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Beastlord + Bard box slow DHHA runs. Low pet aggro. Any advice?

Started by Lewp, November 30, 2016, 06:53:16 PM

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Lewp

Hey everyone. New to the forums. I box a 90 bst (main) and 89 bard both on gold accounts with auto grant turned on. About 6k AAs each.

It takes me about an hour, give or take 15 minutes, to complete each DHHA. My pet tanks, bst DPS, cleric merc and wiz merc. Bard sings melee songs and auto attacks. Both mercs are j5. I play on FV so I have pretty good gear.

Bst with pet tanking pulls about 12k dps.

Wiz merc is pretty awful at about 2k dps. (On balanced. I cant set to burn since pet aggro is too low, but he always climbs up to 70-90% aggro by the end of the fight on balanced and pulls aggro a couple times if on burn.)

Bard does about 2k dps but spends a lot of time splitting pulls back to the group.

Once i get a mob back, I tank with the pet, auto attack bard and bst. Then I mostly play the beastlord since it takes attention to do any decent DPS. At about 30% I go to get another pull with the bard.

Am I doing anything wrong? I'm going to try a rogue merc since the melee songs will be more beneficial to him. Maybe add in a mage to the composition for some more DPS? I feel like wiz/rogue would just pull aggro and the rogue might take too much time to play and distract me from my BST.

I see people talking about finishing 3 DHHA in less than an hour. Almost all of my guild is 105 so there isn't a ton of people to join me.

Bard melody:
Aria of the Composer (Edit: not Sotors Aria)
War march of Dagda
Noiras song of suffering
Arcane Arietta

I just got Pet Focus X earring until i hit 92 then I have a pet focus XIII item ready to go. I always gear up the pet with summoned gear + summoned weapons that proc hate. The pet has defensive spells on that increase hate / AC / etc. Even my bst has to step back occasionally and I always use AAs that drop hate so I dont pull aggro.

Any ideas? I feel like im missing something. I reviewed AAs and can't find anything about boosting pet aggro.

Zorthaz

These are what I use to maximize pet aggro:
1) Turn pet taunt on
2) Defensive pet buff
3) Pet stun proc
4) Hobble of spirits
5) Epic 2.0 click
6) pet weapons
7) pet haste item ( I prefer the defiant waist from dailies)

Other things for BST
1) make sure you are using all the de-aggro aa discs
2) make sure melee agro is set to off (AA name escapes me)
3) don't use roaring strike, use chameleon strike
4) skip stun and rune procs (I recommend lifetaps)
5) Use roar of thunder
6) Don't use poison dots
7) cast order on spells so you can lowest aggro spells first then work up the list to higher aggro spells.
8) Cast more temp pets so you have more taunting happening

Things for bard
1) try the spite song versus suffering
2) haste and spell focus aura as this haste affects pets

Things for the Merc
1) get some aggro reducing Merc AAs

-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Gio-Cefalu

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to add my $0.02 as I'm a new member to the forum and recently started playing my BL seriously.  I'm 91 with both my bard and BL, so I'm in a very similar situation.  A few tips that have worked for me:

Bard:
1. You can run /melody on up to 6 songs, not just 4, so you can push out more DPS.

2.  Melee hotkeys: I recommend you create a melee hotkey to initiate AAs like selos kick, cacophony, etc.  This way, all you do on the bard after the pull is get the mob into position, auto-attack, and click one hot-key which will fire off all your melee AAs; if you had just pacified the mobs during the pull, make sure you remember to fire off the melody again.  If a melee AA is on cooldown, don't worry about waiting for it to come up; it'll kick off on the next one.

3. Don't waste time pulling with the bard if you know it's a single pull.  There were a lot of times I thought I had to split pull, but after learning the DH HAs really well, I found I didn't have to, so this simply saved a lot of time to pull with the BL.

BL:
1. Hobble of Spirits helps with aggro on the BL pet, and make sure Pet Taunt is on (if you're not using a tank merc).

2. I use the defensive buff on my pet and give him every single other buff I can.  There is a nice attack buff (12 minutes) that lasts around 38m with extended AA, and I cast it on both me and the pet.  Long cooldown on the spell, do I don't cast on the whole group.  Can't remember the name of it.  It's under Stat buffs > Attack, I think.

3. If it's a single pull, I just let the BL pull it with Slow.  Then i get auto-attack and pet in there.  Flip screens, position the bard for auto-attack and fire off the melee AA macro.  Switch to BL, use Feralgia for the growl buff and then cast your poison DoT and the Maelstrom DD.  Next round use your Of the Moon line for an extra warder instead of Feralgia as it's cheaper to cast and your Growl buff should still be up.  I don't use the Disease based DoT because it does less dmg per tick, and mobs die way before a minute and 12 seconds, so while the Poison DoT is not as mana efficient, it ends up doing way more dmg to each mob.

4. Be sure to use Paragon of Spirits and Focused Paragon on yourself to keep your mana and endurance up.  Endurance is usually not a problem because I can use the Disc between battles any time I get below 21%.

General Thoughts:
1. People who are running 3 DH HA in an hour are incredibly well geared and running them as a group.  They probably aren't moloing them.

