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#1 Mar 07 2004 at 12:34 PM Rating: Decent
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I am not exactly sure how the assist works. I thought you had to type /assist after targeting the tank but I tried this and it seems that I am just nukung the tank. What am I doing wrong?
#2 Mar 07 2004 at 1:20 PM Rating: Decent
Set up a hotkey. The command should be "/assist <name of player you are assisting>". If you are trying to assist the player you have targeted, the command should be "/assist %t"

Typing /assist alone will not work. You need to let the interface know WHO you are wanting to assist.

Hope this helps.
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#3 Mar 07 2004 at 1:28 PM Rating: Decent
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No wonder lol thanks.
#4 Mar 07 2004 at 1:43 PM Rating: Decent
the %T is no longer needed for the assist to work.

making a hotkey with either the players name, or just /assist is fine.

only time i use a name on the assist key is when its a raid and not a group mate for the MA on the raid.

to target your groups MA, just hit the proper F2-F6 key for that member, then hit your /assist hotkey.


you do have to make sure it is spelled properly, and that the target does swap.
#5 Mar 08 2004 at 5:26 AM Rating: Decent
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Range of possible issues here.

If you target a mob (even accidently) and /assist, you will target whoever the MOB is attacking.

So... if you target MT, and do /assist twice, you will be back targetting the mob.

Now if you are hitting the general "attack" key to comence fighting, you will auto target nearest mob. If you THEN type /assist, you will be targetting your tank. Making sense?

You can click on your tank, or use the F keys (F2, F3 etc) to target your MT. Make a /assist hot button, and then you can target then assist.
#6 Mar 08 2004 at 6:08 AM Rating: Decent
Since I have never done tanking except for my Rogue and no one asked me to /assist - I just kept backstabing all the time I don't know the differece between /assist MT and /attack mob...

Could someone explain please when /assist is preferred over /attack?
#7 Mar 08 2004 at 6:24 AM Rating: Decent
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Could someone explain please when /assist is preferred over /attack?


Quite often you will have more than one mob in camp, with one or more mezzed, or otherwise controlled. In these circumstances it is important for everyone to fight the same mob. Fighting one mob at a time is most efficient, and allows the crowd control to deal with the extras without the mezzes being broken. Usually the main tank or main assist (MA/MT) chooses which mob to fight next and will give a message something like "Assist me now on <<< %T >>>".

This is when you have a hotkey set up:

/Assist <name of main tank>

Hit this only when the main tank calls it and you will target the same mob as the main tank, then you attack. This does two things:

1) It makes sure that eveyone is fighting the same mob and mezzes are not broken

2) The main tank should call for assist once he or she is sure that they have firm aggro (after there weapons have procced, or after sufficient time), to avoid ping ponging of aggro.

This is one of the most important and fundamental of all tactics in EQ. If a group uses good use of assisting, it will be far more efficient and less likely to wipe than one that doesn't. In a raid situation, it is even more important.
#8 Mar 08 2004 at 6:33 AM Rating: Default
THX!

Another thing: My Rogue often got much attention by the mobs we were fighting. Was this a result of the MT having to less aggro or is backstabbing especially aggro-building?(I didn't pickpocket in between just to ad)
#9 Mar 08 2004 at 6:45 AM Rating: Good
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Eh? I'm not aware of any /attack command. The issue is the difference between "/assist %t", "/assist <name>", and "/assist".

First off. If you aren't using those in a hotkey, you should. It's a pain in the butt to try to actually type out /assist when in combat. Don't do it.

When in a hotkey, the three commands above will do the following things:

1. "/assist %t". Lot's of confusion on this one. %t will resolve to the name of whomever you happen to have targeted at the time. This is a *special case* (and will beome clear in a moment). If you have a hotkey with the line "/assist %t", the very first time you hit it, it will change the actual line in the hotkey to make the "%t" match whoever you had targeted when you hit the command. Subsequent uses will act exactly like "/assist <name>", except <name> will be whoever you had targted that first time.

2. "/assist <name>". This is used during raids and really anytime you feel like saving yourself an extra click or three. I have a hotkey called "MA", whith this line in it. I edit the line so that <name> matches the MA of my group. What happens is that everytime you hit the button, you will automatically target whoever <name> has targeted. Typically <name> will be the name of someone in your group/raid (the MA).

