Curse

Juicey Shake · Jul 23, 2006, 05:14 AM // 05:14

if someone has r13 they should update guildwiki~ and only person would be like.. sama or leelof

Sparrow · Jul 24, 2006, 11:49 AM // 11:49

I just have to brag about finally beating Eat Sunday morning. You guys have been terrorizing me for the past week or so. Thank you for upholding a high standard of TA play, and giving us all something to shoot for.

I might mention we also beat a guild team that was from the #1 guild at the time in that run, and that match was nowhere near as close. =)

Run Red Run · Jul 24, 2006, 06:13 PM // 18:13

What build were they running?

Sparrow · Jul 24, 2006, 07:21 PM // 19:21

I don't really feel comfortable broadcasting someone's build in a public forum, I'll let them answer this if they want to. Sure anyone could just play TA and see their build but even so. It was a fairly standard build though and one that I'm sure they've used before. Actually I'm kind of embarrassed now to have mentioned this, I hope it was received in the intended way. Ie, admiration.

Divineshadows · Jul 24, 2006, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amity and Truth

The one thing i seriously don't like are top guilds sync entering the Random Arenas. They're willingly abusing a flaw to steamroll other teams. There is no way in hell a random team could compete with 3-4 Players from a Top Guild, all on TS/Vent.

Agreed that this is just wrong and while I did not encounter it over the double faction weekend, I have seen teams like this in the past. It makes me sick and destroys what RA is intended to be...

There have been times where I randomly ended up on a team with another player from my guild or a player from one of my former guilds and I always enjoy this, because I at least know how one of my teammates will respond to situations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I just have to brag about finally beating Eat Sunday morning. You guys have been terrorizing me for the past week or so. Thank you for upholding a high standard of TA play, and giving us all something to shoot for.

Happy to see that we are viewed in this way with respect to TA play. We are really shooting to get the same level of coordination in GvG at the moment and I can see our GvG play improving as we learn from mistakes. No matter how high we can reach on the ladder, we will continue to play TA cause we love it that much and is much better practice for building up player skill for GvG matches than HA is.

My guild just felt the same level of relief that you felt after finally beating a full team from [QQ] in a match after they had previously beaten us 6 or 7 times, so I understand where you are coming from. We also beat full teams from [Vibe] and [Te] in TA yesterday, so we are on a bit of a hot streak. Beating [Vibe] was a bit of revenge for our GvG match in which we had a decent morale edge on them 15 minutes in, but they punished us for our lack of awareness on our own catapult and caused us to basically implode with our own inexperience of handling the situation they had us in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I don't really feel comfortable broadcasting someone's build in a public forum, I'll let them answer this if they want to. Sure anyone could just play TA and see their build but even so. It was a fairly standard build though and one that I'm sure they've used before. Actually I'm kind of embarrassed now to have mentioned this, I hope it was received in the intended way. Ie, admiration.

I could care less about you mentioning the build we were using. Mention a couple of the key skills and I'll instantly know the build. If I was in the team as one of the 4 members and you can mention something about the build you were running, then I will likely even remember the match. It would help if I knew your in-game name though as Sparrow is not really striking my memory...

Van Goghs Ear · Jul 24, 2006, 10:05 PM // 22:05

hmm...were we by chance running a ridiculous mantra of persistance crip anguish/migraine build with a wild blow warrior? I know we were running that just to piss off touch rangers. The only other time we lost yesterday was running some standard balance I think consisting of 2 mesmers, a blessed light and a shock axe.

Divineshadows · Jul 24, 2006, 10:43 PM // 22:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Van Goghs Ear

hmm...were we by chance running a ridiculous mantra of persistance crip anguish/migraine build with a wild blow warrior? I know we were running that just to piss off touch rangers. The only other time we lost yesterday was running some standard balance I think consisting of 2 mesmers, a blessed light and a shock axe.

That build (of my design) was awesome at accomplishing its task which was to not only beat teams of 4 touchers, but completely frustrate the touchers and hopefully get the teams of 4 touchers to ragequit TA for the remainder of the day. An additional property of the build was that it had to function mildly decently against the rest of what we could expect to face, since they was no point continuously losing and re-entering until we faced teams of 4 touch rangers.

