Trying to understand how to defend against no-miss, no save, 4-5 hit instakill

[Sarisa]

You can easily strafe in non-mouselook mode by quickly holding the right mouse button and hitting 'A' or 'D'.

Granted that it requires some observation and/or prior knowledge, but Quells don't move much. The room provides a huge column that you can hide behind. They can dispel, but they'll have a LOT more trouble dispel'ing a high level cleric hireling's Deathward than your Flesh Render visors.

Also, beyond that quell are 6 orange named Vampire priests, 4 red named Vampire honour guards, and numerous yellow named Vampire trash mobs. They're all dangerous with their stat drain, and the priests MAY be able to enervate as well. All the vampires are able to dominate you, so you need to have some source of Protection from Evil (long lasting clickie, Fragment of the Silver Flame [from Church and the Cult], the aforementioned Silver Flame Talisman)

A monk is one of the strongest solo'ing classes, but one of the DnD principles is that every class has a weakness. For a monk, that would be level drain. It's still not as dangerous as other classes weaknesses because monks are far more mobile than most other classes. You are better able to dodge or avoid a mob's attacks, and therefore can use the terrain more to your advantage.

DnD design (aside from solo quests) tends to balance things for a party of 4-6 people, and DDO tends to do the same. This Quell IS balanced for a group of 4-6 at-level players. As mentioned, dungeon scaling will lower the mobs attack power and HP, making it easier to handle for a group of 1 or 2 as opposed to 4-6, but some abilities that are a problem for 4-6 can be overwhelming for 1-2. Level drain is one of these, and there is not much that can be done to balance it for a 1-2 member group. In order to manage it, you need to think of alternative strategies to mitigate its damage.

Solo'ing at high levels is definitely possible, but it REQUIRES foreknowledge of the quest, experience handling the mobs, and the equipment to make up for the lack of other party members. You're off to a good start, but you don't yet have the experience with the mobs and quests yet.

The Necro series' in general are not solo friendly. There isn't much that can be done in that area without prior knowledge of the quests. If you truly want to continue solo'ing, the Lordsmarch quests, the Gianthold side quests, parts of the Vale, and parts of the Inspired Quarter and the Dreaming Dark are good for it. Necro, Amrath, the Gianthold main quests, and the rest of the Vale can be solo'able but are not anywhere near as easy to do when you don't have prior knowledge of the quests and mobs behaviors.

[wyndzen]

Thanks again for all of the info and perspective, particularly to the most recent 4 replies before this one.

You've helped me with understanding what to expect from ddo in order to have fun, and also with several tactics.

I agree with that list of quests that are fun to solo, and that also are quite doable the first time without foreknowledge. I'm really enjoying the Lordsmarch quests, and I enjoyed the side quests in Gianthold.

With a couple of friends we did the crucible, and unfortunately that wasn't fun the first time. Puzzles, I think, from years of PnP experience and now with DDO, are much more fun in theory than in practice, in most cases. In theory, the maze in the crucible was a challenge, or a change of pace, or whatever, but in practice it was worse than watching paint dry for over an hour... at a time when we had rl appointments that forced us to simply recall halfway through, having allowed for more than 2 hours to do the quest.

Clearly the choice between player twitch and/or puzzle solving skills vs. char skills is a matter of personal preference. In rpg's, I greatly prefer to have success be dependent on my char, rather than on my personal twitch skills, or my personal ability to map a 3-D maze in my head. All of the investment, such as with gaining experience, choosing race, class, enhancements, feats, items, etc., is into my char, so when I go into a dungeon, I like it to be my char's skills that determine success, as much as possible.

If I can make a bit of a joke, you'd think that one of these big bad enemies would figure out to just sabotage a lever, or swallow the keys to an unpickable door, and they would never be defeated...

[jjflanigan]

This may have been already stated but, if not, I wanted to make sure it was out there:

When I did this on my baby monk (no twink gear and I PL'ed so I didn't have many items that would help against the red named quell) I used hit-and-run tactics to avoid the enervation hits. I'd run him around the pillar in the middle of the room -- dart out and whack him a bit, then hide behind the pillar again.

The hit-and-run using Line of Sight (or running circles around beholders) tends to work very well when you don't have the gear set to make direct fights feasible.