Strategy

[icycalm]

I have a tactic for 4v4s.

First you identify the two best players in the team. The internal 1v1 tournament will help with that, but let's say for the sake of the example that it's recoil and infernovia. These two have a greater chance of winning their battles than anyone else, so they should stand and fight. In the meantime, the other two guys run away from their fights, and towards recoil and infernovia. At this point, there are two outcomes:


1. recoil and infern beat their opponents before the runners have got to them

In this case it's all good because then the runners turn around, once they have reached recoil and infern, and we have two 2v1s on our hands.

2. recoil and infern are still fighting when the runners reach them

This is still good because the runners can then give them a helping hand. Usually, the pursuers won't be far behind, but even one or two extra slashes can mean the difference between winning and losing a closely-contested fight. Worst case scenario is that the pursuer arrives and the fight turns into a 2v2 brawl in which anything can happen, which is still better than two 1v1s for us, because the reason recoil and infern won't have beat their opponents early on is probably because their opponents were equal to or better than them.


To pull off this tactic well we must get good at doing two things: running away, and fighting 2v1s without hitting each other. I don't have much to say about the running thing, but as for not hitting your team members, I think the key is to allow one person to be the chief fighter in the battle, and the second person to circle around and get the occasional hit in when he is 100% sure the coast is clear. Even if the second guy gets no hits in at all, the battle will still be won, I think, due to the psychological terror the opponent will experience knowing he is fighting against overwhelming odds. So don't try to take over the fight, when you barge in on one -- except if your teammate is near-death and asking you to -- just circle around the back of his opponent, and try to maintain this position (since the opponent will be constantly trying to maneuver to avoid the flanking) all the while getting the occasional light slash in when you can. That should be enough to achieve victory. And since you won't be the one doing the heavy fighting, keep an eye on your perimeter for extra opponents arriving and changing the dynamic, so you can call it out to your teammate.

All this of course means that -- at least as a runner -- you won't be improving your fighting skill so much during 4v4s, but that's the whole point of 4v4s -- tactics -- otherwise why play 4v4s at all? If you want to focus on your pure combat skills, do duels all day long and only jump into 4v4s when you want to use some tactics to break up the monotony.

For me, it's tactics all the way, and I'll only do duels when there's no one else around to play with me.

The above tactic will also work for 2v2s, but will of course be less effective because the stages tend to be smaller and the pursuer tends to reach the runner much faster. As long as you get effective at it though (i.e. at running quickly and at aiding your teammate without getting in his way) I still think it can be useful, especially when there is a big gap of ability between the two players.

In sum, I think that the goal in 2v2s and 4v4s is to win the battle, not to have a good fight with one opponent or two, so every tactic that can help achieve that is fair game, and should be explored and utilized.

[icycalm]

If a teammate is near-death, we could also try killing and reviving them. Maybe we can gain health this way.

Not very good tactic immersion-wise though. Could still use it, if it works, if we are in a very tough spot.

[Qpo]

3. recoil and infern are dead before the runners reach them

In this case we end up with two 1v2s, in which case we should expect to lose that round. If they won, and we have two 2v1s, we should expect to win that round. We can elaborate on both of these scenarios but that's more or less going to be it. Taking that to its extreme, we can have one fighter and three runners — picking fighter through quick coordination at the "camera floats around and introduces your opponent phase", based on player skill, match-up and terrain. If the fighter wins, we have a 4v3 which we should expect to win. If he loses, we have a 3v4 which we should expect to lose. So basically having runners puts all weight on those of us that do fight, win or lose.

So using runners is great, and if we have a strong champion, we can let him get his kill and the round is ours. (You can relate this to any team sport, where having a strong offensive player draws two defenders and opens up for another offensive player to score.) And if there's not a single player on our team that can kill a player on their team in a 1v1 situation... we should expect to lose. Even if the "all of us are weaker than all of them" might be a fun scenario to work on. If just one of us can kill one of them however, by running we can "shuffle" the duels into having our champion meet their weak link, break it, have the round snowball in our favor, and win.

