Lesson 3: Single Target / DoT spec RVR Advanced: Kiting

PART 1: CAMERA SETTING

While this might be the easiest part for you potential uber BWs in training, it is also the most important, and possibly the most secretive. I will be shunned by many a bright wizard for sharing this forbidden knowledge of l33tness, and possibly struck by lightning - or more likely witchelf blades in the back, for bringing forth divine knowledge to the comman man.

Go into your User Settings, under the General tab, scroll all the way down to the Camera section, see "Smart Follow"? Uncheck it, hit ok.

Now, whenever you're moving and pan your camera to your side or behind you by dragging the left mouse button, when you let go of left click, the camera will not automatically switch back to a frontal view. This way you can highlight and select targets behind you, and click your hotbar while maintaining visuals on your target. This is the easy part. The rest is all hard work.

PART 2: DEFINITION

What is kiting? "Kiting is running away from a fight, /chicken him," says the upset destro. The difference between kiting and running is, when a destro melee class - tank, mdps, dps dok tries to chase a kiting bright wizard, they die. Kiting is about doing moving dps, and crowd controlling destro on the run, eventually causing their death. We're not going to focus on how to get away from a melee train without dying, although that takes some skill too, that's actually running, not kiting :D

Kiting is more difficult than running. Running may be as simple as turning away from the destro and hold down the W key and maybe hit flee or Resolute Defence, and run to reinforcements or the warcamp, Kiting requires you to keep destro within your cone of fire while running and be attacking at the same time, while keeping destro away.

PART 3: TARGET CONE OF FIRE

In this game, target cone of fire for ranged classes is 180 degrees. Which means you if you are facing north, you are able to hit targets to your direct west or east, within a radius of 100 ft or 80 ft depending on the skill you're using (Cone AoE and Point Blank AoE are exceptions). Your cone of fire usually follows the direction you're facing, with some exceptions.

See back in world of warcraft, you used to be able to be running in one direction, and if someone's chasing you and they're directly behind you, you could jump, and while in the air moving forward, you can quickly hold and drag the right click button to the right (for example), and as a result your camera will quickly shift to behind you, and you can let loose an ability since the target cone of fire followed the camera to behind you, and then you can drag the right-click button to the left and back towards the direction you were running, all before you land. This way you never stop moving forward, this was how kiting was done in WoW.

In WAR, this doesn't work. You can still jump forward and drag your right-click even in a full circle before you land, but from others' perspective, they don't see you spin; and incidentally, the game doesn't see you spin either, thus your abilities won't go off and you will get a target outside cone of fire warning. Kiting in WAR, is done with strafing, see next section.

PART 4: KITING SEQUENCE

In WAR, the best way to kite is by strafing, using Q and E. Q strafes you to the left, E strafes you to the right.

We'll use a dps dok charging at you as an example, because they're the easiest to kite. They can only hit you within 65 feet, but you can hit them within 100 feet. Even factoring in lag and this game's terrible synchronization, there is a perfect kiting distance where you can constantly hit them but they can't hit you. Achieving this perfect distance is called pre-kiting. You have to watch the dok get closer, then start running, and after lag and sync factors in, you are both settled into this perfect kiting distance. This only comes with practice.

Kite Start:

If up to this point, when you see a melee train come after you, what you do is spin your character 180 degrees and hold W to run, time to change that habit, because:

1. It doesn't put a target into your cone of fire.
2. Witchelf daggers from 65 feet away will snare (slow down) you if it strikes your back. Then you're pretty much dead. But if you strafe, the dagger will hit your side and won't slow you down.

You can start kiting using Q or E, I personally prefer to use Q, on the fourth finger of my left hand, because it allows me to hit the other keys easier. Hold right-click and drag to the left, until your character turns left 90 degrees, and the charging dps dok is to the right of your screen, now, hold down Q. Now you'll begin to move left, at the same speed as turning away and holding down W, but look on the diagram, you're the green dot moving left (green arrow direction), facing forward (the black arrow), yet the dps dok - red dot chasing you (red arrow), is still within your cone of fire. You have just begun kiting. And the enemy is directly to your right.

Note: Don't worry if you're kiting and the target is not diretly to your right, but let's say higher up your cone of fire (The red dot is higher up on the diagram). As long as you make them run parallel to you, you achieve the same result. If they try to settle into a position that is directly to your right, and most dps tend to try to do this, they actually stretch out the distance between you two. The key is to always try to have your kiting target run in a parallel line with you. You should do your best to begin kiting like this, and ideally never have to turn. Everytime you make a slight turn, the distance between you narrows.

Look forward, Look back:

Here, forward doesn't mean the direction you're facing, You're still holding down Q to kite, so forward is actually to your left. Imagine yourself as a crab, walking sideways. Once kiting starts, this is where left-click comes in. Do all the following while still holding down your Q key.

