EQDiva

Short question: Whats the best straetgy to pull here to avoid taking so much damage? Longer explanation: I'm returning to EQ after a 8-9 month break. When I left I was pulling in WoS and MPG regularly, but never went to RS. Last night I was asked to join a party there. I believe it was called the BP area. At the zone in, I went up a flight of stairs and the group was at the top. Many of the mobs were easy to single pull. However, the problem was that I would get hit significantly on the way back. The mobs move fast. I often came back with 50% or less health. Several times I had to fade, run back with no mob, get a heal and then run back out. This slowed things down and the pally with almost 14k HP decided he could do better. He ended up pulling 3 and we wiped (no chanter). I don't have my lvl 70 mezz song so I can't use mezz as a pulling tool. I only have run 4 and about 1/3 of my defensive AAs. I'm going to get run 5 an the the rest of my defensive AAs asap. I have about 8.5k HP buffed. I tried to pull with snare and slow but it was resisted a lot. Was I just getting unlucky. I didn't think to use HoS until later. (Still a little rusty after the long break.) I also used DA when I could and that seemed to help but I couldn't use it every pull of course. Another thing that bothered me was that when I pull I like to turn around to make sure I didnt somehow get any adds. When I did, this slowed me down a little and often allowed me to get hit more. Any advice here? Dumaine 70 Bard of Brell

Pull in 3rd person, no need to turn around that way. Second, Strafe-Run. This is a skill that most bards dont know about, since they are rarely un-seloed anywhere they hunt. To strafe-run, hold down both the right key, and the up key, then using mouse look, turn to the left to counter the right turning, and you will run forward, basically, at an angle. Just hitting up is 100% run-speed (run4 in this case). Strafe-running uses Pythagorean's principle: A²+B²=C² So, 100² + 100² = X², or ~141% faster. 1.41x 1.40(run4) = ~197% run speed, or about Run10. That should be plenty to out-pace them. I have pulled her as a BL, and NEVER had issues with them catching me, pulling with slow, and strafe-running them, with run3.

Good advice! I totally forgot about that. I used to use it eons ago to cross the Karana's faster. I'll give it a try. I never did like pulling in the 3rd perosn view but I guess I need to get used to it. That sounds like it would solve my problem too. Thanks. Dumaine

[url]http://eqdiva.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=71661[/url] Lots of good advice there. I'm also a bard on Brell/Cazic, send me a tell if you need any tips or anything, Aeuvas.

Thanks Aeuvas. That post is exactly what I was looking for. However, the poster said he used HoS to pull instead of bellow. I almost always use the bellow to pull because of its range being 250. I assumed that would be best in RSS since you can stand 25% further away. HoS has a 200 range. Or is the 3 sec that it takes to cast HoS the issue? Now that I think about it, I'm guessing thats what he's implying. If you pulled with bellow then cast HoS, then cast snare, it would take a minimum of 6 seconds to land snare. If you pull with HoS then cast snare it's down to 3 seconds. I wasn't using HoS at all which after reading that post was my main mistake. By the way, as for snare, last year when I was playing there were mixed opinions on dirge of metala. Is it used or is selo's consonant chain still the best? Dumaine

Yes, thats usually why. Occasionally when I get sloppy and just want the mobs fast I bellow, haul back to camp with HoS pulsing then snare when I get close. Usually this works using jumping, r10 running, etc.