Need some help understanding my matchups yesterday

[OniOfTheSword]

Hi there folks.

 

To start off, I'm not a regular arena player, I mostly just do my pvp dailies (call me a noob, sure). But I do lurk on the forums and read about matchups and threads that have useful information. I main a Blade master, and am curious about something that happened in my matchups against two summoners yesterday.

 

I started every round with a glide -> rmb to aoe stun both the summoner and the cat, then proceeded to burst down and kill the cat before losing even 50% of my hp, in all 4 rounds.

 

But after that, I couldn't even touch the summoner. I got rooted a lot, but I figured it was ok since I would parry their attacks, SS out of root and charge with either 3, or switch to basic stance and charge with 2. But.....

 

1) The summoner never got stunned from my parries. I was constantly deflecting attacks while rooted, but the summoner just kept attacking and going ham on me. My rush was on CD at this point since I had used most of my CCs up against the cat. So this constant deflect-stun-avoidance continued for a good 15-20 seconds without the summoner getting stunned even once.

 

2) When my rush was ready for use, I made sure to watch out for the summoner holding up that flower that allows them to go invisible. Used my rush when I was sure they weren't holding it up (made it less obvious by not rushing straight after SS since that tends to be a standard/predictable pattern for BMs), but the summoner went invisible anyway.

 

So I basically lost all of my remaining HP in all 4 rounds to this, and lost both matches. So my question(s) are:

1) Do summoners have some sort of innate stun resist that I should be aware of? If so, how do I get around this?

 

2) Is there some kind of known exploit that gives them this immunity? Did I go up against a scripter or was this a real person who had amazing timing/very skilled person? This was in silver. What leads me to this question, is the fact that they let their cat die so easily. I find it hard to believe that really skilled summoners would be so bad at managing their pet.

 

Replies/insight/advice appreciated, and thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Please avoid summoner hate replies, as I've seen enough of that on forums and it sickens me to no end. Keep the posts constructive, please.

[TheRealBronx]

Hey there, fellow BM here.

 

This is the definition of a match-up nightmare. Just read the Summoner's skills, and you will realize their kit is designed to counter ours.

 

Ranged naturally has advantage over melee, but Blade and Soul takes it to another level. They can negate your gap closers with their flower thingy, putting your primary tool for getting in to do damage, on cooldown, and at the same time, refreshing this defensive cooldown so they can do it over and over.

 

If you do manage to get a combo onto the Summoner, cat breaks it up. If you manage to catch the cat in a death combo, they have a 6 sec. cooldown cat tank mode that makes this strategy impossible. You will waste cooldowns on the cat, while healing it.

 

Your only hope has a melee is to gapclose, cc, and combo, but look at this! Summoners have 5 different ways to disable your gapclosers, which they can rotate to make sure you're doing nothing but eating free damage.

 

Blocking? They can disable your block, just because. Attacking a Summoner? Here let me pop my bubble.

 

I did the math, and as a BM, you pretty much have a 12 second window to work with. A 12 second window that gets smaller with each correct decision the Summoner makes, or with each mistake you make against them.

 

If you manage to get a win vs a Summoner as BM, you have to play close to perfect.

[Emya]

23 minutes ago, OniOfTheSword said:

1) Do summoners have some sort of innate stun resist that I should be aware of? If so, how do I get around this?

 

2) Is there some kind of known exploit that gives them this immunity? Did I go up against a scripter or was this a real person who had amazing timing/very skilled person? This was in silver. What leads me to this question, is the fact that they let their cat die so easily. I find it hard to believe that really skilled summoners would be so bad at managing their pet.

 

Replies/insight/advice appreciated, and thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Please avoid summoner hate replies, as I've seen enough of that on forums and it sickens me to no end. Keep the posts constructive, please.

 

> Do summoners have some sort of innate stun resist that I should be aware of? If so, how do I get around this?

Summs have skills that render them "invincible" for 5 hits or status effects for X seconds at the cost of their cat's HP, I think the skill is called True Friend (a certain spec of it)

 

You mentioned that this was yesterday, maybe its just the ranking just reset? And you've been matched up to some summ who might have had a high ranking or lots of experience already prior the reset.

