Curse

Tyroie · Sep 21, 2005, 10:16 PM // 22:16

As I play the game, I write down the different things I think of that I can do to achieve more, uhh.. Roxxoring-ness? And I wanna show it off! I hope this helps some of you. I almost consider them basics - once these become a casual understanding in the back of your mind, you get better when things get chaotic. And this is by no means a complete list. I've played mostly a healer, so some of these tips may seem centered toward that, but I think there's useful stuff for anyone.
---

Understand what's going on a fight. How?
1) Learn the game's class skills. Read their descriptions, use them all and understand how they work. Every single skill is viable for some purpose, and ultimately in PVP, you'll see every skill used against you.
2) In a fight, see what skills your team-mates and opponents use, and try to assume the builds they use. I like to remember by the number by their names in PVP. When you have a person selected, the skill they're currently using pops up on screen. This thing is vital to watch. Another way to tell what's being used is simply by the graphic effect that shows - each skill has a different graphical effect. By doing this, for instance, a good healer could have a team-mate selected, but watch a mesmer to see when they start casting their diversions. Watch the direction people face to see who they're attacking.
3) Always watch what conditions, hexes, enchantments, and other effects are currently on you. This can both help you decide what actions to take, and let you know what skills people are using. For instance, if you see things like Fragility or Mark of Rogdort pop on you, this can be a warning that you're about to take a bunch of damage.
4) When you take damage, it tells you the name of the skill that caused that damage on-screen. When you're taking Maelstrom or Chaos Storm damage, move out of it before you cast. When you see Meteor Shower or Fire Storm, move away. When you see Distracting Shot damage, an interrupt ranger is trying to stop you. The list goes on.

Try to get a good idea of how much defense, healing, damage, and shut-down each team has. This is especially important if your primarily role is shut-down, like a mesmer or interruption ranger. If it looks like the enemy team might have more damage than your team has defense, you might wanna try shutting out their damage dealers, or something.

If there are two classes I recommend everyone play at least once, it's a healer, and an interrupter. Playing a healer gives you a very keen sense on how matches are really won and lost. Playing an interrupter helps you learn to recognize skills by their graphical effects.

If energy-draining opponents are annoying you, switch to items that reduce your max energy while they're draining. Then when you need to cast, quickly switch to items that increase your max energy, cast, then pop back again quickly. Your energy can go under 0 when you do this, but your energy will appear to just sit at 0 - that's ok. Your energy is still recharging, you just can't see it. Energy drainers can only reduce your energy to 0, and that's how you're blocking their drains. This may be a little confusing, so try it to see what I mean.

If you've got a ranger or mesmer who is very good at manually timing their interrupts and you understand the recast-time on them, cast a very cheap skill or spell, then make use of your "Cancel Action" key to do a fake-out cast. (The key defaults to escape, but I recommend changing it to something that's very easy to press quickly). By doing a fake-out cast, you lure your attacker into using their interrupt, but the effects of that interrupt don't happen. You can avoid distracting shots, distracting chops, concusion shots, power blocks, and more by doing this. The best part - your attacker will probably falsely think they interrupted you. If you wanna get good at this before trying it in PVP, practice it against those archer centuar mobs in PVE first, as they use their interrupts way better than most players!

Remember that you can take cover behind walls to avoid arrows and certain magical projectiles. This can free you up for a moment for a few casts if they're interrupting you.

If you are being chased by someone who is running the same speed as you, wether to keep them out of melee range or spell range, turn very very gradually and slow. This keeps them from catching up, but still allows you to stay near your healer. Taking sharp turns (unless going around a corner) can cause them to "shortcut" toward you and gain on you. If they see you're turning slowly and try to manually cut across to get closer (as opposed to autofollowing), quickly turn the opposite way.

And to reiterate something in the last paragraph... Stay within range of your healers when you're taking hits.

Your team should focus fire to kill. It helps bypass healers. Have someone who knows how to constantly call a new target, and have your team's damage dealers switch targets as soon as he calls, every single time.

On a similar note, the more damage a team takes, the more pressured that team's healers' energy bars are. Anything you can do to cause the enemy more damage, or to prevent yourself or your team-mates from taking damage, helps you. Knowing this, remember that warriors take about half damage from most attacks, and rangers take half damage from elemental attacks.

If you're a ranger or warrior, carry both a physical damage weapon, and an elemental damage weapon. Use physical damage against enemy rangers, and elemental against most other targets. Learn when which is best to use. Cold weapons can help you interrupt an enemy if someone in your party is casting Spinal Shivers. Fire weapons can help you cause more damage if someone in your party is casting Mark of Rogdort. Lightning weapons can allow you to damage someone who has Iron Mist on them.

Armor makes a big, freaking, difference. Seriously. Every 40 armor halves the damage you take from warriors, rangers, elementalists, and certain attacks from the other three classes. Armor of Earth can give you 60 armor. If you have 530 max health, that has the potential to be the equivalent of making your max health 1325 and making all heals on you 2.5 times more effective, as compared to someone unarmored. Doesn't that sound overpowered? It is. Use armor whenever possible! You never know who the enemy team will attack, and thus everyone is a potential "tank". Many skills which work similarly to armor can have a similar effect.

Think about how effective you are, and what things make you and your team less or more effective. Think mathematically - if you somehow keep a healer from recovering 200 health, you've essentially just caused 200 damage. Imagine if you built a character meant to shut out 2 or 3 monks at the same time!

I personally like to make my interface very big and put everything in about the same place on the screen. I think this makes things feel less scattered and easier to see. I like to make the compass, the effects currently on you, and the target's skill-popup all easiest to see.

---
Any comments / corrections? Add more if you can think of anything!