MP Strategy and Playstyle
Version: 1.00.00
The MP in the Crowd Control Role
The MP in the Damage Dealer Role
This section describes the key roles that teams usually need filling and then goes on to describe the ways in which an MP can fill those roles. When choosing your gameplay in a team, it is important to fit yourself to the needs and requirements of the team. One of the great benefits of playing an MP is that the MP has something to offer in nearly all of the key roles in team play. As a result, you can be flexible and fit into many roles and have varied and interesting gameplay.
Many MPs will change their playstyle through their careers, playing one role most of the time as a low level player and then changing to a different role selection as a medium level player and finally changing once again as a high level player. There is no 'right' way to play an MP. This section takes some of the elements that MPs can add to a team and gives some hints and tips on how those elements can be played. But each MP can build as many or as few elements into their gameplay as they like.
Some MPs don't do much more than just stand back and let their pets do their talking for them. Other MPs are right up close and personal with mobs. Still others mix the elements up to work mostly as a support for the team and others use everything they can to die with honour!
MPs are lucky in many ways. For a large part of our playing career we are one of the most sought after professions to play in teams. At different levels the reasons for this can be very different too. It's important to have an understanding of what may be expected of you by a team in order to have an idea of what your role will be in a given team. This whole section is based on the average Nanomage breed MP. Tactics and team play for MPs of other breeds will differ greatly in some areas.
MPs are blessed with a little of everything:
· with our attack pets, we have some ability to take the focus of anger from a mob (tanking)
· with our heal pets, we have some ability to heal players in the team and we can increase this if we like through using first aid stims
· with our Mez pets, we have some ability to calm mobs that threaten the team
· With one of our perk specials we have a powerful root
· with our nukes and our attack pets we can be potent damage dealers in a team
· with our buffs, we can often buff the other players in the team to raise the overall level of damage, healing, calming, rooting... and because we enable other people to reach better buffs, we also indirectly affect the chances of critting for the team, the defensive buffs that members can give the whole team and so on.
· with our damage and nanoskills debuffs we can reduce the damage done to the team and sometimes save team members lives
· with some of our perk specials we can debuff nano resist and nano vulnerability, thus enabling all of the casters in the team to land their hostile nanos more easily on the target
· with Curse of Chronos and our pets we have some ability to help with controlling mobs when there are many of them or when the team needs to escape a bad situation
· with Nano Shutdown we can render many opponents totally harmless long enough to kill them.
On the other hand, the MP is something of a jack of all trades and is Master only of nano skills buffing. So the flipside of the above is:
· several other professions can tank much better than our attack pet
· several other professions can heal a team better than our heal pets
· several other professions can out-damage our pets and our nukes
· several other professions can calm and root better than we can
· several other professions have better debuffs than ours
· several other professions have better crowd control nanos and techniques
So, what is it that makes the MP a good team player? There are 3 key things:
· our nano skills buffs are very useful for the whole team. It is one of the great benefits that we bring to any team and should never be underestimated. In order to get to casting the buffs we put in a great deal of work and effort and teams prize the result.
· when a team is being built there are several elements that they will look for. Because the MP can offer a little of several different elements, they can help fill out a team that is missing some key elements.
· in a team of people where all of the key elements have been covered, adding an all rounder like the MP is often a very good choice. For example, if the healer is debuffed by a mob and finds they cannot cast any heals, then the MP's heal pet can jump in and save lives. If the tank is rooted to the spot by a mob and can't do his job properly, then the MP attack pet can often reduce the dangers involved. If there are lots of adds, the MP mez pet can help hold some of them back etc.. In a sense we can act as the back-up for all of the key elements.
To summarise, the MP is only really good as the sum of all of his tools. No one tool or attribute stands out above those of other professions. Yet when you put all of the pieces together and use them all well, then you will find yourself to be a prized addition to almost any team. This also means that you can put the pieces together in your own way in order to create your own play style. Few other professions have this luxury.
Let's look first at what the key roles are in a team and understand a bit about why the role is important and how people who fill that role can be successful in it.
When a team hunts whether outdoors or in a mission there are often a lot of mobs around ready to jump on the team and do their best to kill you. The art of pulling (and it is an art) is splitting off one mob at a time for the team to kill at their leisure instead of the team having having to deal with 3 or 4 mobs at a time and struggling to hold their own. Some teams prefer then to stand still and have someone go off and bring one mob at a time back to the team (or sometimes to do this at a distance with special tools). When there is more than one mob attacking the team they are called 'adds'.
Generally speaking, a puller would want to satisfy at least some of the following attributes:
In order to know what's going on in a room full of people, pets, bots, mobs, blinding flashes, loud noise and a text window full of chat and cires of congratulations and help!!!! - it's important to have the team focussed on the same goal. Generally, it's better for a team to try to work together to kill one mob at a time. Different people attacking different mobs on their own generally leads to the mobs killing the people.
The best tactic 90% of the time is to focus on one mob and kill it, then switch to the next mob and then the next. In the meantime, it's important that the damage being done to the team by the other mobs who may be around is kept to the players with the most Hit Points who will not die too quickly for the healer to keep up.
The Tank role makes sure that all of this works. A tank is usually a player with high hit points who can do high average damage. As a result of the high damage they do, they are seen as being the most threatening member of the team and even additional mobs will often focus on them. The Enforcer and Soldier professions can both make very good tanks. Both professions have Nanos and tools that they can use which make mobs even more angry at them. In this way, the tank makes sure that most of the damage from the mobs is focussed on them.
At the same time, they focus on killing one mob at a time and their choice of the mob to die is usually followed by the team. Because most of the damage is going on one team member, the healers usually have an easier time of healing. It's easier and costs less nano for a healer to heal one player a lot, than to have to heal the whole team repeatedly because several team members are getting attacked.
In any situation where a team is fighting, people are going to get hurt. The healers role is to heal them and make sure that they don't die. There are three main types of healing that are important in a team.
Team Healing:
This is where one team member casts a nano that heals all of the members in a team. There are several professions that can do this to varying degrees. Team healing tends to be wasteful. Each team heal will usually use up a lot of nano and that power is used to heal all of the people in the team, even if only 2 or 3 of them were hurt.
Singlepoint healing:
The healer heals on person by an amount with each heal. It's more complex than team healing because the healer must shoose who to heal by their level of health (shown in the team panel's bars) and by the rate at which they are losing health.
HoT healing:
This stands for Heal over Time. A nano is usually cast on the team or members of the team which heals a few points every few seconds. Often, the nano increases the overall hit points of the target too. This kind of healing ensures that if a few of the people in the team are getting hit occasionally, but not very badly, then the HoT will heal them bit by bit over time. These are very powerful but often underestimated healing tools
The down side of being the healer in the team is that the mobs aren't entirely stupid and if someone is healing a lot in the team then the mobs will start attacking that person. They know that if the healer dies then they are more likely to be able to kill the rest of the team.
