Ragnarok Online: War of Emperium: what I learned from the Legendary Guardians

[Regdren]

It's been a while since I posted here. As Moderator of this board, I should be ashamed of myself. Hopefully this will help to make up for my absence, here's what I know about WoE as practiced by the larger guilds. This will consist of 3 posts; defense, offence, and miscellaneous details.

Defense:

The job of the defense is simple. Its primary goal is to kill anyone outside the guild's alliance that enters the castle, and its secondary goal is to protect the emperium from anyone who reaches it.

The room with the strongest defenses is not the emperium room. Rather, it is the room where the flag teleports guildmates and allies. As long as this room is held, reinforcements can quickly and easily join (or re-join) the defense of the castle. The flag room will have the heaviest precast, the most Loki Veils, the best equipment strippers, and the toughest tanks.

The emperium room defense mostly consists of people designed to stop soloers. This usually means a pair of efist champs, a few Deadly Poison Sonic Blow Sinxs, and a High Priest or two for Safety Wall and Sanctuary. All of the attacks used for this purpose are physical in order to bypass Gold Thief Bug armor (which makes you immune to magic).

The actual anatomy of a precast and its support is worth discussing in detail. Even small guilds, if they are in a decent alliance, will have some of the elements described here. Hyperguy was right when he said that Loki's Veil would be useful in guild defense, though it's used slightly differently than what he predicted. The veil is placed over the portal entrance so that people entering the room can't easily use Land Protect or other defense to aid allies in the attack. It also helps to prevent counter-attacks aganst the wizards involved in the precast. Larger guild often have two Loki's Veils lined up consecutively; even if a player makes it through both veils, Land Protect won't reach the entrance and therefore won't stop other attackers from having to endure the precast.

The precast itself consists of as many Wizards and High Wizards as the guild (or alliance, in a joint defense) has available. The most important spell for a precast is Meteor Storm. Several copies of Storm Gust or Lord of Vermillion will not stack with each other, but because Meteor Storms deliver damage in distinct semi-radomized packets, multiple castings of it will deliver cumulative effects, much like multiple Fire Bolts or Jupiter Thunders. The High Wizard with the highest magic attack uses amplified Storm Gusts to punish people who tru to get through the precast with fire armor. Supporting the precast is a Bard or Clown with Poem of Bragi to reduce cast and after-cast delay. Priests supply Bless and, more importantly, Magnificat to keep the precast going smoothly. Paladins with Devotion also sometimes support the precasting wizards, reducing the damage from counterattacks as well as preventing the spells from being interrupted.

In addition to the precast and veils, several characters are set up to attack invaders on sight. The most infamous of these is the Creator with Acid Demonstration. This attack deals extra damage to high Vit characters, which in WoE is most of them. Furthermore, it has a chance of breaking equipment on a foe without Full Chemical Protection, and as a physical attack ignores Gold Thief Bug armor. There can also be Sinxs with Grimtooth or Soul Breaker, Efist champs if there are already enough in the Emp room and Profs with Dispel to remove buffs and chemical protection. Enemies that escape the veil are attacked in melee by anyone with the means to do so, and are subject to equipment-stripping rogues.

So how does one get past all of this? It looks pretty intimidating, but obviously people are beating it since even the castles held by the biggest guilds change hands from time to time. In the next post I'll describe an effective guild offense.

[Regdren]

Offense

Defenders have the advantage of position, concentration of firepower, and several layers of effects that can cause casualties before invaders can even begin to fight back. What is the advantage of the offense in War of Emperium? It is simple: the attackers do not have to kill the defenders to achieve their goal, while the defenders are only successful if they kill every invader. Invaders don't have to bother with those tanky warrior types, annoying priests or slippery assassins or thieves. They only need to survive on their way to the emperium room, lay down a Land Protector on the emperium, and break it to win.

Since I mention Land Protector a lot in the Defense section, I'd better describe it right here since it's such a vital part of a guild's offense. Land Protect is a Sag/Prof skill that makes a large area immune to area-effect spells, including ground effects like Quagmire and Safety Wall, duet songs like Loki's Veil, and most importantly area damage spells such as Storm Gust and Meteor Storm. Profs designed to use this skill in a castle offense have minimun intelligence because it doesn't affect and aspect of its support spells like Land Protect or Dispel. Instead Vit and Dex are maxed out. Such Professors are notoriously difficult to kill and are very high-priority targets for the defense.

