Arboreal Animist RVR Guide

 

Considered gimped by fellow realm mates, overpowered by enemies and neglected by mythic, Animists are the most difficult caster class to play in the game. They are specialists to the very definition, with abilities that range at the extremes of the game.

 

• The LOWEST population
• The MOST bugs
• The ability to summon the MOST pets
• The SLOWEST casting speed for all casters
• The HIGHEST DPS AE range spell
• The WEAKEST life tap
• The MOST potential to surge damage in a limited amount of time.

 

  It’s pretty simple to see that we have to stick to what we are good at; else you’re really cruising for a bruising.

 

I play an arboreal animists “Ghowick Gurnisson” on the Guinevere server. I pretty much run in pick up groups, but I do occasionally gank in proper 8 man teams. I decided to play an animist because I believe they are the saviors of Hibernia in the next 12 months, they can hold off Albion zergs single handedly given the right situations and can easily turn the tide of battle. The following is a collection of tactics and ideas that I thought I should share with the animist community.

 

Know your role

 

Animists are casters, plain and simple. They are extremely slow and fragile, but should you give them a bit of time, they can surge more damage faster than any class in the game. Obviously you HAVE to know what you’re doing.

Notes:

• Try and stick to keep/mile gate defense and 2-3fg+ warfare.
• Avoid anything less than 2fg. I know this is a big ask, but 2fg generally means there is a far better chance we will not get targeted and we can really put some hurt in. Animists can do well 8on8, but just about any other caster in the game is better at it then us – the enemy has far more chances to interrupt us because we take too long.
• We are awesome at stand offs. Most of the time the opponent wont know we are hitting them until its too late and even then, we have the option of attaching a AE bomb to the opponents back when they run back to their zerg.

 

Speed

 

This is the most important trait of an animist. Unlike other casters, Animists receive Dexterity as a tertiary stat and Constitution as a secondary stat. If you examine the arboreal spec lines, the animist spells are extremely slow, bombers are cast at 3.0 seconds and pets are summoned at 5.0 seconds. This in conjunction with significantly less dexterity means that animists are the slowest casting class in the game - Animists are dreadful against enemy casters.

Remember for every 10 points of Dexterity above 50, your casting speed is increased by 1%. This is why animists are absolutely awesome with red spec buffs, no class benefits more from these spells than an animist. Also Mastery of the Arts is the most important realm ability for Animists IMO. Each level increases casting speed by 3%, that’s equivalent to 30 Dexterity. Fully buffed, an animist with MoAIII like Ghowick has the equivalent of 400 Dexterity (35% faster casting speed), capping his bomber speed at 2.0 seconds and turrets at 3.25 seconds. Buffed animists can stack 4 bombers onto someone before they know what’s coming!

 

Turrets in open field combat

 

Practice makes perfect. Nearly every new level 50 animist I see RvRing favors turrets in all situations. I see them showing off by spamming shrooms, then when the opponent arrives, suddenly they line up in the stand off and forget about the shrooms. Shrooms are severely overrated. Do the math, 5 seconds to cast a shroom that takes 3 seconds to cast a level 44 spell at a level 50 opponent. That’s 8 seconds before 1 guy gets hit for 150 or so damage, and they get a 3 second noise warning to move out of the area. I’m not saying avoid them totally in open field combat, but just don’t make it a primary role for yourself.

Important notes about shrooming

Notes:

• Psychological effect. Enemies will back off or split up once they see shrooms. You can split forces very easily with shrooms because tanks know they can run through a shroom field and casters know they can’t.
• If you see the enemy far off and have some time, shroom around your casters/healers. If you have a small field up, the softies can now kite the enemy tanks.
• Never shroom at point blank with enemies that are not CCed! They have 4.9 seconds to cancel your spell that you have spent so long on. That’s enough time to tap a guy on the head with their sword twice, then turn around and interrupt you before you finish. A good group will make you pay.
• Shroom against mezzed groups. Shrooms alternate between valid targets each cast and they do NOT target mezzed enemies (not unless the mez has landed during the casting of the spell). This means that if you shroom around a mezzed group, when the first person breaks mez, they become the ONLY valid target for ALL your shrooms. Concentrated firepower means they are going down quick!
• Leave your controllable at a traffic point; it will give you a warning of incoming enemies.
• If you have recon on the enemy and time, set a trap. Hide your shrooms in trees, behind walls etc. Try and look innocent!
• 2 Tanglers is enough. There is a 1 minute immunity timer so it’s pointless to put more down. Talk to your Druid and see if they are AE rooting, else plant 2 tanglers first and the rest DD FnFs. If you do use tanglers, you should never use anything but the highest tangler.
• Low level shrooms should ONLY be used when you have plenty of time to set up. Do NOT regret putting down level 5 shrooms and dying with a lot of power left. I use the maximum level shrooms 95+% of the time.