An apt name for a very important task, that makes the job of any team (and tank) a lot easier. There are six basic Crowd Control elements in AO:
Calms/Mezzes:
These stop a mob from fighting or moving. They can hold the mob like this as long as the mob isn’t attacked. If the mob is hit by a weapon or a nano is landed on the mob – the mob will suddenly come back to life again and attack.
Roots:
Roots stop a mob from moving, but the mob can continue to fight. It’s possible to hit and cast nanos at a rooted mob to an extent. Most roots will eventually ‘break’ though and the mob will be free to move towards you again. Roots are most useful against melee mobs with limited range, as the team is more able to move out of range of his attacks.
Snares:
Snares slow a mob down dramatically. When you sanre a mob its runspeed is massively debuffed so that he can only move at the very slowest of snails paces. The snare is much less easy to break with damage than a root, so although it doesn’t entirely stop movement, you can usually continue attacking the snared mob for longer.
Stuns:
Stuns are like unbreakable calms. They stop the mob from moving and fighting and the effect sticks even if you keep on hitting and casting at the mob. The Stun effect is usually very much shorter than a calm though, lasting from 2 to 5 seconds only.
Scares/Fears:
These are effects that scare mobs away. The mob suddenly turns tail, often in mid-fight and runs as far away as he can get. Take care though the mob will sometimes come back and attack again so you should be prepared.
Charms:
Charms are a very special form of crowd control, where a player can take control of a mob and make it attack its own. Essentially, when a mob is charmed it then becomes the pet of the charmer.
In a situation where there are lots of adds (mobs in addition to the one the team is trying to kill), crowd control can be essential. By making sure that none of the other mobs attack the team or preventing mobs that hit at close quarters from getting close to the team, the crowd control member of the team allows the team to take their time killing each mob one by one.
Debuffing professions can do a great deal in keeping a team alive. There are many debuffs in the game, some make mobs hit much more slowly, others reduce damage, some stop certain mobs from attacking, some reduce the Armour Class of mobs, others steal hitpoints from a mob and give them to a caster, others that reduce the vision of a mob making it harder for them to see what they are attacking... the list goes on.
Each debuff reduces a mob's ability to hurt you and/or increases the team's ability to hurt the mob. Often, you'll find that debuffs from different professions will stack up together. So as an example a doctor may have a debuff that reduces the combat speed and accuracy of a mob by reducing its Inits. A trader debuff cast on the same mob may reduce the inits by some more. An MP debuff cast on the same mob might reduce the inits by even more still. Then the NT may cast a 'blindness' debuff on the mob and what you have left is a mob that hardly ever hits anything and never does much damage when they do hit.
All of the above roles are all well and good. But somebody has to actually kill the mob by damaging it! The damage dealers in the team have this role. Damage dealers are usually either weapons specialists or direct damage nano specialists. In particular, critical hits, weapons special attacks and perk special attacks can do a huge amount of damage.
There are two other types of damage that can be very effective too. DoTs, or Damage over Time attacks will take a certain amount of hit points away from the target every few seconds for a certain number of 'ticks'. So a DoT that does 250 damage for 10 ticks, will end up doing 2500 damage overall.
The second type of damage that can be very powerful is steady consistent damage. Professions who cannot deal massive single attacks which do huge damage can often maintain a good steady level of damage. This is particularly useful against targets that take longer to kill. MPs with their pets and nukes are an excellent continuous damage over time profession.
Most professions have some buffs that will improve the overall success of the team. The buffing role is sometimes seen by players as being annoying or unwelcome, but just as a debuff that reduces the abilities of the mobs can be important, so can a buff that increases the abilities of a team be important. Hit point buffs that raise the hitpoints of the team, Armour buffs that make them less vulnerable, Crit buffs that make the damage of the team higher, evade buffs that keep the team from being hit, nano skills buffs that make the power of all nanos better etc.
One of the great benefits of teaming with other players from different professions is that the buffs that each player can give will tend to enhance the performance of the other players in the team.
So, given these key roles in a team, how can an MP play their part. As we said before, the MPs strengths lie in three areas:
· Buffing Role
· Filling a missing role or a poorly covered role in a team
· Backing up and reinforcing a filled role
Let's take each of the key roles and look at how the MP can help.
An MP in general doesn't make a good puller. Our runspeed is often not good enough (dark blue skill) and running around with pets following us will make it very difficult to pull just one mob at a time back to our team, so we'd need to leave them behind by using the /pet wait command. We don't have specific tools for pulling aggro from a distance (other than the general aggro prod buff), our evades are a light blue skill, our sneaking skill is dark blue and would be wasted IP for an MP and so on. However, it is an important skill when you are soloing indoor missions and some MPs really enjoy the role. There can be quite an adrenaline rush while pulling mobs and good pullers are highly prized in teams.
If you are going to pull for a team (particularly in a mission) then you should try to satisfy as many of the attributes mentioned in the description under this heading in the section above.
Basic Pulling Techniques
Many pullers prefer to set their agg/def bar to full def. This helps them avoid hits and also makes them less threatening to a room with several mobs, making it easier to pull a single one away from the room. It also ensures that when you get back to the team, they can easily pull the attention of the mob(s) away from you and onto them.
Pullers should always create a macro that tells the team in team chat which mob they are going to pull. This allows the team to prepare for the mob in question. For example:
/macro Pulling /g Pulling %t now
You can also simply target the mob in question and type %t into the team chat. Also, if you think that you may well be about to pull more than one mob because you don't think you will be able to split them, try to warn the team in advance.
When approaching a mission room as a puller, it is important that you use your map display to assess the room before going into it. Check where the mobs are on your map (with the Monsters map upgrade). If there is only one mob in the room, then approach with care through the doorway until you notice that the mob has seen you and begins its attack. Then begin moving back to the team, with the mob in tow. Keep an eye on the dot on your map too in order to make sure that it is still following you.
When pulling indoors or outdoors, be aware that there are other mobs around too. Outdoors you may well only attract the attention of one mob, but then find that all the other mobs of that type who are nearby will come to your target mob's defence.
Try to learn which mobs will defend which others and make sure that the surrounding area doesn't hold too many mobs for your team to deal with. Indoors, you will need to make sure that as you work your way into the mission, there are no side-rooms with mobs left in them next ot your return path. These may not attack you as you go past the room, but can very well attack you as you're on your way back with another mob! If this happens then you may well end up pulling more mobs than your team can comfortably deal with.
The best way to deal with this is to clear the rooms as you find them. Decide a path that you will want to clear and clear at least the rooms on either side of this path before going deeper along the path. For this reason, it is usually best to clear all the rooms leading directly off the main room in a mission.
Also, having a set a path in your mind that you want to clear is very useful because it makes it easier for you to remember the way back. You don't want to be running around lost with mobs trying to attack you. You want to get back to the team as soon as possible. In addition, if you don't remember your way back, then you may find yourself stumbling into a room with more mobs in it... which could easily mean your death.
