One of the challenges I sometimes have in mounted combat is maintaining contact with my opponent.
This video demonstrates my attempts to counter this with the /follow command.
While this was recorded with a minstrel, I presume that it will work even better with my warden.
May your shield protect you and your spear never break,
Pineleaf Needles
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Not only an excellent tip for combat, but another for approaching quest givers. I had not thought of the latter!
As you said yourself in the video, it’s not pretty, nor is it particularly fast. Plus, against the better mounted war band bosses it will get you rolled and killed in a hurry. The mounted Uruks in this particular daily seem to simply zone out when glued to an enemy.
IMO the idea is to learn situational awareness, and seemless control of both the horse and the commands that make you an effective weapon when perched upon it.
Where /follow is quite useful in when you have a large group and have one member of that group on a heavy that’s not yet capable of its maximum speed. A group can only go as fast as its slowest member. Thus /follow is quite a help when the group is in transit between war bands if folks latch on to the slow poke.
As with most methods, it’s all situational. I can see this as a pretty effective way for a guardian on a heavy steed to keep on Bugud, while the rest of the people attacking him keep their distance and do their thing. Would a Minstrel want to do this on Bugud? Not at all, but against the standard landscape trash? Sure. I use the follow method from time to time on regular mobs just so I can free up a hand to take a drink, eat, answer the phone, whathaveyou.
Autoattacks are a big deal, as always.
Pretty to look at is going to have to take second position after pretty effective to use. lol
Without having tried this yet, I have plenty of thoughts I want to bring up for discussion but I’ll definitely run right out and give this a try.
This technique doesn’t carry the penalty we get from using Spur On but gives roughly the same result, correct? Too often mounted combat seems to be like bumper cars at the amusement park where you can’t close on your target because you can’t really predict their path as they try to evade you. Spur On was a bandaid that carried a high cost so I’ve not used it. Something like this is a nice counter-strategy that I can use.
I’m thinking that this can capitalize on the mounted skills that apply bleeds with attacks that strike from behind. This will let me get in on the enemy’s six and apply some bleeds worrying about steering, then I can go ahead and break off for ranged dmg, time my attacks to build fury, and enjoy more attack safety from distance. If the enemy is still alive when the bleeds run out, the /follow seems like a nice way to reacquire position at the Magic Six, put on some more bleeds, and then dance away again.
I haven’t done much dedicated healing yet via mounted combat but I’m thinking that this would be a great way to move on and off of healing targets to stay in range of my heals but still let them jink around and fight.
I normally sign my blog comments as Sigela, my Nimrodel rune-keeper, but that would probably be pretty confusing here. So I’ll be Ringeras, Rin for short, my Nimrodel lore-master. I’ll probably be just as long-winded on Ringeras as I am with Sigela. Bear with me. lol
I think you are correct in that using /follow will be similar to Spur On, the differences being the obvious pathing issue (/follow is jerky when the target is moving slow/very little) and that you wont be building as much fury if the target is not moving a lot, where as with Spur on your riding gaining fury and not turning in for attack until you queue a skill.
I think using follow will be really good for healers and ranged damage dealers as you can put a fellowship member or another player on follow, let them steer as you heal them and/or fire ranged skills at the mutual target.
Also, feel free to use your normal moniker if you’d like. There is room enough for both of us. 😀
I had the same thoughts about putting one member on follow so everyone else can fire at will while the first guy drives. First guy might get into a bit of a bind but the 5 or more guys behind him should be really kicking some orc so any problem shouldn’t last long. Will be a huge help too with the classes where they will want to change mounted stances more frequently.
I still haven’t built the shortcut to /follow but I did just complete the final quest in Faldham where you accompany the Thane and his men around and take out mounted enemies. PIECE OF CAKE with the /follow on the Thane. Kept him as my target for skill target forwarding, he drove me through the mobs, I picked them all off. Much, much easier than the last time when I was driving on my minstrel.
The one potential problem about everyone putting a single driver on /follow is the possibility that the enemy may use area attacks. There’s a time to fight in formation and a time to split apart. The trick is knowing one time from the other.
The biggest disadvantage I see to this method is that the enemy is steering. Sometimes, you don’t want someone who’s trying to kill you to control your movement.
Spur On is probably better for those huge attacks with longer cool downs that can benefit a great deal from your built-up Fury. If you tend to do many quick small attacks instead, then /follow is probably better.
For escort quests, I think your idea of “follow the escort” should work well. I did that for the wild horse taming quest but never tried that on any others.
Pineleaf I could kiss you! My usual approach is to circle while button-mashing, this looks like I’ll get a lot less dizzy and still be as effective. And I’m constantly over-shooting quest-givers – I usually give up and dismount. Now does it work on crafting nodes I wonder …
You no longer need to make custom shortcuts for /follow as It is now available in the key mappings as ‘follow selection’
I discovered this shortly after getting my first warsteed because I have had /follow as shortcut 49 (and always hidden) for years but it didn’t work on warsteeds on account of the different quickbars and a bug with bar4
I put the new /follow shortcut on alt-W[1] and lock run on shift-W[1], simplified auto-movement is good.
For mounted combat I sometimes use the /follow to line-up an attack but the downside is a warsteed will actually slow-down when it approaches a target, dumping your fury perhaps before you can use it, so once I’m lined up I’ll switch to lock-run to joust through the enemy, and attack at the last second.
[1] It would more correct to say alt-E and capslock-E as I don’t believe in WASD, why move from the home-row ignore perfectly good keys that can be hit with the pinky? It would be even more correct to say alt-. and ctrl-. as I have turned caps-lock into another control key and use Dvorak, but we are rapidly falling down a rabbit-hole I don’t want to climb out of.
Can there possible be a way to program the shortcut to a button?
Would be awesome for guard jousting. while running in the opposit direction, after a strike, click the button and directly run at the enemy. when in line, hit the front arrow key once two dump the follow mode so as not to lose fury and to stop following the enemy after the hit. Then lather, rinse, and repeat.
Just need to figure out how to set a macro to an onscreen button
When I made this video, there was no way to directly program a key to follow. Assigning a quick slot to a macro did assign it to a key, though (for example, Quickslot is assigned to Ctrl-6). You could use the Key Mapping tab on the Options panel to assign an alternate key if you wish (or to check which quick slots are assigned to which keys).
Since that time, Turbine added a means to define a key to the follow command directly to a key (this is mentioned in Algaffer’s post above). The “Follow Selection” action is in the Miscellaneous section of the Key Mapping tab is the best way to program it if you have no intention of even selecting the action through the mouse.