Calmers And Reflect Shields

[_____________Kwangju]

If this has been on the boards before I think it needs revisiting. I seem to have this conversation each and every mission, where I have a calmer in the team. The conversation goes like this, as everyone is buffing in the entry room in mission:

Crat: No reflect shields or reflect bracers please
Soldier: huh?
Adventurer: What?
Crat: If you use reflects or brcaers they break my calms, and the adds will be all over us and I can't calm them.

First off I will say that the crat in this team in being a bit extreme. Sure, there are rare occasions where a calmer will cast his calm on a mob, just as that mob is starting his attack on a player. If that player does have a reflect shiled or bracer, then as the newly calmed mob shoots, and then takes the reflect damage, the mob's calm may be broken and the calm will have to be recast.

Big stinking deal, just recast the calm. This may happen two or three times in the entire mission. Besides your best calmers have area calms, and if you can't calm mobs then, maybe you should pick a different profession.

IMHO, it is unreasonable to expect the soldier, and anyone else that wants a reflect shield, to take 25% or more damage from mobs for the entire mission. Also IMO if you find you are continuously having to calm adds, then your team is not "doing it right" hehe. Barging into a new room to kill a mob, without pulling it into a safer "kill room" can bring as many as 5 new adds, form the unexplored new room, and the ajoining rooms. And as anyone knows, calms can get countered by mobs, depending on the mission this could be fairly often.

A soldiers reflect allows him to take up to 30% less damage per hit from mobs, and adventurers damage shields allows them to absorb some damage. Both of these shields also damage the attacker, which is what may break a calm. but only on those rare occasions when the mob is calmed, just as it is begining an attack on a player with a reflect shield or bracer.

I have a level 133 soldier, she teams with a 130ish crat and a 150ish trader. These two guys always ask for her reflect shield, and they never have a problem calming mobs. Sure there is that once or twice per mission that you may nee to recalm, but it is rare.

Now, I will also state that an NT friend of mine swears that NT calms are more adversely affected by reflects in a team, or if he has a reflect cast on him. I have not verified this, but I take him at his word, so i never buff him with reflects.

I guess the bottom line is, don't worry so much about reflects, and do not demand "No reflect shields and take off all bracers". Realize that your tanks need to tank, and you may have to recalm once or twice on a mob. Heck, 95% of the times it's people attacking the calmed targets.

I will say that sometimes the first room can get very tricky with up to 5 or 6 mobs at once, so I might suggest no reflect shields until the adds are calmed in the first room. The calmer tries so hard to calm all those adds, and if they can be calmed, the first room will be a breeze.

Maybe the boss room too, until the lackies are calmed, if you want to take out the boss first. but even there, Ihave gone first with Total Mirror Shield running, all mobs attacking me, and they all get calmed without a problem. some calmers are just better at it then others.

[___________killerman]

Please think for a bit before you post

Not everyone has TMS you are just being greedy and want to cast your shield during fights

If you break the calm with a reflect it isnt always insta calmed again, they have a chance to resist

Un calmed mobs effect the whole team not just you, other profs with low HP can and will die faster then you because you wanted to take slightly less dmg with you reflect shield

Its easier to have the whole team on one mob without a bunch of adds running around also


Do you think in team mission everyoen should just attack the boss with all his cronies running around shooting people? Or what about the first room with 4 mobs?

[Zamolcrat]

I have a 100+ NT and Crat so I know a little about calms and I'll try to explain short what is the problem.
What you described happens at low levels (like under 100) when the calmers don't have high nano init in order to insta cast the calms and also the players at that level take very hard missions which means the calmers get lots of resists.

Many times (when blitzing missions for example) when you calm a monster it will hit you once after it has been calmed (strange indeed) and if you have reflect/damage shield on it will damage the monster and make it break calm. Now you can try to calm it again, at lower levels though you won't be able to calm it fast enough (not enough nano init) before the monster can attack again so what happens is you get in a cycle: you calm mob, mob hits you, calm breaks and start again. At higher levels when you can insta cast the calm this isn't a problem any more because you can cast the calm again before the monster can hit again (the recharge on monster attacks is longer than the one on calms).

Also resists are a big problem, early on I get resisted like at least twice on almost every red monster I try to calm, but at high levels I barely get resisted once or twice per mission. So at lower levels recalming takes some time.

