PVP: Tactics and Terminology

[Lashang]

Clusterfact wrote:

Ok gang, this thread is in response to another thread of ours I recently read. The OP was asking about a certain phrase in a PVP setting, but there was no comprehensive thread containing that information. This information is vital for us as a PVP-oriented guild and everyone needs to be on top of their game. My hope with this thread is that we can accumulate as much information as we can as a guild, find out the areas we are lacking, and then round us out for the future. I need everyone who has two cents on PVP to post anything you know. This guide will be by the guild, for the guild. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Getting Started: Almost everyone in this guild will not be new to PVP, but for those of us who may be relatively new, PVP is an acronym for "Player vs. Player". PVP combat offers players an entirely different play style from PVE (Player vs. Environment) combat in that it factors in the human element. Not only do you have to know what you are going to do, you have to have a fairly good idea what your opponent is going to do and adapt to any changes. Be Familiar with YOU: This may be the Golden Rule of PVP combat. Nothing makes you feel more stupid than losing a skirmish and realizing that one ability you learned a few levels back would have turned the tide. This happens all the time; someone is not familier with their character build/spec and they fail to utilize important skills. An easy fix for this problem is to just sit back for a few minutes, read your abilities (and their tooltips) and think of interesting synergies between them (believe me, there are far more than you may think). Learning anything requires repitition -- your brain needs this to make connections! Very few people will be able to jump into an unfamiliar role and dominate the first time around, and odds are, we aren't one of them, so why take the risk? Be familiar with your opponent: By familiar, I don't mean you need to be able to read your opponant's mind. In fact, one of the most exciting parts of PVP combat is NOT knowing what your opponent is going to do. Regardless, you need to be prepared with any commonly used crap he/she may pull. What kind of class are they playing? What race/species are they playing? You can even tell what spec/role they are playing by paying attention to their gear. These are a few simple things that you can do to make PVP life a little easier. After a while, it becomes an almost primal instinct to know who you are fighting. Be familiar with your surroundings: This one pretty much speaks for itself. Know where your opponent may come from, where they may be going, etc. Not only can this keep you out of line of sight, but it may give you the element of surprise, which is a powerful weapon in and of itself. A surprise attack will most often leave your opponent reeling to catch up in combat. This advantage is one that should never be given up freely and many skirkishes have been decided by whoever lands that first, unpredicted blow. Your Team and You: Anyone who is part of a team is just as important as the next member. Do not get importance confused with skill. Sure, your team leader may be the most skilled PVPer on your team, but without his team, he is a target for abuse. Paul Ehrlich, a well-known ecologist, proposed the Rivet Model of Community, which states that individuals affect each other greatly. Like the rivets on an airplane wing, when one rivet is removed, more stress is applied to the next rivet, if that rivet is lost, the effect continues until there is no plane wing anymore. View your team as the wing and its members as the rivets holding the wing together. The Numbers Game: When you are in a team, your greatest advantage is having numbers. One large, roving squad of maniacs are going to dominate any smaller group of individuals almost every time. In a deathmatch, this is probably the safest way to achieve team goals. Many scenarios, however, will not allow for much success in large groups. Your whole team can go capture the flag, sure, but who will protect your base? Smaller groups are more easy to manage and allow for greater flexibility during mission-based PVP scenarios. These teams should be split based on the mission objective. Are you taking a point of interest? Dps and healers would be nice. Defending a point of interest? You should probably leave someone who can take a beating. Never, EVER venture off on your own. One truly is the loneliest number and in the game of numbers, you WILL be over taken by any group not made up by a bunch of idiots. Communication: Just as in life, communication is the maker and breaker of team PVP combat. I cannot stress enough how important it is to talk to the rest of your team. Do not stop talking even if you are rocking the scoreboards -- I personally have been in PVP matches where the opposing team made a miraculous comeback because our team stopped talking halfway through. Not sure what to say? Your team needs to know the "who", "what", "where", and "when" (relating to PVP, of course. Nobody is going to want to hear about your cat when your base is being overrun). For the philosophers and psychologists of Pax Republica, the "why" may also be an appropriate discussion. Important details need to be relayed as quickly as possible, and a system of abbreviations and slang words (both will be covered further on in this guide) will most likely be employed to ensure that the message isn't boggled down by language barriers or syntax issues. Here are good and bad example of how to communicate efficiently in a hypothetical Star Wars scenario. Good: "2 imps HB inc" Bad: "I believe there are two imperials heading this way. I'm currently in the Hanger Bay, so this could pose an issue for my health." By the time the second message is put out, the opponent may already be on their way for the medical bay (all speculation -- don't quote me on those locales). Note: Even PVPers without Ventrilo or a mic can still communicate as effectively. I obviously typed the above example, so not having a mic is a poor excuse for not communicating with the team. I'm going to say this one more time -- Communicate!! PVP Terminology: These terms are usually used to help communicate quickly and effectively. While some are used in a derogitory term for someone engaging in a particular style of PVP. Griefer:: Someone who is currently and purposefully making another's life a living hell. Whether its by constantly stealing kills or resources, killing someone (who isn't a challenge) over and over, or sending nasty remarks, griefers are not nice people. Don't grief. ex: "Griefers are not nice people." Carebear: Someone who doesn't PVP. Often used as an insult. ex: "Don't be a carebear, you joined a PVP server for a reason!" HQ: Head Quarters/place to protect or spawn from. ex: "Enemy in the HQ." Tank: A character specialized for taken consecutive, often brutal hits. ex: "The Tank is unstoppable with a good healer at his side." Heals: The act of healing. Can also be used to refer to the healer. ex: "The heals is giving heals to the tank." DPS: "Damage Per Second", often used to describe a class build designed to put out as much damage as possible. ex: "That ranged DPS is able to pull off 10k DPS!" Aggro: Aggression/Attention of a hostile. ex: "Heals has aggro!" On Your Six: Meaning "6 o'clock". This refers to the military system of denoting the location of an enemy in relation to the person. 12 o'clock is directly in front, 3 o'clock to the right, 6 behind, and 9 to the left. ex: "You have two imps on your six and one on eight." AOE: Meaning "Area of Effect". Usually referring to an abilities damage range. ex: "When surrounded by more than one enemy, sometimes the best course of action is to use some AOE. CC: "Crowd Control" used to disrupt and control the tide of battle. Usually divided under snares/binds/roots, silences, stuns, mezzes and abilities that remove the target from combat (rfc) ex: "The Jedi Consular may be able to specialize in CC." Snare/Bind/Root: A CC ability that prevents the target from moving, but does not affect the ability to use abilities. ex: "If you are trying to run from someone, a snare will buy you some time." Silence: An ability that prevents the use of abilities. ex: "Silence the Mage before he can cast." Stuns: An ability that prevents both mobility and ability use. Usually the target can still be targetted during the stun. ex: "Stun the mage then beat him mercilessly!!" Mezz: A stun that will be removed should the affected target receive damage. ex: "Watch your AOE! The boss is Mezzed." RFC: "Remove(d) from Combat". Similar to a stun, only the target can not be targetted during the effect or any damage will remove the ability. ex: "RFC the mage, but then cease fire. We don't want it getting loose again." Peel: To intercept/stall aggro from another teammate. ex: "Aggro on heals! Peel with CC!" _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ This is just a draft to the final copy and I emplore everyone who reads this to add anything PVP they can think of. This has a lot of potential to be a very fine-polished final product. I have a few guides around my home and I will be looking for them so I can add more to the terminology page. Looking for feedback for the betterment of the guild!

