3v3 / pvp understanding guide

    → Introduction ←


    The purpose of this thread is in a way to compress things which you learn in arena with a lot of experience and time and to explain them to the newer players so they can improve faster by understanding how the pvp actually works much quicker than others. Hopefully after reading this thread more people will improve in pvp faster than they would normally and we'll get more arena in which people are going to play their classes to the maximum. I will focus a lot more on healers since healers are a big part of 3v3 and the game pretty much revolves around them and around playing with them. This "guide" will skip the basics of the classes because you need to learn those by yourself and before even thinking about doing arena properly. Oh and also, i thought about how should i write this guide but i decided it'll be just text and nothing else so you'll have to think after you read it and try to understand / imagine the situations i might be talking about.


    p.s. ignore my horrible grammar and stuff because i have the habbit of writing informally so i ended up putting comas and dots whenever i want not whenever i should >_> habbits die hard, even bad ones!



    → Entering the arena! ←

    ~ Whats the first thing that matters when you enter the arena? I guess its the classes you're going with. Luckily, in TERA, skill matters a lot more than class or gear goes, if you've been around for longer you've probably witnessed more than few good players beating other players (even good ones) with much worse gear and usually when enemy has "class advantage." Various advantages such as class and gear do exist but they dont' define the outcome of the game. In tera every single class has a cheap mechanic or something cheap ,easy and efficient.
    So what about classes? Well a single class can have different roles depending on the setup and the way his team wants to play, you need to be completely aware of what your mates can and cannot do. The majority of the teams have a warrior or a lancer because they are both tanky, have the best sustained dps and have lots of "physical CC" (staggers,stuns,knockdowns).. however! You do NOT need to have either of them you just need to be able to work with your team ! "So? How do i work with my team?" - Well you could say its chemistry, its not neccessarily having voice com or anything its just about how you play with each other and how you look out for each other and stuff. This is hard because it comes with actual game experience *and* "teammate" experience. In order to react good in most situations you need to know whats going on .. but i'll get to that part as well. I will talk about classes more later, the point of this here is to make you realize that class is no excuse its just that you probably mis-play your composition and that anything can work if you're more skilled than your enemy.



    → Gears, technical difficulties,skill, situation ←


    >> Gears~ Aah yes, everyone's favorite excuses. Well contrary to popular belief, gear in tera isn't so important. If you play good you can win even with VM1, however, that requires your enemies to play much worse which is not always the case. You need gear for really good enemies but you don't really need to outgear them to beat them. Currently strikeforce is almost as strong as nightforge and even if, nightforge is obviously better, gear is not really an excuse. The difference between SF and NF is 2.5% in stats or so and 1 extra bonus which is good but at best is just 4-5-6% less damage or more heal received or something like that. Do you know that one step to the left makes you dodge an arrow and saves you 40k damage? Its not your gear its your movement.


    >> Skill~ What is skill? It depends on many things but skill in tera is often .. everything. Player A can have 100 skill and player B can have 80 skill but player B can be better at something than player A, however, in the end player A is more skilled because he does stuff better overall and "snowballs" into a better situation. Skill is the way you move and the way you fight, like literally. I've met more than few teams that have outgeared my team and they have lost within literally 30 seconds. In TERA (unlike most games) one step to the left can save you from so much damage. One jump can save you from death and a single stagger can interrupt a huge damage skill coming your way. Its not your gear thats carrying you its all the little stuff.


    >> Situation~ What does that mean? Well from this point on you should have in mind that ANYTHING I WRITE DEPENDS ON THE SITUATION. Tera is one of the most situational games in which everything can matter, be it buffs , crux buffs even, small delay, random crit, someone walked in your room and distracted you, misplay. Tera is very very very very situational. A sorc which you can beat 30 out of 30 in a duel can oneshot you in arena or even in the duel , should you let him. Good players are able to manipulate the situation in their favor way more than worse ones. If you're sick today and your shield blocks are a bit slow you'll end up taking so much damage, thats what i mean by situation. In this game gear doesn't matter as much as situation and small things do.


    >> Technical difficulties~ well unlike gear, lag is actually an excuse. Lag ruins games in so many ways but oh well what can you do about it? In tera theres the infamous desync.. contrary to popular belief, there is no way to reliably desync yourself in tera and use it to your advantage. Many noobs seem to think that u can desync at will and even make desync work for you but i have yet to see someone who prefers to jump instead do damage in arena. If you do stupid stuff to desync you'll most likely end up giving big advantage to your enemy. You can't jump while holding W to desync because it doens't always work and i dont know a single good player that lets his fate rest in a coin flip.
    Desync sucks, desyncs happens a lot and it happens regardless of what your enemy is doing. Its not your fault, its not my fault and its not your enemy's fault. It may be a legit excuse but it happens all the time. I have never tried to intentionally desync but have desynced so many times (unintentionally, even if my enemy doesn't think so), its unreliable , its inefficient and its not worth it.


    → Pressure! ←


    What is pressure? Obviously pressure is a word in the english language.. but the pressure im talking about is something in tera, something invisible which exists in your mind only. They could add (well probably not) a meter which determines the pressure in the arena. Pressure is always there and always exists and pressure is done by damage. Its not done by CC, one of the reasons why i believe EU arena is better than NA arena is because everybody here does damage instead rely on CC so much. Sure in the end CC often decides the winner but thats the thing, with pressure its easier to land CC.
    Lets say that team A is warrior lancer and team B is something something warrior and lancers are both classes with huge pressure which are able to deal damage without taking damage since their enemy can't even move. They have high sustained dps which results in pressure. Sure damage can be healed but healing requires mana, effort, animation lock, situation , positioning , everything. If a team has high pressure its much easier for that team to land their CC. Surprised? I've never even had max cast speed on my stuntrap/sleep as a sorc in arena yet my CC ends games so often, the reason is because when a healer has to heal his team a lot he is often exposed and a much easier CC target.
    With pressure its easy to land CC, its easy to kill someone if enemy healer / team stops receiving heals (thats called cracking under the pressure) and its also easy to exhaust people or force them into doing something stupid. Pressure comes from damage and all classes in tera can pressure enough , some do better than others and some rely on spikes of dmg but that doesn't matter. Pressure in arena is one of the most important things, with pressure u can land giga leash much easier, u can have a lot more backstabs that last longer than usual cus no cleanse, however, pressure does not mean your team is better or that your team is going to win the game and its just a matter of time. Pressure is highly situational and a random misposition or even a random RNG crit could turn pressure against your enemy. You can recover from a state of pressure (easier for some classes than others) and the best ways to beat pressure are > a random huge crit that sends enemy defensive and turns the tide, giga leash (which is why everyone hates lancers, cus they're disrespectful towards the leash and only want to spam and mash buttons), random thing depending on the situation. If your team can get the pressure its good, try to beat your enemy under the pressure, its not so easy to recover from it, you should never get cocky tho because the game isn't over and can turn at any time because well TERA.

