Class Wars lessons

I usually enjoy Class Wars in Wartune, for several reasons. 1 vs 1 is still fun and challenging, and lag is not a problem there, like in 4 vs 4. This is the epic championship, the final test which makes sense to all your character development. Strategy and fast decision-making is equally important. It's the same event as the championships in Doomlord, you are doing it more for the glory than for the reward.

I already wrote about Class Wars strategy here and here. But strategy always changes with the game, you have to adapt. I was afraid of not doing well enough, because I decided not to pump up my new Odin yet, and I did not even add defensive passive skills for him because I still try to get as far in sylph expedition as far it's possible, and for that I use the suboptimal offensive passive skills. But I can't complain about the end results. In Prelims, I finished 11th, lost only to JBird, Stormy and George7, I could even win vs Darkdays who had several red merged sylphs. But my BR wasn't enough for Warlords Hall, so I fought in Warriors hall during the finals. There, I managed to rank 1st with 13 victories.

Lately, there are many debates how the winner is decided in case of time-out. Some people in this forum topic claim that healing matters, lowest BR wins etc. I'm pretty sure this is not true. Most of my opponents had lower BR, they healed like hell, and I still won. The official rule is that total damage dealt counts, and I believe it, however I don't have complete trust that the calculation is absolutely correct :) Also don't forget, damage dealt count can do weird things, if your eudaemon dies early on (or you don't even bring it), and you keep damaging your opponent's you might end up winning due to this, even if your opponent is stronger. The same is true for sylphs. If your support sylphs survive much longer than your opponent's, that can be a trouble :)

This time I used an unusual rune setup. I went with chaos+amnesia, instead of my favorite, guardian+healing rune. Chaos is a good choice since long in CW, you can disrupt your opponent for the first 3 round, and against whales, who have strong eudaemons, you can neutralize even a few of his sylph rounds. But I always thought I need either heal or guard rune to survive, or at least to reduce damage. But amnesia is as much fun, if not more. The only problem is chaos/amnesia resist from eudaemons, makes the match even more of a gamble.

Stun is also an important factor still, although most people have maxed out beads of influence. This is because you always have a chance to stun your opponent. And stun is bugged, you usually lose 2 rounds, not one. So if you can stun your opponent just before he sylphs, you have a huge advantage. 

During fights, my general strategy was this: open with chaos rune, rain of fire, delphic hell thunder, lightning, frost bolt, awaken, amnesia, aoe sylph skills to kill the opponent's support sylphs, then rage decrease for opponent. Along with my wind sylphs' rage decrease, this was pretty good. I almost never healed, the group heal from my triton was usually enough. My prediction about resist was also correct (who donated and received the hint sheet know what I'm talking about).

All in all, Class Wars is the event where I'm grateful that the majority of players don't read my blog. When people try to keep alive their wind sylph by healing it, I know there is a good chance he will be shooting his own eudaemon even during the sylph phase. Same thing when people try to chaos me when I'm in sylph mode, and my eudaemon is nowhere.

Next coming up: analysis of new patch. Stay tuned!

Consequences of the unlimited resist event

In my recent article, I already mentioned that the unlimited resist event changed the balance in Wartune. People are full of level 9 resist gems, some even lvl 10 ones - and the resist reduce level is nowhere close to that.

As you know, resist gives a modifier to damage: The multiplier is
(1 + (your resist reduce - opponent's resist)/833)
As long as resist and reducers were in par, this meant a +-20% damage. But let's check what happens when I have an 1500 dark resist, and your resist reduce is 900:
(1+(900-1500)/833)= 0,28.
So you will deal only 28% of your normal damage. That's pretty tough.

We just had a Class Wars. I'm not a big casher, but it seems with determination and time I start swimming with the big fish (but only as their food). Now again I made it into top16. I did 5 dark dimensions to pump up my dark resist to 1500. Also had 1100 wind and light resist (and yes, this means I went against reason, and did even some lvl 10 resist gems, and now I can bang my head into wall, with lvl 9 resist coming tomorrow).

Out of 15 rounds, I got only 5 players who dared to use dark sylph. All big names, very far above my BR, much stronger than me: still, I could beat 4 of them. 72% damage reducting is a real killer. The other 10 players, they used all sylph except for electro: there was fire, water, wind and light too. I used wind sylph, that was my other orange PATK sylph who could use the equipment of my temporarily retired Aegis. My final result was 8:7 which I think is pretty unrealistic for my BR (and the amount of money I spent), the usual 14:2 would have been more reasonable.

