PvPing as a Mage

Nocturnal's Guide to PvPing as a Mage
By: Nocturnal

Introduction
   Have you ever been witness to one of the thrilling and long mage duels in the Deceit dueling room? Ever seen a lone mage take down an unexpecting person in 5 seconds flat? Ever wanted to be one of those mages? I hope this guide will be of some assistance to you. This guide assumes you know the basics of character building and have a halfway decent mage character to pvp with. In my mind, that would be:

  • GM magery (definitely GM if you want half a chance against gm resistors)
  • 90+ eval and meditation (note: the difference between 90-100 eval is roughly 2 damage per spell against high-level resistors, i.e. duelers)
  • GM tactics and weapon skill (swords is the best, closely followed by maces. You have to be a weird and crazy person to use fencing as a mage)
  • the best resist you can afford (that means if it makes you go broke to get 80 resist, do it.) See Nighthawk's excellent guide on how to do this. Once you have the character down, here's where this guide comes in. Note: this duel does not tell you how to kill a lone newbie with 4 mages, as I don't consider that pvping, I consider that retarded.

Basics
    This short section covers the art of precasting and spell/weapon combos.

Precasting : this is the thing that all the monsterkillers whine about that makes the mage half worthwhile in pvp to play. This consists of casting a spell, but instead of releasing it, arm a weapon (using your favorite 3rd party program or...*shiver*...Origin's version), hit them once with the weapon, disarming, and releasing the spell. Whew. To put it a little simpler, this keeps the targetting cursor up while you whack away with your weapon. Then when they start to heal, you can disarm and release the spell, rather than disarm and starting to cast, which takes too long. Greater heal is faster than ANY attack spell you will use in battle, so precasting is the only way to beat it.

Simple combos: (these assume the opponent is paralyzed for the sake of simplicity)
There's always the favorite, the explosion/ebolt combo. Everyone knows that explosion doesn't immediately damage the opponent, and it's very easy to get off an ebolt in that time and making them hit simultaneously. This will do 40-60 damage all at once, which is decent, but not reliable enough to use a lot.

There's the common standby, the explosion/flamestrike combo. It takes a bit of practice to get the FS to hit when the explosion does, but once you get it, you'll know why it's used so much. It can do upwards of 70 damage very quickly.

Now the combos become a little more complicated and involve precasting with weapons.
Explosion/precast FS/weapon hit/release FS. This combo is EXTREMELY deadly. Especially when combined with a nice magic hally or qstaff, this can easily kill a low-resist target at once. Basically what this does is confuses the early healer. Once you cast the explosion, then the FS the opponent will think to heal as soon as he's unparalyzed. However, without releasing the flamestrike, you arm your weapon and attack him. He will usually cancel the heal or delay it, but then you do a quick disarm and release the flamestrike. This will catch mediocre duelers off guard all the time and works most of the time on experienced ones. This is worthwhile doing on a fully healed opponent, as it does that much damage. They will normally be close to death, if you can get off a quick ebolt you've pretty much clenched victory.

Precast paralyze/hit with weapon/release para. This is basically the precursor to the above combo. In the case where the above combo doesn't kill the opponent, this little extra damage that this combo causes before hand is very nice. This insures that you whittle away some life before you para them and release your (hopefully) deadly combo.

And finally, the last basics of pvp that all characters use, potions (and lots of them) and trapped pouches. Bring a LOT of greater heal potions, they will save your life. However a lot of duels agree on not using them. Greater refreshes are nice against macers if you need your stamina back. Explosions seem rather worthless now, I never use them anymore. Bring greater cures if poison is allowed in the duel, most times it isn't. The greater strength and agilities aren't very useful. And have some trapped pouches (cast magic trap on them) prepared before duels. When you're paralyzed, just open a trapped pouch and bam you can move again. However a lot of duels disallow these as well.

Mage vs. Mage
    These are the fun duels that last a long time and don't consist of the mage running as fast as he can in circles while recharging mana. These are the duels that drain 30+ silk each :P. One quick note first that fits into anything, if you see them preparing some sort of combo, get a gheal ready, you'll need it. Precasting the gheal when they're casting the paralyze works very nicely.

