How do Swashies fare against Named and Heroic mobs solo?

[Dragunsoul]

<DIV>Currently I play a 48 Illusionist who despite what people say about them does very well and had no problems soloing blue heroics and green named mobs.  Im considering rolling a Swashy and was curious how and if they can handle the same situation if played correctly.</DIV>

[Shiverr]

<P>Sadly, not near as well as a predator type.  Go <FONT color=#ccff66>Ranger </FONT>or <FONT color=#ff0000>Assassin </FONT>FTW!  You won't regret it, trust me. . .</P> <P> </P>

[Jeffmaster]

<P>you'll be able to beat a 3x heroic at most 5-6 levels below you. Named.....9-10 levels below....</P> <P> </P>

[Dragunsoul]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> 9thArch wrote:<BR> <P>Sadly, not near as well as a predator type.  Go <FONT color=#ccff66>Ranger </FONT>or <FONT color=#ff0000>Assassin </FONT>FTW!  You won't regret it, trust me. . .</P> <P> </P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Ive noticed you give this same advice to everyone who posts here. If your intentions are to keep people away from this class it really does the opposite.</P> <P>Either way its not helpful<BR></P>

[Dragunsoul]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Jeffmaster wrote:<BR> <P>you'll be able to beat a 3x heroic at most 5-6 levels below you. Named.....9-10 levels below....</P> <P> </P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>So I would say its generally the same if played correctly. However.. is that with average gear or really good gear?<BR>

[Dakkon_10]

Most named/heroic mobs are cake if you know how to fight them.

[aubreyy]

<DIV>Hugely dependant on your gear. Since i took coule and str defence, my defence is capped with defensive stance, and my parry skill is like 400. I can easily take 67 named ^^^ without kiting. I can get my avoidance up to 65%, and my mit is about 3300. Before I had okay gear going wis no coule and int, I couldnt take a 60 named ^^^ without getting in the red. If you are good at kiting, andi it doesnt cast, you can really take anything, though, but that is the same for any scout. I think we are the best scout for soloing because we dont have very many positional attacks. Thats just IMO.</DIV>

[Keldo]

Yeah its VERY gear dependant.  I could barely solo 60-62 ^^^ at start of expansion, now I can almost solo Roost.<div></div>

[aubreyy]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Keldoth wrote:<BR>Yeah its VERY gear dependant.  I could barely solo 60-62 ^^^ at start of expansion, now I can almost solo Roost.<BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>(pssst you mean nest right)

[Keldo]

yeah, although I could also solo scornfeather roost just for reference (/whew saved)<div></div>

[Wildfury77]

Also depends on AA (and gear)!! A <font color="#ff0000"><i><b>mighty swashtank (stamina/strength line)</b></i></font> would laugh at a named 9-10 lvls below.....seriously guys if thats your limit, then respec from <u><b><font color="#ffff00">wisdom </font></b></u><img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  or stick to groups/raids.Still i suppose its obvious that higher mitigation, 7k HPs and 65% avoidance (solo) combined with this classes burst damage means that stamina line swashie will fare better at soloing named. <div></div>

[Raveller]

<div><blockquote><hr>Dakkon_1007 wrote:Most named/heroic mobs are cake if you know how to fight them.<hr></blockquote>As long as you have all Fabled gear and Masters.</div>

[Pnaxx]

<P>This a good thread. I just made a Swashy...he is level 9 now....and I made him specifically for soloing. Track a named, invis to him, kill him with real decent dps, avoidence and mit.</P> <P>Swashies seem like the perfect soloer....maybe even better than Brawlers considering how many little things Swashies can do. Better DPS than fighters combined with the fact that Swashies are sorta a nice combo of tank and dps plus the scout traits....seems like a no brainer...I am lookin forward to playin him.</P>

[Zygwen]

While I do have fabled gear, I'm lazy so I can't be bothered to solo heroics. It is just not an efficient way to solo. If you really want to farm heroic named mobs you should look into a Bruiser, Illusionist or Summoner. <div></div>

[OpethPA]

