Mage PVP

Biff

It's 2018 at the time of writing this post.
I want to ask about the current state of pure mage PVP. Specifically, whether or not I should include parry into the template? Here is the standard template I'm starting with:

Magery
Eval int
Wrestling
Resisting spells
Meditation
Anatomy
Inscription

I'm happy to make this template but how good is parry really? and if it's still op, which skill would I drop for it? Inscription?

I'm also open to other Pure mage variations to anyone who has the time.

Thanks in advanced!

Cookie

Good luck.

I don't know how to respond to this question anymore.

I hope some players can give you a positive response.

cobb

drop anatomy or wrestling. no reason to have both

Mervyn

Parrying is a lot better than inscription, drop anatomy, that way you can disarm.

what is very important is actually the suit, you will require the following:
45 HCI AND DCI
reactive para shield
50 ep [+25 hpi standard]
18 damage eater and hit point regen
150 strength, 80 dex, at least 125 int (more the better)

utilisise shield bash and supernova potions, and ALWAYS summon a daemon vs warriors 

Biff

Thank you so much! So to be clear, I'm dropping both inscription and anatomy, and training up parry? Thanks, I'll follow your mod suggestions too

I thought anatomy added or affected the stun mechanic? or have things changed?

And how does the Daemon help?

Biff

.

cobb

Yes its changed.  You only need Wrestling to stun and disarm

Mervyn

Utilising summon deamon vs warriors and using supernova vs everyone was just my general advice, not necessarily specific to the template. You'll be surprised how much damage the deamon can do.

Here is also a full macro listing requirement for a parry mage (not sure what client you're using but this is described as if you're using CC):

last target: wheel up
target self: wheel down

DEFENSIVE:
weaken (also aggressive)
mini heal
greater heal
cure
arch cure
eat apple
invis
recall
teleport
wall of stone
drink heal pot
drink cure pot
drink refresh pot
(drink dex)
(drink str) - can make into one macro with uoa
bless
protection
magic reflect
dispel field
use item type trapped box
heighten senses

AGGRESSIVE:
disarm (also drag the special out of the book so you can see when it's active)
shield bash
supernova pot
conflag pot
curse
magic arrow
fireball
harm
lightning
poison
mindblast
e-bolt
explode
flamestrike
paralise
mana vampire
meteor swarm or chain lightning
earthquake
summon deamon

energy field
para field (defensive)
poison field



General use:

last spell, so it makes it easier to just cast the spells below more than once, the last spell macro won't count the spells that are macrod,
last object
all names
dismount self
mount
bandage mount
mount ethereal
dismount and bola
select next mobile (uo macro)
use skill tracking
use skill hide
opendoor
dress

arm

arm alternate (high sdi book or dragon slayer)
disarm right hand




bank guards recsu recdu
all follow me
all kill
all guard me
all stay
all stop
(mount name) stop, (mount name) follow me - in 1 macro - mervyn will explain why





Spells you can just drag onto the desktop and double click when you need:

dispel
mass dispel
res
energy vortex
nightsight
telekenisis
reveal
polymorph (for the piper)

The moderators are a little trigger happy on this forum with thread locking, so i thought i'd throw all the information i have rather than you go without.

Biff

Mervyn. You are an absolute legend and have gone above and beyond my question. All this stuff is super important. I want to get every aspect of mage pvp down to the last detail!

Much appreciated and thanks again!

TimSt

Inscription adds a small boost to your Spell Damage Increase and a large boost to your Magic Reflection Pool.

Biff

@TimSt Yeap thanks. I decided to drop inscription and drop anatomy for 120 parry.

Biff

@Mervyn. First off thanks again for your contributions on the forum regarding Stun/parry mage pvp.

I wanted to ask you about the "reactive para shield" What is it? how can I get one? Can it be crafted/imbued? and what other mods would I need on it.

If anyone else is able to answer this, much appreciated.

How good would an arcane shield be as alternative?

Thanks mate!

Mariah

A search for Reactive Paralyze on the uo.com player wiki gives results as:

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/items/artifact-collections/artifacts-stygian-abyss/

Boura Tail Shield.

or

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/skills/imbuing/runic-reforging/

using the Towering/of Aegis option

Mervyn

Reactive paralyze on a shield makes parrying twice as good. When you successfully parry a blow, you have a good chance of paralyzing the opponent. 

You can eitther get it through reforging, or through loot. You will need spell channeling and as many other mods as you can find (probably want DCI)

Vendor Search on Atlantic is normally most people’s first port of call. (Tip of the day: wooden shields can be enhanced with frostwood to make them spell channeling) 

Biff

@Mariah
@Mervyn

ahhhhhhh awesome! I'm on it!

Biff

@Mervyn
Some questions on mechanics. While im in the midst of casting a spell, am I actively wrestling and parrying? Or is there a pause during this cast time?  
It's important to know for example... i activate a wrestling ability and begin to cast greater heal as a dexxer reaches my proximity. Does my wrestling ability activate during the cast time of greater heal? Similarly, do I parry during the cast time?

Or perhaps im wide open during the cast time?
Thanks!

Biff

@Mervyn
You mentioned stats, but it includes stats from gear. Can you help me determine what my base stats should be at 255 cap? Thanks.

Mervyn

with regards to disarm and shield bash activation, you have to perform them between the spell casts. Fortunately with 80 dex you'll have quite a high swing speed, so you'll want to really only use the shield bash when you've maged the target to low hp, then go for the shield bash, flamestrike supernova lightning.