Hold down left-click and drag left, now without changing your movement direction nor your cone of fire, you're actually looking forward, or to your left now. Ensure that you have an open space ahead of you, no cliffs or walls, or bumps, or knowing WAR - a blade of grass to get stuck on. Make sure the direction you're facing is clear for the next 10 seconds or so. If not, adjust your direction. Note, do NOT use right click now to adjust your direction, unless you rotate the camera back first. Else you'll make a sudden 90 degree turn as soon as you right-click, and you'll get caught. Tap the D key to turn slightly right, or tap the A key to turn slight left. So your way is clear, good. Time to hit somebody.

Hold down left-click again, and drag right, until the camera rotates to behind you. I must say now, you better have turned off smart follow. Because now you're going to let go of left-click, and then left-click on a destro as your kiting target. If you didn't turn off smart follow, as soon as you let go of left-click your camera would've completely rotated back to the direction of the black arrow on the diagram, and your kiting has failed. But, let's say smart follow is off. You can now left click your target, select a target within your dmg range.

Damaging and killing:

So, you're kiting with Q, made sure your way was clear for a while, looking behind you, and selected a chasing target. All this time holding down the Q key. Now begin to apply your dots. I'm used to holding down Q with the my fourth finger and applying 1-4 using my middle and index fingers. Those are my four dots, then, apply nova, choking smoke is also a damage tick. Fireball Barrage's first tick also goes off doing damage while runing. Rain of fire can also be cast while running, although you need to select a landing zone so there's an extra left click or key press involved. Do enough damage, and they're dead.

At the end of a kite, it's sometimes fun to stand still and cast withering heat at your target (if they have no helpers), and watch them struggling to get to you while snared and taking damage, and just as they get to you, you nova them in the face and they die. This is very satisfying, just keep in mind that sometimes it's not a good idea. Dps Doks and choppas can heal themselves on doing damage. Don't do this to them unless you know for sure you can kill them. 

Maintaining Distance:

Remember I said a dps dok is the easiest to kite? That's because unlike mdps classes, they don't have a charge skill to speed them up. They can however still use flee + action point potions, or get an odjira proc on their boots from one of your dots which speeds them up significantly, and all the smart melee doks or mdps classes all have odjira slotted. You should also have your own odjira slotted for rvr, because the not so smart mdps, will hit you with tiny hits from far away instead of trying to catch up to you, and some witchelves will frantically throw daggers at you trying to slow you down, and if any of this procs your odjira it'll put a huge distance between you, to your benefit.

But let's say the dok gets an odjira proc, you cannot, CANNOT let them catch you, because if you get caught the first thing they do is put a snare on you, then you can't really kill them anymore without creating more distance as melee doks heal themselves by doing damage. But at least they don't have a knockdown, unlock some other classes. Either way, you need to create more distance. While kiting, to put some distance between you, find your Withering Heat key, and hit it. Withering heat's first tick goes off while kiting as well, doing damage and snaring your target, slowing them down for 3 seconds. This might've saved your life.

The other ability to use, if the destro gets really close to you, or there's more than 1, is fire cage, your root. As long as they're not immune to roots and punts, this will give you a few seconds while they scramble for a root clear. Resolute Defence is good to use too, and combined with an odjira proc you're home free. Cauterize anything put on you, especially witchelves' out of stealth attack that does damage as you move, cauterize that ASAP. In fact, if you get jumped by a witchelf, your first few actions should be, start kiting, fire cage, cauterize, detaunt if root didn't work. This will all become instinct.

Morale 1: Mage Bolt
This is my morale 1 of choice for kiting. It use to have a huge knockback several patches ago, which got nerfed. But it's still a decent knockback, and it can be used from 100ft away. It's another thing you should be able to activate on the run to knock back destro on your tail. Our morale 4, although still is a knockback, but it's point blank and anyone you can hit with it, is in range to hit you. Don't rely on that one for kiting.

Switching between Q and E:

Sometimes your kiting target likes to run at you while slightly out of your cone of fire, forcing you to keep turning a little bit at a time, until you're running into a wall, then your camera goes weird. Or maybe you just need to turn towards a direction which would expose your back to your kiting target. Either way, a lot of the time you wanna turn and face behind you but still moving in the same direction. This is how to do it.

Assuming you're Q key kiting. While holding Q, hit jump. Your toon will jump to his left. While in the air, quickly right-click and drag left until your character turns 180 degrees. Before you land, let go of Q and hold down E. Now land. Viola, continuous kiting, but now you're facing the other way. This will come in handy a lot and helps you to maintain the enemy in your cone of fire.

Switching from E to Q is the same. Practice makes perfect.

Q - E - Q Switch

PART 5: CAMERA RESET

If you've been running around and rotating your camera alot, sometimes the camera gets to an odd angle and can be a little disorienting. To reset the camera to the middle, simply hit right click at any time. I don't recommend this in the middle of a kite unless the camera is at least somewhat close to directly in front of your toon.

PART 6: KEY ASSIGNMENTS

This section is about assigning the proper skills, to the proper hotbar keys. This game, compared to say World of Warcraft, has a waffle (yes waffle, I miss the old forums) ton more of useable skills, to the point of confusion if you're not careful. For the bright wizard, EVERY skill has a use, and it's up to you to put those skills where they can be reached, when you need to be.

