Thanks
This is part 2 in my "How to not die by" series. There may be references to the first part, if you have not read it, you can check it out at the following link.
http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10117
I'm going to cover a few things in this one, and I will add to the listing as I remember things that I forgot to include. For starters I am going to talk about healing yourself the proper way, I know this sounds redundant, like information you already know, but I can promise you, there are people that should benefit from this information. After that I will discuss some of the ins and outs of presenting a good defence, particularly, what to do in certain life-threatening scenarios. Finally, this guide will cover an exit strategy, how to evade an attacker (or attackers). Let's get started.
How To "Not Die" By Defending Yourself And Evading Attacks
The only really good, sure fire way, to keep yourself alive, is to heal yourself. "Duh I know that", well of course you do. The trick to it, is to know how much damage you might be eligable to recieve at any given time, and plan accordingly.
Mage Opponent Combo Types
Suppose it is just you and one individual in combat. Many players like to resort to the same combos when they fight (this is apparent, just watch the tournaments). If you throw a wrench into their combo, they often lose their momentum. There are really two basic types of combos, I call them "Immediate Damage", and "Sequential Damage".
Immediate Damage
This is the typical "Do a ton of damage before you can heal, in hopes that you die" combo. Good examples of this are the "Explode-Flamestrike-weapon", and the "Explode-Earthquake-weapon". Sometimes purple potions, magic wands, and magic weapons (paralyse/lightening ect) accompany these. The important thing to note, is that the attacker is counting on doing the most damage he or she can in the smallest amount of time. These combos pose a threat to you obviously, but they have some benefits as well.
One good strategy to use here is the disrupt. Harm or debuff a spell that is crucial to their combo. If they have explosion up, once you see the EB/EQ/FS start to cast, you should know what is about to happen. Cast Harm (or a debuff if you can) and ruin their second spell. If they are relying on some razor macro, sometimes this alone will make them purple potion themselves. If not, you at least got yourself some more time to prepair. When their second spell is ruined, you now have precious time to heal, run, recall, or start on the offensive.
I personally like to block the second spell, and then run at them and attack last them (with a weapon if I have one). This buys you another 2 seconds of not being hit with a halberd, and also lets you get a little offense in. Again, if they are using a razor macro for this combo, it should be easier to get to them and attack last, before they can arm their weapon because they are expecting the macro to play out.
Now, usually when these combo's happen, the attacker is left with very little mana. I guess that is the downside to this type of tactic. This is really good for you, but it will never happen if you block all of their spells. Being disrupted will cost you 0 mana, but casting harm will cost mana. If you sit there and break all of their spells, they are eventually going to have the upper hand again. The ideal solution here, is to find a way that both, keeps you alive, and, drains their mana.
Magic reflect items really come into play here. Let them hit you with that crappy explosion spell. If they see that the first spell has been reflected (and they will know because of the little animation) they wont continue. Let them hit you with explosion, and then equip your reflect item when you see the flamestrike has been cast for about a second. This drains them of a good portion of mana, and reflects some damage back to them.
If you suspect your attacker to be attempting a combo like this, of the explode-eq variety, the best thing you can do is wait for the EQ to cast, and then run out of range so you take only the explosion damage, and the EQ misses you. This takes a crap load of their mana away, and leaves you on the up and up. Note: You cannot magic-reflect-item area spells like EQ, Meteor, Chain lightening.
If Magic Reflect is not an option, or you just don't carry it (see part 1 again..), you can still plan on surviving. It always costs more mana to go on the offensive, than it does to defend or heal yourself. The trick is understanding that damage does NOT happen simultaniously. Even though it looks like that explosion and ebolt hit you at the same time, I can tell you that it most likely did not. It's really as simple as waiting until you have the window open (they cast a big spell), and then getting up a greater heal and holding it. Once you take some damage, target yourself. The benefit to "taking" the damage is that your opponent now has limited mana, and it becomes easier for you to attack, or recall. Healing simultanious (I use that loosly) damage has another trick to it, that I will talk about after the next combo type....
Sequential Damage
Most of the better PvP'er realize that the above "Immediate Damage" combo types are not guaranteed to work. They will usually try out the combos of the "Sequential" variety. Often, the players that do try an "Immediate Damage" combo, will resort to some form of "Sequential" when their "Immediate" attempt fails.
A Sequential Damage combo is one formed to prevent you from healing or casting. You could say that "Hally-Harm-Hally-Harm" is a form of this combo, but there are many other varieties. The defining factor, is that the combo does repeatetive damage over a decent period of time, in intervals that would prevent you from countering. Because people often resort to the same strategies when they are under fire (use greater heal, or start spamming mini heal), these sequential combos work. A great example of this is the good old, Explosion-target-EB(hold)-weapon-eb-eb(fastcast). The idea is that the explosion will hit you, followed by the weapon around the time you would try to heal. They both hit you, disrupting your heal, and then you get struck with 2 eb's, back to back. If this does not kill you, the usual retort is another weapon hit, or harm. An alternative ending, is the lightening spam.
Lightening spam works fairly good on those pesky "Mini-heal" spammers, and I'll tell you why. Lightening takes longer to cast than mini heal, but if you are casting mini heal over and over, and they are doing the same with lightening, eventually the lightening is going to disrupt your heal. This causes a delay for you, and allows them to get another lightening in. Think of it as them getting 3 lightenings, for every 2 mini-heals you put in and you can see that the odds are not in your favor.
