# Stupid MMORG Tricks **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 15, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151 "2011-07-15T18:07:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/21 "2011-07-16T15:29:24Z")
OK, this happened Thursday night. Regulars to the massive WoW thread may remember I posted: > [@New WoW General Discussion Thread 6/8/10](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-wow-general-discussion-thread-6-8-10/542480/9738): > > So I unlocked the Shadow Wardens tonight. Holy shit, if those are the easier dailies, I am not looking forward to the Talon Druid line, not one little bit. That “Enduring the heat” quest drove me up a damn wall. Broke my gear, big repair bill, finally had to google it to learn how to finish the quest. What I failed to mention was another reason those quests seemed so hard. My spells just weren’t hitting very hard at all. I was doing much lower damage than usual, and just couldn’t seem to figure out why. So I log on yesterday–on the character that had some much difficulty with those quests, and what do I see? I had my damn fishing pole equipped instead of my weapon. Ran a full set of dailies like that. Was marveling last night at how much easier the quests are when I actually equip my Tol Barad staff :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/22 "2011-07-16T17:28:40Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > OK, this happened Thursday night. Regulars to the massive WoW thread may remember I posted: > > What I failed to mention was another reason those quests seemed so hard. My spells just weren’t hitting very hard at all. I was doing much lower damage than usual, and just couldn’t seem to figure out why. > > So I log on yesterday–on the character that had some much difficulty with those quests, and what do I see? I had my damn fishing pole equipped instead of my weapon. Ran a full set of dailies like that. Was marveling last night at how much easier the quests are when I actually equip my Tol Barad staff :smack: Ahahahaha! I’ve done that more than once!! Joe ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2011, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/23 "2011-07-17T21:42:44Z")
Quoth **Balance** : > [@](#): > > In City of Heroes, your “R” key is bound by default to the command to make your character autorun. One of my personal habits is to bind the “T” key to a command that targets the nearest enemy. Another habit is playing squishy ranged characters. > > This combination is not especially compatible, as I realized while staring at a horde of cyberzombies standing on my first Defender’s head. I’ve had situations like that in Diablo II. "What? No, I didn’t teleport directly into the middle of that horde of enemies! I shot a fireball at them! Of course I did! Stupid game, why did you think I was saying to teleport? ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2011, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/24 "2011-07-18T08:24:49Z")
> [@treis](#): > > Ah complete heal. I had a similar situation. I was in Lower Guk (this was a decade ago, at leats) and I use complete heal on my tank. Same thing with you. Watching the cast timer and health bar going, hmm this could be a problem, then uh oh, and then “oh shit” when my tank goes unconscious. Unconscious means (I don’t remember the exact number) that 99.99% of his life is gone, and the weakest creature in the world could kill him with one hit. Luckily, my heal spell went through in the nick of time, and I played it off with a casual “I like to be efficient with my mana”. > > Then there was the time I accidentally casted an aggressive spell instead of a buff on a fellow player while raiding the Plane of Sky. It didn’t do anything to the player, but pissed off the god we were hanging around waiting to kill. Said god goes apeshit and takes out a swath of the party, but oddly enough, not me. Ah, Lower Guk. “You’ve ruined your own lands, EQPC01, you’ll not ruin mine, Frooaaak.” Everyone thought Complete Heal was this spectacular spell and it was, but it took a lot of effort to optimize its use. You didn’t want to wait too long to cast it, obviously, but you never knew what the “too long” line was, mostly because it was always changing. If it’s tank vs. one mob and the damage is steady, then it’s pretty easy. But (and especially in places like LG), the fights are rarely solo mobs and the damage is rarely steady. You get adds all the time; crits; nukers. To be mana efficient, you also don’t want to cast Complete Heal too early, like when your tank is at 80%. So, what you describe (tank unconscious) is actually the optimal result. Of course you don’t mind giving up a little mana efficiency to not cut things so close all the time. In my Cleric’s lifetime, having used Complete Heal many times, I’ve found 20% to be the best balance of efficiency and safety. Casting CH when the tank is at 20% health, I would put the success rate at 98% with about 4% close calls, (the tank getting down to 5% or less HPs). I must say though that I’ve never fired off a CH when the tank was unconscious. That is impressive. And for the record, a PC has 10 hidden HPs. Once his visible HPs reach 0, he goes unconscious. He is still alive with 10 unconscious HPs. He dies when he is unconscious and loses 10 HPs. The unconscious HPs can be significantly increased with AAs. Also for the record, Complete Heal is still fixed at 7500 HPs, though you can crit with it. With tanks and even squishy PCs now having tens of thousands of unbuffed HPs, Complete Heal is ineffective after about level 65-70, before that if you’re in a raiding guild. But of course Clerics get much stronger healing spells at those levels and above. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/25 "2011-07-18T15:25:21Z")
This happened in Molten Core in WoW, so you can tell how long ago it was. Our guild was preparing for the next pull and our hunter from Texas suddenly drawled “Why is (Duke) dead?” Seems I’d tried to buff the tank but hit Divine Intervention instead. I know it’s an FPS and not an MMORPG, but since it broke all records for chowderheadedness I’ll put it here anyway. The first time I played Call of Duty, my stepson was coaching me. Going around a corner, I saw an enemy throw a care package marker and dropped him. “Now steal that!” said JP. So what did I do? I stood right at the marker and the care package fell on me. ---
