In regards to raiding,

I would gladly give every plat seller in EQ my mailing address, my home phone number, and social security number if it meant I wouldn't have to listen to the spamming of clerics.

Why do clerics think they need EVERYONE in EVERY channel they've ever joined to know exactly what they are casting at every moment?

Divine Intervention messages.. why on earth would the entire guild/raid need to know when a cleric casts this spell? If you want to prevent folks from doubling up on one tank, just send this message to the healer channel.. but they do both.

Spam heal messages - Why does everyone in 'say range' or group need to know when you cast every single heal? Thats what spell awareness is for.

Rez messages - why would the entire guild need to know every time you cast a rez? Just send this to the healer channel so folks aren't rezzing the same corpse over and over. Perhaps if your pallies were quick-draw-McGraw on the mid-battle rezzes, I could understand this. But thats only the case 1 out of 1000 times.

CH messages - This one really boggles me.. why on earth would your entire group need to know every single time you start casting a CH if your in a rotation?

Divine Arbitration - come on.. by the time anyone is able to read that message, the AA has already fired.

I've just been getting overwhelmed by the asinine amount of spam clerics spew out. When we start an event, if your grouped with a cleric, you can pretty much kiss your chat box goodbye.

I split all my messages into two chat boxes. One box for spell and melee spam, the other box for all communication (say, groupchat, guildchat, raidsay, etc). The benefit to this is continuity. For example, if someone says in raidsay "attack now!" and someone else says in shout "back off and mez!" , by looking at separate chat boxes, you would have no idea which instruction was the current one. So you'd need to send raidsay and shout (and all communication channels) to the same chatbox.

Now, every time a cleric hits CH, I get 2-4 lines of text announcing it: group chat, healer chat, rotation channel (when I have to join it), and sometimes Say. Every time someone casts DI it gets sent to Raidchat, Guildchat, Healer Channel, and Group chat... etc etc

Aside from the spam annoyance, there's a genuine problem with their method. Any raid instruction that is given is pushed out of view within seconds of it being spoken. Sometimes the instruction is in guildchat, other times raidchat or groupchat.

And a small note to fellow druids about our epics.. this is the same topic. Why would you need to announce to everyone (or even just your fellow druids) every time you click your epic? This is why audio triggers are your friend. Just add a trigger for "fury of the seasons" and you'll know exactly when any druid has cast their epic. If this won't work for you because you choose to play with everyone else's spam turned off, then you need more help than just audio triggers. Playing without being able to see what folks are casting is playing with one eye blindfolded. Use spell awareness to see when a cleric in your group is casting a heal so you can interrupt yours.

Spam sucks. At least melee and spell spam allows you to turn it off (if you want to), or filter it to a window allowing you to retain important information in your favorite window. Cleric spam is totally different, you can't filter out just the worthless groupchat and raidchat spam. It takes charge of your entire communications window with no remorse, pushing the actually critical information out of view.

Sounds like an issue within your guild, we have no such problem.

What we do have is a spam channel that all healers and officers join that all heals and cures go in to so that if someone is interested to see if their target is already getting a heal they can look there... otherwise they can stick it in another window and minimize it off into a corner.

It also provides officers with accountability from healers because on occasion we will parse the channel to see who is pulling their weight.

I've promoted using a spam channel in the past. It worked for a short while, however, they never removed all the other channels' messages. It just amounted to more spam. As a druid, I get a TON of grief whenever I recommend anything to "The Gods of Healing". And this movement for less spam was just another case in point.

I understand what your saying. I noticed clerics have hotkeys tied to all their healing spells. When I replace a cleric in a group for healing or I am main healer to begin with, the tank gets "scared" because their is no inc heal message. Sit back and relax buddy, I got ya, sheesh.

We have a healer channel and a chatter channel in addition to RS.

Spams goto the healer channel
DI messages go to healer channel and /rs because frankly I want to see it's refreshed when it fires.
Rez messages goto the healer channel and to the chatter channel

If we're using MGB heals they goto the healer channel
CH messages goto the healer channel

I don't care what else they are casting, and no one needs to see it. If you have so much spam that it's hard to pick out what's important, it needs to be cut back. Information overload during an encounter is non-helpful.

-Fenier

Rez messages - why would the entire guild need to know every time you cast a rez? Just send this to the healer channel so folks aren't rezzing the same corpse over and over.
This stops people from questioning who has been rez'd not rez'd. An announcement in raid channel (not /rs) or /gu means people Know rez's are incoming and to be on the ball.

And a small note to fellow druids about our epics.. this is the same topic. Why would you need to announce to everyone (or even just your fellow druids) every time you click your epic?
The druid epic announcements are important and can increase the dps of an encounter. They also help keep track of who has used their epic ability allowing chaining of the ability to keep dps high.

The /say spam is something your cleric class leader can correct. I am in the healing channel in my guild. I have my channel separated so I can still track what's going on and not get overwelmed.

I will deal with group heal spam and healer channel spam and rarely have to deal with any other.
Ranting in /gu or on the guild boards won't get you any love... perhaps chat with the cleric class leader about your concerns might make your play time more enjoyable.

By the way in my guild the druids are in the main line healing about 40% of the fights.... go DRUIDS.

I don't mind heal messages in group chat in just xp groups or whatever, I know some tanks get scared if they see no message. I personally do not use spam unless asked to, and even then I only do it in group. The only one I always announce is group heal.
But it does bug me when I am grouped with a cleric in a raid (which is rare mind you, being as they know my loathing of healing and so give me the suicidal group as sole healer -.- ) and I get spammed in group and in healer channel. Sometimes, you even get a bonus in a spamming pally with that 0.3 sec cast heal!

in our guild we have a spam channel as well i keep in seperate window
but honestly i dont mind the spam and i do it myself specialy in groups of more then one healer last thign i want to do is waste mana or have another waste mana

also in our guild ch rotations done in guild chat cause there is less channel lag there

This stops people from questioning who has been rez'd not rez'd. An announcement in raid channel (not /rs) or /gu means people Know rez's are incoming and to be on the ball.

