Secondary Defenses 1 (Source)

This is my edited version of my PVP guide for starters. i have adjusted the BETA version i posted a few weeks ago and included some things people sugested and tested some other things again to be sure etc , anyways , I want to start of by saying that all that’s included in this guide has been tested by ME together with a few friends i used as testsubjects . I’ve put in allot of effort and time into making this. Please I can take constructive criticism but keep you unconstructive flame and bragging, or I don’t know what to yourself. If you know something better , Well power to you and I am humbled by your awesome uberness... I quiver in reverence. I hope those who read this will discover new things and remember forgotten things about PVP and mainly I hope you’ll enjoy playing the game more even in its broken state

Finally before you start I like to offer thanks to my helpful friends who assisted me in some of my weird and obscure testing habits.

THANK YOU !!! : Beldaran ( armour & PSG’s ) , Kiriana ( combat ) , Future ( combat & dmg calculations ) , Novocain ( combat & food ) , Vendar ( spelling ) , Iglo ( VK’s & info )

And thanks to all the people I’ve battled I hope I posed a challenge and I’m sure we all enjoyed our time Now lets start the guide.

• As a young man trains his battle stances over and over again, an old woman starts her lecture about the mind and hart of combat and warfare*

Ok now, listen carefully young one. All combat is decided with your mind, not your strength or speed. You observe the situation and use it to your advantage. You dictate the ebb and flow of the combat, because if you let your opponent control you, you have already lost.

• A strange expression comes to the face of the young man*

But, sensei, I don’t understand. If you attack, don’t you already control the situation?

• Smiling wisely, the old woman replies with a chuckle*

Let me explain myself. Let’s start at the beginning of all combat, preparation; a successful fighter is a prepared fighter. Put down your sword and listen to my words.

Preparation:

First off, in PVP you need to be prepared; this has many meanings, and I will attempt to touch the subject as broadly as possible.

Buffs: Very important, you will need enhancements to PVP nowadays. If you try without you will end up dead or incapped and laughed at, so be sure to get buffs from your local doctor. Don’t forget to buff your Mind too! Very important and often overlooked, your mind pool is the main HAM bar most people will aim for, so it’s best that you buff it as much as you can. Musicians and Dancers give wonderful mind buffs. Dancers will double the size of your mind pool, while musicians will double your mind’s secondaries, focus and willpower. Getting both might be very hard these days with all the Afk’ers and hologrinders, but the buffs are very useful if you can.

TIP: To store an extra buff, watch a dancer or musician for 15 minutes (normal buff duration) or 3.4 minutes (speed buff duration using flourish macro), and after you’ve watched do /stoplisten or /stopwatch. Then watch or listen again and ask the dancer or musician to buff you again ,watch or listen him/her again for the duration needed to get 2 hour buffs

Go PvP (or whatever else). DON’T type /stoplisten or /stopwatch until your first mindbuff fades (usually after 2 hours). Then do /stoplisten or /stopwatch and your second mind buff will kick in. You’ll have new mindbuff(s)

Personally I prefer musician buff over the dancer buffs but that’s something everyone needs to figure out on his own (you can, if you are lucky enough to find both professions, have both). In PVP mostly you’ll use your mind HAM when doing specials therefore you want to have your focus buffed, and willpower for regen, a large HAM pool might look better, (dancer buffs) but a good musician buff will do much better in controlling your mind pool HAM use, and regen rate, if you can get both, you have the best of 2 things, and will have a very nice edge in PVP.

Food & Drink: There are various foods that can be used in PVP. I’ll only mention a few I’ve observed other people use a lot and the ones I use. I suggest you looking up a list of all the foods chefs make the on the net. Many sites provide more full detail, but I’ll go over the basics as best I can.

