Index
1) Introduction
2) List of soloable Mobs:
a) Unsoloable
b) Elite
c) Very Hard
d) Challenging
e) Standard
f) Easy
g) Super-Easy
3) The Techinques:
a) The Pull
b) Kiting
c) Fear!
d) Alpha-Kill
e) Outlast
f) Layers and Mongo
g) Patience
4) The Gear:
a) Perks
b) Armour
c) Useful Items
d) Buffs
5) Notes on Particular Mobs:
1) Introduction:
Sometimes, oddly enough, you might find the urge to go off and do something by yourself, or perhaps you seek an additional challenge beyond the day-to-day challenge of tanking for the masses. This guide aims to give you advice on the skills needed to solo, the monsters you can solo and tips on how best to do it. This guide won't tell you who drops what, you can cross-referance that information with AO Pocket for the most part.
Despite what you may have heard, enfocers solo well at most levels and better than most other classes. While soloing as an enforcer isn't always easy, that doesn't mean it's impossible. The skills you learn while soloing while help you in other aspects of your game, such as pvp and high-end raiding.
2) Soloable Mobs:
There are more endgame mobs that an enfocer can solo than mobs an enforcer can't. This is a rough list of the mobs you can (and cannot solo). While there is no exact rules for any of these, (and whatever level anyone suggests, someone will say they did it 15 levels earlier, without kiting and only using a spoon ) these are just rough guidelines to give you an idea of a reasonable time to try these mobs.
Key:
Mob Name (first levels you should try soloing at) (type of fight) (kiting, or not kiteable)
(o) - Outlast
(a) - Alpha
(k) - Kite
(nk) - Does not need to be kited
(uk) - Unkiteable
A) Unsoloable
- Lord of the Void
- Xark
- Razor
- Zodiac
- APF Endbosses
- Urqhart the Absorber
- Ian Warr
- Peter Lee
- Ris Lee
- Inferno Drudges
- Inferno Abbetors
- Anansi Mobs (except for favourite)
- Hezak The Immortal
B) Elite
- Bigots (220) (o) (k)
- Inferno Heckler Bosses (220) (o) (k)
- Biodome Hags
- Patricia Johnson (215) (o) (k)
- Nelly Johnson (215) (o) (k)
- PW Generals (218) (o) (k)
- Scary Spider (220) (o) (k)
- Mortiig Bosses* (220) (o) (k)
- Anansi's Child (218) (o) (k)
- Ankari Type Genral with Red Pets (n/a) (o) (k)
- Corrupted Xan-Cur (220) (o) (uk)
- Inferno/Penumbra Temple Bosses (220) (o) (uk)
- Alien Heavy Patroller (220) (0) (k)
C) Very Hard
- Tarasque (217) (o) (uk)
- Kefalonia (220) (o) (uk)
- 250 Dragons (220) (o) (k)
- Corrupted Hsii Bezerker (219) (o) (uk)
- Corrupted Xan-Len (219) (o) (uk)
D) Challenging
- Creepy Spider (219) (o) (k, nk)
- Afreet Ellis (219) (a) (k, nk)
- Pande Spider Mobs (219) (a) (uk)
- Adonis Temple Bosses (215) (o) (uk)
- Arachnis (215) (a) (k, uk)
- Inner Sanctum 3rd Floor Side Bosses (220) (a) (k)
- Steele Filar (219) (a) (k, nk)
E) Standard
- Merlin Dragons* (210) (o) (k, nk)
- Eremite Bosses* (210) (a) (nk)
- Hoathlan Bosses* (208) (a) (k, nk)
- Anansi's Favourite (212) (o) (k)
- Demon Bosses* (210) (a) (k, nk)
- Greek Bosses* (205) (o) (uk)
- Malah-Furcifera (208) (a) (k, nk)
- Notum Scourge (211) (a) (nk)
- Rimah Type General (n/a) (o) (k, nk)
- Cha Type General (n/a) (o) (k, nk)
- Jaax Type Geberal (n/a) (o) (k, nk)
- IS Second Floor Side Bosses (218) (o) (nk, uk)
- Conflagrant Spirit (210) (o) (k, nk)
- Numiel (215) (a) (k, nk)
- Estella Fire (213) (o) (k)
F) Easy
- Scheol Temple Bosses (205) (a) (uk)
- Trash King (205) (a) (nk)
- Ankari Type general with Yellow Pets (n/a) (o) (nk)
- Iilari Type General (n/a) (o) (nk)
- Spirit Bosses (except Conflagrant)* (205) (a) (k, nk)
- Fanatic Spirit Hunter (205) (a) (nk)
