Sunday, October 31, 2010

Spike Damage - 5s and 10s Spike

One of my very first posts dealt with the coordination of CC. I did not mention in that post with what CC was coordinated. CC is coordinated with spike damage.

There are two types of CC in this game. You have offensive CC which disables an opponent while allowing you to attack him. These are knockdowns, silences, and disarms. These are typically 3 or 4 seconds long. Then you have defensive CC, stagger, which disables the opponent, but breaks if you attack him. This is typically 9 seconds long. A group heal from a WP or DoK takes 1s to cast. This gives you a 5s window to attack with offensive CC and a 10s window to attack with stagger. You'll know which spike to use by the type of CC being called.

I'll use my SM as an example.

For my 5s spike, I will try to use Ensorcelled Blow, Quick Incision, Sudden Shift, Wrath of Hoeth, Taunt, Ether Dance. If I am doing the CC with Whispering Wind, this becomes Sudden Shift, Quick Incision/Wrath of Hoeth, Taunt, Ether Dance.

For my 10s spike, I go Ensorcelled Blow, Quick Incision, Blurring Shock, Ensorcelled Blow, Wrath of Hoeth, Taunt, Ether Dance.

I also have a WL, so I can give those too.

For 5s spike, I use Pounce + Force Opportunity, Blindside/Shattering Blow, Pack Assault, Cull the Weak/Coordinated Strike/Lion's Fury.

For 10s spike, I use Pounce + FO, Blindside, LF, SB, PA, CS, CtW/LF. My tanks should be snaring the target for me. The highest spike occurs when Coordinated Strike is activated. Blindside + Shattering Blow + Pack Assault + 4 hits from Coordinated Strike + autoattack + procs all hit at once. Pack Assault helps put more damage at once if everyone is coordinating spike correctly.

The basic idea is that you need to put as much damage into a single second as possible to make damage more difficult to heal. Should you disable all healing that your opponent has, you can remove all the DoTs and just hit them with everything you have.

3 comments:

  1. I find this subject very interesting. I currently play my Black Orc most of the time, and at r33 I have my taunt for interrupts and just Big Slash for knock backs. There is a knockdown if I spec for it, but haven't.

    So I guess my I am just curious if being a tank should I be going after healers or someone else, and when to use my taunt for interrupting.

    One thing is for sure, this has given me some food for thought on what I could be doing to improve my play in oRvR.

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  2. While you may not be able to provide the spike damage part of the equation yet, you can definitely provide the CC.

    Target calling is something a melee DPS or DPS tank should be doing. That's not you at r33.

    I would Guard and assist a MDPS and knockdown his targets to make sure they die at your rank. If the MDPS picks bad targets while you are pugging, just pick someone else to Guard and assist. You'll pick it up with time.

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