myxomatosii
11-11-2013, 12:26 PM
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=127216
Video with commentary added Feb 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvcJQ34pCNc
I'll be referencing the above thread now and then, which was sort of the launching point for this as well as the constant queries I get as to how I'm leveling so fast on my characters.
On top of that, I learned a few things from respondees to the enchanter thread I wouldn't have learned otherwise, so maybe the same will happen here.
Here goes!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SETUP
Target Audience
This thread will be focusing on naked, low-level druids, with low funds
Sometimes understanding the use of a single spell can completely change the way you play a class, perhaps in this thread you'll get a chance to learn something about druids you never knew.
One obvious benefit to kiting as a druid is that just as charm kiting becomes an option, so does SoW which means jboots aren't a concern and survivability is really high. Imo, the only time you'll die charming on a druid is when you were taking unnecessary risks as running is always an option in outdoor zones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SETUP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPELLS and SKILLS
Spells
My personal mem order of spells goes something like this.
1 - Snare/Ensnare
2 - Root
3 - Animal Fear (Panic/Terrorize)
4 - Charm Animal
5 - Stinging Swarm
6 - SoW
7 - Nuke or a higher version of Stinging Swarm
8 - OPEN (Pet haste optional)
Obviously 5, 6, 7, and 8 are just personal preference. 1-4 are the essentials as well as one damage spell and invis/hide.
Pet Macros
Why?
-- Personal preference and greater control, if you like just use the pet window, at the minimum I create 4 buttons
pATK
/pet attack
pFOL
/pet follow me
pSTAY
/pet sit down
/pet guard here
pSTOP
/pet back off
Strafing [Note: taken from enchanter charm guide, not required with SoW but will enhance SoW for emergencies]
Why?
-- Appears to increase run speed by exploiting hit boxes, significant boost that will cause you to outrun the majority of (all?) non-sowed mobs.
How?
--Hold Right-Click and walk forward while holding either the left or right turn key, this will cause you to travel in an angular fashion and will save you any of those times you end up in the middle of no where without SoW and a passing yellow/red con agros you out of no where. It is also useful in charming.
--An alternative is to bind the sidestep keys and hold that key in combination with forward, removing the need to hold Right-Click.
Getting Full Exp
Now, this server has a built in component to pets which essentially says if they do over half the damage then you get less exp. And its much less, rumored to be -75%? I'm not too concerned with the details but I know that with minor modifications to your strategy you can toss that aside and get full exp anyway, so that is what we will be focusing on!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPELLS and SKILLS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------STARTING THE FIGHT
Starting the Fight
Pre-Fight: Choosing a pet
Reasons to choose a low pet, pet focus
One place that druid differs from enchanter is their ability to use fear quite casually in combination with snare. If anything goes wrong, it goes wrong quite slowly giving the druid plenty of time to cast and solve the problem at hand. Therefore since we'll want a pet that we can keep charmed for a long time, it is often smarter to charm a low blue, light blue, or in some situations even a green, haste it up, then go find an enemy.
Druids pet haste is amazing.. just by casting this spell on your newly acquired low pet you are increasing its attack speed and stats drastically. This is anecdotal as I'm writing this quickly but I've seen a green con gnaw through a red con at dramatic speeds. Upgrade that green to a blue or a high blue and its as if you have an even/yellow con charmed. BEWARE when charm breaks, as your new super-best-friend is your new super-bitey-friend, that haste doesn't drop with charm! Snare is your best friend here!
Yet more reasons, enemy focus
An oddity that a druid can make great gain of, is how low of a resist check snare and animal fear have. I can't tell you how many times I've successfully feared or snared a red con out of necessity and had it land on the first try. While this is not typical (I'd expect 2-4 casts on a red for snare and 1-2 for fear from personal experience) it is the case often enough that maintaining snare+fear on a even, yellow, low-red con mob is easy enough that your held charmed blue/low-blue will dominate it over the duration of the fight while taking ZERO damage as the enemy is busy fleeing.
Ok I've got it, let's fight for full exp!
1. Find an outdoor area or any dungeon that allows you to create distance between yourself and mobs via pathing or strafing.
2. Choose a pet.
3. Stand at max casting range and snare your pet.
4. JUST before snare finishes casting, exploit server latency and begin to strafe the opposite direction, the spell will still land.