But the current resist mess made the pvp game a pretty stone-scissors-paper game. Which is fun, everyone have a chance to win, and you need a heavy mind-game trying to figure out who is going to use what, and which 3 resist should you use. But I'm sure the majority of players - especially heavy spenders - wont like this. It is rumored dimension resist bonuses were reduced due to whale's pleas, and I'm sure we are getting another resist nerf soon.

Until then, enjoy it: complete sky trial, purgatory, narrenda, farm people in battleground: and dread the day when the nerf finally comes; when all the tendonitis you collected from doing dimension 3 hours each day becames meaningless.

Class Wars

I like Wartune's Class Wars, its really exciting, a test of all what you achieved. This is the equivalent of the Championship in Doomlord. Class Wars brough a pleasant, unannounced surprise: they made more categories. So far, there was a separate CW for east, west, europe and oceanic. Now it got split further. I'm not sure how it worked, but there were at least 2 sepearate Class Wars now on the European servers (if not more). 

This meant more people could get into the final. Previously, you needed 11 wins to make to the final, now 10 was enough. And yeah, BR requirement for making to Warlords Hall as less as well, so...

Yeah, I made it to Warlords Hall! The only non-vip there :) 

The past months brought many opportunities to increase BR for cash - huge advanced sepu and mahra sales, and the introduction of eudameons. I skipped these opportunity to spend balen, just grabbed the cheap mounts - but I did not even spend my mount hoofs on them, so I didn't really expect this. I'm very happy now, fighting with the big players in finals :) 

And if its already Class Wars, some words on strategy. CW strategy changes drastically almost every month. Lately, troops were replaced by sylphs, then eudaemon was added: those all changed CW strat. And now, the introduction of dual gems made ATK values soar, surviving is not really an option anymore unless you are a whale with astronomical DEF values.

So far, I always went with guard and heal rune, but now I tried chaos and guard. Chaos can really mess up the first 3 rounds due to eudaemon, and if somehow the fight is still going on after the first awaken phase, it can counter the opponents heal spell as well. Amnesia can be powerful too, since on CW, there is no HS, so amnesia can be more effective than in general pvp.

In CW (and in pvp general) its always important to time your awaken well. The best bet is to awaken at the same time as your opponent do. If you awaken too early, then you will revert much earlier than him and he can destroy you while in sylph from. Same if you don't awaken, and try to outheal. I think this outheal strategy no longer works since the dual gem ATK boosts.

Also do not forget, that during CW, if you happen to have a draw, most damage dealt is the tiebreaker. Keep this always in mind when choosing skills.

Don't forget resist. For a mage, dark resist is obviously the most important. Hercules is also still popular, and thirdly, I choose fire resist. I need fire and electro resist for elemental forest anyway, so I even have dimensions for these 3 resists.

Also here is stun. You prolly remember how much crying was about stun. People hated that they stood there helplessly for rounds. But eventually, this problem solved itself: they nerfed holy seal, and everybody reached HS 99 anyway. And now, stun is back, nastier as ever. You just need to cough up a few thousand of USD, buy a large amount of beads of influence, and you can stun people for 3 rounds right before sylph. This is a show of how poor is the game designer lately. Not only he piss off everyone by rendering fate stones useless (which are still given out as rewards EVERYWHERE in the game), but he demands beads instead, which is a very expensive cash-only item now. So influence is a guarantee for whales that they can win: regardless of resists, mistakes, timing delphic and guard runes (unless his opponent cashed into influence as well).

Luck is still important (with chaos and amnesia runes, deflections, criticals), but timing is important as well. If you know your opponent is going to delphic, you can usually have time to use guard rune - unless you are casting a delphic too.

If you made it into the finals, good luck to you!

*** UPDATE ***
Finished 14th, which is not so great, because I could beat only 2 people. The fun part is, I realized after the CW finals that my medal was expired :) So guys, always check everything before going into battle! Medal, buff, astrals, resistance crystals...

Class Wars with sylph

This is the second Class Wars in Wartune which is using sylph instead of troops. First I was excited about the change, but now I admit I am disappointed, for the following reasons:

1.) This change introduced a LOT of bugs. Chaos rune not working at all on sylph teams (out of like 30 chaos rune, opponent was never targeted when in sylph form), game freezing and the player not being able to reconnect, targeting problems. I would also swear some of the skills are bugged (triton heal being ridiculously low compared to some aoes), the damage calculations seems to fail (lost to a dude who did nothing but healed, while the system is now supposed to count damage dealt), but I need to make a video of CW next time so I can "debug" what is actually happening.

2.) This change takes away hope from low and medium cashers. Previously, you needed only 1 strong sylph to compete. Now you need 3.

