Ok, all you experts… I’d like advice on how to solo some bigger/thicker/harder hitting mobs… for instance Pheonix in Arbo and Mayor Galio. Yes, I know how to use a nightmare… but more specifically to the point… I’m wondering how to get better effective use of my mana.
Last night I spent probably the greater part of 30-40mins killing Galio. At first I tried to run him like I do Solarian and Morrigan. I create slime molds, give them potions, stone them, aegis them, and cast demonic aura. I then shift into a mean tarantula and we do the deal in two runs.
However when a mob like Galio dispatches my pets in the first few rounds, I wondered about the real benefit of wasting 200 mana and 2k coins on them.
I then tried to employ a few different strategies…
• Stay in as long as possible breathing fire (2 Run Regen)
• Stay in as long as shield of thorns was up, NO BLAST, recall, cast shield, shift and repeat (3-4 Run Regen)
So, which do you think did the most damage for the cheapest amount of mana… and what is the best way to solo these mobs?
For the record… I am NOT a cleric, I am NOT a mage, I am a 4x Caster, Druid Prime, with -8ac, and with no way of improving that ac without copious amount of drachma eq, and iron skin. (You’ll have a hard time convincing me running unshifted is the way to go) I got 650 mana to play with in a run.
I don’t know the answers, but I do suspect that there needs to be a shift in strategy for me when a mob is more than two runs with pets. Don’t tell me play a necro or whatever either. Stryx is mean, and you all know it! I just want to be the best that a druid my level can be.
Should I bother with debuffs… baring in mind at -8, gonna have to heal self a lot before they land.
What spells should I have up? Is wraith a waste of time for big mobs? etc
Ok, Fire at will! (no Aaron… I’m not inviting you to abuse Leaf, more than what you already do.)
The best way start a shifted kill primarily depends on whether the mob in question actually has any chance of missing. Assuming it does, it’s normally most efficient to fog the room (taking advantage of the fact that forms have high enough hit that you’re not likely to miss most mobs even with fog up) and toss a damn/curse.
Staying in to land more debuffs seems like a good idea at first glance, but only damn both lasts long enough to be useful for a shifted kill, and lands easy enough to make it worthwhile. Fog is of course a free debuff since mobs don’t get angry when you cast it. If you have to use 200 mana worth of heals in order to land a blind or weaken or whatever, anything you gain from the -hit is lost with your mana.
Slime molds are only really useful on mobs that either do very little damage but have a ton of hp, or mobs that hit insanely hard(I’m not talking 4-500 dam a round when I say hard btw). In the first case they’ll last a while and help you chop a mob down, and in the second case they’ll save you some hp, at the cost of efficiency. I don’t generally use them on the latter example anymore though.
As for blasting, my rule of thumb is that it’s a waste of mana for any mob that you can stay with for 3+ rounds, you’d get better mileage saving the mana for heals when you flee. In the case of mobs you can’t last that long with, the expense of the frequent flee/heal will likely overtake the expense of blasting.
I’m not entirely clear on how shield of thorns works, but assuming it’s a -ac spell with a chance to break on each hit, I doubt it works out as useful as stone/iron when you can’t recast without fleeing and unshifting.
Wraith is useful on a mob-by-mob basis, if the mob in question whiffs through wraith, go for it, if not, waste of mana.
Hopefully that long ramble has at least some useful information.
Edit:As you fight bigger and bigger mobs, and get more mana, you will start running up against problems with your own spells dropping near the end of combat. The best advice I can give for that(and to solve several other problems) is to keep a stopwatch with you, and keep track of your timing. I realise there a plenty of ways you can script around such problems, but in my experience you can’t do much better than a good stopwatch.
Thanks Ryn, it’s nice to get specific information on the questions.
Debuffs
I’ll try fog and damn tonight and see how they go. Shield of Thorns is practically the “only” redeeming feature of being prime druid, besides the nice regen. If a mob is hitting me less, it has less chance to break, and this means I could possibly stay in 3-5 rounds more per round, if it’s up. Will give this a shot tonight. I rate Shield of Thorns one of the best spells in game… Pity it breaks so easy.
I remember trying to dispel Solarian before runs… It landed but seem to have little to no consequence on how long the fight took. I didn’t bother after then… Maybe nothing good came off him.
Drop The Pets
Nod, thought this might be the case for these mobs.
Blast/No Blast balance
So there is a balance, and it’s best gauged by how long you stay in battle. Good to know. I’m in for about 6-8 rounds on galio. I’m still really unsure at what ratio I should be blasting him. It probably changes per mob, but gauging that will come with experience that will come with time…
What spells to have up
I dropped the wraith, good move on gailo… Greater Fluid… pointless when shield is up. Haste… for the win. Aegis and Stone… givens.
