Can magicians solo Ice Burrowers?

TheBlob · #1 02-01-2021, 11:17 AM

So I was wondering if mages can solo Ice Burrowers. Read a thread that said enchanters/rangers/bards can do it:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=281737

Since the dps of a magician's pet is lower than the dps of a charmed pet, and magicians cannot snare, maybe they would run too fast/have too much exp for us?

What do you think? Has it been done before?

Snaggles · #2 02-01-2021, 11:20 AM

Not having snare or aggro low mana spells to keep the mob’s attention is the issue. A mages problem is usually solved by one extra person. I love mine but would rather find a buddy than do a 20+ min kill even if I could.

I have started carrying a midnight mallet. Not for borrowers but just for that extra trick.

DeathsSilkyMist · #3 02-01-2021, 01:08 PM

https://youtu.be/5fsvt1xfuqY I soloed an Ice Burrower on my Shaman using my pet as the main source of DPS. That means Mage pets could do it too, as their DPS is higher. Unfortunately, as Snaggles points out, I do not believe Mages have a sustainable method of keeping agro. You need to keep the Ice Burrower agroed on yourself while your pet beats it down. The fight will take a very long time, so theoretically you would build up a lot of hate over time if you kept hitting it with a low mana damage spell. You would need to cast a new pet every time it got agro and died, but each pet would theoretically last longer and longer as your own hate builds up.

EDIT: To answer the snare question, you do not need snare, as you can see from my video. They do not run very fast. Just use SoW pots instead of JBoots for extra speed.

Jimjam · #4 02-01-2021, 01:11 PM

The thing with this mob is it doesn't summon, so really it is just about finding a way to out damage it's regen in a sustained way while staying out of melee.

On my ranger I did this by spamming snare and arrows for most the fight (occasionally I'd jump in to do some melee while my hp was high).

On a mage, aggro kite seems obvious. You could probably corpse a bunch of epics, chain pets using them to ensure you don't OOM each time a pet out aggros you.

I'm unsure if https://wiki.project1999.com/Bioluminescent_Orb has a small enough cast time to spam aggro without being caught up to, but I'm sure you could find something else to use instead.

Snaggles · #5 02-01-2021, 02:14 PM

cheap'ish aggro clicks are the death beetle gland, forlorn totem, forlorn scepter, midnight mallet. Of those the scepter and gland are instant. The totem's are cheap to recharge and fairly quick; Holy Might is 400 hate even for a mage so quite good.

Sabin76 · #6 02-01-2021, 02:23 PM

This is interesting to me, since I came in here not really knowing anything about this fight, but if you can outrun it with a SoW pot why even bother wasting your mana on nuking occasionally? By the time you're low enough mana from casting pets it should be glued to you for much of the rest of the fight. Maybe toss a malosini to get resisted to piss it off initially and be sure to turn pet taunt off. The only problem would be if it can kill a pet faster than the 10 seconds it would take you to cast a new one.

When it turns on the pet, just begin casting new pet and /pet get lost when it's about to finish so you don't have any time when there isn't a pet up. Can use a mask of empowerment for instant burnout for 5 of them...

Snaggles · #7 02-01-2021, 02:26 PM

Malo is very low aggro. Damage spells are fairly low hate too even if they land full damage (unlikely).

If you could put over half the burrower's 20k hps down with your spells and the pet was doing less with taunt off, sure. I just don't see this happening since they are lvl 61. Besides -100 check spells the mage in this case is really lacking a 10-15 mana spell that creates 400+ hate. Druids/rangers have flame lick, necros have disease cloud and shadow vortex, shaman's have blind/disease spells/slow, ench's have tash and cheap slows, bards have a whole spell book of those.

Sabin76 · #8 02-01-2021, 02:34 PM

Quote:

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

Malo is very low aggro. Damage spells are fairly low hate too even if they land full damage (unlikely).

If you could put over half the burrower's 20k hps down with your spells and the pet was doing less with taunt off, sure. I just don't see this happening since they are lvl 61. Besides -100 check spells the mage in this case is really lacking a 10-15 mana spell that creates 400+ hate. Druids/rangers have flame lick, necros have disease cloud and shadow vortex, shaman's have blind/disease spells/slow, ench's have tash and cheap slows, bards have a whole spell book of those.

I was under the impression that resisted spells actually provided MORE hate than non-resisted ones (it certainly seems like it). Is that not right? In any case, the malo was not all that important to the "plan" as it were.

DeathsSilkyMist · #9 02-01-2021, 07:04 PM

Quote:

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

The thing with this mob is it doesn't summon, so really it is just about finding a way to out damage it's regen in a sustained way while staying out of melee.

On my ranger I did this by spamming snare and arrows for most the fight (occasionally I'd jump in to do some melee while my hp was high).

On a mage, aggro kite seems obvious. You could probably corpse a bunch of epics, chain pets using them to ensure you don't OOM each time a pet out aggros you.

I'm unsure if https://wiki.project1999.com/Bioluminescent_Orb has a small enough cast time to spam aggro without being caught up to, but I'm sure you could find something else to use instead.

Bio orb would work when building up agro initially, but you couldn't have the Ice Burrower blinded while your pet was attacking. When a mob is blinded, they will always attack an enemy if it is within melee range. I assume most people do not have access to one, however, due to their cost.

DeathsSilkyMist · #10 02-01-2021, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabin76 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is interesting to me, since I came in here not really knowing anything about this fight, but if you can outrun it with a SoW pot why even bother wasting your mana on nuking occasionally? By the time you're low enough mana from casting pets it should be glued to you for much of the rest of the fight. Maybe toss a malosini to get resisted to piss it off initially and be sure to turn pet taunt off. The only problem would be if it can kill a pet faster than the 10 seconds it would take you to cast a new one.

When it turns on the pet, just begin casting new pet and /pet get lost when it's about to finish so you don't have any time when there isn't a pet up. Can use a mask of empowerment for instant burnout for 5 of them...

Ice Burrowers have a huge HP pool, and hit hard. If you were just chaining pets, you would run out of mana long before the Ice Burrower died. You need to keep the Ice Burrower aggroed on you so it will chase you, and your pet will safely attack the Ice Burrower from behind. Another reason for this strategy is Ice Burrowers have a nasty aoe proc on attacks, so this strategy prevents those AoE procs from happening.