Bard AoE kiting How-to & Screenshots

[Lazortag]

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

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get over it.

[Lazortag]

double post.

[machin576]

Thanks for the advice Falkun. I have been trying the Mouse-strafe method also, and I think my hits are still random lag ones, but i am landing a lot more dots using Hmotzart's method. I can't wait for 18 and some sweet action DDD. In response to Nokia, you are right, we need to work on a guide for AoE kiting, with key bindings, hints, and definitely some leveling guidance.


I am currently 16 and I am kiting FoB Northeast of Kurn's tower. There are plenty of light blues to yellows around there, but I actually prefer the dark blues because they drop super fast. I have also tried Dervs in Sro at about 14, but you need to watch out for wanderers + caster mobs. Desert madmen will nuke you to hell.


If I was your level, I would try Willow wisps in North Karana, I did that for a while, and every GLS that drops can be turned in for nice EXP + 9-11 PP. I might actually go do that anyways when I hit 18 to make some cash.


Lake of Ill Omen would also be a great place for levels 12 - 30, plenty of mobs, even though the Tigers stun which is NOT classic. You have many options and I will try to make a file of them at work today and paste it in later. Also, hopefully, Hmotzart will get on and post some of his spots for his quick rise to kiting fame.

Off this topic: Do any of you old bards remember when they added Selo's lasting for like 3 minutes instead of 15 seconds? Was that like PoP or Luclin? I am hoping it is earlier, makes kiting a lot less OCD.

[gencs74s]

thanks for share good sharing

[falkun]

Honestly, OT will take you from 20 to 40+. You will get sick of that zone you do it so much. I had a lull around 28-30 where OT was in "transition" between the east side turning green and the south/west sides still full of yellow/reds. I did that dry spell in WW iksar bandits and FV drolvargs (FV 'vargs take some balls to kite. Died a ton there!)

HMO, can you explain this strafing thing a bit to hit mobs with dot? I use my mouse to do instrument swaps, so I had to learn to keyboard turn, which meant my hands were busy so I also use my mouse for song-changing. I've recently gotten to the point where I don't instrument swap anymore (slower selos is easier now), so I could go to keyboard twisting and change to mouse movement. I'm very interested if you can enlighten me.

EDITS BELOW:

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

Im trying to make myself a "zone path" as to where I will go

This was my path. Its not definitive by any means.
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...09&postcount=8

[Nokio]

L10-12ish: The orcs in LFay (locations #6 & 11)
I started doing that one at level 8 actualy and it works great!



Do you think at level 10-11 i could AE kite the minotor at the minotor cave or around?

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[Hmotzart]

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

HMO, can you explain this strafing thing a bit to hit mobs with dot?

Hmotzart's Hmethod to Hmadness in Dsharp
Ok first off I was thinking I am not a HMO! But I guess this is going to be a shitty insurance policy so I might be a HMO hehehehe

It took me 50+ deaths in WC to teach myself this and figure out all the settings i needed.. I die ALOT when moving to a new zone, testing out each mob so i can figure out what I want to pull and what I want to LEAVE THE HELL ALONE. THIS IS NOT easy mode plvling and most people think bards are easy THEY ARE NOT. It is live or die out there and most the time it is DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE live YAY I got my exp back.
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Ok this is the whole strat.. It is a lot of prep work so get your self ready to DL a few things and set up your UI for things to work really smooth.
This only works if you drive with WASD and have a steady hand for mouse steering. This method has nothing to do with weight limit or speed of your toon. You can start this @ lvl 2 with no speed enhancement at all. You will just have to do HUGE circles... You will have to adjust the speed at witch you turn your toon with the mouse the faster you become. The slower you go the bigger the circle.

1.
I LOVE audio triggers but there are only a few in the folder to work with so GO out and find some .wav files (under 2 seconds of sound works best AND make sure they are not super loud ones or it will get annoying) I personally found some broken piano, guitar, and brass/wind instrument sounds. DL them and drop them into the "AudioTriggers" folder in your eq directory.

