Curse

Divineshadows · Jan 02, 2007, 08:29 PM // 20:29

Random Arenas over the course of the past few days (12/28/06 to 1/1/07) have been in a worse state than I had ever seen them. The disparity in the skill of the players and the skills selected by the players was simply enormous. On top of this, I would often ask my teammates what their elite skill was simply so I could have a vague idea of what type of build they were running before the first match even started. Approximately 10 to 15% of the players answered that they had no elite skill on their bar. Things were not much better when I played on TA teams during this stretch of time. The population of TA players was down meaning that an even higher percentage of teams you faced were from RA and, consequently, competition was lacking. What factors contributed in making RA at least three times worse than I normally see it during this stretch of time I cannot even begin to guess at.

The goal of this thread is to post descriptions of some of the bad builds you have seen recently from your teammates in RA or from your opponents in either RA or TA. With each description, please include the reasoning as to why the build is bad to serve as a form of negative re-inforcement to less experienced players and as comedic value to the more experienced players.

Here are some of the more memorable examples I witnessed over the last few days:

1. A warrior using read the wind, punishing shot, and savage shot. In almost all cases when a build starts to use more skills from your secondary class than your primary class, you really have to question if the right primary class was selected. Short recharge 10 energy skills fail miserably on a warrior due to 2 pips of regen and no expertise. Perhaps most importantly, warriors are meant to do damage in PvP and this build's damage output was miserable when compared to your typical warrior using a hammer, axe, or sword when set up with the right skill combinations.

2. An elementalist using life transfer, vamp gaze, and other spells from the blood line. Life transfer is a horrible elite choice for PvP no matter which primary class is using it. The 30 second recharge and complete lack of utility or shutdown offered (most other elite hexes cause some form of shutdown or have something to deter your opponents from taking certain actions). This build suffers from the same problem as the warrior using the bow...it does not do damage (relative to what a real damage build could output) and is overloaded with skills from the secondary class.

3. A warrior using orison, mending, and power attack. Three of the worst skills in the PvP game from a competitive standpoint all packed onto a single bar. Orison is a bad skill for monks to use, because its energy efficiency (healing per point of energy) is so bad when compared with anything else in the healing line and the heal is so small that it can hardly keep up with the pace of damage given that this skill has a very high time cost associated with it. It becomes even worse on a warrior who has no divine favor bonus, only two pips of regen, and any time spent casting is time spent not attacking. Mending has even worse energy efficiency than orison and wastes energy even while you're at full health. Power attack is inferior to warrior adrenaline attack skills and many of the warrior energy based attack skills such as critical chop, bull's strike, and protector's strike (these energy attack skills at least provide a knockdown or allow an additional attack to fit in between two normal attack swings). Just like the bow warrior, this warrior failed to realize that warriors in PvP are about doing damage.

4. A warrior using defy pain and vital boon. This player was on my team and was very proud of his high health, which actually wasn't even as high as I expected. The player was probably using multiple superior runes (i.e. sup strength and sup swordsmanship) and using defy pain and vital boon in an attempt to overcompensate for the lost max health. After a loss on the lava map, the player complained about the opposition kiting his attacks. Of course, the player had no increased movement speed skill like rush or sprint and no increased attack speed skill to deal more damage. This player's build failed to recognize that warriors in PvP are about dealing damage and not about taking damage. Only stupid players attack defy pain warriors early in a match. The smart players simply ignore these types of warriors because they are simply not threatening at all and they just kill them only after all the other players on the team are dead.

5. A fire elementalist using no elite skill, flare, firestorm, and inferno. I ran into more than one player using this type of build. Not only did the player fail to include an elite skill which is a big mistake in PvP, the player selected some of the worst skills from the fire line. The fire line offers three main (but weak) forms of utility -- burning (armor ignoring damage), knockdown, and energy management (in the form of glowing gaze and fire attunement). Flare, firestorm, and inferno offer none of this utility and are simply damage skills that don't cause much damage to begin with (fireball and liquid flame are superior to them in terms of time, energy efficiency, and recharge) and is damage that is easily avoided by dodging projectiles or moving out of range of the firestorm or inferno.

6. A dervish using wounding strike, grenth's fingers, inferno, aftershock, blinding flash, glyph of elemental power, rez signet, and some 8th skill I cannot remember. I was actually shocked that this player had ressurection signet on the bar. This bar has absolutely no focus whatsoever and has a lot of expensive skills on it. It appears to have some vague attempt to deal point black area of affect damage, but simple scythe auto attacks and attack skills outperform inferno, aftershock, and grenth's fingers in terms of time, energy, and damage. As for blinding flash and glyph of elemental power, those skills really have no place on a dervish bar given that dervishes in PvP should be focused on dealing damage (ebon dust dervishes with crippling sweep are a mild exception). While this build was among the worst of all the ones I witnessed over the holidays, there is actually some hope for this player because the player was willing to ask for help on becoming better at PvP. I spent a couple hours talking with the hour and getting him setup with a build he could use (using Nightfall and core skills only) and explained some of the basic strategies in PvP such as kiting, damage mitigation, and how to effectively deal damage. Some of the other builds listed prior to this one are being played by players that have no hope in PvP simply because they are unwilling to ask for help at getting better and ignore any advice offered to them.

