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RAB
30-11-10, 13:08
Ok I've never had a ppu before so I thought Id give it a go.

Would any of the more exerienced ppu users out there mind giving me some pointers as to what in preactical terms are the best modules to use ? (apart from heal !!)
and any other pointers you think useful etc..

thanks loads

Rich

CMaster
30-11-10, 13:32
You'll find some useful stuff from kk here although there have been some minor changes since then - foreign resist cap is now 30%, exact numbers of various spells tweaked.

OK, the big spells you will be using all the while.

Heal - Heals the target once a "tick" for 60 seconds. More damage = more hp/tick
Absorber - Protects the target from Energy/Xray damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection
Protector - Protects the target from Fire/Posion damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection
Deflector - Protects the target from Force/Piercing damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection

Important to note is that shields degrade over time. If you or your damage dealer is taking a real pounding from a certain damage type, recasting may be necessary before the 180 seconds is up. This does not reset the 180 second timer however (unless done in the last ~5 seconds before the shield times out)

Erm, AFK, more later

RAB
30-11-10, 14:02
thanks dude...

CMaster
30-11-10, 14:56
Gah, ran over edit timelimit while editing.

You'll find some useful stuff from kk here although there have been some minor changes since then - foreign resist cap is now 30%, exact numbers of various spells tweaked.

Key Spells - cast very frequently:

Heal - Heals the target once a "tick" for 60 seconds. More damage = more hp/tick
Absorber - Protects the target from Energy/Xray damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection
Protector - Protects the target from Fire/Posion damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection
Deflector - Protects the target from Force/Piercing damage for 180 seconds. More damage = more protection

Important to note is that shields degrade when absorbing damage. If you or your damage dealer is taking a real pounding from a certain damage type, recasting may be necessary before the 180 seconds is up. This does not reset the 180 second timer however (unless done in the last ~5 seconds before the shield times out)

Boosters/"Primes"
These spells provide 10 minutes of boosts to main stats - provided they aren't bugged, should tell you exactly what on the info.Stats don't matter here (other than frequency) - any cast is always the same. Any character can only have one booster of each type (IE One resist, one combat skill, one tradeskill). You'll probably be casting them before every fight, but not worrying about them much the rest of the time.

Resist Boosters - important for everybody, almost all the time. In the past, hazard 3 used to be the generic buff of choice. My hunch with the deadlinesss of the dissy these days means most people probably want Heat.
Weaponskill Boosters - not sure how important these are, but people will always appreciate them if you have time. To be really handy however, you need to give each person the right one. There's no "one size fits all" combat booster (although they almost all boost WEP and TC)
Tradeskill boosters - Tradeskillers might occasionally ask you for a CST booster. For everyone else, Spy boost is almost always what they want. Gives bonuses to agility, implant and hack.

Antibuffs and debuffs
Things you use on enemies, human or otherwise.

- Antibuffs There's a range of anti-buff spells available that remove shields (as per the spell name) or heals from opponents. Holy unprotector removes all three shields at once. Long cast and big psi-pool drain for most of these, but can get someone taken down fast if they get focus fired. Completely useless in PvE (unless you accidentally shield a mob or something).
- Damage boost. Increases damage received on a target, given away by sparks flying off them (although like all graphical effects, this can bug). Useful for speeding up a mob take down, or just helping your fighter vs a human enemy. Not quite as powerful as it once was. I forget whether this stacks any more - experiment.
- Parashock. Slows down the target. Nerfed into trivialness vs players, and not really necessary vs mobs. Huge numbers of spells, no idea if any of them are at all useful.

Anti-debuffs
Spells for making people better form weird effects. Simply target a player, cast them, watch the effects dissapear. Available for all DoTs and all negative statuses. Holy Catharsis removes all DoT-types while Holy Exorcist removes all negative statuses. However these do-all have rather long cast times and big pool cost. Practically, while I'm sure players will be happy if you remove their DB in a fight, there are normally more important things to do. Mostly, these spells come into their own in PvE. If you are going to crystal or swamp caves, or Graves, then a good anti-posion is a must, while anti-xray is necessary to avoid team-wipes on DoY tunnel runs.

Weird things
A collection of other spells that dont fit into the other categories, but have their uses.

-Sanctums. They cast a short-lived version of the spell in question on everybody in a radius around you once per "tick". The shield sanctums are unreliable and should be avoided. Damage Boost Sanctum will annoy everybody in the vicinity. Heal sanctum actually works differently, and provides additional healing to nearby players. A must in PvE runs and sometimes useful to keep yourself alive.