Now log into game and hit your EQ button, go to actions then audio triggers.

You will need to make a few of these to help you drive a bit blind. <-- I will explain this driving blind a bit later.

Making your first BARD audio trigger.
You must add a pattern you want your trigger to sound off of.
First safety pattern will be.

pattern: You miss a note, bringing your song to a close!

Then pick a sound you want to hear then click create. (something small and hardly audible because you will hear this A LOT) you do not want to get annoyed.

Second safety pattern will be.

pattern: You slow down

Pick a sound YOU WILL notice because this usually means DEATH!

Your Kite pattern for driving blind.

pattern: Winces

This time pick a sound that is low, short but noticeable so you know when your dot lands and can circle a bit bigger as to not get hit. Note you will want to change this one when you group with a shamie cause you'll hear it a lot and it will bug you.

To edit one of these at anytime you will then edit and click APPLY.

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2.
Movement
Mouse steering and strafe.
Let me explain, we all know when playing a non bard non sow class most mobs can be outrun by running diagonal. Not all mobs but some mobs. NOT GIANTS or any larger creatures but I add this into the kite just in case. It does not always help and if u get hit at higher lvls you usually DIE.

So this is how it goes.

Push forward and hold your mouse button down that lets you mouse steer. Mine is the right mouse button lets me steer with mouse..
You are now mouse driving! YAY

If you intend on turning left with your mouse you'll want to push and hold forward & right while holding the steering mouse button the whole time, so place your DOT hotkeys on 1 and 2 so your ring finger will be free to hit them.

If you intend on turning right with your mouse you'll want to push and hold forward & left while holding the steering mouse button the whole time, so place your DOT hotkeys on 3 and 4 so you can hit them with your pointer finger will be free to hit them.

So lets recap this just incase..
Left turn YOU PUSH AND HOLD forward, right and steering mouse button.. THE WHOLE TIME!
Right turn YOU PUSH AND HOLD forward , left and steering mouse button THE WHOLE TIME!

You Might have to adjust your mouse's sensitivity (mine is @ max) I do not suggest this until you get used to this method. You WILL be picking up your mouse a lot to move it so you can keep pulling the circle. Its trial and FAIL don't worry you'll get it. Remember 50+ deaths for me to teach myself this. I always pick up and move my mouse immediately after the dot hits WHILE HOLDING THE 3 BUTTONS forward, right and mousebutton,so i run a little diagonal at that point before I come in for the turn again.

I use the mouse because u never know with the UI lag how much of a turn you get from taping the turn keys. But with a mouse (its crazy I know) you will start to feel it.
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3.
Your view
You will be a little blind but use the standard view when kiting but scroll all the way out.
You MUST clear out the bottom corners of your screen either the right bottom or left bottom corner depending on what way you turn. I myself just fade my chat boxes all the way out.

This is for range of the song. When circling you will not be able to see the mobs! So the trick is to target the white,yellow or red mob. ( the higher the lvl targeted the longer your target will stay alive so you dont have to try and target another mob to get the target ring) Once that target ring comes into VIEW (if turning right, right bottom corner of screen. When turning left, left bottom corner of screen) They are close enough to be doted with the lvl 2 song. You will be able to time this the more practice you get. TRICK start circling in big circles then tighten them down slow . You can even circle without any speed enhancement what so ever (if you don't mind 3 mile wide circles)

EDIT TRICK: If you have seen me out and about you'll notice usually I have 3 of my dead bodies in a triangle on the ground.. I use this for circle reference on how close I can circle before I get hit.. You can also Use bushes, ground change lines, sides of buildings and a unlooted bodie anything on the ground you can watch and Know your circling perfect.
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4.
Hot key macros
Hit your EQ button go to actions hit your action window it will bring up a box and then u must select the social tab on the far right.. these are your editable macro buttons. Go to page 2 and start this proses.

