Verdant Animist/Bard Duo Advice Requested

Sooooooooooooooooooo....

The wife and I want to level up some farming characters for the plat necessary to begin crafting to outfit our mains and have funds for other ventures. We decided on a Bard/Animist duo, and it's going fairly well (we're 22 now). However, I can't shake the feeling that I'm doing something wrong with my Animist. Perhaps I'm simply overlooking the best combinations of spells/pet/etc and something in the back of my head of screaming at me to get it right.

I'm also not sure if our standard modus operandi for pulling is correct - basically I put down the Verdant tank pet and nothing else, and Bardwife runs and collects about 4-6 orange-con mobs, drags them through my turret, and I blast them with the pet-PBAoE. A quick rest for power from her song, some end regeneration, and we do it again. I don't use any other 2min Turret, and the only buffs I personally give the Tank Turret is a damage shield and the health regen buff (called Spirit of Relief I believe).

If this is wrong, please correct me. Animists are one of those classes that has always confused me with the way they operate, but, dammit, I want to get this down. I'm an adult, I should be able to figure this out. ...but help never hurts.

Explain it to me like I am five years old - I welcome all helpful advice for a Bard/Animist duo.

Fri 8 Feb 2019 10:41 AM by Giorgione88

You are doing it right
To improve a bit try to invite more people ,xping in duo its fine but u can enjoy more inviting mentalist pbaoe and druid classes.
At higher level I m used to buffing my pet with abs
Bomber buff : there are 2 buff in spec line one is short duration (15sec) one is long duration ( 20min) if u are bored to cast the short duration before every pull ( if ur healers are fine healing u dont need to waste mana on that), just cast the long duration one. Besides i suggest in fg with many pbaoes to use the pbaoe of a lower level ( blue if u got a yellow one of yellow if u got the red) so u can waste less mana, u just keep the aggro on ur pet and let pbaoes do the rest of dps. The only 2min pet that can helo eould be the ablative one in spec lane but personally I prefer to do many pulls as fast as i can and keep mana for the pbaoe thats the most important thing u have to do to keep whole grp alive

Fri 8 Feb 2019 5:31 PM by Arshesmaral

Oh, we were definitely going to invite more people and build a group around ourselves as the core, but I wanted to get a handle on my class before the lives of other players were in my hands. Wouldn't want to have a reputation as that animist that kills groups. Thank you for the response.

Fri 8 Feb 2019 6:59 PM by Thinal

Depending on the camp, this is either the entirely correct or entirely incorrect way of drawing targets. It's a matter of how much you want to draw, how much you want to put your bard at risk, how close to the MOBs you can safely set up, and other factors.

The big benefit for solo / smallman verdants is that FnFs will send their aggro to your controlled pet, if it's close enough. This is custom to Phoenix and came down midway through beta; before then, the trouble for the verdant (especially completely solo) was getting a manageable pile of MOBs concentrating on your controlled pet. Its taunt is actually pretty piss-poor in generating aggro.

Another benefit of using FnFs to draw on Phoenix is that they're not as random as they are on Uthgard. Here, they seem to do a decent job of concentrating on one target at a time. In a stack, they might or might not coordinate on the same target, but they are overall (usually) going to draw roughly the number of FnFs or fewer targets at a time (presuming they're not dropped into the MOBs' own aggro ranges; then all hell breaks loose).

Placing FnFs about 650 units or less away will be close enough to send their aggro to the controlled turret. 800 units away is far enough for them to have separate aggro, especially good for arborials and sometimes good for creeps. The precise cutoff line seems to have some wiggle room; 750 is usually far enough for separate aggro, but not always. I like 800 because it's close enough for the shrooms to attack MOBs on each other (aggro range is a bit less than the 1000+ of Uthgard, so don't push much farther apart than 800).

Also, if you want to concentrate on one target at a time (bigger fish), you can try using the CON debuff from the creeping baseline at level 12+. This spell doesn't so much draw aggro as it draws attention, so your controlled / FnFs have an easy time pulling the MOB off of you. Drop FnFs if you want them to assist, 650- from controlled and out of aggro range of nearby MOBs.

Fri 8 Feb 2019 8:29 PM by Arshesmaral

Thinal wrote: ↑
Fri 8 Feb 2019 6:59 PM
*snip*

I didn't know about the F&F Turret change for Phoenix, but that's good information to know, thank you. However, the issue with them I find is that, one, they don't last too long for their power cost, and two, uncontrollable. We tried doing Main Turret + F&F Turrets, and even with a Bard, my power was constantly drained.

That's not a bad idea with the CON Debuff as well, especially if we're camped in a place that has close spawn points, like Darkness Falls. Saves Bardwife from being smacked around by Plated Fiends and such.

Perhaps when her Power Song is more efficient, the Main Turret/F&F Turret combo will be a little more manageable?

Tue 12 Feb 2019 12:02 AM by Thinal

It takes some practice, and I find my strategy differing quite a bit from one camp to the next. So try different things.

For power, it helps a great bit to get serenity RAs. Serenity and POM stack, I'm told up to a combined level 6. A verdant or arborial is going to ration less power for FnFs and more power for nukes. I'm arborial, and I'll tend to use about 2-4 FnFs when nuking, or to power / pet count limits when farming creep-style. Also, verdant nukes do less damage than arborial nukes, so you'll take more power to kill than the other animist specs.

MCL is going to usually be a waste, because you'll be in combat for 10 seconds after your last shroom attacks. Keep that in mind. Most casters go for MCL pretty early, but you should concentrate on at least Serenity 2 first. Go get some easy RAs in the BGs on the way up; you can farm by dropping FnFs around and just waiting for people to walk into them. You can get RPs even when dead, and you can get a small amount and credit to the kill players task just by one of your shrooms attacking something before someone else kills it. The kill players task fills up pretty quickly and is worth about a minor rank.

Almost always, I'm dealing with a controlled in one spot and a stack of FnFs in another spot. (Don't just drop them randomly; it doesn't distribute aggro or prevent them from being AOE'd unless they're appreciably far apart.) Common placements are controlled forward, FnFs behind for steady but slow-paced drawing; controlled behind, FnFs forward for faster, possibly more random drawing; and both piles a bit out of aggro range and I draw everything with the caster or group mate.

The last pattern is going to find the FnFs troublesome for power and time management, which is where you seem to be. It's the safest, which is the tradeoff. Verdant is already a reasonably safe spec, though, and having FnFs out means that if your controlled dies and you can quickcast a second, you have a good chance of shaking the aggro.

Animists have a pretty good return of reward for risk. I still sometimes die repeatedly because I do things like creep-farm hordes of oj-reds or arb-AOE yellow-OJs. If the accelerated gains minus the accelerated losses comes out to be greater than the safe play, then I don't mind a little death spam.

Tue 12 Feb 2019 4:36 AM by Vordae

I'm duo'ing with my roommate an ani/bard duo and i prefer creeping when its just the two of us. Pulls are a little smaller but you don't ever have to stop pulling for anything. In a perfect world the bard would end up doing pretty much all the work while the ani just kept up a shroom stack at all times. In my world my bard likes to just play her song and heal every once in a while, while looking at stuff on her phone, so i have to do all the pulling lol.