While I could go into this blind, I still want to take a look at his status, even if I don't look deep into it.
It is a fact there are few people who reached level 18 in the game. It's pretty impressive in fact.
Assuming they have regular work hours, or at least more regular than mine, then it is a fact they leveled up way faster than I did.
Even if I am the one level 20, I probably spent close to twice as much time as they did.
Paradise is a very complicated game, so the usual level-up strategies don't work. A less skilled player will most likely be unable to level up a high-level character, so it is hard to imagine them taking turns leveling up a single character with their elite players, when they can level up several at a slightly slower pace.
Anyway, these reasons should be enough for anyone to understand why I still am taking a look at their status.
My level advantage might allow me to look down on them, due to the reduction of the effect of all skills, but that does not mean I can totally underestimate them.
And looking at that status, I indeed did well to check.
╔════════════════════╗
║ Heaven-Defying Paradise...
║ Name: ImperialShadow
║ Level: 21
║ HP: 412/412
║ MP: 423/423
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Stats
║ Opportunism: 12353
║ Strength: 7707
║ Scheme: 3020
║ Intelligence: 2824
║ Wisdom: 2125
║ Endurance: 982
║ Luck: 915
║ Will: 517
║ Comprehension: 287
║ Dexterity: 21
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Inventory
║ Sticky bombs x50
║ Sticky bombs x50
║ Sticky bombs x50
║ Sticky bombs x50
║ Amulet of Endurance x1
║ Amulet of Change x1
║ Mjolnir x1
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Genome (4990 points)
║ Sheep Transformation
║ Soul Collection
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Skills (251 points)
║ Slow (10)
║ Slip (10)
║ Palm Push (10)
║ Thick Skin (10)
║ Attention Grabbing (10)
║ Bite (9)
║ Sharp Eye (1, MAX)
║ Emotionless Machine (3)
║ Master of Attention (3)
╚════════════════════╝
╔════════════════════╗
║ Progress
║ Name: WinterLord
║ Level: 18
║ HP: 388/388
║ MP: 213/213
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Stats
║ Endurance: 5412
║ Strength: 4760
║ Dexterity: 2745
║ Will: 851
║ Intelligence: 720
║ Comprehension: 287
║ Wisdom: 126
║ Luck: 70
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Inventory
║ Amulet of Constitution x1
║ Aegis x1
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Genome (1014 points)
║ Stoneskin
║ Demonize
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Skills (281 points)
║ Raise Shield (10)
║ Shield Bash (10)
║ Plant Feet (10)
║ Lightning Aura (8)
║ Revenge (4)
║ Gauntlet Throw (3)
║ Solid Bones (1, MAX)
╚════════════════════╝
Just like me, that character shows characteristics that are unique to this game's top players:
A low quantity, high-quality equipment.
In this game, if you want to carry a lot of high-level equipment, you need to spend time farming in this particular direction, and it is something that most characters avoid.
For now, it is more worth having a few high-powered items rather than a bunch of low-quality items that make you both slower and unfit for fighting.
Beyond that, its skillset is way better distributed than mine: while I did give it a direction lately, it is a fact it's been all over the place. I have skills for offensive, defensive, crowd control, and even aggro management purposes. It makes me an all-rounder, but it also makes me weaker than everyone in every area.
Meanwhile, my opponent focused on defensive skills, and even its few offensive additions are based on that defense-first logic.
Just look at his items:
╔════════════════════╗
║ Aegis
║ Rarity: Legendary
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Aegis was a device
║ owned by Zeus.
║ Sometimes borrowed by
║ Athena, sometimes used
║ by heroes, one of its
║ multiple appearances
║ is that of a shield
║ bearing the head of
║ a Gorgon.
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Attached Skills:
║ Fear Shake
║ Stone Gaze
╚════════════════════╝
╔════════════════════╗
║ Amulet of Constitution
║ Rarity: Legendary
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Whenever you take
║ damages, there is a
║ 10% chance of adding
║ a counter to this amulet
║ Use the amulet:
║ Restore [counter]% of
║ your maximum health,
║ increase your max HP
║ by [counter]% for 1
║ minute, consuming all
║ counters.
║ The counters are reset
║ when you are no longer
║ in a fight.
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Interference limit: 2
╚════════════════════╝
In fact, I didn't need to look into the details of the Amulet of Constitution to know what it was. In fact, I am pretty sure that I am the one who sold that specific Amulet on the market.
Not far back, after raiding a level 19 solo dungeon, I dropped two amulets. One was an Amulet of Constitution, and one was an Amulet of Endurance.
I kept the Amulet of Endurance, and sold the other.
As for why I'm so sure it is of my own source, it is because there is no, to my knowledge, anyone who reached level 19 yet. I only recently reached level 20, and I am roughly 1.10 to 1.15 levels in advance.
Challenging a solo dungeon of your level is already hard enough, thanks to the sadistic nature of the developers, I don't see how anyone could have raided that dungeon at level 18.
As for Aegis, I only opened its details to know which version it was. Just like its description can let one think, there are several versions of this shield in the game. I never looted any of them, but it seems like I just met the most troublesome of them all.
It is the version that has this annoying Gorgon skill, Stone Gaze. Who thought it was a good idea for Medusa to get her head cut off? Off with their heads!
Anyway, beyond his equipment, the most telling thing about his playstyle is his stat distribution. It is one of the things you have the least amount of control on, as it almost only increases through your gameplay.
A focus on Endurance and Strength gives us good information, telling us that it will most likely be a huge fortress, with a straightforward style that is meant to just take the enemy attacks and win through attrition.