There's no reason for folks to not be "on the ball". If your waiting for a rez and not observant enough to click the "yes" box, thats sad. Why would non-priests need to worry about who has and hasn't been rezzed? If you think they've been missed in the recovery, just send a tell. Either they're AFK and don't deserve a rez or they'll answer you.

The druid epic announcements are important and can increase the dps of an encounter. They also help keep track of who has used their epic ability allowing chaining of the ability to keep dps high.

The clicky is what increases the DPS, not the spam message. All the folks that can benefit from our clicky should already have a "fury of the seasons" audio trigger to know exactly when it's in full effect. With the 20 hit limit on our epic clicky, it fades within 8-10 seconds of the time you casted it. Unless half of your raid is made of epic'd druids, you're never going to get a rotation to cover every moment. Just listen for your audio trigger to know when no one else has casted theirs within the last 8 seconds.

I do not think that having a hotkey setup to cast heals and have a "spam" line as you call it is a bad thing. I know that I like to know who is casting heals when I am grouped with them. I also know that a lot of people in my guild use the same set of hotkeys during raids as exp groups and just join the heal channel on raids to add the spam to that channel. Also, often our raid leaders set up a group of clerics to help them communicate better.

Our guild also uses /say for casting patch heals. It is all dependent on how you and your guild want to do things.

It's only spam if you don't make use of it. As a druid that's been forced into a heal role on 90% of raids, I find it very helpful to see who's healing who, and when, so that I can pick where my heals are best needed. Without that "spam", this simply wouldn't be possible.

I use 4 windows though, so I make sure (almost) nothing gets lost by healing spam.

Spell awareness does not tell you who they are healing when multiple people are being hit.

Not everyone is always standing together to be in range for spell awareness.

A heal spam channel is a whole lot less spam than having spell awareness on and seeing what every person in the entire raid is casting. Now that is spam!

Sounds like you are a very opinionated person and have your own way to do things. Good luck finding a fit for your personality.

When I replace a cleric in a group for healing or I am main healer to begin with, the tank gets "scared" because their is no inc heal message.

Seriously, this is so annoying. I don't like spam in groups, and I don't like pushing an extra or different button to heal if I don't have to. I've had this happen a few times, and even had a SK feign death on the damn group and wipe us because he didn't think he was going to get healed. If you can't tank because you don't see a heal message then don't play melee. Go make a healer, set up your own spam keys, and leave the rest of us alone.

Seriously, this is so annoying. I don't like spam in groups, and I don't like pushing an extra or different button to heal if I don't have to. I've had this happen a few times, and even had a SK feign death on the damn group and wipe us because he didn't think he was going to get healed. If you can't tank because you don't see a heal message then don't play melee. Go make a healer, set up your own spam keys, and leave the rest of us alone.

That's something to really rant about, drives me NUTS.

Tanks who panic when they think a heal isn't inc, or when they get low on health... in doing so tend to wipe groups and raids.

If you can't watch your health bar shrinking, appreciate you're about to die, and stay on the job holding agro as long as you can, don't play a tank. Dumbasses!

I would drive people mad in an instant if I actually had any spam messages. When I watch OTs and MTs I tend to continuosly start casting and interrupting and only let the heal go through if their hp is low enough. This would equal spam every 1-1.5 sec.

As a cleric I'll admit I'm a bit guilty on this stuff, though many of it has multiple purposes which I'll explain.

1) Divine Intervention messages.. My guild OFTEN has 'helpful' tanks and other classes telling us that so and so's DI wore off. We've tried to cure it and it's only cured when we put our "Casting DI on %t" message in raid say.
- Folks think they're helping but it's not. We have our "di wore off triggers or see it in the white text" so often we've already recast it when folks are still saying it's gone off (cause they don't know we caught it).
- It goes in healer channel so we don't overlap ... too often. With 2 min refresh, we have to be prudent on casts.

2) Spam heal messages - Not sure why folks use say though they may have their reasons. Group and the 'healer spam' channel are all we do and some only do the spam channel.
- We often have enough clerics on that at least 1 is in each group, so healers get doubled up and in that case policy is to call heals so the other healers know whose being targetted and can work accordingly. Plus coordination with pallies, druids and shaman on AoE mobs (which are over half of our raid encounters) is covered with group spam.

3) Rez messages - We used to do all of the calls in raid say (and healer) but often remove the raid say spam now and only call it on during event rezzes (so all buffing classes know someone needs their attention - otherwise the newly rezzed rarely gets all buffs they need).

4) CH group messages - Some of ours call it in group; most don't so I agree here.

5) Divine Arbitration - I don't know any of our healers who still use dva message on raids (the cutsy message pulled out in groups occasionally but that's it).

6) Chat box #'s - some folks can manage with one, some with two - folks who play multiple roles/jobs may need more to work efficiently. I'm on the extreme high end myself.
- One box for raid say, group and our raid chat channel.
- One box for the two healer channels (instructional and spam)
- One box for tells
- One box for our guild/app guild chat channel, guild say, officer channel, shout
- Then various other smaller boxes that deal with actual damage/crit/spell awareness/pet stuff, focus effects, etc. where I don't have to see most of it so it keeps the key channels clear. (Total of 5-6 other boxes depending if I have to split out emotes for events)

All 4 chat boxes are stacked (group/spell bar in bottom middle) with 2 chat boxes on top of each other just to the left/right of group - so the eye can see things fairly quickly without moving much.

7) Druid epics - as someone said, this is so the raid knows that now is the time for that extra boost of DPS if possible.