5a. You should be able to quite casually cast Charm as the mob will be approaching slowly
5b. To avoid interrupts when casting after running, its a good idea to do a 90° turn or hold right click and twitch the camera back and forth just before casting, experiment is key just like with step 5a.
6. Your pet is charmed, depending on the zone bring it with you or tell it to stay and go find an enemy.
7. Pull with snare at max range, strafe to camp, attack with pet.
--NOTE [only applies if you don't plan to fear]: You may need to run a few circles around your fight if your pet is still snared, if you allow them to walk straight the enemy will soon OOR your pet's melee. Run a few circles til your pet taunts the enemy and you can sit and med
8. I recommend simply letting the pet beat on the enemy until it gains agro as snare is much safer than root (fixed duration, lasts longer, can't be broken by nukes)
9. Maintain snare throughout the fight, letting it wear off a few times to figure out how often you need to cast it is fine. Don't waste mana, you're naked!
10. Med as much as possible, sitting at max range
11. At this point one of three things will happen
A: The pet will win
B: The pet will lose
C: Something goes wrong
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------STARTING THE FIGHT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------FINISHING THE FIGHT
Finishing/Continuing the Fight
A: The pet will win (this is ideal if pet vs enemy is a low pet vs a high mob and you're reusing the buffed pet after)
12. Likely you will be fighting an animal which will flee, call your pet off but tell it to stay far from you. hide/invis and fear your own pet, now finish the enemy, get full exp and med. when your pet returns, recharm it. the fearing isn't too necessary as you could just recharm, but fearing often gives the druid time to med and recover mana without worry as fear rarely breaks early, unlike charm
13. Carry on with your pet into a new fight!
B: The pet will lose (this is ideal if pet vs enemy is a close fight)
12. If fighting an animal enemy, fear it and let the now <20% pet beat on it while it runs. when the enemy reaches an equally low amount, you're going to want to break charm, now you get credit for two kills! and after the fact there is nothing more to deal with, med up and repeat!
C: Something goes wrong
12a. I treat animal fear like mez, (with snare if I've been having problems with social agro on fear). Fear and forget, sometimes things go wrong but in the areas I hunt its typically fine to follow this practice. With the low mana cost of fear and the duration (especially at 19), I've found that I can gain a significant portion of mana back with each fear duration which makes mob juggling quite handy
12b. Mostly its improvisation here. You know your class, you know your spells. If things go wrong you can and should run, but if you have 10-20% mana and over half hp, chances are you can still turn the tide. With experience it becomes simple to determine what is a waste of time and what is worth pursuing. Sometimes you just read the tea-leaves and see that even though you're 90% mana and full hp this charm isn't worth pursuing and it'd be better to just reset asap.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------FINISHING THE FIGHT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------But where do I fight?
14-22 I'd recommend East Karana
This map shows you where I prefer to hunt. The red circle near GoKX is the best place to fear kite without any social agro. The other red circles are locations of guards you can flee to if things go badly.
http://i.imgur.com/kjMgv3E.png
22-32 I'd go with Lake of Ill Omen [Note: Tigeresses, tigers, AND grimalkins all con KOS but none KOS or assist, its excellent]
This map shows you my preference here. The red circle being my stomping ground with tigeresses, tigers, and grimalkins. The blue circle being a valley off to the side where no skeletons, iksars, or goblins patrol. (If you fight around the windmill you'll get a lot of skeleton surprises..) And the green circles are other places I've noticed good pets roaming but I never really hunted there.
http://i.imgur.com/qYnkf5k.png
After 32 I'd go to OT, you can actually leave and go to OT at 30 but you'll be dodging yellow and red cons left and right. Same story at 32 but a bit less sever and you'll have an easier time finding pets. By level 34 (if you're a twink) you can look into quadding but many druids prefer to continue charming as its more active, engaging, faster, and takes less mana/downtime. If you're not a twink I'd look into doing some ports for cash and picking up 6 wis rings, 3 wis earrings, 7 wis masks, a few other cheapie +1/2 wis items and trying it around level 36/38 if quadding is your thing. Else, charm on in OT until the upper 40s!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------But where do I fight?
I made so many changes to the other guide that I'm submitting this one a little rougher so I can edit as any comments come in and refine it from there.
