Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Holy War Tactics (Order Rank)

**This is part two of a two part posting. Posting one was for (Solo Rank) while posting two is for (Order Rank)**

Many Orders struggle to attain a high rank. Even orders with many active players can end up with a low rank due to lack of organization. The tactics for achieving a high rank as an order vary significantly from the tactics to achieving a high solo rank without the aid of your order, but following these will not only result in a higher order rank, but also a higher individual rank.

Order Points:
Order Points are achieved by adding up the points each player earned during the Holy War. If five players each earned 5000 points, the Order Points would be 25000. On top of this, a bonus to the points is given for victory. There is also something called Ragnarok.

Ragnarok:
Ragnarok is a sort of event that occurs during a Holy War. The effect of the event is that upon Order Victory points are doubled. It also has the effect of cutting your opponents points down by 20%. So, if you have 50000points, you end up with 100000. If your opponent had 40000 points, they only achieve 32000. It adds an extra benefit to victory.

Walls:
The Order Leader is the only one capable of building walls. If your order does not have a wall up, the chances of your order winning are slim to none. As discussed previously, they cut the opposing orders points in half.

Attack Leaders:
Defense/Attack Leaders each get a 5% boost to their specialties. Because of this it is customary for your Order Attack Leader to defeat the Opposing Order Defense Leader.

Defense Leaders:
A good defense leader is mandatory to do well during Holy Wars. Nothing is more discouraging to an Order than beating their heads on a powerful Defense leader and not being able to accumulate points.

So, these are all important to note in order to understand this strategy. As well as the information from the (Solo Rank) section. This tips section will detail a battle from start to finish.

Tips from start to finish:
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The Order leader should have time brackets set up on a forum for a war. A certain number of players need to agree to battle during each time bracket for him to decide to engage during that time. Players are expected to spend decent amounts of HP for a scheduled war It would look something like this:

1pm: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H are all able to attend.
2pm: L, M are able to attend.
3pm: O, P, Q, R, S, A, B, C are all able to attend.
4pm:  Y, Z, Q are able to attend.

Because of this the Order Leader may produce a final schedule something like this.

1:30-2:30pm: Attendees- A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, L, M
2:30-3:30pm: One Hour Break
3:30-4:30pm: Attendees- O, P, Q, R, S, A, B, C, Y, Z, Q

People would be expected to contribute during their bracket but are welcome to attend other brackets as well. This allows the order leader to progress through a war with enough people each time to win.
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So the Order leader begins his war at 1:30pm, it would progress in an orderly fashion as such. Players C, D, E all have Wall Breakers in their decks. They demolish the wall shortly using minimal HP each because they are attacking in a group. Nobody attacks players until the wall is down.
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The Wall has come down and the defense leader is up. Player A is the Attack Leader and takes down their Defense Leader. If the Attack Leader is incapable of defeating the defense Leader, he posts in the Order that he cannot, the cards the Defense Leader is using, and how many Defense points the Defense leader has. For this, the Defense Leader is using five FF Lancelots and has 200 Defense points. At this point, Players should all have a specialty Attack Deck equaling 50-60pts. Every time the defense leader is attacked by a Deck equaling 50-60pts he will drop 10 Defense Points. The group blitzes him, dropping his defense to 90 and then somebody takes him down.  Now everybody is open to be attacked.
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Now, the Order waits until the last 5-10 minutes of the Holy War. The Order waits because a player loses points each time they are attacked and lose.

Once you start attacking the players in the other order will lose points they have accumulated. The players in your order will have fewer points to lose since they haven't accumulated many if any.
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At this point, players are now allowed to attack other players. Players with point boost cards are targeting Defense, Offense, Order Leaders, and Vice Leaders. This allows them to double dip in points (the amount is small but extra is extra). Every player at this point should be rotating between characters they attack targeting the ones that pay the highest point totals.
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Finally, if it's a Victory, points are double. If it's a loss, points are reduced by 20%. The HP spent will be worth it if Victory, it will NOT be worth it if defeat.

It's important for an Order Leader/Officer to notice if an enemy is far too strong to begin with. If your Order is full of level 40s and the other Order is full of lvl 100+ even if the time has been scheduled, it will be a loss and players shouldn't have to use their HP at a diminished value.

Also, if there are long gaps in scheduled wars, players should be allowed to start their own if they plan on contributing heavy to it and it won't cause an overlap.

In the end it's a lot like poker. When you win, win HUGE. When you lose, lose small. With an Order helping in removing walls, everybody gets double points, leading to higher individual rankings. More organized assaults means more chances at good payoffs for everybody.

