Mag's beam kiteing

For what its worth, snare didn't help much beam kiting.....only hits 4 mobs. Icefall mammoths were wonderful cuz they are slow. Wiz beams are also instant cast (though with detrimental effects like root or blind on the wiz). All that being said.....If its not allowed for one class why should it be for another? Now if its a zone disruption problem, unnerf wiz beam and everyone of both classes swears they will only use it in instances. /nod

8 for wizzies, it used to be unlimited. I think mage beams are still.

If you think something is an exploit, please petition or PM one of us with details. Posting vague innuendo on the forums in the hopes of getting some other class ability changed is not constructive. Thanks.

If they are unlimited targets, and it ends up being good exp, they will be nerfed to a target limit.

Happened to literally everything else in the game that was similar. Not that I'm saying it should be, this is just how things work around here.

How dare casters have an ability close to knights and hs/decap/assas!

<333333

They still haven't removed defensive procs that proc direct heals or life taps. This will scale with the number of mobs hitting on you, unlike say something like the Shammy defensive slow proc (ie, Lethargy, etc) which only refreshes a Heal over Time doing a fixed amount of healing per tick.

Any kind of healing that scales with the number of mobs hitting you is just asking for exploits. I even seem to remember an incident in a Frostcrypt raid instance that got the attention of the devs... yet come back a few years later and the term "swarming" is part of every day EQ conversation...

FWIW I don't recall ever getting more than 5 or 6 killshots with any one beam cast on my Mage even with some pretty big trains.

• Snare had nothing to do with Wizard Beam kiting. The principle behind it was to pull enough mobs to lag out the zone, making the mobs stand still so you just spam click the beam.
• Instant cast time had nothing to do with Wizard Beam kiting. See above. If the mobs don't move, you don't need instant casts.
• Wizard Beams are 8 targets max, Magicians' are still unlimited.
• Wizard Beams have a 12 second recast, Magicians' have a 1.5 second recast, letting it be spammed back to back to back.
• Wizard Beams have a recourse DoT as a consequence of it being instant, (trollololol), Mages' do not.

The only thing that really scales up that way is healing through riposte damage. In a proper swarm, defensive proc abilities go through their counters in seconds. They do help, but aren't doing the bulk of the healing.

Mage beams are also non-instant with a base 3 second cast time, hastened to about 1.5s. So, it can't just be hit while running. You have to stop, turn, cast, resume running. That gives the mobs considerable time to catch up/warp to you.

You seemed to have skipped over the first and second bullet points.

Never said hide it, this post went off into a tangent though. Should have actually stated the exploit. Asking a general question 'should mages be able to beam kite?' is a bad way to go about it IMHO. Considering i can kite grey cons nbd lol.

Beam kiting is dumb and would be quite hard legit, leads me to believe fishy things are at work here.

Let's put it this way:

Without any kind of description of what is going on, how is anyone, devs especially, supposed to know what these mages are doing, whether it's an exploit or not, or whether it's intended or not? Or, indeed, if it's even happening?

Because, maybe I'm missing something, but the only two ways I can see a mage doing this 100% solo (no other classes helping, no tank taking hits etc), which you're indicating it's being done solo and give no reason for us to think otherwise, is either the zone lag exploit that wizzys used to use, or mounting up and stacking DA clickies (Sky ring, DoDH/Bloodmoon clicks etc)

The former is dangerous for obvious reasons, lag is a killer, and if you manage to pull it off it's a pretty clear exploit. The latter...well...sure the DA stops dmg, and sure the mount prevents push. But there's not a single thing stopping bash, or stun, or just general hits, from interrupting spells. Even with twincast and fire core it'd simply be "interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, opps DA is down, opps so am I". No cleric merc is gonna be able to save you when DA drops and a boatload of mobs, enough to be "PL worthy", are hitting you for 10-15k. It's just not happening. The only outcome I can see of the DA method is the mage's death unless they get mega mega lucky. And mega luck isn't exactly something to rely on for a PL method, especially one you're so confident in that you'd advertise.

Furthermore, as previously stated, if it's done in an instance you'd either have had to:
A. Asked them and they told you. Somehow I doubt they'd give out their trade secrets, and if they did why would you not release more info?
or B. You'd have had to be present. So you're upset enough about this to call for the nerf bat but not enough to soak up the xp while it lasts? Mkkay

And where are the other people who saw a mage advertising this PL method? Anyone? Anyone at all?

tl;dr unless OP can either post, or at least PM to a dev, exact details of what is happening, this thread is pointless. And I call troll. To quote Zombieland "nut up or shut up".

I have played a magician main for over a dozen years. I must admit, I am getting a chuckle out of hearing how magicians are now awesome power levelers. Because outside of casting a damage shield on someone, I seriously do not know what else we can do to effectively and efficiently power level someone up. There are so many other classes (bard, druid, shadow knight, shaman, cleric for starters) that can power level much much much better than a magician.

So all this fuss about magicians lately is quite comical. I anxiously await the thread where a magician has soloed Argath raid...

There is one method but it's not mega effective, only really works up until 75 or MAYBE 80, and requires a bard or wiz or other AoE class low enough to be capable of grouping with the target player (I always roll trash bard toons I just delete later when doing this)

Get cleric merc, group bard in group with PLee, mage and cleric on their own, cleric on passive, pull a boat load of mobs, take cleric off passive, let the mobs hit and dmg you so cleric heals, they move to cleric, cleric heals itself, cleric secures aggro, bard AoEs until all mobs, or almost all mobs, have been hit once, Cast Surge line on cleric merc.

ding
ding
ding
ding
ding
ding

etc

Can also have a SK do the pulling/tanking/aggro since they can secure hate/aggro without doing any dmg. Actually more effective that way. But since we're talking about 100% solo.

As for Argath. No. That event requires more dps than the mage alone can put out while trying to keep pet up. Eventually they will just go oom. Even at 100. Assuming they can keep the pet up that long. However I know of a mage and a paladin that got it down to....30%? maybe 50%. Somewhere along that line.

and for all the ppl whining about sk swarming...not counting the 2hours total time i stopped for other reasons or the delay before i started, I was second on server and it took me 13hours nonstop swarming (dinged 15houts after i logged in) and 8 were double xp, 5 with 50% bonus, so your full group was barely slower.

the quest xp is qutie nice this year at least if you finish them all. in about the same playtime or less, my group of alts have gotten as much or more xp jsut doing saviour of shards, as all the people i see building grind groups instead of doing the quests. plus you get free aas on top and the trophies.

no idea what OP is talking about with the mage thing though

You can't cast while DA, so you wouldn't be beaming. Also, while DA doesn't stop summoning, it does stop pushing cold- you don't need a mount for that (Moot point I know, since you can't cast). DA is, however, useful for bunching things up and then taking off at a great speed not long before it wears off.


As for the OP, you *might* get a response if you directly PM a dev. More likely, if it is considered an exploit, your response will be reading a patch message that makes an adjustment to mage beams. If it is not changed in a patch... it's not an exploit.
Yet.

Ahh yeah you're right. Forgot about that, whoops.

Well now I literally can't think of a way to have accomplished what OP is implying =.=

Try pulling over 100 mobs.
Easy thing is to get every mob in a low level zone, reminds me of what Plane of Innovation starts to do when you have the entire zone. The zone load cant handle it, and the mobs just get stuck running in place.

How is mage swarm kiting any different than SK swarm kiting? How do you consider this an exploit?