About Warriors in PvP
Some Stuff i wrote about Warriors/Warrior tactics in PvP:
Quaterknocking
Quaterknocking is a way used to keep your foe knocked down twice in succession with so little time in between that he doesn’t have time enough to stand up and use a single skill, not even a 0.25 second cast Patient spirit.
Quaterknocking can be done in various ways, but this example will have quaterknocking that depends on the skills Bulls Strike and Shock. Merely keeping your foe knocked down is a big advantage but it is an even bigger one if you can deal damage to your foe while he is knocked down and unable to defend himself. This means that you need to know what your attack speed currently is and therefore how many hits you can land before having to knock down your foe again. Having a Stonefist insignia gives you knock downs that last 3 seconds. So this is the time frame in which you have to act.
Quarter knocking with Bulls Strike and Shock using Sword or Axe
Using Bulls Strike with Shock means that in order to quaterknock you have to use Bulls Strike first, since using it second will not fulfill the requirement of hitting a moving foe. The chain we will look at in the first example is the use of Bulls Strike followed by Dismember followed by Shock.
What you need to accomplish by quarter knocking is to knock down your foe at the right moment. Not too soon, because then your knock down will hit while your foe is already knocked down and it will not trigger, use it too late and the foe will have time to act and it will not be a quarter knock.
With no attack speed boost you will hit once every 1.33 seconds with a sword or an axe. This means that after hitting with bulls strike you can hit twice and have spent 2.66 of the 3 seconds that is your timeframe. Shock has 0.75 second cast which means that if you hit twice and then use shock, the second knockdown will occur after your foe has had 0.41 seconds standing up. If however you wait for around 1 second after hitting with your first attack after Bulls the knock down from shock will hit when your opponent have only had 0.08 seconds standing up, not enough time to do anything.
Using a 33% increased attack speed stance, such as frenzy, means that you land an attack once every 0.88 seconds. This means that after having landed 3 attacks you will have used 2.64 of the 3 second knock down, and following the second hit with shock will trigger the knock down after 3.39 seconds and your foe has therefore had 0.39 seconds standing up. You do however have time to land two attacks, which will only use up 1.76 seconds of the knockdown, followed by shock the second knock down will land after 2.51 seconds and not trigger a second knock down, but if you wait for roughly 0.5 seconds after hitting with your second attack you will succeed.
Quarter knocking with increased attack speed (IAS) is hard because hitting with Bulls Strike and triggering knock down will usually involve the use of a stance that increases movement speed (IMS). Few stances, with Primal Rage being the exception, gives you both IAS and IMS, so you will have to cancel your IMS stance with an IAS stance if you are using one to hit with Bulls. This, along with the needed fast reaction of quarter knocking with a sword or an axe, makes it considerably harder than with a hammer.
Quater knocking with Hammer
You can also quaterknock while using a Hammer, this is more convenient in many cases due to the abundance of knock down skills in the hammer line. Hammers however also have a slower attack time, 1.75 seconds between attacks which with 33% faster attack speed makes 1.155 second attack speed. The attack chain we will be looking at here will be the normal Devastating Hammer, followed by Crushing Blow, followed by Heavy Blow.
With no IAS, you will have a problem, because hitting with Heavy Blow immideately after Crushing Blow will trigger a knock down 0.5 seconds after the person have had time to stand up (1.75 x 2 = 3.5, for the math interested). This means that if you want to hit your foe while knocked down, and still be able to quarter knock him, you have to use an IAS stance, flail is the obvious choice here because you wont have to move when your opponent is knocked down.
Now by using an IAS to decrease the time between attacks to 1.155 seconds we get the opportunity to quarter knock, the pause we have to make is 0.7 seconds. This will land the second knock down 0.01 second after your foe has gotten onto his feet, making it completely impossible to use anything else than stances and instantly activating skills in between. Since this is a long pause, you loose most damage but it is also considerably easier which is why hammers are most frequently used for quarter knocking.
