The 10 Anti-Gank Guidelines- Tips to reduce the frequency of being ganked

RinaldoGandolphi

The gankers may not like me for writing this guide(taking away their low hanging fruit kills), but I don't really gank, and I feel sorry for seeing the same people getting ganked over and over again, So i am writing these tips that will reduce your chances of getting ganked considerably, Allowing you to live longer and not become a AP farm for gank groups.

1.Get Off Your Horse and Stay Off! - The ONLY TIME you should be riding your horse is if your traveling with a large group, and you should be using Rapid Maneuver. Any otherwise, Stay off your horse, your just making yourself an easy target. Also stay off the roads, Gankers love to hang out at heavily traveled points on the road to pick you off while on horseback for an easy kill.

2. Use Rapid Maneuver - Use this skill or its morphs for traveling with a group, its adds an extra layer of safety in its speed boost that you will minimize the amount of time you are on your horse and thus vulnerable.

3. Avoid traveling though gates and choke points You should avoid these at all costs unless your with a group, if you must go through one of these, make sure you well scout out the area in advance for a potential ambush. DO NOT RIDE YOUR HORSE THOUGH THESE GATES, its not the end of the world to hop off your horse for a brief second to go through the gate stealthed, use the stealth eye to know if anyone is around so your not caught off guard. You have Rapid Manuever, you won't get separated from your group. I have seen countless times the person in front of me go right through the gate on horseback to be killed, while i was hopped off stealthed and either kill the lonewolf assassin, or make a hasty retreat thus saving my life and coming back through the gate later with reinforcements.

4. Try to travel with groups between keeps even if your not grouped, just traveling with 6-8 pugs in between keeps with Raid Maneuver adds more to your survivability then traveling on horseback alone, even this is risky, but its less risky then lone horseback traveling. Their is safety in numbers to some degree. I would try waiting in keeps and leaving with groups that leave or head towards the fort they are attacking. You can also try forming your own group in keeps, or even just traveling together without grouping. The point is just don't go hotdogging out there on your own making yourself an easy mark.

5. Run Radiant Magelight This skill reduces stealth attack damage against you and friendly allies by 56% at rank 4. this will add considerably to your survivability from ranged stealth attacks. I would highly suggest you or one of your friends run this skill.

6. Avoid Traveling in Open Areas and Obvious Ambush Spots The huge field path between Bleakers and Ash is an example of an open area, that is prime spot for an ambush. Look at the terrain around you, if you think it would be a good place for an ambush, it probably is, so your best to avoid it and most certainly stay off your horse in such areas. If you MUST traverse one of these areas I would recommend doing so in stealth, even if it does take longer. Your usually better off to find an alternate route if at all possible, its just safer that way.

7. The areas around your keeps and resources are often the most dangerous - Lone Wolf gankers and small gank groups love to hang around the outskirts of your keeps and resources(Farms, Mills, etc) waiting for poor unsuspecting souls to ride by on horse back to get an easy kill, so don't make it easy for them...90% of your travel should be on foot, with a good bit of it stealth.

8. If you are ganked, DO NOT go back for more - I know it stinks to get ganked, but don't go back to the same area looking for him, especially not alone. If the ganker is skilled at all, he will move position and set up shop elsewhere and simply kill you again. Its best to just move on find action elsewhere. Don't take it personal.

9. If you are ganked, report number of gankers and their location in zone chat for your Alliance Even in death you are still useful, leave it to me to make use of a death. When you die, look around and see how many of them their are.The best revenge against a ganker is revealing his or his groups position to the rest of your Alliance. This instantly puts a big target on their back that leads to them getting crushed or pushed out of their gank spot with superior numbers.

