PvP - Mage flavored. What helps keeping health & stamina up when things are up close & pesonnal?

[Tanivar]

I've played mages and archers since AoS got inflicted on the game, fighting from a distance. What skills. gear features, and tactics help you survive when your nose to nose with someone trying to do you in? I want to stay spellslinger instead of going melee, using a weapon for defense not serious attack.

I'm currently thinking of using a mage weapon for defense if armed or Eval/Anatomy defense if using a spellbook.

Healing/Anatomy for healing that can't be completely blocked by being hit.

Spellweaving for close in fighting spells.

Focus in place of Meditation for the Stamina Regeneration?

70's barbed leather or metal armor?

Jewelry shifted from 104 skill points to DCI, HCI, and other combat features?

Fast mousing/keyboarding is hampered by years of wear & tear so I need to be able to commit major mayhem on an opponet in a bit slower fashion.

Any advice will be appreciated.

 

[azmodanb]

with no med.. and focus instead.. go with studded parts and 55% lmc and max mana gen .. there is no cap but waste after 18..

issue with weapons right now is everyone is a disarmer .. but of course you get used to that.

if you did useage weapon and had anatomy eval at least when disarmed u would have defence of wres.. which i can see being nice.

never used spell weaving .. so no comment.. but people do like sticking pixies all.over .. which are mean little bastards

 

[ApollyonSP]

I personally detest melee PVP in UO these days. It's just worthless in my opinion. Most people are moving in PVP, not standing still. So melee is always at a disadvantage compared to ranged damage. Plus melee templates require a lot of stat stacking to be effective and useful. As Azmodanb just mentioned, even IF you finally get somebody in melee range, and go toe-to-toe, what's going to happen? You're going to get disarm spammed.

Melee in UO PVP hasn't been fun for over a decade. It used to be really fun, but now it's rather worthless in my opinion. There are very few benefits and advantages to melee pvp.

I favored melee a long time ago. But that was when metal armor was useful, before the 7 Modded armor pieces, and back when a Halberd was dynamite! Swordsmanship Halberd was the way to go, in the distant past. You slammed somebody with a Halberd and did a whooping 50 damage blast to the face, even when the opponent was fully armored. That was the bomb.

Now.....there are many aspects of UO that the devs foolishly made useless and or redundant. Melee PVP needs a lot of love, in my opinion.

Also the UO Devs need to empower crafting, nerf modded armor piece drops, and make metallic armors worthwhile again. Metal armors have been useless for years now, and it's just pathetic.


Bring back METAL armors!!! Bring back BLACKSMITHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Bo Bo]

why do you need to keep stamina up on a mage? need something more than a greater red pot?
Bo would disagree almost completely with Apolly most of todays dexxors are much stronger than any mage out there. There damage per second when you add poison or ninja makes them very tough.

If you plan on running a mage for pvp you best think about your temp and gear. 40lmc, 2/6 casting, 100lrc (unless you taking regs with you), lots of int/str bonuses, and atleast 45 dci. If you running a mage weapon expect to be disarmed, almost not worth anymore. Wouldnt bother with healing, the dex requirements make it useless for a mage. Spellweaving is very viable, attunement, and the pixies are great for pvp, make sure to have a circle so when you cast the pixies you get all them at once, and not one at a time. Med is much better than focus for a mage, you have no need for stam or stam regen, unless you running myst than run focus. Armor bo runs stuff that is medable, usually 3 or 4 crafted pieces than 2 or 3 shame style loot pieces. Jewels already stated what you need to run a mage, make it up in the jewels where needed. Use enhanced client there are many targeting advantages to it.

 

[Ru TnT]

Maybe try parrying and get a shield with reactive paralyze. It'll block some attacks and have a chance to paralyze them when you parry. You'll probably need to invest a little in dex for it to be effective.

 

[WhiteWitch]

I find even with 120 wrestle and 45 DCI I still have a very hard time surviving a lot of the dexxers on Siege, I did train parry but have not used it as I'm told you need 80 dex for it to be very effective, I'm not sure how true this is, maybe someone here has some experience trying that.

One thing I find pretty useful is casting focus, I have inscription which gives an instant 5% of it and raises the cap to 17, I think I currently have it on 14 as its hard to balance up the gear to include that too, many times this has saved me from death because not all melee hits on me will disrupt my casting.

 

[Klapauc]

I find even with 120 wrestle and 45 DCI I still have a very hard time surviving a lot of the dexxers on Siege, I did train parry but have not used it as I'm told you need 80 dex for it to be very effective, I'm not sure how true this is, maybe someone here has some experience trying that.