In order to split mobs off from a room where there is more than one mob, you need to attract the attention of one of the mobs without the others noticing you. Before moving close enough to a door to open it you can see the mobs on your map display in the room ahead. Patience is a virtue here. Wait as long as possible for the best positioning of the mobs. This will be when one mob is near to the door and the others are further away. Inch towards the door and dart forward a step and then immediately back. If the mob you wanted turns and begins attacking then move away from the door at least far enough to allow the door to close behind the mob that is now after you.
With a deal of practice and a great deal of skill you can even pull a single mob from a tiny room where the two mobs are standing right next to the door.
Once back to your team, it's usually wise to tell the heal pet to heal you and the attack pet to attack the mob as soon as possible.
As a puller you may also want to take your Mez Pet with you. For rooms where there are two mobs, the mez pet can be used to ‘calm’ one of the mobs allowing you to pull the other mob back to the team. This makes splitting mobs a great deal easier. However, you need to be sure that your mez pet is strong enough to reliably hold the mob calm. If the mez pet should lose its hold over the mob, then your team may get a sudden uninvited visitor half way through killing the mob that you pulled back with you.
If you do use your mez pet to hold a mob calm while pulling, always make sure that you pull that mob as the very next mob. Simply tell the mez pet to follow you and wait a few seconds for the mez effect to wear off, then pull the mob as usual. He’ll usual already be fairly angry with you because of you using the mez pet on him, so he’ll follow you happily enough.
Pets as Pullers
Pets, generally, don't make good pullers. They are nowhere near as precise as a player puller can be. If there are adds to be had they will pick them up. You can reduce the likelihood with an MP attack pet by not buffing them with instill or chant or evocation... but then the attack pet will not hold the attention of the mob in all likelihood once it has pulled. The only really valid thing you can do is to buff the pet with an evocation only when they have pulled back to the team room, which won't really help much in most cases.
The basic technique for doing this is to get the pet to attack a mob from a distance. Once the pet is hitting on the mob you need to get close enough to the pet to order it to follow, then run back to the team. The pet will follow you and the mob will follow the pet. Once back with the team you need to order the attack pet to start killing the mob again and you have just pulled with a pet!
Generally, when asked to pull you should say no. There are all sorts of problems. By sending the pet off from a distance, you have less idea of what other mobs might be around. If your pet attacks one and there is another one nearby, it will like as not come straight for you. You then have to move close enough to the pet to command it to follow and in missions and outdoor hunting, this leaves you exposed and sometimes out of range of the team.
In any team there will almost certainly be one other profession who will make a better puller. Suggest that they pull and failing that, suggest that nobody pulls and that you move through the mission room by room, or run round as a team together to pick your battles with mobs.
With social aggro getting stronger in the game, which means that mobs will sometimes decide to attack your team from a long way away and without warning, you will sometimes find that your attack pet defends the team and runs off himself to deal with the attacker. This is not a good situation to be in. Your attack pet is off somewhere away from the team not under your control.
In this situation, you need to be able to go and pull your attack pet back to the team, bringing the mob with him. Don't just let him go without saying anything to the team. If there was more than one mob wherever the attack pet went, then they will probably kill the pet. Once he's dead they will soon turn up and start hitting on your team. If this is a surprise and the team isn't ready, is resting or worse rebuffing the results can be deadly. Tell the team that the demon is fighting elsewhere and that you will pull it back to the team, then go pull it!
Advanced Pulling Techniques for the MP
For the sake of completeness here are some more advanced techniques that you can use if you have to pull:
A pet owner with a strong pet can split three mobs in a room quite well,
· Put the Mez pet on one mob
· Attack a second mob at distance with the pet
· Pull the third mob back into the room where the team is.
It’s relatively rare that you’ll need to pull three mobs from a room – and not be able to split one off by just using proximity. Still on some occasions it can happen.
The downside is that the attack pet may not hold out against the mob while you are killing the pulled mob and as a result, the original mob may add in the end anyway (though considerably weakened by then). In addition, the MP’s attack pet can sometimes be a fair portion of the overall damage potential of the team. With this method you leave that damage in one room with a mob and the team has to kill the other mob without that help.
However you pull, the high damage players in your team need to be ready to get aggro away from the pulling MP very quickly. If you’re pulling during solo hunting, ensure that the evocation buff is running on your attack pet to make him a more attractive target for the mob to hit.
It is quite possible to tank using an attack pet in some situations. As we mentioned above the tank's role is to hold the attention of a mob and to act as a focus of attention for the team through everyone attacking the mob that the tank is attacking. The tank should have enough hit points to be able to absorb the damage being done by the mob and should have good average damage to keep the attention of the mob.
Generally, if your attack pet is going to tank, then it will need to be a high QL pet. It should be strong red to you. If your attack pet is orange or yellow to you, then the likelihood is that the pet will not hold up to acting as tank for the sort of hunting you are likely to be doing in a team. You will also want to be sure that you have a good quality Chant and Instill cast on the attack pet.
It is generally best to have a player character pull back to the team and as you see the player returning with a mob, cast your Evocation pet buff on your attack pet and dispatch it to attack. Keep an eye on the health bar of the puller and if he's struggling put the heal on him immediately after commanding the attack pet. The Evocation line is the best for making your attack pet a tank as it also increases the AddAllOff of the pet which will help the pet to keep aggro so make sure that you keep it refreshed on the pet.
You can nuke or shoot at the mob. Keep in mind though that you go on the mob's hate list too as the owner of the pet (which is why adds will quite often go straight for the owner in a solo mission) any damage and aggro that you give to the mob will potentially pull him off the attack pet and on to you. Exercise care when doing damage while your pet is tanking. Your role now is as tank and not as damage dealer.
If the mob does switch target away from the attack pet, make sure that the evocation is running on the attack pet and get the heal pet to heal the attack pet. The damage add from the evocation plus the addition of the heal pet to the mob's hate list as healing a major threat will sometimes pull the mobs attention back to either the heal pet or the attack pet. Keep in mind of course that the heal pet is then not available for a period of time for the players.
When the mob is down to the last bits of life, then you can usually allow yourself a bit of a free for all with your own damage. Bang away with the nukes, shoot your gun... whatever damage you have, until the mob goes down.
If it looks at any time like the mob has more HP than your attack pet, put the heal pet onto the attack pet straight away. Your responsibility in the tank role includes not letting the attack pet die. This would just leave the whole team open to attack by the mob. If the tanking pet does go down before the mob is dead, then all hell tends to break loose. If this happens, once calm is restored, discuss new tactics with the team. Generally, in any hunting zone or mission the mobs will be around about the same difficulty and if your attack pet dies as tank in one battle it is likely to happen again.
If your attack pet has been unable to hold the aggro of the mob and the mob switches to hitting/shooting a member of the team, try the heal on attack. If it doesn't work, then when the next mob is there if the mob ends up attacking the same player, make sure you get the heal pet to that player as soon as you can. After the second mob is dead, discuss the possibility of the player that has been getting the aggro (being hit) playing a tanking role. You can agree to stick the heal pet to that player in order to maximise his chances. The reason is obvious: if the player is consistently taking aggro away from your attack pet and heal pet combo then he is also likely to be able to keep aggro well as a tank.
