31 Pally in Depth !!!

[Burningdex]

So, if I was to tell you that pally was the best mage class available to you at level 31, what would you say or do? You would probably laugh at me and report me…
Well, you’re wrong. Pallies have-
• More armor points than voodoo mages
• decent to insane DPS (depending on what weapon you use)
• average hit % but above the hit % cap of ~84%
• 14 mana regen.. (yes I said 14. That’s 5 more than shivering mages, and 2 less than pure int brain freeze mages.)
OK, now I've convinced you to at least read this. Let's get into it, shall we?

MetaGame
So in my opinion, bears and mages are tied for first, foxes and rhinos are tied for second, and bird sitting at a lousy third (that doesn’t mean you cant make it work though; (shameless self advertising))
For people who can't comprehend that, it looks like this:
Mage=Bear>Fox=Rhino>Bird
Stats & Gear

You may be wondering why I use 37 int? Well that is because the int rings for 37 int can give up to 3 mana regen. Obviously, I use 94 str for the iceberg gear and the rest dex for some bonus offensive and defensive stats.
You may also be thinking, use plat pack you new gen scrub, well, 1. You only get 5 m/s, 2. Iceberg looks nicer overall, and 3. You get more armor with iceberg. Also, this ring is mandatory as it adds 3 m/s.



Skills
In my opinion, the standard 31 mage build works the best.


General Play
On a general note, pallies can tank like crazy. When I was first starting pally, I was complaining to someone “Mages always nuke me, help” and I got the reply “you can nuke too dummy” and this became my mantra for 31 pally. You can nuke when you want to, too. But, in recent times due to the nerrfs and other things, people may cry about it’s generally easier to tank them until they cark it or run out of mana.

Mages
Depending on how they are spec'ed and what level they are, fights can rage on for 5+ minutes or less than 30 seconds. There are 3s ub branches for mages now, Dex-Int-Pally
Dex
Dex mages are very common and IMO the most played class at 31. Your mana regen bests their's. So a general rule is, if they are using as many skills as you do, when your regen rate is at half mana, they will roughly have 1/4 or less. To fight them, you need to:
1. Ensure you use your buffs after they do, gives you more of a window to pop in a nuke.
2. Ensure they don’t kite you. This is the biggest thing you will need to deal; with when fighting a decent dex mage.
3. For the love of god, DO NOT SPAM HEAL, use it
I) When frozen by ice,
II) When you are about half health or less,
III) Or when they are draining and lightning.
4. Please, please, please! Spam lightning, the debuff is amazing, and it gives insane damage with low cool down,
5. Stay with in your auto range of 3m,
6. Sneak in an ice, drain, fire after they heal to force them to ms; after that you have basically won as they cannot regen over your DPS.
Another way to fight dex mages is to tank their mana, and swap to an Iceberg Frozen Longsword and nuke their socks off. The 1st method is much easier and requires less timing, this method is very effective. Reun is a God
INT
I haven’t come across many, but the ones who play it are either 35 or 31 nuke mages.
To fight them you need to:
1. Spam lightning and heal
2. If you have a decent grasp on timing, you can use their low armor points against them and try to late buff nuke them :0.
3. Always always sneak in a hot flash after they heal as criticals from the combo. It takes one fourth to one half of their life away, and they will occasionally panic ms. You will win 80% of the time.
STR
Remember those 5+ minute fights I was talking about? Well here is where they come up numerously. Your mana regen is insanely high as most of the pallies I have come across are plat pack “noobs” and have very very little mana regen. Most of the pallies I have seen usually say “why are u in iceberg you poor noob use plat set godly Reun”. Then, I fight them and halfway through the fight I'm sitting pretty at half mana and they say “stop I have no mana.” This is where you can be nice, or just nuke them and run. Fighting them is fairly straight forward and doesn’t really need step by step, just get the hot flash and spam lightning, and you should be sitting pretty.

As a general rule of thumb versus any mage, try to drain after they do, it can crit and cause them to panic ms which is the main thing you need to happen in order to win .
Bears
95% of them are dex bears so you just need to go close at about 8m. To win
1. Buff after they do, same principle applies to vs mages on this tip,
2. Heal AFTER they hell scream, not when they beckon.
3. Try to juke them and get them to use cb and cs out of range. You are guaranteed a win if you can get this to happen frequently.
4. Spam lightning and drain, they are your damage dealers and are essential when fighting bears.
5. Pray to the STS gods and hope they don’t dodge.


Fox
Very simple, keep them frozen and pray for dodge. To win:
1. No hot flashes AT ALL. Instead, fire and ice makes a nice maneuver to deal damage and keep them frozen.
2. Spam lightning. The debuff from lightning is essential when fighting foxes.

Rhinos
Same as fox, however, it is more of a mana fight.

Birds
Their longsword hurts A LOT, stay at 8m. To Win
1. Stay at 8m
2. Drain when rooted (they usually cruel blast, so the drain can save you)
3. Heal AFTER their combo.
4. NUKE AFTER their combo as they are defenseless when they have no combo or root.

Thanks for reading guys, pictures for fighting MAY come in the near future if enough people want them.

UPDATE TIMELINE (for you non-aussies read it backwards DD/MM)
19/4- Written and posted
~Burn
23/4- Reun is godly and helped weed out errors. Praise me with millions of gold if you so please.
~Reun