Keep a stopwatch with you
Swatch or Casio? :twisted:
Hmm, be nice to hear from king strides or stryx…
I remember trying to dispel Solarian before runs… It landed but seem to have little to no consequence on how long the fight took. I didn’t bother after then… Maybe nothing good came off him. [/quote:3nw6d53v]
The Solarian has a spellshield that won’t dispel fully with a single casting. Use something like {e;disp solarian;w;e;disp solarion, etc} until there is a list of dispelled spells (whether you can tell what they are or not). You have a better shot of keeping mobs friendly that way.
I’ve never really figured this one out… the whole… Darkness… Fog… Dark Cloak… Wearing Light… Mobs fighting blind etc.
How do I use these spells to make a seeing mob fight blind in a lighted room?
Do I cast darkness on myself or the mob? (Conflicting info on this one)
What effect does a mob’s darksight or infravision have on this?
Discuss…
galio has damn good saves, sometimes you need 10x to land a damnation on him
Evergreen is right, saves on this mob are incredible, debuffs are a waste of time for solo.
So I’ve been running some tests… Here are results… For mayor galio…
B = Brutal
M = Massacre
E = Extremely
V = Very Hard
I = Miss
Mayor Galio (With Haste - 5 Attacks - Tarantula - -10 - No Wraith)
B M E V I
0 22 4 0 4
0 19 6 0 0
0 21 9 0 0
0 15 8 0 2 Small Wounds (Regen #1)
0 22 5 0 3
0 19 9 0 2
0 20 5 0 0
0 16 6 0 3 Quite Few Wounds (Regen #2)
0 19 10 0 1
0 18 5 0 2
0 21 4 0 0
0 24 4 0 2 Pretty Hurt (Regen #3)
0 21 3 1 5
0 25 6 0 0
0 17 8 0 1
1 16 1 0 1 R.I.P.
During this test, I had aegis and haste up. Each run I shift returned to recast shield of thorns. I got 4 runs per regen and 3 regens, to kill mayor.
Here is the surprising part… next run I just breathed fire at mayor. It took me 2 runs per regen to waste my mana. It took me 3 regens to kill mayor. So that’s NO DIFFERENCE just attacking, or blasting hard. If anything blasting is actually quicker in REAL TIME.
Jezer did I read right … You do not user Greater Fluid if u have shield of thorns?
Unless something have changed, I was informed that thorns and fluid stack
with each other. If it did not, then thorns would be one of the biggest waste
as a prime spell only. Since anyone that has druid in 2-4 can cast fluid.
I use greater fluid almost perm… but sometimes I’m scratching my head why. I don’t see much difference. It would be the first thing I’d want to know about, if sloth was a bit more free with information.
if sloth was a bit more free with information.[/quote:1nnfmhmr]
The main reason sloth is not free with information is due to that most players now days are more familiar with calculations and variables then the past coders were. If they made info available, everyone would pick out the inconsistencies and bad coding.
If they made info available, everyone would pick out the inconsistencies and bad coding.[/quote:1a99s50u]
ROGL! :twisted:
galio has damn good saves, sometimes you need 10x to land a damnation on him[/quote:639ag09n]
Heh, try dispelling him first. He’s prolly just got prot from evil up, like the lammasus and semielves in elemental school. I always get the damn on one try after a dispel.
Galio is a pretty weak chop mob. You should be able to debuff him easily after u dispel and damn him. Then shift and chop him down with a rabbit healing u. Might be 1 run.
It could be quite a laugh, to run some tests on some spells to gauge there effectiveness… A bit like “myth busters” on sloth. Yeah, people been doing it for ages I guess… but would be cool to start like a journal or newspaper on the crier about them.
Need to find like a practice dummy type mob, cast faerie fly on it like 50 times and then see there is any effect, and write a satirical post back with the results. Sounds right up my alley! :twisted:
I swear some of the lesser used spells are probably completely broke. Things do get broken through obscurity.
But then again, some players have tried to warn me off my little “activist” type tendency in case things get nerfed or broken or changed. Yeap, some people are serious… but I’ve never been much of a “people pleaser” :twisted:
I might try faerie fly tonight and write a post, it caught my eye last night… cause I had to cast it 20 times to get 2 to stick on galio last night. (I bet he was a goal keeper in another life.)
I also tried that fog spell and it disappeared in like two ticks, and that’s about how long it takes to shift tarantula when rapid shift doesn’t work! :twisted: and I’m thinking… debuffs are such a group thing… be cool if some were a little more for solo. Two spells to test straight up I guess.
