Exodus' Guide to Effective PvP - R8

It's been a great time smashing heads and cracking skulls with everyone. I've had some gloriously bloody wins and some devastating losses these past few days. I saw a thread recently that stated there wasn't enough constructive tips on PvP right now. I think that's probably because people are being hyper competitive. Seeing as there is less than 1 day left in R8, I'll share with you everything I've learned about SotA PvP.

Some are for melee, some are for casters. All are helpful.

1: Clipping Auto Attacks: The auto attack timer on swords is around .5 seconds and two handers somewhere around 1 whole second. If you execute a skill before the auto attack swings, you will "clip" it, meaning it will not fire at all and you have to wait the entire swing timer again to get an auto attack. It's wholly possible to clip every auto attack with skills and lose out on a ton of damage. If you've fought me, I use a skill, wait for auto attack, root, get behind, wait for auto attack, skill etc. The auto attacks deal a great amount of damage if they crit, and it can change the fight in one hit.

2: Positioning: Try your best to stay at the opponents backside. I don't know if its a mechanic, but I have never missed an attack when swinging from behind.

3: Root: Though typically a caster skill, it doesn't fizzle yet and functions to make two things better for you. First, it locks them in place (hopefully they dont jump out) and allows you to move behind them and avoid their auto attacks/spells while getting hits on them. Second, if they do jump out, its a big focus sink for them. Players can lose a whole bar of focus from 4-5 root jumps so they're key. Lock one on your bar for an 8 sec cooldown and put a few in your deck to randomly lock em down.

4: Knight's Grace: I was surprised how many people don't use this skill. Its at the end of the Heavy Armor tree and allows you to break stun/knockdown instantly. When locked on a bar, it has nearly zero cooldown. Use it liberally. The focus cost is worth not getting nuked by a caster.

5: Stunning: The bludgeoning tree has 10 cards that each have a chance to stun or knockdown. It also proccs nearly every hit if not every other hit. This can be terribly frustrating for your opponent and will either result in them blowing through all focus breaking your stuns, or sitting through their duration getting pounded by you.

6: Rend: Rend deals a lot of damage and is a very long lasting DoT. It's wholly possibly to hit someone with rend, only auto attack, then refresh rend when it drops and still win fights. Very strong bladed skill and when locked on a locked bar slot, it has nearly no cooldown. The dot does not stack so don't use it every attack.

7: Deflect: The first skill in the shield tree gives you 15 damage protection. When locked on your bar it's cooldown is slightly longer than the duration of the buff. Can be up almost always.

8: Discarding Cards: You can discard slugs from your hand by right-clicking them or holding CNTRL and pressing the hotkey for the slug. It will discard fast and be replaced by a new card. This is important when you have a second to right-click slugs out of your hand.

9: Go for the fire Ele: Most people either have fire ele locked on their bar with a 20-25 sec cooldown or 1-2 cards randomly in their deck. The elemental has pretty poor resists and can be burned quickly. This is important as the Elemental is a ranged dps with an elemental attack and fast attack speed. It just has to go. Kill it, root the enemy, get some range or LOS and attempt a self heal. Now that the field is level, see who wins.

10: RUN!! : When in doubt, put your weapon away and run. Better yet, run into water. Auto attacks work there, but you can probably get out of combat and regen enough to reset the match when you get back to land.

11: Fire Arrow: Fireball is awesome, but fire-arrow > fireball in most all cases. It homes, it dots, it doesn't cost much, it casts faster. What's not to like.

12: Searing Ray: Searing Ray allows movement while casting like lightning and even though Lightning has a chance to stun, which makes it good, Searing Ray is instant cast and costs very very little focus. It's a good quick cast if you have a small window of time.

13: Discard Speed: I run fastest draw speed and fastest discard speed. My deck has 20 cards in it and if i dont get a chance to discard the slugs, I need them to get gone on their own, and fast! It's not too much to overcome, even with 9 cards.

14: My personal build.

fastest discard, fastest draw, 2 locked cards and 9 total hand.

Skill Pts.