10.Retreating is nothing to be embarrassed about - If you get stealth attacked and don't know for sure where the attack is coming from, Don't stand their looking around! retreat ASAP!..if your a Sorc use Bolt Escape and quickly get yourself out of range. and go stealth, other classes can use Invisibility or Speed Boost potions(make you as fast as Boundless Storm rank IV and can be bought if you can't make them) to get you out of range. Then you go stealth and assess the situation...do you think there was only 1 attacker or multiple? Did you hear more then 1 snipe? Do you have a good idea where you think they might be hiding? Do i think this fight will have favorable terms to me? Ask yourself these questions and then proceed to engage or full retreat accordingly. Retreating is NEVER bad...its better to flee by any means necessary and survive, then get into a fight that's not in your favor and get killed. How to know when to fight and when to flee is something that just comes with time, I can't teach you this, you will just have to get a feel for it...

Conclusion Never allow yourself to be an easy target. If the enemy is going to kill you, at least make them work for it. Following those 10 guidelines above will reduce the amount of times you are ganked considerably.

Bonus

Once you master those 10 guidelines, and get comfortable enough, you may start doing what I do which is "toying with the gank groups" which means staying just out of reach, but teasing them, like a dangling piece of fruit...they may have been sitting their for 20-25 minutes without a kill, gankers are very impatient, and you can use this advantage.

Ever see the Movie Assassins with Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas? Well Stallone goes into the bank and he knows Banderas is waiting to get him when he comes out of the bank, so Stallone literally stays in the bank all day...Banderias knows he is in their, but eventually all the waiting makes him to start to question himself, is he still there? did he get out and I can't see him? he gets impatient and anxious and Stallone uses this to his advantage to outwit "The Ganker" Banderias.

You can play games like this with the ganker/gankers...allowing them to hit you once, escape and then stay just out of range, but visible for a short time like dangling a juicy steak just out of the reach of a hungry dog, how you do this is up to you...then disappear for awhile...You can play this a few ways.

# If you know its a sole ganker, after waiting a certain amount of time, depending on the location, he will actually sneak forward to check and see if your still there...most people can't help this because "Curiosity killed the cat" so to speak. If he hasn't seen you in awhile, he may think that your gone, he may think that its safe to move forward. He also just may be impatient and doesn't want to wait for the kill...in these situations, you have unwittingly turned the tables on him without him even realizing it...now the hunter is being hunted. At which point if played right you get the drop on him and finish the job he couldn't.

If you know its Multiple Gankers - If your alone, escape. If you have a group too and the numbers are favorable, you can have the rest of your group stealth and someone be the bait. This works even better if the gankers only saw you and not the rest of your group...its very trival to lead them into a surprise attack that gets them wiped because of their overzealous nature. If they saw you and your group, you cna still play mind games with them doing this that sometimes give you the edge. Many gank groups never dream of 1 or 2 people playing games, while they are flanked by surprise from the sides, too busy paying attention to whats in front of them...All predators suffer from 1 flaw...Tunnel Vision... This is what gets all predators be it Tigers, Bears, Lions, etc trapped or killed...because all they see and focus on is the prey...very few pay 100% attention to what is going around them, especially with a distraction.

This post also gives the gankers something to think about and put insight into, because its unfair to give the entire cookie to ones who are getting ganked, without giving the gankers at least a little bit of insight into such tactics.

See in reality(not being egotistical) it doesn't matter if the gankers knows these anti-gank games or not. These tactics are in-grained in our psychological makeup, and your not going to reverse 600,000 years of genetic predisposition...Sit a plain can with no markings on the table and tell someone vehemently not to open it under any circumstances, but don't tell them whats inside it, yet make it appear to be important to you...i guarantee you the longer a person is in the same house or room with that can, the more irresistible the urge to open that can becomes, even more so when the person believes something important or valuable is in that can due to misdirection and illusion on the part of the one the can belongs to.

This is just a little insight, but I play this game just as much as a battle of mind games and psychological warfare, as I do a game...I have killed much better players, including Emperors and Former Emperors playing such mind games...so its very effective....the question now becomes....Is the person you fighting playing mind games or not?

