Hi everyone, I'm at a point where I've made it to 65 with my standard tank enchanter and healer trio. I've got some 'leftover' characters that I'd love to finish leveling as well. In Kunark and Velious zones it was doable, but in PoP it's a totally different beast. Basically I'm left with a wizard, mage and bard at 61 and I'm looking for creative ways to try and level them as a trio. What are the other leveling strategies beyond just the standard tank/heal/DPS method that could work with a trio like this? I guess the other way to do it would be to just sub them in one at a time with the other 65 characters, but I wanted to push my understanding of the classes and my boxing to see if there's a way to make this work! Thanks!
Find mobs that don’t summon in nightmare, valor, honor, tactics, fire. Kite or quad or roll mez and nuke between pulses them to death.
Oh that's an interesting thought.. so keep mez running with the bard, snare, and maybe time the mage and wizard nukes together before the needs pulses again?
So far having tried this, I'm not having much luck. The mem blur from the bard mez keeps resetting the mob to full HP. So the nuke between pulses strategy has some flaws, unless there's a way to avoid this? Unless my only option is to wait until 62+ where I believe the new mez song doesn't have a blur component and I'll be able to mez things over lvl 55?
Hmm that sounds unfortunate. I haven’t had blur happen quite so often. Does your wiz have a flux staff? You might be able to keep it aggroed with that.
Kite with the wizard and use the other two in support. Pet at the mobs back (taunt off). Bard with selos and/or mana song. Wizard holds agro with snare and spam on the (instant cast from inventory) Staff of Temperate Flux. Wizard nukes when able. Mage nukes in emergencies. I would say forego quads and just crank out single kites using as little mana as possible.
I would imagine if I can get good at it, I could use quad kiting then. I do have a flux staff. So last night, I was about to successfully do the single kite. Snared with wizard, but I would root after each nuke. Mage and wizard would nuke together through assist macros, bard kept mana song running. Mage pet would get tossed in when root was down or for periods of root but pulled out once down to 20-30% HP. Bard and mage were auto following the wizard and we'd run as a pack before redoing root with some breathing space between the mob. Obviously not usable against anything immune to snare or root. Also, VERY slow. It was taking about half my mana pool each kill so 2 kills to go oom and then a lot of down time medding even with both mana songs in the down time. I suspect I could adapt this to quad kiting with the mage and the wizard both doing aoes. Or, as suggested, I could let the mage pet do more of the work while kiting to use less mana. I found the 61 air pet with the walnan blades bought a lot of time with the stuns to keep separation, but that probably wouldn't work well with a pack if they're getting separated, so the mage pet would work well for singles but not for quads. I miss the efficiency of my tank/enc/healer. But I'm determined to make these functional together lol. I think of all those lonely wizards I saw on live making it to 65 so there much be a way lol!
I've been charm swarming with my bard, while my druid and enchanter just sit. Once I get down to the last two mobs, they chime in with dots and nukes. I've been killing flies in PoD, and I know there's mobs you can kill in PoN, I'm just not familiar with them. Once the bard goes OOM, you could single nuke/root/snare kill until the bard has mana again.
I was almost debating just using 1 character to carry the other two... either quad kiting or swarm kiting. I guess this means I need to learn how to swarm kite with the bard! I will look around for a TAKP-specific guide to give this a go as well!
You could very easily cycle bard or mage in your normal trio for the tank. Mage pet can tank long enough for you to recharm, bard can be completely afk to keep your pet perma mezed while you do what you need to recharm on enchanter, or he can tank if he's got ok gear.
Lol.. although I'd probably sooner do 3 enchanters. I've definitely seen 3 mages go going for some which was kind of cool!
I've tried the bard in the rotation and it was fine prior to PoP but I find they're getting eaten alive now. But I'm guessing their use would be more so for mezzing on charm breaks and just trying to make the enchanter more efficient?
That and pulling I think, yeah. Those I know who use bards in trios either have low agro heals and dps (DRU/RNG) so that the bard can tank, or they just use the druid to kite.
FYI, bard swarm kiting does not work well here. IDK why but even small swarms I had trouble not getting hit and lag wasn't the issue. Bards also just lose a lot of steam tanking post 50 even before pop
Bard/wiz/mage is a nice quad trio. After charming, quadding is probably the fastest exp in PoP. Plenty of mobs in all zone tiers that don't summon.
Yeah the could times I tried bard swarming it was a disaster with pathing and I got destroyed. Then again, I never got the knack for it even on live! So.. exploring the quad option. I would imagine I would try to round up my 4, snare, and then in circles bring the pack closer to the mage where I start to cast the aoe nukes with the wizard and mage? Does the bard do anything other than mana song, or would it be better to run selos? And I assuming a non rooting or stunning pet (probably water) to add a little dps with the mage too?
With bard/wiz/mage, I'd Selo the wiz then stop songs, pull a mob on wiz, spam flux staff for a bit to build enough hate to overcome prox aggro on the other toons, repeat 3 times, then roll Selo. Then I'd quad on the wiz, flipping to the mage now and then to mash a "spam quad spells" hotkey. Mage can just stand next to the bard near the middle of the kite path. If stuff's resisty, I might Malosinia it early on. I'd probably just roll Selo during kites and roll mana between kites. But I'm a pretty lazy bard! The nice thing about quadding with Selo is you don't have to elf around with keeping the short-duration wiz snare up on all the mobs.
When I experimented with it in pofire I just left bard and 1 nuker back at camp and went out with a selo’s to gather 4 mobs with flux staff, circle them up into a knot, and land a pillar or two on my way back to camp. From there it was just run ovals around the bard and at each narrow end of the oval, pause to toss a pillar, tab to other nuker and do the same, switch back to see cast finish and on you go.
Beautiful. I've got the single kite down so time to add some more in and see if I can get fancy with the mage in there too. Thanks for all of the feedback and advice.. great learning new strats/tactics!
