Doing less damage does not equal Unskilled

Evryn - Morai

It is a strategy used by many Free to Play games. Not so much Pay to Win on the PWI side, but Pay to Compete (in PVP). In PWI, if you buy your gear, the PvE challenge dissipates completely, so if you're in this game for the PvE element it's not in your interest to cash -at all-, unless you want to blow it all on fashion.

Most Free to Play games that sell power burn out eventually... Surprising how close it follows the lifecycle of a star.
* Inception: The game is launched, usually after a beta and with lots of advertising. As a new game, lots of people come take a look.
* Main cycle: Cashers end up ahead of the crowd and dominate the game. F2P folks farm to catch up. Bots and other cheats start cropping up and get exploited by a few F2P folks who don't want to spend the effort farming. They join the cashers sooner at the top.
* Endlife: Cashers and cheaters reach absolute endgame. Some cashers stop spending since there's no point anymore. It becomes harder for F2P folk to catch up.
* Nova: The majority of the F2P crowd leave, unable to progress further, leaving just the core of casher and cheater endgame behind as a remnant. As fewer F2P folk remain, the percentage of (relatively) overpowered characters in PvP events increases, making the game less fun for the remaining F2P folk and accellerating their departure rate.
* Slow cool: With activity down sharply, the remaining playerbase slowly declines until the company decides the game is no longer viable and pulls the plug.

PWI is currently in main cycle, approaching endlife.


But all of this is offtopic I suppose. Ontopic:
I'm a fully F2P player. My main is my Blademaster. In the nation wars, I'm oneshot material if going against heavy R9 squads. But I can still be useful since the BM is quite versatile and able to control and debuff - and the speed skills make a flagrush possible (Genie on start - charger orb - Will of Bodhi and hope for the best).
As a F2P player however you should focus on control as your style of play. You will never be top damagedealer since you don't have access to S packs, +11/+12 orbs, JOSDs, full spiritcoins and other such stuff. (You might eventually attain some of these, but not all of them like heavy cashers). Focus on survivability instead.

Keisari - Raging Tide

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

But all of this is offtopic I suppose. Ontopic:
I'm a fully F2P player. My main is my Blademaster. In the nation wars, I'm oneshot material if going against heavy R9 squads. But I can still be useful since the BM is quite versatile and able to control and debuff - and the speed skills make a flagrush possible (Genie on start - charger orb - Will of Bodhi and hope for the best).
As a F2P player however you should focus on control as your style of play. You will never be top damagedealer since you don't have access to S packs, +11/+12 orbs, JOSDs, full spiritcoins and other such stuff. (You might eventually attain some of these, but not all of them like heavy cashers). Focus on survivability instead.

Just like this. Without at least full A-cards, nuemas farmed and well-refined full T3 pretty much anyone ish 1-shot in mass-PVP these days. But gear doesn't help much against control-skills(excluding purify-weapons if they proc) and thus F2P-player can at least make an extremely annoying opponent by using control-skills properly, despite lacking damage to really harm dem cashers.

Good example of such playstyle ish Kitty's way of playing her glasscannon-psy(T3+10-sphere and TT90-armors) in NW. In some CtFs Kitty tried keeping flag-carrying BM from moving while r9rr-barbs were whacking him dead. By spamming Glacial Shards - Earth Vector - Glacial Shards-combo and running away while Glacial ish on CD even 1-shot psy can easily last longer than half a min against melees. b:cute

And if somebody made fishsticks of Kitty's fish...at least they were quite stunned from succeeding in killing Kitty.b:chuckle

Couple days ago Kitty dual-cliented her sin and seeker for NW 'cause she needs engrave for sin's necklace. Because Kitty's going HA on her sins these days, Kitty had just seeker actually geared and since they both are leveling back towards 100 sin doesn't have enough dex to wear daggers without certain ornaments yet. Thus Kitty used her T2 SB+int-bow instead. Pewpew-fish FTW!b:victory

So, Kitty went into Bridge battles and stealthed to the center of battlefield to make sure she's in range of nearby enemies. Then Kitty started pewpewing them r9rrs. Guess it was due to Kitty's inferior damage or unusual choice of weapon for a sin that nobody bothered to attack the semi-geared 1-shot archerfish. Oh well, as Kitty got to pewpew without anyone disturbing she eventually got purge landed on her target. Next target, pewpewpew, purge. Rinse, repeat.

