Imagine’s PVP Issue #03 – Insomnia Edition
So… all of you have witness how PVP turned out pretty much like how I described…
Mainly:
1) Erosion hex is annoying in PVP and you HAVE to prepare a counter for it, along with the other status effect causing attacks.
2) Lord of Armor drastically improves your survivability in PVP.
This insomnia powered post will show some additional stuff that may or may not affect your PVP experiences.
1) Resist/reflect/void buffs
Not sure how common they are on the EN server, but these buffs are quite common on the JP one.
As an example, this is a devil I have:

From top left to bottom right: Attack, Mahasamanda, Hellfire, Reflect Ice, Reflect Fire, Void Zan, Resist Melee and Mediarama.
While reflect/void don’t work in PVP, they still reduce the damage you take to 1 for 3 attacks, and it’s a pretty decent advantage. Has no cooldown either, so you can chain cast it if you’re dexterous enough.
Resist buffs grants a straight 49% reduction, and they aren’t penalize. Plus, they stack with regal/enhance etc…
About resist melee, initially, it reduce all physical damage by 50% but was eventually fixed to reduce only slash/blunt/piece damage. Nevertheless, it’s still useful, especially against melee who use Rashomon.
There’s also a resist gun buff that reduce damage against the three default gun types, but right now, only immature Morrighan learns it and it was only given out during an event.
2) Force-based attacks
Cave introduced a new zan/force based weapon, 凶風 (Violent Wind) lately and quite a bunch of mages use it for PVP. It’s a 40 p.attack, 30 m.attack, +30% zan/force damage, 4 slot hand-to-hand weapon.
Since it’s a hand-to-hand weapon, most PVP melee don’t really use it.
Add to the fact that more and more people are hitting 150 devil requests and are getting the 13th Zodiac stone, Ophiuchus (+20% zan/force damage, ring slot) as a reward, the trend for high-end PVP mages lately is spamming kamaitachi.
30% from a weapon, 15% mod, 20% stone, 10% extra, 10% toggle = +85% zan/force damage before factoring armor.
Kamaitachi also has a very low cast speed and with just toggles, it’s pretty close to instant cast.
Lag a bit or blink and you’ll be rushed 2-3 times, more often than not, without regal etc…, you’ll be dead by the first or second rush.
3) The Nocturne Costumes
Referring to these sets.
The armor itself cannot be traded, but the voucher can. Each costume also grants a skill on top of damage boosts.
The problematic one is Chiaki’s and the main character’s costume.
Chiaki’s costume gives a party-wide buff, Tyrant’s Command and it adds 2 to the activation stack of all skills.
The buff affects devils as well.
What does this means? If means that after charging up megidora etc… once, you can cast it THREE times in succession.
The worst cast scenario will be something like
1) Cast/receive buff
2) Receive clock off from party member. (2 cast of clock off left)
3) Instant charge Megidolaon
4) Cast Megidolaon 3x
5) Receive clock off from party member. (1 cast of clock off left)
6) Instant charge Megidola
7) Cast Megidola 3x
8) Receive clock off from party member. (0 cast of clock off left)
9) Instant charge Megido
10) Cast Megido 3x
Remember, this works for the whole party. This is especially unbalanced in 5 vs 5 as the group which has Chiaki’s costume is going to have a huge advantage over the other group.
A full party of mages is going to have 15 Megidolaon. 30 Megidolaon total if their devils has it, and that’s a painful among of damage.
The main character’s costume is also problematic, but to a lesser extend.
It grants the user an AE spin skill, Gaea’s Rage that does damage based on your level. Damage type depends on weapon.
Since it’s a spin, stuff like Nozuchi etc… boost its damage as well.
Most melee do about 6-9k damage with it PVE, and around 1-2k PVP depending on weapon/affinity etc. Tyrant’s Command affect it as well.
Like the other spins, it has a very minimal casttime, and can easily be weaved into your attack spam for an instant “nuke”.
As of now, PVP can still be considered “balanced” on the EN server.
Offense always goes up in Imagine, but defense pretty much remains stagnant and as more +boost things get introduced, the differences between the various archetypes will grow larger and larger.
e.g. Best armor on Aeria now is probably the rider set at 15% boost to one element for 4 armor pieces. Comparatively, on the JP server, the top I’m using alone adds 12% damage to all attacks and 8% fire/ice/magic, giving a total of 20% boost for just 1 armor piece.
However, the defense granted by rider top and my kimono is the same.
Currently, among the top 20 PVPers in JP, 12 are mages, 7 are melee with 1 sole gunner there. It should be easy to tell why the distribution is like this.
