[GUIDE] Everything you knew, or should know, about PvP in D2
Dec 12, 2014 13:37:04 GMT -5
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Post by [SA}XaeSword on Dec 12, 2014 13:37:04 GMT -5
Things you need to know about PvP
Table of Contents (Ctrl + F to fast scroll)
I. General
1. Stun
2. WSG (Weapon-Switch Glitch)
3. Desynch
4. PvP Penalty and Calculating Damage
5. Synergies
6. FHR - How it works
II. Class Specific
1. Amazon
i. Dodge Lock
ii. Lightning Bolt/Fury
iii. Strafe
iv. Multi Shot
v. Poison/Plague Javelin
vi. Charged Strike
vii. Critical Strike
viii. Penetrate
ix. Pierce
2. Assassin
i. Mind Blast
ii. Shadow Master
iii. Blade Shield
iv. Wake of Fire/Inferno
v. Lightning Sentry
vi. Dragon Flight
vii. Fire Blast
viii. Fade
ix. Burst of Speed
x. Weapon Block
xi. Cloak of Shadows
3. Barbarian
i. Whirlwind
ii. Leap
iii. Berserk
iv. Concentrate
v. Increased Speed, Natural Resistance, and Increased Stamina
vi. Iron Skin
vii. Warcry
4. Druids
i. Tornado
ii. Oak Sage
iii. Cyclone armor
iv. Wolves vs. Bear
v. Ravens
vi. Twister
vii. Were bear + Shockwave combination
viii. Shockwave
ix. Shapeshifting
x. Feral Rage
xi. Poison Creeper
5. Necromancers
i. Bone Spells
ii. Bone Spirit
iii. Teeth
iv. Bone Armor
v. Bone Wall
vi. Bone Prison
vii.Poison Nova
viii. Clay Golem
ix. Amplify Damage
ix. Decrepify
x. Summoning Necromancers
6. Paladins
i. Charge
ii. Smite
iii. Blessed Hammer
iv. Fist of the Heavens (FoH)
v. Blessed Aim
vi. Defiance
vii. Resist Fire
viii. Resist Cold
ix. Resist Lightning
x. Meditation
xi. Prayer as a Synergy
xii. Conviction
xiii. Holy Freeze
xiv. Concentration
xv. Zeal
xvi. Maxing Smite + Fanaticism vs Holy Shield
7. Sorceresses
i. Warmth
ii. Fire Ball
iii. Meteor
iv. Enchant
v. Telekinesis
vi. Teleport
vii. Energy Shield
viii. Blizzard
ix. Frozen Orb
x. Armor Spells
xi. Masteries
I. General
2. WSG (Weapon-Switch Glitch): This basically means pressing your switch weapon hotkey repeatedly. This both causes desynch (explained later) and your FHR (Faster Hit Recovery) animation to be reset every time you switch. This does not work 100%, but it will help tremendously with getting out of a stun-lock. Generally, it is best to try to do this to the south, but it works in other directions, if not as well. WSG’ing is only allowed by our rules if you are being FHR locked or dodge locked on an Amazon.
3. Desynch: Desynching, simply put, is causing your character to be in a different spot on your screen than it is on everyone else’s. This is caused by a communication delay in the game when a player does things too fast, such as charging and then stopping to cast something and charging again, sometimes the server does not keep up with how far you went on your charge before you started casting something, and this causes your character to stop somewhere else server-side than you did on your screen. This can either be beneficial or hurtful.
4. PvP Penalty and calculating damage: The penalty on all damage in PvP is 1/6 of what it says on screen (in most cases, explained later). For elemental damage, divide your damage by six, then multiply it by the difference of one hundred and the amount of resistance the person has divided by one hundred, remember to factor in pierce.
So say someone has 75% lightning resist fighting a FoHer with 8k damage.
Take this 8000 and divide it by 6.
1333 damage before res. Now multiply by the difference of one hundred and the person’s resistance divided by on hundred.
(100-75)/100 = .25
1333*.25 = 333
A FoH hit for 8000 damage versus someone with 75% lightning resistance will do 333 damage to their life.