<P>Just as important is learning how to play the class correctly. I met a 56 swash online a few weeks ago that said he was watching me solo and did not know how to get off positional attacks in the middle of a fight.</P> <P>that is a sad. </P> <P>As long as you have your mez up any swash should be able to get 2 -3 positional attacks off in the middle of a fight. </P>

[Cocytus]

<P>Using lung puncture will make or break a fight. If you don't use it...you're going to have a bad day.</P> <P> </P> <P>Also, you need to be in defensive stance, of course.</P>

[Dakkon_10]

When Fighting a named, it is very important to know their tricks. What gear I use and what technique I use varies from mob to mob. I only have 3 pieces of fabled, all the rest is legendary and easily attainable with a group. I will always use vitality breach, enfeebling or cerebral ebb, and turgur or snare poison. If I lose a fight, I tweak my strategy. You have to know what the mob is doing to be able to counter it.

[Lea]

A fairly decent sized area for kiting and I can kill any non-caster yellow heroic (use all 3 snares, spam cheap shot and/or mez if snare breaks early and none are up).  If you absolutely have to try and solo one without the given area (which is not as big as you think once you get used to it and get a pattern down), vitality poisons, a regen potion, and using mez as often as you can are your best bets.Also note that with kiting, it tends to get expensive since it takes so long to kill most mobs that besides being a pretty bad form of solo experience, one fight is never going to pay for the consumption of ammo you go through.My opinion, if you're asking about heroic killing strictly as a way to gain exp solo, might I reccomend my personal favorite:  gathering something equivilent to 6-10 one-down solo mobs, hitting inspire followed by both AEs and auto-attack hurricane until inspire wears off.  Granted this only works at levels 52+, but it's still effective with just firing off both AEs at lower levels.  Even though solo mobs are usually crappy exp, killing them in droves can equal or best heroic exp that other classes have.  From meager testing, about 6-7 one-down arrow solo mobs is equivilent to one heroic of equal level.<div></div>

[Rokjin]

<DIV>Stupefying and Vitality Breach poisons also make soloing much much easier.</DIV>

[OpethPA]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> <P>Also, you need to be in defensive stance, of course.</P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Why? </P> <P>I can not  think of a single solo fight when I have ever used defensive stance. </P> <P>Your goal is to kill the mob as fast as you can, not tank it. For that reason offensive stance and its interrupts are the way to go. </P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[Rokjin]

<P>Defensive stance is great for soloing non-caster blue or green con mobs because you don't need any additional skill to hit them, but the extra defensive skill bonuses make you quite hard to hit.</P> <P>Offensive stance causes you to take too much damage from blue and green cons while not really helping you hit them since you already are hitting them without problems.</P> <P>I fight in defensive stance against even cons as well due to having Coule. It means I take much less damage and thus can kill a larger number before pausing, since I have no problems with offense anyways.</P>

[Cocytus]

<P>Why? One, you take less hits, and staying alive is going to save your [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn], and will utilized En Garde MUCH better. On top of that, if you took the wisdom line, lunge reversal will trigger more.</P> <P>The only time I ever solo in offensive stance is when I play my PVP swashbuckler alt, not my main, level 70 swashbuckler.</P><p>Message Edited by Cocytus on <span class=date_text>09-02-2006</span> <span class=time_text>11:37 AM</span>

[DocEvil]

Off Stance + Coule = Really good Soloing <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Keldo]

<div></div>I use defensive stance exclusively when soloing in SoS, nest, poets, wherever.  I only use offensive stance if I am trying to beat at level 70 or higher named, which will kill me extremely quickly.  My strat for those is essentially 13 seconds of love, in which I win or lose afterward ~edit: I suppose I should note that I never use defensive stance when actually fighting solo mobs, only vs heroics..<div></div><p>Message Edited by Keldoth on <span class=date_text>09-02-2006</span> <span class=time_text>02:45 PM</span>

[tass]

<div></div>edit<div></div><p>Message Edited by holystones on <span class=date_text>09-04-2006</span> <span class=time_text>08:04 PM</span>

[tass]

