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Difference between revisions of "LearnToSwarmKite"
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Clear off the bottom left (or bottom right depending on which direction you prefer to autostrafe) quadrant of your eq window. | Clear off the bottom left (or bottom right depending on which direction you prefer to autostrafe) quadrant of your eq window. | ||
| − | + | * You're going to practice keeping your swarm just barely visible in the bottom corner | |
| − | + | * Your lvl 2 aoe has an excitingly small radius of effect - you're going to get to know your swarm up close and personal | |
| − | + | * I couldn't really do that with chat windows and tool bars cluttering up that bottom corner | |
Prepare yourself physically and mentally to spend 10-20+ minutes running in very tight/controlled circles | Prepare yourself physically and mentally to spend 10-20+ minutes running in very tight/controlled circles | ||
| − | + | * Stand up for a minute | |
| − | + | * Walk up some stairs | |
| − | + | * Engage your core | |
| − | + | * Engage your glutes | |
| − | + | * Do some jazz hands until you feel your forearms relax | |
Make this a thing you do before every swarm - You'll thank me, but your neurologist's children won't get to go on that 3rd ski trip this year... | Make this a thing you do before every swarm - You'll thank me, but your neurologist's children won't get to go on that 3rd ski trip this year... | ||
Revision as of 17:41, 18 August 2022
Teach yourself to Swarm Kite!
after 20+ years on and off (mostly off) in eq, I decided it was time to learn the bardic ways. Now that my bard is lvl 15 (and ALL grown up!), I think maybe a few notes on the early stages might be helpful. This is mostly notes I either missed in all the videos I watched or came up with independently - I doubt I've invented any wheels here... but the real value is a) I did it recently and b) I had no f'ing clue what I was doing when I started.
Contents |
How To Use This Guide
autostrafe
It's a thing. I was lvl 12 before I "discovered" this. It's at the top for a reason.
You can map strafe keys, but nothing beats mousing and twisting while you autostrafe. You're probably gonna have to practice turning it on.
- While right clicking your mouse, hit the forward key and the left-or-right key.
- While still right clicking and holding down forward+left-or-right, hit enter.
- Release all the keys and your mouse.
- If you did it correctly, you're now running at a 45 degree angle off of forward. I have an 80% keyboard - I find it easiest to use the arrow keys to achieve autostrafe. Left-or-Right == you rotate left or you rotate right (won't interrupt casting).
- One of your chat windows now thinks you want to type a message. Equip/unequip something or click on your grp window. Anything that will close the message cursor w/o disturbing autostrafe will do.
Again, you're probably going to have to practice this - you'll eventually be doing it w/upwards of 25 mobs hot on your booty...
With a little practice you'll find you can get anywhere you want to go w/autostrafe engaged
- You can steer w/your mouse by holding down your right mouse button - it won't break autostrafe
- Neither will keys mapped to strafe which is super handy for dodging trees, wanderers and the like
Swarm mechanics
Pre-Swarm Preparation
- You've got your song macros, commands and settings mapped to something you can reach easily?
- I have an mmo mouse with 6 thumb buttons, guess where I mapped mine?
Clear off the bottom left (or bottom right depending on which direction you prefer to autostrafe) quadrant of your eq window.
- You're going to practice keeping your swarm just barely visible in the bottom corner
- Your lvl 2 aoe has an excitingly small radius of effect - you're going to get to know your swarm up close and personal
- I couldn't really do that with chat windows and tool bars cluttering up that bottom corner
Prepare yourself physically and mentally to spend 10-20+ minutes running in very tight/controlled circles
- Stand up for a minute
- Walk up some stairs
- Engage your core
- Engage your glutes
- Do some jazz hands until you feel your forearms relax
Make this a thing you do before every swarm - You'll thank me, but your neurologist's children won't get to go on that 3rd ski trip this year...
Your First Swarm Kite
Ok, you've got autostrafe turned on right? Maybe do a couple short swarms w/o it so you can really appreciate how much better life is with it.
- If your autostrafe is pulling you left, you're going to circle right via your mouse (or vice versa if your autostrafe is pulling you right).
- If the mobs get too close, just let go of your mouse's right button and autostrafe will automagically begin increasing the distance between you and your buddies
- If the mobs aren't on screen/close enough, use your mouse to tighten the circle (move you towards your swarm) you're making w/it (GRADUALLY!!!).
If you've remapped 'a' and 'd' to strafe left and strafe right, you can create/close distance even faster - they don't break autostrafe
Make sure nothing undesirable is on screen if your aoe agro's it (guards and wolves mostly if you're in WFP).
