#faction rivalry

Many years later, long after I had abandoned the previous Perfect World, I found a private server, Epic Perfect World. My first character was a Venomancer, who I named in honor of her predecessor back in the Retail release of the game. In this version, you started off ten levels above the previous cap, and level cap had been raised from 105 to 150, more skills had been added, and a couple new mechanics had been introduced. It is important to note that among these mechanics was a formerly expensive cash-store only item made free and available to all players, which refreshes your HP to full once every ten seconds if you fall below half. Looking through the new (and higher level vanilla) skills, I noticed a buff.  Sage Venomancers in fox form got +150% physical resist, scaled so because their base physical resist was really low, and they are meant to wear robes. It makes it so that they don’t get oneshot by physical classes and such. The dream... Could it be real? 

I decided to try this out after I hit level cap of 150, wearing all physical armor, and to spare you the months (years) of tweaking that went into it, full Vitality with Magic Resist accessories to help pad my already somewhat okay-ish inbuilt Magic Resist. The result of this was... Underwhelming, on its own. I made myself a bit harder to kill, that was all. I was nothing if people weren’t focusing on me, and people wouldn’t focus on me unless I dealt damage or pissed them off sufficiently, which took a LOT.

So, I looked at my metaphorical character sheet and decided to learn the skill Vicious Mockery. In addition to this, I got myself a skill that would ordinarily turn someone into a puffbird for four seconds, and got an augmentation that turned people into a cat instead. With this in tow, I set myself out into the world, and thus began my quest. I had decided to become the most annoying piece of shit on the server.

I chose my first target carefully, the leader of a faction known as GodsArmy, an Assassin by the name of FeelMyPoIson (Capital i, he had an alt where he used a lowercase L). I had an advantage against Assassins, because they could only deal physical damage, and they didn’t hit hard, but instead they hit fast. He could deal almost no damage to me, so he seemed as good a target as any. So, I went to the small village where he and his faction hung out, chattered, regrouped, and whatnot, and waited for him to leave safe zone for a sparring match with someone from his group. Then, just as he used his Spark (A thing that consumes a resource that you gain by attacking. Think a Fury meter or something), I stepped out of SZ just far enough to turn him into a cat, making him incapable of attacking or using any skills. 

I then typed in public chat “KITTY!” and cast Purge on him, a Venomancer skill that strips someone of all buffs, completely nullifying his Spark, just before returning to the comfort of the Safe Zone. This prompted both him and his sparring partner to cuss me out. They built their chi back up (resource used by Spark) and started at it again... Just as Bewitch (KITTY!) came off of Cooldown. The moment I moved, both changed targets from eachother, and it was suddenly a 2v1. I died at the hands of the archer, but not before shouting out in celebration of FMP’s temporary new form. I continued this for hours and had no lack of fun at their expense. This earned me their hatred, and the favor of their rivals, Ruthless. 

I joined with Ruthless just about the time I got the weapon that made this all stitch together. On being hit, this weapon had a 10% chance to remove all debuffs from me, grant me temporary immunity to further ailments, and increase my movement speed to the maximum possible on the server. 

I discovered the synergies possible with this while harassing my next target, the popular whale and another assassin, Vookie. When I had joined Ruthless, I had been granted a small bit of money to finish learning some Ascended skills and some cash to buy Morai books, which granted me several new skills,including a spammable AoE attack speed debuff and the most important skill of my build, Feral Concentration.

Feral Concentration, only usable in Fox Form, and thus overlooked by most Arcane venomancers that preferred to stay in Human form (I was a fox, 24/7) applied a stun, a root, and a silence to the caster in order to make them completely invincible for ten seconds. It worked a lot like a consumable item that was rather popular that made you invulnerable for six seconds, applying the same debuffs.  So, if my Health Charm allows me to refresh my HP bar every ten seconds... I wait for it to tick, to heal me back to full, allow myself to get hurt down into healing range before the cooldown is up, use Feral Concentration to wait out the heal, come out with a full health bar and about half the CD done, get damaged until it ticks again, and repeat the process with the consumable... Okay, but I’m going to be useless for half the fight... This is no good! Wait... Those apply cleanse-able debuffs. If I do it while being attacked by an Assassin that hits me five times per second... I IGNORE ALL THE DEBUFFS AND AM AT MAX SPEED, YES! This is perfect! Until, that is, I use both immunities and have to wait for cooldowns... UNLESS I use this Genie skill which has no cast time or consumable cost to grant me another six seconds of immunity and another charm tick! But... What if I use Bewitch to render my opponent incapable of attacking? That’s... Another charm tick. Oh, and I have a skill that roots them in place while I run around!  And I can perform a quick knockdown!

What came to be was a stressful hell. Vookie was PISSED because he couldn’t kill me, and I kept interrupting him trying to kill other people, acting as their guardian.

He came at me outside of the Ruthless Safezone one day with FeelMyPoIson, a third assassin that I forget the name of, an Archer, and a Wizard who I had managed to piss off. This 5v1 outside of Ruthless’s hideout lasted a full ten minutes, and gathered Safe Zone spectators, people looking on at the Impossible Fox, ducking, dodging, weaving between the assassins, keeping them permanently slowed, countering the full-on combos of the Wizard by bewitching him at the apex of his combo, fizzling it out, and just laughing at the three assassins and archer trying to kill her.

Ten minutes later, I walked to Safe Zone, using the slow walk animation instead of the normal Run animation, travelling across the entire battlefield as I typed to the assailants. “Sorry guys, gotta go to the bathroom! Was fun, I’ll brb!”

“NO! YOU STUPID FOX! YOU DEAL NO DAMAGE! YOU ARE TRASH AND SHOULD UNINSTALL!” he yelled in caps. To which I retorted “If I’m trash, what does that make you guys who couldn’t kill me 1v5?”