Help with heroic opportunities

[Stabbath]

I've been playing a little over a month and still don't understand HOs. I haven't grouped for long yet, so, for now, I am just trying to figure them out for solo play. So don't worry about speaking in terms of groups. Sometimes the HO work for me, sometimes they don't. From what I understand, or perhaps misunderstand, is that after hitting the HO icon, a certain random opportunity exist for us if we follow a chain of moves/abilities that are flashing. However, this only works on occasion for me. 90 percent of the time, if I hit a flashing icon within the time bracket the flashing of icons end and the HO prompt goes away with NO buff. I know there is something to do with another icon on the  abilities. Me being a Swash, I have a mask icon on some abilities, sword, coin, and cloak. But, sometimes when the prompt shows a pic of a coin, nothing but my sword icon abilities are flashing! This just adds to my confusion. Could someone break things down for me step by step? I have read and read about HOs, but I am either not getting it, or my toon is bugged. Thanks.

[Rokaab]

<p>Ok, soloing there will be three different HO's you can get, one will be rarer than the other two, dont know what the swashie ones are.</p><p>They will not all grant buffs, for instance I'm a bard, two of mine (including the rare one) give buffs, the other does damage to the enemy.</p><p>Also note, if one of your bits of the HO is resisted, it does not count for the advancement of the HO. If the middle of the HO thing goes red youve run out of time to complete it so will get no advantages, so start again.</p><p>Coins for scouts: ok, if youre on the first bit of the HO, ie. just after youve pressed the start HO button, something with a coin icon can flip it to a different HO (note, it picks one of the three at random, can pick the same one it already was). This is generally called 'Flipping the HO', ie. if you dont want that buff you got 20 seconds ago, you can attempt to flip it to a different HO - you can only flip once. This 'flip' ability is only available to scouts.</p><p>Hope that didnt confuse you more.</p>

[Stabbath]

That helped Rakk, thanks.

[Isisalthea]

<p>I was confused when I first started learning about HO's also.  so what I did was find some really low level mobs to practice on.  You can take it a little slow and actually watch what is going on with the HO wheel. </p><p> Also you can move the wheel to a better spot to view if you want.  If you hit f10 it will show you the outlines of all the visable ui windows and is easier to make a change on them.  The HO goes so quickly you might have to have this display for more then one fight to move it.  After you make you adjustments you hit f10, it blanks everything out then hit f10 again and you are back to normal.   This is also good for taking screen shots if you want an uncluttered picture.</p>

[Kaldrin]

I've honestly only tinkered with them. I don't see a great benefit to disrupting my attack/spell cycle to just get something that might or might not work. Most of my foes don't last long enough to get it all going anyway...

[SisterTheresa]

<cite>KaldrinXanthin wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've honestly only tinkered with them. I don't see a great benefit to disrupting my attack/spell cycle to just get something that might or might not work. Most of my foes don't last long enough to get it all going anyway... </blockquote> You'll be quite amazed at how strong group HOs can be.  My guess is you are a Warlock (by your icon).  For a Templar like me, it can give a bit of extra damage or add to my wisdom.  All depends on the person and the class.  Use it if you need it.

[SageGaspar]

You can do solo CAs without disrupting anything. Scout CAs like the OP was talking about go HO starter, debuff/detaunt, sword attack. You either got a nice buff to your melee skills, extra damage to the enemy, and rarely a very nice haste buff. Mage spells either go nuke-nuke, nuke-AE, or nuke-DoT/effect for extra damage, extra damage, and a power proc. Tank goes melee-taunt, melee-taunt, or melee-buff for damage, AE damage, and a mit buff respectively. I dunno about priests but typically it's just free damage and buffs for doing what you'd be doing anyway. There might be a handful of classes that will miss them a lot but mostly if you just hit them when they're up they'll go off on their own without your attention. Tanks don't need to taunt while soloing (though some have debuffs attached to them), but it usually doesn't hurt to throw it in. Especially at early levels you'll be sitting there with no attacks to do even if you do use HOs constantly.