[img]http://i7.tinypic.com/8e7yk43.png[/img]
Alright, a disclaimer: If you don't like me, shut the **** up. I'm not going to put any of my humor in this guide, no references to how bad Memoire is at this game, nothing like that. It's going to be a straight up, no-nonsense PVP/PK archer guide.
This guide is to be read by an open mind; anything I say sarcastic in it, or any "name calling" or anything like that is purely playful. There is a bit of adult language present, and if that offends you, please close this thread now and be on your way.
If you have any LEGITIMATE complaints, you may put them here. If your complaint is "wtf ur guide suxxx" and you don't give any advice on how to prove it, you're a cumguzzling cockmaster and should just kill yourself. Thanks.
That said, this guide is a work in progress. It is NOT complete as you see it. I will be updating it as time goes on. As an additional note, you should go find my PVP/PK guide in the PVP section for more tips on PKing.
Welcome, wayward nublet.
You have stumbled, one way or another, upon my archer guide and that means that you are now my personal meat. You will sit your ass in that chair, watch intently and shut up until I'm finished. I may not be the best archer player, but I'm the only one with the nuts to write a decent PVP guide (no offense to opelxfrost, who's guide is okay) and so that makes me cooler than them anyway.
Now, my young nublet, do you know what the first step to being an archer is?
Making your character.
Okay, there are some first steps for making your character. First of all, as an archer, get a creative name. If you name yourself xxlegolasxx I'm going to punch you in the face. Get a decent name, even Mirana Nightshade would have been alright if you could get it to fit on the horribly gay 10 character name limit. Shout out to my DotA peeps. Anyway, get a decent and creative name. My good friend Thesaurus will be glad to help you with that. http://www.thesaurus.com
Now that you've got a good name, you need to pick your sex and what your character will look like.
Listen closely.
Male archers are homosexuals.
While I have nothing against homosexuals, I know a large part of the word is homophobic and if you are, you will hate your male archer.
You think I'm kidding? Have a look at this.
[img]http://i11.tinypic.com/73kej2t.png[/img]
THAT'S RIGHT, CLAY AIKEN. I JUST SAVED YOU FROM MAKING A CHARACTER LIKE THAT. You're welcome.
So, obviously, make a female archer. It's also very important for female archers to have huge breasts. It helps us with our balance when firing our bows and it also is a counterweight for when we're flying. Very helpful, do not forget.
Try to make your character look at least semi-unique, please.
Now that you're done with that....
The lowbie levels.
The lowbie levels as archer suck. They really, truly do. All I can really tell you, is to love that you have wings. You have been blessed with pre-30s wings, use them. Don't be in a hurry and teleport everywhere, you'll go broke. Get in the sky, click in the direction of the town and alt+tab out to post on the forum about how great my guide is. Come back in a few minutes and IT'S ALMOST LIKE YOU TELEPORTED THERE!
Do quests. Constantly. You have to, you'll be level 15-20 your first day if you do plenty of quests and keep yourself busy.
At level 19, you get an Iron Blood tablet which means you can go to an instance dungeon in an attempt to clear it out and kill the boss at the end of it.
That quest will quickly become your god. You will worship it.
You get a sweet level 19 crossbow at the end and you will use this until you're 30-35, if you're like me. It's an AMAZING bow, it looks cool as hell, and you will love it.
Generally people are shouting that they will help people who need help for their fb19. Usually these parties are full parties of high levels looking for some free exp. By going with them, you won't lose anything except the drops that you'd normally lose even to a party your level. There's no problem with going with these groups, and you'll probably make some carebear cuddlefriends that way too.
Oh, and for those in search of some carebear cuddlefriends, RageQuit's glad to help you with your fb19/29 too. Message WILLSMITH, Junk, or Ambition ingame.
So you've hit level 30.
That means it's time for...
30s pvp.
At this point, these are your main skills.
[img]https://archive.is/20130626093159/img443.imageshack.us/img443/7138/yumang21ba2.jpg[/img] Thunder Bolt: This is your main damage skill for heavy armor. Most of this skill's damage is magical, which means it'll do crap damage on robes, decent damage on light armor and excellent damage on heavy armor. It is lightning element, so it'll do extra damage if you use it right after Thunder Shock. You're going to use it mostly for warriors and werebeasts, and if you're in a fight with an archer it's worth trying out too because a lot of people's metal defense sucks. When people get close to you (like warriors) you'll be spamming this skill and thundershock because they deal full damage at close range. Your normal attacks and other skills except wing attack and wingspan deal half damage close range. The skill takes no vigor and has a very short cast time. THIS SKILL DEALS FULL DAMAGE AT CLOSE RANGE.
[img]https://archive.is/20130626093209/img401.imageshack.us/img401/107/yumang34st9.jpg[/img] Colligation Bolt: This is currently your main alternative to runners. The damage it does is physical and the damage it does is also sky high. The downside? It takes a full bar of fury, which is not especially helpful for us fury-reliant archers. Regardless, it does excellent damage to robes and is your main nuke for them. Don't be surprised if you break their heirogram with just this shot. Use sparingly, against robes and runners. Use often against robes in 1v1 situations.
