How to solo summoning mobs.

[Alphawolfxtrem]

I tried to solo in WoS today, but after I snared and dotted my next dot, I got summoned. By the time I had run and cast my second dot, I was summoned again. By the time I had gotten 3 dots off I was dead. I had to choose between running and lifetapping or running and dotting.

This is dumb. How can I kill something if I can't even dot them? Take away all my dots, and all I have is lifetaps, which are very mana inefficient. I tried doing one dot and just doing lifetaps as needed, but I ran oom and die.

What can I do to be able to dot? ty :(

[flishtaco]

A lot of the ability to tap tank is gear based. Summoners can be dealt with but your usually better off finding a place where they dont summon to play.

I am not sure your level your better off doing murk stingers in NC, bears/wolves/spiders in Icefall, Roots in DW, etc over messing with really anything in WoS. I never have been in a group in WoS where I wasnt sure I could get as good or maybe better exp solo. Maybe onetime when it first came out but I was doing that group because I wanted spell runes mostly.

[scrat]

Are you trying to solo summoners for xp?

[Alphawolfxtrem]

No, I don't fight summoners for exp. I solely play this game to solo VERY difficult mobs. Anyone that has soloed RSS mobs or RSS named, can they please give me input on their exact strategy? Snare, dot to full, chain lifetap? I just wanna be able to solo REALLY hard stuff, that's why I play a necro, that's the only reason.

[Aegrusnecrox]

I am gonna be frank with you.

Necros are not the best suited class for soloing those "REALLY HARD" mobs. The reason for this is we are a silk class, thus our mitigation is crap, we can't slow anything except undead, and our pets cant tank for shit. You are better off playing a cleric or shaman if you want to solo the really hard stuff. Mobs that summon and hit hard are not going to be in the realm of your capabilities for quite some time, so you might as well get used to it and go solo for xp instead.

-Egg

[scrat]

No, I don't fight summoners for exp. I solely play this game to solo VERY difficult mobs. Anyone that has soloed RSS mobs or RSS named, can they please give me input on their exact strategy? Snare, dot to full, chain lifetap? I just wanna be able to solo REALLY hard stuff, that's why I play a necro, that's the only reason.

You have a magelo? Hard to suggest a strat not knowing what you have available. For starters, expect to do something like this varying on how fast mob summons, atk speed & your abilities-

1) snare
2) death peace
3) bigDoT_1
4) death peace
5) sick war pet w/aegis & guard, bigDoT_2
6) death peace
7) click epic, bigDoT_3
8) death peace
9) AotD, bigDoT_4&5
10) death peace
11) SoD, bigDoT_6
12) death peace
13) HoT, tap tank or tap kite w/shards & pots, maybe harmshield
14) win or die

Expect this method to fail anywhere from step 3 onwards. You are a necro and you specialize in being destructive over a lenghty period of time via your ability to keep a mob at a distance. You will never be able to solo "hard" named unless you mean 3 years ago hard.

Swallow your pride, grab a shaman partner & then you can kill hard stuff.

[Mortticia Addams]

I solo summoners little bit different then Scrat. I lead off with Army usually. Snare //FD stand up sick pet DOT DOT //FD Drop skellies DOT AA heal pet if needed//FD DoT DoT heal pet now or if can't FD pet //FD stand DOT then tap tank rest of the way and or kite best I can.

Please note I do not do this on a regular bases just sucidal, basically takes alot AAs/gear/luck depending on Mob vs your level.

Army=speed bumps to tank for you
Archers= same thing
Pet= Speed bump just one you can heal and malipulate

AAFD is your friend

[FCseven]

If we could take down named easily it would be too overpowering for the class and we would get hit with the nerf bat.There used to be a rule where a mob could not summon you for like 5 seconds after a summons but they changed it.The 5 second rule used to give us time to get a spell off and we stood somewhat of a chance.These days Ive seen caster mobs summon in the middle of casting a spell lol.SoF kills most of the solo hopes by having them not only summon but be immune to snare and cast non-resistable stuns.Welcome to SoF and the shitty band-aid mechanics of summoning mobs and solo classes.

[Reyla]

no text minimum character rule.

[Vivamort]

An important thing when trying to solo summoners is to have affliction haste. I think tribute is best as most spell haste items are less than the 33% faster Affliction Haste. This allows you time to get a DoT in between summons. Also have a stock of clicky heals, and use Vet AAs if possible.

