General Game Play
Playing Offense
Playing Defense
Vehicle Drivers and Passengers
Control of Graveyards
When to Call for Backup
Sample Match Strategies
General Game Play:
Strand of the Ancients is a bit different than most battlegrounds.
Although you will use your spells and abilities like you would in most
battlegrounds, vehicles and bombs play a
larger role in SOTA. Without vehicles or bombs there is no way for
the attacking team to win the battle. In general, the attacking
team wants to use the vehicles and bombs to destroy gates and ultimately
capture the Titan Relic. The defensive team will attempt to
prevent the attacking team from capturing the relic.
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Playing Offense:
For one of the
rounds during the battle your team will play offense. Your team
will begin split up into two groups, one on either of the ships.
The ships land on opposite sides of the beach. One lands near the
Gate of the Blue Sapphire the other lands at the Gate of the Green
Emerald. Each side has two siege vehicles available an a pile of
saronite bombs.
Whichever strategy your team decides to use, if
any at all, every player should pick up a saronite bomb that they can
use should they come near one of the gates. The attacking team
will need to make use of the vehicles to knock down the gates.
Seaforium bombs are also very useful for destroying gates. Each
player can carry one at a time and should be dropped right up against
the gate. (Note: The player that drops the bomb will have to stay
fairly close until it blows up if they want credit for the achievement).
The attacking team will
attempt to make its way south to the Relic Chamber by destroying gates.
To get through the first two gates, the Gate of the Blue Sapphire and
the Gate of the Green Emerald, only one of the gates needs to be
destroyed for your team to reach the next two gates, Gate of the Purple
Amethyst and Gate of the Red Sun. Likewise, only one of these two
gates needs to be destroyed to reach the Gate of the Yellow Moon.
Once this gate is destroyed you can reach the Relic Chamber and attempt
to destroy its door to capture the Titan Relic.
See below for sample strategies.
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Playing Defense:
For one of the rounds during the
battle your team will play defense. your team will attempt to
protect the Titan Relic from being captured by the attacking team.
The attacking team will be using vehicles and bombs to knock down the
gates. Your team will have to do what they can to destroy the
vehicles and disarm any bombs that are dropped near the gates.
Remember that if the attacking team breaks through one of either the
Gate of the Blue Sapphire or the Gate of the Green Emerald, your team
should pull back because the attacking team only needs to destroy one of
these to reach the next set of gates. As well, once the attacking
team destroys either the Gate of the Purple Amethyst or the Gate of the
Red Sun your team should pull back to the Gate of the Yellow Moon, as
they only need to destroy either the Purple or Red gate to reach the
Yellow gate.
Players on the defensive team can use the turrets to
help damage both approaching vehicles and enemy players. As well,
defending players will be doing whatever they can to destroy approaching
vehicles and disarm bombs that are placed near gates.
See below for sample strategies.
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Vehicle Drivers and
Passengers:
Vehicles are very important in SOTA and
using them is almost necessary to win (unless your team can be
successful enough running bombs). The more vehicles the attacking
team uses at any given time the better. It only takes a few
attacks from a vehicle to destroy a gate and the more tanks that are
attacking a gate the faster it will be destroyed. Remember
that even if you are going to be driving or riding in a vehicle, it is
always good to carry bombs with you in case your vehicle is destroyed
and you have a chance to drop the bomb near a gate.
The drivers
have access to the vehicle's abilities (a ram and a fireball launcher).
The passengers of the vehicles do not have access to any of the vehicles
abilities but are able to use their own spells and abilities on nearby
players. Healers are able to heal while riding as passengers,
casters can cast and cause damage to nearby players, and players with
crowd control abilities (polymorph, hex, slow, entangling roots, etc.)
can use these while riding as passengers. Generally, melee dps
players that do not have many long range attacks, spells, or abilities
are typically the drivers of the vehicles. Casters, healers and
players with crowd control abilities usually ride as passengers.
With passengers, a driver can focus on destroying gates while the
casters can help to keep the defending team away from the vehicle with a
means possible. Enemies chasing the vehicle should be slowed as
much as possible and killed is possible. If at any time the
vehicle is destroyed, run your bomb to the gate and attempt to run back
for another vehicle.
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Control of Graveyards:
Controlling the graveyard is important in SOTA because they can assist
in making it easier for a particular team to win. The defending
team originally starts the match by controlling all graveyards. it
is up to the attacking team to attempt to capture graveyards. Once
a graveyard is captured it cannot be defended or recaptured by the
defending team.
