My findings in PvP

Shield / heavy is the response to archer, not the other way around.
The counter for you is to flank, or hit from behind. Stay out of range, and kite. Have you not noticed you can kill most people unaware or unprepared in a couple seconds?

 

Spears, can ignore armor and shields.

Ohh, and air magic.

 

4 on 4 battle. All players with similar level and experience. 4 heavy + shield players vs 4 anything else. You don't think you could come up with a combination of 4 builds that would beat those 4 heavy+shield users?

Pvp balance isn't all about 1 on 1. Much bigger issues come up when you put experienced players with multiple different specs, working together to multiply offense/defense to create powerful parties.

 

No, I can't. I'm not experienced enough to do so. Can you share your vision?

I didn't know 4x4 was a thing in the game. Where is it happening so I can join and learn more?

 

Cool.

As I obviously don't know as much as you guys, how can the air mage and spear wielder avoid the "Body Slam -> Torpid" trick? For the air mage this one is especially deadly.

 

Dear Vesper,

Forget about archers for a sec. What's the counter to heavy + shield?



Back to archers:

Keeping range? Blink + body Slam is one of many counters to that.

The fact that I can kill unaware, unprepared and afk players with a couple of arrows doesn't say much in my opinion, since these aren't really PvP fights. These are just cheap ganks.

 

You don't need to be experienced, you just have to know how pvp works and then use your imagination.

 

I don't really understand this question. Are you asking what a counter is for a player with heavy and shield spec? What do they attack with? And I'm assuming your talking about 1 on 1 combat, since I guess multiple people fighting at once just doesn't happen in this game. There doesn't seem to be enough context here to be able to come up with a counter.

 

It's actually much more simple than you think. Really less on Shield of Air, and more on Health. It might sound counter intuitive, but think of it this way : you know you're gonna get Torpid cast on yourself, why not build a heavier suit of armor (use some leather instead of cloth kinda thing). Get your health up higher because your focus pool won't be as useful, and then simply out-run them and out-cc them, you have an entire arsenal of Stun spells, you can add water to your deck to slow them and help maintain your distances.

PvP is about adapting to your opponents, and to the meta, Shield of Air is way too easy to dispell, time to not build your entire defense around it.

 

Outrun the enemy? As already stated there's a whole arsenal of teleport type skills in the game, why would they not use them? Blink + body Slam is a very common trick. Not to mention, magic range is not that big. After the heavy+shield guy used body Slam, it's over for you if you're on light armor.

Just curious: I see a LOT of high level players walking around on heavy+shield, why I don't see any high level air mage walking around on cloth without a shield like you describe? I think it's way more likely to bump heavy+shield guys randomly. I see heavy+shield+polearm fighting heavy+shield+polearm head to head. Are they both missing the opportunity to destroy their foe or is it just sportsmanship?
Is the whole community missing this simple way to get rid of the heavy+shield guys?

PS: I've already tried an air mage to counter heavy+shield, specd with 400ish attunement. Not quite exactly like the build you proposed though. Most I could do with that guy was stun him for 1-2 secs, then he woke up, body slammed and shot a star at my face. Maybe I would have better results with air+heavy+shield?

 

I don't know how it works. Can you explain the way to beat 4 heavy+shield guys? Mages and polearms.

Heavy+shield+polearms is the best. How would you counter them?

 

It's fine to say "There's a bunch of skills out there that let you catch someone with high movespeed" but that's just what keeps high movespeed players from being unkillable, it doesn't completely zero out their advantage. Movespeed is a very coveted stat in PvP builds of every sort, and with good reason. You can further (and dramatically) increase your advantage here with something like disabling shot or any number of other slows.

 

Of course not! Once you get body slam'd it's game over, since everyone is playing Shield + Heavy + Polearms all you can do is hope you land the first body slam!

 

Sorry I'm not experienced enough. Don't know how to do that!

 

I'm not discussing teleport skills here, let them be.

I asked for any counter to heavy + shield.

You responded that there's a counter to heavy+shield, which is range control.

Your argument didn't seem very strong for me because there's plenty of counters against range control and heavy+shield already uses it, e.g. blink + body Slam.

You try to make a point on move speed, but again blink is instantaneous and body Slam will lock to target.

It's not my fault every fight must start with a body slam rush

 

Any competent Polearms player will wipe the floor with a Heavy Shield player.

The majority of non-glass cannon spellcasters will win against Heavy/Shield.

Body slam is great, but the more you get stunned, the less you get stunned, and that is actually super fast if you escape from the stun with a bit of space bar spam. At some point they won't be able to stun you, and as long as you maintain higher movement speed, you're good to go.

Gust is a super undervalued spell, it will push them back and stun them.

 

ngl, that got an audible laugh.

I also think you're conflating my comment with another user's. Either way, if you want to ignore the advantages of movespeed in PvP, you do so at your peril. Don't try to work this all out on paper, go try it in the field.

 

You got my point there, coming you're better than this.

I just said I'm not discussing if teleport skills are fair or not. I just point out they're obvious, almost absolute counter to move speed.

Finally you got my point.

On the field there's an overwhelming amount of heavy + shield users.

 

Because you're an archer.

When I would PvP, I'd never see shields. Archers came by the dozen, dual blades, air mages 2handed polearms, Death mages, but shield players? Never.

Like someone else said, these observations are flawed because the build you have has a very obvious counter

 

They're not an "almost absolute counter to move speed", that's what a few of us are working at telling you. That is why you need to test a bit more in the field rather than go on the current limited experience and what you see on paper.