--end
Video with commentary added Feb 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvcJQ34pCNc
I'll be referencing the above thread now and then, which was sort of the launching point for this as well as the constant queries I get as to how I'm leveling so fast on my characters.
On top of that, I learned a few things from respondees to the enchanter thread I wouldn't have learned otherwise, so maybe the same will happen here.
Here goes!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SETUP
Target Audience
This thread will be focusing on naked, low-level druids, with low funds
Sometimes understanding the use of a single spell can completely change the way you play a class, perhaps in this thread you'll get a chance to learn something about druids you never knew.
One obvious benefit to kiting as a druid is that just as charm kiting becomes an option, so does SoW which means jboots aren't a concern and survivability is really high. Imo, the only time you'll die charming on a druid is when you were taking unnecessary risks as running is always an option in outdoor zones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SETUP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPELLS and SKILLS
Spells
My personal mem order of spells goes something like this.
1 - Snare/Ensnare
2 - Root
3 - Animal Fear (Panic/Terrorize)
4 - Charm Animal
5 - Stinging Swarm
6 - SoW
7 - Nuke or a higher version of Stinging Swarm
8 - OPEN (Pet haste optional)
Obviously 5, 6, 7, and 8 are just personal preference. 1-4 are the essentials as well as one damage spell and invis/hide.
Pet Macros
Why?
-- Personal preference and greater control, if you like just use the pet window, at the minimum I create 4 buttons
pATK
/pet attack
pFOL
/pet follow me
pSTAY
/pet sit down
/pet guard here
pSTOP
/pet back off
Strafing [Note: taken from enchanter charm guide, not required with SoW but will enhance SoW for emergencies]
Why?
-- Appears to increase run speed by exploiting hit boxes, significant boost that will cause you to outrun the majority of (all?) non-sowed mobs.
How?
--Hold Right-Click and walk forward while holding either the left or right turn key, this will cause you to travel in an angular fashion and will save you any of those times you end up in the middle of no where without SoW and a passing yellow/red con agros you out of no where. It is also useful in charming.
--An alternative is to bind the sidestep keys and hold that key in combination with forward, removing the need to hold Right-Click.
Getting Full Exp
Now, this server has a built in component to pets which essentially says if they do over half the damage then you get less exp. And its much less, rumored to be -75%? I'm not too concerned with the details but I know that with minor modifications to your strategy you can toss that aside and get full exp anyway, so that is what we will be focusing on!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPELLS and SKILLS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------STARTING THE FIGHT
Starting the Fight
Pre-Fight: Choosing a pet
Reasons to choose a low pet, pet focus
One place that druid differs from enchanter is their ability to use fear quite casually in combination with snare. If anything goes wrong, it goes wrong quite slowly giving the druid plenty of time to cast and solve the problem at hand. Therefore since we'll want a pet that we can keep charmed for a long time, it is often smarter to charm a low blue, light blue, or in some situations even a green, haste it up, then go find an enemy.
Druids pet haste is amazing.. just by casting this spell on your newly acquired low pet you are increasing its attack speed and stats drastically. This is anecdotal as I'm writing this quickly but I've seen a green con gnaw through a red con at dramatic speeds. Upgrade that green to a blue or a high blue and its as if you have an even/yellow con charmed. BEWARE when charm breaks, as your new super-best-friend is your new super-bitey-friend, that haste doesn't drop with charm! Snare is your best friend here!
Yet more reasons, enemy focus
An oddity that a druid can make great gain of, is how low of a resist check snare and animal fear have. I can't tell you how many times I've successfully feared or snared a red con out of necessity and had it land on the first try. While this is not typical (I'd expect 2-4 casts on a red for snare and 1-2 for fear from personal experience) it is the case often enough that maintaining snare+fear on a even, yellow, low-red con mob is easy enough that your held charmed blue/low-blue will dominate it over the duration of the fight while taking ZERO damage as the enemy is busy fleeing.
Ok I've got it, let's fight for full exp!
1. Find an outdoor area or any dungeon that allows you to create distance between yourself and mobs via pathing or strafing.
2. Choose a pet.
3. Stand at max casting range and snare your pet.
4. JUST before snare finishes casting, exploit server latency and begin to strafe the opposite direction, the spell will still land.
