Dumb Monk FD Question

[SpartanEQ]

How do I know if feign death succeeds? Right now, I just lay there and wait to see if the mob hits me. Sometimes I get a "falls to the ground" message, sometimes I don't. I just failed 4 times in a row and got the "falls to the ground" message on one of them.

It would be nice if there was a way for me to know if it failed because just lying there you get pummeled; it's like sitting. I'd rather pop back up and wait for the refresh. Also, if I just want to feign and go AFK, I'd like to know if it actually worked before I walk away.

[Harmonicdeth]

Falls to the ground means it failed, if you didn't get the message it worked.

[SpartanEQ]

Falls to the ground means it failed, if you didn't get the message it worked.

That's what I thought, but I just had four in a row fail and only got the message once. Really, I wish it wasn't true because I had a nice corpse run afterward.

[Barkingturtle]

Happens all the time on my necro, too, so it's not just your version of FD that is a bad communicator.

[MrSquirrelbane]

Sounds to me like your problem is not turning off attack before you FD.

Make a macro with the following:

/attack off
/doability x (where x is ability number of feign in your abilities window)
/consider

You MUST turn off attack before using FD else you swing at a mob while falling and FD will fail.

With this macro if you do not get the "soandso has fallen to the ground." message then your FD has succeeded. However if a mob casts a spell on you, once you are down, they will realize you're faking it and come kick your ass.

To solve this pull a group of mobs then duck around a corner. Watch your combat messages for "soandso begins to cast a spell." If they have cast a non-line of sight AOE spell you will get hit by it. As soon as you're damaged FD before they can run to you and start casting again. If they haven't cast an AOE you will see the message "soandso has been interrupted!" at this point you can FD.

Hope that helps and wasn't confusing! (I'm good at being confusing...)

[liveitup1216]

That's what I thought, but I just had four in a row fail and only got the message once. Really, I wish it wasn't true because I had a nice corpse run afterward.

what? FD works if you see no message, it doesnt always mean you can get up and walk away immediately, sometimes you have to either wait or get up and FD again once or twice to clear your hate.

also, if you FD WHILE a mob is casting, if the spell hits you (or even if its resisted) they and their friends will continue to pound on you. caster mobs require some timing, you need to hit FD the very instant AFTER their cast goes off.

and of course, if you see "Blahblah has fallen to the ground", you've failed your fd and mobs will continue to beat on you.

[SpartanEQ]

Sounds to me like your problem is not turning off attack before you FD.

Make a macro with the following:

/attack off
/doability x (where x is ability number of feign in your abilities window)
/consider

You MUST turn off attack before using FD else you swing at a mob while falling and FD will fail.

With this macro if you do not get the "soandso has fallen to the ground." message then your FD has succeeded. However if a mob casts a spell on you once you are down you they will realize you're faking it and come kick your ass.

To solve this pull a group of mobs then duck around a corner. Watch your combat messages for "soandso begins to cast a spell." If they have cast a non-line of sight AOE spell you will get hit by it. As soon as you're damaged FD before they can run to you and start casting again. If they haven't cast an AOE you will see the message "soandso has been interrupted!" at this point you can FD.

Hope that helps and wasn't confusing! (I'm good at being confusing...)

This must be the reason. It makes sense and I suspected it was just something I was missing. I just tested it again without turning off attack first...I didn't get the "falls to the ground" message and the mob continued to beat on me while I was on the ground.

I'll make the macro and use that instead. Thanks for the input everyone.

[Barkingturtle]

That is sound advice, but it happens when attack is off, too. FD just fails without a message.

As a necro, I'll split two mobs by mezzing one, waiting for his buddy to head toward me and sending my pet on him. Then I'll FD so the mezzed one stays put. That's when I notice my message-less fails the most.

[SpartanEQ]

I just tested using the macro and it works. Maybe the necro spell FD works differently.

[Messianic]

I used the "attack off" macro a little, but I preferred doing it manually and found better success by being more hands-on and not relying on feigning while face-to-face with the mob.

From playing a Monk into 60+epic+Kunark high end content, I find it's most effective not to feign in their face. If it's possible at all, FD away from the mob or jump away from them while feigning to get a little bit of distance. Bursts of lag can cause it to fail sometimes, and that space gives you a buffer against that, although that's even more rare than "falling to the ground" failures beyond 40ish. Be a pathing genius, and know exactly where you can get extra space from the mob before feigning. Pathing also affects how you can split mobs.

If possible, it's also really effective to feign behind where a mob spawns so they return to spawn point more quickly, clear you on their hate list completely, and turn around to their default facing position. You can then turn on sneak and stand up and bandage 2 feet behind them or whatever if they're a static mob, etc...this was very effective in lguk.

In short, try to combine feign with another force multiplier to evade your enemy. It will usually work straight-up (as long as you turn off autoattack), but relying on it in the wrong way in the wrong situations can work out very badly.

One of my favorite ways of using it was to find ledges to jump off so I could feign mid-air and get a lot of distance from the mob. That way, if it failed, it was a lot easier to buy time to try a second FD. IIRC, fall damage does not un-do your FD (at least I distinctly remember it not doing that when I FD-jumped from really high areas).