Assuming everyone is of equal individual skill in the 4v4s scenario with two fighters and two runners, i.e. "rounding off" individual skill to give us a "smoother equation" to work with as we move on, we still have the potential advantage of being better in a 2v2 brawl than in two 1v1s (brawls is a place where the game will really shine), and the advantage of a short window of 2v1 that running can give us. I say can give us, because there are two scenarios:


1. You run and get chased

Leads to a momentary window of 2v1 in our favor, which then turns into a 2v2 brawl.

2. You run and don't get chased

Leads to both a 2v1 and a 1v2 and has to be reported. Maybe our 2v1 starts before the 1v2, in which case it's a small advantage, but it can also go the other way depending which side has better map knowledge, running speed and communication. The winning move in a 1v2 while you have friends alive, is to run. If they both chase you, it's the exact same as if you expertly block, parry and dodge thousands of incoming blows from both of them at the same time. It's commonly referred to as "kiting". If you don't run, expect to die. Honor, schmonor — it's run or die. Run before the second enemy manages to engage you, for once he does you might not be able to get away. And this is why someone who doesn't report that an enemy is on the loose sentences one of his brothers in arms to death.


So you can see how the flow of a round, and in the larger perspective the "tactical evolution" of the game, as people eventually start to catch on, is:

1. Simultaneous duels
2. Ganking and kiting
3. Brawls

Duels can be worked on solo. Ganking and kiting requires some coordination but can almost be called "trickery", as there's not really that much to it once you understand how it works. That said, it is very powerful against those who fail to make use of it, and once we learn them better we might be able to use the maps to force a 2v2 into a short 2v1+1, e.g. by both climbing up a ladder. A move for the outnumbered is to leap from a high cliff, if you think your pursuers are bloodthirsty enough to blindly follow. There's a falling "smash the shit out of someone below you" attack in this game though, so it might be too risky here. In any case, there's ample room for exploring, and communication alone gives us a large advantage over most opponents.

And then we're at the brawling, which, the way I see it, really is the purpose of the game and only comes into light because the 1v1 is necessarily somewhat shallow as we otherwise wouldn't leave the dueling stage. It also helps in the one vs. many scenario, which we want to be doable. Brawling 2v2 is going to work around creating momentary windows of 2v1 and using attacks hitting both opponents — which can be said to be the same thing — while avoiding 1v2 and both of you being hit by the same attack. So there's a lot of overlap between 2v2 and 2v1 and 1v2. The first step of brawling, you could say "where ganking ends and brawling starts", is to really be able to capitalize on even a second of 2v1. If you consider that a 2v1 is better than a 3v2, and that you can't rely on creating 3v1s (I'm not sure about this yet, but intuition tells me so), a 2v1 is the best chance you're ever going to get, and someone might've taken a lot of risk, damage or even died to give it to you. So if you do get it, even briefly, someone has to die.

In a 2v1, the enemy is either focusing you or your friend. Whoever doesn't have aggro is the flanker and main aggressor. This forces the enemy to switch focus, upon which you switch roles, and so forth. As you become better at this the lines will blur between who is baiting and who is flanking, and when you can hardly tell the difference yourselves anymore you will have become a complete nightmare to play against. Just thinking about going up against such opponents puts a darkness in my stomach and I can feel my face moving towards a frown, even if I'm used to be almost exclusively on the attacking side.

To avoid hitting my teammate, I use the high stance and heavy blows, while circling the opponent away from my friend. This works pretty well so far. The alternative would be that when I circle to the right, I also swing from the right, to have my blow come from an angle as far away as possible from my friend. Or, if my step to the right is big enough, I can swing on my left side to reposition while attacking from the front, but then I want to be sure that my friend isn't standing there or attacking from the front as well. I'm not fully familiar with "external parrying" yet, i.e. parrying incoming blows from a third party when locked to a target, but in general you want to be attacking from different angles, if only to create more stress. If the target is good at 1v2, you might have to step it down to light blows, even if just to start off a combo.