Heal options in no particular order (and most have recast timers and some share them, so check it out before you wade in)
1) Heal Potions
2) Best Soul Orb thingies
3) Clicky PoR robe for some fast casting Life tap dot
4) Life shards
5) Life Taps (especially with DD Crit AAs and Soul Thief AA line, and a DD Damage Focus)
6) Bring a friend
7) Stanch Recovery AA
8) DI (if you are willing to get out of class buffs) or the DI like Tribute if not
9) Epic 1.5 or 2.0 clicky pet
10) Mark of the Grave Finder click.

Damage avoidance
1) Armour of Experience Vet AA
2) QvoX and Harmshield
3) FD in all its forms
4) if 65th level or less, can try the 66 and 67 fear spells (probably wouldn't work but if it does, mobs won't summoned if feared)
5) Rune
6) Vie line (if you are not adverse to other class buffs)
7) Big AC especially in the Shield department
8) Max Combat Reflexes and Stability
9) Slow if undead
10) Kill it as fast as you can, lead with biggest DoTs after it is snared (and or rooted)
11) Keep Mob on Pets as long as possible by FDing to keep aggro down on you and up on pets. Pray for enrage to give pets a few more seconds of life. Pet Heal AA,
12) Debuff Mob before engaging if possible (ATK Tap, Resist Tap, AC Tap, Str Tap, STA tap, Maybe Disease dot with Debuff (like Grip of Mori near the end, hopefully it won't get it to where it will start summoning before you are ready) anything to slow it down and make it easier to kill, while it is rooted and before it hits the magic percentage to start summoning).

I am sure there are more possibilities I am missing, but it is all situational and as others have said, we are not the bestest big named soloers, as we lack mitigation and slowing and our damage takes a while to build up.

[encephalitis]

Has anyone tried some big game hunting post SoF patching to compare mitigation?

I saw about a 600ac jump from those patches, and with shield block aa's, and a few other useful ones for pet mitigation and survivability, I'd think we should see some relief in this department....

[winchester20]

Yeah, even me, with my mediocre gear, I saw around a 300 point jump in my AC. Had me scratching my head when I checked my Defense skill and it was the same as it was before SoF. I ain't complainin though. I mainly picked iksar as my race for the regen, but that racial AC boost was an attractive feature too. I do like the boost that SoF has given us.

[Ozadar]

Gents, I haven't purchased SOF yet, leaving it as a Christmas gift option since my list was so short. Do you get the AC boost after you register your expansion or when SOF launched? I don't really pay attention to my AC, so haven't noticed a boost.

Oz

[encephalitis]

SoF not required, was a general patch.

[Knutplate]

One thing that I recommend for soloing summoners that hasnt been mentioned yet is root.

Its a great way to get a little breathing room bewteen summons because the mob isnt traveling toward you reducing your casting window.

Granted, you will not be able to use your pet (unless you are trying to sac him or strike a lucky enrage) but it can buy you enough time to get a few rounds of dots on.

I always start out with snare, then root.

FD and let the mob tick back to 100% (if it regens at all)

I start with lifetap over time using either highest dps available, or Nights beckon (weaker dot but longer recourse) depending on my target.

I transition into ashengate.

This almost enssures that summoning is about to begin. I time the summon and once i get the yellow text I run for about 1 second, do a half turn and cast Dread Pyre.

I continue this cycle by dotting until the mob has me at 50% health.

At this point I start my DDtaps.

If root breaks, i send in pet.

Thats my basic strat for summoners, although you customize your strats for your target. Sometimes AoD pets are useful, others times the heal from epic pet can be wonderful. CoA robe speeds things up... but as you gain more experience and are able to gauge your abilities you will know what you can handle and what is needed when.

My only advice is to do it. You will eat a few deaths, but the skills you will gain are very valuable.

[Doogrin]

I haven't done any tap tanking in awhile. I can tap tank the undead murks in WoS, but that's hardly worth it. I am looking forward to trying other mobs later on.

[Reyla]

This is an old thread but I recently started to try and solo summoning mobs and thought I would post my findings. Many of the things I discovered are already posted here and some things I discovered by accident through trial and error.

I am 9500 HP 9600 Mana 1500 AC self buffed. Bazaar/Praetorian geared. Level 80.

1) Mob level is irrelevant. Mob attack speed, accuracy min/max hit, spells and abilities are important factors.

2) I can't solo anything that summons in Gates of Discord. That is, by far, the meanest expansion ever outside of SoF.

3) Summoners that cast often are eaiser than non casters.

4)I need to use the 76 Warrior pet when doing this. His survival is key to this working.

