Bard Kiting 2013
 

Despite reading numerous bard kiting related posts I can't help but realise most date back to 2010.

Since hitting 18 I have been trying to kite down elephants and Aviaks in South Karana, I am not sure if I am doing anything wrong but 70% of the time I am out of range of being able to hit the mobs with either Denons Disruptive Chord or Chords of Disonance.

If I began to tighten my circles I normally find myself being stunned by my small train which results in me having to resort to widening my circle and playing Hymn of Restoration until I am at an acceptable %age to try and land my DoT's again.

At the time of writing this post, a pull of 10 mobs takes me approximately 35minutes to down which in regards to many other bards seems very poor.

Could anybody offer me some tips - I currently use the WSAD keys to move and use my mouse to manipulate my song twisting and instrument swaps.



Tryndal - 18th lvl Bard.

I had trouble also. it has a lot to do with lag .

make sure horn equiped, use lvl 18 dot only until you are good with that one. only do aviaks, leave elephants alone for now. its easier to learn if you have the same mob type. other than that its just practice, i never played a bard before p99 and i picked it up in a day. too easy.

Diagonal movement may help... you hold forward and strafe simultaneously, while adjusting heading with mouse look (other people use turn keys too I think). Many mobs have trouble hitting you while you are moving diagonally, which helps you get into close range w/o dying. It takes a bit of practice to get it tuned properly. You also want to avoid mobs with huge hitboxes, which may include elephants.

High latency and framerate skips can make this more difficult

Thank-you all for your help I shall try this.

What should I bind strafe to?

what Ephirith said, and kiting all of the same mobs does help a bunch..if you pick up multiple mob types you'll end up hitting some with a dot and others will miss, or you might even get hit.

looks like you were all right strafing is the key just took out my first 15 aviaks

Some mobs have larger hit boxes. All the cats I've kited have, and I'm assuming elephants do too. If you are pulling the mobs together, next time you get hit, look at what mob hit you first; if it was only elephants first, stop pulling them together.

I tend to only use my larger AoE spell because it has greater room for error. You only kill 60% as fast as if you used both, but you don't have to switch instruments or get quite as close. And when you are kiting 50 mobs it still is ridiculously fast leveling, so don't feel pressured into using both if you don't want to.

avoid the elephants, large and small

Honestly I find this method is better if you're lagging since you're not looking at the mobs the whole time. Kiting in circles is tedious and prone to error, but strafe kiting is super easy and you don't even need selo's to do it.