    Edited once, last by Flanberry: typo ().

    → Healers! ←


    Its no secret that healers have a big role in 3v3, you have one healer and two dd's so i guess healer is often more important than a lone DD by himself but there are DDs which stand out by themselves. Anyhow, what about healers? Well this may come as a revelation to you but healer's role is NOT to heal himself until the game is over, its not to heal his teammates until the game is over either. Healer's role is to assist your team in winning, however that may be. What does this mean? It means you'll do what you're supposed to do to ensure your team's victory and that is rarely ever just spam healing until the round is over. You need to play with your team and to use ur brain and for that you need to understand the classes in tera and know their skills and play with your team .. not alone, because the biggest problem i see in premade arena is that people play alone and not with their team. If your sorceror is slept and you're under pressure and you'ré dying, its obvious to more experienced players that cleansing your sorceror is the 2nd highest priority (Highest being: not dying, but being on 10% hp still means you're alive) so he can help you with the people on you. Many healers would just spam heal themself and won't realize that this is bad for the long run.
    What does a healer need to be good? General game knowledge and experience, a lot of it. You can get a lot of it by just spamming soloq 3v3, bgs, duels and even PVE. You need to be able to "feel" your character and that applies to everyone in tera not just to healers, but its even more important on healers. The reason you need a lot of general game knowledge is to know what each class is capable of and to be able to take appropriate action against it.
    You can get this knowledge by observing it first hand and by talking to people or just by playing a class.
    The most important thing to be a good healer is to play with your team and to have a good team and to realize that 100% hp isn't the most important thing. You need to be able to plan ahead and schedule ahead. Tera is not an easy game contrary to popular belief but most of the skill is sort of automatic, you need to know when big damage is possibly incoming and to be ready and you need to know that cleanse is your best friend. As a healer player i can tell you that there are many cases in which i would rather cast mana infusion than heal my teammate thats on 60% hp. Just because hes not 100% it doesn't mean ur supposed to instantly heal him but it also doesn't mean ur supposed to just let him die. You're playing to win, not healing him to regain some mana is good for the long run and if you can afford to do it then go ahead and do it. If you see that enemy has used up their skills then its unlikely that big damage will come. It might sound basic but most healers dont even pay attention to that and its a big problem, what you need to do as both priest and mystic (i'll talk about each class individually later) is pay attention to the skills that have been used and its nowhere as hard as it sounds. In tera most classes "spike" in dps with certain skills which are easy to look for and even easier to counter for a healer.


    >> It's not always the healer's fault! .......... but it usually is.
    What is that supposed to mean? Well imagine this scenario, your archer gets backstabbed by a slayer and since backstab has such a long and obvious animation (both warrior and slayer backstabs actually) you've noticed it and instantly bumped a cleanse in your priority list. So you cleanse the stun kick (you can also cleanse the backstab but most people will still get stun kicked, even good players can often get stun kicked) and your DD is just standing there and still gets hit by the entire slayer combo. In this case its your DD's fault for not moving after you've done your job and not only that but now you also have to heal him. Cleanse is the right course of action in almost all situations because damage in tera is so conditional and situational. The damage in tera can be so big that you won't be able to heal it, but at the very least you can make sure that the conditions favor your team so you can avoid what could be a certain death at the press of a button..


    High priority stun cleanse?
    Warrior backstab, the sooner you cleanse it the better.
    Warrior cascade, not all warriors use cascade with backstab so you need to look out for that. Luckily for you cascade has the most obvious animation ever, for all races, you cant really mistaken that skill.
    Warrior gylphed counter stun, it lasts long, should be cleansed. If its not gylphed its not a requirement to cleanse.
    Slayer kick, well slayers have only two stuns and one of them is incredibly short and often not even worth cleansing (it depends, there are many cases in which you are able to cleanse it because you're not actually doing anything just at this splitsecond but if you're even half a second late then its better to just heal the damage from backhand stun.) Slayer kick is the longer of the two and the one that opens up a lot more possibilities for them , you must cleanse that or prepare for huge damage.
    Lancer shield bash, its fairly obvious after you play for awhile, most lancers use leash first then shield bash so the leash is like a huge warning to you. Its inefficient to use single target leash and anything else afterwards so whenever they use the single target leash its like a big warning sign to you for incoming possible giga and shield bash. Either way you need to be 15m+ away and ready to cleanse.
    Sorceror's stun trap, sorc stuntrap is used offensively quite often and you can't really heal a fireblast back crit so cleanse is a must there. It depends tho, not always a sorc will be able to nuke a stuntrapped target but you should be ready to cleanse it.
    Archer stun trap, archer kick lasts a long time but its not always good to cleanse it , sometimes you should just queue other stuff instead kick cleanse, however, stun trap cleanse is a must because stun trap has a longer cd and a lot longer duration and opens up many plays.


