Dave J.
Banned
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2006
- Messages
- 164
Introduction
Hello. What you are about to read is a small compilation of my own conclusions from several years of RvR. This is meant to give a few tips and tricks of how to setup and play in a somewhat opted and competitive FG. My reason for writing this simple, I think its sad that so many players never get the chance to experience the real FG RvR scene - not saying it is the real way to play DAoC, but it is one way - and therefore might miss out on one thing this game has to offer. It feels like the playerbase has almost divided into two groups; the ones that only play FG RvR, and the ones that never does it. Back in the old days
)) almost all guilds participated in all kinds of rvr-styles, and even tho the player population aint what it used to be, i see no reason why that fact should have changed - from what I've understood, the choice of not playing in FG RvR seems to origin from a "we stand no chance" reasoning, instead of a "i dont find that kind of rvr fun" reason, which really should be the case.
So, I'm writing this and have a small hope that it actually might help a few players regain interest in this form of RvR, not only because I'm a very kind person, but also because I want more groups to fight. And no, not to get more groups to "farm", but simply because each encounter out there is different from the other, and that is why most of us play, right? Now, you can debate if the rest of this guide is true, it's only my personal views and no facts written by Mythics RvR Experts, but if I'm lucky i might have gotten a few things right.
Group Setup
Ah yes, the setup of classes in the FG. This has been debated alot during the whole existance of DAoC, and wheras there have been certain overpowered classes at times, at this moment, I must say that there are no particular setups that are a must, in either realms. You can pretty much make a group consisting of almost any classes, and still have a decent chance of success - given you follow a few guidelines:
There are 4 basic needs in all FGs - Crowd Control, Damage, Damage-Countering and Interrupts. For the normal way of playing, you will need all four in your group to make it work the best possible.
Crowd Control
CC includes mezzing, rooting, stunning and snaring. All tools to disable the enemy, keeping them from doing anything at all, or at least control what they can do. A very important part of your group obviously, and most classes nowadays get some ways to CC the enemy, all from normal class ablities, to ML-abilites or CL-abilities. Theres not any reason to go into detail about the different CC-ways, but there are a few things you should remember.
The first and most important one is to never stun a banelord-class, unless you are completely sure it will die during the stunduration. If the class in question survives the stun and thus have stun-immunity, one of his banelords (Snaring Tendrils) allows him to cast a large-radius pbaoe-snare, each eight seconds. One of the most annoying situations to face no matter what class you are playing. Don't worry tho, this 'bug' is fixed in an upcoming patch, but still worth to know about until then.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that if a player have root-immunity, he cannot be snared from either spells or melee-styles. For example, rooting a tank (which have high determination) might not always be the best choice in handling him, if you have someone with snare-options in your group. Both snare-styles and snare-DDs does not give any snare immunity, so if you play your cards right, you can keep enemies snared (and thus preventing them to do much) for a much longer total duration then a root. This mostly applies to tanks with heavy determination and/or purge: a well casted root on a support or caster-class can be a fight-winner at times, due to the fact that roots cannot be cured, only purged or broken by damage. This is the reason rooting is tending to be even more important then mezzing in the modern rvr.
Damage
Generally the most important factor in a group, since the only way of defeating your enemies is to smash them into pieces. The key to dropping a target in todays rvr is one of two things - either do alot of damage fast, or make sure the enemy support is interrupted or mezzed/stunned. Some classes do very good damage over time (not only talking DoTs here), but that is not enough at the moment, as the healingclasses are equipped with alot of toys to keep the group alive. This is why tank-trains or debuff-nuking are the real winners in the damage-competition. So if possible, try to form your groupsetup so you have at least one or two casters that can dish out good damage, be it by debuff-nuking or normal specnukes, and preferably at least two tanks that can assist on targets when the time is right.
Damage-Countering
Because of the above reasons of how to deal damage, it is important to have classes that can prevent damage from beeing taken in the first place. Because even if you have a healingclass free, the amount of damage can sometimes be too immense to out-heal.