 

 

Bombers and life tap

 

Mythic has blessed us with a DD spell and a bomber - Use them both! Do NOT underestimate the lifetap, try and favor it in all situations until you are used to using bombers! With a lot of practice, you will know when to use lifetap and when to use bombers.

Notes:

• An enemy should never be killed off with a bomber; the killing blow should always be with a life tap or DD. If you have killed them off with a bomber, chances are you are doing something wrong and allowing the enemy to live 2+ seconds longer then they should!
• As a general rule, life tap if the opponent has less than a quarter health remaining.
• When you do bomb, you have to make a judgment call when you believe you have enough bombers and you can finish off the opponent with life taps. This comes with experience
• If an opponent is a caster and they have LOS to you, use life tap exclusively.
• Think Streetfighter 2! I’m serious; you have to do combinations to kill your opponent. My Favorite is Bomber, Bomber, Life tap, Life tap. This will kill most casters in 3 seconds!

 

B1 – Bomber1      B2 – Bomber2    L1 – Lifetap1 L2 – Lifetap2

 

This is an ideal combo, although it takes 8 seconds to cast the spells, all the damage is frontloaded within 3 seconds. This is because bombers have travel and explode times that delay the actual damage done whilst life tap does not. You can also mix in Con debuff shouts before the lifetaps to increase the damage, but I think this isn’t worthwhile. Another thing that helps is not directly facing your opponent, they will think your targeting someone else until the bombers change direction and home in on your target. If the enemy is running around, you can increase it to 3-4 bombers and 3-4 life taps, by running they are merely giving you more time to increase the stacking size.

• Using root bombers. The animist community has been complaining about having crowd control that takes 5+ seconds to land. Once again I have found this to be beneficial in certain situations. When you are casting combinations at the enemy, mix in a root bomber with your DD bombers. You can drop an enemy tank to less health then CC them, allowing you to back off and restart stacking.
• Pathing bug where your bombers halt on an undefined position and can’t move. Mythic don’t understand how detrimental this is to an animist. It is like an archer whose arrows freeze in the air. Whilst this has not been fixed, I have found the best way to get your bombers to hit is to get the opponent to move into a valid position, hit them with a life tap and they will often panic and move. Sometimes it can have a positive effect, I have killed 5 albs instantaneously from full health with it once when 5+ AE bombers got stuck in a position and I got the target to move and trigger off all the bombers.

 

AE Bomber

 (The Bowling ball)

 

Ok, for all you animists out there, here is our most uber spell. You may be asking what’s so good about it? Check out its stats.

-         178 Damage delve (About the same as a caster baseline single DD spell!)

-         3 Second cast time. Fastest AE range spell in the game

-         Stackable

-         Level 50 spell (less resists)

Although it does half PBAE damage, you have to realize that the target is ALWAYS in the direct centre of your blast, and also most importantly, you can do it safely from distance. Note that you should only use this spell when you’re not assisting or shrooming and when you have permission from your leader.

Here is an important key to using it - DON’T target softies, go for tanks! Tanks are always assisting and they will be stacked. Also you want your target to live the longest so the bombers explode on him and spread onto the others. Its always funny watching people drag the AE bombers back into the fray as they retreat. It’s great for tight packed entrances to keeps/mile gates.

 

Keep/Mile gate Defense

 

This is the Animists domain. No other class in the game is more effective at keep defense than animists, not by a long shot. There is hundreds of tactics for keep defense; here are my favorites.

 

Keeping assassins off walls

One of the main tactics of assassins on keep takes is to climb a wall, perf a caster and jump off while taking minimal damage. You can stop a lot of assassins doing this by planting 2 shroom points. One on your side of the wall within reach of all climb points, and the other about 15 yards off the wall on the ground. Any assassins climbing the wall that gets revealed by any Light GTAE/PBAEs will be unstealthed in the middle of your garden. Also any assassin perfing a mage up on the wall will get blasted by your shrooms on the wall and when they jump off, your other shroom point will continue to blast them. Eventually a smart assassin will learn to keep away from the climb points.

 

Keep the guys off the doors

A well planted shroom field can push people off doors. Here is a picture of me helping keep 90 albs off the doors at Beno for 3+ hours against us 30 Hibs. I have selected a ground target that has Line of sight and range to the door. Although I cant see the door, my shrooms can blast anyone on it. Start off with your controllable turret and be persistent, continue summoning turrets.

