Hi all,

I have gone thru several of the threads on soloing summoners and I think I have the basic strat down:

Stack up the HP buffs on yourself
Toss on max regen and DS
Snare, Debuff (HoR, Illumination)
Apply DoTs
Heal between summons
Have Exodus locked and loaded :lol:

I generally dual box a 66 Necro (I'm a 66 Druid), so I'd prefer to agro kite these if I could, so I won't be rooting it after pulling.

My specific question - with buffs, I'm at about 6200 HP and 1050AC. I'd like to give this summoner thing a whirl at the Ridge Runner / Aggressive camp in NC. Will that amount of HP be OK for this kind of fight (assuming I can pop off heals between summons), or do I really need some more HP and/or some of the combat AAs to really pull this off?

Thanks,
TinyDru

I suppose its possible, though I think unlikely given your stats. You really should root them though. Being able to step back for a quick heal can mean life or death.

If you're kiting it I think 6200 might suffice, but if you're at that and you're trying to tank them, you'll be dead pretty fast. I was at 9khps and eh, 8.2k mana and I ended the fight at 30m with all my clickies and dots unleashed(with Ridgerunner Drunt that is).

NC Mobs are fast summoners. Like 6 or 7 seconds.

Only some NC summoners are quick summoners. Some are 5 seconds, some are the usual 10 seconds.

Some NC mobs are fast summoners.....the RR and aggressive murk are not however.

They do often have a nasty little snare proc tho, so rooting them is really critical. If they arent rooted you really cant get clear between summons to cast once the snare hits you. The aggressive murk will cast a stun too, so once again if it isnt rooted you will really feel the pain.

The best summoning named in NC to test with is the ukun packleader near the center of the zone (called the crossroad camp on out server). He doesnt have any procs, stuns or casting ability. If you can take him, then try the RR. I found the difficulty level to be ukun, RR drunt, aggressive murk, RR droongar. Most of the other named in NC are fast summoners, so dont even worry about them.

The stun is prismatic based, so get all of your resists high (over 200 helps) and you will resist most of them. The snare doesnt seem to be resistable tho.

I would definitely root the mobs if you are soloing. If on the other hand you are duoing, the kiting idea works very well. Duo I can root the mob, snare, debuff it, put on one dot then nuke to break root. I then concentrate on healing myself while my partner kills the mob. ; )


Sliggoth, druid/ tradeskiller of Lanys-seventh hammer

Do you really have time to run far eneough on a moving summoner to cast a heal?

And no, at 6-7k hp you can't solo Drunt. He his 500ish, quad and does that stupid snare.. you might survive him summoning you, but getting his hps down through all this is pretty impossible.

Good place to practice is Harbingers Spire. There's lots of nameds there, all summon and they hit harder the deeper you go. So it's kinda like a progression :) I spent a great deal of time there, learning to get single mobs out of large rooms, fighting summoners, dealing with adds, etc. Drops are not so bad either. There's no runes, but still.

Well, it sounds like I stand a good chance of getting my arse handed to me if I start this with the RR/Aggressive camp. I think I'll give either the packleader or Harbringer's a try (thanks for the suggestions) to see how it will go.

If worse comes to worse, all I really need to worry about is keeping agro on my druid and healing between summons. For damage in that case, I will have the Necro loading on the dots and have the Necro pet whacking away as well (if I use the necro pet, that will necessitate not having the mob rooted...).

If all that doesn't work, then I'll just try the root/dot method as suggested.

Thanks for the advice all - it is greatly appreciated!!

-TinyDru

Depending on the DPS of the mob your attempting to solo, i'd start out with a full load of dots and go straight to nukes. Dots are good damage, but take time...precious time that you can't afford to spend.

Heres how I usually setup to kill a summoner...

-Buff max hp/ac/ds/mana regen etc
-If mob is snareable, pull it that way (serpent vines best if you have it)
-Run far out of range and load pummel the mob with round of dots
-Kite mob around, avoiding damage until he starts to summon.

At this point, you can do several different things..
A.) Flat out tank the mob unleashing chain nukes and keeping yourself healed
B.) Keep the mob rooted and immediately back up after each summon. Keeping Dots on him.
C.) If the mob cannot be snared rooted, you can cast dots and run around in circles. As long as you keep going the mob wont get more than 1 round off on you before you run out of range. Then when the dots where off you can stop to heal yourself / refresh dots.

does stun spell interrupt summon timer?

not tough enough to try it myself.

Soroan

If you are going to duo with a Necro, then you will have no problem. The difference between duoing and soloing is pretty big. Especially with a necro. Root the named, debuff then toss your dots on while he dots and sends his pet in. Heal the pet if you have to and nuke if you don't. Should die pretty fast.

There's a mushroom in Echo Caverns, on the Fungus Grove side, called The Great Saphrophyte. It's under level 50, but summons! It doesn't even hit you, just casts and knockbacks and stuff like that. There's 4 little grey dudes there, kill them first, then see how summoning works with the mushroom.

Or you can try the entrance mobs in Ssra, they also summon and don't hit that hard and is completely safe to do in zone-in corridor.

Stunning does nothing to summoning as far as I know, but you can try it out in the places I wrote.

