How to deal with confuse as support conjurer

[save_the_trees]

I just started to playing again recently (turning off shaders gives me decent fps again ... ) and then I started to remember how I did deal with confuse before. Actually I'm still far away from perfect atm regarding my gameplay against confuse, but in most situations conjurers can actually do something, even if they don't have a DI. I found that the topic seems to be still discussed all the time in the gameplay problem section. Almost copying Dky's thread, I'd like to discuss a few strategies here, maybe some of you want to add additional ideas. First, this thread is about FULL SUPPORT conjurers, which means that the discussion is about:
1. How to survive
2. How to make sure that everybody else survives
3. Why maybe confuse is a powerful spell but not such overpowered that we all start to whine or start playing other classes or warjurer

Basically, there are 3 different situations:

a) big fort fight / big hunting party with at least 2 conjurers:
This one is probably the easiest:

• DI each other. if you want to have 2 targets buffed with DI all the time, you need lvl 5, with lvl 4 there would be a hole of 10s, which is probably not that risky
• Use dispell. Most conjurers have dispell lvl 3 or 4 but that is already quite a high success chance. Bind it to a key where you tend to have a very fast reaction and use it all the time.

b) you are the only conjurer in a small group, unexpected confuse from a hunter out of camouflage:

• Keep buffed permanently. arcane devotion, energy barrier are absolutely needed, and a lvl 5 mind blank can prove very useful too, if the hunter trys to use ambush first or if he uses ambush after a successful confuse to prevent you from running away from his pet. try to stick to your group closely. Tell people to wait if you start to fall behind because of buffing.
• Be aware of your environment, turn your camera frequently
• Most hunters I see these days are using pets again. And the moment the hunter starts to cast, his pet becomes visible. This actually leaves enough time to cast either steel skin or sanctuary, provided that you have absolutely no lag, you are not casting something else at that time and your arcane devotion is running. The choice should basically depend on two questions: If you are fighting, and auras like greater healing + mana pylon are running, I would tend to use steel skin and risk being confused (more on this topic in point c) ). Otherwise sanctuary would be the better choice imo, since it has less cooldowns and still allows you to heal other people better against focus fire.
• Notice that you can use mana pylon with sanctuary still running .... use it if your healing output would be otherwise too low to keep everybody alive.
• What to do when sanctuary runs out and the threat is still there? If you have put enough points into mental (I can't afford them myself -.-), use will domain. The 1s cast time combined with the surprise moment since the hunter does not know when your sanctuary expires (he could hit confuse all the time but then he can't do anything else anymore) will probably make sure that you can knock him down before he can do anything. Don't use beetle swarm or tremor while he is still knocked, or the effect would be wasted. At that point a bit of fine tuning with the timing is often required. In practice, there is still one problem with this strategy: If sotw is still active when your sanctuary expires, you won't hit .... lvl >3 sanctuary starts to outlast sotw, assuming that your realm mates can force the hunter to use it within 5s after the confuse attempt (this is just numbers ... what lvl of sanctuary a conjurer wants to use is will certainly not really depend on this)
• It is almost impossible to react if the hunter does not have a pet. But on the other hand, hunters without pet hopefully won't do enough dmg/ survive long enough anymore to kill you when you are in a good party, especially if you have a barb around. Apart from lvl 5 barrier, the only thing you can do is using items with hp/constitution. Aim for at least 3000 hp.

c) you are the only conjurer and your group will fight a group with at least one enemy archer
These are the most interesting situations, and some points I suggest here require good teamwork and possibly they also require people to be somewhere in mumble to work as intended:

• Try to fight at a position without mobs on the enemy side and tremor is your friend. It has range 30 > range of confuse! Although the duration is a bit short, it can buy very important seconds. My personal experience is that anything below lvl 3 is not enough for this kind of usage.
• Normally fights start from quite a distance. As soon as it is sure that the fight will happen, activate mana pylon. The optimum would be starting the actual fight with about 30s of mana pylon charge for everybody else apart from you. This will help you to keep others alive when you are confused in spite of all your efforts. If you some how find yourself suddenly already in a close range, then maybe using sanctuary + mana pylon and some strategies discussed in b) would be the better choice.
• Try not to move into confuse range yourself if the archer is visible, instead try to make him come towards you. Already press the key for some cc spell when he is not in range yet, and your spell will fire off first.
• If sotw is used right at the beginning to prevent any cc, then there is probably nothing efficient you can really actively do anymore to prevent a confuse. try to get greater healing and steel skin out before it actually happens. Usually the archer will be quite ahead of the rest of his group because of the speed buff of sotw, which reduces the effective duration of confuse in the actual fight. Consider moving back a bit with your entire group to buy even more time and keep the effective duration of confuse even shorter
• If you succeed to hit the archer with some cc spells, the next step would be casting self buffs and auras while healing and dispelling. This needs some time, so probably one cc spell is not enough but you would rather need a cc chain. Maybe some of your realmmates can assist you in doing this. Mod especially is a really nice in such situations. If you do not succeed, hope to get greater healing and steel skin out in time.
• Camouflaged hunters are the most problematic to deal with. When you don't know about them then there is probably nothing you can do when they suddenly appear when you are fighting. But well, hunters are supposed to be dangerous when you don't know about them .... it's the whole point about hunters. When you know that one of them is there in camou, use your auras in time and try to guess when he might appear. Cast steel skin late but not too late (guessing the time is really difficult, but the only thing you can do)....
• when you are confused, with mana pylon, steel skin and greater healing running, it still is not that easy to kill anybody (40 hp every second + 30 barrier points every second + additional mana pylon charges since you used it before the actual fight + abilities of other players to keep themselves alive is a lot). But make sure that you move your auras in range of people who need healing. If there are still pets alive when your steel skin expires, make sure to be close enough to your warriors if you have any.... they can quickly two hit them
• With this strategy pay attention to the positioning of yourself and enemy warriors .... Don't get yourself successfully mindsquashed or it will be game over

[DemonMonger]

Originally Posted by save_the_trees

I just started to playing again recently (turning off shaders gives me decent fps again ... ) and then I started to remember how I did deal with confuse before. Actually I'm still far away from perfect atm regarding my gameplay against confuse, but in most situations conjurers can actually do something, even if they don't have a DI. I found that the topic seems to be still discussed all the time in the gameplay problem section. Almost copying Dky's thread, I'd like to discuss a few strategies here, maybe some of you want to add additional ideas. First, this thread is about FULL SUPPORT conjurers, which means that the discussion is about:
1. How to survive
2. How to make sure that everybody else survives
3. Why maybe confuse is a powerful spell but not such overpowered that we all start to whine or start playing other classes or warjurer

Basically, there are 3 different situations:

a) big fort fight / big hunting party with at least 2 conjurers:
This one is probably the easiest:

• DI each other. if you want to have 2 targets buffed with DI all the time, you need lvl 5, with lvl 4 there would be a hole of 10s, which is probably not that risky
• Use dispell. Most conjurers have dispell lvl 3 or 4 but that is already quite a high success chance. Bind it to a key where you tend to have a very fast reaction and use it all the time.

b) you are the only conjurer in a small group, unexpected confuse from a hunter out of camouflage:

• Keep buffed permanently. arcane devotion, energy barrier are absolutely needed, and a lvl 5 mind blank can prove very useful too, if the hunter trys to use ambush first or if he uses ambush after a successful confuse to prevent you from running away from his pet. try to stick to your group closely. Tell people to wait if you start to fall behind because of buffing.
• Be aware of your environment, turn your camera frequently
• Most hunters I see these days are using pets again. And the moment the hunter starts to cast, his pet becomes visible. This actually leaves enough time to cast either steel skin or sanctuary, provided that you have absolutely no lag, you are not casting something else at that time and your arcane devotion is running. The choice should basically depend on two questions: If you are fighting, and auras like greater healing + mana pylon are running, I would tend to use steel skin and risk being confused (more on this topic in point c) ). Otherwise sanctuary would be the better choice imo, since it has less cooldowns and still allows you to heal other people better against focus fire.
• Notice that you can use mana pylon with sanctuary still running .... use it if your healing output would be otherwise too low to keep everybody alive.
• What to do when sanctuary runs out and the threat is still there? If you have put enough points into mental (I can't afford them myself -.-), use will domain. The 1s cast time combined with the surprise moment since the hunter does not know when your sanctuary expires (he could hit confuse all the time but then he can't do anything else anymore) will probably make sure that you can knock him down before he can do anything. Don't use beetle swarm or tremor while he is still knocked, or the effect would be wasted. At that point a bit of fine tuning with the timing is often required. In practice, there is still one problem with this strategy: If sotw is still active when your sanctuary expires, you won't hit .... lvl >3 sanctuary starts to outlast sotw, assuming that your realm mates can force the hunter to use it within 5s after the confuse attempt (this is just numbers ... what lvl of sanctuary a conjurer wants to use is will certainly not really depend on this)
• It is almost impossible to react if the hunter does not have a pet. But on the other hand, hunters without pet hopefully won't do enough dmg/ survive long enough anymore to kill you when you are in a good party, especially if you have a barb around. Apart from lvl 5 barrier, the only thing you can do is using items with hp/constitution. Aim for at least 3000 hp.

c) you are the only conjurer and your group will fight a group with at least one enemy archer
These are the most interesting situations, and some points I suggest here require good teamwork and possibly they also require people to be somewhere in mumble to work as intended:

• Try to fight at a position without mobs on the enemy side and tremor is your friend. It has range 30 > range of confuse! Although the duration is a bit short, it can buy very important seconds. My personal experience is that anything below lvl 3 is not enough for this kind of usage.
• Normally fights start from quite a distance. As soon as it is sure that the fight will happen, activate mana pylon. The optimum would be starting the actual fight with about 30s of mana pylon charge for everybody else apart from you. This will help you to keep others alive when you are confused in spite of all your efforts. If you some how find yourself suddenly already in a close range, then maybe using sanctuary + mana pylon and some strategies discussed in b) would be the better choice.
• Try not to move into confuse range yourself if the archer is visible, instead try to make him come towards you. Already press the key for some cc spell when he is not in range yet, and your spell will fire off first.
• If sotw is used right at the beginning to prevent any cc, then there is probably nothing efficient you can really actively do anymore to prevent a confuse. try to get greater healing and steel skin out before it actually happens. Usually the archer will be quite ahead of the rest of his group because of the speed buff of sotw, which reduces the effective duration of confuse in the actual fight. Consider moving back a bit with your entire group to buy even more time and keep the effective duration of confuse even shorter
• If you succeed to hit the archer with some cc spells, the next step would be casting self buffs and auras while healing and dispelling. This needs some time, so probably one cc spell is not enough but you would rather need a cc chain. Maybe some of your realmmates can assist you in doing this. Mod especially is a really nice in such situations. If you do not succeed, hope to get greater healing and steel skin out in time.
• Camouflaged hunters are the most problematic to deal with. When you don't know about them then there is probably nothing you can do when they suddenly appear when you are fighting. But well, hunters are supposed to be dangerous when you don't know about them .... it's the whole point about hunters. When you know that one of them is there in camou, use your auras in time and try to guess when he might appear. Cast steel skin late but not too late (guessing the time is really difficult, but the only thing you can do)....
• when you are confused, with mana pylon, steel skin and greater healing running, it still is not that easy to kill anybody (40 hp every second + 30 barrier points every second + additional mana pylon charges since you used it before the actual fight + abilities of other players to keep themselves alive is a lot). But make sure that you move your auras in range of people who need healing. If there are still pets alive when your steel skin expires, make sure to be close enough to your warriors if you have any.... they can quickly two hit them
• With this strategy pay attention to the positioning of yourself and enemy warriors .... Don't get yourself successfully mindsquashed or it will be game over

I have a full support conjurer and a petless hunter and your words are 100% true.

