Curse

zling · Jan 22, 2008, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

Go back to RA.

hmmm... what? what does RA have to do with it?

and well, if you've started talking about RA than just so you know, RA became harder ever since Monks got toned down. the reason for that is that before this a decent Monk on an RA team=instant win now even a good Monk sometimes isnt enough as he isnt strong enough to keep himself alive from all the crazy Monk bashing RA ppl... especially if you run into a few good people like a Rending Axe War...

Lordhelmos · Jan 22, 2008, 05:48 PM // 17:48

I agree with moving towards more active play. The problem is that active play skills like guardian, blessed light, SoD, etc., need to be worth using over a blockweb; and in the current meta they aren't. One of the worst aspects about blockway is the fact that many of the blockway skills are 50% based melee counters.

With a layer upon layer or % based defensive skills covering the whole party, more luck than skill is forced on to players. Teams might get lucky spikes through layers of prot just because executioner's axe and eviscerate just happened to cut through an aegis.

The game should be less luck more skill. I don't have a problem having my melee spike stopped by SoD, because the monk knew it was coming and used his skill to reflexively stop my attack. However, getting attacks through like 4 layers of 50% based defense that covers the whole party is stupid.

Skills like Aegis, Wards, DA, etc. are highly rewarding to the entire team and takes alot less skill to use than singular prot. The question is why use weaker singular skills when you can rely on overpowered midline buffs that take less skill to play and reward the entire party?

All this coin-toss based defense skills are turning GvGs into a giant pachinko machines with the spikers praying on luck that they can get their attacks through layer upon layer of unremovable number generator based defenses.

This is not the way tournament style play should be. Less partywide % skills and more real skill please.

Captain Robo · Jan 22, 2008, 06:50 PM // 18:50

@ zling

What Yue means is that you come off as scrubby. You can't expect to enter a thread, rail off some quick solutions (bad ones, at that), and solve a problem that many people have been moiling over for some time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zling

the problem is not blockway. there are plenty of skills that counter it.
the problem is the close mindness of most people and the trend to copy builds off each other(and wiki) resulting in everyone running the same super defensive build and thus getting stuck until VoD.

I won't say there isn't anything wrong with copying builds, but you're not going to change anyone's mind if they keep winning with a build they saw on observer. People are going to always play builds that win. The more a build can make up for the [lack] of player skill, the easier it is to win with. This is something nobody will ever be able to reverse, you'll just have to deal with it.

Furthermore, arguing that counter-skills beat a certain build is an extremely one-dimensional method of thinking. Sure, you'll beat a build by bringing counter-skills X,Y,Z; but what about matches where you don't have those skills, or you bring them and they're totally useless? Preparing for the metagame should not come down to: "You will lose to build X if you do not bring skill Y."

That is the definition of Build Wars.

Quote:

Ghostly Weapon, Seeking Arrows, Anthem of Guidance, Magebane Shot, Magehunter Strike, Golden Fox Strike->Wild Strike->Shattering Assault, Expose Defenses and Rigor Mortis are just some examples of skills that let you bypass blockway.

Let me reiterate:

Counter-skills are great when they work, terrible when they don't. Only a few of these skills are useful outside of penetrating a blockweb.

Quote:

there are also skills that bring the enchantments in blockway down easily:
your regular enchantments strippers, along with HEV and Rending Touch

also, remember that only melee attacks can be blocked, spells always get through!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Quote:

now lets assume you completely ignored the list of anti block skills, even without them you can still beat blockway. get rid of enchantment based blocks, like Aegis, Guardian, SoD, etc.
now the only problem remains DA and Ward vs Melee.
when facing DA Paragorns you should target their melee chars and the Paragorn itself as they're DA wont stick as they gotta attack...

Well that's the thing... isn't it? The problem with blockway is that you can either pressure the monks (who are kiting, under DA and whatever other prots they can throw on each other), or you could pressure paragons, who are also under DA, and make up for their lack of mobility by wearing chunky warrior armor.

You can choose between doing no damage to the monks and ruffling their backline, or doing less damage to a brick wall with shouts.

