In the case that this may help new or aspiring bards...
Bards are TERRIFIC soloers pre-42 with dun dun dun... AE Kiting!. You can realistically start AE kiting at level 2 with CoD and strafe running. It is ideal when AE kiting to kill mobs that drop xp hand-ins because this will drastically boost your xp rate. You can only kite 6 mobs at the time but once you get experience kiting you will rip through these mobs quickly. Important level thresholds include level 5 when selos replaces a lot of yoru strafe running, level 8 when the stringed instrument skill doubles your CoD generally from 4/tick to 8/tick, and level 18 when you learn the brass instrument skill and can start twisting DDD with your CoD.
Very important notes to make. The larger a mob is, generally the more attack range it has. This is why giant spiders are difficult, and giants are next to impossible to ae kite. Also your CoD has a smaller pbaoe area than your DDD. So if you have slaughtered a zone to the point that only a million large spiders are up, you could handle them easily with only DDD although this would take much longer.
Only kite pure melee mobs. Caster mobs will hurt you with their dds and dots, root you so your kite goes wild on you, and generally mess up your tight mob formation when they stop to cast. Also be aware that where there are shaman mob types (seers or oracles for example), you will usually find pure melee near them that are sow'd which also messes with your kite.
Finally, try to kite mobs that run the same speed. This will make things much much easier on you for kiting.
My leveling suggestions. You may find better though, who knows.
Level 1 : Stick to even cons or blue and melee everything until 1) you are at least level two and 2) you have enough money for your level two song.
Level 2 - 5 : Try kiting beetles in either North Newport or Centaur Hills. Keep [Beetle Pincer] s for a NNP xp hand in. You can supplement your kites with gnoll pups if necessary.
Level 5 : At this point get the quest from Mandy. Completing this quest will give you a mastercrafted drum, lute, and horn. Use the SODWiki and start any other Newport quests you can.
Level 5 - 9 : Kite gnolls outside of Blackburrow in Centaur Hills (nice hand-in xp) or the surrounding wolves when the gnolls are down
Level 9 - 14 : Kite in Western Badlands. There is a bandit camp of 6 (bandit heads for NNP or SNP(night) turn-in), a gnoll camp of 6 (keep 2 gnoll balm, destroy fangs), and a gnoll camp of 3, as well as surrounding lions and spiders if that isn't enough. These can all be found in the southeastern point of the zone. You can also hit the other bandit camp in the mountains by the merchants if you want.
14 - 22 : Kite in Northern Badlands. Your main targets are lion cubs (paws), lions (lion skins), and spiders (tarsus) for xp hand-ins. Supplement kites with decaying corpses or bandits to shorten the time it takes to get 6 mobs aggro. You can throw in young griffons after 17 or so but they make the kite longer, however they have nice cash drops.
23 - 27 : Liodreths in Southern Badlands (heads and paws for xp hand-in) and whatever still gives you xp in Northern Badlands. Young griffons are still nice kites but stay away from "griffons" because those kites take so long.
27 - 31 : Eastern Badlands beetles, plaguewind gnolls (furs for xp hand-in), and lions. [Bitter Leaf] also drops off random mobs for xp hand-in but they are lore so you can only have one to hand in at a time.
32 - 36 : This is where I am now. Spiders and Panthers are my targets so far and they are very easy to deal with. Spiders have faction hand-ins.
I'm hoping to get a Kings Pass kite route set up very soon so I can actually get xp while pharming my mask (although the confined spaces will make those kites very interesting).
Basically you want to round up 6 mobs using selos and your drum and then get them in a single tight group. Giant spider type mobs seem to have a greater reach so they will make your kites more difficult if you have them compromising 1 or more of the 6. Once you have aggro'd your 6 mobs you need to get them into a tight mass by running around them a few times. Next, switch to your lute and start your kite. This is extremely hard to explain in text, but basically you run in oval formations around your mobs starting the song when you enter one end of an oval and letting it hit as you exit. Otherwise, you can strafe in one direction so you are running sideways away from the mobs, then you strafe run forward to form an 80 degree angle. Something like ( /_____ [mobs] ). Try to have restoration and selos on at all time as your beneficial songs. If you get hit, and you will at first, you can heal up by kiting your mobs at a far distance with resto playing.
Due to a request, I made a really quick and dirty YouTube video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skMIWdC-CuE . This was put together in a rush, but other than getting my a$$ handed to me on the first run by, you can see decent kiting from the 5th second to 33rd second. 33rd second to the end of the movie is basically me missing CoD over and over which happens to the best of us.
In conclusion, AE kiting still rocks in its diminished form and probably is the equivalent of a good steady group, if not better, due to xp handins. This rant has made me late for History Class, gotta love free college electives...
syduck:
