Wayfarers of Veeshan

I've never played a healing class before with any real focus, so now that I'm taking it seriously (10th level Shaman...woot) I'm having trouble programming appropriate hotkeys that let me jump in and out of combat efficiently.
I could use any advice on the below situation.

So, let's say I generally am the type to hit my "Q" key for autoattack at the beginning of a combat. So I'm in the middle of combat and I need to stop attacking, heal myself or a buddy, and then go back to attacking.

Question 1:
Now I generally hate changing "hotkey windows" in the middle of combat (but it happens with Drex too), so with only 10 hotkeys per window,
do many of you healers out there put 6 of your hotkeys as "heal" keys for the 6 players in your group, and leave the other 4 for "attack hotkeys"? Or do you have all 10 as "attack hotkeys", and then change to a different set of 10 for "heal hotkeys"?

Question 2:
Here's how I generally want a "heal hotkey" to work, in plain English. After this, I'll show you my best guess in "EQ hotkey speak", but don't think I'm doing it right and would ask for advice:

Step 1: Turn off my autoattack
Step 2: Target player 1 through player 6 (I think I'll need 6 seperate hotkeys for this...?)
Step 3: Cast my best heal on that player
Step 4: Re-target the main mob
Step 5: Turn on my autoattack

Name: Heal
Line 1: /attack off (First off, is this the right command?)
Line 2: /target %1 (Is this how you target player #1 in your group?)
Line 3: /cast 5 (Assuming spell #5 is my good heal)
Line 4: /assist %1 (Should cover steps 4 and 5)


I know this is noob stuff, but I've never much had to care about babysitting the other players in the group before and I'm confused how best to balance heals and hurts.

Thanks,

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

I use the Function keys to target players in my group. These are already the default so you don't need to set them up.

F1 = self / F2 = the second person in your group (down on your group window), etc. If F2 is Mal, I can hit F2 again and target Mal's warder; it's a toggle.

I always mem my heals in the same spot and I also generally call my heals (so if there's another healer in the group they know I'm casting), so a heal hotkey might look like this:

Line1 /g casting nature's infusion on %t
Line2 /cast 5

This assumes that my nature's infusion heal is in the fifth memmed buff slot down from the top. Putting %t in a hotkey returns the name of the target in that spot.

Ask if any of this doesn't make sense to you.

I get it Alley, but if your autoattack is on, and I insert your sequence into combat it'd look like this:

"F8" then "Q" (target mob in front of me and then attack them) or "/assist <partymember>" (to target AND autoattack their mob)

then
F3 (to target player 3 in my group)
*** however at this point, my autoattack being on, I'll get the message that I'm attacking player 3

then
/g Casting heal on %t
/cast 5

At this point I'm doing casting heal, and have targeted player 3. What do you do to get back to
re-attacking? Do you have to /assist again or F8/Q again? That's what I've been doing, but it
seems inefficient.

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

I never have auto attack on.

And I have a hotkey labeled "MT" (main tank) that I edit in every game. If we're in a group my assist is usually set to Haams or Dorann, so that hotkey's text would say
/assist Dorann

Since I'm usually just casting on mobs rather than hitting them, that targets whichever mob we're supposed to be killing and then I just cast dots, nukes, etc. If I do want to get up close and personal I hit my Q key, which is mapped to turn on attack.

I got out of the habit of having auto attack on when we began doing more mobs that might involve crowd control. If you mistakenly think orc_01 is the target of the tank and you click on him, and orc_01 was mezzed . . . oops. You just broke mezz. If you're assisting the main tank, you can close on the target and hit Q.

And it doesn't matter if you switch targets and start attacking Tali as you throw a heal on him, or on yourself. You'll get the message, yes, but it doesn't hurt anything.

Gotcha...so it comes down to my habit of having autoattack on all the time, which I thought
would be best for playing a 2 character party (Shaman + Paladin), but perhaps I need to stand
back and be "healer+buffer / DoTer+Debuffer" for a while. Gonna take some getting used
to

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

In a small group, it probably wouldn't matter if you have auto attack on all the time, but it's really better (IMHO) to break that habit. It can definitely come back to haunt you later.