For physical damage, it is much simpler. Simply take your onscreen damage and divide it by six, then multiply it by the amount of DR the person has as a decimal.
Say you do 5k damage versus a person with 50% DR.
5000/6 = 833
833 * .5 = 416
A physical damage attack hitting for 5000 damage against a 50% DR opponent will cause 416 damage to their life.
5. Synergies: Synergies are skills that add bonuses to other skills. Note that only HARD POINTS in synergies will cause them to add damage to the attack they are synergizing.
6. FHR - How it works: Faster Hit Recovery, or FHR, is figured simply.
In the D2 engine, FHR is *not* a 1/12 magic number like some people say.
If the attack deals more than 1/16 of the targets max HP, they have a 37.5% chance to go into FHR
If the attack deals more than 1/8 of the targets max HP, they have a 75% chance to go into FHR
If the attack deals more than 1/4 of the targets max HP, they have a 100% chance to go into FHR
II. Class Specific
1. Amazoni. Dodge lock: This is a very bad thing if you like Amazons. While dodge, avoid, and evade are extremely useful for survival, they are also very bad in PvP because you can become locked in the dodging animation. This works the same as FHR lock mentioned above in the Stun section. It is possible to WSG out of dodge lock, but sometimes you cannot tell if you are in dodge lock or not unless you pay attention to the sounds your character makes. Personally, I always play with sound, so I hear my Amazon making the dodge sound and I know I’m in dodge lock, so I WSG out if possible.
ii. Lightning Bolt/Fury: Some people do not know that while Lightning Fury is blockable, Lightning Bolt is not. This can be handy if you have a low life opponent that is blocking or dodging all of your arrows or javelin throws. If you hit them with Lightning Bolt a few times, they will most likely die. Lightning fury is also good for killing off a Druid’s summons, a good thing to note.
iii. Strafe: Everyone knows an Amazon’s biggest enemy is the summon stacker, Druids. However, Strafe is very good against these guys, it usually kills all of their summons in 1-2 shots. Be careful when you use it, because it makes you unable to run for about 1-2 seconds. This is perfect stomping time. Basically, Strafe > Druids and even Necromancers sometimes.
iv. Multi Shot: Multi Shot maxes out at 24 arrows. You’ll want to aim for this most of the time, because it has the widest spread, making for the best AoE.
v. Poison/Plague Javelin: These two skills share a cool down with each other and Valkyrie, Plague Javelin initiates a longer cool down than Poison Javelin does. Be aware of this when using them, because not knowing this could cost you a duel.
vi. Charged Strike: The single most retarded move in all of Diablo II, Charged Strike has the most impossible mechanics of any melee ranged move in the game. The way Blizzard coded this stupid excuse for an attack, most of the time, once an Amazon has gotten to a certain point in the attack animation, the bolts will always be casted, even if you teleport/run away before the Amazon finishes the attacking animation. This causes you to still take all of the damage from the Charged Bolts, which is a LOT. This also looks like Far Cast, when it’s not, but it is still extremely annoying. Due to the way the bolts are casted, on attack and not on striking, the hit check the physical part of Charged Strike has makes absolutely no difference. Charged Strike sends out like 15 bolts at one time, each dealing 1-10,000+ damage. While not all of the bolts hit, a large majority DO, which causes a LOT of damage, way more than any skill should be able to.
vii. Critical Strike: This skill provides a massive boost to your chance to score a critical strike, which doubles your damage. This effect does NOT directly stack with Deadly Strike, but having both DOES increase your chance to critically strike, however, simply adding them together is not how you get the %chance.
viii. Penetrate: This skill provides a massive boost to your attack rating for skills like Multi Shot, Strafe, Jab, Poison/Plague Javelin, etc. This allows you to hit higher defense characters more often than if you did not have this skill. Usually only one point is used here.
ix. Pierce: This skill gives you a high chance for your ranged abilities to pierce through your target and continue on their path of destruction. This is one reason why Strafe is so effective against a Druid’s summons.