- Obsolete Soul Dredge [I](205) (a) (nk)
- Devoted Spirit Hunter (205) (a) (nk)
- Chimaera Monitor [SIZE="1"](212) (o) (k, nk)
- Inobak the Gelid
- Inferno Dryads* (205) (a) (k, nk)
- Mantis Queen (210) (o) (uk)
G) Super Easy
- Adonis Dryads (190) (a) (nk)
- Cerubin The Rejected (185) (a) (uk)
- Ankari Type Generals with Green Pets (n/a) (o) (nk)
- Adonis Hecklers (201) (a) (nk)
- IS First Floor (205) (a) (nk)
3) The Techniques:
A) The Pull:
Learning to pull is probably the most important skills when trying to solo. Learning how to pull each individual mob will take time and experience, and probably a few deaths. In general most mobs have one or two "good" locations to pull to, quieter locations where there is a lesser risk of adds, trains etc. Some mobs are much easier to pull than others, for instance Aniitap's Shadow is about the easiest pull in the whole game, Tuq'usk and Ushamsham are also very easy pulls. On the other hand, Afreet Ellis is quite a nasty pull. Over time, when soloing you will learn how to handle each mob.Essentially pulling is very simple, you run up to the mob popping cocoon as you run, DoT the mob, then runn off and wait for the mob to come to you. While simple in theory in practise it doesn't always work perfectly. Your first problem is shaking the adds. In most cases, if you can't get less than one or two adds it is generally best to run off and try re-pulling. You can always loose adds with fear, and often lining adds up and fearing them off cliffs or into lakes/lava will help you no end. You can also use root grafts to root adds that can't be feared, although these don't last long and break rather too easily, but as a last resort they have worked for me a few times.
With your target mob Dotted you want to run away until the name turns light grey, then wait s econd or two, and run back to where the mob was. Hopefully runing out of range will loose the adds, and then when you get back into range of the target, the dot will tick over and the mob will trundle on to you. This isn't a perfect science, and mobs will periodically reset, wander off and get lost, or get stolen by other players . Hopefully though you'll get your target to the place you want to kill it. Note that if you stay out of range of mobs for too lng they revert to their "out-of-fight" state, during which they gain crazy healdelta (I've had mobs heal up several million HP on me before because of this) and ultimately reset. RK mobs do not reset in the same way as SL mobs I should note, and can often get lost as a result.
The importance of choosing a site to pull to is critical, for mobs you are going to kite, you need to pull to a site with something nice to kite around, such as a large rock, hut, tree, small hill or volcano. You also need an areas which is free of mobs that will aggro you too. The only DoTs we have are the IS/ToTW dot rings, and a couple of perk DoTs such as Crush Bone and Bore.
The pull is your most vulnerable point, you will have multiple mobs hitting you and you will be in motion, so unable to relayer. Once you complete the pull you can start getting into your fight rhythm.
B) Kiting
The main purpose of kiting is to give you time to heal up and let your perks recharge. You can just use a wide area to kite in, but given that there aren't many of these, finding a rock/tree/small hill to kite around is best. When you kite try to keep the mob's HP bar flickering between coloured and deep-grey. If you kite too far the mob will enter it's out-of-combat state and regenerate HP ridiculously fast.