    Is this too obvious? It is to me, i don't know how other people feel but if i were to read this last part here i would be like "wtf is the point of this obvious guide". Well tera may often be a hard game but its also predictable and obvious quite often. You think that good players have some super secret hidden moves? Not really. They just deal with stuff way better which snowballs the game in their direction. The thing is, when someone is stunned or knocked down or staggered - he can't move!!!!! (Obviously). How do you counter something if you can't move? You don't, your teammates do for you. It was one of the first things i figured when i started doing 3v3 in this game. I don't know why it feels like rocket science to some people today. If you're a DD and you get backstabbed at 30k hp and you don't get cleansed then its almost guaranteed that its not your fault. You can't move after all ~


    Earlier i wrote that tera is highly situational. If your archer is stuntrapped by a sorceror in middle of a hailstorm while a sorc and a slayer are hitting him ,what can happen? Fireblast back crit for 60k, void pulse for 20k, heart thrust for 35k, overhand for 20k, measured slice for 30k. Yeah that can happen. 165k damage, can you heal 165k damage in 2 seconds(i even forgot the hailstorm damage)? Not really, you can't always save your teammate by healing him but in this case a cleanse would prevent all this damage. One button would make your teammate take 165k damage less. Tera is HIGHLY situational game and you can dodge *ANY* damage, you can even counter warrior damage by jumping his backstab but its still the "safest" damage in the game. Fast cleanses against deadly spells are the best way to ensure that your team doesn't get under pressure, it lowers incoming damage by so much and no damage means no pressure means better chance for you to get to that kill-moment and win the round. Cleanse is anti-pressure-snowball skill and it prevents people from landing their damage normally.


    >> Pressure.. (again)
    Most healers fail because they think they are responsible only for your party's HP, thats not true like i wrote earlier and im writing it again so you can get it in your head. A good healer is a healer that can turn the pressure to your side. Its not his job entirely but he has a big role to that, you can help with your team's pressure by many ways (especially as a mystic). A random sleep on someone or a double knockdown on someone (so they have no retaliate) is HUGE. You need to support your team in pressure, however, that doesn't mean you should let your guard down and get aoe stunned or leashed so enemy can recover...

    → Denying damage,understanding and doing damage, knockdowns ←


    >> Denying damage~Well, what is denying damage? We already know that tera is a highly situational game. Imagine this, you're a sorc and you're playing corsair. Enemy team sends 15 people at the gate and you happen to be there and fireblast them all with energy stars on you. So whats that? its um lets say that you hit 10 with normal hit and 5 with crit, 35k x10 and 80k x5. 350k+400k = 750k damage from one sorceror for one button press. What would happen if an archer were to hit him with rapid fire? Yeah he'd stagger him and he'd deny 750k damage on his team. Put it in other words, offense is the best defense. In tera damage can be so huge and abundant that you literally have no way to actually tank all of it , this is where the term denying damage comes in! This is also the reason why lancers and warriors are so popular, they can easily deny damage while doing damage and even if their burst isnt so big their dps is still the highest in the game (sustained dps / throughout the arena match). A stun is denying damage, a knockdown is denying damage, a stagger is denying damage. Denying damage is neccessary in arena or your healer will get overwhelmed and you'll lose, it won't even be his fault.
    In a team of sorc+berserker, the berserker will be knocking down the majority of the game because sorc has nothing to deny damage with (except magma bomb but yeah lol) and if their team doesnt have enough deny damage vs a good team they'll just get crushed under the pressure. The best class for denying damage is probably lancer, followed by warrior, slayer +-=berserker,archer,sorc. If you use ur common sense here you'll see why, lancer because they have the best staggers in the game, leash, shield bash, wallop and most importantly pledge of protection (which is not denying damage the way im talking about but is still reducing the incoming damage). Warrior would go second because of the amount of stuns and staggers they have and so on and so on. Focusing a DPS class is mostly done so the dps class is prevented from just dishing out countless amount of crits in your back and not because the DPS is squishy. In terms of kill speed its not even effective to hit a DPS, its much better to just kill the healer instead since a good healer and a good DPS can live a looooooooooooong time, however, people focus dps in order to deny the incoming *potential* damage from them.


    >> Understanding and applying damage? ~ Damage is damage but say warriors need stuns and back crits for damage, they can't really do good damage otherwise.. and what happens if you meet a good healer? He just cleanses all your stuff instantly and you get frustrated, however, theres a backdoor for this. Even if most of the damage is done during stuns in this game. The back door is called stagger (and knockdowns to some extent), you can't cleanse stagger and while there are anti-stagger and anti-knockdown skills, they don't last forever and are pretty much a luxury. You can easily hit everything during staggers and you should learn to stagger for your teammates and use your teammates's staggers. What i mean by this is using your charged arrow or void pulse or thunder strike on your lancer's shield barrage's stagger. Its much better if you can damage during stuns but its not always reliable, stagger and knockdowns might be much shorter but they are atleast reliable and when you get better those short windows are enough for you.


    >> Knockdowns ! ~ knockdowns are way too many in this game and way too overpowered, friggin everyone can kd even healers. Knockdowns are super efficient against pressure and every damage you get during a knockdown is sort of free damage. The most important thing to know about knockdowns is that they turn the enemy with face towards you. They turn the knocked down player B with face towards player A. You need to learn to exploit this, defensive as in - jump to take face damage from someone instead back damage or knockdown the enemy with back towards your DD so he can do more damage. Stacking knockdowns is one of the most efficient ways to kill healers as well. Unlike staggers, knockdowns can stack and work together and are overall annoying and op~ If you see someone without retaliate you should jump on the KD waggon and kd him to oblivion.

