Curse

JR · Feb 16, 2007, 01:55 AM // 01:55

The Crag (Kill Count)

Also known as:
"The lava map"
"I hate this map"

General Layout

The Crag is one of the more complex arenas in the map rotation, introducing an alternate victory condition on a treacherous map: narrow bridges spanning a broad lava river, ramps overlooking low lava pits and the terrain along the river.

Teams spawn in the soutwest (A) and the northeast (B) of the map, the southwest team blocked by lava, the other team closed in by stalactites. Once the stalactites crumble down and a pathway rises in the lava, both teams arrive at the broad cliffs around their base (C, D), which continue on to the right where it moves down into a narrow pathway along the wall. Going left from the entrance, the terrain slopes down into an open area around lava pits (H, I), featuring two resurrection shrines around each (A1, B2 and A2, B1); heading straight forward from the entrance slopes gradually down onto the terrain adjacent to the lava river (G). Although it's possible to move through the lava river, it is spanned by two high and narrow bridges (E, F) on the northwest and southeast side.

The Maps

Terrain Quality

Despite its rugged appearance, the terrain on the Crag map is exceptionally smooth. The lava edge definitions are largely accurate, causing their effect where you would expect it to be. Due to a pathing glitch, characters running from the cliffs (C, D) towards the lava river (G) will incidentally retain their elevation, allowing them to float in mid-air; this glitch will restore itself lateron.

Hazards

The center of the Crag has a broad river (G) and two seperate pits (H, I) filled with lava. The lava inflicts the conditions On Fire (7 pips of degen, 14 health loss/second) for three seconds and Crippled (50% movement speed reduction) for five seconds, and while standing in the lava is applied/refreshed every three seconds.

There are a couple of considerations to make when deciding how to deal with lava:

Lava hurts. If your team is unable to handle the added damage, don't stand in it. If your team can handle it, it can be used both defensively and offensively to kite attackers through, aiming to either discourage attackers from following you further, or put more pressure on the opposing team than what the lava does to yours. If your healing options are not pip-based, keep in mind that health degeneration caps out at 10 pips: while suffering from moderate degeneration being on fire has a relatively weaker effect, and while suffering from severe degeneration the effect becomes relatively negligable. With pip-based healing (e.g. Healing Breeze) being on fire will generally be very bad for you.
When kiting melee characters through lava, keep in mind that whenever you stop when out of the lava, they might still be in it. If you feel you can take the punishment, and your pursuer shows no signs of moving out of the lava as well, feel free to tank the damage; as long as your pursuer stays in lava, you can always move away faster should things get hairy.
Lava applies two conditions (potentially adding to other conditions you are already suffering from), turning Mend Ailment and Restore Conditions into efficient heals that can distort the trade-off balance; skills like Melandru's Resilience, "I Will Survive!", Resilient Weapon and Resilient Was Xiko have similar influence.
Speed boosts still take effect while crippled: whether in lava or not, attackers and kiters should keep general kiting guidelines in mind.
The crippling aspect makes moving through lava like moving through molasses. Once you're in it'll take you a while to get out, and during that time you will be unable to avoid any projectiles, and need to anticipate a significant delay for reaching anyone outside your range of operation.

Strategy

The Crag map has the largest initial distance between the two teams, causing a relatively long delay between the start of the match and the actual onset of battle. Because of the large size of the map, it's not always clear where the opposing team is heading: situations can occur where both teams head over to the other side of the lava river using different bridges, defeating the purpose of doing so in the first place. Moving through the middle and only choosing sides when the other team is spotted eliminates this uncertainty, but gives the team that actively chooses sides some terrain advantage; alternatively an aggressive and confident team can ignore the bridges altogether and head straight through the lava river, arriving at the other side with about 75% health remaining but with guaranteed enemy contact before they can choose their battleground.

There are three general battlegrounds to discern on this map: fighting on the cliffs close to the base (C, D), fighting around the lava pits between the resurrection shrines (H, I) and fighting back and forth over the bridges (E, F). Most fights start out on the cliffs (in case of a defensive team) or around the bridges (as sensible midpoint between the bases); as people start to drop and respawn at the resurrection shrines the battle will generally shift towards the lava pits.

Bridge combat

The bridges (E, F) are the tightest choke-points on the map; their long and narrow nature makes them ideally suited for area control tools such as traps or wards, and lets teams keep a formation of sorts, with support hiding back at the base of the bridge. Two players (not necessarily from the same team or species - a ranger with a pet can get the job done) are enough to body-block the bridges, frustrating mobility and thwarting kiting across them. Bow users have a significant height advantage on the bridge as well, covering the area up to the lava pit and closeby resurrection shrine with their amplified range. The walls shielding the resurrection shrines (A2, B2) block line of sight, making them suitable as cover for casters supporting melee-ranged characters on the bridge.