Damage Loss Comparison
Quarter knocking with axe or sword without IAS will cost you a pause of 1 second which will cost you ~75% of one hit. With IAS you will loose ~57% of one hit. Using a hammer you have to use IAS to quaterknock and will loose ~60% of one hit. The Average damage of hammers, swords and axes means that the damage loss in stopping your attacks when quarter knocking is:
Axe 17,2
Axe (IAS) 13,1
Sword 19,5
Sword (IAS) 14,8
Hammer 22,2
Quater-rupting
Quaterrupting is similar to quaterknocking except that instead of a second knockdown you use an interruption skill. The most used skills are Savage Slash, which, conveniently has a 0.5 second activation 0.33 with 33% IAS, Agonising Chop with 1 second activation, 0.66 with 33% IAS and Disrupting Chop with 1.33 sec activation, 0.88 with 33% IAS.
By now you should be familiar with the pausing and resuming of attacking with quarter knocking and quarter-rupting works just like it. So I will simply state the pauses that you have to make when quarter-rupting with or without IAS.
Savage Slash: 2 Hits->Savage Slash, Interrupt 0.16 sec after getting up, no pause needed.
Savage Slash (33% IAS): 2 Hits->1.1 sec Pause->Savage Slash, Interrupt 0.19 sec after getting up.
Agonising: 1 Hit->0.8 sec Pause->Agonising Chop, Interrupt 0,13 sec after getting up.
Agonising (33% IAS): 2 Hits->0,7 sec Pause->Agonising Chop, Interrupt 0,12 sec after getting up.
Disrupting: 1 Hit->0.5 sec Pause->Disrupting Chop, Interrupt 0,16 sec after getting up.
Disrupting (33% IAS): 2 Hits->0.5 sec Pause->Disrupting Chop, Interrupt 0,14 sec after getting up.
How to deal with block
If you want to kill someone you need to be able to counter their blocking. In the monk case we will assume that the monk has Guardian and a blocking stance that lasts 3 seconds.
The blocking stance is not really counter able since it lasts too short to be worth removing but it has the advantage of a 15 second recharge which means that once you see it activated you know that you have 3 seconds where you cant hit and 12 seconds where you can.
Guardian is a pesky skill for warriors since it both reduces the damage and the adrenaline built, the best way to deal with it is to interrupt it with either Savage Slash or Shock. Shock has the convenience that it will hit even if the monk is already under a block effect from a stance or previous cast Guardian.
You can use the convenient 3 second knock down with shock to make sure that the monk wont be able to use the 3 seconds of block from his stance for anything other than lying on the ground, and then follow up with a quarter-rupt or quarter knock to catch the pesky Guardian that will follow as soon as he gets up. After this you will have at least 5 seconds block free environment to work your pain at the monk, if you can get him to kite before that its even better since you can then use Bulls Strike to knock him down again.
Alternately the monk might not start out with his blocking stance but try to get a guardian through first, in this case you let him cast and count down 5 seconds before using shock to knock him down. This will most often ensure that Shock will go through guardians block and interrupt the guardian that the monk is about to renew. Once this is accomplished unleash your damage and quarter-rupt whatever skill he would want to use after getting up, which is likely to be a condition removal to remove deep wound or a heavy heal such as Word of Healing.
Warrior Stances
A warrior should allways bring two stances, usually one stance is for IAS while the other is for IMS, in a few examples it is not so simple.
What you have to consider when choosing your stance pair is the following: What drawbacks does this pair have and how does it fit my situation. What requirement does my stances have and what recharge.
Stances can either require adrenaline or energy. Haveing stances that requires adrenaline means that you have more energy to spend on other more crucial skills but it also means that when you activate them you loose 1 hit of adrenaline in all your other adrenaline skills, mainly attacks, which you have to regain in order to resume your chain, this is crucial to remember when you are executing a spike. Energy based stances have the drawback that you may have to cancel your stance soon which leads to a wasted 5 energy. Usually it is advisable to have one adrenaline based and one energy based stance. The most common stance pairs and their drawbacks and advantages are the following:
Frenzy/Rush
The Advantage of this pair is that your IAS does not inhibit your performance, you do not deal less damage and you are not slowed. The extra vulnerability also means that you can lure foes to attack you instead of other more vulnerable targets and you can cancel your stance makign you a heavy target at any time. Thus you can force your opponents to retarget more. The Drawbacks is that you can not start out with a speed boost which in Fx AB makes it harder to move between shrines.
