Originally Posted by
tobindax
Save yourself from a mountain of pain and go by DBM. I don't know where to begin proving how much I have researched this subject, I have literally gone through every single option that exists, and we used some of them before we ended up to it. To make the story short, DBM was horrible before a few versions because it only gave marks, even if it gave them according to duration, however, recently, after a request I made to the DBM author, he added everything you need because it makes groups automatically and dynamically.
- - - Updated - - -
And how would you deal with a group that has 4 out of 5 getting a mark (the 1 guy left can't soak anything on his own)? The mechanic does not even get 2 ranged + 2 melee or anything predefined like that, it just goes randomly with the exception of tanks (unless they are the only ones left with fewer than 4 others alive) and I have a small suspicion that healers have a lower priority but we can't rely on anything like that.
It's actually a very interesting subject if you pose the question "how am I going to deal with it if I have no addons for it"? If you do the first step of addons of getting the marks on people's heads very obviously shown - which might be done by the graphics of the encounter anyway so it's not a very big deal - you still have to probably use the durations of them. That would be plain hard core to do dynamically by verbal communication so some sort of UI aid is too good. Now, the soaking of others on those people, would probably need good players going "they need help there".
It's generally one of the most hard core and interesting mechanics that exist in this game, if addons didn't cheese it, so, I don't know, it either needs the game to avoid them, or have a nicer UI for them. I think that would be the best option. They already do stuff like vehicle buttons and stuff. It would be cool to have things like a UI that sends people to spots by duration, e.g. their heads get on top of them a very bright color that denotes duration without requiring addons to set up marks (e.g. green explodes last, red explodes first, easy to remember) and the rest is to help soak.