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Its nice to see my that my build is doing very well in Japanese pvp. Kamaitachi ftw!
I really hope Aeria games version doesnt become a CP fest like the Japanese server to the point where the came is no longer fun.
Top 20 PVPers for EN population? you got like 5 melee and like 15 mages rofl. Whats a pvp gunner? :O
Mages dominating? Unpossible. Next you’ll be saying that chaos usually wins. :/
Actually surprisingly, weighted on the Top players of law and of Chaos for pvp atm, it is almost 50-50 balance. The top 2 players on server are Chaos, but thereafter, almost rest of top 10 are all law players.
Only odd thing about the fate matches is everyday during the day chaos wins (cause all the the high levels are on) and at night law wins all the matches (for same reason).
Though it did help that me and my friend (Rho) changed to law to help their side or it might be extremely skewed too.
It’s a shame I’m a gunner.
We have someone as a chaos mage who has 0 death and reached the max rank. He’s untouchable enough that even Pearz gave up on trying.
And yeah, law during the night is hardcore, makes me actually want to finish class 4 regal and get my strength back. I blame it mostly on Rho, law force mage is really painful when you can’t normal attack.
Well, this is more of a deliberate result of certain players to shift the balance around.
If left naturally, there tend to be more chaos players than law and such, would dictate that chaos win more often due.
Well t wasn’t deliberate to oppose chaos. I moved to law for the uriel effect as its prettyhard to skip that whole chunk of my life.
Rho is Force mage, huge benefits for being law.
Just so happens restof high lvl population is Chaos for surt bonus.
Well, Uriel comes with the funfun -50% ice resistance penalty which will be problematic once the frost set is available.
Zan slot/Pazuzu isn’t used that much in PVP lately due to the 100% cap of elemental damage. I’ll elaborate on this later when I’ve the time to put up how damage boost calculation is done.
Most use other extra slots with Aquarius enchanted for resistance.
Then again, different server, different state of gear, different approach to PVP.
How exactly do the Resist/reflect/void buffs do they apply only to the demon or can you select a target? Either way it will take a long time to get demon levels that high to get those skills
It’s a targetable buff.
Ultimately, you do try and get them if you’re serious about PVP though, since they do make a difference.
Question: http://zoome.jp/11nin/diary/5/
This Video was the only PVP video of Jap Megaten PVP that I seen. How closely does it resemeble PVP? or maybe other links? Is this what you consider still semi balanced PVP (since don’t see anyone with the armors you speak of)
This is something that’s taken just when versus was implemented so yeah, can still be considered balanced I guess. Chance for a PC to 1 hit another PC still isn’t that high.
Definitely doesn’t reflect the current situation with Chiaki’s costume etc…
Let me see if I can dig out any other public PVP videos. Most don’t really fraps their PVP experience here since it’s considered rude as you’re “mocking” those that lost.
It seems gunners are gonna be nearly useless in pvp in the future. Anyways would you happen to know that sole gunner’s build? There must be something he is doing that is working against others in pvp.
Don’t really know what he’s using since I’ve yet to face him in a battle. Guesstimating rapid + something else.
I was wondering about the void zan and resist-melee. I have tracked down both reflect fire and ice. any info on how to obtain them would be great thanks ^^d
void zan, djinn lv 62 (start from 44ish). Resist melee Pallas Athena lv 82 (start from 76). There’s one for zio too, lucky pixie lv 76 happy ichigaya hack zombiing~
hmmm so pallas athena huh? no chaos demons have it i suppose… (this is gonna cost me abit for sure)
Note: Very sarcastic post.
Dear everyone…
Forget about getting nulls skills to be good at PVP, forget about getting CP items/gears/weapons for PVP/PVE, forget about levelling up for being better or stronger. The PVP was unbalanced but it wasn’t CAVE’s design flaw. It was your fault.
Why? Clickie (by clickie I actually meant point and laugh)
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=921999&topic=49823250&page=1
As you can see on the above link, getting better at things like video games or tennis match or job or social skills or managing a family without questions or end is a sickness. Improving yourself is a very sick and uncivilized behaviour! You should be ashamed of yourselves. (Note: CAVE is still innocent in making PVP/archetypes unbalanced, their design is flawless)
PS. farming plasma is inhuman. if you farm one too, shame on you plus plus.
2 village idiots talking… What do you expect? Something intelligent?
Dumbidiots.Mustbedestroyed.
Does the new zan weapon look the same as the tonfa’s?
Don’t really look like tonfa, more like green colored horns.