Furthermore, straight up damage-based pressure isn't going to stop DA from coming out; interrupts and KD's will. However, chances are he's also got Shield's Up, so your only options are mesmer-based interrupts, Shock, or Magebane. I have no idea what you mean by the DA not being able to stick.

Quote:

as for Ward vs Melee. its main problem is that everyone needs to stay inside the Ward to be protected from it. so you what you should do is this:
target everyone who is outside the Ward range. if everyone is cramped tightly inside the Ward than nuke them, yes NUKE!
a Mind Blaster ele is perfect for this. either on the Runner or another char. Savannah Heat also works wonders.
punish them with AoE dmg that cant be blocked, to force them out of their Ward and into your meleers.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Quote:

if you really dislike nukers in PvP(no reason to but meh)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Quote:

than at the very least bring a Dervish and equip your Rit/D Runner with Ghostly weapon along with Splinter. now this Dervish will be able to deal a lot of dmg to the cramped ppl in the Ward, not as much as nuking and only adjacent but still good enough...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

ghostly is a gimmicky RA skill that doesn't work well without zeal or remedy. It has no business on the Rt/D.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zling

hmmm... what? what does RA have to do with it?

and well, if you've started talking about RA than just so you know, RA became harder ever since Monks got toned down. the reason for that is that before this a decent Monk on an RA team=instant win now even a good Monk sometimes isnt enough as he isnt strong enough to keep himself alive from all the crazy Monk bashing RA ppl... especially if you run into a few good people like a Rending Axe War...

You were being trolled.

Lurk for a while, take some time to read some good posts.

Div · Jan 22, 2008, 07:14 PM // 19:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by zling

hmmm... what? what does RA have to do with it?

and well, if you've started talking about RA than just so you know, RA became harder ever since Monks got toned down. the reason for that is that before this a decent Monk on an RA team=instant win now even a good Monk sometimes isnt enough as he isnt strong enough to keep himself alive from all the crazy Monk bashing RA ppl... especially if you run into a few good people like a Rending Axe War...

If anything, the buff to WoH made RA monks much stronger, since no one took LoD anyways. But I digress. Listing stuff like seeking arrows and ghostly weapon to counter blockwebs is stupid, as mentioned before. You want skills that are already incorporated into a balanced build that can break down blockway, not unused skills that you put into build wars to beat blockway.

Neo-LD · Jan 22, 2008, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Build Wars aside, all of his suggestions are terrible. You could go into GvG with a build featuring every single skill on his list (if thats even possible) and you would still lose horribly because all of those skills are easily countered by common GvG skills and tactics. Hell, they are all so weak your opponent probably wouldnt even bother countering them: "Oh noes, Im getting plinked by Called Shot."

Reverend Dr · Jan 22, 2008, 09:31 PM // 21:31

The biggest thing I've noticed Blockway doing to the game is that more interrupts are being brought and more focus is placed upon interrupting and ping issues. Unless you are going to run some terrible shit specifically to counter blockway (which we have already correctly identified as bad) then about the only way to deal with it and still have some verisitily are KD's/interrupts/diversion. There is just so much more importance being placed on these skills lately than there has been in the years prior.

What I feel is the worst thing about this is the lag issues. Now I suspect that most of the whine here are people that are looking for an excuse for a loss that isn't "we lost because of our performance" and are exaggerating things, but there is going to be some lag issues one way or another with americas vs europe vs asia. As has already been addressed in other threads on the issue, having a significant part of the game greatly affected by lag and ping issues is a very bad thing.

Anyway blockway has just brought the lag 'issue' to the forefront with this interrupt crazy meta.

DutchSmurf · Jan 22, 2008, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

Build Wars aside, all of his suggestions are terrible. You could go into GvG with a build featuring every single skill on his list (if thats even possible) and you would still lose horribly because all of those skills are easily countered by common GvG skills and tactics. Hell, they are all so weak your opponent probably wouldnt even bother countering them: "Oh noes, Im getting plinked by Called Shot."