Beginning of the Duel
There are several paths you can take to start off with in a duel. Depending on how strict the dueling rules are, you might want to guzzle a greater strength and heal potion before it starts, but that's your perogative. I never do it, since if you die that early that the potion makes a difference...well...you need more help than this guide can give you. :P Make SURE you have reflect up. 99.99999% of the time, it will be dropped, but the one time the other duelist doesn't check for it is the time you win easy. Now, onto the paths you can take.

Early offensive
This is where you want to drop your opponent in 10 seconds flat without him really getting a chance to do anything. Personally, I consider this fairly unreliable considering that they have a large pool of mana to heal themselves with, and greater heal takes less mana and time than the attack spells.

However, with that said, here are some early duel options.
-a lot of players start out by dropping reflect and immediately paralyzing the opponent, and then doing a combo on them. This works okay, but since most duelists have 100 strength, you'll rarely do enough damage this way to kill them before they heal. I think the best early offensive combo, is the precast para/weapon hit combo, then the big weapon/fs combo. If you can pull it off, this kills anyone. The only problem is most people precast a heal when they see a para coming. Quick note: often times when your reflect drop spell bounces back at you, it will disrupt your first para or whatever. Wait the miniscule amount of time it takes to bounce back before you start casting.

-In general, I find early offensives very unreliable. If you don't kill them, you'll be *very* low on mana and they'll have used almost none to heal back up. Especially since the latest defensive duelist tactic is to precast a harm or magic arrow not to drop your reflect but to release their paralyze. If they release the para during your critical combo, you're screwed.

2) The midway or apathetic beginning. This isn't overly defensive or offensive. This is probably the most reliable way of going. Drop their reflect right away and see what they do. If they cast a heal or weak attack spell (to drop para), arm your weapon and charge at them gungho. It will mess up their defensive strategy a bit, and they'll use up some mana to heal the damage you did (while you used none). Precast a spell if you want, but this will usually cause them to heal as soon as their health drops even a little. However, if the opponent chooses an offensive strategy, do the opposite and precast your choice of a heal or para dropper. I personally still prefer to charge at them with the weapon, you might disrupt the para, and now they're scrambling.

3) The defensive beginning. This is where you may not even drop their resist to start with, you precast a para dropper (since it looks like a reflect dropper anyway) and just stand there and await the onslaught. This is a good opening against an offensive duelist, since you won't use much mana up and you'll be perfectly calm and collected when their 90 damage combo hits. However if it DOES kill you, it kinda sucks :P, but that's when they make a good swing with their vanq halberd of meanassedness. This strategy waits out the opponent, healing any damage they do and then doing your offensive when they have no mana left.

Mid Duel
The mid duel may or may not exist during a duel. This is when one person has no mana and the other does. This part is very simple. If you have mana and they don't, combo them to hell and back. If you are the one that failed your early offensive, hope to hell you can heal back up...and meditate as much as you can. If you can spare a paralyze, do it and just meditate until their resist breaks it off. (As a quick side note, I once just kept paralyzing a fighter and meditating until I was back up to 100 mana. They weren't happy but hey, I won. =).

Late Duel
This is where both players are somewhat low on mana and are basically running around hitting with weapons and meditating when possible. Throwing a few spells around. This is the part that lasts a loooong looooong time in some duels. The biggest priority here is keeping yourself healed and hoping you knock them down a ways in health. At this stage, I like to precast a paralyze and whack at them with my weapon for a bit. When they run off to heal, release the para. They're now wounded and can't cast. However, I'd recommend against doing this if they have the upper hand weapon-wise. If they can out smack you, precasting a para is bad because when you go to heal you'll have to cancel the paralyze as well which costs precious time.

