Combat Stances

[firescue17]

I'm looking for some feedback on various Combat Stances, States, Roles, pick your term, other users may have set up. I've come up with the following so far, which may exist independently of each other:

ATG: Combat Group - DPS
Melee Off: Spell damage only; requires an Event Mapped Key to toggle "/assist off" and reset "/assist on" (based upon User preference).
Spells Off:: Melee damage only

AoE: Obvious
Burn: Dumps everything available including long duration cooldown abilities.
Balanced: Staggers the best ability not on cooldown with a re-use of 15 minutes or less as soon as it is available. The purpose is to raise average DPS over time while grinding.
Swarm Pets: Generally on; can be toggled off situationally. Disables Swarm Pet AAs, clickies, etc; anything other than pets for primary pet classes which can not be controlled with /pet hold. Can co-exist with Burn or Balanced to achieve 4 separate states:

1) Burn with Swarm Pets
2) Burn without Swarm Pets
3) Passive with Swarm Pets
4) Passive without Swarm Pets

Passive: Uses nothing but basic auto attack and spellbar spells to preserve cooldowns prior to engaging an event or Named.
Idle: Uses no action whatsoever, not even basic auto attack in order to med when OOM or recently rezzed.

ATG: Combat Group - Healers
A round-robin ATG where Healers are either DPS or Heal oriented. This ATG is generally empty and the User would manually Heal. For Named or Raids one can drop any of the three healing classes (CRL, DRU, SHM) into the ATG for single, double or triple direct heals. Could potentially include pet heals for primary pet classes which use a pet tank as the MT.

ATG: Combat Group - CC
A round-robin ATG to manage various forms of long duration Crowd Control (AoE Stun locking / AoE Mez). The ATG is generally empty and the User would manually single target Mez or Stun. Needs to play nice with the Healer ATG in case a Cleric is being used in an AoE Stun chain.

Thank you for any input.

[Alge]

My team is only 35 but those look fine to me. I've not raided (well not since PoP when I played solo) and am only playing a single cleric as healer in a 6-man group. Consider the following two suggestions speculative:

1) I would probably set things up so these were changeable on a per-character basis.
2) I could see a use for an Idle/Medding stance.

Also, I haven't quite worked out how important mounts are given the whole indoors/outdoors thing.

[firescue17]

1) I would probably set things up so these were changeable on a per-character basis.

This is where I'm working on some fine tuning. Up until now I've been running Macro-States where everyone was Passive, Balanced, or Burn; with my Cleric Burn being direct heals.

2) I could see a use for an Idle/Medding stance.

This is perfect! Thank you, Alge. A Passive-Passive state so to speak; sit-down and Med cause you're OOM or recently rezzed. I have updated the original post.

[firescue17]

Adding two more stances for specific Raids:

1) Melee off: Spell Damage Off
2) Spells off: Melee Damage Only

How about:

Debuff /Crowd Control = can cast DB/CC spells; mellee off and DD/DOT spells off?

So, CC character could keep target controlled/debuffed and not break mez while rest of group burns other targets...might be very situational.

Scart

[firescue17]

Do you have a particular event in mind?

"DD/DOT spells off" I have covered with an IFF Key Map. Generally speaking, it's used to keep from Dotting and Dispelling the MT. The same principle could be certainly be applied to this. One could consider a Mezzed mob a Friendly to keep from attack it.

For short duration mezzing of 60 seconds or so, I implement attack off into the /social itself:

Line 1: /attack off
Line 2: /cast Mez spellgem

For short duration AoE mezzing, I target and cast it on the Main Tank so it doesn't matter if attack is on or off, although best practice one would want to keep it off.

For long duration where you're trying to keep a set of mobs locked down for, let's say 20 minutes, I suppose this could be akin to the Healer ATG. In that case, the Healer does nothing but heal. One could add a CC ATG where an enchanter does nothing but cycle through the nearest target, group marks, or pre-set extended target slots and cast mez and cripple over and over.

How are you personally handling it now?

For long duration where you're trying to keep a set of mobs locked down for, let's say 20 minutes, I suppose this could be akin to the Healer ATG. In that case, the Healer does nothing but heal. One could add a CC ATG where an enchanter does nothing but cycle through the nearest target, group marks, or pre-set extended target slots and cast mez and cripple over and over.

How are you personally handling it now?

Yep, this is exactly what I had in mind, and you are right the ATG route is the way to go. I recall now that this is the way I handled it in WoW. Like I said earlier, this may be more specific than/not necessarily applicable to a "stance".

Right now, my CC is a hobbled together mess of mez breaking insanity. And at 71-ish that == a wipe. I like Algae's method and am setting up that way, which should improve things.

Scart

[firescue17]

Updated the OP to include CC. I have the beginnings of a Menu which I *think* I can make plug & play with Drag and Drop ATGs. It's very preliminary at the moment; I'm afraid I'll stumble across a glaring conflict at any moment and break the whole thing

[firescue17]

OMG. I solved it.

[sfdd]

Hi Firescue17. Just getting back into EQ and was going to try to get mezzing set up again using Alge's method, but Bob pointed out this post during a chat we were having, so I thought I'd ask. Any chance you could follow up your "OMG. I solved it." comment? It is a helluva cliff hanger... I'm not sure if you were speaking to a stance bit in general, or something referring to mezzing (which I am particularly interested in).

Thanks,
sfdd