Horseman Of War · Jan 02, 2007, 08:40 PM // 20:40

ok even if you woulda said "builds ive seen in the lvl<10 arena" Id still be smiling.

Treck · Jan 02, 2007, 09:44 PM // 21:44

Yeah, I can agree with you on that one. RA is worse off than TA since there is so much people that don't even bother to run proper PvP builds but just rather 'tossed' in whatever skills they think was cool.

And I for one am tired of seeing Wammos in TA or RA... I can't count how many time I've seen a Wammo on the other team.... Granted I run a Linebacker build but.... still that's no excuse to run a Wammos in TA or any PvP area even....

I was lucky enough to earn my first gladiator point last night with a extremely tough group. The only builds we lost to was the SF build and the.... build with a sin and 3 monks, DK the name sorry. I do remember one particular battle.... I was to take out a ele and all of my KD was used up. I was so shocked to see him use Meteor Shower. Yeah... The spell killed me but I got him after I was rezzed.

And probably the worst build I've even seen in all of my time in TA would most likely be.... A teammate ranger that was a spirit spammer.... He had useless spirits.... And I mean useless spirits.... Just can't remember the exact name. I kept telling him "Please don't run that build, it won't work in TA" or something like that... And he actually told something like this "STFU, U F***ING NOOB!"

I was running a Linebacker at the moment and nevertheless to say.... he got raped pretty harshly. He then spammed the team chat about how bad our group was and left.

Yeah... It's a bit sad how so many people run bad builds and also the lack of respect that come with it but there are some notable exceptions..

necrosfeelyaks · Jan 02, 2007, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Most of the time in RA, i get pissed when they run the standard skills they give u on the template for pvp onlies when u first create them, not adding any runes, and finishing off th bar with usually horrible choice of skills. I do however find some hope like once a week in the couple hours I play on weekends. I was playing one of those gimiick b-surge toxic shock singnet sins, and we had a wander rit, monk, and a regular sin with shadow of haste and no hexes. We got through RA easy, and went on to beat fairly orgnaized gorups in TA

Divineshadows · Jan 02, 2007, 10:19 PM // 22:19

Ok. This isn't really the type of replies I was looking for in this thread. I am looking for detailed accounts of bad builds you see other players running. List at least 2 or more skills and the primary profession and give detailed reasons why these builds were just miserable failures for PvP. I'm looking for comedy (heck that's the only reason I go into RA to begin with is for comedic value) and a way to educate the less experienced in the community as to what not to run.

Absum · Jan 03, 2007, 12:12 AM // 00:12

looks like the same old RA garbage to me

minor · Jan 03, 2007, 12:40 AM // 00:40

i thought of making a thread like this a while back but i think it "Skills you should never use in Pvp" would be another way too put it.
i had the classic sword war with hundred blades and mending on my team the other night. I tried to tell the guy that mending sucks and he should use other skills. Then the idiot ranger on our team goes " no mending is good if your sword with all adren skills"; i wanted to cry

Had a monk the other night and actually won 10 with him lol. His elite spellbreaker! He was a reasonable guy he said he was just trying new skills since he was starting guild wars. other than the elite his bar was ok; when i told him the SB sucked he agreed and said he would ditch it in the future.
Other thing that kills me to see is copies of builds from old GvGs. i see Charge sword wars, heal party flag runners and the like. Just because a build worked at one point for a gvg team doesn't mean its good for Ra/TA.

As far as explaning why a build is bad in the 1st 2 cases its simply that the skills used suck, hundred blades is a low damage elite and SB is just not worthwhile with the recharge and all the other good monk skills out there.

remmeh · Jan 03, 2007, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Mo/D with Avatar of Melandru.
A/Mo with Zealous Benediction.
A/N with Reaper's Mark.
W/Me trying to Energy Tap faster by Frenzying.

the list goes on =)

Symbol · Jan 03, 2007, 05:18 AM // 05:18

W/Mo with Amity as his elite. He had no idea how to use it too, I was farming faction with SF at the time and he'd put it on me (to prevent my wand spam, lolz) while I was merrily blowing up their team.

Arkantos · Jan 03, 2007, 05:20 AM // 05:20

I didn't see what enchantments this wammo had, but he was using blessed signet. ;x

I saw a D/R using a bow with power shot and concussion shot. Don't know how effective it was.

urania · Jan 03, 2007, 08:09 AM // 08:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by remmeh

A/Mo with Zealous Benediction.