One thing I find pretty useful is casting focus, I have inscription which gives an instant 5% of it and raises the cap to 17, I think I currently have it on 14 as its hard to balance up the gear to include that too, many times this has saved me from death because not all melee hits on me will disrupt my casting.

There is a calculator for parry chance on stratics http://uo.stratics.com/content/arms-armor/combat.php .
Wrestle/parry combination does potentially work very well IF you got the swingspeed and hci to disarm reliably. Hard to do on a mage, but maybe possible if you only want to defend yourself and do not care about killing others at all.
But because the uo rng can be very streaky at times, there is no 100% sure defence against a high damage output dexxer that gets lucky.
Imho its also very hard to build a high damage pvp dexxer without sacrificing anything, maybe best defence for a mage is to learn about common dexxer temps and find those weak points in them.

 

[Tanivar]

I'm really getting the impression this PvP mage scene is going to be a challenge. <chuckles>

 

[Marisa Kirisame]

But what kind of PvP you're up to?
According to my classification, there are four types of PvP:
1) Duel. The basic of the basics, the duel involves two players fighting to see "who's better", where "who's better" stands for a) "who's got better ping" and b) "whose template counters the other's template". It is yet unknown which of these two factors is deciding.
2) Mass PvP - a plain old full-scale battle between many players. Has two subtypes: a) deathmatch, when everyone's for himself, targets are chosen randomly, and b) team deathmatch, when there is at least one team of two or more players. The more teams there are and the larger is their player count, the more important and complex the tactical part gets. These are usually interesting to spectate.
3) Ambush PvP. One or more (usually more) players set up an ambush of some kind. The ambush either succeeds, where the ambushing group wipes the target group or player without any substantial losses, or fails, if the target group or player reacts and strikes back or flees, or the ambushing group is simply unable to catch the target/s. This one is my favourite. It requires long preparations, must be executed quickly and may imply a very specific set of skills and/or tricks.
4) An ambush, followed by mass PvP. There one group of players sets up an ambush on another group of players, knowing that there's a decent chance of failing to wipe it out entirely on spot, but doing so to gain an advantage in following team deathmatch. Also can occur when usual ambush fails, if both ambushing and target groups are large enough. This kind of ambush is usually not set up with the complexity of the normal ambush, often because there isn't enough time and/or aiming at the following deathmatch.
Some philosophers also note the "Ambush->Duel" case, but it happens with a chance of Blaze Cu Sidhe spawn, usually because two or more people set up an ambush, and the advantage it gives leaves no chance for the target player to fight back.

 

[WhiteWitch]

There is a calculator for parry chance on stratics http://uo.stratics.com/content/arms-armor/combat.php .
Wrestle/parry combination does potentially work very well IF you got the swingspeed and hci to disarm reliably. Hard to do on a mage, but maybe possible if you only want to defend yourself and do not care about killing others at all.
But because the uo rng can be very streaky at times, there is no 100% sure defence against a high damage output dexxer that gets lucky.
Imho its also very hard to build a high damage pvp dexxer without sacrificing anything, maybe best defence for a mage is to learn about common dexxer temps and find those weak points in them.

The weak point in most very high damage dexxer templates on Siege is they tend to lack magic resist skill, I mana vamp ones that seem to be para vulnerable, if get two vamps off that buys some time as they hurt a lot less without the special moves.
Wrestling disarm I find not incredibly useful, I'm pretty sure the disarm from wrestle can be immediately rearmed from anyway, plus without wasting a lot of mods on HCI and swing speed, standing there getting hit while waiting for that move to work is counter-productive, you cannot cast during this "throw of the dice" so by the time it actually works you are redlined anyway and have to spend the time it takes him to re-arm healing.

As for "defending yourself if do not care about killing at all", a dexxer who knows when to run will not be killed by a mage anyway outside arena, the dexxer gets to try his opening salvo of specials like nerve strike, death strike etc, if I survive that and start to do damage, he can just reset the fight by running off, I cannot chase him down as you have to stand still to cast, so he gets to run off and heal up and come back to try the salvo again, Ill either die or Ill stalemate him, this is particularly true of archers, I have had stalemate fights with archers that lasted more than half an hour, or an entire VvV game.

One way to level the "run and heal" playing field for a mage is to run mystic, healing stone can be used while running unlike heal and g/heal, you are probably more likely to catch a dexxer out as a mystic anyway as the burst damage is higher making it easier for him to miscalculate when to disengage.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

I'm really getting the impression this PvP mage scene is going to be a challenge. <chuckles>

Put together a template and tactics that knock out a few of the many dexxers here and you'll see a switch pretty quickly. No worries, Siege used to be primarily a mage PvP arena. Back in the day, the orcs were the primary dexxers on the shard...la