Once your pet has tanked the mob and it is dead, take the time to make sure that your pet is fully healed by your heal pet and that its buffs are at full strength. Then the puller can go off again to pull the next one. Tanking with an attack pet is usually considerably slower than tanking with a real tank. If the team begins to get impatient waiting for you to prepare the pet, don't rush yourself. Instead, begin discussing other tactics. Allowing the team to rush the process when tanking with a pet will often lead to deaths in the team in the end.
The biggest drawback of tanking with the pets is that they are very much less able to tank multiple mobs. Good tanks can use aggression enhancers, special attacks, special nanos etc in order to keep the attention of more than one mob. Even if they can't get the whole attention of all of the mobs they can be certain to get most of the attention. With the pets it is much more difficult to manage this.
The best way without doubt is having good crowd control in the team. They calm the mobs that are not being attacked and once the first mob is dead, take a little time to prepare your pet and then set the pet off. You can do this to an extent with your mez pet, but you can only hold one mob calmed at a time with your mez pet. Also your mez pet has to recast his effect every 10 seconds or so – if one attack fails to land, then the add will be free to attack, at least until the next mez effect lands.
Even the calms that players use do not last for ever and will time out eventually. Make sure you know approximately how long the player's calms will last before engaging in battle. Your attack macro for the attack pet (macros are discussed in a separate section) should say the name of the target before ordering the attack. This way, the team is left in little doubt what the target is.
There are two main tactics you can use in add situations without good crowd control or when you do not have a Mez pet that can reliably calm the mobs that you are fighting.
· One is to put the heal pet onto your attack pet again, in the hopes that the adds will attack the heal pet rather than attack other team members.
· If this doesn't work, you can use a more risky tactic, being to cast an evocation on your attack pet and then cycle quickly between the mobs ordering an attack on each one of them by your attack pet. Make sure you get a confirming response from the attack pet and that the attack pet hits each target at least once. It's a little risky doing this because it means that the teams focus for action isn't focussed! Only do this when one mob is already showing lost health on its bar. This way the team members know which one to hit themselves. In most instances a single hit on the add mobs will not show very much on their health bars, but may grab their attention to the pet.
If the attack pet does die while tanking despite your best efforts, your first job is to watch to see which player the mob turns his attention to. Immediately get the heal pet on that player and then begin casting a new attack pet. As soon as the new attack pet is up, command it to attack the mob. Then begin casting the buffs on the attack pet that will up its damage and aggro setting. When the pet has died during tanking your first priority is to get a new tank up and running that will tank again.
Without a puller, tanking with a pet is possible but much more hazardous to the team. Outdoors and in mission it's possible to command the attack pet to attack a target and then have the team follow the pet into battle. The biggest difficulty with this is that dispensing with a puller and just going from mob to mob (room to room in missions) will often lead you into many more add situations. You are far less likely to be able to deal well with an add situation if you are running into it.
Generally, with this type of tanking you want to have the heal pet stuck to the attack pet before commanding the attack. If there are any adds as a result of following the tank, then the heal pet stands a chance of taking the aggro from the add thus making the situation a bit less desperate when you arrive.
In the section above we identified the three major healing types
· team healing
· singlepoint healing
· HoT healing (Heal over Time)
· Nano Healing
Your heal pet and stims can take over some of the hitpoint roles to a lesser or greater extent in a team and also the Soothing Spirits Perk Line offers a team healing perk special. The nano healing element comes from Perk Specials (only available if you have the Shadowlands Expansion Pack) and stims.
Team Healing:
As a general rule the heal pet cannot do this but if you have trained the Soothing Spirits perk line (which all MPs should do) then you will have access to the “Spirit of Blessing” perk special which gives a team heal effect every 40 seconds. Since Soothing Spirits also improves the amount that the Heal Pet can heal for, the Soothing Spirits perk line is a key perk line for the MP.
Any team that is relying on the MP to heal the team, should be told that the MP may well be able to cover the healing role as long as the content chosen is not too difficult. If the team is planning on doing very difficult content, then you should probably leave the team in order to allow the team to recruit a doctor or good team healer if this is the role that they are expecting you to play.
In teams who are hunting well within their range, you can consider continuing with the team. Essentially, you will be singlepoint healing as below with the occasional Team Heal from the Spirit of Blessing team heal. But you will still have responsibility for the whole team. Nevertheless, you are acting in the 'team healer' role in this situation and have a responsibility for the lives of all team members.
It is particularly important that the team have a good tank if you are to fill this role. If the tank is excellent and hunting well within his range, then he will hold most of the aggro and take most of the damage. You can then simply stick the heal pet to the tank and very rarely have to move the heal pet at all to other players. This is the optimum situation for the heal pet to be in.
When other players are taking damage such as when there is an Add and you need to be able to heal them while waiting for the mez pet or other crowd controller to calm the add, then the Soothing Spirits perk special and/or first aid stims might be used to tide the team over.
If an add situation occurs while you are trying to fill the role of team healer – or if the tank is not holding the aggro of the mob very well and the mob is switching its attack from player to player, then it’s a good tactic to use the /assist command to choose where to send the heal pet. Make the following macro shortcut:
/macro Assist /assist
Then target the mob and as you see the graphic showing that your heal pet has just healed a player, hit the Assist macro. By assisting the mob, you’ll change your current target to the player that the mob is actually hitting. Once you have the target tell the heal pet to heal that player.
If the mob is changing its target very often because you’re in a balanced team where several team members are doing similar damage and generating similar aggro, then you need to watch the health bars on your team window carefully. You need to assess several things:
· Which team member is taking the most damage
· Which team member is losing most of their total health with each hit
· Is the team member running out of nano for casting protection or taunting nanos during combat
These factors, amongst others, will give you an idea of how is in most danger of dying and who is being hit the most. Based on this, you can:
· put the heal pet on the player who is losing most of his health in a single hit. If the mob happens to hit him two or three times in a row then he might die. Since it takes time to switch the heal pet to a player and for the heal to kick in, players who die quickly may be a good place to stick the heal pet most of the time.
· Keep a close eye on the player who is taking the most damage overall and switch the heal pet to him when he needs it to top him up. Once that is done put the heal pet back on the player most in danger of dying quickly.
In a team with a good tank, the tank should be the player taking the most damage and the mob should not be switching targets very much at all. In that optimum situation, the heal pet should be stuck to the tank.
Singlepoint Healing:
Although it is possible to single-point heal as a supplement to a team healer, there are restrictions to this. You cannot single-point heal if there is no team healer. In any team where there is no team healer then you and your pet are in fact in a team healing role with responsibility for the lives of the whole team. Although the MP usually has the Team Heal perk special “Spirit of Blessing”, this perk special is only available every 40 seconds and so isn’t sufficient to qualify the MP as a true Team Healer.
Basic Single-Point Healing techniques
We spoke above of the difficulties of switching a pet from person to person in the team. Generally, the single-point healing role is filled by the MP only when there is a good team healer in the team. In difficult situations where several players are being attacked, you can keep an eye on the health bars and switch the pet to the most needy cases. These will be the players whose health is dropping the fastest and the players whose health is well below half health.
