Witch Elf Guide
Mastery Choices:
So, we’ve got many different specs that im sure many people are using, but im only really going to discuss the two that I have found the most useful in rvr combat.
Carnage – http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...04:3:8:5:32:25
This spec’s main tools are On Your Knees, Kiss Of Doom (imo a must have for any spec, the damage increase alone from this is pretty nasty), and Elixir of the Cauldron (also imo a must have, were a squishy class, that’s going to attract a lot of fire, why not use that to our advantage in wasting the enemy time).
This spec, in my eyes, is more of a ‘pugging’ spec. That is, you can go in to the enemy ranks, and will usually kill one, without relying too heavily on support. The premise behind this is that you can pop on a bright wizard, throat slitter, get a kiss up, and on your knees everyone in the vicinity. This should give you the time to finish off that one enemy and either start working on the second or to get out of there leaving the enemy reeling from the incredibly fast death of one of their number.
Carnage does allow armor bypass with pierce armor, it gives us ~0 armor mitigation against almost all of our priority targets: RDPS, Runepriests, Archmages, etc... Make sure you get up an ailment on the enemy before using pierce armor so you get the armor penetration for 10 seconds.
Same with EoIP which gives us 0 armor against anyone for a nice burst, or the fact that PA works like a more powerful AW every 10 seconds (assuming they already aren't at 0 from the debuff) - Thanks Sogui
Pro’s
• Doesn’t need as much support to do its job,
• Gets you high on the damage meters (lol),
• Good for spreading a kiss of death over a few healers in the enemy ranks
• Less susceptible to CC, due to knocking down anyone who means to get you off the squishy your focusing.
• High damage, ability to deal with almost all classes attacking you.
• Relatively easy to play well, and kill people
Con’s
• No healing debuff, I cant stress this enough, if your playing with a team, without a healing debuff, against a premade or even a pug with good healers, they are more likely to be able to heal through your damage. (note that kiss of death isn’t a healing taken debuff, it’s a healing done debuff, hence why spreading a kiss of death over their healers is such a good idea)
• Needs weapon skill as a secondary stat to do more damage, since slice doesn’t ignore armour, this means less toughness/wounds and therefore less survivability.
Suffering/Treachery -
http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...520:11:2592:25
The only other mastery setup that I find useful for RVR combat. This build focuses on high single target damage, and utility. This is the build that I use so I may be a touch bias .
I find this spec very useful when in groups, and against other premades. The ability to put one black lotus up on someone that’s being focus fired as your running back to your healers after nuking down some poor schmuck of a bright wizard, and watching that person, being focus healed, still die, will keep the grin on my face for a long time. I started playing this build by getting an opener, then going for damage, and getting the healing debuff up on the person as soon as possible… but then when I started playing against better and better adversaries, I noticed… people can dispel your opener…. Damn those bright wizards. So, as it stands now I get up a heart seeker straight away after my opener to cover it for a few seconds, getting up a kiss and then a black lotus blade. By this time I should have 3 ailments on the target, which should cover your opener from dispels, unless the other team seems adamant in getting rid of it, instead of healing the person your mauling.
This build is very reliant on team mates. Your very easy to get cc’ed, so you will want at least a tank with you in the front ranks keeping snares up on the target your dpsing, guarding you, and knocking back those pesky Ironbreakers who try to knock you back. You will also want healers, this spec isn’t really designed to kill more than one enemy per stealth run. Go in, kill one, retreat and harass enemy melee/tanks while being healed back up.
Your mission is utility, your there to stun people, to get up debuffs on the right people to cripple the other team, while also nuking down squishy targets to thin the enemy ranks once in a while. This spec IS NOT, at least in my eyes, a suicide spec.
Pro’s
• Healing debuff – love to the black lotus.
• Nasty single target dps, but not hugely more, if at all, than carnage.
• Strength is the only dps stat that is really worthwhile to stack, since our main attack ignores armour. This leaves more room open for toughness/wounds, meaning that your more durable than some people might expect (which is good since you should have a healer, remember, this is a team play spec.)
Con’s
• Vulnerable to cc, moreso than the carnage spec listed above.
• Less aoe damage – don’t expect to top the damage meters with this spec.
• Hardish to play, since most of your moves require positional requirements, getting behind the enemy is sometimes quite difficult.
Gear – Now, im not going to make a full list of gear to aim for, because well, I don’t really have the time to go through all that effort. What I will do is tell you what stats I personally think, are the best stats for your witch elf.
Strength – What more can I say, it increases dps, if your having trouble nuking people down, stock up!