30 comments:

  1. this is a good point. i see alot of order want their member to spam HP, i believe an organized order can ensure the HP use is worth every single during HW. Now the hardest part is to find that organized order.. :)

    can i join your order lucarda :)

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    1. Currently I just joined a new order and it's full. HP spamming is necessary. If you're not gathering at least 100HP before a HW it irritates me. Yes, there is a point where you get a .5 payoff per HP (wall up) or a 1.0 payoff from using HP (wall down), and that's where organization helps. But when you have that 1.0 payoff, you need to be blowing about 10-20HP on that battle.

      Anytime an order has members blowing hundreds of hp while other members get to their 1000pt or 4000pt qualifier and stop spending it annoys me. I believe those members should be kicked immediately after HW ends unless they're too new to have gathered the HP.

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    2. I agree that a winning order needs members who can put in what's required to win, but you make it sound like 100HP is something like chump change anyone can easily scrounge together. I don't know what you do to get HP, but for everyone else who isn't sitting on a ton of capital, earning HP in large quantities just to spend on attacks is really hard. Any HP I get gets poured into getting all those HR and SR cards I need to upgrade my deck. Short of becoming a feeder service (which I've tried, and it's not very lucrative) how would you justify someone coming up 100+HP for a HW when they only give you 3-4 days notice before one happens?

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    3. Saving. Knowing that Holy Wars come about once every 30 days. They aren't really tough to predict. (Outside of the next one of course)

      Besides that, my real question is why somebody who can't scrounge up 100HP determines that they deserve to be in a top 300 Order?

      You mention that you need your HP for HR and SR cards that you need to upgrade your deck. Well those guys who spend 300-500HP carrying their order, they could always use that to buy HR/SR instead of carrying people who put themselves before the order.

      But if everyone in the order brought 100HP, that guy wouldn't have to spend that.

      I'd rather have a person with a 60k attack deck who has 100HP than a person with an 80k attack deck with 10HP.

      As for coming up with it with 3-4 days notice. A couple holy wars ago I sold two Nightmares I was enhancing for my deck to make sure I'd have HP to contribute.

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  2. How much HP Count would you recommend for newer orders? In my current order, since it's newer, the order leader took 10HP from each person and redistributed them. We're talking about starting the HR evolved into SR decks.

    Thanks

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    1. To answer your first question, I believe any order member should at least have enough HP to have purchased the reward they will win. For example, if your guild is likely to hit a rank to win Archdaemon, every member should use at least 35HP. If your Order is likely to hit an SR, 150HP. Keeping in mind if a player is lower level they only get 1 attack per HP vs somebody lvl 140 who may get 4-5 attacks per HP.

      About your current order:

      I don't believe in what your order leader is doing. Players personal ranks are dependent on that HP and if that player is willing to contribute that 10HP during holy war, that player shouldn't be forced to give those 100s of ranking points to somebody else.

      I am aware that some orders take 10HP in order to have a pool for the top contributors afterward. This I can agree with. It promotes the higher level players who generally already use more HP to stay around rather than look for an order they don't have to carry.

      But, what it sounds like your order leader is doing is taxing your order members to better his deck, and in my opinion that's extremely wrong.

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  3. As far as I've heard there is little to no follow through with retrieval.

    I can write a guide on how NOT to get hacked. A lot of the stuff is common sense to me though.

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  4. Can you be declared war on without you ever declaring war? Like can someone declare war on u. If that makes sence.

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    1. Somebody in your order needs to declare a war for you to enter into the matchmaking scenario.

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  5. Hi Lucarda,
    thanks for your great guide. It really enlightend me on many points I did not understand before (pity I found your posting *after* last holy war ;-)

    My Order's currently wondering: you have that example with a def-leader with 200 def and you have to hit him at least with a 50-atk-deck to deminish his defence -- are the 50 atk-points a given figure, or does it always have to be a fifth of his def-points?

    Thanks a lot again!

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    1. It's 50 attack points no matter how much defense they have. It was a safeguard they put in to prevent people from spamming attacks from 1 goblin decks on the defense leaders.

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  6. So I just had several people "blitz" a defense defense with 50 point attack decks, but it never showed the defense leader losing any points. Do you know why?

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    1. If he was attacking at the same time or watching for it he could have been using HP as you attacked.

      Otherwise he should have been losing defensive points unless there's a new glitch.

      Delete
  7. Just wanted to say great guide man. Alot of this info I have been taking back to my order. Unfortunately me and 5 members carried our order to the top 300 with 37 wins. Its unbearable to see inactive members reap the rewards when I personally put 200 hp into hw. Ps. Hw 5.5 was a joke.