Enraging Charge/Flail
The advantage here is that enraging charge can be used when you are on your spear/shield set to build up adrenaline fast. Flail has the advantage of costing adrenaline so for a hammer warrior you can use it just before using crushing blow and gain back the adrenaline you lost by hitting with crushing blow (which cost Energy). Your opponent also cant flee when knocked down so the movement inpairing of Flail is not as noticeable. The drawbacks is that Enraging charge has a long recharge which means that it is harder to cancel Flail with Echarge in the long run, thus kiting makes you more immobile if your KD spike fails and in general you have a harder time retargeting.
Sprint/Flail
This combination allows you to move fast initially for example while moving between shrines in AB, and sprint have a lower recharge making you in general more mobile, if used however and withotu a knock lock it should mostly see use on Cripslash bars where crippling your oponent makes you able to keep hitting even while under the effect of the slowing from Flail.
Primal Rage/Rush
Primal Rage comes in a nice package because it gives you two stances in one, with the same drawbacks rechargewise as Sprint and damage wise it gives you the same benefits as Frenzy. You shold only cancel PR if you are taking too heavy damage. This means you have to think less when using PR because you dont have to take enemy kiting into account when you are in PR. Smart people will often force to have you cancel PR early and then wait for it to recharge while ignoring you.
Cancel Stance
As a warrior it is very crucial for you to be in the correct stance at the correct time. Of course being in frenzy comes with a nice unconditional 33% increased attack speed, which means that foes who are stationary (or knocked down) take 33% more damage than they otherwise would. However being hit while under frenzy also hurts twice as much, fortunately you often have rush on your bar. Rush has the advantage of charging up really fast when you are in frenzy, since you will land 4 hits in 3.52 seconds, this means that you can overwrite frenzy if you are under heavy damage or if you see an Elementalist preparing a heavy spell. This is not necessary if you are protected by your monk however and there is no reason to cancel frenzy with rush if you are protected with protective spirit.
Frenzy doesn’t however give you any speed boost which means that kiting foes wont take the extra 33% damage, in which case it is of course useful to activate rush unless you have crippled your foe with crippling slash or equivalent.
Quaterknocking
Quaterknocking is a way used to keep your foe knocked down twice in succession with so little time in between that he doesn’t have time enough to stand up and use a single skill, not even a 0.25 second cast Patient spirit.
Quaterknocking can be done in various ways, but this example will have quaterknocking that depends on the skills Bulls Strike and Shock. Merely keeping your foe knocked down is a big advantage but it is an even bigger one if you can deal damage to your foe while he is knocked down and unable to defend himself. This means that you need to know what your attack speed currently is and therefore how many hits you can land before having to knock down your foe again. Having a Stonefist insignia gives you knock downs that last 3 seconds. So this is the time frame in which you have to act.
Quarter knocking with Bulls Strike and Shock using Sword or Axe
Using Bulls Strike with Shock means that in order to quaterknock you have to use Bulls Strike first, since using it second will not fulfill the requirement of hitting a moving foe. The chain we will look at in the first example is the use of Bulls Strike followed by Dismember followed by Shock.
What you need to accomplish by quarter knocking is to knock down your foe at the right moment. Not too soon, because then your knock down will hit while your foe is already knocked down and it will not trigger, use it too late and the foe will have time to act and it will not be a quarter knock.
With no attack speed boost you will hit once every 1.33 seconds with a sword or an axe. This means that after hitting with bulls strike you can hit twice and have spent 2.66 of the 3 seconds that is your timeframe. Shock has 0.75 second cast which means that if you hit twice and then use shock, the second knockdown will occur after your foe has had 0.41 seconds standing up. If however you wait for around 1 second after hitting with your first attack after Bulls the knock down from shock will hit when your opponent have only had 0.08 seconds standing up, not enough time to do anything.
