(Go Directly To Fun, Do Not Pass Grind)
Hello all. I was bored waiting for stuff to sell, so I started writing. It struck me a while back, that there didn't seem to be a beginner-friendly guide to the nitty-gritty of playing Sin/Ranger.
There's an excellent guide here, which everyone really should read first. But it's more general and macro-focused than what I had in mind.
Now, a lot of this is Obvious if you're an old hand. And most of it is Highly Opinionated. You're quite welcome to snort and disagree. I'll just say, this is my experience and hard-earned wisdom, managing to have fun with my dirt-poor NM Sin, mostly solo in 1-15. (Though, a lot of it has broader application, even for other classes.)
Disclaimer: If your personal goal in PvP is "getting mah ranks real quick", this is not for you. Go make a... really, anything else.
If you're like me - yeah, I know, what are the odds - and enjoy PvP for the sake of PvP... read on.
So, you've got your 3 str / 2 dex Assassin / Ranger to L15. You've got your noble kit good to go. Cup of coffee handy, you step into the free-for-all zone.
The first lesson is learning not to fight. This is your class privilege. Stealth and Sprint. Try to have at least one of them ready at all times. Yes, I know, the recharge timers are cruel. But you need to start slow. Getting caught up in a repeated lemming rush will crush your soul.
Speaking of which, see that big pile of people on the hill, facing off against the other side's even bigger pile? Yeah, you don't want to be there. Trust me on this. You can not contribute in a ranged standoff. Get out of there. Go around. There's plenty of room.
Yes, there will come a time when you can actually break camps, but... it's not the first thing you should try. That way lies boredom, depression and repeatedly dying horribly.
Don't bring knives to a gunfight. Don't fight on the other guy's terms.
Dex-based dodging only gets you so far. Lapis-enhanced REC, def, magic resist or hp gets you a bit further. But your main way of avoiding death is neither of these. You're a Miyagi Tank. "The best block is not being there." Never be where you are expected. Never stay where twelve guys can give you their full attention. You're not Frontal Assault Person. Don't even try to be. Flank, avoid, hit-and-run and - when you can pull it off - sprint right through all of them. Never get into a stand-up fight. You're not made for it.
Go roaming. Get the lay of the land. Make friends in the Iron Blood. (Anyone who's there is either another non-hiller or a questing greenhorn. The former is Your Kind Of People and the latter... needs a helping hand and - *cough* - early indoctrination. To save them from becoming lemmings later.)
Pay attention. Keep your eye on the radar. When it flashes, find the enemy by cycling targets with § (key-to-the-left-of-1, tilde on some keyboards) before they're even in visual range. Always keep looking around. (Moving by ground-click lets you turn the camera while staying your course. Moving by forward double-tap lets you turn yourself. Both have their uses.) Never get so caught up chasing anyone, you stop watching your surroundings. And if someone retreats into guard range, don't follow. Don't. Follow. Back up, give them a sarcastic clap-as-admitted, and move on.
Start slow. Find yourself some 1v1s. Learn. Then move up. Oh, I can take two targets if I kill the one who's snoozing first? Wooo. What about three? Raaaah, got one. Now I'm almost dead, but hey... poofstealthgone. Get a sense of what's manageable, and don't hesitate to leave when in over your head.
Use your surroundings to your advantage. Force melee enemies to follow you around cover, so that the ranged ones lose line-of-sight. By all means, make them chase you into the orange guards and then stun the heck out of them. You'll live longer, and there's nothing more satisfying than wiping an entire party with just a bit of timely assistance from NPC Security.
If at all possible, don't fight people while you've got monster aggro. Run out of range or finish off the critter, then turn your attention to enemy players. (Stealth prevents monster aggro, but doesn't break it. And even if the mobs will miss you most of the time, you don't want a handy AoE / ground shock target following you around while you're making a quiet getaway.)
On a related note: when going to the Iron Blood, bring Slow cure scrolls. And take pains not to antagonize the Vipers. (If possible, make enemies run through them to get to you. Slowed targets are good targets.) In fact, always position yourself so that others have to draw monster aggro to get to you. Dex monkeys can dodge NPCs very well. Everyone else can't. And you can always use a bit of extra damage on a target.
