Originally posted by Daizedd Why limit a group to 8? just because it was done that way in DAoC? This is not the same game!
One reason is that it just isn't practical to have larger groups because then the group window would start to fill up your screen. Also the larger the group size, the more you'll have to stand around in the safe zone looking for people to fill the group. Somewhere between 5 to 8 players in a group is the right amount depending on how many classes with required group abilities there are.
nonsense. I have had groups of up to 40 and I was healing so needed to see bars and saw the game very well thank you. DPS can be in big groups and have even less clutter. This is just a question of good UI design, but you are basing your opinion on bad ui design.
^ to quote a certain image board - Pics or it never happened.
You were never healing 40 people in a group unless the game was so broken as to be unplayable. You may have been in a group with 40 people and THOUGHT that you were healing simply because you had 40 health bars on your screen. Group limitations based on healing has nothing to do with ui management. It has to do with mana.
If you had enough mana to successfully keep 39 groupmates alive then one of two things was going on: You weren't actually fighting anything or; You were hacking, lol.
Way to totally sidetrack the subject. Obviously I was not the only healer... did I say that anywhere??? The point is I had 40 bars to watch more or less depending on my particular healing assignment as part of a team of healers. If the UI is decent you can have large groups. The number of crafters in group will always be a discussion to have, but when you limit your UI to squads of 4-8 you are severely limiting the possibilities. My point is there is no good reason to do so assuming good ui design.
My bad. But you are right. I never considered that you would structure a group with multiple Main Healers. How in the world did you coordinate heals?
This is off subject, but on alot of bosses we had our individual heal assignments of course but we also might be needed to be ready to cross-heal so you always had your eye on other people's targets to some extent. Imo you usually should not be totally rigid on heal assignments which means you need to have your eyes open. I imagine this would be the even more case in PvP healing where fights are obviously never scripted.
Where there's a will, there's a way. Individual heal priorities are assigned. I recall in Rift we had a single target healer for each tank and 1-3 raid healers depending. That's a PvE raid example though and it varied per encounter. Sometimes there were 3 MTs and you needed 3 main healers, or 1 main healer with 1 MT swapping, or whatever. All healers would do cross heals, but they would keep their priority straight.
In WAR, it was more typical to have a group healer and a single target healer in a group (e.g. a DOK and Zealot) assigned per group. Specifically, you would assign 1 group healer per group, and then spread the single target healers out (since the ST healers could heal other groups as easily as they healed their own, but group healers were mostly restricted to healing their own groups). Generally they played whack-a-mole with healthbars.
More organized warbands would consolidate front-line targets together. For example, group 1 would have the frontline tank/PBAOE/mDPS + group healers (maybe 2 group healers, as opposed to the generic example above). Groups 2 and 3 would each have 1 group heal with some tank / rDPS mix. ST healers would be spread across groups 2, 3, 4. Group 4 would have the weakest group heals, probably stuck with most of the "safer" rDPS (archers). There were other variations where you would have 3 healers in the frontline group (to mix buffs), etc, but those were some of the considerations placed on group / warband composition and healer organization.
Originally posted by Karraptathid I can easily see CSE setting up crafters with some combat skills as baseline with the option of spec in combat or items. Say baseline with seige, alch and SCing. Then you can spec in seige engines - combat, or spec in armor-weapons, or spec in Alch-potions, or spec in SCing-items (rings, bracers, gems, pendents, etc). This gives crafter's a good choice while being able to support a RVR group in support or direct combat. I do think groups should be 8 man teams, gives enough space for a crafter to fit in and not hurt RVR capabilities.
I remember reading some comment from MJ saying something like :
"The only way to survive as a crafter will be prayers and footwork. Maybe not in this order."
"If we give crafters combat skills, they wouldn't be pure crafters anymore, would they?"
PS : found that from another of my posts on another forum :
A few words from MJ :
"As to crafters being a bit brittle, yep. They won't be there to fight; that's what those big, brave, muscular looking folks are there to do,protect them. " (KS comment, 13 pages from the end - it was on page 70 when there was 83)
"The crafters best defense if they are about to be overwhelmed will be prayer and foot speed. Maybe in that order, maybe not." ((KS comment, 20 pages from the end - it was on page 63 when there was 83)
Comments
This is off subject, but on alot of bosses we had our individual heal assignments of course but we also might be needed to be ready to cross-heal so you always had your eye on other people's targets to some extent. Imo you usually should not be totally rigid on heal assignments which means you need to have your eyes open. I imagine this would be the even more case in PvP healing where fights are obviously never scripted.
Lol, this tangent is funny.
Where there's a will, there's a way. Individual heal priorities are assigned. I recall in Rift we had a single target healer for each tank and 1-3 raid healers depending. That's a PvE raid example though and it varied per encounter. Sometimes there were 3 MTs and you needed 3 main healers, or 1 main healer with 1 MT swapping, or whatever. All healers would do cross heals, but they would keep their priority straight.
In WAR, it was more typical to have a group healer and a single target healer in a group (e.g. a DOK and Zealot) assigned per group. Specifically, you would assign 1 group healer per group, and then spread the single target healers out (since the ST healers could heal other groups as easily as they healed their own, but group healers were mostly restricted to healing their own groups). Generally they played whack-a-mole with healthbars.
More organized warbands would consolidate front-line targets together. For example, group 1 would have the frontline tank/PBAOE/mDPS + group healers (maybe 2 group healers, as opposed to the generic example above). Groups 2 and 3 would each have 1 group heal with some tank / rDPS mix. ST healers would be spread across groups 2, 3, 4. Group 4 would have the weakest group heals, probably stuck with most of the "safer" rDPS (archers). There were other variations where you would have 3 healers in the frontline group (to mix buffs), etc, but those were some of the considerations placed on group / warband composition and healer organization.
I remember reading some comment from MJ saying something like :
"The only way to survive as a crafter will be prayers and footwork. Maybe not in this order."
"If we give crafters combat skills, they wouldn't be pure crafters anymore, would they?"
PS : found that from another of my posts on another forum :
A few words from MJ :
"As to crafters being a bit brittle, yep. They won't be there to fight; that's what those big, brave, muscular looking folks are there to do,protect them. "
(KS comment, 13 pages from the end - it was on page 70 when there was 83)
"The crafters best defense if they are about to be overwhelmed will be prayer and foot speed. Maybe in that order, maybe not."
((KS comment, 20 pages from the end - it was on page 63 when there was 83)