Guide to Being Tasty Monkeybait.

[Syfik]

 

Requires: Feathered Wreath

Best characters for this role

Wes and Woodie are the best characters for this role because they both have abilities which allow them to keep agro with little issue. They both excel at kiting in their own way. 

Wes is better at kiting large groups of enemies due to his increased agro time. Wes's downside is that he is not very good at getting agro off of people making him fall short during the Boarrior fight. He should be used when the team already has 2 tanks.(Note that if one of the tanks is a Woodie you should ask if they are running.)

 Woodie is very good at keeping the agro of and attack canceling enemies such as the Boarrior. However because he has to throw his axe to gain agro it makes it hard to keep the agro of a group of enemies only because you have to aim the axe and it can't pass through enemies like a normal attack can. He should be used when there is no runner(Monkeybait) and 1 or less tanks. this is because 2 tanks can usually keep agro better than a Single Woodie can. Plus only 2 stone armors spawn.

 

 

Strategy by wave

Pig wave: Just attack any pig you see kiting really doesn't matter in this wave.

Croc Wave: When the Crocs and pigs spawn focus the enemies in this order Banner>Pigs>Crocs. If you have a good caster they will have petrified the enemies on the opposite side. When the petrify wears off go and take out the banner. Do this for both waves. (Note that I've never seen the Feathered Wreath spawn after this wave.)

Updates:

• As Woodie you can instantly take agro with an axe throw so keep an eye on your healer and take agro away when they are being attacked.
• Woodie should be doing a tanks Job for every wave except the Boarilla waves.
• The only item you need for running is the Feathered Wreath. Your body item should be Stone mail.(Wes gets stone mail on the second Boarilla wave
• The other Tank gets priority stone mail but when they drop it you should grab it as soon as they drop it as Woodie, Or Grab it during the Boss wave as Wes.
• Woodie should get the Blossomed Wreath for the boss if it spawns as Woodie should usually have agro you are attack canceling. The Blossomed Wreath gives more healing and the cool down reduction helps with axe throws. (If the Blossomed Wreath doesn't spawn stick with the Feathered Wreath.)

Turtle Wave: (Woodie only needs to worry about focusing down the turtles and stunning them out of block for this part let the caster focus on kiting and stunning) For this wave, if you're Wes, the caster is your best friend. At the start of this wave you should stand in front of the middle spawn, after you've taken the agro of mid go up and take the agro of the two turtles opposite of where your team is. Once you've grouped all 5 up work with your Caster to petrify them. Go back to your team and focus on the Turtle they are hitting while also keeping an eye on the 5 that are petrified. Once they are free run back and keep them in a group to repeat the same thing over again. Once your team is done killing their they should be able to Sleep/petrify lock them but always be ready to lure some away if something goes wrong. (The best way to lure an enemy is to hit them once when they're asleep or petrified, you must be the closest to them or they will target someone else.)

Scorpion Wave: Same as the turtle wave although this time your caster will have a fire staff. Meaning that they can petrify lock them after the first time.

First Boarilla Wave: This is where Monkeybait is the most useful (hence the name). At the start of this wave stand very close to the middle and allow the enemies that spawn on the left and right spawn to agro your team. As soon as the Boarilla spawn you immediately hit him a few times to gain agro then run over to the opposite side of your team. To keep the Boarilla's agro you must be the closest to him at all times (Which shouldn't be an issue if your team does their job and stays away), and you must hit him more than once unless you're Woodie. For this wave you can hit him 3-4 times between his attacks with a dart or Axe and then run away from him until he hits (You CANNOT outrun him without the Feathered Wreath and Reed Tunic.) 3 times is safe 4 times is doable but dangerous. When he goes into his block form you can do a few things. If you have normal darts you can wait for him to open up then use a special on him, If your special is on cooldown you can attack until he comes up, if you have magma darts your special will break through his block, and if you are Woodie your special will break his stun. Do this until your team has dealt with all the enemies. Then bring him to the middle so you all can kill him. When he dies he will drop Steadfast Stone Armor. If your Wes that means one of your tanks dropped their Stone Mail so take that. And if you're Woodie, leave the armor on the ground until you're ready to fight the boss.

Second Boarilla Wave: In this wave 2 Boarillas spawn opposite of eachother. Your job is to keep the agro of one while your team kills all the enemies and their Boarilla. If both Boarillas reach a low health the boss will spawn early and you will have a bad time. So to prevent this you should only try to hit the Boarilla twice in between his attacks and never use your special as Wes. If you're Wes you should also only be using normal darts.(You don't have to but I feel it's safer. You could also probably get away with 3 hits but I think 2 hits gives your team more room for error.) During this wave there will be 2 additional spawns. The first will spawn Crocs in the middle spawn and the second will spawn Turtles and Scorpions on each side. To prevent getting agro from either of these you should try to kite the Boarilla in the player spawn in front of Pugna. It's a small area but It is just enough room to kite him around (Even with  the Stone Mail you can still kite in that small area, you just have to walk in straight lines). Once all the enemies are dealt with once again bring him to the center.

