Disclaimer: All information is provided assuming that you know how Dark Gaming’s PvP differs from other servers. If you do not know about the differences, please check out these posts:
As well as checking out the PvP Manager and Armor Spreadsheet for weapon and armor differences.
Introduction
As I alluded to in my previous guide, the next guide I would be making is a loadout making guide. I also explained before that in order to make a good loadout you must have weapons that fit all the archetypes. This is mostly true, but you should have multiple weapons that fit under the same archetype in order to cover your bases.
In this guide, I will explain the two-step process behind loadout making, picking out what weapons to use and picking out what armor and accessories to use.
Picking the right weapons
As I explained before, you should cover with bases when it comes to filling your hotbar. You should have a weapon for each of the most common situations, for example, when your opponent is close, far away, behind a wall, etc.
Your most used weapons, or rather, your weapons that fit the most common situations, should be the most easily accessible with keybinds. I may go more in-depth on ideal keybinds in a later guide, but for now, all you need to know is that the keys you can reach the easiest should be where your most used weapons are. For example, your 1, 2 and 3 keys should hold your close-range weapon and poke weapon, as those two are the most common situations. The other most common situations are ones that warrant usage of mid-range and area coverage weapons.
With all this in mind, here is an example of a good loadout:
I have adjusted my keybinds a little bit, my Hotbar 6 button is set to Right-Click, and my Hotbar 7, 8, 9 and 0 buttons are set to Z, X, C, V respectively.
My most easily accessible hotbar slots are 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7, so I put the most important weapons there: my main close-range, my main mid-range, an area-coverage, and my pokes.
Anti-Rushing and Wall Piercing are two less common situations, so I put my anti-rush and wall pierce weapons in my less easily accessible slots, being 4, 5 and 0.
To summarize, you should cover your bases by having weapons from each archetype in your loadout, with weapons that fit more common situations being more easily accessible.
Picking the right armor/accessories
Picking the right armor set is based on the damage types of the weapons in your hotbar. If you notice your loadout has more ranged weapons than not, you should use armor pieces that give more ranged damage than other types.
You should scan through the PvP Manager or the Armor Spreadsheet to find out what stats certain pieces give. When it comes to defense, it entirely depends on whether you want to have average defense and damage or if you want to sacrifice defense for damage. Again, I recommend looking through the PvP Manager to find out the right armor loadout for you.
Picking the right accessories is much more simple. Your first 4 accessories should likely be your Wings, Tabi, Hero Shield, and Worm Scarf. You will also likely have a Celestial Shell, leaving 2 open accessory slots.
If you’re using the Paladin’s Hammer, you should have a Fire Gauntlet/Mechanical Glove, so you can have autoswing. You can try to use Paladin’s Hammer without autoswing, but you will fail.
If you have a set with mixed damage types, you’ll likely use the Avenger Emblem, but you can switch it out depending on the spread of damage types on your hotbar.
Going back to the weapons hotbar example i provided earlier, here’s an example armor/accessory loadout:
My loadout has 3 melee weapons, 2 ranged weapons, and 5 mage weapons (however, two of them are rarely used due to the specific niche they fit), which is an even spread of damage types. So, I decided to go with a more typical mixed set, with pieces that provide all damage types, a bit of additional melee speed, and average defense.
My accessory choices are also simple, with me using my 2 free slots for more melee speed and increases to all damage.
Additional Tips
- You can totally make a loadout where you use only weapons of one damage type (except Summoner), do keep in mind that each class has its strengths and weaknesses and you won’t be able to be as consistent as with a mixed loadout.
- If i had to rank class-exclusive loadouts on how consistent and versatile they can be, it’d be (least to most consistent) Summoner, Melee, Ranged, Mage.
- If you have too many weapons to fit your hotbar, that’s fine, you can swap out weapons based on what you feel is best for the moment.
- Additionally, you can adjust your armor loadout based on how effective the weapons in your hotbar are. For example, if your opponent loves being aggressive with the Paladin’s Hammer, you can switch an armor piece out for one that grants more melee damage, giving you the advantage in Paladin Hammer exchanges. Alternatively, you can switch to a piece that gives your anti-rush weapon more damage.
Conclusion
In order to make a good loadout, you need to know a weapon’s stats, what archetype it fits under, the stats of various armor sets, as well as all of the viable accessories. This may seem like a lot to know, but the PvP Manager as well as my previous guides, including this one, can help you out with that.
That being said, this is the last major guide I wanted to make, so guides will come out less frequently. You can still suggest what to make guides on, but there’s something more specific I want to do with this thread.
I encourage you to post your own loadouts, and I will criticize or compliment them, give tips on how they could be improved, and make suggestions for additions to your loadout. I want this thread to not only be a guide on making loadouts, but a thread for general DG PvP loadout discussion.