A Guide to Shamanic Feign Death - by Telorea of Firiona Vie

[Shammy 101]

Copied from an original posting by Telorea.

Okay, since we will soon have a total of eight shaman with feign death ability, rather than explain to each of you individually how it all works when I take you up to PoSky to do your final hand-ins I decided to write this guide.


The Basics of Feign Death
This is the simple stuff:
* The ring is used by putting it on your finger and right-clicking it to instant Feign Death.
* To stop feigning death you need to stand up (/stand or CTRL-S)
* You CAN feign death when on horseback (the horse will just go poof)


Whilst You are Dead...
* To clear aggro, you must stay feign-deathed until the monsters have forgotton about you. If you stand up too early, then all the monsters that have aggro on you will re-aggro.
* When aggro is cleared you will get a "Your enemies have forgotten you" message in most cases. For some non-wandering monsters they will sometimes forgot about you when they get back to their spawn spot - but do not rely upon this.
* As Shaman, we do not get the monks Stone-Wall ability - this means that if a mob hits us or a spell hits us then our feign death will break. Note: spell effects (like DoTs) that land on you before you FD will NOT break your FD (but you better hope the DoT doesn't kill you whilst you are FD)
* AoE spells, AoE rampages or other area effects will also break your feign death.
* Whilst you are Feigning Death you cannot change spells, activate clickies or AA, or do anything much. The important things you CAN do whilst feign death are:
- (a) Activate Tribute (important if you are on low health or DoTed and you have extra regen on your tribute)
- (b) Recharge your ring if you just used up the last charge.
- (c) Drag corpses to you.


How & Why Feign Death can Fail
* Some people complain that their feign death fails a lot. From my own experience of regular use of the ring over the 18 months or so I have had it, the chance for FD to actually fail is very low (less than 5%) but there are other things that can make it seem to fail - when in actual fact it simply instantly broke due to bad (or unlucky) timing of FD.
* Casters: If you are feign-deathed, then casters will not start to cast spells at you (except for a few rare cases). But if you FD after they have started to cast but before the spell lands, then the spell will land after you FD and it will break your FD.
* Melee: Similar to casting, it seems that in melee monsters will start to swing at you and then actually hit you a very short time later. So it is the same as for casters, if you FD in that fraction of a second (also affected by server lag) between the start of the swing and the hit, then the hit will land and if it hits you will break the FD.
* This means that if you are in melee with a very fast hitting mob or lots of mobs, then it is often down to luck and server lag whether your FD holds or breaks.
* If you are stunned, then you cannot click your FD ring - a number of times I thought I had FD'ed but died, and I often found that no charges had been used up on the ring because I had been stunned and unable to cast the FD.
* Important thing to remember: if feign death fails or breaks you DO NOT automatically stand up, you will stay laying on the ground looking dead until you actually die or you stand up.


Advanced Use of Feign Death
* To avoid the chance of FD breaking, as described above, there are two things you can do:
- (a) For Melee, try to get out of melee range. If you run out of melee range and FD before the monsters catch up with you and start melee again, then FD will not break.
- (b) For Casters, get out of LoS or out of range of the caster. Run around a corner or something before you FD. Remember that not all walls block monster LoS, so be aware of your scenery.
* If you are running away when you FD, you need to stop and do a quick turn before you click the FD ring. If you do not, then server lag may cause EQ to think you are still moving when you tried to cast FD and it can fail (this is the exact same technique that you need to use when you are running or on horses and trying to cast any spell after moving).
* If you have a fully charged ring and FD breaks or fails on the first click, you can quickly stand up again and click it a second time and hope it works before you die.
* Make a "/stand" hotkey. In the heat of a dangerous melee it is hard to quickly tell if you are standing up or laying down. If you click the FD and are still getting beaten on you may think that FD broke/failed and so try to stand up again using CRTL-S (as I used to do). However, quite often the reason you are still getting beaten on is because you were stunned when you first clicked FD and so pressing CRTL-S actually makes you sit down - and of course when sitting you cannot cast FD again, and mobs will hit you more. Using a /stand hotkey in these situations will save you.
* Use a quick-swap UI window to help you FD faster. I have a great UI window that I created by adjusting the /gems window. It has two columns of item slots, the left hand colum are worn slots and the right-hand column is slots from the bag where I keep all my 'must-equip' clickies. This makes it easy to click a box on the right-hand side (to pick up a clicky), click the left-hand side box right next to it (to equip the clicky) and right-click to activate it. With them being so close together it is extremely fast to click-click-click and activate any clicky item very rapidly - I use this for lots of clickies and love the speed it gives me. If you are on Firiona Vie, send me a tell or in-game email and I will email a version of this UI window to you with instructions on how to customise it for your needs.


Recharging The One Ring
* The ring has two charges, but can be recharged with a "Box of the Void" (approx 1pp, sold by Keymaster at port-in spot in PoSky) and a Class-5 Mana Battery (52.5pp, also sold by Keymaster).
* The ring can be recharged when it has 1 charge left as well as when it has 0 charges left.
* The "Box of the Void" is lore, so you can only carry one at a time - this gives you a total of 4 charges of FD if you are carrying a recharge-box and a fully charged ring.
* You can get spare recharge-boxes and store them on corpses - or if you are on FV like me you can also store them in shared bank, guild bank or get alts and friends to hold them for you.
* If you have an exhausted ring and travel to PoSky, remember you can buy the recharge parts, recharge the ring, then buy another set of recharge parts straight away - giving you a full 4 charges again for just one trip to PoSky.
* If you have a rezing friend travel with you to PoSky, you can make any number of corpse-stored recharge boxes by buying a recharge box, dying, getting rezed, leaving box on corpse, buy a new box, dying, etc...


Telorea of Firiona Vie
Shaman, Artisan and Proud Member of Chivalrous Valor and the Planar Campaign

[Gukak]

Interesting to read - specially the part about FD being broken by a mob hitting you.
I recently started 2-boxing a shadowknight, and you just explained at least two times where I could not understand he died after a FD had succeded - both times with an unslowed fasthitter on him.

Now I just need to get the ring for my shaman.

Greetings Gukak Kluelezz

[Kozul]

Nicely put together Telorea

More FD rings on FV now /cheer !

[nameless.Cocodrilo]

I don't ever recall a time when any kind of rampage broke my FD.

[Tharkis]

*slays Kozul*
*Loots all of his stuff because he's on FV*
*FD's while the police investigate*
*????*
*PROFIT!*

[Bethiana]

[nameless.Cocodrilo]

[KB]

[Shammy 101]

[nameless.Cocodrilo]

[Bernz]

[siludorf]

[Shammy 101]