hey mate nice pvp guide thanx for all the info mate...also you might want to add a little bit about keybinds.

[Idea.]

Excellent article man, it's incredible how many of those little things you have mentioned are things that people really do take for granted. The value in this will be great to always look back on, especially to prevent a player from ever feeling like they are in a rut with any play style outside of guild groups.

[Torvos]

Communication is key! I don't know how many times some one has died because they never said anything about it not allowing me to help =/. Nevertheless great guide!

[Clusterfact]

Wow! I had lost this guide in the forums and I couldn't quite find it -- thanks, guys for bringing this back to the surface!

Lashang, I'll start compiling some info on keybinding. I cannot believe I didn't think about that before (it is a draft, but still).

As always, I encourage anyone who has anything to offer to feel free to throw it in with the mix. This is for us!

[Jaycen Lightrider]

This is great stuff.

So Mezzing?(guess thats short for Mesmerized) Never heard that before...I get the concept because I have unknowingly loosed a mage or four that I shouldn't have because they were Mezzed and I AOEd.

Keybinding...I don't get it...Macros...I don't get it.

I have this nice g15 keyboard too so if someone can explain the advantages of Macros in PVP and Keybinding that would be a great addition. Everytime I find an article about it I am lost from the jump.

[AstralProjection]

Jaycen Lightrider wrote:

This is great stuff. So Mezzing?(guess thats short for Mesmerized) Never heard that before...I get the concept because I have unknowingly loosed a mage or four that I shouldn't have because they were Mezzed and I AOEd. Keybinding...I don't get it...Macros...I don't get it. I have this nice g15 keyboard too so if someone can explain the advantages of Macros in PVP and Keybinding that would be a great addition. Everytime I find an article about it I am lost from the jump.

Yeah, mezzing is a term that comes from mesmerized, you're absolutely right. That can be a pretty broad term. Stuns usually account for anything that incapacitates your character, and they don't wake on damage.

