DCZ Art of War

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

I see 3 problems here:
1. when parasited and then cured there is no time to put your hp gear on for undying.
2. Its not so easy for mages/rogues to have over 2K HP, unless very well geared.
3. You are comparing cast times but not considering what happens when you have to cure and buff. If timed correctly from a party of one priest & 7 melees/mages ur party member will be dead before you have to time to cast cure, let alone rebuff. Also, you are unavailable for that time to heal anyone else - which in a party of 1 priest is a problem. For example - lets say you have 2 mages in ur party. I send my 3 melees on ur first mage and then malice ur second mage and have 1 melee on him and my mage pillar him. You will see the second mage mage maliced and with falling HP, so you will cure and rebuff and possibly heal. By which time your first mage is probably dead. And I still have 2 melees in hand which I have not used.

Now, at that point I would remalice ur second mage, who already has 2 attackers + the 3 that are freed from the mage that died which means that once maliced he is dead. He could tp the first one back - but then again that one would be unbuffed and you would either have to stop healing and buff - or the second mage will be dead again in secs as he will be tp-ed in the middle of 5 melees. Now you are left without tp-ers so no way to keep your spot.

I am not saying the build does not work. Indeed the 1920 is very powerful in dcz; the only way to counter it (unless there is 879876 of you) is actually malice. It would work quite well if you had a second priest in party. But with one only its tight.[/b]

haha nice points silver. But:

1. im comparing the usefulness of the two buffer builds only, i.e 960/1500 + malice Vs 1920/1200. if a party has a debuffer that can parasite or reverse life, then everything changes. Of course, u cant put hp gear on and undy during fights, thats when u have to use 1200. But like i said, the scenario only has malice and both sides are using buffs.
2. some will have over 2k hp. my point was, the maximum amount of hp lost from the 1920/1200 build is 300hp and a lot of the time the loss is less than 300 since undy is applicable whenever a party member has over 2khp. the extra healing power more than covers up the ~300hp loss.
3. If all 7 attacking members of ur party decides to attack one of mine, then it is highly likely that i wont even have time to react and my party member will die. i did make a mistake saying 'party B would have already casted cure', i guess i was just thinking about the priest Vs priest. Indeed, it is very hard to tell who the enemy will malice.

Also lets not forget in your scenario that i also have 5 melees which have not been taken into account. The 5 melees will either be constantly hassling ur mages or in this case, they should be concentrating on killing ur priest with only 960 heal. Like you said, if a dead party member gets tped back into the action, they would be unbuffed and hence easy prey. So therefore if your priest dies once, he will die again even faster if we are assuming that the mages tp right as he clicks ok so that he doesnt have time to rebuff himself. Of course, u can have your rogues healing him but if that happens, your rogues wont be doing any damage and we might end up with a stalemate. Also, if my melees werent concentrating on your priest, there is no way that they will let all of your melees run around freely, hunting my mages. If you insist on sending all your melees to hunt my mages, who's to say that i will stick to the rules and cure my maliced mage asap as opposed to healing my other mage getting ganked? All i have to do is spam 1920 on my ganked mage to keep him alive, while my maliced mage can tp another party member to block for him or better yet, tp the ganked mage and both mages can then proceed to destroy the isolated melee character (im assuming it will be a rogue). This will force your mage to tp the chaser rogue back and we are back to square one since i will use that break time to cure and rebuff my mage. This is of course assuming that my mages are not close together. Why would they be together unless they are both blading your priest? After all Cross tps are the most important skills during combat and cross tping only works when the mages are spread out on both sides of the battlefield. Of course, these repositioning tactics will have to be used before you can cast malice again (it isnt that hard to do if ur party is coordinated). Now, say if all my melees were hunting YOUR mages, what would you do then? your 960 heal is not enough to save your ganked mage indefinitely so you would have to call on your other mage to tp or call on your rogues to minor. Either way, your 960 heal will sooner or later, become inadequate and you wont even have time to cast malice. Then again, you can just employ the escape tactics i used with party B and we will definitely end up with a draw.

Also, it is highly likely that both sides will have an ice mage and when the ice aoe is cast. malice becomes even more redundant, although i admit, an ice + malice combo can prove to be very effective. but again, if party A was all slowed, and party B was on the offensive, the priests 960 heal will take its toll and members of party A will die regardless of their buff status if a successful gank occurs. i guess u can say the same for the opposite scenario when party A is on the offensive as well..... lol.... This can go on and on and on.

there are way too many variables if you take into consideration the actions and positioning of each and every character on the field and I am willing to admit that the battle will end up as a draw. But generally, you will find that your survival capabilities are much greater with the 1920 build and you will feel more vulnerable/flimsy on the 960 priest. the 1920 build allows more room for error.