You must keep a particularly good eye on the health bars of the team healer though. The moment the team healer's health bar starts dropping, you should switch your heal pet to him. As we mentioned above, team healers will tend to get aggro from all of the adds in an add situation. The team healer's life is the most important in the team, because if the team healer dies, then the likelihood is that others will follow. Find out who the team healer is at the beginning of the team. Make a note of which F-key corresponds to him and keep a close eye on his bars.
When single-point healing, you are supplementing the team heals. You need to take into account that some drops in health will be picked up by the team healer. Don't switch your pet too early, because you will find that you are switching your pet to someone who wasn't in trouble and whose health is restored by the team heal. Keep an eye on the health bars and you will soon get a feel for the rhythm with which the team healer is casting. If you see a player's health stay still or go down after a team heal, then keep a close eye on that health bar. It is the most likely candidate for a heal in the near future.
It is essential for single-point healing that you have a good understanding of who is where. The best position to be is in the middle of the team with the team loosely in a circle around you. You should have the heal pet stuck to you. Until you have a good deal of practice you should not take part in the battle itself. Put the attack pet on the mob and then focus on the health bars. When you see that one of the team may need a heal soon, select them and turn around until you see their health bar above their head. Make a mental note of where they are and keep pointing in their direction, then go back to scanning the health bars. Remember, keep a particularly close eye on the team healer and check during the battle every once in a while to make sure that you know where the team healer is.
When you do need to heal a player, select the player using the F-keys (F1 is yourself F2 is the next person down in your team panel and so on till F6) and command the heal to heal the player. Then turn to where that player is and try to get a fix on which mob is attacking the player. Make sure that you are pointing towards the player being healed and have your First Aid Stim (or spindle) shortcut ready.
If the heal pet is healing but is not keeping up with the damage, use one of your nanos that will probably pull aggro onto yourself. The damage/init debuff is usually very good for this purpose. Then step forward to the player and give him a first aid stim. If you then stay still and do not attack the mob that you pulled onto yourself, someone in the team will shoot at it and get the aggro off you again. If this doesn't happen very soon then command your attack pet to switch targets to the mob attacking you. This should finally get the aggro away from you.
Make sure that the person you were healing is reasonably OK again and then command the heal pet to heal you again. This tactic is hair raising and gets your adrenaline running. You must stand still with a mob attacking you and wait, trusting your team mates or your pet to pull the aggro away from you again.
Once you are more adept at keeping track of where the rest of your team is around you by using your mini-map and simply understanding better how players tend to move around during battle, then you can more confidently take a more active part in the battle and use only the health bars in your team window to make decisions about how and when to move pets.
Problems and Issues when Single-Point Healing
If you switch the pet and get the message "I am unable to do that master" then one of two things is the likely cause.
· you don't know where the person is and they are either out of line of sight of you with the pet above you, or the person in question may be standing on top of furniture or hiding near shelves. Many players do this to reduce their likelihood of being attacked. Essentially they are getting themselves out of line of site of the mob. Unfortunately, they are also getting themselves out of line of sight of your heal pet.
The best thing that you can do in this situation is go as close as you can to the player and then order the heal pet to heal. Often this will get the heal pet to the player in question, but it brings its own problems. Once the pet is healing a hidden player, it can be very difficult to get the heal pet back for other players.
If the team is relying to any extent upon your heal pet as a supplement to a team healer, then you must explain to them that they need to stay off furniture and try to stay in plain sight of you. If they don't then not only do they risk not getting healed themselves, but the heal pet can get stuck making it impossible to heal anyone in the team.
· The heal pet has run out of nano. It's a good idea to use the /pet report command regularly to keep an eye on the percentage nano status of the heal pet. If the heal pet is running low on nano, the best thing to do is to get the team to pause for a moment, terminate the heal pet and recast a new one.
If the heal pet has run out of nano during a fight, the only thing you can do to make it heal again is to use the general nano “Bot Mass Migration” to transfer a small amount of nano from yourself to the heal pet. Each time you cast Bot Mass Migration on a heal pet that has run out of nano, you should enable a single heal from the pet. It’s generally a good idea to buff your heal pet with one of your Nanocost Reduction buffs in the beginning as this will keep the pet healing for a longer period of time.
First Aid Stims
If you have maxed your First Aid skill then you should have reasonably good “Simple First Aid Kit” stims and in Shadowlands “Spiri-Aid Spindles” available for you to use. Using these to fill in the gaps between your heal pets strokes during moments of acute danger can mean the difference between life and death. You can only use one of these every 40 seconds though, so this should be a last resort in particularly bad situations.
HoT Healing:
This is the most common usage of a heal pet. If the heal pet is stuck to a single target and doesn't need to be moved, then in essence the heal pet is acting just like a large, slow HoT on that player. It heals regularly when needed for a certain amount. You will often get the request in teams to "Stick the heal on the tank". In this case you simply command the heal to heal the tank and get on with your role as damage dealer. If the tank is not managing to hold the aggro of the mobs well at all, then you will probably want to switch back to a single-point healing role.
Never stick the heal pet to a puller.
Firstly, the heal pet will take aggro from possible adds the puller may come across and it makes it much harder for the puller to do his job of pulling a single mob back to the team. If the Tank is also acting in the puller role, then put the pet on yourself while he is pulling and then stick your heal pet to him when he is back in the room. Make sure that you get the heal pet back onto yourself as soon as the mob is dead. Pullers have a tendency to go off quickly to pull the next mob and you don't want your heal pet going after him.
A good candidate for using the heal pet like a hot is (weirdly enough) the doc in the team. If the doc is a good high level doc and the team is fairly balanced meaning several members are regularly getting aggro (or when there's no crowd control) then the doc will be doing a lot of team healing. This will undoubtedly get the doc a lot of aggro. Sticking the heal pet to the doc will often help just enough to keep him alive in a bad situation.
Another possible candidate for the heal pet when you are playing the HoT role is any NT in the team. NTs tend to be nanomage breeds and can do enormous damage with their nukes. In addition, nukes have a tendency to pull aggro even when they are not dealing the most damage. As a result, they quite often pull aggro away from a tank. As Nanomages, most NTs will not be able to stand up to much of a beating when they get aggro, so having the heal pet 'HoT' running on them can keep them going long enough for the tank to get aggro back or for the doc to get the NT targeted and healed.
Keep in mind too that you yourself are a profession with a nuke and aggro pulling nanos... In some teams you may want to have the heal pet 'HoT' running on yourself.
When you are moving from mob to mob with the team in a mission it is usually not a good idea to leave the heal pet as a HoT on anybody else other than yourself. Generally, if you are moving through a mission, particularly at speed you should keep the pet with you while moving, put it on the target during combat and get the heal pet back to you (with follow or by commanding it to heal you) as soon as the battle ends and before the team moves off again.