3. "/assist". The /assist command by itself, with no arguments will automatically target the current target of whoever you have targeted. If you are targeting your groups main tank, your target will change to whomever he's fighting (or just happens to be looking at at that moment). If you are currently targeting a mob, it will change you target to whomever the mob is targeting. This is part of the reason why the "/assist %t" does something special. There's no need for the %t since your target is already assisted without putting anything in. Adding %t would have been redundant, so they made it do something different.


I personally never use the "/assist %t" syntax. There's really not much need. I suppose you could set up a hot key with that and it would allow you to create a "/assist <name>" key very quickly (just target the MA and hit the button). However, once set, you'll have to manually edit it anyway. Honestly, if you've got to edit it each time you are in a new group/raid anyway, why not just type the MA's name in? I suppose if you have an MA with a completely ridiculously hard to spell name, this might come in handy, but that's the only reason to use this.


I *always* have both a "/assist", and a "/assist <name>" key ready. There's a reason for this. You want to use the "/assist <name>" for assisting your MA. During a typical group/raid, you're going to be assisting that person a hell of a lot of times (every single mob kill). Continually targeting your MA and hitting your "/assist" key adds an extra bit of time that you don't need to waste. Not to mention an extra step you can ***** up that could result with you on the wrong mob. Imagin if your MA is the 4th person in your group and the chanter is the 5th. One miskey on the function keys (or drifting mouse over the group box), and you end up assisting the chanter instead of the MA without knowing it. This can have disasterous consequences. Just always use an MA key with the line "/assist <name>" in it (with <name> replaced with the name of the MA). It'll save you a ton of problems and guarantee a really smooth grouping experience.


You still want an "/assist" key though. Ok. Most classes do anyway. I suppose a pure melee in a support role doesn't need it. But everyone else will. There will be occasions when you'll want to know who that mob is targeting. "/assist" on the mob will tell you that. If you are the MA, you'll probably want to use /assist to obtain a target from the puller. If you are the CCer, you might want to use /assist for any of a number of reasons. Same with slowers. I've just found so many situations where being able to just find the target of something is incredibly useful that I always have this key on my primary hotbank. It's just one of those things that when you need it, you need it now, and you cant take time typing or fumbling with key banks.



Another piece of advice. I can't for the life of me remember the exact syntax, but there's a command you can run that will turn off autoattack on assist. You want to do this. If you don't have autoatttack turned off yet, do it now. Don't wait. You only need to do it once for all your characters on your account (its in the account INI I believe). As I indicated above, there are a whole ton of situations in which you'll want to use /assist for targetting without actually attacking. EQ by default (unless they've changed it) starts you out automatically turning on autoattack whenever you /assist something. That's a really bad thing. If you do nothing else to change your configuration from the default, change this. It's right up there with remapping the autoattack key from "a" (which SoE eventually changed the default for). It'll kill you and your group just as often.
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#10 Mar 08 2004 at 6:47 AM Rating: Decent
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Another thing: My Rogue often got much attention by the mobs we were fighting. Was this a result of the MT having to less aggro or is backstabbing especially aggro-building?


Both. Rogue back stab is high aggro because it is high damage. Rogue's should have an evade hotkey for these situations (can't remember exactly how to set one up, ask a rogue). It is also wise to give the main tank time to build up aggro before backstabbing though. This is part of the reason for a tank to call for assist, which should be called when the tank is fairly sure that nobody can pull aggro easily off them. Even a rogue.

Not so important at low levels as mobs don't hit that hard, but lets say you are on a raid against a mob that quads for over 1k, you definitely don't want a round of that as a rogue.
#11 Mar 08 2004 at 6:52 AM Rating: Decent
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Eh? I'm not aware of any /attack command. The issue is the difference between "/assist %t", "/assist <name>", and "/assist".


There is an /attack command. "/Attack on" does the same as whatever key your auto-attack is mapped to. Leiany was asking why not just attack, why do I need to assist. I think.

Quote:
I suppose if you have an MA with a completely ridiculously hard to spell name, this might come in handy, but that's the only reason to use this


On this point, if you MA is called Tardsgfesgsdtfhferdhsuyf, then an assist key with:

/assist Tard

will work just the same, assuming there are no other Tards nearby.

Edited, Mon Mar 8 06:53:49 2004 by Patrician
#12 Mar 08 2004 at 6:57 AM Rating: Good
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Oh. One more thing about /assist. In order for it to work, the person you are assisting has to be within a certain distance (I believe his target does as well). So, using /assist on a groupmember may not work if he or his target is out of range. Don't panic. By the time he gets close enough for you to need to worry, the command will work. Certainly, it'll always work in melee ranges.