Wounds – Once you have enough strength to get people down, wounds is the best way to get survivability. Some people think toughness is the way to go, but theres a forum somewhere around here that shows that toughness is only the way to go as a tank. That being said, the wounds renown training gives you less wounds than any other stat, and the wounds talismans are the easiest ones to get permanent. I think you know what im saying there, get other stats from renown training and stock up your talismans with 19 wounds perma ones. They’re in our auction house usually for 35g each.
Toughness – Always a nice stat to get, not quite on the level of wounds, but renown training toughness is cheaper per point than wounds, and a lot of the wounds gear has toughness on it too. Basically, the way toughness works is that it reduces the dps taken by a certain amount per person attacking you, so say you have 100 people attacking you at 10 dps each, toughness could reduce that down to very very little (1 damage an attack I think is the lowest). Whereas its not as effective against burst dps (the type of dps were more likely to take). This makes toughness still a nice stat against low dpsers, like healers who are noob enough to try to dps you down while your ripping their face off, or turrets/pets.
Initiative – Although I personally haven’t stacked much of this, ive been hearing lately it’s a pretty decent stat to have afterall. Reduction in being crit is always nice to have.
Weapon skill – Great stat for carnage specced Witch Elves, not so good for the other two mastery trees, mostly because the main attacks of treachery and suffering should be ignoring armor (the dot part of envenomed blade, and if your attacking from behind with agonizing wound)
Willpower – this is for healers, heres hoping that Mythic gets this crap off our gear. Now before everyone says ‘BUT IT GIVES US SPELL DISRUPTION’! you should know that spells aren’t what normally kills us, and were quite good against them (see elixir of the cauldron) I’d much rather have an extra 100 hp than 10 willpower giving me a tinnnny bit of spell disrupt. That also being said, its not the worst stat to have some of, I think I’ve got like +20 of it due to annihilator having some, and my shoulders too.
Intel – If you have any of this, I pity you. Give us absolutely nothing, unless I’m missing something huge.
Ballistic skill – Throwing dagger damage, at least I’d assume, we don’t need any of this stat, were not going to kill anyone with throwing damage, and if we do, its probably because of that nice hefty kiss proc coming from the dagger.
Can anyone give me the link to the character finding profiley thingy website? Incase anyone wants to look at what im using and ask me where to get it.
Mastery Choices:
So, we’ve got many different specs that im sure many people are using, but im only really going to discuss the two that I have found the most useful in rvr combat.
Tactic Choices –
Kiss Of Doom - <3,>Flanking – Great for both dungeons (or any group pve) and RVR, and indeed any situation where you can get behind an enemy, 15% is quite a nice chunk of damage. I’d say this is probably a must have unless your solo grinding, in which case its not so good (just about useless infact)
Sharpened Edge – I think this procs before the finisher goes ahead, in which case it’s a nice dps boost for finishers, especially ruthless assault (since it procs from each hit). Never used it myself, but I hear decent things at least.
Brute Force – Dps increase, good to have, I think it gives like 32 dps increase on specials, 16 on autoattacks. So that’s like… 45 damage increase to most skills.
Swift Blades – Might be useful for aoe farming when combined with riposte, cant really see a use in group pve and while rvring, but for soloing I can see it could have its uses. Especially as carnage while aoe farming.
Septic Blade – Sure, it decreases the amount of damage the enemy your attacking is going to be doing, but in rvr, how much dps do you think that bright wizard your stabbing in the spleen is going to be doing anyway? Could be nice for group pve with mobs that hit the tank exceptionally hard. (Bilerot anyone?)
Swift Pursuit – Heard it was bugged so never bothered to use it, would be good if fleet footed actually worked too. For 1v1 this would be great, but if your 1v1ing in this game your probably going to win quite easily anyway, or your doing something wrong. (at least imo)
Healers Bane – Could be quite nice, pity most people would never use envenomed blade as their main attack ever, might be good for a game with no bright wizards (since most witch elves go for bright wiz before healers). Cant imagine giving up on masterful treachery for it though.
Swift Movements – Heard this sometimes bugs out, cant see it being hugely useful, would only be useful if your attacking melee who are on you constantly, which means your probably doing something wrong.
Baneful Touch – Could be useful for group pve, but I cant imagine giving up other tactics for it. If anyone has any experience with this post, it might be really good, never know.
Masterful treachery – This is a little beauty. Get the drop on someone and your going to be doing some crazy damage, definitely enough to drop most targets pretty fast. Might just be coincidence but I notice doing a lot better with this tactic as opposed to without it.
