Bard Kiting Guide - 2013

[Fromp]

BARD KITING GUIDE 2013
Attention all bards, I just wanted to post this thread out as a lot of the kiting guides I read whilst starting out where somewhat vague and left me somewhat confused.

Over the past week or so I have became a lot better at kiting and felt that I should share my experience with fellow bards, this guide shall aim to convey the art of kiting in a nutshell, a long with a nice YouTube video I recorded today [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] .

Optimum Performance
Even on my newest computer rolling a 4.3gHz i7 processor with 16GB RAM and an NVidia GeForce GTX650, I still struggle to pull a good frame rate whilst kiting in the midst of 50+ mobs, this is a nightmare for essentially every bard but I have finally found a way to overcome this common cause of death.

After opening options direct yourself to display, you then want to ensure the following...

• You have advanced lighting and shadows disabled.
• You have the actor and shadow clip plane on 50-75%
• You have a balanced or no sky reflection (I run 256)
• I use all pixel shaders, but you can turn these down if you still have problems
• Ensure your spell opacity is somewhere around 20% or less - 18% allows me to clearly see that I have landed my DoT on all my mobs and causes no frame-rate drop.
  
  -- ADDED BY FALKUN --
• In the "Filters" tab of options, turn off: Damage over Time Messages, All you need to know is the mobs were hit, you don't need 50x13dmg messages every 6 seconds.
• turn clip plane way down, sky off, and spell effects off when kiting.

Most of the options in the above list are optional, however the spell opacity is Mandatory and this is the main culprit for that nasty frame-rate drop!


The Keybinds
When it comes to setting up your key-binds here is what I found works best for me, and I know a lot of you out there are not going to like this...

The WSAD keys by far work the best for maneuverability when kiting, it allows you much more space (if using a right handed mouse) which will make the overall kiting experience more comfortable. Below are my keybindings:

• W - Move forward
• S - Move backward
• A - Move left
• D - Move right
• E - Strafe right -- KEY
• Q - Strafe left -- KEY

It is absolutely essential that E and Q are bound, I can't stress how much they are going to save you in your kiting process, when strafing you automatically increase how hard it is for a monster to hit you (has a direct effect upon there hitbox) , thus allowing you to play your song and escpae unscathed!

The Loadout
Possibly one of the most important things to consider before going into a kite is your load-out, I mean after-all your going to be juggling instruments left right and center for the duration of your pull. I find the best way to handle this is to have my lute, drum and horn in the top level slot of my inventory (outside of any bags for those who don't know), these should then be made available on your hotbar for easy swapping - to do this hold left click on the instrument until the little icon pops up on your cursor and drag it onto the hotbar. You will also want to do this for your primary and secondary slots to allow for the easy swap outs ( a primary slot is not mandatory but I use this for when I equip weapons later ).

I then carry anywhere between 2-6 bags depending on how loot hungry I'm feeling, but in the video I roll around with only two as I was getting a tad encumbered...anyway back to the guide, you want to have one bag available on your hotbar, this bag shall contain your weapons - at the end of a train when everything runs for the hills, you want to chase and assasinate them as quickly as possible, once all the mobs in my train are running, I open this bag and immediately swap out my current isntrument for my two one handers and start going chuck-norris on those fleeing cowards.


The Method
Starting the pull
With your durm in hand you want to begin running around the zone chaining that selo's like a mad man; don't stop - round up all the mobs you can using your Bruscows Boastful Bellow or Selo's Consonant Chain as a long range pulling mechanism. This phase can take anywhere aroudn ~10minutes to complete. I'd recommend you pulling in moderation if you're new to this (meaning try 4-5, then once comfortable increment your pull amount again) so that you don't get too frustrated about your first few deaths, which inevitably will happen.

Rounding them up:
Once you bring those critters in you want to find yourself a nice level ground to fight on, try to avoid hilly areas as this will affect the mobs pathing and will likely result in you getting your ass whooped.
Once on level ground you want to begin running circles either clockwise or anti- clockwise dependent on whats more comfortable for you, this will allow the mobs to stack up on each-other for you to then start dotting them, I normally tend to complete 4-5 circles before I think about starting the DoT process.
Note, its most efficient to take light blues, dark blues and whites - throwing in the occasional yellow, I personally try to avoid reds due to the high resists.

