[Vanguard] Questions on starting again - class, race, group size, starting areas etc.

[pox67]

Well despite what I said in the F2P thread I was looking around on the Vanguard website last night and remembered that I really enjoyed my first month of the game. I think I'll give it a whirl now that it is F2P.

Can anyone answer a few questions for me:
1. What is the optimum group size? I would like to be able to do most content but don't really want to run 6 characters. I find with that many chars I end up a manager rather than enjoying the game. I would prefer 3 to 4 chars if they can do most content.

2. Class suggestions - I am not much of a finger wiggler. I was thinking Warrior or Paladin, ranger/bard/monk and either Cleric or Disciple for healer.

3. Does race matter for classes?

4. Starting area - is it better to start in the new Isle area or in each races home town?

5. Can any race quest anywhere or are they confined to their own continent?

I am looking forward to a game with macros after playing SWToR.

[Alge]

1. What is the optimum group size? I would like to be able to do most content but don't really want to run 6 characters. I find with that many chars I end up a manager rather than enjoying the game. I would prefer 3 to 4 chars if they can do most content.
If you want to do group content beyond about level 25 you'll need a full group. I 3-boxed a Dread Knight, Bard and Disciple through all of the Hunter's League quests but needed help on the final boss fight. Beyond that there may be content you can do with 4 if you outgear/level the content. My 6-box team (DRK, SHM, BRD, PSI, SOR, NEC) is currently 38 and finding at-level content sometimes challenging.


2. Class suggestions - I am not much of a finger wiggler. I was thinking Warrior or Paladin, ranger/bard/monk and either Cleric or Disciple for healer.Cleric or Disciple are both good choices for healers. You may need to go DSC for a bit more DPS if you only have a group of 3. The benefit of the cleric is a much wider range of buffs. Paladin or Dread Knight would be my choices for a tank. A bard is invaluable for both runspeed and group invis. Unless they fixed the issue with /follow and the z-axis you may find yourself running rather than flying.


3. Does race matter for classes?Yes, ideally you want synergy between the attribute bonuses when levelling and the class. Some of the racial abilities are much better for boxing than the others.


4. Starting area - is it better to start in the new Isle area or in each races home town?It depends on the mix of races. You are no longer at a gear disadvantage by starting in the home town. The benefit of the Isle is the ease with which you can assemble a group of races from different continents.


5. Can any race quest anywhere or are they confined to their own continent?You are no longer KoS anywhere unless you ruin your faction, so yes, any race can quest anywhere, at least beyond level 10. I have not tested whether a Kojani Human will be able to obtain to starting quests in Qalia though.

[pox67]

Thanks Alge.

I'll try out 4 boxing. It will be a shame to have trouble around 25 but I rarely get above mid level in a MMORPG anyway.
Maybe Paladin, Bard, Ranger, Disciple.

Or should I got for all melee and make the Ranger a Monk?
Also how is the Shaman at healing?

I was thinking of making a full cat team but think now I should mix up the races to fit the classes better.

[Alge]

I would go with a melee team and therefore a monk.

Shaman healing is good but DPS is on the low side. I mostly chose the shaman because the bear shaman has endurance regen.

[pox67]

Thanks for the advice Alge.
I got 4 chars loaded up and on the island for testing but ran into a big problem - performance. I figured the comp in my sig would play a game this old easily.
I am playing a big resolution - 3600x1920. That is three 24" monitor in portrait. I can't run 4 instances od Vanguard at medium settings and that res though. The Sli GTX 670's are getting hammered and the cpu is coping it as well. Problem with the CPU is that it has 6 cores but I am running 4 instances - running 3 instances of the game with 2 cores each would help.
I'll try dropping down the res of the Surround screen to see if I get better performance.
If that is no good I can split the monitors and go with the three in Landscape - have the tank and healer on a monitor each and the two DPS on the third monitor.
How are you running 6 instances Alge?

[Alge]

I run 6 x 1920x1200 (a stacked window layout) with my main on good settings and my slaves on the absolute minimum. My processor is only a 2600K and I have a 6990 video card. Main is capped at 30 FPS and slaves at 12 FPS. I sometimes get lower frames in crowded areas but I am prepared to put up with that occasionally because the game looks so good.

[pox67]

Cool, Vanguard might hate Sli as well. I will try 1920x1200, this computer should be able to do 4 instances at that res. How are you running different settings? My ISBoxer didn't virtualize the ini files for me so each game gets the same settings.

[Alge]

The Virtual File Wizard doesn't know about Vanguard. You can, however, add Virtual Files manually (http://isboxer.com/wiki/Virtual_File). You'll need to do that for VGClient.ini and User.ini.