3.) The luck factor has increased too much. We already had enough in fights: illusion, deflection, regeneration astrals, chaos and amnesia runes, criticals... But now, the resistance boosts from dimensions make it an even bigger gamble, and in a 3 vs 3 battle is pretty difficult to see actually what is happening. There is no combat log like in other games, and this is a once per month event, so not much room for experimenting with strategies.

4.) The rewards are not upgraded since CW was added to the game. So every CW is nothing just 300 mount whips, a big disappointment which should be the crescendo of all character achievements. With the 3-sylph team, now you have to upgrade a Medusa to have an optimal team, spending tons of mahra, sepulcrum... just to get 300 mount whips monthly? This is a pretty nonsense.

5.) Duration of duels. Maybe the 2 and half minute was enough initially, but now people have so much HP, and there are so many ways to heal and reduce damage... So the 2 and half minute is just not enough, often it ends seconds before a final delphic. They should either extend the time of one round, or increase how fast we get the damage increase. Or, at least, display the damage dealt so we know how the match is going.

Anyway, this Class Wars needs some changes, the epic championship, the goal of advancing your character should be something more balanced, less luck-dependent, and better rewarded...


At least I could grab an XP bonus for my server, and the ability to summon goblins for my guild :)

Class Wars strategy

Tomorrow is Class Wars, so I would like to share some thoughts on Class Wars - from a mage's view, of course, but maybe some advices work for other classes as well.

Testing. It is very important that you decide in advance what skills, astrals, sylph you will use, and make some testings. Find someone of your class with similar BR who is willing to do some practice with you. Go to altar of enoblement, you can duel there unlimited time without losing HP potions. Try out different strategies, see what works best for you. But make sure you do not go in the direction of just trying to beat the specific setup your friend is using! This practice is good for something else too. CW is some stress (at least for me), and any mistake can be fatal. So you must have a good routine at knowing what to do, what skill to use. You hands should not shake :)

Preparation. This is a good time to use all the sepulcrum you saved up (waiting for a sepu spender event), upgrading your astral, refining/identifying your last cloth. Make sure you have all the lvl 5 potions (do not buy it for balens! Just roll guild wheel each day 30 times, you will have enough), and scrolls (you can get them from guild wheel too, or buy them for crypt tokens). 5 minutes before CW, double-check skills, astrals, sylph, your PVP medallion, then drink the potions, and use the scrolls (2 of each since scroll last only for 30 minutes).

The swiss system. People complain about pairing all the time, even though it works fine. Each round, you get paired with someone with the same number of wins. BR has nothing to do here. Earlier, this system was exploitable, since the first rounds were less points than the later ones, so it was a good strat to lose the first 4 match. Not anymore. Just try your best. If you lose, no worries, your next opponent will be weaker probably.

Astrals. Some astrals work better than others. If I were you, I wouldn't use Illusion, for example. Guardian angel is great, on the other hand. It's a reason why I don't recommend a mage use crit setup: even if you like it for emotional reasons, guardian angel will ruin it during cw.
Deflection is a funny gamble astral. It's main strength is, if it triggers when your opponent would kill you and you kill him as well, you will win. If it wins you one match you would otherwise lose, it served its purpose.
If you think between HP and block, I would go for HP.

Slyph. A slyph does 3 things during cw: it determines the elemental form of your attacks, it deals some damage based on its stats in passive state, and it deals massive damage in awakened form, based on your atk and the mahra and sepulcrum you spent on the sylph.
If you have a sylph where the quality/sepu is much, much more than your other sylphs, use that - it will deal more damage, regardless of other considerations. If you have several similarly powerful sylphs, consider what others use in your category, and what works best against that (I mean here the resist / elemental type).
My personal opinion is that for mages, Hades is the best choice, for others, Gaia. Unfortunately, not everyone had 400 bucks (me included) to have a Hades.



The duel itself. Chaos rune is widely used now, so you have to be prepared for that. For a mage, it does not make much difference - troops die in 2 rounds anyway, and then you start sylph phase at max hp, but for other classes where it is a damage race, it can be lethal. It's best to wait a little at the beginning to see what your opponent is going to do, before eating/using a chaos. Besides chaos, my other favorite is still bleed rune.

The duel is decided by awakened sylphs. Before that, we just toy around: kill troops, heal up, purify each other's bleed - but the sylph delphic is usually a finisher, whoever can cast it first AFTER the 50% damage increase wins. Therefore, you must time your awaken well. If you awaken too early, eat a bleed and use sylph skills before 50%, your opp heals up and then finish you off. If you fumble too long with purify and healing, the Hades big nuke kills you. BR, ATK is not as important as timing. Practice it with someone a lot in advance.

Good luck all!