Coach Me!

Discussion in 'The Newbie Zone' started by Palamar, May 11, 2020.

  1. Palamar New Member

    Ok, I need some coaching. Trying to get better at this game. Trying to get better at boxing.

    Here is the situation…
    • Boxing 3 toons: Heroic Paladin 85, Heroic Druid 85, Heroic Enchanter 85.
    • Using the software with keybroadcasting and the cool videofx picture in picture. (it’s sweet)
    • Completed the ferrott Merc quests on all three and did a few of the Aug quests.
    • Using a Healer merc and two wizard mercs.
    • Paladin & Healer merc are GOLD sub, Enchanter and Wiz merc are GOLD sub, and Druid and Wiz merc are Silver account.
    • Paladin has VoA group gear (Rustic)
    I went to run Gribbles HAs. “into the woods”. I can slaughter the normal mobs. Pally can tank at least 4 at a time easy. I can even put away the cleric merc as the pally can pretty much keep himself up, especially if I pull singles with the druid or enc.

    Problem is… Bloodsucker! The named mosquito. I’ve fought him two times so far and wiped each time. Only my druid got away on the last one with an evac. Admittedly, I’m still learning the game and the classes. At the same time, trying to refine my boxing skills. I need to know what I’m doing wrong. I feel like I should be able to kill this dude. Here is how the fights went down.

    First fight, I was not really prepared. I had killed the nameds in Ferrott the dream and so assumed this guy was similar. I hit my hotkey to cast debuffs from the druid and the enc at the same time that I pulled with the pally. Druid casts the Ro debuff and both the ice debuffs and then the one with the up and down blue and red arrows (wraith of seasons??). Enc casts Tash and Slow. I notice my pally is getting chunked pretty hard so I start stunning (honestly not even sure if bloodsucker is stunnable) and healing. I get pretty low and pop a disc (Mantle?) and my Spire. Meanwhile, I’ve hit my Burn hotkey on the enc and druid. Druid Twincasts his fire dot, then casts his other doT and then nukes on repeat a few times. Enc casts highest dots and nukes with twincast. (oh, also, enc has twincast aura and befuddle aura, druid is running the aura of life). So macros are firing, I’m panicing on the paladin because I’m still chunking hard, so I redirect the druid to start heal spamming my pally. Eventually my discs fade and just before I can hit Lay hands, pally goes down. I try to evac the druid, but it’s too late. Bloodsucker eats me all up. Only got him down to ~80%

    Second fight, I had more strategy. Same setup except the wizard merc (Gold Sub one) was set on burn. This time, I also prebuffed tank with the druid reptile spell and the bigger thorns. Still, Started the same… Pally was getting chunked so popped a disc/heal spire. Focused more on healing with the pally as well. Eventually I even got to pop a second disc and the other heal mod AA on the pally so lasted a little longer. Also, I read online that he has a nasty DoT. So I cast cure on myself on the paladin. (don’t even know if that fixes that or not, total noob here). Anyway, eventually since I’ve got my wizard set to burn, I’m using crushes on paladin to keep agro. Stunning when able. But since I’m also trying to spam heals on pally, Wizard ends up pulling aggro and dies. Eventually, my paladin takes a bad round and goes from half health to no health with no reaction time for gift of life or anything. Then druid evacs as the enc gets eaten.

    Root cause analysis…
    Two problems I feel from my gameplay. 1) I don’t know the classes innately enough for quick reaction situations. The druid has a couple Save the Day AAs that I didn’t use because honestly I forgot which one was which. 2) my boxing skills are not to the level of being able to react even if I did know the classes better. Trying to keep track of what each character is doing while also maintaining focus on agro and staying alive is difficult. I should have used more Aggro AAs on paladin but was distracted by making sure the druid and enc macros were firing or switching druid to heal mode.

    I feel that just playing more with the characters will help me learn them better for better reaction time, and I actually enjoy the challenge boxing brings… I think maybe once I learn my characters better and can create some better macros and hotkeys to make things simpler, I’ll be able to adjust faster.