[Oatboat]

Think you could get a video up of multiboxing Vanguard? I played back when it was first released and I cant remember why I quit other than none of my friends played.

[Alge]

Maybe. What do you want to see?

[pox67]

After some reading of forums I found that Sli doesn't do anything for Vanguard and that it likes fast CPU cores rather than multis.
I plan on overclocking my CPU but I don't think my current pc is set up well for Vanguard - I would need a fast single card like your 6990, maybe the 7990 if it is ever released.

I did try 3 characters all on a separate 1920x1200 screen but it was only using one graphics card. I have gotten ISBoxer to use a GPU per screen before but it wasn't working for Vanguard.

At this point I'll go back to SWToR and wait for some updates to Vanguard (possible with the new F2P interest) or until my PC config changes to a fast single graphics card.

[MiRai]

Sli doesn't do anything for Vanguard

I would need a fast single card like your 6990
From AMD:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6990/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6990-overview.aspx


Harnessing the incredible power of dual second-generation DirectX® 11-capable GPUs, the AMD Radeon HD™ 6990 is quite simply the fastest graphics card in the world.

Harnessing the incredible power of dual second-generation DirectX® 11-capable GPUs

dual second-generation DirectX® 11-capable GPUs

dual
If you're trying to avoid SLI and CF, you should not buy a video card with it built-in. ;)

[pox67]

From AMD:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6990/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6990-overview.aspx
If you're trying to avoid SLI and CF, you should not buy a video card with it built-in. ;)

Cheers Mirai, I am aware that the 6990 has two graphics processors on board. But cards that have trouble with Crossfire often don't have trouble with the dual GPU cards as the system sees them as a single card. In effect the crossfiring is done on the card and then presented to the computer as a single card solution.

That is why I said I was looking at the fastest single card and not single GPU.

[MiRai]

Cheers Mirai, I am aware that the 6990 has two graphics processors on board. But cards that have trouble with Crossfire often don't have trouble with the dual GPU cards as the system sees them as a single card. In effect the crossfiring is done on the card and then presented to the computer as a single card solution.

That is why I said I was looking at the fastest single card and not single GPU.
Crossfire is Crossfire whether you're using 2 physical GPUs or whether it's a dual-GPU card... it's all the same.

[pox67]

Crossfire is Crossfire whether you're using 2 physical GPUs or whether it's a dual-GPU card... it's all the same.
I just did some research and you are right MiRai. Although there are a lot of people on a lot of forums saying different which is probably where I got the idea.
There are a lot of people saying that games that have trouble with crossfired cards don't have the same issues with the dual GPU cards. Odd, maybe they just aren't checking the individual GPUs to see if both are working.

I guess if Alge was bored he could test Vanguard on his computer with crossfire enabled and disabled on his 6990 to see if there is a difference...

As the GTX 670 isn't far off a GTX 680 and my factory overclocked Gigabyte ones are pretty speedy I am out of luck unless the Vanguard devs/maintenance crew get SLi working.

[Alge]

The 6990 is an over-priced piece of shit. I didn't do enough research before buying it and regret doing so. Next time I will ask MiRai's advice before buying a video card.

With 6 Vanguards running at 1920x1200, 1 on Ultra High and the rest on Low, I'm using 30-40% of my RAM on GPU 1 and GPU 2 is idle. I'm also using 10MB of 16MB system RAM

[pox67]

Thanks for testing Alge. It is a shame to have a GPU core sitting there doing nothing!

I did some more fiddling last night and now have an acceptable outcome.

First though a couple of questions:
1. Characters don't autoface targets in this game? I was having trouble getting my melee group to attack a target as they were mostly standing on it. Follow seems quite close in this game which doesn't help. How do you deal with this Alge?
2. I know there was another mechanics type question but I can't remember now...

I made a few changes last night which helped performance:
1. I disabled HyperThreading so that each game instance would have a single fast core.
2. I enabled SLi and set my desktop as a Surround mode 5760x1200. Then in ISBoxer I set the Windows Layout to run the games at 1920x1200 and spread them out over the physical monitors. Three game instances on very low settings getting a constant 30FPS in the background and one game instance on High getting around 45FPS in the starter Island town. I can live with that.

Now I'll start a team of 3 to get used to boxing this game.

[Alge]

Characters don't autoface targets in this game? I was having trouble getting my melee group to attack a target as they were mostly standing on it. Follow seems quite close in this game which doesn't help. How do you deal with this Alge?
There is no auto-facing towards targets. However, combat does not break follow either. Maximum follow range is large and the minimum follow range (how close your slaves come to your main when your main stops moving) is quite small.

