Can magicians solo Ice Burrowers?

[TheBlob]

So I was wondering if mages can solo Ice Burrowers. Read a thread that said enchanters/rangers/bards can do it:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281737

Since the dps of a magician's pet is lower than the dps of a charmed pet, and magicians cannot snare, maybe they would run too fast/have too much exp for us?

What do you think? Has it been done before?

[Snaggles]

Not having snare or aggro low mana spells to keep the mob’s attention is the issue. A mages problem is usually solved by one extra person. I love mine but would rather find a buddy than do a 20+ min kill even if I could.

I have started carrying a midnight mallet. Not for borrowers but just for that extra trick.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

https://youtu.be/5fsvt1xfuqY I soloed an Ice Burrower on my Shaman using my pet as the main source of DPS. That means Mage pets could do it too, as their DPS is higher. Unfortunately, as Snaggles points out, I do not believe Mages have a sustainable method of keeping agro. You need to keep the Ice Burrower agroed on yourself while your pet beats it down. The fight will take a very long time, so theoretically you would build up a lot of hate over time if you kept hitting it with a low mana damage spell. You would need to cast a new pet every time it got agro and died, but each pet would theoretically last longer and longer as your own hate builds up.

EDIT: To answer the snare question, you do not need snare, as you can see from my video. They do not run very fast. Just use SoW pots instead of JBoots for extra speed.

[Jimjam]

The thing with this mob is it doesn't summon, so really it is just about finding a way to out damage it's regen in a sustained way while staying out of melee.

On my ranger I did this by spamming snare and arrows for most the fight (occasionally I'd jump in to do some melee while my hp was high).

On a mage, aggro kite seems obvious. You could probably corpse a bunch of epics, chain pets using them to ensure you don't OOM each time a pet out aggros you.

I'm unsure if https://wiki.project1999.com/Bioluminescent_Orb has a small enough cast time to spam aggro without being caught up to, but I'm sure you could find something else to use instead.

[Snaggles]

cheap'ish aggro clicks are the death beetle gland, forlorn totem, forlorn scepter, midnight mallet. Of those the scepter and gland are instant. The totem's are cheap to recharge and fairly quick; Holy Might is 400 hate even for a mage so quite good.

[Sabin76]

This is interesting to me, since I came in here not really knowing anything about this fight, but if you can outrun it with a SoW pot why even bother wasting your mana on nuking occasionally? By the time you're low enough mana from casting pets it should be glued to you for much of the rest of the fight. Maybe toss a malosini to get resisted to piss it off initially and be sure to turn pet taunt off. The only problem would be if it can kill a pet faster than the 10 seconds it would take you to cast a new one.

When it turns on the pet, just begin casting new pet and /pet get lost when it's about to finish so you don't have any time when there isn't a pet up. Can use a mask of empowerment for instant burnout for 5 of them...

[Snaggles]

Malo is very low aggro. Damage spells are fairly low hate too even if they land full damage (unlikely).

If you could put over half the burrower's 20k hps down with your spells and the pet was doing less with taunt off, sure. I just don't see this happening since they are lvl 61. Besides -100 check spells the mage in this case is really lacking a 10-15 mana spell that creates 400+ hate. Druids/rangers have flame lick, necros have disease cloud and shadow vortex, shaman's have blind/disease spells/slow, ench's have tash and cheap slows, bards have a whole spell book of those.

[Sabin76]

Malo is very low aggro. Damage spells are fairly low hate too even if they land full damage (unlikely).

If you could put over half the burrower's 20k hps down with your spells and the pet was doing less with taunt off, sure. I just don't see this happening since they are lvl 61. Besides -100 check spells the mage in this case is really lacking a 10-15 mana spell that creates 400+ hate. Druids/rangers have flame lick, necros have disease cloud and shadow vortex, shaman's have blind/disease spells/slow, ench's have tash and cheap slows, bards have a whole spell book of those.

I was under the impression that resisted spells actually provided MORE hate than non-resisted ones (it certainly seems like it). Is that not right? In any case, the malo was not all that important to the "plan" as it were.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

The thing with this mob is it doesn't summon, so really it is just about finding a way to out damage it's regen in a sustained way while staying out of melee.

On my ranger I did this by spamming snare and arrows for most the fight (occasionally I'd jump in to do some melee while my hp was high).

On a mage, aggro kite seems obvious. You could probably corpse a bunch of epics, chain pets using them to ensure you don't OOM each time a pet out aggros you.

I'm unsure if https://wiki.project1999.com/Bioluminescent_Orb has a small enough cast time to spam aggro without being caught up to, but I'm sure you could find something else to use instead.

Bio orb would work when building up agro initially, but you couldn't have the Ice Burrower blinded while your pet was attacking. When a mob is blinded, they will always attack an enemy if it is within melee range. I assume most people do not have access to one, however, due to their cost.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

This is interesting to me, since I came in here not really knowing anything about this fight, but if you can outrun it with a SoW pot why even bother wasting your mana on nuking occasionally? By the time you're low enough mana from casting pets it should be glued to you for much of the rest of the fight. Maybe toss a malosini to get resisted to piss it off initially and be sure to turn pet taunt off. The only problem would be if it can kill a pet faster than the 10 seconds it would take you to cast a new one.

When it turns on the pet, just begin casting new pet and /pet get lost when it's about to finish so you don't have any time when there isn't a pet up. Can use a mask of empowerment for instant burnout for 5 of them...

