Proper circle strafing

Urrelles

Much debate about the usefullness of circle strafing.  People seem to be completely for it or against it.  The truth is both parties are wrong and right.  I'm not expert at this game, but I noticed quite a bit about circle strafing that I want to share. 

Positives of Circle Strafing.

1.  Circle strafing allows you to hit the vulnerable points on your target.  Even with autoface working, a circle strafer can still land side positional attacks and sometimes a rear attack.

2.  Healing classes are vulnerable to at some point in time by a circle strafer.  When healing yourself you stop autofacing for a good 1.5 seconds.  that is 1.5 seconds time to  strafe your enemy and land a juicy back attack.  No matter what healer class you play against, they will at some point stop to cast a self buff or heal.  The Warrior Priest and Disciple of Khaine are the 2 hardest classes to find this weakness in.

3.  Shield users.  Shield users will constantly block attacks in a face off.  So a player must circle strafe in order to land more hits in general.

4.  It confuses noobs.  Noobs will panic when the person they face runs around like an idiot.  But this won't be the case for long.  So exploit it now, but people will wise up later.

Negatives of Circle Strafing.

1.  You are vulnerable.  For every second you circle strafe, you are vulnerable to positional attacks and lower your chance to block & parry.  I'll repeat that.  IF YOU CIRCLE STRAFE YOU ARE VULNERABLE.  Circle strafing may open the enemy up to a side attack but it opens you up just as much or even more.

What is even worse is that you are doing all the work to give your enemy easy openings to attacks as they auto face you.  This is not much of an issue in Tier 1 and 2 since most players assume that the strafers sides are not open.  but hit high level, and you will find the more advanced players will be landing some nasty attacks on you.

2.  Your ass could get knock off a cliff etc.  If you run circles aorund a high level tank or some archer class, they can time their knockback skill so that you fly off the cliff as you run about them.  I have done this many many itmes agianst circle strafers.  Sometimes it is best to face a target head on withyour back to a wall than to run around and let him punt you.

3.  Stationary attacks do more damage.  I really need someone to confirm this.  It was repeated stated in Closed Beta that a person who stands still has a higher crit chance and damage output than someone who strafes about.  If this is true, then a circle strafer is only weakening themselves more by moving about.

 

Proper Circle Strafing

When you circle strafe nonstop during battle, the enemy will obviously notice the tactic.  You have to strategically circle strafe.  Here is what I do during a battle with my White Lion.

I engage the enemy by running slightly past them and opening up with a rear attack.  Even with Autoattack, they character is not able to turn aorund fast enough to prevent that first rear attack hit.  After that  I stand my ground and perform my standard frontal attacks. 

When my rear attack DoT or debuff has faded I perform a quarter circle or half circle strafe and hit the enemy with 1 or 2 more positional attacks (usually side attacks since back ones tend to miss)  .Usually the enemy will not be fast enough to react to this quick sudden movement, which in turn protects you from their positional attacks as you move for that quick second.  Keep doing this and win. 

 

If the player is a healer, just wait till you see them cast something.  The moment they cast do a quick quater strafe and "hit em in the vulnerables laddy".  If its a caster player, you can strafe arounda ll you like, just remeber you can block magic attacks with a shield.

 

If I am facing an obvious, spaztasic, circle strafer who is constantly running aorund like a mad rabbit,  I just remain stationary and hit them with any side position attack I feel like while my character autofaces them. 

So in the end circle strafing is useful, but over use of it will become more of a weakenss than a help.