Generally I will run my tank through the mob slightly and then turn 180 degrees. However, if you go too far past, your slaves can end up following you through the mob and with their back to it. One way to avoid/correct this is to make a Mapped Key that moves all your slaves backwards while held down. It's not a big issue once you get used to the distances involved and the fact that follow is always on (unless you deliberately break it) means you can reposition easily at any time.

[pox67]

Played with three characters (Warrior, Disciple, bard) last night and quickly got the hang of positioning. It is quite handy not having follow break. It is also great to box a game with macros again, makes life much easier!

So far so good and seems like fun :)

[heffner]

I've been messing around with boxing Vanguard for a few months now. At first I tried most of the classes solo doing IoD for free and eventually subscribed to three accounts. I started with a DK, Bard and Shaman on IoD. Got them to 20. I started a second trio of Paladin, Ranger and Cleric and got them to level 17 on Qalia. I missed the bard a lot just for running around. After F2P started I figured I would give six a try and have been playing around with various combos since then. Some days it's good, others is laggy and I've crashed quite a bit on my computer that runs four of my toons (I run three computers- 1 with healer, 1 with tank and 1 with the other 4). For some reason it doesn't like to load up 4 clients. Once I get loaded up things seem OK - but again, some days are frustrating due to different kinds of lag (e.g., sometimes my 4/5 slave toons lag and sometimes my main stutters causing my slaves to run past me which really sucks).



My current toons are Paladin, Bard, Shaman, Disciple, Sorcerer and Necro. I only have three paid accounts so my other three are obviously limited. Ultimately I don't think it matters too much as long as you have a tank and a healer. Bard is such a great utility class it would also be a mistake not to include one. I chose a Disciple just for some extra healing to help me out and I will spec it more for DPS than healing. Sorcerer is just good damage and has that nice port spell. Necro gives some buffs and decent DPS as well. Originally I had two sorcerers, but decided to switch and think it was a good idea for the extra buffs and the pet the Necro adds.

As for race, well, there are some slight advantages for some race/class combinations but ultimately you can make up for any deficiency later on with gear. My last group of six I just went all Qali humans since I wanted them all in the same starting area and they have one of the best racial abilities - a 10 sec invulnerability that resets after 30 minutes. For me it's an extra "OH CRAP" button for when I neglect to notice one of my slaves is getting beat on. Otherwise you go with the races with bonuses to the key stats like:

VIT/WIS for healers (Goblin, Raki, Wood Elf, Half Elf or [High Elf for WIS]) [for Disc or Blood Mage, VIT may be less important to YOU so races with STR/DEX bonuses (and hopefully WIS or VIT) for Disc (Varanjar, Vulmane, Half Elf, Varanthari) or INT bonuses for BM (High Elf, Dark Elf, Goblin) might be a good choice]

STR/CON for tanks (Lesser Giant, Dwarf, Varanjar, Orc, Varanthari, Kurashasa)

INT/WIS for DPS casters (High Elf, Gnome, Dark Elf, Kurashasa).

STR/DEX for melee DPS (Halfing, Vulmane, Wood Elf, Raki).

Humans are more well rounded and I think still a good choice. I am sure you can still reach the stat caps at end game.



Anyway, as far as group composition, I liked both Paladin and DK as tank. I've been waffling between these two for a while but decided to go with a Paladin because it's a safe bet. Warrior might be OK now too, but I haven't seen much information on how it compares since the adjustments to the class a few weeks back.

So, that being said, I'd suggest a DK or Pally tank. DK has some advantages for multiple targets, while Paladin has more group friendly buffs and heals.

Healer - Cleric or Shaman. The Disc and BM are likely to be more difficult to box as main healers since they are non-traditional healers, but you may like them and find they fit your playstyle just fine. CLE and SHM have nice group buffs. If you go SHM, I think bear or wolf shaman would be good, but bear has the nice melee buffs if you go for more melee toons. It's probably a good idea to try the healers you're interested int on IoD first [actually, that can be said for all classes]. You can get to Level 10 pretty fast and get some idea of how they each function.

DPS - You can pretty much pick any class here. The one I am not 100% sure on is a rogue - basically, I can't remember if you have to be behind the mob or not to do your awesome rogue DPS (sounds silly, but I recall that was changed but it might be another game). Bard speed and buffs are really nice to have.

If you can do a group of 4, you should. I think Pal/DK, SHM/CLE, BRD and a DPS of your choice.

Where to start - well, I like IoD. It's definitely more streamlined than Qalia. I haven't done much on the other two continents though. I would defnitely go to IoD if you want to level more than the Adventuring Sphere and as Alge said, if you want a big mix of races. Also, I found Qalia to be way more laggy than IoD. They made IoD easier as well, you don't even have to do complete the final dungeon now - although, I found it fun the first couple of times.