It did exactly what I hoped against the multiple touch teams we faced which was get them completely split up and degening like mad to the point where we could single them out and kill them one by one. Here is an overview of the build:

Hammer warrior - knockdown to provide a dom mes effect and give us a shot against teams with a good boon prot monk despite our team having no true boon prot hate

Persistence Crippling Anguish - crippling anguish, images of remorse, clumbsiness, accumulated pain, mantra of persistence, spirit of failure, drain enchantment

Persistence Migraine - migraine, conjure phantasm, imagined burden, mantra of persistence, power drain, drain enchantment, inspired hex

Two separate 36 second snares allowed us to divide and conquer the teams with 4 touch rangers with ease by splitting them up into two groups of 2 and then ganging up on them when they were at low health. This build really gave the touchers no choice but to give chase, because they had a very long lasting 10 degen and their only self heal requires that they be in touch range. Very amusing to watch in practice and even more amusing were some of the comments we got afterwards.

Unfortunately, it was a bit weak against standard teams because our anti-melee basically depended upon the hexes staying on allowing our casters to stay out of range of their melee. Teams with expel hexes and/or blessed light made this very difficult. In addition, neither mesmer had distortion because it synergizes so horribly with mantra of persistence so rangers gave us big problems. This build basically had no plan against rangers other than clumbsiness and trying to hide behind obstructions.

Sparrow · Jul 24, 2006, 10:59 PM // 22:59

I never go by the name Sparrow in game to be honest, it's just my forum name across many forums...

This was early Sunday morning, some would call it Saturday night. The name I was using at the time was Tranquil Brute.

You were running Ineptitude Mez (Joan), Interrupt Ranger (I think Melandru's?), and a warrior/melee of some kind (not real sure, probably Shock Axe). Also Divineshadows was on Blessed Light monk which surprised me since you weren't running NR. Divineshadows had Distortion.

EDIT: We were running double thump. You came back and beat us on the rematch though, but we had a 20+ streak nonetheless. Wish we could have beaten you twice but alas, was not in the cards. =D

Divineshadows · Jul 24, 2006, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

You were running Ineptitude Mez (Joan), Interrupt Ranger (I think Melandru's?), and a warrior/melee of some kind (not real sure, probably Shock Axe).

This is a well known build in TA at the moment and I have seen several top guilds run it (some use minor variations on the skills). I believe it originated with either [Fish] or [Vis], but I could be wrong. The build does not use a shock axe. Instead, it uses a thumper with apply poison to provide extra degen pressure while still having a melee. The thumper brings a bow in one of the weapon sets to quickly spread poison at the beginning of the match. When run correctly, this build is very difficult to beat. There are guilds that know how to run it better than we do. Still, it wins faster than most of the other TA builds we run on average and that is what we were looking for at the time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Also Divineshadows was on Blessed Light monk which surprised me since you weren't running NR. Divineshadows had Distortion.

This build you described is normally run with a boon prot that uses draw conditions. I have seen other teams run a blessed light prot monk instead of a boon prot. I decided to try the blessed light heal monk that I use from another build instead of either of these options. As much as I love distorition, distortion on the monk is probably not the wisest idea when using an ineptitude mesmer as the anti-melee. An ineptitude mesmer does not shutdown two thumpers and two pets very well at all, and to make matters worse distortion at 8 illusion is great vs a single melee but very bad against 4 (2 thumpers and 2 pets) and kiting with a healing monk is even more difficult than kiting with a prot monk due to longer casting times.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

EDIT: We were running double thump. You came back and beat us on the rematch though, but we had a 20+ streak nonetheless. Wish we could have beaten you twice but alas, was not in the cards. =D

Ferocious or Enraged? While monk is still my speciality in PvP, nothing gets me more angry as a monk than having my faced pounded in by a couple of rangers with hammers and their pets. This usually gets me pissed off enough that I demand to play warrior for when we re-enter so I can eat the thumpers alive with my axe. The fact is that most thumpers don't kite (there may be something in pet AI that the pet stops attacking if they kite?) and just let me frenzy their backside all day long and allow me to mess with their bash crushing spike by shocking them. The rare smart ones try to switch onto me and catch me frenzied, but I switch into rush and now have their focus off my monk. This is when they start to kite and I begin a cycle of bull's strike -> frenzy them while they're knocked down -> rush and repeat. Meanwhile, there is substantially less pressure on my team and my team is beating the energy out of their monk.

