Seal Rock (Seize) Strategy

See also: Seal Rock (Seize)

General Tips

• You are stronger as an Alliance. Stay grouped up and work with the majority.

• As an individual player, Your First Priority is to Stay Alive. Second is to kill. Third is to capture nodes.

• As a group, your priorities are to Attack when it's convenient, Defend when it's not convenient, and Be Aware of the other 2 Alliances.

• It's important that everyone have a similar mindset in the game and find an agreeable solution quickly, otherwise you have split alliances and scattered idiots feeding, which are a death knell for a game. Hindsight is 20/20, but shit-talking the person making calls does nothing to help your team. Be supportive.

Node Strategies

Nodes give points once every 'tick'. An activated node will tick 40 times total. Depending on the node rank, they give points each tick.

To capture a neutral node, simply select it and follow through with the cast time. To capture a taken node from an enemy alliance, it must be selected twice, once to turn it neutral and stop bleeding points, and once again to capture.

To keep your node from being captured, one must simply interrupted anyone trying to activate it. Normal attacks and AoE spams do this. As far as I know (and I could be wrong), ground DoTs do NOT interrupt node capture.

• B Rank: 80 points (40ticks, 2pts/tick)
• A Rank: 120 points (3pts/tick)
• S Rank: 160 points (4pts/tick)

Node Defense

Defending a node from a handful of enemies is actually rather easy. Even just a single player can keep any node up from lone node predators (NIN's), or at least long enough to let your team know that there's a problem. If you're defense oriented and hate attacking, pick a job that lets you spam the most annoying attacks repeatedly while also staying alive.

The best jobs for keeping a node defended:

• DRK - A tanky dude with AoE spam. Not to mention Living Dead which is guarantied 10 seconds of even more AoE Spam. A single DRK can keep a node captured for 10 seconds even if completly surrounded. What an asshole.

• BRD - Ranged AoE spam and being able to annoy targets from far away. Just don't stick around when your team is no longer winning the node.

• MCH - God. That. Freaking. Turret. You know the one. Hide in a corner out of sight and laugh as the enemy keeps taking down easily replaceable turrets.

• SCH/AST - provided that your team already has plenty of heals, a SCH/AST in capable hands is very difficult to kill, making them better node defenders than a solo DPS.

Other than that, it's situational depending on the node. Some nodes have definite pathways which allow your alliance some freedom of movement away from the node, provided you know where the enemy is. Some are wide open and pretty much demand a full alliance stacked/surrounding it (just watch out for those LBs...). In general, kill whoever gets too close, but don't get distracted away from the node you're defending.

It is also important, I think, to know when to abandon a node. A B rank at 20% is not worth losing lives over. But also, if you know your node won't be attacked before it despawns, it's probably better to leave it and move towards the action.

Early Phase (Spawn)

For the first node spawn it's generally best for at least one person to spread to the nearest reachable node so that it can be captured quickly. From there, once the 4 nodes spawn, several things can happen:

2 Nodes near your Base - Your priority is to capture them, but you should be prepared as a group to choose the most defensive one. and forsake the other. The two other alliances (Let's call them Enemy A and Enemy B) have already spotted your clear advantage, and are very likely barreling their way as a full alliance towards your position. Trying to defend both against a very likely sandwich from them is a losing proposition. To best avoid losing the advantage in this situation, your team must prioritize staying alive while keeping at least one of the nodes captured.

Enemy A has 2 nodes, Enemy B node is far away - Your alliance should capture its own node quickly and then immediately go after the less defensive node of Enemy A.

Enemy A has 2 nodes, but Enemy B node is nearby - This is tricky. If you move too quickly as an alliance to attack Enemy A, Enemy B might see that on radar and decide to attack. They could also attack you out of spite/stupidity. It's important to wait here and see what Enemy B does first. IF Enemy B attacks Enemy A, you should also jointly attack Enemy A. If Enemy B attacks you, you should defend and try to farm kills off of them as best you can, but remember that Enemy A will come out the victor in points.

An A Rank Node spawned with 3 B's - If the A rank is close by, everyone should focus capture/defense of that one and wait to see if there's any openings to exploit. BUT IF the A rank is far away and hard to obtain, the Alliance's focus should be to capture 2 B's. The points from 2 B's > 1 A. (Rarely, an S rank will spawn at the start. Same rules apply, but 2 B ranks will only tie with the S. And everyone goes crazy for that S so expect heavy resistance around it.)