[img]https://archive.is/20130626093221/img519.imageshack.us/img519/1908/yumang22nl4.jpg[/img] Thunder Shock: This is another shot that takes some vigor, but like Thunder Bolt it's damage is magical. Even better, it raises the damage of Thunder Bolt if you do TB (thunder bolt is now TB, with TS being Thundershock, and CB being colligation bolt. The more you know.) right after it. The vigor taken can be quite a bit but the combo is devastating against warriors this level, as devastating as you can get without being a mage against werebeasts, and still pretty damned good against archers. As it is magical damage, do not use it on robes. THIS SKILL DEALS FULL DAMAGE AT CLOSE RANGE.
[img]http://i2.tinypic.com/6kz30c1.png[/img] Fury Burst: This skill takes a full bar of vigor, makes you invincible for 1 second and gives you an extra 150% of damage from your equipment for 10 seconds. 10 seconds? Woop-de-doo, right? With the delay we can't even make use of that ten seconds. WRONG. This skill is AMAZING and is what archers are all about. At your level, don't even use skills while it's activated. Just activate it, lock your normal attack on a robe and watch them go down. This is the skill you should center your entire fight around. Break their heirogram and immediately proc this, lock on them and watch them go down like they're Lelouchi's mother. Oops, I wasn't supposed to flame Memoire in this guide.
[img]https://archive.is/20130626093205/img443.imageshack.us/img443/579/yumang42hz3.jpg[/img] Wing Attack: This is an excellent skill, and the first melee skill you will get. Unlike the lightning attacks, this skill CAN NOT be used at far range, it is melee only. That said, it has a near instant cast time and a very short cooldown and will be your staple skill if someone who's not in heavy armor gets close to you for some reason. Also useful against melee mobs. THIS SKILL IS PHYSICAL; IT IS REDUCED BY PLAYER DEFENSE AND WILL DO CRAP DAMAGE AGAINST HEAVY ARMOR.
http://perso.numericable.fr/ecatomb/...g/yumang41.jpg Wing Barrier: This skill is optional at this point. At the level you're at it blocks a arguably useless amount of damage and doesn't regen much mana. This skill will save your life if you use it right after someone furies. Running would save your life too, with less SP wasted.
Later on (Level 39, when you finish your next cultivation) you can get these too:
[img]http://i13.tinypic.com/82nh00z.jpg[/img] Wingspan: This is a great AoE that does physical damage around you. It's basically just Wing Attack that hits everything in the area around you. The damage is a bit higher if I remember correctly. It also pushes back. A good combo for when monsters get into melee is Wing Attack -> Wing Span, but it's important to remember that players do not get knocked back by knockback skills. That means that doesn't matter what order you combo these in when you're in melee range. They cool down fast and can be spammed, but usually if your opponent is in melee range then they're heavy armor and the fact that the damage from this skill is physical ruins it against heavy. Running up close to a robe when their heirogram breaks and hitting them with these two skills is a fairly effective way to finish them off, just be sure that you only use these skills and lightning skills when you're closerange. Everything else will do half damage.
[img]https://archive.is/20130626093138/img115.imageshack.us/img115/5277/yumang35yu1.jpg[/img] Outcold Blast: This skill is the true proof that we are the descendants of god. This skill is absolutely amazing. It deals half damage at close range, but at long range it does GREAT physical damage (making it very useful against robe users) and has a good chance to stun for 3 seconds. The more you level this skill, the better it's damage gets as well as stun chance. This skill requires NO VIGOR which makes it absolutely AMAZING, and you will use it EVERY FIGHT against robe users and probably against archers, too. There's really just no reason not to use it. It's also a good way to stop runners, if you use it in conjunction with Colligation bolt. Just use this skill a couple times. You'll understand.
So there you have your skills for your level. What else do you need to know about PVP? Well, here's your lowbie pvp stylezzzz.
Basic Low-level PVP tactics.
This is going to be a pretty short section, your limited amount of skills as well as me forgetting most of what went on at this level will trim it down considerably.
PVP is all about heirograms. I'm sorry for those of you who don't agree, you can Darksoul me a river. Heirograms are these things that, when your hp hits 50% or lower, they "break" for 10 seconds and fill your HP. What the ****, right? That means fights are gay and they're going to last forever. Well, for some classes, that's mostly true. But not for us. We're spike damage. So, that means what you have to do is break their heirogram, and then spike your damage and take them down within the next 10 seconds. The easiest way to do this is to use fury, but for heavy armors that won't work. So for heavy armors try using your normal attacks and Wing Attack until their heirogram breaks (you'll know when it does, they'll shoot up to full hp) and then do your thunder combo. It won't finish them, but it's a good start and you've got 6 or 7 seconds left to finish them. When your heirogram breaks, throw up Wing Barrier if you have it or run back a little bit so you take less damage. You never know when they'll score a lucky crit and kill you. I don't think I need to say that if you see your opponent fury burst, which looks like this: [img]http://i9.tinypic.com/82c770p.png[/img] you run the hell away. It only lasts 10 seconds, kite them for those 10 seconds. Their hand will be shining brightly until it ends, and when that shine goes away, it's safe to stop kiting them and turn around to fight again.
