So for those who can't read some higher level gameplay tactics here let me help and I hope my friend Panemon is okay with it :) - His surprise switching to poisoned Katana after using his heavy xbow multiple times in a row catches most mages with a surprise (if they don't know his build) - He uses a poisoned katana that can mess up the defence for some mages or dexxers who equip double handed weapons - When he fights multiples, if the enemy is disorganised, it actually works in his favour with pre heal bandages and draining enemy mana. Since his enemy thinks they outnumbered him, they drop their guard down and die one by one. - He pays super close attention to his health and the spell combos. This is a must. Blink and you can die. - If he switches to a faster weapon but enemy runs away, that drops the countdown timer for any weapon to 0, so he always switches to his heavy xbow for a maximum damage for his next hit. This is a basic gameplay tactic but a lot of peeps often miss on that. So yea, there is a lot more to list but I gtg. :)
Yes, you make a lot of excellent points, and observations. The DP poison I use works as a nice distraction against mages, especially in conjunction with the hamstring but the main reason I use it is when I encounter heavy armor dexers, or dexers with parry. Many of these fights end up in stalemates, if I do not have sufficient poison. This is why I am moving away many of my old templates from swords to fencing, with fencing I can have 3 weapons with poison on them, and one of my new builds has 120 poisoning so I can use lethal, and archery. example: 120 poison, 100 fencing, tact, anat, resist, healing, archery. (a great template to try out) Spear, short spear, kryss, bow, xbow, heavy xbow. These plate or parry dexers are virtually impossible for me to kill, but one thing I've known from my experience from fighting other dexers is knowing when to use a well timed poison to interupt the bandage heal. This is something a lot of mages can benefit from in field pvp as well is to try and time that poison spell just right to block that bandage heal. Get them low quickly, and then start slapping them around with the poisoned kryss or katana. I do notice that others tend to drop their guard when they are grouping up against a single player, this is why I try to kite them around and hope not to run into any choke points to slow me down. Sometimes they fail the hamstring, which then sometimes creates disorder. Eventually they will run down all of their mana, and then at that point I have to rely on good RNG to finish them off. Sometimes I will put them in a position where they try to heal one or the other, and then I try to use up their hamstring. The trick is to either avoid their hamstring as long as possible or force them to waste it during a heal. A lot of mage pairs like to do the double explode, so when I see explode being casted, I have to assume it's a follow-up spell from another explode, so I try to kite it. I hate to do this kiting all the time, but I am left without a choice if I want to survive these mage dumps. Even a single mage doing an double explode, purple pot, rope teleport ebolt macro alone can easily kill you if you are not careful. Since the addition of rope teleports being allowed in precasting, I've had to adjust my strategy by kiting more. I generally try to avoid 1v2, because all it really takes is a proper double debuff and and hamstring sync dump and you're toast. Mage, or dexer this can happen quite easily. I know people like watching me fight these but I don't, lol. It's very hard to fight 2 mages, compared to fighting a mage and a dexer or two dexers. I have found a way to survive some hammy, ex,eb sync dumps, it is very hard to time it properly. Most of these dumps take anywhere from 4-6 seconds to pull off and if you time the bandage properly, and remain fully buffed you can heal through it. I hate doing it though. I demonstrated it twice in a row in my #18 video, at around 14:30 on my pure archer. There are other sync dump methods that are way more effective then these. I once ran into an archer mage pair, they both had FS preloaded and they both hit me for 35-40 dmg each with their heavy xbows, and released the flame strikes at the same time. Insta-death. (no debuff or hamstring required) This is why it is important for players to fight as one, otherwise their numbers become my advantage. I don't recommend that any dexer try to take on two mages, it's not as easy as it looks and most of the red pks on this server are experienced veterans, and you must expect that in every fight no matter who you are fighting. I prefer 1v1 encounters with mages, because I like to see the way other people will fight me, and everyone seems to have their own technique and I like to see them demonstrate that technique so I can apply it to my own mage pvp abilities, when I am playing my mage.
I generally use my own crafted bows, or other mastercrafted bows I stash in my shelf. Bronzewood, Goldenwood and occasionally Rosewood. It's very rare to go above 46-50 damage with a heavy xbow, but it's possible if the player is missing leather armor peices. The 60+ damage shot you saw was on a player with no armor on them. Anything over 50 damage means the other person is not wearing a full armor set, or their leather armor is heavily damaged.