- Soulclusters - "Creature focus" spells. Really buggy, but still useful. A single cast should get a blue creature flying near you. A second cast, while targetting an NPC should get the soul cluster to attack the NPC. Note that you won't see any attack animations or even damage numbers. However, the NPC's health will decrease.

- Ressurection. A key part of every PPU's arsenal. Brings another player back to their feet. There's a lot to be learned in the world of snipe-rez and rez-dance.

- True Sight Sanctum. Decloaks and stealthed player in the radius once per tick. Ticks are slow enough, and lag a big enough problem, that it borders useless and is commonly known as "true shite".

Thats it for the spells - more on general PPU play in a bit.

RAB
30-11-10, 15:20
nice one - couldn't have asked for more

thanks mate.

CMaster
30-11-10, 16:32
Ok, so actually playing guide.

Casting spells
For single target spells, look at who you want to cast on and click. You'll wave your hands around and cast it on them. To cast on yourself, don't target anything and cast.
Group and sanctum spells however don't care what you are looking at, and are always centred on you.
Casting spells require sufficent psi in your pool. This regenerates over time and can be found near your HP meter.
Movement is limited while casting - you can go a certain distance from where you start and still have the spell work correctly, but beyond this the spell will "fizzle" at the end and not go off. You'll eventually get a feel for how far this is, and learn tecniques to deal with it. Because of the need to keep moving on PvP, this often involves croching, or running in a circular path. When rezzing under fire, you see the famous "rez dance" - moving as much as is possible without the spell fizzling.
You will also occasionally see the "wavey hands bug". Sometimes, even though you should be able to cast, the game says "no" and puts your arms through a crazy dance with no spell effects. You can't abort this, or cast anything else during the time.

Survival and Priorities
PPUs shouldn't really die. They're very, very tough, having both the highest resist cap and the highest practically acheivable resists of any class by far, combined with their ability to heal at an impressive rate. On top of this, in almost all PvE, and many PvP situations, a PPU's self survival tends to be more important than anyone elses. This is because they can ressurect the other team members, combined with a tendency to dropping more valuable items in belts, being best equipped to actually escape, etc. To ensure that you as a PPU never die, there is one key point - be fully buffed at all times. Wherever you go, whatever you are doing, those 3 shields should stay up. If pulling off a ressurection under fire, NPC or human, abort if it is obvious you won't make it, rebuff and heal and try again.

Of course, there are times when because you can take it and your friends can't, you'll deliberatley want to draw fire/aggro. It's all a case of knowing your limits and reading the tactical situation. (And a neat trick in op-fights etc is to get in the way of whoever is gunnning for your charges.

Beyond ensuring your own survival, the key role of the PPU is to keep their team alive. This means keeping them buffed, keeping them healed, and quite often knowing what's going to be a problem before it happens. With practice, you can find yourself timing a Holy Antidote so that it finishes casting just as a barrage of poison stacks arive on a friendly. Doing this does require the damage dealers help - train them to call for buffs as they run. Use your own sense of timing and visual clues (but remember that heal bubbles can stick sometimes). Use voicecomms wherever possible.

The nature of the kind of people who play PPU, and the fact that the PPU doesn't target fixate in the way that other classes do mean that people frequently look to the PPU for leadership, or at least as the one who has the best overview of the tactical situation. Warn people who need to take cover and heal. Cal out wounded targets. Call a retreat if needs be.

_More Later_

RAB
01-12-10, 13:00
you should write a book dude ! :)

thx again

Biglines
01-12-10, 13:28
would be good to have that on the wiki tbh

Morpheus
01-12-10, 13:29
this thread made it into my favorites ;)

Brammers
01-12-10, 17:55
would be good to have that on the wiki tbh

What's stopping you? ;)

Neallys
01-12-10, 19:02
Twenty bucks says I can lay down the PPU of the guy who actually made this guide within 10 seconds :p

Biglines
01-12-10, 19:31
What's stopping you? ;)
because I prefer that people that wrote it get credited for it in the actual edits ;)

and it's not like I haven't contributed to the wiki :p

I wouldn't want people to take what I write and just post it everywhere without permission tbh

CMaster
01-12-10, 19:42
Twenty bucks says I can lay down the PPU of the guy who actually made this guide within 10 seconds :p

Anybody else should feel free to jump in and disagree or offer other suggestions. I have to say if you think that you on your own could drop my PPU, I'd be very, very suprised, although we can test if you want.