The best way to prevent melee-damage is to have a bodyguarder in the group. If this player does his job well, he will help his healers alot, and making it possible for them to concentrate on other things then only healing. Versus many groups the bodyguarder is a keyplayer, and everyone in the group should keep an eye out for where he is, in case the enemy tanks suddenly take a turn for yourself. Make no mistake tho, its important that everyone in the group plays with the BG'er, his job is harder then it seems, and even the smallest thing can stop him from reaching his target in time for the bodyguard to kick in.
The bodyguarder also have another meleedamage-reducing tool, and that is grapple. Grappling a target makes the bodyguarder stunned for eleven seconds (!), but keeps the target rooted (and this root cannot be broken or purged) for nine seconds. This is a powerful tool, with both good effects, and if unlucky, bad ones. Firstly, grapple should only very carefully be used on a class that has access to useful spells, such as hybrid tanks, or support/caster classes. As the grappled target cannot be hit with melee-attacks, chance is that he might get the oppertunity to start casting spells, and the only way to interrupt him would be for another player to cast spells on him, which is not always that easy. I'd recommend only using grapple when either the target is ready to dish out serious melee-damage (a zerker in hamster-mode for example), or when you are sure your groups casters can nuke him down, then grapple is the perfect tool to stop him from running away. Theres another catch to all of this still however; if the target as the RA Charge up, he can use it to 'escape' the grapple, in the meaning of he can move around, but still not attack until the grapple duration is over. The dangerous thing about this move is that he might end up very far from the bodyguarder, resulting in an oppertunity to do damage until the bodyguarder can catch up. A powerful tool if used right, but dangerous if used without thought.
The best way to prevent magic-damage (aside from interrupts, which is described below), is the Banelord ML-path. Instant large-radius spells, given to classes with Charge, Determination, Purge, Stoicism and, surprisingly enough, some Midgard caster classes, is by far the best way to keep casters interrupted, and therefor preventing them to dish out damage. This is why at least one tank with the banelord path is recommended in all groups. Preferably two, but one is enough if your group contains other classes with good interruption abilities.
Interrupts
After all the expansions DAoC has to offer, a character with all its abilities is a very strong force, even solo when playing in a group. A solo tank, or caster, or a supportcharacter, can turn around a fight solo, if he plays well as soon as he is left unwatched for a moment. Loads of times a fight is going well, when suddenly one of the enemies casters gets free, and can kill half the group in almost notime. So, exactly as important as the parts described above (even tho dd's and cc spells can be considered as such) are the ability to interrupt your enemy. The best way to keep your opponent under control, is to use everyone, and i do mean everyone, in your group to help with this task. This is why the supportplayers in a group are so important; even if its not their main task, when druids, healers and clerics go offensive, and starts to annoy the enemy support, it gives the group an upper hand real quickly. It's like the saying "The best defense is a good offense", and it actually has alot of truth in it. The key to winning a fight can sometimes be for a healerclass to rush forward, using instaheals to keep his group alive, while he interrupts the enemy support - the advantage given from this move can often be enough to win the fight in the long run. It's basically a thing that obviously needs alot of practise, but after a while it will be easy to spot the right time when a 'ninja-move' is needed.
Still, its of course not only the supports task to inflict chaos into the enemylines, its everyones job; as soon as you have a spare second free, do something, anything, that will interrupt the enemy, even if your target isnt even casting at the moment. This manouver is ofcourse of the preventing kind as well; if you keep an enemy caster busy, he cant do damage, if you keep an enemy support busy, he can't trouble the rest of your team, nor can he help his own.
Another very important factor in the interrupt-war are pets. Many, many, many times, have people lost a fight only because they neglacted to take care of the enemy pets. This issue is nowadays so important, that in some situations, even if you land a perfect mez on an enemy FG, the first think you should nuke down as a caster is the enemy pets. Not always, but it's definately not a bad move. Pets have a very nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass if you dont take care of them fast. This is also why you will need at least one caster in your FG, since buffed pets are very hard to kill with melee, whereas they have low magicresists, and even a yellowcon buffed ml9 pet will drop in a few nukes. I really cant stress this enough, taking care of pets is an as important task as any, to do when playing in a FG.