So for the main room it can get very frustrating trying to calm a few red monsters using single target calm and indeed when I was lower level I had to ask other players to remove their reflects because I just couldn't calm it.

Now I'm 140+ with my crat and I ask for all damage and reflect shields and don't have a problem calming anything and I also get resisted like once in a blue moon. Actually I don't even calm if we have only one add, as we kill monsters in less than 10s and I'll better concetrate on nuking/shooting main.

[engelstein]

Killer, at least *try* to be coherent.

Zamolxis, this is a discussion of 125+ teaming...and whatever merit not using reflect in sub-100 teams may have, at my level I'm not going to take up to 43% more damage just because the calmer doesn't want to recalm.

[Zamolcrat]

Yeah, at 125+ calming is not a problem any more. As I said, now that i'm 140+ even I ask for reflect shield and if a calmer tells you to take reflects off at that level, just get another one, I'm sure there are some who know their job.

[Cambist]

Yeah, you're right. There's not much reason for support classes to do their real jobs in this game. I agree. Everyone playing as a psuedo-tank is a much better idea than actually asking for a fix to roots, snares or mez.

In the article Soloing and Teaming (the conclusions) by Gaute Godager - Game Director, he suggested crowd control was already underused. It was said they wanted to improve crowd control by:

• Increasing the range of the crowd control nanos.
• To make "runspeed-debuffs" ("snares") less prone to break. They will then be used as a type of "getaway" crowd control, which was the way they were intended.
• To make Psychoses (or "mezz") nanos stop giving monsters the ability to "shout" for help. If you run a "sleep" or "coma" type nano on a monster, it will send its shout for help out to its friends. That is a bug. So even if the monster is standing in the middle of a room with others, "sleeping" it will mean the other monsters ignore their comrade's plummet into insanity.
• Sleep or Mezz nanos will also include a PvP component. They will be attack-speed debuffs, mimicking the effect they have on monsters. Remember, these nanos are one-hit-100%-break always. Also, they will not stop people moving around or fleeing.

For some reason that lead me to believe Funcom wanted to improve Crowd Control not break it completely.. Did priorities change? Do they now believe there should only be tanks and healers? Why have support professions?

Could someone ask FC to make the stupid reflect damage stop breaking calms so we can at least do our job again? That or make the creature stop getting the hits in after being calmed that break from reflect. Either would be a nice change and much more productive than asking support classes to not do their jobs. The reflect shields/bracers are too prevalent now.

[_______________North]

It is a problem at lower levels when people are doing 100% missions. I would say that around 125 or so you won't have this problem anymore, as even the mezzer class can take few hits from mobs at that point.

However, the problem usually is the first room and after that the boss room. At sub-125 levels, I would advice to let mezzer calm the mobs first at least from the first room after which soldier should give Reflect buffs to team members who want it. An able mezzer does not/or should not have any problems calming 3-4 mobs from the first room, as long as everyone keeps their calm doing the process and remeber to turn the autoattack off.


If you are on a smooth team, where people progress through a mission systematicaly, while keeping eye on people health bars...it really isn't the problem. The problem I had at lower levels were those suicidal players, who run to next room when half the team is still trying to eat treatment packs. Some of them even run past few rooms to a chest and get aggro from 3-4 mobs in a process, which means that the calmer will be busy for no good reason. And this can mean that probably half the team will end up dead, if people are wearing reflect buffs....albeit the fault was not with the buff itself or calmer...but on the team that was unfortunate of having a selfish/just-plain-stupid/or-ebay player(s) with them.

[______________Saruzi]

I'm no 100+, but when my NT is rumping around in a team mission, I always have the bad luck of so rarely finding a group I take what I can get, and they ain't bright. They pull adds 24/7 no matter what happens, and for some reason my NT has a 'invisible' taunt on him at all times, so when that calm is broken the mob is on my a5s first. I'd re-calm the thing, then the team would take it from there, but its mostly an inconvience. I ask them to take reflects off because it isn't a rare chance that the mob will still attack when calmed. They almost always get off an additional hit after the calm is placed. Sometimes calms take 2 hits so if one person has a reflects shield the mob might just sit there anyways. Above 125 if you don't need people to calm adds, then why do you need to worry about taking 30% less damage from 6 people against one mob. Doesn't sound right, does it?