First of all, if you are about to die, use a potion. If you can't do that, then mini-heal 2 or so times until you have just enough life to survive a little attack. (30 or so?) Now hold your last mini heal and wait until that lightening hits you. Just as soon as it does (remember it has a delay), drop the mini on yourself and fast-cast a greater heal. This has worked for me 95% of the time. Mini-heal/heal-potions are really the best way to go though.
Just keep telling yourself that eventually they are going to run out of mana before you do. If you are fighting a tank (or anyone else who relies on weapon cycling) do not run away while you are mini healing. Stick TO them. The more you make them punch, the more time you have before they can hit you with a weapon. The trick is to not spam attack last, simply run up to them, tap it twice. If you are a tank, you should immediately tab yourself out after they punch because this will allow you to hit them first when your weapon cycles and insta-hit is up. (This is really beneficial if you plan on fighting, because your weapon will be up first, provided you have stamina, you can then hit them before theirs is. You also force them to punch or arm their weapon before it is ready, ergo, ruining their weapon-cycle again. The ultimate goal in leet red-pots-only tank mage pvp is to do this, while disrupting their spells and/or casting damaging spells on them).
If you are a dexer, especially if you are a dexer!, do not run away from the tank mage unless you know that you can get away. If you have magery but no wrestle, wait until they hit you (punch or weapon) before you start trying to cast a heal. If you start casting a heal while the tank has an insta-hit ready, you are screwed my friend, screwed.
The basic idea in these types of combos, is to play "rock paper scissor" with them long enough for you to get enough "just in case" health and recall, or drain their mana and counter attack.
How To Heal Yourself
Healing yourself while simple-sounding, can be quite complex. I gave you the general idea in the above listed "combo types", but now I am going to explain how that can be applied. I will divide this section into 3 parts, healing with magery, healing with bandages, and a combination of both.
Magery
Greater and Mini heals can go a long way. As I stated before, it takes more mana to remove 50 of your hit-points, than it does to heal it back up. The obvious first choice is the greater heal. Because other players know that this can recover such a great deal of life, they will often resort to disrupting you (harm ect) if you try to use it when you are low on life. The key is using it early and often. Use it before they have a chance to disrupt you. When they cast a big spell, you cast a big heal. If you find that you are being disrupted and for some reason cannot resort to mini-heals, you can always equip an MR item, cast G-heal, and then unequip the item. If this is the case, you are almost better off equipping the item and recalling.
Mini heals are great when you are low on hit-points and the enemy is disrupting you. You can pretty much heal through anything (within reason) by spamming this spell. If the opposition resorts to lightening, switch back to greater heal, but cast it the second you take damage from a lightening spell to ensure you are not disrupted.
Heal potions come in handy when used in conjunction with the above 2 spells. Instinct is to use heal potions when you need life. That is not the case. Use them early, they have a delay. If you use a heal potion when you are at 70, you get put back up to 90, and then you can prep a spell (heal, g-heal). This way when you find yourself in a bind (low hp) you can use the potions again. If you wait until the last minute to use a heal potion, the delay is going to come back and bite you. These potions also work well with greater str potions. If you are in a situation where big damage is coming (a combo from more than 1 individual) drink a g-str, followed by a heal potion, and then prep a heal spell, mabye even equip an MR item.
Bandages
Bandages suck, period. The delay is so painfully long, that it makes this form of healing almost usless on it's own. (Unless you plan on doing alot of running). You CAN suppliment healing with a little enginuity. The key to healing with bandages is timing it so that the bandage kicks in shortly after you expect the damage to occur. Healing with bandages is more about spamming bandaids on yourself, interupting your own heals, than it is about actually healing. If you are at full health, use a trapped pouch or g-str potion and then use a bandage. If the bandaid 1/2 way through it's timer (yes use a timer in razor) and you still have not taken the damage, use another bandage! Keep doing this, and eventually when you take some damage you need only "not" use another bandage and you will effectly heal yourself in 1/2 the time. ALWAYS HAVE CURE POTIONS IF YOU ARE USING BANDAGES
Heal wands can be great (especially if you are a macer), to suppliment this skill.
Healing really begins to shine when you are on the run from someone who likes to throw potions or use magic wands. This is one area where this skill has the upper hand.
Note: If you are out of trap-pouches, g-str pots, or otherwise cannot get your hit-points down a little so that you can preempitively use a bandage, simply run to your opponent and attack last spam a little. If they punch you down to 99hp, you are back in business.
Healing and Magery
This is a truly amazing match made in heaven. You can heal yourself on the run, save mana during a conflict, and survive magery-dumps with spells. All of the concepts from the above two types of healing come into play here.
Healing through group tactics
Because people are such an obvious pain in the ass to kill, many players have resorted to using group tactics. The combos employed here, are identical to the ones listed at the beginning of this essay, Immediate damage, and Sequential.
Immediate Damage(group)
In the case of "Immediate damage" a group of players will all cast a damaging spell (or combo) and target you at the same time. With voice-communication, programs like razor, and sometimes out-right cheating, they can easily time this to almost instantly kill you. Stealth archers also employ this tactic in some way or another.
If two people are casting on you, you still have a great shot at healing through the damage. The key is timing it correctly. Take a look at the following chart...
//Explanation of chart
//What will probably happen after chart
//How bandaids can be used
Sequential Damage (group)
//types
//General use
//How to protect
//bandaids use
//Title:Environment
//abstract
//Movement
//counting tiles
//object interaction
//direction of travel
//Title:TBD