5) Scrat's method is what I use.
Send pet
DoT
DoT
FD just after first tick.
DoT
FD after next tick.
Keep adding DoTs and FDing after each tick. That "usually" seems to reset the aggro I get from damage so that my pet can keep aggro.

If the mob is still at 30% or so and my pet is below 20% or so, I let the mob "realize" that I am the real threat to it's survival and refrain from FDing so I get summoned. This keeps my Mage geared and buffed pet alive (I don't have pet FD). As soon as I am summoned, I begin casting Lifetap and the mob dies before it kills me since it now has 8 or so DoTs running on it.

I have been doing this on Arcstone named trying to get Spirit Marks for my Berserker and OOW named for runes for my Shaman with relative success.

[Galudamite]

Have your pet, the 77 war pet tank.
Dot up the mob, FD to clear aggro, and heal pet with orbs replenish and wintry revival.

I can kill some pretty big (to me at least) mobs this way.

I am a lvl 80 necro with 9755 hp 11000 mana and 1685 AC self buffed, including the Duskmold Orb buff.

I am starting a new post for us necros to post what we have killed, lets not worry about what SKs and Clerics solo, they need way more gear to do what we do anyway.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

Was playing around with some named last night, and I haven't ever really done much summoning soloing. I was a bit surprised that people haven't mentioned the valued of a buffed, geared suspended pet. With the hastened suspend minion aa AotD gives plenty of time to bring out the second pet to lengthen your "Time to Live" which will directly correlate if you can kill a named or not.

[Cathan]

Summoners are a real pita but occasionally I'll find a namer somewhere I wanna kill. It really just depends how hard they hit. I won't solo summoners for xp, anything that gives decent xp that summons is just too fukn hard, even in a group setting it's generally a major pita to pull summoning mobs.

Preparation is key to killing summoning mobs. Get all the hp buffs you can for yourself and your pet. Put 1 pet in suspension and buff them both up with spectral shield and the aegis spell also.

Load the best rune spell, corpseskin now and keep it memmed during the fight.

One trick I like to do to swap from pet to pet is when your pet enrages, hit the epic clicky pet and or army of the dead pets, then when the real pet dies pull the other out of suspension to pick up where the other left off.

While doing that you gotta load up as many hardcore dots as possible, it's all about the fast kill. If you try to rely on tap tanking a really hard hitter your dps is going to be shit. Use fd and the pets to help keep the mob off you as much as possible so you can keep dotting.

Last thing you can do is have both or all 3 invulns up w/ the new aa harmshield so you can tank the mob while the dots work their magic at the end of the fight.

[kazman32]

what if you had a cleric merc healing you while you tap tank?

[solithan]

what if you had a cleric merc healing you while you tap tank?

He'll rez you after you die. :)

[scrat]

The biggest problem I've had soloing summoners in SoF is the prep time i.e. losing out on the named to others before I can get ready. I've tried to tackle a few named in FoS without extensive prep (corpses, aa refreshes, runed & activated aa's on war pet, etc) and it's amazingly not happening. Maybe the new pet mitigation AA's will make some difference.

Every time I prep a war pet with gear, buffs, aa's and suspend it for emergancy named showdown I take a lag spike and die stupidly somewhere before I can use it. I've never yet been able to whip out a ready pet and jump in the octagon.

WTB aa to keep a suspended pet through death.

[solithan]

It is fustrating to farm a named for 4hrs only to have it spawn then magically some ass turns up to steal it. What I find intresting is they often dont have track and are in a group that doesn't contain a tracker... hmm. I supose they just "luckily" came along at just the right time.

[Genkster]

i been using mercs to heal pet and doing the fd dot fd dot method

[Neurye]

with the tier 5 Journeyman Cleric Merc i have pet Tanked named in Tosk and warrens useing the lvl 82 War pet. I set the merc to reactive and use the dot FD method so the pet keeps Agro. for Pet Gear i use a full set of the new Elagant Defiant Plate armor. Every now and then ill get Summoned just FD back out and Tap.

[scrat]

with the tier 5 Journeyman Cleric Merc i have pet Tanked named in Tosk and warrens useing the lvl 82 War pet. I set the merc to reactive and use the dot FD method so the pet keeps Agro. for Pet Gear i use a full set of the new Elagant Defiant Plate armor. Every now and then ill get Summoned just FD back out and Tap.

Huh, everything I've heard about healer merc tiers is just an increase in mana/hp pool. The healing power remains the same, they are just able maintain the healing longer.