Too many offensive, defense strategies and counter counter strategies to think about... I guess this is one of the reasons why KO pk is so great

I hope my writing is somewhat logical and make grammatical sense. In a bit of a hurry and have no time to proof read ><

p.s @ silver. I love how your posting such great battle scenarios for me to counter and think about This is exactly the kind of stuff that i wanted to include in my advanced pvp guides for different party Vs party setups. As you can see, there are countless different scenarios that we can talk about and analyze XD. This is why this guide is called DCZ "ART OF WAR"

[enigma69]

haha nice points silver. But:

1. im comparing the usefulness of the two buffer builds only, i.e 960/1500 + malice Vs 1920/1200. if a party has a debuffer that can parasite or reverse life, then everything changes. Of course, u cant put hp gear on and undy during fights, thats when u have to use 1200. But like i said, the scenario only has malice and both sides are using buffs.
2. some will have over 2k hp. my point was, the maximum amount of hp lost from the 1920/1200 build is 300hp and a lot of the time the loss is less than 300 since undy is applicable whenever a party member has over 2khp. the extra healing power more than covers up the ~300hp loss.
3. If all 7 attacking members of ur party decides to attack one of mine, then it is highly likely that i wont even have time to react and my party member will die. i did make a mistake saying &#39;party B would have already casted cure&#39;, i guess i was just thinking about the priest Vs priest. Indeed, it is very hard to tell who the enemy will malice.

Also lets not forget in your scenario that i also have 5 melees which have not been taken into account. The 5 melees will either be constantly hassling ur mages or in this case, they should be concentrating on killing ur priest with only 960 heal. Like you said, if a dead party member gets tped back into the action, they would be unbuffed and hence easy prey. So therefore if your priest dies once, he will die again even faster if we are assuming that the mages tp right as he clicks ok so that he doesnt have time to rebuff himself. Of course, u can have your rogues healing him but if that happens, your rogues wont be doing any damage and we might end up with a stalemate. Also, if my melees werent concentrating on your priest, there is no way that they will let all of your melees run around freely, hunting my mages. If you insist on sending all your melees to hunt my mages, who&#39;s to say that i will stick to the rules and cure my maliced mage asap as opposed to healing my other mage getting ganked? All i have to do is spam 1920 on my ganked mage to keep him alive, while my maliced mage can tp another party member to block for him or better yet, tp the ganked mage and both mages can then proceed to destroy the isolated melee character (im assuming it will be a rogue). This will force your mage to tp the chaser rogue back and we are back to square one since i will use that break time to cure and rebuff my mage. This is of course assuming that my mages are not close together. Why would they be together unless they are both blading your priest? After all Cross tps are the most important skills during combat and cross tping only works when the mages are spread out on both sides of the battlefield. Of course, these repositioning tactics will have to be used before you can cast malice again (it isnt that hard to do if ur party is coordinated). Now, say if all my melees were hunting YOUR mages, what would you do then? your 960 heal is not enough to save your ganked mage indefinitely so you would have to call on your other mage to tp or call on your rogues to minor. Either way, your 960 heal will sooner or later, become inadequate and you wont even have time to cast malice. Then again, you can just employ the escape tactics i used with party B and we will definitely end up with a draw.

Also, it is highly likely that both sides will have an ice mage and when the ice aoe is cast. malice becomes even more redundant, although i admit, an ice + malice combo can prove to be very effective. but again, if party A was all slowed, and party B was on the offensive, the priests 960 heal will take its toll and members of party A will die regardless of their buff status if a successful gank occurs. i guess u can say the same for the opposite scenario when party A is on the offensive as well..... lol.... This can go on and on and on.

there are way too many variables if you take into consideration the actions and positioning of each and every character on the field and I am willing to admit that the battle will end up as a draw. But generally, you will find that your survival capabilities are much greater with the 1920 build and you will feel more vulnerable/flimsy on the 960 priest. the 1920 build allows more room for error.

