Any Tips for Soloing Casters?

[loramin]

I'm just a lowbie shaman soloing in LOIO, but I've already learned that casters on a P1999 are a bit more ... ok a LOT more difficult than they were on live. I can take on any non-caster blue and still have half my life and mana left over at the end of the fight, but if I try to take on a caster, even if I have 100% mana/hp, full buffs, AND clarity, I'll die. Every time.

So I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for fighting casters? Or does everyone just avoid them unless they're in a group?

[Lorraine]

Haste yourself.
Have the fastest melee weapon you can get your hands on.
Slam during their channeling (unless you're an iksar)
Pray.


PS: Running away from casters will likely result in you dying. First of all cause they cheat and are quite often SoWed inside dungeons, and second because LoS laws do not apply to them. If they've started channeling something and in the meantime you've turned a couple corners, they'll still get it off on ya.

[Ahldagor]

in loio i stay away from the casters unless groped or partnered up at least. if i do get brave it's full mana and nuking constantly because they have lower hps, but they can still ruin your day.

[Hobosnax]

If you have room to move just root/rot at their max spell range. Step into spell range and cast dot, than step back out. You might get hit with one spell while you are dot'ing.

By far the easiest way and makes casters in outdoor areas simple.

[hatelore]

With casters , corners and spell range are your friend. If you are around a corner, a mob can't initiate a cast. So root, dot, go around corner, in open areas just use spell range to your advantage. Root, dot, get out of range. But the biggest factor with casters is resist gear. Get a ton of it, earring of esense, 7/7/7 rings , white gold necklace, 9 Mr neck etc.

[Wotsirb401]

stack resists lol

[fastboy21]

there is no reason to kill casters unless you are farming something...cherry pick the easier kills, they give the same exp.

if you have to fight casters do what folks above said:
stay oor as much as possible. root rot from out of los if you can. get as much resists as possible.

this only gets worse imo as you lvl. when casters can start dropping ice comet on you then you need to be very careful.

[Hamahakki]

A) Try not to aggro caster mobs
B) If you do aggro one, root it, and either zone, or get out of range and camp
C) If you have to fight one, slam when they cast

[loramin]

Thanks for the responses all; sounds like there are no easy answers, but I did get some helpful ideas.

Oh, and fastboy21's mention of future ice comet-ing has now *almost* scared me in to not wanting to level ;-)

[Estu]

Thanks for the responses all; sounds like there are no easy answers, but I did get some helpful ideas.

Oh, and fastboy21's mention of future ice comet-ing has now *almost* scared me in to not wanting to level ;-)

Well, the easy answer is not to fight casters, which is certainly doable if you're soloing :p

[Lojik]

I'm just a lowbie shaman soloing in LOIO, but I've already learned that casters on a P1999 are a bit more ... ok a LOT more difficult than they were on live. I can take on any non-caster blue and still have half my life and mana left over at the end of the fight, but if I try to take on a caster, even if I have 100% mana/hp, full buffs, AND clarity, I'll die. Every time.

So I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for fighting casters? Or does everyone just avoid them unless they're in a group?

If you can fear kite casters they're easy exp since they usually have fewer hp's. As a shaman this is limited to Troll and Iksar who worship cazic thule, and even then that's only undead casters.

[Splorf22]

The problem with casters is that player vs npc resists seem way too low. On Loraen, with 160+ MR I will resist almost every Force Shock, but I will regularly get tagged with Rend in Sebilis. I remember posting somewhere some logs from Dramor where with ~80-100 cold resistance I would get hit for maybe 75% damage on average by blue kobold shamans in Sol B.

Your biggest problem is that shamans are just very weak against casters - about all you can do is stack resists and pray, and unfortunately that does not work very well here. The easiest way to fix this is to group with classes that are good against casters. Enchanters, bards, and paladins are probably the best here; shadowknights, wizards, and necromancers can work in a pinch.

[Arteker]

as paladin i rather have a caster(when soloing ) than a pure mele . make things way eeasier.:)

[loramin]

Arteker, could you clarify a bit?

What I mean is, when I solo a caster (and this doesn't seem class-specific to me) they use their spells to blind me, dot me and then nuke me to death.

So, I'm just wondering, is that not happening for you because you resist their spells, or because you have a ton of hit points and can ignore their spells, or because you can interrupt their spells, or ...?

[lecompte]

Paladin has more HP + push + stuns and casters mobs have less hp

[phobus]

Shaman NPCs are nasty. They'll slow you, dot you, and nuke you and - if you do happen to seriously hurt them - they'll just heal themselves. It's actually a lot better now that they have realistic mana pools, but you're still at a big disadvantage.

Outdoors, as a low-level Shaman, it's even worse. There are no walls/corners for you to hide behind. Sometimes you can get lucky and use hills/rocks to break LOS (i.e., root them and hide behind a rock). But at low levels, your root doesn't last long at all (if it even goes to full duration), which means it's hard to keep them out of casting range. Not to mention that your dots are still quite weak.

At higher levels, it's actually not so bad. I started carrying some basic resist gear when I started facing undead oblations in HS North. I went from having to use basically a full bar of mana to burn down one mob before it killed me, to being able to stand toe-to-toe to the same mob if I chose, resisting nearly every spell. Of course, there were usually places to park the mob behind a wall or corner, but the resists did help while applying dots and refreshing root.

Ice comet-casting wizards are, I'm sure, a different story. :)