PVP Guides

[Gustoo]

that guide is rock solid gold holy smokes I learned a lot.

[Kergan]

Mage not bad at low level against people w/o resists. They have like zero survivability at the high end though, with as much zone hoping and shit that happens the pet is worthless half the time. You don't have yonder, harmshield spells, etc to escape.

Another bug (pets not being able to zone) that was fixed post Velious that we'll never see here unfortunately.

[Gustoo]

That wasn't a bug though. It is just an inconvenient feature of the game.

You musta been playing way way late live to see that change, I have never even heard of it.


But yeah Kergan is right on. Mage is tuff for PVP because it is so easy to root the pet and then you have no CC spells and...zone hopping. It is a good class but overall not a top pick unless you are bum rushing to level 50 at the start of a server with a team of mages just destroying PVE.

A totally non classic thing that P99 did for some aweful reason to make mage a truly painful class is the pet EXP nerf, where the pet robs 50% of exp if it does more than 50% of damage to mob. This goes away in any group. So you can't chain cast pets anymore for exp which makes mages even worse.

Still a great class though... but far from my personal top choice.

[Gustoo]

Originally Posted by Feanol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Reasons the Mage can own PvP:

1= Invisible Air pet

2=Rain spells

3=Malosi

4=Automatic 2v1*

5=Item buff stacking

Honestly the Mage is more suited to a surprise attack, or rather the offensive in PvP. Defensively it lacks some ability. But keep the right spells memorized, be prepared, and keep a pet up.

And play what you enjoy!

I missed this post but this guy is totally right. Mages are great murderers under well planned circumstances. Low level PVP vs unprepared people or just any non caster, mages are insane guaranteed death.

For a long time on live, when a mage pet was attacking you by the guards and you attacked the pet, the guards would aggro you while the mage was casting long range bolt spells at you.

They really are a good class. My main frusteration with them is that it is difficult for them to break deep into dungeons because they don't have any crowd control spells and if your pet loses aggro or something, things get out of hand very quickly.

On the other hand they are very efficient when they can single out mobs or otherwise make PVE manageable...it is just hard to dungeon crawl with them especially with bad pathing. Best choice for dungeon would be an enchanter followed by shaman then necro and druid for solo.

But like I always say you can't lose going with any class you love...they are all great in their own ways.

[easy_lee]

Mages are pretty good for farming up gear because you need basically no gear for the mage to farm just fine and the pet can solo lower level mobs pretty easily. Most people pick druid and wizard, who can port and make decent money off of that. But wizards and druids are very mana-intensive classes and can be hard to use for farming gear because of that. Mages after 50 can just run right into guk or whatever and tear most of the place a new asshole while farming gear for an alt.

That said, you will die A LOT as a mage. The great thing about druids is that even a newbie druid with shit gear is very hard to kill if he/she mems the right spells (spirit of cheetah is amazing). Mages are easy as fuck to kill when they get ambushed, free YT. So you might want to play during non-peak hours if you're trying to farm gear. As always, keep tapping that /who macro.

Bear in mind that some of the people on this server are using hacks. Don't be surprised if a rogue zones in and knows exactly where to find you, in spite of the fact that you're hidden in the middle of swamp of no hope or whatever and there's no possible way he knew where you were. They'll get what's coming to them eventually (Pras Sirken, Deru), just be aware it exists.

Play a gnome mage. Gnomes can look through some walls if you run right up against the wall and press your face right up to it (first person view). Gnomes are also hard to spot and visually track (big advantage in pvp) and have good int.

When you do roll up your alt, play an ogre or troll if the class you want to play is available to those races. There are two good reasons beyond the obvious (stun immunity/regen and great melee stats). For one, this server isn't as established as blue, so good gear (the kind that lets a gnome warrior actually hit strength cap) is harder to come by. The other reason is that you need to get as much resist on your gear as you can. Cloak of the ice bear is very popular on this server for that 20 CR helping you survive ice comets from bullshit no-skill wizard pkers who play hit and run like girly men. Sure, you can eventually carry around multiple sets of gear, but that's hard to do until you're very established.

Because of all of the gear limitations and requirements you'll face, the stat benefits of ogres and trolls are a very big deal (no pun intended). Look at it this way: an ogre can wear nothing but resist gear and have the same strength as a wood elf in blue-style gear. And if you want to play a warrior, there is no excuse not to pick ogre. No. Excuse. Frontal stun immunity, bro.

