On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Lost Child wrote:
>
> [Pixie Strike]
> I have never used that song on myself, but I used yesterday many times on
> some Sol Mage (trying to get my lambent boots) and it works. I used it to
> pull them by stunning them first, and I run back to my safe spot invis and
> wait for it to come. I also used it to interrupt his spells. I also used
> it at Lower Guk a few days ago (Friday night I think) against Zol and Dar
> ghoul frogloks, it works well. I can hold them for like minutes so our
> group could break up the camp.
>
> However, I think they Up'ed the mob resist rate. Not the resist messages,
> but the way that they break the trance even when the song went thru.
That is what I thought at first - that the mobs were instantly
breaking out of the song effect. However, if you carefully
observe how many Strikes it takes to successfully mesmerize a
mob, compared to how many Strikes it takes to keep it
mesmerized, it's obvious that this isn't what's going on. If
it were a tweak with the rate they broke out of the effect,
they should be "immediately breaking out" as often with
subsequent Strikes as with the initial ones. That isn't the
case. Once you successfully get Strike to stick, it's almost
trivial to keep it mesmerized - basically if it isn't
resisted, the Strike gets "refreshed," usually for another
three pulses. Aside from resists, it virtually never fails in
this manner if you're Striking a mesmerized mob. The bug only
seems to happen if you're trying to Strike a non-mesmerized
mob.
If you give me a situation where three mobs my level start off
mesmerized, I can pretty much hold all three of them with this
song indefinitely by Striking them one after another. But if
you give me three unmesmerized mobs, I'll probably have to
Strike the first one 5-7 times before one finally "sticks."
Only then can I move on to trying to get one to stick to the
second, which means another 5-7 tries while keeping the first
one refreshed. By this time my cleric is dead from having the
2 other mobs beating on him while I futzed around with the
first one. That is what makes this song broken and virtually
useless. Given the high "false failure" rate, I found it more
effective to just charm the thing and remove its damage from
the fight on the first try.
> I am at lv50 so maybe at lower level this will be worst.
Try it on yourself. Or duel a like-level friend and try it on
him.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...