Feldon As more and more onerous “slacker detection code” has been added to Public Quests, healers have felt the burn, and repeatedly asked if they are being left behind due to a lack of DPS. Windslasher has always reassured us that healers get counted too. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. Take a look at his advice and it may just improve your chances at getting better gear, if you can find someone in need of healing on a Public Quest that is.
[Public Quest Rewards use] the same system for every class. Damage does count for a lot, but it is not the only thing.Healing carries the same weight as damage-dealing, but only if you healed someone who is taking damage. If you try to heal someone who’s at full health, or you drop wards & reactives on people who do not subsequently get hit, then it doesn’t count. This can happen pretty easily when the public quest area gets crowded, because 40+ people is enough to utterly overwhelm the enemy.
When in doubt, look at the chat log or the green combat bubble numbers to see if your heals are doing something. If nobody around needs healing, then help with dps for a while. It doesn’t take much. You’ll get the loot drops, and be more helpful in general.
“If nobody needs healing, do some damage” is pretty basic gameplay for a healer, isn’t it? I would be kind of surprised to learn that there were healers out there expecting to get a passing participation score just by warding people who weren’t getting hit.
I received my first BP last week by doing DPS on my templar. Still haven’t seen a weapon or rune yet for him. No matter how many times I topped the heal parse, nothing. But the time I go nuts on DPS and do minimal heals, I get a BP. Hmm. 🙂
On my wizard, I’ve received one rune and 2 weapons regardless of me topping the parse. In fact, topping the parse has granted me no benefit.
Overall I believe it’s simply that you DPS and cross your fingers. Though I do have a hunch that the group who has the player who holds aggro the longest (aka gets beaten on the most) gets decent loot. Or hmm .. was it because my wizard got aggro that I got the rune and weapons?
Argh! Figuring out the PQ is like figuring out when the ancient cyclops would pop in EQ1! hehe
If only the PQ system would allow open groups just like RIFT does. As a solo heal in a PQ raid, it’s hard to see the player’s life bars to know who exactly needs a heal …
The PQ system still need improvements in gameplay and user interface
Mel, I’ve never rocked up to a crowd gathering for a PQ and failed to receive an invite if there was a spot. Sometimes it takes me saying, “invite?”, but not more.
It’s unlikely that introducing RIFT code would help too much (I kept my group locked anyway when they added it so I could control balance better and not be randomly sucked into random groups).
On eq2 try talking or asking (a strange concept based on my RIFT playtime). People wold LOVE to hear from you.
If a healer casts a ward while targeting a player that does not subsequently take damage and the ward is used to heal does it count as a heal or not? I am guessing not.
and what about debuffing the mob? useful to the raid/group yes count towards participation probably not.
Copy that, Windslasher, I’ll just bust out my mace and compete with the Assassins and Wizards for the DPS loot.
Thanks.
It’s only a LOW threshold for damage and/or healing. No one buffs so much that they shouldn’t eps or heal (and most healers also dps). If you are warding or healing people that aren’t getting hit, buffing and debuffing the mob without healing/damaging something, and not doing some dps…then you are, by definition, slacking. Build a bridge, get over it, turn on your autoattack and step a bit closer to a living mob. 🙂
I tried to figure the damage threshold for Ringwar when I was two-boxing my alt army and some rarely-playing guildies through it (some pre-90).
Doing about 85,000 damage to each wave (85,000 to Narandi & friends; 85,000 to everything before that) with no healing or debuffs, seemed to be enough. Even a gimpy heal-spec templar can nuke that hard (if it takes a minute to clear the first wave, you have to pull a massive 1400 DPS). There is allegedly some “press buttons to win” anti-slacker code too, so just autoattacking for 85K may not do it.
The only times we didn’t get the humming cache was when I failed epically at keeping my two-boxer on target (2nd box has no monitor, he just flies blind with a gamepad), or when guildies were literally AFK taking care of their kids for part of a wave.