Focused Perfection - Efficiency/Raid Dynamics

[Stellah]

I'm trying to think of an efficient way to integrate this into our raids with multiple beasts.  I've got a general idea but I'd be interested to see how others are applying this, regardless of if its a formal method or informal method of doing it.

i.e., do you announce it and use tells, have a specific channel people enter to request it so you don't double-up on people, etc?

I'm swaying more and more towards the channel, as I don't want to clutter /rs or even /gu with this stuff.  I'm also hoping it would get clerics to actually ask for it in the first place.  We literally have clerics say "oom", and I haven't gotten a single tell (they know Focused Perfection exists).  I've also tried explaining the benefits on our forums - 3 beasts can keep this running on 1 toon full-time provided they have extended enchantment AAs, nearly 5K mana every 2 minutes.

Any feedback would be great.

[Seryk]

We don't have a formal policy on its use (heck I think some of the clerics still may not know it exists  :-o).

At any rate, I usually get an occasional request (via private tells). Other than that, I take it upon myself to hand it out unsolicited if I know or can reasonably assume during a particular event that it is needed. I do have it set up on a macro to send a return tell to let the receiver know it is incoming.

A channel might be useful and something to consider for mana-demanding encounters.

+Seryk+

[Inphared]

The prime idea is to get it spread out among your clerics. If you focus on one person, and he dies, all of your efforts have been wasted on that one person while everyone else is continuously going lower with no help.

This is how we have it set up in Triality: we've got the Beastlord channel and the Cleric channel. Clerics call their mana percentages in the cleric channel and we toss Paragons to whomever is lowest at the time. Our paragon keys give a message in both the cleric channel and the beastlord channel so that no one overwrites one another.

You don't want to wait until clerics call 50 mana either. Ideally you start paragoning at 90% mana, because they're going to keep using mana and not just stagnate. This way you get the maximum number of paragons off in a set amount of time.

[Urim]

Similar situation in my guild.

Beastlords join the cleric channel and call out when we Focused Paragon anyone. I would love to say our clerics call their percentages ... but sadly they slack hardcore in that department. So usually we take it upon ourselves to cast it on random clerics throughout encounters, usually focusing on the ones that are known to go low fast and often.

Typically I start doing focused paragon about 30sec to a min into a fight to try and keep ahead of the demand as much as possible.

[Stellah]

I like that method.  Having them requesting it is somewhat of a middle-man issue.  Getting them to routinely update their mana percentages allows the beast to decide who gets it will eliminate that - based on % of cleric's mana and the actual manapool of the cleric in question, prone-ness to death, etc.  I'm sure a few clerics would hoard it too, trying to stay at FM - we also have a few who like to go oom fast (highly dumb and inefficient).  Our clerics have weird characters, good think I have the password to their channel from a while back - they won't be able to keep us out ;p.

Thats not to say I'm decided, as I would be rather interested to hear how other guilds have this set to work. 

Thank you for the comments thus far!

[Kenusten]

I no longer raid as a beastlord, but when I did and we had newer clerics on a raid, I kept Ferocity on them to help them where there were mana drain AoEs/nukes.

If I still raided, I would take a similar tack.  I would ask the lead cleric who they thought had the most mana issues.  Having new clerics with subpar gear is not uncommon because it is generally the most desired class for a raiding guild.

If no cleric had mana issues, I would look at paragoning MA type knights.

[Inphared]

Why would you ever paragon a knight?  :|

Always paragon healers. You get the most benefit from giving a healer mana because you can always continue to keep people alive via heals, which produces more time for everyone else to do their job.

[Maylian]

Like everyone else I have joined our cleric channel, unfortunately they aren't always able to call their mana levels so will pick a few people or myself depending on the fights. Since I'm the only active beastlord I don't need to worry about it being overwritten.

[Kanan]

with the spam that would hit the clr channel, I know I can't join it & be able to process any of the information.  We try to get them to send us tells when they're needing mana, usually by calling reminders in /rs.  Doesn't usually work (I tend to feed one person a lot, since he's the one that sends me the tell).  Hell, most of the time I ask for it, wait almost a minute & then decide to use on me.

I call out in bst channel who I'm feeding (if it's not me) and do a /tt to that person to tell em to ask me for more in 2 mins if needed.  If I get a tell after I just hit someone or while the AA is down, I'll ask another bst in chat to cover them.

[Sushe]

As Inp said, we tend to hound our clerics about calling mana (and calling it early).

However, depending on your raid set up (how many bsts you field, how much spam is in the cleric/healer channels, etc) will impact what works best for you.
You can also set up timers to remind you when Fpara re-pops if that helps you keep the bottemless mana-pits happy.

[Khauruk]

Why would you ever paragon a knight?

I'm assuming this actually was referring to Paladins only, and when they're in a group healing role, which can run them oom fairly quickly for many guilds.  People can learn to control their agro on trash clears if the mobs are coming too fast for tank mana, or just pull slower /shrug.

[nedoirah]

I used to be the beast class leader in my guild last year. This is how I had it set up. I was the correspondant for the cleric and beast channels. I would call out the requests in the beast channel for paragon and mgb paragon when the cleric class leader asked in the cleric channel. It really cut down on the confusion that would come from several healers spamming their heals in the channel and beasts trying to read and spam their paragon in the same channel. I had talked to the cleric class leader about a rep in the beast channel in case I missed a paragon request. That idea never took off. But I do think that a rep from each class in the other class channel to help with paragon requests would and could work.

[Inphared]

The problem there is that you only have two people working to organize many more people. When you're mid encounter and you're busy trying to do your job it's easier if everyone can see what other people are doing.

[Praxxis]

I'm 1 of 4 active beasts in my guild.  Right now we don't have anything setup for Focused Paragon.  Matter of fact, I haven't seen an MGB Paragon used in a long time nor was it needed on encounters we've been doing.  We just started hitting Demi & took our first kill on Graniteclaw.

Usually I'll hit Focused Paragon on the healer in my group if I see them spaming quick heals due to AE's & such.  As for my MGB Paragon, I usually will hit it if I see the encounter is taking a while.  Not sure about the other beasts in my guild though.

[nedoirah]

I agree Imphared but actually it was easier with only 2 players directing traffic than to have a bunch doing it on their own. I don't know why but it was.