Paladins as kiters in raids..

[thurvok]

When we do Mindshear Avatar in Korfax a group is set up to kite the named adds that pops during the fight.. the enchanters take care of the bouncing little fat balls of goos.. BUT it is the knights job to tie up the named adds.. It is a long fight.. I just suck at kiting.. soo when assigned to these groups I just try to heal/battle rezz.. I am not sure WHY I suck at kiting I just do.. I notice Shadowknights seem to do such a better job.. Do they have more tools for these jobs??.. or do I just really suck.. hehe.. When other Paladins are assigned kiting jobs.. How do you do it and stay alive for the long period of time you are asked to tie up the named adds on this raid and in other situations where kiting is needed???.. I would like to work on this..

One thing ... does using a diferent camera angle help?? I just use the 1st person when I am looking straight ahead thru my toons eyes. as opposed to other angles.. I can see where a different angle might help for these jobs.. just never have gotten good at it..

[Normy]

Well, SK's do have an additional tool to help them kite what would ordinarily be impossible to kite. But I've not done the event you are referring to. So my question is this, do the adds run faster than your character? If they do not, then I can normally tie up 2-3 adds reliably depending on how hard they hit. Lots of adds are still easier with a SK since they can AE agro.

If they run faster than a character running, then a paladin is generally a bad idea for kite. Its just a matter of time before they die. On all the events I've kited mobs in the past though, I usually look to exploit the geometry of whereever I am. I look for ways to get up a rock, around an object, something that will make the pathing of the mob get a little stupid and give me a chance to stop and cast a spell or two. Sometimes its just a heal spell on myself, sometimes its a stun on another target, sometimes its a group heal. All depends on situation. Between our HoP, LoH, HoT pots, and burst heals, we are usually fairly difficult to kill which is one of our main contributions to being kiters. Being self-sufficient without having to damage mobs works to our advantage here.

I only play in first person unless I'm trying to observe more of what the raid is doing. I find it disorienting to try to run around like that though.

[Opfor]

SKs kite well due to DoTs, AE aggro, pets, and a few other toys. In general no another camera angle does not help, HoTT is huge, pallys are a poor choice for kiters in general, although if you want the job I don't know of any SK that will object to letting you all take it.

As for Mindshear we make/made our Pallys deal with the NA also, aggro run up the ramp to the staging room, about the top of the ramp he will memblur and start to walk back, reaggro before he passes the door into Mindshear room, rinse/repeat. And you SKs should be sitting on top of the green blob in the center of the room with 1-2 chanters, and popping AE aggro every time adds pop, then mez/charm the adds, it will be alot less work for your raid.

[shiftie]

First off.

Camera Angles: Yes another angle can help. For wizards that quad kite running in figure 8's will round up the mobs into one group and most casters play from a scrolled out view. I have found that you lose aggro doing this because EQ is sketchy at best with the "you cannot see your target" that you get spammed with if you angle yourself wrong. Maybe through years of practice there are those that control that better than I but I am so used to playing first person because of it anything else feels foreign.

Raid kiting: From first person view it is often hard to get a feel for your surroundings and if you switch camera angles you can often get yourself killed by getting stuck on random zone geometry (someting that juts out from a wall etc). The best method for checking the status of your kite is to use the Shift-T (no pun intended) function and to bring up the titles menu. When you use that it will automatically reverse your view to allow you to check behind yourself. This will allow you to check the status of the mobs behind you and immediately toggle back to first person by closing the "titles" selection screen.

Why Sk's are better...
1. Hate step (Not that I want everything SK have but Paladins should have a version of this, warriors and SK both have a version)
2. AE aggro

What paladins can do to be better...
1. Heal the SK, and don't let any other classes heal them unless absolutely necessary. If the SK dies this almost guarantees the paladin will pick up their adds also.
2. Force of disruption - this is by far the best spell to use.
3. Flash of light - if you don't have to worry about causing "zone" adds this can buy you time and cause you to run less circles especially if the adds are in an open zone and can be snared.
4. Allow yourself to get hit and use burst heal to create ae aggro.
5. Make use of HoT potions.

Mindshear
If you do it right (or at least how my guild does it) there will only be 2 girplan adds that spawn everytime the emote goes off. Have 2 paladins use cycle target when the adds spawn and each lock them down at which point enchanters can charm them and send them in to suicide. Net result is 0 adds except for the 30-45 seconds after the emote and they get locked down. The easiest place to pull them to is the ramp leading down from the door.

[Edivor]

[Edivor]

[shiftie]

[thurvok]

Hmmm... "As far as Mindshear Avatar is concerned, the Negativistic Acolytes are on a cycle of being active for 20 seconds, then deactive for 20 seconds. They have an emote in say that denotes the active/inactive periods."

I did not know that.. there are 1-2 other named adds that pop during the raid as well.. Do they also mindwipe themselves???.. the Girplans are handle by the chanters.. ocassionaly we are asked to stun them when they 1st pop to allow chanters to mezz them.. those are never a problem the named adds are the problem for us at times..

[Edivor]

Acolyte of Granduer spawns if someone in your raid aggroes the wrong Avatar, I believe.

[shiftie]

So far as I can tell the avatar don't spawn if you kill in the right order. I'll have to check if this includes the NA.

[Opfor]

Warriors do not have a version of hatestep as far as I know, Monks do, wizzies do, not Warriors.

[Normy]

Personally I'd prefer to NOT have a version of their hatestep. Means they get to kite more, and frees me up to heal more. I do frequently heal the SK's though, for hte reasons stated. If one of them gets a bad stun and wipes or just something goes wrong, the mobs are usually after me rather than a squishie. As for camera angles, like alot of things in EQ it all depends on what you are comfortable with. Some people can make great use of camera angles, I'm not one of them, but I have used the Title screen trick to do a quick check behind me if I have a decent straight path for a few seconds.

But in the end, you aren't missing some one-super-uber-kiting-trick-to-own-them-all. Kiting is a practised art. Takes time and alot of screwing it up to get really good at it, then it becomes easier. SK's are known kiters and have some tools to back it up, so most smart SK's are good kiters. If you have a good crew of SK's, kiting might be a bit foriegn to you. For a while we were low on intelligent SK's and packed full of paladins in my guild, so I ended up learning alot about kiting.

[shiftie]

[Brohg]

[Hulkling]

IMO Paladins are better suited to kite a single mob due to FoD (as mentioned). SKs are much better suited to kite multiples for obvious reasons.

[Nodden]

I always play in 3rd person view with the camera mode where I can pan around freely, unless I'm in a place with a very low ceiling.
Kiting in 1st person kinda sux .

The Mindshear Acolytes each have specific abilities. Negativistic acolyte is spawned by one specific Mindshear Acolyte. Kill that Mindshear Acolyte early on and you won't see negativistic again until the Mindshear Avatar(end boss).

Someone mentioned the Acolyte of Grandeur. This is simply spawned by the same Mindshear Acolyte that spawns Negativistic if you leave Negativistic up for too long. There is also a third add called Acolyte Guardian which is spawned in manner similar to Grandeur. If you just kill Negativistic when it pops you'll never see Grandeur or Guardian.

[Brohg]

[karkariace]

[shiftie]

[Thebobo]