I do the same in heavier situations. Cast a dps spell, start healing and interrupting if not needed. Now, I have had some clerics who do the same thing (cept they are usually the main healer) with messages every time they start to cast. Can you say annoying? Fills up the window I use just for /say, group, and emotes. No way I am going to be caught doing that.

I know what I can heal and what I can't, and I say so very loudly and clearly if something is too heavy for me to heal. In my old guild there was this SK that drove me INSANE. About 4 in every 5 times we would group I would be the only healer. He is a decent tank, I could heal him in Vald while doing my taxes, but he would always change plans if we didn't get a cleric/another druid, even if the group was already formed and just picked him up to be our tank, and go to Sunderock. Always no further than Sunderock. Seriously, wtf? He denied it a lot, but told others he doesn't trust druids (cept the guild leader's) to heal and won't go with me because I don't spam heal messages so he can't see what I am doing every second of every battle. Ok, whatever, but seriously not even to heal in Direwind or Icefall? ........
I do not miss him.

I've healed (with ranger for named back ups) in Ashengate without a slower no problem, had an awesome tank, but still, and with a decent tank and slower it's easy. I mean, it's the druid's grove, you people know we can heal. So for a while now I won't really group with a tank who freaks out about having a druid healer or one without spam messages. I can go solo the tough stuff, they get to sit around waiting to find a new healer.

As a tank (I play my SK mostly now) I don't care for heal messages in group. I almost exclusively group with guildies anyway but I have faith that the heal is coming.

Then again, I can lifetap to buy time if something comes up, also.

Amen Beatslayer.

I do agree with whoever mentioned it that this type of problem is usuauly a guild problem. I have been in a couple of high end raiding guilds over the years and while some have had a slight problem with spam; none of them have the problems that my current guild does. We have too many channels and almost all of them are abused. We have several clerics that drive us druids absolutely nuts. They post their heal/cure/rez/Di etc messages in eveyr channel they are in. Being grouped with them is enough to drive me nuts as I get to see said clerics announce in say, group, raid, healer channel, and our spam heal channel that he/she is casting a heal on so and so. Its beyond rediculous and a couple of our druids refuse to pay attention to the healer channels, if they even join them, because they just dont care for the spam.

IMO, there is no need for rez messages in any channel but the healer channel.

y gulld has a spam heal channel, so use IT for for your cures, heals etc. The entire raid does not need to know that you are cureing so and so. If you want that person to know you are healing/cureing them then set a tell up in your hotkey. It's simple, /ttell.

On raids, the group does not need to know everytime you cast a heal, Di, rez, Mark, and whatever else unless your casting it on one of them so stop with that useless spam.

I feel for Crystilla, she is maxed on her channels. I do not know how she keeps up with them all while we raid. I think a guild can suffer from over communication and mine is definetly suffering.

Our DI communication often happens in /rs. With a 2 minute recast time on the spell, it's very important not to overlap casts. By making both the calls for DI (for when clerics miss messages about DI wearing off) and the DI casts visible to the raid, some classes that aren't normally considered healing classes can choose to throw extra patch heals until DI lands again, too.

We don't announce our heals though, and most of the time debuffs stay in channels. Other priest announcements are rare.

A heal spam channel is a whole lot less spam than having spell awareness on and seeing what every person in the entire raid is casting. Now that is spam!
QFT!

I've got my stuff filtered so that I only see what group members are casting. I've got just about everything I can spare turned off, hehe. No complaints about spam here. I like when other healers announce their heals in group. I don't mind the extra spam if it's another Druid and I see it in Druid chat-- during raids. I rather not see it during off times though hehe. <3!

I would drive people mad in an instant if I actually had any spam messages. When I watch OTs and MTs I tend to continuosly start casting and interrupting and only let the heal go through if their hp is low enough. This would equal spam every 1-1.5 sec.

I do the exact same thing. Back in GoD it wasn't enough to be a very fast reactive healer. You HAD to be a PROACTIVE healer, which meant 1 channeled heal for every 2-6 interrupted heals. Anyone trying to judge when I actually let a heal go through would be boggled, thinking I was chain casting 0.1 second heals.

One particular tipt run, a fellow druid I was grouped with demanded I put in healing spam into the group channel. I told him he "really" did not want this to happen, but he persisted. Needless to say, 1 minute later they were saying 'WTF are you doing, is this just to spite me???'

As to announcing Rezzes midfight ... its done in our guild so the 7 or so Calls the druids / shammys have dont get wasted ...
generally the clerics tend to stay on the MT, but if one dies early they go straight to rezwork in between self buffing/medding/calling for a tap, so it keeps us from wasting calls if they announce rezzes

I know what I can heal and what I can't, and I say so very loudly and clearly if something is too heavy for me to heal. In my old guild there was this SK that drove me INSANE. About 4 in every 5 times we would group I would be the only healer. He is a decent tank, I could heal him in Vald while doing my taxes, but he would always change plans if we didn't get a cleric/another druid, even if the group was already formed and just picked him up to be our tank, and go to Sunderock. Always no further than Sunderock. Seriously, wtf? He denied it a lot, but told others he doesn't trust druids (cept the guild leader's) to heal and won't go with me because I don't spam heal messages so he can't see what I am doing every second of every battle. Ok, whatever, but seriously not even to heal in Direwind or Icefall? ........
I do not miss him.

How bad is that guy's gear? And did you notify him that he has lifetap spells?

Divine Intervention messages- Mine goes into three channels, raid chat, cleric chat, and raid channel. I have 4 filtered chat boxes, main chat, guild chat, cleric chat, raid channel. Tanks typically ask in raid chat and raid channel for DI. The purpose for all the spamming of the channels is to let the clerics know "Hey, this person has it.. Don't cast it" It lets the tanks know " Hey, you have it.", it's a fairly important spell, which requires alot of communication.. Saves tanks alot :-)

Spam heal messages - /shrug, i never announce my heals.. Sometimes i'll announce a group heal in group chat though.