2. Assassin
i. Mind Blast: Mind Blast. If you don’t know what it does yet, I will tell you. Mind Blast knocks back anything it hits in its radius and gives it a long duration stun. This, as you can imagine, is extremely annoying, because it causes their traps/kicks/whirlwind to always FHR you no matter how hard they hit. The majority of Assassins use this to their advantage when dueling, and they know that it is very hard to counter. Bear this in mind when dueling Assassins.
ii. Shadow Master: To all elemental characters: Shadow Masters often become immune to your primary element, making them an ideal meat shield to the Assassin. Keep this in mind when dueling them as well. These annoying little companions can also cast AA Mind Blast from off-screen, so if you’re getting hit by Mind Blast at a slow pace from off-screen, it is most likely the Shadow Master.
iii. Blade Shield: Keep in mind if an Assassin has Blade Shield on, this can add to your Stun FHR lock if they stomp onto you. Just a friendly precaution. This ability also causes Venom to hit you as well.
iv. Wake of Fire/Inferno: If you are stunned, try your best to avoid these traps, they hit a lot and cause a terrible FHR lock. Lightning Sentry got nothing on this.
v. Lightning Sentry: Chances are if an Assassin is casting these, they are either a Hybrid with decent trap damage, or a pure trapper, because most Whirlwind Assassins (Beyblades)/Kickers use fire traps for the more effective FHR lock.
vi. Dragon Flight: If you see an Assassin teleporting without using Enigma, they are probably using Dragon Flight, which causes them to teleport to their target’s location and kick them, which will probably miss a lot.
vii. Fire Blast: This skill is extremely useful in place of spamming Mind Blast, which is against the rules. Fire Blast locking requires more skill to do. As long as the target is stunned, these little buggers can cause them to FHR lock, so you basically hit them with Mind Blast, cast your traps, and then Fire Blast them either from a distance or with a tele stomp, keep in mind that Fire Blast takes more and more time to hit the clicked spot the further the spot is from your character. It is most effective to use the telestomp method, but some types of characters you simply don’t want to tele stomp (Smiters, Hdins, Barbarians, etc.).
viii. Fade: This is probably the best skill an Assassin has. It adds massive stacked resistances, as well as 1% of Physical Damage Reduced per SOFT POINT. Say you have a level 30 fade. If you cast this on yourself, you now have 30% DR and only need 20% more to cap it. As you can imagine, this is extremely useful as well.
ix. Burst of Speed: Most Assassins overlook this skill because of how amazing Fade is, but this is very useful if you get slowed or just like to run fast, because it makes your IAS get way over stacked and gives you a ton of FRW.
x. Weapon Block: We all know what this does. It can block any skill in the game with a relatively high chance, however, what most of us don’t know is the way it works. While maxing block with a shield allows you to block 75% of attacks that come at you, this percentage has to be calculated over a period of time. For shield blocking, this happens per battle. For weapon block, this happens per GAME. Meaning that as long as an Assassin stays in a game, her Weapon Block will block only xx% of the time she is in the game, not xx% of every fight like with shield block. Whether this is working as intended or not is unknown, but you could imagine why this could be considered bad. Just remember that the next time you want to complain about Weapon Block.
xi. Cloak of Shadows: This is a fun skill to play with, it makes your opponent’s screen dark and any minions they have become inactive due to the darkness. If your opponent is in range, it also lowers their defense rating, making them easier to hit with melee attacks, while raising your defense rating, making you harder to hit. You will know when they are affected because they will have smoke above their head in a little spout-type shape.
