1) Playstyle. Personally, I like to save mana for unforseen situations (ie, PKs, dispel, etc) so I just provo and put an EV unto non-dispelling creatures like melee elves. Not sure if curse stacks with disco, but it's effect is probably minimal after that. The only way I'd really use curse, or disco for that matter, is if I wanted one creature to kill another faster. 2) Well, I have not seen the RNG, but I have gotten scrolls and coins just barding, without casting or EVing unto the creature. I believe the chance is inherent to the host, and not how it dies. For example, I was in Deceit, close to the champ spawn spot, and saw an elf ranger, I just hid and let the champ spawn kill it. I did 0 damage to it. When it died, I simply went up to the corpse and looted the 2 green coins in it. 3) See 2) 4) See 2)
1. I, too, generally don't curse mobs, waste of mana/regs, but I'm not sure if they work together or not. Would need to test with animal lore to see. 2. No, I don't believe there will be a higher chance of drop, based on damage dealt with your other abilities. All damage created by provoke is turned into your own damage dealt, which I assume is why you see the damage ticking, as if they were your own summon. 3. No. Alone you should see no further increase for chance to drop items based on other damage you deal. However, if provoke damage alone isn't enough to put you in the top damage dealt in a group, I would assume you'd need to deal more damage. I always empty my mana pool with Explo EB combos to try to assure enough damage dealt, when in a group setting on "chance to drop in bag" items. 4. My understanding is, if a "chance to drop in bag" mob is attacking another NPC and you are not registering enough damage, you may not receive the item in your bag, but could see the item dropped on the corpse since it has no one to award the item to. I mainly play a Discord/Provoke Mage. Hope that helps.
I'm not sure the curse would lower the elves ability to cast Dispell, as it wouldn't lower their magery skill, though it would result in less mana. However, I run with peacemaking, as well, which keeps most mobs from dispelling. Or if you just simply keep 2-3 EVs up, the mobs get overwhelmed and simply can't get a dispel off.
One thing I've noticed is that Mind Blast is pretty underrated in PvM here, and for no reason. On a bard with 0 EvalInt mind blast spam is waaaaay more effective than ebolt spam against certain creatures. For example, discorded Blood Elementals take 40 damage from it most of the time. 0 evalint, only 15 mana per cast - great deal. Arctic Ogre Lords usually take less, but it varies a lot from one to another. P.S. ice golems and snow vortexes also take 40 damage straight.
Some good questions here! 1) It's your decision whether a drop of 10 in each stat is important. I'd say, it's usually not important. 2) No. The damage that the summon does is added to your toon's damage table. @Chris once said in IRC though, that when the summon disappears, that then the attributed damage from the summon is also deleted from your fictive toon damage table. I haven't witnessed that though. This would in theory mean, that you didn't do any damage to a monster, when using only summons that disappear before the monster dies, while not doing any other type of damage. 3) I don't know for sure, but afaik provo damage is attributed to your toon's damage. @Chris ? 4) Good question. Afaik, only player mobiles are considered for rare drops, this means NPCs shouldnt get rare drops into their bags. But in theory several situations are possible: NPC gets the rare drop OR the rare drop stays in the corpse of the dead monster when you aren't the max damager OR you get the drop because you are the highest player mobile damager. It might even be a big difference, whether the NPC is a hireling or a grey NPC that automatically attacks other monsters (like normal monsters fighting elves).
