What am I doing wrong?!

[Tigrah]

Hi there, I have been soloing for a while now... I was comparing notes with a guildy, who until not too long ago was of equivilent level to myself. Anyway, at the time I had been similiarly geared +/- in some areas to my guildy but he has always been able to solo some areas far better than I can... Of course I have no idea what AA's he has, or specifics of his gear, I'm just wondering if you guys can give me tips on the most efficient/ productive methods for soloing for folks like myself who have not figured out how to kite.

[Kroshx]

Kiting just a big pain in the ass. If you don't have that one pet-proc that lowers hate, forget what it's called, chances are you won't be able to generate more aggro than your pet. Anyway, I'd suggest sticking to LB/Green enemies that you can mow down. At the port in of Undershore are some nice green shrooms, at least at 75, and they go down pretty quick. When you run out of them simply run over to port in and head north, dropping down in to that little pit-area for some animals. They, also, are not too powerful. Be careful if you get more than two, though. Can easily spell trouble for you if you're not ready.

[mogtoth1]

Depending on gear level I would suggest doing the Fallen spirits in Arcstone. I was soloing them quite happily for aa's at 70 when the xp was very good. They are well spaced out so single pulling with slow is easy and no adds plus they dont run. You have to keep an eye on the odd wolf who joins in(depening on where you set up camp - I try to get on the first slope heading up to the named there). Almost no trains and little competition for that camp. Can drop some nice vendor loot as well.
As for what you are doing wrong? It sounds to me like you are trying to pet tank. Forget it at any level where you are going to gain xp. Our warders tend to do too little damage and die too easily on mobs so apart from backing out to heal and going straight back in I tend to fight almost all the time. It isnt a question of out agroing your pet as a large portion of agro the pet generates transfers to you anyway so as soon as you have hit the mob a couple of time it will ignore the pet in favour of hitting you. I have the agro reduction aa maxed and it makes no difference. Dont forget to incapacitate the mob as well on incomming as this makes a big difference in what you get hit for.
I still havnt found a good place to solo with db mobs at 75 that allow for chain pulling like arcstone yet. TSS mobs hit too hard in comparison to chain pull DB's.

[Spiritclaw]

First of all, mobs will ALWAYS take player over pet in direct combat.  You can have 1 point of hate and pet has 10,000 and the mob will still attack the player.  Pet agro does not transfer to players at all, if your pet dies, you don't get uber hate.  If somebody has more agro than you, but less than pet, the mob will not turn on you when pet dies (for whatever reason).

Kiting isn't efficient for us because pet can out agro a pc who isn't in range.  Not enough dots or dds IMO.  When I solo, I go for close combat, as far as exp goes, a good place is WoS, again IMO.  The 73 pet can offtank adds in a pinch, and between the 2 of us tanking our own mobs, 2 dots each, 2 slows each, mobs go down, but then I have over 800s (don't know yours or what you put them in).  I have max defensives, 1.5, 2 lifetap procs, 2 other procs, WA5, max melee and spell crit.  Started soloing WoS at 73, with probably around 750 AAs and maxed defensives.  Non Lesson of the Devoted, I get 2-3% AA per kill, with named being around 6% per kill, with lesson going 6% is average with 12% for named.  TSS mobs hit harder, have twice as many HP (based upon the fact I need to dot and slow them twice as opposed to WoS I can do once).  I think that I have less trouble with a WoS named that are level 73 (chimera and ferans) than I do with lb non named in Steppes.  Burly Hill Giants can hit for over 1k pretty consistently and they take up to 3 slows when I solo and don't even give 2% AA per kill.  Not saying i can't solo in TSS, have done a few quests that way, just not efficient for exp.

[Tigrah]

I don't do major pet tanking. I do pet offtanking occasionally if i get spare mobs. but else i take the beatings. My magelo is relatively up to date, few days old, but still quite close.

[Tiroon]

With only one rank of Lightning Reflexes and no Innate Defense you're bound to take an even bigger beating than we beasties usually take. Both those AA's are a big boost in our defensive capabilities and maxing out OoW and DoD defensives will make things even more manageable.

No matter what your immediate plans for AA's were, you have to max Lightning Reflexes and once that's done get those five ranks of Innate Defense.