For kiting, we're concerned with skills we can use on the run. These would include your instant cast dots, which are the major source of your kiting damage: ignite, slow boil, boiling blood, detonate. The other instant cast attacks: choking smoke, stop drop & roll, nova. Your support abilities: Cauterize, playing with fire, smoke screen, shield of aqshy, choking smoke, stop drop & roll, Burnout, Resolute Defense. Your 4 morale abilities. We're also concerned with withering heat, fireball barrage, and rain of fire. Personally, I don't actually bother with rain of fire.

* This next part does not apply to you if you are a 3-armed mutant, an alien disguised on earth with 20 tentacles, or using specialized equipment for button mashing in WAR like such:

This will also not work if you're using say specialized user interface equipment for left handedness.

Now a word on the addon Nerf Buttons, while allows you to assign multiple skills to one button in sequence.. I've never used it, I think it's too restricting. But if you want to use it, go right ahead. The addon is there for a reason. For the general population, using a regular keyboard and mouse to play, read on.

This game's default key assignments, when you show all 3 action bars, are 1,2,3.. to =, ctrl-1 to ctrl-=, and alt-1 to alt-=. The game assigns new abilities to the next default empty space on the hotbar as you learn them. This must change. If you keep your left hand on the keyboard, near the WSAD movement keys, and right hand on the mouse, there are only certain key combinations that can be hit while on the run.

Key Pressing VS Mouse Clicking Abilities

BTW, if you're now thinking, I mouse click all my abilities, I don't have to worry about key assignments, you have just discovered your first obstacle to proper kiting. I don't care if you have been mouse clicking for the last 70 renown levels, if you want to kite properly, you must force yourself to begin to key your abilities. The reasons are as follows:

1. You can rotate the camera must faster and more fluently, with much better control by using the mouse. Dragging left click moves the camera without changing your movement direction. Dragging right click faces you towards the center of the camera as it moves.
2. Target selection in this game using keys is less than intuitive. The best way to select your offensive target most of the time is by mouse clicking.
3. You need to keep your eyes on the battlefield, you must see and hear everything before your enemy, before your allies. This is how to stay ahead. It's like people who've learned to type fluently, they look at the screen when they type, instead of the keyboard. If you mouse click your abilities, your eyes are not at the part of your screen that matters.

While mouse clicking your abilities, you cannot do any of the above three things. However, if you keypress your abilities, you can be camera rotating and target selecting while activating abilities. You'll save time, and every half a second you're faster than your opponents, could give you an edge and decide if you win or lose.

Of course, there are only certain key and key combinations that your left hand can reach comfortably and accurately without you looking down at your keyboard, and without straying too far from your movement keys. The left over abilities do still require mouse clicking, but they're not needed in the heat of battle. But all the ones I've listed above in yellow, has to fit into a scheme that works for you, where you can hit them with your left hand without looking down at your keyboard. While moving and working the mouse.

I find that keys I can reach comfortably are

• 1..6
• ctrl-1..ctrl-5
• alt-1..alt-4

But while Kiting, which means I'm holding down Q or E, the buttons I can still reach, and I have small hands, are

• 1..5
• ctrl-1..ctrl-5
• alt-1..alt-3

This is where we adjust some key assignments. The game allows 5 hotbars, use them. There are keystrokes close to your left hand that the game does not use by default, these are:

• C, R, Z, F, T.

I'll leave it up to you to figure out what you want to put where, but here is a screenshot if my hotbars. My dots are 1-4, silence on 5, playing with fire on 6. Detaunt is on T, Shield of Aqshy on Ctrl-T. Resolute defence on F, Cauterize on C, SDR on R, Burnout on Z. Withering heat on Ctrl-3, Nova on Ctrl-4. I'd strongly advice you put your dots on 1..4, and start getting used to casting them on the run.

You should also be able to activate your morales on the run, without having to look at them with mouse click. Find a way for them to work for you. I have my 4 morales on Alt-Q to Alt-R, going down the first row of the keyboard underneath the number buttons.

Solarflame's Hotbars

Coming soon, Lesson on Advanced Bombing!!
Wiping out destro warbands in a Post-Scorched-Earth-Nerf era, one city instance at a time.

Link to lesson 1: Single Target / DoT spec RVR: Tactics, Rotation & Build
Link to lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear
Link to lesson 3: Single Target / DoT spec RVR Advanced: Kiting

Solarflame
GM - I am LEGEND
Faction: Order, Server: Badlands
Warhammer Online

Lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear

Lesson 2-A RENOWN TRAINING

I've tried many things in the past with my BW's renown training. It's an odd class on its own. Because with all my other toons I usually focus on two stats:

• STR/WpnSkill on my WH/WL, or when my IB and WP goes dps (Might IV, Blade Master IV*), rest in melee crit %.
•    *There's some variation to this, my wife's WL is spec'ed Might III and Blade Master V.
• Will/Init on my WP when he goes survival healing spec (Resolve IV, Fortitude IV), rest in heal crit %.
• WpnSkill/Armor for my IB when tanking (Blade Master IV, Reinforcement II), rest in block %.