3. Barbarians
i. Whirlwind: Most everyone has seen whirlwind in action, whether in a PvP setting or a PvM setting. It is a devastating attack when used correctly and still quite annoying when it’s not. Whirlwind causes the Barbarian to enter an “uninterruptible” state, meaning they cannot die, cannot drink potions, and cannot move outside of Whirlwind movement until Whirlwind is over. While this sounds like a bad thing, it really isn’t. It makes Whirlwind ridiculously hard to counter. You usually never want to try to out tank a Whirlwind Barbarian because of Whirlwind’s mechanics. Whirlwind also causes desynch on the Barbarian 75% of the time. This cannot be helped, and it doesn’t really make a big difference on the duel, because usually you’re busy avoiding the Whirlwind anyways. If you notice a Barbarian following all of your teleports while in a Whirlwind animation, he has name lock whirled you either on purpose or by accident, personally I always teleport off the map to break the name lock because Whirlwind locking causes VERY bad desynch, they can hit you with whirlwind from 2-3 screens away because of this, and as you can imagine, this is very bad. Long story short, Whirlwind is a difficult skill to fight and it takes practice to beat a good one. Whirlwind is NOT considered a melee attack.
ii. Leap: This is the second most annoying skill that Barbarians have. When maxed, Leap has a radius of roughly 18 yards, which is about 1.5 screens. When used, Leap knocks anything back around the Barbarian within this 18 yard radius when he lands. It causes a DOUBLE FHR animation, meaning you enter FHR twice in a row when knocked back by it. This is also very bad. A 10 frame FHR animation would be reduced to 20 by Leap, causing it to take almost a full second to finish. Usually only BvC (Barbarian versus Caster) Barbarians have this skill maxed, but Leap can still be just as effective on other types of Barbarians, just with a much lower radius of effect.
iii. Berserk: Beware of this skill if you are a caster, most Barbarians can chain lock with this skill, and it hurts a lot if it hits. Berserk converts 100% of physical damage dealt into Magic damage. Magic damage cannot be resisted, so it WILL hurt. Usually the average BvC can 1-2 hit lower HP casters like Necromancers, Sorceresses, and Druids (without Sage) with Berserk, and still hit quite hard on the higher HP ones like Hdins and Druids (with Sage).
iv. Concentrate: This melee attack is uninterruptible, meaning the Barbarian cannot be FHR locked out of using it. Concentrate also increases the Barbarian's defense while he is using it, so in a GM Melee vs Melee duel, a Concentrate Barbarian will have much higher defense than other times, because he is constantly using Concentrate.
v. Increased Speed, Natural Resistance, and Increased Stamina: These skills are all good to have, but generally you don’t want to put more than 1 point into them. Some guides recommend 3-4 in Natural Resistance and Increased Speed to get the most out of them, but after that, it becomes harder and harder to get 1% more out of the points you add in. Diminishing Returns, they call it. Diminishing Returns means the more you put in, the less you get out, basically wasting points for next to nothing.
vi. Iron Skin: Generally only BvBs (Barbarian versus Barbarian) and BvM (Barbarian versus Melee) Barbarians worry about this skill. It increases your defense by a % shown passively, making you harder to hit with melee attacks. Using this skill with Shout will give you a massive defense boost. Most BvBs/BvMs also use Fortitude because the armor itself has massive defense, as well as the chance to cast Chilling Armor when struck, increasing your defense even further.
vii. Warcry: This ability is an AoE attack that does very low Physical Damage and adds a stun to your target. It is a blockable attack, so generally it is mainly useful against Sorceresses, Necromancers, Druids, and other characters that can roll with no block chance. Warcry barbs are a force to be reckoned with when made correctly. Due to the rule allowing Amplify Damage to be used against characters with block of 67% or higher, Warcry barbs can now be an effective build to use versus anything. Keep in mind the stun effect it has, it lasts about 10 seconds.
4. Druids
i. Tornado: The bread and butter move of most elemental Druids, this ability, when statted for it, can do up to 7,000+ physical damage depending on gear. YES, Tornado does physical damage if anyone is curious or didn’t know. There isn’t much to say here except to try to avoid them, it is possible to block the FHR animation from a Tornado, but not the damage. This is just another odd mechanic of D2 that we all must deal with.
ii. Oak Sage: Good ol’ Oak Sage, adding tons of life to you to make you think you’re invincible. However, Oak Sage has been proven to be nearly useless when it comes to that life boost. Most of the time when you get hit as a Druid, your Oak Sage is already dead, meaning your life pool is not boosted anymore and you’re not so invincible anymore. Keep this in mind, try to simply keep your minion stack up as much as possible, and avoid being hit.
