Deck Mode DOMINATION (Your guide to building a deck for PvP)

Great update, thanks!

 

Wir können am Samstag gerne mal ne Session machen, dann erklär ich euch es. Mittlerweile komme ich ganz gut damit klar, versuche aber noch meinen Schadensasustoß zu optimieren und meine Focuskosten zu reduzieren.

 

My realy last post about this. I have accepted my doom and will Date the Deck System until i finaly fall in love with it.
I always had the feeling that "Reflex Games" give all Character Types a chance.


I realy hope they do the magic of creating a balanced Deck System. What i am most afraid of if you are into competition thinking is that there always be that "strongest Deck" forcing us to play it.
MageTank , nerv, FastBlader, nerv, Archermage, nerv and so on.


I hope at least if we have Decks dominating, that we end up having Sissor/Rock/Paper Decks at the end. Red Deck owns Blue Deck owns Yellow Deck owns Red Deck

Take care.

 

Yeah, the team's goal is to make it so everyone isn't using the same skills, they want to make all trees and skills viable options and nothing dominating. (Lum is really good at spotting those, he has worked on many games and has done a lot of PvP ever since UO days and has found and reported these balance issues). They already nerfed fireball and some of the swords skills.

 

Love the new forum avatar, Myrcello!

 

PvP a roaring success, and riot of fun!

I never bothered with PvP in the other MMO's I've played over the years. I disliked the roaming PK teams lurking around waiting to ambush players, as much as I hate RL thugs attacking helpless victims in parking lots. I've actually left games with PvP focus due to the constant "evil PK looters" present. Time will tell us how SotA will formulate PvP vs those not interested. I do hope those not interested will be protected, as in this current test. With that said, I'm now a PvP player!

Last night, I joined the PvP crowd. I met the enemy, and he is me! (to paraphrase Pogo) I entered the PvP area timidly, and exited way past my bedtime with a swagger to my step in spite of the taste of road dust in my mouth from eating so much of it! I had a great time, enjoyed tinkering with both the melee deck and the ranged deck, and made lots of notes about how to fight smarter next time! I made new friends, helped kill a developer (Thanks Qball!), fought side by side with my Order of the Dragon's Flame guildies in a party, and logged off with my grin muscles aching from over use!

My concerns about my old stiff fingers, and slow reflexes responding to experienced young PvP opponents, and my worries about my antique computer keeping up with fast paced combat, all proved to be unfounded. In the end, I did figure out the melee/ranged/magic deck system combinations, and how to use the Deck for defense of self and friends, direct actions attacking an enemy, and in support of party members attacks.

If you are still hesitating, I urge you... take the leap! PvP is not as complex as you might think, once you get your screens in front of you and start working with the parts. This old geezer figured it out, I'm betting you can too. I'm also betting you'll have just as much fun as I did last night!

I'll see you inside! Come kill me... if you can!

-Samlee Bowman

 

Ditto! Cool tongue-in-check play on words Myrcello!
Say hello to Myrcella for me

 

I'm one of those folks coming from a single-player Ultima background who had dismissed PvP as something I'd really be unlikely to want to participate in... but I thought hey, I'll try it out to help test, just dabble a little... then I looked at the clock and realized it was 5:00 AM! I had a blast even though I quite frankly sucked at it.

I think the idea of certain zones being PvP and players being able to flag themselves as open to PvP is going to work well. I found my "PvP mindset" to be different than my "story mindset," so being able to switch between those without having the former interrupt the latter, I think, is a good compromise.

 

I'm sorry if this has already been answered - I haven't got a lot of free time to play this weekend but I've tried the basics of deck building and combat. I like the way it works so far.. It took me a while to figure out how to target myself for healing and I only managed to figure it out when I was not in combat.
My question is if I have to switch to target myself to heal, do I then have to click on the player/mob onscreen to retarget, or will the name bar just move over or something so I can reselect it? I guess there might be a keystroke for this but I have never been good with keyboard shortcuts.

 

Holding down the ALT key temporarily targets yourself.

 

Ok so if I assign the heal skill to F4 then I should be all good to go

 

Really having trouble getting an effective combat deck going. Doesn't seem so random, skills seem to pop up in the order they are listed in my deck build at times.
Tried plate armor, even maxed out the innate skill that minimizes fizzle and slugs. But I get more slugs then anything during combat, and yes I have 20 skills in the deck so that it wouldn't generate any more slugs. But still, get 5 slots of slugs, one discards and another slug, another discards and another slug. Then I get a thrust, use it then another thrust appears and goes red when I click on it. If this is going to be so random and skills are going to be rare as they pop up, they really need to be usable as soon as they pop up.

And yes I have points in focus, I had 7 slots for my hand in the beginning but they kept popping up all slugs and didn't help the slug issue above so I changed the points to speed, which just seemed to make the slugs come faster.
I'm not giving up, later today I will try and reshuffle some skills again. But so far, not so much fun.

 

I agree that slugs seem to happen more often than their percentage of the deck would seem to require... I use light armor, and a 24 card deck, and out of 4 active cards, I am usually seeing a slug.

Watch your chat box while in combat. If you try a skill and it goes read instead of flying away to indicate you used it, in the chat box you will usually see something like "Death-Knell tried to use Rend, but was still busy with another action" (not the exact wording, but close to what you will see). There isn't a cool-down associated with actions, but there is a time required to complete an action, and it won't let you perform another until that is done.

 

I have noticed that is very important to move while in combat, you must get out of their melee range everytime you can, and try to get their backs.

 

doesn't movement break skill use?

 

Not all of them. And, depending of your deck, there will be times when you will not have available cards to cast and must rely on auto attacks. In that case it is a good idea to avoid attacks or get a better position to attack.

 

not all... gust and lightning are really annoying and can break your momentum...

 

The penalities for heavy armor do seem rather high at this point. Inbetween the large amount of slugs high fizzle rate and I think additional focus cost I am not really sure if plate is worth it right now.

 

I'm not sure exactly why these completion/cool down timers are not equally visible.. Am I supposed to have to guess how long until I can click another skill from the deck or just keep clicking until something works? Why not just have all affected skills be colored red until I complete or fail my current action?

 

I can understand the annoyance at the number of slugs but that may balance in time. The fizzles however should be as intended, as physical combat actions are immune to fizzle. Unless this game departs further from the traditional path, heavy armor is more likely suited to melee than magic.