Here's where the BW is different. While other classes have two main stats to focus in and then either some kind of crit or block, in that priority, for BWs, our priority goes magic dmg, magic crit %, wounds, in that order. The reason I said magic dmg and not int is because a lot of the times magic power bonus takes priority over the int stat.

I've tried, and discussed with others about a possible 2nd stat for BW other than int to focus in. Tried toughness or initiative. There's a few reasons why focusing on a 2nd stat for BW isn't a great idea.

1. We're glass cannons. When you wrap a piece of leather over a glass cannon it's still gonna break just as easily. Speccing into toughness or init might allow you to take an extra 2-3 hits from a choppa or WE, but since this game really gives no good means for BWs to escape from a melee class other than an odjira proc coupled with snare immunity once they catch up to you, you're dead either way. Killing you in 4 seconds or 6 seconds really isn't much of a difference. The key here is to NOT ever let any melee class touch you. Besides, our toughness or init will never be high enough to make a significant difference.
2. Although wounds are vitally important for a BW, because our own explosion damage always does a flat 750 damage, and a lot of BWs including me run with Funnel Power skill in the incernation tree (helps to proc 5pc Tyrant bonus if nothing else, haha), but training wounds in renown training, as everyone would tell you, is a bad idea. You get way less wounds per renown point than the primary skills in the first tier. The key is to use wounds talismans.
3. Speccing into a 2nd stat lowers our damage. While the majority of other classes can usually pull off a softcap in str or ballistic skill or whatever by using a combination of two armor sets, usually a 3/3 or 3/4 combination, for bright wizards starting with the annihilator set our best armor bonus is actually a 5/1 combination, 5 pieces from 1 set, and 1 from another, for sake of crit % bonuses. This means that we're not getting the 2nd int bonus (More on this information, see the GEAR section below). The vulture lord glyph/cloak set gives awesome bonuses to the BW but not much in intelligence, all this means that our int will not be soft-capped even when we solely focus in int.

Trading off dmg for slightly higher survivability is not a great idea. With the best dps gear available in the game now we can only just barely burst down destro in certain premades. It's a lot easier when you have two BWs both single target spec'ed focus firing on same target at all times *cough*autofocus-addon*cough* (gone by 1.3.6) but when you're by yourself, you'll need to squeeze out every single bit of dps you can to burst through certain healers like Drz.

So, what to train for renown:

• Tier 1 - Acumen V, 5 clicks +102 intelligence, 34 points. Total points spent: 34.
• Tier 2 - Sage II, 2 clicks +9 intelligence/willpower, 6 points. Total points spent: 40.
• Tier 3 - Focused Power III, 3 clicks +12% magical crit chance, 30 points. Total points spent: 70.
• Tier 3 - Resolute Defence, 1 click, 5 points. Total points spent: 75.

What to do with your last 5 points:Before you're rr80, if you want to get renown faster, you'll probably want to put 2 pts in For Glory!, 5% extra renown for fighting players in scenarios, and Town Raider, 5% extra renown for fighting players in cities. If you do more orvr than scenarios, maybe put in the 5% in skirmish or objectives instead of scenarios, up to you really.

At rr80, as a bright wizard, to max your PVP damage, we'll choose two out of three of the 2% extra damage vs [destro race] renown tactics. This is your personal preference again, pick two races your either hate or kill the most. For me, I like killing witchelves, squig herders, choppas, melee doks, etc, so my two choices are 2% dmg vs darkelves and 2% dmg vs greenskins.

On the way to this build, as your renown level grows, while you wait for your renown rank to be high enough for the next click into something, you can temporarily put the pts into wounds, resists, etc, if you like, and just respec when you can continue on. Get the clicks into magic crit % ASAP.

Lesson 2-B GEAR

Before rr40:

Tier 1-3 is pretty straight forward. The pvp sets are your best choice, with the scenario token weapons being the best available.

When you get into tier 4, assuming your renown rank is following your actual level, get into full annihilator pvp set, find and buy a dark promise belt off someone. I wouldn't bother with sentinel set from Sigmar's Crypts and Warpblade Tunnels, not that great for BWs, the only reason to collect this set would be to give yourself greater wards. By the way, we're already starting with the 5/1 configuration.

When you hit level 36, if you're lucky enough to get your hands on a Greatstaff of the Sandstorm, this will be your weapon for the next LOOOONG while till you can get your scenario royal insignia weapon, usable at rr75.

