PvP Guide

== how to become a PvP part one, what is essential?==

hi people, i was always thinking about writing a guide for PvP, but i believe if you want to become a good PvP player, you need some essential stuff to do first. i won´t explain here how to do main tasks or stuff like that, i will explain what you should work on so that you might become a competitive PvP player one day. let me start with the basic: for becoming a good PvP you will need good gear. thus your first goal is to get T10 items (treasures level 10) asap. the best units for farming T10 items are T8, the best hero is a speed hero! you want your T8 army to outspeed NPC fairy dragons, so that you can farm those items quite easy. the best place to find combat items is the instance (level 40 and above), after that the world map. babel items are most of the time BS, boss items can be useful, but are also most of the time useless. if your hero can´t outspeed T10 units, use http://heroesofgaia.wikia.com/wiki/Scout_Tactic to get the advantage. what items are useful? everything which improves the speed of your T8 is great, as your final goal is to auto farm level 10 items. for PvP it depends what kind of strategy you are using, i will go into this point later... overall you can say everything which improves stats of your hero or the units you want to use for PvP is good, especially in combination with a chance of double attack and/or double damage to melee. unit allocation is also a great item buff. everything in one sentence: you want a speed hero with a T8 army to farm T10 items without losses and you want to spend the majority of your AP for farming items till you have at least one good set of gear!

how to become a PvP part two, heroes
so while you are farming those high level items it is also time to think about a combat hero for PvP. a good hero is a must for PvP, and depending on what strat you are using you have to use the right choice of hero.

Tavern: you will need a level 10 tavern. at least one. the more the better. check them every hour to see if one of those precious heroes shows up.

Heroes: a good hero has at least 150 combat stats. combat stats = att + deff + speed - the level of the hero you are hiring +1.

What attribute should i push? that depends what strat you want to use. every human player should have at least one human deff hero (thus pushing only deff). with fortify defense and the human racials, human deff heroes are maybe the strongest heroes available in HoG. look up for epic fights of Tengu or Zona to see the famous Angel-strategy (but AA will also work...) for elf players Att/first strike is important. you don´t want to push your speed, but for first strike you might have to if you don´t have good gear. i still recommend pushing Att and try to push speed through items. if your elf-hero is too slow, don´t hire it. orc.... well, i am not very experienced with orc, but i fought gov several times and his best heroes are deff heroes. so i guess deff for orc is working good, especially with all that items which buff behemoths hp (or monsters def). ud.... meh, imho the worst pvp race. the only good ud hero i know of is dingbat of theding, and that is a hybrid (50 points in att and 50 in defense). hybrids are tricky though. you might end up with a great hero, but you could also end up with BS. my hybrid jean has a around 60 points into att, rest into deff. i also have a ud Att hero, but she is not as good as jean is, though her combat stats are better. always remember, if you go for ATT, speed is also essential. you will lose if you don´t get the first hit with an attack hero.

summary: def heroes are strong for every race, some races benefit more though: hu>orc>ud>elf att heroes are just usefull if you have first strike! thus elf and hu can use att heroes (elf because of fairy dragon and racial abilities, hu because there are lots of speed improving items for AA). my ud att hero has AA speed gear and uses AA as a combat army..... hybrids can be very strong! but you can also end up with a complete useless hero. speed heroes will always lose against a good def or a good attack hero! they are just useful for farming items and doing instances.

how to become a PvP part three, secondary castles and spells
so we all love our secondary castles, right? we need them to produce additional units and to get nice spells. i will start with the castle spells: secondary castles should have high ressource spells. 10/10/10/10. period. i know some people say they are too expensive and won´t pay off. well, that is not true, my secondaries with 10/10/10/10 ressource spells have enough ress income (with the right castellans ofc) to produce 24/7 t8 units without farming. and that pays off considering that i paid those spells with AP (farming others). storing skill is always usefull, but i guess a second could also live without it. construction skill is imho worthless in a secondary (so are battlements!) scouting could be useful but is definitly the last spell i would research in a secondary bootcamp and manufacturing should be at least level 9! hero spells (except the spells for castellans, it´s obvious you should get them.....): next to plus melee damage and plus range damage following spells are definitly worth to get: elf: agility (nice to have if you need to go backrow to backrow) orc: harden bones! imho better than Fortify defenses as you can move your units! human: fortify defenses! especially if you use a deff hero that´s also a must have. ud: curse can be good if enemy has first strike (but then again i would prefer harden bones). necromancy is normally not good enough to change it against buffing your own units.