Sparrow · Jul 25, 2006, 12:23 AM // 00:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

The build does not use a shock axe. Instead, it uses a thumper with apply poison to provide extra degen pressure while still having a melee. The thumper brings a bow in one of the weapon sets to quickly spread poison at the beginning of the match. When run correctly, this build is very difficult to beat. There are guilds that know how to run it better than we do. Still, it wins faster than most of the other TA builds we run on average and that is what we were looking for at the time.

I have definitely played vs. the Poison Thumper/Inept/Melandru's variation... difficult indeed... but for some reason I seem to recall no poison in that particular match.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

This build you described is normally run with a boon prot that uses draw conditions. I have seen other teams run a blessed light prot monk instead of a boon prot. I decided to try the blessed light heal monk that I use from another build instead of either of these options. As much as I love distorition, distortion on the monk is probably not the wisest idea when using an ineptitude mesmer as the anti-melee. An ineptitude mesmer does not shutdown two thumpers and two pets very well at all, and to make matters worse distortion at 8 illusion is great vs a single melee but very bad against 4 (2 thumpers and 2 pets) and kiting with a healing monk is even more difficult than kiting with a prot monk due to longer casting times.

Yes Distortion didn't seem to help much. To be honest I have rarely had trouble dispatching a BL monk in TA except when NR is in use, regardless of whether they were prot or heal. But this may be simply because I haven't faced skilled Blessed Lighters. I had thought that with Blessed Light you are giving up Boon Prot in order to gain an advantage in some other way -- NR being the obvious example -- and for that reason the BL needs some extra protection (traps, melee shutdown, etc) built into the build to remain as competetive as a Boon Prot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

Ferocious or Enraged?

Enraged! Gotta love how nobody seems to know about this skill still!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

While monk is still my speciality in PvP, nothing gets me more angry as a monk than having my faced pounded in by a couple of rangers with hammers and their pets. This usually gets me pissed off enough that I demand to play warrior for when we re-enter so I can eat the thumpers alive with my axe. The fact is that most thumpers don't kite (there may be something in pet AI that the pet stops attacking if they kite?) and just let me frenzy their backside all day long and allow me to mess with their bash crushing spike by shocking them.

To my relief, teams frequently do not even pressure our thumpers except with blind and hexes. With Expel in our build our only real challenge is vs blindbots (and the bad blindbots will sometimes not even blind you if you pressure someone far away from them.) Monk+Ritualist is as always an annoyance, and can waste enough of our time for our monk to become vulnerable. Knowing full well how dangerous (and yet how fragile) thumpers can be, I am more than happy to pound them into the ground while my comrade chases down their monk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

The rare smart ones try to switch onto me and catch me frenzied, but I switch into rush and now have their focus off my monk. This is when they start to kite and I begin a cycle of bull's strike -> frenzy them while they're knocked down -> rush and repeat. Meanwhile, there is substantially less pressure on my team and my team is beating the energy out of their monk.

The beauty of thumpers (especially with Enraged) is that they are actually an even match with a warrior in most cases. With TF and 6 adren Hammer Bash, you can usually out-KD the enemy warrior -- who can't use Frenzy while you're on him. I remember one time when a match was winding down... me (thumper) vs. 2 shock axers and a shutdown mez. I knew it was lost but I intended to go down fighting. Rather than chase down the Mesmer with the axes on my tail I decided to bring the fight to them. Dispatched one axe as he was away from his teammates, then went for the second -- brought him to within an inch of his life when the Mez Blackouted me and it was over -- axer Eviscerated and poof, no more thumper =). Great end to the match though.