When assaulting a room guarded with the strongest defenses an alliance can muster, there are several techniques used, often in conjunction with each other. All attackers must be capable of surviving precasts along with any ranged direct skills likely to be thrown at them. Paladins, Lord Knights, Assassins, and Professors are the most common choices for this, though sometimes Whitesmiths, Creators, and Priests, and Clown join the offense too. These attackers are ideally enchanted with every defense the priests can apply before going in, and they typically have MDef and element protection gear. Furthermore, the main assault characters typically have Full Chemical Protection. Creators who can do this are not the most common type, but they are out there and most large guilds have at least one (same for full-strip rogues and defense). Although such chemical protection is sometimes dispelled, there's never enough time to dispel every attacker that comes through.

One in the job of the attackers is to disrupt the defense enough to allow the more fragile attackers in. Typically this is achieved by damaging the duet bard/gypsies enough to halt Loki's Wall. If the first veil is stopped, a well timed land-protect opens the way for the rest of the alliance. There are other ways to take the bite out of a defense too; for example, by reaching the precast wizards and using area effects like Grand Cross or Brandish Spear to kill or interrupt as many wizards as possible. If a Clown can make it past the veils, the use of Frost Jokes to freeze any defenders not equipped with a Marc Card is a common tactic. Once the veil-precast combination is disrupted, all of the remaining members of the attack team advance and (hopefully) overwhelm the defenders. At this point, it's not uncommon for a long line of attackers to walk through a room with defenders trying to pick off as many passer-bys as possible, but at this point there's little that can be done unless the next room also has heavy defenses set up (unlikely, even for large guids).

So that's how attack and defense work on a large scale. However, there are some indivdual tricks and tactics that can make both jobs easier, as well as PvP knowledge in general. That will be covered in the third and final post.

[Regdren]

In preparation for guild-versus-guild warfare, a certain minimum or equipment and items must be met in order to be effective. The most obvious of these are a Cranial shield of some sort and a PvP weapon. In addition, a Marc Card prevents all kinds of annyoing delays, most notably from Frost Joke. Fancy card combinations typically do not show up in WoE; the sole purposes of WoE equipment are to reduce damage to yourself and maximize damage to your enemies.

In addition to armor and weapons, recovery items have a heavy emphasis. Even the toughest characters recieve enough damage to kill them several times over, and thus need potions or other healing items capable of restoring several full life bars. Thus, in addition to the raw power of healing supplies, weight must also be taken into consideration, especially for low-strength classes. Mastella Fruit is the most popular healing supply for its strong recovery ability and very low wieght, but its cost is going to be dramatically increased later this months. Ranked Slim White Potions are probably going to take their place, along with Aloe Leaves and whatever else can be found. SP recovery items are much more important for some classes (Champs) than others (Wizards). Furthermore, healing supplies are much more important for attackers than defenders, because of the battle dynamics described above. Attacking is an expensive undertaking. though Acid Demonstration bottles and Deadly Poison aren't cheap for the defense either.

Switching armor and weapons in battle is not uncommon for more well-established characters either. One might equip anti-magic armor for dealing with a precast, but then switch to anti-status armor once out of it. Similarly, damage, accuracy, and status weapons might frequently be switched during battle. For this reason, it is strongly encouraged to use Battle Mode during WoE so that you have three rows of hotkeys to manage your skills, equipment, and item use.

That's all I've got for now. Feel free to post any responses, questions, or your own WoE experiences in this thread. I'll answer any questions you have as best I can.

[JG]

Try to find out for me how many suits of armor and weapons the lord knights take to battle.  I'd like to carry both offensive and defensive plates (something like Brilight, which I have, and Marc, which I'm still hunting) and a varied set of lances (Brionac, Quad Ancient Pike, and a Quad status-inflicting pike) but unsure if that would leave alot of weight for healing items (granted, I do have easy access to condensed whites)

[Regdren]

As far as I can tell, the practical maximum for melee characters is two weapons and three armors. Accuracy weapons usually aren't neccesary in WoE because of the universal flee reduction. That leaved a status weapon and a damage weapon. Armor is usually divided into anti-precast equipment (Swordfish silk robe, for example), status armor, and status prevention armor. Generally this array is enough to cover most WoE situations while leaving a decent amount of room for recovery items.