<div></div><div><blockquote><hr>9thArch wrote:<div></div> <p>Sadly, not near as well as a predator type.  Go <font color="#ccff66">Ranger </font>or <font color="#ff0000">Assassin </font>FTW!  You won't regret it, trust me. . .</p> <hr></blockquote>rangers and assasins suck for soloing. I mean how are u going to get a first powerfull hit on a named when they can see you and ur trying to get behind em? And a ranger, well the first arrow counts because u might be able to get another fast 1 off before the mob is on u beating the daylights out of u. Oh you can try to root em but the dam thing always gives by the time ur stealthed back attack spell is almost done. Swashy's are the best of soloers.And there buffs suck to. They're basicly like a safe bet mage to take in a grp that wears chain.</div><p>Message Edited by holystones on <span class=date_text>09-04-2006</span> <span class=time_text>08:06 PM</span>

[-ShadoW-]

If you want to solo heroic named mobs then go bruiser/monk. At lvl 32 I'm able to solo some 28^^^ names, and my lvl 70 monk friend can solo even lvl ^^^ names. Of course gear is one of the biggest factors when it comes to soloing.

[Krontak]

Couple pointers.  Use defensive stance, Vitality Breach, Essence of Turgar and Enfeebling poison.  What I've done is create a macro to fire off my HO starter paired with double cross.  This goes off in less than a second.  What this will do for you is ensure you can get off all your debuffs since your offence is down at the moment cause of your defensive stance.  From here you can stun and fire off your Lung Puncture First to reduce its chance to hit you, dazzling steel to reduce damage you may take.  At this point, if your enfeebling goes off along with lung puncture you shouldn't get hit much.  From there it depends on if its a caster, decrease its int with gaudy strike.  Walk the plank is invaluable for soloing to ensure you can get in all your positional attacks.  Use your mit debuffs then go to town with your high dps CA's.  If things look like they may get hairy, you can snare, quaff a health potion, charge with your long cast aoe knockback rolling and finish the scoundrel off.  I'm sure everyone's got thier own method but this seems to work well for me.  In regards to the HO macro, I use this all the time as double cross has a short duration and should be recast constantly on the mob to reduce its defence.   This paired with your chance of firing off swindlers luck will ensure your ability to hit offsets the penalty incured from your defensive stance.  This HO macro also works well with Raids and groups to ensure you can constantly have swindlers luck up without having others interupt your HO's.  Also, you get the occasional Bravo's Dance which has a duration of something like 4 minutes as opposed to the origional 90 seconds which was a big waste since you rarely see it.  Good luck.

[Raveller]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> -ShadoW- wrote:<BR> If you want to solo heroic named mobs then go bruiser/monk. At lvl 32 I'm able to solo some 28^^^ names, and my lvl 70 monk friend can solo even lvl ^^^ names. <STRONG>Of course gear is one of the biggest factors when it comes to soloing.<BR></STRONG> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>EQ2 is all about the gear. What you can hope to accomplish either solo, in a group, or in a raid in EQ2 all comes down to how well equipped you are.

[Hamervelder]

<div><blockquote><hr>Cocytus wrote:<div></div> <p>Using lung puncture will make or break a fight. If you don't use it...you're going to have a bad day.</p> <p>Also, you need to be in defensive stance, of course.</p><hr></blockquote>You seriously solo in defensive stance?  I've tried soloing in defensive stance, using sword and board, and found it to be a subpar experience.  </div>

[gfx]

<div><blockquote><hr>Dragunsoul wrote:<div>Currently I play a 48 Illusionist who despite what people say about them does very well and had no problems soloing blue heroics and green named mobs.  Im considering rolling a Swashy and was curious how and if they can handle the same situation if played correctly.</div><hr></blockquote>My 26 swash can solo some named mobs in FG and SH .. Blacksmith Brigg (SH), Commander (FG), Lord Ak'Tarnis and a few others.Imo, their very good. Better than rangers, not as good as brawlers.</div>

[gfx]

That's with 2 steel dual wields, full steel chain armor, full palladium jewelery, all adept III's.<div></div>

[Jeffmaster]

