User:Me zee/Micromechanics - Avoiding Damage

A guide to help you improve your micromechanics and overall teamplay. A guide to avoid unnecessary damage.

Why do I need to avoid damage?
Avoid damage to avoid being killed. Being dead in GuildWars means being useless until you are resurrected.

Until then, your team is outnumbered and on top of that the game gives you a 15% of death penalty for every death. This reduces your total life and energy by the amount of death penalty you have accumulated.

Avoid dying and being a burden to your team by avoiding damage!

Damage that is avoided and not being taken does not need to be healed. Consequently, your monks do not need to cast certain skills, which has two positive effects. Firstly, the energy from that cast is preserved, and, secondly, the skill being used is not on a cooldown and is available anytime for a more relevant situation. This is even more important in solo-split situations, where you usually do not have a monk nearby to heal up your damage taken. Thus, on the long run, this will make your gameplay more efficient, put less pressure on your backline, and gives you a higher probability of winning a game.

Caster Set
„A caster set usually consists of a 40/40 set which refers to a weapon set composed of a wand and a focus, each with 20% HCT and 20% HSR upgrades devoted to a single attribute.“(1) This caster set gives you 36% chance of halving casting times and a 36% chance of a halving recharge time on spells concerning the devoted attribute.

In terms of a prot monk or an attunement casting elementalist, it can also be a 40/20/20, „which refers to a staff with two 20% HCT upgrades, a 20% HSR and a 20% enchanting upgrade.“(2)

Use your caster set to get juicy fast casts in order to avoid interrupts and make the opponent team take damage instead of your own. Cast on your caster set in order to have the chance of overpowered fast recharges on your spells and for additional points of energy to spend.

Shield Set
A defensive shield set usually consists of a shield and a one-handed melee weapon of your choice.

The shield consists of a +30hp shield handle of fortitude and a +10 armor inscription versus a certain damage type, while the sword/axe/spear has a +5 armor sword pommel/axe grip/spear grip and an inscription and prefix of your choice.

In order to calculate the impact of changed armor rating on damage taken in a simplified way, the following formula can be used:

(3)

In the worst case, the shield set provides +30hp and 13 extra armor points (8 from the shield base armor, 5 from the melee weapon), which will reduce armor pendant damage by approximately 20% according to the formula above.

Therefore, immediately swap to your defensive weapon set when you see damage incoming, may it be in the form of an elementalist casting on you or melee characters running your way.

However, this does not only apply to casters, but also characters with higher base armor such as dervishes and hammer warriors wielding a two-handed weapon. The little added armor and life can give your backline the extra few milliseconds they need to get in range, bait out a shutdown skill and save your ass!

On the other hand, there is always situations where there is a higher priority to deal damage rather than taking less. Stay on your offensive weapon set when
 * You are not at the edge of dying
 * You are close to making a kill
 * Your monks have plenty of energy to waste
 * You need to gamble on wiping the enemy team in order to cheese a win

Positioning
As this topic is very specific to every class, I do not want to go into too much detail. Here are some general thoughts that you should always have in mind including a few examples:
 * At any point in the game, think about where you are and why you are where you are. Is there a better spot to be at? Your team can have the best monks in the game but when you are out of position and your monks have no way of reaching you, well, worst case c‘ya in 2 minutes at the base resurrection shrine.
 * Position yourself in a way, that you can reach out to your targets without being threatened by opposing damage or shutdown characters immediately. Hide behind walls to avoid arrows and spears, keep an armlength of distance to melees. Avoid being able to being targeted by two shutdown characters at once, it is hard enough to deal with one shutdown character already.

Example 1: Pushing a flagging character


 * It can be advantageous to push an opposing flagging character in order to slow it down and build up flag advantage. Always keep in mind, that in such situations you might have to run out of the reach of your monks. Make sure your monks are aware of that and it is really important that you have a plan B to make your way out alive in case your monks will not be able to push for you in time.

Example 2: Sneaking NPCs for NPC-advantage at 28


 * There are points in a GvG match when it is important to build up NPC advantage for Lord Damage. Realize the moment when the opponent team cannot deal with your push, snare the response in the main team and go kill those NPCs. The same rules apply as in example 1. Just fall back when it becomes too risky.

Example 3: Tunnel-visioning


 * As a shutdown character such as mesmer or ranger, it is easy to fall into a mode of tunnel-visioning certain characters. Those characters may try to keep distance and before you realize you have followed them into enemy damage you might already be dead.