This is kind of an aside since I don't know your playstyle (you might have played a monk further than I did, and i'm sure there are better monks than I was on this server), and I never did high-end content beyond Velious, and very little of Velious at that. But I did a lot of pulling and was very successful at it during the Kunark era.

[SpartanEQ]

Thanks for the advice. I'm new to playing a monk, so I have no experience here.

I just mended while I was FD and it didn't seem to interrupt anything. What else can you do while FD that won't break it?

[Destruction]

Just because you have a successful FD does not mean you have cleared all your hate. Multiple successful FDs, dying, or zoning will do this. However if you have a huge train of mobs, the probability of losing all aggro with a few FDs is slim (unless they are static mobs and go back to their spawn point, which from what I remember would clear hate if you were still FD).

I believe that is why they put in the 2 min rule on live where if you are FD for 2+ min, it clears all hate and sends you a message telling you so. Don't expect that here though :)

You can test this with one mob and multiple FDs. Just get aggro, then FD... if it attacks after you get up, FD again.. repeat. Eventually it will "forget" you.

[Messianic]

Thanks for the advice. I'm new to playing a monk, so I have no experience here.

I just mended while I was FD and it didn't seem to interrupt anything. What else can you do while FD that won't break it?

Mend is pretty much all you can do which is useful (that and /ooc, etc). Sense heading probably doesn't break it (although i do not have a specific recollection).

Destruction has a very good point which I forgot to mention. Losing hate entirely can be really difficult, especially with certain mobs. The only surefire way I know where 100% of times the mob will clear hate is when it returns to its spawn point, does an about face to whichever way it faces by default, and does nothing else.If it's a patrolling mob, it can be tricky. Even 2-5 minute waits while feigned didn't clear all aggro for me all the time. It normally did for any vanilla-classic dungeon, but the Kunark dungeons seemed far more complex in terms of pathing/etc. I always found borked pathing (see City of Mist Z-vector problems) and weird game mechanics issues that were never addressed. I almost always found a way to use them to my advantage though ;)

Sometimes I just FD frog-hopped to a safe place and /quit while FD when nothing else worked (FD for 5 minutes+, sometimes more in large dungeons like Seb or something, but hate was still retained and a massive train would come at me when I got back up). You stay FD, but you go LD (linkdead) and get kicked out after a length of time. I would then log back in and go back to whatever I was doing.

Watch out though, I heard that was a bannable offense on live - never happened to me, but I am circumspect to follow admin rules here. Unless I see them say that is okay, I won't do it here since it is kind of abusing the /quit command to clear your hate list.

[Messianic]

I believe that if you sucessfully FD when I mob is swinging at you and then subsequently hits you it will recognise that you are in fact, alive.

One of the confusing aspects of this, however, is that a successful FD should cause the mob to stop swinging. So how could they swing and hit you and break a successful FD if the FD was successful? FD either stops them from attacking you or it doesn't.

Logically, the only reason it should fail is if the mob had an in-progress swing - but there's really no such thing as an in-progress swing unless there's lag - so ultimately the issue is lag. I'm not even certain that's the issue since I never saw SOE take the issue on directly - it's just what lots of experience (and FD-related deaths) led me to believe. That's why I built an entire framework on how to help FD work (see my first post in this thread).

[SpartanEQ]

I believe that if you sucessfully FD when I mob is swinging at you and then subsequently hits you it will recognise that you are in fact, alive.

Is that because you say "Owie!"?

I didn't know any of this stuff. I'm glad I asked. I searched but didn't find much on the subject. Is there a level where you can say that FD is finally relatively reliable? Also, prior to this, will groups ask you to pull thinking that FD will just work and you'll be able to split? I'd hate to have that responsibility now with about a 40% success ratio.

[Messianic]

Is there a level where you can say that FD is finally relatively reliable?

It's more reliable with every extra rank in FD in terms of not getting the "soanso has fallen to the ground" message.

However, it's continuously less "reliable" at higher levels in the sense that higher-level mobs retain hate longer and rarely entirely forget you based on a single FD, so it actually is "less reliable" at higher levels in that regard.

Also, prior to this, will groups ask you to pull thinking that FD will just work and you'll be able to split?

Sometimes. Don't worry about that, if you learn your class well enough, you'll be able to manage. Plus, often there's often a secondary puller who helps pluck single/doubles instead of whole rooms, etc when necessary. I don't know if that's the case on this server, but it was very often the experience in Kunark/Velious.

Sometimes it might mean you lay on the ground while the group takes out a mob or two to make sure you don't bring more, but you'll manage.

40% success ratio.

It's higher than that at higher levels - my "fall to the ground" ratio was probably in the range of 2-5 percent (guessing). Failure rate for simply not using FD correctly or it "failing without failing" is based entirely on your experience and usage (i.e. feigning while a caster is casting). I rarely failed to use it correctly once I started to figure out how to get it to work right (probably 1 percent if only a little more than that). Another helpful skill is how to run around a corner when a caster is casting, eat the spell, and immediately feign so he can't run around the corner and start casting again, and thus keep you in a state where you can't feign.

[Loke]

I have only experienced a failed FD without a message a couple of times, and all of those times were in specific zones and specific places in those zones that I assumed were just bugged (i.e. there are a few places in Sol A that I could just never get FD to work - ever).

Other than that 100% of the time I think I've either succeeded or gotten a message. My guess would be you're doing something wrong.