From -7329820670703487787 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fb739,808aafbdad3c2717,start X-Google-Attributes: gidfb739,public Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.dejazzd.com!news.dejazzd.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 08:37:25 -0500 Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 09:37:23 -0400 From: Lance Berg User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.games.everquest Subject: A New* PL method Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 130 NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.216.131.199 X-Trace: sv3-hA7nOnWL/mEukx0rTFsXojDHTnpFsfZVApY0QzooBPhMQyzAbBzcN9iIsalny+XrLai6y1Mq3gynr7m!n42c5G/WIkchNvhUXEj7n3DKoR9NCWgna9+RnqyHZ17u3xzxtskNze5xJsExgQM3/hIkuzyWNq99 X-Complaints-To: abuse@dejazzd.com X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@dejazzd.com X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: g2news1.google.com alt.games.everquest:6076 *is this new? I haven't heard of it before, but I certainly haven't heard everything. A change made long ago in the way pet aggro works strikes me as creating a way I hadn't thought of before to PL. Once upon a time, pets aggro worked more or less like that of PCs; if the pet was doing more damage or hitting more often or casting more annoying spells, etc etc, then the pet would be on the top of the hate list and so the mob would turn away from PCs and attack the pet. The change made was that although pets still appear on the same hate list, mob AI says that IF there's a PC anywhere on the hate list who is in melee range, then the mob will never attack a pet, even if its also in melee range, even if its much much higher on the list. Its easy to see this in action; have a pet with taunt off in a normal fight, back a warrior out who's been working his taunts and various annoyances, and the mob will follow the warrior, ignoring the pet beating on it... variations of this are used to pet kite, pulling the mob around while pets beat on its back. But let the pet build up hate, and have the warrior doing little but melee, and when he backs off the mob will often turn on the pet who's been doing the actual damage. Walk the melee back in, or a fresh melee who's done nothing at all (assuming he's KOS to the mob) or perhaps thrown a single dagger into the fight... and no matter how long the fight has been going on, no matter what the pet has been doing, the mob will turn on the PC target like a shot. Because of this, it occurs to me one way to PL someone who has a pet is for the PLer to stand there next to the mob with his attack off, while the PLee sends in his pet. If the PLer is high enough level with good enough gear, he'll get hit so little that his regen can take care of the damage, and the PLee's pet will never get hit at all. This is a relatively slow way to level someone up, but the beauty of it is that you can arrange to do it such that the PLer doesn't have to be paying any attention at all; he can set up his character and go out to the movies while the PLee does all the work, pulling target mobs over to the stationary PLer and getting the fight set up there in melee range of the PLer. Since the PLee won't have to expend mana he'll mow thru mobs as fast as his pet can kill them. If he's got a DS he can speed things up by keeping DS on the PLer, although not by much if the PLer is using AC to prevent being hit at all. He can also cast whatever other spells he likes to speed things up, no use wasting his mana regen. But he won't HAVE to, to keep the exp flowing he just needs to be able to park mobs next to the Designated Target. PLer would want to be very sure his combination of AC and Regen items/AAs is sufficient to shrug off anything thats being done to him. You'd also have to be sure that the mobs you are using will aggro on the PLer without him doing anything to them, once placed in range. Have to be KOS, and to NOT be the sort that don't aggro if green. So, who could do this? Well, at sufficiently low mob levels, pretty much any class could potentially be the PLer; key factors being a high defense skill, AC, and HP Regen gear+AA. Best suited might be Necromancers because they often concentrate on HP regen... but they tend to have poor AC/Defense (and are on a crappy table). Warriors might be a better choice, a soloing warrior often finds investing in HP Regen worth his while, and he's in the best situation as far as defense/AC/table goes. How about PLee? Well, mage is where this came to mind, as we have decent pets and a DS. But Beastlords would also be a natural, and they have some small healing ability to help out in case the PLer gets a bit chewed up. Necromancers would really be good here, since their ability to FD would make getting the mob onto the PLer much simpler. Enchanters seem more challenging, since they'd have to arrange to get hit themselves to activate their animations... but nobody said this had to be easy for the PLee, and the same is true for normal enchanter killing with an animation. How about Shaman? They have a decent pet and have heals and cast regen and slow... while they don't get that pet till the mid 30s, which is a bit higher than my original thinking, the fact that they can actively keep the PLer alive mitigates that, in fact they may be better suited to this plan than anyone, given a really high level/well geared PLer, this could take them into their 50s. Druids, Clerics, and Wizards don't get their pets until into their 50s, and I doubt this would be too practical at that point; dunno, something thats still blue at 58 yet so wimpy that a well geared 65 warrior can just stand there and take it indefinately while the pets do the killing? Maybe, druids and clerics -are- healers so that could help a bit, druids do have regen and DS... but druid's pets are really really wimpy so this would be extremely time consuming, leaving this plan largely to the cleric, if its viable at all. Non pet classes could use a variation of this, where the mob is hitting the PLer and they use ranged weapons to do the killing... but I'd think it would be hard to keep the mob on the PLer while he's doing nothing and the PLee is continuing to do damage even at range. The beauty of the Pet part of the plan is that the pet is the one getting aggro, so there's never a reason for the mob to walk out of melee range of the PLer. If the PLee is so agressive that he gets aggro over the PLer, then I think (haven't tested this) that the mob will walk away from the PLer with the pet following him, and when outside range of the PLer, turn to attack the pet, who should be much higher on the hate list than either the PLee or the PLer. Now its just a matter of getting the mob/pet battle walked back over to in range of the PLer. In an emergency, the PLee can even zone out, as the PLer should be safe regardless (assuming we aren't using one of the plans where the PLer is being kept alive by a healing PLee... and even if we are he should be safe for a while, with his PLee cast regen still going and so on) One variation of this would be to deliberately put the PLer in a spot where he'll be aggroed by mobs as they pop, this would relieve the PLee of needing to train the PLer. Park him, say, in the middle of Derv 2 so the mobs all attack him on sight (note, I think dervishes are actually among the "don't attack red PCs on sight category), and the PLee sits up nice and safe on the hill sending his pet in to attack each derv off. I don't know what to call this, I think Punching Bag comes pretty close, but doesn't mention the pet. Bait and Tackle? Lance Other thoughts; danger of someone not liking what you are doing and deliberately training the PLer with every mob in the zone... while the PLer may have sufficient regen to handle one mob beating on him forever, does he have enough to handle 50 mobs all working on him at once, even though they are each only hitting for a few points every now and then? Also, it MAY be an exploit. Philosophically, SOE seems to object to any method whereby someone can get a reward without a risk.