Bludgeon: Crushing Blow 5 , Knockback 5
Heavy Armor: Defensive Stance 3 , Inner Strength 3, Endurance 5, Healthy 5, Knights Grace 1. Plus pre-reqs.
Earth: Stone Fist 1, Root 4,
Fire: Flame fist 1, Highly Flammable 1, Fire Proof 5
Focus: Higher Consciousness 5, Concentration 1, Mental Reflex 5, Heightened Awareness 2, Eidetic Memory 3
Life: Healing Touch 1, Healing Ray 1

Deck

Crushing Blow 5/5
Healing Ray 1 - LOCKED
Defensive Stance 3/3
Inner Strength 3/3
Knockback 5/5
Root 4/4
Knight's Grace 1 - LOCKED

Method
This build is played with a priority method. This means that if certain conditions are present, certain actions are taken. From highest priority to lowest

Knights Grace if stunned/knocked down
buffs (Def Stance is instant cast, Inner Str has a small cast time).
Root if it is up and the enemy is not rooted
Either of the 10 stun/knockdown attacks
Heal if the enemy is stunned or rooted and you are out of LOS.

The attacks usually are: Root, get behind, wait for auto attack, use stun skill. If doesnt stun, immediately use stun skill again, buff when they appear on bar. When enemy is stunned, right click out slug cards while waiting for auto attack and standing behind enemy. Root again and rinse/repeat. Always let auto attack hit before using another skill unless your stun misses, then feel free to quick use it again.

I hope that these tips will help improve the pvp population as a whole. I apologize that I don't have as much experience as a caster, though there are some great pvp casters in this release. They will have knowledge to share once the R closes I'm sure.

Enjoy
Ex

 

Nice post Exodus, it will help a lot to those willing to get better at combat . I my self prefer to use root (locked too) instead of healing like an scape/catch mechanism on open areas.

 

Ahh yes, I was using Root locked also but then I realized that locked skills have a 50% greater focus cost and I was burning myself out using it. I just put a few more in my deck and it's been pretty reliable I guess.

 

Well thank you. You have done such a great job describing this. Very good pointers. I haven't had to heal much myself but have locked fire arrow instead for a range in my warrior build. Heals don't seem to heal that much and come up enough for me, but I will try some of your very good advice.

 

My pleasure! I personally don't like the fizzle system and prefer you simply have to pay more focus to cast spells as a warrior in plate armor, but fire arrow seems to cast pretty often, even in full plate.

 

Yes it comes back for me often even though locked I notice it shows up on my bar in other places. Do you know if locking is suppose to have that happen? It is ok though because when it shows up I can cast it again and it seems to have a dot and can be cast at close range. I just use it as one of my hits

 

You're able to both lock a card and put more of that card in the random deck to get drawn into your other slots. So it's perfectly possible for you to have the locked one ready and more in your other slots, and pretty probable.

 

Great post. Too bad it's the last day of R8. If they re-release R8 it is a good help, but I'm guessing there is a high probability that some of this will change before R9.

Although I think you're right on every point. Great point you bring up about auto attack and skill use. That will probably remain the same. However, who really knows.

I'm predicting that Air magic might turn out to be a very dangerous skill set in R9. Lighting bolt is a quick spell, it does considerable damage, if the stun chance was greater (and the option will likely be there), then we are looking at a deadly mage trick.... Then there's the whole thing about combos.

 

I lock both of my heal spells and the rest I run through my deck at random. Healing Ray almost always seems to be successful, and it will restore, roughly half of my health in a fight. It is absolutely key to winning unbalanced fights. I also use endurance as the str bonus is fantastic. Also worth noting that if you use Bludgeoning weapons, the Satyr axe can be gotten in the mines off the sauteed fighter, and has an increase in damage over the founders two handed axe of 2 points.

I personally use root as my warrior, and air as my mage. Both give out a high amount of stuns.

Also a good time to use your heals is roughly half health. If you wait any longer it may be to late. At least in my experience.

 

Didn't caught this on first read xD. Again, great tips ;P.

 

Thanks a ton, awesome strategies. Let people read this and say deck combat sucks

 

True. Maybe not all that helpful with what I imagine will be sweeping changes in R9, but at least we can use some of these tips as a foundation. Thanks for the compliments!

 

Great post Exodus, thank you for sharing your knowledge!

 

Always a pleasure Soleidad!