Realm Abilities
The reason high RR groups win over lower RR groups: they have more win-buttons. Right? Well, partly, but thats not the whole story. A soloing character survives because of his abilities; he's solo so none else can help him. But in a group, its not that simple. There are two type of classes in a FG, the multitasking ones, and the damagedealing ones. The first type, does alot of things, maybe some damage, some interrupting, some CCing, some healing etc etc.. These classes should spec their RA's to gain different support-abilities to their group, a few examples might come in handy - the groups demezzer should most definately have purge, and moc. The healing classes should have BoF, MoC, DI and similar things. Classes with alot of CC-spells should have moc. These abilites helps the groups when things go wrong, or at least not according to plans. These defensive skills keep the group alive, which is even more important then doing damage to the enemy.
Along with the same lines, bodyguarding classes should have either high determination, or high purge (preferably both), so that they can always be avaliable where they are needed.
The second group of chars, the damagedealers, might want to concentrate their RA's on passives, preferably on those that increase their damage, Mastery of Magery, Wild Power, Aug Acuity, Aug Dex is the main choices. This due to the fact explained above: when you get the chance to dish out some DD's, you want them to do as much damage as possible. If your character is very high RR, i would say RR9+, you have the choice to have MoC3 as well, if you feel like wanting it. But its nothing i would recommend below that realmrank at least.
Same arguement go for the pure damagedealingtanks, alot of MoPain is to recomment, along with high Charge, to always be free at the start of a fight, in case the other group got the upper hand with CC or such.
Basically figure out what your real role in a group is, and spec RA's accordingly.
Tactics
This word might be a bit misleading, there are really no pure tactics set up for FG RvR, more different moves or things to do in certain situations. There are too many for me to describe here, most can really only be understood by experiencing them, but i can give a few pointers.
* If you meet a casterheavy group, do your best to keep the fight at land - if they manage to pull you down in the water, it will be hell for you to take control over the fight.
* If you meet a tankheavy group, let the most vulnerable casters box up at eachother, so that your bodyguarder can easily switch between them.
* Alb groups are known to have alot of interrupts, so if you meet them, be prepared to be interrupted most of the time (due to pets, casters with long ranged spells)
* Midgroups are known for their high DPS, so if you meet them, concentrate at first on the defensive things to do, until you have them under control.
* Hibgroups are known for the high amount of stuns on their damagedealers, so it is very important your groupmembers keep an eye on the situation around them, someone might be stunned and in trouble fast.
* Last but not least, some groups out there keep pushing away from you when you fight, these groups spew speedwarps, and have lots of casters in them. Their tactic is basically to pull someone out of your healrange, and nuke him down. If they succeed, it will mean they will soon get the upper hand of the fight, and with the heavy damage from their casters the fight can be over very soon. The key to beat such a group is to concentrate on CC their members, rooting works best due to not beeing curable, and not breaking the CC unless you are 100% sure you will drop the target. Always keep up with them when they run (after you have taken care of pets!), and keep your group well coordinated, and it shouldnt be so hard to beat them after some practise.
Final Words
So, there's a few tips for anyone not so familiar with the FG scene, and while some of these things might seem obvious or easy, its hard to fully master them until you have actually experienced them in person. Watching a few movies from the top guilds might also help, you get alot of ideas and "aha!" moments from them.
Another thing that helps alot is different communication programs such as Ventrilo or TeamSpeak, the differance in teamplay from using only the groupchat to actually beeing able to speak to eachother is huge, and hopefully you can enjoy eachother more as well; there are usally alot of fun moments when you play, along with the usual bit of whining ofcourse
Also do remember, the path to succeeding can be long and hard, but everyone has been newbies at one point, and i dont think todays RvR is that hard to learn, as long as you keep practising. Some people might finding loosing hard because the ego-boosing of the winning team, but seriously, screw that. Noone really cares about that, the important thing is that you have felt you have done a good job, and that you learn new stuff while at it.
No guts no glory!
ps. Feel free to add helpful tips & tricks in this thread.
