Kiting

Centurion Class : Ranger

Taken from: http://uk.aiononline.com/forums/class/ranger/view?articleID=119&category=101

Preamble:

The ranger on Aion is second of two choice after raising a scout to L10, the other being the assasin. While the ranger shares many of it's attributes and skills with the assassin after ascension, the two classes go their seperate ways, with each of them taking on completely seperate roles and ways of killing.

The Ranger is a very a versatile class, allowing the player 2 different play styles but still remaining close to the class perception. Watch, select, kill.

What is "kiting"?

Kiting is the term used to explain the way a player kills a mob. Like a normal kite in real ife, you keep the mob at distance and still kill it. The actual killing occurs by firing arrows at certain points in the kiting routine. By landing those shots you inflict damage and there-fore kill the mob. The huge difference is that the mob never gets near you to put damage on you.

Sounds sloooowwwww?

Yes, kiting is slow, much slower than killing by other methods. The difference is this; By kiting the mob you do not get hurt. If you can kite well, you can kite any mob that you could kill by using lots of potions and a few mobs that you normally could not no matter what. At this stage I'll give an example; Trandila is a dinosaur mob L17 and very difficult to kill if you are below it's level, and you cannot kite. It can be done if you have helpers etc, but we're sticking with solo kills here.

A ranger can kite Trandila and kill him with ease at L12. So that's killing a mob 5 levels above you on your own. How many other classes can do that in Aion?

Ok, so explain this kiting business already!

We'll stick with Trandila. This big mofo spawns in the middle of a lot of other lesser dinosaurs. And as a ranger, you do not want to be killing this thing while other mobs are likely to eat your ass. That kinda defeats the whole purpose.

So, firstly we want to ensure we have room to move. First thing we do is ping Trandila with either a normal shot, or our main shot. We do not use our snare shot. The reason being, we do not want him coming to use slowely. While he comes to us, we are open to other mobs spawning on top of us and ruining our day fast. What we want is Trandila running fast to us so we can then run to the place we want him. Behind trandila there are two different locations to kite him. One is a staright run between lots of other mobs against a wall, the other is a straight ramp.

I ping Trandilla, and get him coming to me when he gets close I run away towards the ramp. Once I'm sure he's clear of anything else that can hurt me, I need to slow him down so I jump shot a snare onto him. (I'll explain jump shots later) So now he is much slower and I have lots of time to think about what I'm doing. Next I'll jump shot my main shot onto him causing a lot of damage. While doing this I'm running up the ramp and trandilla is a bit back, but behind me. he is clear of anything else, so it's just me and him. I need to keep him at distance and not let him eat me.

Having got him to the ramp, I now proceed to kite him. My plan is to make him follow me up the ramp, and when I get to the top, follow me back down again. While doing this, I'll be jump shotting my main shot when it is available and jump shotting my snare when it is available. If both of those 2 are on CD, I'll jump shot my attack shot.

There are a few really important points to note here. 1. I cannot run too far ahead of trandilla without shooting at him or he will leash back to his spawn point. Then I'd have to start again. 2. I must keep him snared at all times. and 3. The ramp is pretty narrow. So at some point, I have to turn back down, and I'll be meeting him on the way back.

To take care of (1) I simply watch my mini map, from there I can see if I am outrunning him. To cater for (2) I just jumpshot snare each time it is ready.

To cater for (3) we move into some finer details of kiting. Specifically, box or triangular kiting. In my case, we are on a narrow ramp, I need to turn trandilla, but not let him hit me.

Firstly, I need to plan my snare to ensure, trandilla is snared and slow when he turns. If he is slowed it is so much easier. Next I want to bring him as close to one edge of the ramp as possible, in this way, it gives me a little room to turn to my right or left and be running across the ramp to it's other edge, when I get there, I'll make my turn to run back down the ramp.

So what we are doing is basically kiting in a trangle which has 3 points. I start at P1, run to P2, then to P3, then back to P1. Doing all this, gives me lots of room and ensures trandilla never hits me.

