Swashbucklers and PVP/Dueling

[rioi]

Hey Everyone,My name is Rioisk and I have been playing a swashbuckler since launch. I know pretty much everything a swashbuckler can do when it comes to pve. In PVP, it's a different story. I am currently level 70 with 4488 wisdom line.I can't even touch a coercerMonks destroy me in five secondsAre swashbucklers good at pvp at all? What strategies are used to kill players because I cannot think of anything except the good ol stun to mez to backstab technique. Everyone else has a stun that somehow miraculously is cast on me before my quick stun comes on them. We are one of the best dps'ers, and before I can land a few combat arts I'm dead.Pretty lame if you ask me. If anyone can somehow tell me how to win duels, I will love you until the end of time.<div></div>

[Luk]

<div></div><p>get yourself an item that has see invis on it, this way, in combination with your see stealth attached to your stealth, no one can hide from you.</p><p>I don't PvP so this may or may not work. This tactic I use for duels, not sure if PvbP rules are dueling or you can just go up and smack someone.</p><p>Stealth and keep close to the person you are fighting, not many toons, and no items I know of have see stealth, so you will be pretty safe.</p><p>When duel starts, stealth will drop, this is why you need to keep close, use your slip line (must have he other person targeted), 0.5 sec casting time stealh, someone has to be really really good to target you and get a spell or skill off in that time.</p><p>From here you can use your stun attack, followed by your back stabs, cheap shot, mezz and then stealth again (normal stealth this time), Then use stun attack, and your multi atacks, if they are still alive after this, you bit off more than you can chew <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Also there are some nice guild level purchasable items from the city merchant, like immune to stifle or stun</p>

[Rokjin]

<div>See my post in this thread:</div><div> </div><div><a href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=pvp&message.id=44433#M44433" target="_blank">http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=pvp&message.id=44433#M44433</a></div><div> </div><div>I'm level 58 atm, but there's a lot of info there.</div><div> </div><div>Key things to remember in PVP is they can see you at 20 meter range, no matter if you are stealthed or not. If you are within 20 meters, you should be either charging towards them to knock down from out of stealth, or using our throwing attack to snare and engage in melee.</div><div> </div><div>Remember Stuns are cut in half or more duration for PvP, and make a person immune to them for a time equal to their duration after they wear off. Stagger our knockdown/cheap shot/swathe. Deal out as much damage as you can as quickly as you can.</div><div> </div><div>I haven't had much problems with healers so far, I can out burst-DPS their healing and they go down pretty fast. Same for mages. Hardest are Tank types and other scouts that can stun me as often as I stun them.</div><div> </div><div>My general pvp line up is like this: Charge in on them from stealth, knockdown attack, Guile flanking attack to debuff their mitigation, backstab (if you do it quick enough, they'll just be coming out of the knockback now), disable/impair to snare them so they can't get away. Then launch all of our other attacks, mixing in a cheapshot about 5-6 seconds after you started the fight. Throw in Evasion as well to make them lose target on you. Berate if they have any magic buffs and to interrupt their spells. Ten seconds into the fight when our out of stealth knockdown refreshes, use lie low to make them lose target again, and use the knockdown again. At this point you've probably blown through almost all of your damage CA's, use Swathe and our other AoE if you can for extra damage/another knockdown or turn on finesse and inspired daring/inspiration and auto-attack to finish them off. En Garde thrown in there possibly before the fight starts would help as well.</div><div> </div><div>Brawlers your are going to have problems with due to their avoidance. En Garde should help kill them with it though. Other Tanks might just have enough HP and mitigation to just outlast your burst damage. Generally I find with Inspired Daring, I can bring them down fast. If you get rooted and see it's for a longer time, use Hail of Steel to try and finish them off, though get ready to cancel it when you get unrooted.</div><div> </div><div>Honestly, if I get the first hit, there's almost nothing that can stand up to me except some tanks, particularly Shadowknights and Bruisers/Monks.</div>

[Elvenn]