Good luck!

[pox67]

I have gone with 4 kojani humans starting in Kojan. I plan on going back and doing the IOD with another group.
So far so good running Warrior, Disciple, Bard and Monk. They are still under level 10 as I have been stopping to adjust macros as I go. The second group shouldn't take as long.


Basically I think I will go with 6 main macros:
1. General Combat Spam 1
2. General Combat Spam 2
3. AOE abilities (only the monk has one so far, I love AOE's so hope the other chars pick some up)
4. Rescue : based on Alge's rescue macro he posted in another thread and also a heal to the char getting beat on from the healer. Only the tank and healer use this key so far.
5. Autoattack toggle, also any start of fight buffs if necessary.
6. Ranged attack.


Other than that there are the Follow, Assist, Hail and load UI macros for every character.
The bard has a few of his own macros as well for changing weapons/instruments depending on the song.


Then a macro per character on the healer for healing in emergencies.


Thanks for the great info Heffner.
I like the human races as well, every other race seems like too much of a compromise for the class I want.


I will see how far I get with this group of 4 before starting again. Now with F2P a 6 char group is a real possibility. I like themed groups so maybe just a group of the animal classes DK, SHM, BRD, DRD, SRC, ??. I can't see a group not including a Bard, they seem just way to versatile and useful. Including a Disciple as backup healer is a good idea and I read that a Druid can do the same.


I am looking forward to coming up against some tougher enemies, so far everything has exploded with one or two group hits :)

[Alge]

I'm a subscriber x 6 again and having a great time. My team of DRK, SHM, BRD, PSI, NEC, SOR hit 41 last night. The day before that I finished Wardship Armor x 6 on that group. I'm about to start on Greystone (particularly the weapon quest) and Trickster's Haven with some Rakshasa Citadel and Vault of the Hidden thrown in for good measure. There's a heap of great content in the 40s I am looking forward to.

[heffner]

Looks like your off to a great start! My macro collection is pretty lame, lol. I only have a DPS, heal tank, follow and assist macro. At some point I will make another combat spam macro that includes my DoTs etc, but right now I have no need for them. I haven't really spent much time on the rescues either, but I need to read up on all that. Have to look up Alge's macro. An AoE macro is a good idea too. Probably should make a team buff macro too. My current team is only Level 11, so they hardly have any of their abilities yet.

Good to see your renewed interest as well Alge!

BTW, how is the lag for you guys? I am using Keyclone across three computers and get various types of lag. Are you both running ISBoxer on a single computer? When I was running just three on two computers before F2P I had ZERO problems.

The name of my current main is Ansarto if you guys ever want to chat.

[pox67]

Welcome back Alge :)
I was looking at your screen shot in this thread: http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1723&start=0
The quests looked interesting at that level as well. Do they have good stories?

Heffner, that thread above is where I saw Alge's Rescue macro, my warrior doesn't have a rescue yet but the macro is in place and one for the healer as well.

I have posted a screenshot here: https://picasaweb.google.com/115300929047700938836/VanguardSagaOfHeroes
Click the magnifying glass at the top to get full size. I would have attached to the thread but the file is 12mb.
You can see my 4 chars spread across 3 24" monitors. Tank in the centre at Very High settings, Healer on the left at High settings. The 2 DPS characters are stacked full screen under the healer at the lowest possible settings and then using VideoFX (ISBoxer) windows on a DXNothing (ISBoxer) window on the right hand monitor with click through for targeting and quest etc.
Works very well. If I went to 6 chars I would extend the DXNothing window to include the entire right screen and have 4 little windows there.
I am using Sinisna's UI.

Macros are on the top row and are
1 DPS1
2 DPS2
3 AOE but empty for most chars at the moment
4 empty
5 empty
6 Rescue
7 Autoattack
8 Ranged attack

Middle row are abilities specific to the class and third row are utility macros and heals for the healer.

Macros I am using:
Follow
/target ##
/follow

Hail
Use assist key
Broadcast H key from ISBoxer

Assist
/assist ##

UI
/uiload default :on secondary chars

/uisave default : on main char

Combat
/assist tank
/reactionautochain
/reactionautocounter
/cast ""
/cast ""
/cast ""

Autoattack
/combatformset "##"
/cast "##"
/autoattacktoggle

Ranged
/cast ""

Heals
/cancelability
/targetgroupmember 1 to 6
/cast "heal"

Bard song
/playsong ""
/wear ""
/combatformset ""

Bard Weapons
/wear "" primaryhand
/wear "" secondaryhand
/combatformset ""

Rescue - Tank macro
/assistoffensive
/reactionautorescue
/cast ""

Rescue - Healer macro
/assist moguli
/asisstoffensive
/cast "heal"

Lag - I get quite a bit of lag as I am playing from Australia, generally in the 300-500ms range. It is playable though. I had some FPS lag before I hit on the above screen setup and that is all good now.
Crashing - often! It seems I crash every hour or so and it isn't just me, I see messages in Chat like "zone crashing". This has gotten better in the last couple of days though.
I do often see some chars run off in to the distance but they generally spring back to where they should be.