Mezzes can include sleep, disorient, fear, mind control type effects, some of which require active control by their user. Typically all of these break upon damage. That's the real key to knowing when to use Area-of-Effect attacks.

In PVP and PVE, it really helps to know EVERYONE's abilities, not just your own, so you can identify when your attacks may actually hinder the group by breaking crowd control, rather than aiding them.

Focusing the proper target is everything, if the enemy's healer is worth his salt, so ideally you won't have to worry about single target moves breaking CC, since you'll all be on the one target that's not mezzed.

[Taic]

Jaycen Lightrider wrote:

This is great stuff. So Mezzing?(guess thats short for Mesmerized) Never heard that before...I get the concept because I have unknowingly loosed a mage or four that I shouldn't have because they were Mezzed and I AOEd. Keybinding...I don't get it...Macros...I don't get it. I have this nice g15 keyboard too so if someone can explain the advantages of Macros in PVP and Keybinding that would be a great addition. Everytime I find an article about it I am lost from the jump.

I had a G15 keyboard for the longest time. Sadly, using the hardware macros keys to automate functions within the game is generally against the game's TOS. However, almost all MMOs have the ability for players to use software macros that allow you to perform functions and you can then keybind those software macros to one of the hardware macros. It is confusing the first couple times you do it, but a lot of people use the hardware macros to do things like fish or other repetitive, grindy actions.

Keybinding is the act of mapping a hotkey (skill like "strike") to a key such as "Q". Personally I generally take the last two slots on the first action bar which normally are key bound "1" through "=" by default and map them to my "Q" and "E" keys so I have access to two more skills within my normal left hand position. I also remap the strafe left and right which to "A" and "D" so I do not use the keyboard for turning the character since this can usually be done more effectively using the mouse. If you use the keyboard to select skills instead of a mouse, it is just a way to get more efficiency out of your play style.

Macros are software scripts that allow the player to perform multiple actions with a single keystroke. Take for simple example from WoW:

Quote:

/cast Polymorph /p Sheeping %t! You spank it, you tank it!

This macro casts the Mage crowd control skill Polymorph (turns the target into a sheep for a few seconds). After this action has started, the macro moves to the next line which is a party message. This can be powerful as you can use operators such as the "%t" which will display the name of the Mage's target when Polymorph is cast. They can be used for much more powerful uses depending on what the developer allows the players to script. We will have to wait and see what the TOR developers allow.

SWG had a fully functional macro system. Every single action in the game could be automated within a macro. It was not uncommon for Entertainers to macro an entire dance or music routine and have it run an infinite loop which left them open to use the keyboard to socialize and try to get the most attention as possible (the more people that watched or listened the more xp you would get per minute). But, this also is controversial, because it would allow players to essentially let their characters play themselves while they were AFK.

You can also check out http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro , as this explains macros and the basics of what they entail very well. (granted, this is for WoW, and might not linearly transfer over to what TOR developers will allow us to do)

Hope that helped!

Also, amazing article on PvP; a great read and refresher!

[mrmarko]

great guide!

[Osristo]

Not sure if it was in the article, my brain gets bored and i tend to skim when reading long blocks of text :D...

My experience, which i like to think I have kind of a lot of in PvP, is that...

1. Having a Captain/Team Leader calling the shots and movement of groups is key. Not always your best player or most important player, takes a different kind of person to be able to be a leader in a video game. Micro Managing skills and the ability to think on the go are keys for this player and in WoW would often times be our defensive player posted up at the AB Farm or Lumber Mill (I was Horde) from their posts they could just sorta watch the battlefield unfold before them and make the appropriate adjustments of the troops there after.

2. The Roleplayers or Team Members need to have about 0 ego and the ability to refrain from becoming headstrong. Going back to WoW for those of you who play you understand when you PUG a BG you win either because people actually listen to the guy whos tryin to take charge or you get lucky and the people youre playing just suck real bad, and then theres the random occasions where both PUG groups are just free roaming and killin each other and you just happen to come out on top. Those can almost always be done away with as long as the members of the team know their role and dont get out of their lanes and try to do someone elses job. Again to example AB in WoW if youre the dude the team has slotted for defending the Farm then dammit defend the farm dont sit there and get bored so you go afk or alt tab out or somethin. Boredom can cause a fight to go from total domination to a skin of the teeth victory that lasted 20 mins longer than it shouldve.

3.Tactics, going into battle with a standard Plan of Action for a set Battleground is key, however having 2-3 contingency plans is even more important. Your plans of action obviously evolve with the game and its updates but the only real way to get Tactics that work for you and your squad are to develop your own through practice. People come up with all kinds of different strategies online, but just because me and the 9 other people on the squad have read over the tactics 100000x doesnt mean we will be able to execute them. Not every plan fits the personalities and playstyles of your personnel so be mindful in what and who you are working with when you put your plan into action.

