The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Cassandra

Cass grinned at Sylvia's attempts to fight her on the screen. Once she had gotten all of her basic [Hallow] AoEs up, she was perfectly content to sit and wait.

Even when Sylvia decided to dash into the middle of everything to make some attacks, it didn't exactly pressure all that much. The main issue here for Sylvia was really that this was a bad match up, almost entirely in Cass's favor.

While Sylvia's [Blade] was very mobile and would make for a great harasser and annoyance in a group fight, in a duel, this particular [Blade] loadout was ill-suited to take on Evie's [Hallow], and it came down to a fairly simple issue.

Sylvia had no way to counter Evie's general strategy.

Evie's entire strategy when approaching a duel against a melee-based opponent as a [Hallow] had been executed basically in its entirety already. Lay down a bunch of overlapping AoEs, make it difficult for the enemy to approach, then simply use her general strengths as a [Hallow] - healing and self-buffs - to whittle the enemy away.

Typically, Cass had to deal with either lots of damage or lots of CC effects, both of which could shut her down before she was able to execute her main gameplan. But she figured something like 70 or 80% of the time she was able to lay the groundwork for all of her AoEs, she won. Most of her losses were from being unable to keep up with the opponent's opening moves.

As a [Hallow], she could heal herself pretty easily, but the time spent healing was time spent not moving her own strategy forward. And, generally speaking, she could not out heal a DPS [Path's] damage output.

Similarly, there were a number of [Paths] that had access to enough CC that she simply never got the chance to execute her plan, and died before she could really fight back. Had Sylvia brought their [Tower] loadout that was mentioned earlier in the day, Cass was pretty sure she would've been toast.

But, the current match up was entirely lopsided in her favor. [Blade], especially set up the way Sylvia's was, simply didn't put out enough damage to make Cass heal herself too much, nor did it bring enough CC to stop her from casting.

On top of that, with Evie simply surrounded in AoE effects, it left Sylvia's speed and movement abilities basically useless, because Cass didn't really need to worry too much about targeting. She simply threw out low cost damage effects, and didn't worry too much about missing, because it was the AoEs that would do the brunt of the work.

On top of that, because of the AoEs she chose for her compass layout, Sylvia really only had one option for approach direction, further lowering the usefulness of the [Blade's] speedy movement.

And finally, the thing that was the last nail in Sylvia's coffin was the way [Hallow] skirted around a tank's typical mitigation plan. In addition to Sylvia's current speed and movement, the other strength that a [Blade] relied on was their dodges, parries, and other mitigation tools. The AoEs that [Hallow] primarily utilized simply circumnavigated that issue entirely with area-based damage over time effects.

Effects that Sylvia would need to step into to deal damage to Evie to win. But while Evie could stand in the effects and heal herself, Sylvia only had access to one minor healing ability with a cooldown by default. And specced for dashes, probably did not add to that number.

The fight ended up lasting more than two minutes. Sylvia had spent a lot of the time trying to figure out the best approach to attacking Evie in the mess of AoEs, but really got nowhere.

"Man, I got nothing. Where's the forfeit button?" Sylvia said with a wry laugh.

"Hit escape, bud." Firo said.

"I told you Evie's Hallow is a nightmare." Zoe chuckled. "She has two weaknesses on it. Lots of damage, and lots of CC. But if she gets set up, it's over."

"To be fair, Mag Mell's balance for PvP is clearly not designed around duels." Cass said. "The Paths, especially with that way you can customize them, can specialize so much that the game becomes a game of rock, paper, scissors when you fight solo."

"You're not wrong." Sylvia agreed. "And AoE monster like you is the worst possible match up for me, too."

"Yeah, basically. On the other hand, your Blade would probably wreck any precision based ranged. An Arrow wouldn't stand a chance. They'd never hit you."

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"I don't think I've ever lost a duel to an Arrow with this setup." Sylvia agreed. "Keepers can make me sweat a little if they manage to chain CC on me, but I have enough escapes to usually turn it around."

"I wonder how Bisky would do…" Firo wondered aloud.

"Bisky?"

"Our Clan's de-facto leader." He clarified.

"I doubt she'd win." Zoe said. "Like he said, he's got enough ways to get out of the roots, plus being difficult to hit on top of that? Bisky's aim is pretty average, I don't think she'd do better than the average PvP player."

Firo chuckled at that. "You haven't seen her in many duels, have you?"

"We haven't, no. We really should do a big PvP night one night for funsies." Cass said.

"She has a couple different set ups on Arrow for PvP. And one of them is so off-meta and weird that I think it might actually be an indirect counter to Sylvia's Blade playstyle."

"Oh yeah?" Sylvia sounded like he was interested in the challenge.

"Oh yeah. You ever seen an Arrow play entirely around their traps?"

"I've had a bunch try to bait me into them, sure. They always try to put one between us, then stand behind it to stop my approach." The shrug in Sylvia's voice was clear. "It doesn't usually work. Even when they're using the invisible traps, it's pretty obvious when they start circling unnaturally that they placed one between us and are moving around it."

"That's not what I meant." Firo clarified. "I meant actually making their traps their main focus."

"Ah." Sylvia tried to recall his past Arrow duels. "Don't think I've ever seen that, no. Is there even any way for an Arrow to make that work? They don't have enough traps to make that work, do they?"

"Not without building for it entirely." Firo said. "I asked Bisky about it after watching her absolutely wreck someone with them. She said it requires dedicating all of her Invested Effects toward trap improvement ones, as well as altering her skills with the traps in mind."

"Yeah, that's definitely off-meta." Cass said. "I think most Arrows simply build for raw damage plus a few root effects to assist in landing their bigger skills."