There are three graveyards in which the attacking
team can capture. There is one in front of the Gate of the Purple
Amethyst (the western graveyard) and one in front of the Gate of the Red
Sun (the eastern graveyard). By capturing either of these
graveyards it will allow your team to resurrect near the workshop that
it near that graveyard. If you resurrect at the workshop you will
not have to run far to get vehicles. There is also a graveyard
that is in front of the Gate of the Yellow Moon. This graveyard is
not near any of the workshops and it is generally not wise to capture
this graveyard if your team does not want to have to run back to grab
vehicles. However, if your team is resurrecting near the Yellow
gate there is a pile of bombs right behind the resurrection point that
your team can use to destroy the gate while other players run back for
vehicles.
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When to Call for Backup:
Remember
that in SOTA as well as any other battleground, you should only call for
backup if it is absolutely needed. As well, you may not always
receive the backup that you are asking for. However, it is always
important to communicate in any situation.
There are several
instances in which you may want to call for backup in a SOTA match.
If you are on the defending team you would want to call for help if one
of the gates has a lot of enemies attacking it and not many players
defending it. You team may be at another gate an unaware of a
different gate being attacked. You can always keep your eye on the
map as well in case other players are not calling for backup when it's
needed. If at any time the Gate of the Green Emerald or the Gate
of the Blue Sapphire is destroyed, the defending team should call it out
and retreat backwards to the next gate, preferably the one closest to
the one that was destroyed. If the attackers are getting through
quickly, someone may want to yell for everyone to get to the Yellow gate
to defend. As well, you can communicate which side the attackers
are advancing on.
While on the attacking team, you may
want to communicate whether or not there are enemies at a particular
gate. If you are traveling on one side towards a gate and there
are few to no enemies defending you can call out that your side is
clear. Likewise, if the side that you're on is crowded with enemy
players that are defending you can call that out. While you travel
south destroying gates you should communicate which gates are destroyed
and which gates you are heading towards so that your teammates can
attempt to assist you. If you notice that players are not making
use of vehicles or that your teammates are not protecting the vehicles
while attacking, you can ask for assistance.
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Sample Match Strategies:
Sample
Strategy 1 (Attacking):
Just before both sides of the team land
on
the beach, attempt to determine how many enemy players are on each side
and call out the side that has the least. Your team will head for
the gate with the lest enemy players, regardless of which side you begin
on. Everyone on the team
should grab a saronite bomb. Each of the vehicles should be driven
by someone and the vehicles and players should head to the side of the
beach with the least number of enemies defending. If possible,
have melee players drive the vehicles and casters and healers ride as
passengers.
The drivers of the vehicles will be solely focused on
the gates. Once a gate is down, head directly to the nearest gate.
For the most part, the passengers will be crowd controlling (polymorph,
slow, entangling roots, hex, etc.) so the attacking players that are not
in vehicles should be constantly running bombs to the gate. All
players can attempt to slow down the enemy that are approaching or
attacking your vehicles but the main focus should always be destroying
the gates.
Sometimes you will be able to pass through all gates
very easily and quickly and sometimes you will find the teams
bottlenecked at the yellow gate. The attacking team cannot get
through because there is too much defense right at the gate. If
this happens, the strategy remains pretty much the same except that it
is best to have stealthed players on your team focus on running bombs to
the Relic Chamber. The defending players will have to stay at the
gate or run to the Relic Chamber to protect it. Keep pushing
through with vehicles and attempt to push the defenders as far back as
possible. The vehicles will be able to shoot at the gate to the
Relic Chamber from a far distance.
Sample Strategy 1 (Defending):
The
defending team should always split u fairly evenly on each side of the
beach. You will not be able to tell where the enemy team will
attack from until the match begins. Once the match begins
defending players will need to communicate which gate is being attacked.
If one side is being zerged (the majority of the team is head to one
gate), then your team will want to move most if not all of its players
to that side.
Players on your team will want to make sure that
all of the turrets are filled. Turrets can be used by anyone but
are best used by players that do not do a lot of damage. Most of
the players will be focusing on destroying the vehicles.
Destroying vehicles is far more important than PvPing with enemy
players. If vehicles are sitting there and do not yet have a
driver, attack the vehicles until they are almost destroyed but do not
destroy them fully. Once the vehicles has a driver then your team
should destroy it. otherwise, if destroyed to quickly it will just
spawn a new vehicle with full health.
Defending players,
particularly those in turrets, can watch for enemies attempting to drop
bombs near the gate. Be prepared to disarm any bombs if you see
enemy players running toward the gate. you will also have to watch
for stealthed players who make it to the gate undetected. If
a gate is destroyed run immediately to the next gate and announce in
your raid party for others to do the same (some players may still be
fighting at the Gate of the blue Sapphire when the Gate of the Purple
Amethyst is unknowingly under attack).
Sample Strategy 2 (Attacking):
Sample Strategy 2 (Defending):