Sacrificed Rewarded – Solo pve and if your playing very very defensive in RVR (doing something wrong again prolly)
Broad Severing – Aoe grinding, or if the other team has a lot of melee focusing you, can you imagine disarming those 6 melee attacking you? That’d be schweet.
Taste of blood – Solo pve is where I can see this being pretty good. Not much else though.
Bathing blood – Doesn’t give enough health to realllly warrant it over other things for solo pve, and it wouldn’t be useful anywhere else. (maybe a use for that wisdom gear mythic keeps giving us?!!)
For the hag queen – So people are telling me that this isnt bugged, and that it has a chance to proc from all hits of a relentless strikes. Could be good for lower levels but at higher levels youve probably allready got another stun which will kick up unstoppable, which i think will stop this from working. If anyone knows if knockdowns/stuns are both affected/start unstoppable or not, please post.
Exotic venom – Very rarely would the extra 5 seconds kill someone, they’re either dispelled or dead by 10 seconds in at the latest, can only think of one situation where the extra 5 seconds would have killed someone, and he died anyway from some random sorc.
Riposte – Could be good for aoe solo farming? Almost useless for rvr, if your being beaten on, that extra tiny bit of damage isn’t really going to win it for you, unless your going 1v1 with someone.
Alignment of naggaroth – Garbage
Jagged Edge – If this scales with strength it might ok for group pve… maybe, but I doubt it.
Dark Blessings – Could be useful with a healbot or three.
Frenzied mayhem – Couple this with Increased Pain and it could be quite useful to just sit at 5 bloodlust forever to keep 15% extra crit going? See what you guys think.
Whirling Blades – Great for carnage solo pve imo, get to that ruthless assault faster. I tend to be swimming in bloodlust anyway as suff/treach so I don’t really see a use for it, any carnage specced people want to testify?
Increased Pain – Extra burst dps, who can go wrong?
All that being said, currently im running with brute force, flanking, masterful treachery, and Kiss of Doom. This provides me with some very nasty burst damage to take down a target once I pop on them. For carnage specced I’d suggest instead of masterful treachery (which you wont have) use Increased Pain, get some hefty big crits. After all, the aim of a witch elf is to burst people down before they can react, hehe.
Morale Abilities.
Mostly just gonna say that Confusing movements > Sever nerve, that is all. 1200 damage at level 40 really isn’t that much when you can get heartseeker crit’ for like 1300 without Increased pain, and 7 seconds where your immune to physical (or very nearly) is a godsend when your being focused, like Elixir of the Cauldron, wasting the other teams action points and more importantly, time. Note, to parry an attack you have to be facing the attacker, you cant parry or dodge an attack coming from behind, this means you cant activate this ability and turn tail and flee and expect to live, you’ve got to sidestrafe or backpedal away from the enemy(s) for it to work.
I use web of shadows for rank 2 morale, since we run with a magus, and its nice to help with the aoe’ing down of the enemy team, hehe.
Broad swings, does more aoe damage than web of shadows unless you only hit the enemy 4 or less times (waste of a morale then) or if there’s a hell of a lot of enemies. Great for nuking down packs of champs (since they normally come in 3’s). Don’t think I’ve ever used this in RVR. Its very situational is all I can say for RVR.
Play style.
Personally I play like a guerrilla warrior, coming in from the sides, nuking down a bright wizard, and running back to my lines to protect the healers/ranked until my stealth comes up again. I’m not saying this is the best way to play, but I will say I hate suicide witch elves, you know, the ones that go in, try to kill as many as possible and die, respawn and repeat. Some people may say this helps the team more than what I’m doing, and if you can get down 2 enemies before you die you may be right, but while your running back you can be picked off and you cant do anything to protect or work with the rest of your team.
Also, these suicide witch elves tend to not know that once the enemy gets away, there’s not much chance that you’re going to be able to kill them. Sometimes its better to run away, pop a cauldron to absorb the enemy fire and waste their time, and then go again in a few seconds, than to spend a minute running back to the fight and giving the enemy points.
The way I see things, melee are mostly there to break the enemy lines and mop them up when they are breaking and running. Ranged are there to kill enemy melee and push the enemy back through concentrated fire (forcing the enemy backwards), and tanks/healers are there to hold the line in place. If you go in and kill an enemy, then run back to your lines, chances are their entire team is going to be focus firing you into the dirt, by running early, you have a much higher chance of getting back into my lines where you have the ranged dps to cover you and the enemy team has just wasted 10 seconds of their time trying to nuke down someone who didn’t die. This gives your team more time to kill or CC a couple more of their players. Hell, even if you don’t kill one (very rare against pugs), you’re still absorbing fire, and giving your team time. You know how annoying it is when that bright wizard gets out of your reach? That’s what you’ll be doing to them.