Boss Wave: Soon after your team starts to attack the Boarilla the boss will spawn. If you're playing Woodie you should swap out Feathered Wreath and the Reed Tunic for Stone armor and any tank helmet you can find. When the boss spawn dialogue appears head to the middle spawn and take the Bosses agro. Make sure to hit the boss whenever you can to keep agro and obviously keep him away from your team. With this strategy I've never had to go all the way around the arena before the Boarilla dies. After your team has killed the Boarilla guide the boss to the center of the arena and start attacking him. If you are Wes you will want to pick up the stone mail and a dark helmet assuming there is one left. If you are Woodie you will want to pick up the Steadfast Stone Armor and the Blossomed Wreath. Make sure you stop attacking him when the heal field starts to go up. And if you're Woodie you can time your axe throws while tanking to cancel the bosses attack although don't feel bad if you don't time it well. It's very hard to do. Be wary that your axe throws take agro so you should be in melee range of the boss when you throw it to keep him stationary. Unless you are trying to lead him away from your team.

Pig Boss Wave: During this wave take out the banners ASAP and head to where your healer put the heal field. If you have a caster it's pretty much up to your healer and caster to deal with all the pigs. If the pigs aren't one shot just start hitting them and they should die in a few hits. In the event you don't have a caster. If you're Woodie you should try to lead the Boss away from your team and let them deal with the pigs.

Post Pigs: The Boarrior will now begin to avoid the heal field if he is already outside of it. Keep him stationary so your healer can sleep him. In my experience he almost always uses a charge when the heal field is being put up. So if he does charge out you can do a few things to save the heal. walk into him and try to push him back in the field, cancel the charge before it happens with an axe throw, or if you can't get him in the field lead him away from your team so they can get a good heal off. You can still cancel his attacks while leading him away albeit hard to do consistently.  

 

Side Notes

This guide heavily assumes you have a caster on your team (Which you should) but in the event that you don't just kite the Turtles and Scorpions and when your team has finished off their enemies allow one turtle/scorpion to lose agro on you and walk over to them. If you end up losing more than one to bad team positioning then just utilize the heal field to hit them while they sleep and steal agro back as Wes or use Woodies axe throw to instantly gain agro. DO NOT constantly hit turtles while you are kiting them. Otherwise they will get to low health and start spinning. To keep agro hit them the moment they walk away.

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinister_Fang]

2 hours ago, Syfik said:

and I've only played Wes the entire beta

Maybe you should actually try using Woodie before saying he's the worst at this job. His axe throw instantly draws agro (unlike the darts) and it's really not that much longer to use then firing a dart now and then to keep agro anyway. Woodie and Wes both do the same thing, but in a different way. So saying that one is better then the other is like comparing apples and oranges.

[Syfik]

1 hour ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Maybe you should actually try using Woodie before saying he's the worst at this job. His axe throw instantly draws agro (unlike the darts) and it's really not that much longer to use then firing a dart now and then to keep agro anyway. Woodie and Wes both do the same thing, but in a different way. So saying that one is better then the other is like comparing apples and oranges.

But I've never lost the Boarilla's agro using this strategy. And also yes Woodie keeps the Boarilla aggro just fine however "The frequency of axe cooldown combined with woodie's aggro in general means you can only pull 2 scorpions at a time" That was what my friend who just got done testing Woodie a few times had to say. And I agree he's definitely better than I previously thought so I'm going to move him up on my list. But Woodie is still just not as good compared to Wes considering he doesn't need to do anything special to keep agro and he can keep agro of multiple things for a longer duration. 
 

[Tumalu]

Woodie can't pull a crowd of enemies like Wes, but he's got more margin for error on boarilla. Either of them can do boarilla fine, though.

Woodie shines in being more useful on Boarrior though; Wes can't really do anything but ranged dps in boarrior but Woodie can pull his aggro with Lucy at any time to either take him away from the party (revival time) or pull Boarrior into a corner while facetanking all the hits with 90% armor and keeping the rest of the party alive as he keeps chucking lucy for aggro grab and stunning out of attacks. He'll die now and then but keeps the rest of the party alive between heal fields where wilson can res him, and keeps boarrior in place for easy sleep fields.