-Blue milk: 600-ish instant heal to your mind for 30-ish filing not often used but useful in a tight situation where you need that little edge over the opponent. (drink)

-Vagnerian Canape: 650-ish on focus and willpower, 33 filling, 9 minutes, a great help if you don’t have musician buffs, and even if you have, the effects can be very beneficial. It has a short duration true, but it also has low filling. Eat three of them on top of a musician buff, and believe me, even those FotM Riflemen will wonder why your mind remains full. (food)

-Synthsteak: 43% Damage reduction for 42 attacks, lasts 23 minutes, 29 filling (most likely the effect will have been used up before those 23 minutes are over). This is a food that gives a very nice edge in PVP, especially if you’re facing a hard opponent like a rifleman with an ion rifle or various others that sometimes hit hard for one or another reason. This will reduce 43% of the DMG you take after your armour reduction has fully had its course. My personal favourite PVP food. (food)

-Thakitillo: This will give something close to + 95 Defense vs. Knockdown for about 12 minutes at the cost of 44 filling. A Fencer or Pistoleer using this food is near impossible to ever knockdown. Posture down attacks will still work, however. (food)

-Ithorian Mist: This will give 20 defense vs. Dizzy for 12 minutes and has about 11 filling. Some people swear by it. I myself rarely use it, but it’s a good way to get extra defense against the Dizzy state. (drink)

-Citroncake: This will add 40 to accuracy for 20-ish minutes at 28 filling. Most will wonder why to bother with this food. Well, try hitting a fencer with a Center of Being loop macro, and believe me, you’ll be glad you ate this. Basically, this will give you an added bonus of 40 to-hit on the weapon you’re using at that time. In the right situation, a good food. (food)

-Vercupti : 1150 Health/Action/Mind for 7-ish minutes, 60ish filling. A highly unknown food and much underrated, in my opinion. Granted, it has a high filling but it can still be used in combination with synthsteak, making a very nice damage-proof HAM. Adding 1150 to each of your pools isn’t nothing, even on top of your buffs. Vercupti will give a big HAM in the right situation, a good edge. (food)

-Aircake: 40 to the Dodge bonus, 23 minutes, 11 filling, used by Fencers and Pistoleers to make it even harder to hit them. If you’re a Fencer or Pistoleer, I advise you to use it in combo with a Center of Being macro loop. Then watch everyone miss you. (food)

-Ahrisa: 400 to focus, for about 35-40 minutes, 33-ish filling. It’s a useful food, especially if you happen to use a lot of mind HAM for your special attacks. Frequently one Ahrisa will bump your focus up to the 1500 mark (where no mind is used for specials), even in heavy armors. (food)

-Vasarian Brandy : 420 to Mind/focus/willpower, 40 minutes, 50 filling. This is a must-use, no matter who you are or what opponent you’re up against. This is the mother of useful drinks. It explains itself in its stat bonuses, and given the fact that the mind pool is the primary PVP target, anyone can see why it’s useful. Not only does it boost you mind pool, but your secondaries, too. It has a lot of filling, true, but 2 can be consumed at the same time giving a powerful buff. (drink)

These aren’t all of the food or drinks in game, but they are the most widely used ones that I know of from the people I know and have asked. The stats are based on what I just bought from a very good chef. I’ve seen some with better stats, but these are nice enough as it is.

Spice: I add this in case of emergencies. Spice gives you a temporary boost, but it has serious drawbacks. Only to be used in desperate times.

-Muon Gold: 500 to mind, focus and willpower for 10 minutes, Muon Gold is a nice extra help but BEWARE the 5 minute downer following the buff, which reduces your all three affected stats by 500. If you use this, find a spot to sit out the downer in safety

-Neutron Pixie: 1000 Health, 200 Strength, 200 constitution, 500 action, 50 quickness and 0 stamina for 13 minutes. While useful at times, again BEWARE the 5 minute downer that will reduce your stats by the same amount as it increased them before.

Armour : Another very important part of PVP is armour seeing as you want to reduce as much DMG as you can you want the best armour you can get. At this time, in game that’s composite armour.

Advanced composite with stats of 80 kinetic, 80 electric, and 65% base can mostly be made on any server, and by almost any master armoursmith. Now while this armour is good, you will want a smuggler to slice it on it’s effectiveness raising the base stats from 65% up to 90% as the max. Slices are random so unless you find an vendor that sells pre-sliced armour you’ll have a hard time putting a full set together.

