Curse

Midknight · Nov 13, 2007, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Part I:http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10217736

Guild Wars: A Journey through my Eyes
Part 2: The Fight to the Hall

For my second venture into the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, I approached the situation with a seasoned knowledge of the PvE world, not that it did me much good. I was focused on massive damage to an area while staying alive to continue on down the road. My mind had not been molded into the notion of working monks for death penalty, shutting down the key skills, and forcing enemy movement into bad positions. This was no surprise to anyone else as only a few select teams had evolved to this point yet. Oblivious to my ignorance, I continued to join pick up groups and gain a gradual sense of experience. I even joined a guild and started to accumulate a friends list. While my guild functioned in the sense that we had active people that communicated and played together, there was no real sense of development or organization in the team. I quickly saw, while consistently losing to guild teams, that a proper guild was most likely where I was going to evolve the most.

I came across an interesting fellow by the name of Dion Star who was forming a group called a “Seed Ball Spike.” This was another quick name for a build that I had no idea how to run. He accepted me into his party after I made an effort to sound professional over a whisper that I was versatile and could help out if given a little instruction. He was generous enough to explain the seed ball concept (1 Life Bonder that has Healing Seed on him at all time and we all bunch around him). It was my job to provide one of the Healing Seeds in the sequence of three while spiking down targets with air magic. To do this meant I had to log onto his Teamspeak server. Refusing to admit I was clueless, I Googled “Teamspeak” and had it up and running in a few minutes. Upon entering the channel, I was greeted kindly by a group of adults, something that probably should not have shocked me but did. I was playing with level headed adults who were willing to be patient in order to maximize their chance of victory. I quickly jumped into the conversation and proceeded through the night with great success. We took three trips to the Dark Chamber that night, three maps further than I had ever been before. At the end of the night I quietly petitioned to join Dion’s guild. After conferring with his fellow officers for a moment, I became the newest member of The Second Foundation.

After playing for a month irregularly in The Second Foundation [TSF] on various builds, we all agreed that we needed to create our own identity as a guild. Many teams were making headway and gaining fame for gimmicks. A guild called the Por No Stars boasted a flamboyant pink cape and a surprisingly lethal tournament build. I was hearing buzz about these Korean teams that were phenomenally coordinated and winning nonstop. This American guild from the alpha tests known as The Fianna was setting trends with its play to death penalty via water spikes. All around me, I was hearing lore of all these teams shining on the battlefield and being hailed off it. I wanted that fame and recognition, but could not find a way to do it. I was a rather irregular player, usually only playing on weekends when I could. But something drove me to work hard to become a feared force on the battlefield. Our destiny seemed without direction until Dion approached us with an unorthodox build deviating from conventional build notions. He titled it simply as “The Smite Build.”

With our new build, Monks now became the frontline power. This was something that had not been done before and for good reason. Monks have the lowest armor in the game and take a lot of damage. Dion’s answer to this was, “Be a better healer or protector.” As the primary protection monk for the guild, a lump formed in my throat. What he was asking us to do was use this unique build which takes incredible coordination and phenomenal healing abilities to execute it well. “Well” was not in our Guild Leader’s vocabulary. He expected near perfection, and made himself clear about it. In our first entry to Tombs with the new build, we wiped out at the Burial Grounds. In our second attempt, we wiped a little slower. Frustrated with us, he drilled us to spike down the rift wardens over and over again until we got it down to a clean spike. Impressed with our success, he allowed us to continue on to the Burial Grounds.

In that following battle, our true dominance became evident. The team dropped in less than two minutes. The following battle was a repeat success. We continued on to the Courtyard only to lose out to a double gang up in the final minute of battle. This initial success was enough to motivate all of us to perform at perfection to win. The following three months saw a rapid change to our guild. We took on a heavy influx of new players and had a seniority order to who would get to play on the “A Team” that night in Tombs. Each player had earned his spot on the team by being ready to play at the designated time every night. Not to do so allowed for new talent to fill in for the night. If they proved acceptable, they were given the new spot. This quickly became a highly competitive environment within the guild while remaining relatively friendly. Through this process we weeded out those unwilling to commit and those that just plain did not have the “right stuff” to compete on our team. Our dedication showed through our success with nightly trips to the Hall of Heroes. I had accumulated a small stack of sigils and had subsequently become rather wealthy in the process.

We played through the next few months taking note of the various skill balances that took place. None of them affected us because we were the only ones running our build. Everyone else had begun to devolve into the typical meta builds common for the time. We saw air spikers, Ranger spike teams, spirit spammers, VIM trap teams, and a handful of balanced teams out there. Those balanced teams proved to be our nemesis as we progressed through Tombs. Rarely would we lose to a flavor build unless it was at the hands of Power of My Ranger or these nice guys know as the Idiot Savants. We also began to become more active in the Guild Wars community and became regular visitors of the fan site forums to stay up to date on the latest happenings of Guild Wars. The one webpage that became an obsession of mine was the Guild Ladder standings. I checked the page daily to see the dynamic movement of guilds up and down the ladder and still see teams like the elusive War Machine and another Korean team The Last Pride topping the list frequently, with Eternum Pariah representing America at the top consistently. Winning the Hall of Heroes gave us recognition on a nightly basis, but teams like WM and EvIL could hold onto their rank indefinitely. Still there was no strong desire to GvG in our guild until we came across a true GvG team.

We all loaded up into Dark Chamber on a normal night like any. Our A team was fired up and performing as well as we ever had. The guild flags came up to show our enemy for the battle and War Machine was the red team. An immediate excitement built up in Teamspeak and Dion calmed us all down telling us to just focus and continue on with our standard game plan. Within fifteen seconds of the initial clash, I had a hammer warrior on me and I was dead in three hits. Until that point I had never seen an effective hammer warrior. Nor had I seen two necromancers pumping out curses on our monks to make them useless. We collapsed in less than four minutes. While it was a sobering defeat, it proved the power of balance and opened up the idea of running a balanced build. Also with this defeat, we could clearly see the truly great teams were on the Guild Battle maps, and not in the Halls. After a few days of deliberation, The Second Foundation became the owners of the Wizard’s Isle Guild Hall and we prepared for our entrance to a new arena.

Next Time: The conversion to a well balanced team and plenty of good times until……Factions

Discussion Questions:
1. What kind of builds were you running at that time, and what was the criteria for getting onto a team?
2. How did you measure success as a guild in the mid to late days of Prophecies?
3. What skill balances really hurt or helped your build(s) and how do you feel the changed the meta game of PvP?
4. As a PvE player, did you even notice at this time what was going on with the PvP world with favor being locked into the Hall of Heroes?