When you're Stealthing out of trouble, immediately start moving by WASD. It stops you accidentally auto-attacking and becoming visible again, and gets you out of range of traps, ground shocks and clerical True Seeing spells. Which will all ruin your day.
Sprinting or Stealthing away doesn't always have to mean you're leaving the fight. Get some distance, reassess who's wounded and who's stopped paying attention to you... and go back in. (Sometimes, all you need to win is a few more seconds for the potion timer to recharge.)
You can /town while stealthed. Use at your discretion. (If I'm hiding in a cluster of Sonic Cheese and can't get out of range before timer runs out, I will sometimes teleport home. If they've bored me. On other occasions... "%¤% it, I'm taking this Mage with me or I die trying. Possibly both.")
If you do want to help with the campers... move up the waterway and thin the herd of reinforcements. Or if you're in a roaming party - that rare and beautiful beast - go hit the altar. If you can take it, woo. If it pulls the campers off your hill, woo. Really, it's win-win. (And if your party yields to temptation and gets stuck in a Staring Contest... ask them to get moving. If they won't, politely thank them for the group, refresh the LUC buff one final time and leave.)
When jumping on a backline cluster of Zapmeisters and Doctors... don't focus on one target. Spread the love around. Land as many halt kicks and stuns as you can on different people. (Nine seconds of silence or four seconds of nothing can make a big difference to your pals pounding on their frontline. Assuming you have pals pounding on their frontline. If not, why are you in the backline caster cluster?)
When surrounded by Sonic Hedgehogs and all out of both Stealth and Sprint... don't try to run. Either fight till your last breath or stop and fire off as many different emotes as you can. This increases your Style rankings, which is something I just made up.
Don't keep pounding on a high-defense target unless they're alone. And if they are alone, don't get too obsessed with breaking them. Taking down a defender/guardian is not a fight. It's a bloody siege. Chances are you'll get jumped just as you get them to 10% hp. On the bright side, they usually can't do more than debuff you. If they're with a party, you can cheerfully leave them for last. (Oh, and here's something it took me a while to learn: the tanks have blunt weapons, fighters/warriors have sharp ones.)
On a related note, never leave a Doctor unmolested. Take them out as soon as you see the golden glow of doom. If they're wearing kevlar undies, as many of them do, just halt-kick, then return to beating on whoever they were healing. Repeat as necessary.
When someone kills you in a string of all crits, make a note. Then don't fight that person ever again. Miyagi Tank, remember? They're paying for easy kills, but you're not getting paid to provide it. You're a sneaky stabby one. You have the option of boring them to death. (By all means, if you're with a group, be sure to stun-and-pile-on. But don't get too surprised when they mysteriously vanish at 30% hp. Some people are more interested in Winning than they are in Playing. Shrug, and move on.)
If you're the kind of person who beats up pinball machines... bring lots of blood pressure medication. Here's why. You're sprinting and chasing? "Insufficent range." You're sprinting and hitting from the front? "Insufficient range." They're slowed? "Insufficient range." They're stationary? "Insufficient range." They're stationary and resting? "Insufficient range." They're chained to a wall with an elephant sitting on their head? "Insufficient range."
Lag happens and - thanks to skill chains and timers - you're the one who suffers the most from it. Take deep breaths.
Insult to injury, all of your debuffs - stop, silence, stun, drag down and venom - can be cured by scrolls and potions. Always assume everyone brought cures and be pleasantly surprised when they didn't. (It's better than being unpleasantly surprised when the choppy git you just stunned takes 75% of your hitpoints in half a second.)
Bring your own cures. Dispel potions take care of stop, stun and slow - but they're expensive and only come in stacks of 3. Stop, stun and slow cure scrolls are cheaper and come in bigger stacks, but require more Correctly Pressing The Right Button. Use whatever works for you. If you can, get rid of any Damage-over-Time before you hit Stealth. If you can't... well, at least it breaks target lock. (Poison cures take care of Drag Down and Venom, but not the archer/hunter Sustain thingy. Fighter/warrior stomp debuff can't be cured either. Deep breaths.)
Speaking of the Drag Down chain - as an NM, don't bother. It's about equal to a bad rash, and if you need to de-stealth your counterparts, drop a trap as soon as they vanish.
