High Level PVP team progression

When I first started out, I had no intention of engaging in PVP. I knew sGE has been out for quite some time, and surely a lot of players would have far better equipment than me. So I was mostly a PVE player, just leveling my characters to expert and doing the raids I can.

After some time in Millenion, a number of players started engaging in PVP. They were masters already and I was still expert but I decided to join in anyways. I remember heavenzmandate and his fighter on defender as well as TheShadowKnightz with his elementalist in LOE stance. It was a lot more fun trying to use your skills against players who were not as predictable (sometimes) than normal mobs. This gave me the motivation to train my first 3 characters (Romina, SohoTheWind, Grace) to master and start engaging in PVP.

Training in Bahama AT to master allowed me to camp quite a number of King of Greeds (KOGs) and by the time I mastered my 3 characters, I already got 2 Dragon Heart Recipes. This allowed me to craft a black dagger for STW and a serpent rifle for Grace. Romina stayed with her +6 Trump Sword (woot!).

My initial team was ok-ok, able to handle various threats and can buff and debuff. I did however have problems with Hard Armour characters due to my weapons. After a few months, I got an iPod (calyce) and was extremely lucky in making a constellation crossbow (2 tries to +7, used 7 chips to get the stats) so I retired Grace and started using Calyce. She was fun to use, at the start. Approaching the enemy while invisible then releasing burst shot and watching bodies kiss the ground was fun until the 100th time, then I got bored of it.

I was contemplating on replacing Calyce with someone who was able to handle metal armour, and coincidentally a friend of mine was selling Grandice. In my faction I think less than a handful had Grandice, but I already knew she would be a great HG user. I bought Grandice and traded out my Crossbow and ELB fighter for a Constellation GreatSword, an Elite Schvarlier Armor and some other stuff.

While Grandice was training to master and still lacking a weapon, I went back to Grace for a few weeks. It felt so weird using flintlock again for PVP, but it was only temporary. The constellation GreatSword took 155 veteran chips and tranquilizers to get the current stats.

I was on Romina - STW - Grandice for a long time. It was quite a popular build and even until now, I still see top tier players using the same build. However, Grandice got old (get it? GET IT? ok.) and I moved on to try Nar.

I encountered a Nar user at Poison Yard and was impressed at his power, but I thought maybe that player possessed a really really good Hestia which would explain the great killing power. After training my Nar to master, I borrowed a War Crescent with 39 Atk Stat and tried out Nar's skills. To my surprise, even a +5 39atk 1s War Crescent dealt considerable damage to ESA + Garim + HOA. This pvp test closed the deal and I poured a substantial amount of my savings to prepare my Nar for PVP. His Hestia and stance rings took a lot more resources to complete than expected. Enough to make me EMO //__* but when it was all ready, it was very satisfying.

My current team is Romina - STW - Nar and I need a few more weeks of practice to completely sync their skill timings. But so far, Nar has proven to be thicker and stronger than Grandice.


And now for the hao lian part. My current weapons for my PVP teams.

Romina - Equites

Grace - Flintlock (now shared with Romina)

SohoTheWind - MMA (set sold)

SohoTheWind - Arnis

Calyce - Sagitta (sold)

Grandice - Hanging Guard

Nar - Semilunar

a side note on these pvp weapons - I am unsure as to whether Penetration Rumins are better than Attack Rumins.

One theory relates rumins to weapon type. Apparently one should put attack rumins on physical weapons  and penetration rumins on magic weapons. Another theory is dependent on stat weapon. If it's attack + AR, put attack rumins because the extra AR will penetrate through high DR. If it's attack + human, put penetration. A forum thread suggested that penetration wins hands down, but it used a japanese / russian damage calculator; the difference from attack rumins were only minor, less than 5% damage really. I really don't know which is good, not that rich or too concerned to test out damage with different rumin sets against different armor sets. If only GE had a damage calculator -in English-.