Curse

Aeros · Jan 01, 2006, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Hi, as far as i know nobody has posted a build like this, i have tested and proven this many times in the ca, this build is capable of taking massive damage from even experienced players in the competition arenas and defeating them. I have beaten elementals, degen necromancers, shutdown mesmers, iway, interrupt, and Illusionary weaponry and defeated them all, with the exception of a few iw's getting me in time.

Basically this build is dealing damage without dealing damage: if that makes sense, it means that you can take little to no damage and deal massive to the people around you.

W/Me
Attributes:
I use these, you can modify them however you want.

15 Tactics (12+3)
11 Strength (10+1)
9-10 Swordsmanship (8+1+1)
2 Inspiration

Skills:
Physical resistance or Elemental resistance *i prefer ele*
Dolyak Signet
Watch yourself
Shield stance
Riposite
Gladiators defense
Healing Signet
Rez signet

How it works:
basically you pick a target, usually warriors work best. And start hacking away at them, when you find that your being attacked by enemy mele's, cast riposite and gladiators defense. if they dont realize they're taking plenty of damage, then they will die. Next, when glads defense runs out, your kinda stuck for about 15 seconds right? wrong. Just use your trusty old Shield stance. 11 seconds of goodness is a long time in the ca, and all the time keep attacking and spamming healing signet, that is what will keep you alive most of the time. When you end shield stance, recast glads defense. After this ends you'll realize that shield stance isnt recharged. What i do in these events is cast Watch yourself and Dolyak signet, if im being attackd by warriors i use Physical resistance as wel if you brought it.

basically, this build tanks as well as dealing damage because you have a decent amount of points in swordsmanship you can still do good damage. Riposite actually blocks illusionary weaponry, which is how you can defeat some of those pesky mesmers, but you must keep your health up at all times.
When facing a degen necro, always make sure your in your stances and spam your healing signet, you will last longer than the degen necro, i promise.

I'll post pictures of me tanking soon.

Rico Carridan · Jan 01, 2006, 11:16 AM // 11:16

This build will only be able to defeat people who are basically total newbs. You don't do enough damage to be a threat, except against a warrior. To everyone else you are harmless. Let's break this down step by step.

Against a target with AL 60, the maximum damage per second (dps) you can inflict with a sword is about 21. In other words, it takes you about 23 seconds to kill a monk, mesmer, elementalist or necro, assuming they don't heal themselves, and have AL 60 armor. That's the best case scenario. In a more realistic scenario, your dps will probably be more likely ~15, which is not significantly better than a pet. With a dps that low, you will probably never be able to kill any target, period.

That means, the only thing you can do is kill the warriors that are stupid enough to attack you throw glad's defense or reposte, and I give you that, if the warrior does do this, you will probably kill him with great efficiency. That's the good news. Here's the bad:

You have no chance against a ranger, really, since troll urgent can heal 14 dps at ~7 wilderness survival, up to a max of 20 dps, which is, incidentally, almost exactly your "ideal" damage. Which you can't get against a ranger, since they have Al 70 armor. So basically, assuming the ranger decides to heal himself (quite likely), you will not do enough damage to kill him. If he brings any of his interrupts, he can kill you, since he can block your healing sig. So, against a ranger, you are looking at, at worst, a loss, at best, a draw.

You have no chance against a monk, whatsoever. Any monk worth his salt can outheal your dps, and, for that matter, keep the rest of the party alive while he's at it. If he's a protection monk, it just makes matters worse, and if he's a smite monk, then all of your defenses are useless against his holy damage, and he will destroy you. So, against a monk, you are looking at, at worst, a loss, and at best (and most likely) a draw.

Against a mesmer, you actually might have a fair chance of winning. A mesmer primary only has ether feast for healing, which only heals about 13 dps, give or take depending on skill. Since he also has AL 60, your dps might be high enough to (slowly) overtake his healing. Unless he brings distortion. Or healing from his secondary. A mesmer primary set up to do so could probably kill you, but such builds are probably unlikely in the arena. Mesmers are usually set up to be anti-caster, or strong against serious warrior threats, not builds like yours. Realistically, against an average mesmer, you can expect, at best, a win, and, at worst (most likely) a draw.

