Provocation / Peacemaking tips

So I've been out of things for quite some time, but my mage bard is well underway.

When fighting large groups of mobs, what are people using to get off a quick provo ? I remember I used something like target closest grey, next target then select. Or even random grey ? I can't seem to get it right! Not looking to be spoon fed, but anything to get me on my feet a bit would be helpful!

j

I must be old school. I pull their life bars and manually target them. If you are a peacemaker and you are getting surrounded by monsters then you can peacemake target self for about 2 seconds of relief. So you can recall, inivis, or run away. GL

I have peace on this character - have never used it in the past, only have provoked. I used to have some sort of spammy macro i would fire off to get mobs attacking each other while I rode around lol

Use a hot key for you bard skills, target closest grey type, I have a habit of using a all names hot key, ctrl alt., and slap bars to each other as fast as I can to gain control of the area.

Same, I have a manual macro to use peacemake skill (to target) and then a macro to use peacemake on last target (if they break). I'm sure it could be easier using nearest target or something but I'm too lazy and have never died using this method.

I just pull the bars and use the button in game. I am going to work on a macro or hotkey now, not a bad idea at all. Just seems like nearest gray wouldn't work in high level mob areas. I want to get the ogre lords fighting not a snake.

I think I had targeted hots keys and a macro for getting specific mobs to fight - but sometimes you can get into a bad situation and the time it takes to drag bars could mean the difference between life and death. ie a bad spawn at an inopportune time and you can quickly get it off you.. I think at one point I had provoke on nearest murderer but I guess that is not available here.

I need to play around with peacemaking - as I said I have never used it in PVM before. Could probably accomplish a lot of what I'm saying

I mean I guess it is what you want to do. As a peacemaker you shouldn't put yourself in a situation to get overwhelmed - I've had 4-5 mobs peaced before but it is risky and the optimum is 2 or less. I haven't encountered a situation where I've died because someone spawned and I wasn't able to peace it in time. It's more about mob management than having the quickest hotkeys. Additionally, I could also say that you could run into problems with hotkeys as well because you'd have to pay attention where you are standing to do "nearest grey" and that could get messed up.

End of day, do what is comfortable for you. There's many ways to do it and just try them all out on weaker mobs first to get a sense of what works best.

Ctrl+Shift is your friend.

You're welcome!!

Yea, maybe the problem isn't so much the macro but the set up, i.e. invising next to the mob to give time to grab bars or hiding for that matter. My pure bard has hiding. It is a must need skill for a bards, especially here. It is not wise to try and stand in the middle of a bunch of monsters and run a macro to provoke. It is a waste of a provo if you have a mongbat attack a ogre lord. Bards are super effective, but they are not a All Kill command. Takes a lot of finesse to play a bard successfully.

For actual game play at the heat of the moment, I find macros to be a hindrance more than a help. I think quick reflexes and being able to improvise are so much more worth it. MANY times you need to switch targets last second.

I have soloed every non-champ area of the map with my bard/mage (non-peace), and gone deep into champ spawns solo on my bard tamer simply by being able to pull out health bars quickly, keep moving, and knowing what to provo unto what.

And again, CTRL+SHIFT, drag those bars out quickly...save mana, save skill cool down, just be nimble. Run around like a little girl. We won't judge.

Control/ shift held at the same time brings up GIANT life bars and makes targeting a hell of a lot easier. Have magery or hiding that you love to rely on? Make a hot key to hide or cast invis for you

ctrl + shift FTW (pull bars)

Then macro for 1st peace and macro for peace last target as need arises (or area peace & run like a bitch, that too ).

Thanks for the responses. Currently my planned setup is:

GM music (done)
GM provocation (done)
GM peace (done)

GM magery (working on it)
GM resist (working on it)
GM med (done)
GM eval (done)

I initially had hide but was swapping it for peace, as I had this idea I would take this guy out with my fisherman to help etc. Peace and hide are both easy enough to get that I guess I can see how not having hide changes my play. In the past I always have liked having hide on my bard.

My method, which I would in all modesty say is DA BEST:

1) Drag all health bars out. Use the Ctrl-Shift method for easier dragging.
2) Set one of the monsters as last target (e.g. use "set last target" in Razor)
3) Fire off a macro that provokes/ peaces last target.
4) If provo was chosen, than you just click on the 2nd monster's health bar when in range for the provo.

The advantage of this method is, you are way faster than pushing provo hotkey, selecting the first health bar and selecting the second health bar, because the selection of the first health bar via last target can be done out of range of the mobs (they agro at ~10 tiles distances, while you can view 20 tiles max.)

Special advantage for peacers: You have some kind of "pre"-barding cursor up, which auto-fires once you come into range of the selected (last target) monster. This means, you can set last target + push the macro for peace last target out of monster agro range and just run to your enemy. Zero risk of getting agro.

All this is making my head spin, I'm with the OP here, I used to have a wonderful provo macro as well and can't remember what it was. I'm a pure bard, disco, peace, and provo and in need of a magical macro. And I'm certain yall have one.

Could this work?

!Loop
Assistant.Macros.UseSkillAction|22
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:01
// Target Closest Grey
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:09
// Target Next
// Target Closest Red Human
// Last Target

No macro. Just hotkeys. Macros will get you in trouble more times than they won't.

Would be awesome ...IF you could provo onto players.

Hmmm I figured it would work on mobs and humanoids depending where I was.