Valdis

Some thoughts:

You know, if we had duration enhancements, this problem could be really, really reduced. 3 enhancements to double the duration? Sounds pretty good to me. And there's no way that even a 6-enhanced, 4.5 minute clear mind would be game breaking. No way. It'll make life easier without breaking the game. Even a 12 minute bubble wouldn't be insane (remembering that the bubble would then have zero def buff enhancers in it). Of course, things like AoE increaser enhancement, damage buff enhancers, cone angle enhancers, and recharge reduction enhancers would be nice to have too.

If they aren't going to do the above, they need to increase the buff durations. I have a new FFer, and it is oh-so-nice not to have to deal with the short buff durations that my empath, stormer, and kineticist have. It would remain ok if they increased clear mind to 3 minutes and stimulant to 2 minutes. Clear mind is still better, both are still usable, and my 6 key won't break as quickly.

Given Statesman's long record of being unable to live up to his campaign's hype, and Lord Recluse's lack of experience, I'm rooting for the Geko/Vyv ticket. You might not like what they're doing, but at least they're straightforward, honest, and experienced!

Has anyone gotten Jimmy Carter involved yet? Without him, who knows how much vote fraud and voter intimidation we'll have due to recognized enemies like the Devouring Earth, Hellions, and Vahzilok.

Since this is now listed in the guide to guides, I'll update it soon, but I wanted to say for now that /findmember appears to no longer work. However, the addition of the /makeleader command is a huge help.

May the hype be with you....

I have a different memory of the Rikti "invasion" at the end of beta. It was broken. A few people had fun, but in Atlas, we spent 9/10 of the event finding broken Rikti that couldn't be attacked. I think I saw maybe 3 functional Rikti (all of them taken down by the few high level heroes around while the rest of us were mobile targets who could do absolutely nothing useful). The Rikti stood around, sometimes killed people, but didn't actually DO anything. Ooooh...scary invasion, they spawned some monsters, most of which didn't work, and none of whom actually had a goal other than killing heroes. Real terrors to the city.

Statesmen likes to raise expectations, but don't go overboard and expect something dramatic or spectacular, you'll likely be disappointed. I'll be surprised if it amounts to anything more than villains being spawned throughout the city and wandering around to be mobile targets.

And I agree, this should henceforth be known as the Geico event.

Good points. Assist is useful mainly when fighting those orange and higher, especially bosses or higher level lieutenants. There are two reasons to assist though. The obvious one is that you drop the target quicker, but the equally important one is that it prevents blasters from accumulating too much aggro. Usually its smart to have blasters assisting a tank since the tank will almost always generate more aggro than the blaster. I learned (very painfully), however, that scrappers are a very poor substitute in this respect. Teaming with a scrapper, he was unable to out-aggro my storm defender. Generally, if your team is killing quickly, don't bother assisting, but if you're having a really rough time, assist can really help things move along a little faster (and safer).

I'll have to put out the 1.1 manual soon at this rate.

Thanks for all the comments. While playing today it occurred to me; expect the first few battles with a new team to go poorly. Especially at low levels. It takes some time to get adjusted to your team, everyone has to learn how one another's powers work. At higher levels you have a bit more flexibility to adapt to a situation (and people know how most of the powers work), but at low levels you can't really do that. Today I had 2 people in my group die in the first encounter. Second encounter we had a couple close calls. After that noone went below 50% health. So don't get frustrated after just one try.

Yes, and defender AoEs can do the same thing. Early with my storm defender I used snowstorm on a group of yellows. I was on the ground before the healer could throw out a single power.

Thanks for the comments. I like your idea Fjorn, that could be a big help if you can get people to pay attention to it. It might be a bit more than most pickup teams would put up with. For an organized group or a task force, that would be nice though.

As for kicking people, I really try to avoid that. As long as things are running smoothly, its probably better to let it slide, just to keep everyone happy. Only if its causing problems do I kick someone. I had one guy, a blaster, in a group in Faultline. The rest of the group would take on some clockworks. He would run behind us and aggro a separate group and pull them to us. He would (of course) die, wasting much of my healing end, and we'd be stuck fighting 2 groups. After 3 times doing this (and warnings not to), the team leader kicked him.

I realized I left one thing out. What do I mean by a successful group. It does not necessarily mean that its the optimum for fastest xp (I have little experience with that), but rather the optimum for having noone die while moving along at a nice pace and everyone having fun. If people die a lot, the team generally gets frustrated (for obvious reasons). With teams following the guidelines I have up there, everyone has ended with no, or at least less, debt.

I've noticed that many team leaders out there seem unaware of how to successfully run a pickup team. Many more seem unaware of what makes up a successful team. Although many of those people probably don't read these forums, I'll post what I've learned as the leader of teams and task forces (up to level 25) from the perspective of someone that's played every archetype (my main is a level 25 storm defender).

Basics:

The commands you need to know as a team leader are:

/invite (name) - this command invites the person with (name). You can also invite people with the find button on the team menu or by right clicking on them.
/sk (name) - invites a person to be a sidekick. You can also right click on them.
/findmember - not as useful for the team leader, but it allows others to access the find menu of the team section. I've found it very useful. Others cannot use the invite button, but they can relate names of people to the leader for inviting.

