Training lead by:Celuvian Haap, Arcanist
Attended by:Graum Trolle, Watchman
Arcanist Haap was kind enough to take the time to give me another lesson in the ways of an Arcanist, and in this specific case tips on how to battle another magician yourself.
The training started out with a discussion of how there are two sides to a mage's combat, Offense and Defense. When you are on the defense your aim is to keep yourself alive and well, and one step ahead of the opponent. While on the offense instead the focus lies solely on how to best destroy your opponent.
For the defense the key is to learn to predict and anticipate your opponents moves, and countering them on the spot. This way you will always stay on an even level with your attacker. Failure to keep up will leave you falling behind, making it more and more of a struggle to keep from getting knocked out. As an example he explained that upon hearing an enemy mage utter the words "In Nox" your brain should instantly respond by saying "An Nox", and so on.
Offense on the other hand is all about timing. Combining your offensive spells to the best overall attack is key to make sure your opponent is unable to counter the attack. If you fail to maintain a good pacing on your attacks the enemy will have an easy time countering and absorbing the effect of your spells.
To demonstrate this Arcanist Haap showed me a basic combination of offensive spells used in two different ways. This way he was able to show the difference it makes to time these attacks together in such a way as to make it impossible for me to heal myself between the two attacks, despite knowing exactly what was coming. Following up on this he also demonstrated a similar combination intended to disrupt the enemy healing himself. Once again the idea of the lesson was to show the much higher difficulty in countering a well-timed attack.
Finally, to wrap up the lesson, Arcanist Haap also re-iterated the importance of always keeping yourself blessed to keep yourself at your peak, and at the same time keeping the enemy cursed to weaken them to all of your incoming attacks.
It was a very good lesson, and now all I will have to do is practice it until I learn to act this way instinctively, which will be significantly harder.
Signed,
Graum Trolle,
Watchman
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