- Start singing your aoe dot
- Head towards some mobs you want to make dead
- You can't really control when your dot is going to land (ok you can time the start of your song and the 1st 'hit' will be right when the song bar finishes ?casting?, I've not found this useful yet, but some bard kiting videos I've watched advocate for it)
- Run tight little circles around mobs until they agro/body pull or you see the dot land (mobs will get a little ring of fire around them if the dot hits them)
- You won't be able to observe this w/o some fancy camera view work, but as you autostrafe your swarm, the mobs will sort themselves by speed
- Your dot is only going to hit the closest/fastest bunch
- You'll learn later to only agro mobs of the same speed for your swarm, but not in WFP - it's a crazy free for all, you're gonna have half the dessert on your kiester!
- Now that you've got some mobs hating on you properly, it's time to start tightening your circles until you can hold that fastest bunch of mobs just barely in the bottom corner of your screen until you ding 3 (10-20 minutes)
- If they fall off screen, the aoe doesn't hit (annoying)
- If they get too close, you're gonna take a lot of damage
- Even pretty much nekkid at lvl 2, the swarm in WFP probably won't single round you (unless you're also kiting guards)
- Your stretch goal is to swarm 2->3 w/o getting hit from mobs already in your swarm
- Unless you're unusually well geared/buffed, by lvl 8 if you let a swarm get too close it's pretty much a guaranteed CR
- It happens
- Get used to it
- If it's happening a lot, roll another half elf bard in Freeport and practice some more
You'll know pretty quickly if you've agro'd a wolf -- they run faster than autostrafe and will beat you to death long before you ding 3...
If anything goes wrong short of you being dead or you just don't want to swarm anymore, head for EC -- the 3 guards at the entrance to FP can't really deal with 30-40 mobs storming the gates to love on you, and you're not going to make any friends training WFP either
practice swarming
Here is one explicit way to practice in a low pressure environment where death is still a possibility - ymmv
- Roll a throwaway half elf bard starting in Freeport
- Melee your way through lvl 1 in the noob area in WFP (that desert area you run past on your way to EC tunnel)
- It takes ~5-10 minutes
- Target skellies with weapons and you'll have the 2g7s you'll need at lvl 2 to purchase Chords of Dissonance (bard's first and only aoe dmg song until 18)
- As soon as you ding 2, run to the bard guild in NFP (it's conveniently located in the first building you'll encounter in NFP)
- Did you save up 2g7s? Great!
- Buy your lvl 2 aoe
- You're now fully equip'd to swarm kite. It's time to practice.
- Back to the noob area in WFP. Get out past the guards and turn on autostrafe and your new aoe. You're swarming!!!!
Repeat steps 1-4 until you can start a swarm having just ding'd 2 and not stop until you ding 3. Just constant mobs on your tuckus the entire time. You'll want to avoid
- The wolves - they run too fast
- The guards - something or someone seems to always be pulling them out into the noob area
- The vendor, cactii, walls, etc.
The guards and the vendor don't care for your aoe dot one bit, and if you dot them, they'll let you know in a hurry (hint: you can turn your aoe dot song off)
I deleted my practice bard when it hit lvl 3
- I found it a lot more interesting/exciting/valuable to have imminent death always a real option
- Once you ding 3, all the lvl 1 mobs are just too low to keep it real
- If you delete your current low lvl half elf bard and rename a new one the same name, you'll get to keep all your macros across practice bards - I think I went through close to 10 before I felt solid - you're probably better at this than I am
Macros
I found it convenient to setup 1 macro for the aoe dot song and 1 to stop singing
Dot Song Macro
/stopsong /cast # (where # == the spell slot your aoe dot song is in - I put it at the top in slot 1. ymmv)
Stop Song Macro
/stopsong
Commands
These are commands I've found useful before/during/after a swarm kite
hidecorpse
setup macros for
-
/hidecorpse all
when mobs start dropping, click it occasionally so you won't accidentally auto-loot or feel the urge to drift your swarm away from the early dead. -
/hidecorpses none
use after swarm is dead to reveal the waste you have laid upon the land -
/hidecorpses looted
click once just before looting if there's a bunch of trash on your mobs you don't want to loot but also still want the corpse to 'poof' so you can loot the rest of the swarm.
afk (while swarming)
you can add a msg to your afk --/afk swarming, will get back to you after...
much like driving a car, texting while swarming is a recipe for a bad time
toggleinspect
I usually just leave toggleinspect set to off, but you can toggle it on/off if that's what you're into...
/toggleinspect offso you won't repeatedly inspect yourself mid-swarm
/toggleinspect onso you can creep on people when you're not swarmin
Settings
Some settings I've found useful to tweak in the Options window (alt+o)
disable auto-duck
Disable auto-duck (crouch) while kiting
- alt+o
- Unclick "Allow Auto-duck" on the General tab (alt+o pops up in the General tab in my client)
tune spell effects
I turned down opacity until I could still see the dots land but no longer worried I was going to have a seizure. For me, that was right around 25%
- alt+o
- display tab
- particles sub-window
- opacity (slider bar)
- particles sub-window
- display tab
credits
This started as a post on reddit's r/project1999. These persons greatly improved the quality and content via their comments and time...
- u/yorptune
- u/wigf1
- u/Laoracc
