EQDiva

As defined to me by my friend, level 61 bard, swarm kiting is pulling no less than 3 mobs (we prefer no less than 5) and charming one, breaking charm when it is low on life and dotting until it dies, and start over. This is doable. Just takes practice, lots of it. I've managed it to an extent, but I have a long way to go before I am highly proficient. There are issues I have yet to figure out that affect this process. As I learn more, I'll add to this. Item 1) Speed is GOD. You MUST have some kind of run speed enhancement, be it SOW pots, Selo's, J-boots or whatnot. Remember, you're dealing with a "raging hoard" chasing you much of the time. You really don't want them to catch you. Item 2) You should work with mobs of the same kind, social ability of mobs is important. A great place to practice the skills is in Eastern Wastes, in the South West Corner, specifically the walrus'. NEVER attack the mobs, just run by them, they should be high agro as is. The only time you will ever attack a mob during this process is when it is low on life after you had it as a pet to finish it off for your xp. Item 3) You must have a Toggle Target key set up. I use "z" since it is not an often used key, nor is it already used for anything else, normally. Item 4) Hotkeys are important. You need one to make your pet and send it in to attack, another to DoT/Chant the mob and a last one to just run(!) when things go down the drain fast. Item 5) I would advise you to use either a primary drum and primary wind instrument, or both as secondary. This is because you will need to do FAST swapping of your instruments. Kind of hard to swap out Primary slot drum with a Secondary slot Flute fast. Remember, you are running these mobs in circles; anything that slows you down is BAD, if not deadly. Item 6) Hotkey bank it has to be simple. It helps to get a hotkey setup that includes Inventory and primary/secondary on the side for ease of swapping out instruments and other items. Hotkey setups: Pet attack can be pulled from pet window. Pet Charm: Line 1: /stopsong Line 2: /cast #(charm gem) Invis button: Line 1: /stopsong Line 2: /cast #(invis gem) If you are level 51+ you can avoid swapping and use the Travel song instead. (Remember to swap to your flute/wind before hitting this button, if they kill your pet, no exp for you.) NOTE: Using HIDE can break the charm as well! DoT/Chant buttons: Line1: /stopsong Line2: /cast #(DoT/Chant gem) Make three to four of these, one for each Chant. Depending on how many DoTs you have for your level. RUN button: Line1: /stopsong Line2: /cast #(Selo's gem) No other lines. This is your get away fast button for when the toilet if flushed with you in it. Run for the zone line, equip drums AFTER you start casting this if they are not equipped already but before the song is playing. The idea here is speed, NOW, not later. This can also be used to refresh Selo's as needed. Quick run down on how to do this. 1. Get a bunch of mobs running after you, in a tight pack. 2. Be sure to have a speed run buff going at all times. 3. Target 2 different mobs if you can, not required but makes it easier. If you charm your pet and toggle to the other target and have it attack it, it speeds things up a bit. 4. Keep the mobs running back over your pet as much as possible to get them to agro the pet not you. 5. Avoid letting them touch you, I'm not sure, but it seems once they have hit me, they agro me instead of my pet. *There is a agro range issue, if too close they ignore pet and go for you. 6. When the pet is low on life, equip the wind instrument and go invisible for just a moment to break charm; alternately Travel song if you have it. 7. Once charm broken DoT/Chant the pet over and over until dead. Remember to keep running circles, best to run them around the dying ex-pet so it doesn't get out of range. 8. Get new pet and start over. 9. When down to two mobs, to prevent them from running, get them both targeted, using toggle key, and Chant them down in turn. Try to prevent them from getting too far apart in life. Snare chant the last one, it should be under 10% if done right. NEVER do damage to any of the mobs you are kiting unless down to the last 2. You only ever directly attack your "ex-pet" to kill it for the exp. By attacking any of the mobs you instantly get full and unbreakable agro, thus making the whole point of this process worthless. The idea here is work smarter not harder, and yes, it is hard and takes a lot of practice. The rewards however are some of the best experience to be had at "reasonable" risk. Please post questions, comments in the appropriate forum and I'll address them as best I can. *Permissions for the publication of this guide on the Internet granted solely to EQDiva.com's owner and web master as they are as of the original posting date of the above info on this site. This guide may NOT be reproduced and resold for profit by anyone. © January 26, 2004 *Updated 3/6/03 © extended to cover these changes and still applies as stated above.