If you can't get a Greatstaff of the Sandstorm, other good choices are:

• Bloodfist Greatstaff, Dwarf tier 4 warcamp influence reward weapon, 5% crit good int, no magic power. Two tally slots, requires lvl 38 and rr38.
• The Greatstaff of the Bloodmoon, farmable from a PQ in Bastion Stairs, usable at lvl 37, it has 7% crit on there. Two tally slots.
• Greatstaff of the Radiant Star, the staff from Stage II City instances, purple bag. Int and toughness, only 3% crit though. Usable at lvl 40, no renown requirement. 

rr40+:

Here's where the fun begins: Your next set is Conqueror, rr40-45, this set gives your greater ward, same as the sentinel set, and opens the door to the two end game instances, Lost Vale and Tomb of the Vulture Lord, therein lies your further armor upgrades.

Conqeror has great set bonuses for the first 5 pieces: int, some armor, wounds, and magic crit, in that order. The 6th piece bonus is crap, really is o_O, so we'll use 5pc conq. But be sure to collect and put on the full conq set or corresponding sentinel pieces for a second, to complete your Greater Wards.

Conq gloves and boots can be easily found in a guild vault or the auction house, and for the rest of the conq pieces, best way is to participate in the PQ to take destro's warcamp in Land of the Dead, each time after the zone flips to Order, and try to win gold bags.

Even if you don't win the gold bag, be sure to keep accepting the two repeatable quests at order's warcamp, Food for the Flies, to kill 20 destro in lotd, and A Blight in the Sky, killing the destro airship at their warcamp. These quests become available some time after hitting lvl 40. You'll still receive a silver ankh for completing these repeatable quests. You'll need 12 silver ankhs to buy a cloak and 2 more to buy a good jewelry piece (see the 2nd paragraph from this sentence).

Anyway, to hit the battlefield, our 5/1 configuration ideally is either:

Option 1 - 5pc Conqueror, +1 pc Illuminations of Ruin
Illuminations of Ruin is the shoulders from the Ruin set, which is the pve set from tier 4 Public Quests, hope for a gold bag, and hope that the gold bag has the Ruin shoulders. Or:

Option 2 - 5pc Conqueror, +1 pc Darkpromise Spatterguards
Darkpromise boots, dropped by the last boss of Lost Vale's left wing, which is the easiest wing, it's a giant spider queen. If you ever do this boss, as a BW your job is to kill all the little spiders before they get to the boss. If you get these boots, rejoice, because these will be your boots until you start wearing sovereign pieces. Actually, if you can, try to get two pairs of these boots. Put Odjira into one pair, for pvp, and put +23 or +24 int into the 2nd pair, for time-sensitive boss fights such as boss 8 of Vulture Lord.

Land of the Dead introduced some awesome jewelry pieces. The 4 glyph and backpiece set from boss kills in Vulture Lord is still the best accessory set in the game for BWs even in 1.3.6, but before getting to vulture lord, there are some sweet ones to buy from the armor vendor in the lotd order warcamp, using golden scarabs and silver ankhs once you turn level 40. Golden scarabs are tradable and farmable off mobs in lotd, and are sold in the AH for about 1g each. In 1.3.6 you can only access lotd after reaching level 32. Once you're lvl 40, and get some silver ankhs, buy:

• Emblem of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 4 Golden Scarabs, jewelry, which pairs with:
• Veil of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 12 Silver Ankhs, 4 Golden Scarabs, cloak, for a bonus of +90 magic power.
• Icon of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 4 Golden Scarabs, jewelry. which pairs with
• Nehekharan Icon of Knowledge - Cost: 2 Silver Ankhs, 5 Golden Scarabs, jewelry

The first pair, the jewel/cloak set, you will use until you can achieve the full 4xglyph/backpiece set from Tomb of the Vulture Lord, which is your end game accessory set.

rr50+:

The next two pvp sets, Invader and Warlord, beyond the 1st set bonus, the rest of the set bonuses are absolute junk for the bright wizard. between conqueror and sovereign pvp sets, your upgrades lie in Lost Vale's Darkpromise set, and Vulture Lord's Tyrant set. If you're lucky, by the time you're in your rr50s you'll have your darkpromise belt (bought), boots, gloves (which is supposed to be the easiest drop but I waited ages for mine), plus something else, as long as you get 4pc darkpromise, 3pc is doable, but the 4pc +72 wounds bonus is NICE. This is when we break the 5/1 gear pattern for a while. Your next progression, after looting / ninjaing enough dark promise pieces is:

4pc darkpromise including boots, and 2pc invader
Keep in mind invader gloves can be traded/bought.

rr60+:

Into your rr60s, find and buy/farm/bump off someone the warlord ring & gloves and one more piece as soon as you can use them, preferrably NOT the warlord boots if you're using Darkpromise boots. Your next progression is:

4pc Darkpromise including boots, and 3pc Warlord (including the ring)
with the Warlord gloves, and Darkpromise boots as required pieces, and together with the lotd jewelry and cloak stuff listed 2 paragraphs ago. The gloves themselves have 3% crit, and the DP boots have 3% crit, the DP 3pc has 5%crit, and together with a good weapon like the ones listed above, your crit % should finally be approaching the wtfpwnage level.

