Curse

Thom Bangalter · Jan 16, 2007, 09:05 AM // 09:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Really strong slugfest teams virtually always have 2-man defensive splits that hug the boat while everyone else marches forward with their unstoppable stand teams. Have people forgotten how to split? It's deeper than that, most teams don't even bring builds that can proactively split well enough to overcome two guys in a boat.

Peace,
-CxE

<3 the boat.

The problem is, there's a good chance you'll have your sh!t pushed in at the stand making the split kind of pointless.

Kabale · Jan 16, 2007, 12:09 PM // 12:09

There's still the very occasional 5 mesmer SP spike, but not that common.

yesitsrob · Jan 16, 2007, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

<3 the boat.

The problem is, there's a good chance you'll have your sh!t pushed in at the stand making the split kind of pointless.

that's pretty much the problem i tend to get, split, and the flag stand gets whattheRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO murdered.

romO · Jan 16, 2007, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

The problem is, there's a good chance you'll have your sh!t pushed in at the stand making the split kind of pointless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by yesitsrob

that's pretty much the problem i tend to get, split, and the flag stand gets whattheRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO murdered.

The problem is that too many people think a split build needs to have a stand presence in order to stall the opposing team. Too many people engage at the stand and get destroyed and put too much of an emphasis on useless things like capping the flag. Your uber defense at the stand can still get plowed through, and what will really end up stalling the other team will be running in circles back to your base and turtling.

In pretty much every match that we play where the other team tries to plow through us with a full team at the stand, we turn directly around and sit in our lord area. We never attempt to cap a flag. We never attempt to stall them. We never attempt to establish any kind of presence on the field. In several games last season, we knew that Te had adopted a "never split ever no matter what" policy, and chosen Burning Isle to go along with it. Whenever we would go up against Te, we would kill the first sentinel and then sit next to our guild lord, never attempting to leave the base. Pretty soon, we would have all NPCs dead, force them to send back a split, kill their flag runner, return their flag, kill their split, collapse on their stand team, full wipe their stand team, secure permanent morale, and have them turtling without NPCs by eight minutes. Either that or their lord would be dead by six.

If a team is making it clear that they will ignore your split and are only interested in one thing: ending the game now, then they are not worried about your stand presence or what you are doing to stall you. They are making a full rush for your lord. As long as they ignore your offense, there is no better way to counter their push than by turtling. The most important thing to realize is that the zerg team does not care about your team, the flagstand, morale, the split, or their base. They only care about your guild lord and killing it as quickly as possible. Whereas a split tactic will result in finishing the lord more gradually, there is no way to give yourself a better boost than drawing out the game and never letting them succeed in their push.

Moral of the story: Do not hesitate to turtle when you have a split team and are facing a lord rush guild. If you are able to hold off their push just enough to prevent them from killing your lord, you are winning the game.

Honestly, I believe that the failure to realize the role of the "stand team" is the number one reason why most splits fail.

Thom Bangalter · Jan 16, 2007, 08:56 PM // 20:56

The other moral of the story: now you know how to beat QQ.

Neo-LD · Jan 17, 2007, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Tommy:

When we run split builds we often encounter the problems you mention, and a few more that you didnt - we fight through them and often come through despite them, but I've never really found a solution that I've been happy with. I'll explain:

When running a split build, you are doing well as long as you are making progress on at least one end of the split, and at least holding even in the other. The other team can react in a number of different ways, ranging from matching your split, to sending back token defense, to just ignoring the split and trying to plow through your stand team.

Against teams that 'over-correct' (send back enough to stop your split from making any progress whatsoever) it is preferable to have your stand team decked out with lots of offense to take advantage of their depleted numbers at the stand. If they stop your progress on one end, then you must make progress on the other, right? An example of an aggressive stand team might be the dual thump + smiter that you guys (QQ) used in your 2sin split build a couple seasons ago.

However, against teams that 'under-correct' (send back little or nothing, try to rout your stand team) it is preferable to have a stand team that is built more defensively, to sponge damage and hold out for long periods of time. The aforementioned thump/smite stand team seems like it is hardly effective for such purposes - you would want things like Ebon Dust Aura, Blinding Surge, and Ward Against Melee instead.

The problem, though, is what happens when you have a defensive stand team, but the opponent overcorrects? Cant make progress in the split, cant kill anything at the stand. Or conversely, if you have an offensive flag team, but they undercorrect?... In both cases it seems awfully easy to either get into situations where no progress is being made anywhere, or where you're just flat-out getting mauled. I was curious if you had any insight as to how to avoid this?

At the moment, we have been trying to deal with this by having a variable amount of split-capable characters, all of which can mesh fairly well with the main stand team, so that we can try to reposition into 5/3, 6/2, 7/1, or even 8-man fairly smoothly if need be. In this way we can shake things up if we've been stalled at both ends. Also, we've crammed as much defense as possible into the stand team while maintaining a mini-eurospike that can still score kills even with depleted manpower at the stand. Other than that Im not sure what else to do, but Im sure there must be more since situations like that still come up occaisionally.

Seamus Finn · Jan 17, 2007, 01:34 AM // 01:34

I think in the undercorrect version, you might jsut want to split more offense off. Flagstand monk stomping teams generally can't afford to send back more than one guy in addition to the flagger. After that, there jsut usually arent helpful options for such a build to send back. Thus, if you have a flexible split, you should have enough guys to send that can fend for themselves(to a degree) and break the weak defenses of one or two characters that are not meant to skirmish.

Muk Utep · Jan 18, 2007, 05:25 AM // 05:25

D/W

Here to stay

unmatchedfury · Jan 19, 2007, 04:15 AM // 04:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muk Utep

D/W

Here to stay

Tru Dat

I'm really glad to see taht asecondary class gets such nice usage in GvG. The assn rit and para doen't get a whoel lot of use in GvG just because they don't do what their supposed to do well enough.

Patccmoi · Jan 19, 2007, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by unmatchedfury

Tru Dat

I'm really glad to see taht asecondary class gets such nice usage in GvG. The assn rit and para doen't get a whoel lot of use in GvG just because they don't do what their supposed to do well enough.

Para actually do what they're supposed to do (party support, offensively or defensively) damn well. The main reason why they're not there much imo is mostly because they're not as abusive atm. Grenth Dervishes are really abusive, BSurge is really abusive, Spiritual Pain spike is crazy... Paragon are sadly just very good, not broken, so there's not much reason to use them is there?

And for the teams ladder farming (most high ranked guilds are atm really, look at the totally insane amount of ladder games played, it's nearly ridiculous. Lots of them played around 10 games/day), Paragons are usually not gonna allow games as fast as other insane offense (SFs, Grenth train...).

I think it's more about not fitting the current meta of broken skill very well than anything else. Skill balance should bring them into play a lot more (unless they get nerfed hard, but i REALLY don't see why that should be the case, cause as you said atm they're just not seen much).