Heh, try dispelling him first. He’s prolly just got prot from evil up, like the lammasus and semielves in elemental school. I always get the damn on one try after a dispel.
Galio is a pretty weak chop mob. You should be able to debuff him easily after u dispel and damn him. Then shift and chop him down with a rabbit healing u. Might be 1 run.[/quote:1r800w9p]
Hmm, thanks, I’ll give this a shot too… is his sanct perm? Cause if I could have dispelled it, I really have been a doofus haven’t I :twisted: :oops:
I use greater fluid almost perm… but sometimes I’m scratching my head why. I don’t see much difference. It would be the first thing I’d want to know about, if sloth was a bit more free with information.[/quote:2sqc7cf5]
Greater fluidity is 20% reduced damage from hits. Its a pretty major difference.
I use greater fluid almost perm… but sometimes I’m scratching my head why. I don’t see much difference. It would be the first thing I’d want to know about, if sloth was a bit more free with information.[/quote:2ebbnwdo]
Greater fluidity is 20% reduced damage from hits. Its a pretty major difference.[/quote:2ebbnwdo]
scratching head I’ll try look harder for that difference… it was wearing off when I was fighting mayor, and I saw no noticeable increase in damage… Looks like I have a 3rd spell to test.
galio has damn good saves, sometimes you need 10x to land a damnation on him[/quote:vkg52ncr]
Heh, try dispelling him first. He’s prolly just got prot from evil up, like the lammasus and semielves in elemental school. I always get the damn on one try after a dispel.
Galio is a pretty weak chop mob. You should be able to debuff him easily after u dispel and damn him. Then shift and chop him down with a rabbit healing u. Might be 1 run.[/quote:vkg52ncr]
Masterful dispels do nothing to Galio. Damn went awry. Maybe your just lucky.
Shield of Thorns is DamReduction spell, can be broken by mob’s hits just like Bone Armor.
Druid-prime spell.
Nodz I’m not sure the exact % for Shield of Thorns, but I believe it does
stack. So this does help you Jezer!
Masterful dispels do nothing to Galio. Damn went awry. Maybe your just lucky.[/quote:1t9go8ui]
OOps. You’re right, it’s not dispellable.
I havent had much time lately to play but I am still voting.
So you think we are going to give all the secrets away? Be happy that you can 4 run him :P
So you think we are going to give all the secrets away? Be happy that you can 4 run him :P[/quote:2mibbgu4]
No I don’t expect the DoW Clan to help me with info at all. My experience with DoW has been 50% (Haha your a n00b you suck) 40% (Indifference) and 10% help when I needed it!
At least with the pirates, everyone sucks, and everyone’s a n00b, but they help you anyways :twisted:
Feel free to work to increase the 10%. :) So, I’m still a n00b avatar, and I don’t know everything, don’t laugh at me! help me! So your clan has a lot of elite players… get over it!
I’ve been hitting polar bear in Dark Chasm, a fraction easier than mayor for me. I seen cicada, a mid avatar practically kill it one run. I think the secret is necro ;) Definitely more than -10ac would help.
I’ve heard avatar warriors talk about mayor being two runs… I’m not at the height of my powers yet…
At least with the pirates, everyone sucks, and everyone’s a n00b, but they help you anyways :twisted:
[/quote:3egxlchs]
Oh yeah? I wouldn’t expect much help now, Corky.
Hmm, I just realised they are two ways to take my remark, and you took it the wrong way :) Oh, man, I dug myself a hole there didn’t I. :oops:
I meant the pirates think everyone ELSE is a noob, not directly the pirates themselves. And it was all in jest… bah… forget it… :oops:
You play with fire, you get burned… :oops: I’m sorry. How embarrassing…
[quote:2qayhsr5]My experience with DoW has been 50% (Haha your a n00b you suck) 40% (Indifference) and 10% help when I needed it! [/quote:2qayhsr5]
I’ve been pretty absent lately, so I’m not taking this personally. I think I can speak for a lot of the long-term players who have been here awhile…it’s fun to see someone trying to learn.
I think we have a mis-understanding when you say “10% help when you needed it”… If you’re dead, and Galio has looted your corpse, I expect a lot of people would come to help. That number, when you actually NEED help, I hope is closer to 80%. On the other hand, when you’re trying diferent tactics to solo Galio but you’re not dying, then you don’t really NEED help. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do.
I guess it comes down to telling someone how to hit one mob, vs teaching someone how to think about things for yourself. If you tried to cycle Galio without even attempting to dispel him the first run, just assuming that he’s permalit without testing it, we’ll all call you a newbie and hope you learn from it.