END GAME GEAR

Weapon:

There is no question that the Nihilist's Greatstaff of Reckoning, purchased with 850 Royal Insignias + a ton of officer emblems, although at only 4% crit, but gives great int, magic power, wounds, and AP bonuses, is the best weapon for pvp for the BW. Try to get it ASAP at rr75.

If your AP isn't a problem, The Greatstaff of Sandstorm and the Ur Hondo Asaph, sceptre of Vengeance, purchased with a Torn Page of the Liber Mortis (World Boss PQ gold bag) + 5 Sacred Funeral Masks will still generate higher dps than the Nihilist's Greatstaff of Reckoning for pve fights. As of this moment, no order on the badlands server has ever killed the World Boss, which is a 15min timed fight, it's the statue in front of Vulture Lord instance entrance. He awakens after someone with the curse buff from killing the 8th boss in Vulture Lord walks close enough to him.

Jewelry & Cloak:

Unfortunately, the end game jewelry pieces and cloak for BW pvp is in a pve instance. Tomb of the Vulture Lord instance drops a glyph/cloak set, boss 1-2 drops one glyph, 3-5 drops one glyph, and 6-7 drops one glyph. The 4th and last glyph is bought from the armor vender in the lotd warcamp with 50 golden scarabs, +12 golden cartouches, which are gold bag PQ rewards for killing bosses in Vulture Lord, these can be masterlooted. The final 8th boss drops the backpiece that goes with the glyph set. As glyphs become available, use them to replace your existing jewelry pieces, but do not replace the Emblem/Veil of the Nehekharan Ritualist pair until you get the full set.

Armor set:

Before rr80:

Vulture Lord instance bosses also have small chances to drop the Tyrant set. As a BW, we're concerned with boss 1, 4, 7, and 8. First boss drops boots repairable by all dps classes. Boss 4 drops shoulders repairable by all humans. Boss 7 drops helm repairable by all dps classes, boss 8 drops chest repairable by ALL classes. Killing boss 8 also gives you access to 6x gold bags, each containing a Sacred Funeral Mask, you'll need 3x masks + 200 golden scarabs to buy either the tyrant gloves or the tyrant belt. Advice: buy the tyrant gloves first. It has 3% crit just like the warlord gloves. The 6 gold bags containing the masks can all be master looted. Thus one person can receive 6 masks in one run.

We're back to the 5/1 configuration.

5 pc tyrant + 1pc Darkpromise Spatterguards boots.
If you don't have DP boots at this point, substitute with Conq boots which also have 3% crit.
(info updated for 1.3.6) The tyrant 5pc bonus is a proc on hit to reduce cast times by 25% for 10 seconds. In 1.3.6 reduced cast time stacking no longer works like the last patch. In this patch, if you hit focused mind, or is using close quarters (reduce cast time by 50%), and your 5pc tyrant bonus procs, cast times will be reduced by 62.5%, using either of the two following formulas:

• .50 + .25 * .50 = .625 = 62.5% or
• .25 + .50 * .75 = .625 = 62.5%

If you combine close quarters, hit focused mind, AND get a 5pc tyrant proc, your cast time will be reduced by 81.25% using one of the following formulas:

• (.50 + .50 * .50) + (.25 * .25) =  .8125 = 81.25% or
• (.25 + .50 * .75) + (.375 * .50) = .8125 = 81.25%

Keep in mind, spamming fireballs at 50% reduced cast time or 80% reduced cast time takes the same time overall, due to the 1.5 second global cooldown, this of course does not factor in lag. Difference is, you won't be set back as much by getting hit if your casting is faster. Some notes:

1. The tyrant 5pc proc can refresh itself during a proc, if you're lucky, especially when you're AoEing a lot of things, you can end up with endless tyrant 5pc procs and thus spam faster fiery blasts for a long time. You're limited only by your available action points.
2. If you read my first lesson, you know that my rotation relies heavily on dots, and faster spells actually prevent my damage from hitting together, so the 5pc tyrant proc is a little counter-productive for my rotation. With 1.3.6's close quarter changes, you don't even need it much for pve, thus you might want to replace the tyrant belt with the darkpromise belt, using a 4 pc tyrant, 2pc DP gear configuration with DP belt & boots to get the int bonus, rest all tyrant. This is really up to you.

Since 5pc tyrant bonus has been nerfed to 25% this patch, and a burst rotation doesn't really rely on reduced cast times, it's feasible to replace tyrant belt with darkpromise belt thus losing the 5pc tyrant proc but giving you an extra 72 intelligence.

rr80:

1.3.6 Option 1 - 6pc Sovereign
Sovereign helm, shoulders, gloves, chest, boots, belt. Plus the 4xGlyph & the Keymantle of Ptra backpiece set. This will give you the overall best crit% and dmg% bonus for max dps generation, 1 more tally slot, with much higher armor than the pre-rr80 setup. The missing 5pc tyrant proc is fun but not necessary for my rvr setup.

The 6th piece sovvereign proc, 130 magic power, is a huge boost to dps. And with all the dots we do and Flames of Rhuin and Funnel Power it procs pretty often.