Target Priority.
This will vary from player to player, from mastery to mastery, but I think I can safely say KILL THOSE DAMN BRIGHT WIZARDS. These guys will pump out so much dps its incredible, and they go down fast, what’s not to love about sticking a dagger into their back. For example, say the enemy team consists of 2 bright wizards, 2 healers, an engineer, some people would go for the healers, leaving the bright wizards free to cc you, burn you etc… while the healer (if hes decent) will probably get away. Going for the bright wizard will probably mean that he will be doing damage to himself while running from you, hes probably squishier, he will probably not get heals until a few seconds after the healer would have given them to himself if you’d jumped him (since he wont notice straight away the bright wiz has been targeted), and most of all, he wont be able to dps you back. Killing dps as a witch elf is what you should be doing, sure you can kill healers, but that means you’ll go down faster, and hence have less chance of killing one, killing all the enemy’s dps and their line will crumble, without much retaliation. Killing a healer will mean that their line can still crumble, but will be doing a lot more dps to your team while they are crumbling. TLDR – killing their dps is a lot safer.
Stupid things to stay away from –
Running in by yourself. The amount of times per game I see some random magus or sorc try to take on 10 people by yourself, its just stupid, your feeding the other team points, while reducing your own impact on the game. Don’t try to be a hero, that’s the tanks job to charge in first, because they can soak the damage. Try to time your charges for when your team has melee in with the enemy. This should make your chances of being focused a lot lower, since people wont notice you as easily (noticing one melee is harder than noticing the witch elf in three melee). Also, you’ll have backup meaning that the targets should go down faster. If your running with a team, the tank chucking guard on you, and snaring your target will make nuking it down so much faster.
Realise that healers don’t automatically notice you. If your behind the healer, they probably wont notice you as fast as if your in front of them. Yeah, there are some bad healers that don’t seem to notice you at all, but think of it from a healers perspective. There could be 5 people on your team all at 10% hp, if you pop a pot to live and the healer keeps as many of the 5 people getting hurt up as possible, he can hot you up after they’re out of damage and instead there’s more people alive at the end. Also, the other side of it, you stayed in far too long and got gibbed by 10 people focus firing you and you had no chance, take this with a grain of salt and respawn and move on, think to yourself, could I have popped my abilities better to allow the damage I took to be lower, and give my healers a chance to heal me? Could I have gotten out earlier to avoid the burst? Was I running in without support? Then again, if you get two dots on yourself, nobody else in your team is taking damage and you stand right in front of the healer and he lets you die, feel free to call him whatever you want.
Tips and tricks
These may not be classified as tricks or whatever, but I’m hoping that people will reply with their own tricks/tips so I can add them to the guide.
Popping a cauldron early – If your trying to stop damage taken completely (i.e. you don’t have a healer) popping the cauldron as you think the enemys will start to chuck their dots on you etc… i.e. where you think they have noticed you, chuck it up, I think ive had more than 50 spells disrupted by the one cauldron before, when 9 odd people started spamming me with dots only to see them all disrupted. Now, if you do have a healer, realise that you can time the cauldron differently, your job with a healer is to reduce the burst damage you take, as to make yourself more healable, but also to bring attention to yourself in that you will need healing soon. Using the cauldron after you have a few dots up, means that your taking stable damage, its not high enough to not be healed through, but it lets the healer know to heal you, this also means that once the cauldron runs out, you will have hots/heals incoming and are more likely to be healed through it.
Openers from Stealth
Protip: Openers from stealth (Enfeeble Strike, Treacherous Assault, Vehement Blades) do not invoke the GCD, so it is wise to bind your most often used ability directly out of stealth to the same hotkey as your most often used opener. This allows you to spam your opener and get another hit and bloodlust in simultaneously with your opener. This is great for either getting up a quick kiss/healing debuff, or to stun/throat slitter them to scare them right from the start. - Thanks Qpon
On the respawn run or getting back into the fight
After respawning and running back to the engagement zone you see an IB/Lion/SM deep in your lines, quickly throw a few hits at them for bloodlust before going off to look for a squishy. If carnage spec, feel free to pop a CoIP and you have quite a high chance of bursting them down.
