[ehnrho]

Ok.

After mercilessly slaying some number of people approaching 4 digits in slightly over a week, I think it's time that my merry band of pissed-off rangers made a public service announcement.

Or,

How Not to Get Ambushed.

Some people honestly, truly, need help on that one.

1. Stay. Off. The. Road.

You are effectively traveling through a warzone. Bad things tend to happen to inattentive people in roads; if you're going to lay an ambush, that's the place to do it. Crossroads, bridges, and switchbacks are even worse. Go offroad. Hide behind trees. Climb the back way in, swim up a waterfall, take the river, do some ninja stuff. You'll die less.

Also, stopping and staring at the known danger zone where you always get whacked for 2 minutes will not increase your odds, nor will trying to hide while you have 8 pets out.

2. Bring a buddy.

Trying to go it alone in a PvP zone is generally a fail unless you're some sort of PvP god who has something to prove. I don't need to out-heal or out-dps you when there are two, three, or five of me. Don't complain about fairness, this is my road, see #1.

Seriously, how can you NOT manage to pick up someone to run with? Go con a friend into buying AoC so you have someone else with you; if it's a single attacker, kick their ass. If it's 3 or more, well, remember, you don't have to outrun the ambushers, you only have to outrun your buddy.

Bottom line, people with more friends and a better ability to work together are going to win.

3. Get help.

If you spot a party of ambushers, get the entire blob of dudes at the rez to come with you and steamroller them. Call in help from your guild (I have yet to see ANY effective guild-reinforcements show up, ever.. only "more targets".) The worst thing for an ambusher to see is the last 7 people they killed all rolling down the path at once and spinning up their buffs.

4. Get a Ranger

Out in ambush-land, Ranger = win. It doesn't matter what you think of their solo abilities, a party of ambushers is either going to decide you're too tough and let you pass, or decide you're toast and attack, and you'll have no idea we're there until you're getting your ass kicked. Unless, of course, you have a Ranger and can avoid the entire thing (see #1 again).

Bottom line, if you don't know what's around you, you're the tuna and not the shark.

5. Stop coming back to where you died.

Unless you have a party of bloodthirsty killers with you, STOP COMING BACK TO THE SPOT WHERE WE JUST KICKED YOUR ASS. It's going to happen AGAIN, and then again until we start actually feeling bad for you. If there is a way around, use it. I find many people never even learn the back ways, yet they complain about getting ganked over and over. Gee, I wonder why.

6. Sneak

If you can move while hidden there is no excuse for you to get ambushwacked because you chose to be impatient and jog in the open. Again, you are in a PvP area and basically in a warzone.

Bottom line, those with tactical patience are usually going to win.


If most of the people we've killed applied these ideas, we'd have killed less than half of them.

[ehnrho]

This is getting bumped because the number of people trying to win the "Special PvP award, Leeroy Jenkins Edition" is going through the roof lately.

Also:

What to do when you DO get ambushed:

1. Run, you idiot. Self explanatory. Stagger the use of your CC so that you're not all on cooldown at once, and take turns using it on the pursuers; pop stam pots. If you're not on TS or Ventrillo you will fail and have no standing to whine about PvP in the first place.

2. Do not attack the strongest enemy when you're outnumbered. You'll end not not killing ANYONE. The quickest and most effective way to reduce their overall DPS, sow confusion, and get inside their decision loop is to whack the little guy and work your way up. Gankers don't like to die.

3. Do not, after dying the third time in the same spot to the same people who outnumber you, send them tells saying they're cowards unless they fight you one on one. Maybe they are, but they're still not as craven as you are stupid.

4. Do not smack talk them with "say" from your corpse. No one takes a dead guy seriously, and it makes for a hilarious screenshot the odds of which appearing on the forums are always approximately "1".

5. Do not try to come back and sneak up on a group of rangers that outnumbers you. They just killed you; they know your name. They killed the 30 people who came before you, and they will kill the next 30 people who come after you. There are little tombstones all up and down the road. This is probably a good indicator that every single one of them is hitting "Track" every 60 seconds, and are snickering while they watch your little red dot approach from the rez pad.

[Grothnar]

Great post. Won't stop the QQ, but great post none the less.

[Slench]

This post gets my personal seal of approval.

[ponderacon]

swim up a waterfall

My favorite part of this game.

[ehnrho]

Indeed. Swimming up a waterfall gives you a much smaller dignity-hit than being defeated, does it not?

You want some real fun, try swimming DOWN it.

[arcturus2005]

Also you should add wait till level 40-80 when the ambush will usually turn into the ranger dead on the ground with the ambushee standing over him laughing. I know rangers in later levels need more attention but rangers damage in lower-levels need as much attention

[Lughsan]

Originally Posted by arcturus2005 Also you should add wait till level 40-80 when the ambush will usually turn into the ranger dead on the ground with the ambushee standing over him laughing. I know rangers in later levels need more attention but rangers damage in lower-levels need as much attention

Nope Three rangers DPSing you down can down you at level 80 quite well..

[vampirian2008]

Amazing post...thanks for taking the time to write this up!

[Matthefrog]

Or if you're traveling, you can just let them kill you, its faster than the way you were going anyway.