Too many offensive, defense strategies and counter counter strategies to think about... I guess this is one of the reasons why KO pk is so great

I hope my writing is somewhat logical and make grammatical sense. In a bit of a hurry and have no time to proof read ><

p.s @ silver. I love how your posting such great battle scenarios for me to counter and think about This is exactly the kind of stuff that i wanted to include in my advanced pvp guides for different party Vs party setups. As you can see, there are countless different scenarios that we can talk about and analyze XD. This is why this guide is called DCZ "ART OF WAR"[/b]

i couldnt read the entire guide now you want me to read that ^^^^^^^^^^^ your crazy!!

nice job the things I disagree with still work out very well and it comes down to personal preference this will be very helpfull to new players, i wish i had this around when i sucked, i woulda read the entire thing!

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

i couldnt read the entire guide now you want me to read that ^^^^^^^^^^^ your crazy!!

nice job the things I disagree with still work out very well and it comes down to personal preference this will be very helpfull to new players, i wish i had this around when i sucked, i woulda read the entire thing![/b]

lol its not that bad...... Glad i could help :P

but like i said, the stuff ive been discussing with silver is going to be the real &#39;meat&#39; of this guide, its not just a simple 4 class multi build guide.

[CroNe]

well.. i already know most of it!! but i can say you&#39;r doing a good job here!
this might help alot of ppl.

i&#39;m not at home atm, but once i get home, i will read it

[SilverBlade]

Yes, point taken, it is obviously more complicated than that, especially if you bring in tp&#39;s and legcut/slow/stun.
However, still considering the simplistic scenario I also had 2 melees/mages in hand which I had not used. Which I could send to pester ur priest. That leaves your melees free to hunt my mages - but my mages ain&#39;t maliced so they will probably hold long enough. Or I could use the 2 melees to guard my own priest if your melees are pestering him. And the priest is the only party member that can die and be tp-ed back - you lose the time for him to buff of course, but its done in town rather than at spot.
If you dont cure your mage you can still only spam 3x1920s on your ganged mage before I will malice him as well- and once maliced the 1920 might not be enough. And you are now in a situation where you have 2 maliced mages. Consider that I can spare my rogue in order to exchange him with your mage, ur loss is greater than mine - or he will just lightfeet/minor away, if you can&#39;t stun/slow him.
Also - if you bring blading mages into the equation - duffs are the best way to get rid of a blading mage, since in order to blade they have to be in the middle of all and also close together so you lose the advantage of repositioning with tp&#39;s.

Then again sins could change this if they are smart enough to cure others. And so on and so on ..

I do agree that it depends on how each party works and you could very well end up in a stalemate or either party winning - but if I have the timings correct (I have never really played priest) one priest casts malice, 960+960+960, other casts cure, buff, 1920+1920. That gives you 960 advantage every 4 spells but also the risk of a party member ganged while maliced. And while I am not disagreeing with you that 1920 is very powerful I still think its not an easy trade-off.
In general I found it much easier to fight against parties without malice. Party that is not maliced has the advantage that no party member is an easy kill - and once you start losing members in a fight with buffs you have lost the spot. Party that can malice forces you to re-act rather then go on the offensive.
Again, if any or both parties have a second priest or are on scrolls things are much different.

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

Yes, point taken, it is obviously more complicated than that, especially if you bring in tp&#39;s and legcut/slow/stun.
However, still considering the simplistic scenario I also had 2 melees/mages in hand which I had not used. Which I could send to pester ur priest. That leaves your melees free to hunt my mages - but my mages ain&#39;t maliced so they will probably hold long enough. Or I could use the 2 melees to guard my own priest if your melees are pestering him. And the priest is the only party member that can die and be tp-ed back - you lose the time for him to buff of course, but its done in town rather than at spot.
If you dont cure your mage you can still only spam 3x1920s on your ganged mage before I will malice him as well- and once maliced the 1920 might not be enough. And you are now in a situation where you have 2 maliced mages. Consider that I can spare my rogue in order to exchange him with your mage, ur loss is greater than mine - or he will just lightfeet/minor away, if you can&#39;t stun/slow him.
Also - if you bring blading mages into the equation - duffs are the best way to get rid of a blading mage, since in order to blade they have to be in the middle of all and also close together so you lose the advantage of repositioning with tp&#39;s.

Then again sins could change this if they are smart enough to cure others. And so on and so on ..

