Bard Swarm Kiting

[Daldaen]

Been reported many times, but I think with the changes recently made to sit aggro, this change should be doable.

Basically, for those unaware, this is what swarm kiting was:

You got a train of let's say 20~ mobs. You charm 1, and have it attack a mob in your train. This will lead to the mob you attacked, to fight your pet. And the other 18 mobs assisting the mob you sent your pet onto, and they will all attack your pet. You then break your pet with invis and repeat until most of the train is dead. Chant kiting the old pets you broke at low HP.

The bolded part doesn't function properly on this server. Mobs should ***IF YOU DO NOTHING BUT BODY/PROXIMITY AGGRO*** assist and all stack up on your pet.

However once you put in enough aggro the mobs you get aggro on will not assist on your pet. For example, if you have 20 mobs again, and I charm mob #1, and it fights the other 19, then I break charm. If I charm mob #2, and send it on mob #3. Mobs #3-20 will attack my pet (mob #2). But mob #1, the first mob I charmed and then broke, will ignore my new pet and keep chasing me because a single charm or DoT is sufficient to keep aggro on me. Atleast until my new pet is lower than 20% and then gets low HP aggro.

This can lead to several of your mobs having enough aggro from charms and DoTs to ignore assisting on new charmed pets you get and will continue chasing you.

Mob faction or body type is irrelevant for this type of killing, so long as they are all KoS, they will assist onto any charmed pet you have.

In before links to posts about this reported already. I know they exist I just felt making a new one specifically for this in light of the aggro changes implemented for sit aggro, which is similar I think.

[Exalt]

A little old but I am glad I found this and somewhat fresh. This is exactly what I was going to post; I could not state it more clearly myself.

The bizarre thing is if you attempt to do this; their behavior is very eradic. Currently when you a 'swarm' of mobs with a pet, only the one being attacked will engage. However, if you run the mobs from the swarm between the two in conflict, anything can happened. By this I mean, there's a good chance only ONE mob from your swarm will assist the mob engaged with my charm pet. Other times, a significant portion of the swarm with assist. Rarely, the ENTIRE swarm will engage your pet; this is how is should be.
I couldn't find any consistency in what made the swarms behave this way whether it was pathing, distance, placement, etc. More variables than I know, I'm sure.

[zanderklocke]

Burning Wood is a good example to explain how it's currently working. Let's say I pull a bunch of bees including different named bees (ash hornets, cinder hornets, scornae, etc). If I send a charmed mob to attack an ash hornet, only the ash hornet will initially attack it. If I run the train through the pet, the other ash hornets will assist in attacking the pet. However, once the pet becomes low health, all of bees will assist. However, if I had gorillas and skeletons in that train, they wouldn't assist in killing the pet when it's low hp.

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

[Daldaen]

Burning Wood is a good example to explain how it's currently working. Let's say I pull a bunch of bees including different named bees (ash hornets, cinder hornets, scornae, etc). If I send a charmed mob to attack an ash hornet, only the ash hornet will initially attack it. If I run the train through the pet, the other ash hornets will assist in attacking the pet. However, once the pet becomes low health, all of bees will assist. However, if I had gorillas and skeletons in that train, they wouldn't assist in killing the pet when it's low hp.

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

What should happen is similar to what's described above with some differences.

It should not take another pass through the mob. The train should immediately turn to attack your charmed pet once you have him Attack another mob. The second your pet attacks a mob in the train the rest of the train should turn and Attack it. Think of it as though the pet has sit Aggro at that instant. You shouldn't need another pass.

Also yea mob faction is irrelevant. They should all attack.

[derpcake]

From what I have heard, this isn't correct, but it sounds like aggro for pets in game would have to be reworked to fix this. This would definitely affect other pet classes as well.

Pet initial agro is too low on blue / red. Was attacking pets ever given a lower priority on these servers or so? That would explain.

Undead (skeletons like in your example) should KoS pets with a higher initial agro then on P99, so it doesn't take "one pass" to get them on your pet. Even if singing regen and selo while mobs are agro, all it takes on live is to charm 1 mob and have it attack its friends near it, to get em all on pet.

A fix should also affect other classes since they have the same issue.

[Buellen]

I believe this all has to do with pet agro problem and the need to NOT have pet tanking raid targets.

The pet agro problem has been stated in other threads, but if it is corrected then pets would out agro tanks and would be used to tank in raids.

[derpcake]

Considering Velious hasn't launched, such a fix seems inappropriate.

When they fixed the frozen jezus charm in Kael they didn't break swarming either, am sure there is an elegant fix.

[Nirgon]

Charmed vs summoned change maybe? Shrug

[Daldaen]

Bump.

When you body aggro mobs (just by getting near them and doing nothing else to generate aggro), and then charm a mob and send it on your pack, the amount of aggro your charmed pet generates by meleeing another mob in the pack should outweigh the amount of aggro you have from proximity/body aggroing your entire train.

Due to this, your entire train should assist whatever you sent your pet to attack and they should all pile up on your pet.

[Slowride]

Bump, I did this on classic

[Tann]

I swarmed during Kunark/Velious back on the nameless. It worked how OP described it should with 1 exception (for me at least).

Once I had charmed the 2nd pet and sent it into the swarm I had to run very far away for all the mobs to turn on pet, I have no idea why but distance had something to do with how the aggro mechanics worked. By far away I mean to the point where I could no longer see any of the mobs, and I know it worked because my pets hp bar would nose dive.

distance somehow plays a roll in aggro, maybe at some point the mobs switch who's 1st on their hate list?


side note about distance/aggro and completely anecdotal, an expac later up on luclin i was swarming these geode type mobs (forgot the zone name) and this wizard was chilling nearby. At one point the swarm must've gotten too close to him because instead of attacking my pet when I was out of range they turned on him and he just about died. No initial threat, just mobs that were KoS to everyone.