This is also another reason to always use the "/assist <name>" syntax when assisting your MA over and over. You'll be doing it alot, so if there's a mistake, it'll happen here. If you're just targeting your groupmember and using an /assist key, you'll find that it doesn't always work (especially if your MA/MT is also the puller!). You can spam your "/assist <name>" key all day long and it will either not target anything, or it will target the correct target (presumably whoever your MA has targeted). If you are hitting a plain "/assist" key over and over, a tiny bit of lag can easily result in you toggling back and forth between your MA and the mob. Not a major problem, but it's just an extra thing that can happen that you want to avoid if you can. Nothing worse then blowing a chunk of mana on a nuke only to find you just wasted it hitting your own tank.

In a good group, you'll always have the same guy tanking mobs. You will make grouping essentially error free by using the correct hotkey in your groups. There's just no way to go wrong with using a "/assist <name>" key. Mob arrives in camp, tank starts fighting it. He calls for assist (or not depending on whether it's needed), and you hit your "/assist <name>" key and hit attack. It's pretty much bulletproof.
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#13 Mar 08 2004 at 7:08 AM Rating: Good
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Patrician wrote:

/assist Tard

will work just the same, assuming there are no other Tards nearby.



C'mon Pat. This one's just wide open and you know it... :)


Actually on a serious note, while it's not incredibly likely that you'll have two folks with extremely similar names, I have seen it happen. I make a point of always typing ou the whole name of the tank (obviously much more important on a raid then in a group). You just never know when someone with the same first few characters in his name will join your raid and really ***** you up. If you type the full name, you will never ever have that problem. It's all about peace of mind you know... ;)
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#14 Mar 08 2004 at 10:19 AM Rating: Decent
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Now if you are hitting the general "attack" key to comence fighting, you will auto target nearest mob. If you THEN type /assist, you will be targetting your tank. Making sense?


Nope no sense at all.

For starters turning attack on does not auto target any mobs. If you have no mob targetted you will get a message telling you to target something. Just as well or this would be lethal.

Second NEVER use /assist after starting to attack. Always get your target acquired properly by using /assist when asked to.

In the example above even if the "nearest mob" thing were true or you used the ultimate idiot key - F8 - you might just as easily target your enchanter having acquired the nearest mob and not the one being stunned and knocked back by the MA.

Use of /assist will vary between classes and while the one with the name in is useful for melee it is sometimes easier for other classes (like clerics Smiley: smile) to have it without. I often assist off the MA onto the mob to cast on it (MoK, MoR etc) and then assist back onto the MA. If the mob suddenly charges off into the casters then assisting off it can tell you who will need a fast heal very soon. This is all a bit esoteric when all you are doing is whacking it with a pointy stick .



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#15 Mar 08 2004 at 11:29 AM Rating: Decent
yes cobra brings up good points. that is why i just build all of my assist keys to /assist and nothing more.

the MA can use that key to check and see who has agro, and thus /shield that PC from the mob to help build more agro.

example. a warrior is the MA and the cleric CHs to soon and draws agro from the tank. well the tank simply hits his hotkey for assist and that will automaticaly target what ever PC now has agro, in this case the cleric. then he can hit his /shield hotkey to help protect the cleric a little bit.

a cleric can use the plane /assist key to see what PC the mob is beating on so he can heal them if they need it while at the same time keeping an eye on the mobs life if he needs to help with stuns or what not.

same goes for any class really. a generic assist key unless in a raid situation is IMHO best way to go. that way it can be much more effective at findind targets. yes see that S at the end of the word. if you build your hotkey to /assist <pc name> then you can only target what that PC has targed. what are you going to do for assist when that PC dies, or is laggin and can not pick a new target??? you are fubar. with a basic /assist key you can just pick an other PC (SA or TA in most cases) and go from there. heck you could even pick a mob, assist on the mob to find the PC, and then hit it again to find the mob that PC is hitting on.

you target mobA and hit /assist hotkey.
your target will change to PCa.
now hit your /assist key again.
your target will change now to the MOB that PCa is hitting or targeted if casting. this could be a different mob is more then one are in the fight/camp.

about 6-8months back there was a patch that made the /assist %t not work properly. there would be times it would first take your target, then bounce 2 or 3 assists for some odd reason. so by dropping the %t or %T (yes they are slightly different to the backworking of EQ) you will be much safer.