I do agree that it depends on how each party works and you could very well end up in a stalemate or either party winning - but if I have the timings correct (I have never really played priest) one priest casts malice, 960+960+960, other casts cure, buff, 1920+1920. That gives you 960 advantage every 4 spells but also the risk of a party member ganged while maliced. And while I am not disagreeing with you that 1920 is very powerful I still think its not an easy trade-off.
In general I found it much easier to fight against parties without malice. Party that is not maliced has the advantage that no party member is an easy kill - and once you start losing members in a fight with buffs you have lost the spot. Party that can malice forces you to re-act rather then go on the offensive.
Again, if any or both parties have a second priest or are on scrolls things are much different.[/b]

yes point taken again However, might i point out that you actually only have 1 melee (u already have 3 on 1 mage and the 4th on my maliced) left undeployed and 2 idle mages. Also, my escape tactic combo involving spamming my ganked mage and having my maliced mage tp my ganked mage out of trouble should all be done by the time your malice has cooled down (very realistic goal). This will take us back to square one and would logically result in a stalemate. Also, the whole point of having mages blading your priest is if either my mages are ice + lighting or have very high blade damage and my other melees are also targetting your priest. This way, your priest will be dead very fast since it has low healing capabilities, hence, low tanking ability and it will most certainly not have time to spare to cast a malice. Even if it does cast a malice on one of my mages and my mage dies, then the trade off is 1 mage for 1 priest which imo is pretty even. If it is dangerous for my mages to be in the middle of the action, they should be spread out and using ranged ice spells to slow you instead.

the 1920 build is of course, a more defensive build. Your malice is a threat, but in most cases, I am confident that I can counter what you throw at me. It is true that this automatically puts me in a defensive position, but because of your low healing ability,, my defensive state also poses a threat and you are much more vulnerable to any form of counter attack.

But hey, there isnt really any point discussing tactics on a hypothetical battleground :P

I agree with you that the 960/malice build is useful and I admit in some cases, depending on your part setup, it is far more efficient than the 1920 build. It is good to see that you share the same thoughts with us and consider the 1920 build as a very practical build. I merely wished to compare the 2 buffer builds and show that the 1920/1200, despite the lack of 1500, is a better &#39;support&#39; build than the 960 and in many cases, you will find survivability > killing ability. Remember, I can still kill without malice.

Another thing we should consider is the possible duo priest combinations each build can have:

the 1920/1200 build can go together quite nicely with every debuffer/healer build there is (full healer, parasite/complete heal, tormentor). 1920/1200 + party healer will have excellent healing capabilities and in terms of duffs, malice + reverse life might seem a little weak, but it should be enough to cause death in the other party (lets not forget mana duffs also). 1920/1200 + para/complete is self explanatory - good heals, good duffs.
The 1920/1200 can also be paired with a tormentor and this combination will have slightly weaker heals and excellent debuffs. 960 and 1920 isnt a lot, but it is still a respectable amount of healing power.

the 960/1500/malice can go together with the party healer and para/complete no problem but it will face difficulties when paired with a tormentor. When paired with the tormentor, the malice becomes redundant and this is where you will suffer from your low healing abilities.



hey silver, here&#39;s another scenario for you. What party setup will you use to counter a party consisting of 4 priests (2x party healer, 1x tormentor, 1x complete/para) + 1 rogue? Assume the rogue is someone like Babashopper with insane stats and can most definitely kill every tormented player out there who is not getting healed by a priest. I was talking with vincent the other day about this little problem and we havent come up with a proper solution yet. We&#39;ve faced this 5man party setup once, the rogue was iceXD and lets just say our near full strength AofD party couldnt take them :/

[SilverBlade]

hey silver, here&#39;s another scenario for you. What party setup will you use to counter a party consisting of 4 priests (2x party healer, 1x tormentor, 1x complete/para) + 1 rogue? Assume the rogue is someone like Babashopper with insane stats and can most definitely kill every tormented player out there who is not getting healed by a priest. I was talking with vincent the other day about this little problem and we havent come up with a proper solution yet. We&#39;ve faced this 5man party setup once, the rogue was iceXD and lets just say our near full strength AofD party couldnt take them :/[/b]

Parties with 85629485 priests are indeed very annoying. But they are 5, they have no ice/light, no far attacks no tp-er & only one attacker which gives you a lot of advantages if you are scrolled and can dedicate the required chars to cast cures. Since they have no tp-er if you can kill one then you have won the fight.