Nano Healing
There are quite a few situations in combat where players may need to have their nano healed. Other professions have more nano healing tools available to them than an MP has and so this is only a secondary role for the MP. The MP has relatively few tools to help with this situation:
· With maxed First Aid, the MP is able to use a good quality of Nano Kit Stim. These heal the nano of the target for an amount but lock your First Aid skill for 40 seconds.
· With the “Soothing Spirits” perk line trained for Shadowlands enabled MPs, you have a perk special called “Spirit of Purity” which allows you to heal the nano of the whole team every 40 seconds.
· With the “Notum Source” perk line trained for Shadowlands enabled MPs, you have a perk special called “Access Notum Source” which allows you to heal the whole team every 4 minutes.
· Indirectly, the MP has a series of buffs that reduce the nanocost of each nano that is cast. These can reduce the need for nano healing in the first place and prevention is better than a cure.
When to best use your nano heals on others
There are several professions who perform key roles in a team who need to have nano at all times:
· Any healing specialist. Without nano most healers cannot continue healing.
· Crowd Control specialists. Crowd Control can be an essential part of safe team play. Without nano to cast their crowd control nanos, these professions cannot help with adds
· Enforcers when tanking. Enforcers use a range of nanos to manage the aggro in a battle. Unfortunately, Enforcers tend to have very small nanopools and so run out of nano quickly. Without nano, Enforcers can sometimes lose control of a situation with deadly results for the team
If you have the Spirit of Purity and/or Access Notum Source specials, then it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on the Nanopool Bars of any of these professions during combat. If you notice that one of them is losing nano at a fast rate, you may want to offer them your nanocost reduction buffs. If they have no NCU room free or if they are already running such a buff – then you should keep an eye on their nanopool bars – especially during longer or more dangerous battles.
Since both stims and the specials have quite long recycle times, they should not be used just whenever they are available. Try to hold these nano heals in reserve for moments when your team is truly in trouble and a key member of the team has run out of nano.
Timing is everything with these forms of healing.
MPs have quite good crowd control abilities available to them. There are three major elements of crowd control that an MP has access to:
· The Psychosis “Mez” pets. These pets have the ability to hold a single mob in PvM continually calmed as long as their attacks continue to land. Each mez effect lasts only 12 seconds though, so if a single attack fails to land then the mob will be free at least until the next Mez pet attack lands. Moving the mez pet to another mob will nearly always result in one mob being free before the next mob is calmed.
· Higher level MPs have access to a Stun nano called “Curse of Chronos”. As with most stun nanos, this has a 5 second duration and a 10 second recharge.
· The Theoretical Research perk line includes a perk special called “Quark Containment Field” which is a powerful 1 minute duration root that is almost unbreakable. The special recycles after 1 minute and 40 seconds.
· The MP pets can be used as “Meatshields”. This is where the MP uses his pets to attack mobs that have added to a situation. As long as no other players in the team attack those mobs, then they will attack your pets which means that your pets are likely to die but the team stays alive.
When to use your Crowd Control
In general, if there is a Crowd Controlling specialist in your team, then you should largely leave the crowd controlling to them. The Crowd Control nanos are more flexible and more reliable than a mez pet. Also, specialist crowd controllers are more able to manage more than one add situations. Only in situations where large numbers of adds appear should you mix in and use your crowd control when a specialist is in your team. It’s a good idea to check whether the crowd controller himself would like you to do anything.
Basic Crowd Control Techniques
In teams where there is no Crowd Controlling specialist, then you may well be the only source of good crowd control. You should try to ensure that the team chooses tactics that are unlikely to result in more than one add though, because your mez pet is your first line of crowd control and he can only cope with one add at a time.
For situations where a second add appears, try to spot him as early as possible and catch him with your Quark Containment Field root if you have one. If your attack pet is not playing the role of Tank, then you may also choose to field the first add with your mez pet and then hold the second add off the team by having your attack pet attack it and act as a meat-shield.
When you are acting as a Crowd Controller for the team you need to be very outwardly focussed. Your focus needs to be on what is going on around the team in order to spot any adds that arrive mid-combat. You may also want to keep a close eye on your mini-map so that you can see any of the mob dots heading in the direction of the team and be ready to control them in case they add.
The mez pet attack is quite slow to land. It takes 7 seconds from the time when he begins his attack before the mob itself has been calmed. 7 seconds can feel like an age when your team is being beaten on by a mob. This is part of why it is so important for you to spot any adds as early as possible. Even the Quark Containment root takes a couple of seconds to actually land on the mob.
Game View: 1st person Vs 3rd person
If you play in the First Person mode, then it’s usually best if you don’t use your weapon to attack as this will cause you to spin round and face your target. You can still nuke and cast nanos though. All in all though, it’s best to play in a 3rd person view when focussing on crowd control, as this enables you to get the best overview of a situation and you can attack with your weapon (if you use one) while still keeping that overview.
Advanced Meatshield Tactics
Using the pets as targets to keep the attention of mobs can be a very powerful tool both in solo and in team play.
· watch which mob the tank chooses to attack, pick another one and put your attack pet onto it. Put your heal pet on the tank and if you have him around, put the mez pet on another mob. With any luck you can delay one add with your attack pet, another will start attacking your heal pet a bit and a third can be delayed with your mez pet.
· it's possible to hold the attention of two adds with the attack pet and heal pet. Attack the weakest add with your attack pet. Put the heal pet on your attack pet. This should give the attack pet time to hit the weaker add at least once, then you switch your attack pet to the stronger add. The attack pet and heal pet are now both on the hate list of both mobs. The attack pet is attacking (and should hold) the stronger mob and the weaker mob will often switch between attacking the heal pet and the attack pet.
So, essentially the tactic is to get your pets on the hate lists of as many mobs as you can from the adds.
This can even be extended to cover as many as 15 or more adds if your attack pet is a particularly good one and the mobs are grey or green. Just get the attack pet to hit as many of the mobs as possible at least once. Your attack pet must be excellent to hold large numbers of adds. It needs to have a high attack rating but also have enough hitpoints to be able to stand up to the onslaught of all those mobs attacking him with the help of the heal pet.
· If your heal pet needs to stay where it is, because the tank isn't very strong and needs it or because the doc is getting serious aggro (as often happens when there are adds), then you shouldn't move it. These things are always a balance. You need to make a judgement call on whether a pet is better where it is or whether it is better being used as crowd control. For example, if the first mob is nearly dead and you get adds, you may leave the attack pet there to kill it quicker and only then switch the attack pet to an add.
There's a debuff for just about every skill in the game. They tend to be a bit underused by many players. Using debuffs in team play can be extremely useful. The biggest drawback of debuffs is that they tend to pull the aggro onto you as nearly all debuffs include a taunt.
The MP has a series of debuff tools available to him:
· Unmakes: Each unmake nano will reduce a particular nanoskill on its target by 75 points for 3 minutes.
This debuff has no effect on mobs and is used only for PvP.
· Dominates: Each dominate nano will reduce a particular nanoskill on its target by 125 points for 3 minutes
This debuff has no effect on mobs and is used only for PvP.