    → Game awareness,peeling,strategy,improvisation ←


    Lets say you start the game and your strategy is to focus the healer. Just because you're focusing the healer it doesn't mean you should ignore everything thats happening around you, the game is highly situational and it changes all the time, it can go either way. Lets imagine a team of player A,B,C, each of which are 70 skill and a team of players D,E,F each of which are 100 skill. Player A is a warrior who wants to go on enemy healer and leave his teammates B and C to fight the enemy players of D and E (both of which are 100 skill) while hes buggin the healer of skill 100. What is the point of this its pretty much a lost game before it even started, first the warrior will barely scratch the enemy healer and then his teammates are supposed to survive against not 1 but 2 better DDs? Yeah.. no. You need to be aware of what people can do more or less and act appropriate. The game is highly situational but better players can manipulate situation to their favor a lot more.
    "Peeling" means interrupting people's combos and damage and everything, if a warrior backstabs your healer you can peel him in some way (either a stagger,kd,sleep,whatever, just note that u might make things worse with giving him counter stun) to reduce the damage incoming. Afterwards the warrior has backstab in cooldown. Even if enemy team is "better" than your team , skill-wise, they still have cooldowns and limitations and RNG and crits and such. Plus you need to fight more skilled people to improve, you subconsciously see what they do and later use it to ur advantage/against them , etc. If a "better team" blows their cooldowns on you and doesnt kill you and you've successfully peeled , you can turn offensive with your skills which are not in cooldown and if RNG favors you, anything can happen.
    Improvisation? Well thats a must. You cant possibly stick to one strategy if it doesn't work, the fight is constantly changing and evolving. Just because you said "Kill XX" at the start doesn't mean you should ignore the enemy lancer thats on 10% hp from aoes.


    → Comboing, coordination and playing together ←


    >> Comboing ~ I won't explain comboing to you. Its a misused term in TERA which people use for different attacks, a combo is even stuntrap > fireblast > void pulse. Comboing is basically doing skills , im not sure why but everyone refers to it like that. You need to know your class's combos and possibilities etc by yourself before you even enter skyring
    >> Coordination and playing together ~ well i talked about this earlier but i'll mention it here in a different light. Whats that? You need to remember its not 1v3 like MANY people think. Even when your healer gets soloed he didn't truly get soloed. Its 3v3 its not 1v1, no matter what you do there are always 4 other players in the arena its not one vs one. Even if they don't buff you and they are 15 meters away and dont hit you, theyre still there and their HP is moving and all this is distracting. You're not supposed to win 1v1 in arena anyway, even if your warrior "solos" the healer , theres often random damage from his teammate lets say an ice needle for 5k and a random void pulse for 13k and a magma bomb for 7k and you might think that this damage is nothing and not much but its not true, this damage is something and it counts and without it the enemy might have stayed alive even.
    Coordination - working together, reading each other, preforming together, chemistry! It's vital and very important and there are many cases in which the people are just not "ticking" together and that shows in the way they play. You need to remember its 3v3 , everyone has to contribute towards a common goal and a strategy and not towards his own e-peen or whatever.


    → Debuffs ←


    >> Healing debuffs~ Healing debuffs are OP. They are a BIG thing in soloq but not so big in premade, still big tho. You should be very aware of healing debuffs (especially as a healer) and cleanse them almost always whenever you can. Ofcourse healing is a priority and if you have a guy on 10k hp and he might take damage then you should heal him ,you don't really have a choice, but if ur guy wont take damage any time soon you should first cleanse then heal. Healing debuffs are mostly strong because your skills have cooldowns. If you use self-heal as a healer with heal debuff, you're "locked" without self heal for 5 seconds and you only got 15k heal instead 30k heal, its a big difference and cleansing the heal debuffs is important to reduce the overall damage and pressure.
    >> Slows~ slows in tera are incredibly strong and underrated, most people don't even realize how much they rely on slows. I myself wasnt even aware how much i rely / use slows for a loooooooooooooong time, i did use them and all but it was sort of automatic i didn't even think about it. Slows are the best defense against melee classes and especially warriors, they cut melee's animation propel forward so you can easily kite them. There are only few skills in the game which are not affected by slows and most of the melees use those skills when they're slowed so it gives the illusion to the person using the slow that its not so efficient. It is, you just have to deal with a fighter's charge or backstab and then the slow effect kicks in. Priest/Sorc's fiery and glacial escape are probably the best slows (not counting Mire as a slow) and are both viable and important. TL;DR, priest use fiery escape more. Slows CAN be cleansed but are rarely prioritized because cleanse costs time and resources.


    → Jumping.. ←


    Many people hate jumping but they can't really explain why. They say you desync but its not true. You desync even without jumping and jumping has little to do with it. Jumping has other uses which are turning your face to someone / not getting stunned/ not getting stunned, however, its very easy to punish someone whos jumping wrongly. First hes not doing any damage (or anything really, hes just a punching bag), 2nd he has no retaliate and buffs you cruelness and 3rd you can easily move behind him if hes on the ground without retaliate. It is easy to punish bad jumping, just use your imagination.

    [align=center] → Positioning, pillar usage and lane of sight ←


    [align=left]>> Positioning~ I mentioned earlier that a step to the left can dodge an arrow for 40k damage. Positioning can dodge so much. Positioning in tera is KEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is very important (hence the many !!) and the worst part is that most of the time you don't even actively think where you're going. Its pretty automatic and even good players often run stupidly but they have some passive,subconscious, memory that in a way positions them better. Positioning is very important for healers so most healers need to be mindful of where they go. Even as a DD positioning is very important, if your teammates are getting hit you should just go behind the people that are hitting them for back crits which are so important in tera. The point of this part here is to make you think about where you stand and how you position yourself and to more actively think about it during the actual game. Standing in middle of the room is often stupid but if you're pressuring the enemy you can use it to your advantage.. Positioning is very important against lancers because of giga leash, any good healer should stay 15m+ if a giga threat is possible but good healers can too get leashed, the window is small (18m for skills / 15m for leash) and people constantly move so if the healer's ally makes a step back hes suddenly within 15m of the healer whos in animation lock or something. Staying far/close can help you against many skills as long as you are aware and know the game. For example staying close to sorc means he can only cast trap at you so you only have one thing to worrry about, their sleep doesn't even work on melee range.
    >> Pillar usage and lane of sight! ~ Pillars were put in the arena for one reason or another, even if it was by chance (which i doubt) they are there and you can use them. Pillars are your greatest ally and should be used whenever you can. All classes in tera can effectively use pillars as a defensive safe heaven. Especially healers. You can dodge many skills (plague, sleep, archer arrows, lock ons etc) by walking behind a pillar at the right time. You can heal safely from behind a pillar (or nuke) forcing the enemy to come closer where he becomes a potential aoe/leash victim. You cant even dodge some skills in tera without using lane of sight/pillar (or getting lucky) so pillars are vital. Many healers and even archers/sorcs consider pillars as "their own", this is "my pillar" etc etc. Lane of sight is great, learn to use and exploit it , its awesome and its free!
    If thats not enough, you can use pillars offensively as well, many ranged skills work on pillars creating very effective bombs (archer traps/roa/sorc hailstorm). Almost all 3v3s revolve around a pillar, rarely ever anyone fights in middle of the arena.