Make use of the keyboard macros. The number keys are good for your skill chains, but when the excrement hits the spinny air-mover-around... you need every millisecond. You don't want to have to reach across they keyboard or - god forbid - move the cursor to click on potions or stealth. And do make sure to drag basic attack onto the skillbar. There are times when you'll just stop hitting after a stun / aggravation. Not having to point-and-click helps. (I have the second skill bar bound to R F C X Z < T G V. I'm sure you can see why.) Find a setup that works for you and practice until it's second nature.
Hang on, I hear you say. Umpty-dozen paragraphs and barely a mention of Teh Ubar Gear?
Well, good news. You're the class that's least reliant on gear. (Like you're the class most suited for NM PvP.) Because you don't - primarily - fight with the big scary numbahs on your equipment. You fight with, erm, tactical concepts. You do mediocre damage, but it doesn't matter if they can't hit back at all. You're too squishy, but then you're just not there. You don't get to kill crowds, but you can disrupt and create chaos like nobody's business.
Clever party members (and out-of-party allies) will know how to capitalize on what you do. (You'll know you're in good company when everyone you stun has a Dogpile of Doom on them in seconds. Or when you zoom into the middle of an enemy party, get promptly targeted by everyone... stealth out and watch your friends stomp all over their distracted heads.)
But, okay. Gear.
During my early NM days, I found my main problem was just not having enough time to get out of dodge. I had some cheap L3 craft and shrewd lapis on... but it was far from enough to reliably dodge or quickly outdamage fighters. And of course, it did nothing against magic. Alright, magic resist will help against zappings, REC will help against physical damage... I compromised. L3 life lapis on your clothes will near double your hitpoints, and has the benefit of helping against all kinds of ouchies. When I can afford breaking umpteen more Dual Craft 3s, I'll get those. About the same hp bonus with a lot more hurt. For now... I've "usually" got enough of a hitpoint buffer to take a bit of a beating and still have time to break and run or bwahahahstealth.
Your mileage may of course vary. And the richer you are, the more options you have. But - and here's my main lesson - you do not have to wait until you're filthy rich and ultimate uber mode of "pwn". Really, you shouldn't. You're missing out on a lot of fun.
Best of luck!
- *Jones
Hello all. I was bored waiting for stuff to sell, so I started writing. It struck me a while back, that there didn't seem to be a beginner-friendly guide to the nitty-gritty of playing Sin/Ranger.
There's an excellent guide here, which everyone really should read first. But it's more general and macro-focused than what I had in mind.
Now, a lot of this is Obvious if you're an old hand. And most of it is Highly Opinionated. You're quite welcome to snort and disagree. I'll just say, this is my experience and hard-earned wisdom, managing to have fun with my dirt-poor NM Sin, mostly solo in 1-15. (Though, a lot of it has broader application, even for other classes.)
Disclaimer: If your personal goal in PvP is "getting mah ranks real quick", this is not for you. Go make a... really, anything else.
If you're like me - yeah, I know, what are the odds - and enjoy PvP for the sake of PvP... read on.
So, you've got your 3 str / 2 dex Assassin / Ranger to L15. You've got your noble kit good to go. Cup of coffee handy, you step into the free-for-all zone.
The first lesson is learning not to fight. This is your class privilege. Stealth and Sprint. Try to have at least one of them ready at all times. Yes, I know, the recharge timers are cruel. But you need to start slow. Getting caught up in a repeated lemming rush will crush your soul.
Speaking of which, see that big pile of people on the hill, facing off against the other side's even bigger pile? Yeah, you don't want to be there. Trust me on this. You can not contribute in a ranged standoff. Get out of there. Go around. There's plenty of room.
Yes, there will come a time when you can actually break camps, but... it's not the first thing you should try. That way lies boredom, depression and repeatedly dying horribly.
Don't bring knives to a gunfight. Don't fight on the other guy's terms.
Dex-based dodging only gets you so far. Lapis-enhanced REC, def, magic resist or hp gets you a bit further. But your main way of avoiding death is neither of these. You're a Miyagi Tank. "The best block is not being there." Never be where you are expected. Never stay where twelve guys can give you their full attention. You're not Frontal Assault Person. Don't even try to be. Flank, avoid, hit-and-run and - when you can pull it off - sprint right through all of them. Never get into a stand-up fight. You're not made for it.