I am hoping that I now have my macros sorted that I can start playing for real :)

[pox67]

I am not too sure about the rescue macros above...they didn't work as expected for me.
After doing some reading it looks like it would work better when my group gets to level 10 and the Warrior picks up Protect I - his rescue.
The way I think it works is the tank targets the mob beating on the group member, then /assistoffensive sets the group member as defensive target and the /reactionautorescue should fire off Protect I.


What would be easier is if the tank could target the groupie getting beat on and then somehow set the offensive target from there.

I had quite a bit of trouble with my first group boss mob. It was at the top of a fort with very tight rooms. The followers kept getting stuck and the mobs seem to stand on top of each other as well, they don't spread out. The healer died a couple of times as the tank only had one taunt and no rescues yet.
Trying to target the actual mob that was attacking the healer was difficult.


I found pulling with the bow helped as it didn't agro nearby mobs.

[Alge]

The macro I use works very well and is the standard way of rescuing in Vanguard (once you have all the proper tanking tools). Your level is the big issue here. Vanguard doesn't have easy-mode snap aggro like other games do. The tank will actually need to build threat and the DPS/heals may need to hold off for while. This is one of the reasons why I prefer a Dread Knight for multiboxing tanking - they have some self heals that allow the healer not to have to heal so early

[pox67]

That explains it well, I have been just wading in with all chars as the last games I boxed were Rift and SWToR. I'll give it a little time from now on, an AOE or two wouldn't go a stray.

As to the Warrior, this is my training team. Crash test dummies if you will, it would have been better to go with a Pal or DK.

I am thinking of changing things up a bit again as I just had a situation on another boss where the Tank was stunned for a couple of minutes. Probably a bug but the team fell apart after that.
So I am thinking of setting up a second set of macros so that with the push of a button another char can drive the team.
Basically my top two hot bars are the ones that can switch banks so all I would need to do is rewrite the macros with another char as the focus of assist, target and follow. Then I can send a keystroke to each game to switch their hotbar banks.
Means rewriting and maintaining a second set of macros...I am writing more macro that gaming!
It is a shame that the macros don't work if you copy in the text from notepad :(

[heffner]

Thanks for the info and insight Pox. What is the macro you're using Alge? I assume it must be similar to the one Pox posted?

My current problem is my healing macro. I am so used to spamming keys to get what I want, but with /cancelability it doesn't work properly; and my shaman is DPSing so I have to work in the heal by pausing my DPS spam and waiting until GCD is done.

[Alge]

Thanks for the info and insight Pox. What is the macro you're using Alge? I assume it must be similar to the one Pox posted?
/assistoffensive
/reactionrescue 1
/reactionrescue 2
/cast "Seething Hatred III"

is my current rescue macro.


My current problem is my healing macro. I am so used to spamming keys to get what I want, but with /cancelability it doesn't work properly; and my shaman is DPSing so I have to work in the heal by pausing my DPS spam and waiting until GCD is done.

I solve this problem by not having my shaman DPS except for basic melee and her pet.

[heffner]

Thanks Alge. Figured it would look something like that.

I think I might just have to leave my Shaman out of DPSing as well. I've only really needed to do that for "boss" fights when I was running a trio. Right now I rarely even need to heal but my current team is only L13 so I imagine that will change at some point.

One thing I have been debating is whether or not I really need to follow a quest path to level up. I am not a big quest person [although, the ones in Vanguard are usually decent], but would rather dungeon crawl and try to find decent loot from named mobs. You think that's a reasonable option? With the exception of the HL and URT quests I suppose?

My lag improved greatly last week as well =)

[Alge]

Pretty much all I have done since the late teens was the major quest chains and dungeon crawls (including any associated quests).

Here's a list of what I have done (I am now 44):

Hunter's League Questline
United Races of Thestra Questline
Vault of Heroes
Khegor's End
Tomb of Lord Tsang (incl. quests)
Kalendra's Coven
Imanjal Sacellum
Mound of the Zihurr
Skawlra Rock
CIS Questline
Ruins of Trengal Keep
Fallen Lyceum
Wardship Questline (incl. Vol Tuniel and Thelaseen)
Zossyr Hakrel
Spire of the Decakin
Dargun's Tomb
Karrus Hakrel
Islands of Madness
Vault of the Hidden
Graystone
Rakshasa Citadel

I love dungeon crawling and that is the one big improvement that VG made over EQ - the dungeons were designed to be crawled rather than boss camped. Getting my Graystone weapons took five longish sessions and I loved every minute of it.