When planning to use the bridge as a chokepoint, always go to the bridge on the right-hand side of your starting position in order to face the opposition's lava pit and the flat terrain surrounding it. The reasoning behind this is that when taking the left-hand bridge, you risk losing the strategical advantage that the bridge offers when the opposing team takes a defensive position on the cliff facing the bridge instead of facing you straight up, either forcing you to move all the way around the cliff while in attack range, or traverse the lava river (or even the other bridge) for a more sensible approach angle. When both teams claim their respective right bridges in this fashion, just move over onto their side and approach them from the cliffs.

Fighting on the cliffs

The cliffs lining the bases (C, D) give a significant height advantage over the terrain below it, making it a suitable defensive position. Bow users have an excellent attack range from the higher ground, and casters are relatively safe from melee-ranged opponents below, who have to move all the way around the cliff to access them, and can move back towards the wall in order to thwart casters below. When approaching a defending team from the bridge, either move around the left side for a longer but safer path around the back, with the cliff wall providing some line-of-sight shelter from the players up top, or go around the right side for the fastest access, but being more vulnerable to attacks.

The cliffs and ramps are the battleground at the furthest distance from the resurrection shrines, which introduces a significant delay after resurrections before players return to the battle. Aggressive teams on the opponent's side of the lava river will resurrect at the opponent's lava pit (A2, B2), whereas a defending team can either spawn at their own lava pit (A1, B1) or at the opponent's lava pit across the lava river (A2, B2), depending on where they died on the cliffs (see the red and blue dividers for reference on the resurrection midway points).

The lava pits

Due to the resurrection shrines at their sides, the lava pits (H, I) commonly see the most action on this map. Providing strips of relatively level terrain around the lava, there is a decent amount of room to maneuver here, few ways to break line-of-sight (exceptions being lava pit I, which has two solid trees at its side, and the resurrection shrine A1, which allows players to position themselves behind it), and constantly respawning players keep the battle fast-paced. Bow-wielding characters can take to the cliffs (C, D) or the bridges (E, F) overlooking the lava pit for some height advantage, but neither position gives comfortable coverage over the area, so be prepared to reposition if required.

The diameter of the lava pits is inbetween casting range and longbow range, which gives players the opportunity to kite offensive casters around it - either they waste time moving around the lava, or they are forced to stand in it in order to cast. A similar technique is possible when kiting melee-range characters: when kiting sharply around the edge of the lava pit, the pursuer has to actively prevent his character from traversing (and thus bogging down in) the lava in order to catch up; naturally taking the corners too sharp can get you stuck instead, which is rather counter-productive.

When the tight action around the lava pits gets too intense, the most readily available escape route is along the terrain lining the lava river towards the center: here there's more room to kite, and respawning opponents won't be an immediate threat. A bow-wielding character has decent coverage of this terrain from the cliffs (C, D) however, which can reduce its appeal.

Victory requirements

Unlike Annihilation, Kill Count isn't just about eliminating your opponents once: at the start of the match a three minute timer begins counting down, and whichever team scored more kills than the other team in this time period emerges victoriously. The following details apply:

Deaths do not incur any death penalty on this map.
Any death that would normally have incurred a death penalty counts as a kill for the other team. Players sacrificing themselves to death or dying from overexposure to lava increase the opponent's score.
If both teams have an equal amount of kills when the timer ends, the game will announce Sudden Death, and whichever team scores the first kill after that wins. The time measurement is more precise than the score measurement: if a player is killed shortly after the timer hits zero the score will reflect his death, but whichever team was in the lead at exactly zero seconds will have been declared victorious, even if the scoreboard indicates a tie.
If all of one team's players quit out, the match is ended prematurely, and the remaining team is declared victorious.

Resurrection

Every thirty seconds, dead players will respawn at their team's nearest resurrection shrine with full health and full energy. Keep an eye on when and where players will respawn, and if necessary/possible relocate towards the resurrection shrine to reduce the distance resurrected team members need to traverse before they can be a factor in the battle again.

Because the home-side resurrection shrines (A1, B1) are further from the map center than the opponent-side shrines (A2, B2), a player is more likely to die closer to the opponent-side resurrection shrine, and thus resurrect there. For a quick reference on where to expect players to resurrect, refer to the thin red and blue lines on the Outline Map, signifying the respective midway points between the red (starting at base A) and blue (starting at base B) team's resurrection shrines. The only times when it may not be obvious where a player will resurrect is when dying on the home side of the cliffs (C, D) or terrain along the lava river.

Because of the frequency and energizing nature of automatic resurrects, they are a reliable and often preferable method of resurrection to manual resurrection (using permanent resurrections such as Resurrection Signets or hard resurrects - temporary resurrections such as Vengeance and Unyielding Aura should be used whenever possible to maximize their usefulness). Only in the following circumstances should a manual resurrection be considered on this map:

a player dying right after a thirty second mark. Fighting three vs. four or worse for twenty to thirty seconds can be a deciding disadvantage in a battle, especially when support characters vital to the functioning of your team go down, such as your monk.
a player standing to be resurrected far away from the location of the battle. As mentioned, this is mostly a concern when fighting on the home side of the cliffs (C, D). Consider that teammates will effectively respawn on the other side of the map, and in certain cases manually resurrecting them on the spot is a better idea.
a player dying in the last thirty seconds of the match; only fast-cast resurrects and resurrection signets should be considered at this point, wasting too much time attempting to resurrect can do more harm than good.