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  8. First off, thank you for all the work you do here. It's a VERY valuable resource.

    But here's my question about the upcomming HW...you mention how spending HP is "worth it" and I've seen some of the higher ranked Orders talk about 200+HP expendatures. I'm just not seeing how that's worth it unless you're REALLY in the top tiers of rewards. And even then, for some of the past HPs I've looked at (this will be my first) the rewards just don't seem worth it.

    What am I missing?

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    1. Ah, you're missing a couple things. I'll be doing a post on it because now that HW fever will set in people may want to know my logic but to give you an idea beforehand.

      1) Double down. If you spend that much HP and your order does as well, not only do you get a great reward from personal ranking, but your order ranking gets you a great reward. If you're in an inactive order, obviously it isn't as profitable.

      2) 200 is a large amount to ask. Generally only top 100 orders ask that and you can normally sell the SR you get for top 100 for over 200hp, so yes its worth it. This isn't counting the additional you get for personal ranking and the additional HR+ cardpacks.

      That's a little of it but I'll be posting more either today or tomorrow.

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    2. Thanks. I'm only ~3 weeks in and solo'd the puppet master and got myself into the 10k bracket without using any HP/CW. (I got mad lucky with a SSR I was able to turn into 3 4max Clays for my attack deck, and I've since added a 4max Master Archer I've been working on lately.

      I've had some interest from a couple Orders and joined one today...so I guess I'm trying to figure out how much any HP investment to risk, and measure the amount of risk vs potential reward.

      It'd be easier to justify in a very top tier Order for the reason you list...but when the end reward is more or less unknown...you get my point.

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  9. What about switching the order leader..? If the order leader is level 20, you should be able to cut down the 1, 5x multiple

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    1. I virtually never farm the order leader, I farm the entire team on rotation. It is a strategy some lose, I normally don't recommend it.

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  10. Quick question: when in a battle in the HW, what factors determine how much points someone is giving out? Not talking about no wall boosts but as an individual?

    Thanks!

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    1. There are a couple factors that I've seen.

      One seems to be the % of defense points the player has left reduces the % of points. This also gives way to a nifty glitch. If somebody has a total of 11Def points because they shoved all their points in attack, they seem to give 90% of their point value no matter how many times you attack them.

      Besides that I think if they have a higher holy war rank than you by a decent margin you get extra points. If the player is being farmed constantly by your order, you're better off targeting a fresh target.

      So: % of total defense points they are at and individual rank. I've noticed on my low level account though that if they're much higher level they seem to pay bonus as well.

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  11. When building a wall breaker deck do you just attack with your wall breakers or does the skill if activated work for all your cards?

    Do you see any value in having two wall breaker cards or is it the more the merrier so to speak.

    Great site and advice thanks.

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    1. I recommend a 3 Wallbreaker deck. The buff is on your entire deck so if three trigger you'll start demolishing the walls.

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  12. Your reply from October 4th I feel misses another valid point, if you invest in a hw and don't finish in the top 100 where the rewards make it worthwhile, but finish say in the top 500, you are more likely to attract stronger players to the order, which long term makes it a very much worthwhile investment, our first hw we finished around the 5000 mark, invested heavily and made 1008 after that we attracted some stronger players to the order and last war we made 244 now we attract strong players and next war looking to get even higher, a very much worth initial investment ! :)

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    1. Good point! Sometimes you operate at a loss initially in order to attain long term gain.

      There are a lot of good players out there carrying their orders and always looking for better orders to join so if you're in the top 500 you can get those guys looking your way.

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  13. Great blog. Thanks for all the great info. For a wall breaker deck you suggested three breaker cards. I currently have 2x mithril golems and 1x mithril golem+. My plan was to max each out and evolve. Would I be better served maxing out what I have and keeping the cards seperate to stack their bonuses?

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    1. I prefer to max them because then you can start skilling the final form as well. I don't think the buffs will make up for the stat loss from using non-evo'd Mithril Golems.

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  14. Nice Blog. Do you know the bracket of the number of attack leaders can be assigned per order level?

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    1. Oddly enough. Despite my knowledge I am notorious for my lazyness, my current order leader can vouch for me on that.

      As a result I have never run an order, only consulted. I have no idea how many attack leaders can be assigned per level. But you should also know that I believe only one is necessary.

      Attack leads don't earn extra points, but they give extra points. You only take an attack lead for the buff to break the defense leader. So, in my view you should only need up to 3, ever. If you are starting wars without one of your top 3 attackers there, you are making mistakes that extra attack leads wouldn't help with.

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