Things to do in Fortress Mechanatos when you're dead

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

So there I was minding my own business, killing gnomes and robots and racking up some xp, when Gaurdian mechawhatever model 1 shows up.

I currently am 3 boxing
80 gimp shaman 1k AA, not great gear, but some good stuff. about 16k hp buffed, 13k mana. Sadly, still wearing Qvic gloves... I really need to fix that.
80 gimpier mage ~500 AA, very poor gear some good pieces (LGUK helped) 10k hp buffed, 11k mana
80 gimpiest druid ~ 500 AA, extremely poor gear. a few good pieces (sadly I went dormant on my accounts for the month of BB), 9.5k hp buffed, 11k mana

So, I proceeded in a Northerly direction your honor, to pull with the druid. ok. Unsnareable, unrootable I should run awa... dead.

It's a do over.

COTW druid, rebuff. pull from a bit more distance...

engage with mage pet as druid runs back in, spam heals from druid and shaman till things stabilize, got it under control, and looks like an iminent win... I think it enraged. I didn't check logs or anything soo.... Anyway, I am thinking furiously, if I PET HOLD the mage pet, he'll run back to the mage, we all die due to the mechanics of mob agro on pets won't work if a player is close by. So, we all die because hte mage pet went down, and it summoned and beat the crap out of everyone before I could do much of anything.

So while I was laying there dead, I had some time to reflect.... Stupidly, I should have had the mage pet on /guard at a spot away from my characters, then could have simply stopped attack during enrage, (if it was indeed enrage, I seem to have lost my audio triggers for enrage. need to fix that too), healed through it, then finished him off. Live and learn...

However, I looked up this guy on Alla (I can't link because Alla is cut off from my work computer) and it didn't say anything about enrage, just a comment that he has 'wild rampage' at the end of the fight. ... Never heard that before so I think it was just someone saying his rampage was really high at the end of the fight, which makes me suspect enrage...

Any comments or thoughts on this OTHER than 'you suck Bigcatt'. I already know that. Tell me something I don't know.

Edit: fixed some diction.

[Macnair]

With regard to your druid, I'd note that I have just counted up 70 pieces of Gnollish Leather armor in the Maelin bazaar. Some of it is overpriced, of course, but much of it is quite reasonable. Your server might be different, but maybe there's a bargain or two that would help you out.

You can have a hotkey set up as follows:

/pause 3, /pet guard here
/pet hold

That will set the pet's guard spot as wherever he is when he hears the command -- in this case, right in front of the named -- and then turn off his attack. He won't run back to anywhere, he'll just stay there and get pounded on. The /pause command is probably necessary, because you want to ensure the correct order of operations: first guard, then hold.

If you have the pet set up to guard another spot, when you /pet hold him, he'll try to run back to that spot, and then someone will get summoned. You hope it's the pet, but maybe it won't be.

[Kumudil]

That "Pet Attack off" Hotkey is great.
I am running same Trio once a while and found it always anoying to first run the pet to an "offside" point to guard it there, sometimes getting in trouble because I forgot it. This will make life easier. I am also lurking in the Mages tower, never saw this one mentioned.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

That worked out beautifully btw.

Got a named last night, locked mage pet in place with /pet guard, while he was fighting, threw him in to /pet hold at 10% and won. I forgot to make my audio triggers on that, so still not sure if he enraged. Will check this week and find out.

Thanks for the idea on that Macnair!

Also, followed up on the Druid gear in bazaar at your suggestion. I was amazed at the variety and low cost of the stuff there. Jumped the druid up quite a bit, updated his healing focus through a neck item ( Can't recall the name, but had 30% healing focus to lvl 80 spells for only 1500 p!), and bought either Scratched or gnollish for all his spots. I tried to go with Scratched when I could, because my thinking is that I will get cores for them as I level them up when the new expansion comes out. Unless of course the one groupable gear from the new expansion immediately blows away the SOF group gear, by availability and stats. I suspect it won't for a while, so it seems a reasonable strategy.