Hey all...

As some know I made my first real trek into pvp-land the other night with dark (thanks for showing me "the ropes bro), and then a few other friends (farida and sargentmajor) for a larger group experience. I played the whole night in pvp only (I thought Id never say that before I reached lvl 100) and I have to say - I had an awesome time. It was endlessly better than my "real" first and second times when the people who were playing were less than accomodating or friendly in their own way. So thanks to all who were there to bolster the experience (Necro is the only one I know from here besides my "normal" in-game friends, and he called me out immediately, lol - he also stomped me soundly ) Now, on to what I really need to ask about pvp...

I played with both Swiper and Aerator for about half of the night each, and I have to say that I was much much better with Aerator (ranger) and had more fun.

With Swiper I got laid out by all and any mages, although I did alright against rangers and seemingly quite good against other "non-uber" fighters. One mage told me the reason I was dying with Swiper is that crystal gear is useless in pvp because its all high def (Im all rbw purp crystal gear almost) and that I only use 2 1h Wraths and that 2h weaps are much better. Is there a reason for this? Is it because with 1 2h I can do more crit dmg or one-shots? Also, the person asked if I was an all STR fighter (which I am) and thats why i got smoked in pvp. Now, I dont seem to have bad end/hp with my gear, so I respeced for fun to all end, and lasted longer, but then seemed to do no appreciable dmg. It seems I'm at a "schooling" loss with pvping with a fighter, lol.

As for Aerator, I bought skills I never had before (i.e. fear shot..) and I played, but it seemed that no one uses a poison ranger in pvp. Like I said, it seems I did alright, but when I asked about poison skills being used in pvp, most everyone said that the crit ranger is much much better in pvp. Is that somewhat true? Are there any "true" poison rangers in pvp? Ive never asked this before, but can someone take a look at Aer and make some suggestions?

I think I'm going to "convert" aerator to pvp and use Swiper for pve, not entirely sure, but thats my feeling. I currently build 1 Agi, 2 end, 2 int (because I like to use the ranger skills and have good magic dmg). I use all "bone gear" and am currently farming for rbws of them all at my level (trying to get to 30 to use bill as he seems a definite bonus to have in pvp from my one day experience).

Thanks in advance all whom I played with/against that I didnt mention. I had a good time this time and really got "into" pvping and had fun (which is my goal, winning is cool, but I like having a good fight over anything). But, I would like to learn/be able to do my best with someone Im going to build just to pvp.

Sorry for the long post, but Ive had less time on forums, and I had to get it all out at once. Thanks in advance guys.

note: I think my skills on my chars will be how I set them back to pve for a short while. Disregard what skills are in my slots, thats not how I had them for pvping.



Edited by Teclis (05/11/08 10:20 PM)

[mysterious voice]The Dark Side consumes you... ke ke ke...[/mysterious voice]

Anyways, it's nice to see another innocent player fall victim to the seduction of PvP. =P

Regarding Fighters in PvP: High Defense gear is not useless in PvP, but it is very useless against Mages. The reason being Magical Attacks ignores defense ratings, and armour with high defense ratings often reduce your speed a lot which makes you more vulnerable to kiting Mages. I personally do not believe 2H weapons to be better than 2 1H weapons: lots of skills have their cooldowns based on weapons speed, so if anything dual wielding 1H weapons is better as you can unleash your skills more often. That is a matter of preference though, some people prefer to take chunks out of other's health/mana.

Full STR Fighters aren't useless in PvP IMO, considering some can take out low health opponents in two to three hits. On the other hand, others can take you out in very few hits as well, so its a double edged sword. However, END Fighters do seem to be the better choice: since Fighters need to get close to opponents to deal damage, you're going to be taking damage as you charge against a Ranger/Mage, and without sufficient END chances are you're going to crumble before you even get to them. Again though, matter of preference: whether you want to ambush your opponents and take them down quickly, or to just plain outlast them with superior health.

Against Mages: the best bet for a Fighter against a Mage is to wear gears with lots of resists and high speed, like "Shazam!". Defense ratings make no difference to Mages, but resists do. Switching to equipments with a lot of resistance against a Mage's element (usually Shadow), and using the respective elemental resist buff, can force a Mage to change his/her elemental attack, which hopefully will be weaker than his/her preferred one.

Regarding Rangers: I doubt there are true "Poison" Rangers in PvP, though I'm not sure exactly what constitutes as a Poison Ranger. Certainly lots of Rangers use poison shot and putrid penetration (and fear shot, possibly acidic blight), but not as primary attacks... poison shot is for extra damage and to stop opponent from using Spirit of the Hare or Heal Self Not Other if they try to flee, and putrid penetration is for stunning/slowing. Primarily, I think most Rangers prefer to deal normal, physical damage augmented with trigger finger frenzy. I don't know about Crit Rangers, I've been told they aren't useful in PvP, but I may be wrong. Certainly I don't see as many Plate Piercers these days, so maybe they have fallen out of favour.

Hope that helps.

I'm just going to touch on poison rangers atm i've got a lot to say about everything and don't want to go heavy into it right now. And since you are going to mainly use the ranger my advise there will be best

So, no, there aren't really any true poison rangers because the dps isn't high enough to make it worth losing all of the end or agil to int to boost those poison skills.