Example 4: Pushing your own flag on a character with a speed boost


 * Sometimes it may be necessary to push your flag through the enemy team to the flag stand. As the flagging character, keep in mind that you have to have your monks in range. You are usually faster than your monks and your monks can’t move while casting. It is also really easy to throw an interrupt at a monk that is just running in range to cast on you. If you don’t want to die and throw the match, wait for your monks to push with you!

Example 5: Balling versus AoE-damage


 * Just don’t ball…

Dodging and Kiting
Dodging and kiting might look easy at first but it takes some practice to do it all the time, especially in the middle of the fight while you are busy with communication and playing your character’s bar.

Dodging and kiting in general
„To kite is to use movement to avoid enemy damage. Melee characters (such as warriors, dervishes, and melee ranger builds such as touch rangers and thumpers) deal a great amount of damage, especially to targets with low armor class. However, since they can only deal this damage at close range, the pressure from a melee character can be mitigated via kiting. (…) Observant players will pre-kite dangerous enemies. Pre-kiting simply means moving away from an enemy before that enemy is in range to begin dealing damage. For example, if a backline character sees a warrior approaching, they would be wise to begin running away.“(4]])|undefined

Kiting is good, but there are some rules that should be followed:

There is a handful of very common movement related attacks that can be avoided and will be discussed in the following.
 * Don’t kite into team members. It will make the life of your monks a living nightmare because of possible AoE-damage. Your monks can now also just flip a coin where the enemy spike is going to land.
 * As a rule of thumb, do not kite backwards. Kite sidewards or in a circle. Kiting backwards will probably end up in your team losing overall position.
 * Melee builds usually have a skill to increase their movement speed (IMS). Prekite to force cooldowns on those skills and make it as hard as possible for them to deal damage to you. Realize when a hammer warrior used flail and abuse its reduced movement speed to leave the hammer warrior behind in the dust.
 * In case you can’t prekite anymore and the melee is at you already, do not kite while the melee is landing attacks. Attacks landed in your back while moving will always be high damage critical hits and will make your backline sweat blood and tears. However, good players will wait for the attack to land and kite in between attacks.
 * Versus caster-spikes you can also prekite. According to the movement of the enemy caster-spikers your prot monk may now have a better idea where the spike is going to land.
 * Since spear and bow attacks are projectiles with travel time, these attacks can also be avoided by quickly clicking left and right next to your character after the projectile has been sent out to you.

Dodging and kiting versus movement-related attacks; close range
Commonly used skills in this chapter are:
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.

How to avoid triggering these movement related skills
In order to not trigger the effects of the skills named above you need to stand still when the hit is applied on your character. Standing still can be achieved through 3 different techniques:
 * Pressing Escape
 * Casting a skill
 * Attacking with a long-range weapon, for example a wand or a spear. You can also attack with a close-range weapon but it is risky and really depends on your position and the movement of the character you are trying to attack. If the character is moving slightly away from you after its cast and your character moves a little bit to attack, you might get hit while moving and trigger the knockdown or cripple-effect.

Dodging and kiting versus movement related attacks; long range
Commonly used skills in this chapter are: Basically, the same things apply like dodging and kiting versus movement relates attacks from close range, with another addition. Instead of taking the hit while standing still, it is possible to dodge the long-range attack completely by quickly moving sideways after the projectile moves away from the attacking character. However, on mid-range this can be very tricky and it might be safer to just take the hit while standing still.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.
 * – very hard to dodge on purpose, you will need to play mind games with your opposing character.

Side note: Do not be upset when eating a cripple from [[Melandru's Shot] despite you thought you were standing still. Depending on the server you are playing on the game can troll you sometimes.



How to practice
Learning by doing is a great teacher. Just play the game and try to apply the things stated above. Form small scrim teams in your guild hall and try to switch, kite and dodge as long as you can.

Dragon Arena is great for practice. When the event is not available you can make a custom one in your guildhall. Switch your guildhall to Imperial Isle and play the following mesmer bars with the following equipment. [build prof=Me/E AirMagic=12 InspirationMagic=10+3 FastCasting=8+1+3][Lightning Orb][Shock][Windborne Speed][Air Attunement][Resurrection Signet][Ether Signet][Waste Not, Want Not][Lyssa's Aura][/build]

Side Notes/Honorable Mentions
Thank you, Kyle, for proofreading.

Thank you, Rudi, for assisting me to create the GIFs and implementing the guide to PvX.

by Mize

Quotes

 * 1) GuildWars Wiki: 40/40 (5th September 2020)
 * 2) GuildWars Wiki: 40/20/20 (5th September 2020)
 * 3) Guildwiki: Schaden (5h September 2020)
 * 4) GuildWars Wiki: Kite (5th September 2020)