Also, it depends on whether I have to kill them (for example I need to defend my warder) or I am simply trying to make np out of them. It also depends on a lot of other parameters (the DD you wear, the defenses on the priests, the strength of chars in ur party etc)

But as a joke I would say:
6 spikes + duffer + a support mage (for ice and tp) or 6 light/ice mages+duffer+sin (for lupine).
1. First you ice then you duff then you spike. Since a dcz rogue cannot have more 2K parasited 6 simultaneous spikes should do it easily.
2. Again first ice then stun the hell out of everyone, keep them stunned, spam duff whoever is not stunned and kill.
In both cases you might have to sacrifise his first target.
Not very realistic party set-ups though and quite a simplistic strategy. But the real question is what you can do with the party you have with possibly some adgustments.

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

Parties with 85629485 priests are indeed very annoying. But they are 5, they have no ice/light, no far attacks no tp-er & only one attacker which gives you a lot of advantages if you are scrolled and can dedicate the required chars to cast cures. Since they have no tp-er if you can kill one then you have won the fight.

Also, it depends on whether I have to kill them (for example I need to defend my warder) or I am simply trying to make np out of them. It also depends on a lot of other parameters (the DD you wear, the defenses on the priests, the strength of chars in ur party etc)

But as a joke I would say:
6 spikes + duffer + a support mage (for ice and tp) or 6 light/ice mages+duffer+sin (for lupine).
1. First you ice then you duff then you spike. Since a dcz rogue cannot have more 2K parasited 6 simultaneous spikes should do it easily.
2. Again first ice then stun the hell out of everyone, keep them stunned, spam duff whoever is not stunned and kill.
In both cases you might have to sacrifise his first target.
Not very realistic party set-ups though and quite a simplistic strategy. But the real question is what you can do with the party you have with possibly some adgustments.[/b]

well no its no where near as simple as that. all 5 of them can cover heal, 4/5 can rez and all of them can cure. They dont need to get tped around since they just stick together and not let the rogue out of their healing range. If there are mages in ur party, you have the advantage of repositioning yourselfs but it also makes your mages the weakest links since their def is lowest and they cant cure themselves. There are ways to survive against the 5 man party but i fail to see how you can actually take them down. And by taking them down, i mean total annihilation and not just killing 1 or 2 of their members.

[sexy Owa]

stop typing in paragraphs! i see the reply&#39;s and their lengths and just say screw that and dont take part in the conversation :&#39;(

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

stop typing in paragraphs! i see the reply&#39;s and their lengths and just say screw that and dont take part in the conversation :&#39;([/b]

thats the difference between you and the big boys/girls :lol:

[sexy Owa]

thats the difference between you and the big boys/girls :lol:[/b]

prick :&#39;( i hate you and your guide too!

[Kain_the_heartbreaker]

prick :&#39;( i hate you and your guide too![/b]

love you too <3

[SilverBlade]

well no its no where near as simple as that. all 5 of them can cover heal, 4/5 can rez and all of them can cure. They dont need to get tped around since they just stick together and not let the rogue out of their healing range. If there are mages in ur party, you have the advantage of repositioning yourselfs but it also makes your mages the weakest links since their def is lowest and they cant cure themselves. There are ways to survive against the 5 man party but i fail to see how you can actually take them down. And by taking them down, i mean total annihilation and not just killing 1 or 2 of their members.[/b]

Ok, I had not considered res. But still how many times are they willing to res the dead rogue? Also, they can&#39;t stick together for ever if you keep them iced as they would never get near you. Given current ice rate - cast the ice lvl 45 continuously with your 6 mages and they should be spending most of their time curing, rather than dufing or healing. But yes, that is more survival tactic.
The only way I can see is with ligh mages - they cant do anything while stunned and they cant cure it. The problem is where you find so many light/ice mages.

On the other hand there wont always be a way to annihilate a party, especially if they are skilled and well geared. There will always be a way to win (with the exact same party and wait for the first one to make a mistake), but not always a way to annihilate them unless they make a very big mistake. Which one side eventually do.

PS: you could also have the same party + another 3 very well geared light/ice mages. That should also do it, but it will take a bit of time.

[turles]

nice work

[Cure]

lol still really interesting, but resorted to skimming. I agree that warriors easily have hp over 2k, but if the rest of your party can do that too than chances are they have really nice gear and are gonna scroll. Therefore full heal is best lol when i was first reading it, i was thinking bp but then realized it was int you were talking about. Bp without malice = less kills.

anyways... continue on with your strats