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boxing a beast

Started by Nadric, May 06, 2014, 10:15:25 AM

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Nadric

Hey guys boards have been quiet lately, hope some people are still around to answer this. I've been four boxing a bst, brd, druid and necro casually for the last couple years but now I think I am going to replace the necro with a SK or pally. Until now the bst has always been my main screen but I will need to focus on the tank if I use one so does anyone have any good macros or tips to get decent dps out of a bst ur not paying full attention to? Also which tank would fit in my group better, SK or pally? Thanks guys.

Illiyana

Either are a viable choice, but I would choose the SK. When I group with a pally, I have to keep moving around because their stuns knock the mobs around, meaning you have to preposition the BST.  Sure, you could not use the stuns, but then you are gimping their abilities.  The SK keeps them in spot and kicks their arse.

~Illiyana Wolfmother~


Zorthaz

I would just macro the agro abilities of either tank and focus on the BST.  Swapping a tank for a necro will certainly be a hit to DPS and having an autoattack BST will make it that much worse.  I am guessing you want to take on content either a BST can't tank or the tank merc isn't up to the task.

We might be able to give you some more pointers if you can provide some more information.  Just an FYI, you don't have to use the knockback stuns on the Paladin.

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

nedoirah

#3
It's been a while since I've played but I do remember setting my bsts discs and melee abilities all on one key.

Line1=/alt activate 247
Line2=/pause 1, /disc rush rk. II
Line3=/pause 10, /alt activate 11080
Line4=/pause 10, /doability 1
Line5=/pause 10, /alt activate 986

This one has my melee discs and stuff on it.

Line1=/attack
Line2=/pause 10
Line3=/pet attack
Line4=/pause 10
Line5=/disc Bestial Rending rk. II

I use this to start attacking on bst. (attack can be subbed with /assist <char name>)

Personally when I started using a warrior alt as my tank, I had to get her set-up in a similar manner. Bst usually pulled then switch to warrior to grab agro with /assist and taunt and agro discs. Then I'd switch back to bst and hit melee key (above mentioned setup) then switch to shaman to hit a slow/malo/debuff key then back to warrior for more agro discs. Hit bsts spells and warrior agro with shaman heal hotkey. Back and forth like that till fight is done. I was usually very successful with this setup.

Use disc <name> for whatever disc you are partial to. I like rush or whatever the highest level version is. But this part is the most important. You must use a comma then a space after the /pause command so that your discs/aa/abilities don't get skipped. Unless things have changed since I've been gone that's how it works. You should be able to set up a spell hotkey the same way. I also make sure I add in my deagro abilities to this key. This way I can spam it and not think about it. You can set many keys like this.

I'm sure my comrades in here will come along and correct me if I'm wrong.

Zorthaz

#4
You can create hot keys for your beast, the problem is you need to be constantly cycling through them to get any real DPS.

First question, are any of your accounts Gold accounts?

If you do have a Gold account, do the J5 merc quest and get a tank merc.  (I recommend the Iksar tank merc)
If you boost your merc tank with bard songs and also boost heal crits (they fixed this song a patch ago or so and it makes a big difference especially if you are using a healer merc.)   You should be able to handle all group content outside of named.  For named mobs swap the tank merc for a healer merc and pet tank.  Or if you are comfortable healing your pet, you can use a wiz merc.

Raising and outfitting a tank with armor, weapons, augs, and AA is not a small task.  The game seems to be moving towards requiring a real tank for more content, so it might be a worthwhile investment for the future.
-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Nadric

Thanks for all the replies guys, sorry it took me so long to post back. All 4 of my accounts are gold, I just upgraded my 70 paladin to heroic so that helped me save alot of time. I have been fooling around with him for a few days and I think I've finally figured out how to use him. My bst is 92 and tanking voa t1 trash mobs with 1 cleric merc with no trouble, the main reason I wanted a tank was because my bst cant seem to hold agro off the dps mercs. If I can figure out how to hold agro reliably maybe I'll bag the pally till I hit a wall. I also haven't tried tanking a named in voa with my bst yet, maybe if I debuff the crap out if it with my druid and use my defensive discs right I'll be ok.

Khauruk

The biggest thing is to make sure you're not using Chameleon's Strike, and to preferably buy zero ranks of Spell Casting Subtlety (unless it's too late).  Then start out w/ poison nuke for a bigger shot of agro out the gate.

Bst aren't a massive agro class anymore, though, and it'll always take work (and lots of mana).
TURNCOAT!!!!!

Nadric

Yea its tough to break the spamming chameleon strike habit. Even spamming all my nukes I can't hold agro off the melee dps mercs. Does anyone have any agro holding tips, will putting runes in my weapons make a big difference? How about spamming flash of light does that cut it these days? Lol.

Illiyana

What is the feasibility of using a Tank merc until the Paladin catches up?  Will you have enough healing power and DPS to continue to kill the same mobs you were previously?

~Illiyana Wolfmother~


Khauruk

Quote from: Nadric on May 28, 2014, 05:27:51 PM
Yea its tough to break the spamming chameleon strike habit. Even spamming all my nukes I can't hold agro off the melee dps mercs. Does anyone have any agro holding tips, will putting runes in my weapons make a big difference? How about spamming flash of light does that cut it these days? Lol.

So what I do is I put an extra "/" in my hotkey, in front of that line, so that even if I hit it I *can't* activate the ability.

Weapon augs - they are useful, and if you plan on tanking regularly then yes, put them in at least mainhand.  With a crafted weapon in the mainhand you should be able to get an agro proc for the main one in addition to whatever aug you put in it.  They are infusible so you can use a powersource that gives an agro proc for a tiny bit more agro.