Hello. What you are about to read is a small compilation of my own conclusions from several years of RvR. This is meant to give a few tips and tricks of how to setup and play in a somewhat opted and competitive FG. My reason for writing this simple, I think its sad that so many players never get the chance to experience the real FG RvR scene - not saying it is the real way to play DAoC, but it is one way - and therefore might miss out on one thing this game has to offer. It feels like the playerbase has almost divided into two groups; the ones that only play FG RvR, and the ones that never does it. Back in the old days
)) almost all guilds participated in all kinds of rvr-styles, and even tho the player population aint what it used to be, i see no reason why that fact should have changed - from what I've understood, the choice of not playing in FG RvR seems to origin from a "we stand no chance" reasoning, instead of a "i dont find that kind of rvr fun" reason, which really should be the case.So, I'm writing this and have a small hope that it actually might help a few players regain interest in this form of RvR, not only because I'm a very kind person, but also because I want more groups to fight. And no, not to get more groups to "farm", but simply because each encounter out there is different from the other, and that is why most of us play, right? Now, you can debate if the rest of this guide is true, it's only my personal views and no facts written by Mythics RvR Experts, but if I'm lucky i might have gotten a few things right.
Group Setup
Ah yes, the setup of classes in the FG. This has been debated alot during the whole existance of DAoC, and wheras there have been certain overpowered classes at times, at this moment, I must say that there are no particular setups that are a must, in either realms. You can pretty much make a group consisting of almost any classes, and still have a decent chance of success - given you follow a few guidelines:
There are 4 basic needs in all FGs - Crowd Control, Damage, Damage-Countering and Interrupts. For the normal way of playing, you will need all four in your group to make it work the best possible.
Crowd Control
CC includes mezzing, rooting, stunning and snaring. All tools to disable the enemy, keeping them from doing anything at all, or at least control what they can do. A very important part of your group obviously, and most classes nowadays get some ways to CC the enemy, all from normal class ablities, to ML-abilites or CL-abilities. Theres not any reason to go into detail about the different CC-ways, but there are a few things you should remember.
The first and most important one is to never stun a banelord-class, unless you are completely sure it will die during the stunduration. If the class in question survives the stun and thus have stun-immunity, one of his banelords (Snaring Tendrils) allows him to cast a large-radius pbaoe-snare, each eight seconds. One of the most annoying situations to face no matter what class you are playing. Don't worry tho, this 'bug' is fixed in an upcoming patch, but still worth to know about until then.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that if a player have root-immunity, he cannot be snared from either spells or melee-styles. For example, rooting a tank (which have high determination) might not always be the best choice in handling him, if you have someone with snare-options in your group. Both snare-styles and snare-DDs does not give any snare immunity, so if you play your cards right, you can keep enemies snared (and thus preventing them to do much) for a much longer total duration then a root. This mostly applies to tanks with heavy determination and/or purge: a well casted root on a support or caster-class can be a fight-winner at times, due to the fact that roots cannot be cured, only purged or broken by damage. This is the reason rooting is tending to be even more important then mezzing in the modern rvr.
Damage
Generally the most important factor in a group, since the only way of defeating your enemies is to smash them into pieces. The key to dropping a target in todays rvr is one of two things - either do alot of damage fast, or make sure the enemy support is interrupted or mezzed/stunned. Some classes do very good damage over time (not only talking DoTs here), but that is not enough at the moment, as the healingclasses are equipped with alot of toys to keep the group alive. This is why tank-trains or debuff-nuking are the real winners in the damage-competition. So if possible, try to form your groupsetup so you have at least one or two casters that can dish out good damage, be it by debuff-nuking or normal specnukes, and preferably at least two tanks that can assist on targets when the time is right.
Damage-Countering
Because of the above reasons of how to deal damage, it is important to have classes that can prevent damage from beeing taken in the first place. Because even if you have a healingclass free, the amount of damage can sometimes be too immense to out-heal.
