Sandolphan

To command subsets of pets, you use letters in common among the desired powernames that are not shared by the powers you want excluded. For example:

/petcompow C goto

This will send the Genin and Jounin ninjas to the GOTO spot, but will exclude the Oni. The reason is the letter 'C' is shared by both powernames 'Call Genin' and 'Call Jounin' but not the powername 'Oni'.

There is a section in the numpad guide linked in my sig dealing with this exact issue, along with a chart showing all possible combinations (although moving to the new forums messed up the formatting a bit).

The command you're looking for is:

/bind KEY petselectname BOTNAME

where BOTNAME is the name of the pet you want targeted, and KEY is the key combo to bind to. Section V of the numpad guide linked in my sig has an example of this.

Also, I would keep the buff power bind separate from the targeting bind. That way you can easily target any pet for any purpose, and still have the power available for any purpose as well. Linking them in one command they sometimes won't fire correctly and the bind is less versatile.

As mentioned, two illusionists can easily tank LR by trading PA's. Advice is to not wait until the current PA is ending, but drop the next PA with at least a 10-15 second overlap to insure solid agro passing.

If solo, it's also possible to use the Phantasm decoy to tank LR for the few seconds it takes for PA to recharge (assuming no perma-PA). I've used it on LR for a couple of cycles, but it's extremely hard to keep going.

Try liberal use of Passive mode to keep wayward pets following orders.

Passive will clear out their agro list, making them more responsive to things like Stay, Goto, or Follow.

Of course don't just keep them in Passive all the time (you'll at least need Defensive for bodyguard mode), but periodically flip them into that mode to remind them you have orders you'd like followed immediately, not at their whim.

If that doesn't work, I usually shoot one where the others can all see...

Thought I would add that Virtue now does evac-less raids blueside (and with some more practice, red-side soon) using a strat modified from the nuke-hami raid.

Changes:

Have yellow mito teams thumbtack their assigned yellow on the map, to find it later before it spawns. It also can be helpful if everyone on the raid has 3 EOE's to eat on the blooms.

While attacking the nucleus after clearing mitos, instead of calling for TP'ers to get safe, apply single target buffs as needed. Roughly 15-20 secs before each bloom, call for RA's and aoe buffs on the assembled group.

Immediately after RA's are stacked, yellow agro holders move to pre-thumbtacked positions and get ready to taunt-agro the spawning yellows.

Remind the raid to eat an EOE on the bloom. Then proceed with a standard mito clearing. Keep AB stacked on the Hami taunt tank throughout.


This will easily shave 10-20 mins or more off a normal evac raid, and make for a non-stop event throughout.

Red-side lacks stacked RA's, so will have to drop a pair of nukes on the assembled raiders prior to bloom. Even then, it might be necessary to have the squishier assaulters exit the goo prior to bloom and let melees take Hami down (after the buffs are applied to all). More experience with this forthcoming.

Perhaps some clarification is needed.

A 'nuke-raid' is performed without any evacuation during blooms. The blooms are ignored and Hami is killed all at once. Warburg nukes and masses of temp power pets, as well as tanks in thumbtacked positions pulling yellow agro out of the middle, are employed to survive this. It takes under 10 minutes to execute, but requires participants spend time to acquire the nukes/temps.

A 'no-run' or 'evac-free' raid is a normal Hami, where each bloom is cleared before attacking Hami to spawn the next bloom. Instead of pulling out (evac'ing) when the next set of mitos bloom, the raid buffs during the hami attack phase just prior to the bloom, and the tanks take up position to intercept the fresh yellow mito agro. Each clearing proceeds normally except for raid buffing which takes place at Hami in the goo and the tanks moving into position, both just prior to the bloom percentage.

I am guessing they are doing the second (non-nuke) version, as it can be done normally without special preparation, and there had been some discussion about method and expectations to which I was a party. Times on this should be near or under 30 minutes.