    Now it’s coaching time…
    Is bloodsucker really that tough? Is not casting a few life saving AAs on the druid really the difference between wipe or win? Should I try blocking any heals on the merc cleric? Should my paladin really be getting chunked that bad? Should I have the druid focus more on healing instead of DPS? Are nameds stunnable? Can pally purification AA cure bloodsucker DoT? Is there a better way to tell when I’ve been hit with a DoT other than trying to decipher it in the buff window with the 50 other icons?

    What should I have done differently?

    Do you agree with my self-diagnosed root cause of failure? Is it really Class education or am I missing something else?

    Open to helpful feedback.

    Thanks in advance!
  2. Qbert Gallifreyan

    Nevermind . . . saw you say you're using boxing software so not interested in replying.
  3. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    Easiest thing would be swapping to a 2nd healer Merc. 1 on balance, one on reactive. Slow early on chanter, and wear it down. That named isn't doing anything special, just a tank and spank. As you get more AA and gear, you have the edge over him.
  4. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    One healer Merc is not going to be sufficient for your group until it has all of its AA & it has merc gear and even then it may not be enough.

    Try running with the silver healer merc in balanced mode & the gold healer merc in reactive whenever you are facing named creatures, especially if you are not a proficient boxer.

    The wiz mercs are ok dps with Enc support but you wont have the Best Aura for that at 85 and you need to focus on survival first, the Wiz mercs are not going to be all that great at 85 that they will blow mobs away fast enough for the healing to be easier.

    Nameds are substantially harder in HA than regular zone mobs & have some additional spells & abilities so also read up on what those are prior to tackling them, if all you want is XP then ignore them as much as you can as the ones that drop gear items are not required for the completion of the HA in most cases.

    Other than that, take some time to figure out decent assist & supplementary macros (social buttons), you will then reduce your "attention workload" on boxes & make your life a lot easier. I personally find that using 3 pcs was a lot faster than switching tabs on 1, with the sheer amount of repeated actions I have built up muscle-memory good enough that I can "blind hit" the other keyboards & hit the keys I want with no or minimal time spent with my eyes off my main screen, alternatively you can go the "number pad" route & have access to those keys right in front of you. If you are 1 PC tabbing then you will need to have a set order for each tab on your task bar so more easily memorise who to click when and you can do this quickly & reflexively.

    Reading Dythan's post he makes a great point about slowing early, but on some mobs you may also want to consider pulling with dispel or slow, nothing worse than pulling a mob & getting destroyed due to it being hasted or damage shielded, adapt to what the mob has on it, when I have used an Enchanter to make easy pulls those were my 2 go to methods, it;s very easy to get lazy on pulls with an Enchanter that can just mezz everything but that won't work everywhere so improving your pulling skills by working on getting clean single- pulls is worth practising.
    Shanarias likes this.
  5. Xenze Elder

    I'd advise going through and reading up on your Class AAs (sort by "can activate in bottom drop boxes). You've got 3-4 heals that'll bring you from damn near dead to full health.

    Also, Armor of the Inquisitor and Group AotI - increases your AC and healing received. Make sure you pop this just before you pull. And have 1-2 fast heals on your spell line up as well. Aurora (fast cast group heal, the lower the health, the better the heal), and Burst (targets target, aka you, fast heal).
  6. Palamar New Member


    This is great feedback! I really appreciate it!

    You know, i hadn't honestly considered swapping a wiz for another healer merc. I think I just assumed that a Paladin healing and a Druid spot healing would be plenty of healing with one merc. I get that I'm not playing them at full potential, but still, druid macro is spamming heals and pally is spamming heals when able. Is pally and druid healing real not that adequate? What is the point of the paladin then if it can't fill the gap of a Healer Merc? Shadowknights have easier healing and better DPS? If I didn't love the lore of the Paladin, it'd probably be way easier to just roll a SK.

    Anyway, what is the actual difference between "Reactive" and "Balanced" mode for the healer merc?
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Druids and Paladins are good healers with good gear & good focus effects but their straight-line healing power in (presumably) heroic gear is not going to be better than a healer merc's, the best use of your Druid is probably going to be debuffs & dps, if you are using Healer Mercs though & don;t have a player Cleric in group then block spell the promised heals line the mercs use (right click on it in the buff bar & select block) .... the reason I say that is they usually won't heal you with other spells while you have that on you waiting to trigger & you will likely die before it does. Block it and they are forced to use their other heals, it's a bit of a weakness in the Merc Healer AI.

