MLs and Albion Keeps

[Aenslaed Kasugano]

MLs and Albion Keeps

This is largely a result of encountering Justice employing our own LR Heal ward defense method against us and winning due to miscommunication, confusion, and generally poor performance. I know this is not a very entertaining read, but I think that with the way these MLs are gearing up, a straight up smash and grab style of keep sieging will end up a total wipe up against any of the large RvR guilds of opposing realms. Feel free to comment and provide your own suggestions. If we cannot devise valid tactics, our successful keep farms in Albion will become fewer and fewer.

The current situation on Merlin is that both Mids and Albs are on the same stage of ML advancement. While mids have more people with ML5 complete than albs, the actual rvring population of ML5 characters is about even. Guilds with ML5 are Arsenal, BWC and Veturi.

As a general rule, you can now assume that albs have ML4 abilities at their disposal in the typical zerg.

In regards to Albion Keep warfare, the current ideal situation for the defenders, is the "LR Turtle" or "Bunkering up". The defense in its simpliest form is an abundance of ML3 Perfector Heal wards combined with PBAE, AE and lots of tanks. The opponent will discover that any form of ranged non LoS attack will have no effect on the players inside the LR, and that attacks requiring LoS, will have minimal effectiveness as a whole, and also pose significant risks to the caster.

Advantages to this strategy:
1. Stacking wards to provide cost free healing regardless of combat situation.
2. Enemy is confined to a narrow staircase with no direct LoS of the LR from an advantaged position
3. Enemy is also subjected to keep guards.
4. Forces the attackers to move in single file allowing for effective use of AE and PBAE attacks.
5. Lots of movement from both sides, so attackers can be lured into defensive "kill zones" and removing them from the battle.

Disadvantages:
1. Enemy is contained while in the LR defensive position.


Now knowing the advantages to the LR Turtle strategy, and actually having experienced it first hand, strategies can be developed.

Albion has one means to effectively break the LR turtle defense through use of its Necromancer class. A shade can enter the LR and lay a Power Trap by the casters, sapping them of all available power. Once there is no power, offensive capabilities such as casted PBAE/AE are severely diminished, allowing the breach of the LR by sheer numbers. Killzones are effectively removed (stairs just outside LR).

Also knowing that powertrap has an effective diameter of approximately 350 units, it is possible to make use of a powertrap from within the kill zone to sap the power further.


Offensive Strategies

Knowing that the enemy is contained and confined to the LR and floor above, the opponents are also limiting the possible methods of attack. If the melee defenders were to overexert the healing capabilities of their group, they would thus remove themselves from the battle upon death as ressurection may prove impossible.

Casters, in specific Albion casters, lack GTAE spells as a generality. Thus without LOS, they are rendered largely useless in confined spaces.

The first priority of any attack on a bunkered LR is to remove all means of the opponent attacking you in a position where it is difficult to attack back. There are three positions where this is true in an albion keep. The windows in the LR, the archway into the LR, and from the top floor of the tower from the battlements.

Of those 3, the easiest to secure is the top floor.

The top floor is very similar to a Midgard Lord room, as there is a set of stairs leading up to an open area. Defense of a Midgard lord room with PBAE consists of PBAE hiding on the other side of the wall hitting all attackers as they reach the top floor. This is not the case in albion. The atackers have no real effective area to hide from enemy AE. In addition to this, all PBAE classes would be encouraged to stay in the lord room instead, maximizing the DPS of the staircase kill zone. With these characteristics, the top floor is the easiest to fall once breached.

Strategy to engineer a top floor breech is simple, risky and requires very good timing. The bulk of the force must pass through the kill zone and up to the top floor. Several variables that determine the effectiveness of such a rush exist.
1. The DPS of the PBAE in the kill zone.
2. The melee defenders in the kill zone.
3. The available power to the attackers.
4. Troop disposition.

If the PBAE is not too severe, and the melee defenders is light to none, a sprinting player can enter and exit the kill zone with minimal injuries.

If the killzone has extreme PBAE DPS, a strategy to reduce the power stores of the PBAE casters must be used.
1. The use of Power Traps and Power Leak
2. Tricking the casters into using their mana stores prematurely.
3. Maintaining constant pressure and interrupts to the opponents in the LR.
4. Ensuring that the RA Mastery of Concentration is not available at time of breech.

By GTAEing the LR, it prevents necromancers from using their power transfer ability. Combining this with careful baiting can result in a situation where the PBAE casters are out of power and the DPS of the kill zone is drops to negligable. At which point, the breach should be ordered.

If the killzone is crowded with melee defenders, they must be removed in order to pass through. This is the most ideal situation. By carefully baiting the opposing players further and further down the stairs, you reduce their chances of a successful ressurrection on death exponentially. By sending a few heavy tanks up to LoS of the kill zone, then retreating back to the bulk of the attacker's melee, there is the potential to bait lesser skilled tanks and removing them from battle.

Once the breach occurs, and the top floor is secured. The situation is effectively reversed.

You how hold the top floor and the attackers have no means to attack you. Setting up wards at the very top floor or on the first turn of the stairs from the top, creates your own safe spot. You also eliminate the possibility of a "back door" attack where reinforcements will have full reign on the vulnerable rear line support. You now have the luxury of time in the keep siege.

Simultaneously, by moving all forces to the top floor of the keep, 2 of the attack methods of the defenders have been eliminated. The Courtyard will have no targets where the lord room window can attack, and they no longer have the top floor battlements to attack from.

Methods of Attacking and Securing the LR from the Top floor

While in control of the top floor, the defenders will be unable to attack due to their lack of GTAE. The kill zone is now largely reduced, and there is now an LoS for attackers to target the LR defenders(staircase going down).

From that point on, it is largely a game of attrition. Mids on the top floor have the luxury of sitting down while the albs do not. By the sheer overwhelming of numbers, a breach of the LR can be ordered approximately 6 minutes after the top floor is secured. Long enough for a double set of wards to be placed.

This tactic will work on opponents without ML5 Power Wards with superior attacking numbers (as this defense is easily capable of defeating 4:1 situations). I estimate that with a previously instructed group, it is possible to overcome the defenders with 2:1 odds with attackers numbering over 32 at the very least.

[Joshll]

a few thoughts:

GTAE is still key to the fight. ML's or no ML's. Attackers absolutely must have GTAE against a well dug in opponent.

Heal wards or power wards or whatever, GTAE still interupts PBAE, and still interupts casted heal spells & damage spells. GTAE is largely an attackers weapon. BWC needs GTAE from at least some of our runies. GTAE is key. The value is not the damage but the interupt.

Heal wards can go both ways. As we fight out way up to the lord room, if we have healers place heal wards as far up the stairs as they can without being engaged by the enemy, then attackers can have support of wards as well. Alternatively, and perhaps even more overpowered in the right groups is to have healers stay at the base of the tower within a power regen field. They can spam spread heals non-stop which would potentially be even more healing than 4 wards. The defenders do not have this option if we are GTAEing the lord room. They may have power wards up but GTAE will interupt any heal spells they cast.

Going even farther, if we place our GTAE'ers in a power field and just bomb the lord room non-stop for 10 minutes, we can guarantee that there are no heal fields up as the clerics could not have gotten off a 15 second cast in that time.

So I say that for attack GTAE is everything as it largely takes casters out of the defense. BWC absolutely needs RC runies.