Mage PvP in the EC

[War Machine GTFO]

Hey guys

TL;DR version: Good pvp mages that use the EC (I hope there are a few of you at least) please tell me how you set up your targeting and why. Bad pvp mages that use EC read and learn from this post.

I've done a few searches on mage pvp and how people are setting their hot keys and macros up in the EC. I didn't find anything really helpful. Please link me something if it's out there.

I've set up my keys to target cursor and target current, primarily. I use target queueing bound to my mouse wheel and I have a clear target queue key like I did in UOA.

I thought at first that I should set everything to cursor targeting and just use the target queue system like I used to--I had my spells in UO macros and I had my targeting in UOA--plus whatever I mapped in the UO client for the target switching on moving targets etc so I didn't have to pull their bars while they were running around. Anyway, I tried everything on my cursor target and I thought it was slow, sucked, didn't cast all the spells I told it to when I told it to, etc that I think other posters have complained about in the past.

Then I set up some keys to cast the spell on my current target. Wow was that fast. Say I just target my duel partner and spam my harm current target key (set by just right clicking on my harm and setting it to target current)--that's really fast. It's as fast as I could have spammed harm in 2d on my best days with perfect timing and the target queue working. It feels even faster for self-healing spells when I just spam the key.

Now I don't want every offensive spell on target current even if it's really fast because sometimes I want to just cast explode or paralyze or sleep and just run around with it up until I can target whoever. So, I have to have those (and a lot more) on just target cursor rather than target current. I might even eventually set up like flamestrike cursor and flamestrike target, but if I do that with many keys I'll have a real problem. I already have 60 key binds and I plan on at least 10 more. I'm sure other pvpers have more--I could easily go to 90 with the system I just described.

So, mages experienced with the EC, please, post any advice you have or send me a PM.

A really nice change I'd like to see is allowing my clear target queue or some other key to stop the 'flamestrike current target' that I just started casting from targeting my target and instead make it just go to cursor. I'd also like a range checker on the target current too like UOA had.

 

[Merion]

Now I don't want every offensive spell on target current even if it's really fast because sometimes I want to just cast explode or paralyze or sleep and just run around with it up until I can target whoever.

Just fyi - hit ESC before you cast a spell mapped to target current. This will clear your current target. If your current target is cleared (meaning you're not targeting anything) and you then cast a spell with target current, it will bring up a cursor.

This is what I do if I want to pre-cast a spell.

 

[War Machine GTFO]

Just fyi - hit ESC before you cast a spell mapped to target current. This will clear your current target. If your current target is cleared (meaning you're not targeting anything) and you then cast a spell with target current, it will bring up a cursor.

This is what I do if I want to pre-cast a spell.

Right, thanks. This is useful to know. I realized that I could clear the target with a key a while ago and that it would work this way, but I thought that in crowded fights it might be slower to re-target the kill target when I got back on screen with them if I cleared the target before chasing after them.

The 2d client with UOA has a real advantage in this situation. I either have to bind a lot more keys to use the EC effectively or I have to retarget someone when I run on screen with them again--something that can be hard or slow when in a bigger fight.

In the classic client, I would either clear my queue or just let the UOA range checker handle it and I'd just chase after the kill target and boom my lightning or whatever would go off when I got in range (or I'd lag and it'd say I was out of range), but "most" of the time it worked. That's a real advantage for mages running the classic client and it should be rectified.

If in the EC, you could hit escape to clear your target AFTER hitting your flamestrike current target key and it'd bring up a cursor rather than trying to still cast it on the current target, that would help. I think that when I hit my FS current target key though, it sends that I'm casting flamestrike AND which target to hit with it to the server at once and it's kind of 'fire and forget' and there is nothing you can do to stop that FS from targeting that player short of interrupting the spell (woot bring back 'daggering' lol). This is not confirmed (at least not by me), but I bet that's how the harm spam on current target or the heal spam on self target can be so fast.

I appreciate your advice Merion and it does help, but it still seems inferior to the classic client *in this particular situation*. To be clear, I am very confident that the enhanced client is superior in other particular situations for a PvP mage.

