Vanguard Monks

I stopped playing my Monk at lvl 7. After I got the feel for him and like the race and starting area i didnt want to over do it. I mean, i dont want to lvl him way up only to do it again when the game goes live. Anyway, back on track how does the fd work. Is it instant like was in eq1. is it a skill that has to be worked up. how long is the cool down timer. How is the animation handled. In eq1 the lizards were always complaining their death animation took too long and they got smacked on the way down..hehe..another reason i hated those lizard monks :) (no offence to any former lizard monks ) hehe.

I am only lvl 13, but from what I heard it has 8 seconds cooldown timer. Sorry I do not any other info till I ding 14 (maybe tonight).

It works a lot better than it did in EQ when you first get the skill.  There's nothing to train up, so you rarely fail, but I hear it happens, hasn't happened to me yet, but I just got the skill last night.  The animation is hilarious.  When you succeed, you get a message that says, "Everyone thinks you are dead."  And the name above your head changes to "Joe Schmoe's Corpse" so anyone not targetting you might actually think you were dead at first glance.

I've heard that if you fail, you get a message that says, "Only you think you are dead," or something like that.

What's even more fun that feign death is the /playdead emote.  Go into 3rd person view and type that in.

Yeah, feign death will be resisted by mobs higher than you quite a bit.  If it is around your level or lower though it works just about every time.  I have found it good to drop agro back to the tank if you manage to get it.

I agree it is a great way to drop aggro as I find myself pulling aggro off the tank quite often with my monk. Monks also get a punch ability as well that decreases threat.

Anyway, about feign death, I find it to fail more often when you have a lot of mobs right on top of you pounding on you. Seems to work better if you can get away and then use it. Also, the level of the mob effects the success rate as well from what I can tell.

What is the approximate percentage that it wipes you from the mob's hate list?

I recall using it quite a bit in EQ to drop (or lower) myself on the mob's hate list at upper levels.  If I ever got agro, I could simply FD, wait a couple of seconds, then pound away on the mob again. 

The higher level Feign Deaths also reduce the recast timers. I know the second one is down to 4second reuse i would assume the 3rd upgrade to it is 2seconds but not 100% sure about that.

At lvl 14 it is an 8 second cooldown.  From my testing spliting mobs is almost as efficient as EQ1.  Also aggro wipe is immediate if you succeed.  Its more of a succeed/ fail thing

Yeah, I think it drops all the aggro you have if it works, it does nothing if you fail.

That would be really sweet if FD did drop your aggro. In EQ1 it was kind of annoying that FD really did nothign with your aggro and if your FD failed you basically were dead instantly if you didnt sit up extremly fast.

Had a level 30 buffed monk for a few days now.

At level 30, not sure what level we get it, the Feign Death 2 has a refresh of 4 seconds.  Putting both FD 1 and 2 on my bar would not net me more usage. The seem coded that using one resets the timer on the other (even though the icons may be lit up you can't use them until the timer expires).

As far as higher level mobs resisting it, I found out last night this is a big fat YES.  Several deaths against much higher level mobs to me, and not once did FD save me.  My FD was successful and I got the everyone thinks you are dead message, but they kept right on kicking my ass.

I played up to lvl 15 with my monk so i got to use FD quite abit, its very effective against any mobs near your level :), animation is fast and looks cool and you can jump just before you use FD :laugh: it has a 8second refresh and only thing it takes is 10 endurance. dosent work at all on any of the lvl 40 enemy faction guards I had to run through for my monk quests though :P

One thing I noticed is that sometimes successful FD does not wipe you from agro list, you are still in combat mode regenning 1 HP/tick and it lasts forever. Mobs will not forget you and will not go away. It happened much more often when I FD right under mob feet.

i think that is just a bug

Feign death will only work on mobs who are a few levels above you and below.  Anything higher will cause them to instantly see through your FD.  So instead of skill-basing it like in EQ1, it's level-based.

As far as wiping aggro...  as far as I can tell it completely whipes aggro...  Sure if you feign death at the feet of a mob and instantly get back up it'll continue to lay on the beat down.  But if you stay down a second or two they forget you unless you pop into their sight.

In beta, FD had a very high chance of working on equal cons. It becomes much less reliable the higher the mob is compared to your level. FD completely wipes your agro when successful.

AFAIK The only differences between the first and second versions were endurance costs and reuse times.

FD produces a message in the chat box letting you know whether your FD was successful. Unfortunantly a bug still exists when you have multiple mobs agro'd, FD will produce a successful message but because you have agro'd so many the game fails to drop them all from your agro list. Hopefully they'll be able to fix it.

close to the end of beta my FD would work most of the time. at least when I didnt have more then 2 mobs on me, if there were 3-4 I would usually still catch agro. Hope they fix the message bug soon

been using FD pretty extensivly pulling in coterie infiniteum lately.

I can say that when the mobs was red, if i pulled a lot it felt like 50/50 weather it would work or i die :p

Now that mobs are yellow/white mostly it works so often i pretty much expect it to work on every pull, it must be about 90% success now
(note this is only against 4 dots, not tried 5's much)