Using a 33% increased attack speed stance, such as frenzy, means that you land an attack once every 0.88 seconds. This means that after having landed 3 attacks you will have used 2.64 of the 3 second knock down, and following the second hit with shock will trigger the knock down after 3.39 seconds and your foe has therefore had 0.39 seconds standing up. You do however have time to land two attacks, which will only use up 1.76 seconds of the knockdown, followed by shock the second knock down will land after 2.51 seconds and not trigger a second knock down, but if you wait for roughly 0.5 seconds after hitting with your second attack you will succeed.
Quarter knocking with increased attack speed (IAS) is hard because hitting with Bulls Strike and triggering knock down will usually involve the use of a stance that increases movement speed (IMS). Few stances, with Primal Rage being the exception, gives you both IAS and IMS, so you will have to cancel your IMS stance with an IAS stance if you are using one to hit with Bulls. This, along with the needed fast reaction of quarter knocking with a sword or an axe, makes it considerably harder than with a hammer.
Quater knocking with Hammer
You can also quaterknock while using a Hammer, this is more convenient in many cases due to the abundance of knock down skills in the hammer line. Hammers however also have a slower attack time, 1.75 seconds between attacks which with 33% faster attack speed makes 1.155 second attack speed. The attack chain we will be looking at here will be the normal Devastating Hammer, followed by Crushing Blow, followed by Heavy Blow.
With no IAS, you will have a problem, because hitting with Heavy Blow immideately after Crushing Blow will trigger a knock down 0.5 seconds after the person have had time to stand up (1.75 x 2 = 3.5, for the math interested). This means that if you want to hit your foe while knocked down, and still be able to quarter knock him, you have to use an IAS stance, flail is the obvious choice here because you wont have to move when your opponent is knocked down.
Now by using an IAS to decrease the time between attacks to 1.155 seconds we get the opportunity to quarter knock, the pause we have to make is 0.7 seconds. This will land the second knock down 0.01 second after your foe has gotten onto his feet, making it completely impossible to use anything else than stances and instantly activating skills in between. Since this is a long pause, you loose most damage but it is also considerably easier which is why hammers are most frequently used for quarter knocking.
Damage Loss Comparison
Quarter knocking with axe or sword without IAS will cost you a pause of 1 second which will cost you ~75% of one hit. With IAS you will loose ~57% of one hit. Using a hammer you have to use IAS to quaterknock and will loose ~60% of one hit. The Average damage of hammers, swords and axes means that the damage loss in stopping your attacks when quarter knocking is:
Axe 17,2
Axe (IAS) 13,1
Sword 19,5
Sword (IAS) 14,8
Hammer 22,2
Quater-rupting
Quaterrupting is similar to quaterknocking except that instead of a second knockdown you use an interruption skill. The most used skills are Savage Slash, which, conveniently has a 0.5 second activation 0.33 with 33% IAS, Agonising Chop with 1 second activation, 0.66 with 33% IAS and Disrupting Chop with 1.33 sec activation, 0.88 with 33% IAS.
By now you should be familiar with the pausing and resuming of attacking with quarter knocking and quarter-rupting works just like it. So I will simply state the pauses that you have to make when quarter-rupting with or without IAS.
Savage Slash: 2 Hits->Savage Slash, Interrupt 0.16 sec after getting up, no pause needed.
Savage Slash (33% IAS): 2 Hits->1.1 sec Pause->Savage Slash, Interrupt 0.19 sec after getting up.
Agonising: 1 Hit->0.8 sec Pause->Agonising Chop, Interrupt 0,13 sec after getting up.
Agonising (33% IAS): 2 Hits->0,7 sec Pause->Agonising Chop, Interrupt 0,12 sec after getting up.
Disrupting: 1 Hit->0.5 sec Pause->Disrupting Chop, Interrupt 0,16 sec after getting up.
Disrupting (33% IAS): 2 Hits->0.5 sec Pause->Disrupting Chop, Interrupt 0,14 sec after getting up.
How to deal with block
If you want to kill someone you need to be able to counter their blocking. In the monk case we will assume that the monk has Guardian and a blocking stance that lasts 3 seconds.