More like, "Hey, I got Bull's Striked while I had a 99.999999% block chance 3 times in a row". Which is very much possible by taking 1 skill, without any attribute points invested in it and which can't be interrupted. People call it "Build Wars". You can also look at it from the other side and see it as smart choices. In GW there has always been a main metagame. Isn't bringing skills to counter most of the guilds a good idea then? Even if they are useless against all other guilds? Which they won't be, since any guild will at least run some kind of block somewhere in their build.

The passive<->active defense debate does make sense on paper. However, when you think about it more, it doesn't make any sense. Sure, active defense takes more skill to use. The problem with it, after more then 2 years of practice, it just doesn't work anymore against most warriors. And even less against paragons. The warrior skills hardly changed. The people playing said warrior however have improved. After running the same build for 2 years, that should hardly come as a surprise. So you can cast SoD and Guardian as much as you want, you won't be able to keep up with any decent warrior. With passive defense you can tho.
Not saying SoD and Guardian aren't strong skills, they just don't keep your team alive. They do keep certain important targets alive. Which is why they are used even when there is a HUGE blockway web of 2 copies of Aegis and a ward that covers a small area of the battlefield. Of course it isn't very easy to interrupt said Aegis and make everyone outside that ward do with active defense only. It is also very hard to hit your Shatter and/or Inspired button as mesmer to give your warriors a chance to spike someone. But I know, just because it can be countered doesn't mean it is fun to play against. I wonder tho, how many people here would enjoy playing against warriors who most of the time don't get blocked?

pah01 · Jan 22, 2008, 10:23 PM // 22:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

So you can cast SoD and Guardian as much as you want, you won't be able to keep up with any decent warrior. With passive defense you can tho.
Not saying SoD and Guardian aren't strong skills, they just don't keep your team alive.

Gaurdian and SOD plus a blinder, plus good kiting and positioning are active defence and they should be eneogh to keep your team alive against two good warriors. Think about the builds used in the GWFC seasons. They often had EP powered HP, two blessed lights and a bflash spammer and that was it. Of course some teams had aegis on a flagger and some had a ward as well, but this wasnt the majority choice.

Now there is often a ward plus two copies of aegis, sometimes two copies of blind guardian etc...

Vitae runes and easy access to multiple shields has given people a decent increase in health and armor and we still have need of this much defence, I dont understand why the developers have let the game go down this road.

Joe

Neo-LD · Jan 22, 2008, 10:27 PM // 22:27

As per my post in the other thread, single target prots in the hands of a smart monk are perfectly effective even against smart warriors, so long as the rest of your team is also good. Also, with Pre-Nerf LoD, single-target prots were enough all by themselves to keep the team up, but most monks/teams were too bad or scared to even try. My team ran 0 Aegis', Ward's, DA's, or partywide defense of any kind, and still dominated early last year.

Also, Dutch, you know perfectly well (or at least you should) that all of those counters are either too weak to be effective, too clunky and unwieldy to be reliable, or else are unable to fit on viable templates. Seriously, if you told me ahead of time that my opponent was going to run full-blockway (whatever that means), I would not slot in one single skill from that list of supposed counters. They just dont work - you're better off relying on disrupting the defense web and playing agressively.

Lorekeeper · Jan 22, 2008, 11:10 PM // 23:10

There is nothing wrong with the reality that prot cant prevent deaths forever. It shouldnt be able to do so. Gameplay would be boring if monks could keep their allies alive forever with minimal effort. Its not only prot that should be encouraged in active defense gameplay, i think bsurge is another example of a template that rewards excellent active play. I think prolonged durations of linebacking has disappeared from play because while passive defenses are up it is not that necessary, but when passive defense is down linebacking becomes too necessary but more often than not its not enough.

Active play involves much more than bringing back strong prots into the game, it involves reversing the reliance on static gameplay which players natural feel more comfortable with (because their roles are strictly defined and deviate very little). Bring back midline templates which arent so spammy and mindless in nature (translation: i hate paragons) like the bsurge and water
eles (dont dare tell me these are spammy mindless bars unless you are bad).