Middle Phase (150 - 600)

This is where the game gets interesting because any number of things can happen. If you came out of the initial spawn with the most points, your focus should be to keep your advantage and not get lazy/complacent. If Enemy A/B has more points, your focus should be to attack the winning team whenever possible.

By this time you should also have some idea of the strengths/weakness of the opposing teams. If it's possible to farm an enemy team for kills, do so as often as you can. However, if an enemy team has some battle highs/fevers (as seen on the radar), attacking their full alliance head on is probably a bad idea. If your team is weak at PVP and died a lot in the first round, there's still hope, but everyone has to refocus and group up.

It's important also not to be cut off from your spawn point. Say Enemy A is winning at the moment, and you're trying to pressure them at the south of the map. Enemy B being the buttheads they are decide to send a small party up near your spawn or capture a node. If you ignore these guys, they will likely start spawn camping and cut off your KO'd members from the rest of the group. This can lead to a domino effect and demoralize your alliance very quickly. Therefore it is VERY important that you are aware where both enemy alliances are on the map. If one of them is cutting you off, you should disengage and re-establish your spawn before your alliance becomes split.

Note that nearly all of the highly defensible positions can be cracked by well placed knockback abilities causing the alliance to fall off the edge. None of these nodes are fool proof, but also none of them are impossible to defend. A well grouped alliance can be an iron wall on just about any of them. There's individual strategies on each, but I won't get to that in this post.

It's also important to start moving your team into the winning Enemy's territory. Keeping pressure on them whenever possible is the best way to crack their lead. If no nodes are up, you should consider directing your team to move towards the spawn of the winning team to capture nodes there before they do. If you have nodes but aren't being attacked, consider sending your full force in for a sneak attack on the team with the biggest lead on you.

Farming kills for battle highs/fevers is also a very viable option. A team with 4-6 BH/F's can pretty effectively mow down any alliance in a head-head. I've seen groups in 3rd place shoot up to 1st and win by doing this.

Since the battlefield is changing all the time during this phase, it's important to keep priorities:

• Defend when you have to. Don't grow complacent.

• Attack when its to your benefit. Gang up on stray enemies whenever possible. Free kills is Free. But don't stray from your alliance or the enemy is likely to do the same to you.

• Do not tunnel vision when attacking. Stay aware of the map and the calls being made. Many a brave WAR has died because his alliance left him behind in the dust.

• Attack the weaker node if possible. Full on Alliance vs Alliance battles rarely end well unless you're rolling face (but they are often necessary). If there's a node further off but still reachable in time, consider attacking that one instead.

• Know/predict where the enemy teams are.

When one alliance reaches 600 points, it's time to shift strategies into

Final Phase (600+)

The alliance that hits 600+ first only needs a handful of nodes from that point on (3 Bs, 2 As, or 1 S and a few kills). It should be everyone's focus at that point to knock down points from that alliance by preventing them from acquiring new nodes and killing them mercilessly.

This basically means that the winning team must become Ultra Defensive, and the 2 losing teams must become Ultra Offensive. The winning team should focus on node capture while keeping everyone alive. The losing teams should focus on node capture while killing as much of the winning team as possible.

In order for a losing team to win in this scenario, they have to cause the winning team to hemorrhage points, or keep them from acquiring points at all. The weaker members of your party who are prone to death and can't PVP well should hang back and defend/capture stray nodes while the bulk force of your group should be keeping pressure on the winning team. It's very tough to do, but it's possible. I've been in games where the winner was 795/800 or 1 kill away from winning, only to lose out because they kept dying to enemy attack and couldn't find a node in time.

The winning team has it easy, conversely. All they have to do is sit on the nodes and make sure no other enemy is close to surpassing them. If they played the middle phase right, they have a huge lead (200+ points ahead). If it's a close game (each team within 100 points of each other), it's way more chaotic and it's anyone's guess.

At this phase it's very important to pay attention to the map and not get tunnel vision while killing/defending. It's also of the utmost importance to stay alive. Every death/suicide costs your team 5 points which has to be made up by either 3 ticks of a B rank, 2 ticks of an A, 1 tick of an S, or 1 kill. Keep your head on your shoulders and don't give up!