<P>I personnaly solo with a 1 hand sword and shield in def stance all the time..The survivability is increased a lot!!</P> <P>I use DW and off. stance when I'm grouping and when I don't tank.</P>

[Bunion]

<DIV> If I am just soloing regular con mobs I almost always was in offensive stance, your interupt and damage proc from your offensive stance is a noticable difference in damage. Try fighting those fetit trees in Bone Mire in defensive stance and it will take longer as they will get their heals off more. Depending on your gear/skills you may need to go defensive to fight the ^ near your level. One thing too you have the largest advantage when you are first able to equip a new tier of armor, for example when you get to 52 and get a full set of cobalt armor your mitigation will be much higher than it will be at 60 with that same armor. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> As for poisons, I used to use vitality breach a lot when soloing, but now that I am 70 with a lot of fable gear and most of my skills masters with the rest adept 3 I usually just stick with Caustic Poison and don't bother with any others as the mob will be dead before the other debuffs/slow will really have any effect. During raids I use the turgur since stuns won't effect the epic mobs in general.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I am mainly set up for DPS on raids/groups so perhaps others may be able to solo nameds better than me. But soloing nameds all depends on the named. You will find some that are very easy and others that will own you. Take for example the level 65 scroll bearer in Barren Sky, he hits for a ton of damage. I was with a level 70 necro friend pre pet nerf and we tried duoing it but the pet was dead in a couple of hits and it only took 3 hits to kill me. Even at level 70 for a green con mob he is tough. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> Your optimal strategy for soloing a named is to start in stealth and hit him with your stealth back attack/stun and then get off 2 positional attacks. Then blow off all your combat skills, then hit your haste/dps buffs and Inspiration line. Some people will then use their mez to then mez the mob go back into stealth and then repeat.  If the mob sees invis you'll need to use your throwing skill and if the snare actually works you can do a huge amount of damage before the mob ever gets to you, especially if your poison procs. You have 2 other snare skills, but kiting a mob as a swashbuckler isn't that great of a strategy since your snares tend to break pretty quick.  As for offensive/defensive stance, Enguard is far more effective in Defensive stance, it is also highly useful if you are fighting a named that is grouped with a bunch of regular or down arrow mobs. With your two AOE's, Hurricane and Enguard they will all be dead in a short period of time while you concentrate on the named.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> I have a templar on another account that I two box with a lot and mentoring down I use defensive stance as there is a huge difference in the damage I will take when duoing now even con mobs. You do have a huge advantage mentoring as most <50 encounters aren't designed for someone equiped with fable equipment and master spells even scaled down to that level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Bunion</DIV>

[Cocytus]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Hamervelder wrote:<BR> <DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Cocytus wrote:<BR> <P>Using lung puncture will make or break a fight. If you don't use it...you're going to have a bad day.</P> <P> </P> <P>Also, you need to be in defensive stance, of course.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>You seriously solo in defensive stance?  I've tried soloing in defensive stance, using sword and board, and found it to be a subpar experience.  <BR></DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Like I said....if you took the wisdom line, you do more DPS in defensive stance. And if you have Coule, you do even more dps.

[SageGaspar]

Really, all depends on the mob. Unless I'm clearing out massive amounts of green solo mobs (TT harvesting ftw), for solo mobs I'm always in offensive stance. Heroics that con blue or below, always in defensive stance. Even the mages autoattack hard enough that it's worth being in defensive. Heroics that con yellow and above... it's a toss-up. Usually I'll try it both way and die both ways, but I think I do lean towards offensive in that situation. Also, you're only likely to really have a set in T7, but switching into the appropriate resist for the mob can make a huge difference. On tough mobs that I'm trying to solo for claymore or something, a lot of times I'll go down like a rock the first time because I don't know their resists, but I go in the next time with my resist gear up and it's a lot easier.If I'm tanking a group I'm pretty much in offensive 100% of the time unless we get into trouble (big adds, nasty yellow heroics, whoops that's an epic). Groups are 90% aggro and 10% mit/avoidance unless you're in one of the three hardest instances.<div></div>