Another point in PVP, 80% of the people you’ll encounter will use STUN DMG type. Seeing as composite is vulnerable to stun it will ignore your armour rating and thus inflict allot of DMG upon you. I recommend using stun layer composite, which has the following stats, obtainable by almost any master armour-smith 80 elect, 23 stun, 65%base. (You’ll notice kinetic isn’t high anymore because it will have moved to a base) Stun layered composite will not be vulnerable to stun DMG, and the Armourrating, light (AR-1) will work against some weapons I’ll go into this further down in this manual.

Top PVP players will most likely have a full set with stats in the lines of 80% elct / 32% stun / base 80-90 (after they have had it sliced of course).

note : Composite armour condition loss is the remaining dmg after AR and Resists reduction , divided by 10 , Example 500 dmg done AR1 reduces 50% = 250 dmg , base resists 60% reduction = 100 dmg , divided by 10 = 10 condition loss , So the higher the resists the slower it will decay . So short version 10% of the dmg that goes trough your armour will be subtracted from you condition

Decay & Insurance : Very important to remember, is to insure your armour, decay should be removed from game, when you PVP, but you can still get decay, if you are triple incaped, or sometimes by a disease, or fire DoT, or sometimes even none of the above, you just get decay. It’s strange, and has baffled me at times, but best thing to do is insure, so that if you get decay its only 1% and that won’t matter much.

• note : regularly check the condition on your armour be sure to get it repair when it hits 55% of total condition I’ve seen people who totally forgot that and when they finally checked there expensive 40% stun 90% base chest or helmet they noticed that it was down to almost 15% of total condition and when they tried to repair it , It broke and went to 1/1 condition ..

PSG’s : Personal Shield Generators, are an essential part of PVP, these will save you a lot in combat against fencer’s, and pistoleer’s. Fair warning unless you know an Armoursmith , or have a guild armoursmith willing to work for resource cost these PSG’s will cost allot of cash usually .

Go for the Max % resist shields, these can go up to 47% un-sliced, witch is nice, and decreases allot of DMG but most PSG’s have 3k condition, same rule as Armour applies here the higher your resistance the slower they will deteriorate with a slight difference in calculation on condition loss . Example : a Fencer hits you for 270 DMG , your PSG subtracts 199 DMG ( that’s AR1 & 47 % stun resist ) leaving 71 dmg that goes trough . Divide that DMG by 20 and you’ll come to your condition loss . or easier stated 20% of the dmg that goes trough is subtracted from the condition

• Note: I already calculated the PVP DMG reduction with the initial DMG so that’s 270 DMG in PVP*
• Note : PSG’s can be sliced to increase effectiveness if you want *

Tip : click on your combat Tab and pull it to the right upper corner of your screen . this will make you able to monitor the combat spamm and will help you see how much dmg you take and what kind of attacks your opponent is using

Weapons: Your weapons are essential to combat. Know them, understand them, and use them correctly!! This means use the right weapon for your opponent. An energy-damage pistol won’t do much against a composite-armored opponent, but a stun pistol might!

Don’t waste your stun pistol’s condition on someone if the situation doesn’t call for it. If you see your opponent is wearing Ubese armor, pull out your Republic Blaster and let him eat energy damage. Basically, know to adapt to your opponent’s armour and know its flaws. 70% of PVP battles are done with stun weapons.

The other times one combatant has either an exceptionally made weapon that has such high damage that normal resists doesn’t matter or the person has a trick up his sleeve. Mostly, this evaluation is a trial-and-error kind of thing to learn based on experience. After a while you’ll get the hang of it.

Power-ups : there are many different power-up out there ask your local Master artisan to make you some and use em in PvP they’ll give your weapon an extra edge over others . Here are some that you will most comonly find on vendor’s

Ranged : Max / Min Ranged : Mind / Speed Ranged : Mind / Max Melee : Mind / Speed Melee : Mind / Max

• Note : I put Power-ups on with only 2 stats good artisans will be able to craft some with 3 to even 4 stats but other then 1 primary and 1 secondary stat all other stats ate they get on em are totally random *

Macros: Macros are useful in PVP, and thousands have been made. Some swear by their macros, and claim to have the ultimate macro and so on. Personally, I don’t use any extensive macros in PVP, but I will detail a few to give you an idea on how to make your macro. Your imagination will find ways to use your skills, I’m sure.