Keep in mind however that manual resurrections never give full energy to the resurrected player, and in certain cases don't give any energy at all. Casters who died while having emergency energy items equipped (typically +15 energy, -1 regen wands and/or +12/+15 energy, -1 regen focii) aren't much of a factor when manually brought back to the battle before the automatic resurrection mark, starting at negative energy levels, and leaving them to automatically resurrect despite time and relocation drawbacks can be a better option.

Because of the full health and energy resurrect, dying can be an incredibly beneficial thing to your team. A worn-out caster exhausting even his emergency energy buffer should keep an eye on the timer and not be afraid to drop dead right before a thirty second mark - although the death will count against your team's score (potentially giving up a Flawless Victory) being resurrected with full energy can be a critical factor in inflicting several deaths (offense) and/or preventing several deaths (defense).

Resurrected players will receive an initial five seconds of "grace", granting them temporary immunity to damage (receiving 0 damage from attacks), conditions and hexes (neither will be applied). Knowing this, opponents in position to attack them should hold back instead of blindly unloading their energy and adrenaline to no effect - warriors can still build adrenaline with their (harmless) attacks, and passive effects such as Ward Against Foes and disruptive effects such as knockdowns or interrupts will still affect players during grace. When placing traps to thwart resurrected players, place them around the resurrection pad, not on it, or they will trigger before their damage and conditions can take effect.

Timing and stalling

Fighting aggressively is not always the best way to win, and the time-based nature of this map make delaying tactics and non-action quite viable at times. Keeping a close eye on the timer, the following situations can occur where holding back your attacks or simply fleeing the battle can prove effective:

resurrecting opponents start with full health and energy, whereas you may still be low on either or both from the fight that killed them. Retreating to a safe distance from the resurrection shrines can give you an opportunity to recover before facing the full brunt of the opponent's assault, potentially preventing a counter-wipe.
knowing opponents will resurrect every thirty seconds, the optimal time to kill them is right after a thirty second mark, which either places them out of the battle for a significant time or forces your opponent to employ a manual resurrection to bring them back. Considering there is no reward for a higher score, holding back your attacks/spikes for this purpose can give you the edge you need to win.
after three minutes, all that matters is who made the most kills. If you're leading but things aren't going too well, don't hesitate to have dying players run far away from the battlefield, switching to pure survival mode in order to delay further casualties and thus hopefully securing victory.
one or more players on your team are down, and continuing the fight can only cause further deaths (e.g. a warrior kept blind by the opposition while his monk is down): by active kiting/self-preservation, you can sacrifice offense for defense until your teammates are resurrected and you are able to fight at full strength again.
if you have reasons to believe you'd lose a straight four on four fight (e.g. facing a team you've fought before at a severe build disadvantage), you might improve your chances of winning by running your opponent around the map. The hope here is that the opposing team will make the tactical mistake of spreading out (for instance because their warriors can gain ground using speed boosts, but the rest cannot) in order to catch one of you, allowing you to turn around and collapse on one or two of them with your full team, squeezing out the single kill you need in order to win. This strategy works typically only if your team carries enough punch to take out a single target before the opponent can catch up or react to it, and if the opponent has no utility that helps them pick off stragglers (e.g. Imagined Burden, Pin Down, etc.). This strategy should be abandoned for a straightforward confrontation at the first signs of failure.

Sudden Death

If after three minutes the score is tied, Sudden Death will be called, dead players will be resurrected for the last time, and whichever team scores the next kill will be declared victorious. Having had three minutes of experience fighting the other team, you should be aware at this point where their strengths and weaknesses lie: if the opponent has people resurrecting make sure you back off for a bit in order to recover and get on even ground, keep a tight target priority, abuse weak players on their side and anticipate your opponent to do the same. Do what you can to prevent getting killed, even if it means entirely removing yourself from the battlefield when weak - not participating in the fight is still better than losing the battle for your team. Don't get suckered by players fleeing from the battlefield in this fashion unless you have the tools to thwart their escape - chasing after them doesn't guarantee a kill, and often concentrating on the remaining players is more constructive.

Sudden Death is difficult to prepare for in a regular fight, considering that any coordinated effort that could lead to a kill should've been made to get the kill in order to avoid Sudden Death in the first place, and Sudden Death itself doesn't change the battle by much. The main principle you should keep in mind while in Sudden Death is that it doesn't matter how little energy you have left, how close to dying everyone is, how far people are spread out and how exhausted your elementalists are, as long as you are able to squeeze out that kill that grants you victory. Be aggressive and don't be afraid to gamble.

-[iQ]Silmor