Mag's beam kiteing

Disclaimer - I don't care a great deal about this.


Beam kiting has been nerfed before, so I can understand the thought process. Now you could always ask why aren't all forms of swarm kiting nerfed? There have been "swarming" nerfs before, bards come to mind, as do ranger ae headshot and pally cleanses on untargeted mobs.

So you just posted to brag?

um..no. dude jsut said his grind group all hit 100 in 16hours and i was making the point that swarming is NOT better, we're just psycho enough to do it til we hit 100. with enough dbl xp pots... there was no mention of what bonuses were used in that grind group but i doubt they all had 8 horus of double xp which means my 13hours swarming was really, subtracting all the bonus xp from potions, 24straight hours (8x2=16 + 5x1.5=23.5) thus, the straight grind group of 16hours is better,

I really could care less to be honest. I will get t here as I can, but I don't hate those who are already there. In fact, if I had the ability/gear/know how.. I'd do it just the same as they are. As it is, my main is an enchanter so I will charm/group and do my best to get there quickly.

Nerf his bladder!

This is actually why I was perhaps most annoyed that El insisted on Stagnating Headshot, Decap, and Assassinate.

Because even before these abilities were stagnated, they were outdone by Solo Bards and Sks.

Let's be clear what is and what isn't an exploit here. Mages being able to hit unlimited targets with a beam spell is not an exploit. If the dev's wanted to limit the targets on that spell, they could do it in about 5 minutes of work included in the next patch. Take a look at the raw data for the mage beam spells on lucy, the field "maxtargets" says 0, which means unlimited. Other cone or beam-like spells have a number in there, like enchanter Beguiler's Banishment. The "unlimited" part of mage's beam spells seems to be intentional.

The part that is the exploit is agroing so many mobs the entire zone lags and they slow down to a crawl. If the mage agros 50-100 mobs or more, then they start moving at a snail's pace. If this is done in public zone, not only is it an exploit, it's disruptive to other's playing. I have reported mages for this in the past because it really does hurt other people's playing experience in a bad way.

What I can't understand is why people would think agroing something like 30 mobs should be reported. I know a mage who tried this in a public zone and he was gunned down by a GM within 10 minutes. He must have been reported, but I can't figure out why. Is kiting 20-30 mobs with beam considered an exploit by GM's? There is no evidence to support this whatsoever other than other players complaining for some strange reason. Would any of you report an SK, or some other class swarm kiting? I can't understand why this happened to this mage I know.

Chances are an sk reported the mage because they were jealous that they cannot swarm current content,

I lol'd a bit

pulling that many mobs in a static zone causes a bunch of lag which is against the Play nice policy i guess? Be nice and stick to instances when pulling enough mobs to lag a zone =).

Talk of anything being "fixed" is ridiculous as long as Headshot still works on xp giving mobs.

They have stagnated headshot, assassinate, decapitate, and the AAs for SK swarming. They will no longer get updates and did not this expansion not to mention having been nerfed previously. It was not intended and they took action. If they are going to fix swarming for one class, then it is important to fix them all. Enjoy the fruits of your whining about SKs and Rangers. No one is interested in hearing you cry about it now.

Hello. SK main here, I have tried swarming before and found it to be annoying. I made the bulk of my AA 6000+ from 2 boxing group tasks during the House of Thule expansion. On my server, there was a level 100 Ranger 10 hours after server up on launch day. he was headshotting solo at the temples in feerott and ofc using xp pots and stuff.

I realize that there will always be ways that people find to make the most xp as fast as possible but if you read the description of the headshot ability: This ability provides you the chance of instantly killing an opponent (humanoid only) who is too far below you in level to provide a challenge, when using a bow.

It really seems out of whack to be able to swarm pull in the highest level hotzone and get massive xp from these challenging mobs. Obviously when the ability was created they didn't take into account Vinelash. I wonder- do they really know how insane this ability is?

This is not a call for ranger nerfs, heck nerf sk swarming I dont care. I'm just tired of the general chat on my server being dominated by headshot talk and begging for headshot PL's and will the ranger at temples please send me a tell, etc.

You won't have to worry about it much longer since Headshot, Mortal Coil (and other SK AAs), Assassinate, and Decapitate are no longer getting upgraded. They've already been nerfed before and now they will still be great ways to level up to a certain point, but then no longer be used as you get high enough. They will cease to be an issue very soon.

Mortal Coil hasn't been upgraded since Underfoot. While, yes it is one of the most key features in SK swarming it can never be upgraded again and still be just as critical to the act.
Visage of Death is, hopefully, what you were confusing Mortal Coil (I don't see how as they're completely different) with. Which was stagnated in RoF.

Even if they never upgrade MC ever again SK swarming will not be hurt one bit unless some nerfs go out. As a SK i hope its soon. Every time SKs ask for any sort of change we get a big fat NO because they dont want to do anything that could possibly buff swarming.

Actually I was referring to VoD, but I was looking at the list of AAs not getting updated and MC stuck in my head. Regardless, swarming will most likely phase out soon enough and that is exactly what they intended.

So as I said before, it's time to start looking at other classes and their abilities now. Fair is fair afterall.

to the sks in this thread saying silly things about their swarming ability being stagnated. The mods that majorly assist in sk swarming are percentage based effects, just because you don't upgrade a percentage based effect doesn't mean it is stagnated. It will have the same effect regardless of upgrades.

The only things that were stagnated were weapon ratios and the relative power of gear upgrades, which will once again be upgraded opening up new zones for swarming. The only other factor involved is the sweetspot zones where mob HP doesn't exceed the usefulness of swarming vs incoming dps from the mobs. Stop trying to detract attention away from the whole ordeal it is unbecoming.

Stop trying to detract from the point that if one is fixed, the rest should follow suit. It's ridiculous. Nerf them further if you like, but then let's all go through the list and "fix" all the ways to gain experience that are similar otherwise shut your mouth.

Nerfs R bad. Right now here's what we've got in terms of soloing:

2-4 basically PL themselves
4-5 that do well
4-5 ok not great
2-4 terribad

Skill/Gear/AA/etc may play into a lot of it as expected, but it seems no matter what some classes are just hosed. I think a lot of the jealousy would go away if the weaker solo classes were thrown a bone to even things out a bit.

Which would be great, but there are few people interested in trying to increase their power without trying to whine about someone else being too powerful to get it. There has been no end to the jealousy on the boards and in the game regarding swarming and headshot. Can't go a day without someone making a comment about how terrible it is, even if they do it in a round about way. The players (especially on the boards) aren't interested in getting more unless they can take someone down to get it.