So, yes, dungeon crawling is a very viable option. I'm just not sure whether 3 characters will be enough for the content after about level 25.

[heffner]

Thanks Alge. I think I will try out some dungeons soon. Dungeonguru (http://www.dungeonguru.net/index.php?title=Vanguard:_Saga_of_Heroes_Dungeon_W iki) has a list, albeit likely outdated, but it's a starting point.

My current team is 6 and is the reason I started over - Paladin (might switch to Dread Knight - hard for me to decide), Shaman (bear), Bard, Disciple, Sorcerer and Necro. The Disc, Sorc and Necro are on free accounts. Hopefully that won't be a problem for me in the future.

[pox67]

As you said Alge after level 10 those rescue macros worked much better.

I always add group members in the same order but have noticed that they don't appear in the same order in the group bar. Is that a bug?
I added some VideoFX pass though windows to heals, specials and health potions on each character but they don't line up all the time with the group windows. This game can be frustrating!

[Alge]

I always add group members in the same order but have noticed that they don't appear in the same order in the group bar. Is that a bug?
I added some VideoFX pass though windows to heals, specials and health potions on each character but they don't line up all the time with the group windows. This game can be frustrating!

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here.

I always invite from my DRK in the order SHM, BRD, PSI, NEC, SOR and on the DRK they always appear in that order in my party frames. However, on the SHM they appear in the order SHM, DRK, BRD, PSI, NEC, SOR and always in that order.

I use a 6 step mapped key in ISBoxer to set up the party. Step 1 uses a macro on my leader (Slot 1) with a line to invite each of the other 5. Step 2 uses a macro on Slot 2 to accept that invite (not sure of the command as I am at work). Steps 3 through 6 use a macro to accept the invite on Slots 3 through 6. This ensures I always have consistent party ordering.

The fact that party ordering is not consistent from party member to party member is a feature of Vanguard (and most other games). I'm pretty sure there is no way around it given the constraints of the Vanguard UI.

For my healing I use almost transparent Click Bars overlaid on my lead character's unit frames which send key presses that activate targetting macros on key press and healing macros on key release. Of course, that means I can only heal from my main.

[pox67]

Thanks Alge, I think I was clicking the accepts too quickly and with the lag the group was being formed differently each time.

Doing it slowly put all the members in the correct order so now the party frames line up with my VideoFX click throughs.
Also put in the healers cast bar to make sure they were doing what they are meant to, sometimes key presses get lost.

Team is at 12 and having fun :)
This is a great world. Kojan seems huge and is the smallest of the 3 areas. I think I am going to buy a boat with one character and do some exploring, I assume I can just load the other characters up on to the boat and go?
It is great there are no (visible) zones. You can just run and explore :)

[Alge]

You have to be careful when you chunk on a boat that you don't leave people behind. Best way to guarantee that is to ensure everyone has loaded fully after chunking and make sure you don't move them around the deck, just leave them where they are after hitting U to enter the boat.

[heffner]

Ran the "Serpents of Sihari" in Lomshir and "Gardens of Xao'Liu" on the weekend. Great dungeons! Although, I was too high for Serpents of Sihari, but it was still cool.

One thing I noticed was my Shaman AoE heal Ancestor's Gift didn't appear to be working properly. Not sure if it's lag or something else. Ever noticed a problem with this?

I also put /reactionautorescue in my tank DPS macro. Seems to be working OK so far, but obviously with multiple mobs you'd want a separate macro key.

[Alge]

One thing I noticed was my Shaman AoE heal Ancestor's Gift didn't appear to be working properly. Not sure if it's lag or something else. Ever noticed a problem with this?

Yeah, it is flaky for me too. There is an instant AoE heal on a cooldown which is much more reliable but it comes at a higher level I think.


I also put /reactionautorescue in my tank DPS macro. Seems to be working OK so far, but obviously with multiple mobs you'd want a separate macro key.Given that mobs are immune to having their targets forced for 30 seconds after being target-forced, you may only want to use this situationally. For example, my shaman tanks fine on most mobs but my sorcerer is a lot more squishy.

