The Shadow Warrior Survivalists Guide Part 2

4. Kiting the Unstoppable: Probable and Possible

By the end of Tier 2 you will pretty much notice melee are nearly unstoppable. Marauders get a sprint buff that will out-run your Takedown snare, and later also have a few ranged tricks up their sleeve to keep you in their kill zone. Always be ready to react to these and foil their plan.

The number one objective of a successful kite strategy is to lure melee into over extension. This means pulling them into your back lines where they will get slaughtered, assuming your tanks aren't retarded and your DPS aren't tunnelvisioned on some black orc with Shield Wall up.

If you can lure them so far back into the line that they are still chasing you even when you're far behind your group, usually they are dead meat. One of two things happen, they either give up chasing you, and attack someone else, or they just keep trying and die. If they give up, now you are at a safe range to pelt them with arrows, and usually they are out of reach of their healers, meaning an easy kill.

The second objective of a successful kite strategy, is to realize when you can win in melee range, and teach them not to mess with you again. Which means more safety in ranged combat later on ;p. This is often called "peppering", but if you can successfully kite someone until their HP is sub-50%, and you feel like they're about to catch you, LET them. Fight preemptively, keep the fight tipped in your favor. As soon as they start to close distance, distracting shot. Often times melee will open with a stun (as I said earlier in this guide), the DS will make them hit with pillows until you can react. And make sure you're in Assault stance before they get close. As soon as you get up, Draw Blood and Disarm. If you're assault specced, Stun once the disarm is over. If they were kited below 50% you easily have the fight in your favor. Do as much burst as you can while they're stunned/disarmed, then ROOT, and start kiting again. You might want to go toe-to-toe to the end, but really in all cases it's easier to just NOT take damage when possible.

Typically a melee rushing you will use their snare break cooldown. You need to be aware how each works, and how to counter each one if you want to avoid melee encounters as much as possible.

Kiting Marauders: There's a few dangerous things you need to watch with these guys. They're brutal opponents 1v1, but if you're on top of your game, they'll never scratch you.

• Root/Snare break: They have one, on a 60 second cooldown. It's not that big a deal because it provides no immunity. I'd suggest using Takedown as your initial snare because if they break that, they are susceptible to Whirling Pin once they close distance. If you want to do it the other way (Whirling Pin->TakeDown), have VoN up so your Takedown also knocks them down. If they still are too close for comfort, you can also just Point Blank them.
• Charge!: This is the killer right here. They move at accelerated speed until they attack something. If you're caught with your pants down and no CCs up, they will catch you. Be aware of this. Also to note that you will only slightly move as fast as them even with Takedown up on them, so if you see the charge, don't get too cocky, just keep running until it wears off (it's about 8-10 seconds). Once it's off, you've got the upper hand.
• "GET OVER HERE": They have a draw-in ability which can foil any good kiting strategy. This is where you need your Disarm handy to survive. I'd highly suggest using your distracting shot early in case they use this to buy some time to switch stances and get your disarm up, and also get a root up so you have a chance in hell.

Kiting Witch Elves

• Root/Snare break + 10s immune: This is the hardest part about kiting a Witch Elf. They not only can break our snare/root, but they can also become immune to it by breaking it. You can usually tell if they've used it preemptively to avoid any interruptions if they throw their hands up in the air after jumping you (very common amongst better WE players). Use the aforementioned tanking strategy to outlast those 10 seconds, then use your root or snares as needed to get away.
• Ranged snare: Their ranged snare will let them easily catch you. Make sure you kite using a strafing angle, don't run with your back to them at any time. If you feel it necessary, just run and flip shot in intervals before their throwing knives hit you, and you will NEVER eat the snare. The ranged attack they use has a cast time of about 1 second, so you can usually time your turn-around-and-fire SFAs around this in your head. One shot to each toss they send your way. If they do snare you and you're about to get caught, go Assault and distracting shot. Usually by the time they catch you, you are ready to go toe-to-toe with them.
• Movement Debuff: If they open on you, DONT try to kite, this is where you have to tank them for about 10 seconds, and hopefully you have your Point Blank morale handy.

Kiting DOK
Note: Your only option vs. DOKs is to kite them. I honestly would not try to do this for an extended period of time, as they will easily outheal your damage unless you are scout stance, catch them under 50%, and open with a VON takedown before bursting with rank 2 morale. Otherwise kiting them to death is not even an option, and just delaying them catching you. HIGHLY recommended that you snare and get away. Live to fight another day.

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These are some of the survival strategies I've picked up over time. It should be noted this is just a guide as to how to survive a melee rushing you or jumping you from stealth. If you keep a cool head and are one step ahead of your opponent (even good ones), you can come out on top. It should be noted that we can survive toe to toe with melee, but highly requires speccing into Assault, otherwise the best we should do is tank them until our team can help.

In all other cases, you will rarely live a melee ZERG (2-3+ melee on you and snared), but i've gotten away thanks to clever rooting/snaring, assault stancing, distract shot one, disarm another, and flee'ing as soon as a snare ticks off of me.

Know when to fight, know when to flee. That is the Shadow Warrior way

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T4 Shadow Warrior
T3 Disciple of Khaine
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Shadow Warriors: Skirmish is the official downie spec, going any deeper into it than Shadow Sting makes baby jesus cry.

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