Heroic Opportunities (EQ2)  

As I am sure everyone here is aware of, Heroic Opportunities ROCK. Well, maybe they aren't amazingly exciting, but using them correctly can turn a 2 minute fight into a 30 second one, which means the Tank might actually live and the healer has a little mana left over.

Overview of HO's

For people who have no clue what a Heroic Opportunity (HO) is, here�s a rundown. Every arch-type gets an ability which does nothing but start off a HO chain. When someone uses this chain starter, a circle of abilities/Spells will pop up. If the next ability/spell used in combat matches one of the indicated abilities/spells in the chain�then the Wheel magically pops up. However, if someone performs an ability/spell which is NOT listed in the chain circle, the chain breaks!! We don�t want that chain to break. I�ll get into that later. Now once the chain completes, and that Wheel pops up�it�s a free-for-all in terms of what spells/abilities people can use. Nothing can break the wheel. The only way for the Wheel to go away is if A) A very long timer times out, or B) The HO is completed. You will see what abilities/spells need to be cast inside the Wheel, in order to complete the Wheel. Once the Wheel is complete, some fantastic special effect happens, and you are back at step 1.

Don't Break That Chain

{Much harder to do now}

Originaly it was possable to break an HO chain by anyone using an ability of any kind. This is no longer the case. Players can continue casting as normal during an HO.

The only ways that an HO chain can be broken now are by a) restarting the chain by triggering a new Heroic Opportunity or b) allowing a stage to time out.

This makes using HO's a great deal simpler since players do not need to pay as close attention to the HO chain window rather than their team mates status.

Single HO, Example

For this example I will use a group with One Healer, One Tank, and Four damage dealers. I would number everyone in the group, aside from the healer, so we have HO Starter 1, 2,3,4,5. Macros would be created. One macro for starting an HO, one macro for failing an HO, and possible one for Done with an HO, although when an HO finishes everyone will probably know, so I will just use Starting and Fail for my example. So, Tank pulls and Healer starts healing. Starter 1 gives his Starting macro. Now until Starter 1 either says Failed, or the until the Wheel pops up, no one cast a spell or use an ability, as this will probably break the chain. If Starter 1 says Fail at any time, Starter 2 says his Starting Macro, and does his HO chaining, etc�etc� Also, once a chain completes and the Wheel pops up, everyone has until the Starter who initiated the wheel completes it, to do whatever he/she wants. If the Starter finishes the Wheel quick, everyone has about 5 seconds to do whatever they want to do. Just make sure to stop by the time the next Starter gives his/her �Starting HO� speech. So everything up to this point is pretty basic, the part that makes it tricky is that Healer who has the heal spells mashed non-stop. It will be up to the Chain Starters to work in between the Heals. If there is a mess up, and a Heal breaks a chain�just treat it as a Failed HO, and spam your Failed macro so the next Starter can start. Perhaps the Healer can link a text macro to his/her healing spells like: �Healing now� or �Healing done�. We will have to see if that is needed.

Cross HO, Example

Same as above, but a slight variation. Starter 1 Says starting. Right after Starter 1 says this, Starter 2 presses the ability/spell which he/she knows is going to pop up. So Starter 2 finishes the chain and makes the Wheel pop up, and Starter 1 finishes the Wheel. This will make things a lot quicker than the Single HO plan, but trickier. The next step would be Starter 3 and Starter 4, and so forth. This speeds things up a lot, and also adds a variation to the types of Wheel Effects.

Spellcaster

It is tough for spellcasters to follow a strict HO based solution because, as opposed to fighters, Mages can't do anything without using a spell/ability. In a really solid group things work out nice though. I mentioned that free-for-all period once the wheel is up. If you want to organize it so that say, on the first Wheel that pops up, no one complete it until the mages cast all buffing/debuffing spells. And on the next Wheel pop ups, wait an extra few seconds before completing to give a chance for the mages to cast an extra DD.

So in summary, some people may be saying, �Hey man, this is too much work!� Well in the groups I have been in, using HO�s effectively make encounters a LOT faster, and leave you with a lot more power and hp left over. If this holds true for all encounters in the game I am not sure. Could there be times where just random spamming of abilities/spells drops mobs just as quick as when using HO�s? Possibly, but not from what I have seen. Plus it makes combat exciting!

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