[______________Rogoff]

Originally posted by Kwangju

I will say that sometimes the first room can get very tricky with up to 5 or 6 mobs at once, so I might suggest no reflect shields until the adds are calmed in the first room. The calmer tries so hard to calm all those adds, and if they can be calmed, the first room will be a breeze.

Outdoor camps are one big first room .

Really, it wouldn't occur to me to ask everyone to strip off reflects. On the other hand, if things get messy because mezzes keep getting broken, I will say as much.

At that point, I expect a good team member to do whatever they need to do to help me keep the odds in our favor.

An extra 1-2 calms on one mob is no biggie. An extra 1-2 on four might mean a dead doc.

[Trapspringer]

Well there is one way for calmers to do theyr job easyer. STOP CALMING and see who will complain then.

If you who are the calmer in the group. Calm for your own good and not others that have reflect on.

Myself will not do this but its an idea that is beeing on my mind alot when team mates have reflect sheilds...

[_____Real Kinky Ityn]

Here is the deal with reflect.

With area calms mobs are calmed instantly and stop fighting when calmed. The resist on it is 135% and for lower level crats with ghetto AMS in PM/SI this can mean a lot of failed attempts.

With single target calms the mob you calm gets 1 or 2 more attacks in (aces and RM seem to get 2) after being calmed. Usually you can calm them again because breaking the calm seems to create more hate than the damage someone's reflect shields does, then it aggs the crat then you can re-calm it.

At 163 I don't care who uses reflect in the party, and I often take the buff too for kicks since I have a Nano INI of 1200ish and a base of around 800ish, I can calm till the cows come in and even my area calms work well on RM/Aces now.

However, at levels below 125 reflect can get a lot of people killed in harder missions. Reflect cannot be an aura nano, it needs to be a players choice. All crat auras have beneficial effects to everyone, what soldier would like an aura forced on them that reduced ranged INI by 100 for 100 in nano INI as an example?

In the end what matters is that everyone works as a team. The idea of pulling mobs to a "kill room" is another novelty of your level, not long after 125 all you do is run from room to room and personally I don't care if there are 10 adds, and everyone has reflect, IMO the more the merrier =] Approaching a mission with only 1 way to do them is very boring, and missions don't need any help being boring. I've done mission teams with 5 high level NTs all with nullity, I'd run through 4 or 5 rooms pulling 10 mobs or so to the main, then have all these fellows spam VE on themselves till everything in the room was dead. Bottom line, work as a team, have fun and don't be too anal about anything.

[_____________Kwangju]

I was expecting to get flamed from most calmers.

Yes I am refering to higher level characters, 125+. I just want there to be an understanding that when you join a team at level 140ish, and claim to be "the calmer", reflects should not matter too much to you. The calmer should be able to cast quickly and often, not as if he will run out of nanos like when he was level 40. And if the calmer is a crat, it should be a cake walk.

At level 140 a good soldier will have about 25% reflect, which is a life saver. At level 40, the reflect shields are weak, and being able to calm adds is worth more in a team. A 10% reflect when mobs are doing 80 points is not going to make much difference.

As has been stated in this thread, at lower levels you are casting so slow, that if a reflect breaks the calm you may not be able to recast. Esspecially when 40% of your nanos get countered in a 75%+ mission.

[Ratty]

I think you've all got good points here, and you're all right. So I'll summarize with my own points at the end:

* Calmers, at least crats/nt, can have low hp/ac/evades so you soldiers have to think of that! The mob you calm, gets uncalmed, it can agro the calmer, and from a soldier perspective they have no idea what its like to die fast, and say stupid things sometimes like, "so what if it gets uncalmed? just calm again". This is more relevent at lower level.

* The higher level versus lower level argument. Thats a good point. You have to decide between having lots of reflection or having a calm broken now and then. At high level init is very high, the amount of counters is lower (or even almost zero). If you are talking about that first room, just everyone hang in the entrance room and let your crat do a AOE calm over and over, hard to miss with that.

* And more on the above point, playing as a high level is very different, people have to remember that. You just dont pull at high level, you always room to room. And calmers should be watching for those adds. Maybe even calm them through the doorways proactivly.

* Heres my own point. PETS!!! Frigging pets break my calms more than anything, because if they are agroed by a mob before its calmed, after their current target dies, they will automatically just go and eat the next target. Pet people can just do a pet follow jsut before the current target is dead, but most of the time they dont. I'd say pets account for most of my mezzes being broken, not reflect shields, or stupid players. Hell, as a crat, EVEN MY OWN PET! ARG.