You should learn how to corner cast so you can cast long spells like gate more easily when the shit hits the fan. In short, corner casting is where you start casting a spell, move, and end up standing in exactly the same spot when you finish casting the spell. Spell casting only checks for movement at the beginning and end of a spell cast, so if you end in the same spot then the spell will go off as normal. It's called corner casting because a lot of people use corners to do it properly (run in corner, start casting complete heal, run all over the place, run back in corner as it goes off). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this exploit is allowed (see it in people's streams all the time).

Find groups while leveling and ride the xp train. It doesn't take more than a few hours to knock out two, three, or sometimes even five levels all in the same spot. It just depends on who you group with. The lower level your group mates are in relation to you (and the fewer of them are hybrids), the larger portion of the experience you will get for each kill (see the game mechanics guide on the wiki).

PKers like crushbone, unrest, mistmoore, and city of mist. Befallen, Highpass, Sol A, and Sol B have far fewer PKers if you can get a group to go to these places. Their ZEM is good too. As an added benefit, all of these places (except highpass) are just one zone away from a port (west commons and lavastorm land you right next to their respective dungeons). City of mist is popular because anyone can bind there, but you don't care about that because you're a mage. And city of mist is a bitch to get to the first time, anyway. You have to evac from KC and it's just a pain in the ass.

Root gets resisted a lot, so hit people up with that tash and that root pet if you want to try and lock them down. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just dispel people, particularly when you have allies. Established players will avoid dispells by carrying around clickie buffs they can stick in their first two slots (goblin earring and bracer of the hidden are very popular for these reasons, + see invis on bracer). But most players are too stupid/inexperienced/lazy to do this, so you can catch a lot of players with good buffs in their top slots. Dispelling a wizard's lev/sow/rune is a good way to ruin his day.

People talk a lot of shit here. Just gotta deal with it. Your ignore list is a good way to keep track of who to kill on sight.

Some rules you should be aware of:

1. LNS can be called after YT, has to be called for each zone you want to use it in, and means you're Loot N Scooting. That means you're going to get your corpse and leave. If anyone kills you while LNS'd, screenshot it and report them. Don't kill anyone else who's LNSing - pay attention to OOC if you're trying to camp someone. Azrael got wiped out in VP by Sirken a few weeks ago because they ignored Holocaust's LNS. It was funny.
2. Carry gems instead of plat (peridots are popular) because plat can be looted off of your body. You should get in the habit of eventually carrying around a stack of peridots just so you can sell them if you need to buy something at a vendor immediately or tip a druid/wizard/whatever.
3. It's against the rules to set someone up for a trade and then kill them for their plat. It isn't against the rules to set someone up to be killed, though. A wizard on this server got set up by someone offering him clarity for a port. When he ported in, there were people waiting for him and they YT'd him. That's perfectly legal because they didn't set him up to try and steal plat.
4. There's a four-level range for PvP, meaning anyone within four levels of you can kill you and anyone outside that range is untouchable and can't harm you.
5. The PNP is still in effect here. Don't train people or Sirken will YT your account for a variable length of time.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

[Gustoo]

Nice guide easy lee.

[HippoNipple]

You will be a good addition no matter what class you are.

As far as social norms you can pretty much do whatever you want. If you want to have an easy road leveling up just be friendly to people. It seems like most people leveling up 1-50 don't really attack anyone unless they are an alt pvp char. Kind of sad but it is what it is. Everyone just groups and levels up in dungeon zones. Seems like there is more pvp if you come across people in other zones though.

Once you hit 50+ it is pretty much KoS to anyone not in your guild.

In group PvP as a mage you can be pretty valuable depending on the type of PvP. Send in pet from far away, use CoH on crucial members of group if they are being targeted and low on health, debuff. Any class can be useful if they are at least dispelling. You will find something useful to do.

[Humerox]

Mage is a lot more viable with the resist changes

best in duo or group PvP tho

[Gerf]

Thanks for the great discussion everybody. Learning a lot. Just to follow up on one specific thing, I've heard a couple people mention rain spells are good in pvp. Why is that exactly? I'm used to completely ignoring those spells for pve purposes.

[Tameth]

Originally Posted by easy_lee [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

• It's against the rules to set someone up for a trade and then kill them for their plat. It isn't against the rules to set someone up to be killed, though. A wizard on this server got set up by someone offering him clarity for a port. When he ported in, there were people waiting for him and they YT'd him. That's perfectly legal because they didn't set him up to try and steal plat.

wrong. sirken actually encourages players to set up unsuspecting individuals for massive plat gains. while in the play nice policy not to scam someone, the gm's actually allow this general fraud. that said, only ever do trades and purchases on low level bank alts in safe towns near guards/NPCs.