52 Bard looking to solo a bit

[Troxx]

Originally Posted by brecon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

With recent changes to mob MR, charm killing is going to get you killed pretty fast in any tight spaces. You don't want to charm entrance of KC or Ice Giants in Everfrost anymore, you'll just eat deaths. Honestly i'd hold off until they fix the MR issues.

Not really true at all. Charming resists rates are still favorable enough that it's not really any more or less risky from a resist standpoint - you just have the static risk of choosing to kite those tight quarters to begin with. I simply opt not to charm in tight quarters. The risk isn't worth it. DL has a good number of DBs up until 54 - even then at 54 the ravishings and occasional rager, petrified and voracious brute are still dark blue. BW is also good for this - lots more dark blues and wide open spaces. If it isn't camped - giant fort makes for chain pulls of dark blues up until 55 and there are some safe spots near the ramp with few roamers.

I did just did a lot of charming from 50 to now 2/3 through 54.

My approach was:

-pull 2
-charm one and sick on other
-load 3 dots on pets target
-self selos
-wait 3-6 seconds for charm to break
-immediately charm my target and sick it on my old pet
-having just come out of charm, it will immediately turn and start hitting new pet
-repeat above steps until both are at or below 20%
-dot both down and pull again

If you really want to get fancy you can start slowing the target who's dying slower to make sure they both end up fairly low at the same time. On p99 where social aggro is borked, this is the most reliable way of reproducing (as best you can here) the original intent of swarming ... let the mobs do the damage for you. It's slower than real swarm kiting as it exists on live, but it's a hell of a lot faster than fear dot kiting, simple single target kiting (without fear) or fear melee kiting. With fear kiting you basically have your own dps and nothing else. With the above method you have the sum total dps of double whatever you're fighting (duking it out) on top of your 3 best dots. Most of the dot ticks will be firing on a non-moving mob (they're standing still beating each other ugly).

AoE dot kiting unfortunately is still the fastest way. I swore off aoe dot kiting at 48 and leveled halfway through 54 in groups and soloing more traditionally. Until this weekend - 12 hours lfg over 3 days and I said fuck it and took a stab at BW. I don't bother with 2 dots, so the kill took a long time, but > 30 dmg a tick on 50 mobs ends up being ...

1.5k-2k damage a tick

Still the fastest way to xp [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

With as long as the kill took (and with as much cramping I had in my wrist at the end of it), I'd prefer to duo with another bard and have them relax and play the level 48 dot after I get an aggro lead with the level 18 dot. Kill more than twice as fast and less cramp pain.

Still though - hard to argue with 8-9% of level 54 for about 30 minutes worth of work.