If there is any missing information, please email: [email protected]
<-Go Back
So, we’ve got many different specs that im sure many people are using, but im only really going to discuss the two that I have found the most useful in rvr combat.
Carnage – http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...04:3:8:5:32:25
This spec’s main tools are On Your Knees, Kiss Of Doom (imo a must have for any spec, the damage increase alone from this is pretty nasty), and Elixir of the Cauldron (also imo a must have, were a squishy class, that’s going to attract a lot of fire, why not use that to our advantage in wasting the enemy time).
This spec, in my eyes, is more of a ‘pugging’ spec. That is, you can go in to the enemy ranks, and will usually kill one, without relying too heavily on support. The premise behind this is that you can pop on a bright wizard, throat slitter, get a kiss up, and on your knees everyone in the vicinity. This should give you the time to finish off that one enemy and either start working on the second or to get out of there leaving the enemy reeling from the incredibly fast death of one of their number.
Carnage does allow armor bypass with pierce armor, it gives us ~0 armor mitigation against almost all of our priority targets: RDPS, Runepriests, Archmages, etc... Make sure you get up an ailment on the enemy before using pierce armor so you get the armor penetration for 10 seconds.
Same with EoIP which gives us 0 armor against anyone for a nice burst, or the fact that PA works like a more powerful AW every 10 seconds (assuming they already aren't at 0 from the debuff) - Thanks Sogui
Pro’s
• Doesn’t need as much support to do its job,
• Gets you high on the damage meters (lol),
• Good for spreading a kiss of death over a few healers in the enemy ranks
• Less susceptible to CC, due to knocking down anyone who means to get you off the squishy your focusing.
• High damage, ability to deal with almost all classes attacking you.
• Relatively easy to play well, and kill people
Con’s
• No healing debuff, I cant stress this enough, if your playing with a team, without a healing debuff, against a premade or even a pug with good healers, they are more likely to be able to heal through your damage. (note that kiss of death isn’t a healing taken debuff, it’s a healing done debuff, hence why spreading a kiss of death over their healers is such a good idea)
• Needs weapon skill as a secondary stat to do more damage, since slice doesn’t ignore armour, this means less toughness/wounds and therefore less survivability.
Suffering/Treachery -
http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...520:11:2592:25
The only other mastery setup that I find useful for RVR combat. This build focuses on high single target damage, and utility. This is the build that I use so I may be a touch bias .
I find this spec very useful when in groups, and against other premades. The ability to put one black lotus up on someone that’s being focus fired as your running back to your healers after nuking down some poor schmuck of a bright wizard, and watching that person, being focus healed, still die, will keep the grin on my face for a long time. I started playing this build by getting an opener, then going for damage, and getting the healing debuff up on the person as soon as possible… but then when I started playing against better and better adversaries, I noticed… people can dispel your opener…. Damn those bright wizards. So, as it stands now I get up a heart seeker straight away after my opener to cover it for a few seconds, getting up a kiss and then a black lotus blade. By this time I should have 3 ailments on the target, which should cover your opener from dispels, unless the other team seems adamant in getting rid of it, instead of healing the person your mauling.
This build is very reliant on team mates. Your very easy to get cc’ed, so you will want at least a tank with you in the front ranks keeping snares up on the target your dpsing, guarding you, and knocking back those pesky Ironbreakers who try to knock you back. You will also want healers, this spec isn’t really designed to kill more than one enemy per stealth run. Go in, kill one, retreat and harass enemy melee/tanks while being healed back up.
Your mission is utility, your there to stun people, to get up debuffs on the right people to cripple the other team, while also nuking down squishy targets to thin the enemy ranks once in a while. This spec IS NOT, at least in my eyes, a suicide spec.
Pro’s
• Healing debuff – love to the black lotus.
• Nasty single target dps, but not hugely more, if at all, than carnage.
• Strength is the only dps stat that is really worthwhile to stack, since our main attack ignores armour. This leaves more room open for toughness/wounds, meaning that your more durable than some people might expect (which is good since you should have a healer, remember, this is a team play spec.)
Con’s
• Vulnerable to cc, moreso than the carnage spec listed above.
• Less aoe damage – don’t expect to top the damage meters with this spec.
• Hardish to play, since most of your moves require positional requirements, getting behind the enemy is sometimes quite difficult.
Gear – Now, im not going to make a full list of gear to aim for, because well, I don’t really have the time to go through all that effort. What I will do is tell you what stats I personally think, are the best stats for your witch elf.