These things you’re learning now are a lot more valuable than someone just saying ‘for Galio, you do step 1, then step 2, then step 3’. If you learn your character and your abilities, you can come up with the steps by yourself much better than we can guess your abilities.
Most of us don’t remember the damage that a Tarantula blast does, and how much mana it costs, or the damage he does just fighting. You have to balance those out and figure out whether it’s better to blast or just fight and use the mana for heals. These kinds of decisions change for each mob, and change as you gain each level or put on another bit of new eq.
Charles
Hmm, I just realised they are two ways to take my remark, and you took it the wrong way :) Oh, man, I dug myself a hole there didn’t I. :oops:
I meant the pirates think everyone ELSE is a noob, not directly the pirates themselves. And it was all in jest… bah… forget it… :oops:
You play with fire, you get burned… :oops: I’m sorry. How embarrassing…[/quote:gf3llm1r]
Dont worry Jezer, Nancy just has a short fuse is all, rub her belly and she’ll be on your good side again :)
Yeah a lot of truth in your comments Charles.
I do find it frustrating often, because I want to learn and be the best that I can be, and people seem to be so short on information. You ask whats a decent coin run or something like that, and no one answers, then you check the top 20 and one of the people you asked got like 40mill in the week.
I gossip, can I kill this mob, someone says try, you hit it, you die, and then your rescuer pays you out for trying it in the first place because it was beyond your level… things like that, when your not empowered to be able to do the right thing, they get frustrating.
Things are getting better, I’ve never ever pulled down a solo mob bigger than 5 million till this week, it’s done wonders for confidence killing mayor and polar bear. I should be able to “self learn” better now that app is becoming increasingly more and more powerful. I’m 2 cp’s away from having max possible damage shifted… looking forwards to the fun afterwards. Looking to do a few forges, which is one of the most rewarding parts of the game for me… and maybe pop some eq for coins. It’s just a matter or building experience in time, as frustrating as that journey is…
As willing as I am to provide information where I can, there really is no substitute for creating your own style through a lot of trial and error. One player’s tactics aren’t always going to work for another.
Most of the “best” players have accumulated playtime in the high tens through hundreds of days doing this kind of thing.
I’m most certainly not including myself in the aforementioned “best” category, but as an example, I have 203 days logged on Ryn at the moment. A good chunk of that has been spent soloing in form, and it took time for it to start going smoothly.
Not too many other people Ive seen solo djab there ryn, I Would call you one of the best.
Hehe, I’ll be checking sloth blog to see how many avatars die at djab in the next few days, trying to figure out if they are as good as ryn. :D
$5 says Yinao has a shot :twisted:
Yinao’s already done Djab :)
Thanks btw Alias.
Has Yinao done eternal flame yet Ryn? It was just a couple of runs for you right? :lol: :wink:
Neither Yin nor me have soloed flame, but we two manned it once.
:twisted:
Edit: Couldn’t resist looking this up. Yin wasn’t there for the killing blow, so we get to see solo xp:
A thick beam of frost sprays forth from your body, hitting The eternal flame square in the chest.
The eternal flame has been banished to the ethereal plane!
You received 143495184 experience points.
Everything The eternal flame was carrying suddenly drops to the ground.
First of all, just because DoW doesn’t pop your spellbooks or tell you what eq you need and then help you pop it doesn’t mean were all a bunch of dicks. I spend quite a bit of time rescuing people that I could otherwise be using to horde these hidden coin runs. I refuse to show everyone every step of the way. Like Ryn says if your looted or need a cr I am sure you can find someone. If your looking for someone to hold your hand or wipe your ass, I am sorry for you.
Secondly what do we owe you? The game is meant for you to learn. Not for us to tell you. I know a bushel of avatars that suck. Why you ask? Because they run xp in dmount or they beg Shyla to pop the sbs and they have no idea where anything is because their clan runs to eq mobs for them. So don’t talk trash about my clan that knows the runs, and works for what they got. There is a reason were called The Dogs of War and not the Pussys of Thordfalen.
Last night I was shifted ferret, and tried to get past a blocking mob. The Tarantula in Gosseriuertjertj-on-the-somethingarather.
It attacked and killed me in a round. Ok, lessoned learned, block mobs block ferrets too… How can I get past these mobs safely? Will flee direction nearly always work…? Can the flee fail, and it will kill me anyway, or is this the exception to the rule?
Not many blocking mobs will block ferret, and very, very few block-aggro mobs will attack it on block. I’ve never found a block-aggro mob that will attack when you try to flee past in ferret though, and you’ll normally get through.