The best way to prevent melee-damage is to have a bodyguarder in the group. If this player does his job well, he will help his healers alot, and making it possible for them to concentrate on other things then only healing. Versus many groups the bodyguarder is a keyplayer, and everyone in the group should keep an eye out for where he is, in case the enemy tanks suddenly take a turn for yourself. Make no mistake tho, its important that everyone in the group plays with the BG'er, his job is harder then it seems, and even the smallest thing can stop him from reaching his target in time for the bodyguard to kick in.
The bodyguarder also have another meleedamage-reducing tool, and that is grapple. Grappling a target makes the bodyguarder stunned for eleven seconds (!), but keeps the target rooted (and this root cannot be broken or purged) for nine seconds. This is a powerful tool, with both good effects, and if unlucky, bad ones. Firstly, grapple should only very carefully be used on a class that has access to useful spells, such as hybrid tanks, or support/caster classes. As the grappled target cannot be hit with melee-attacks, chance is that he might get the oppertunity to start casting spells, and the only way to interrupt him would be for another player to cast spells on him, which is not always that easy. I'd recommend only using grapple when either the target is ready to dish out serious melee-damage (a zerker in hamster-mode for example), or when you are sure your groups casters can nuke him down, then grapple is the perfect tool to stop him from running away. Theres another catch to all of this still however; if the target as the RA Charge up, he can use it to 'escape' the grapple, in the meaning of he can move around, but still not attack until the grapple duration is over. The dangerous thing about this move is that he might end up very far from the bodyguarder, resulting in an oppertunity to do damage until the bodyguarder can catch up. A powerful tool if used right, but dangerous if used without thought.
The best way to prevent magic-damage (aside from interrupts, which is described below), is the Banelord ML-path. Instant large-radius spells, given to classes with Charge, Determination, Purge, Stoicism and, surprisingly enough, some Midgard caster classes, is by far the best way to keep casters interrupted, and therefor preventing them to dish out damage. This is why at least one tank with the banelord path is recommended in all groups. Preferably two, but one is enough if your group contains other classes with good interruption abilities.
Interrupts
After all the expansions DAoC has to offer, a character with all its abilities is a very strong force, even solo when playing in a group. A solo tank, or caster, or a supportcharacter, can turn around a fight solo, if he plays well as soon as he is left unwatched for a moment. Loads of times a fight is going well, when suddenly one of the enemies casters gets free, and can kill half the group in almost notime. So, exactly as important as the parts described above (even tho dd's and cc spells can be considered as such) are the ability to interrupt your enemy. The best way to keep your opponent under control, is to use everyone, and i do mean everyone, in your group to help with this task. This is why the supportplayers in a group are so important; even if its not their main task, when druids, healers and clerics go offensive, and starts to annoy the enemy support, it gives the group an upper hand real quickly. It's like the saying "The best defense is a good offense", and it actually has alot of truth in it. The key to winning a fight can sometimes be for a healerclass to rush forward, using instaheals to keep his group alive, while he interrupts the enemy support - the advantage given from this move can often be enough to win the fight in the long run. It's basically a thing that obviously needs alot of practise, but after a while it will be easy to spot the right time when a 'ninja-move' is needed.
Still, its of course not only the supports task to inflict chaos into the enemylines, its everyones job; as soon as you have a spare second free, do something, anything, that will interrupt the enemy, even if your target isnt even casting at the moment. This manouver is ofcourse of the preventing kind as well; if you keep an enemy caster busy, he cant do damage, if you keep an enemy support busy, he can't trouble the rest of your team, nor can he help his own.
Another very important factor in the interrupt-war are pets. Many, many, many times, have people lost a fight only because they neglacted to take care of the enemy pets. This issue is nowadays so important, that in some situations, even if you land a perfect mez on an enemy FG, the first think you should nuke down as a caster is the enemy pets. Not always, but it's definately not a bad move. Pets have a very nasty habit of coming back and biting you in the ass if you dont take care of them fast. This is also why you will need at least one caster in your FG, since buffed pets are very hard to kill with melee, whereas they have low magicresists, and even a yellowcon buffed ml9 pet will drop in a few nukes. I really cant stress this enough, taking care of pets is an as important task as any, to do when playing in a FG.
