Curse

paranon · Mar 07, 2011, 05:49 PM // 17:49

An introduction to end-game content and speed-clearing.
Guild wars has five end-game areas – The Deep, Urgoz’ warren (Urgoz), the Domain of Anguish (DoA), the Fissure of Woe (FoW) and the Underworld (UW). For many players these areas present a challenge and methods have developed to complete these areas as fast as possible, whether for fun or for the rewards from the chest. These methods are known as speed-clears, for obvious reasons, and are widely regarded to be the most challenging thing to do in PvE. Speed-clear tactics are based on a few basic principles:

-It is generally faster to avoid foes than to kill them.

-It takes less time to group foes together and then kill them all using AoE damage than it does to kill them individually.

-It is quicker to split up and complete multiple objectives at once than it is to do each objective in turn.

These principles can be seen in all of the speed clears – in FoW and UW “terras” split off to complete objectives on their own while a smaller team does things that the terras can’t do using a tank to ball things up and AoE damage to kill them. In DoA and Urgoz, groups can be ignored using tanks with recall who can pull enemies away from the team and recall back to the team when they are safe.

Principles and techniques used in speed-clearing
Balling
Balling is the act of running around in such a way that a group of foes will be forced to stand very near each other in a “ball”, this is used in speed-clears to make AoE damage more effective by increasing the number of targets hit. In most situations the balling is done by dedicated “tanks” who carry skills on their bar that make them more resilient and so able to withstand foes attacks while they ball them up. There are a few specific techniques used to ball foes:

Spiking
Once the foes are balled, you need a concentrated amount of Area of Effect (AoE) damage in order to kill them quickly. This is known as a spike. However it is never as simple as that and there are many methods to improve the quality of the spike:

Aggro
The ideas involved in these tactics center on the idea that who the enemies follow and attack can be chosen by the player, in the hope that all of the aggro can be centered on one tank who has the resilience to deal with it, meaning the team does not take any damage. However there are many ways to accidentally draw aggro to the team and many of these are not obvious:
- Going in range of or attacking the foes.
- Using skills on the person who has aggro.
- Running over traps laid by the enemies (trap aggro)
- Attacking spirits laid by the enemies (spirit aggro)
- Running over the corpses of foes’ party members (corpse aggro)
- Using a resurrection scroll on someone who is in range of foes.
If you have aggro of a group but your team doesn’t, then the best thing to do is to stand still and die – dying and running out of range are the only ways to fully lose aggro of a group. Dying means your monk can resurrect you safely and the tank can take aggro of the group again. The worst thing to do is to run back to the group after you get aggro, because this means that the whole group gets aggro and means the team has to either kill the foes, run fully out of range or die completely – it is easier for one person to die.

Consumables
Consumables are commonly used in all speed-clears and there are two types used – party wide consumables are used in all speed-clears and there are 3 of them - Essence of Celerity, Armor of Salvation and Grail of Might. Together this makes up the “conset” and it is common for each member of the team to donate money towards the person who uses this (typically 1k each as consets cost 8-9k). There are also personal consumables or “pcons” which can be used individually by the player to make themselves more effective. In most roles in most speed-clears these are not necessary to complete the job but can make the run smoother. Most casual groups won’t expect people to use personal consumables.

Getting involved with Speed-clearing
Speed clearing is (in my opinion) one of the most fun things to do in guild wars, however like the pvp community, the speed-clear community can be difficult to get a foothold in – lots of people do fow and underworld speed-clears but for other areas it is necessary to find a guild to do it with and speed-clear guilds tend to require previous experience at least in a few areas. For someone who has never speed-cleared before I would recommend starting with FoWSC – it is the simplest of the speed-clears and groups can be easily formed and joined in all chat, once you are experienced at this then you can move onto more areas and begin to look for a good speed-clear guild.

Glossary
FoWSC – Fissure of Woe speedclear
Manly spike – the build most commonly used for FoWSC
UWSC – Underworld Speedclear
Tway – “Terraway” the most common build for UWSC.
DoASC – Domain of Anguish Speedclear
Trenchway – One of the builds used in DoASC, faster but more difficult to run.
Caster spike – The other main build used in DoASC, slightly slower but easier to run.
Conset – Essence of celerity, Armor of Salvation, Grail of Might
BU – Backup Essence of celerity, often used to allow people to complete the run where armor and grail are unnecessary.

Useful Links
http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_FoW_Manly_Spike – FoWSC builds and tactics.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_UW_Terraway – UWSC builds and tactics.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_DoA_Trenchway – DoA trenchway builds and tactics.