[Scrubosaur]

I loved swarm kiting as a bard in classic. I was surprised that it did not work on p99. There were a lot more swarm kiters than ae kiters back in classic due to connection speed and player skill. AE kiting didn't get a lot of attention until PoP due to the extended range AA skills and people pulling all of Halls of Honor. As long as you didn't do ANYTHING other than body aggro / assist aggro then everything would aggro your pet (sometimes you would have to do a circle back to your pet if you had a train of adds that didn't aggro your pet due to mob speed).

[Slowride]

^ bump both op seem classic to me.

[Scrubosaur]

I swarmed during Kunark/Velious back on the nameless. It worked how OP described it should with 1 exception (for me at least).

Once I had charmed the 2nd pet and sent it into the swarm I had to run very far away for all the mobs to turn on pet, I have no idea why but distance had something to do with how the aggro mechanics worked. By far away I mean to the point where I could no longer see any of the mobs, and I know it worked because my pets hp bar would nose dive.

distance somehow plays a roll in aggro, maybe at some point the mobs switch who's 1st on their hate list?

The way you got around this problem was making sure that your next charm pet was the npc that your original pet was attacking. And continue this trend until all the mobs in the swarm are dead.

[evilkorn]

distance somehow plays a roll in aggro, maybe at some point the mobs switch who's 1st on their hate list?


That sounds like the way lazy agro worked.

[Tann]

The way you got around this problem was making sure that your next charm pet was the npc that your original pet was attacking. And continue this trend until all the mobs in the swarm are dead.

I highly doubt anyone could pull that off to be honest, with a swarm of 8+ mobs knowing exactly which one your previous pet was attacking. Note that when pet(s) have multiple targets on them they switch constantly.

Again this is all anecdotal but if i "remember" correctly my next pet would be the one with the most hp so that i had more room for error with invis song.

one of y'all 27+ bards try this, i bet it works as I described. I'd try myself but I have no desire to do the bard thing again as I had 260 something days played on the bard when i finally quit eqlive.

[derpcake]

I highly doubt anyone could pull that off to be honest, with a swarm of 8+ mobs knowing exactly which one your previous pet was attacking. Note that when pet(s) have multiple targets on them they switch constantly.

They don't switch (constantly) on live, and they don't here either. If you can't manage to use the "toggle NPC target key" to find the right NPC, this technique is probably beyond your current skill level.

I mean you press the button till you get the mob at the correct HP%. How hard is that?

Lmao at the junk that gets posted here lol, just like EQlive, classic as hell.

[MudMan]

^ Toggle last two targets

[Tann]

They don't switch (constantly) on live, and they don't here either. If you can't manage to use the "toggle NPC target key" to find the right NPC, this technique is probably beyond your current skill level.

Yes they did switch on live and still do here. Clearly you never swarmed on live or played a pet class before

Derp on man, derp on.

[derpcake]

Yes they did switch on live and still do here. Clearly you never swarmed on live or played a pet class before

Derp on man, derp on.

This used to be my bard: http://eq.magelo.com/profile/1428900

Was serverwide 1st on magelo several times, officer & raidleader and some stuff in same guild from 2001 - 2011. Make sure you check the veteran AA count.

Where is your bard background then?

Damn I wish I had that char on R99 btw. Would be fun being able to solo every raid mob on server, along with AEing any / all raid forces near it :p

[derpcake]

^ Toggle last two targets

That or cycle NPC, whichever works fine ..

[Daldaen]

Bump.

Bards should be able to swarm kite.

Charming an NPC and sending it to attack a pack of 10 mobs that you body aggroed should cause them ALL to turn and attack your pet once he does his first hit on whatever mob you sent him on.

Basically just set it to where a pet who runs into a pack of several mobs gets +50 Hate and that should make this work correctly and cause them to classicly turn and fight your pet until charm breaks or the pet dies.

[Raev]

Would fixing this be as simple as increasing proximity aggro vs initial aggro?

[Daldaen]

I believe so yes.

A charmed NPC attacking a pack, after its first attack should generate enough aggro by proximity, to override each mobs hate they have towards the bard (given the bard only had initial aggro + body proximity aggro) to force the mob to turn and attack the pet.

Currently this requires you make two passes through your charmed pet, and it only works when mobs are on the same faction. It shouldn't require any additional passes, once you've charmed and sent him to attack 1 other mob in the pack they should all immediately turn.

However once you do things to each individual mob in the train (like charm or DoT them), those mobs will stop turning to fight your new pets and will continue to charge you due to the extra hate you gained on those individuals through charming and/or DoTing them. One way you can counteract this behavior is by having your new pet attack your old one (his few melee rounds are usually enough to pull aggro over a previous charm of a DoT or two).

[zanderklocke]

Would love to see this implemented.

[Wiley]

Bump, this thread about mobs dropping agro via distance is related

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217482

[Doctor Jeff]

You got a train of let's say 20~ mobs. You charm 1, and have it attack a mob in your train. This will lead to the mob you attacked, to fight your pet. And the other 18 mobs assisting the mob you sent your pet onto, and they will all attack your pet. You then break your pet with invis and repeat until most of the train is dead. Chant kiting the old pets you broke at low HP.

This is exactly how I bard kited in classic.