    [align=center]→ Back crits ←
    [align=left]
    Back crits in tera are OP. In most games only some classes need to go behind you but in TERA they all do. I learned turning with face long , loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong ago , in a previous game. Turning your character to get face damage is essential in TERA. Your healer can't outheal back crits, stop taking back crits already wtf? If you can't dodge a hit and you're about to take it, atleast turn around. Nobody can heal back crits in tera and they snowball the pressure so much. Back crits are massive in this game and if you atleast turn with face it is healable and the pressure received from them is much lower. You can't blame your healer for not healing you if you constantly eat back crits when you're not stunned. Back in the day there were many cases in which i knew i got nothing/no way to run around so id just auto attack a lancer or something to get face crits instead back crits, atleast its healable. I've seen so many people running from a berserker with their back and then just getting oneshotted, especially healers. Stop run, turn around, take some damage and heal up, its much better than hoping you outrun him, you don't pvp with hope.



    [align=center]→ Blacksmith's hammerstrike / VM stuns ←


    [align=left]Vm stuns are no secret and anyone doing arena and probably reading this guide is familiar with them, the only reason i will mention them is to mention that they are random and chaotic. VM stuns can easily turn the pressure/the game around and good players can use VM stuns for giga leash or stun traps or a back crit or just some big combo. VM stuns are a big part of TERA as it is and even if they are random they exist and are very big in many cases. Sometimes they don't matter but sometimes they can single-handedly end a game. Its chaotic and random, don't underestimate VM stuns .. at least they are very obvious because of the lightning you see most of the time.


    [align=center]→ Chaos and button mash ←
    [align=left]
    Yea, tera is very chaotic but you can see patterns in the chaos when you become better.. however, even at high level there are some rounds which are pure chaos and button mash. You are not doing anything wrong , thats how it is, just hope that you can outplay people in the chaos so you're left in a better situation after the chaos is gone..

    → Priest ←


    Priests are the "default" healers in TERA EU currently. Back in the day there were many mystics but for some reason they are all gone, the reason is mysterious one because its not a real one. I guess its like the story with the monkey that the monkeys beat up the others. People don't play them cause other people (who never played them/seen a good mystic themself) say that mystics aren't good. Priests were always a lot more defensive but for some unknown reason they also became a lot more offensive due to ES buff and CDR. Also, since they are healers - like mystics the playstyle of a healer is sort of "schedule many things you have to do in queue and try to do them as fast as possible while dealing with bumps along the road"
    Priests are much easier to bully than mystics and literally everyone can bully priests in TERA under the right circumstances. Anyone can solo a priest with buffs and luck and situation and like i said this game isnt about soloing so its rarely ever 1v1. Unlike mystics, priests are a lot more sensitive to their own positioning and they have to be much more mindful for that.. luckily for them, immersion doesn't have an annoying animation lock and can be cast while moving - providing a lot more "mobile heal" playstyle as you can cast the majority of your skills while moving.
    Priests are awesome at recovering from high pressure and turning the tide around and overall have many defensive tools at their disposal. If played right and if your team plays with you, its very hard to kill a priest .,.,

    >>     Energy Stars. Well it gets a special mention, ES used to be a weak buff when 3v3 was first introduced , priests didn't even use it. For some mysterious reason the skill got overbuffed to oblivion, it gives approximately 18% damage and 10% attack speed and is incredibly important and vital. You could even say that the game revolves around energy stars. It might be a bit far fetched but a team with ES has huge advantage against a team without ES. Even noobs do more damage with energy stars and good players are given access to longer/better combos (thanks to the atk speed and damage) and can solo anyone. ES is a high priority on priest list and i would say that having ES is even more important than getting healed (Unless you are about to die, obviously staying alive is #1 priority). You should always have energy stars up, gylph it if you want either way you MUST have energy stars up, even if its 2v3 you have more chance winning 2v3 with ES than trying to res a dead guy. ES is massively underrated by healers but not by DDs for a reason. If you wanna play with your teammates then learn to respect what they say and do the guddumn ES already.

    >>     Cleanse (purifying circle,whatever). Priest cleanse is OP, it has 18 meters range and fast cast with low cooldown. It can save you lots of damage that you'd have to heal so spam it as much as you can, it is your #2 priority (#1 being staying alive, but cleanse usage helps to that #1 priority). Imagine a warrior does counter stun on your sorc whos on 80% hp and then the warrior backstabs your sorc right after, what do you do? Obviously you cleanse again. Doesn't matter that you used it 2 seconds ago, use it again. You need to know what to cleanse and you need to cleanse all the time. Priest cleanse is way better than mystic one and it gives you stagger and knockdown immunity so dont be scared to use it even when you are focused, you can also use the cleanse to resist an incoming knockdown (like berserker TS or slayer or something) and if you use guardian sanctuary at the same time as cleanse you are immune to everything in the game. There are few cases in which prioritizing sometihng else (such as healing or regaining mana) is better than cleansing a stun, stuff like this you can easily learn in soloqueue as i have learned myself.

