation... plain silly, but guess that's one expected downside of this system. Dunno if it could be changed to something in the lines of "you break trance if you're closer than x ra<nge of a fight, or in any agro list" That would allow pullers to go and play with their little friends, while we casters med.
 
How about...

Meditation is something that the casters/healers/hybrids choose to do. Not just by sitting down. Sitting down would be a lower level of mana regen...unless...


Let's say you do a /cm meditation 30 and it sits you down and blinds/deafens you for 30 seconds but will give you enhanced meditation for those 30 seconds...BUT the downside is that you can not see text, can't see the pc's/mobs, and can't hear anything.

I think it woudl work from a role-playing perspective, because then you really feel like you're in a meditative trance, plus it would give the benefit of added mana regen...

Now how to stop it from being abused? Make it so it MUST be entered before anyone in the group/raid has aggro.

So you can enter your meditation and if your puller gains aggro, you have no idea because you're already medding. If you're in a fight and low on mana but the group already has aggro...it won't work.

Hopefully this sounds like a useful idea. Not sure if it's possible to do, but I would think it is as I don't think it would rely on the client to be modified at all.
 
Bah...sorry. I only saw the last couple of posts on it and saw they were all recent. :-/

Damn thread necromancers...


But I still think my idea is a good one. Consider. Thanks. :-D
 
I actually noticed this thread was from April, and I am thinking how the battle changes did nearly nothing as far as changing clerics/healers from a sit-and-heal type role... just a thought really...
 
Xeldan said:
By the way, this thread is from April.
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I only started playing last month, and I thought it would be better to bump this thread with my own observations and experiences, instead of starting a new thread.

Was that a bad idea?
 
Not at all, was just pointing out for the people replying after you to posts that are fairly old. :p
 
hooden said:
I actually noticed this thread was from April, and I am thinking how the battle changes did nearly nothing as far as changing clerics/healers from a sit-and-heal type role... just a thought really...
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Not the adventurous type I see! Anyways, go back and read some of the replies here, because you certainly seem to be in the minority on this one. Even zaira's post does a decent job summing up the good aspects of this change.
 
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