Rez messages-We just hail the corpse to let other clerics know, and let other people know that the person is about to be alive again.

CH messages - We do the rotation in cleric channel.. I'll tell groups at the beginning of fight i'm in chain, and heals might be a little scarce (Depending on the mob, i guess)

Divine Arbitration - Pointless to announce, lol.

Communication is a good tool in most raid environments, it lets people know you are trying. It lets people know you are there. It lets people know that you should be able to rely on them a bit. While un-necessary alot of the time, I guess it's better to communicate with people then be left in the dark. /shrug.

How bad is that guy's gear? And did you notify him that he has lifetap spells?

He had good gear, I think the best geared sk in the guild. The problem was he was an idiot and a wuss. Bad combo for a tank, but one I see a lot. It especially comes out if they don't have their version of a safety blanket (cleric).

I'm in Crystilla's boat with the chat windows. My guild (for the most part) doesn't seem to have a huge problem with misplaced spam (excluding, of course the person that get's their channels out of order by accident).

-One box for XO / RA / Rsay
-One for raider's channel /guild / app channel chat
-One for group / tells / druid channel (I don't use tell windows)
-One for heal channel / ooc / say / shout / auction / emotes
-One for Melee spam / casting / dots (wear off messages go to group chat)

-Two spam windows - One for general spam that's minimised and banished to a corner of my screen, and one for our heal spam channel, which only shows 1-2 lines of text.

Of course, we've been very clear about what goes where.

The only spam messages going to the heal channel should be DI / rezzes / CH rot casts.

Rsay is for RA (Usually *only* the RL) to give directions. Definitely a "spam free" zone. Only exception are MGB Heal chains (Although I personally think those belong in the healer / raider channels), Tank comments ("Assist me, defensive down in 15, OT'ing, heal me" etc...), pulling messages, and the like.

Spot heals messages are for the healer spam channel only (and nothing but the name of the person you're healing). Rezzes go to both healer channel and raider channel. Epics messages go to druid channel and raider channel. Reptile goes to the druid channel, along with any other druid utility related spam, luckily, no one I know feels the need to call their fernspur cast every single time, but I'm sure there are a few of those out there. /bonk!

Shamans have their own channel for debuffs, slows, etc...

Whether you announce your casting in you group... /shrug. Up to the healer. I personally only announce group heals. And then only if I think there's a chance people have wandered out of range.

I guess it's just a matter of managing it. If I see someone sending their spam heal messages to the main heal channel, I give them a few grace casts, then correct them. I haven't yet run into anyone who's had a problem with that (usually it's a case of mixed up channels) but if I did find someone who had a problem with following our raiding guidelines, I'd say either deal with it or leave. Same as if you had a rabid tank breaking mezzes or a raider who was unable to keep themselves from jumping into rsay.

Whether you announce your casting in you group... /shrug. Up to the healer. I personally only announce group heals. And then only if I think there's a chance people have wandered out of range.


I never really considered group heals spam, since it does matter that people stay in range and can save mana from being used on single heals from someone else in the group.

-One box for XO / RA / Rsay
-One for raider's channel /guild / app channel chat
-One for group / tells / druid channel (I don't use tell windows)
-One for heal channel / ooc / say / shout / auction / emotes
-One for Melee spam / casting / dots (wear off messages go to group chat)

-Two spam windows


Wow, thats more windows than most greenhouses, heh.

Referring back to my mention of the necessity of 'continuity' in communication lines, I don't know how I could make such a setup work, without creating an opportunity to get conflicting information.

Wow, thats more windows than most greenhouses, heh.
Sometimes when I raid, I go spy on the tank / shaman channels, so there's a whole other window for that =p

But I've adjusted my veiwpoint so 3 out of 8 windows aren't blocking my screen (neither are my hotkeys or group heal windows), and everything else is, of course, faded. And those 2 that are either minimized or close to minimized hardly register.

The channels are all different colors as well, so they show up differently.

I agree, it's a ton of chat windows, but it keeps things from disappearing under spam. And I've adjusted to it nicely, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest. It probably helps that I've added channels and windows over time.

I have 3 windows only.

All chat to one
elee spam to another
Spell Spam to a 3rd

I can't understand how people could use 8+ windows and still follow everything in a timely manner.

I use 2 windows. One is all chat, the other is all melee/spell spam. I dont pay attention to the spam window, so no use in having more than 1. I have seen UI's with 5+ windows and its so cluttered, it just drives me insane.

I have seen UI's with 5+ windows and its so cluttered, it just drives me insane.

I have a UI that give a lot of information up front, and while it was a little overwhelming at first, I've adjusted to it and actually prefer it. But then again, it all comes down to personal preference and what works best for you.

With the set up I have now, I rarely have to scroll up to catch something I missed. A cleric saying "CH inc to %t" to group doesn't make me scramble to see what the raid leader just said.

Then again, my guild raids with a lot of chat channels, so my windows are a partial response to that.

I'd be interested in seeing how many chat channels other guilds use.

I'd be interested in seeing how many chat channels other guilds use.

4.

/rs
/chatter channel
/heal channel
/tank channel

Shaman sometimes make thier own channels for buffing.

Written by Rowann:
-One box for XO / RA / Rsay
-One for raider's channel /guild / app channel
-One for group / tells / druid channel
-heal channel / ooc / say / shout / auction / emotes
-One for Melee spam / casting / dots
-general spam
-heal spam

How would you navigate this situation or avoid encountering it?

Your fighting a brand new event with tons of adds. After tossing out a heal, you realize you now have lots of agro and must immediately start kiting. After narrowly dodging death a handful of times, you get the chance to stop running to heal yourself, just as a knight pulls it from you and into his kite. However, in the past few moments (30 seconds) of utter chaos, you neglected to observe any new chat in your windows. Now you must choose what to do based on your windows.

