Has anyone soloed Khelkar Icepaw in Velks?

[Emmin]

I apologize in advance if this ends up being a little long. I'm going to write this in the spirit of the solo artist challenge (https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=80165) since that's what inspired me to even attempt this. I play on a Mac, so no fraps. You'll have to settle for screenshots.

First, I clarified a couple of questions about Khelkar from earlier in this thread before I actually fought him: 1. Dictate will not land on him, so he must actually be level 59 like the wiki says; 2. If you cast recant magic on him after rapture, it strips off the rapture, so it isn't possible to debuff him after rapture/slow; 3. You cannot recover items given to dogs that aren't pets. I tested this by giving a dubious con icepaw a torch, then killing him after and the torch wasn't in his loot table. It's unclear if he actually equipped it, though, because the dogs in Velks don't show weapons in their hands when equipped. I didn't think it was worth it to give Khelkar some -MR items because of this.

I wondered if there was a better high level pet in the zone than a champion since during my attempt about a week ago, Khelkar had about 60% hp left after slaughtering my first champion pet (he was slowed, too). I tried the golems and gargoyles near the castle (I wondered if the wiki level ranges were accurate), but charm wouldn't land on them so they're actually 54+. I then tried the frost spectre near Lord Bob (thanks for the suggestion, Izmael) and he can actually be charmed with Boltran's. The wiki says that a champion has 3k more hp than the frost spectre, so I wasn't sure if he'd actually be a better pet than a champ. To figure this out, I had him fight a champ and it wasn't even close. The champ died when the spectre still had ~40% hp. He has a quick-cast 240-something lifetap that he uses quite a bit as well as a harmtouch. That ended up making a huge difference when I actually fought Khelkar.

I assumed that I'd need to chain a few pets in order to solo Khelkar so I pre-buffed (and torched) the champion and warrior in the room next to Khelkar's with tash, VoG, umbra, and rune V, thinking I'd keep them calmed during the whole fight. This actually made the fight more difficult than it needed to be since I didn't actually need that many pets. I also had a caster dog in the room below that I could use for ToT. I pulled out all the stops on my spectre pet: right before starting the fight I torched him and gave him umbra, rune V, epic haste, feedback and boon of the garou.

On to the actual fight. I had one aborted attempt on Khelkar (after calming the dogs in his room) since all three of my slows after rapture+tash were resisted. I blurred him and started over. On the next attempt, I again went with rapture+tash+forlorn deeds and it landed on the first cast, then BoF+tash again to lower my aggro. Then the fight was on! Here's a screenshot right after the initial engage:

EQ000095.jpg

I sat and watched the show, ToTing the dog down below whenever I could. I was also basically chain casting calm on the other dogs in the room because I was so paranoid that it was going to wear off. Amazingly, my pet was actually keeping even with him towards the beginning of the fight with all his lifetaps

EQ000096.jpg

Right at 2 min after landing my first slow (I kept a timer going) I started attempting to re-slow him. It landed on the second cast. He was at about 50% at this point. Here's a screenshot right after landing the second slow:

EQ000097.jpg

He finally started to pull away from my pet towards the end. It ended up dying when Khelkar was right around 10% hp. Right before my pet died, I backed him off and told him to sit, hoping Khelkar would burn his summon and backstabs on my pet instead of on me, and it worked! Unfortunately I didn't get any screenshots of this because I was panicking at this point. I then clicked my wand on the champion in the room and sent him in. Right about then I realized that I forgot to blur him after landing the second slow so I had a whole bunch of aggro built up and my pet couldn't pull him off of me. He actually enraged at this point, but since he was busy beating on me my pet was able to keep working on him. Finally, enrage wore off and my pet peeled him off of me:

EQ000098.jpg

Dead dog:

EQ000099.jpg