In the end Kitty usually got 3-4 targets purged before anyone bothered to make fishsticks. And looking at how quickly the enemies died after purge Kitty thinks it was actually quite effective way of helping allies.b:laugh

At the same time(when sin was either pewpewing towers(the right-side one that doesn't stun/sleep/seal) or running to next battle) Kitty was playing her seeker. As Kitty noticed she can't really hurt most full T3's anymore due to inferior spirit Kitty decided to rather Ion Spike groups for other allied metal-users and throw dem SS+QPQ-combos on enemy barbs to help kill them. Sometimes using those combos made barbs vulnerable enough for even spiritless seeker to deal some good damage and Kitty eventually got a couple kills. Ion Spike's metal-debuff also seemed to be effective against enemy melees when allied r9rr-seekers used their Ion Spikes on already debuffed enemies.

_BIackRose_ - Raging Tide

This! people constantly call me fail because i'm a demon vitality build seeker. demon already has lower damage then sage (by a lot) and i use a warsoul weapon rather then r9rr. and ofc being vitality further reduces my damage. tho i regularly win fights against much tougher opponents simply because i know how my skills work better. for instance gloom VS zerk:

zerk makes any one attack deal x2 damage.
gloom raises your base physical attack by 25% for 15 seconds.

now the most popular choice is GoF with its proc being 25% iirc, gloom is 15% the benifet gloom gives me is it increases my stats directly so all my skills are improved. zerk is only offense. Blurr for instance is a buff, not an attack, (LOL how many of you know it can be purged? xD) so zerk doesn't affect it. since gloom affects the stats it increases blurrs damage quite drastically. also keep in mind blurr completely ignores attack levels, defense levels, spirit, AD, reflect, invoke, irongaurd, and i havent looked but i'm going to go ahead and guess it would ignore defense charms as well.

so all this combined with the longer CC skills i have a demon, a few well placed occult ice, and maybe an apoth or 2 i can deal quite a bit of damage, even if that damage is weaker. i often am able to take out much stronger opponents that way. i play more defense/support so this build works best for me.

XXHotXx - Morai

_BIackRose_ - Raging Tide wrote: »

This! people constantly call me fail because i'm a demon vitality build seeker. demon already has lower damage then sage (by a lot) and i use a warsoul weapon rather then r9rr. and ofc being vitality further reduces my damage. tho i regularly win fights against much tougher opponents simply because i know how my skills work better. for instance gloom VS zerk:

zerk makes any one attack deal x2 damage.
gloom raises your base physical attack by 25% for 15 seconds.

now the most popular choice is GoF with its proc being 25% iirc, gloom is 15% the benifet gloom gives me is it increases my stats directly so all my skills are improved. zerk is only offense. Blurr for instance is a buff, not an attack, (LOL how many of you know it can be purged? xD) so zerk doesn't affect it. since gloom affects the stats it increases blurrs damage quite drastically. also keep in mind blurr completely ignores attack levels, defense levels, spirit, AD, reflect, invoke, irongaurd, and i havent looked but i'm going to go ahead and guess it would ignore defense charms as well.

so all this combined with the longer CC skills i have a demon, a few well placed occult ice, and maybe an apoth or 2 i can deal quite a bit of damage, even if that damage is weaker. i often am able to take out much stronger opponents that way. i play more defense/support so this build works best for me.

lawl demon seeker is actually good! the double purify gives so much sustain

people underestimate deity seekers too
a deity seeker can easily camp r8r weapon omalley and adrenal for around 120 def levels

and when you see an opening you can switch and rely on like what 200+ atk lvls with SS, 60-70% crit rate with rewinding + gof?

demon seekers are very versatile

Joe - Morai

XXHotXx - Morai wrote: »

lawl demon seeker is actually good! the double purify gives so much sustain

people underestimate deity seekers too
a deity seeker can easily camp r8r weapon omalley and adrenal for around 120 def levels

and when you see an opening you can switch and rely on like what 200+ atk lvls with SS, 60-70% crit rate with rewinding + gof?

demon seekers are very versatile

I have to agree. Deity seeker are way more versatile then josd ones and can dish out unbelievable dmg even without SS.

Josd seeker are very predictable. SS and then the regular combo. If you have HoS ready you can easily negate anything the seeker throws at you. Still, in most situations you will take huge advantage out of the josd (TW and with a group).

TBH, for 1on1s I'd always use 16 deity/8 josd demon seeker cause they own big time, especially with that sharding.