[quote:j831la3c]No I don’t expect the DoW Clan to help me with info at all. My experience with DoW has been 50% (Haha your a n00b you suck) 40% (Indifference) and 10% help when I needed it!
[/quote:j831la3c]
It’s a pity Cocaine has been playing WoW. I’m sure he would have taken you under his wing.
[quote:j831la3c] because I want to learn and be the best that I can be[/quote:j831la3c]
Like what Medios is saying… do you want to learn… or do you want to be taught. To me theres a big difference. Even myself, being in DoW, was encouraged to learn for myself which I am more grateful for, than being given all the eq i needed from clan members.
My advice to you is to get 5x40, mana eq and ac shift eq, then go out and ’learn’. You’ll find it much easier than trying now.
[quote:11vy8fll]A thick beam of frost sprays forth from your body, hitting The eternal flame square in the chest.
The eternal flame has been banished to the ethereal plane!
You received 143495184 experience points.
Everything The eternal flame was carrying suddenly drops to the ground.[/quote:11vy8fll]
Ahh, now those were the good ol’ days. We gotta do it again sometime on nocap :)
[quote:11vy8fll]Last night I was shifted ferret, and tried to get past a blocking mob. The Tarantula in Gosseriuertjertj-on-the-somethingarather.
It attacked and killed me in a round. Ok, lessoned learned, block mobs block ferrets too… How can I get past these mobs safely? Will flee direction nearly always work…? Can the flee fail, and it will kill me anyway, or is this the exception to the rule?[/quote:11vy8fll]
I found that mobs that block and such in this manner normally wouldnt if you try to flee passed possibly or hunt passed normally works too. If neither work just have a good flee hand, when you solo like me and ryn you’ll learn to type flee pretty fast :P Sometimes probably too fast for your own good lol
[quote:11vy8fll]Has Yinao done eternal flame yet Ryn? It was just a couple of runs for you right? Laughing Wink[/quote:11vy8fll]
However I haven’t tried the eternal flame solo, I do beleive my biggest solo mob was probably Ithiqua or Guardian Daemon xp wise anyways, most difficult was probably lyme chicken unshifted. Alot of those solos came from learning and dying plenty of times however, and beleive it or not Mike saved me a few of those times I’m sure.
Solo’ings fun but its difficult unless your at 5x40 or alot closer to it, I don’t think I started soloing till about when I got the seadragon form, it had decent ac fairly decent blasting, and quite a bit of hp to take some damage, now It wasnt -12 but it was -11 and almost did as good, but now I wouldnt go back ever. I’m not telling you dont do it now bc its always fun to see what you could kill and how you could kill it, but it deffinately gets easier if your char is at their prime :)
Hope this helps
Yin
heh.. I tried to solo eternal flame ..bad move.
It was 197 mil when I soloed it… mud must have been up longer.
Took me 8 runs though, ouch! Also, it was during a house of major frost. Always good to make sure the stars shine in favor of your epic battles :)
Last night I found myself leading a 3 man around SS. Such a big difference between “shift soloing” mobs and trying to run them with a group mindset. I found that if I didn’t shift, the 3 of us could only kill about as much as what I do on one of my shifted runs. All mana was put into keeping the tank alive, instead of killing the mob, like with shift.
How do new avatar warriors / druids / necros run nice together?
To deal real damage to a mob, it seems useless to have me as a one attack weak healo. Hiding behind a tank with necro pets chopping didn’t work effectively either. I didn’t really know what to do. In the end me and the necro shifted, split damage and the warrior healed self and debuffed and we run some biggish mobs one run. Unfortunately the warrior often ran out of mana healing self in a few runs. After the experience… I was kind of thinking… this group of 3 is harder to manage than running the mob’s multi run solo!
I just get the feeling, hiding behind the tank, relying on it to dish all the damage is just not the way to go. I want to shift when I run a group, but the other groupies, just seem to end up dying cause they can’t last as long.
How do you suggest odd classo like this run together..? I need some advice. (I can’t prot btw)
hello mcfly…..
tanks aren’t supposed to do damage… they are supposed to absorb it.
the people behind the tank do the damage.
in the case of your previous group, u and the tank split dam….necro debuff and heal the tank.
‘supposed to’ being the operative words.. :wink:
If my shield of thorns is still up… and don’t blink cause you might miss it… I’d back myself as taking less dam than a monk or a warrior!
seriously, just learn to play instead of spamming the board with your retarded crap
:twisted:
seriously, just learn to play instead of spamming the board with your retarded crap[/quote:2fc4143u]
I’m already well aware of how a few people like yourself feel…