Dumb Monk FD Question
 

How do I know if feign death succeeds? Right now, I just lay there and wait to see if the mob hits me. Sometimes I get a "falls to the ground" message, sometimes I don't. I just failed 4 times in a row and got the "falls to the ground" message on one of them.

It would be nice if there was a way for me to know if it failed because just lying there you get pummeled; it's like sitting. I'd rather pop back up and wait for the refresh. Also, if I just want to feign and go AFK, I'd like to know if it actually worked before I walk away.

Falls to the ground means it failed, if you didn't get the message it worked.

That's what I thought, but I just had four in a row fail and only got the message once. Really, I wish it wasn't true because I had a nice corpse run afterward.

Happens all the time on my necro, too, so it's not just your version of FD that is a bad communicator.

Sounds to me like your problem is not turning off attack before you FD.

Make a macro with the following:

/attack off
/doability x (where x is ability number of feign in your abilities window)
/consider

You MUST turn off attack before using FD else you swing at a mob while falling and FD will fail.

With this macro if you do not get the "soandso has fallen to the ground." message then your FD has succeeded. However if a mob casts a spell on you, once you are down, they will realize you're faking it and come kick your ass.

To solve this pull a group of mobs then duck around a corner. Watch your combat messages for "soandso begins to cast a spell." If they have cast a non-line of sight AOE spell you will get hit by it. As soon as you're damaged FD before they can run to you and start casting again. If they haven't cast an AOE you will see the message "soandso has been interrupted!" at this point you can FD.

Hope that helps and wasn't confusing! (I'm good at being confusing...)

what? FD works if you see no message, it doesnt always mean you can get up and walk away immediately, sometimes you have to either wait or get up and FD again once or twice to clear your hate.

also, if you FD WHILE a mob is casting, if the spell hits you (or even if its resisted) they and their friends will continue to pound on you. caster mobs require some timing, you need to hit FD the very instant AFTER their cast goes off.

and of course, if you see "Blahblah has fallen to the ground", you've failed your fd and mobs will continue to beat on you.

This must be the reason. It makes sense and I suspected it was just something I was missing. I just tested it again without turning off attack first...I didn't get the "falls to the ground" message and the mob continued to beat on me while I was on the ground.

I'll make the macro and use that instead. Thanks for the input everyone.

That is sound advice, but it happens when attack is off, too. FD just fails without a message.

As a necro, I'll split two mobs by mezzing one, waiting for his buddy to head toward me and sending my pet on him. Then I'll FD so the mezzed one stays put. That's when I notice my message-less fails the most.

I just tested using the macro and it works. Maybe the necro spell FD works differently.

I used the "attack off" macro a little, but I preferred doing it manually and found better success by being more hands-on and not relying on feigning while face-to-face with the mob.

From playing a Monk into 60+epic+Kunark high end content, I find it's most effective not to feign in their face. If it's possible at all, FD away from the mob or jump away from them while feigning to get a little bit of distance. Bursts of lag can cause it to fail sometimes, and that space gives you a buffer against that, although that's even more rare than "falling to the ground" failures beyond 40ish. Be a pathing genius, and know exactly where you can get extra space from the mob before feigning. Pathing also affects how you can split mobs.

If possible, it's also really effective to feign behind where a mob spawns so they return to spawn point more quickly, clear you on their hate list completely, and turn around to their default facing position. You can then turn on sneak and stand up and bandage 2 feet behind them or whatever if they're a static mob, etc...this was very effective in lguk.

In short, try to combine feign with another force multiplier to evade your enemy. It will usually work straight-up (as long as you turn off autoattack), but relying on it in the wrong way in the wrong situations can work out very badly.

One of my favorite ways of using it was to find ledges to jump off so I could feign mid-air and get a lot of distance from the mob. That way, if it failed, it was a lot easier to buy time to try a second FD. IIRC, fall damage does not un-do your FD (at least I distinctly remember it not doing that when I FD-jumped from really high areas).

This is kind of an aside since I don't know your playstyle (you might have played a monk further than I did, and i'm sure there are better monks than I was on this server), and I never did high-end content beyond Velious, and very little of Velious at that. But I did a lot of pulling and was very successful at it during the Kunark era.