PWI Sanc Diary 8 - When Nations Collide

Spinner_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Not to put TheDan down for the video or anything but atm he has such a advantage with the gear he has over everybody else during Nw so you can't really comment much on his skills during the video to much as it's just 1-2 shot dead.

In my opinion i prefered the vids when you were equally geared with others as it shows how you can actually play your char when the opponents actually have a chance of killing you b:thanks

Needless to say, won't be too long before Nw won't be as easy as this due to every other person upgrading to r999 or refining there G16 to a decent level so am looking forward to the vids in the future \o/

It wasn't the best PvP I admit, but in my defense it was one of my most consistent runs without anyone getting the delta bug at the beginning and losing half the squad before anyone even gets in. Then everyone getting sent back to base because we're only a squad of 5v20 for 30-40 minutes and base-locked like what happened on Friday in Asterelle's video. It's very very hard to get a good fight in NW, the hard fights are trying to break an enemy base-lock. The whole reason I didn't bother to record Friday's NW was because I was essentially going solo with only barb buffs because you can't get everyone into the same base-lock instance.

I guess in short, the goal of my video on Sunday was to demonstrate a normal consistent run, the base lock wars I had on Friday were better PvP, but my squad was separated and the instances were less coordinated and consistent. I'm sure when the new NW instance is released with 6 instances outside of base, squads can actually coordinate themselves to face other OP squads in whole, without the stragglers.

I'm actually not that well geared compared to the people in the 2nd video I linked. I'm only +10 r999 armor and +11 weapon, with no shards in gear atm except garnet gems in weapon. Almost all of Asterelle's squad I faced was +12 r999 with JOSD. If you watch the 2nd video you can evaluate my skills against opponents that out-gear me heavily, as the difference between +10 and +12 is huge.

Maelael - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I do gotta ask however, why the lack of Roars? or was the 4x (I swear it was 6x) speed just **** with me and you did use some? I swear I saw a bunch of HFs without the stun first, and a lot of areas you could have stunned to help set them up for death more/better.

I did roar when appropriate in the video; maybe in that particular section I didn't as much, but I tend to stun-lock opponents that are more of a threat and can stay alive through ganks, like when that r9 +12 seeker was carrying the flag in that section who kept getting purified by a cleric and almost scored and caused us to lose. A lot of times when you AoE stun a large group of people they'll get 1-2 seconds to react to it and AD, so my HFs without stun were to try to kill them before they could react with AD.

I guess if you watch the 2nd video made by Asterelle you'll see me stunning a LOT more due to everyone in his squad being a threat, even 1v1.

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Nah you're thinking Kirby's squad...
In mine everyone is mostly R9 or R999 +7~+10 armor with +10~+11 R999 weapon. I don't think anyone else is JoSD except maybe yesy and disconnect (disconnect is not r999 at all though).
If the others were more tanky I wouldn't put so much effort into flagging.

It is a shame though that NW does not encourage the OP squads to fight eachother. The best way to help your nation is usually to go for a base lock and those battles fill up so fast with noobs it is impossible to get a coordinated squad into them.

Hmm, I probably exaggerated a bit too much, but I know for sure almost everyone in your squad at least the DD had the R999 weapon which alone is the most important piece for DD.

But yeah, it's a shame I can't really get any good PvP footage because it's very very very rare I land in a war that goes the full 25 minutes as your video showed, because the current mechanics don't allow full OP squads to fight other full OP squads. The rare occasion you might see the full 25 minute battle is if you get lucky and a few r999 players land in 1 instance against another r999 squad and hold it out 10v20 or so.

Most NW we either completely roll the opponent, or get rolled so naturally my average run won't have great PvP. I've probably stumbled across 2, maybe 3 instances ever in the past few months that ever went the full 25 minutes. So I really applaud the footage you got there. The 2-3 times I actually stumbled upon a 25 minute war I wasn't recording so I kind of missed my opportunity, as the 25 minute wars are the most even.

Maelael - Heavens Tear wrote: »

kay watched it.

I feel the purge pole, in some cases, you would have been better off with axes as you may have just killed her buffed instead of taking the time hoping for a lucky purge and getting nowhere. God you got ganked in some areas lol, Ive so been there. Have you looked into a def level pole?