· Mind Line of Nukes: The Mind line of nukes do damage but also include a debuff of all 6 nanoskills which lasts for 10 seconds. The amount of the debuff rises as the QL of the nuke increases. The top nuke in this line is Mind Quake which debuffs all 6 nanoskills for -100 points
This debuff has no effect on mobs and is used only for PvP.
· Nano Shutdown: The Nano Shutdown debuff switches off all casting on its target. It works by debuffing all 6 nanoskills by -2000 points.
This debuff has an effect on mobs and will stop them casting most nano effects. It is mostly used against self-healing mobs who heal too fast for the team to defeat and against certain very powerful mobs who cast extremely powerful nukes and debuffs.
· Notum Rejection: The Notum Rejection debuff increases the nanocost of any nanos that the target casts by 25%. The duration of the debuff is 1 minute.
This debuff has no appreciable effect on mobs and is used only for PvP.
· Damage Init Debuffs: The Damage/Init debuffs reduce the damage that each hit will do and at the same time slow down the speed of hit of the target for a small amount.
This debuff is effective against mobs – though the amount of the debuff is rather low. It’s best used together with the Resolve/Will debuffs or with other debuffs such as the Doctor’s Init debuffs or with a blind.
· Resolve/Will Damage Debuffs: The Resolve/Will damage debuffs stack with the damage/init debuffs and reduce the damage per hit of the target by considerably more. The debuff comes in two parts: A primary debuff which debuffs for a smaller amount and lasts 45 seconds – and a secondary debuff which can only be cast when the primary is already running on the target, but which debuffs for a much larger amount with a 10 second duration.
These nano debuffs require Shadowlands to use them. While much more powerful in terms of the amount of damage debuffed, there are issues with these debuffs in that the short durations of the two parts mean that to maintain the debuff you need to be continually busy casting them. Also the taunt on these debuffs is very large indeed.
· Accelerate Decaying Quarks: This perk special enabled by the Theoretical Research perk line is a direct damage attack which also includes a -2000 nanoskills debuff that lasts for 12 seconds. You can use this special successfully every 1 minute 10 seconds. If the attack fails then you can try again 35 seconds later.
This debuff should be effective against mobs.
· Dazzle with Lights: This perk special enabled by the Starfall perk line is a Blinding attack that lasts for 15 seconds. It debuffs the attack skills of the target thus making it harder for them to hit you and reducing their damage. It can be used every 35 seconds.
This debuff is effective against mobs and works well together with the MP damage/init and damage debuffs.
· Stop Notum Flow: This perk special enabled by the Notum Source perk line is a Nano Resist debuff for -800 which lasts for 40 seconds. This debuff makes it a great deal easier to land your hostile nanos on the target. It can be used every 45 seconds.
Perhaps one of the best debuffs in the Shadowlands perk specials. This massive Nano Resist debuff will make landing many of the other nano cast debuffs a great deal easier against mobs. Also, when used in team play this debuff will enable all other hostile nano casters to more easily land their attacks.
· Notum Overflow: This perk special enabled by the Notum Source perk line is a Nano Vulnerability debuff. It’s as yet unclear how this debuff directly affects the target. The duration on this debuff is 60 seconds and may be used successfully every 6 minutes. If the attack fails then you can try again after 3 minutes.
It is as yet unclear whether this debuff will work in PvM play and what effect the debuff will have.
Using debuffs in Team Play
Generally, it's always best to hit a mob with the debuffs at the beginning of the fight with them. This has several benefits:
· The tank is at full resources and can get aggro back very easily after you and your team mates have debuffed.
· you get the maximum benefit out of a debuff early in a fight, because then more hits are avoided and more hits give less damage.
· you yourself are at full health and the team is rested, so should you get any aggro as a result, you have the best chance of being healed swiftly as a result until the tank takes aggro back
If you find that you are getting too much aggro as a result of casting your best debuff, there's no harm in going one step down and using your second best. This will usually not even get you aggro and will still help a little towards the success of the team. Don't expect a great deal of recognition for your debuffs though.
Using the Taunt to your advantage
Most of the MP debuffs have considerable taunt attached to them. This is also true of the Curse of Chronos stun. That taunt value will essentially move you higher in the hate list of the mob, thus making the mob much more likely to change to attacking you.
This can be used to the team’s advantage.
If one player is in trouble and losing health rapidly (well below half health) and your health is still near full, debuff any mobs that are attacking him with your best debuff. Put the heal pet on yourself! You will get hit and hard, but the struggling player will get a break from being damaged allowing the rest of the team to heal him and if necessary giving the player enough time to sit down and recharge nano and health himself. There are two professions who you should definitely try to save in this way:
· the Tank. If the tank is taking such a huge beating that he may die, then you need to keep him alive because if he does die, you can guarantee that the rest of the team stands a good chance of dying to the same mobs. In addition, giving him a break to get healed and get his nano back up allows him to use his special tools to get the aggro back onto himself. The result is that the team survives and as long as he gets the aggro back in time, so will you.
· the Team Healer. In particular doctors tend to get a fair bit of agg from adds as we've mentioned before. They can't take much of a beating on the whole, if they are having to heal the whole team. In addition, docs use a lot of nano to do all the healing. They have to sit down regularly to recharge it and can only do this if they are not being attacked. Defending the doc by pulling a mob off him with a debuff is always a good idea, but it is essential if the docs bars in the team window show that he is low on nano.
The MP is an excellent damage dealer when he uses all of his tools to the fullest.
The MPs attack pets, particularly when well buffed with Chants, Instills and Evocations can do a lot of damage indeed. Maximising your damage by using all three is a very good idea if you can find them.
The MPs range of direct damage nanos are good, because they do a decent amount of damage and are quite fast to cast and recharge. This means that you can cast lots of them quite quickly. There are two limits to this:
Nanopool
If you're using a lot of nukes, you're using a lot of nano. The MPs have several tools to reduce the amount of nano that they use. Many of the MPs Creation Weapons and Shields increase the nano pool that you have and also decrease the nano cost (nano used up with each cast). Also the Notum Source Shadowlands perk line increases your nano-delta and gives you a team nano heal. Addditionally, the useful General Perk line “Genius” includes a Nano Heal over Time special “Regain Nano” which will heal you for 1200 over 12 seconds.
We also have a line of nano buffs that we can use that reduce the nano cost by an amount. These are:
· Ease of Execution
· Notum Attunement
· Coherent Notum Web
· Neuron Notum Interface
· Mocham'Neural Interface Web
In addition to all of this, you can also install a Hardcore CPU Upgrade into your NCU Belt and equip certain armours that will increase your Nanocost Reduction stat.
All put together this makes a great difference to the nano cost of each nano you cast and to the size of your overall nano pool. At the highest levels you can increase your nano pool by over 1000 points and decrease your nano cost by a maximum of 45% for Atrox, 50% for Opifex and Solitus and 55% for Nanomage MPs.