Another thing is grabbing. In a 1v1, a successful grab can be reliably followed by a light attack (at least for me as a Warden). A grab and push into a wall can be followed by a heavy attack. In a 2v1, if I have a grab and my ally hits the enemy, I think you lose the grip (not 100% sure). So in a 2v1, with a grab on an opponent, and you can't kill him outright, smash him into a wall and do a heavy blow, during which your ally can land at least one of his own. I have not recreated this on purpose or practiced it with anyone, but when I've played with recoil it has happened more than once and they turn to mush.

1: Grab and push enemy into wall
2: Ally lands heavy blow while enemy is staggering into wall
3: Land heavy blow just as enemy is stunned against wall
4: Ally lands another heavy blow as enemy is stunned against wall

The moment when you jump into the 1v1 to make it a 2v1 is worth some special consideration. Many heroes (possibly all of them) have a special attack usable when sprinting and not locked onto a target. The ideal might be to have a grappling move here. In the Warden's case it is a heavy blow, making him leap forward a considerable distance as he delivers it. Naturally I'll use this to jump into a fight. If the enemy starts to focus me, we do a standard 2v1 bait and flank pattern. If he doesn't I kill him. He's going to die.

In the case I have a pursuer, if I have a big lead on him we can proceed like a clean 2v1 scenario, but with extra urgency, and try to get the kill before he catches up. If he's right behind me however, I would suggest doing a switch, meaning I jump in and take over the fight against the hostile fighter, and my allied fighter disengages and intercepts the hostile runner. The first reason for this is that it is awesome. Frankly this is just "dynamic" as fuck and I keeping seeing it play out in my head over and over again and it never stops being cool (maybe it will if we try it out and it doesn't work well, lol). The second is that it is stressful for the hostile fighter. He was in one match-up, now he's in another. If he's whiny about honor his spirit might even break. The more shocking and spectacular this sudden attack is the better. The third is that turning around 180 degrees (what the runner would have to do) is harder than turning 90 degrees (what the fighter has to do). In this way, even if the pursuer is RIGHT behind, we trade a "our runner slams their fighter in the back (advantage)" for a "our fighter intercepts their runner head on (neutral)".

To execute a good "crash and switch", communication is needed. Even if you, as the runner, announced at the beginning of the round that you were being followed, that might be as much as 10 seconds before you found a 1v1 to crash into. That's an eternity on a battlefield. Nobody is going to remember that. So as soon as you see the 1v1, you have to announce to the person in it that you are coming, and repeat if you have a follower or not. So either "icy I have a follower", or "icy I'm clean". Then, just as you crash in, you should say "switch" if you have a follower and "kill kill kill" if you don't. This way there are two cues, in case the fighter missed one. It also helps with timing the switch and allows the rest of the team to follow in more detail what is happening, allowing them to make better decisions on their end. Silence is ambiguous and can't be relied upon to have a meaning (unless you define a default tactic and let silence mean "go with the default", which is what happens anyway if nobody says anything).

To pull this off we also have to get good at distinguishing one another at a distance, so we know who to call out to. Using different classes helps, possibly having part of our armor be distinct, perhaps a head ornament, and maybe the quick chat on the left shoulder pad can be useful here, if one of the fighters uses it and the other doesn't.

Then we have the 2v2 and beyond. Now we're really brawlin'. While I don't know too much about this yet, I suspect there will be some form of pairing up. But maybe not. If we're all close and I circle around my enemy towards the other enemy, I can possibly land an area attack which my ally can use to combo off of. If I grab my enemy and throw him into a wall, instead of hitting him I can temporarily switch target and strike the other enemy a heavy blow in the back, which, if it makes him switch target to me, opens up his back to my ally and now we're almost doing a 2v1. Even if it doesn't make him switch target, putting as much damage as possible on a single target, commonly referred to as "focus fire", is very effective. Even if you have to pay 60% health to deal 20% damage to your ally's target, it can be worth it if it leads to him dying, taking you to a 2v1 you should be able to win almost regardless of how much or little health you have left. I don't know yet if a heavy horizontal blow can hit multiple enemies. Basically we want a loose formation while boxing them in, forcing them into a tight formation, while ideally herding them into some form of dangerous corner, possibly allowing us to land hits on multiple targets or sneakily landing a strike or two in someone's back. Maybe a full switch in the middle of a fight can disorient.