The blocking stance is not really counter able since it lasts too short to be worth removing but it has the advantage of a 15 second recharge which means that once you see it activated you know that you have 3 seconds where you cant hit and 12 seconds where you can.
Guardian is a pesky skill for warriors since it both reduces the damage and the adrenaline built, the best way to deal with it is to interrupt it with either Savage Slash or Shock. Shock has the convenience that it will hit even if the monk is already under a block effect from a stance or previous cast Guardian.
You can use the convenient 3 second knock down with shock to make sure that the monk wont be able to use the 3 seconds of block from his stance for anything other than lying on the ground, and then follow up with a quarter-rupt or quarter knock to catch the pesky Guardian that will follow as soon as he gets up. After this you will have at least 5 seconds block free environment to work your pain at the monk, if you can get him to kite before that its even better since you can then use Bulls Strike to knock him down again.
Alternately the monk might not start out with his blocking stance but try to get a guardian through first, in this case you let him cast and count down 5 seconds before using shock to knock him down. This will most often ensure that Shock will go through guardians block and interrupt the guardian that the monk is about to renew. Once this is accomplished unleash your damage and quarter-rupt whatever skill he would want to use after getting up, which is likely to be a condition removal to remove deep wound or a heavy heal such as Word of Healing.
Warrior Stances
A warrior should allways bring two stances, usually one stance is for IAS while the other is for IMS, in a few examples it is not so simple.
What you have to consider when choosing your stance pair is the following: What drawbacks does this pair have and how does it fit my situation. What requirement does my stances have and what recharge.
Stances can either require adrenaline or energy. Haveing stances that requires adrenaline means that you have more energy to spend on other more crucial skills but it also means that when you activate them you loose 1 hit of adrenaline in all your other adrenaline skills, mainly attacks, which you have to regain in order to resume your chain, this is crucial to remember when you are executing a spike. Energy based stances have the drawback that you may have to cancel your stance soon which leads to a wasted 5 energy. Usually it is advisable to have one adrenaline based and one energy based stance. The most common stance pairs and their drawbacks and advantages are the following:
Frenzy/Rush
The Advantage of this pair is that your IAS does not inhibit your performance, you do not deal less damage and you are not slowed. The extra vulnerability also means that you can lure foes to attack you instead of other more vulnerable targets and you can cancel your stance makign you a heavy target at any time. Thus you can force your opponents to retarget more. The Drawbacks is that you can not start out with a speed boost which in Fx AB makes it harder to move between shrines.
Enraging Charge/Flail
The advantage here is that enraging charge can be used when you are on your spear/shield set to build up adrenaline fast. Flail has the advantage of costing adrenaline so for a hammer warrior you can use it just before using crushing blow and gain back the adrenaline you lost by hitting with crushing blow (which cost Energy). Your opponent also cant flee when knocked down so the movement inpairing of Flail is not as noticeable. The drawbacks is that Enraging charge has a long recharge which means that it is harder to cancel Flail with Echarge in the long run, thus kiting makes you more immobile if your KD spike fails and in general you have a harder time retargeting.
Sprint/Flail
This combination allows you to move fast initially for example while moving between shrines in AB, and sprint have a lower recharge making you in general more mobile, if used however and withotu a knock lock it should mostly see use on Cripslash bars where crippling your oponent makes you able to keep hitting even while under the effect of the slowing from Flail.
Primal Rage/Rush
Primal Rage comes in a nice package because it gives you two stances in one, with the same drawbacks rechargewise as Sprint and damage wise it gives you the same benefits as Frenzy. You shold only cancel PR if you are taking too heavy damage. This means you have to think less when using PR because you dont have to take enemy kiting into account when you are in PR. Smart people will often force to have you cancel PR early and then wait for it to recharge while ignoring you.
Cancel Stance
As a warrior it is very crucial for you to be in the correct stance at the correct time. Of course being in frenzy comes with a nice unconditional 33% increased attack speed, which means that foes who are stationary (or knocked down) take 33% more damage than they otherwise would. However being hit while under frenzy also hurts twice as much, fortunately you often have rush on your bar. Rush has the advantage of charging up really fast when you are in frenzy, since you will land 4 hits in 3.52 seconds, this means that you can overwrite frenzy if you are under heavy damage or if you see an Elementalist preparing a heavy spell. This is not necessary if you are protected by your monk however and there is no reason to cancel frenzy with rush if you are protected with protective spirit.