 

As for the match where cat was left to die, there are some players that can gauge that he/she can kill you, especially if they figured that you'll focus on the cat alone first while summ himself is unleashing lots of damage to you. Sometimes, if summs make the cat ball-up, most often you'll divert your attention from the cat to the summoner himself (cuz you don't want it to heal)... and if he's already dishing out lots of damage near you, the cat is a small price to pay (at least if summ can take your HP down to around 10%, he can manage without a cat IMHO).

 

 

[OniOfTheSword]

10 minutes ago, Emya said:

 

> Summs have skills that render them "invincible" for 5 hits or status effects for X seconds at the cost of their cat's HP, I think the skill is called True Friend (a certain spec of it)

 

10 minutes ago, Emya said:

As for the match where cat was left to die, there are some players that can gauge that he/she can kill you, especially if they figured that you'll focus on the cat alone first while summ himself is unleashing lots of damage to you. Sometimes, if summs make the cat ball-up, most often you'll divert your attention from the cat to the summoner himself (cuz you don't want it to heal)... and if he's already dishing out lots of damage near you, the cat is a small price to pay (at least if summ can take your HP down to around 10%, he can manage without a cat IMHO).

 

This is where I'm confused. I killed the cat in all 4 rounds as mentioned in my first post. And I had over 50% hp in all those instances. The summoners did literally nothing with their cat. Not to mention that they let both themselves and their cat get caught in my aoe at the opening of the match, which makes me believe their skill level wasn't that high. I wish I had recorded a video of this. The summoner and the cat were literally running in circles while I glided above them, nicely positioned myself to aoe stun them both with rmb.

 

Is that 5 attack/X second status resist usable without the cat? Is it on a low cooldown/spammable? Cause again, as I mentioned in my first post, this constant stun avoidance went on for a good 15-20 seconds.

[PatchKid]

9 minutes ago, Emya said:

 

> Do summoners have some sort of innate stun resist that I should be aware of? If so, how do I get around this?

Summs have skills that render them "invincible" for 5 hits or status effects for X seconds at the cost of their cat's HP, I think the skill is called True Friend (a certain spec of it)

 

You mentioned that this was yesterday, maybe its just the ranking just reset? And you've been matched up to some summ who might have had a high ranking or lots of experience already prior the reset.

 

As for the match where cat was left to die, there are some players that can gauge that he/she can kill you, especially if they figured that you'll focus on the cat alone first while summ himself is unleashing lots of damage to you. Sometimes, if summs make the cat ball-up, most often you'll divert your attention from the cat to the summoner himself (cuz you don't want it to heal)... and if he's already dishing out lots of damage near you, the cat is a small price to pay (at least if summ can take your HP down to around 10%, he can manage without a cat IMHO).

 

 

 

So, I don't think you faced a real person / summoner player.  There is currently a hack in the game specifically for summoners that allows them to fade in and out of invisibility and be 100% immune to all attacks.  This hack is being used by a handful of summoner bots.  They will auto-face you, and spam 3 abilities with no CD while fading in and out of invisibility making every attack you attempt "resist".  Additionally, they will ignore their cat and let it die because it does not add to the automated routine.

[OniOfTheSword]

11 minutes ago, PatchKid said:

 

So, I don't think you faced a real person / summoner player.  There is currently a hack in the game specifically for summoners that allows them to fade in and out of invisibility and be 100% immune to all attacks.  This hack is being used by a handful of summoner bots.  They will auto-face you, and spam 3 abilities with no CD while fading in and out of invisibility making every attack you attempt "resist".  Additionally, they will ignore their cat and let it die because it does not add to the automated routine.

 

I see, that pretty much sounds like what I experienced yesterday. Hmm, that's demoralizing. Is there a way to counter the hack as a BM?

 

As far as I know from my limited knowledge, block-stun is BM's bread and butter counter-play for pvp. But if that's rendered useless by the exploit, what are our options?

 

Hopefully this won't be the meta for Pre-Seaon 2, after the flood of destroyers that was in Pre-Season 1. I suppose I'm just going to have to start recording all my summoner matches from now on.