Base stats comparison with 6pc sovereign vs. 4x tyrant 2x darkpromise, using 4x glyph + keymantle of ptra set.
With the talismans listed below, and rr75 royal weapon:

• 6pc sovereign: 258.6 dmg bonus, 33% crit, 7130 hp, 263 tough, 1431 armor, resists 443/405/447
• 4xtyrant/2xdp: 264.4 dmg bonus, 35% crit, 6930 hp, 209 tough, 1264 armor, resists 415/415/419

As you can see the tyrant/dp set still gives better base dmg and crit, at the cost of other stats for survival. A great solo spec'ed kiter might still choose to wear this over sovereign, if you don't want to rely on the 130 magic power proc.

1.3.6 Option 2 - 7pc Sovereign (remove 1 glyph or backpiece)
The BW offensive sovereign set offers pretty cool procs for the 6th and 7th piece soverign. You might feel like sacrificing the 5% overall damage from the glyph/cloak set for the procs from sovereign. The 7th piece sovereign proc is a 10% chance on hit to make target receive 5% dmg from all sources. You need to weigh that with the glyph/cloak bonus which is a constant 5% damage bonus from you alone. Are you a team player? Or would you rather do more damage? >:-D

BTW, if you need to remove one piece of the glyph/backpiece set, I'd replace the backpiece with the sovereign keymantle. Higher resists + 2% more crit is always good.

1.3.6 Option 3 - 8pc Sovereign (remove 2 glyphs or 1 glyph and backpiece)
Is it worth it? To have a granted ability at a 2min cooldown that increases target and surrounding destro's action points cost by 50% for 10 seconds? Lose 5% damage, 2% crit overall, for a 10second proc every 2 minutes? Not for me, but maybe for you. We're all different :)

Talismans:

No matter what gear you use, the ideal talisman config is the same. If you have the gold and want to use good tallies on gear you might be changing out of soon, go ahead. But at end game, this is your tally config for rvr:

Helm: +23/24 wounds
shoulders: +4% magic crit
chest: +23/24 wounds
gloves: +35 magic power
boots: Odjira
Weapon: +23/24 int, +23/24 wounds
(As of 1.3.6 the sovereign belt also has a tally slot, put in +23/24 wounds)

Again, this is for rvr.

OTHER NOTES

I never mentioned the vessal weapon from lotd, won by killing bosses in the tombs in lotd where you can slot in 3x lotd tallismans, because it's a temporary fix, and +magic crit% tallies from lotd are very hard to come by. If you really want to use it, ideally, you'll put in a crit% tally, +magic power tally, and a wounds tally, all from lotd.

Link to lesson 1: Single Target / DoT spec RVR: Tactics, Rotation & Build
Link to lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear
Link to lesson 3: Single Target / DoT spec RVR Advanced: Kiting

Solarflame
GM - I am LEGEND
Faction: Order, Server: Badlands
Warhammer Online

Lesson 1: Single Target / DoT Spec RVR: Tactics, Rotation, Build

Since the last patch, 1.3.5., a lot of BW skills and tactics have changed. I've figured out the following after much testing and forum discussions and private chats with other bright wizards. And it really does work, it bursts through heals it makes choppas and dps doks go WTF-how-did-I-die-with-my-pocket-healer-spamming-me and it makes squig herders hate you with a passion. 

TACTICS TO USE:

Endless Knowledge, Devour Energy, Ignition, Fuel to the Fire (NOT Fueled from Within).

These are your solo tactics. If you know always that there will be a knight in your group charging into the destro debuffing their resists, swap out Ignition for Crown of Fire since ignition's debuff does not stack with knight debuff. And if you somehow never run out of AP, say you're using 1 or 2 sovereign rings, a warlord ring, sc weapon, and maybe 1-2 other pieces that regen AP like tyrant chest, or have a WP using refreshing radiance tactic, you can swap out devour energy for something else too, maybe close quarters (see next paragraph), flash fire or fueled from within.

- 1.3.6 update: Close quarters is a viable and sometimes even sexy tactic to slot in 1.3.6. Although some would claim the new close quarters & expert skirmish tactics are only good for pve, but even for single target / dot spec BWs, with no more dmg penalty for targets far away, and 50% reduced cast times within 20feet which is basically free focused mind, it's quite possible the new tank killer or even an mdps killer with the help of dmg absorb items and good heals, just spam fireball at them when they're close.

The tactic works wonders also for certain elements during rvr, such as keep doors, city siege cannons, stage 2 warlords, king, and even stage 3 destro champions. Swarm the destro champ with all your bright wizards, engineers, and shadow warriors, make sure they can't move, and spam them with your fireball or similar spells.

However, don't let it go to your head. When you're solo, vs multiple destro, it's still better to kite. Spamming fireball @ the destro chosen won't save you.

Fuel to the Fire is an absolutely necessary tactic for my rotation in the next section to work, it brings your boiling blood tick from 10 to 5 seconds and raises the damage significantly.