Good luck out there, and may this guide cause you die less

driosketch

11. If you spot a white plus sign while traveling, dismount. Solo, stealth and detour the long way around, while reporting the possible location of gankers. In a group, carefully investigate.

Gankers like to camp the bodies of the dead hoping to get kills on those trying to rez them. To the group, this is a warning flare, they should cover the person rezzing from stealth and hopefully turn the tables on who is baiting who.

For the person who is dead, stay there while the gankers are still in the area if you can serve as a warning flag. You can still use group chat while dead. But revive to a keep if it looks like your are baiting others into the trap.

Cody

ah. excellent... now to formulate a counter to all these rules......

Bramir

Besides making it easier to see and hear you, riding your horse isn't a death sentence. Just don't sprint, and your horses stamina will actually protect you when someone tries to gank you...maybe even long enough to get away.

If someone does start attacking you while on your horse, if your horse isn't at full stamina, it is best to dismount before getting knocked off, which is a death sentence in most cases.

Wreuntzylla

If you are going to stealth past the enemy, have a medium set. Use Wykkyd's gear swap addon.

RinaldoGandolphi

Cody wrote: »

ah. excellent... now to formulate a counter to all these rules......

hehe see its already worked, your already thinking of ways to alter your core game play, game play that has probably been successful for you. This adds a bit of hesitation to your game now which is an inherit disadvantage.

As for the mind games part, I only touched the tip of the iceberg...One must keep his trade secrets now. I may not get as many kills or AP as the elite, but its a big part of what makes me so darn hard to kill thus I don't die often.

However, these mind games have been employed by master military minds for thousands of years, and are still in use in modern warfare today, so good luck figuring out a way to counter them, because the greatest military minds in history are the ones that came up with them and understood how to exploit the inherent flaws in the human psyche.

Smoke and Mirrors is a big part of war fare, maybe im bluffing, maybe im not? Are you willing to risk I am bluffing? What if im not? The whole point of Smoke and Mirrors is illusion, deception, perception, and trickery forcing your adversary to make a choice between different possible scenarios and the more choices your adversary is faced with, the greater the odds he makes the wrong one.

If someone is a ganker, coming up with ideas to counter this will cause you to hesitate when you see your prey and that hesitation alone could be what gets you killed, as perhaps you let him ride by and attempt to gank what you feel is an easier target only for the one you let go by be the one who ends up killing you....like i said...forces you to make choices, the more choices available, the more likely you will pick the wrong one. The odds are inherently stacked against you making the correct choice.

It forces you to roll the dice and play a game you don't want to participate in. A game where the only winning move is not to play, but if you don't play, you won't get any kills, or will get outwitted by people who do employ psychological warfare and mind games, so it has pigeonholed you into the position of making choices, and rarely is the choice you made last time the correct choice the next time. Thus the ganker is playing "their game" in "their world" with "their rules" where they "layout the choices" and your forced to pick one, in a game where life and death is decided on the mere roll of a dice.

Very few gankers will choose the winning move which is "Not to play" because if they do, they might as well not gank at all, and will be waiting a long time for that perfect opportunity where they know for 100% certain they won't get killed.

So instead of simply sitting stealth in one place and getting easy kills via ambush, without any real thought behind it, your now forced to embrace much more conservative tactics, even in groups, because you will now be forced into making choices instead of just trying to kill everyone who comes by, thus more and more people will slip through gank nets due to indecision and hesitation on the part of the ganker to know if he/she is making the right choice or not, to engage or back off.

For those reasons alone this thread is already a success. More and more people will begin to get through the gankers net now because I have planted the seeds of uncertainty and doubt in the back of the minds of any ganker who reads this thread. This entire thread was a mind game in itself. Perhaps the teasing gank groups was nothing more then another attempt at trickery and misdirection...perhaps its not...perhaps we do use it...whos to say

This entire thread presented the ganker with a plethora of new choices he/she must choose from now....are those choices another cat mouse game of misdirection and trickery? or are they the legitimate choices to choose from? I guess you will have to make that choice yourself, but again, your still forced to make a choice

as the saying goes from an Old English Proverb:

There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip

TheBucket

I use Nights Silence and speed pots. Im a mobile ganker

Xeniph

I play an avid ganker spec on my NB. I can tell you all this information is solid.
However, nothing that would change my tactics or impede my success atm.