A few words about communication. I know that to automatically report what's going on and communicating in the heat of battle takes some practice, and really just getting used to more than anything, and everyone else should realized that too. I get that miscommunication with fatal results can be sensitive but it's really just a game anyway and whenever things go bad I just write it off as "practice" and move on. It is pretty hard to do well, judging by how few actually do it, but it feels damn cool when a whole group does it well together. It's really the central aspect of playing together and shouldn't be taken lightly, even if at first some think it sounds silly. In all my years I have never met a group that communicates well and plays bad.

A few words about balance and honor. Whereas in duels you start from as low risk offense as possible, from light attacks, to heavy attacks, to pushing into damage or falling to death, in flanking and ganking it is the exact opposite, as you're facing at most 50% of the target's "total defense" (in this game, his focus or attention). So you can see how different heroes are suited for different situations. Merely having a lot of health is a huge asset here, as it means, at the very minimum, that you're occupying someone. Having good light attacks, which decides many a duel, might not count for much when any second a juggernaut can come out of nowhere and smash you into a wall, shortly followed by everything fading to black. Understand also how in duels you should never, ever pay even the slightest heed to any whine about "dishonor" when you toss those pesky little rabbits off of a cliff. They bite hard but are easy to toss, so toss them. Some heroes have special moves just for better grappling, is it really "fair" for them not to use and fully capitalize on them? "Don't use them because I don't have anything like that! Let's stick to only dealing damage in open wide spaces, because that's where I have an advantage!" Oh, you! The game is very clearly made with the terrain as an integral part of the fighting and to separate it from the cutting and slashing is an affront to the designers.

A few words about settings. Increasing the FOV in the options menu basically zooms the camera out, giving you better awareness around yourself, at least outdoors. Indoors, or with obstacles in the way, there's more adjusting in and out which is a bit annoying. I'd still recommend zooming out a little bit, though perhaps not to the max of 90. There's a description saying "Your actual FOV is 71", but I don't know what that means. You can also increase the sensitivity of your right stick, allowing you to turn around faster. Putting it on max is probably "best", but it was much too high for me and felt flimsy and bad. I did raise it from 5 to 7. Both of these two settings seem extra handy for brawling.

A few words about game modes. The list from before, with two additions:

1. Duels
2. Simultaneous duels
3. Ganking and kiting
4. Brawling
5. Objectives

When the basic combat in itself isn't enough, it's time to play for objectives — if there are any good ones that opens up interesting new tactics, that is. But respawning sucks, so if they don't add something with rounds, as far as I'm concerned the game ends at the brawling.


P.S.

Note that when I say "expect" to win or lose, it doesn't mean WILL win or lose. It just means the odds are stacked in favor of that outcome. This, psychologically, also changes the rewards for the outcome. (I am telling you a secret right now.) If we are outnumbered and win, it will feel great, and the opponents will feel really bad. If we manage to lose when we outnumber them, it will boost their morale and be bad for ours. So, if this even needs to be said, always go 100%. The chance of you winning a 1v4 is slim, but if you DO, your teammates will shower you in praise, screenshots will be taken to eternalize your glory, and possibly even poems or songs written in your honor (note: I'm not promising anything!), while the other team will usually be so crushed that you've now won all of the remaining rounds in advance. It's only best out of five rounds each game, but mental advantages like this can and will carry over into subsequent games — and start legends. It's just as important to not relax when having the advantage. The risk of losing is less than 50% — but that's all it means. It's not over until either their skulls, necks or torsos are in two. When you have the advantage you want to be cold, tactical, avoid risk, and slowly strangle your way to a victory. When you're against the odds, and there is no other option left, explode.