Leadership:

In most pickup teams I've been in, there has been a real ambivalence on what to do. This doesn't work, the group will waffle, and probably fall apart if noone moves things along. You need to suggest something; people will probably go along with anything, but you have to suggest something to start the conversation. Running missions, hunting, whatever. When you're in the mission, make sure everyone knows who to follow so you don't end up pulling multiple groups. If things are going badly, you need to make sure people understand that they need to assist one another. Whether you like it or not, as the leader, you are usually in charge. On the other hand, I've seen successful teams where someone not the leader is leading the team. That's fine too, as long as everyone knows who's calling the shots. (wouldn't it be nice if we had a change leader command?)

Keeping it moving:

If you want to keep a team going, you need to recruit. Constantly. Between every mission or every few minutes in a hazard zone, check the find menu. This is really the only way to keep the team size up. Otherwise it will attrition away as people leave. Its a constant struggle to keep enough people involved in the group. Try to keep the downtime between missions to a minimum. If you have to go AFK, at least pick the next mission so people can start heading there. A word on starting battles. Never start a battle with an AoE unless you're a tank. You will die. Maybe not the first time, but you will. I see it all the time. No archetype except a tank can survive the counterattack from the enemy (maybe some scrappers could, but their AoEs are generally small). If you have an AoE, wait to use it until after the first volley of single target attacks has gone through or the tank has aggro. If you have controllers/defenders, let them get off a few debuffs/holds before letting all hell break lose with your AoE. This will save you lots of debt.


Team Building:

Although with pickup groups you often can't pick and choose what you want (with tf groups its more important), you can try to aim for a successful group. Be sure to travel to other zones to look for people if you're still short of the number you're aiming for. First off, you don't need a full time healer. No, you don't. Really. Some of my best teams have had no healer and some of the worst have had 3. What you need is diversity. I had a team with 7 blasters and 1 empath once. We were horrible. Absolutely terrible, people died all over the place. Some guiding points for teams with 6+ people.

- You need meleers. Two scrappers work well, or a single tank. If you can't find meleers you'll need 3-4 controllers/defenders to keep the enemies debuffed and held.
- You need one blaster or two scrappers at least. Ever seen a team of 6 without any damage dealers? Too slow, the controllers could probably solo faster.
- Multiples are not good in some cases. Two of the same blaster, scrapper, or tank is ok. Two of the same controller or defender is less so. Having two different controllers or defenders is much more powerful than two of the same kind. Its really a huge difference.
- If someone mentions a friend online, grab them. Why? There are several reasons. The two friends probably will work well together since they know one another's abilities. Also, the person has friends, so the likelyhood they are a well adjusted human is better. And of course, it'll make your teammate happy, which is always good.
- Sidekicks are underrated. You can safely sidekick someone up to 10 levels lower than you. Below that is a bit problematic because it means they have far fewer enhancements and powers. When recruiting a sk, you should tell the person that before inviting them so they don't look around and say, "I think I'm in the wrong group".
- You should sidekick people who take damage first. This means blasters that are aggro-magnets first, then scrappers, then tanks, then whoever else. Its unnecessary to sk people three levels lower (especially with the purple patch fixed) unless the team is having a very hard time.
- A team should probably be all within 4 levels (after sking).

In smaller teams, its easier to make a team. With 4 or less, you can get away with just about any combination and do just fine. Also, if your team is a mismatch and not very effective, you're better going to hazard zones where the number of mobs is limited than trying missions (where the number of mobs scales with team size).


Managing Missions:

As leader, your main job (after recruiting) is managing the missions. First, you select missions from the team mission screen. If you click on the mission, without hitting select task, the mission icon will appear on your nav bar if the mission is in the same zone as you. This will save you having to continually hit select mission while looking for one in the zone you are in. Also, if you select a different mission after you have entered and left a mission, then reselected the current mission, the mission will be reset. It will be readjusted for the current number of people on the team, and all the mobs will be restored (i.e. you will have to restart the mission). This can be useful to lower the difficulty after people quit, or to raise the difficulty after people join. Also, if everyone alive leaves the mission (leaving only dead people), the mission will sometimes reset. I'm not sure about the specifics of this, its been erratic in my experience. Also note, that if you have started an instanced mission, and the person who holds the mission quits, you can complete the mission normally.

The level of a mission will depend on the level the mission holder was when he got the mission and the team size. The enemies in a normal mission will be either the mission level, or if the team has 5+ people, the enemies will be the mission level+1. If the mission is front loaded, the enemies at the front will be 1 level higher than normal, and drop off to up to 8 levels lower than the mission level. Given all this, it seems to be ideal to pick missions of people within 0-2 levels of the highest level person in the group, assuming the whole group fits within a 4 level span after sking. If most of the team is lower or uncoordinated, pick a lower level person's mission. Sidekick's missions will always be too easy for the group.


Are you ready to lead a team?

The things you need to lead a team are:
- A stable connection (an unstable leader is a bad thing).
- A good command of English (or whatever language the team is speaking, I've only been in one non-English team, a group of French people who were very nice to use English for me).
-The ability to type well. This can be underrated, but its really needed.
-Patience.


Good luck out there, hope to join your team some time. Add your comments if you feel something is missing (or plain wrong). Anyone adding high level post-25 content would be appreciated.