Yes they are the standard 2 song twist macros. I always put Selo's on the second song of any kite macro I build so I am always safe with speed at the end of the macro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DOT Macro looks like this
/stopsong
/cast 1
/pause 28
/stopsong
/cast 8

I ALWAYS put my biggest aoe dot on the top of my spell gems and selos on the bottom.. NEVER change the spell gems around or the macros will not work.

Selos macro looks like this.
/stopsong
/cast 8

This is for when you miss a note aka fizzel on selos and need to hit it again. Remember your audio trigger will let you know when the first part of the macro or the second part of the macro fails. If the first part fails and you hear your audio trigger , be patient and let Selos hit you before you tap the dot macro again!!!!! If the second part fails hit your selos macro asap. If you hear your selos wear off with the "You slow down" audio trigger RUN IN A STRAIGHT LINE OR DIE!

Pause macros are funny creatures, they will lock you into that macro and you will not be able to use any other action untill it is complete so do not freak out. Keep running and you will be safe.

I Have a lot more kite macros that i use such as a heal, DD, direct dot, just about anything.. The key to a kite macro is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS put selos on the second cast for your protection.
NOTE The macro only has to be hit once. it will twist the 2 songs perfectly for you. Unless a song fails then you just wait for the selos to be sung and keep up the kite.
I use the pause 28 cause it accounts for this servers UI lag.. If your songs are not twisting raise the number by 1 each time until they twist and if u think u have no lag u can go to the pause 26 BUT WARNING NOW the second your ui hits any lag these macros WILL NOT WORK! so be safe and use 28 as your pause.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT EVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER, NEVER EVER EVER FOR ANY REASON USE MACROS IN GROUP SETTINGS OR YOU FAIL AND MIGHT AS WELL DELETE THE BARD NAO! single tap single song macros do work for groups and I use them a lot but the twist macros are JUNK!
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5.
What to wield and when to wield it?
I personally use my drum for the pulling of the swarm.
Then i use my Brass for the dot i use now.

CoD. lvl 2: song- Strings
DdD. lvl 18:song- Brass horn
Selos CoC. lvl 48: song- Strings

Make a hot key for your weapons bag and a hot key for your main hand and offhand slots. Easy enough to change weps in and out.
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6. Be paitent.
You will die! You will take a long time to heal if u get hit and have to run around with regen going. Just know this. Patience is a virtue please let it be one of the virtues you have while being a bard. You will be killing a ton of mobs who cares how fast you do it when you have 100 in your pack.
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7.
Don't screw yourself with your skills. If you do this all the way to lvl 60 you'll be horrid melee dps and no one will like to group with you so take the time out to fear kite and group to skill up. DON'T BE A LAMER! If you have no skills in melee you must lvl it up and if you don't stop every 5 lvls or so to go melee then it will take YEARS @ lvl 60 cause u have to have a hit for a skill up so imagine a lvl 1 trying to hit a raid boss.. NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!
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8.
Be kind, Be courteous, Invite strangers who are soloing for a huge swarm and bump there exp, Offer groups to swarm for them while they single kill, Let the zone know you do not mind if someone pulls a mob out of your pack.
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I had informed a few higher lvls to use sneak as a means to slow yourself down with selos.. This no longer works I am gettin to the lvl where I am super fast so tried it today EWW can only use sneak with drums and it puts you at the same speed as without drums and without sneak.. Sorry for the misinformation! SOW pot's FTW

[khanable]

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

walloftextomg

copied this (along with several other pieces of information from this thread) to a text file -- great stuff!

Working my way up solo at the moment. Haven't attempted to kite yet (just made level 12 last night, heading towards the freeport area to give it a shot now).

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[Dr4z3r]

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

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]SOW pot's FTW

OH. MY. FUCK.

I never thought of that! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[machin576]

• L1-18ish: Field of Bone, great zone.