But yea moar roars Id say. I see what you mean by the HF to get in before AD, I just find that people who are gonna fall to that are gonna die to Fissure/Highland just as easy. If they all AD, thats good for you as thats now in CD for them and they have an empty genie. But thats my style of thinking.

I also so a lot of single person HFs - I'm of a mind thats bad unless it's a flag puller or a DD thats killing everyone on your side that people can't put down. I've always been one to just Will and utilize drake bash for a heavy hit instead, save the chi for something else down the road, etc.

But overall in both vids (save the single person HFs which Im kinda against), it shows good skill choices at timings regardless of gearing/playstyle of the opponents. Thumbs up.

I probably made an error in judgement with the spear and a few times with the single target HFs, because I underestimated my team's DD (wasn't with my normal squad to really gauge our DD), he did almost died a few times where if I had used the axes I could have delt more damage and possibility landed a finishing blow on him, but it's all a gamble with the purge spear. I often pull the purge spear out on an immune stunned target hoping it'd purge the immune stun.

I actually used to have a defense level spear but I re-rolled it to get the spirit blackhole, however if it's possible I can make a 2nd pole I would probably get defense level.

I will for sure work on improving my judgement and timing on things though, I re-watch my old videos when I'm bored and even today I'm seeing subtle improvements that add up over time when I thought I really couldn't improve much more, but it's always possible to do better so long as there's room to improve timing, etc. It's actually scary to watch some of my old videos where I actually thought I was doing well in PvP (Diary 2 I made huge mistakes as evident with all my deaths where given my current abilities I probably wouldn't have died once) and spot mistakes I made I never would have noticed before. Maybe another 3 months down the line I'll be able to look at the current and see more mistakes and continue making room for improvement in play style.

Maelael - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Theres a group of us on HT that criticize the hell outta each other (like not to be mean, but improvement and such), and were all kinda different in playstyle too.

Mostly were looking at "What was the optimal choice", but it has a lot to do with perspective. I'm mostly a CC/Support BM, whereas some others go for the kill. In some cases, going for that kill is optimal, and at the same time so is CCing the whole group so your side can wipe out a whole **** ton of people. Looking back is a lot of shoulda coulda woulda, but it's still a matter of personal style and well...theres like umpteen different situations out there, its hard to know what to do in each one when you have 9000 different choices.

So if single target ganks works best for your style with your party, then I'd say "Okay but I don't like it." If you feel you have the support to work on a lucky purge and it makes putting down a target doable for you - thats understandable for me, cause usually Im that CCer supporting you (Although i dont think Asty is tanky enough to be worth it)

I think it's very situational depending on the style you like to play, coupled with who your team/support is and who you're facing against. No real "perfect" way but I feel we all gotta look back at if there is something, even 1-2 things we should switch out strategically to improve our overall gameplay. I think if anything our overall game play changes styles over time to what we are enjoying, and fits the needs of the fights. I've ganked some ideas from your other videos for sure for some situations, others I wouldn't use but I do definitely agree they work.

Example is how I handle coming out of BT: I either Will and start CCing or bounce, or I immediately go for Roar -> HF, or I stand around and look at the dead bodies. There are other viable strategies (chase, insta bounce, more AoEs, etc), but I think its kinda style and situational.

Hell I started out with highland cleaving and fissuring everything in sight a year ago...

I like criticism, if everyone were a yes - man there'd never be any other opinions out there. I guess it really depends on the team and play-style. I know sometimes when we're in a fight we know we can't win, we try to send as many priority targets back to base as possible knowing the instance might not go our way. Other times just CCing hard opponents might work with the squad better if you have proper DD to finish the job. I guess my squad is a bit different, of all our DD, we only have 1 r999 caster so it makes it hard to kind of be the tank and DD, leaving little room for your own support.

Makes me wish I recorded a TW 2 weeks ago, of our faction fighting 50 of us vs 80 of the opposing faction and turtling it out for 2 hours. I was wiping 30 + people at a time, doing fortify + IG BT then AD + roar and HFing, we were wiping the entire faction with a few chained combos like that.