    I would suggest you avoid killing nameds in HA until you have managed to gear up well enough to tackle them too, i.e. complete missions without killing the named until you can build up enough points to put some mercenary equipment of the mercs & improve the healing/dps foci you have.

    You may also want to consider using a Tank Merc over tanking stuff yourself in HA & see if you find that easier, where you can then be more a backup healer.

    I would also check what augments you can get from HoT group content, first thing I do when people come back & heroic upgrade is run them through a bunch of House of Thule stuff for fast & dirty aug slot filling since it has so many good ones. Getting as much ac as you can find from Augs is a lifelong occupation for tanks so those should be your no.1 Priority.
  8. Tucoh Augur

    I think you're doing just fine, bud, keep it up.

    I recently leveled some characters through dead hills and was surprised by how tough some of the named mobs like Bloodsucker were at some levels. I don't know if it's just sloppy balancing or intentional but he was a brick wall compared to the other mobs, where as at higher difficulty levels he's only moderately tougher.

    Actually, as chance would have it one of the few vids I made of my mage group involved Bloodsucker while I was level 86. Note how I'm killing mobs in a few casts until I get to him.



    If I had any specific tips I'd give them to you, but my skills with enc/pal/dru are marginal at best, especially until you're at level cap.
  9. Palamar New Member

    Thanks for the replies. And that’s a cool video @Tucoh. Never actually seen a mage army.

    I was in Ferrott last night doing some more aug quests. Seems to be more fun. And learning to pull with the enc.

    One more question though. Just curious how much difference I’d notice if I replaced the Druid with a shaman. I have a 86 sham on that account. I really like the Druid. The ports are super useful to me, evac has saved me a couple times, and I just overall like the Druid lore and play style, but just curious if shaman slow and healing would make a big difference?
  10. Petalonyx Augur

    Use two healer mercs. It doesn't matter how many PC healers you control. You need to devote your attention to DPS, especially on druid.

    I box a paladin and druid and two mages. I still run 2 healer mercs 99.9% of the time. It's WAY less stress, and even more DPS than running DPS mercs since i can focus almost entirely on doing DPS on my characters. As soon as i have to do anything more than an occasional group heal, my DPS plummets very, very hard.

    The other thing you can do you kind of already hit on. Prep to the max. Prebuff your paladin with anything you can. Enchanter runes can help. Druid have several HP/AC/HOT buffs that you should fire on or just before engage, and together function about as effectively as a defensive disc. You want to mitigate and dampen incoming damage to the point the 2 healers can keep paladin up. Even minor stuff like paladin reverse heal DS can help. I'd avoid stuns. Use the spells that include mitigation effects.

    It still may be a fight you should skip. A shaman heals much better than a druid, but I wouldn't swap what you have. The paladin is a better healer than the druid at end game, and together, especially with enchanter runes, you shouldn't need one bit of additional healing.
  11. Tucoh Augur

    Not sure at level 86, but at higher levels (105+ I guess), shamans really outpace druids healing wise. Druids have developed into almost nuking classes that can heal instead of true healers.

    Druids have some casting ADPS abilities (Group Spirit of the Great Wolf
    Season's Wrath VII
    Frostreave Breath
    Skin to Sumac
    Frostreave Aura
    Spire of Nature
    Overwhelming Sunray) that will boost your enchanter and paladin's spells, while the enchanter's ADPS (Chromatic Haze
    Gift of Chromatic Haze
    Illusions of Grandeur
    Third Spire of Enchantment
    Dissident Reinforcement
    Tashan's Lingering Cry V
    Bolstering Aura
    Mana Repetition
    Twincast Aura
    Beguiler's Synergy
    Order of Tashan) will boost your druid's spells moreso than a shaman's spells.

    The shaman will help your paladin's melee damage.

    Overall, I'd recommend sticking with the pal/dru/enc just because of the synergy between the enchanter and druid. If you wanted to try a shaman, you may want try a sha/brd. pal/brd/sha is a fantastic trio.
    Skuz likes this.