[MalaTempora]

i've a knight and a hunter (but i dont use hunter by a long time), a nice reading indeed.

karma for ya!

[Dupa_z_Zasady]

Originally Posted by save_the_trees

I just started to playing again recently

Yes, the rest of the post proves it quite good.

DI each other. if you want to have 2 targets buffed with DI all the time, you need lvl 5, with lvl 4 there would be a hole of 10s, which is probably not that risky
Use dispell. Most conjurers have dispell lvl 3 or 4 but that is already quite a high success chance. Bind it to a key where you tend to have a very fast reaction and use it all the time.

You suggest every conju should have the same anti-confuse setup, reducing conjurers ability to heal and give other buffs, only due to ONE stupid spell?
C:/>ongtulati.ons.

Keep buffed permanently. arcane devotion, energy barrier are absolutely needed, and a lvl 5 mind blank can prove very useful too, if the hunter trys to use ambush first or if he uses ambush after a successful confuse to prevent you from running away from his pet. try to stick to your group closely. Tell people to wait if you start to fall behind because of buffing.

Irrelevant. This doesn't depend on conjurer. People hardly give a f*** about mages falling behind. I could only name a few that do, warriors mostly.

Be aware of your environment, turn your camera frequently

Mhmm, and maybe you will be able to spot hunter under camo...

Most hunters I see these days are using pets again. And the moment the hunter starts to cast, his pet becomes visible. This actually leaves enough time to cast either steel skin or sanctuary, provided that you have absolutely no lag...

...assuming you have big bunch of luck, and hunter attacking you is total noob, yes, you can make it.

you are not casting something else at that time and your arcane devotion is running. The choice should basically depend on two questions: If you are fighting, and auras like greater healing + mana pylon are running, I would tend to use steel skin and risk being confused (more on this topic in point c) ). Otherwise sanctuary would be the better choice imo, since it has less cooldowns and still allows you to heal other people better against focus fire.[*] Notice that you can use mana pylon with sanctuary still running .... use it if your healing output would be otherwise too low to keep everybody alive.

Yeah, and when it comes to REAL fight you will have all these, very useful, high lvl spells on CD, so you'll die from few normal hits. Support conjurer...

What to do when sanctuary runs out and the threat is still there? If you have put enough points into mental (I can't afford them myself -.-), use will domain. The 1s cast time combined with the surprise moment since the hunter does not know when your sanctuary expires (he could hit confuse all the time but then he can't do anything else anymore) will probably make sure that you can knock him down before he can do anything.

Yeah, sure, hunter surely will be dumb enough not to cast his buffs while you're on sanct.

I really have not enough patience point ATM, so i'll stop here, cause commenting whole your post would make me drown in an ocean of sarcasm.
Now, I can be flooded with red karmas again, but i have to say it. What you propose is to subordinate all gameplay to counter ONE spell, which is utter bullshit. I can only agree that confuse is dangerous in combos or with pet, but this is the point. Hunter can't have it.

Originally Posted by DemonMonger

I have a full support conjurer and a petless hunter and your words are 100% true.

Off topic. Stop quoting whole post when you add only one sentence.
Could admins, please, make a warning to DM for such behaviour?

[e30G]

It was easier to deal with Confuse when you can pre-buff regen spells and when there wasn't a delay between ranged normals after moving. Now you can't fire while moving, but a hunter's pet will pummel you through either way.

Chaining DI is the only way to make sure you don't get raped by this spell but often times in Horus you only have 1 support Conjurer. I don't bother anymore, Galynn is having a nice vacation at Central/Christmas Island. At least in Ra there are enough Conjurers around to support each other.

Now I wonder what is the basic RvR unit that balance is based on? It doesn't seem like it's based on a 6-man team of 1 class each since you need at least 2 Conjurers for them to be able to support effectively.

