Nocturnal's Guide to PvPing as a Mage
By: Nocturnal
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:
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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 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. 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.
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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
Early offensive
However, with that said, here are some early duel options. -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
Late Duel
Finishing the Duel
After Duel
Final Notes
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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
1) Combo 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
Final Notes
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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: 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
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