iii. Cyclone Armor: This ability says it absorbs damage, but it keep in mind it only absorbs ELEMENTAL damage. It is in every Druid’s best interest to keep this skill up at all times.
iv. Molten Boulder: This is the only fire move that needs any explaining. Molten boulder will knock back anything it hits that does not block it, multiple times, until it explodes at the end of its path. Molten boulder will deal its damage to whatever it knocks back every time it hits and when it explodes. Statted for it, this is an excessive amount of damage.
v. Wolves vs. Bear: There are many arguments about the druid community about which summon is the best to use against which opponents. Personally, I use wolves against everything except Fire Sorceresses and other Wind Druids.
vi. Ravens: Believe it or not, these little buggers can be helpful. When an opponent is stunned or has max block, it can cause them to stop for a moment to FHR or to block their attack. This annoys them and sometimes gives you a chance to stomp for some damage.
vii. Twister: While Twister DOES have a stun attached to it, it is 100% blockable and the stun lasts for only 0.4 seconds, so this skill is pretty much useless due to its low damage.
viii. Were bear + Shockwave Combination: This is a nifty combination I learned from some Euro duelers on open battle.net. Basically you just have to shift into bear form, cast shockwave a few times to stun your opponent, shift out, teleport on them, and Tornado them to death. The stun will take care of all the work once Hurricane hits them. This is most effective against Sorceresses and Necromancers.
ix. Shockwave: Ahh the fun times… Shockwave is an FCR based skill that does very little damage but adds a stun to whatever it hits. It is blockable, just like Warcry, but it still hits a lot. The stun length starts out at about 10 seconds, so you only need one point in it.
x. Shapeshifting: Shapeshifting druids in general are pretty god-awful, but Werewolf is generally the way to go here.
xi. Feral Rage: The Life and Mana steal from this move in PvP is negligible, it is only useful against summons and minions.
xii. Rabies: This is the only poison move in the game that will kill without having to hit your opponent again at low HP, so if you are hit with Rabies and get to low HP, you will probably die, seemingly from nothing.
xiii. Poison Creeper: This summonl is 100% useless in PvP, I don’t know why people stat it, it doesn’t even count as a minion stack. Don’t use it.
5. Necromancers
i. Bone Spells: All of the Necromancer’s bone spells deal magic damage. Beware because they will hurt a lot.
ii. Bone Spirit: This ability is like a very slow version of Guided Arrow, following your opponent until it diminishes. If a Necromancer was to spam this move from off your map, they would be invisible on your screen. Beware of invisible spirits and don’t stop moving against Necromancers.
iii. Teeth: This ability is very useful for killing summons like Wolves on a Druid, or Shadows for Assassins, or even causing an Amazon to go into dodge. Keep this in mind when going against it or using it.
iv. Bone armor: This ability says it absorbs damage, but keep in mind that it only absorbs PHYSICAL damage. It is in every Necromancer’s best interest to keep this skill up at all times.
v. Bone Wall: A tip: Bone Wall can be very useful against Bow Amazons because it can lure some of the Guided Arrows away from you and cause them to hit it.
vi. Bone Prison: This skill is useful against Barbarians that like to run around a lot. If you name lock them with a bunch of spirits, then cast Bone Prison on them, they will probably not be fast enough to teleport out before the Bone Spirits hit them, causing massive damage. Remember that Bone Prison is BM against characters without Teleport, Leap, or Whirlwind.
vii. Poison Nova: This is a very large AoE spell that applies a high amount of poison damage over a relatively short amount of time, if statted for it. It is best to try to stack resistance against this, because most Poison Necromancers will be using pierce and the Lower Resistance curse to make your Poison Resistance as low as they can. Another option is simply avoiding the Poison Novas, which can be a real pain.
viii. Clay Golem: This is your best friend. Keep him alive as much as possible. This is also your worst nightmare. Try not to get hit by him or hit him if you fight one with a character that uses IAS. They slow anything that hits them or that they hit by a whopping 60%, sometimes more. You can imagine that this would be horrible for any IAS-based character.
ix. Amplify Damage: Everyone knows what this does, but what some might not know is how it does it. Amplify Damage effectively subtracts 100% from your current DR%, meaning if you had 50% DR, and you got Amplified, it would lower your DR% to -50%, effectively doubling the damage you take.
x. Decrepify: Similar to Amplify Damage in that it also subtracts from your DR%, but only by 50% rather than 100%. On top of this, it also slows you or your target by a certain percent that is based on the level of the skill. This skill is considered BM in all cases.
xi. Summoning Necromancers: These characters are considered BM and will not be discussed here.