His high dexterity means he probably has a lighter and faster secondary weapon, probably a spear, that is not currently in his inventory, that serves as some sort of secondary loadout, probably meant to be used for some specific raids.
Why do I know it's a spear? It can't be a heavy weapon, as those don't increase and use dexterity much due to the way the game works. Swords meanwhile are especially weak in the meta, as it doesn't have either the reach, power, or speed of other weapons, and for the other light weapons, light daggers and rapiers, they are way too dependent on either alternative skill trees or the player's manual wielding to be useful.
Spears are fast and have a lot of reach, and their damages are not negligible. They also are easy to use even without much time spent training with them, and they don't need any specialized skill tree to be a convenient weapon.
Anyway, the fact that his spear isn't even in his inventory means that his fighting power is stronger with a shield, even in PvP.
Apart from that, there is nothing more to deduct from his stats, so next are his Genome and his skills.
There is, in fact, nothing much to say about the Genome skills.
It is one of the few things you can't take a peek at and are private in the status, but the names are telling enough.
These can probably be used to strengthen himself in resistance, for Stoneskin, and strength, for Demonize.
As for his skills, there are just a few whose names are not transparent enough for me to immediately get their use cases.
Namely Lightning Aura, Revenge, and Gauntlet Throw.
Be it raise Shield, Shield Bash, or Solid Bones, they are obvious enough to not need any kind of further analysis.
╔═════════════════════════════════╗
║ Lightning Aura
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ For the duration of this skill, you
║ emit lightning around your body,
║ destroying all projectiles with an
║ health inferior to 8% of your
║ intelligence, and dealing 0.4% of
║ your intelligence per second as
║ to nearby targets
║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Evolutions
║ None
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Cost: 10
║ Active
║ Duration: 8 Seconds
╚═════════════════════════════════╝
╔═════════════════════════════════╗
║ Revenge
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Revenge might be best served cold,
║ but it is good warm too.
║ Deal damages equivalent to 80% of
║ the health you lost in the past 40
║ seconds to a designated target
║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Evolutions
║ None
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Cost: 50
║ Active
║ Delay: 2 Seconds
║ Cannot be canceled
║ Interruption Super-sensitive
╚═════════════════════════════════╝
╔═════════════════════════════════╗
║ Gauntlet Throw
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Throw down the gauntlet, provoking
║ a single target.
║ For the duration of this skill, any
║ skill used by the said target that
║ can do so will inevitably target you.
║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Evolutions
║ None
╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢
║ Cost: 20
║ Active
║ Duration: 3 Seconds
╚═════════════════════════════════╝
Now, I understand.
Lightning Aura is some sort of shielding with bonus damages, and is in line with his focus. Revenge is bonus damages resulting from his passive approach to fighting, and Gauntlet Throw is meant for two purposes, but both are more meant for group fighting.
In PvP or PvE, it allows him to get the aggro of anyone, including players.
One additional use of it, though, is in the specific case of PvP group fighting. It can be used to directly disrupt the enemy team's flow. Most major healing spells have either big cooldowns or big costs, and one important thing about this game is that almost all your resources are finite, and need time to be replenished. It means that redirecting major healing spells is the definition of a perfect move. The epitome of it, in fact.
Just imagine sending a huge wave of buffs and healing to your team only to have it go and strengthen the enemy tank. You might just leave, uninstall, and go cry in a corner.
The inherent sadism in every part of the design of the game is admittedly one of its most frustrating sides, but it's also what makes it so fun, indirectly:
Life isn't fair, so it makes sense that life in another world wouldn't be fair. It contributes to the feeling of immersion into another world, and thus makes it feel better when you beat down a shameless young maste-hmm, I mean, a silver-spooned player.
Anyway, there is an interesting thing about Revenge that could be useful to me.
It is an extremely strong skill. Its cost is pretty low for a skill with such a powerful effect, it doesn't have any sort of cooldown, and while its cast time is long and can't be canceled, making it a bit harder to time, it is only 2 seconds long.
But it also is interruption Super-sensitive.
It is a very rare special kind of effect.
So rare, actually, that sometimes I tend to believe it's just put on whatever skills are so OP that the developers are worried the players are gonna whine about.
Basically, there is normally a threshold of damages or CC the caster need to be hit with for channeled skills to be interrupted. But this special property makes this threshold effectively 0. It also ignores any kind of defensive skills, so even a negated attack can cancel it.
It means that any kind of attack, even if it is totally blocked by his shield, would be enough to interrupt Revenge.
In the lower ranks of the PvP Arena, there are a lot of people who depend on Interruption Super-sensitive skills as some kinds of ultimate skills to win the game, so there is no short amount of players who take time getting a weak AOE spell just to be able to cancel these.
In fact, one such popular skill just causes a slight breeze in a huge range. It's way stronger if you max it, but most players who get it keep it at level 1, a point at which it basically pushes the player a few centimeters for a short while, but it is enough to cancel an Interruption Super-sensitive skill at a low cost.
You could use this skill over and over again for the whole duration of a fight and still have skills points left at the end to keep going on for an hour, which is why it's so popular.
Anyway, beyond these matters, I believe I learned everything I needed to know about my opponent. The game started a few seconds ago now, and spending any more time on my opponent's status could put me in danger.
I've made a simple plan of action:
Step 1: Be careful of Shield Hit and close-range AOE
Step 2: Attack
Step 3: Cancel Revenge
Step 4: Repeat from step 1
Let's go!