These tactics are for pvp only. PvE uses a set of different tactics.

ROTATION:

Time (sec)    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

---------------------------------- 8.5 sec rotation

1 Ignite      1 2 3 X 5 6 X 8 9 X

2 slow boil      1 2 3 4 5 X

---------------------------------- 5.5 sec rotation

3 boil blood        1 2 3 4 5 X

4 Pyro Surge           1 2 TX

5 Burning Iron/Sear        1 X

6 Nova/Withering Heat         X

This is your bread and butter burst rotation. The red X's are the damage ticks that matter. Global cooldown in Warhammer is 1.5 seconds.

8.5 sec: Best case scenario, nothing gets cleansed. Everything hits between 7.5 seconds since ignite, to 9 seconds since ignite. Throughout the entire rotation, Ignitition tactic will keep target corporeal resist debuffed. Fuel to the Fire is required for this rotation. T is the half second travel time for Pyro surge. It might feel longer, but it's only half a second. Two of ignite's ticks hit right before and after the main burst combo, at 7 and 10 second mark, if you want to count that damage.

In an non-best case scenario, something's gonna get cleansed. This is really up to you. If you prefer for ignite to get cleansed, the corporeal resist debuff will be gone, so sb,bb,pyro etc will all hit for less. You can definitely switch slow boil and ignite, since they both don't have cooldowns anymore, and let slowboil get cleansed first, so ignite will still keep corp. resist debuffed for the burst hits, but there will be one less hit from slow boil. Even if 2 things get cleansed, you'll still have skill 3-6 hitting, which actually becomes the 5.5 sec rotation.

The great thing about this rotation is that it can be repeated almost right away. Hence the need for Devour Energy. No time to rest.

5.5 sec: Ignite is of course optional, as well as taking out Slow Boil, taking out the two initial buffer skills, and starting at step 3 with BB will make this a 5.5 second rotation. with 4 skills hitting within 1.5 second of one another (last 4 X on chart). Do this if the destro is at less than 60% health and not getting healed.

FOLLOW-UP:

Quite often after you do your rotation, this destro isn't dead yet. What do you do?

• Target almost dead - If your target only has a sliver of health left, and you just hit your Nova, following up with the first tick of Withering Heat, fireball barrage, or use Choking Smoke, lots of people always forget, until they get used to it, that our silence is a good instant cast damage tick. Just keep in mind choking smoke and fbb has only 80ft range. Most likely at this point, the destro is running away anyway, so you need to be moving forward. The first tick of withering heat and fbb WILL connect and do damage while you're moving, keep this in mind for kiting as well. If they're still in fireball barrage range, stand still and channel it for the full duration. FBB doesn't not cancel channeling if your target moves out of range.
• Target getting heals - If they're starting to get healed, and there are other order trying to kill your target, the best thing to do at this point is begin your rotation again, but put in Playing with Fire, 50% incoming heal debuff, right after Ignite and Slow Boil. See if your 2nd round of bursting with a heal debuff kills your target.

BUILD:

So which build to use? Two builds will work for these burst skills, either high up incineration up to Fireball Barrage, or high up immolation to stop drop & roll.

1.3.6 update: I used to use fireball barrage for VL a lot, but with recent 1.3.6 close quarters changes, pretty much all a BW is doing in VL is spamming fireball or fiery blast up close and personal. So without the need for FBB anymore, I actually settled with the Stop Drop & Roll build. Keep in mind though, PyroSurge/Sear/BuringIron/Nova all benefit from higher up Inci tree to FBB, and these are direct dmg attacks that can't be cleansed. I do tend to solo a lot in scenarios, so the SDR build is more useful when I need to create some distance between a choppa charging at me or a WE that pops on me, SDR will give a 3 second breather room. Just keep in mind that it extinguishes ignite.

I'm not gonna post a wardb link for my build since they haven't updated their skill/tactic descriptions. But:

FBB build:
In the Incineration tree you want Nova, Fireball Barrage, and Funnel Power.
In the Immo tree you want Withering Heat, playing with Fire, Ignition tactic, Fuel to the Fire tactic.

SDR build:
In the Incineration tree you want Nova, and Funnel Power.
In the Immo tree you want Withering Heat, Playing with Fire, Stop drop & roll, Ignition tactic, Fuel to the Fire tactic.

The above two builds require rr70 and 29 mastery points. If you're not that high yet, for the FBB build you can leave FBB till the end. For the SDR build, I'd get SDR, fuel to the fire, and nova ASAP, then get the others.

Funnel power is a subject of debate. It definitely does more damage to your target than it does to you, it's not bad to run if you have constant heals. If you don't have any heals at all, maybe turn it off. It also helps to proc your 5pc tyrant bonus should you be lucky to have the gear.

Link to lesson 1: Single Target / DoT spec RVR: Tactics, Rotation & Build
Link to lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear
Link to lesson 3: Single Target / DoT spec RVR Advanced: Kiting

Solarflame
GM - I am LEGEND
Faction: Order, Server: Badlands
Warhammer Online