learn to use the F2-6 keys to target group mates and learn how to then follow that up with your assist key BEFORE hitting your attack or casting your spells.
#16 Mar 08 2004 at 11:29 AM Rating: Decent
yes cobra brings up good points. that is why i just build all of my assist keys to /assist and nothing more.

the MA can use that key to check and see who has agro, and thus /shield that PC from the mob to help build more agro.

example. a warrior is the MA and the cleric CHs to soon and draws agro from the tank. well the tank simply hits his hotkey for assist and that will automaticaly target what ever PC now has agro, in this case the cleric. then he can hit his /shield hotkey to help protect the cleric a little bit.

a cleric can use the plane /assist key to see what PC the mob is beating on so he can heal them if they need it while at the same time keeping an eye on the mobs life if he needs to help with stuns or what not.

same goes for any class really. a generic assist key unless in a raid situation is IMHO best way to go. that way it can be much more effective at findind targets. yes see that S at the end of the word. if you build your hotkey to /assist <pc name> then you can only target what that PC has targed. what are you going to do for assist when that PC dies, or is laggin and can not pick a new target??? you are fubar. with a basic /assist key you can just pick an other PC (SA or TA in most cases) and go from there. heck you could even pick a mob, assist on the mob to find the PC, and then hit it again to find the mob that PC is hitting on.

you target mobA and hit /assist hotkey.
your target will change to PCa.
now hit your /assist key again.
your target will change now to the MOB that PCa is hitting or targeted if casting. this could be a different mob is more then one are in the fight/camp.

about 6-8months back there was a patch that made the /assist %t not work properly. there would be times it would first take your target, then bounce 2 or 3 assists for some odd reason. so by dropping the %t or %T (yes they are slightly different to the backworking of EQ) you will be much safer.

learn to use the F2-6 keys to target group mates and learn how to then follow that up with your assist key BEFORE hitting your attack or casting your spells.
#17 Mar 08 2004 at 11:49 AM Rating: Decent
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One thing I've had trouble with lately is targetting lag. Sometimes I can hit a key to target someone and nothing happens then maybe a second or so later their name is in the target box.

Now when I build macros to heal or DS I always put a pause 5 after the target command and before the cast.

Not sure if this affects /assist <name> in the same way but it could be ugly if it did.
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#18 Mar 08 2004 at 12:10 PM Rating: Decent
Ahhh...rule of EQ...there are ALWAYS Tards nearby!

:-D
#19 Mar 08 2004 at 12:13 PM Rating: Decent
If I made an /assist TARD hotkey, how do I know which member of my group it is going to assist? There are usually at least three that could be contrued as Tards

OK OK, I will stop now?
#20 Mar 08 2004 at 12:21 PM Rating: Decent
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This may be a stupid question, but what is /shield? I have never seen this commnd or used it.
#21 Mar 08 2004 at 1:12 PM Rating: Decent
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^ BUMP ^

Can someone shed some light on what "/shield" is?
#22 Mar 08 2004 at 2:38 PM Rating: Decent
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Another use for /assist <MT> is in crowd control. The MT targets who he wants pacified/soothed and asks the CC person to assist him, which brings up the target to be pacified. The MT then moves onto the next target to be pacified. This brings two big advantages:

1. The crowd control person can stay behind the MT to pacify the mob(helpful if bad visibility such as sand elf LDON).

2. The MT knows which targets have been pacified and in what order. One frustration in CC is to pacify mobs from left to right and then have the MT grab the one on right first.

Also as mentioned before, using /assist makes sure everyone is on the same page and not breaking mezs or targeting wrong mob.
#23 Mar 08 2004 at 2:39 PM Rating: Decent
i might have the term wrong, but IIRC /shield is a skill (like disarm, or repotse) that warriors get at a set level. this alows the warrior to take some of the damage the other PC should be getting.

in my above example with the cleric and the warrior if the mob was going to hit the cleric for (made up #s here) 100 points, then instead of the cleric taking 100 points of dam. the warrior will take lets say 40 points, and the cleric only take 60 points.

i have no clue what the % is, but it does reduce the amount of damage given to the PC you have targeted when you /shield them.

clerics and chanters will love you for this skill if you are a warrior.
#24 Mar 08 2004 at 3:29 PM Rating: Decent
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I've looked around and I can't seem to find it. I don't recall "shield" being one of my trainable abilities (like bash, riposte, etc.), and I could not find it here or here. I am not trying to be contradictory - I would just very much like to find out about and acquire this skill if it still exists. I will check my skills menu tonight and see if it is trainable as I cannot recall if there are any trainable skills past disarm. I may just not have paid attention to the ones beyond my level. Any help is appreciated.
#25 Mar 08 2004 at 4:12 PM Rating: Good
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The /shield command is gained by warriors at level 30. It will automatically take your current target (ie: target PC and type /shield, and it will shield that character). I'm not sure if it can also take a name as an argument (ie: /shield <name>).

