|
Raid Tips and Tricks
|
Contents:
- Changes to your settings.
- Loot and Experience.
- Some real life stories.
Changes to your Settings
When you have 3 to 6 full groups in a single zone, especially the planes, the lag starts to increase beyond playability. To help alleviate the lag, here are some suggestions that should help.
First thing you want to do is go into "OPTIONS", "GENERAL" and turn off "PARTICLE DENSITY". Not high, not medium, not low, but "OFF". This setting allows you to see the pretty spell effects when you or others cast a spell. If you turn this off, your processor can work on other things besides drawing those complex colors onto the screen. This will help your lag immensely. You may also want to turn down (slide to the left) your clipping plane. This allows you to see objects, which are further away from you in the game, more clearly. The mobs will be brought directly to your group, so you wont need to see them coming from a mile away, and you will greatly appreciate the lag relief when trying to fight them with this setting turned down.
You will then want to go into "OPTIONS", "CHAT FILTER", and turn OFF everything on both pages, EXCEPT the following…
- Group chat
- Shout chat
- Guild chat
- OOC chat
For example, turn off Damage Shield notification, Auctions, Your misses, Other misses, Bard Songs, Spells, etc. You won't need to see those in your chat window. That will just clutter things up and slow down your play. Hopefully, this helps your lag situation. Enjoy the raid!
Loot and Experience
When you have 3 to 7 full groups of intense players all working together for a common goal, (like killing that one mob in front of you, before it kills you), it is obvious that you will not receive experience for every kill. It's unfortunate that there is not a way to split the experience with every member of the raid, but until then, you will have to settle for only getting experience every once in a while, or maybe even never during the whole raid.
I have been in a group of 5 players, when every other group had 6 players, and my job was to slow the mob for the others to kill, so I wasn't even doing any damage. One of the other players in my group was the healer, so we only had 3 people doing damage, instead of 4 or 5. I knew I wasn't going to get any experience. It's all right; I was there for the camaraderie and the experience of being in a planar raid situation, and to see, first hand, the teamwork of 5 groups working together on a single task. It's truly intense.
Many of you may not know this… The mobs in the planes (Fear and Hate) don't respawn for 12 hours. This means, after you kill them, they are dead for the rest of your raid. That's why you have to schedule planar raids on a "universal raid board", so that there is time for the mobs to spawn again for the next guild's raid.
To keep things flowing smoothly, ONLY the leader of each group (the person highlighted in yellow, the player who invited you into the group) is allowed to loot the mobs. If your group gets the experience for the kill, do not loot that mob unless you are designated the leader of the group. If you are the leader, and you do loot, please OOC what that mob dropped. If it drops "no drop" armor or weapons, do NOT loot that item. You cannot give it back once it's in your possession. A blunder like that will get you kicked out of the raid.
My First Raid
I remember my first raid, like it was yesterday. They ported my group to "Hate" and said run or die, LOL. I looked at my group and said, "which way"? Nobody knew where to go, so I /shout which way do we run from the port in spot? Somebody replied, Northwest corner! (Like I knew where that was.) I cast invisible on myself, and started running. Of course I went the wrong way, and had 4 of the nastiest mobs on me in no time flat. I died in a dangerous spot and it took an hour for the corpse retrieval. I was lucky to get a resurrection.
After my resurrection, I appeared in a safe spot, in front of 47 angry, eager players. Later, I found out that they were not angry with me, but because they had also died on the port in. Most people die on the port into the planes, whether it is "Fear" or "Hate". If you don't die, consider yourself lucky, and camp out in the safe zone until notified that it's safe to come back. (Log on another character and chat with someone in the raid party, or your guild, and have him or her tell you when it's safe to log your raiding character back into the game.)
Now I know exactly which way to run, but I still die every time, LOL, there are just too many "nasties" on the way to the safe spot, and their agro range is insane.
Okay, three hours into the raid, we are all buffed up, and all 42 resurrections have been performed, and the weary clerics have regained all their mana. We are all huddled in one spot awaiting a big fight. The monk yells, "INCOMING a forsaken revenant", and feigns death right in front of us. The main assist (usually a warrior) tags the mob off the monk, and we all hit our assist buttons and commence killing this evil mob. He resisted my first 3 attempts at slowing his attack speed (shaman spell), but the fourth one took hold. I /OOC a forsaken revenant has been SLOWED! I'm sure that all the melee players felt a little at ease after the mob had his attack speed slowed 75%. One cleric had died already from the agro caused by healing one of his group members.
