Quote:
Originally Posted by Comapavik
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Can someone explain swarming and how a shadowknight does it? Haven't played live since GoD.
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Okay, here's how you Swarm Kite as a Shadowknight. It was all I did on live, and was the only reason why I played.
You get AAs that make it so you Double Riposte (every time you're hit, you have a chance to Riposte based on skill, this AA lets you have a chance to hit back twice). You get AAs that make it so when you hit a target, you have a chance to cast a Lifetap. You get AAs that make it so you triple attack, that you hit things a lot. You get defensive AAs to lower incoming damage. You get cooldown AAs like Visage of Death to both boost your defense and your offense.
And most importantly, you get Mortal Coil. Mortal Coil says that when you kill a creature that is Light Blue or higher, you have a chance to proc an effect that makes all damage you deal return some health to you. Additionally, you get AAs to increase proc buff timers, so it lasts for 2.5 minutes each proc.
The essence is to make it so that you've maximized your DPS, and maximized your defensive stats, so damage does very little to you, and your damage output is greater than their damage output to you.
Then, you get your 1.5 and 2.0 epic. The epic has a clickie effect called "Lich Sting" which says 40% of your damage becomes healing (I believe the 2.0 is 60% or 80%). This is Mortal Coil on demand.
You go to a place where you have Light Blue enemies (as that is the minimum level to proc Mortal Coil). At first, when you don't have Visage or an Epic, you will kill enemies until you get a Mortal Coil proc, and then do mini swarms, picking up 20-30, killing a few to get a proc, and then dragging the remainder with you to the next pull. Once you get Visage and an Epic though, you will pull 100-150 mobs with you to a corner.
You back up into the corner, pop Harmshield, and then while you get all the mobs right up on you (Harmshield will prevent spellcasters from staying out of range), you pop your Epic, and spam click Visage so once Harmshield drops, you're in Visage. You start attacking immediately, and your health will start to spike. You'll drop to 20% health, but then your ripostes go through, and your Epic clickie "Lich Sting" will proc, giving you HP for every Riposte you do. So you go back up to 100%. Having more HP/Armor/Defenses helps neutralize this spike, as this is when you're most likely to die.
You have 90 seconds to get a kill to force a Mortal Coil proc, which is why Visage and some other AAs are good for offensive ability. You need to get the last hit, not a lifetap, to proc Mortal Coil, so you start mowing through light blues, and once you get a Mortal Coil proc, you can relax. Cycle your DPS cooldowns, do not cast any spells (you can't riposte while casting), as DPS cooldowns are now defensive cooldowns (given the HP return), and you'll start to clear them out.
And then they all die, and you get 100-150 instances of Light Blue kills. Loot up, you make shit tons of cash. Additionally, you can power level players by having them group with you, as the XP you get is incredible. It is like being able to solo Chardok AE, if you got 2-3x the XP Chardok AE provides.
There's about a 30-40 minute relaxation time between pulls as you wait for respawns, so you can dump everything into it. Harm Touch can make for a great way to push toward an early MC proc.
It is absolutely the most fun you can have on Live, and it isn't the Beaming AE that has caused server instability in EQ. They are just killing SK to try and "be fair". Ruins the one fun thing you can do on Live EQ now days. The one thing that goes into real strategic play.