Unleashing those power chords:
Once your satisfied that all those mobs are rounded up you want to begin to twist those all important chords into your kite, I normally roll a fresh Selo's on me to ensure that I get the most duration out of it - I will then swap out my drum for my horn and begin to cast Denon's Disruptive Chord (once you get used to swapping, start twisting DDC after your fresh selos and then swap to your horn, its more efficient), once you notice the cast bar is about half way you want to start narrowing your circle and then when you see the last bubble disappearing strafe either left or right dependent on which way you are running and this will allow the DoT to hit the mob stack. (strafe into the mobs, not away from them), I then swap back to my drum and re-selo myself just to be safe, after doing this I swap to my lute and play Chord's of Disonance and then swap back to my drum for another Selo, the process is repeated...

NOTE: It may take a while to get used to landing the DoT but once you are comfortable with tightening those circles you'll do just fine.

If you are under level 18, this process is a little harder as you will be chaining Chords of Disonance which has a MUCH lower AE range, this means you will be running your circles MUCH closer to the mobs, so be warned you may get hit. Once you get really confident with your ability to kite you can start chaining both dots, this will improve your kite speed somewhere in the region of 40%.

Ack I've been hit, and the trains just began:
Although very discouraging at the start or even half way through a pull, don't let the fact that a mob train has stunned you force you to zone it. It's going to happen every once in a while but as bards we are VERY good at surviving when things like this happen.

As soon as you notice yourself getting stunned, immediately switch to strafing away from the mobs; this will narrow their hit-box and allow you to escape on a slither of health, you then want to recast that selo's on yourself as soon as possible. I've had kites where I've escaped with around 10% health and still taken the entire kite.
Once selos has been recasted you want to switch to your lute and begin playing hymn of restoration, you should chain both selos and hymn until your back to a sensible amount of health (don't be greedy and try DoT things, you may find yourself dead).
As soon as you get back to a sensible amount of heatlh say ~60% you can begin chaining your Selos/DDC/CoD twist again, however everytime you come to cast CoD ensure that you pop a Hymn of Restoration too, overtime this will allow you to slowly regenerate your health.

I have uploaded a youtube video here for those of you who want to watch an example, it wasnt the smoothest of kites but it demonstrates everything detailed above.


Good luck kiting

-Tryndal
24th level bard.

[Kagatob]

Having tried both I can't help but find low HP aggro kiting to simply be more efficient with less risk. This includes both 'bard as bait while wizard/mage/druid etc AE's' and 'other player as bait while bard chases and AE's'.

[Fromp]

Hi Kag, I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion on low hp kiting, I just prefer to know I'm slowly regenerating a few HP's to safeguard me if I'm hit again, especially whilst solo kiting!

[falkun]

Optimum performance:
In the "Filters" tab of options, turn off: Damage over Time Messages
All you need to know is the mobs were hit, you don't need 50x13dmg messages every 6 seconds.
I turn clip plane way down, sky off, and spell effects off when kiting.

Other than that, looks pretty good.

[Fromp]

I'll update that now Falk, thats taught me something new too - thanks!

[Heartwork]

If you're kiting on a computer with no Solid State Drive, people zoning into your zone will generate a small stutter (fraction of a second), because EQ loads something from your harddrive when that happens. If this happens when you're turning your bard, it will fuck things up and send you directly into your swarm. This happens a lot in OOT where people enter the zone all the time.

Not owning an SSD, I solved the problem by installing a RAM disk program which creates a virtual harddrive using memory (2GB should be enough for an EQLite install).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/26091..._ram_disk.html

[Mandalore93]

Pre-18 it's still rather easy to swarm kite. To be honest the biggest difficulty in kiting between level 2 and 12 is pulling. However you can pull safely without being hit by using throwing knives, a 60 degree turn and strafing away with Selo's.

However, once I get my mobs loaded up (I'm level 8 and generally do around 20-30 in EC/WC) I only use Selo's to get them tightened up. With Chord's I find it is much easier, more efficient, and safer to only use strafe without selo's. I run at around 90 FPS even with nothing turned off, though. Part of the reason is that with selo's you can't land Chord's tick after tick, which is important when you're killing reds so that you have less damage disparity due to resists and therefore less runners.

[Robdukes]

Might be a good idea to pick up a cloak of shadows. I noticed you were missing notes like crazy during that video. Get some dex and it should help a bit.

[Estu]

I've found, kiting at level 8 with just Chords and Selo's, that it's not at all necessary to use my drums to speed up Selo's. I do this when I'm gathering mobs, for convenience, but once it's time to Chords of Dissonance them down, I just switch to a lute and go to town. As other people have noted, Selo's itself is not strictly necessary if you strafe-run, but I find strafe-running to be kind of a pain, especially if I get stunned in the middle of a kite (god forbid).