[pox67]

You have to be careful when you chunk on a boat that you don't leave people behind. Best way to guarantee that is to ensure everyone has loaded fully after chunking and make sure you don't move them around the deck, just leave them where they are after hitting U to enter the boat.
Curses, nothing works quite right does it.
Ah well, I am well acquainted with the /rope command now so I guess I can get them back on deck :)

[pox67]

Bought a medium sized boat, after some hiccups getting out of the Tanvu bay everything was good. It is great being able to transport the troops around, especially in Kojan which is all little islands.
Chunking freezes up the game for a second and the boat stops but no one has gone overboard yet. The U button works if someone is under the boat anyway.

Picked up a lot of new abilities at level 10 and 12. Took a long time to redo the macros but things are rocking now. I didn't pick up, but I am sure Alge said, that Instant abilities all fire from a macro at once. I couldn't work out why trash mobs were dying so quick. Basically one button press shoots off 4 or 5 abilities in the macros. Feels a bit exploity but handy for making macros. Now I don't need to worry about loading up the macros with instant cast no refresh abilities.
The defensive abilities I put in to the rescue macros for each of the characters. The Disciple is still quite squishy, maybe some better armour will help.

[heffner]

You guys still playing? I am slowly trudging along. Working on improving my macros along the way. I find the Disciple is probably the most complicated class and hardest to macro. In hindsight I probably should have picked something else, but we'll see.

The past couple of weeks my main toon has had terrible hitching. Every time I pull a mob it hitches, while my other five are just fine. Not really sure what's going on. Running three F2P accounts is OK so far, but I do think it's going to hamper me somewhat. It's annoying doing all those quests and not being able to use any of the gear. I might subscribe to a fourth, but haven't decided.

I finished all the URT and HL quests. Finished Trengal Keep and now at L31 I am starting to work on Wardship armor. Sometimes I feel like I am leveling too fast and missing out on a lot of content.

[pox67]

I was still playing up until a couple of nights ago. I have 3 monitors and I use them in Nvidia Surround mode, some games I play in 3 x landscape and some games 3 x portrait.
Vanguard was the three screens in landscape and SWToR I play in portrait. I just switched back to play some SWToR and Borderlands 2 big screen style.
I'll come back to Vanguard in a bit.

I got to 18 on my 4 some. Things were going quite well and it was lots of fun. I wasn't having too many troubles macroing the Disciple but don't have all the skills you do yet.

[Alge]

I'm still playing and enjoying myself. My first team are now almost 51 and working on RI/ToT/Magi Hold. I started a third team (WAR, BMG, BRD, PSI, RNG, DRU) who are now 16. I've been having a lot of fun soloing a ranger lately too. My guild is called Fara Undir Jordhina. I'm normally on the tank.

[heffner]

The 3 monitor setup must be sweet =). Although I have 3 monitors they are all different brands/sizes and on three separate computers ;)

WRT the Disc, it's not difficult to macro really....it's difficult to do it well and maximize as much potential as you can. At least for me it has been. I wish the macro system was more like WoW's. That made things much easier to accomplish.

I've looked for you a few times Alge, but I don't think two individuals could be any further apart geographically (I live in Ontario, Canada) so I am not sure if I will ever catch you on. Although, back in my younger days my regular EQ group included people from Hawaii and Singapore since I played early into the morning.

[pox67]

Three monitors is great. I previously tried multiboxing with 2 different size monitors and it didn't work as well. I really need a stand though so I can easily flip between portrait and landscape modes.

[Lokked]

Hello!

I attempted to Multibox, using IS/ISBoxer with 6 instances and ran into 2 problems:
Artifacting - Solved by turning all instances VSync ON, but this isn't ideal.
UI Flickering - Not resolved.

I'm thinking UI elements are due to either not enough processing power or not enough graphics power.
I am running:
Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz (8 cores, hyperthreaded)
12GB Ram
Win7 64-bit
nVidia GeForce GTX 570 (might be the problem)

In ISBoxer, I have 1 instance at 1600x900 on main monitor (ingame res also 1600-900), and 5 spaced out on second monitor at 533x300 (1600x900 divided by 3) and the ingame res for those is 1600x900.

Can I get away with just upgrading either the Vid Card or CPU? Or do I need a new computer :p

Thank you!

[Alge]

I'm running 6 clients stacked @ 1920x1200. i7 2600K @ 3.4 GHz, 16GB RAM, Win 7 64, Radeon 6990.

I run my main at 30FPS and slaves at 15FPS and get lower frame rates at times. Main is on High Quality, slaves are on the minimum for everything. Make sure shadows and volumetric clouds are off for everyone.

Under Settings, Performance make sure Hardware Occlusion is Off and the next 4 are On.

If you suspect a bottleneck (either CPU or GPU) here (http://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Tweak_your_framerate#Identifying_framerate_b ottlenecks) is how to find out.

[pox67]

Lokked, I was running 4 characters at 1920x1200. 2 on the lowest settings, one on medium/high and the main on very high. I was getting 30-45FPS.
Vanguard isn't a very well optimised game and I noticed it using quite a lot of CPU at times.