Also try turning run off and / or ducking before next summon, then move away.. to give you an idea how the snare from Drunt works (and couple nameds in Harbingers).

defensive AAs, avoidance, higher AC, channeling focus, stun resist
would all be great to have!
6200 hp buffed.. you're not going to do well in NC yet. ( solo )
might be ok with necro there , but necro would get aggro for sure.


when fighting summoning mobs, I like to root, debuff ( hor, immo ) after immo is cast you get summoned pretty fast, then i just DD them to death as they hit me and my DSs. if the mob has decent amount of HPs then i add another dot between summons and then back to blasting.

maybe practice with DS mobs first.
or non-summoning mobs beating on you..
if you find yourself in trouble you can always root them and run away.

Do you really have time to run far eneough on a moving summoner to cast a heal?

It is difficult, which is why you should keep them rooted while you can. When rooted, you only have to move off a little bit to stay out of melee range and can have plenty of time for a spell cast.

A typical rhythm is to lay on the DoTs, get summoned, move away, stop, cast your spell, then start moving just before you get summoned again so you are already running away from the mob. In fact, I have managed to avoid being hit at all by the mob on a summon or two this way, depending on what it's doing when it summons you.

6K might be low, but you probably can do it with 7K, depending on what AAs you have. Only one way to find out, and the worse that can happen is that you will die.

Ok! Ok! I give!! :)

I suspect that, based on what I've been seeing in this thread (and thanks a TON for all of the great comments and advice!!!), I'll likely get squashed if I try to agro kite and will still likely get squashed if I try just a standard root/dot.

I think I'll give it a whirl with at least root/dot though just to see what will happen - like Scirocco said, the worst that could happen is that I die once or twice (gotta love that Necro arond for a rezz :)).

As far as losing agro to the Necro - I have spent a ton of time agro kiting with the necro the only time I lose agro is if I'm being lazy (this is with the Necro loading on Funeral Pyre, Pyrocur, Saryn's Kiss and Blood of Thule as well as tossing in the occasional Neurotoxin). I find Flame Lick to be a pretty effective agro-generator.

Again - thanks for all of the info, comments and advice!!!

-TinyDru

I have 2-boxed all the minor named in NC with only self buffs and some form of chanter buff. I play druid/wiz, and you can check the magelos of both below. With just oak I only have about 6200 hp, so I don't know why people are saying you will have such a hard time. Hell, I was doing NC mobs well before I had all my DoN gear, so I probably had closer to 5500 hp. I assume they missed that you will have a necro with you to do damage, so all you have to do is keep aggro and stay alive as the necro burns the mob down. The other thing is that it might not be possible if you don't have many defensive AAs. I have LR5 and CS5, and did when I did NC camps. The camp I always liked was poisonous murk/battleleader. I seem to recall that the murks were undead, so your necro might even be able to slow them.

Get your best regen on, including nature's recovery(level 60, stacks with regen) and get your DS as high as possible. I always snare/root, and lay on all the attack debuffs I can. Toss a couple extra snares on just to build up aggro a bit more. I then get off as many dots as I can before they start summoning, then I stand and take the hits. Next, stun is yor friend...use it as soon as it pops unless you desperately need to heal yourself. First and foremost its huge aggro, second it mitigates damage(when it lands), and third it does a small bit of damage. Lay into the mob with your necro, and keep stunning and healing. Remember heals are aggro too!(in this case it actually helps!) I know necros can do group taps, so that could help you stay alive also. If that doesn't work, get more defensive AAs, or try to pet tank.

Edit...I reread your post and saw you don't have defensive AAs. At the very least lightning reflexes 5 is a huge help, so you might not be able to stand up to the NC named without it. I also wonder if you would have any luck channeling through heals without LR5. I found that I didn't really have time to get away and heal myself when snared(which most the named do), so I had to stand and tank. You could also try pet tanking. I would still try it, but then again I am kinda crazy. When I first tried the poisonous murkglider nobody in my guild thought I would live.

I wasn't able to really solo the NC named until I maxed out my defensive AA. All of them. Quad 600+ with a stun can drop you fast. With max defense and mitigation you can get multiple quad misses and even when they do land a hit, you'll be getting tapped for only a fraction of that 600. I can usually finish Drunt with about 75 mana/hp leftover. Some of the other's are tough, like Poisened Murk and Deranged Feran, but that just takes practice.
But yeah, defense is the key when trying to solo them guys, otherwise after you land your first dots you'll be doing nothing but healing yourself.

I generally dual box a 66 Necro (I'm a 66 Druid), so I'd prefer to agro kite these if I could, so I won't be rooting it after pulling.


Necro's can heal themself (while doesnt damage in the process), but not heal you. My best suggestion for soloing these namers is to stay the necro's DS (even use a potion) and tank it with the necro while chain tapping and the druid is chain healing. The tap damage + pet should get the namer dead before you run OOM.

Another strat would be to root the mob with druid, DoT the heck out of it with necro, and let necro get summoned, than back him out for heals. I know your looking for root-summon-backup-heal tactics for druids, but there's a lot factors that can go wrong (ie root breaking, getting stunned etc) that can make you miss heals, so i'ld advise against that when killing a difficult mob.