In the XO/RA/Rsay window, you see an officer has said: "EVERYONE Help kill this trash add FAST, it's in summon mode and eating our healers/kiters"

In the raiders channel, you see a fellow raider has said "Our cleric just died, group 4 needs a heal badly"

In your group channel, you see a groupmate has said to you "DT on me, will die in 36 seconds, cure pls."

Your not sure which of these messages were said as you started kiting and which were said as you finished kiting, a span of 30 seconds.

Do you assume the 'Assist on cleric-killing trash request' and the 'DT request' are the recent requests (since he hasn't sent a request updating from 36 seconds), leaving you time to help burn the mob down before curing, potentially saving numerous other healers?

Do you assume the DT message was sent just after you started kiting, forcing you to find the player immediately and cure him, while ignoring the two old requests for group 4's heals (who probably already got a heal in that time) and to kill the priest-killing mob (who is probably already dead by now)?

Do you assume that both requests from group 4 and the DT'd player are the fresh ones, allowing you time to heal group 4, then cure?

~

Condensing those types of important information into one chat box would be crucial for a time like this. While I only gave 3 choices to be pinched between, there could be even more. Knowing which text precedes other text chronologically is a huge benefit when every second counts, especially when circumstances can prevent you from keeping watch on your windows.

~

Fenier wrote:
DI messages go to healer channel and /rs because frankly I want to see it's refreshed when it fires.
Rez messages goto the healer channel and to the chatter channel

Don't you join into the healer channel also? Why would you need to see this twice?

Why don't clerics watch the chatter channel to know who has been rezzed if the information is already found there, but instead include the information in the healing channel as well?
~

Aldier wrote:
I also know that a lot of people in my guild use the same set of hotkeys during raids as exp groups and just join the heal channel on raids to add the spam to that channel. Our guild also uses /say for casting patch heals.

Why use say for patch heals when you have a dedicated outlet for spam such as that channel, when the people who want to hear those say messages can just join the channel also?

~

Alaene wrote:
It's only spam if you don't make use of it

That's very correct. However, a lot of these spam message serve no benefit to the rest of the raid. I totally advocate making use of all the information you can observe, especially Spell Awareness. My problem is when the overwhelming amount of spam makes it impossible to find use from a single line of text. The #1 contributor to this is multiple casting messages to mutiple channels from a single spell cast.

~

Suva wrote:
A heal spam channel is a whole lot less spam than having spell awareness on and seeing what every person in the entire raid is casting.

I have spells turned on for the entire raid, and I feel that I make great use of it without having to read it all, nor could I. I find uses for it regardless if it's during the first trash pull to see if there's too few people awake and healing to force me from DPS mode to healing mode, during engage to see if some other druid casted either of my usually assigned debuffs allowing me to skip it, or for fast reference by peeking at other group's priest's casts if I happened to forget what type of spell cures the AE. By knowing exactly what your looking for, 54 people's spell spam can be very helpful.

This is totally different than hotkeyed spam to the various chat channels. For the people who see no benefit to knowing when a DI has been refreshed etc, they have no option to hide that information from view when it's sent to a channel they must monitor for other reasons. Spell awareness spam anyone can turn off at any time. If they didn't find it useful before, they'll have no problem hiding it.

~

Beats edited what Crystilla wrote:
- DI - My guild OFTEN has classes telling us that so and so's DI wore off. We've tried to cure it and it's only cured when we put our "Casting DI on %t" message in raid say.
- It goes in healer channel (also) so we don't overlap

To prevent overlapping, you send DI messages to 2 different channels? Why continue to use healer channel at all for DI messages when the information is readily (and unfortunately) being sent to raid say?

2) Spam heal messages - Group and the 'healer spam' channel are all we do and some only do the spam channel.
- We often have enough clerics on that at least 1 is in each group, so healers get doubled up and in that case policy is to call heals so the other healers know whose being targetted and can work accordingly. Plus coordination with pallies, druids and shaman on AoE mobs (which are over half of our raid encounters) is covered with group spam.

I agree with the intent of preventing doubling up of heals, but I still maintain my anti-spam stance. Instead of cross-referencing your heals with the spam messages in group chat, designate, before the fight, your group members responsibilities and the healing hierarchy: Who's going to concentrate on heals for which member if multiple people need heals; which members are cured by which priest; who's secondarily going to handle groupheals when the primary grouphealer can no longer afford to; what the order of RC use will be among the group members when AEs land; etc. As for doubling up on heals if only one group member is taking a beating: if it looked serious enough for more than just the designated person in that group to heal, one heal likely isn't all he needs.

Regardless of all that, why not just observe the 'healer spam' channel to prevent these inefficiencies?

3) Rez messages - We used to do all of the calls in raid say (and healer) but often remove the raid say spam now and only call it on during event rezzes (so all buffing classes know someone needs their attention - otherwise the newly rezzed rarely gets all buffs they need).

If folks need immediate buffs after a mid-battle rez, why flood the entire raid with those requests? In addition, how are multiple buffers of the same class going to know which one of them will stop what they are doing, and begin casting buffs? If you predesignate rez-buffers, let the folks who feel they can't raid without buffs send a tell to them when they die. If you type really slowly, make it into a multi-lined hotkey to just press once upon zoning back in, one line per buffing class's predesignated person.

~

Palarran wrote:
Our DI communication often happens in /rs. With a 2 minute recast time on the spell, it's very important not to overlap casts.

This function is entirely possible within the confines of a healer channel. However, regarding the other half of your statement below...

By making both the requests and the casts of DI visible to the raid, some classes that aren't normally considered healing classes can choose to throw extra patch heals until DI lands again, too.

Anytime there's an emote for "Palarran's Divine Intervention spell has worn off", there's going to be a need for a refresh of DI. Anytime one of the not-so-healer classes sees this wear off message, that should be all the indication they need to help out for a moment on the healing front. Glory be to the audio triggers.