• Mez vs Shrooms at keep defense. Don’t be disheartened by mez on your pets in keep defense. A mez will wipe off about half the life span of a shroom, and it will temporarily disable your controllable. Once the mez expires, your shrooms are going to be immune to mez for their remaining lifespan (60 seconds or so) and the enemy can’t walk around them – they have to get to the door! If you keep a constant supple of shrooms up at the keep, no number of people casting mez will be able to control them. Enemies MUST engage your shrooms to kill them.
• If they AE mez, continue summoning! It hurts the enemy severely psychologically if they think they can mez the shrooms, but there is always at least one casting at them and when the first AE mez wears off there is a huge surge of damage from the freed shrooms. Even if all your FnF’s die, you’re controllable should still be up. They must destroy this one to stop you from hurting the rammers.

• Think outside the square, your shrooms allow you to hit people resting adjacent to the wall that are out of LOS.
• Press the “Select last attacker” key repetitively. This will alert you if an archer or caster is targeting you specifically.
• If the opponents melee the pet, spam AE bombers at them. You will be surprised how many people actually try to melee the pet down.

 

Keeping Rushers out of the keep

• Turrets are psychological weapons when the enemy has rammed in your doors. Plant low level shrooms in LOS of the gateway. Mix and match with high level shrooms out of line of sight. Don’t regret putting down low level shrooms and dying with a lot of power left. Time is priceless.
• AE bombers are awesome in these situations. Target the ram and spam the AE Bomber button. You will begin casting the instant the doors are down, and hit everyone in the doorway every 2 seconds for up to 400 damage. Once you have started casting select a proper target. The ram should only be used as an anchor point. AE spamming rams, trebuchets and mile gate doors is an excellent idea. You can use all sorts of objects as an anchor for AE bombers.

 

Realm abilities

 

• I cannot stress enough the importance of mastery of the arts. Speed kills and we desperately need to cast faster. Mythic has informed us that they are willing to decrease the casting speed of bombers, but for the time being I suggest you pick up MoAII or III. Note that augmented dexterity 1 has a better return rate than MoA III (AugDex 1 is 1rp for 0.6% speed increase, MoA III is 1rp for 0.5% speed increase). If you have permanent access to a buff bot you could forgo getting the higher level versions of this RA.
• MCL I is a must and Serenity II is good. Raging power is optional. You can live off MCLI and a lot of power potions, but I prefer Serenity II because it is saves me a lot of money and time.
• MoC is always handy with life tap and spamming AE bombers/shrooms.
• The Animists RA is quite amusing and can be effective if you stick it on a healer/caster, but not really worth spending 10 realm points on.
• A few levels of WP and MoM are always good too.
• Augmented Constitution and Toughness are good too. Animists fully buffed should have over 1500hp without Realm abilities. It is quite possible to get more hit points than hybrids. Mythic purposely gave us more hit points so we can kite the tanks longer.

 

Other tactics

 

• Animists stacking AE bombers on a mezzed group. 3 Animists can stack around 6-12AE bombers on a mezzed group BEFORE the mez even breaks. This can be a dangerous but rewarding experience.
• Assisting with a void Eldritch. Animists and eldritchs are excellent 2 man assist teams, the animist can be main assist and bomb targets while the eldritch can Body debuff the enemy before the bombers hit.
• Assisting other animists. Same idea here, but the stacking on a person is doubled. Hardly any players can heal/IP fast enough out of 2 assisting animists. (can be effectively 4 casters)
• Mile gates are excellent anchors for AE bombers and revealing stealthers.
• Jumping while casting is a good way to hide the casting animation, enemies will think you have insta summoned your shrooms.
• Life tapping grey mobs is an easy way to heal your self.
• Mile gate blast. Shrooms will begin casting when an opponent is in range, regardless of whether they have line of sight to them. The LOS check is done at the end of the spell. So a handy trick is to plant 5+ shrooms directly behind a mile gate about 600 units away. What happens here is the shrooms will begin to cast at the opponent, usually the LOS check will fail and the spell won’t be cast. But if you place it at the right distance from the gate, people wandering in and opening the gate will be blasted almost immediately as soon as the gate opens (the LOS check is made at the end of the cast and this can be the instant the door opens). I have insta dropped warders doing this and put a lot of people on critical health with this tactic. Also, 2 tanglers at this shroom point can be used like insta roots.

 

 

mailto: mailto:aal04@bigpond.net.au