[Emya]

3 minutes ago, OniOfTheSword said:

 

Is that 5 attack/X second status resist usable without the cat? Is it on a low cooldown/spammable? Cause again, as I mentioned in my first post, this constant stun avoidance went on for a good 15-20 seconds.

 

Nope, its not spammable and its not usable without a cat.

PatchKid's post might be the reason though I haven't encountered one before,

 

4 minutes ago, PatchKid said:

 

So, I don't think you faced a real person / summoner player.  There is currently a hack in the game specifically for summoners that allows them to fade in and out of invisibility and be 100% immune to all attacks.  This hack is being used by a handful of summoner bots.  They will auto-face you, and spam 3 abilities with no CD while fading in and out of invisibility making every attack you attempt "resist".  Additionally, they will ignore their cat and let it die because it does not add to the automated routine.

 

[TheRealBronx]

7 minutes ago, OniOfTheSword said:

 

I see, that pretty much sounds like what I experienced yesterday. Hmm, that's demoralizing. Is there a way to counter the hack as a BM?

 

As far as I know from my limited knowledge, block-stun is BM's bread and butter counter-play for pvp. But if that's rendered useless by the exploit, what are our options?

 

From watching the successful Diamond BM streams, I've concluded that an aggressive style tends to yield the best results.

 

Turtle BM spamming block is fine vs. certain classes, but vs. a Summoner, it just makes you a sitting duck. Summoners want you to stand in place, it makes their job easier.

 

The BM's I've seen that deal with Summoners fairly well, used calculated aggression. It's not blind aggression, but rather a very cerebral approach to aggressive play. 

 

Playing full defensive vs. them just seems to get you wrecked.

[OniOfTheSword]

@TheRealBronx Quoting is being dumb. Would you be so kind as to link one of those streams here please? Also, any stream/recording out there of BMs playing and winning against these bot-type summoners.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Vecejj]

This would explain a few things as today doing 1v1 as FM I faced a summoner twice in a row, killed his cat within seconds and he just proceeded to spam spells, however when you're frozen you are locked in place yet when I was strafeing around him he was turning towards me which obviously means he's a bot. 

 

Now im not sure if this hack people are talking about only resists things such as deflections, parry, counter, melee damage etc but I had no issues doing damage not even a petal storm. 

 

I hope these bots get dealt with, currently on a 16 win streak and 0 losses, 5 of them being actual human players... I'm on the verge of leaving this game considering how weak the pve is and how boring pvp is with free wins, I ised to play WoW but they had a major bot problem in pvp too which made me quiet :/ 

 

Hope NCsoft aren't as clueless as blizzard. 

 

 

[Shirou]

Rosethorn Tier 4 Form 1

Deals 14 ~ 17 [1.20] wind damage

 

Generates 1 additional Focus on critical hit

Penetrates Deflect

Increased cast speed

Increased projectile speed

 

Petal Storm

User and nearby party members are resistant to projectiles

 

Enemies within the area cannot passively Block, Evade

User is resistant to Stun caused by Deflect

 

Doom 'n' Bloom

Deals 77 ~ 90 [6.40] earth damage over 5 sec

 

Heals the user 100% of the damage dealt to the inital target

Generates 5 Focus over 5 sec

Penetrates Defense, Deflect

[OniOfTheSword]

10 minutes ago, Shirou said:

Rosethorn Tier 4 Form 1

Deals 14 ~ 17 [1.20] wind damage

Generates 1 additional Focus on critical hit

Penetrates Deflect

Increased cast speed

Increased projectile speed

 

Petal Storm

User and nearby party members are resistant to projectiles

Enemies within the area cannot passively Block, Evade

User is resistant to Stun caused by Deflect

 

Doom 'n' Bloom 

Deals 77 ~ 90 [6.40] earth damage over 5 sec

Heals the user 100% of the damage dealt to the inital target

Generates 5 Focus over 5 sec

Penetrates Defense, Deflect

 

Wow o.o. Thanks for the info. That explains the summoner not getting stunned, quite the unfavorable matchup for BMs, like TheRealBronx stated.

 

Guess I'll just have to learn to play with calculated aggression.