~

Kitano wrote:
As to announcing Rezzes midfight ... its done in our guild so the 7 or so Calls the druids / shammys have dont get wasted

To know who has been rezzed, the druids and shammys can surely observe the healing spam channel instead of clerics flooding the information to everyone, when they need to know.

As an aside, with the incredible benefits in using dru/shm rez versus cleric rez, it should be the clerics who have their rez as a last resort. Benefits such as: 6 second cast time versus 10 seconds, 2500-3000 mana upon getting rezzed versus zero, druid/sham diverting their attention to rez for 6 seconds doesn't nullify nearly as much healing potential to the raid as a cleric casting for 10.

~

Wildone786 wrote:
Divine Intervention messages- Mine goes into three channels, raid chat, cleric chat, and raid channel. I have 4 filtered chat boxes, main chat, guild chat, cleric chat, raid channel. Tanks typically ask in raid chat and raid channel for DI. The purpose for all the spamming of the channels is to let the clerics know "Hey, this person has it.. Don't cast it" It lets the tanks know " Hey, you have it."

Use your healer channel to distribute DI's before tanks have to start asking for them and there'll be no need to send those messages in a wasteful triplicate. I won't deny the importance of DI, but having a better/faster method of DI delivery will break the need for tanks to plead for it.

Rez messages-We just hail the corpse to let other clerics know, and let other people know that the person is about to be alive again.

How is using say to inform those within 75 feet of you a better method than informing the entire rezzing population through use of the healer spam channel? Using the channel stops spam.

Communication is a good tool in most raid environments, it lets people know you are trying. It lets people know you are there. It lets people know that you should be able to rely on them a bit. While un-necessary alot of the time, I guess it's better to communicate with people then be left in the dark.

Over-communication is just as hazardous as communication can be helpful. Your companions should know that you are reliable by the things you achieved doing, not what you attempted to do. All my praise goes to the believers in spell awareness and audio triggers

~

Discanthir wrote:
I never really considered group heals spam, since it does matter that people stay in range and can save mana from being used on single heals from someone else in the group.

Especially if you are not a healer, I see the most important responsibility as protecting your life in the interests of furthering the raid. If you see that multiple people in group are less than full HP, you should realize that a group heal is not only possible, but likely. Get in range now, before you have to scramble when the heal has already started to cast.

~

I'm not here to change your guy's opinions, nor do I think I remotely have a chance of doing so. I merely hope that other folks who read this rant of mine can see a sliver of the reasoning I present and spare their guildies the wrath of spam that has blackened my attitude towards this overzealous attack on communication.

Palarran wrote:
Our DI communication often happens in /rs. With a 2 minute recast time on the spell, it's very important not to overlap casts.

This function is entirely possible within the confines of a healer channel. However, regarding the other half of your statement below...

By making both the requests and the casts of DI visible to the raid, some classes that aren't normally considered healing classes can choose to throw extra patch heals until DI lands again, too.

Anytime there's an emote for "Palarran's Divine Intervention spell has worn off", there's going to be a need for a refresh of DI. Anytime one of the not-so-healer classes sees this wear off message, that should be all the indication they need to help out for a moment on the healing front. Glory be to the audio triggers.
This is certainly true, and we encourage people to set up that audio trigger.

The problem is that DI can also wear off naturally mid-fight, particularly during long fights, and no audio trigger will catch that unless you were the one that originally cast the DI that wore off. (I have an audio trigger for that too on my cleric.)

As for the first part, sure, DI messages could be done in the healer channel. However, our heal channel tends to have additional spam that would get in the way for most non-clerics.

Fenier wrote:
DI messages go to healer channel and /rs because frankly I want to see it's refreshed when it fires.
Rez messages goto the healer channel and to the chatter channel

Don't you join into the healer channel also? Why would you need to see this twice?

Why don't clerics watch the chatter channel to know who has been rezzed if the information is already found there, but instead include the information in the healing channel as well?

Two reasons, 1, the Tanks call out when DI fires if no one beats them to it, and they like to know it was seen and is being handled.

As far as rezzing goes, it's to quell the questions of - when am I going to be rezzed? It lets people know we are rezzing, and recovering and it's being handled rather then their spamming rogues, bards, clerics and so forth as to their status.

-Fenier

Sorry, instead of writing "Palarran's Divine Intervention spell has worn off" I meant to write the trigger emote, "has be rescued by Divine Intervention!"

I advocate to separate the healer instruction/discussion channel from the cleric spam chatter channel to allow non-clerics this benefit of information without the spam.

As for when DI runs its entire duration unused, the cleric who casted the DI that faded from time can avoid telling the entire raid "so-and-so needs DI, but mine is down atm" and instead send that message to the healer information/discussion channel. This also can allow any spot healer who desires to help out in this time to see it and lend a hand.

Even without having to read the healer information channel, an audio trigger could be used to listed for that request for DI refresh in a minimized window, if folks are instructed to standardize the message. Although, I would see it as a sign of heals being superb when DI fades over time (or buffing too soon/waiting too long to engage thereafter). Of course, another DI would be wise to put on the tank, but definitely not a time of spam healing crisis.

In principle, yes, having a channel for DI messages and such that is separate from normal healer spam would work. However, when you apply the same reasoning to other problems, you end up creating so many channels that it may be impossible to join all the channels that it would be useful to join.

Already I occasionally run into the 10 channel limit. Now, as guildleader I'm sort of a special case--I have to use channels that most other people don't (such as our officer channel and huntmaster channel). Still, it would be inconvenient to have more special purpose channels than we already have.

The more channels we use, the more difficult it is to make sure that everyone is in the proper channels, particularly when we have people that only play on occasion.

We don't standardize all of our messages, for (at least in part) the same reason. It would be too much of a headache to make sure that everyone, including our infrequent players, formats all of their messages properly. The only place that I recommend some amount of message standardization is in our cheal chain, when applicable.

