I know most of you I'm countering on this issue hate me and mine with a passion and are already discrediting me and forming a retort before you even read this. I normally stay out of these for that reason. I write all this with the disclaimer I haven't played OSI, only Demise, so I can't even cycle bro.
Anyway, I personally don't think miniheal is much different than the Razor era. The top players have always been able to live pretty much endlessly in a non-boxed-in 1v1 until they get too risky going big when both are low life. You've always had the lesser players that stand in one place spamming miniheal, but you can do that with Razor and that's never an effective tactic against a group focusing damage on you. It's always better to run while casting miniheals here and there in order to increase distance between you and your attackers who have to spend a longer amount of time casting their bigger spells. The only way someone is minihealing through a group of attackers is they aren't syncing damage and don't have mortal or wind mixed in. The advantage UOS does have is the ability to better manage targeting and crossheals, but PvP has continuously been evolving over my years on Demise and new UOS features are, to me, just the next adaptation you need to take on to be at the top levels. I find it absurd to put forth the notion that the veterans are suddenly not playing here because of FCR, since Demise has been this casting speed for all 10+ years and they all played here under that casting.
Wind has its uses in breaking up a choke or finishing off those defensively healing that you can't quite bring down (poor syncing) but can become annoying when heavily spammed the whole fight by several in an outnumbering force. Still, it's pretty easy to interrupt with a clumsy or thunderstorm and when they are protection casting it, you have so much time to run out of range. Run away, load as a group, come back and drop a target. I don't know how players don't realize they are winded or don't react by to being winded and you see them standing in middle of the enemies trying to cast a 3 second miniheal. I also find it strange to see the people who are most vocal about needing to nerf wind because they are almost all part of SEGA, who are the current worst offenders. If I'm not mistaken, Necrodog, you were one of the M winding continuously last night while losing a field fight with one or two extra people on your side and and our side never casting wind, so it's not the be-all and end-all of PvP that is being claimed. Wind has been in for years, it's just nobody realized it's potential because we ran 96 spellweaving that can't land against high resisting spells. About a year ago now, Barcode came back for a brief stint and introduced us to effects of 120 wind and wildfire in PvP by winding a harrower choke away from us. We adapted to it and they left after another month or so citing cheap tactics of using spellweaving in fights. Rest of the shard eventually followed suit by incorporating wind and wildfire. This had the effect of changing choke point PvP. Before all this, the complaint over Hz for years was over choke point PvP with para fields and withers. Spellweaving has flipped this in my view as the advantage now lies in the aggressors instead of defenders. The upper hand, if numbers are comparable, usually goes to the first side to send an advance winder over the para fields followed by the rest of their group. The other team then has the option to retreat and make a coordinated counter-attack or have enough weapon-based characters to put down the wind character before the rest of the winder's team comes in and wipes the disabled casters. Aggressive wildfire use also causes a steady retreat of a defensive guild. Passively sitting behind rows of fields is no longer foolproof.
One bad tactic oft employed is to have almost an entire guild casting wind. While the other group is certain to not be able to cast, there's nobody left in the wind army to do any damage. A group mixing up different character types and taking different roles that lend to the common goal of murder is going to triumph. When everybody takes on perceived overpowered template, the counter to that template will just start being used in response and quickly bring you down. That being said, I'd much rather be running from 6 mages instead of 6 archers or dexxers. Mages just seem more powerful because that's what the strongest players with the lowest ping typically prefer to play over the face-rolling-on-keyboard simplicity of dexxers and archers. There's not often a coordinated group of non-mages like there are coordinated mages.
Thunderstorm at 4/6 is an ineffective interrupter to spam in mounted PvP and in no way comparable to clumsy as you would expend your mana too fast. Nerfing spellweaving to 2/6 would cripple current spawning tactics and send us back to the dark days of 2011. Pixies are a non-factor for me and I don't know why they are brought up so much. They are so slow that you can off screen easily and if supposedly 90% of the players are using spellweaving, then two quick thunderstorms (or a mass dispel) wipes all of them. It never seems like they are doing full blast flamestrikes to me. They are only worthwhile for me as PvM tanks. 40 mana for half HP is retarded and would make the spell useless.
tl;dr adapt or cry, cry is free