Ice Burrowers have a huge HP pool, and hit hard. If you were just chaining pets, you would run out of mana long before the Ice Burrower died. You need to keep the Ice Burrower aggroed on you so it will chase you, and your pet will safely attack the Ice Burrower from behind. Another reason for this strategy is Ice Burrowers have a nasty aoe proc on attacks, so this strategy prevents those AoE procs from happening.

[Snaggles]

Ice Burrowers have a huge HP pool, and hit hard. If you were just chaining pets, you would run out of mana long before the Ice Burrower died. You need to keep the Ice Burrower aggroed on you so it will chase you, and your pet will safely attack the Ice Burrower from behind. Another reason for this strategy is Ice Burrowers have a nasty aoe proc on attacks, so this strategy prevents those AoE procs from happening.

Yea actually with the way that aggro transfers on P99 even if you dont do any damage the pet damage will sweep over to the mage. Normally horrible but in this case you dont want that mob on the pet at all.

Chain summoning in this case might be the best way to keep it off the pet but you would need a long enough lead so you could start the summon. A 10 second lead. Of course, all while not finding any Velium Wolves or more ice burrowers. I also don't know if they leash so will they just chase forever or break aggro and regen hps if you run too far away? :confused:

It seems finding a bored epic Druid to help would be much easier. So much easier.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Yea actually with the way that aggro transfers on P99 even if you dont do any damage the pet damage will sweep over to the mage. Normally horrible but in this case you dont want that mob on the pet at all.

Chain summoning in this case might be the best way to keep it off the pet but you would need a long enough lead so you could start the summon. A 10 second lead. Of course, all while not finding any Velium Wolves or more ice burrowers. I also don't know if they leash so will they just chase forever or break aggro and regen hps if you run too far away? :confused:

It seems finding a bored epic Druid to help would be much easier. So much easier.

They do leash eventually, so you do need to be careful about that. When I was making my Ice Burrower video that happened once to me hehe. You will need to cast multiple pets over the fight, I am just saying you can't rely on that alone due to how fast your pet will die when the Ice Burrower agros it. Ideally the mage need enough agro on them to keep the Ice Burrower on you for a decent amount of time. Unless something about agro changed after I made that video, you should be able to build up a lot of hate over the duration of the fight if you keep doing something to the Ice Burrower to generate more hate.

[Sabin76]

You don't need a 10 second lead... you just need 10 minus however long it takes for it to kill your pet. As soon as it turns to your pet, you start casting. Either 10 seconds pass and your pet isn't dead yet (so you dismiss it with a typed command right before your cast finishes), or it kills your pet before then and you only needed enough of a lead to finish the cast. If it doubles for 200 and hits once per second, that's still enough time to only need about a 1-2 second lead on it under those circumstances.

And all agro the pet had transfers to you on death, so the next summon will be able to BS the crap out of it that much longer before you have to start casting again.

At least, that's the theory...

[Foxplay]

Could keep aggro with low hp aggro, and have a manna robe to ensure you never go above 20% health

[Snaggles]

You don't need a 10 second lead... you just need 10 minus however long it takes for it to kill your pet. As soon as it turns to your pet, you start casting. Either 10 seconds pass and your pet isn't dead yet (so you dismiss it with a typed command right before your cast finishes), or it kills your pet before then and you only needed enough of a lead to finish the cast. If it doubles for 200 and hits once per second, that's still enough time to only need about a 1-2 second lead on it under those circumstances.

And all agro the pet had transfers to you on death, so the next summon will be able to BS the crap out of it that much longer before you have to start casting again.

At least, that's the theory...

I was assuming the first time it killed the pet quicker than anticipated and the player had to run and build runway to summon another. That one without burnout. I’ve tanked one before; they are quite mean.

Give it a go. Let us know how it turns out.

[Sabin76]

I play on green, so it will be a while yet. But I'll try once I get there ;).

[Jibartik]

Ive never felt more sorry for anyone in my life than when I watched DeathsSilkyMist chase a fleeing ice burrower in the water.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Ive never felt more sorry for anyone in my life than when I watched DeathsSilkyMist chase a fleeing ice burrower in the water.

Lol it was pretty sad, having to poke it in the butt to death with my pet.

[wwoneo]

Could keep aggro with low hp aggro, and have a manna robe to ensure you never go above 20% health

Does this work? I thought they fixed this years ago. Although, I haven't tried it in a few years.

From what I recall, mobs will charge at you with low HP aggro; however, the mob will attack others somewhat randomly even if you are low HP.

[Disease]

Send a few pets and let them die. All that aggro will transfer to you

[Jimjam]

Anyone (Mage) done it yet?

Whats the estimate on how long it would take? Druids say they need like 20 mins, rangers an hour, i can’t remember where shamans fit, 40 mins? How will mage compare?

[DMN]

Anyone even confirmed that the pet hate transference is working on blue like it is apparently working on green?

Would be a pretty annoying fight if not. I'd guess spamming malaisement would have the best hate to mana ratio. On vanilla it had about the same hate as tash.

[Disease]

Anyone even confirmed that the pet hate transference is working on blue like it is apparently working on green?

Would be a pretty annoying fight if not. I'd guess spamming malaisement would have the best hate to mana ratio. On vanilla it had about the same hate as tash.

Runes are a ton of aggro as well. Maybe spam a few serpent blood potions?

[Snaggles]

Runes were a ton of hate but I think they tweaked that. If so the Mystic Cloak would work.

[tg822]

Yeah it is nerfed on blue also. Tested last night. Pet 1 unsummon dumps all the aggro to you. Takes pet 2 probably like 10 seconds to get it back instead of snapping to them. So chaining is way more annoying. Not sure what mages did to the devs? Like they aren’t that powerful lol