**Author:** ![Amanda\_the\_Wuss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/cdc98d/32.png) [@Amanda\_the\_Wuss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amanda_the_Wuss)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/26 "2011-08-22T17:26:04Z")
While tanking, pulled the boss just as the healer said “brb, my cat threw up.” (Oddly enough, said healer and I ended up eventually meeting in real life due to mutual friends, became roommates, and then she gave me the cat when she moved out. One of these days the shoe will be on the other foot… and _I’ll_ be the one cleaning up cat vomit. :smack: ) During the Saurfang fight in WoW’s ICC raid, it became a running joke in my guild that the guild leader’s wife would say “Gee, I wonder what ‘Dranosh’ means?” just as Saurfang said “We named our son Dranosh. It means ‘Heart of Draenor’ in Orcish”. This annoyed the main healer to no end. One day, we attempted a 25-man run with another guild. Guild leader’s wife sent MH a whisper with her usual line, causing MH to scream “GLW, YOU WHORE!!!” over Vent, leaving the other guild to wonder WTF just happened. Our guild now has “No calling GLW a whore” as an official rule. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/27 "2011-08-22T17:50:15Z")
> [@Wargamer](#): > > Dark Age of Camelot, when first released, had hard crowd control spells for PvP, including a mesmerize spell area effect that could lock down huge numbers of enemies for lengthy periods of time - long enough so that a good mezz could allow an outnumbered group to win fights. The only way a mezz would break was damaging the target or time expiration. > > Anyway, I played a thane, a tank with ranged ligtning bolts spells. Our group’s mezzer got off a great mezz, freezing three groups of enemies and we moved down to attack. Except for some stupid thane who cast his aoe lightning bolt spell. Did I mention that thanes were really sucky, and not many people played them? And that the only thane that night was me? And thanes were notorious for over-eagerness mezz breaking lightning bolts? > > Mezzer: %^\*&%#$^%^&! > > Me: Oops. Yup, that’s me as well. I played a Thane too, or as the guild’s Healer called me, a Lvl 60 Mezbreaker. Hey, if the gods didn’t want me to break mezzes, they wouldn’t have given me a sweet, mindlessly used insta-cast PBAE, would they ? That thing was so essential when solo-ing (which I did a lot of, being the only college student in a guild of working stiffs), you actually had to concentrate on not using it the second it was up when playing in a group. Least I did. Not that I didn’t have genuine stupid moments. We were in that big underground demon-themed dungeon all three factions could play in that they added a bit before the first expansion, just grinding through… I don’t even remember. Succubi, I think ? We were pretty underlevelled for the area and everything was purple to us, but thanks to our Healer’s chain mezzes we were really plowing through them. In fact, for supposedly being such a dangerously dangerous area, I didn’t feel much challenge. We’d just toss an arrow at one group, mezz them, wail on one of them at a time, rince, repeat. Decent XP and loot but yawn city, right ? So, while we’re in the middle of one such fight, I decided on my own accord to spike things up a little bit, see how on the ball the main tank and Healer were. Tabbed to a nearby group and “accidentally” let go of Thor’s Hammer, the big ranged AoE. Except instead of pulling one more group like I expected, there were two more in a side room. They got damaged through the wall by the AoE and came running too. The rest of the group was _not_ amused. But we did get challenged pretty hard ! ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/28 "2011-08-22T18:26:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **Balance** :I’ve had situations like that in Diablo II. "What? No, I didn’t teleport directly into the middle of that horde of enemies! I shot a fireball at them! Of course I did! Stupid game, why did you think I was saying to teleport? And don’t forget the infamous Town Portal Attack. You can select town portal and cast it when you think you’re casting an attack. A badly-placed TP, particularly if you’re falling back or running away, might cause any and all teammates leaping through it to appear in the middle of a horde of enemies. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151/29 "2011-08-22T19:46:08Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I am the notorious master of, when late into raids, accidentally popping Heroism (the buff spell with a 10-minute timer) BEFORE a major boss fight. > > The best stupid trick, though, was actually a MUD story rather than a MMO story. I only witnessed it, I didn’t do it. > I used to run a MUD with open, in-character PvP. There was an in-character Law Patrol, even, to enforce some standards of behavior. Anyway, we had this one guy who was a max-level (lv50) mage, whose personal joy in life was killing lowbies for his jollies and then killing the patrolmen who’d hunt him down. Racked up literally millions in gold coins worth of bounty on his head, but no one could nail him. > > So finally, one night (I was on IC as the God of Law) I’d had enough–he was chain-killing people level 10 and under, and taunting about it on shout. I wasn’t going to break my own rules by smiting the guy unless absolutely necessary (for various politics reasons with the other admins, I didn’t want to open that can of worms), but I wanted him to lose at least once. So I announced across the MUD, with a booming voice in the sky, “I desire that the blight of \ be removed from my world. If you but pray for the opportunity, I shall transport him to your location for you to make the attempt.” > > And I get one response. From a level 31 cleric who was not particularly associated with Good/Law. “Transport him to me, I can do it.” We went back and forth a few times, with me reminding him how little chance he had, but he was so insistent that I did it. > > And the message immediately pops up in the log, within a second or two, “\ has been playerkilled by \!” > > I’m literally openmouthed in astonishment so I teleport to the cleric myself to see what’s what. > I arrive, take 1hp damage from the Cleric’s fire aura, and instantly plummet 15 rooms straight down a mineshaft. That the cleric was hovering over with a levitate spell. Landed right next to the broken corpse of the PvPer, who had died of falling damage and one tick of fire damage. And who never, to my knowledge, logged in again. _clap clap_ That is absolute genius on the cleric’s part. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-mmorg-tricks/589151.md?page=1)