* Reflects DO break calms!! I actually had to argue with some nitwit trying to tell me that they dont. I even offered to prove it to them but they ignored me. I just said put a reflect on me and let me calm a mob, just have the doc heal me. And you watch it get broken. Nope. UGH, what a moron. But I just wanted to throw that out there if any retards out there think they don't break calms because they do. The only issue here is deciding if its worth having no reflects. Which I'm agreeing its worth having reflects and having some calms broken than no reflects.

[_____________Cloudehxx]

What the ****.

In short retarded speak.

If mob is calmed during its attack and hits a Ref/Smg shield it will unagro, maybe.

But I have spent a year with damage shields and I tell you, when someone says Take your Reflect and dmg shieled off cuz it break Calms I say NO.

Usually its because the target resists it.
Also I find even if they are calmed they tend to come out of it.
I was playing with one of my trader friends and she Calmed the add before it even got to hit anyone, shes fast :P

[_____Real Kinky Ityn]

Originally posted by Kwangju
I was expecting to get flamed from most calmers.

Yes I am refering to higher level characters, 125+. I just want there to be an understanding that when you join a team at level 140ish, and claim to be "the calmer", reflects should not matter too much to you. The calmer should be able to cast quickly and often, not as if he will run out of nanos like when he was level 40. And if the calmer is a crat, it should be a cake walk.

At level 140 a good soldier will have about 25% reflect, which is a life saver. At level 40, the reflect shields are weak, and being able to calm adds is worth more in a team. A 10% reflect when mobs are doing 80 points is not going to make much difference.

As has been stated in this thread, at lower levels you are casting so slow, that if a reflect breaks the calm you may not be able to recast. Esspecially when 40% of your nanos get countered in a 75%+ mission.

I'm not flaming you, I'm just saying be diverse. I was running around with RRFE all morning long, I seldom use my calms in missions now, I run a 7% crit buff (or if there is an MA an AMS/DMS buff) a -12% crit debuff that breaks calms in about 3-5 seconds anway, and keep 2 pets that I split off to handle adds most of the time rather than calming if they happen to be around and not stuck somewhere. At 160+ all I really use calms for are; to prevent an add or to break up aggro when it gets too focused on one person or myself. Mostly I'm shooting, spamming 1.5-3k nukes, and sicking those 2 pets on things. Calms are mostly a waste of my damage output, but if a team needs them I use them more.

In the end it all depends on the team. Work as a team. Don't let your ego screw the team over. This goes for the calmer and the soldier, play as a team everything goes smooth, play as an individual, things can get rough. You know the kind of team you are in by the end of the top floor, if you are in a team of individuals, play to save yourself, if you are in a team of team- mates, play to save your party.

[Ratty]

I'll just say this then.
If I'm in a group, and my calms are being broken repeatedly, and there's no pets, and nobody seems to be attacking the mob, I ask if people have reflects on. Always the answer is yes and I just ask them to remove it. Not so much an issue at level 120+ when most people have decent HP/AC/evades, and you have a doc to just keep you alive.

Sometimes you get people like Cloudeh that, when under level 120, even if you prove they break calms, refuses to remove it, jeapordizing the lives of the entire team (usually not the person themselves cause they are secure in the amount of HPs and Acs they have, they could give a damn less if YOU die) and your only recourse is to get leader and kick them out, or leave yourself. Best to resolve that right in the entrance room before you rack up all this xp then die cause you get swarmed with adds you have to keep calming over and over, and as they start to agro on you you are one dead calmer.

[Ratty]

Btw, Cloudeh, i think as a calmer you know if your calms are being resisted. The issue is the mob is calmed, then broken.
If you are the calmer, you calm a mob, and it clearly tells you successful. Then a second later it just walks around. I think I know the difference between a nano getting countered/fumbled and it working.

Mobs NEVER EVER EVER EVER just "come out of it". Maybe in your world of wearing reflects and refusing to remove them, they come out of it. When attacked they come out of it, sometimes in that half state of being rooted and glowing but still attacking, then you gotta just keep recalming and hope they arent attacking someone with a reflect because you have to get lucky and hope its synced where they get calmed and dont get that extra attack in. But in most teams they never ever break unless someone has a reflect on. Get it through your thick head, please. If you want to argue that reflect is more valuable than having calms breaking, do that, but I can scientifically PROVE that reflects break calms, put a reflect on me, let me get a mob to agro me then i will calm it. Oh look it just walked away with its calm broken, i wonder why??