At any rate, it's good advise and everyone can benefit from a lot of it.

Cody

woodsro wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

ah. excellent... now to formulate a counter to all these rules......

hehe see its already worked, your already thinking of ways to alter your core game play, game play that has probably been successful for you. This adds a bit of hesitation to your game now which is an inherit disadvantage.

As for the mind games part, I only touched the tip of the iceberg...One must keep his trade secrets now. I may not get as many kills or AP as the elite, but its a big part of what makes me so darn hard to kill thus I don't die often.

However, these mind games have been employed by master military minds for thousands of years, and are still in use in modern warfare today, so good luck figuring out a way to counter them, because the greatest military minds in history are the ones that came up with them and understood how to exploit the inherent flaws in the human psyche.

Smoke and Mirrors is a big part of war fare, maybe im bluffing, maybe im not? Are you willing to risk I am bluffing? What if im not? The whole point of Smoke and Mirrors is illusion, deception, perception, and trickery forcing your adversary to make a choice between different possible scenarios and the more choices your adversary is faced with, the greater the odds he makes the wrong one.

If someone is a ganker, coming up with ideas to counter this will cause you to hesitate when you see your prey and that hesitation alone could be what gets you killed, as perhaps you let him ride by and attempt to gank what you feel is an easier target only for the one you let go by be the one who ends up killing you....like i said...forces you to make choices, the more choices available, the more likely you will pick the wrong one. The odds are inherently stacked against you making the correct choice.

It forces you to roll the dice and play a game you don't want to participate in. A game where the only winning move is not to play, but if you don't play, you won't get any kills, or will get outwitted by people who do employ psychological warfare and mind games, so it has pigeonholed you into the position of making choices, and rarely is the choice you made last time the correct choice the next time. Thus the ganker is playing "their game" in "their world" with "their rules" where they "layout the choices" and your forced to pick one, in a game where life and death is decided on the mere roll of a dice.

Very few gankers will choose the winning move which is "Not to play" because if they do, they might as well not gank at all, and will be waiting a long time for that perfect opportunity where they know for 100% certain they won't get killed.

So instead of simply sitting stealth in one place and getting easy kills via ambush, without any real thought behind it, your now forced to embrace much more conservative tactics, even in groups, because you will now be forced into making choices instead of just trying to kill everyone who comes by, thus more and more people will slip through gank nets due to indecision and hesitation on the part of the ganker to know if he/she is making the right choice or not, to engage or back off.

For those reasons alone this thread is already a success. More and more people will begin to get through the gankers net now because I have planted the seeds of uncertainty and doubt in the back of the minds of any ganker who reads this thread. This entire thread was a mind game in itself. Perhaps the teasing gank groups was nothing more then another attempt at trickery and misdirection...perhaps its not...perhaps we do use it...whos to say

This entire thread presented the ganker with a plethora of new choices he/she must choose from now....are those choices another cat mouse game of misdirection and trickery? or are they the legitimate choices to choose from? I guess you will have to make that choice yourself, but again, your still forced to make a choice

as the saying goes from an Old English Proverb:

There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip

ok. I will remember this glorious speech when im /drink over your corpse:)

blocking and spamming wont save you either:) I will find a way.

does not matter how many counters you post, there is always a way. be it me getting out my giant steel greatsword and impaling you, or shooting an arrow into your knee, whatever it takes, I will find a way:)

now to find out your ESO name so I can kill you in lagodill.

Cody

Here is a good tip: have other players in your alliance waiting in stealth nearby if you suspect there are gankers in the area. then jump the gankers when they try to gank whoever is with you.

works pretty well