4.Have Fun. No ones gonna wanna keep PvPing with you if all you do after a loss is blame everyone and yell at them for their mistakes. No one goes undefeated, its just part of life. Dont let your ego cause you to lose your mind and go WolviBerserker on the Vent channel cuz some dude on your team missed a key heal or missed the CC that wouldve allowed the last point to cap. People make mistakes and losses happen.

I ran a highly successful team with 2 other friends of mine back around the AQ days of WoW, hence the larger part of my tactics and knowledge came from AB and WSG. We were probably the most dominant team on Destromath for the better part of 3 months before I quit playing to focus on schooling and dealing with a death in the family. I reached 2 ranks below High Warlord and our team housed 5or6 people who reached High Warlord, though Destro kind of had a system for getting ppl to HWL. We basically cycled team members with another team and capped different players at different levels of Honor. Our team produced the most honor per week on the server though so naturally people from other teams had to come play for us when their turn came up to get HWL. Either way I PvPd a crapload in WoW and SWG and even Aion. All 3 were the same thing, Shoot,Move, Communicate. you get those 3 things down and your team will pretty much automatically be above average, combine it with skilled players and your team just became deadly.

[Blind Equilibrium]

If I recall correctly about the G15 keyboard and similar keyboards, they actually travel a very fine line of most TOS. If you use them for simple macros where you are at the keyboard and having to actively use a key every few seconds, it is ok... when it becomes such a complex "macro" that you can walk away for 5+ minutes at a time while action is still occurring, that is considered botting and is where it hits banhammer territory.

[Osristo]

Blind Equilibrium wrote:

If I recall correctly about the G15 keyboard and similar keyboards, they actually travel a very fine line of most TOS. If you use them for simple macros where you are at the keyboard and having to actively use a key every few seconds, it is ok... when it becomes such a complex "macro" that you can walk away for 5+ minutes at a time while action is still occurring, that is considered botting and is where it hits banhammer territory.

your post reminded me of the early days of SWG when people were looping macros and spamming them, basically say you were a Rifleman and you had a macro to cast I think it was Headshot. you would stack the macro to cast that shot like 25x in a row and then write in something that would drop combat and aid in your recovery. The game would try to process all 25 lines at once for some reason so if you say hit the button real fast about 20 times the game would lag out for about 10 seconds then BLAMO target annihilated. It worked similar to the Kalimdor Totem Buff Bug that the horde could exploit for about the first 6 months of WoW. Where you could just get 2 shamans to lay down 2 sets of totems on a phase line in the games processing. Basically every time text popped up on your screen saying you entered a new district within a zone and you discovered a new place, you are essentially crossing phase lines. There was one in Kalimdor that had a big rock and tree like split half and half on the line so you put the same set of totems on both sides of the rock or tree and ran back and forth between the two for the duration of the totems. Each time you crossed the line your character was being saved, only a glitch allowed the boosted stats to be saved as your base stats. STR of Earth + Grace of Air stacked about 600x made your character literally unable to be struck in melee and the STR allowed you to hit for a crap load of damage with any character in Melee as well, and you would stay buffed like this until you loaded into a new screen. So basically a level 1 with these buffs could kill anything in the game that was freely roaming Kalimdor as long as he didnt hearth anywhere or try to go into a dungeon or go to Eastern Kingdoms. Was an awesome bug to mess around with and expedited the process for a lot of my friends to get Alts to level 60. We were like 15-18 years old so of course we were gonna exploit such a powerful bug :D...I used it to farm for Eye of Shadow for my guildmates as well as crap tons of gold to buy the then unreasonably priced epic mounts. Im not proud of it but sometimes its fun to bend the rules.


Sorry I rambled on about something totally off topic...

recommence the discussion

[Blind Equilibrium]

As an addition to the terminology for pvp I submit the following:

Tunneling/Focus Fire/FF - Entire team concentrates a majority of their damage on a single target in an attempt to kill the target rapidly.

Hard Swap - changing focused target mid attack chain to cause a healer to be out of position/unprepared for the damage on a new target

Soft Swap/Pressure - Dumping burst on one target, swapping to a new target to do damage, then swapping back to the original target in order to off balance the healer or cause them to have to try and heal multiple targets at once maybe leading to multiple kills

[Clusterfact]

Updated with the suggestions given by Blind and Osristo! I'll be getting around to adding a section on keybindings and macros as soon as I finish up some school work.

[Jecs CI]

Nice list. Without much specific game info available, there isn't much I can add to this.

But the one big thing I would recommend to anyone that is serious about PVP in an MMO is that you look in to getting yourself one of these. You need to be able to move and cast effectively. If you're trying to do both with your left hand, you'll have a limited number of keybinding options.

[Crox Rava]

I'm going to build a cozy, modest house in this thread. I am ready to drink in the collective PvP wisdom of PR's veterans.