Bard swarming ruins classic experience.

[Swish]

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

People are so bored on Kunark right now that everyone is rolling ridiculously twinked alts or trying out bards it seems.

It's either a bard at the camp or some rogue with a fungi and epic since lvl 1 monopolizing the camps; had a rogue last night with a fungi, epic, and a camped/boxed lvl 60 cleric to buff/heal... how bad of player do you need to be that a fungi and epic at lvl 30 isn't enough??

And honestly it wouldn't be that big of a deal if the uber-twinks weren't the biggest assholes I've met on P99. Not only do they monopolize zones, but they are rude and arrogant; none of the crazy twinks ever want to duo a camp, but will gladly inspect and mock you for wearing new gear.

I guess I haven't had that bad of a time with bards....it's every rogue I meet with a fungi+epic+asshole that isn't classic

Have had similar experiences on alts. If they talk smack on red you can at least pvp them.

Cue Drpepper and Macarena in Kurn's Tower... probably a year ago now...

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[toolshed]

And genuinely, these twinks are awful at playing their characters as well. When they do finally group up: necro twink not healing/twitching, only nukes; bard fungi twink only singing one song; shaman fungi twink not buffing or healing; multiple fungi+epic rogues drawing agro against a SK because of 'leet deeps dude'

I don't know if this is because their character was just created 2 hours ago and they don't have the right spells since they got plvled, or maybe they think that once people see their gear it won't matter the skill level, but the twinks are awful to play with and I have never seen so many ridiculous twinks in my EQ days.

Okay I just started playing on this server, and they got here first, but holy shit do they need to learn to play.

[MilanderTruewield]

My first character on this server is a rogue. No epic, but oh well. His dps is ok, he does have a rapier of oriin and a css... no haste though [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Evade rarely works pre-20. Warriors at this level suck at keeping agro due to the dependency they have on proccing weapons in order to keep agro. Thus, my rogue constantly gets agro. I hit evade after every BS, if not more often, and I turn attack off if the mob turns to agro me. I still have agro for the rest of the fight. When a pally or SK is tanking, as long as they know what they are doing, they can keep agro.

Not all twinks are bad. Just the majority [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Daywolf]

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

My first character on this server is a rogue. No epic, but oh well. His dps is ok, he does have a rapier of oriin and a css... no haste though [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Evade rarely works pre-20. Warriors at this level suck at keeping agro due to the dependency they have on proccing weapons in order to keep agro. Thus, my rogue constantly gets agro. I hit evade after every BS, if not more often, and I turn attack off if the mob turns to agro me. I still have agro for the rest of the fight. When a pally or SK is tanking, as long as they know what they are doing, they can keep agro.

Not all twinks are bad. Just the majority [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Duo with a cleric against undead. Works really well.

Er well excluding high elf [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
But full plate, better than summoned weapon, and a bit of extra str. Will hold 95% of the fight with one DD. And even with the rogue pulling [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Though the trick is finding one that isn't just loaded down with wisdom junk.

[nyclin]

Bard swarming/AE kiting is the classic-est. The un-classic part is broadband and your modern PC. I levelled a bard for a friend during Velious using AE kiting, which was taught to me by a bard in our guild. My pulls maxed out at about 30-50 mobs due to packet loss and framerate issues, but it was totally possible.

People complaining about bard kiting is also classic.

[eqjayme]

This really has little to do with whether it's possible - it has to do with being a D and the PNP. It's sad but true that every bard I see swarming lately doesn't just pull 10 or 20 mobs - no he pulls an entire zone area clean. And it doesn't matter if it's Dreadlands, CB, OT, LOIO, EK, BW, SF, or anywhere else - I NEVER see a fair pull that leaves some behind unless I complain.

I actually got a good result once by sending a tell "hey I know you're swarming and that's what your class does, but someone not as nice as me might petition you for taking the entire area. I've been sitting here leveling and you have now left me to wait for full repop. It is against the play nice policy just so you know, and you can get in trouble for not sharing mobs".

The bard apologized and offered to share some swarm xp. I didn't take him up on it, but he pulled significantly less mobs the next time and I went on my merry way. I think it just takes some nuance in dealing with these guys. They aren't all asses but there sure are some out there, and usually (I don't blame anyone) people react pissed when it first happens to them.

[fastboy21]

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

Bard swarming/AE kiting is the classic-est. The un-classic part is broadband and your modern PC. I levelled a bard for a friend during Velious using AE kiting, which was taught to me by a bard in our guild. My pulls maxed out at about 30-50 mobs due to packet loss and framerate issues, but it was totally possible.

People complaining about bard kiting is also classic.

most of the bards who do it are really just trying it out or curious...the truth is that bard AE kiting is a boring hard monotonous way to spend your time. and, you'll die enough that if you don't figure out what you're doing it might not even be significantly more efficient.

my experience lately has been that almost all of the bards that are causing the zone disruption AE kiting are mostly causing the disruption because they don't know what they are doing...on live, one of the reasons that folks didn't try this stuff was that they didn't want to ruin their rep or get embarrassingly owned in front of a whole zone of people. there are no such social mores here.

there are only a handful of truly "working" bards out there that can do this efficiently.

[Mandalore93]

If you can't consistently land both chord of dissonance and denon's disruptice chord then you should stop because you're bad. If you can, then bard on young man. As for disrupting zones, I still have no idea why people go to places like OT and then expect it not to happen. It's like getting pissed that there's some wizard quadding in TD. I can't think of a zone where the bard will reasonably pull everything in the same level ranges simply due to mob differences. In OT you can't really pull tigers anymore with other mobs and that's always been true of the rhinos. Pulling sarnaks can get dicey as well. In DL you would never pull the yetis, brutes, and drachnids. In BW you never pull the giants or wurms and I personally never Sarnaks.

Really, the only time I ever get complaints is from quadders who need a certain mob type. In almost all instances though, the bard kiting zones are almost always the worst zones for those levels no matter what class you are. Although, I do mine at off-peak hours exclusively so I wouldn't know about prime time for EST people.

[Daywolf]

Originally Posted by fastboy21 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

mostly causing the disruption because they don't know what they are doing...

I don't buy that one bit. Every bard I've talked to about such a situation just acted like an asshat about it, they knew full well what they were doing. Then the ones that say "oh I didn't know" they're just BS'ing you before doing their next pass again.

A good number of people that roll bard, they are doing it because they have played a number of characters and didn't like the time commitment to level. They really don't want to grab their enc or whatever and group with you, to do the mundane grind with just normal gear. They're lazy and want the shortcut to level cap and then maybe later ultra-twink that enc they wont play with your broken wizard etc. You and your slow leveling ways are just in the way, man, and your camped mobs are up for grabs at all hours of the day or night.

[Daldaen]

If we had classic mechanics this would be less of an issue.

Swarm kiting would be an option and allow bards to kill in several other zones. Also for some reason PBAE DoTs from bards don't decrease in value if the mob is moving? This is impossible to prove either way since we couldn't even see DoT messages until LoY.

Speaking of, let's remove those too please. Test the Velious DoTs and then remove the messages $$$.