Nobody was even disbelieving it until you posted, read above, not a single person doubted that reflects breaks calms, the only thing being debated is, "does it matter?". I'm willing to say that at high level its more valueable to have everyone wear reflects and just work harder at calming, or calm things before they agro so they arent even fighting when calmed. Yes every calmer should work towards being very fast and calming things before they agro, but it sucks calming something, and having it break, then calm it again, then it breaks again, then youre wasting all this time calming you could be shooting/nuking, assuming it doesnt agro you and kill you in the process. Or if you, as the calmer, dont have a reflect, agro on you is good when someone has a reflect, because when it is attacking you, at least when you calm it you know it will stay calmed. Gotta do what you gotta do when you have selfish people in the group.

Again all this doesnt apply at high level, but i was in a lower level group with someone like you, maybe it was you, who refused to remove their reflect, it annoyed me to no end, I finally had to leave the team, better than dying cause of a selfish person.

Originally posted by Cloudeh
What the ****.

In short retarded speak.

If mob is calmed during its attack and hits a Ref/Smg shield it will unagro, maybe.

But I have spent a year with damage shields and I tell you, when someone says Take your Reflect and dmg shieled off cuz it break Calms I say NO.

Usually its because the target resists it.
Also I find even if they are calmed they tend to come out of it.
I was playing with one of my trader friends and she Calmed the add before it even got to hit anyone, shes fast :P

[Destractor]

As an engie, I always ask before buffing up if I can use reflects.
I am almost always told no, when there is a calmer. (I am also often told to stop my symathetics with casting classes)

It is annoying as I have little health. But if it makes the team happy, even if the liklyhood of them breaking calms is small, it is worth it.

And yes the bot has the amazing ability to attack stuff breaking calms. I think there are many bugs within the calm system, one of them being that bots think the mob is still attacking.

I still find it hard to see how a calmed mob can get broken by a reflect if it is not attacking, but people tell me syncing issues. To me that means that maybe they will get fixed one day.

In the end I would prefer to have only 1 mob to worry about, but with larger hits on me, than 3 mobs doing less damage each.

[Mercatura]

Here is the calm bug. It is a very real bug. Its quite annoying, but I never cancel rrfe becuase of it, 30% reflect is so handy. I might cancel a damage shield if it has no other positive effects like some do, e.g. the enf shields that add life. I drop advent shields like a bad habit, waste of ncu for PvM imho. Damage shields alone don't reduce damage at all. Minimum dmg same, crits same range. (mob crits vary anyways, unlike players with static crits unless ac changes)

blah blah blah

Anyways:

1) Mob hits a target
2) Calm Successful (yes, there is an actual message)
3) Damage/reflect hits mob

Then 1 of serveral things happens, depending on the lag and/or your bad luck and/or phase of the moon:

A) Mob loses calm and wanders around for a bit, and reaggros in a few seconds to whoever it wants
B) Mob loses calm and immediately attacks the calmer
C) Mob still has the gas, but keeps attacking its previous target. The nano was successful but the mob basically ignores it.

It has absolutely nothing to do with nano resist or counter, if the nano is countered, you wont see the golden gas around it at all. (you also see a counter message) A and B are most common, C if pretty funny but sad at the same time, they will fight with the gas around them until either the calm expires or you hit them 4-5 times.

I am 95% sure it has to do with a bad order of damage. There is too much being done between 1 and 3.

The proper order should be:

1) Mob hits a target
2) Damage/reflect hits mob
3) Calm successful

No code or checks that have ANYTHING to do with aggro or nanos should be happening between 1 and 2!

Apparently something is.
Are damage/reflect shields partially client side? I hope to hell they are not!

Some FC dev needs to go and fix their combat code or something of that nature for this bug to go away. Either that, or they could say its 'working as intended' though it would be nice if they renamed all those nanos to be 'calms that have two defensive checks: nano resist and lag resist'.

[Thuggy]

I personally have no problem with team mates using reflect at any lv, infact id rather them have it on. Basicly if you break the calm due to reflect simply duck around a corner so the calmer can reclam then continue to /assist the team