Party-wide buffs and PvE mobs...

I wasn't quite sure how to test this in-game, or search for it on wiki/guru, so I guess a question thread is in order!

So my question is about skills that have a party-wide effect being used by mobs in PvE. Basically, what is considered a mob's 'party,' or 'team' as far as skill effects are concerned? Is it just the single patrol/group in which the skill user is a member of? Or does it include any patrol/group in range/aggro'd?

The skills I am questioning include:

Heal Party/LoD/Divine Healing/etc
Orders
Rit Spirits like Recuperation, Union, etc
Paragon shouts/chants/echoes that are party wide ("Stand Your Ground!", "Never Surrender!", etc)
Other skills with "party members" in the description (like Mystic Healing)


I am also going on the assumption that as long as the different types of mobs don't attack each other, they are considered "allies" for skill effects. But that is just an assumption, so I may be wrong on that, too. So, I guess consider this a question for that, too.

wow, a serious question thats not so easy to prove as most questions on these forums

i never really thought of this before but it does have a major impact. Does aggroing 2 groups and 1 with a monk, mean the 2nd group will get healing and thus be harder than alone?

best idea i can think of to try this is the training isle. Look for a monk boss, then aggro another group (without a monk preffered) and then see if the monk boss does in fact heal them.

Also, heres another question u forgot about...do creatures heal other aggroed patrols with normal healing skills? do they offer help to other groups or just ignore them and heal only their 'party'? u asked about party healing skills which is an interesting question btw, but do they even bother with thing such as healing breeze on other 'allies' if they even consider them so?

well u gave me somethin to research for going to the training isle now and will post my findings (if any)

Yeah, I thought about this last night while my wife and I were vanquishing some of Kourna. We'd occasionally over-aggro, getting an extra group of Kournans, and one time a group of Kournans and a group of Heket. The Phalanx use Cautery Signet, and it got me to thinking. Unfortunately, when the rare time the over-aggro happened, well Cautery Signet is just too tough to test since it only removes conditions, which are often re-applied in a split-second.

I have noticed that there are certain areas where I could be attacking one group, and a different group will be wandering nearby (but not aggroed), and the monk in that group will stop and heal someone in the group we're fighting. So, I'm pretty sure that part is true. Not sure about the Rit spirits, though. I mean, in Slaver's they work for all mobs, but those are a little different because they're not spawned by any particular mob.

Really, I think I am most interested in the "party members" effects. Finding this out would determine if groups/patrols are individually considered 'parties,' or if it is dependent more on race or type.

well i tried the LoD beatle in Marga Coast by aggroing a group of beatles nearby then running to the monks group. Some of the beatles were healed quite well and others got no healing as far as i could see. So i can only assume he didnt heal the beatles from the other group. Whether is even casted LoD is questionable tho. I tried this with my ele and 2 monks and a W only. This means i didnt do insta kills and did enough dmg to force the boss to do some healing

gonna go re-try and this time kill all but 1 beatle in his team and then the same in the other party. Then aggo both to bring them together so theres a boss and 2 beatles (1 from his party and 1 from the other). I'll then set my heros to attack the beatle and watch the boss for LoD and see which beatles it heals. WISH ME LUCK !

EDIT:
tried it with a beatle and cournan guard. The boss never even healed the guard once and he died pretty quick with goren hacking away at him. The little beatle from the bosses party however, got the bosses attention all the time and koss couldn't kill him on his own.
now with the cournan dead i tried aggoing a beatle of the same type as the boss (also a monk) and the monk boss didn't bother healing him either. So doesn't seem to be a species thing as far as i could tell. as for LoD, the boss only seems happy to cast that when he's being attacked, not his party, so couldnt see if LoD was healing other parties. As i said tho, he didnt get any healing (no blue star effect of health gain) so if the boss did cast LoD at some point, the cournan guard didnt get any benefit.

It's just so hard to prove really but as far as i could see, LoD doesn't heal other aggroed groups at the same time. I'll keep testing and post if i do find somethin un-usual tho

EDIT EDIT:
got a cournan and a beetle by the boss again, but this time left my W heros hacking the 2 of them whilst i pounded lots of dmg on the boss forcing a LoD casting and the little beetle got healed but the cournan didnt.



u can clearly see the beetle with the blue star healing effect and more hp than the poor cornan on his hiney with no healing at all.

Yesterday we vanquished "The Eastern Frontier". We found that the Grawl Ulodytes from other parties would move closer and use their skill set to assist the party under attack.

The Grawl area outside "Ruins of Surmia" took just as long as the remainder of the zone.

He's not talking about other patrols moving closer to use a heal, he's asking about party wide effects and who is included.

Never heard anyone ask this question before from the PvE mob point of view, good question.

I would assume the same rules apply to them that work for us in AB. Some skills will work on anyone within the range of the spell while others only work on those imidiately within the defined party.

This will be very hard to test I would think!

Party wide means only your party... or in their case, their one group. LoD wouldn't heal a huge aggroed group because it is party wide. However, if there were a spirit like symbiosis that raises the health of all non-spirit creatures in the vicinity of its effect, then everyone in that area would be effected by it, good or bad.

I have tested this extensively... and I will say that groups sometimes glitch and become a single mob. This has everything to do with spawning and not actually whether you link them together yourself. Very rarely will two groups have very close spawning points and join to form one massive mob. One area in particular where I see this happen is explorable Kurzick areas.

I wonder if there is a list of groups hostile to each other.

I have seen Titans vs. Avicara Tengus and also some NF groups fighting each other.

Char vs Undead... CoF (undead pwn on average)
Smites vs Coldfires... Underworld (Coldfires pwn on average and steal my ecto... bastards)

I have thought of this question before. Never bothered to ask it or do research on it though. It is a very good point (especially with the plethoria of new monk skills post-prophecies like extinguish and LoD, as well as the entire paragon profession).