DPS PvP As Ice players, we have a slight disadvantage in PvP as we have lots of powers that have cast-times and long animations to completely pull off. To compensate for this, it is best to use quick hitting powers that have no cast times and short animations. This makes your damage instantanious instead of waiting on a move to cast (Impaling Ice, Frost Blast) or waiting on an animation to finish so you can attack again (Glacier Flash, Arctic Gust). All of these types of powers are also interupptable which causes a waste of power to yourself. When PvPing you can expect to be constantly interupted, the amount of times you would have the opportunity to get these moves off are not worth wasting the slot in your load-out. Mepps wrote: Just to reiterate: Just so that everyone is absolutely and abundantly clear, Animation Canceling or "clipping" is intended. You shouldn't feel bad for doing it and it is not cheating. Weapon Clipping The bread and butter of any DPS is knowing how to properly clip your powers. Clipping is essentially animation canceling of moves in order to have the effect persist with them. The great thing about Ice DPS is that our moves seem almost tailor suited for clipping, second to only Light DPS and being on par with Gadgets, with very little moves having long cast times or long animations. Moves can be clipped with powers, jump canceling, block canceling, and in some cases, other powers. Here is a quick guide to the basics of clipping and how it works. Clipping 101 Now each weapon will clip differently so it is up to each individual user to find out which combos he is going to use. Just always remember to try and keep the last hit in your combo the one that you clip. This is usually the hardest hitting move of the combo and can have you starting your next combo while the hit is still taking effect on the target. I use the staff for DPSing so here is an example of a clip rotation I use. I always hit a power first to start my damage modifier. Start the Roundhouse combo (5xTap Square), directly after the last Tap I instantly cast Bitter Winds. Then I move on to the Downward Smash combo (2xTap Square, 3xHold Square), on the last hold I hit Winter Ward. Repeat the last combo again and use Wintery Tempest on the last hit instead and then immediately use Reflection to cancel the animation and deal damage to any enemies that attack me. Now what I would do is use the Focused Spin attack which can be clipped by holding Block when the cast bar is a little over halfway for full damage effect. That rotation uses 3 different types of clips. A Power clip, and Support Power clip, and a Block Clip. Again, you need to play with your powers and weapons to decide what is right for you. If you play a ranged weapon style then some powers would be better left off your load-out like Bitter Winds and Winter Ward as using them will give no real damage if adds are not close to you. Power Clipping For certain powers, it's possible to clip the animations of them by using another power. The powers that clip the attack powers are generally meant to be support powers but this is not always the case. For example, I can cast Wintery Tempest and upon casting that I cancel the animation with Reflection which will also deal damage. When you do this it's more favorable to do it with long animation moves like Tempest or Resonating Gale. 3 powers will clip your long animation moves. Ice Bash, Shatter Restraints and Reflection. http://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/a-chilly-guide-to-everything-ice.197/ <----Ice guide by Radium that the above post was taken from. Hope this helped. If not then my apologies.
Wow... I really need to update that. From that snippit I'm still telling people that Impaling is bad for PvP lol
