My Crat Probs

[______________Vishra]

In the early days of AO I played a crat (Missed out on my Pioneer Backpack by about 2 weeks - doh!), but for a while after I came back to AO I took solace in playing a Meta, got her to L85 so far. Anyways, I finally come back to play a crat, and he's doing ok, level 36 so far. But I've come across problems playing a crat, and since I want to improve, I thought I'd post them here:

1) roots and snares - in my limited experience, these seem to suck badly, often breaking after a matter of seconds. Sometimes it helps a melee mob stay agroo'ed on my pet, sometimes not (In Solo missions that is) at this low level, the snares/roots last hardly any time - is there a point where they become more important?

2) Charms - I never get a message to say whether it's worked or not. Fair enough, they get resisted a lot, but I don't like waiting to see if a mob hits me again, or spamming the /pet report key.

3) (I've got this one sorted now) - use pet follow, not pet guard. Pet guard means your pet breaks your calms

4) I've had problems with calms - not sure whether it's me, a bug, or the people I group with. Again I never get a message they are resisted, and they seem to get resisted a lot. Sometimes they seems to last a few seconds, and then the mob re-aggros. (Yes, autoattack monster is now off )

5)The aggression bar - what is the best to set this to? I guess if your calming it needs to be below 50%, and when soloing it it can be generally set a bit higher (apart from multiple mob rooms). Do calmed mobs reaggro if your aggression bar is too high?

well I think that covers it, just gotta get a few more levels and get one of those flash suits I keep seeing

Vishra, L85 Clan M-P, RK-1
Misteranon, L36 Clan Crat, RK-1

[Psyonis]

1. I always use a snare when soloing, attack with bot and snare just in case he aggros me i have a chance to get away. Especially if the mob is red to me. Roots are also great for getting away, /pet follow, root mob, run like hell. AOE roots great for outside hunting, root entire camp, kill one at a time.

2. When a charm is activated it should tell you Mind Control Activated. Remember you have 2 charm lines, stable and unstable. Unstable dont last long and the chance of them being resisted are much higher.

4. sometimes they dont work, keep an eye on the mob, if the yellow glow or what ever it is goes a way then re-calm it. I also find that calming a mob and trying to charm it when it is calmed does not work, just breaks calm.

5. I always leave my aggro bar at 100%, probably a bad idea. If your doing a tough mission with a lot of red mobs i would set it at 50%. The only problem I have with setting it low is that if things get out of hand you get cast calms quick enough even with high nano init.

Hope this helps

Psyonis --81 Crat

[Cambist]

1) Nope, if anything they get less and less useful. Use snares instead of roots as they usually last 3 hits instead of 1.

2) There's several bugs that make it a bit worse, so it's important to understand what's a bug first. Sometimes if your pet is attacking what you charm it will continue attacking and the charm will auto-attack back. You'll have the same problem if you're attacking it yourself. The server isn't synced properly so the hit happens after the charm or something... It's a bug. Someone should probably report it, if no one has already.

Then there's the can't charm something that's mezzed feature (as opposed to a bug). Make sure whatever you charm isn't mezzed. This is a "known shippable" type of bug. If you mez then charm the mob will stay rooted but continue to hit you.

3) /Pet behind seems even better at times... Tells the pet to stop attacking and sometimes pulls them through walls magically.

4) People are morons and often attack your calms. There's also a bug where mobs aggro even while mezzed. The development team thinks this is another sync issue with the server. You can read more about it in Charles' Report

5) 100% aggro until you instantly cast your calms at higher nano inits. Nothing should reaggro you after being calmed, though they're a bit bugged. Usually they'll get one hit in after a calm no matter what.

Good luck with your new crat.