Velious Solo/Duo Challenge Official Thread (and Trio/Group)

[loramin]

I don't see consensus yet on clickies or ranks, so I haven't tried to summarize the discussion on them, but it seems like the mob/tier list is mostly uncontroversial, which is great! If no one objects, everything on the list without red text after it could go onto the wiki tomorrow.

As for the red stuff, I'm sure everyone here can come to a reasonable agreement on it, and then everything can go into the wiki.

Here's are the "controversies" I see so far (plus I added one of my own). Apologies if I missed anything.

Solo Master:
* level 52-54 Western Wastes Dragons (minus Bufa/Nintal/Espora/Gangel/Quoza) and Ice Burrower
These dragons are single-pullalble (I was unclear if this meant the poster felt that should change the tier of these mobs, or not) - DSM
Ice Burrower in contention as too easy for this tier - DSM
* Laoch Uljux / Laoch Yubtin / Laoch Zalbryn / Elder Kalur / Elder Kajind / Elder Hajnix / Tri Velic / A Kromzek Spy
* level 56 Wakening Land priests / Mist Panther / Shamus Aghllsews
* all level 55-56 MOB in Dragon Necropolis
* Yvolcarn
* Vores the Hunter / Kardakor / Gnomish Deserter
* A siren priestess / An Enthralled Molkor
* A4 Brenn+Grenn / TwentyTwo (A4 version) / EightySix / A hedge wizard (might need to be a tier higher, can't remember if any can be solo aggroed)
* all unnamed level 54-57 Plane of Growth MOB
* all level 53 Icepaw in Velk's Lab / Any level 55-56 MOB in Velk's Lab
* all level 55-56 MOB in Kael (certain MOB's probably need to be a tier higher because of pull difficulty)
* Tserrina Syl'Tor (must obtain each dungeon key on your own for it to count)
The dungeon key thing sounds out of scope of the challenge to me; the solo artist challenge is about doing cool solo fights, not nit-picking how people get to the fight, and this isn't the solo self-found challenge (we don't make people solo earn any of the other items they bring) - Loramin

Solo Grandmaster/Duo Master:
* level 56-58 Western Wastes Dragons that don't C-heal or Chaos Breath, plus Bufa/Nintal/Espora/Gangel/Quoza, plus Stronghorn / Tantor / Breezeboot
I don't think Tantor or Stronghorn should be on the list ... They do not summon, so you can kite them - DSM
* Laoch Yailin / Laoch Jaklor / Quadrix Velic / Supreme Laochsmith Psorin / Eldriaks Fe`Dhar / Ralgyn
* A corrupted unicorn
* level 59-60 named Rats in Dragon Necropolis
* Chief Kalan
* all level 57-61 MOB in Thurgadin/Icewell, except the Royal Guardsmen
* An icy servant / Fellspine / A neriad weaver
* Plane of Mischief puppets (aside from Bristlebane) / My Right Hand
* Galiel Spirithoof / Ordro / Sarik the Fang / Grahl Strongback / Tunarean Earthmelder / A thifling lord / An entoling essence channeler / A Serene Forest Spirit
* A Crystal Destroyer / Failed Experiment
* all level 57-58 MOB in Kael (certain MOB's probably need to be a tier higher because of pull difficulty)
We need to figure out the "certain mobs" part
* all level 59-62 MOB in the entry areas of Temple of Veeshan that don't have linked aggro, such as An emerald sky defender

Solo God/Duo Grandmaster:
* level 59-60 Western Waste Dragons, plus lower level Dragons that C-heal or Chaos Breath, plus Icehackle / Tsiraka / Tranala / Travala
* Laoch Zelnair plus any level 58+ Loach MOB in Skyshrine / Lawyla / Jualicn / Oglard / Talnifs / Talon Velic / Lignark / Zaldin Fe`Dhar
* Phenocryst / Rolandal
* Vilefang / A Chetari Packrat / A Chetari Hoarder
* Lodizal
* Captain Stonefist
* Grand Historian Thoridain / Royal Guardsmen in Icewell Keep
* A Siren Templar
* Ferjeneror / Lithiniath / Bristlebane puppet
* A Phase Puma / A guardian power / An abstruse phantasm
* Tpos Icepaw / Gregendek Icepaw / Khelkar Icepaw / Bledrek+Bled / Kerdelb+Kerd
Gregendek Icepaw is too easy for that tier - Danth
Zura agrees; looks like there's consensus this one should move down
* all level 60-65 MOB in Kael (certain MOB's probably need to be a tier higher because of pull difficulty)
* all level 59-62 MOB in the entry areas of Temple of Veeshan that have linked aggro

Duo God:
* Level 62-66 Western Wastes Dragons
* A Huge Gargoyle Guard / A Huge Golem Sentry / Placlis / The Seer
* Queen Raltaas / Vaniki / Neb
* Seneschal Aldikar (Icewell Keep)
* Taskmaster Abyott
* Level 60-61 named mermaids in Siren's Grotto
Helsia mindreaver is soloable (and so belongs on a lower tier) - PatChapp
* Keeper of the Glades / Undogo Digolo / Ancient Totem
* all Level 66+ MOB in Kael (minus raid targets)
* various Temple of Veeshan encounters to be decided
"Various" needs to be determined

Finally, just a general comment, there's a lot of "all mobs ..." entries. When we put this in the wiki, I think it'd be ideal to spell those mobs out, so each one has a link people can click on to see what they're going to solo.

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Both SoW Pots and JBoots are a clickie.

One is a consumable and one isn't. No different than the clicky effects on any other piece of equipment that doesn't have charges, as compared to items that do. Those equipment effects are something a character always has and require no additional time/money expenditure to use (which is a particularly important consideration for servers that don't have item recharging).

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's not Ranger specific. Warriors, Rogues, Shadowknights and Paladins can bow kite Tantor as well wih SoW Pots.

No they can't, not realistically, and SoW pot inherently makes it different than a Ranger's achievement (SoW sword can be used instead, although it takes longer to activate, a detriment while kiting). Warriors and Paladins are also going to need the dragon tooth, a further different tier of doing the encounter, unless they get some unbelievable one-in-a-billion luck of hitting a bunch of instant snare procs that don't get resisted. Even then, it would take a LONG time to do.

Feel free to try fighting it with your Shaman. I know for certain it will take longer than any other WW fight you've done, if you can do it at all. It already took you an hour to do an Ice Burrower, much more time than dragons of that tier and many other fights.

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

* Tserrina Syl'Tor (must obtain each dungeon key on your own for it to count)
The dungeon key thing sounds out of scope of the challenge to me

Moving through each area of the dungeon on your own is the purpose of the challenge, and something a lot of people have never done. Tserrina herself is not much of a challenge.

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Finally, just a general comment, there's a lot of "all mobs ..." entries.

Yes, there's still quite a bit of work to do in separating some of them out and deciding exactly how many to include and how many things in total are needed to complete a tier.

[bcbrown]

The sentiment of "if a ranger can kill it, it shouldn't be on the list" is rather disappointing and discouraging to me. Otherwise it's just gonna be primarily enchanters and shamans participating with the occasional monk or necro. I'd much rather see a list of the hardest stuff that can be killed by an SK, or a wizard, etc.

I watched a friend of mine almost-solo Strong Horn once. It took him maybe an hour, running around to find mobs to charm into it. By the end he also had two ice burrowers chasing him. I say almost because I came and epic-snared it at the end so he could run off the burrowers. Soloing something like that is an achievement worth celebrating IMO.

And Tantor - the wiki page includes a couple notes by people who duoed/soloed it. Seems to me that's a good indication it deserves to be included. If someone's proud enough of their achivement to update the wiki, and few enough people are able to do it such that there's just a couple of entries, seems to me like it should be included on the challenge list.

Looks like the list in this thread is only Velious mobs, but a couple other mobs I'm proud of soloing are Estrella, Tainted/Corrupted seahorses, the Ghoul Lord, the Froglok King, and Priest of Discord. I think it would be much more interesting and engaging to have a list of mobs that most players/classes could attempt.

Another name is Faydedar - I once watched a monk solo that. He burned a ton of wort pots, but still cool to see. If slightly disheartening because he beat our raid force to the FTE and 30 of us had to just sit and watch one dude kill it.

[Zuranthium]

The Kunark list should be expanded at some point and also include Old World zones. There's a TON of city MOBs that are a big challenge. But yeah this thread is just for Velious, and the challenges in it are also more difficult on average.

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

a list of the hardest stuff that can be killed by an SK, or a wizard, etc.

Would be a lot of work to list all that, but the standardized challenge helps to establish it. Always a big question of how much extra help you're going to use to do it though.

Clerics need puppet strings to do anything relevant, but can do some amazing things with that item. Wizards (without puppet cheating) need to be able to reliably land blind with Bio Orb so they don't get summoned. Then from there it's a long process of keeping the target rooted/blinded while meditating for more and more mana to be able to eventually kill it. Shaman are similar in that it's all about time commitment of slowly grinding down the MOB for the things they can possibly do.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

These dragons are single-pullalble (I was unclear if this meant the poster felt that should change the tier of these mobs, or not) - DSM

Sorry if it wasn't clear. They should be on the tier list, and the tier is fine. I just wanted to show that they fit within Zur's specific pull requirements. They don't need lull, FD, etc. Anybody can just do a face pull and dodge roamers. You do need Sont to be killed or moved to pull Ionat. Sont will agro if you try to face pull Ionat. These days he seems to be killed every week, so that shouldn't be a big issue.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Moving through each area of the dungeon on your own is the purpose of the challenge, and something a lot of people have never done. Tserrina herself is not much of a challenge.

There's no other mob in the challenge where you have to get even a single key as part of the challenge, let alone seven.

If Tserrina isn't a challenge as a solo, she doesn't belong on the list of hard to solo mobs. Adding non-solo-artist-challenge stuff (ie. key farming) won't make her a challenge.

[Zuranthium]

I guess it's too easy indeed for a level 60 char, but they key fights can be hard at other levels. Would be nice to have more ways to reward dungeon crawling as part of a solo challenge.

Wild to think about how there could be solo challenges for max level 52 chars, level 40, level 30. I wonder how many people would be interested in those if they got created.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The Kunark list should be expanded at some point and also include Old World zones.

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Would be nice to have more ways to reward dungeon crawling as part of a solo challenge.

I strongly agree with both of these statements (but of course, one thing at a time).

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Wild to think about how there could be solo challenges for max level 52 chars, level 40, level 30. I wonder how many people would be interested in those if they got created.

This is a bit of a tangent, but a (very) long time ago, someone in the forum said they were going to have a soloing contest, with a reward (maybe a fungi, but it's been so long I can't remember).

They never actually wound up holding it, but I got so excited that I prepared anyway. Being a low-level shaman (I was killing forest giants in WW), I tried to come up with a way to make killing such low-level mobs interesting.

My solution? Naked solos! That's right: I killed a forest giant with no gear.

Not sure if the naked solo artist challenge is the next big thing in soloing ... but it did make a low-level solo challenging! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Tewaz]

Ah Zuranthium trying to gatekeep with his lull stuff.

Lol.