5a. You should be able to quite casually cast Charm as the mob will be approaching slowly
5b. To avoid interrupts when casting after running, its a good idea to do a 90° turn or hold right click and twitch the camera back and forth just before casting, experiment is key just like with step 5a.
6. Your pet is charmed, depending on the zone bring it with you or tell it to stay and go find an enemy.
7. Pull with snare at max range, strafe to camp, attack with pet.
--NOTE [only applies if you don't plan to fear]: You may need to run a few circles around your fight if your pet is still snared, if you allow them to walk straight the enemy will soon OOR your pet's melee. Run a few circles til your pet taunts the enemy and you can sit and med
8. I recommend simply letting the pet beat on the enemy until it gains agro as snare is much safer than root (fixed duration, lasts longer, can't be broken by nukes)
9. Maintain snare throughout the fight, letting it wear off a few times to figure out how often you need to cast it is fine. Don't waste mana, you're naked!
10. Med as much as possible, sitting at max range
11. At this point one of three things will happen
A: The pet will win
B: The pet will lose
C: Something goes wrong
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------STARTING THE FIGHT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------FINISHING THE FIGHT
Finishing/Continuing the Fight
A: The pet will win (this is ideal if pet vs enemy is a low pet vs a high mob and you're reusing the buffed pet after)
12. Likely you will be fighting an animal which will flee, call your pet off but tell it to stay far from you. hide/invis and fear your own pet, now finish the enemy, get full exp and med. when your pet returns, recharm it. the fearing isn't too necessary as you could just recharm, but fearing often gives the druid time to med and recover mana without worry as fear rarely breaks early, unlike charm
13. Carry on with your pet into a new fight!
B: The pet will lose (this is ideal if pet vs enemy is a close fight)
12. If fighting an animal enemy, fear it and let the now <20% pet beat on it while it runs. when the enemy reaches an equally low amount, you're going to want to break charm, now you get credit for two kills! and after the fact there is nothing more to deal with, med up and repeat!
C: Something goes wrong
12a. I treat animal fear like mez, (with snare if I've been having problems with social agro on fear). Fear and forget, sometimes things go wrong but in the areas I hunt its typically fine to follow this practice. With the low mana cost of fear and the duration (especially at 19), I've found that I can gain a significant portion of mana back with each fear duration which makes mob juggling quite handy
12b. Mostly its improvisation here. You know your class, you know your spells. If things go wrong you can and should run, but if you have 10-20% mana and over half hp, chances are you can still turn the tide. With experience it becomes simple to determine what is a waste of time and what is worth pursuing. Sometimes you just read the tea-leaves and see that even though you're 90% mana and full hp this charm isn't worth pursuing and it'd be better to just reset asap.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------FINISHING THE FIGHT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------But where do I fight?
14-22 I'd recommend East Karana
This map shows you where I prefer to hunt. The red circle near GoKX is the best place to fear kite without any social agro. The other red circles are locations of guards you can flee to if things go badly.
http://i.imgur.com/kjMgv3E.png
22-32 I'd go with Lake of Ill Omen [Note: Tigeresses, tigers, AND grimalkins all con KOS but none KOS or assist, its excellent]
This map shows you my preference here. The red circle being my stomping ground with tigeresses, tigers, and grimalkins. The blue circle being a valley off to the side where no skeletons, iksars, or goblins patrol. (If you fight around the windmill you'll get a lot of skeleton surprises..) And the green circles are other places I've noticed good pets roaming but I never really hunted there.
http://i.imgur.com/qYnkf5k.png
After 32 I'd go to OT, you can actually leave and go to OT at 30 but you'll be dodging yellow and red cons left and right. Same story at 32 but a bit less sever and you'll have an easier time finding pets. By level 34 (if you're a twink) you can look into quadding but many druids prefer to continue charming as its more active, engaging, faster, and takes less mana/downtime. If you're not a twink I'd look into doing some ports for cash and picking up 6 wis rings, 3 wis earrings, 7 wis masks, a few other cheapie +1/2 wis items and trying it around level 36/38 if quadding is your thing. Else, charm on in OT until the upper 40s!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------But where do I fight?
I made so many changes to the other guide that I'm submitting this one a little rougher so I can edit as any comments come in and refine it from there.
--end