I agree on points 1, 2, and 3. Point 4: Really I just have a /pet attack key and that's plenty sufficient in terms of hotkeys. Apart from that, I just run around pounding the keys, and have no problems. Point 5: If you have SoW or at least Run3, and depending on the mob, maybe even without it, you don't need a flute. Using Selo's Song of Travel to break charm lets you keep your drum equipped full time, and you're only without Selo speed for about 3-4 seconds, plus it refreshes your run pretty commonly. Of course, if you have a Goblin Gazughi ring or TCoDN or the like, you don't really need the second song. Point 6: To save hotkey space, consider using an alternate UI. Several of them have inventory slots and/or hand slots on a window. Then again, see my notes on point 5. Also, mobs vary on how well they stick to the pack. Werewolves in PoNightmare are pretty good. Once they're on the target, they stay. I can wander close, loot, and even DoT the target some (I'll explain why below) without an issue. But I tried the Umbrous Toiler's in Maiden's Eye... there were times they'd finally be all attacking the pet, I'd be standing quite a ways off, doing nothing... and one or two would just decide to come amble over toward me for no apparent reason. Maybe they have ADD, I don't know. Now, as to DoTs. One of the biggest problems I had with the Werewolves when I started swarming them at level 52 or so is that when it got down to 2 of them, I'd have to charm one at least 2 or 3 times to get both low, and if I was low on mana (which happened at the time) chanting them down took FOREVER what with running about. Here's what I now do when I get down to 3 mobs: I try to make my pet the one with the lowest health (usually the target of my last pet, so no problem there) then once the other two are on him, I'll take HIS target, and DoT it a bit. This will depend on a lot of factors as to how much you can do this, but at 59, I NEVER have the target pull off and come at me. What I'm shooting for is to get the target to finish at about 30-40% less HP than the other uncharmed mob, so about 40 vs 75%. When the pet is dead, I now charm the low one (40%) sic him on 75%, then DoT 75% down a bit. This speeds up the whole end process quite a bit, and I almost never need more than one run of charm for that final two.

Thanks Dermei. Please note that at the time I wrote this, it was from the perspective of a SUB 51 Bard, I don't have any "fancy gear" and I don't have the lvl 51 Travel song. As for User Interfaces, not everyone wants to use those specialized ones, hotkeys do work well enough, but for those who want, that is a good idea. As to pounding keys, I hate trying to do that over and over, I have enough ailments as is, I don't need to increase my chances of Corpral Tunnel. And I should have noted the "end swarm" tactics which I forgot. I ususally get down to the last 2 and just toggle back and forth dotting them down to death. Takes a little while, but do able. Again, thank you for your input. It's helpful.

Here's a rinky dink little key mapping to make life even easier I use numpad for casting btw, so make adjustments if you dont do this: 1) Make a hotkey /pet attack /pet target And assign it to Numpad X (i use 7) 2) Go to Options>Keyboard and: a) change the alternate key for "Target Nearest NPC" to Numpad+ b) change the alternate key for "Hot Button X" to Numpad+ Thats it. When you have charmed your pet, just face the swarm and hit Numpad+ and it will: - target nearest mob - send your pet in - reset your target back to your pet so you have it ready to either re-charm or dot. I find it very important to keep pet targetted at all times Melo

Toggle Target works as well. You have to set it up, but it is easy to do, and Z works great since it has no other pre-ordained use, and is not often used in typing.

tem 1) Speed is GOD. You MUST have the lvl 49 selo's to sing, or a SoW (sow potions do work for this). Remember, you're dealing with a "raging hoard" chasing you much of the time. You really don't want them to catch you.

Umm, what is wrong with the first Selos? I never had a problem doing this with just that and charm. I don't think that 49 is a requirement...swarming works fine at 27. And SoW ?

Item 5) You MUST use either a primary drum AND primary wind instrument, or both as secondary. This is because you will need to do FAST swapping of your instruments. Kind of hard to swap out Primary slot drum with a Secondary slot Flute fast. Remember, you are running these mobs in circles, anything that slows you down is BAD, if not deadly.