so what to do when you are at war and your secondaries are attacked? you do not defend them. period. defending a secondary with units which are attached to a secondary is one of the dumbest thing you can do. it is way much better to attach your units to heroes or your main and let a castellan without units defend your secondary. reason for that? you can always get your secondary back when you are online, but you will never get troops back who get killed while your secondary is taken. again, attach units of your secondary either to a hero or to your main castle!

locations of secondary castles: you don´t want your enemies to know where your secondary castles are. that´s why you don´t want a secondary close to your main. if you ever get some real fame on dyo your enemies will find your secondaries anyway, but till then it is better to keep them hidden, believe me.....

most important sentence: DO NOT DEFEND YOUR SECONDARY WITH UNITS WHICH ARE ATTACHED TO A SECONDARY!

how to become a PvP part four, world map battles
first of all: if you want to compete on world map, you should have at least one lvl 100 hero. there are different ways of fighting on the world map, the most annoying one is if you have to defend a cap. reason for that is you always want to be the attacking part rather than the defending one. you should also have different gear for your hero : 1. spd/att gear with lots of double damage/strike chances. jeannedarc has such gear. 2. deff gear with lots of additional attributes for att/deff/hp increasing alloc is always good, but just if it comes along with some additional buffs for your army! i see people walking around with t8-9 items just because of the alloc... that is normally the wrong choice! as an attacker you gain lots of advantages:

1. Setup advantage: Players use different setups and you can adjust your setup to optimize your attack. i highly recommend that you make sure your stacks get first strike and are able to reach the enemy stacks!

1.1 1-Stack-Strat: if the enemy uses just one stack, the maximum of attacking stacks you want to use is three. reason: most of the time the one stack is in the corner, thus the maximum of stacks it can be hit is three. three stacks > one stack, because you increase the chance to trigger double damage/hit of your gear. there seems to be also a game mechanics bug (hitting several times with a stack) which favors using more than one stack!

1.2 3-Stack-Strat: if the enemy uses three stacks (in the front row) you should use 7 stacks! scout traps on world map are dealt with scrolls (low level mass damage scroll is sufficent). if he has 3 stacks in the back row (never seen this) you could either go with 7 stack (using a map movement spell like agility) or also 3 stacks in the front row. i prefer the 7 stack/agility way.

1.3 4++Stack-Strat: this one depends on unit setup: if you intercept a T10/T8 army you are normally good with going yourself with 7 stacks. if it is 7 stacks t10/t9 you are facing, you might consider a deff strategy (swap gear and stay in the corner!). if i get first strike i always counter with 7 stacks though.

2. World map buildings advantage As an attacker you can use world map buildings to buff your hero! Get that additional att/deff/speed and don´t forget the monastery! 3. Surprise advantage The moment of surprise is the biggest advantage you can have! "Best" case is that you are hitting the enemy while he is busy (especially if you fight stronger heroes). You can make the opponent busy by timing a attack on his main before you intercept his hero. Use siege for that (siege the main of the enemy with scouts, stop the sieging hero some minutes away from his main,, then time the siege so, that siege starts short before the target is in the range of your att-force). ways to hide your att-force: there are several ways to hide your att force, but for all of them you need to know the pathing of your target. that is maybe the most difficult part in intercepting enemy forces and it will need some time and training to get it right. if you know the pathing of your target you can use mines, towers and secondary castles to hide your att force. a free secondary castle spot is very useful for PvP! you can use a secondary castle to give your hero a direction from a mine/tower to get into the pathing way of your opponent (dispatch!). 4. How to find a target there are several ways of fighting at the world map (you get attacked, you attack or defend a cap, you attack/intercept an enemy), i prefer attacking/intercepting ^^ easiest way to intercept is if an enemy is attacking your guild mates main. if he attacks a main, his hero has to come back to the starting point, thus giving you lots of choices where you can attack. the portals have been a good ambush place, but as that´s now prohibited, i prefer catching the hero on his way home next to his main (very old school ^^). group defending is also a nice way, you can hide your hero in your guildies castle and call him back as soon as the enemy hero is in range. just be sure that you reach your guildies castle way ahead of the enemy so he can´t see you. as an attacker you want to hit the enemies army, and decimate it. an evil way and a hard punch (without permakilling) is to kill the enemies troops which he uses for dailies (normally a mixture of T10/T8, or just T8). several hits on the dailies army of a player can really slow him down in everything he does in the game! most players do dailies on similar times a day (that´s also hard to find out and you need to stalk a little bit for it....). smart players do dailies from their "hidden" seconds. take care of game messages who tell you which player is doing babel! if you want to hit a player, have observed him for some days but he never went out of his main, it is quite sure he does dailies/leveling from a second!