EQDiva

I'm 75 and haven't tried to pull Bloodmoon Keep since 74, but remember I had zero luck.  I pulled it with my 77 monk without TOO much difficulties, but was curious on your techniques for this zone.  I quickly get snared and bashed on before i can make it back to the party.  I'm thinking I just need to fade more often until snare wears off or something along those lines. 

 I would love to hear more suggestions for those experienced with this zone as I'd really like to go there and be beneficial.  Been pulling the head/leg camp in fortress and enjoy that one =)

Tag with HoS, follow up with snare as well, just in case get snared, can keep them same speed.  Keep to the edges of walls, there's usually a raised bit I can duck behind to fade and break LoS.  DA is great to survive a few mobs on me whilst snared. Lots of fades.

Oo, and the new Dirge of the Sleepwalker AA mez is great for a quick lockdown when an Assasin pops in from no-where, though think that's 78? A couple of levels yet for you.

Keep the group back a fair bit to give time to work the pull, but not be too far out of range just in case I need help. I go to work the pull early too, not waiting for last mob to die. Although I see alot of people complaining about these zones to pull, they're not that bad if you've got a bit of time, mobs usually wander back and forth around corners and such, taking one or 2 mobs out of the equation to start with. 

Also, I've used lulls again for the first time in years when the level of the mob is right.  But you might need to gain a few more levels before the lull starts to be viable.  Think I was 76/77 before I started hitting BMK.

Good fun to pull. Keep at it, good luck, tell us how you end up at it.

Thanks for the feedback...I'll try those tactics.  I wasn't using HoS or snare, but not quite sure why...makes perfect sense.  This zone is so much fun that I really wanted to learn to pull it, but was scared my bard was too young.  Sounds like i just need some practice.  I know at 76 I get the new mez song (up to 80) so figure that would help with CC.

 Lots of things work, though being level 76 so you can mez most of the mobs will help tremendously, and also make it easy to not try to split when just two come.  To avoid the snare I'll make start a song (usually HoS, snare or mez) and run back a little ways around a corner...  if I'm not bringing a train, perfect, if I am, fade and they split up pretty nice.

But mostly, I recommend hitting 76 so you can get the new mez.  I think the armor that drops there is req 76 anyway (unless you're doing the missions for faction/progression).

At 75, you're going to be relying heavily on snare and monk like split tactics of fading and waiting on pathing for opportunities. It's definitely doable, just slow and inconvenient. Snare wouldn't be so bad except for being at greater risk of getting snared yourself. Here are some ideas:

Limit your exposure as much as possible. Whenever you can, avoid line of sight. For example, if you know the next pull is a single, creep up or run in and out quickly, start hos and get out of line of sight as fast as possible and before they aggro. Bring it to the tank without ever getting line of sight again, run past the tank and around the corner till you see the change in hott. This helps avoid the snare.

When you know you have to be exposed for a bit, use da to get out of line of sight and block the snare, then rely on fade/tag as needed.

If you have to pull 3 mobs, one idea might be to duck in and out from behind a corner or other line of sight blocker. Run in and start snare, run out, as soon as snare lands, fade. Toggle to the next target, do the same. Then tag the third mob and haul. If you're lucky, you can get out unsnared, fade and bellow it for a single, consider using a da to get to the tank safely unsnared. Especially by landing da a split second after you bellow. If you're unlucky and snares are resisted, you can try again, or you can hos/fade, snare/fade, hos/fade, snare/haul ass, fade/bellow. There's enough time to do all that if you don't waste any time. The point of the fast fading in all these examples is to fade before they get a chance to respond and do anything, before they even try to snare. You land your debuffs, and fade immediately after, while starting the next offensive song on them.

 A bioluminescent orb could probably work wonders in there too if you have one. It casts blindness on your mob, making it run in a random direction pretty much. Might have to hos/fade, blind to make it work to prevent resists. Expect some chaos, and general full room aggro. Usually, it's enough chaos to manage a good pull out of though. Timing is everything. It scrambles everything up, giving you a new set of mob locations to work with.

Finally, if you do ding 76, the advantage of lull in this situation is huge. Lull lets you do less splitting (if any) and you can immediately go to avoiding line of sight completely (and avoiding snare) on the pull by running in, STARTING the song and running out before it lands and you ever get aggro. Also at 76, the mez is a good back up if there are two, and splits their distances more than snare does if you want to use it to split stuff.

Mez is also fantastic for splitting large numbers easily. If there's a cluster of mobs, let's say four of them, and one of them is a lot closer than the others, you can mez the nearest one, and often only the one or two next to him will come, the further ones being out of assist range. If I'm fast and I want to be extra careful, I may lull potential adds, then pull the mob I want with mez. If he gets mezzed and anything comes (oops) it's probably a single, start hos on the add, run, and fade, thereby tagging it. If no adds come, I did a good job and I bellow it for the single.

