The DuelThe first and the most basic step has been re-iterated plenty of times and don't require any addressing on my side. You learn to block, you learn the fundamentals. From there, it's all about the continuous development of your abilities. There are many approaches as to what areas you develop, but the most typical would be your offense. For a very long time, my offense was incredibly developed while my defensive (blocking unaccounted for) skills had been neglected. By that I mean, feinting and "tricking" the opponent was one of my specialties while I would block properly but I could not allow my offensives to flourish because I was struggling with the defense. It's a bit like trying to write with one hand and erasing with the other one.
Then I encountered the defensively sound and calm player. One great (if not the greatest) example would be Urist. He is by far the most frustrating duelist to fight. He has basic offense, but his defense more than makes up for it on many levels. Urist's style basically allows him to control the duel if fighting a player with little understanding about his own defense. He would block every one of my attacks for so long that I got frustrated and eventually reckless enough for him to capitalize on it. That's when I was encouraged to improve my defense. And when I realized you can't survive on your offensive abilities alone.
The defense and the offense are like two different worlds. As you familiarize with one, new doors open up in the other world. Given that you're somewhat equally developed in both the offense and the defense, of course. More precisely explained; if you learn your ways around both aspects of the dueling properly, you should know when to attack, when you can exploit positions in order to score another hit, when you should do held attacks etc etc. Come to think of it, dueling is like a hyper-advanced version of rock-paper-scissor with elements dependent on raw skill and awareness.
And in order to accomplish the above, you need practice. That's it. There's no complex procedure. You'd be surprised how many other things have just one simple answer. Everything I've mentioned so far I've become aware of as time passed and I improved. To get to this stage, I guess, you just need a big enough interest to keep going. If you're just a casual gamer, you will maybe not develop much more from the decent blocking/decent attacking stage. I suppose you need at least a
bit of the no-life factor.
So to summarize: You want to practice with awareness. Evaluate why you lost a particular duel. Often when you don't understand why you lost, is because you lack in something, which can often easily be gained through - yes, you guessed it: Practice. Most of my duels (even the ones I've technically not fought) have already been fought in the sense that I recognize all the patterns and only need small sign of the opponent's intention to know how to counter. This is also usually a sign that you've played this game for too long, but don't let that discourage you!
Chambering, highly useful. That's all I'm going to say about it. Learn it and you won't regret it, ignore people when they say it's pointless. They've obviously not learned it to a full extent.
Now over to something more exciting and far more e-peen rewarding.
The BattleDueling and Battle are incomparable. Yes, individual skill is important, as is awareness. But battle requires another type of awareness, one that can easily be gained if you give enough attention to developing it. Namely, situational awareness. You've probably heard it a lot, but I think I need to define (mostly for myself) what exactly it refers to.
First of all, there are a few stages of a battle that you have to abide and act accordingly to. You can sometimes push the boundaries and in rare cases just completely ignore them and come out with the hugest e-peen of the day. But in order to be able to even consider this without dying in the first moments of a round and feel humiliated, you need to learn how to interpret situations. Even though sometimes I do stupid things like get shot up by archers/sniper xbows because I walked into their "zerg-horde(lol...phyrex)"(and then cry about it + lags), I still understand why I died. And in saying that, I also understand how to survive.
What I'm referring to is the
skirmish phase. It's the beginning of the round and all the ranged have full quivers of projectiles (those my old friends) and all the melee are afraid to get hit. The cav are setting up their back stabbing flanks and there's a small anxiety of dying and thus trying to avoid it by all means. Usually at this time, you have two approaches, one obviously being the more logical one, the other maybe more exciting. Either you move with the main body (and still run the risk of getting hit in the face by some random sniper xbow) and you support your team in diminishing the enemy team's numbers. This approach, is naturally the most preferred one if you're grinding. But I know how tiresome the grinding can be, and that's when I sometimes just charge in from a good angle and start slicing and dicing. There has been occasions where I kill 15 players and then kill another 5 and feel my e-peen throbbing magnificently in my virtual underpants. But completely ignore this as it's pointless unless you know all the essentials like range control(which I will shortly address) and speed bonuses.
Next phase is the
survival phase. Your team has lost x number of players and so has the enemy team. Technically speaking, the odds of you dying is now greatly increased. What you do here is look around the battlefield. Where can you help, what can you kill. And always plan ahead.
After I kill these guys, then where do I go? Etc. Be as flexible as possible, even if you planned on taking someone out, you may have to retreat if you are under the focus of cavalry or archers since they will disrupt you in many ways. I.e shooting you, bumping you, hitting you. Usually the fastest way of going from 100% to 0% hp.
The last and probably the
most important phase, when 70-80% of all players are dead. Assuming that you've survived this far and your teams are even in numbers - or better yet,
your team is outnumbered(because there's nothing more that makes your e-peen grow larger than when beating the odds to everyone's surprise). Now you will want to check your health bar and from there decide on a course of action. Play reserved if your health is low, or play aggressively if you managed to avoid losing substantial health. Why? Because if you play reserved, situations will open up to you(give that you're not alone) and if you play aggressively at this stage, the enemy is most likely low on health and will be intimidated by your aggression. The latter one being the best because you are always in control if the enemy fears you. It's crucial that you don't hesitate here at all, relentless is the way to go.
All of the above taken into consideration, you can now focus on things that will help you get through them.- Range control. Awareness of the length of your weapon, most crucial ability.
- Awareness of surroundings. If you passed an enemy, chances are he's seen you and is skulking behind you. Use the §(or tilde) to look around/behind.
- Prioritizing targets. If you are outnumbered, don't just focus on one guy. Look for people with chambered attacks (held attacks) and go for them. Upon killing that target, you have a brief window of wreaking havoc unless someone in that gank squad is aware of this (pray they are not). Keep swinging, block only if you absolutely have to. The exact same goes for back stabbing a group. Go for archers first, then melee.
- Speed bonus. Most people aren't aware that you can use it as a form of defense also, not just offense (I'm not saying you shouldn't block, but it is a necessity however). If you move away from a swing, you will reduce the speed bonus of the hit. Some cases you can cause them to glance, but only if the swing is nearing its end-arc. Same goes for glances, which occur if the attack animation begins too close to its target.
- Same applies to the offense. Use the WASD keys to pack stronger hits. Forward for thrust/overhead and A, D for left/right swings.
- Be resolute. If you see hesitation, don't hesitate.
That's mostly it. There are a few technical matters such as weight and speed ratings. Depending on your preferences, and your playstyle, you need to adapt to a build even if you dislike its disadvantages.
For example, good blockers benefit from both the STR focus and the AGI focus, but mostly the AGI since you rely on it more for surviving with an AGI build than a STR build.
The easiest build is probably the STR build, but it's the least flexible one and if you get surrounded; game's over. However, it's the most explosive and dangerous build. You can cause massive damage in battle with this, if you have a big focus enough on STR. 30 STR and 9 AGI for example, gives me the ability to one hit most people if I attack properly. I.e, speed bonus utilization, knowing where in the swing arc I want to hit them (the optimal swing arc is usually around 35-40% of the arc).
If you are a good all-around-player, then AGI focus is really the choice for you. You are dynamic as an AGI build, you can be at many places at the same time(metaphorically speaking) and you can juggle enemies around like they're made of cloth. The only down-side here is ranged. You will be able to avoid them easier with your athletics, but 3 hits from an rcher can be devastating even with 40+ armours. The worst are the throwing lances, they
will one hit you if you move toward the projectile. You can either sacrifice 2 or more of your maximum ironflesh for a shield here and become more versatile. But you suffer in flexibility and dynamism.