Additionally, the NT profession have a range of buffs, which refill your nano pool by an amount every couple of seconds. The range is called Humidity Extractor. NTs also have nano heals and special Shadowlands perk lines that will help a team regenerate nano, Keepers have a series of aura buffs that will refresh nano every few seconds and the Traders have some Nanoformula based team nano heals. Together with your own nano cost buffs, your creations and a CPU Upgrade, this can enable you to go on banging away with your nukes for a very long time.
Speed of Casting
The faster you can cast your nukes the more damage you can do over time. As mentioned in the IP Distribution section, the main influence on how fast you can cast nanos is your NanoC-Init skill. The second factor is the position of your slider on you agg/def bar. Maxing NanoC-Init is going to be essential if you want to become a major damage dealer. You will also need to install a good Nanoformular Recompiler into your NCU Belt. This handy gadget increases your NanoC-Init speed even more. Some other professions have buffs too which will raise your NanoC-Init skill; the most commonly used one is the Doctor's buff "Instinctive Control", which adds +85 to your NanoC-Init.
The Agg/Def bar makes a huge difference to the speed of your casting, but also changes several other things. By sliding it all the way to the 'Def' end you will be in defensive mode and most mobs will just ignore you if you have your pet around. Def settings make you less likely to be attacked but also make it incredibly slow to cast a nano. Agg settings make you one of the prime targets for the mobs around you, but also let you cast your nanos very quickly. With good NanoC-Init and a recompiler and your aggro bar at full, you will find that you can cast your nanos instantaneously. This is called insta-casting.
As your NanoC-Init skill gets very high indeed, you should be able to start pulling you aggro/def bar down some and still nearly instacast your nanos. There is no way to speed up the recharge on a nano.
If you add a weapon to your MP you will do still more damage. Please refer to the Choosing a Weapon section of this guide for more information on this.
All in all, with everything running smoothly, you can do more damage than many other professions in the game. The timing of all the different elements can be hard though. because you have to juggle your nanos, pet commands, keep an eye on heal bars, cast evocation on your attack pet when it runs out, time things with your weapon etc, you rarely get the maximum damage possible out of the mix. But the more you practice the more skilled you will become and eventually you will find that the rhythm just comes automatically.
Defences
Now for the bad news. As we mentioned earlier on, one of the ways the tank makes sure that all of the mobs attack him is by doing consistently good damage. If you are a damage dealer in AO, then the you will get hit on by a lot of angry mobs. MPs tend to have quite low hitpoints so we need to take some precautions.
If you are going to be a Damage Dealing MP, it is essential that you put as many points as you can into evades. These make sure that when you do get hit by a mob it hurts less. The most difficult evade to raise for an MP is Duck Explosions, being dark blue. If you come across mobs that do explosion type damage (like shotgun wielders) then you may choose not to nuke quite as much in order to avoid getting aggro against this weaker evade skill..
Another very important element is armour. Always ensure that you have the very best armour that you can squeeze into if you are going to chaincast your nukes. Most armour in AO has a weak point; one class of armour which has a very low rating. You can either mix up different types of armour to cover some of the holes or find out which mobs do that kind of damage and try not to nuke them, letting your pet do the talking instead.
The final and most important element is your Hit Points. The more health you have, the longer it will take for a mob to kill you. If you want to be a damage dealing MP, then you should make sure that you have very good Max Health implants in. Update them regularly, to ensure that you have the best you can wear. At higher levels or in title caps when you have points to spare, both Body Dev (which directly determines your hit points) and Stamina which directly affects Body Dev, may be choices to add to you list of skills to raise.
Most Nanomage MPs will only choose to play a full damage dealer role in teams which have a doctor (for good healing and for HP buffs that raise your hitpoints). Additional healers on top of a doctor are always good even though you will be keeping the heal pet on yourself for most of the time. Other buffs that you can get from players that will be important are AC Buffs, which increase your armour rating, Hit Point buffs from other players (an important one being the Essence Line of buffs from Enforcers) and Damage Absorbing buffs, which are similar to the AC buffs, but instead of raising the AC directly, they simply absorb some of the damage done to you each time you are hit.
Nanomages are certainly not the strongest of breeds and should be careful when getting aggro, but with the right buffs and good evades you will be surprised at just how long you can last with your heal pet on you. Still, if you die while playing this role, then you should not blame any healers in your team. Any nanomage who decides to go for high damage will die sometimes howver good your precautions are. Your Heal pet and your attack pet will help you though.
For other breeds the issue isn’t quite as important.
Always have the heal pet on yourself when playing a damage dealer role. You will need it without doubt and as a nanomage your health can drop very quickly, so trusting the heal pet to switch back to you from someone else is not a good idea. Only if somone else in the team seems to really need the heal pet should you switch it to them. Since you're in damage dealer mode, there is almost certainly a doctor or some good team healers in the team, they will have to worry about the other players. Add to the heal pet by investing in the First Aid skill to make sure that if you get into real trouble you have a good shot of HP from your first aid health stim.
The damage dealing role can be very exciting, but you will generally be too focussed on staying alive yourself that you cannot perform any other roles in the team at the same time. Still, you don't need to because being a high damage dealer is one of the prized roles to have in AO.
The buffing role is every bit as important as all of the other roles. As you may have noticed in the damage dealing section, in order for you to play that role well, you need to have several buffs from other players. The same is true for most players in most roles. Soldiers sometimes play tanks, although they are not perfectly suited to it. When they do they will make sure that there is a doc for an HP buff, an MP for the heal pet HoT, an engineer perhaps for addition AC buffs and so on.
The basis of nearly all buffs are the nano skills and MPs are the kings of Nano Skill buffs. The MPs can buff these skills more than anyone else and the buffs last a long time. When an MP is in a team, they can make the entire team better, not just by helping people to reach better nukes or better heal nanos... but also by helping people to reach better buff nanos for other people. Engineers can get killer bots with your buffs. Bureaucrats can get very hard hitting bots with your buffs and land their crowd control more effectively. Doctors can get massive heals with your buffs. MAs can give the whole team huge Crit Buffs when you have buffed them, Enforcers are able to give everyone a larger Essence buff and so on.
In addition to our Nano Skills buffs we have several other buffs which are important in teams:
· the nano cost buff is very good and often asked for by doctors
· Anticipation of Retaliation is good for everyone at low and medium levels (at higher levels other professions have better ones)
· the Interrupt reduction buff is asked for occasionally by doctors and NTs. Some tanks may also take the buff, as they are more likely to be interrupted during battle.
Often, the team will be able to kill much more quickly, with far less fear of dying and get very much more XPs because they had you along. Remember too, that every buff that you give to a team member is helping your tank to keep aggro of you, your doc to heal you, your engineer to protect you and so on. Your buffs don't just help others in the team, by giving the buffs you are helping yourself to a lot more XPs.
You should try to keep in memory which team members need which buffs. As an MP your own NCU will usually be filled with the same or similar buffs. Keep an eye on your own buffs and when they are near to running out, call a stop and rebuff them for yourself and the others. At the beginning of a team, when everyone is asking for buffs in the chat window, you will sometimes miss peoples' requests. It's worth prompting people in the chat "Did anybody else need buffs that I missed?".