Saturday, June 11, 2011

Rift: How to Not Suck at Black Garden

I'm a warfront junkie. I'm a bomb at Black Garden, getting good at Codex, and expect to be pretty good at Whitefall Steppes once I get used to the strategy. At earlier levels, the strategy for Black Garden (the lowest-level warfront) was pretty much "get the fang, run away, don't die," or, for a simpler and more reliable strategy, "roll as a Guardian." Indeed, Defiants sucked on my server, and we lost almost every game. The first day I tried warfronts, I can't even remember getting a single win.

Having listened to a bunch of people yelling directions at me and choosing which directions to take to heart and which to discard completely, I have now developed some decent rules and ideas, which are very not entirely shit.

1. For gods' sakes, don't go off by yourself and get picked off one by one. Even if your team has the fang all the way at their spawn point, they're only getting one point instead of the much larger quantities of points the holder would get near the middle. So if one or two people keep dying and respawning and dying again instead of staying with the group, the points the other team gets for the kills might outnumber the points your team gets for holding the fang. Even worse is when the other team has the fang and you do this. Not only are you not accomplishing anything by handing them a quick kill, you're also speeding up their win.

2.1 Offensively, healers need to heal. You are not damage. It probably won't feel very useful, but you will be helping by lessening the time needed to grab the fang, or if you're in a crappy PUG (pick-up group, or group that wasn't premade), you might be giving your offensive team members a chance if possible.
2.2 Defensively, healers need to heal. You are not damage. Healing your team isn't what you should be focusing on, unless you're up against a kamikaze-style kill-everyone team and your team is all close by, so you can do a quick group heal and be done with it. Most of the time, the opposing team will be (or should be) focusing on your fang holder. It's your job to prolong your fang holder's life for as long as possible. When they have low health, put on flat heals. Low health and getting attacked, instant flat heals. And at all times, keep HoTs (healing over time spells) on them, especially if the skill is one that can stack, or if it's a skill that heals for a lot and is activated when the person is attacked.
2.3 Healers should be fang carriers, especially clerics, and especially if there are other healers on your team. You can heal yourself better than anyone else can, since it's more likely you'll know exactly what curses, etc. are on you, and be able to time the fang damage better. Clerics also have a hefty chunk of HP to burn. With the combined effort of other healers if you have them, it could take a good while for you to die. And if you have an organized team, forget about it - the fang could easily pass back and forth between two strong clerics on your team the whole match, assuming the other team isn't more organized and efficient than yours.


3. Mages, ranged warriors and rogues, and clerics: use the walls. Near your spawn point, there will be a wall that leads to the beginning of the "official" arena where the fang spawns. It's tempting to get up on it, and a lot of people do. But if your team is on your side at the moment with your fang, stay up on the wall where no melee opponents can get you, and dish out all the ranged damage/heals you can. This is a popular one.


4. Use AOE (area of effect) attacks around the fang when it's dropped. If someone takes damage, their picking up the fang is interrupted, leaving your team to pick up the fang unhassled. Unfortunately, in matches where both teams do this, this can result in a stalemate for long periods of time, or at least until someone's mana runs out. If your team is spamming AOE around the fang, get it and get out fast.

5. Use snare and other slowing/stopping effects when someone makes a run for it: this can apply to either someone who's snagged a fang from your side and is running back to theirs, or a whole team trying to follow your own fang-snagger. Only a few non-PvP souls offer a talent that breaks people free from these snares, etc., so it's an effective strategy.

6. Melee rogues are best near the center of the arena with few exceptions. Being all the way over on an opponent's side is a bad idea because of rogues' low HP, but rogues are offensive and meant to deal damage, so they can't hang back either. Offensively, from the center they can pick off the other team's stupidest members (stragglers, effectively, who get too far from the pack). If the fang returns to its prison, rogues can be and are fast and elusive, and overall, good at escape, meaning that they can snatch the fang before anyone knows what's happened. Alternatively, with a good Assassin/stealth mode build especially, you can pick off lone players who think they can grab the fang unopposed.
6.5 The main exception to this idea is grabbing the opponents' fang and running back to your side with it and/or creeping around to their side and dealing tons of damage to their carrier, also with stealth. Riftstalkers also make good fang carriers.

7. If your team is good and/or their team is bad, carriers should hang near the center if they can. It means a faster win.

8.1 Carriers: if they're heavily offensive, running around will make you harder to hit, especially around the black tentacle things in the center where the fang spawns if possible, or around and between the trees on your side.
8.2 If not, then focus on staying rather still in the safest spot possible for your healer, or so that you can heal yourself with spells other than instant heals. Of course, every situation is different, and so you should decide for yourself what will work best.

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