You want to start kiting between 45 and 30% HP. If you start too late you'll catch hits and enter the zone where you walk slowly. Once you're there you're as good as dead. Also firing troll form before you kite is a big mistake. While you kite, save cocoon, you'll want it to extend the period when you're toe-to-toe with the mob, or to give you cover as you start.
When you start your kite you'll move into the mob's medium range and will get hit more and harder. I tend to get 1-3 largish hits at the start of the kite, hence the importance of giving yourself an HP buffer before you kite. For very hard mobs you'll be kiting non-stop only letting the mob get in range to perk.
C) Fear
Fear is your most usefull tool when soloing. Dominate Foe has a check and won't work on mobs with more than 460 psy (472 with drain psychic), it also won't work on bosses. However you can still use it on many adds up to and including in inferno:
Eremites, Spinetooths, Dragons, Hoathlans, Malahs, Small Spiders and Chimaeras.
With a couple of adds you can juggle them with fear. Ideally you want to loose adds properly, or fear them off a cliff or into somewhere from which they can't return. Adds will always do a 180degree turn before they run, so you can line adds up and direct their retreat.
D) Alpha-Kill
With alpha-kill type mobs the fight will be over before most of your perks recharge, so don't hold back too much. Don't use perks when they're not needed, but don't keep too much in reserve. The classic example of an alpha-kill type mob is the Notum Scourge. They have low HP, but hit hard, so you want to take them down as quickly as possible. Open the fight with all your perks and cocoon, then once coocon is down, spam layers on yourself and use perk heals and other defenses to keep you alive until the mob is dead. The other case of alpha kill mobs are mobs such as afreet, which has adequate HP, but hits hard so you want to push quite aggressively with your perks and defenses.
E) Outlast
Many of the mobs you will fight will be outlasters. They have a lot of HP and will survive multiple perk cycles. With these mobs you need to save all your perks until you really need them. Wasting perks will get you killed. Typically with these fights the pattern is to use cocoon around 35-45% health, and heal up under cocoon. Then you have to survive for 1:30 by spamming layers and using your heal perks. With these fights you want to save perks like Bio Regrowth and Lifeblood for emergencies, such as when the mob hits you with a nuke and stun, or a string of lucky hits. Aim to sit at between 65 and 85% hp and you'll do fine. Being too strict about staying at 100% hp will cause you to waste healperks. Bioregrowth heals for 10K, so if you haven't lost more than about 7K HP, it's really not worth using.
With really long fights, you will find that you cannot space all your defenses out perfectly, and so you will have some dead-patches where you have no heal perks or defensive perks. Try to prepare for these by keeping stuff like our first aid skill, emergency layers etc ready.
F) Layers and Mongo
Having decent NanoC.Init is ery important to an enforcer anyway, but insta-casting layers at full def is very hard (But not impossible). You need to find the point on your agg-def bar where you are happiest with the cast-time of your layers and the amount you get hit. Personally I like to fight around 0.25-0.3 def. When casting layers and mongo, there isn't any benefit to chaining mongo. The HoT will tick for 15 seconds or so, and in general I find I can cast 3 layers to one mongo. The nanocost on layers isn't huge, but if you don't have a 2 second nanodelta you may find your nano goes down over time. Still, layers are our main source of "healing" and being unable to cast them or mongo will hurt. When fighting on RK Rage will help a lor, and will let you cast your layers closer to def
I very rarely use challenger when soloing, you shouldn't need the AR, so al it really doe is help speed things up. Certainly on easier mobs I'll pop challenger before cocoon just to speed stuff up though.
G) Patience
Of all things being patient is one of the most important. If you rush with your defenses or heals you'll come up short later. Another dangerous temptation is to get sloppy when the mob is almost dead. Never forget that the fight isn't over until you see Remains of XXX. Once you're in your soloing rhythm it's easy to forget that the obs is still hitting you for 1-3K per hit, and getting casual simply because it is nearly dead won't cut it. A mob can still pop out a 4K nuke and 3K crit with only 10HP left, so don't waste your effort by being impatient