You will be spreading 6 games over 4 physical cores, I think that may be a problem.

My feeling is that the 570 would be way underpowered for that kind of work as well.

[Alex66]

Hello guys,

I am thinking about starting a team of 6 in Vanguard (f2p till lvl20 and then I'll decide on subs). Thanks for informative thread, I think I know what my group combo is going be. I have a question on macros - I found this thread http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/index.php?threads/vanguard-macro-hotkey-guide-for-getting-most-out-of-your-skills-and-class.138/ and I am curious if it would be possible to adapt this method to priority casting (like sending keys 1,2,3,4,5 on a single press)? Ideally I'd like to have the setup similar to my WoW keymaps, i.e. Combat key will send "assist tank" to slaves, break movement for casters and execute Virtual Combat key (virtualized into specific class combat sequences). Could I just put these reaction chains and spells in priority order on my hotbars and then pressing a combat key would just roll thru them, or it is necessary to use macros with each spell included in it?

Thanks for advice

[Alex66]

OK, I am level 9 and about to leave IoD for greener pastures with my team of 6 having figured most of the issues (I went with macro system/click bars video FX and the lot:). One thing I stumbled upon is flying mounts and how to make slaves to follow - they kinda start flying up and away... (that quest on IoD where you need to get few mobs on top of the hill). Any hints how to solve this? In EQ2 fying mounts work fine with follow.

[Alge]

Last time I checked following while flying (or swimming) did not work well. It's either a bug or an implementation issue with following and the z-axis. You could try using /bug but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a fix. I always include a bard in my groups because of the need to travel by land (or group lev over water). If I do need to fly to get somewhere inaccessible (very rare after IoD) I just shuttle them individually.

[Alex66]

Thanks Alge,

I figured as much, and done it one by one. Good to know it is not a common issue after IoD. Harvesting is a joy btw :) - watching all toons swing their hammers in sync while passing players stop and gape :)

[Rizamp]

Is there a macro you can use to make your slaves pick up/turn in quests? I've been having to shift to each window, and do it manually.

[pox67]

Is there a macro you can use to make your slaves pick up/turn in quests? I've been having to shift to each window, and do it manually.

I haven't played in a while but I am pretty sure this is what I did:
Made a key map that targets the leader's target. Then does a hail for all characters. That should pop up the conversation/quest reward window on all characters. Then I turned on mouse repeat to click through the quest windows as in theory all characters should have the same quests and be at the same point.

[Candorel]

Under Settings, Performance make sure Hardware Occlusion is Off and the next 4 are On.



Does that mean Vsync, triple buffering, character occlusion and use provided shaders should all be on for the slaves? Also, what are you particle slider settings at?

[Candorel]

Alge:

Do you find it difficult to box a rogue? Any tips or methods you can impart? I am 6 boxing and want to swap a druid out for a rogue (I am not fond of spellcasters, but want to keep the evac which a rogue has) also running a DRK/SHM/BRD/MON/RAN

[Alge]

Can't check my settings at the moment - will do so later.

No, it isn't particularly difficult to box a rogue because I always run my tank through the mob so everyone else is attacking its back. My highest team with a rogue though is only mid 20s, so not sure how it goes later on. I doubt my rogue macros are particularly good though.

[Alge]

Does that mean Vsync, triple buffering, character occlusion and use provided shaders should all be on for the slaves?
Yes, though some sets I have vsync on and some I have it off - haven't noticed any difference.


Also, what are you particle slider settings at?
100, 50, 50 ,50, 50
I should probably turn those down on the slaves.

[Candorel]

Alge, thanks for the info. Also, from your experience, do you find a bear shaman or a disciple makes a better healer in boxed groups?

Edit: Also, how often do you find yourself using evac while boxing, does it come in handy that much?

[Alge]

I've 6-boxed a bear shaman to 52 with a DK tank - it is a great combo in my experience. I've 3-boxed a discple to 25 or so with a pally tank and had some aggro issues on the disciple. My 6-box team with a disciple and a DK (better AE aggro than the pally) is only level 10, so it's a bit early to tell.

The problem with evac in VG is it can and does leave people behind. I used it a bit when I had 3 evaccers in the group, mostly if I managed to make a huge overpull and saw no way to survive. I think a better option is to have someone in the group who can either FD or escape combat and make sure you have the items that healers make which allows anyone to rez the healer.

[heffner]

My evac problems went away as soon as I spread all my guys out manually. Not always easy to do when you need to actually evac from trouble, but if it's for a convenience thing, then you just need to make sure the toons aren't occupying the same spot.