Haams' shaman Puddinghead is one of the best shamans I've ever grouped with, and he's of the opinion that shamans at lower levels can definitely contribute to the group by melee'ing. Thus you'd probably lose out by sitting back and casting/healing only.

Haams, please correct/add to this if I've misstated.

In 80 levels and over 1500 AAs I'm not sure Moltok has meleed more than 5 mobs. There's just no need for it. Their weapons aren't great, they don't get double attack, or crit AAs. You want DPS from a shaman? Use DoTs, pets, and the panther line.

I use f1 - f6 for targetting group members.
My Hotkeys
1 - assist adega
2 - HoT
3 - Haste
4 - DoT
5 - Canni AA
6 - Epic
7 - Pet Attack
8 - Slow
9 - sit
10 - Canni

Thanks Adegax....guess I viewed my Shammy as more of a "Beastlord wannabe" with the desire to melee. Guess I should be thinking about playing it a lot more like my Necro, except actually with a "care about my teammates" attitude that I've never had to harbor before

On a related note, how did you get your epic to fire with a hotkey? On Drexxell I absolutely could NOT figure out what command to use to set off my necro clicky, so I have to do it manually. Would love to have a solution. Is there a "/use item hand 1" or "/click item hand 1" or something like that?

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

From your inventory screen, right click on your equipped epic. Move the resulting little box/picture of your epic onto an empty hotkey slot.

Right click it to fire. Be aware that if you left click it, even as a hotkey, you will pick it up on your cursor.

Ah, Alley...I do have that...it's true. I failed to make my question clear:

Is there a "text command" to fire that epic? That way I can embed it in an actual hotkey macro like this:

Name: FireEpic
Line 1: /g Firing my epic at %t!
Line 2: <insert text command that will fire off my epic>

I'd love this, cuz then I can just treat firing my epic the same way I treat casting a spell.

Drex

_________________
Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

Not that I'm aware of, but if I'm wrong (see shaman's melee vs. no melee post above) I hope someone will jump in.

For raids I have my epic in one hotkey, and another hotkey set up to say in /rsay "DRUID EPIC FIRED. Nuke NOW for maximum results" or something like that. Would be nice to combine them, if possible.

Oh, heck, I didn't take it personally - I always just throw out what I know (or what I think I know) with the hopes that someone will come along and set me straight.

I'm always pleased when folks with good information take the time to post.

Off the top I'd recommend having a blank assist key, ie, one that assists your target. For melee situations where someone else is getting beat on, you assist your target (the MoB), cast your heal on the bloodied Tali (via [alt] + 1-9 for the corresponding spell gem), then assist your target again. Viola, you are back to the MoB. Selecting a specific group/raid member I always just typed /tar xxx where xxx is the first three letters of the intended's name. Then upon healing, use your blank assist key to revert to MoB. This was always very useful in raids as well where I usually was not able to actually 'see' what was going on. The only time this causes issue is when your target has YOU as their target; your target becomes yourself and the blank assist key gets nowhere. Then you have to quickly execute a different manner of targeting, such as F8 or similar.

This assumes you are one to play with both hands on the key board during combat, which I always did. I know some people like to play with as little interaction with the keyboard as possible, but that never made sense to me.

As for getting the target on the same hotkey, you would likely need to put a pause in long enough to finish casting. You used to be able to stack commands after a pause but I recently could not figure that out when playing.

eg while in melee:
line 1: /assist
line 2: /cast 5
line 3: /pause 28
line 4: /assist

Something along the jist of 'line 2: /pause 28,/cast 5' should work.

Regarding the pause, I believe 10 = 1 second. So for a 2.5 second cast time you should use at least 26 to keep from re-targeting the mob before getting the heal off.


~Durezil Coppahtahp

or drexx just do like Mordorntoo does and heal the mobs u are fighting i always have to tell hij m dont heal the mobs

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