Fenier wrote:
Two reasons, 1, the Tanks call out when DI fires if no one beats them to it, and they like to know it was seen and is being handled.

As far as rezzing goes, it's to quell the questions of - when am I going to be rezzed? It lets people know we are rezzing, and recovering and it's being handled rather then their spamming rogues, bards, clerics and so forth as to their status.

Wouldn't seeing the DI buff reappear in your buffbox inform them that it indeed was seen/handled, thus allowing the clerics to eliminate the message to raidsay? I can sympathize with tanks using raidsay when their own DI has faded, but I don't condone it. There are better, less polluting ways.

The rez messages do let people know when other folks have been rezzed, thus showing that there is *some* rezzing going on, but it doesn't indicate when it will be their turn or if their body is even at the rezzing station. By watching the guild manager window, you can tell there is a major rezzing operation in progress without rez messages by the folks who vanish from the lobby and appear at the bottom of list in your raiding zone. If you died, but the raid survived, then sending 'a' tell to a member of one of those classes is a great way to avoid cluttering up the information pathways, but surely not repeated tells to qualify as spam.

Healer channels have been dominated by clerics, and to a lesser degree, priests for far too long. Anyone who has an interest in hitpoints and priest buffs should join. You don't even have to read the info, just use the channel for the good services it provides. You can surely join the healer channel with minimal interest, such as wondering if there is *some* rezzing happening or use it to request your DI refreshes. Toss the channel into a new window, minimize it, and hide it off screen. At your leisure you can open it up to read, or just type in one of your existing windows "/6 DI down"

You do make good points but I am presently content with the handling of both aspects in our raiding.

In principle, yes, having a channel for DI messages and such that is separate from normal healer spam would work. However, when you apply the same reasoning to other problems, you end up creating so many channels that it may be impossible to join all the channels that it would be useful to join.


The distinction between the two channels was this:
1. Any text freshly created by typing in relation to healers- healing strat, healing assignments, healing conversation, healing buff refresh requests in which a tell won't always work such as DI, calls for help on heals, etc

2 Any text that appears as part of a hotkey (this doesn't even have to be healer specific, the spam messages from an entire raid can reside here) .. such as: spam healing messages, CH rotation messages, DI casting messages, rez messages, mob slowed, mob tashed/maloed, epic clicked, MGB paragon/elixer INC, etc.


I include DI casting messages as part of normal healer spam which would be sent into the spam channel, not as something separate to filter into a 3rd channel. It is the important information channel that I endeavor to keep spam free.

You do make good points but I am presently content with the handling of both aspects in our raiding.

That's a win for the day in my book!

In the end there are many ways to handle various aspects of raid communication. What works for one guild will not necessarily work for another.

A bleeding edge guild where all members have high raid attendance can opt for a complex communication strategy, one where every member sees exactly what they need to see and no more, in order to improve efficiency.

A guild where raiding is not a priority, or that hosts open raids, will probably want to keep communication as simple as possible, using at most one or two channels in addition to /rs.

And there are many options in between. We are a moderately high end guild, but as I mentioned, we have a number of people that only play on occasion, and so our choices reflect a necessary compromise. We allow a little bit more /rs spam than what may be strictly necessary in exchange for a simpler channel setup that makes it easier for low-attendance members to jump right in.

I agree

I would venture most guilds have 2-3 groups of very sharp people which could handle the most complex strats with a fair bit of ease.

I likewise would venture most guilds have 2-3 groups of people who need to have everything as simple as possible to handle most encounters.

y guild is less then a year old. Most of the orginal core of people had just broken into the Elementals when their previous guild disbanded. A great number of our apps since then have been returning players, or players who are simply not used to the speed and level of content which we raid.

Thus to minimize friction and lower turn-over we have adopted a more simplfied communication method which works well for us, at the cost of a little bit of spam, I think the tradeoffs continue to be worth it.

-Fenier

Heh, lots of posts while I was sleeping =p

In response to Beatslayer:

(Proposed Encounter refresh - After 30 seconds of kiting mad agro I'm seeing 3 messages in 3 windows. RL saying "Everyone dps trash asap", Group 4 announcing their healer is dead (no back up healer, I assume) and they need heals badly, and group member announcing 36 seconds on death touch (no back up curer, I assume). I don't which happened first, what do I do?)

There are a couple things on which this would depend, I'll try to either name them or assume them as I go. First and foremost, I am a healer. And with low healer numbers that always has to come first. So dps'ing, no matter how urgent, comes last. I'll trust that people are doing what they're supposed to.

(If I was CH'ing or Ramp healing, that would be my first priority. And group 4 / group member would just have to deal. But here I'm assuming I'm free to heal / dps and that I have been declared the curer for my group. (Otherwise my group member being DT'd wouldn't register as important)

Group 4 verses group member with DT.

I hate to say it, but it depends on who the group member is. Healing class / back up tank? Cure them. Group 4 announced in raider chat they needed heals. That means that between hot pots and possible other spots, they've got a bit of time. Not much, but perhaps enough.

If it was another class (the importance of that class depending on the encounter) I'd put the group over the member. Five verses one greater good sort of thing.

And if I need a quick check, I can open up the raid window and click the name of someone in group 4, for reference.

And of course, this scenario eliminates more helpful clues. like someone in raider's channel saying "Thanks for the heals!" or "DPS THAT MOB NOW!", someone in the heal channel saying "I've got Group 4's heals", "Still cursed" comment from group member, Or a repeat of the "Group 4 lost healer, please heal" message"

I'd like to save them both, but that might not even be possible even if I hadn't kiting for 30 seconds.

Now, of course, none of that was your point. You're point was the danger of timing being lost in multiple chat windows.

It's a valid point, one I haven't ignored / forgotten, but frankly I'd rather occasionally have to make a decision like the one above then miss important text due to spam / window overload on a regular basis (and people die because a bunch of things were said and at once and I'm busy scrolling up)

That's just my preference.