Go roaming. Get the lay of the land. Make friends in the Iron Blood. (Anyone who's there is either another non-hiller or a questing greenhorn. The former is Your Kind Of People and the latter... needs a helping hand and - *cough* - early indoctrination. To save them from becoming lemmings later.)
Pay attention. Keep your eye on the radar. When it flashes, find the enemy by cycling targets with § (key-to-the-left-of-1, tilde on some keyboards) before they're even in visual range. Always keep looking around. (Moving by ground-click lets you turn the camera while staying your course. Moving by forward double-tap lets you turn yourself. Both have their uses.) Never get so caught up chasing anyone, you stop watching your surroundings. And if someone retreats into guard range, don't follow. Don't. Follow. Back up, give them a sarcastic clap-as-admitted, and move on.
Start slow. Find yourself some 1v1s. Learn. Then move up. Oh, I can take two targets if I kill the one who's snoozing first? Wooo. What about three? Raaaah, got one. Now I'm almost dead, but hey... poofstealthgone. Get a sense of what's manageable, and don't hesitate to leave when in over your head.
Use your surroundings to your advantage. Force melee enemies to follow you around cover, so that the ranged ones lose line-of-sight. By all means, make them chase you into the orange guards and then stun the heck out of them. You'll live longer, and there's nothing more satisfying than wiping an entire party with just a bit of timely assistance from NPC Security.
If at all possible, don't fight people while you've got monster aggro. Run out of range or finish off the critter, then turn your attention to enemy players. (Stealth prevents monster aggro, but doesn't break it. And even if the mobs will miss you most of the time, you don't want a handy AoE / ground shock target following you around while you're making a quiet getaway.)
On a related note: when going to the Iron Blood, bring Slow cure scrolls. And take pains not to antagonize the Vipers. (If possible, make enemies run through them to get to you. Slowed targets are good targets.) In fact, always position yourself so that others have to draw monster aggro to get to you. Dex monkeys can dodge NPCs very well. Everyone else can't. And you can always use a bit of extra damage on a target.
When you're Stealthing out of trouble, immediately start moving by WASD. It stops you accidentally auto-attacking and becoming visible again, and gets you out of range of traps, ground shocks and clerical True Seeing spells. Which will all ruin your day.
Sprinting or Stealthing away doesn't always have to mean you're leaving the fight. Get some distance, reassess who's wounded and who's stopped paying attention to you... and go back in. (Sometimes, all you need to win is a few more seconds for the potion timer to recharge.)
You can /town while stealthed. Use at your discretion. (If I'm hiding in a cluster of Sonic Cheese and can't get out of range before timer runs out, I will sometimes teleport home. If they've bored me. On other occasions... "%¤% it, I'm taking this Mage with me or I die trying. Possibly both.")
If you do want to help with the campers... move up the waterway and thin the herd of reinforcements. Or if you're in a roaming party - that rare and beautiful beast - go hit the altar. If you can take it, woo. If it pulls the campers off your hill, woo. Really, it's win-win. (And if your party yields to temptation and gets stuck in a Staring Contest... ask them to get moving. If they won't, politely thank them for the group, refresh the LUC buff one final time and leave.)
When jumping on a backline cluster of Zapmeisters and Doctors... don't focus on one target. Spread the love around. Land as many halt kicks and stuns as you can on different people. (Nine seconds of silence or four seconds of nothing can make a big difference to your pals pounding on their frontline. Assuming you have pals pounding on their frontline. If not, why are you in the backline caster cluster?)
When surrounded by Sonic Hedgehogs and all out of both Stealth and Sprint... don't try to run. Either fight till your last breath or stop and fire off as many different emotes as you can. This increases your Style rankings, which is something I just made up.
Don't keep pounding on a high-defense target unless they're alone. And if they are alone, don't get too obsessed with breaking them. Taking down a defender/guardian is not a fight. It's a bloody siege. Chances are you'll get jumped just as you get them to 10% hp. On the bright side, they usually can't do more than debuff you. If they're with a party, you can cheerfully leave them for last. (Oh, and here's something it took me a while to learn: the tanks have blunt weapons, fighters/warriors have sharp ones.)