Strength – What more can I say, it increases dps, if your having trouble nuking people down, stock up!
Wounds – Once you have enough strength to get people down, wounds is the best way to get survivability. Some people think toughness is the way to go, but theres a forum somewhere around here that shows that toughness is only the way to go as a tank. That being said, the wounds renown training gives you less wounds than any other stat, and the wounds talismans are the easiest ones to get permanent. I think you know what im saying there, get other stats from renown training and stock up your talismans with 19 wounds perma ones. They’re in our auction house usually for 35g each.
Toughness – Always a nice stat to get, not quite on the level of wounds, but renown training toughness is cheaper per point than wounds, and a lot of the wounds gear has toughness on it too. Basically, the way toughness works is that it reduces the dps taken by a certain amount per person attacking you, so say you have 100 people attacking you at 10 dps each, toughness could reduce that down to very very little (1 damage an attack I think is the lowest). Whereas its not as effective against burst dps (the type of dps were more likely to take). This makes toughness still a nice stat against low dpsers, like healers who are noob enough to try to dps you down while your ripping their face off, or turrets/pets.
Initiative – Although I personally haven’t stacked much of this, ive been hearing lately it’s a pretty decent stat to have afterall. Reduction in being crit is always nice to have.
Weapon skill – Great stat for carnage specced Witch Elves, not so good for the other two mastery trees, mostly because the main attacks of treachery and suffering should be ignoring armor (the dot part of envenomed blade, and if your attacking from behind with agonizing wound)
Willpower – this is for healers, heres hoping that Mythic gets this crap off our gear. Now before everyone says ‘BUT IT GIVES US SPELL DISRUPTION’! you should know that spells aren’t what normally kills us, and were quite good against them (see elixir of the cauldron) I’d much rather have an extra 100 hp than 10 willpower giving me a tinnnny bit of spell disrupt. That also being said, its not the worst stat to have some of, I think I’ve got like +20 of it due to annihilator having some, and my shoulders too.
Intel – If you have any of this, I pity you. Give us absolutely nothing, unless I’m missing something huge.
Ballistic skill – Throwing dagger damage, at least I’d assume, we don’t need any of this stat, were not going to kill anyone with throwing damage, and if we do, its probably because of that nice hefty kiss proc coming from the dagger.
Can anyone give me the link to the character finding profiley thingy website? Incase anyone wants to look at what im using and ask me where to get it.
Mastery Choices:
So, we’ve got many different specs that im sure many people are using, but im only really going to discuss the two that I have found the most useful in rvr combat.
Tactic Choices –
Kiss Of Doom - <3,>Flanking – Great for both dungeons (or any group pve) and RVR, and indeed any situation where you can get behind an enemy, 15% is quite a nice chunk of damage. I’d say this is probably a must have unless your solo grinding, in which case its not so good (just about useless infact)
Sharpened Edge – I think this procs before the finisher goes ahead, in which case it’s a nice dps boost for finishers, especially ruthless assault (since it procs from each hit). Never used it myself, but I hear decent things at least.
Brute Force – Dps increase, good to have, I think it gives like 32 dps increase on specials, 16 on autoattacks. So that’s like… 45 damage increase to most skills.
Swift Blades – Might be useful for aoe farming when combined with riposte, cant really see a use in group pve and while rvring, but for soloing I can see it could have its uses. Especially as carnage while aoe farming.
Septic Blade – Sure, it decreases the amount of damage the enemy your attacking is going to be doing, but in rvr, how much dps do you think that bright wizard your stabbing in the spleen is going to be doing anyway? Could be nice for group pve with mobs that hit the tank exceptionally hard. (Bilerot anyone?)
Swift Pursuit – Heard it was bugged so never bothered to use it, would be good if fleet footed actually worked too. For 1v1 this would be great, but if your 1v1ing in this game your probably going to win quite easily anyway, or your doing something wrong. (at least imo)
Healers Bane – Could be quite nice, pity most people would never use envenomed blade as their main attack ever, might be good for a game with no bright wizards (since most witch elves go for bright wiz before healers). Cant imagine giving up on masterful treachery for it though.
Swift Movements – Heard this sometimes bugs out, cant see it being hugely useful, would only be useful if your attacking melee who are on you constantly, which means your probably doing something wrong.
Baneful Touch – Could be useful for group pve, but I cant imagine giving up other tactics for it. If anyone has any experience with this post, it might be really good, never know.
Masterful treachery – This is a little beauty. Get the drop on someone and your going to be doing some crazy damage, definitely enough to drop most targets pretty fast. Might just be coincidence but I notice doing a lot better with this tactic as opposed to without it.