Critical rangers aren't "useless" but they aren't all that useful either. A true crit ranger would only have 10-20k health in pvp so you will just die quickly. This would also be considered a dps ranger. But with that low health and speed issues its not good to play solo, you can however, if you are good, play crit ranger in a group, as long as you can kite at get away very quickly.

The best way to go for a "critical ranger" is to stat full endurance(i do this for all ranger builds for pvp, and for solo grinding pve) doing this you can get a base of about 40k health. This is workable if you can kite, but never against a mage. A good mage will almost always win, but i know how to beat some of the god mages out there, MageNolen excluded hehe.

Now with a base of 40k health you have quite a bit of room to play with, full critical gear and agil jewelry you will get near to 2 to 1 agil(maybe more i havn't paid that much attention lately) and end effective. So you have a good attack rating and good damage, if you can kite well enough you can do well in most situations. But the weapon doesn't need to be a PP for it to work, Demon Snipers mana steal is a very valuable asset, you can use skills with little mana because you can just get it back in a few regular shots. As a side note, some mana steal with any ranger is a very very good idea, and especially for endurance ranger builds. For grouping and for fighting groups The Judge is wonderful, big hits, great for taking down weakened runners.

That build is best used for grouping(stay back and kite doing as much damage as possible) and sometimes fighting other groups.

In general all around and great to start any match with, endurance ranger, same stats, full end. And good endurance gear, chain set(girdle, luv cuffs, shackles etc) 1 or 2 endurance jewelry pieces, play with stuff to balance things out, you may only have a couple peices with half and half. Endurance bow for sure(can swith out to The Judge in some situations). At least one mana steal piece(gloves or boots are best) doesn't really matter what the stats are too much. Using a build like this you can get 100k or more health and still hit and deal out damage, plus the extra def from chain and or splint armors will help reduce hits from fighters. This is the best way to fight a mage, along with resist buffs(shazam can be a good body replacement as well in this situation).

If you need to run on occasion or just want to boost poison skills when chasing use a good +12% or better mage body.

For skills, rangers are easy to set up. Poison shot(no noxious shot unless you are fighting a group in a group) fear shot, Putrid penetration if you can get it, trigger finger frenzy, spirit of the hare and heal. Passives are duh, Average BMI, Trigger Happy, and use gym freak(the nerf in next patch isn't really as bad as it sounds) especially for endurance builds. Light on the loafers will help to counter speed debuffs, resists should replace this when fighting mages.

That should be a good start, if you have any questions, ask, i'm sure i'll have an answer for you, or know someone who does

If you look at Nebrius, I'm using what could be considered a poison ranger build (as far as pvp goes).

In my limited experience, going full end doesn't work as well as splitting it a bit. Especially against fighters, you want enough atk rtg. (+ blight) to get through their usually high def rtg.

One of the main things is to be able to adjust quickly; you want to fill your inventory with different gear that's suited to specific purposes. The same goes for skills.

Full endurance when stating is really all i'm saying, you can build from there, like i said with crit gear you get about 2 to 1 ratio agil and end, with about 40-50k health, any lower than that is very hard to play. You can use chill bill as a buffer basically just extra health if he can get in the way, and his little bit of damage helps to close the gap to. However, i really don't like bill for pvp, he really throws off the balance, and besides he's pretty high maintenance.

With the endurance build the ratio is about 1 to 2 agil and end, and the lower attack rating isn't as bad as you might think. I've got a good deal of experience with rangers in pvp, and not even half of it shows in Mayah. I rarely lose with my rangers when i have them set up for pvp, but Mayah is no longer a pvp build, which is apparent if you look at the xml page.

excellent...thank you all for your thought out responses, I appreciate it.

It seems that Aerator is more of a mage/ranger hybrid than a ranger I guess when taking into consideration the way he's been built, skills, gear, and the ways you guys discuss pvping with skills, etc. Maybe I can play along those lines...

Im planning on getting to 30 to get Bill on purpose to use in pvp, but that seems to only be useful with the build im currently "in". The "bone" gear is usually all high endurance (the non-rbws I find) so maybe I can build an all non-mythinc bone set, and get some uber end+ from that. It seems, like a mage in a way, that I can maybe deal "useful" poison damage or even ice damage AND physical dmg as long as I can take a beating...

So many ways and suggestions to follow, lol. I guess Ill have to feel my way into it. No better way to learn how to play than actually PLAY, right? (oh, and get my bum handed to me by all you helpful senior-pvper's and watch what you did to me so I learn how NOT to get pwned).

Anymore info that anyone would like to add would be great if you guys have time. Ill check when I get a chance. Thanks again for all the info. (Not looking for secrets/tactics btw, Im not like that, just general stuff and stuff that one "should" know in pvp).

Teclis.....dont look dont let the dark side seduce you......sets out bags of cookies and naked lady picture books to tempt TEclis back from the dark side........redies the intervention team

*Ghadd gets mobbed by a horde of PvPers and Chill Bills*

so much love...::sniffs::

::eats cookies while sitting on the PvE porch and seemingly looking at the pictures in the mags...which secretly have rbw lists from the townstons.com stuffed in the pages to REALLY read and try to figure out what equipment aerator should try to get a hold of to pvp with:: rofl...