    >>     Guardian Sanctuary. Is also OP, like most priest skills. Don't be afraid to use guardian sanctuary , if you have to leave your pillar and youre unsure of your safety (backstabs, giga leashes,sleeps,fears) then go ahead and use it. GS doesn't serve you if you are dead. Don't keep GS to res a dead guy and keep GS to prevent a guy from dying. Spam that skill whenever you need it, its very good and its awesome to recover from a bad spot. GS is what mystics wished they have. It reduces incoming damage as well making recovery from bad spots that much easier. You can use GS to contribute to your team's pressure if you think you wont need it sometime soon as it lets you play a lot more offensively.

    >>     Kaia's shield. Kaia got a big buff with DMG reduction (wonderholme patch) and with CDR introduction (wonderholme patch) it became even better. Kaia is overpowered and easy to use one button skill which is good to recover or to pressure. It has many uses and its not only used to recover, why would you keep it to recover? That means you're planning to need to recover? No. KAIA is one of the best offensive skills as it gives stagger and KD immunity to your DDs, making them that much stronger. Didn't i explain in my guide earlier that you're supposed to work with them and make their life easier so they can end the game? Kaia does just that. It is a powerful offense tool which lets pressure snowball in your favor a lot more as your dds are able to hit a lot more because denying damage is much harder and inefficient. TL;DR, the current meta says use kaia on CD.. kinda sad that it doesnt require brain or timing but thats how it is.

    >>     Plague of exhaustion (is overpowered). Yet another over the top priest skill. Thanks to CDR plague is now usable all the time. The debuff is uncleansable and incredibly overpowered. I won't tell you what plague does because you should know that. I'll tell you that you should spam plague all the time because no energy stars on enemy means no damage means no pressure means you win the game. Plague is vital against melees and you should always try to plague skilled melees as it adds 150% cooldown to their skills. Plaguing non-melees isnt worth it as much because the effect isnt so strong against sorcs and archers but if you can get them at the same time as melees then go for it. Also plaguing enemy's kaia shield can halt their offense or ruin their recovery so have that in mind as well.


    >>     Healing immersion~ its a healing skill which doesn't require you to aim as much as focus heal does and can be used while moving, awesome! Can be used while moving! OP!

    >>     Sleep ~ Unlike mystic sleep, priest sleep isnt so good because its fairly obvious and much easier to dodge. Also priest doesnt really have many other skills to force enemy to dodge so the sleep isnt so good.. still , its an awesome skill and you can easily sneak it up on some unsuspecting dd. Remember what i told you? 3v3, NOT 1v1. Not everybody can pay attention to you 24/7. You should sleep whoever is out of position/ closest/ is not getting hit. It doens't matter if you sleep healer or not. Sleeping a DPS while enemy healer is preoccupied can boost your pressure by a lot. Spam sleep whenever you can. Also , mystics and priests are vulnerable to sleep after a teleport or a backstep so have that in mind. And also.. sleeping an archer or a sorc is a piece of cake, they have only one iframe and its almost always in cooldown. In their cases even if they see you casting sleep they can rarely even do anything about it.

    >>     Fiery Escape~ i did mention that fiery escape is underrated so ill mention it again so you can see how much i mean it. The slow rapes melees

    >>     Mana charge~ dont forget that mana charge gives mana to your teammates as well, that can heavily snowball pressure towards your side and also mana charge is free so you should use it whenever you can

    >>     Mana infusion ~ spam mana infusion whenever. Tera's mana system is incredibly dynamic and you go up and
    down, up and down, don't be scared to lose mana infusion for whatever reason and just reuse it again. It has low CD and you need mana. Many healers have problems with mana because they dont use infusion enough.


    >> Kaia & Guardian sanctuary at the same time~ usin those 2 skills makes you immune to everything but damage, giving you almost guaranteed recovery. Very cheap, very easy mode. Using them 1 by 1 leaves you open to more skilled players but with 2 at the same time even a baby can recover from bad situation.


    I know that explaining skills to you is pointless, i am trying to show them in a light in which perhaps you haven't seen them. I know that many players dont see the skills this way which is why i decided to write this part about them, it is in a way pushing you to use your imagination and do the rest/ use them better in future.
    To be a successful priest you should know what classes are capable of and how to counter it when on yourself and when on your teammates. You should know what your teammates are capable of and how to assist them in different ways. You learn a lot by chatting and talking to people and by smacking each other and theory crafting. Currently id say that the strongest combo against a priest is sorc + warrior for few reasons, uncleansable heal debuff, hailstorm in backstab (if the hailstorm is casted properly, you cant even exit it with one backstep, resulting in a huge damage). Overall priests are easy to kill if focused by 2 and if they don't get proper peel.

    → Mystic ←


    Mystics used to be a lot more popular back in the day. People loved them because the game was a lot different. Crit rate was much lower so mystic auras were a lot better. Max hp was a lot lower so mystic heals were a lot better and priest's overabundant heal power wasnt "so good" like it is now. I believe that mystics are massively misunderstood and misplayed and most mystic players seem to think their job is the same as priest's job since well both are healers duh! Mystics are a lot different from priests right now and a lot more offensive. If your team has more pressure mystic is extremely strong due to abundant hard to counter/impossible to counter CC skills which priests dont have. As a mystic, you dont just have higher chance to CC someone, you WILL CC someone (unless you're well .. yeah..) because your skills are a lot better for that. With mystic you can throw plenty of b@lls before even deciding to go offensive. You dont need to heal your team nowhere nearly as often as you do with priest due to sustained heal (mystic's focus heal and b@lls everywhere provide so much sustained healing that you can often go for big periods of time without even healing). There are different ways in which you can play mystic but its a pretty offensive class so you'll probably end up playing it offensively. Mystics are a lot harder to kill than priests (yeah even today they are) and a lot stronger against many things.