6. Paladins
i. Charge: Perhaps the most versatile skill the Paladin has, Charge can be used in many ways. For desynching, for getting around quickly, for FHR locking your foe, for knocking them back, for dealing damage, etc. Charge is an insane move and is not allowed to be used for purposeful desynching. Holding Shift and casting Charge allows you to move quickly to the spot you clicked. Using Vigor in combination with Charge gives you a speed boost, but also causes you to desynch more than you already would using Charge.
ii. Smite: Smite. Everyone says it is so overpowered. Smite, in reality, is not that overpowered. What always made Smite overpowered was the desynch everyone used on closed that is not allowed here. Smite is still perfectly viable as a character, it simply takes more skill to use it now. Smite also adds a stun to your opponent, making chain locking with FoH a possibility. Smite is NOT considered a melee attack.
iii. Blessed Hammer: Were you waiting on this one? I know you were. Blessed Hammer is hardly overpowered. It has a predetermined and predictable path, it is easily avoidable. Fighting a Hammerdin does not have to be as hard as everyone makes it out to be. Simply avoid hammer fields. You shouldn’t have to worry about desynch hammers here, since jodering is not allowed. Most Hammerdins WILL try to stomp, and when you do, you just have to be ready. If you’re a Smiter, just shift smite on yourself so they teleport into it. If you’re any caster, be ready to walk south or teleport away. Melees… don’t even try.
iv. Fist of the Heavens (FoH): Simply put, FoH fails on open. At least, the typical one-hit-you’re-dead-Griswold’s-FoH’er fails on open. FoH is still effective, just not nearly as effective because the resistances on open are so much higher than on closed realms, making Conviction and Facets’ negative resistances null. Facets ARE still useful in that they still increase your damage, so don’t rule them out. 8,000 damage FoH still does 300+ damage to a max resistance character.
v. Blessed Aim: This ability passively increases your BASE attack rating by 5% per HARD POINT put into it.
vi. Defiance: This ability passively increases your BASE defense by 5% per HARD POINT put into it
vii. Resist Fire: This aura passively (when NOT equipped) increases your maximum resistance to Fire by 1% every 2 hard points. When maxed and equipped, you will have 95% fire resistance, which is BM according to our rules.
viii. Resist Cold: This aura passively (when NOT equipped) increases your maximum resistance to Cold by 1% every 2 hard points. When maxed and equipped, you will have 95% Cold resistance, which is BM according to our rules
ix. Resist Lightning: This aura passively increases your maximum resistance to lightning by 1% every 2 hard points. When maxed and equipped, you will have 95% Lightning resistance, which is BM according to our rules.
x. Mediation: I personally recommend always having this skill statted, it is useful if you happen to run out of mana potions in longer duels, or if you want to regen some mana and HP at the same time.
xi. Prayer as a Synergy: Skills that get a synergy from Prayer are boosted by both Prayer’s hard points AND soft points, meaning that whatever Prayer heals, those auras also heal that much.
xii. Conviction: Conviction’s negative resistance is maxed out at level 25, for a total of 150% enemy resistance negated. Conviction does not work on Poison Resistance. Keep in mind that if you have two Paladins using Conviction against each other, the higher level Conviction of the two will override the other. Also keep in mind if they are the same level Conviction, they will both be active.
xiii. Holy Freeze: This aura is not allowed to be used at all due to the freezing effect.
xiv. Concentration: This aura adds to both melee AND Blessed Hammer damage. However, Concentration’s effect is halved on Blessed Hammer damage. So if it were to add 500% damage to melee, it would only add 250% to Blessed Hammer damage.
