Slow day at work so why not talk about this. I've been playing for a long time and I used to PvP with my warmage a lot but I'm not an expert (what would constitute an expert?) and none of this is the last word on the subject, etc.

A couple of things should be said right up front.

You should understand that in DR 3.X the numbers command and you are going to run into PvP situations where you can't strategize your way out of your opponent having a stronger character than you do. A lot of times when you get wrecked it wasn't the Stealth or the OP magic or good tactics that did you in - you just got outclassed and there was no way you could have strategerized your way out of it (yes I said strategerized). It doesn't take a big gap to find yourself in this situation. This is the aspect of DR that makes it a bad PvP game, and it's what people mean (mostly) when they say DR is bad for PvP. Then sometimes you do everything right but they do everything more right and you still lose. It happens. It's frustrating. You have to look past your initial reaction (BS is BS!!) and figure out what you can do to maximize your chances. Learning to manage your saltiness is right up there with learning to calm down and not trip over your fingers for helping you become a better PvPer.

Losing to stealth is even more rage inducing than losing because you disco'd. You will always have the feeling that BUT FOR THAT OP SNIPE/PULSING INVISO/SHADOWSTEP-ELIMINIATE I TOTALLY WOULD HAVE WON and in a sense you will be right, but that line of thought won't help you win. So put away your kleenex and start thinking about what you can do.

Stealth's value is all about initiative. It protects your target from harm while they're setting up to attack you. It forces you to let them go first by making you search them out, or if you're really outmatched, making you wait for them to attack. While you're almost never going to have the advantage of being unsearchable as a Warmage, you can make these two things work for you without having any real stealth skill in a way that mitigates the advantages for your stealthy opponent.

The main concept to grab onto is that if they can't see you they're in same boat that you are WRT initiative. If you walk out of the room at the beginning of the fight and hide they can't set up on you and they need to cede the initiative to look for you. Use this idea to set up AOE attacks - prep a big shockwave, walk out when they hide, take advantage of a few seconds of confusion to walk back in and nuke the room then slap out some BG or Dragon's Breath while they're revealed. Or do the same with disablers and try to shake them out of hiding. Or prep your disable and wait for them to come looking for you, then lock them down while they're searching. Don't get locked into the idea that you have to stand and slug it out.

Related to the aboove - keep moving and it's much harder for them to set up on you, and you may catch them out while they resituate themselves. Using space like that is a big way in which you diminish the value of having high stealth skills (disclaimer: it's still a nice advantage to them if they can't be searched out. Best of a bad situation, remember).

You want to learn how to bait people. For instance, by running through a room and then back in (in, out, in) to get someone who is camping out waiting to disable you to reveal themselves by trying to cast while missing you because you've juked into an adjacent room. This can also extend to revealing yourself and hoping you can soak their first strike and disable them with a follow up. It's kind of risky but it can work. With Aegis of Granite, the AP barriers, and good shield skill you can take some punishment before it really debilitates you.

You also need to think about timings. Aiming takes about 10 seconds. I forget how long advancing from missile takes - I think it's 6 seconds with Shadowstep and maybe 15 seconds otherwise? Someone correct me. If you know the timings, even if you can't see someone in hiding you can guess at when they'll be vulnerable and hit an AOE disable or targeted spell while they're facing you but before they attack. Maybe you can't see that thief at missile range but you can when they're stunned at pole. It's not the highest percentage play but it's one more tool to help you maximize your chances.

And use the WATCH verb. The WATCH verb is your best friend. Throw on a PERCEPTION symbiosis if you have it and have the time.

Anyway, there are some thoughts to get started. Let's have a good clean thread.

Mazrian

Nice thoughts, Maz.

>>My issue with the hide and wait to be searched out tactic is it doesn't work well against opponents who use invisibility. One way or the other, they'll likely get the opener. Thieves are particularly problematic because they seemingly all have stun-hiders and can break out of immobilize (liberation) on top of reforming invis so it's nearly impossible to lock one down. They also have an ability in backstab that ignores half of your defenses and is designed to be highly likely to hit a critical body part. Even if the backstab does only 10% vit damage per backstab, you can still die in 3 hits if all three happen to hit the head or back, for instance, even with MAF. The thief fight is weighted so heavily in favor of the thief as a warrior mage, I'd say don't bother unless you know you have 500 ranks on a very experienced thief (at PvP) or 300 ranks on a somewhat experienced one. That's more a problem with thief imbalance than warrior mage imbalance IMO. If you could actually counter the opener with some sort of disabler that lasts long enough to fight back or staying in hiding/invis incurred some penalty to stealth after a time, then I could see some balance.<<

Yeah, this is all true. Not much we can do about it. The dev team will get around to it eventually. We can hope. =/

Ironicly I feel like DR2.0 was in most ways better balanced for PvP than what we have now. The ability to drop massive damage and all the imba stuff spread all over the place meant that you had a good chance of player-skilling yourself to victory if you were cagey and had a good sense of timing (and weren't, like, a Paladin, Bard, or Trader). To me that was a lot of fun. You could have a proper tourney because even a guy who was 40% better than everyone else could get steam rolled if the other team worked together better than his. DR3.X is more dominated by mechanics and the numbers and I find that boring despite that it's also a lot more complicated.



Mazrian

>>I like the strategy requirements of 3.0 and the removal of 1-hit kills (for the most part), but it's a little too far in the direction of strategy and damage avoidance/mitigation. It seems like in order to be somewhat successful in PvP as some guilds, you have to time things perfectly and hope that your opponent doesn't have a passive counter mechanism like stun-hiders and RNG doesn't ruin your day. A lot of times, you need to use multiple debilitations and tactics (skill) just to hit someone for relatively insignificant damage. In theory, that might work okay, but in practice, your opponent doesn't just stand their and take what you're slinging at 'em.<<

Yeah I think this describes 3.0 PvP pretty well.

I think the best thing for PvP, aside from addressing the things brought up here, would be to cap the inputs into skill and stat contests, in PvP, at like 300 ranks and 30 points per stat so that players can participate on a level playing field. After the initial monumental QQ I think the players of high level characters would appreciate having more people able and willing to participate in things like Wyvern Trials. Or maybe have different templates of caps for the different guilds according to skillset placement or SOI or something.

>>A lot of that could probably be fixed with spells that we talked about in another thread, like a fire DoT that debuffs stealth and does some minor damage. If targeting is a pain, DoTs can be made to require no targeting, only prepping; call them heat-seeking TM spells, if you want. And, of course, backstab should work like other DFA (I don't believe it does currently) if it's to remain an attack that can be performed back-to-back-to-back and AE will be brought in line with everything else at some point. I know this isn't the Thief or Cleric forum, but it's as much a warrior mage (or any guilds') issue as it is theirs.<<

This all sounds cool and right.


Mazrian