Bard AoE kiting How-to & Screenshots

[Calibix]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The margin for error on this is pretty darn small. I don't know if it's because of 200+ ping that I have, but I get hit a lot. I tend not to kite more than a few at a time, and at this point they're all blue.

Those of you who are directing things with a mouse, how do you twist? With the extra fingers on your left hand?

Granted I use a slightly different keyboard layout that most people, but basically yes. I strafe run right, and mouse turn left. That leaves my ring and pinky free to twist with, or if I was going the other way, it would leave my index finger free.

For anyone learning swarming, I can give some pretty good advice as I just went through the same learning phase, and have become pretty proficient. My best pull that I counted was 104 mobs in OT (no rhinos).

1) Settings are they number one thing that will get you killed. I ate so many deaths before I found this out. Shadows off, DoT message's turned off are musts. Turning Sky off, lowering clip plane, and turning off npc name's a big help. Particles a lot of people will turn off, I leave them on low density because it doesn't noticeably affect my FPS, and it really helps me with finding the range on the swarm with Denon's Disruptive Discord and setting up the other DoT's.

2) Better safe than sorry, kind of. At some point, your going to pull enough mobs that if you let them catch you, you will die. You need to make a decision when you hit that point. You can pull less mobs and be ok with messing up once, regening, and continuing. Or you can pull an absurd amount of mobs knowing if you mess up you are dead, but you can pull an unlimited amount of mobs. If your in the 35-45 range in OT lets say with 60+ mobs, don't get greedy going for the lvl 2 DoT every time. Spamming the lvl 18 dot with brass on alone is a pretty quick kill as it is, and most of your time will be spent on the pull anyways. And the pull doesn't matter when you die, and now are actually losing time and XP.

3) Practice makes perfect. I can't comment for tap turning, but when your ready to try swarming, try some test pulls on the mobs you want to kill. Just 2-3 so you can see that your hitting them all. The thing to look for is how tight you can turn because of the difference in mob hitboxes. Remember anything that you can outrun with strafe run can be kited without sow or selo's. I honestly don't know how people swarm with runspeed buffs /shrug. I was quite surprised to find that the lvl 48 DoT's range, though according to the wiki the same as the lvl 18, actually falls somewhere in between the range of the lvl 2 and lvl 18. Glad I didn't find that out with 20 Raptors on my ass.

4) Don't hold down right click when mouse turning. It will probably get you killed. Mouse turn is really funky where its kind of slow, but really sensitive. It's easy to turn almost directly around into the swarm, especially when your kind of laggy due to the swarm as it is. Also, it feels like it slows my strafe run when I hold it down, so just little repeated clicks. Make /hidecorpse all and /hidecorpse off macros in an easy to reach spot so you don't stop to loot on accident.

5) Be prepared. Be courteous. Save yourself the trouble and bind somewhere close. Keep some extra drums in the bank and plat to buy a rez if needed. Sow pots for if your doing low HP with a partner because its one less thing you have to twist. You are entitled to every mob you can reliably kill in an outdoor zone that you have agro on (ie most of them), but you don't have to be a dick about it either. I try to avoid pulling where a group is, call when I have to abandon a swarm etc. People will still complain about swarming no matter what you do, but no need to give them any ammo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[HitMePat]

Completed my first AoE kite since 2004 today. Four Orc centurions on my level 4 bard in gfay. I never knew about strafe kiting. Managed to hit them with CoD without sow, and only got myself hit a couple times [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. Back in the day i used jboots or sow potions but since im a Newbie on P99 i dont have access to those yet. I've got a feeling I'll be leveling up quick with this strafe method with a little more practice. Thanks to all the posters who took the time to explain it.

[kined]

hey all! been kiting for a little bit now and im really starting to see the exp fly now that im not dying every other kite! got my circles pretty tight now. heres a semi small kite i just did, ive done some bigger ones, and ive done some tighter circles, but i still think it was a pretty good kite overall! about 26 mobs if i counted exp messages correctly!

im using the "hold w+d while mouse turning left" method, works great. i use selos without drums for the circle. i dont change instuments at all during the circles. i use drums to pull, then switch to brass for the entirety of the circling (unless i have to regen, but most of the time if i get smacked i just die). make sure you have macros! they help a ton. i keep my brass dot + selos on 1 and then my chords dot + selos on 2.

make sure you have selos bound to something else like 4 just incase u miss a note with the macros. if you slow down while using my method you are almost sure to die. if i miss a note with selos i just let go of mouse turning and strafe forward, recast selos and then go back to circling

btw, DONT let people bitching about bards in OT detract you from doing your thing. of course, dont be rude, leave some mobs if you see some guy soloing or a group. every once in a while i just invite someone for the pull and let em get a bubble, people remember that stuff! however, no matter how courteous you are people will still bitch about you even if you arent hurting them in any way. people are just assholes, but remember that they would almost definitely do it too if their class was capable.

[Goseals6]

Just want to say thanks for all this. I tried swarming some stuff at lvl 3 using chords but the hit box for it seems so small. I'll give it another go here shortly.

[Cords]

Goseals the best way to learn is not using strafe off the bat. I count the foot step sounds, 1..2.. turn 1..2.. turn, and just keep doing that, it keeps a tight enough circle for CoD to hit all the mobs.

[Goseals6]

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

Goseals the best way to learn is not using strafe off the bat. I count the foot step sounds, 1..2.. turn 1..2.. turn, and just keep doing that, it keeps a tight enough circle for CoD to hit all the mobs.

Well, I had a pretty good grasp of it on live a few years ago but in classic..a new story entirely lol. I tried kiting CB orcs around, but I got destroyed. Majority of the time they were hitting me and not even in my field of vision behind me.

I chalk that up to latency and CoD's hit radius is very very small when factoring in latency.

[Cords]

Right on, I always start in qeynos on my bards, but I know all the kiting spots from qeynos to south karana

Keep at it, hope the Latency gets resolved for you.

[Goseals6]

After some fine tuning, I can now swarm kite all of orc hill at lvl 6 provided I don't get any casters. I was doing it wrong before hand and had many straight paths instead of small turns. I also managed to get a few spectators, one complimented me and another told me how jealous he was lol.

I kept up 3 songs just fine with no issues and that HP regen song is a life saver lol

[Furinex]

Here's a good one in EK, doesnt look like a lot but it was 25 mobs, lots of the wolves were stacked on top of each other.

[1203jjt]

What is everyone's latency in game? My internet connection isn't the fastest, and I hover around 100ms. I've had a bit of trouble getting the hang of kiting, and I'm wondering if this could be the reason? I'm going to have a more reliable connection next month...perhaps I should just wait until then.