xv. Zeal: This melee attack swings a different amount of times depending on its level, however at max level PvP it is guaranteed 5 swings due to the skills added from gear. Zeal is very useful against minion stackers like Druids, but be careful because it makes you unable to move until all 5 swings are finished. MOST of the time, Zeal is only used Melee versus Melee (MvM).
xvi. Maxing Smite + Fanaticism vs Holy Shield: There has been some debate as to which is better, maxing Holy Shield or Smite and Fanaticism first. However, through much testing, it has been proven that EVEN THOUGH Holy Shield adds more on-screen damage, Smite + Fanaticism should be maxed first because they add more overall damage.
7. Sorceresses
i. Warmth: Very important. Stat this on every Sorceress you make, mana is everything to a Sorceress.
ii. Fire Ball: Wreckage in a fast fiery inferno. Fire ball does a TON of damage when all of its synergies are maxed and the Sorceress is geared correctly, plus the explosive radius makes it effective at killing summons.
iii. Meteor: This ability takes timing to use well in PvP. Predicting where your opponent will be or luring them into its landing spot will be the only way you hit anything. It is worth it, though, because, statted correctly, it can do upwards of 50,000 Fire damage when it hits. Your opponents will be able to see the flaming circle that shows its landing spot, and smart opponents will avoid it.
iv. Enchant: This skill is not inherently beneficial to a Sorceress that casts, but it is beneficial to any melee using party member they cast it on, as well as melee Sorceresses. It adds a massive attack rating boost as well as massive fire damage when skilled for it. The item Demonlimb gives a level 23 Enchant charged skill that any player may use to buff their Attack Rating. Most melee players do not like Enchant, however, so try to avoid using it in Melee versus Melee.
v. Telekinesis: A nearly useless skill, this ability has a small chance on striking to knock back what it hits, and it deals negligible lightning damage. The only reason to stat this is either to max it out for the bonus to Energy Shield, or to get to Teleport. Telekinesis reduces the amount of damage your mana takes from all attacks.
vi. Teleport: Most every character’s main mode of transportation, teleport is good, but do not overuse this skill as a means of running away, it make the duel very boring having to chase a teleporter around for minutes on end.
vii. Energy Shield: This ability basically makes it so that your mana takes a portion of the damage you take to itself, meaning if you have Energy Shield up and get hit, your mana will take most of the damage. Energy Shield absorbs the most damage at level 40, which is 95% of all damage taken. Energy Shield absorb does not matter for mana potion usage, it is still forbidden.
viii. Blizzard: Oh god, the ominous Blizzard Sorceress. These characters pierce upwards of 230 cold resistance thanks to their mastery. Basically this means if you don’t stack res, they WILL kill you in 1-2 hits from Blizzard. It is possible to beat them without resistance stacking, but it is much more annoying and takes much longer. Other cold skills are used from time to time, but a lot of Cold Sorceresses only use Blizzard.
ix. Frozen Orb: While there is no official rule against this skill, it is recommended you don’t use it because it is very easy to play like a douche with this skill. Teleport, orb, teleport orb, it is so easy to use. Orb Sorceresses like to run off-screen all the time, which is what makes the duels long and boring.
x. Armor spells: While there are some Sorceresses that make a build specifically for killing melee characters with Shiver Armor, most Sorceresses use these as a mode of either freezing their opponent, or for a defense boost, or both. It is recommended you stat Chilling and Shiver armors.
xi. Masteries: Each element tree for the Sorceress has its own mastery spell. Fire and Lightning masteries increase the damage done by your Fire and Lightning spells by a % shown on the skill, while Cold Mastery pierces your enemies’ Cold Resistance by a % shown on the skill.
So that is my rant on everything I think you should or need to know about PvP. I consulted no one else on this, I didn’t look anything up, this is all from word of mouth and my personal experience. Take it as you want, but it’s all true.
As usual, PM me any questions you may have, I'll answer as soon as I can.
Best of luck,
[SA}XaeSword