Sacrificed Rewarded – Solo pve and if your playing very very defensive in RVR (doing something wrong again prolly)
Broad Severing – Aoe grinding, or if the other team has a lot of melee focusing you, can you imagine disarming those 6 melee attacking you? That’d be schweet.
Taste of blood – Solo pve is where I can see this being pretty good. Not much else though.
Bathing blood – Doesn’t give enough health to realllly warrant it over other things for solo pve, and it wouldn’t be useful anywhere else. (maybe a use for that wisdom gear mythic keeps giving us?!!)
For the hag queen – So people are telling me that this isnt bugged, and that it has a chance to proc from all hits of a relentless strikes. Could be good for lower levels but at higher levels youve probably allready got another stun which will kick up unstoppable, which i think will stop this from working. If anyone knows if knockdowns/stuns are both affected/start unstoppable or not, please post.
Exotic venom – Very rarely would the extra 5 seconds kill someone, they’re either dispelled or dead by 10 seconds in at the latest, can only think of one situation where the extra 5 seconds would have killed someone, and he died anyway from some random sorc.
Riposte – Could be good for aoe solo farming? Almost useless for rvr, if your being beaten on, that extra tiny bit of damage isn’t really going to win it for you, unless your going 1v1 with someone.
Alignment of naggaroth – Garbage
Jagged Edge – If this scales with strength it might ok for group pve… maybe, but I doubt it.
Dark Blessings – Could be useful with a healbot or three.
Frenzied mayhem – Couple this with Increased Pain and it could be quite useful to just sit at 5 bloodlust forever to keep 15% extra crit going? See what you guys think.
Whirling Blades – Great for carnage solo pve imo, get to that ruthless assault faster. I tend to be swimming in bloodlust anyway as suff/treach so I don’t really see a use for it, any carnage specced people want to testify?
Increased Pain – Extra burst dps, who can go wrong?
All that being said, currently im running with brute force, flanking, masterful treachery, and Kiss of Doom. This provides me with some very nasty burst damage to take down a target once I pop on them. For carnage specced I’d suggest instead of masterful treachery (which you wont have) use Increased Pain, get some hefty big crits. After all, the aim of a witch elf is to burst people down before they can react, hehe.
Morale Abilities.
Mostly just gonna say that Confusing movements > Sever nerve, that is all. 1200 damage at level 40 really isn’t that much when you can get heartseeker crit’ for like 1300 without Increased pain, and 7 seconds where your immune to physical (or very nearly) is a godsend when your being focused, like Elixir of the Cauldron, wasting the other teams action points and more importantly, time. Note, to parry an attack you have to be facing the attacker, you cant parry or dodge an attack coming from behind, this means you cant activate this ability and turn tail and flee and expect to live, you’ve got to sidestrafe or backpedal away from the enemy(s) for it to work.
I use web of shadows for rank 2 morale, since we run with a magus, and its nice to help with the aoe’ing down of the enemy team, hehe.
Broad swings, does more aoe damage than web of shadows unless you only hit the enemy 4 or less times (waste of a morale then) or if there’s a hell of a lot of enemies. Great for nuking down packs of champs (since they normally come in 3’s). Don’t think I’ve ever used this in RVR. Its very situational is all I can say for RVR.
Play style.
Personally I play like a guerrilla warrior, coming in from the sides, nuking down a bright wizard, and running back to my lines to protect the healers/ranked until my stealth comes up again. I’m not saying this is the best way to play, but I will say I hate suicide witch elves, you know, the ones that go in, try to kill as many as possible and die, respawn and repeat. Some people may say this helps the team more than what I’m doing, and if you can get down 2 enemies before you die you may be right, but while your running back you can be picked off and you cant do anything to protect or work with the rest of your team.
Also, these suicide witch elves tend to not know that once the enemy gets away, there’s not much chance that you’re going to be able to kill them. Sometimes its better to run away, pop a cauldron to absorb the enemy fire and waste their time, and then go again in a few seconds, than to spend a minute running back to the fight and giving the enemy points.
The way I see things, melee are mostly there to break the enemy lines and mop them up when they are breaking and running. Ranged are there to kill enemy melee and push the enemy back through concentrated fire (forcing the enemy backwards), and tanks/healers are there to hold the line in place. If you go in and kill an enemy, then run back to your lines, chances are their entire team is going to be focus firing you into the dirt, by running early, you have a much higher chance of getting back into my lines where you have the ranged dps to cover you and the enemy team has just wasted 10 seconds of their time trying to nuke down someone who didn’t die. This gives your team more time to kill or CC a couple more of their players. Hell, even if you don’t kill one (very rare against pugs), you’re still absorbing fire, and giving your team time. You know how annoying it is when that bright wizard gets out of your reach? That’s what you’ll be doing to them.