Finishing the Duel
This is where you face plant them and give them a nice dirtnap. Look for a slight upper hand when exchanging weapon blows, then get off a quick combo. If you have the mana, I prefer ebolt then an exp/ebolt combo. The first ebolt may or (likely) may not kill them, however, it might disrupt a heal and will add to the amount they have to heal back. At this point, an explosion/ebolt combo SHOULD kill them, if not, a quick hally or qstaff hit should fall them. Of course, this will fail many times and now you're low on mana again. This is the most difficult part of the duel when anything could happen. Fizzle a flamestrike, resist some big combo, who knows. Play it as it comes and look for an opening for a combo. Again, as always, mana is key. Don't expend it if you can't kill them with the mana dump. If you think you can, go for it. At this point, big long combos are pretty much thrown out the window and you have to do what you can whenever. Throw an ebolt if they're running off to heal, whatever.

After Duel
Uh, well this is when you loot and/or res them. The fun part where you look l33t and get to gloat. =)

Final Notes
Weapon strategy: for swords mages, use the hally for combos only or for a big hit at the end. The swing time is too long to rely on, and if you use it a lot the delay will mess up that needed final hit. Use a katana when exchanging blows. For macers: use your qstaff all the time. It's nice when they have no stamina left and you can keep beating on them while they scramble to heal without the pain of chasing them around.

Mage vs. Warrior
    These duels aren't much fun, but a little more interesting than warrior/warrior duels (i.e. two people stand by each other and heal repeatedly....wooo....). However, the mage spends most of his time running his ass off and trying to get paralyzes cast without being disrupted.

Beginning Duel
As soon as whoever says go says go, drop their reflect and get a paralyze ready. Make sure you wait until the spell bounces back, because if you disrupt your own spell you only add to the hell that is spell disruption. If you can get your first paralyze off without being disrupted, that's a very good thing. Now, you have the option of doing a combo on them, however more often than not their "precasted" bandage will kick in just as your combo hits and it's a waste of mana. What I like to do is precast a paralyze and charge at them with my weapon. If you end up doing okay against them in hand to hand, you should be pretty certain at this point you're going to win. However, more often than not you'll be whacked down a lot, but not before dealing some damage of your own. Once they're down a bit, release the paralyze and heal yourself back up. Now steps you should take are:

1) Combo them
2) Hope it kills them

If it doesn't, their para is released, more than likely their bandage kicks in, and you're low on mana. This is when the suck part of the Mage vs. Warrior duel comes in...running for your life. Middle / Late Duel
This is where your combo didn't work and you're running for your life hoping for mana. At this point, you're praying for mana, and you're praying to get a paralyze off so you can meditate (hint: para them so you can meditate). If you didn't kill them right off the bat, you're hoping you get an opening and get a quick spell off before they can heal. I normally precast a flamestrike and try and release it when they're around half health. They won't be expecting such a big drop in life and probably won't have a heal finishing. *Hopefully* you can finish them off before they de-equip and gheal. If the duel gets to this point, the warrior wins probably three times out of four, assuming they're capable. Thankfully, most dex fighters AREN'T capable and have no resist or pvp skill. :P

Final Notes
Weapon strategy: basically the same as above, except I'd recommend against using a halberd against a faster fighter, since you won't hit very often. Always be ready to heal. If they get in a few good swings in a row you'll be really hurting, and if you have to run around hoping to not have it disrupted, you'll probably die. Always get ready to heal earlier against fighters than against mages. If they have a far better connection than you, don't duel them, you'll lose. :P

Summary
    Not really any summary except a few miscellaneous points to throw in.

1) It seems very odd, but parrying CAN work with a mage (against other mages, bear with me here). If you can survive the early mana dump (and if you can't you should still be reading above), you'll ALWAYS have the extra hand in the exchanging blows during mid and end duel. They'll do far less damage and you can outright block some of their hits, which really messes up the big hally combos. However, you have to sacrifice resist for it, which is dubiously good. Having parry rather than resist basically means it's a lot harder to survive the early mana dumps, but if you can you'll have them on the ropes.

2) Mana is your friend. Plain and simple. Meditate as often as possible.

3) When preparing for a duel, try and negotiate the following:
-no potions
-no trapped boxes
-no poison

Most (if not all) mages will agree to this, you'll have a tougher time pushing this on a warrior though. Get as many of the above as you can.

4) And the most final, important point: you'll never be good at pvp if your computer sucks and you're on a 14.4. It's a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless.

Hope this has been some help to you!

-Nocturnal of KoY
Pacific Shard
http://ndr.n3.net