-CoB: Center of Being is a melee profession skill. Using it will increase your chance to dodge/block/counter-attack etc., plus raise your melee and ranged defences a little. A frequently used macro by all that have melee profession is to loop CoB. You get this skill at novice brawler, and it will become better and longer as you progress into the elite melee professions. Here is how to make one:

Macro name : CoB /ui action clearCombatqueue; /CenterofBeing; /pause XX (this is found by looking at your CoB duration skill and adding +1 to it for example 36 + 1 would make for a 37 pause) /macro CoB (this will loop to the macro named CoB)

If you have a slow video card or connection and have regular difficulties with lag, you may have to switch the CoB macro to CoB duration + 3 to cope with the delay.

-Intimidate: is also a very useful skill in PVP, and I use this macro to use it.

Macro name: intimidate /ui action clearCombatQueue; /intimidate

Basically this clears the combat queue immediately, making sure you don’t have to wait until all your spammed attacks have cycled until you can intimidate.

-Bleeds: are also useful in PVP. Not so much for the bleed damage, but because 40% of the people will try to stop the bleeding or panic. Here’s what I use as a bleed macro.

Macro name: bleed /ui action clearCombatQueue; /healtshot1; /healtshot2;

Yes, bleeds do still stack! I’ve confirmed this on several people and on Mobs. Bleeds will still stack. They were nerved on damage-per-tick, not on stacking, contrary to common belief. Also, bleeds now have powerful initial-strike damage. Healthshot2, for example, is a better attack than Bodyshot3.

-Deathblow : Furthermore in PVP, I don’t use any macros except that I make a macro for every special I can do and add the line /deathblow to it. Basically this works as a normal attack, but if you can deathblow your target, it will instantly, preventing the use of Force of Will or healing.

Macro name : Headhit3 /melee2hHeadhit3; /deathblow;

Seconds are precious in PVP so DON’T waste them using the radial menu to deathblow a person!

-Warcry: Useful is a warcry macro this will buy you time to heal yourself, or if you see your opponent run from you to try and kite, you can delay him and run your own direction, making him come to you.

Macro name : warcry /warcry1 (or 2) /peace (very important or you’ll attack and your warcry will fail)

ToolbarPane : Very important in PVP, is to know your toolbarslot by hart. Make it organised with everything you need on 1 toolbarpane if you need extra room for food and spice, or dismount, burst run etc. don’t put them in your main toolbarpane. Rather make a macro that switches to the next toolbarpane and use the toolbarslot there, then switch back. I’ll give an example.

The slots are numbers from 00-23 like this 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

And the toolbar Pane’s are the number on the top left of the slots ranging from 1 to 6 , each pane will give you a new set of toolbarslots from 00-23

[1] = 00 [2] = 01 [3] = 02 [4] = 03 [5] = 04 [6] = 05

On toolbarpane00, toolbarslot 00- 22 are used by me with attacks and macro’s, 23 is a macro that switches me to toolbapane01. On toolbarpane01, my toolbarslot 00-22 are used for food, emotes and other non essential things on 23 there’s a macro that switches me back to toolbarpane00

Macro name : switch /ui action toolbarPane01;

Macro name : back /ui action toolbarPane00;

It is easy, and fast, and will free space used in your main toolbarpane by non-essential things.

Tip : have a macro going to a toolbarPane with IDENTICAL settings to your main PvP pane . because sometimes in all the action you’ll click on the toolbarslots to fast and they’ll act like you dragged 1 slot to another . If this happens hit the button that brings you to the reserve PvP toolbar pane and you’ll be al right instead of adjusting your toolbarPane during combat

Skills & Defenses: Skills and defenses are very important and should be known by heart, especially those you can use with your profession. Also know generally what other professions have. This will give you an insight into what profession you’re duelling when you see him using a certain attack on you, thereby giving you a chance to adjust your tactics.