Target Priority.
This will vary from player to player, from mastery to mastery, but I think I can safely say KILL THOSE DAMN BRIGHT WIZARDS. These guys will pump out so much dps its incredible, and they go down fast, what’s not to love about sticking a dagger into their back. For example, say the enemy team consists of 2 bright wizards, 2 healers, an engineer, some people would go for the healers, leaving the bright wizards free to cc you, burn you etc… while the healer (if hes decent) will probably get away. Going for the bright wizard will probably mean that he will be doing damage to himself while running from you, hes probably squishier, he will probably not get heals until a few seconds after the healer would have given them to himself if you’d jumped him (since he wont notice straight away the bright wiz has been targeted), and most of all, he wont be able to dps you back. Killing dps as a witch elf is what you should be doing, sure you can kill healers, but that means you’ll go down faster, and hence have less chance of killing one, killing all the enemy’s dps and their line will crumble, without much retaliation. Killing a healer will mean that their line can still crumble, but will be doing a lot more dps to your team while they are crumbling. TLDR – killing their dps is a lot safer.
Stupid things to stay away from –
Running in by yourself. The amount of times per game I see some random magus or sorc try to take on 10 people by yourself, its just stupid, your feeding the other team points, while reducing your own impact on the game. Don’t try to be a hero, that’s the tanks job to charge in first, because they can soak the damage. Try to time your charges for when your team has melee in with the enemy. This should make your chances of being focused a lot lower, since people wont notice you as easily (noticing one melee is harder than noticing the witch elf in three melee). Also, you’ll have backup meaning that the targets should go down faster. If your running with a team, the tank chucking guard on you, and snaring your target will make nuking it down so much faster.
Realise that healers don’t automatically notice you. If your behind the healer, they probably wont notice you as fast as if your in front of them. Yeah, there are some bad healers that don’t seem to notice you at all, but think of it from a healers perspective. There could be 5 people on your team all at 10% hp, if you pop a pot to live and the healer keeps as many of the 5 people getting hurt up as possible, he can hot you up after they’re out of damage and instead there’s more people alive at the end. Also, the other side of it, you stayed in far too long and got gibbed by 10 people focus firing you and you had no chance, take this with a grain of salt and respawn and move on, think to yourself, could I have popped my abilities better to allow the damage I took to be lower, and give my healers a chance to heal me? Could I have gotten out earlier to avoid the burst? Was I running in without support? Then again, if you get two dots on yourself, nobody else in your team is taking damage and you stand right in front of the healer and he lets you die, feel free to call him whatever you want.
Tips and tricks
These may not be classified as tricks or whatever, but I’m hoping that people will reply with their own tricks/tips so I can add them to the guide.
Popping a cauldron early – If your trying to stop damage taken completely (i.e. you don’t have a healer) popping the cauldron as you think the enemys will start to chuck their dots on you etc… i.e. where you think they have noticed you, chuck it up, I think ive had more than 50 spells disrupted by the one cauldron before, when 9 odd people started spamming me with dots only to see them all disrupted. Now, if you do have a healer, realise that you can time the cauldron differently, your job with a healer is to reduce the burst damage you take, as to make yourself more healable, but also to bring attention to yourself in that you will need healing soon. Using the cauldron after you have a few dots up, means that your taking stable damage, its not high enough to not be healed through, but it lets the healer know to heal you, this also means that once the cauldron runs out, you will have hots/heals incoming and are more likely to be healed through it.
Openers from Stealth
Protip: Openers from stealth (Enfeeble Strike, Treacherous Assault, Vehement Blades) do not invoke the GCD, so it is wise to bind your most often used ability directly out of stealth to the same hotkey as your most often used opener. This allows you to spam your opener and get another hit and bloodlust in simultaneously with your opener. This is great for either getting up a quick kiss/healing debuff, or to stun/throat slitter them to scare them right from the start. - Thanks Qpon
On the respawn run or getting back into the fight
After respawning and running back to the engagement zone you see an IB/Lion/SM deep in your lines, quickly throw a few hits at them for bloodlust before going off to look for a squishy. If carnage spec, feel free to pop a CoIP and you have quite a high chance of bursting them down.
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