    >> Titanic Favor~ well thats mystic's only heal, it is similar to priest's worst heal - focus heal. Titanic favor is better because it adds a 10 second heal over time buff which is actually a lot better than it sounds. It heals for free and it stacks with warding totem and healing b@lls and if enemy damage isnt big then you often wont need to heal as much. Sadly, titanic favor has a huge animation lock and if your team is getting raped and you're forced to spam that skill then you are almost always animation locked and you cant even play tera... youre stuck there spamming heal and being a victim to sleeps or enemy DDs. You have no choice but to spam it in some situations and those are the worst.


    >> Healing b@lls~ they are a free cleanse and a 15k+ heal. Eat mystic b@lls, stay healthy. If you have a mystic in your team or you are a mystic then make sure your DDs eat hp b@lls. You should drop those b@lls on CD in different places of the room and eat them without hesitation, they are your cleanse they are your heals they are your god. Everyone should eat those b@lls otherwise your team will likely fail


    >> Mana b@lls~ you MUST drop those on CD but you are not required to pickup those b@lls. You can just leave them there for a rainy day but make sure that your team doesn't eat them either. In TERA DDs have easy and cheap ways to get mana except sorcs and archers but even so eating mystic's b@lls can often result in a horrible death. Depending on how the game is progressing those b@lls can be used strategically to put mana while in defensive mode and then go offensive and instantly regenerate your mana afterwards so the enemy cant take advantage of the fact that you used your mana for CC.


    >> Cleanse ~mystic cleanse sucks compared to priest one but you can cast it from further away, its overall safer but a lot worse.. altho it can situationally be better. A problem with mystic is when someone is staggering you, meaning that you have to use jaunt before you can cleanse. The only thing mystic cleanse is better for is that its much faster after you use it so if you expect a stun incoming (fairly obvious in many situations) you can prepare to instantly cleanse it by having your teammates already locked on


    >> Regression~mystic's dispel which i like a lot. Regression, unlike plague, cant be staggered or interrupted in any way and is much faster and easier to hit with. IMO this skill alone gives mystics a huge edge because you can easily remove priest's Energy Stars whenever its used (you should keep regression for it) and then you'll have DDs with aura against unbuffed people and you'd have created a much better enivorument for your DDs to fight in. With a lot better sustain and auras your DDs should be able to beat the enemy while youre ccing the priest or something. Regression is an awesome skill which can be used both offensive and defensive. Removing key skills from people prevents them from doing damage (burst of celerity, in cold blood, bloodlust, energy stars) making your job a lot easier. You can easily remove KAIA and guardian sanctuary which can crush enemy's recovery attempt and defense and boost your pressure by a lot. Master this spell and you'll become the king of tera with all 104 pokemons.


    >> Mire ~ the main reason why most mystics suck is because they don't use mire. It is one of the best skills in the game and its equal to a 10 second sleep when casted on a melee. Read the skill tooltip, test it yourself, use it. The only things that counter mire are teleport, charge, backstab, cleanse. You can easily counter all of those.


    >> Fear ~ you can use fear through retaliate, its instant cast, it can be used to stop a flying heal/energy stars/plague/sleep (from an enemy priest), it can be used to cancel attacks and its uncleansable so you can use it on a dd and his priest wont be able to do anything. Mystic fear is very very very very strong both offensively and defensively. You can even use fear if your team is focusing a priest whos knocked down and uses retaliate. It removes the retaliate buff and pushes the priest into another stagger and possible KD , leading to his death. Very powerful


    >> Knockdown~ mystic's knockdown is better than priest because you have a lot more tools to use it with and you can easily kd lock people without retaliate. USE IT!


    >> Stunball~ one of the best skills in the game, instant cast (on melee range) undodgeable long duration stun with low cooldown which can open up many possibilities (Any CC you have or your teammates). Stunball can often end the game by killing enemy team. It also stacks with some of the stuns in tera (the non 5-second ones) making some combos very lethal.


    >> Auras~ auras can be canceled mid game due to lack of mana, make sure you re-apply them and you pay attention.


    >> Mana infusion~spam it even more than priests do, if you dont have mana infusion and its not on cd - what are you waiting for?



    Mystics have very strong arsenal its just misused most of the time. You need to know why are you using your skills and not to use them randomly, they need to have a purpose and you need to be able to plan ahead a lot better than priest. You can burn your mana instantly and you can recover it by having dropped b@lls beforehand, you just need to be able to plan ahead and to deal with situation changes better than priest. Also expecting stuns/backstabs as a mystic and cleansing them is VERY efficient and much better than priest if done right. Mystics are semi DDs even because they can assist your DDs in so many ways to snowball pressure towards your side by making the conditions unfair for enemy DDs (unbuffed or cced). Thanks to teleport (and reset teleport on retaliate) mystics are a lot harder to kill unless you manage to 100-0% them in a single stun which is often what happens if their teammates are bad. Mystics can also recover quite fast with fairy and heals and teleports unlike priests who are vulnerable to slows because it affects their backsteps so they can get melee trained much easier.


    → Final words ←


    Well im gonna finalize this with few things.
    Tera is very situational, the stuff i wrote here might not apply in many many many scenarios but this is pretty much the basics and some a bit more advanced stuff.
    Its 3v3 for a reason not 1v3. Nobody wins 1v3 and nobody carries anybody unless the enemies are horrible. You can underpreform and still win if your teammates are good but if you cant play atleast to some extent yourself then you'will die and you will drag your team down. 1 good player cant carry 2 bad ones and 2 good players need to work extra to carry 1 bad player.
    Many of the things i wrote here are common sense/ obvious but many players dont actively think about them when they should, this thread is supposedly going to change that.
    Use your imagination and common sense. Nobody can teach you pvp but they can help you learn it, imagination and common sense are the most powerful tools in all mmorpgs ive played so far. Most players hate teaching others because its pretty obvious and if they cant see it themself then they dont deserve to get better.
    Stop crying and suck it up, everybody lost at the start and you wont improve by emoquitting.
    Instead of emoing, see what went wrong and make sure you absolutely know what the problem is, then fix it. You can't just say "xxx is noob"you need to identify the problem and then say why xxx is noob and then try to fix xxx and then complain and emo.