• L7ish: The bandit sister camp in GFay (location #3)

• L10-12ish: The orcs in LFay (locations #6 & 11)

• L9-15ish: Willowisps in NK, WC, or possibly Kerra Isle in Erudin’s crossing. Beware, Kerra does not have many flat surfaces and there is no zone lines if you need to reset, so probably not a good idea.

• L13-15ish: The Derv and orc camps in SRo or NRo, lulling the casters and taking them out solo afterward. I usually also went in the desert and grabbed some extra roaming undead/dervs. (locations #3, 5, 6, & 10; although more locations in the southern portion are orc camps. I just found those listed to have fewer/no casters.)

• L14-18: Field of Bone. Good spot North East of Kurn’s and a plethora of mobs to kite.

• L16-19ish: LOIO fields. (I did 17 off the skellies/lower level sarnaks between locations #4, 5, 7 & 9. I did 16-20 off the non-caster wanderers between locations #9 and 13)

• L18-30+: South Karana – Anything and everything. Beware of non-bard classes and their curious philosophy called “Camps”.

• L17-24ish????: Gorge hounds, undead gnolls, all kinds of delightful mobs. I need someone to add some input on this zone, since I have never kited it.

• L20-26: Iksar outcast camps in WW and the lower level field portion of OT. (WW locations #B, 9, 10, 11 and OT field between locations #5, 6, 9, 10). OT is off-the-charts exp at this level range. If you can gather up the whole area, you are looking at ~45min/level during this range.

• 26-28The EXP really started to slow down in OT, so I headed back to WW and continued on the iksar outcast camps there. Was slower, but I didn't have to spend half my kite gathering up LB mobs.

• 29-30: I am doing this portion on the Drolvargs in FV. I have to admit, this range is by far the most dangerous I've done so far. The drolvargs are larger than most MOBs I've kited so far, and therefore have a larger hitbox, while I still have to be within 35 measurement units to hit them with my 18 dot. I have really perfected my distance/selo's speed, while also dieing much more than I would have liked in this level range. I gather up yellow/blue drolvargs while avoiding froglocks (especially casters) and other red dogs. It's actually not that hard to do. On this map of FV, I gather drolvargs from the area surrounded by points #3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and A on the map, and then I take them back towards the NorthEastern Swamp of No Hope zone line as there are no wanderers back there. I'd recommend only pulling a few until you perfect your skills, as I have gotten stunned and 1-rounded (or even not stunned and one-rounded) more often than I'd like to admit. These dogs can take me to probably 35 or so, but I think I may try to find some MOBs to kite that aren't quite so deadly. The good news is I can sell/bank without zoning.

• 31-40: I went back to OT and started kiting the Western/Southern areas of the zone. Basically any blue-red mob (besides dragoons) between the Outpost, SF, FM, the center valley and location #10 on this map of Overthere is fair game. I do recommend you pull only cockatrices, tigers, and cacti. They all move at the same speed. Rhinos move faster, but selos is much faster and a rhino-only kite would certainly work. Some Sarnaks cast, and I'm moving way too fast to check names to see if I'm about to pull a caster or not. This post shows some kites where I had probably 50+ mobs in my kite (figuring 1-2%/kill, and I know I made 100% of a level for each of those 2 kites). You can make some pretty awesome pulls. I've pulled so many that the dot spam insta-crashed EQ to desktop (creating a crappy CR).

• 40-46ish???: Dreadlands, drovlargs. Hopefully Hmo will come give some inputs on which walls of Karnors he used, etc, etc.

• 46-52ish: Spectres in Feerott or Oasis

Kind of stumped after this. I did all my kiting in Velious on live after level 30, so not the best source for this information.

Also, does anyone have any information on TD, I remember being there on live, doing Aviaks or raptors maybe? I cannot remember what level they are.

This list is in no way exhaustive, so feel free to add to it and repost it.