Cheat or tactic?

So here's my new plan; I aggro a mob, drag it over to another mob which
hates it but not me, and get it attacked. I then kite it around a bit
if necessary till it starts to fight back. Then I wait till its down to
"run away" hp%, and charm it.

The mob it was fighting stops, because its now suddenly a pet and thus
neutral, but doesn't start fighting me instead, because I'm not KOS to
it, and the mob it was fighting wasn't my pet at the time.

I run off to one side a bit, away from the "guard" mob, and invis to
break charm. Chain the former pet, beat it to death while it stands
there running in place ("RIP"), boom, practically free exp.

Failures:

1) mob catches up with me and manages to interrupt me enough to stop me
stopping it from killing me. Unlikely, but it can happen.

2) We run over an add, and things become more difficult as I try to get
BOTH off me. Fortunately, there are usually more "guards" around, and I
don't have to stay near a fight once I get one started, I can either
return after ditching, or just give that guy up as a lost cause and
continue the plan with the new one

3) Charm resists mean the "guard" kills the mob. This is a pain, but I
really don't have a lot invested, so its just shrug and go get another

4) Mob kills guard. See 2); thats ok, I just drag him off for a second
guard, although I can also help out by chaining and doing song damage to
the mob.

5) Guard has a swing aimed at the mob which lands in the split second
after charm does; now the mob which is my pet reacts by hitting him
back, and the guard suddenly hates me. Not wanting bad faction with the
guards, this is a Zone Out event.

6) Mob's regen rate is so high that in between charm and charm break, it
regens so much that it isn't running anymore but instead comes running
for me. Happened in NL a few times, hasn't in GD so far. Solution,
charm later, break faster (carrying a flute and having invis song memmed
helps)

I don't remember using this trick, or reading about it, on my previous
bard. I did do something similar involving rooting and atoning, for my
cleric.

I'm wondering whether its considered an exploit, although frankly its
less effective than charming one mob and having it attack another as my
pet; only thing is, with the ED oath restricting me from SOW potions or
twinky JBoots/TBoots, charming work is much harder, and I think I'm
actually ending up with more exp per hour doing it this way, even though
its half the net DPS, and even considering the massive detriment that is
running to find a new victim and dragging him all the way to the guards.

Lance
Midi, 30 bard

In article <DKudnZ2dnZ1twFmjnZ2dnQSgkN6dnZ2dRVn-zJ2dnZ0@dejazzd.com>,
emporer@dejazzd.com says...


Its not an 'illegal exploit' by SOE standards to the best of my
knowledge. Its probably not how they intended the game to be played
either though. But then neither was wiz/dru quad-kiting or necro-FD-
rotting.

I've done it myself in places like Echo Caverns with my enchanter from
time to time, where it works very well. (Lots of mobs, solid gaurds,
don't have to run too far...)

A variation on the tactic:

Instead of charming the mob, mez the gaurd, then melee/snare the fleeing
mob, refreshing mez periodically. In many cases this is much more
reliable than landing charm on the victim in time - especially if
hunting reds or stuff that's higher level the the available charm.

Memblur the gaurd when you're done. Pull a new victim.

42 wrote:



This is essentially what I did with my cleric, rooting the guard, then
atoning him. The beauty, though, of the charm plan, is that I never do
anything at all to the guard, so I don't have to worry about aggro on
him... which is good, since as a bard it will be a long time before I
get a mem blur.

The other good thing about it, though, is that I can with a little luck
use this tactic to swarm the victim; just as with normal charm swarming,
the object is to get several mobs hurting one mob, so you multiply your
DPS. Trouble with swarming is that you really have to worry about
keeping all those mobs on your target instead of on you, and when charm
breaks, your target plus all the mobs come straight for you. Since I
haven't aggroed the guards, though, they don't come for me, and since I
haven't charmed the target, it doesn't break and come for me either, not
till I'm ready for it anyway.

Charming, to use swarming, I'd have to have some sort of AE mez and AE
mem blur.

I worked this out in Neth Lair, where the Neth drones etc are KOS to the
Haven guards. Mobs were from green to cyan to barely dark blue, I was
capable of meleeing them down or fear kiting them or charm killing
them... but I was having trouble with adds, and with running over other
groups while fear kiting, where the AE nature of bard fear caused
trouble at least once. In the end, this tactic was more kills per hour
than melee and heal, or than fear kiting if you take into account the
times I ended up running to zone to clear aggro.

I'm using it now, though, in Great Divide, pulling first wolves and now
scouts over to the coldain wolves and wolfmasters. In NL it was
difficult to get a swarm on the mob, because there were lone guards up
in front and the other pair were way back from that point. In GD,
though, its relatively simple to get a swarm going, as the bad guys run
faster and stick with me better, even after aggroing one or two coldain
wolves (I build hate with chanting all the way over to the coldain
area). Once I have a few guards at work, I snare the victim and then
run off using selos to a good distance, which generally causes the
victim to turn and attack his tormenters. Once that happens, there
seems to be no way to get him back off of them, I've tried all ranged
songs, but its safe as houses.

I have to admit, I'm losing a fair amount of coldain, but I never take a
faction hit for doing so, since its a mob who isn't my pet doing the
killing. I wish I could find tougher guards, since the level of the
guards is entirely irrelvant to the proposition (the key is whether I
can land charm on the mob, I never do anything at all to the guards, so
their level doesn't deter me). Well, no, I did find a tougher set,
Captain Stonesomething... but he took out my red to me scout in the time
it took me to type one sentence!

So another question, then, is what zones have mobs that are KOS to each
other, and with at least one set who won't be KOS to me (even if I have
to use Carrilion to make that happen)

Midi