I've actually seen that in TA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkantos

I didn't see what enchantments this wammo had, but he was using blessed signet. ;x

ownage.

the worst i've seen was...w/e with start burst, another w/e with liquid flame and glowing gaze, a w/me with e burn...e/w with hammer using shock and aftershock (worked quite well actually, but was nevertheless still quite funny)...r/e with flare, firestorm etc.....

kvndoom · Jan 03, 2007, 09:08 AM // 09:08

E/W with Backbreaker... yes, using a hammer.

It was funnny because until he built up 10 adrenaline he didn't use any other skill.

I kept asking myself, WTF is this guy doing?

Fianlly he got 10 adr, and used Backbreaker.

Then he used Aftershock. What a brilliant combo.

Not the worst, but probably the funniest I myself have seen.

oh wait... just read urania's post... wonder if it was the same guy? Maybe he finally realized Shock could KD faster??? AIEEEEEE

Terra Xin · Jan 03, 2007, 09:27 AM // 09:27

You guys haven't seen an ele with a hammer??

That is a good build for RA... not the best... but nothing worth labelling as a bad build in this thread :P.

My gripe is with most of the smiter monks out there. It's not that a hate smiter monks or anything, particular builds can be really effective. But you would think that if a monk goes smiting, he would be able to keep himself alive (at least) just as effectively as his damage output.

Assassins using blinding surge with deadly arts. that's not a good combo.

You have to be leniant when it comes to RA, alot of people play around with builds, and alot of the time those builds are going to be really really crappy. You also have alot of people who try to seek help in the Random Arenas Outpost, and that place is a cestpool for bad behaviour and rude responses...

Arkese · Jan 03, 2007, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Symbol

W/Mo with Amity as his elite. He had no idea how to use it too, I was farming faction with SF at the time and he'd put it on me (to prevent my wand spam, lolz) while I was merrily blowing up their team.

That was probably me, running Essence Bond and Infuse Health too. I was able to keep a whole team up for 30 minutes in RA... hilarious.

Back to the topic, I have seen a W/Me using Arcane Thievery, Larceny and Simple Thievery. An E/Mo with Zealous Benediction, Mo/E spamming Flare, minion master Ritualist, Blinding Surge assassin and the list goes on and on...

Zui · Jan 03, 2007, 04:10 PM // 16:10

- Necromancer/Ranger using only two skills: Vampiric Gaze and Charm Animal. Oh, by the way, he was level 13, and his pet was level 11. Obviously, casters are not not damage dealers, and sub-level20s in Team Areans are not good.

- Elementalist/Monk using Shield of Judgment, Shock, and Aftershock. Seriously, bad elite. How stupid do you have to be to run up and hit someone who just put that up?

Saphatorael · Jan 03, 2007, 04:40 PM // 16:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkese

Back to the topic, I have seen a W/Me using Arcane Thievery, Larceny and Simple Thievery. An E/Mo with Zealous Benediction, Mo/E spamming Flare, minion master Ritualist, Blinding Surge assassin and the list goes on and on...

Ritualists can be decent mm's. Spawning Power affects all creatures you animate, including minions. Doesn't mean they're better at it than primary necro's though, especially in RA/TA.

And a Blinding Surge Assassin, they can be quite good. I've played one myself, and it can deal decent damage. (Think Deadly Arts Signets for dealing damage with the build)

Back on-topic... well, more or less... it was in Aspenwood, but ANYWAYS. There was a Kurzick Me/R using Images of Remorse, Precision Shot, and Whirling Defense. Not kidding.

master_of_puppets · Jan 03, 2007, 04:55 PM // 16:55

W/N with Offering of Blood, Awaken the Blood, and Order of Pain. It was hilarious. He thought he'd do a lot of damage if he used atb and cast order and then attack with his sword. He'd run up to someone and use orders, by the time he finished casting the target would have run away.

N/W with Frenzy, Heal Sig, Hundred Blades, and Riposte.

Mo/W with endure pain, watch yourself and bonettis defense. I think that speaks for itself. The rest of his bar was just random scrub healing skills like breeze etc.

ainkami · Jan 03, 2007, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Bad builds in RA are a dime a dozen. But remember, this is RA where people just want a quick match and some fun.

The funniest thing occured when they had the standard template "Paladin" build. So many Wa/Mo using restore life. Concussion Shot, wait 20+ secs then attack/interrupt. Very hilariously.

Zui · Jan 03, 2007, 11:25 PM // 23:25

- Ranger/Necromancer with Vampiric Touch, Vampiric Bite, Dark Pact, Vampiric Gaze, Resurrection Signet, Dodge, Escape, and Whirling Defense. First, Touch Rangers are trash. Second, Touch Rangers without Offering of Blood and that are using "Spells" are even worse. Third, this guy started wanding after he put up Dodge. Without fail.

urania · Jan 03, 2007, 11:50 PM // 23:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terra Xin

You guys haven't seen an ele with a hammer??

That is a good build for RA... not the best... but nothing worth labelling as a bad build in this thread :P.

i did write it worked quite well