Now. Things can go wrong! Specifically, the snare might fail and trandilla is gonna run his ass off to have me for dinner. The immediate thing your brain tells you is to run your little heart out. But this is not the case. If we run like this, we'll probably out run his leash and he'll just go back to spawn. What we need to do, is jump shot any shot onto him, run, and ping again, and repeat until our next snare is available. This is where knowing the area helps immensely.

Ok, if we do all that, trandilla should at some stage die and give you some good experience, and if your lucky some nice loot. (I killed him many times but didn't get a lot of loot)

So lets just look at what we achieved! We killed a L17 Hard mob, at L12. We didn't use one heal. And hopefully we didn't get hit even once. There is no other class on Aion that can do that. And the only way rangers can do it is by kiting.

Jump Shots

Firstly, there is an issue with the Autoshot/combat in that it sometimes goes away and decides it won't play with you until it's had a rest. In short, it's a bug, but it's a bug you can use to your advantage. To use it we will call it JumpShot1.

The other form of jump shot is JumpShot2 which we use to fire our main damaging shots and snares.

To perform JS1. While running press spacebar to jump, when you are hitting the top of the jump, STOP all movement and press your attack key, then continue landing and running. What happens is, as you reach the apex of the jump, your stop in movement and subsequent attack press allows you to fire 1 shot. The shot will fire, your character will fire over her head.

To perform JS2. While running press spacebar to jump and stop movement and land and immediately press the key of the skill you want. You must time keypress to happen just as you land. What will happen is this. Instead of you standing about like a fool with a L17 dinosaur bearing down on you, you will land it fire at the same time. The animation basically skips and does not happen, giving you what appears to be an instand shot. As soon as you see the arrow leave, get running again pronto. I'll also add to this, I always turn to face my target for these shots. I get to see exactly where my mob is and how far away. I can get this information from the minimap, but by turning, I also get to see the 3D picture allowing me to rethink my kite plan if necessary.

You need to practise these shots over and over and over again, until you can do with out even thinking about them.

Some final tips

1. Your bow is your life. make sure you have the best for your level and always enchant it as much as you can.

2. My personal choice is to gear Critical manastones

3. I always always make sure I have enough coin to buy my next bow. I like to look pretty, but without my bow, looking pretty turns to looking dead very fast. Remember, if the mob is not hitting on you, you don't need prime armour.

4. If shots fail, or your jump shots dont work out, remember to keep the mob leashed. It's better to stand and shoot and keep the mob than lose it.

5. Practise, practise practise.

I'll leave it at that. I hope you get some benefit and some great kills.

Legionary Class : Sorceror

Now perhaps I'm an idiot, but in OB I got a ranger to 20 and never once needed to jump-shoot. I just used mouse movement to be constantly moving forwards, maintaining constant distance from the enemy. You don't need to be jumping to get a moving shot off, the attack animation of most moves can be interrupted by clicking to move again. The attack continues, you start running again. Hell, some moves, including the snare, are moves designed not to even stop you anyway. Jump shooting sounds like a bit too much like hard work for me :P.

Even when snares didn't work things generally couldn't get near enough to hit me. I did a similar thing to what you did with Trandila, minus all the planning of the route. I just winged it and weaved it in and out of other mobs since it doesn't group aggro with them.

Regardless, it seems there's more than one way to kite a ranger. The only thing I've seen rangers doing that is utterly stupid is kiting by backpedalling. Way to go numbnuts, move more slowly so it can catch you AND nerf your own physical attack.

Centurion Class : Ranger

Ehmm... i did not wrote that essay on how to kite... i took it from the official ranger forums...

Centurion Class : Ranger

another thing, you said you where running straight ahead... when doing that my shots wont fire at the target if they are behind me...

sounds interesting if you can do that...

of course strafing would work to a certain degree

Legionary Class : Sorceror

Yeah all you have to do is start the animation, the damage is done instantly (hence the possibility of skill weaving early on), so the moment that animation begins you're free to chain into a move or just start moving again away from the target. It looks fairly amusing to see the arrow fire backwards each time.

The nice thing is since you're constantly running forwards, your phys attack is always boosted. The thing I'm unsure of is if that'd work at all in pvp, since pvp tends towards requiring finer control than mouse movement allows.

PvP Leader Class : Sorcerer

Excellent example:)