Curse

Hanan · Jun 17, 2005, 09:44 AM // 09:44

“Everyone hit the same foe is the fastest way to kill”, it is a simple and straightforward logic on Target Calling/Assisting.

This theory is true, but usually it is not the most effective way to win and sometimes, you will find it not working as intended. As you must realize, killing one foe in the shortest time allowed does not link to victory. In this thread, I'll share my views on Target Calling.

First, what is Target Calling ?
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Target Calling is the action of pressing the “Ctrl” key of your keyboard and double clicking the left button of your mouse while targeting a foe. By doing so, you will hear a ‘ding’ sound and an arrow icon will be shown on the immediately left side on your name in the party window. Any party member can press “T” to get your current target.

Purpose
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The purpose of Target Calling is simply tell your party member who you have targeted to allow them easily and promptly get your target by pressing “T”

Usage
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<<Assign a Target Caller before engage, the Target Caller call out who he has targeted, usually a monk, then everyone rush on to the target and smack it to death>> is the commonly MIS-USE of Target Calling. This is INCORRECT.

To use Target Calling perfectly, you have to let the right person use it on the right target at the right timing with the right action.

Who should Call Target?
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Everyone should call target. There is no different for who to call a target if everyone uses it correctly.

When to Call Target?
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1. Not Before Engage. You should NOT Call a Target before engage. Everyone knows casters are priority with monks on top. Remember you should never forgo your primary function and your most effective target. Calling a Target too early usually cause your warrior sprint to the Mars.

2. To finish off a foe. If you found a particularly weak target, or your target is about to die but you are not sure you can handle it yourself, then you should Call your Target here.

3. Strategy target. When your target has to be taken care of even he is not weak or going to die. E.g. your target is casting resurrection, or a meser is locking down your monk.

4. You need help. When you have a hard time dealing with a foe, you can’t kill her or run away from her, then you should Call Target here. So that you could run away when your party member get her attention and allow you to switch to another target.

Assisting
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Since everyone could Call Target, then who I should assist ? Following points should be considered when you hear a Target being Called.

1. The general rule for assisting: Your effective attack/support range. Only assist if the Target Called is within your effective attack/support range, or if you could reach that range in reasonable time. If the foe is 30 feets away from you using resurrect signet, then it is meaningless to use 3 seconds to run toward her.

2. Spot of fleeing foes' path. If the Target Called is a fleeing foe that running away from your party member, and you are on a spot that she must pass, then you should go catch her or turn to her when she come close.

3. Unfruitful action. If a party member is surrounded by 4 foes and about to die while you and your remaining party are on the other end of earth, it is meaningless to go melee her attacker or cast a heal on her to delay her death. Because you are just putting yourself in her position immediately after her death. For example, in a kill score game with npc priest doing free resurrection, two of your party members are at your own shine while remaining two are dieing at enemy shine, you should just wait at your shine for them to get resurrected before rushing to enemy again.

Other remarkable points
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1. Be wise and watch party channel carefully. Do not blindly go rush the target that called by your monk for Pacifism.

2. Learn all skills and spells name and their effects of All Classes.

3. Look at the whole screen, not just your HP bar and the pop-up damage bubble.

4. Study and predict enemy’s intention. It is very obvious that who is the incoming enemy sprinting warrior targeting.

17th June 2005

Fantras · Jun 17, 2005, 10:08 AM // 10:08

Having everyone call targets is not smart. There should be one, at most, two callers, IMO. Otherwise the whole group would devolve into anarchy. Yes, you should call out targets before engagement. Your warrior should not be so stupid as to run way ahead of the rest of the party to throw a beat down on the called target. In short, the group should stick relatively close together, including the warrior. The only thing redeeming in this post is that yes, it is sometimes a very good idea to switch targets mid-fight for the reasons you supplied. But the other points I would recommend people ignore. I could, however, be wrong in some points and will check back to see the feedback.

Jun 17, 2005, 10:09 AM // 10:09

Quote:

Usage
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<<Assign a Target Caller before engage, the Target Caller call out who he has targeted, usually a monk, then everyone rush on to the target and smack it to death>> is the commonly MIS-USE of Target Calling. This is INCORRECT.

To use Target Calling perfectly, you have to let the right person use it on the right target at the right timing with the right action.

Who should Call Target?
----------------------------
Everyone should call target. There is no different for who to call a target if everyone uses it correctly.

"Everyone" should not call a target. Usually it's a Necro or Mesmer that's going to notice whats going on in the middle of battle since they have a wide-eyed view of the battlefield. Rangers and Warriors are decent TC's, but this also depends on what the team is doing. A Guild or PUG over TS/Vent can of course all call targets at will with ease. Still you shouldn't have everyone spamming Cntrl+Click all over the place

Quote:

When to Call Target?
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1. Not Before Engage. You should NOT Call a Target before engage. Everyone knows casters are priority with monks on top. Remember you should never forgo your primary function and your most effective target. Calling a Target too early usually cause your warrior sprint to the Mars.

Actually, always call out potential targets asap before engaging. Let people know who the priorities are, whether it's monks, mesmers, rangers or whatever(you rightfully hinted at this in the post). A bonus to this is with multiple people cycling targets before engagement you get to sometimes see what skills they are using. You get to split the team up into jobs faster and get everyone on track at once.

Quote:

Assisting
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Since everyone could Call Target, then who I should assist ? Following points should be considered when you hear a Target being Called.

To add on to some of the other points, players that are dedicated to taking out one target while the other players do whatever it is they are doing usually shouldn't break off and just ignore Target Calls. Usually these kinds of guys have some utility for the cases where they may need to assist but in general should stay off the assist train.