With active gameplay, successful defense becomes far more involving an activity relying on the ability of the whole team as a whole to come together. You shouldnt suffer deaths purely because the enemy frontline offloaded damage between prots. Deaths should occur because of the failure of multiple aspect of your defensive utility, like the blind, the infuse, the prot, the kiting, the interrupt on diversion or shame etc etc

In active gameplay successful offense becomes much the same thing. You shouldnt get a kill against a good team just by interrupting or diverting 1 or 2 key skills, you should need to coordinate your disruption and damage to work through or around multiple defensive tools. This is why GvGs in the past felt slower... more methodical than they do today.

If you score kills vs teams with a good amount of active defense without needing to perform much disruption then you face a bad team. If you suffer deaths without much disruption being felt by your defense in a build with a good amount of active defense, you are a bad team.

In both sense of analysis, active gameplay punishes bad teams and rewards good ones. That is a good state of balance imo.

How different is this to current 8vs8 gameplay?

If you are good you can score kills or push positional advantage purely by disrupting a few key defensive skills (like ward and aegis). No matter how good you are defensively, disruption on wards and aegis can quickly convert to large amounts of pressure which will lead either to deaths or a loss of positioning (assuming you face a team of at least equal standard).

In this sense, passive gameplay makes bad teams feel better than they really are so its no wonder they feel more comfortable with passive defense, but unfortunately the vast majority of truly good teams have little option than to run the same passive style builds as the bad teams because game balance doesnt allow them to run a build 8vs8 that can compete on equal grounds.

The truly good teams are forced to run builds full of skirmish templates like mindblast eles, water eles, etc etc if they wish to push their GvGs towards more dynamic style gameplay.

DutchSmurf · Jan 22, 2008, 11:31 PM // 23:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

Also, Dutch, you know perfectly well (or at least you should) that all of those counters are either too weak to be effective, too clunky and unwieldy to be reliable, or else are unable to fit on viable templates.

I know that most of the counters are not viable. Which I think in most cases should stay like that, because else they turn into unstoppable offense, which we don't want. But when I look at a skill like Ghostly Weapon, I don't see why it is that bad. It can't be because of the cost, recharge or casttime. Neither because of the attribute, seeing as it requires 0 points to be effective. Doubt it is hard to fit in either. Should be perfectly possible to use it on a Me/Rt or E/Rt without changing much of the rest of the character. And it requires active use, since you can't really spam it unless you build a complete character around it. Does that mean that getting a single attack through isn't worth as much as I think it is? If no, when does it start being viable, 3 attacks, 5 attacks, more?

frojack · Jan 23, 2008, 12:10 AM // 00:10

You have to baby-sit an allied warrior to use this (Ghostly), when you probably have better things to do as a Mes. Also your going to want to spike to get this to work without hogging a mid-line for the whole game on one of your wars. How fast is that spike gonna be...?

Guided Weapon would be far better if you could somehow jump through the hoops to get it to work, but then 'oh noes!' that would be a gimmick (despite only needing around 7 communing (urgh) to get 8 seconds from it). It would also be fair warning your gonna' spike someone pretty soon to so meh...

It's a really dangerous skill to buff, which is why I think it's still a 2 sec cast. A 1 second cast could easily be worth 10-15e+exhaustion imo, but then what kinda bar are you gonna run this crap on?
It's not so gimmicky-bad, as block is always something you'd like to control, but where are you gonna squeeze this in? A Stand rit with A Rage, Splinter, Glyph of Essence (with -e set), OoS to power it all, then Kaolai + the Kaolai on your runner for party fixing? Lol...

That rit needing to sac to get energy to power this monster, would be the scariest role in the history of the game to play. (Spike target!). That's if you could ever get this madness to actually work...

Riotgear · Jan 23, 2008, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Block-cutters affect Guardian and SoD, which I'm pretty sure you can call rewarding and non-degenerate skills, just as effectively as they do passive block crap like Aegis and DA.

More crap to cut through defense means more defense layers to fill in the cracks, which means more tedious defense shutdown and less getting anything done, and probably more people running Dervish telespike. There's already stuff like Shattering Assault if you really want to Build Wars against block, and the problems with that should be obvious.

Prot is what makes GW interesting instead of a trainfest like WoW. We don't need it to be ignorable.