Maybe NGD never really intended them to be support classes. I mean 1 entire tree is dedicated for offense (summon). RP, XP and game balance seems to point to this. Just look at which of the Conjurer spells NGD has nerfed: Divine Intervention, Heal Ally, Heal Self, Regenerate Self, Regenerate Ally, Sanctuary and Steel Skin to name a few. All of them are skills commonly used for support.

[NotScias]

Nice post, but I noticed an error.

if you want to have 2 targets buffed with DI all the time, you need lvl 5, with lvl 4 there would be a hole of 10s, which is probably not that risky

DI lvl3 is already duration > cd so you can cycle it on a target without hole (but you have to do it more frequently then).

You suggest every conju should have the same anti-confuse setup, reducing conjurers ability to heal and give other buffs, only due to ONE stupid spell?
C:/>ongtulati.ons.

DI is a common support Conjurer spell. Almost all conjurers use it at lvl 5 (well, except me because I use Dispel and Mass Dispel 5 instead). It's not only designed to prevent confuse.

Otherwise I agree, one stupid archer ranged spell shouldn't completely disable a class...
But, at the moment, confuse is still not nerfed, and we don't know if it will be, so we need some strategy against it.

This post is good but what I don't very like is that your "anti-confuse" strategy relies on "stay buffed all time", "look around and always be prepared", "stick with the group"...

Well, I don't have a real opinion about "how-to counter confuse as a lone conj" because if I am confused I have a great chance to die if I can't get back to a safer place.
I have only barrier 5 and mind blank 3 as protection with my support setup, self heals lvl1, almost no mental so I have almost no self-defense as support conj, so I can't deal if I am under confuse...

But I have a strategy if I need to cross a bridge camped by one or more hunters with a very small group, I stay 40m behind the rest of the group so the hunters won't notice me and will ambush the 1st persons of the group, then when I am close, I cast sanct immediately, cast pylon and heal the ally(ies) and in general when my sanct goes out, the hunter(s) fled or are dead...
I did this some days ago with a lock vs 2 hunters, and the 2 hunters fled with low hp.

Anyways the best thing would be a Confuse nerf or move to the knight class.

[ljrossi]

Find a hunter partner that suports you, usually getting ride of the pet hiting you.
If you suport, somebody must give you support.

[Comp]

As a hunter....this was a good read.

Also - as a hunter I find that it is my job to help defend those support conjurers - more hunters should assist in this.

[Ulmanyar]

Kathris, welcome back!

Also, what a nice post! I like people who actually post constructive stuff and strategies to help, instead of just whining about how they are not able to cope with certain imbalanced spells. Sure, there are a lot of spells/combinations that are not quite balanced right now, but until they get fixed we have to do our best to learn how to counter those imbalances. You did a great job providing such information.

And for you, Dupa, I only have to say: please, try to actually read the post as tips from an experienced conjurer, instead of being a douche bag and behave like it was Kathris fault that confuse is overpowered. If you do, you see that there is actually a lot of stuff that makes sense and is (for the most part) perfectly doable with most of the support conjurer setups out there, and doesn't require a unique, crippled, single-purpose conjurer setup.

Originally Posted by Shining-Scias

Nice post, but I noticed an error.

DI lvl3 is already duration > cd so you can cycle it on a target without hole (but you have to do it more frequently then).

Scias, if you read the post again you'll see that Kathris is talking about having two allies DI:ed, not only a single target.

[UmarilsStillHere]

Good post, Im still not happy that a class has a spell that can render another class (Full support, doing its supposed job) near useless for so long though.

If anyone would like to argue that the main roll of the conju class isnt support then kindly argue that other class arnt ment to do their described job (eg Barb: heavy damage dealer) as well.

Originally Posted by Dupa_z_Zasady

Off topic. Stop quoting whole post when you add only one sentence.
Could admins, please, make a warning to DM for such behaviour?

Yes, its not hard to just quote the first line and put "..." then the last line to show you mean the whole post, quoating the whole thing, expecially when its a very long post just isnt needed.