    "What should this thread do for me? " - make you actively think about stuff that i mentioned and who knows how much i forgot but im not one for guides plus im utterly bored now so uhm yeah. Next time you see something i wrote here, maybe you'll realize you noticed it thanks to this thread then pay more attention to it and improve.
    Remember that pvp is against live players who also improve and change and study you and get better against you and so on and so on. Understanding the game is not hard if you try, and you should try because tera is a game like that.. the more clue you have the better action you can take
    P.s. dont mock or judge me for this guide i feel bad enough for doing it >_>


    the end!

    wow it took a while to read this, still worth it I guess. n-not like I have anything better to do on my Friday nights anyway ._.


    Now when you think about it, EU forums hardly have any pvp related guides or any other guides for some reason, at least when comparing to NA forums :huh:

    Quote from Minji

    wow it took a while to read this, still worth it I guess. n-not like I have anything better to do on my Friday nights anyway ._.

    took awhile longer to write ._.


    ..and this is guide #2, guide #1 was gonna talk about all classes in greater detail and was gonna be 2 times longer but i gave up because people are gonna judge me and hate me for posting stuff like this


    dunno why i posted it now maybe cause horizon made me >_>

    kaia + jump op anti war reposi tool++


    no mention of standing dps up from kd chain or kd + silence combo, + 1 button 90k dmg save

    Edited once, last by Ulysse ().

    Skimmed it a lot but it looks good. Warning: Priest vs Mystic rant ahead, don't read if you're a priest that is sensitive about your class


    Display Spoiler


    Another thing to add to the mystic section is your CC's costs a lot of mana, pay attention to your mana pool and make sure you can recover if your CC combo fails, just because the CD is up doesn't mean you need to use it, save it for the right moment so that you can either try to force the enemy behind on damage or make the priest play out of position for a fast swap, you don't always have to use your sleep and fear on healers! (Even though it's the case 90% of the time)


    I didn't play all that many games on my mystic because I dislike solo queue and I don't have a third for team queue but those are some of the things I noticed that caught me somewhat off guard after playing BGs for a long time with charms and what not, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

    thank you for this guide, will take a time to read it too!


    would like to read your classes description though too :beer:

    Quote

    kaia + jump op anti war reposi tool++


    no mention of standing dps up from kd chain or kd + silence combo, + 1 button 90k dmg save

    You can't reliably desync even with a shield and wasting time to jump with kaia and hoping someone would stun you is stupid. I jumped today in a duel with mana barrier(which i noticed too late) and even if i seemed like i was desynced the warrior still hit me with his full combo, then he stuns me when im not jumping and his combative misses me even tho i wasn't moving.
    As for arise, arise is good i guess i should have mentioned it but if you can't do the stuff in this mini-guide then u shouldnt even bother with arise and if you can do it then hopefully you'll have enough imagination to use arise. Also berserkers arent so scary if they're plagued which they should be.


    Quote from Ruse

    Skimmed it a lot but it looks good. Warning: Priest vs Mystic rant ahead, don't read if you're a priest that is sensitive about your class

    This "guide" assumes that the players are somewhat familiar with their class and the skill explanations, like i said, were just to show them in a different possible light. It is true that mystic CC is expensive but if your team's dds are equally skilled you won't even need to use that much more mana. I've played with a good mystic for a good chunk of my 3v3 time and i have played mystic myself now. If your team doesn't need spam-heal you not only have abundant mana but you can even give mana to your teammates.
    I agree that burst heal is better (obviously!) but i mentioned the sustain heal because it is sort of "Free" and is there and should not be underestimated. Having played mystic quite a lot now i noticed that in many cases you don't even need to heal.
    The thing is that CC is extremely powerful in premade/with skilled players and you can almost always end the game in 15-20 seconds of healer CC and a mystic can easily CC someone for that long, it is almost guaranteed to happen every minute because of how easy it is to land fear or stunball+ sleep. The reason why CC is expensive is because its also very powerful. This thread is mostly about premade but if we're talking about soloq then yeah , there are many cases in which your random dds are just horrible and can't make use of your ccs.. theres no secret here >_>
    Also what you probably don't count in is how often a mystic can prevent enemy from having energy stars for long enough time to matter and during that time his teammates have a much bigger advantage so they're supposed to "win" pressure clashes and all. You could even fear when enemy is about to do ES if regression is in CD(It rarely is tho). Denying buffs is their way of turning the game to their side .. atleast in today's meta!

    Quote from Flanberry

    Denying buffs is their way of turning the game to their side .. atleast in today's meta!


    Well in that case I think it's worthy to mention (even though it seems obvious) that ES can be denied with iframe but not with block, and the animation of ES is extremely obvious and the lack of a texture (like a ball or something flying) allows you to dodge it really easily and save your mystic or priest a dispell (it costs a lot on mystic). There is about a 0.5 second delay or so after the priests arms go in the air so make sure you pay attention to that DDs.

    Flan... I love you <3 a lot of the things you said seemed obvious to me after I read it. I'm so happy you done this. You explained everything I wasn't 100% sure about, and now I feel more confident ;3 amazing guide :)


    Thanks again <3

    Very good info flan ,mods please sticky this thread.


    I have one addition mostly concening arise.please for the love of Teralith buff ,change your default jump key to be different from the chain key(if u use chains anyway).
    It will help you control your retaliate and even keep it for when actually needed.Kds come in succession most of the times,and if you get arisen and jump you just wasted both your hp and healer's mana.


    Again make thread sticky,very well written OP.

    When in an awkward situation, peeing everywhere asserts dominance and makes you alpha as fck.

    Mystic part is so solid, you displayed the main approach while keeping personalisation open.


    Approved.


    Dropping HP regen bawls in Solo q kinda risky though, one time this one guy left the fight to pick up a Hp bawl on the other side of the ring.† (While there were closer ones o:)

    魂