Kiting is a very powerful technique for soloing. One could argue the best classes for this, but I'm most certain Druid, Necromancer, Wizard, Shaman (to a lesser extent) would be among the choices. Basicly, you are damaging a mob without taking melee damage yourself. For instance, as a druid a fairly standard procedure to kite a mob would be something as follows:
1) make sure you have sow on yourself
2) ensnare
3) root (dots do less damage when the mob is moving)
4) winged death or applicable stinging swarm line
5) possibly breath of ro or immolate line (sometimes us druids leave this out due to the resist rate)
6)sit down and med while the dots do their thing
7) reroot if it breaks during the fight
throw in a nuke somtimes depending on the hp or how efficent you are trying to be
Since you can meditate while the mob dies, often times you can finish a kite with pretty much the same mana as you started with, or on the other hand be able to kill a mob that without meditation you whould surely go oom.
A similar technique can be used by a necro, although this is referred to as fear kiting/reverse kiting.
1) summon pet (most of the time, depending)
2) darkness line to snare the mob
3) fear(root, depending)
4) lifetap dot, boiling blood..whatever dots you want to use
5) necro can be in lich form converting hp to mana..lost hp is being replenished by the lifetap dot.
6) re-fear if fear breaks, restack dot(s) if necessary
This technique works best in outdoor zones. Of course you can root the mob instead of fear, but then you lose out on the damage your pet could be doing.
In addition, by using the root/dot technique, shamans can solo quite well. When indoors, use of slow allows the shaman to easily reroot/reposition mobs when the root breaks. Cannibilize/bear form, fungi tunic works wonders on mana.
You mentioned you are playing a bard. Bards can also kite mobs to a lesser extent then that of the previously mentioned classes. In this case, good equipment (notably weapons) helps tremendously. One method is executed by hitting the mob with snare song. Next, fear the mob and continue twisting spells while you beat it from behind. Depending on the lag, if you can effectivly twist 3 songs, often one of the dot songs makes a good addition to the lineup. Another way (alot slower but more foolproof) is to run around while you twist snare, dot, direct damage while staying out of melee range. It takes awhile so most bards do not use this technique. Jboots are extremely valuable for the kiting bard.
One variation of Kiting I neglected to mention, quad kiting. Wizards are most famous for this, howerver druids can do it quite well. The technique is pretty much the same, but this is how it would work for a druid.
1) find a mob, snare it (possibly ae snare if your a wiz)
2) run around and find another mob, snare it (repeat untill 4 mobs are snared)
3) next you have to get them all next to each other. This is best accomplished by running around in large circles in such a manner as they gradually close the distance between each other
4) now you can open up with your ae based dd spells. Wizards have the most efficent/highest damaging ae spells which make them ideal for this type of kiting.
Depending on the mob, it generaly requires quite a large mana pool to quad kite (resists, partial resists)
Charm kiting can be done by enchanters and bards. This is fairly tricky and inefficent and is not commonly used for extended periods of exping, mostly as a novelty. Enchanter charms a mob and has it attack one of its buddies. Enchanter gives his pet a little help by dotting the current target. Enchanter watches as his pet beats the target and the pet manages to win due to his dot help but not before the target has beatin down his pet to next to nothing. Target dies, enchanter gets exp. Charm is broken, enchanter roots and gives 1 nuke and its dead. Since charm is fairly unreliable, and enchanters dont really have a way to heal themselves at all, this technique is really a crapshoot.
Well, thats pretty much the basics of kiting, there are variations for different zones (mainly indoor/outdoor) and equipement pieces, but the concept is the same.
Peace
Try to get familiar
Linear Mode
