Not great connection and Bard Kiting

[DevGrousis]

My connection isn't great, so when I kite I only do groups of about 20 or so.

That being said, i'm in FV at lvl 34, but I get too much lag to deal with their big hit boxes, and every other pull i'm dying when I don't think I've made a bad move. I was in OT from 18-25 and never died, so i'm pretty convinced that the combination between my lag and larger hit box is the reason why FV is failing me.

I'm lvl 34 now, and I'd like to go back to OT to kite the stuff that was too red for me in my younger 20's, but dont know if i'll be able to land dots on them or just get resists every time. Any suggestions?

thanks,

Dev

[indiscriminate_hater]

I started there at 32. You'll be fine

[Frudrura]

This may not be helpful. When I would bring in all the mobs to the area and I was more or less sure that they had all come to the spot to be kited, I would turn my sound up all the way (so it is easier to listen to how loud the footsteps were to gauge how close the mobs are), turn down my clip plane to 10% or so, I'd turn off NPC names, and I would turn the spell Opacity to 0%. Also, I turned off completely DoT damage in the Filters section so I wouldn't get a giant influx of text every tick (which seemed to give me a bit of a lag spike). This way the only indicator I see of the mobs being dotted is "Soandso winces" or whatever it is and of course the playing of the instrument. Even after all of this, I would get not so much network lag but if I wasn't careful I would end up turning very sharply because that many mobs for whatever reason kills frames. But for me it wouldn't kill frames in lowering the frames uniformly it would be more like spikes that would come. It felt like driving in a shitty car at like 100+ mph, where it gets kind of shaky. Also, I would make buttons so each time I would go to cast my dot, it would hide all the corpses. This way there are less things to possibly lag me and I could avoid accidentally looting while turning.

By level 31 or so, you should be able to kill all of the drolvargs in FV. I think around level 28 there were some that were too high. I would do an entire kite and check and some of the snarlers were at 100% health. By 30 or 31, you should be good to go.

[nyclin]

OT is fine, also started at 32 there on my Bard

You may run into mobs you can't hit occasionally, but you should be able to land spells on the great majority of them.

also they're much easier than drolvargs, just like you said - because of the big hitbox that the drolvarg model has

[DevGrousis]

Thank you for the replies guys. Helped immensely. I made the trip to OT last night and was able to do 3 pulls of 15 or 20 mobs. Really fun, way less stressful!

The graphics changes definitely help my computer. The macbook pro graphics card is NOT the business. Most "normal" content my computer performs brilliantly, but with 100's of mobs in the same frame all stacked on each other it just poops the bed. So thanks for that as well.

[Slave35]

There seems to be no reliable way to reduce the microlag that comes with people zoning in, which will still get you every time.

Unless you are willing to do RAMdisk.

[Kileras]

Thank you for the replies guys. Helped immensely. I made the trip to OT last night and was able to do 3 pulls of 15 or 20 mobs. Really fun, way less stressful!

The graphics changes definitely help my computer. The macbook pro graphics card is NOT the business. Most "normal" content my computer performs brilliantly, but with 100's of mobs in the same frame all stacked on each other it just poops the bed. So thanks for that as well.


There is a lot that goes into the emulation on a mac, from my understanding. I am running it when i play in wrapper and even on a current gen macbook pro my bard kiting is limited to my 3 year old PC.

[DevGrousis]

There seems to be no reliable way to reduce the microlag that comes with people zoning in, which will still get you every time.

Unless you are willing to do RAMdisk.

What exactly is microlag? And that little skip that i feel in the game is happening because one person is zoning into the same zone i'm in?

[Droog007]

What exactly is microlag? And that little skip that i feel in the game is happening because one person is zoning into the same zone i'm in?

I don't believe it's necessarily when someone zones in, but when they cross into your clip plane. In order to draw the character, the client hunts for the texture and model on your HDD. This often causes a little hitch in your FPS, a.k.a. "microlag" (evidently). If you are turning when this happens, it makes you suddenly turn much sharper. I mousedrive to swarm kite - it would make me spin 180 violently, and send me headlong into my swarm.

I've found that a properly configured SSD almost entirely eliminates this issue- prior to that, RAMDisk completely cured it.

RAMDisk is not that big a deal to set up. If you search these forums, you might even still be able to find a script that you can run on your EQ directory that will remove unnecessary files included with Titanium but never referenced by P99. This will shave the folder down to well under 4G. When I used it, there was a freeware version that created a ramdrive up to 4G .... upon a quick search this may no longer be true. Maybe it was called something else?

[DevGrousis]

I'm definitely going to check that out.

Another strange thing has happened to me three times now in the past week. As i'm doing a kite, in an open area with nothing near me, I'll randomly duck. I thouht maybe at first it was my keyboard acting up, because my hands were so far away from my "delete" key which was bound to duck that i couldn't have have accidentally touched it. So I unbound any key for duck and left it unmapped completely. Then it happened again two separate times. Anyone have any explanation for how this could accidentally happen? it's never happened to me randomly in the game in almost 15 years until I started kiting.

The crazy part of my brain tells me its some disgruntled person who's invis'd themselves and is infront of me haha can't think of any logical reason why or how this could happen.

[stifling]

The problem you are likely facing is mostly with drolvargs. They have larger hotboxes than other mobs do if you use any song besides the brass they will more likely eat you. You can use stringed songs more easily with smaller mobs in OT in a few levels. Just avoid tigers and rhinos

[Beckoning]

I would just add that you need to play in a 4:3 resolution (not 16:9). This helped immensely when kiting large hitbox mobs like the drolvargs in Firiona Vie. I was getting my butt handed to me prior to trying this out. Quom and Suif have great bard kiting tutorials on YouTube but if you've made it to your 30's you probably don't need them, although Suif's video also has other bard techniques that are good.

[DevGrousis]

I would just add that you need to play in a 4:3 resolution (not 16:9). This helped immensely when kiting large hitbox mobs like the drolvargs in Firiona Vie. I was getting my butt handed to me prior to trying this out. Quom and Suif have great bard kiting tutorials on YouTube but if you've made it to your 30's you probably don't need them, although Suif's video also has other bard techniques that are good.

I've got a macbook pro 15inch with a res of 1440x900. I play with a game rez of 1152x720. Not sure if that meets the 4:3 res you said. I've got the option of going 1024x768, 1024x640, 1280x800, 1344x840, and 1440x878 What should i change to?

[DevGrousis]

I just changed my resolution to the 1440x878 resolution which is actually really great for viewing the game, but when trying to strafe kite i could not see my swarm when they were being hit by my dps. which was scary lol

[Beckoning]

Sorry for responding so late, Dev! You want your game to be played in something like 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 so that you can see the mobs in the corner. The 16:9 ratios cut part of the screen out, so by the time you see them they are way too close and you're gonna get stunned and stomped!