Realm Abilities
The reason high RR groups win over lower RR groups: they have more win-buttons. Right? Well, partly, but thats not the whole story. A soloing character survives because of his abilities; he's solo so none else can help him. But in a group, its not that simple. There are two type of classes in a FG, the multitasking ones, and the damagedealing ones. The first type, does alot of things, maybe some damage, some interrupting, some CCing, some healing etc etc.. These classes should spec their RA's to gain different support-abilities to their group, a few examples might come in handy - the groups demezzer should most definately have purge, and moc. The healing classes should have BoF, MoC, DI and similar things. Classes with alot of CC-spells should have moc. These abilites helps the groups when things go wrong, or at least not according to plans. These defensive skills keep the group alive, which is even more important then doing damage to the enemy.
Along with the same lines, bodyguarding classes should have either high determination, or high purge (preferably both), so that they can always be avaliable where they are needed.
The second group of chars, the damagedealers, might want to concentrate their RA's on passives, preferably on those that increase their damage, Mastery of Magery, Wild Power, Aug Acuity, Aug Dex is the main choices. This due to the fact explained above: when you get the chance to dish out some DD's, you want them to do as much damage as possible. If your character is very high RR, i would say RR9+, you have the choice to have MoC3 as well, if you feel like wanting it. But its nothing i would recommend below that realmrank at least.
Same arguement go for the pure damagedealingtanks, alot of MoPain is to recomment, along with high Charge, to always be free at the start of a fight, in case the other group got the upper hand with CC or such.
Basically figure out what your real role in a group is, and spec RA's accordingly.
Tactics
This word might be a bit misleading, there are really no pure tactics set up for FG RvR, more different moves or things to do in certain situations. There are too many for me to describe here, most can really only be understood by experiencing them, but i can give a few pointers.
* If you meet a casterheavy group, do your best to keep the fight at land - if they manage to pull you down in the water, it will be hell for you to take control over the fight.
* If you meet a tankheavy group, let the most vulnerable casters box up at eachother, so that your bodyguarder can easily switch between them.
* Alb groups are known to have alot of interrupts, so if you meet them, be prepared to be interrupted most of the time (due to pets, casters with long ranged spells)
* Midgroups are known for their high DPS, so if you meet them, concentrate at first on the defensive things to do, until you have them under control.
* Hibgroups are known for the high amount of stuns on their damagedealers, so it is very important your groupmembers keep an eye on the situation around them, someone might be stunned and in trouble fast.
* Last but not least, some groups out there keep pushing away from you when you fight, these groups spew speedwarps, and have lots of casters in them. Their tactic is basically to pull someone out of your healrange, and nuke him down. If they succeed, it will mean they will soon get the upper hand of the fight, and with the heavy damage from their casters the fight can be over very soon. The key to beat such a group is to concentrate on CC their members, rooting works best due to not beeing curable, and not breaking the CC unless you are 100% sure you will drop the target. Always keep up with them when they run (after you have taken care of pets!), and keep your group well coordinated, and it shouldnt be so hard to beat them after some practise.
Final Words
So, there's a few tips for anyone not so familiar with the FG scene, and while some of these things might seem obvious or easy, its hard to fully master them until you have actually experienced them in person. Watching a few movies from the top guilds might also help, you get alot of ideas and "aha!" moments from them.
Another thing that helps alot is different communication programs such as Ventrilo or TeamSpeak, the differance in teamplay from using only the groupchat to actually beeing able to speak to eachother is huge, and hopefully you can enjoy eachother more as well; there are usally alot of fun moments when you play, along with the usual bit of whining ofcourse
Also do remember, the path to succeeding can be long and hard, but everyone has been newbies at one point, and i dont think todays RvR is that hard to learn, as long as you keep practising. Some people might finding loosing hard because the ego-boosing of the winning team, but seriously, screw that. Noone really cares about that, the important thing is that you have felt you have done a good job, and that you learn new stuff while at it.
No guts no glory!
ps. Feel free to add helpful tips & tricks in this thread.