[icycalm]

A couple of quick comments.

Your "3" scenario, of recoil and infern dying before I reach them, has never happened to me, and that's why I didn't include it. Unless they somehow suicide I don't see how it's possible.

Also, your insistence on calling out when you are running that one of us could get into a 2v1 situation also seems bizarre to me. The runners can't get into this situation because they are running, and the two people who are standing their ground can't get into it either since that's precisely where the runners are running to, and they started running first. The only way I could see something like this happening is if both runners run to the same person, so that the other person stays alone, but that is a matter of knowing the map and where to run. It is an issue of execution, hence of secondary importance. It's merely one of the many things that can go wrong with this tactic if we haven't practiced it enough and can't pull it off very well. And since we call out the tactic at the start of the round, the fighters who stand and fight know exactly what is happening, so calling it out again later seems unnecessary to me.

[Qpo]

I haven't had the "3" scenario either and I don't think it's going to happen more than once in a blue moon. The main point of listing it was really just that it allowed me to get started writing from somewhere. That said, they could both get tossed out in 5 seconds flat. To discuss what to do then (2v4), or even listing the scenario at all, is more a matter of mapping out all contingencies because it is fun, than actually preparing tactics for use. Or at least premature to discuss now.

As for the enemy on the loose, I made a mistake there. For it to create a 1v2 to our disadvantage would indeed be bizarre. If it's 4v4 with two fighters and two runners, if both runners are chased we get two 2v2s. If one runner isn't chased, he will create a 2v1 with one fighter, and the chaser on the loose can be assumed to find his way to the other fight, turning that 2v2 into a 2v3 in our disadvantage. There's no way a 1v2 can reasonably result from a chaser on the loose at the start of a 4v4. I see now that the paragraph under "2. You run and don't get chased" is handling a 3v3 scenario with one runner.

The point of reporting whether you are chased or not as a runner remains though, as a 2v3 is definitely grounds for escaping if you have a 2v1 going on somewhere else.

[icycalm]

The ultimate tactic is for everyone to run and meet at one place. As long as we learn to fight in large numbers without hitting each other, the best tactic will always be for us to be in a single group, steamrolling enemies who are alone or in smaller groups than us. This strategy doesn't even have the disadvantages it has in PA, since there are no resources to seize and develop here. Whatever small advantage the scattered power-ups can provide will always be offset by the overwhelming advantage of a 4v1 or 4v2 setup. And the only way the opponent can counter this tactic -- as long as we apply it effectively, that is -- is for them to form a single group of their own. And that's precisely how armies are formed, and why.

[icycalm]

When we are in a single group, we don't even need to stress about what the opponents are doing, or hurry at all. We just walk around lazily and fuck up whoever we come across. If someone dies we revive him on the spot and keep going.

[icycalm]

This tactic would be particularly effective and easy to pull off if we all got fast characters. Good luck catching four Peacekeepers who don't want to be caught. As long as we learned the layouts of all stages and picked a meeting point roughly equidistant from all starting locations, the only way we could lose a battle is by far superior opponents against whom we never had a chance in the first place, or by opponents who wizened up quickly and met up too before we got a chance to catch any of them alone or in a smaller group. Because after we killed one or two of them, it'd make no difference if the rest met up. And since we'd be the ones who practiced the running+meeting thing, we'd be generally guaranteed to pull it off faster than anyone else, and kill at least one enemy in the process, reducing the game to a 4v3 in our favor, which almost guarantees victory if the opponents are not way above our ability level.

[icycalm]

At the very least, we'd have a blast trying to make the tactic work. Four Peacekeepers + stage memorization + single meeting point. It would be a fun way to play a few dozen battles and see if we can make it work. If we want to play this game as long as possible, trying as many tactics as possible and sticking with them long enough to see results is certainly one way to keep things fresh and keep playing week after week. I am really excited to try this shit out.