What it does is take part of the damage that the target is taking away and apply it to the warrior. The target takes 50% of the damage they would otherwise take, and the shielding warrior takes 75% (or the other way around, but I think that's what it does). In any case, It does add 25% to the total damage taken. /shield also only lasts for like 10 seconds, so it's of very limited use. You're really better off practicing better agro control then trying to use it to protect a cleric who just healed you. I'd also suspect you'll probably be better off just trying to use taunt to get agro back then using shield.

It's not well known because honestly it's just not that useful. There are a very few esoteric situations where it might be useful. There's also the very occasional group situation where you might need it. However, the rareness of need (not sure on the reuse timer either) means that most warriors wont have it hotkeyed on their first bank anyway. That means that it's unlikely to be readily available for use in the short amount of time you'd have in the healer overagro scenario listed above for it to be useful.


Oh. Cobra. Your points about using /assist are valid. However, that's why I suggest having both hotkeys instead of just one. As several people have pointed out, the vagarities and lag that can occur when assisting can easily mean you end up with the wrong target.

Consider this scenario: You hit /assist, but nothing happens. Maybe it didn't take? Maybe the target was out of range? Maybe the server *thought* it was out of range? You hit it again. Now it changes. You start your nuke. Oops. Lag catches up and your nuke drops on your tank instead of the mob. This happens all the time.

Yet another: You're a cleric/druid/shaman. You /assist the MA to aquire a target to nuke/debuff/whatever. You /assist off the target to heal the MA. This works great. You /assist back to the target. Oops. The Ranger got agro. You /assist the target to heal the ranger. You /assist the ranger to get the target back. Well, the ranger for some reason decided that was a great time to re-sow the puller, so you're mistargeted. You /assist the puller, but Ooops! He ran off and is targeting a new mob for pull (which maybe has the same name as the mob you're fighting). You nuke and cause a train...


In the same way that you are bouncing your target around during a fight, it's reasonable to assume that others are as well (or at least unreasonable to expect that everyone will have the mob you are fighting targeted at all times). Using /assist to bounce back and forth works wonderfully until the first time you end up on the wrong mob as a result. What if it was the chanter that was taking damage instead of the ranger? What if you then /assist off him onto a mezzed mob? There are just sooooo many different ways that this can fail.


I use /assist to find out who the mob is beating on. But I always always always use my MA key ("/assist <MA>") to retarget the correct mob. Always. Not some of the time. Always. If you do that, you should never end up targeting the wrong mob. At the very least it will work just as well as /assist (ie: If your MA/MT happens to have something else targeted for some reason, it will fail). You always want to reduce the likelyhood that your targeting will be at the whim of someone else in your group. You have an MA pre-assigned. Use him for targeting. Use your MA command instead of /assist and you'll never have to worry about targeting lag. You'll never have to worry about who's targeting what at any given moment. You've reduced the number of people in your group that you are assuming are going to have the main target targetted at any given moment from 5 to 1. IMO, that's a really good thing.
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#26 Mar 08 2004 at 4:23 PM Rating: Decent
gbaji wrote:
What it does is take part of the damage that the target is taking away and apply it to the warrior. The target takes 50% of the damage they would otherwise take, and the shielding warrior takes 75% (or the other way around, but I think that's what it does). In any case, It does add 25% to the total damage taken. /shield also only lasts for like 10 seconds, so it's of very limited use. You're really better off practicing better agro control then trying to use it to protect a cleric who just healed you. I'd also suspect you'll probably be better off just trying to use taunt to get agro back then using shield.


that is why it is not used alone as a total means for getting agro back.

/shield is very useful for those situations where someone did something they should not of to soon. IE: cast CH as soon as a mob is running into camp, or anyone but the MA breaking mez on a nasty mob that is now beating on your chanter...

use it for the short time frame, and you still have taunt, and now with the new combat system you also have the provoke line to add on top of taunt.

it by no means is something to use completly to get agro, but used to help save an other PC who does not have the hp/ac of the warrior who is designed to take the beating.
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