Disarm is used only on warriors who are hitting you with melee attack, you don't want to bother chasing someone around trying to disarm them, just do it when they are up in your face.

With regards to base stats, i can 't help because it depends on what the + stats are on your armour.

Biff

Ahh yes I thought this was the case.

People on my shard (oceania) are saying that protection spell not only prevents cast interruption, lowers spell resist, but that it also reduces fc cap to zero? Is the latter true? Because i dont see it changing on my character sheet. Does it affect fcr too?

If this is the case.. I wouldnt use protection against dexxers but switch it on vs other mages. Is this reasonable?

Mervyn

Biff said:

Ahh yes I thought this was the case.

People on my shard (oceania) are saying that protection spell not only prevents cast interruption, lowers spell resist, but that it also reduces fc cap to zero? 

Protection reduces faster casting cap by -2, magery’s faster casting cap is 2 so it does reduce the faster casting to 0 and this should be reflected on your character sheet. As a parry mage, the only time you want to put protection on is if you’re being really heavily interrupted, so if you’re dismounted and have many people attacking you, you might want to put protection on to cast heal. You won’t be able to kill anyone as a parry mage with protection on as the spells cast too slow.

this is a very old video but still applies today:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RMXBriyUOIA
ignore the bit about the Keynames bug, was fixed years ago.

JCtheBuilder

Mervyn said:

this is a very old video but still applies today:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RMXBriyUOIA

Wow, I didn't know that if your spell is disrupted that there is a slight recovery delay. It must only be 0.25 or 0.5 seconds.

Biff

Very cool!

Biff

Ec vs CC

Like most people i get nastolgia playing on CC. Also, i love and understand how to use razor and know how helpful it is.
These things aside... EC has some pretty good features.
-Movement is smoother and better on the eyes.
-Can zoom out and see 5x more than cc (pvp benefit)
-can see all stats on the character sheet, for example dci, dci, sdi etc...
-easier looting and bag management
-superior ingame map
-colour coded borders on armor indicating durability
-chat doesnt interfere with keybinds
-i can drag my client window across two monitors.

The main thing for pvp here for me is the zoom funtion... i can see people at very long distances before they can see me.

So why does everyone still use CC? Just because of the pleasant memories and familiarity??

At this point the only thing that will stop me from using EC is if i cant make the same keybinds as I would with razor.. such as dress agents, potions, and usual magery keybinds.

Is there anything that using EC would inhibit my pvp abilities as a mage?

Biff

Can I imbue onto boura tail shield? Or enhance it with spell channeling? Or am i better off making my own shield with reactive para?

JCtheBuilder

Biff said:

So why does everyone still use CC? Just because of the pleasant memories and familiarity??

People use classic client for 2 reasons:

1) looks better
2) Classic Client is faster at casting spells than Enhanced Client. You know your heal or weaken is going to take exactly 0.5 seconds to cast in Classic Client. You don't get the same kind of response in Enhanced Client. Unless they fixed it. I don't know because I never use Enhanced Client.

Biff

Ahh well if that is the case I wouldn't use EC either.
I'd have to disagree about CC looking better though

Biff

Maybe someone who has used EC could confirm the delay thing in spell casting?

Mervyn

JCtheBuilder said:

Wow, I didn't know that if your spell is disrupted that there is a slight recovery delay. It must only be 0.25 or 0.5 seconds.

This is the keystone to mage pvp, i was asked to write an article for the official wiki to talk about it however i've been too busy trolling the forums.

Biff said:

Can I imbue onto boura tail shield? Or enhance it with spell channeling? Or am i better off making my own shield with reactive para?

I don't think you can imbue it, I don't know why Mariah mentioned the boura tail shield, it's not relevant for pvp.

Biff said:

Maybe someone who has used EC could confirm the delay thing in spell casting?

Okay the deal with the casting differences between the clients is this:

Enhanced Client casting is actually much faster than Classic Client casting but ONLY if you have the cursor set to target last/self automatically and NOT set to target CURSOR, if you set it to target Cursor the casting recovery is slower than classic client. This means that you're sacrificing timing skill for raw speed. People on enhanced client with target set to auto last/self are able to cast first circle spells on the run without even stopping.

I'm sure it's not supposed to be like that, but that is how it is and I've made the devs aware of this for years.

The 2 clients SHOULD be the same casting speed, regardless of target set type but they are not.

It's worth noting also that classic client (with uoassist) has the advantage of "range check last target" which is a feature no current ECUI has, (which is supposed to check that the target is still onscreen when you use last target so you don't have to recast the spell if the target is too far away) HOWEVER again because the devs messed up and made the EC movement speed FASTER than the CC, by the time the Classic Client/UOAssist has performed a check that the target is onscreen, you will still receive a message reading "target is too far away" and lose the spell when trying to target players who are running arround on the EC.

@Kyronix @Bleak

It's a bit of a mess and i can only apologise

Am I supposed to write the above for the mage pvp article for the official wiki?

Del

icq me I can make you a template for what your looking for 42254535

Biff

@Mervyn ;
I'm actually very surprised, this is a huge oversight.

Well it should make you feel better that using auto target is terrible for pvp. It would mean that you can't precast spells and wait until you're in range, for example.
So no holding target at all until the right moment.

Right?

Mervyn

Correct, but what players on EC do generally is set some big spells like explode to target cursor so they can precast and the smaller spells to target/self.