Ensign · Jan 23, 2008, 12:43 AM // 00:43

Anti-block skills have been used exclusively for spiking since shortly after the beginning of the game. I don't know what anyone sees in this meta that would suggest it would be used otherwise.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jan 23, 2008, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

Blockway is any low offense/high defense build containing multiple copies of any combination of Aegis, DA, and/or Wards, which is designed to bore you and your team to tears until VoD.

Pretty sure 2 W, P, Me/E, R, 2 Mo, Rt is not a low offense high defense build, and if you actually played the game you'd see that there are plenty of deaths before VoD.

Riotgear · Jan 23, 2008, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Pretty sure 2 W, P, Me/E, R, 2 Mo, Rt is not a low offense high defense build, and if you actually played the game you'd see that there are plenty of deaths before VoD.

Three healers.
Three characters packing party defense + a warder.

The fact that this isn't considered high defense is sad.

Captain Robo · Jan 23, 2008, 02:29 AM // 02:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Pretty sure 2 W, P, Me/E, R, 2 Mo, Rt is not a low offense high defense build, and if you actually played the game you'd see that there are plenty of deaths before VoD.

I guess low offense/high defense is somewhat of a misnomer when you consider that paragons are stupid powerful DPS turrets which double as ridiculous party defenders/healers/whatnot.

That's a design flaw and not really my problem. The majority of these builds ARE designed to ultimately win at VoD if they cannot win before it; that is their long-term game plan. Any kills which occur before that are just a welcome boon, and really nothing to nitpick about.

I am sorry to disappoint, but not everything I say is 100% unadulterated to-be-taken-literally truth.

The build you mentioned would be better classified as high defense/medium offense. You'd get more bang for your buck out of a more aggressive paragon (which is kind of sad) or gimmick builds, but it probably wouldn't do as well because your build is a goddamn brick wall, and a dangerous brick wall at that.

That's why it's good; that's why it's played.

Unfortunately, it's also a problem right now. This thread is about blockway being overplayed and boring, isn't it?

Lordhelmos · Jan 23, 2008, 03:00 AM // 03:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Three healers.
Three characters packing party defense + a warder.

The fact that this isn't considered high defense is sad.

Anything less and your monks are going to explode, which is half the problem in this meta.

Riotgear · Jan 23, 2008, 03:14 AM // 03:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lordhelmos

Anything less and your monks are going to explode, which is half the problem in this meta.

Yes, I'm aware of this. :P

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jan 23, 2008, 09:49 AM // 09:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Three healers.
Three characters packing party defense + a warder.

The fact that this isn't considered high defense is sad.

Maybe so, but if 4 physicals and a mesmer isnt considered high offense then what is?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

I am sorry to disappoint, but not everything I say is 100% unadulterated to-be-taken-literally truth.

In fact, most stuff you say is pretty far from the truth.

Quote:

The majority of these builds ARE designed to ultimately win at VoD if they cannot win before it

People have always taken VoD into account when designing builds, this has only increased since VoD moved to 18 minutes and some idiot decided to add more NPCs to all the maps.

I don't see how this is a problem of the current meta balanced build, they run the defense neccesary to survive prolonged 8v8 fights and a rit runner because splinter/ancestors is still retarded, the reason that most matches still go to vod is because vod comes at 18 minutes and there's 9001 NPCs on most maps so it's a lot harder to crack a base than it used to be.

Quote:

The build you mentioned would be better classified as high defense/medium offense. You'd get more bang for your buck out of a more aggressive paragon (which is kind of sad) or gimmick builds, but it probably wouldn't do as well because your build is a goddamn brick wall, and a dangerous brick wall at that.

The build is actually quite fragile, if your ward gets interrupted or a WoH gets diverted you're usually in big trouble.

Quote:

Unfortunately, it's also a problem right now. This thread is about blockway being overplayed and boring, isn't it?

It's not a problem at all, the build is fine and there's plenty of deads before VoD usually, the problem right now is that if you want to fight 8on8 you pretty much HAVE to have a partygon, the main reason for this is that there aren't any other viable party healing options.

The build isn't really 'blockway' at all and the only reason why I'd consider it 'boring' is because it's pretty much the only viable build to run, unless you run some gimmick or split based build.