We had killed our first planar mob! The cleric got a quick resurrection and was ready for action again soon after. Unfortunately, the mob we killed did not drop any super loot, except some cash, and a diamond, which goes back into the raid fund so we can afford to pay for these events.
The next pull was a spite golem. Someone shouted, "They are totally magic resistant". Of course I tried to slow him anyway, resisted six times, so I gave up and started healing the melee team. It took a good 3 minutes to take him down. He must have had 15,000 hit points, if 30 swords slashing at him took that long to take his life.
I held my breath when the xp team leader went to loot the dead golem, because he is the one who is known to drop shaman armor. Sure enough, on bended knee, I heard the looter shout, "Shaman Gaunts!" I almost cried.
The raid leader proceeded to shout, "all shaman's roll, unless you have better". (Be considerate and do not roll on an item which you already have, or what you are wearing is superior to what dropped.)
I closed my eyes and typed very carefully /random 400, and hit enter.
I rolled a 7… crap! Well, better luck next time J
We continued to fight mobs well into the night, with not too many deaths, matter of fact, I did not die again that night, once we got settled in. I was however, summoned by some of the higher-level mobs for trying to slow their attack speed. Evidently, they don't like that. If you get summoned, (the mob lifts you up and transports you into his melee range, and starts beating on you), don't panic, just carefully, and quickly, move out of melee range. Often the mob will shout, "You cannot evade me player X"! So the whole raid knows that you have just been summoned to your death, and they will try their best to save you from certain peril.
In both "Hate" and "Fear" they have recently added "mini-bosses", which are really tough, but not as tough as the "bosses" (Innoruk, and Cazic Thule) Challenging, and dangerous as it may seem, you must be within melee range to cast a spell on these mobs. So you will see dainty wizards running up to the nastiest mob to cast his or her deadly spells. Often times, they will get hit a few times, which makes healing a challenge, but these fights you will remember for a long time to come.
If the puller brings two or more mobs, the enchanter will try to mesmerize one or more of the mobs so that the rest of the raid party can concentrate on killing one at a time. I said the enchanter would TRY to mesmerize one… If unsuccessful, those mobs will attack any and all of the raiding party (starting with the enchanter) until either he dies, or we all die.
If things start to go sour, and it looks like it will be a total party wipeout, the raid leader, (if still alive), will shout, "Camp Out Now!" In which case, you protect the clerics until they have all camped out (even if it means your death), then you promptly sit down, and hit CAMP. If you died, but saved a cleric, you will get a resurrection shortly after that. If no clerics live, it could take some time to port one back up to rez the raid party. Always protect the clerics!
A few more things that I should mention…
You should NEVER ask for a certain mob to be pulled. At a good raid, the pullers will pull diverse mobs and give every class a chance for loot. Just because I know that the spite golems drop the shaman armor, I would never yell, "pull another spite golem", it's just rude and selfish. I know that a spite golem or two will come during my stay and I will have a chance at some shaman gear.
Never ever hail a mob. Just don't do it. If someone isn't paying attention, they will know very quickly to start fighting or die when they get hit for double 150's. You never need to "hail" a mob.
Always follow the raid leaders suggestions quickly and instinctively. If the raid leader did not say to do something, don't do it. For example, if someone in your group says to disband and join another group, don't do it unless the raid leader specifically said to do that. The group leaders are not in charge. If the group leader says, the raid leader asked me to have you move to group 3, and player X will invite you, send him or her a tell, that sounds more like a cohesive plan, and something that was designated by the raid leader.
I've seen people kicked out of the raid, and even the guild, for not following directions on a big raid like one at the planes. They didn't follow directions, and got 20 people killed for their mistake. It's not too tough to follow directions on a big raid. You are just there to intimidate the mobs and to take their goodies, not to make up your own plan, and to wander off into dark corridors alone. You will end up running back to the raid party with 7 mobs on your tail. Training the raid party will get you kicked out immediately. The monks are there to feign death when too many mobs are pulled. Matter of fact, there is a whole pull group designated to pull any and all mobs. Never pull a mob, ever! (Unless you are in the pull group.)
If this sounds like a lot of rules and regulations, you are correct. Don't worry about doing something wrong. If you keep these suggestions in the back of your mind, then you shouldn't have any problems enjoying yourself and keeping the raid party safe in a dangerous place.
Who knows? You might even win the roll on some uber planar gear J
Have fun, and be safe!
On behalf of the Officers, Elders and Cadets
Bobmd Cureall
Oracle of 62 Winters
Guild Leader - SoD!
|