Frenzy doesn’t however give you any speed boost which means that kiting foes wont take the extra 33% damage, in which case it is of course useful to activate rush unless you have crippled your foe with crippling slash or equivalent.
Total Comments 4
Comments
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So I have to ask, is dwarven battle stance good for hammer warriors to use, or should we be looking at different elites and simply go with flurry for a faster ias to help build adren?
Also any reccomendations when getting targeted by a blindbot ele? |
Posted 04-11-2009 at 10:08 by Noa Brightington
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Dwarven Battle stance has the following drawbacks:
1: It can not be maintained in PvP without the use of either Renewing smash or On Your Knees, which requires additional timing. 2: Interrupts are often not as powerfull as knock downs. Interrupts does not prevent kiting and unless you cancel Dwarven Battle Stance with a speed boost kiting will shut down whatever damage you would otherwise deal. 3: The interrupts from a hammer would land with every hit, that is, every 1.155 seconds with the 33% IAS. this means that a clever monk can time the casting of his skills to fit in between your hits and still easily cast 1/4 sec skills and less easy but also manageable cast 3/4 sec skills like WoH. 4: Dwarven Battle Stance ends if you use any other skill, this seriously inhibits your damage and decition making so you wont have the option to react differently on your opponents actions but will have to keep just hitting normally and hope you interrupt something. All in all, DBS is a really crummy skill for PvP. As for flurry, Flurry seriously hurts you as an Axe or Hammer warrior since the 25% less damage will negate a large amount of the threat you are to the enemy team. Elaborating on Warrior Stances: (See above changes) When targeted by a blindbot ele there are certain precautions that you must have taken beforehand. allways keep a rune on you that reduce blind and weakness by 20%, allways keep a shield as one of your weapon sets that reduce Blind by 20%. This will reduce the Blind duration on you by 40% meaning that the blind from Blinding Surge will be reduced from 7 seconds to 4 seconds and from Blinding Flash will be reduced from 8 seconds to 5 seconds. Now your blind gives you a nice little timer effect because your opponent will have to renew the blinding in order to keep you inkapacitated, and the recharge of both Flash and Surge is 4 seconds, this means that you can time either shock or Savage Slash to Interrupt your opponent when they try to blind you, just when your blind has run out. Alternately you have to depend on your monk to remove the blind by pinging the condition, or call for another target such as your ranger to interrupt Flash or Surge. |
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Posted 04-11-2009 at 13:10 by Aoi Enishi
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Well the reason I consider hammer warrior is I've been on the reciveing end of the thing, and the hammer warrior killed my ele in 4 freaking hits. So as an ele, I take great care to keep an eye on said warriors when they decide I'm cute little miss target.
The only problem in switching weapons I've found is it does take a moment to do so, and sometimes you kind of have to force it to work. On more then one occasion I've had the weapons switch back, and I've had to literally jam down F2 or F3 to get the switch to happen, and not able to attack during that time. Maybe auto attack, or run, but that's it. |
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Posted 04-11-2009 at 15:20 by Noa Brightington
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If you are having trouble switching between weapon sets, because i have had teh same problems as you, you can use the cancel action button right after and, if needed, also before. By pressing cancel action right after swapping you cancel the rest of the "action" of swapping and can immediately take on another action afterwards. By pressing cancel before swapping you cancel your auto attack so you wont have to finish up on an attack before swapping. If you could make macros in GW then i would design the F1-4 buttons as being "Cancel action, swap weapon, Cancel weapon swap action" which would give you instant or close to instant weapon swap. But as it is now you just have to press more times.
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Posted 04-11-2009 at 19:22 by Aoi Enishi
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Recent Blog Entries by Aoi Enishi
- About Warriors in PvP (03-11-2009)
- R a m (28-03-2009)
- Ashes To Ashes Dust to Dust [AADD] Screenshot Competition (12-01-2009)