I will go over some common defenses, because in SWG defense is king. In PVP (and PVE) all defenses are capped at 125 from skills! (It is possible to go over this cap with SEAs (for a total of 150 per skill maximum)}

-Melee & ranged defense: These determine if you are hit or not. The higher you have these, the more likely your opponent is to miss you. These are the first defenses that kicks in, and, in my opinion, the most important ones you have. As you can figure out, ranged works for ranged attacks, melee works for melee attacks.

-Melee & ranged mitigation : Damage mitigation takes the maximum damage of the weapon you are facing and reduces it by a percentage. There are three levels of mitigation for both ranged and melee attacks. Here's the breakdown of levels:

Level 1 damage mitigation limits damage to 80% of the range (20% reduction) Level 2 damage mitigation limits damage to 60% of the range (40% reduction) Level 3 damage mitigation limits damage to 40% of the range (60% reduction)

Damage mitigation works in both PvE *and* PvP, and it's a passive ability -- you don't have to activate it.

How does it work, specifically? Let's take two hypothetical examples, to make it clear using ranged mitigation

SR Combat: 80-140 damage range Uber Krayt FWG5: 45-425 damage range

The SR's range is 60 (140 minus 80 = 60), and Ranged Damage Mitigation 3 reduces this by 60%, to 24. The minimum damage is NOT effected, just the range, so the range is now 80-104.

The Krayt's range is 380 (425 minus 45 = 380), and Ranged Damage Mitigation 3 reduces this by 60%, to 142. The minimum damage is NOT effected, just the range, so the range is now 45-197.

What you should notice, from these examples, is that weapons with a large spread in between their minimum and maximum damage are the hardest hit. Weapons with a very high minimum damage aren't "mitigated" as much as weapons with a big spread between minimum and maximum damage.

In this example, for instance, the Krayt is hit a lot harder than the SR. Before the Damage Mitigation, the average damage of the Krayt was 235, which is around 214 percent higher than the SR. After the Damage Mitigation the average damage of the Krayt is 121 and the average damage of the SR is 92. The Krayt is now only 31 percent stronger than the SR, because the Damage Mitigation reduces its damage far more than it reduces the SR's damage.

Laser Carbine; 38-264 Damage (151 average) AFTER MITIGATION 3 = 38-128 (83 average), a 45.0 PERCENT DECREASE

T21 Rifle : 118-333 Damage (225.5 average) AFTER MITIGATION 3 = 118-204 (161 average), a 28.6 PERCENT DECREASE

Vibroknucker: 38-148 (93 average) AFTERMITIGATION 3 = 38-82 (60 average) , 35 PERCENT DECREASE

• However : damage stats are increased by the Unarmed Damage modifier. In the hands of a TKM, damage is increased 250-250, which isn't affected by mitigation, leaving a 288-332 (310 average) weapon. Mitigation, in this case, gives only a 10% reduction in damage. This is the ONLY exception no other profession has this benefit

-Dodge/Block/Counterattack: These defences will kick in after your melee or ranged defences has failed, and your opponent hits you. They give a chance to avoid damage. They only work if you equip a weapon that is from the profession that gives the skill. For example you will only dodge if you’re holding a pistol or one-hand melee weapon, or block using a pole-arm or rifle, or counterattack using a carbine or two-hand melee weapon.

Dodge/counterattack : will prevent 100% of dmg but status attacks will still come trough Block : will prevent 50% of dmg and status attacks will come trough

Important to know you can stack these up to 125 by using there melee or ranged clones i.e. pistoleer dodge stacks with fencer dodge, pikeman block stacks with rifleman block, swordsman counterattack stacks with carbine counterattack. TKM, with defensive acuity, has the short straw as that skill is working but doesn’t do anything after some essential parts where removed from TKM during beta. It works, but it does nothing. Yay!

-Melee toughness: This is a damage-reducing skill only melee professions get, and it only applies when a melee fighter fights another melee fighter. The amount of toughness you get is the amount your skill with your weapon of that type gives you. Toughness is a straight % reduction of damage done to you in combat. The drawback is this only applies to attacks from other melee professions.