"That's what I see most, yeah." Sylvia said. "By and large, they get countered one on one by lots of movement and anti-CC skills. If they can't hit you, they can't win."

"Absolute monsters in group PvP, though." Zoe said, and Firo let out a full belly laugh.

"Dude, the number of times I've been one-shot while on Mage in group PvP by a well placed Seeker shot is insane. If they can stay safely in the back line, layer a couple buffs, and land a weakpoint shot cleanly, you're just dead."

"They can chunk a tank for, like, 70%-ish in a single go, too, unless you already have some mit up. Seekers be scary, yo." Sylvia snickered.

"So!" Zoe said, stepping Nyx forward toward the ring. "After all this, I'm itching for a match. Who's up with me?"

"Firo?" Sylvia asked.

"All you if you want it." Firo shrugged.

"Cool. Bring it on, Nyx. I wanna see what makes your Athame so scary." Sylvia's excitement was obvious as Evie and Nyx swapped spots. Cass settled Evie in next to Firo to watch.

The fight did not last very long. Zoe's [Athame] put up a decent fight, utilizing the [Path's] debuffs and DoTs to try to deal with Sylvia, but wasn't able to keep up with Sylvia's constant zipping about. A fair number of Nyx's spells did land, but she missed just as many, all while Sylvia was able to keep constant pressure on Nyx.

Sylvia was entirely in her element. Skills were on a constant rotation, keeping her difficult to target, but not at the expense of damage and melee uptime. On the rare occasion that Nyx had Sylvia dead to rights, the [Blade] used a quick mitigation skill, either dodging or reducing the damage.

Watching the fight looked exactly like the opposite of what Cass imagined her bout had looked like. The [Blade] ruled the battlefield this time, with a lone [Athame] simply unable to land enough spells or outlast the reliable damage that the [Blade] could do.

In the final seconds, Nyx launched her final, desperate attack. [Hex Shatter] was potentially an [Athame's] most damaging attack. It removed all of the [Hex] spells from the target and dealt exponentially more damage for each [Hex] on the target. In PvP, if the [Athame] had been able to load up enough [Hex] type spells on their target, a single [Hex Shatter] could potentially wipe an enemy out in a single blast.

Nyx did successfully trap Sylvia into making the skill land, but Sylvia had managed to avoid enough of Nyx's previous spells to only take around 30% of her HP in damage. It simply wasn't enough.

Sylvia ate the [Hex Shatter] and closed the distance to Nyx, landing two more skills in quick succession, bringing the fight to a close.

Zoe let out a big groan. "Oh my god, I hate you." She said, then laughed in spite of herself. "That was just awful."

"You gotta adapt better, Nyx." Sylvia said as they both left the ring. "You just kept throwing more Hexes at me instead of trying something else, so I just kept doing what I was doing."

"And just what, exactly, should I have done?" Zoe said petulantly. "I'm currently set up as a hex master. All my damage is set up in hexes."

"...you dropped all of your knife tricks?" Cass asked, confused. Focusing on [Hexes] was not how Zoe usually played her [Athame].

Zoe just sighed. "Yeah. Wanted to try something new."

"The whole meta-off-meta discussion got to you?" Cass asked.

"I mean, not really? But I've never really tried the meta Athame style, so I figured, why not?"

Firo snorted. "Why would you choose some friendly solos to try it, when it's so bad at them?"

"I don't know." Zoe snapped back. "Give me five minutes, and I'll go swap back to my normal PvP setup. I'll come back and beat your ass, Firo."

Firo laughed. "Whoa, okay. Go get your stuff set and come back."

"You wait right there." Zoe said, sending Nyx literally flying out of the door.

"I'm still not used to seeing people flying around." Sylvia chuckled.

"I know, right?"

"So, how about it, Firo?" Sylvia said, "Everyone else took a shot. Want your turn?"

"Sure, why not. It'll be a good warm up for when Nyx gets back."

Firo stepped into the ring with Sylvia, and drew his weapon. As a [Rune], Firo had chosen to wield a [Longsword] type weapon, which gave him a good blend between reach, damage, and speed. It was one of the more balanced single-hand weapon types.

"Let's go!" Firo shouted as their fight began.

Their duel quickly turned into the most even bout so far. Sylvia continued to fight the way she had in every match so far, while Firo did his best to adapt to the flighty target.

[Runes] were a slightly more tank-y, melee option for the [Mage], and the difference between it and the [Invoker] was immediately clear. Sylvia's attacks weren't doing chunks of damage like they normally would against a cloth-wearing [Mage]. Instead, the [Rune] was able to take the blows in stride fairly well, all while retaliating with magically enhanced strikes of his own. Several which were accompanied by literal explosions.

[Runes] were built around the theme of putting the massive spells favored by the [Invoker] into a melee weapon and striking with it to all sorts of effects. It left fireballs erupting on contact, or shocking lightning strikes leaping from Sylvia on a hit. The resulting AoEs made [Runes] still well suited to AoE damage, but in response for only having point-blank AoEs, they dealt a ton of extra damage to their initial target while dealing less to others in the AoE. It made for a very interesting play style in PvE content.

In PvP, though, its strengths were quite clear in group battles, shredding through teams quickly if they were left alone. In solo duels, they could still pump out massive burst damage to their single opponent. And with melee attacks, Firo didn't need to worry so much about aiming at Sylvia's constantly moving body, simply striking when Sylvia got close for a strike of her own.

With Sylvia landing multiple, less potent attacks while Firo occasionally landed a much more powerful single attack here and there, the battle was surprisingly well balanced. When Firo eventually landed the final blow with a massive, flashy explosion, he only had around 6% of his own HP left.