I'm aware that my guild uses a lot of text channels, and that I use a hella bunch of windows. For the current raid targets we're hitting and my attention, my set up works. If that changes (And I'm sure it will as we progress) then I'll adjust accordingly.

Since reading/responding in this thread, I took this post over to our forums to see what folks thought and we've made a few steps toward removing some spam. Not a ton yet (folks do get set in their ways) but it's a work in progress.

For DI's - we use 2 channels because simply there's a lot of other info that goes into raidsay, so clerics watch the healer channel for this. Right or wrong, this is where they're trained and where they're comfortable for it and where healer officers are comfortable with it.
- As I said it would only be cast here, but for the overly helpful rogues, rangers, and other tanks who help us see when DI goes off LOL so we cast it in raid as well.

Spam heal messages - This is done a bit though on curing we don't singularly designate one person in group as curer (tried and found that not as efficient for an unknown reason). But in general yes in a traditional normal-functioning guild (I call us lovely disfunctional), that would be best.
- With how we do some events, we load up multiple tanks with 2 healers and it's in situations where group healing isn't acceptable/usable.

Rez messages - Folks in our guild don't like having to send tells for buffs; we've tried a lot of different techniques here (from a rez/buff group-doesn't work in our content well for our guild management style to assigning buff folks and using raid notes to just having folks send tells to whoever). Though this is one we've cleaned up and removed almost all rez messages out of raidsay to reduce spam (so it only goes in healer channel).

We still have some more improvements to make - but to whoever started this thread, thank you as it has gotten healers talking together about how to reduce spam. Something that was never mentioned prior within our guild so we didn't know it was a problem.

I made a request on Eqlive forums for a new feature that would solve all of my problems while still allowing everyone to use whatever hotkey spam they want. Help a guy out and click the link below. If you agree that it would be a splendid idea, post a reply on *that* thread.

Feature Request (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=116111)

If I did not know better, I would say beatslayer is a more articulate and aptient version of myself. I agree wiht everything he said for the exacts ame reasons, but lack the patience ot ahve typed it all out like he did. If I had, I probably wouldn't sound as pleasant about it as he does. My guildies tend to assume I am always angry (very very far from the truth but thats how I come off apparently). I continuely work to lessen the spam and improve communication in my guild, even if its just with us druids.

One thing I do not see mentioned by anyone els ebut me (maybe i missed it)is adding in a /tell commmand to hotkeys. If the reason things liek DI or what have you are called in raid channels to inform the person its being cast ont that it is idneed beeing cast, why not just get rid of the raid spam and add a /tell command to your hotlkey? If you are that worried about informing your target that your casting whatever on him that youll make a hotkey to spam 50odd poeple, hwy not just make a tell, which is 10 time smore likely to eb tnoiced and doesnt spam 50 odd poeple?

I would say dysfunctional is putting it nicely Cryst. If you can't tell, Crystilla is the eternal optimist where as I am the pessimist.

I'd say about half of a typical raid benefits from knowing about DI status. Oddly, the person DI is being cast upon does not benefit much from knowing about incoming DI casts. Instead, raid messages about DI serve these purposes:

* Clerics know when to cast DI, and when to duck their DI casts.
* Priests know to temporarily step up splash heals until DI is back on.
* Tanks know to be ready for a tank switch.
* With a likely tank switch coming up, high aggro damage dealers (wizards, berserkers, etc.) know to back off a bit.

So no, tells won't cut it.

DI status is the only thing the clerics in my guild spam in rsay, our raid channel, and the healing channel. I like this, and think it helps the whole guild out. It makes sure everyone knows what DI is, and if the tank misses it, or fails to hit his hotkey for whatever reason, someone in the guild notices and shouts out who has lost DI. When DI goes down most of us druids throw patch heals and keep a close eye on that tank. Tank classes get ready in case one goes down and announce who is next in line. All of these things have saved us from a wipe on a few occasions.

* Clerics know when to cast DI, and when to duck their DI casts.
* Priests know to temporarily step up splash heals until DI is back on.
* Tanks know to be ready for a tank switch.
* With a likely tank switch coming up, high aggro damage dealers (wizards, berserkers, etc.) know to back off a bit.


Your first two points are addressed by the fact that there is a healer channel where DI is announced, all priests classes are in it as well as a couple of our tanks so why should we spam ourselves with it twice. All of the tanks are welcome to join the healer channel but few choose to and I don't blame them. DI goes down on our raids frequently. I would not say it happens all the time, but it’s fairly frequent. DI going down does not necessitate or hint at a tank change on our raids so that addresses your second two points (this is obviously not a blanket statement).

Our clerics announce DI in raid chat for the simple task of shutting up the busy bodies who feel the need to tell the clerics that DI has worn off, because they have apparently decided that the clerics cannot handle that task themselves. This does include the tank upon who the DI has worn off, who usually spasm raid say several times screaming for DI. That was the main reason I suggested a tell be put in my guild’s clerics hotkeys, so that the tanks can stop spamming the raid.

My 2 cents... First I am an experianced druid, but with limited raid experiance. I group with an allied guild now in 75 lv stuff, but I'm 72.

I find the heal channel to be useful. I understand that clerics may hog more credit than is due on occasion and I dont like that but oh well.

This bunch I'm raiding with now uses the "Zerg" tactic. It works. But there's no or very limited heal channel useage. There's no direction for the healers, we are left to our own to figure it out. Its ok for the groups but what about the MA or SA? I'm not a fan of the Zerg tactic nor these effects of it on this allanice guild raids.

aybe this visual method he mentions works but I keep most spell effects turned off for computer speed reasons.

A couple of years ago I spent almost entire raids just watching chat windows.

aybe it comes down to whatever works for your guild, either method. I don't like zerg tho but it seems to be coming more and more into favor.