2. I try to squeeze in 2 HAs on a single Lesson of the Devoted.  I do Disrupting the Ritual first since it gives the most exp and is the longest.  Complete everything, including any named mobs, EXCEPT for the last hail.  Re-buff, pop lesson, hail Gribble and exit.  Leave the task, hail gribble, pick up Into the Hills (it's the fastest one and doesn't require any looting, which saves time).  Then, jump in and immediately start pulling with the Bard.  Run through and complete Into the Hills (skip the named mob if he pops).  Depending on the layout, sometimes you can skip a mob or 2, like one on the dragon head and one right before that where they are hounding over the dead bodies.  This saves time but still fulfills the objectives (they always give you an extra mob in each section, same with the mobs right before the hail near the end).  After you finish and hail Gribble for double exp on the 2nd HA, then you can go back and kill BloodSucker if he's up (and if you can take him.  He's a bitch).

3. I actually run with a tank merc.  He can jump in right away when I pull the mob to the group. Yes, my pet can tank or off-tank if needed, especially now that I'm getting better heals and paying more attention.

4. I use the rogue merc, not the wizzie. I've never had the rogue merc take aggro on Balanced stance.

5. Finally, the last thing I can think of is to use some boxing software.  I'm not talking about MQ or anything.  But find something to help switch screens faster.  You could do InnerSpace/ISBoxer if you want to get fancy with hotkeys and the like, but I use WinEQ2, which is a very cheap subscription and helps me tremendously to switch back and forth between the 2 instances.  This makes it much faster to get into the action and be more reactive to what's going on in the battle.

So, I'm sure Lewp is way past this stage at this point, but hopefully another newb like myself may read this and pick up a few things they didn't know before.  Just remember that my opinion and 2 dollars will net you....2 dollars.

Latang

Good stuff, thanks Brutus.

Question, for dps, have you figured out the best melody to use? ie. sustained dps and burst dps? Do you use different melodies for each?

Full disclosure, I use zerker and beastlord with a bard. Bard for pulling the mob to the 2 melees and just hitting melody, zerker and beastlord attacking, with merc tank, 2 merc healers (in EOK, get away with 1 healer and 2 melee mercs in older content) and just spamming keys on the 2 melees. Heck, the bard uses a shield all the time, and the HH Sebilis darkened breath of harmony weapon. Haven't got the Wurmslayer quite yet, Zorthaz, still working on it. Might try tonight actually, although I'm currently stuck way deep in Kor Sha lab, hunting for non visibles.

Train Engineer, Chief Hermit of <Mystic Nobles>

Zorthaz

Pile on the proc songs and get the belt with Boon of the Seeress as it adds 500dmg to every proc.  There is a mob that drops  the T1 belt in Scortched Woods (IIRC it is Plaguebringer).  There is a T2 version that drops in Kor Sha Lab.

Get the Wurm Slayer and also pick up the whip from the Ancients quest.  The whip has a 12 delay and procs Raptor pets...what could be more fun?  (maybe if you could use it MH ;-) )

-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Latang

Fricking plaguebringer. I've given away a lot of Augs from him and not seen one belt... Living in kor sha lab now waiting for the other one but no luck yet. But ok, will add more procs though. Might drop mana regen or something

Train Engineer, Chief Hermit of <Mystic Nobles>

Zorthaz

My bard with DPS weapons and quad procs and all the proc songs going averages about 20-25K DPS with auto-attack on.  In T2 zones I pull with Wurm Slayer and shield and start tanking until the pet gets aggro, then switch to DPS weapons.  The Wurm Slayer gives you a worn-buff that reduces every incoming hit by 1750 dmg.  I use a rune aug to help reduce incoming dmg.  Get the best shield you can get stick in the 55 AC shield aug from the Chardok hero mission and the 35 AC aug from LDON that goes in the type 5 slot.  I am using the shield from the Bridge Keeper in Chardok.

-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Latang

Got my belts from firedowser now, so we're set (got 3 over 2 days, so zerker, bard and beast all have one). Still need 1 more ring from The Possessed, and 2 more augs from Crackjaw, then I can move to a different part of Kor Sha.

I took your advice and ages ago got the Bridge keeper shield in Chardok (though that was a tough fight, because I was still trying to use a tank merc). I found that the best survivability on t2 named for me is 2 cleric mercs, 1 rogue merc, pet fully geared up and the pet activated aa that helps it tank. Can't remember off the top of my head.

Once I'm done in Kor Sha, i'll go get that wurmslayer thing. I'd like to figure out how to make a hotkey that uses the BB aa AND activates my shield bandolier, then another that activates melee attack + dual wield bandolier. For the moment, most of the deaths I'm getting is over agro from the zerker. AA's are flowing and his dps is getting a bit high for my pet's tanking, unless I've had the chance to get dual rageswords onto him.

Train Engineer, Chief Hermit of <Mystic Nobles>

Zorthaz

Grats on the belts! Make sure the Zerker is not using aggro procs like stun or rune.  Make sure you keep epic 2.0 clicky and hobble on pet and see if there are any de-aggro discs/AAs for the Zerker.  On the bard setup a bandolier DPS setup and call it DPS. Next make a second bandolier setup with shield and call it defensive.

Make a hot key

/band activate defensive

-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare