Where has team-play gone?

[Comp]

This is just a general discussion on why team play (for all realms) has deminished so much. With the thought of invasions coming, group team play MUST be stepped up a notch. Coordination is very important and without it...invasions will be a beeotch.

Lately here's my take.

Conjurers
Conjurers don't heal or give mana and if you get mana you have to ask for it over and over. Additionally, it seems if your not lvl 50 you don't deserve the heal or mana a conjurer would typically give out.

Conjurers are the support class of the mages and without them passing out heals, mana, DI's, dispells...the army will dwindle very very quickly. I think many of the newer conjurers coming up don't understand just how important they are to the success of a battle (not warjurers...conjurers).

Warlocks
Terroring without the warriors ready for areas is USLESS. This must be a coordinated effort and it seems we have lost this coordination. I remember once upon a time when Eli, Inkster would coordinate their areas with the likes of Peli, Snorlax, Aba, and a few archers with areas...and it would totally DESTROY an entire army. Terrors are key in a battle, but useless if they are just thrown willie-nillie.

MOD is another very important spell that MUST be used when the enemy is about to charge...not while they are 30m away. Conserve this spell and use when the charge is coming or when your army charges. This will allow two things. 1) If the enemy is charging they can not area unless they are DI'd and 2) If your army is charging it keeps conjurers from mass healing the dying warrior front.

Barbarians
Most barbs do well with areas so that's not an area of concern; however, onslaught is. What is the point of onslaughting yourself when chasing an enemy if you have a hunter near? Save the onslaught for the group or for a hunter with speed...and I guarantee you'll catch your enemy. I know when I'm being chased and I see a barb onslaught himself and miss his army I laugh my head off....cause I know you'll never ever catch me.

Knights
Most knights do well in-game...but let me tell you newer knights this....a knights place is defence not offense. An army will live FOREVER if the knights are good. Their protection auras are crucial for fighting as a team.

Marksmen
Range is your friend...and a proper DS is even better. Don't waste your time DS'ing a knight or another marksmen during a battle. Instead go for the core problem of the other team...their mage army. A DS'd mage MUST run or they will die very very quickly. So pick your targets out...and call the target. I know for a fact that I watch for a marksmen to call their DS target and I turn my fire to that target. This should be coordinated effor and if it is....the army will be torn apart quickly.

Hunter
....hmmm. Okay, I see this ENTIRELY too often. An army is fighting and it seems like they might loose...guess what happens - their hunter corp begins to disappear and run away. If you can't stand and fight with your brethern, then don't go to the fight....hunt. Hunters are extremely helpful during a fight...using camo to remove low-hp enemy from the battlefield is key. Use your cunning and evasiveness to draw fire from your enemy and don't be afraid to run to the front to "get their attention"...you have the evasion to do it.

Take this for what you will....agree or disagree it's okeedokee. I've been playing this game for quite some time and I can see the decline of team play every day....

[Znurre]

I would like to add some things.

Rushes

There are situations where a rush can give many advatanges, but everyone in the army might not have their areas ready.
What is then important is that everyone still follows the rush, because by attending you can ensure that:

• The enemies get a harder job focusing fire on one or a few players.
• You can still do very much impact without using areas, sometimes even more.

It is also very important that the knights goes first, to drag attention from his friends.
Many knights have a problem with this, as I have seen several of them waiting for their mage friends even before starting to rush.
Ofcourse it is important to protect the mages with the auras - but only one knight is needed for this, and the barbarians usually don't survive a rush if they receive the attention.

The conjurers must follow and support the warriors in the rush - else it's wasted.
It doesn't work if they stay in the back lines supporting the archers, maybe 1 or 2 to give mana and a few heals - but not more.
The warriors rushing are those who will receive the most damage from both the wall and the enemies at the ground anyway.

It is however way better if everyone goes to the fort gate/wall, see section below.

Fort wall/fort gate

There is no range penalty in this game - which means that a mage or an archer can attack a warrior from 0 range and still be able to do this without any problems.
It is plain stupid to stand withing attack range from the wall, trying to kill archers and mages on the wall that will still only jump down when they get too hurt.

Your help is much more needed at the gate to stop enemies from comming out of the gate.
Usually it's a good tactic to let the mages and the archers that would not do very much impact on the gate anyway, attack the enemies at the gate while the warrior can focus on the gate.

If they stand close to the wall they can render the archers/mages on the wall completely useless! and force them to step out using the gate to make any impact on the fight, and then the army united will take care of him.

This way the conjurers can also stay at one place to supply both ranged and close combat characters with mana and life.

Selection priority

It is totally useless for an archer to attack a knight, let the warriors finnish the knights and attack their mages instead.
Make sure to look around you for wounded targets, and never hesitate to attack an already wounded target to ensure that he gets killed fast.

RP

Remember, RP is not everything.
It is better to play good - and earn a few RP - than to play bad, leeching RPs with areas and auras that won't help anyone anyway.

[Miraculix]

Conjurers give great support on bosses - guess what, it pays off, they always get the drops.

On wars, they always go for the reward, which is the RP. Support barely pays off, so they go for warjuring.

Nice posts so far btw.

[Tyr]

The biggest problems I see is when one or two enemies flees, sometimes up to half of the group gives chase. By the time they catch and they kill the one or two enemies the other half of the group they left was killed by a much larger group of enemies.

If just one or two flees no need to chase them that far. Just wait they will bring their friends.

[_dracus_]

Originally Posted by Solarus

Marksmen
Range is your friend...and a proper DS is even better. Don't waste your time DS'ing a knight or another marksmen during a battle. Instead go for the core problem of the other team...their mage army. A DS'd mage MUST run or they will die very very quickly. So pick your targets out...and call the target. I know for a fact that I watch for a marksmen to call their DS target and I turn my fire to that target. This should be coordinated effor and if it is....the army will be torn apart quickly.
.

Oh, believe it or not, I never thought of calling my DS target. Maybe because I still use DS as a defensive spell in fort wars. When I loose my range, I go DS on my ennemy. However, I think I'll try to call my target, to see the result.

[Ertial]

Good posts here.

Focussing is really helpful. I remember a time when we were having a battle with Alsius. When they rushed not everyone came, the people who were the easiest to select were the onslaughted barbarians. Although Znurre evaded my ambush, he was quickly ambushed by someone else. Thanks to Tear Apart, Stunning Fist and more he was dead within seconds. Meanwhile most of the conjurers were standing in the group just out of our range protected by some marksmen.
This could have gone a lot better for the poor barbarian if he had received some more support. If he could have casted one of the dangerous barbarian area attacks the Alsius could have defeated this side of the Syrtian army.

The most important thing is indeed, like the subject of the example also said, is to make sure people don't charge on their own. That's deadly.

Tyr made a good point, chases are often the cause of the disintegration of armies. People should stop the chases after two people training while they're being attacked at the front of the group. It is very, very dangerous.

Another thing that can ruin the defence of an army are warriors or archers with SotW that run into or through the group. People turn to attack those targets or flee, resulting in the collapse of the front.

This is a good example of over-focussing. It's useless to concentrate the whole army around two or three people that will evade a lot of the attacks initially until their buffs run out.
It's just not worth sacrificing your army for.

[Znurre]

Originally Posted by Yest

This is a good example of over-focussing. It's useless to concentrate the whole army around two or three people that will evade a lot of the attacks initially until their buffs run out.
It's just not worth sacrificing your army for.

Exactly!
I forgot to add this into my post - but this is also very, very important.

[Eli2]

It has been like that for months now.

The good old days ... i wish they were back.

[Miriya_PS]

Great posts, I can only hope that people think more about teamplay strategies and less about RP.

I believe that the lack of teamplay is in part Players' fault and in part NGD fault. There is not a actual reward for good Teamplay, and RP junkies can not think "If we play better we last longer and we get more RP". They often are happy just killing one enemy before dying.
But it would be too long to write about that, and I am not at the level to do an analysis of players' minds.
--------------------------------------
So I rather speak about Support Conjurers. I am a Support conjurer, but I can not play that way because I have to level. There are lots of reason why Conjurers can not level as Support, to name some

*Buffs and Heals gives little or none (amazingly this is not fixxed yet) EXP. I am used to get 1 EXP +GRP for a couple of Heal Ally and some Synergy bonds.
*Buffs and Heals (or its cooldowns) last for minutes, but the Conjurer only get EXP for the first creature the ally kills and only if the ally kills it while is being buffed.
*Since auras are the only possible way to get EXP as Support you need a good party to level using auras. And also an specific spell config.
*Some allies do not want for conjurers to help because they think they level faster alone. (you do not believe me? In the Spanish forum there is a thread asking for /Ignore_Buff command)
*Some allies actually accused me of "Stealing EXP" using auras to level. Or ask me to decided between using auras OR attacking the creature.
*Leveling in party with some damage dealers, they just kill the creature without letting me participate at all. And then ask me for mana to kill the next creature.

There are some more reasons, but I think I made my point clear about this. You may notice that is not only NGD's fault.

I HAVE TO use my Warjurer config to level (which I hate) and when I want to go to war I simply do not have the tools to help and do my share.
This happens to every conjurer leveling in the war zone. Some of the new ones, do not even want to be support, because they never learned to use those skills and they have months of practice with the offensive config.

This also happen to me using my knight. I decided that she would be a defensive one, and half of the time I can not find a party to level. So I have to change my config.

[_dracus_]

Originally Posted by Miriya

Great posts, I can only hope that people think more about teamplay strategies and less about RP.

I believe that the lack of teamplay is in part Players' fault and in part NGD fault. There is not a actual reward for good Teamplay, and RP junkies can not think "If we play better we last longer and we get more RP". They often are happy just killing one enemy before dying.
But it would be too long to write about that, and I am not at the level to do an analysis of players' minds.
--------------------------------------
So I rather speak about Support Conjurers. I am a Support conjurer, but I can not play that way because I have to level. There are lots of reason why Conjurers can not level as Support, to name some

*Buffs and Heals gives little or none (amazingly this is not fixxed yet) EXP. I am used to get 1 EXP +GRP for a couple of Heal Ally and some Synergy bonds.
*Buffs and Heals (or its cooldowns) last for minutes, but the Conjurer only get EXP for the first creature the ally kills and only if the ally kills it while is being buffed.
*Since auras are the only possible way to get EXP as Support you need a good party to level using auras. And also an specific spell config.
*Some allies do not want for conjurers to help because they think they level faster alone. (you do not believe me? In the Spanish forum there is a thread asking for /Ignore_Buff command)
*Some allies actually accused me of "Stealing EXP" using auras to level. Or ask me to decided between using auras OR attacking the creature.
*Leveling in party with some damage dealers, they just kill the creature without letting me participate at all. And then ask me for mana to kill the next creature.

There are some more reasons, but I think I made my point clear about this. You may notice that is not only NGD's fault.

I HAVE TO use my Warjurer config to level (which I hate) and when I want to go to war I simply do not have the tools to help and do my share.
This happens to every conjurer leveling in the war zone. Some of the new ones, do not even want to be support, because they never learned to use those skills and they have months of practice with the offensive config.

This also happen to me using my knight. I decided that she would be a defensive one, and half of the time I can not find a party to level. So I have to change my config.

From my very small conjuror experience, supporting a party is very efficient to level up. Heal, buff, and mana gives lots of EXP to me.