<div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>A little something about myself. I'm a former WoW player and I started playing EQ2 since launch of KoS, thats right, I came for PvP. I played a Hunter in Wow and thats why I didnt choose to play a ranger in this game despite how powerful they actually are in this game against other classes (yea check out the population of ranger on Qyenos ehehe...). </div><div> </div><div>I play on Venekor, and Im a lvl53 swashy</div><div>I'm a moderate grinder like I was in WoW. I'm not good at talking the strategy, I only get better after times of practice. For myself, as Im still new to the game, I might say laughable things to you vets. After playing my friend's ranger, I understand that to pvp well as a swash, you indeed need to practise A LOT. Simply because we can't drop a player to half HP or probably kill one from dozens of meters away, we can only do damage once we engage in melee range. I don't know how many times I have died to Freeporters before I came to this routine of CAs, I can tell you that I have like 100+ deaths and I can also tell you to prepare to die a lot to get better in PVP as swashy. P.S: If you're afraid of your current rank would drop, kill some greenies or low blues to maintain your rank in case you die a lot against White/Yellow con however they are the only ones you can practise with.</div><div>I won't expose all my routes to you because you should find your own. Although there are something I found very useful and should pay attention to when it comes to pvp, which are the problems I had in pvp, I didn't realize how important they are untill lately.</div><div> </div><div>Here are couple hints:</div><div> </div><div>Since you can never tell how your toon acts like in your opponent's monitor (due to the lag/spike/w/e), I found it's better to have a certain routine of CAs.</div><div> </div><div>To start a fight, you want and you should always have the initiative. If I didn't I'd usually run, if I had escape up, I'd fight till I get low on HP. Normally people start with the stealth knockdown, after that you'll have a very short time to unload something upon your opponent, against fighter I mostly choose parry/avoidence debuff instead of pure dps, the reason is obvious.</div><div> </div><div>What's next is a series of CAs arranged in a certain routine that requires practice to achieve.  I'm not gonna list the CAs for you, but here's the idea. In general, the mez CA we get (charm(or sleep?) target for 10 secs in pvp) is what I call a "fix" spell, because I use it not only to fix an opponent but also to rearrange my attack. I use this spell in 3 circumstances: When I get jumped(in melee mostly), I use it to fix my opponent, know his class, find my routine CA; When I get the jump, I use the spell as one of the tools to refresh some of the cooldowns of my CAs after the first routine; When I screw up my routine, I cast this spell to give myself some time to rearrange a new routine. That's why I used the lvl44 Master II on the mez spell, any opponent I encountered has yet to resist it.</div><div> </div><div>From the ones I fought against, they probably were busy trying to target me througout the entire fight, the idea is to mix your Evasion-type CA with 1 or 2 DPS-tpye CAs.   Here's an example of how you may arrange ur routine CAs (this is not what I have for myself though): stealth--knockdown--debuff--stun--unload flankin/behind dps and front dps -- Xlow (back in stealth)--knockdown (if available), dps if not.  Up to this point you face a dilemma, you can choose to use mez the target now and wait for the cooldown, or you can use evasion to make opponent lose target on you and try to throw a 3 secs cast  AOE/knockback in a risk, after this you run in and then mez. After mez breaks, you pretty much repeat above with whtever is left to use and unload every other CAs on the opponent.  By this point you need to decide whether to keep fighting or run away by the amount of your opponents HP, especially when they're healer type. It's always better to run away than getting killed.</div><div> </div><div>I dont have a lvl70 swashy, the tactics above is just from my own experience with my lvl51 swashy by far. I hope other lvl70 swashy who duels a lot would throw in their 2 cents.</div><div> </div><div>My 2 cents.  </div><div> </div><div>Btw, this is my first post.</div><p>Message Edited by Elvenndo on <span class="date_text">04-07-2006</span><span class="time_text">05:06 PM</span></p>

[Dakkon_10]

<div>I play a level 70 swash and have absolutely no problem whiping the floor with any class in pvp. I would tell you my strategy... but then it wouldn't be my strategy, now would it? :smileytongue:</div>