On a related note, never leave a Doctor unmolested. Take them out as soon as you see the golden glow of doom. If they're wearing kevlar undies, as many of them do, just halt-kick, then return to beating on whoever they were healing. Repeat as necessary.
When someone kills you in a string of all crits, make a note. Then don't fight that person ever again. Miyagi Tank, remember? They're paying for easy kills, but you're not getting paid to provide it. You're a sneaky stabby one. You have the option of boring them to death. (By all means, if you're with a group, be sure to stun-and-pile-on. But don't get too surprised when they mysteriously vanish at 30% hp. Some people are more interested in Winning than they are in Playing. Shrug, and move on.)
If you're the kind of person who beats up pinball machines... bring lots of blood pressure medication. Here's why. You're sprinting and chasing? "Insufficent range." You're sprinting and hitting from the front? "Insufficient range." They're slowed? "Insufficient range." They're stationary? "Insufficient range." They're stationary and resting? "Insufficient range." They're chained to a wall with an elephant sitting on their head? "Insufficient range."
Lag happens and - thanks to skill chains and timers - you're the one who suffers the most from it. Take deep breaths.
Insult to injury, all of your debuffs - stop, silence, stun, drag down and venom - can be cured by scrolls and potions. Always assume everyone brought cures and be pleasantly surprised when they didn't. (It's better than being unpleasantly surprised when the choppy git you just stunned takes 75% of your hitpoints in half a second.)
Bring your own cures. Dispel potions take care of stop, stun and slow - but they're expensive and only come in stacks of 3. Stop, stun and slow cure scrolls are cheaper and come in bigger stacks, but require more Correctly Pressing The Right Button. Use whatever works for you. If you can, get rid of any Damage-over-Time before you hit Stealth. If you can't... well, at least it breaks target lock. (Poison cures take care of Drag Down and Venom, but not the archer/hunter Sustain thingy. Fighter/warrior stomp debuff can't be cured either. Deep breaths.)
Speaking of the Drag Down chain - as an NM, don't bother. It's about equal to a bad rash, and if you need to de-stealth your counterparts, drop a trap as soon as they vanish.
Make use of the keyboard macros. The number keys are good for your skill chains, but when the excrement hits the spinny air-mover-around... you need every millisecond. You don't want to have to reach across they keyboard or - god forbid - move the cursor to click on potions or stealth. And do make sure to drag basic attack onto the skillbar. There are times when you'll just stop hitting after a stun / aggravation. Not having to point-and-click helps. (I have the second skill bar bound to R F C X Z < T G V. I'm sure you can see why.) Find a setup that works for you and practice until it's second nature.
Hang on, I hear you say. Umpty-dozen paragraphs and barely a mention of Teh Ubar Gear?
Well, good news. You're the class that's least reliant on gear. (Like you're the class most suited for NM PvP.) Because you don't - primarily - fight with the big scary numbahs on your equipment. You fight with, erm, tactical concepts. You do mediocre damage, but it doesn't matter if they can't hit back at all. You're too squishy, but then you're just not there. You don't get to kill crowds, but you can disrupt and create chaos like nobody's business.
Clever party members (and out-of-party allies) will know how to capitalize on what you do. (You'll know you're in good company when everyone you stun has a Dogpile of Doom on them in seconds. Or when you zoom into the middle of an enemy party, get promptly targeted by everyone... stealth out and watch your friends stomp all over their distracted heads.)
But, okay. Gear.
During my early NM days, I found my main problem was just not having enough time to get out of dodge. I had some cheap L3 craft and shrewd lapis on... but it was far from enough to reliably dodge or quickly outdamage fighters. And of course, it did nothing against magic. Alright, magic resist will help against zappings, REC will help against physical damage... I compromised. L3 life lapis on your clothes will near double your hitpoints, and has the benefit of helping against all kinds of ouchies. When I can afford breaking umpteen more Dual Craft 3s, I'll get those. About the same hp bonus with a lot more hurt. For now... I've "usually" got enough of a hitpoint buffer to take a bit of a beating and still have time to break and run or bwahahahstealth.
Your mileage may of course vary. And the richer you are, the more options you have. But - and here's my main lesson - you do not have to wait until you're filthy rich and ultimate uber mode of "pwn". Really, you shouldn't. You're missing out on a lot of fun.
Best of luck!
- *Jones
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