This guide is meant to aid the in understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and roles of different builds in lld and how they work together in large (3v3/4v4) team vs team (tvt) situations. If you're new to lld or just dueling in general and are interested in doing some team duels (they can be pretty fun), this is a great place to start.
Three things determine a character's strength in tvt:
Mobility: how mobile is my character? team battles can take place throughout the entire blood moor, so being able to move about quickly to chase down isolated enemies and to quickly aid allies in need is of huge importance
Range: at what range does my character operate best at? obviously, a character with a long range is going to want to engage enemies that are off their screen, but is going to be a lot more fragile and vulnerable to attacks than one that does best in short range situations
Support: how does my character directly help my allies? an obvious example being a paladin with fanaticism on a team with a bowzon
Paladins
Mobility: high
Range: short
Support: auras
Paladins are all around good characters. Although they are short ranged (except for FoH), they have great mobility via charge to make that not a problem at all. Auras also make them great in a team. Paladins are excellent at sniping vulnerable targets (bowzons/necromancers mainly) that aren't properly defended with charge and desynch.
Barbarians
Mobility: low-medium
Range: short
Support: warcries/leap
Barbarians aren't super mobile, so they aren't very well suited at running in and attacking the opposing team like a paladin can with charge or a sorceress can with teleport. Barbarians are a lot better at hanging back and defending the fragile, long range attackers of the team (IE: defending the allied bowzon from the opposing charger. Regardless of the situation, however, barbarians make a great addition to any team due to battle orders and battle command. The only time a barbarian shouldn't be a high priority pick is if you already have one.
Amazons
Mobility: medium
Range: short-medium (plague)/very long (bow)
Support: none
Bow amazons are the epitome of long ranged damage dealing characters. With huge range, an auto-targeting attack, and a huge amount of damage with critical strike, bowzons can dish out some serious damage to the enemy team if left unchecked. That said, bowzons are also extremely vulnerable to being sniped by highly mobile characters like paladins and sorceresses. Make sure that if you pick a bowzon you also get someone to defend them. Less mobile characters like barbarians and druids, trappers with mind blast, and plague amazons with their threatening, huge damage poison attack do best in this situation.
Plague javelin amazons are quite different than bow amazons. Plague javelin can be tricky to hit people with even at short ranges and is completely useless at long ranges. When it does find contact with an enemy, however, the damage is devastating. One hit from plague javelin is usually enough to drain anyone down to 1 life. Another difference between plague zons and bowzons is that they are much harder to kill than a bowzon, as trying to chase down a plaguer can be very risky. One hit from their poison is most likely death, unless you have very high poison length reduced (even if you do, it will do a lot of damage).
Due to their striking differences, make sure you keep this in mind when you are picking an amazon. If the enemy team has mostly long ranged people and you have someone that can protect them, a bowzon would be a much better choice. Conversely, if the enemy is mostly short ranged with characters like paladins and barbarians, a plaguer would wreak havoc on the enemy team because they have to come to you and run a heavy risk of running into plagues. If your team has no one to defend a bowzon from enemies, however, a self-sufficient plaguer would be a much better since a bowzon would most likely end up being more of a liability than a good addition to your team.
Assassins
Mobility: low (fade)/medium (burst of speed)/medium-high (burst of speed with dragon flight)
Range: short (melee)/medium-long (traps)
Support: limited map control with traps/mind blast
Trappers are good at controlling locations with traps and mind blast, which makes them great for defending your vulnerable long ranged attackers. With dragon flight, they can also chase down isolated opponents. Due to their mainly defensive nature, trappers are great with long ranged teams, but also work well with mainly short ranged teams by causing chaos with traps and giving more freedom for their team to attack.
Druid
Mobility: low-medium/medium-high (teleport)
Range: short (wind)/medium (fire)
Support: oak sage
Because they are short/medium ranged characters and have fairly limited mobility (tele staff helps), druids are better suited for staying back and defending the more vulnerable characters from being killed. Chargers would love to run in and snipe the opposing bowzon, but it becomes a lot less appealing if said bowzon is standing inside a hurricane with tornadoes and summons everywhere. Oak sage, like battle orders, is also great for any team.
Sorceress
Mobility: high
Range: any
Support: none
Sorceresses are great at fighting at any distance and chasing people down with chainlocks. The only downside is that they do not have any skill that directly aids the team except for maybe defensive uses of blizzard/orb.
Necromancer
Mobility: low-medium
Range: medium-long
Support: bone wall, curses
Necromancers do quite well at pretty much any range, but are kind of fragile due to their lower mobility, life, and hit recovery speed. Because of this, they are generally more suited to long ranged situations where they can focus on just casting their spells. Curses like amplify damage and lower resists can also help tremendously.
Knowing how each character interacts with each other both as allies and opponents is critical when constructing a team.
An example of how a character would interact with its allies is if your team consisted mainly of elemental damage dealers, such trappers or sorceresses. A mage (hammerdin/foh hybrid) would obviously be a much better addition to the team than, for instance, a zealot. Conversely, if your team consisted of mainly physical attackers, such as bowzons, the zealot would probably be a better choice for his fanaticism aura than the mage would be (although the mage would still have concentration).
An example of how a character would interact with its opponents would be if the enemy team had a bowzon and you had to choose between a sorceress and a necromancer. Obviously the sorceress is a lot more mobile than the necromancer and would be more suited and hunting down the opposing bowzon than the less mobile necromancer would.
When you're picking for your team, make sure you consider your picks, the opposing picks, and the remaining pool to choose from, and make sure that your team is well balanced.
This post was edited by MiKTeX on Dec 20 2010 01:14pm