 

[Pinco]

you can always use 2 buttons:

- spell with target cursor
- button with target current

- Mouse wheel to switch between targets

It's a different playstyle, but is better when you learn to play

 

[Merion]

That's of course possible. Just set everything to target cursor and make one macro with cursor target current. But then you always have to react yourself. Which is quite a lot slower than if you have the spell set to current and the target is in range.

I agree, it would be much better if you got a cursor if your current target leaves your range while you're casting instead of say it's out of range and dismising the spell.

 

[Pinco]

I tried to make a distance check in my UI, but unfortunately without control on zoom values I can't do that

However, uo assist just wait for target and auto-target the enemy, so if you are quick it's not much different

 

[War Machine GTFO]

Pinco, spells targeted with 'target cursor' work fine for one spell.

When trying to cast spells in rapid succession, it's slower than using the target current method. Maybe if my timing was perfect, I'd be as fast with the target cursor as the target current is, but even assuming I'm the best player in the world, I'm still not going to be able to consistently time the casting of my 2nd spell to follow my first spell as perfectly as the target current will--especially when I can just spam the next spell key during the first spell cast for near-perfect timing on the 2nd spell. It's just not possible to consistently match the speed that you can get a combo off with target current keys. Even the best players screw up and have their evil omens hit after their flamestrikes sometimes (rarely). With evil omen on target current you couldn't miss the FS-EO even if your real life house was on fire.


About a range checker in your UI... You said that *without control of zoom* you couldn't set the range checker. Could you elaborate a bit more on that? I'd be willing to play at just about any zoom level (you can pick!) to have a range checker on my spells. I haven't looked into creating my own UI yet, but I might start fiddling around if this is possible. You imply that you could set the range checker to be a specific distance (in pixels?) from your character or some location on the screen. If that's possible, please let me/us know.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Pinco, spells targeted with 'target cursor' work fine for one spell.

When trying to cast spells in rapid succession, it's slower than using the target current method. Maybe if my timing was perfect, I'd be as fast with the target cursor as the target current is, but even assuming I'm the best player in the world, I'm still not going to be able to consistently time the casting of my 2nd spell to follow my first spell as perfectly as the target current will--especially when I can just spam the next spell key during the first spell cast for near-perfect timing on the 2nd spell. It's just not possible to consistently match the speed that you can get a combo off with target current keys. Even the best players screw up and have their evil omens hit after their flamestrikes sometimes (rarely). With evil omen on target current you couldn't miss the FS-EO even if your real life house was on fire.


About a range checker in your UI... You said that *without control of zoom* you couldn't set the range checker. Could you elaborate a bit more on that? I'd be willing to play at just about any zoom level (you can pick!) to have a range checker on my spells. I haven't looked into creating my own UI yet, but I might start fiddling around if this is possible. You imply that you could set the range checker to be a specific distance (in pixels?) from your character or some location on the screen. If that's possible, please let me/us know.

But you could at least match what anyone on the 2d client could do. Not entirely on topic...But back on topic A slight bit, you could use the target cursor to cast the first spell, then if you want to "hold" your spell, you can hit esc to clear the current target, then when the target is in range again hit the "target last" hotkey. Sounds like that should solve most of your concerns?

 

[War Machine GTFO]

You're right. That does work. I haven't used it much that way--mostly because I was so afraid of losing spells by setting them to target current and having my target run off screen. I'm going to switch a few more over to current and try clearing my target when they are going to get out of range... and use a last target key to target them again. I could even do like Merion implied that he does--set most offensive (all maybe) spells to target current and just clear the target before casting (or not have a target in the first place) to make them go to cursor. I'll try a few things over the next few days when I get time to be on again.

Thanks Cloak&Dagger--it does solve some of my issues, though it requires more steps to have the same effect (in this particular situation) as a player using the classic client would.

A range checker is still better. Mages running the classic client can just hit their queue last target key when I run off screen and chase me around with a lightning that will hit me when I stop to cast heal.