I'm not exactly sure of Justice's Hami method, but as they have claimed near 30-minute runs as typical, I assume they use at least a partial 'no-run' method.

I'll also add that even more time could be saved by skipping clearing of the final bloom (25%) and simply killing Hami all the way down. As long as DPS can be maintained (especially during the 90 secs of RA stacking), there should be no reason Hami can't simply be taken down and the final mitos ignored (by all except the tank yellow taunt team).

Anyway, good luck on the raid if I cannot make it.

I've always been slightly annoyed at players who put their pets or henchmen out immediately in every situation. I prefer to only put them out as needed.

But it's also not my place to criticize them for playing the way they like. Etiquette, common sense, and capable play are the most you can ask for.

I probably would have just started stealing the group's experience by confusing all the bosses.

I'm surprised the leader didn't hit you with that old chestnut too!

Weekend raids are 6pm eastern
Weekday raids are 8pm eastern

In addition to an Attack-my-target and a Goto+attack, you probably want a Follow+defensive (bodyguard mode) and a Follow+passive (no attack) bind or macro.

/macro BG "petcomall foll def"
/macro Fol "petcomall foll pass"

Or if you wanted to bind these to a KEY:

/bind KEY petcomall foll def
/bind KEY petcomall foll pass

To find the old guides in the Player Guide section, you're going to have to perform a search for them until they straighten out the links.
The links in my sig are updated, if that helps.

The only change I would recommend is switching the places of Triage Beacon and Acid Mortar in the lineup. Acid Mortar is immediately useful to the MM with little slotting and one of the key powers of the set; Triage Beacon is more optional and really requires heavy slotting (which usually isn't available until much later in a build because of priorities) to bring it up to reasonable effectiveness.

Putting a power that becomes a forced choice at level four, and that won't be useful until much later, is a poor arrangement for the player.

I repaired the links in my sig to my own guides. Waiting to see what they are going to do about cleaning up the chaos the move has created.

Only the first two missions of Manti are kill-alls. The entire rest of the TF can be stealthed, likely in the time it takes to do the first two missions.

This was similar to the Citadel bug where level 36 warwolves would pop out a few times each mission. Personally, I enjoyed the extra challenge on Citadel, and now Manti. It's not an insurmountable obstacle, but it is difficult.

The end-of-TF AV is such a pushover, coupled with the sweeping aside of every other mob that most teams do, shows just how lacking the actual challenge in this game is. There is some content that is a bit harder (STF or LRSF for example), but for the most part the game merely satisifies mindless button-mashing. Fighting something that's bumping into the purple patch for a change presents a nice challenge the team has to focus on overcoming to progress through to success.

I know most players of this game simply want to crunch whites and yellows ad nauseum, and I'm not advocating taking away anyone's fun (once in a while I even find it amusing for a bit); but it's my own biggest complaint that this game lacks anything approaching real, long-term challenge.

Purple-patch mobs probably aren't the solution to real challenge, but it's a welcome surprise to me.

Sounds like fun!

And now you're thinking with portals...

Illusion - the most versatile toolbox in the game!

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There's also a whole series of binds that people seem to like to use, but they involve the number pad keys which I use for movement (and it wouldn't make sense to use those binds with other keys; the layout of the number pad is perfect for them).

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Although the numpad is well-suited to the layout of the controls, the concept of the binds isn't limited to just using the numpad. This is a key point and is mentioned in the guide, together with alternate layout suggestions (ie the idea behind what the binds do came first, and the 'fit' with the numpad was just a bonus).

The idea of using the same three command and three stance setting keys, and rebinding them on the fly with four group selection keys, is the heart of the system. However, the 3-3-4 layout fitting the numpad extremely well should not limit one's use of the system. Alternate pre-existing use of the numpad or the hand-off-the-mouse problem (to give two examples), won't preclude someone from employing the binds effectively if they assign them to any other preferred layout of keys.