Who knew falling out of the sky could be... so tactical? In this portion of our Survival guide, we go in-depth with the concepts you need to know to survive in Atreia

Hello everyone and welcome to Part II of ZAM's How to Survive Aion's World PvP! If you were looking for the more basic tips, feel free to check out Part I of our guide! This time around, we'll be going beyond the little tips and tricks to teach you some of the best survival techniques and why they happen to be so effective. As well, make no mistake here, while this article focuses on tips that are specific to the world of Aion, these ancient techniques have been around since the introduction of PvP to MMORPGs, and even veteran PvPers of other MMORPGs have committed these concepts to heart. So let's get started!

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Learning the Game Mechanics

One of the biggest things players will need to learn in PvP is how to use their latency (ping) to their advantage. You see, most MMO players tend to play with about 100-250 ping to the hosting server, and this translates into a tiny delay between when you execute an action and when the server actually receives that action.

What this means is that, unless you have a godly connection or you live in Korea (same thing), almost all players are actually a tiny bit ahead of where you see them to be in-game. In this way, if you are a melee class that is barely in range of the character you're trying to attack, chances are high that the game will tell you that you are out of range, even if it seems like you're in range.

Unfortunately, unlike first-person-shooters, where the users can manually adjust their aim in high latency situations, in MMORPGs most of the "aiming" is automatic. So whenever you are trying to attack, your computer is saying "do this immediately!" to the server, and the server, upon receiving this command, immediately tries to execute it. The curious problem that can come from this, however, is when you "flicker" into range; that is, when you get in range and your computer says "OK, I'm in range and can use this ability, time to use it!" but by the time the server receives the message, quickly checks if you can, in fact, use the ability, and if you can't at that precise moment, then that's it for you. This is actually why some MMOs give all of their melee classes some slowing abilities - so that this latency problem becomes less apparent.

Make no mistake here; playing with delay is a part of every North American MMO gamers' life, regardless of whether or not they would like to admit it. For example, in World of Warcraft Arena during TBC, Feral Druids around the world had to, literally, be standing on the player they wanted to attack if they didn't want to be out of range. Feral Druids lacked any slowing mechanism, and, because of this, if players simply zigzagged across the arena while spinning their back to the Feral Druid, the Druid would receive a lot of "out of range" messages. As well, if the Druid was in range to attack, he or she might not even be able to use their Shred attack, which was only usable from behind.

Looking at Aion we can see this principle being played out as well. Chanters may have already realized the connection here between Feral Druids and themselves, as every Chanter understands the sheer frustration that comes from trying to kill a moving target. At level 42, every chanter does gain access to Soul Strike / Inescapable Judgment, which is their one long-range stun skill that allows them to potentially catch running targets, but if this stun should fail, then they're pretty much stuck chasing you, hoping that your keyboard will run out of batteries.