Biglines
01-12-10, 22:36
Anybody else should feel free to jump in and disagree or offer other suggestions. I have to say if you think that you on your own could drop my PPU, I'd be very, very suprised, although we can test if you want.
he can drop my ppu solo if I can't clip, and sometimes if i can :p (and im not even close to the worst active ppu on the server)

but I agree that the most important aspect of a ppu is to have an overview of the battle, and if you're the main ppu, to actually be a leader, designating targets and telling people what to do.

Seeing as you probably won't be main ppu soon, generally it's best to just pick a few fighters, and support those, as more experienced ppu's will be better at tactical decisions

RAB
02-12-10, 11:16
Twenty bucks says I can lay down the PPU of the guy who actually made this guide within 10 seconds :p

ok, on a positive note, how? what weapon you using etc??

Kanedax
02-12-10, 19:58
ok, on a positive note, how? what weapon you using etc??

It's called a sploiter cannon and it is the best if most mysterious weapon in the game!

Brammers
03-12-10, 04:47
That would be the good old Boomstick or the Fart cannon? :wtf:

Biglines
03-12-10, 12:36
That would be the good old Boomstick or the Fart cannon? :wtf:
wocket can't kill a ppu i think, too much impact damage which bounces back

but ye, good tanks can kill my ppu with a devourer

Genji
03-12-10, 14:56
lol what kind of ppu dies to 1 dev tank?! noooooob biggie!
dev is SO SIM PO!

Biglines
03-12-10, 16:12
lol what kind of ppu dies to 1 dev tank?! noooooob biggie!
dev is SO SIM PO!
pff, u would die to neally tbh (that is, if ur not gonna zone and not gonna clip)

Genji
04-12-10, 06:31
asif, just 1 dev tank you don't even have to move to live!
red anti-p red anti-p RED ANTI-P SO SIM PO

Biglines
04-12-10, 19:55
u must be a resist ppu...

RAB
04-12-10, 20:02
so poison is a ppu weakness then ?

Genji
04-12-10, 23:51
u must be a resist ppu...

lol asif, dont need! actually I dont remember, but not much if any.


so poison is a ppu weakness then ?

well it's more that dev is really powerfull for someone that can keep a good aim.

RAB
20-01-11, 12:29
quickie:....

What is Blessed AntiProtector ??? Cant res it and its not rare ...
How does it differ from UN-Protector ???


and.. is PSI shield any good/use ??

Thanks

Biglines
20-01-11, 13:31
psi shield only has marginal use in an environment of heavy antibuffing, as it cannot be removed. It's waaaaaaay worse than pad's though, as it sucks your psi pool dry and you can't do anything else.

blessed anti i think is antired, no idea why u cant res it

CMaster
20-01-11, 14:08
Anti-protector removes protectors from the target. If it can't be ressed, that's a bug. No big deal though - anti spells are only useful in PvP and you should be able to use the Holy spells by then.

Psi shield means your psi pool absorbs damage before your health does. It's normally a good way of getting yourself killed, as you won't be able to heal when you need to.

RAB
20-01-11, 15:05
when i use it it has the rare twirly thing ?? That right for a Blessed spell ??

Garfield
20-01-11, 15:12
blessed one was a 2.1 HN-database obtainable item(cant remember how its been called then). few of those BP`s still floating around...

Biglines
20-01-11, 15:35
holy anti-red is now a gm spawn only item (or very old), so urs might actually be quite good

RAB
20-01-11, 15:39
so.... what is anti-red ???

Garfield
20-01-11, 15:45
anti red= anti protector

RAB
20-01-11, 16:04
Ahh Ta :D

Biglines
20-01-11, 16:36
as in, it removes the protector (red shield spell that protects against poison and fire)

baracoder
11-11-12, 23:28
I have copied the information to the wiki for the sake of redundancy: http://wiki.techhaven.org/Field_Medic

VegaH
12-11-12, 15:58
Gah, ran over edit timelimit while editing.

Weird things
A collection of other spells that dont fit into the other categories, but have their uses.

-Sanctums. A must in PvE runs and sometimes useful to keep yourself alive.



Just a quick precision here, heal sanctum don't heal yourself, it only heals others...

Roc-a-fella
15-11-12, 08:35
good infos here

Genji
15-11-12, 22:50
ok, on a positive note, how? what weapon you using etc??

his penis