And pleeeeeeeeese put your epic in you main hand. :wink:

[Phumog]

You definatly need more defensive AA. I would suggest using a little bit of both you and pet tanking. With the addition of promised mending to our arsonal it helps alot. I usually beat on the mobs until I am around 40% then back off before low HP agro kicks in and let pet tank em down until I have regened enough HP to get back in the fight. HoT potions work great also.

[jitathab]

Spirit of Snow is the agro reducer iirc.

Only kited once, the epic mob in that LoY zone, pet taunt off, load up 5 dots, ride a horse.

Lay down the dots and nuke a bit, then set warder on.

Boring and inefficient but kills a big mob that doesnt summon.

Also another technique which can be used is BE pet tanking, pull with the BE pet, run away and repeat, then engage. Ive done this in Icefall on the wolves at 71 in beta.
This isnt very quick either.

TBH the AA at 75 is nerfed for BST soloing, havent managed to find anywhere to rake in 3 AA in 30 mins on LoD

[Nusa]

Learning a large variety of techniques and applying them to the situation as required is the key to unusual soloing.

For instance, when I was doing some quests in Sunderrock shortly after TSS came out, I was surprised by the roving patrol (5 mobs) while I already had two mobs. Rather than run for a zone, I just kited the patrol while the pet finished the original fight and peeled mobs off one at a time (fetter + /pet focus helps here too). Promised mending is fast enough to use while kiting, so keeping the pet alive was practical. The last couple were killed conventionally. It's not an efficient technique for us, but it works when you need to survive a lot of mobs.

An alternate form of the above is Flash of Light...you can keep a lot of mobs running back and forth, just as if you were using fear spells (and bonus, it even works on mobs that are immune to fear). Takes practice, and if you don't understand the area and the pathing you can get a lot of adds trying it.

If you're a Vah-Shir, you can occasionally use sneak-pulling to split mobs It's primarily a monk technique, but anyone with sneak and throwies can try it. Sneak reduces your aggro radius, and throwing is the one form of attack that doesn't break sneak.

[Tigrah]

And pleeeeeeeeese put your epic in you main hand. :wink:

Why? I was always told to put the fastest weapon in the main hand.

[Shieara]

My guess is because you have your lifetaps in your epic.  Since primary procs more, then having your epic in your main hand should increase survivablity.

Anyways, I think you will see a big difference when you finish off your PoP defensives.  I'd do that soonish, and think about replacing your bone-studded loop also.  There are better earrings out there, and you don't really need the nuke focus since you have the epic 1.5.

[rdahl]

Why? I was always told to put the fastest weapon in the main hand

This a GENERAL rule, along with high damage in secondary.  Always use the damage parser to validate your selection.

[Nusa]

It's a good general rule, given two weapons in the same quality range. From purely a DPS point of view, given the way the weapons are currently auged, having the epic offhand makes sense. The epic would perform better in the mainhand, but the mace performs so much worse in the offhand that the net gain would be marginally negative.

From a survivability point of view when tanking, having lifetaps in the mainhand does help keep your hitpoints up, but you do lose some dps. Once you get a better weapon than your mace, it'll be more clear-cut that the epic belongs offhand.

You can easily switch em on the fly with the bandolier.

[Pakratz]

Strongly recommend epic in MH for 2 reasons:  1) lifetaps are terrific for soloing.  Each LT generates about 45 regen per tick in MH if you have the healing aas (28 or so if no healing aas).  Offhand its half that.  2) You have a damage aug in your other weap, which performs about the same as a proc aug in MH but quite a bit better than a proc aug OH (b/c proc only go off half as much OH).

Personally, I've MH my 2.0 forever since I have a damage aug for OH weap.  Parses confirm that the dps is a tad better with 2.0 MH due to the damage aug OH and I'm getting regened 90 a tick from the LT augs.  If I didn't have the damage aug for OH weap, then it might be a tougher call.

Aside from that, Growl is a terrific spell for soloing.  It heals you for 1500hp and boosts yours & warders dps by roughly 12% (from some brief parsing ive done).

[hokarz]

I'd take that CS4 aug out of the mace, and put in another lifetap aug. If your soloing, you don't need the aggro proc and would benefit more from another heal proc and if you are in a group, you don't want aggro, anyway. Get the improved bestial frenzy aa's as soon as you can, too. They make a big differrence in how fast the mobs die :)