Yes, the enhanced client has some other advantages over classic+UOA in PvP and I enjoy those advantages enough to continue using the EC--so far anyway.

 

[Pinco]

About the range check problem...
In 2d client, the distance between 2 object is static: 1 tile = 50 pixel (just an example)
in 3d client, the zoom change the distance between objects: if with maximum zoom the distance between 2 objects is 10 pixel, with the lower one could be 200.

I could be able to calculate the distance between 2 objects but ONLY if I can read the zoom level, and that's not possible for the moment, because the zoom control is hardcoded

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

About the range check problem...
In 2d client, the distance between 2 object is static: 1 tile = 50 pixel (just an example)
in 3d client, the zoom change the distance between objects: if with maximum zoom the distance between 2 objects is 10 pixel, with the lower one could be 200.

I could be able to calculate the distance between 2 objects but ONLY if I can read the zoom level, and that's not possible for the moment, because the zoom control is hardcoded

Wait, how is the zoom level saved then? I always assumed it was in the character settings file somewhere. If so, could you not find a way to read that prop? (I know I have not looked at any of this but just asking if I am way off or what not)

 

[Pinco]

there is no vars which has it... it's read by the client hardcoded part and kept private
and there is not the IO lua library included to the game...

 

[lucitus]

About the range check problem...
In 2d client, the distance between 2 object is static: 1 tile = 50 pixel (just an example)
in 3d client, the zoom change the distance between objects: if with maximum zoom the distance between 2 objects is 10 pixel, with the lower one could be 200.

I could be able to calculate the distance between 2 objects but ONLY if I can read the zoom level, and that's not possible for the moment, because the zoom control is hardcoded

Only an idea it is not exact, but as far as I know you load textfiles with lua, so it should be possible to read the settings.xml of the character logged in and readout the zoomlevel, this only works once every relogin, but maybe not bad at all to see a distance circle if you go over a spell.

Iam busy atm with other cool coding work, but maybe you can check it .

 

[Pinco]

easy to say, but you can't determine the location of the character profile, because not all computers has the documents and settings folder in the same place... reading the windows registry would be the better way to do that

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

easy to say, but you can't determine the location of the character profile, because not all computers has the documents and settings folder in the same place... reading the windows registry would be the better way to do that

I thought that folder had to be in the designated place, or else the game would not be able to find it. If I move it the game just creates a new one in the same place as the one I moved. Don't know of any way to change it so the game reads it from a different location than the default. Although I could see the issue if someone was say, using linux, or another non-windows OS but any windows machine should have the same location.

 

[Pinco]

you can change the documents and settings folder on windows OS, and if you change it, the game will put his data in there

The location of the folder is determined by the client where they read the default location of documents and settings. But I want to remember that I don't have the game sources so I can't do anything of this

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

you can change the documents and settings folder on windows OS, and if you change it, the game will put his data in there

The location of the folder is determined by the client where they read the default location of documents and settings. But I want to remember that I don't have the game sources so I can't do anything of this

Oh...Did not think about moving the whole documents folder....Interesting concept. But still wouldn't the zoom level read work for like 99% of people? Not sure how many people move that folder hah.

 

[Pinco]

it's not just that... here is another problem:

The default documents path is this in win 7:

C:\Users\Pinco\Documents

On win xp is:

C :\Documents and Settings\Pinco\My Documents

and My documents change name with the OS language

so picking the path is not so easy as it seems if you can't access the windows registry

 

[War Machine GTFO]

How bout making the distance in pixels customizable by the player and let them just set the right distance to their zoom level?

Or how bout just set a distance in pixels and have players play at a certain zoom level that fits the range checker distance?

I'd certainly try both and definitely use the first one.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

it's not just that... here is another problem:

The default documents path is this in win 7:

C:\Users\Pinco\Documents

On win xp is:

C :\Documents and Settings\Pinco\My Documents

and My documents change name with the OS language

so picking the path is not so easy as it seems if you can't access the windows registry

Another good point. Well then better start working on a way to access the registry then