[Dekay]

I’ll admit I was a bit worried if I could successfully aggro the bosses with woody as it requires a bit more of an eye for detail but in practice I did fine. I’ve used woody and Wes for this role and while it is easier to pull larger numbers of enemies with Wes, I ultimately find it more valuable to have a guaranteed pull with woody. Also Maxwell or Wicker is usually available earlier on to deal with CC and do a better job of it.

One downside for woody is his limitation to the role of a tank when not kiting as usually there will be a couple other tanks on the team and 3 is a bit over kill, I could see picking Wes instead for better DPS.

i enjoyed your write up quite a bit though, the Pugna tip especially will come in handy, hadn’t really considered it before.

[Syfik]

2 hours ago, Dekay said:

Also Maxwell or Wicker is usually available earlier on to deal with CC and do a better job of it.

I generally try to help group the enemies up for Maxwell/wicker but this really mostly works if you coordinate with them. It's good to have a friend that mains Wicker

[Syfik]

6 hours ago, Tumalu said:

Woodie can't pull a crowd of enemies like Wes, but he's got more margin for error on boarilla. Either of them can do boarilla fine, though.

Woodie shines in being more useful on Boarrior though; Wes can't really do anything but ranged dps in boarrior but Woodie can pull his aggro with Lucy at any time to either take him away from the party (revival time) or pull Boarrior into a corner while facetanking all the hits with 90% armor and keeping the rest of the party alive as he keeps chucking lucy for aggro grab and stunning out of attacks. He'll die now and then but keeps the rest of the party alive between heal fields where wilson can res him, and keeps boarrior in place for easy sleep fields.

Often you aren't able to kite him away in time due to the Boarrior's ranged attack being seemingly random. But obviously it is insanely useful for when you are able to pull him away. I think it just comes down to what you prefer. basically making a choice between making the boss (slightly) easier or the enemies easier. I wish I had more time to test the two but the beta ends today and some of the characters may be changed when the actual event goes live. 

[Syfik]

Thank you guys for the feedback and ideas btw. 

[Syfik]

I've edited this post to subtract the idea that Wes is better than Woodie and added that they are both equally good while surpassing each other in certain instances. I also added how people can go about kiting with Woodie.

[astroapyr]

[IcyHarpy]

On 10/29/2017 at 8:13 PM, Syfik said:

Wes's downside is that he is not very good at getting agro off of people making him fall short during the Boarrior fight.

I found this to be a really big downside. Newer players spamming F nearby left poor Wes chasing the monkey instead of the other way around.

[Syfik]

On ‎10‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 12:32 PM, IcyHarpy said:

I found this to be a really big downside. Newer players spamming F nearby left poor Wes chasing the monkey instead of the other way around.

Yeah to counter this I usually tell people to not go near me or the Boarilla. Sometimes they just don't listen tho ;-;

[Tumalu]

Yeah, I honestly don't really like Wes runner that much, because if he whoopsies and gets hit twice (such low hp), or people allow the mid-boarilla summons to walk over on spawn and aggro on Wes (and therefore kill him), or aggro is otherwise lost... it's really hard for him to get that aggro back. Even with Molten darts, boarilla will do his rage yell and then just go beat up someone else anyway, so it kinda just turns into "well, guess we'll just have to tank the boarilla instead"

It works great as long as the party makes sure to get the summon's attention, though. If it isn't the Wes' first time or two running, he -probably- won't get hit more than once by the boarilla? I should try running with random dart-using characters sometime (Willow/Webber, or Wilson if there's multiple) and see how hard it is to keep aggro as Not-Wes/Woodie.

[Syfik]

2 hours ago, Tumalu said:

Yeah, I honestly don't really like Wes runner that much, because if he whoopsies and gets hit twice (such low hp), or people allow the mid-boarilla summons to walk over on spawn and aggro on Wes (and therefore kill him), or aggro is otherwise lost... it's really hard for him to get that aggro back. Even with Molten darts, boarilla will do his rage yell and then just go beat up someone else anyway, so it kinda just turns into "well, guess we'll just have to tank the boarilla instead"

It works great as long as the party makes sure to get the summon's attention, though. If it isn't the Wes' first time or two running, he -probably- won't get hit more than once by the boarilla? I should try running with random dart-using characters sometime (Willow/Webber, or Wilson if there's multiple) and see how hard it is to keep aggro as Not-Wes/Woodie.

If everything is done correctly you won't get hit. So yeah a new Wes will usually mess up and die. Also after trying out other dart characters my opinion is they don't do badly, but they aren't as good Wes and Woodie for keeping agro which makes them just worse in general for it.