For one thing, whenever fighting heavy armors, hit Thunder Shock and follow it up with Thunder Bolt. Always. If you're alone in PVP, just let the warriors/werebeasts hit you and activate a heal potion on yourself. Usually they'll miss you so much you'll be fine anyway. If you're NOT alone and you have more than one melee class on you, KITE THEM AROUND. That means run away from them so that they chase you. Imagine this.
It's a 5 vs 5, your guild against theirs. Two of their team are warriors, and they immediately come after you. If you, instead of fighting, just make those two follow you around.... What just happened? You just took two of those opponents out of the fight for as long as they'll chase you. You've effectively just killed two of them and the fight is now 3 vs 4 in your favor. Pretty damn decent for a lowbie archer, and it'll almost guarantee a win.
Against priests and mages, just be really careful. They hurt, but you hurt them more. If you have 2 full bars of fury, lead with Colligation Bolt, shoot them once and immediately activate Fury Burst. This means their Heirogram is probably broken, and they're also paralyzed while you're casting fury (but probably not afterward.) If they're stupid enough not to run after that, they're dead.
Other archers are long fights because you'll miss eachother a lot. At your level, use the lightning attacks against them. Later we'll just fury and kill them that way, but for now your dps isn't high enough so lightning attacks will have to do. If you notice your lightning attacks are doing abysmal damage, stop it, they're either buffed or have a good lightning defense. When that's the case, treat them like a robe. Be careful, but they're less of a threat anyway.
Okay, so you've PVP'd your way through the 30s and onto the 40s. Well, some things change here.
40s PVP Tactics
Okay, so you're in the mid 40s now. You've finished your lightning combo and you're packing wingspan, too.
To be honest, skill use doesn't change much here. Your PVP diet consists mostly of lightning combos on heavys, stuns and fury against everything else.
However, now your damage is starting to shoot ahead of your competition and you should focus almost entirely on fury.
So how do we maximize our Fury use?
I'm glad you asked.
The whole point behind fury is to give you 10 seconds of asskickery to combat the 10 seconds of heirogram downtime. With that in mind, it only makes sense to activate fury as soon as their heirogram breaks.
Use normal shots to lower their HP unless they're heavy (that takes too long.) Sure, they'll go down slightly slower, but this way you get more vigor which you will need. In a panic situation where you've got 2 werebeasts and a mage on you, go ahead and unload everything you've got on the target. But in most fights it's better to take it slow and charge up your vigor.
Once their HP is low enough where you know your next shot will break it, stop shooting. Proc outcold blast and let outcold's damage break their heiro. AS SOON AS OUTCOLD SHOOTS, USE FURY. The hope is that they will be stunned right after their heiro breaks, and you will have time to cast fury and get a shot in before they are unstunned.
At this point they're either going to run like hell or they're going to die to your 1k criticals. Doesn't matter which, let them pick.
Assuming they run, your fury quickly will wear off and it's a waste to get into a panic about 'getting the best of it.' You won't. If they're running, your fury is done, better luck next time.
This takes me to a good point.
Your main use in PVP is assassination of targets. That's what you're good at. You work with other archers to smoke mages and priests so that they're not a problem for everyone else. But you do other stuff in PVP too, and one of your key roles is as a chaser.
People will run. Especially if they're Memoire or Destined, then they'll run every single fight, even when they're 6 vs 2 against you and you've killed 3 of them the remaining 3 will generally run like hell. Regardless, as an archer, you are the anti-runner. You are a chaser. By high 40s your wing mastery will take your basic white wing's movement speed over 1.5ms and you now have an advantage on your prey. Unless they spam fly faster like all the Memoire carebears do, then you'll have to let them go.
Regardless, there's some rules for chasing.
1) Never fury against someone who's trying to run away. 2) Your attacks on a runner are stunshot and colligation bolt. Nothing else. Nothing else matters, you want to stun or paralyze them so your team can get on them, or your priest can sleep them, whatever. Your job now isn't damage, it's to stop them. Even if you think you could kill them. 3) Do not just try to get into minimum range and then proc your attacks. That won't work. Make sure you're within at least half of your minimum range before proccing spells, or he'll cancel them with distance. Basically, get fairly close to your running enemy before trying to stun or paralyze. If he goes out of your range while casting, it'll cancel your casting and he'll probably get away. 4) Work with your clanmates. Announce on ventrilo/teamspeak that you've procced stun/paralyze and advise the priest to get ready to sleep so everyone else can catch up, or advise the warrior to get his ass up there and chain stun. Same goes for werebeasts.
This guide ends abruptly. Here. Right here. Because it's going to be added on later. So yeah.