Muteki's guide to Bard Charm Kiting

[SirAlvarex]

With a recent change, the devs altered the way proximity aggro works. Now a mob will actually peal off it's target to attack another if certain circumstances are met. What are they? Not entirely sure, but one of them allows Bards to charm kite again!

Since I haven't seen anyone post a guide yet, I figured I'd start with a rudimentary one and build upon it if requested.

The songs
The song list will change based upon preference, but the following setup is what I've found to be the quickest and most reliable for charm kiting all of Seafury Island:

1. Mez
2. Single Target Snare
3. AE Fear
4. Magic DoT
5. Fire DoT
6. Cold DoT
7. Selo's
8. Charm

Reasoning
Charm is self explanatory, as is why it's next to selo's. You'll be running around alot, so having those two keys next to eachother will help. As for the rest? They're mostly around for when you get down to your final MOB. I'll cover that later.

The pulling
Pulling is rather simple. There are many ways to do it, but the simplest way I've found is the following:

1. Find your first charming target. Charm him and have him attack the next mob you'd like in your swarm.
2. Let your charm break. DO NOT CHANGE TARGETS This is important because you'll want to stick to one charm target until that target dies.
3. Use social aggro to pull others. I haven't tried this with mobs that don't social aggro with eachother, but it stands to reason that those are your only targets (Centaurs, wolves, orcs, seafuries, etc)

Once you get your targets set up, it's time for the kill.

The kill
Charm your first target. He'll be your first patsy. Once charmed, send him after one of the other mobs in the swarm. They'll start duking it out.

But wait, the rest are still chasing me!!!
That's right, there's about a 3-6 second interval on aggro "sticking" on P99. That's why us bards can practically run right through most KoS zones without getting aggro. Unfortunately, that makes the charm kiting harder. You'll have to run your swarm over the top of their now fighting brothers. Usually you only have to make one pass, but sometimes you just get really unlucky. I like to circle around the two MOBS until the swarm sticks myself.

Rinse and repeat until nearly dead
The amount of time it will take for your patsy to be low enough health depends entirely on the mobs chosen, but when they get low on health (sub 20%), you should start trying to break the charm. Some mobs you'll want to break sooner, some (like seafuries) you'll probably want to wait till sub 10%. The ways I've broken charm:

1. Use hide. Unreliable, but always my first choice since it can be used will singing
2. Invis ring. More reliable, but stops singing and can be expensive
3. Spam "BACK OFF". Since a mob "stops" to attack, if you spam back off enough eventually your patsy will outrun his buddies attacks.

Now that you have your patsy out of the group of minions, load up all your dots on him. He'll die soon enough. If you're able to split him far enough away from the swarm, he'll start fleeing and will take even more damage from DoTs. But the longer you wait to lay on your DoTs, the easier it is for someone to KS you. This is a problem I've ran into at Seafuries, so I've started to take the safer route.

Repeat above till you are down to two mobs
You can obviously keep this going all day if you have mana. But the higher charm will eventually put you at 0 mana, so you'll need to take a break. The easiest way I've found to end the kite is to wait till you are down to two mobs and let them beat eachother. One of them will start to flee (if he isn't charmed). Mez the non-flee'er, and then snare/dot the flee'ing mob. Once he's dead, fear kite (snare - fear - 3 dots in a row) the last one till dead.

Notes
Havin JBoots really helps. Being able to outrun your swarm at all times is handy.

The number of mobs in your swarm depends on how fast they beat down your patsy. For seafuries it's the entire island (sans Corrupted or Quag), but for lower level kills? Not sure.

Circle kiting is more efficient, but this is slightly safer and is the only way to mass-kill mobs with a large hit-radius that I know of.

Always have a drum out. It'll bring maximum selo's speed, and all of the dots are drum based.

The DoTs *do* stack with eachother. At 55 with Selo's Drum of the March, they'll do 179 damage a tic, which ain't too shabby if you ask me. More than my weapons atleast.

[Growlers]

Thanks man, just rolled a bard. I'm in the process of learning how to kite (dying a lot) hehe. But I've had a blast so far! This will be helpful later on.

[Nytch]

Though charm kiting was broken?

[SirAlvarex]

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

Though charm kiting was broken?

It doesn't work like live, but the last time I played (been a few weeks...) all you had to do was get your charmed mob to attack something in the crowd. Then you could run your crowd over the top of the two and they'd all start beating your pet.

So it isn't like LIVE, where social aggro is enough. But I used it to great affect in OOT Seafuries and in Tim Deep's Raptors. Safer than circle kiting atleast.