Combat - Offense

Always use combinations with 3 elements. The reason can be found in the "Spells" chapter.



use combinations with 3 elements. The reason can be found in the "Spells" chapter. Aim properly. If you don´t hit you are wasting potential damage.



Use attacks that ignore the ward of your enemy. Shooting rocks at someone who is immune to physical damage is pointless.



Never use lightnings when your allies are close. Lightnings are uncontrolable and will propably fry your allies too. Maybe your allies may even work as a shield for your enemy agaist your lightnings.



Same thing applies for other forms of damage. Try not toget your teammates caught in the blast.

It should include multiple of kinds of damage. When you use only one element your enemy can simply ward against it.



It has to make your enemy unable to protect against the type of damage you're going to use.



It has to incapacitate your enemy in any way that prevents him from casting well

Breaking through shields and walls

Freezing

Water and pushing:

Using opposite elements in your attack patterns:

Knockdown

The closer you are the more damage you can deal!

Keeping your distance from the fight

Obviously you can´t win a battle without going for the jugular.Some general tips for damage spells;What makes an offensive strategy a good one?Simple:It's enough if your attack matches at least one of these conditions. But multiple are better.Shields are a common way to defend and you will often have the problem that a shield is between you and your enemy. What to do in such a situtaion?Shields can be penetrated by projectiles and lightnings. Don´t try to stick to beam attacks when your enemy puts up a shield. Change your kind of attack, the used elements can stay the same.Change from a fire beam to fire projectiles.Walls are a bit harder to work around. If your enemy stands close to the wall you can use lightnings wich will chain over the wall to your enemy. Another option is to use ice shards or elemental projectiles wich can break the wall. Steam sprays and various selfcasted spells also work great for breaking walls if you are close enough.If you are close to the wall of your enemy you can put a different shield-spell over them to overwrite the wall with stationary lightnigs or mines wich are both no hindrance for attacks. Especially if the enemy is directly behind the wall such spells can deal good damage.Alternative most walls can be broken with aoe spells if you are in range.Slowing and freezing your enemy are great options to include in your offensive rotation. The slowing makes it easier for you to hit your enemy while he is severely impaired from casting. When you hit a frozen taget with enough physical damage it will take lethal damage. So far the only spell that can do that is a charged DDD projectile and some weapon specials.You can also place storms or mines directly on a frozen target so he will instantly get damaged as soon as he gets out of the freeze status.If a weapon can shatter your enemy or not depends heavily on his earth affinity. If your opponent has -50 earth, then a lot of weapons will be able to shatter him; some even without charging. However, any weapon that doesn´t deal earth damage has no chance of shattering at all. A player with a +50 earth affinity can´t be shattered at all.When assuming the enemy has default earth affinity, then the only weapons that can shatter him are: Gungnir, Earth Elemental Chrossbow, Chakram and Spear of Longinus.Bearbed Axe, Earth Mace, Horn of War and some other weapons still deal some damage to frozen targets, but they don´t cause the target to be shattered.These listings of weapons may change depending on balance changes and new weapons.Water is a good additional tactic very synergetic with lightnings and frost because the wetness doubles the lightning damage and increases the freeze rate.Other water strategies can be usefull because while being pushed a player can´t queue elements, cast spells or do anything. This give you time to set up your next spells in an advantageous position while your enemy is wet and recovering.Push your enemy against a wall with , get close while doing so and place some mines under his feet to freeze him up or a storm on top of him to dish loads of damage.The pushing effect of mines, walls and water can also be used to push enemies back into elemental walls like EQF.In general that means: When your enemy has a cold ward then switch to fire. He will change to a fire ward and you will start using cold. This way your enemy will be forced to use up more time in battle to remove statuses and change armors than he would normally.Keep up the pressure on your enemy and his health will wither away.Also its not very effective to cast fire spells while your enemy is already burning. You should use more damaging elements in your spells instead. Why cast AFA on an already burning enemy when you can also cast ASA, wich deals more burst damage (assuming his ward is neutral to all those elements)? Its enough to refresh the burning status on your enemy every 3-4 seconds. This can be done quickly with a short fire beam or spray.While burning doesn´t stack in intensity the chilled status does. For the chilled status you´ll want to keep using cold spells until your enemy switches to a cold ward or is fully frozen. The slowed animations will steal a lot of his time.Knocking your enemy down can be done by using earthquake spells. Being knocked down keeps a player from moving or casting spells until he gets up. You can use this to make you enemy stay in stationary lightnings longer, make sure that Death gets him or just buy some time. A nice follow up after a knockdown are weapon swings or specials if they charge fast enough.Yeah, most spells with a short range deal a really ridiculous amount of damage. Mines, MMB AoE attacks and also using your run-of-the-mill weapon works well. On short engagement ranges your enemy also needs more time to get away from you. Try to be carefull because this works the other way around too. He can do huge burst of damage too, and you cannot esacpe as easily.It's a high-risk, high-reward play.In most cases, especially in team fights, keeping your distance will lead you to win an engagement in the long run. Rocksniping, icesniping, beaming, applying statuses and the like may not get you straight up kills, but it will do a lot of harrasement overall while your teammates have the upper hand and finish the job.[more will be added later. maybe.]