Mercs - I expect that a dps merc will tank better than you.  If you still can't do better w/ holding agro, give it a shot.

You should change to caster mercs - they are significantly better dps and have fewer agro problems on balanced.

If you can handle the idea, the best thing is to have your pet as the tank, use all wizard mercs, and you heal the pet.  Druid uses fire/attack debuffs, caster aura, nukes and black wolf.  Heals as needed.  You slow and heal pet.  Bard pulls.  Wizards tear shit up.  You can probably put the mercs on burn after giving the pet a moment to lock agro.
TURNCOAT!!!!!

Zorthaz

If you are using any mercs on burn, they will steal agro from anyone.  I would suggest you drop the melee DPS mercs and switch to wizard DPS mercs on balanced.  I use a hot key to cast my top 5 nukes.  If you want to hold agro, just order them so the hotkey uses the highest agro spells first.

I never bought the spell casting subtle AA.  I run bite of the ASP and Chameleon strike constantly. This is my hotkey:

/cast 1
/cast 2
/cast 3
/cast 4
/cast 5

spell gem 1 = Frozen Carbomate
spell gem 2 = Poantaar's Bite
spell gem 3 = Kromrif Lance
spell gem 3 = Frostrift Lance
spell gem 4 = Nak's Maelstrom

Make sure the beast gets first agro (slow) and first dmg on the mob.  Once I have agro locked down I will throw in a Kesar's Feralgia. 
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Khauruk

A point that may interest some reading...

The first time the mob is agroed, the amount of agro generated has a hardcap, somewhere around ~500 or 1000 iirc.  This means that if you pull with Bite or another nuke, for instance, you will miss most of the agro potential from it.  Best to pull with a debuff or dot and then nuke asap.

Spells with Hate Override values, like SK terrors, avoid this limit, but Beastlords don't have these.
TURNCOAT!!!!!

Zorthaz

What I was seeing in Dead Hill HA tonight if I pull a mob with Frozen Carbomate, the tank has more trouble getting agro then if I pull with slow.  Is it possible because it is 2 spells in one that it generates the hard cap 1000 for he first nuke and uncapped on the second part?  If I pulled with slow the tank could take agro easily, but if I pulled with Frozen Carbomate I ended up tanking the mob.


Food for thought...
-Z-
Savage Lord Zorthaz - 110 - Scaled Wolf herder - Tunare

Khauruk

#13
I was wondering about that actually as I wrote the post above.  I'm guessing that would be the case.

Slot   Description
1:   Add effect: Frozen Carbomate Poison II
2:   Add effect: Frozen Carbomate Ice II
3:   Increase Hate by 480
4:   Increase Hitpoints by 0

I'm not sure if it would go in straight slot order, or if you'd get all of the innate parts of the spell (i.e. the hate) first and then the two added effects.

Nobody in sk serverwide knows...It looks like I need to do some testing w/ my bst and sk to see.
TURNCOAT!!!!!

Gatash

Quote from: Nadric on May 27, 2014, 04:25:13 PM
I also haven't tried tanking a named in voa with my bst yet, maybe if I debuff the crap out if it with my druid and use my defensive discs right I'll be ok.
This depends on what zone you are talking about. In the zone VoA itself, iirc the slow is far less mitigated than a regular mob so you probably wouldn't even notice a difference.

For other others, I usually use something like the following (some of which you may not have yet, I'm not at home to check level requirements). Use as and when required, if you don't need to pop something, save it until a bad spike.

- Put Friendly pet line on the warder, every little helps.

- Cast Feralgia on inc and go into full burn but don't use Bloodlust

- Hold off as long as you can before popping protective spirit, which might be all of 2 seconds depending on the named but test the water. It's a blessing and a curse because as soon as it drops you either confuse the healer merc or you need your healer to be ready for a spike. I wouldn't stack any other defensive with this.

- Next in line is Monkey Spirit and be ready with Warder's gift to deal with any bad spikes.

- Last in line, bandolier in two weapons with leach procs (and even a heal proc on top if you can get it) and pop Bloodlust. With heal crit AA you'll get a good chunk of hp coming in. If Monkey spirit isn't enough, you can combine this step with it. You'll be hoping the DPS has done its job by this point!

You may or may not have Armour of Experience to blow in the mix too, and protection of the warder can be thrown in somewhere but it's not great and not fixed duration. It can level out a spike though.

All the time, warder should be taunting with snare proc. Once everything is blown and if you can't take the damage, back out, FD and hope pet is next in aggro line. If not then it might all be over at this point!

Otherwise, default to the warder tanking and virtually everything can be held with little effort. This is easily the safest option with named but a) it's boring if you're just playing the bst and b) I thought it might help to expand on the defensive discs as you mentioned them.

Quote from: Nadric on May 28, 2014, 05:27:51 PM
Does anyone have any agro holding tips, will putting runes in my weapons make a big difference? How about spamming flash of light does that cut it these days? Lol.

This popped into my head a month or so back so I tried it out again as the group was top-heavy with DPS so I could afford to lose nukes. It's a tactic that needs to remain firmly in the PoP era :) Any aggro this might generate is offset by the fact you're dropping a huge whack of dps.

I have 3 ranks of spell casting subtlety, which I would rather not have. But spamming Frozen Carbonite and doing high DPS will usually hold aggro unless someone is making an effort to pull it off you. You'll hold aggro from a caster merc on balanced.