One last tip that I don't use in bloodmoon much but you might want to. Sometimes I leave extra room for pulling, especially when snare pulling. When I have room, I'll often split large chunks into smaller chunks, in this case using da to move half of a cluster away from the other half of the cluster, to avoid the snare that goes with it. Let's say that some of them are casters. You start da, bellow on the nearest just before da lands (to block snare), pause a sec (to give any casters a chance to start casting) and then haul ass with only half a train dead on your heels. Use corners as much as you can to block line of sight! Fade, now you have half the mobs, run to where you can see them and start hos (maybe hos/fade if they're in aggro range, let the song continue casting), now, assuming you were fairly quick, you have faded off half of the original group. You made extra room to do splitting, now you hopefully still have some room to split this smaller group and bring one to the tank. AS SOON as the tank has that mob's aggro, go get another one. Grab those mobs before they get back to their friends, why let all that hard work go to waste. Use mez/fade liberally if that's what you have to do, get them under control though so you don't have to work on pulling them again later. Bring them back to the group UNDER CONTROL when you can. Shoot, you don't have mez...... You can play some ping pong with them to keep them nearby, but that can be mana intensive with how fast they can reset sometimes. Still, there's some good ideas in there, and if you get to 76, even better.

A 75 bard can pull bloodmoon, no doubt. A 76 bard can do it much faster, safer, and smoother. Even deeper in where your 76 mez isn't high enough, it's still going to be high enough for some usually, and that makes all the difference in the world. Until then, there are some ideas for pulling at 75, and some previews of 76. Good luck, fun zone.

Great post, thanks for taking the time to post it.  On a bright note, I was pulling fortress last night and made 76.  Wow, did the new mez/lull really make a difference.  I was finally able to always keep a mob in camp.  We had a wipe or two, but I'll chalk that up to learning =).  I look forward to trying Bloodmoon.  The sad thing is I don't have HoS.  Any hints on the fastest way to get the glyphed rune words and how many I'll need for the song?  Wasn't sure what position it was on the turn in charts =)

 Thanks for all of your help, as your suggestions are going to make me become a much better asset to the groups.

 Unfortunately the level 65 ones are random, so you could get it in one turn-in, you could get it in 20.  My main suggestion would be to check the bazaar and, if HoS isn't available, get OoS (Occlusion of Sound) if it's available which is the level 55 version and will work in the meantime.

Fastest way to get runes is probably Plane of Fire.  You can probably kill all 9 (was that right?) minis with just one average geared group and may even be able to take out Fennin Ro.  If you don't have PoFire access, then BoT tower bosses drop a rune each I believe.  Not sure if these are still heavily farmed, but they're on an 8 hour repop so I see no reason they wouldn't usually be up.

http://www.eqtraders.com/items/show_item.php?item=21270&menustr=035000000000

 Harmony of Sound is researchable now, which is probably the easier way to go. All of the ingredients are vendor purchased except Smudged Runic Parchment, which drops in dod and tss zones.

HoS is a special kind of song that makes whatever you *need* to have land on a mob, land on the very first try, when it counts the most. They make mez and slow reliable in places where it is otherwise a roll of the dice.

Another tip for pulling in BMK, or anywhere that has mobs stationed just the other side of a doorway, is to use an Eye of Zomm clicky such as Singing Steel Helm and use the Eye to pretarget a mob on the other side.  Have mez or snare ready, dash into the room far enough to get line of sight, start casting and back up immediately.  This lets you land your song before they can agro and pulverize you, also gives you time and distance to find a corner to break LoS.

yeah, pre-targeting is the only way to do it for sure. other tricks if you don't have eye of zomm is to use stuff like bind sight, or stand near a doorway or corner and switch to a 3rd person camera, and rotate till you are looking into the room without being inside the room.

also don't forget about sneak, sneak is your friend, I use it almost as much as my cloak, it can go a long way in scouting (or just moving around a kos zone in general).

Lull and Mez are just extra tricks to use during pulling but not a neccesity. Even without those I still think we pull better than a monk. At first BK was a little intimidating for me at 75, but once I learned what mobs did what, it became much simpler. Here are some things to note:

1. Snare is an amazing tool for pulling and splitting mobs.
2. Take notice of which mobs are casters, a lot of times, especially in BK, they will first try to cast a spell on you when you pull. And that right there is an easy split, for a little extra split you can snare the caster and pull one of his friends.
3. All mobs don't always retreat back to their spawn at the same time after you fade. This is simple split pulling logic like a monk.

 We dungeon crawled over half the zone with me pulling at 75. It was a lot of fun and I am quite happy I did it without lull or mez at the end, more rewarding.

Thanks for all the tips, pulling went really well on Saturday.  We got 2 plate BPs (I got one of those), 1 silk Robe, 1 Leather Cap, and 1 Belt (I got this one)...overall a pretty successful night!  Thanks for all the tips...worked great.