If anything that slows you down is bad, how is SoW good? Your little level 5 selo is faster and more reliable. Primary instrument? Unless you are not faster than the mobs using selo's without a drum, there is no real need for a drum until you are in the chant down stage. I guess it is up to personal preference, but there are no requirements for this other than a flute. If you pick normal speed mobs, you dont really NEED a drum, primary or otherwise.

DoT/Chant button: Line1: /stopsong Line2: /pause 33,/cast #(DoT/Chant gem1) Line3: /stopsong Line4: /pause 33,/cast #(DoT/Chant gem2) Line5: /Stopsong

Um, this sounds like a recipie for suicide to me, not sure how it works for you, but song macros scare me. It locks you in if you fizzle. Just my own recommendation here, but I: 1)Keep playing my level 5 selos with FLUTE in hand 2) charm and send in, then start selos again 3) either invis or let charm fade(depends), then selo and a normal chant-down twist (this is where I would put my drum in) EDIT: I just checked the song list and Flute is not required for the 27 song, so guess you can do this naked.... gonna check this out tonight :D

This is how i kite stuff i pull 3-4 charm one make it fight another while doting the other 1 or 2 with tuyens chants then time my charm breaks my "ex-pet" is about 1/2 health same with the mob the pet was fighting and the mob or 2 i was dotting are now dead. If you would like to take my advice feel free to i use TDoK which is a 2.8 percusiion modifier which make my tuyens chants WAY better. I do very well doing it this way ive taken 5 in KC doing this... was pretty hard with the limited space. ~Lebol 52 Minstrel ~Fennin Ro

Umm, what is wrong with the first Selos? I never had a problem doing this with just that and charm. I don't think that 49 is a requirement...swarming works fine at 27. And SoW ?

If anything that slows you down is bad, how is SoW good? Your little level 5 selo is faster and more reliable.

I used to think the same thing, until I started kiting seriously. The first Selo's has a short (18sec) duration. The lvl 49 selo's has a much longer duration (about 7min, I think) and of course SoW lasts a lot longer. Not having to cycle the basic Selo's in means I can add an extra DoT chant, meaning 33% or 25% more damage per tick, depending on lag/resists/etc. Plus, it reduces the chance that you'll get caught with your Selo's down. And we all know how that feels! :D Being able to run REALLY fast isn't quite as important as just being able to outrun the mobs you're kiting, so SloW is still worthwhile and if you need to "hit the afterburners", Selo's now co-exists nicely with SloW (er, SoW!) without overwriting! The reason you want to swap the drum in is to get extra damage on your Chants (at least double, unless you have a really poor drum). I've never seen any benefit on charms from using a flute, so you're right, you can do it naked. But please warn the zone before you do! :p

Someday I'm going to update this a bit. I've learned more since writing it. I've got some good input right here in fact and am grateful for it. Thanks to all who have given positive insights. :)

I have updated this somewhat. I hope the changes reflect enough of what I have read in comments here to make it a little better. [url]http://www.eqinterface.com/sdownload/fileinfo.php?id=3007[/url] Link is to a hotkey setup with inventory and weapons slots attached.

here's a new guide. How to confuse a newplayer playing a bard... Read "A easy to understand guide to swarm kiting" in the EQdiva forums. Holy smokes can anyone not agree on one way? I know how to swarm. but man, to a newb you all would be confusing the hell out of them. :cry:

Here's what I now do when I get down to 3 mobs: I try to make my pet the one with the lowest health (usually the target of my last pet, so no problem there) then once the other two are on him, I'll take HIS target, and DoT it a bit. This will depend on a lot of factors as to how much you can do this, but at 59, I NEVER have the target pull off and come at me. What I'm shooting for is to get the target to finish at about 30-40% less HP than the other uncharmed mob, so about 40 vs 75%. When the pet is dead, I now charm the low one (40%) sic him on 75%, then DoT 75% down a bit. This speeds up the whole end process quite a bit, and I almost never need more than one run of charm for that final two. Actually,i do that alot too. I like to have even more adds so that they pound my pet into the ground and it dies even faster,that is why i love the hobgoblins.You can get tones of adds and then charm 1 have 8-10 of them and byebye pet just invis and dot it till its gone. I've finished off whole armies of hobgoblins in little time like this and make quite a nice amount of plat.