Quote:

Other remarkable points

2. Learn all skills and spells name and their effects of All Classes.

3. Look at the whole screen, not just your HP bar and the pop-up damage bubble.

Great advice. #2 is hard for people just learning the game and there is no easy way to remember most things except by playing and making builds over and over and over(8 people builds, not single character builds

). After a while it comes naturally to the point where you'll know casting times, recharge times and energy costs for most of the skills in the game.

Myodato · Jun 17, 2005, 11:53 AM // 11:53

I just wish more people learnt the joys of ctrl+shift+space; call the target without taking any action or giving away who you're going for to the enemy. Giving people even a few seconds to think about who they're hitting before battle is joined can make a huge difference.

Inacurate · Jun 19, 2005, 01:24 AM // 01:24

[QUOTE=Myodato]I just wish more people learnt the joys of ctrl+shift+space; call the target without taking any actionQUOTE]

Does that work with Henchmen as well? I was just searching the forums to see if there is a way to have the Henchmen attack, without you yourself running foward to attack the guy first, or even moving at all.

Guess I will go try it right now!

Inac

d4nowar · Jun 19, 2005, 02:50 AM // 02:50

is it just me, or does the op seem to be talking specifically to the warriors of the game? because to me it hardly applies to any other class.

Scaphism · Jun 19, 2005, 03:52 AM // 03:52

I have a bigger problem with how he phrased the topic:
"Did you abuse target calling" makes it look like using target calling is an exploit. We don't want to scare people away from calling targets, we want to encourage them to use it effectively.

In this case, it's an actual feature, not an exploit. This should be a thread about how to effectively call targets. It wouldn't be the first on the subject either, but it's still needed.

QuixotesGhost · Jun 19, 2005, 04:11 AM // 04:11

Though this may seem pretty basic, I find generally it's a good idea to have mesmers hit targets other than the called one. There's no use shutting someone down if you're just gonna kill em anyway.

Unless of course you need to drop the monk.

King of Fools · Jun 19, 2005, 04:51 AM // 04:51

depends on the mesmer i guess, usually have the mesmer hit the called target with something then move on to others then bring whatever dmg he can bring with wand back to called target.

theclam · Jun 19, 2005, 06:58 AM // 06:58

If you have more than one target caller, then you'll need Vent/TS. Otherwise, you won't know why someone is calling the target. If you allow everyone on your team to call a target, then you'll need Vent/TS, along with great teamwork and planning. The average PUG, or even the average guild, will get more confusion than benefit out of your advice.

Yukito Kunisaki · Jun 19, 2005, 04:47 PM // 16:47

I don't get why people should make this so complicated...

Target calling? Oh yeah 'strategy...'... um. Yeah...

It does require strategy but if you make it THAT complicated, what are the chances of you getting a team THAT perfectly set to 'read' what you're doing?

This first post leaves almost no room for error and has some pretty bad advice in my opinion. [don't target call before a battle? Oh yeah, I'd LOVE to fight a team that does that. make life easier for me.]

When target calling, EVERYONE doesn't matter who, should dive bomb on the selected target. Shouldn't matter where either. People don't charge alongside the warrior due to fear of retaliation. WTF? So in pvp, you let the warrior run in by themselves while you cower in fear far far away? Last I checked, to win a fight, you SUPPOSED to get in your enemy's face. Doesn't matter what class you are. Every fight I've witnessed in pvp and HoH involved finishing an enemy off within aggro radar range.

If you're going to be 'afraid' to rush with a warrior to get into the enemy's area of influence, then ya know, you have no faith in yourself as a combatant and you have no trust in your healer or your team.

Every time I got to the HoH, it always involved NOT CAMPING [unless it's King of the Hill where sadly, you have to camp]. I've made it my game's life goal to eat campers for dinner and to promote that cowardly tactics like waiting for an enemy to come to you will result in you dying. Action is faster and more effective than reaction.

As a real-life martial artist, I can prove this point. Both in a game and in reality, reacting to a situation means, too late fool... too late. The damage has already been done and well, it's over...

Target Call, if they don't lose 25% their hp in seconds, then 2 things are going on, your team isn't helping you out of fear of getting injured, OR the enemy is very skilled in healing...

Move to new target if the called one won't die asap. Repeat....

May sound like a simple/brainless strategy but let me tell ya, being aggressive gets you victories. Camping means you must react, and by then, it's too late... You need only one Target Caller and 2 at most. [one for casters, one for troublemakers] And that's pretty much it.

Neo-LD · Jun 19, 2005, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Looks like someone is a little too idealistic. Your plan of having anyone/everyone calling targets would only actually work if all the players were literally telepathically connected. Or guided by the hand of God. Closest thing we have to that is vent.

It seems to me that (to you) battles should start off with everything being attacked at random, and *then* once a target has sustained damage, you all focus fire to finish it off. Sorry buddy, but if you all attack at random, I guarentee no one on the enemy team is ever going to be at low enough HP for you to decide to "finish him".

Now one of your points is fine. There is no problem with a monk calling his pacifism to let everyone know not to attack. No problem letting everyone know that you have Fragility on you. etc etc. But we have vent for that.

I think there is one small issue with how not to use target calling that you didnt mention, though. (ironic, huh?) Protective Spirit, Shield of Judgement, Life Barrier, etc. There is absolutely no reason to continue to focus fire on an enemy (even is they are 1/2 dead) if they have one of those spells on them. If anyone notices one of those spells going off (they usually have big obvious animations) then you should probably call a new target.