Against a necro, the situation is bleak. If he runs heavy blood, he can easily overtake your healing abilities with numerous armor piercing attacks. If he runs curses, your dps will most likely drop to practically zero, and you will draw. As an aside, here, your healing signet heals about 150 health in 6 seconds (including casting time), which is about 30 dps. The good news is that you have enough healing to overcome 10 pips of degeneration, say from life transfer. The bad news is you basically won't be able to do anything else. So, against a necro, you're looking at, at best, a draw, at worst, a loss.

Against an elementalist, it is tricky to tell. If he brings earth defenses, he will be able to draw you. If he is air and brings blind, he can draw you. If he brings air and spikes, he can probably kill you. If he is fire and spikes, he may also be able to kill you, but you might be able to kill him if he isn't set up. If he brings water, he can easily draw you. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and say that, against an elementalist, at best you win, at worst you lose.

Now, consider for a moment. From what I've stated above, you do not contribute enough damage-wise to feasibly kill three of the six classes, and have limited ability against two more. Now, if you were playing a standard axe, hammer, or even sword build, you could reasonably except to kill any class, with, I might add, a much higher dps than you could ever produce with this build. In that light, you are at best, 1/2 as effective a teammate as an average warrior build. At worst, you are 1/6 as effective a teammate as an average warrior build. In other words, simply by playing this build, you are handicapping your team, severely. If there aren't any warriors on the enemy team, or if the warriors ignore you, then you are little more effective than if the ranger brought his pet.

Now, we get into a whole other issue. This class of builds, is generally what is called in CA a grief build. A grief build is not designed to be an effective member of a team, it is simply a build that is designed to not die, at exclusion of all else. Grief builds are known as such because what generally happens is that all of the grief player's allies die, then the four players must combine their efforts to beat the griefer. Given the randomness of CA, and the effectiveness of some grief builds, it is possible that you can reach a 4v1 stalemate. This unfortunate circumstance serves no purpose to anyone, since nobody is gaining any faction, nobody is really doing anything constructive with their time or becoming more effective, and nobody, except possibly the griefer, is having any fun. This will proceed until either all of the four members leaves, in which case the griefer gets a paltry 25 faction for his "victory" and is moved to another team to find more people to frustrate, or if he leaves, then nothing is gained for anyone. It is considered extremely unsportsmanlike to play grief builds. Fortunately for you, this isn't a particularly good grief build anyway (the pre-made paladin is probably a better grief build), and probably any four random players, as long as they aren't all warriors, could probably overwhelm you, so at least you won't get a bad reputation.

For advice for your build, get rid of most of your tactics points, and invest in sword (or, even better, axe or hammer) and strength. Scrap all of your skills except healing signet and res signet. Forget the idea of tanking in PvP. It is pointless and doesn't work. As a warrior, you want to be a primary damage dealer, not a defensive player.

By the way, if you actually look around, you will find that builds like these get posted every couple of weeks, this is nothing new.

Rico

Warskull · Jan 01, 2006, 11:33 AM // 11:33

If you are winning matches with this build it is because either your opponents are amazingly stupid or your allies are making up for you being dead weight and winning the battle themselves.

The concept of a tank does not exist in PvP. While in PvE monsters have a limited AI and will continue to attack the first thing they see in PvP players will actively pick the best target to kill. Since you have very heavy self defense skills and very weak offense you are going to be an extremely low priority target. In fact all you are good for is using your rez sig. Since you use dolyak signet any intelligent player will kite you and receive zero damage while they kill your allies. Basically as the previous poster said, your team would be better off with someone running a premade paladin.

There isn't much you can do to salvage this build either, the entire concept itself is critically flawed. Best you can do with this is take it to PvE and run it there. Most players don't care about the warrior outputting damage in PvE and most mobs don't have healing so you have all the time you want.

Ellix Cantero · Jan 01, 2006, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

The concept of a tank does not exist in PvP. While in PvE monsters have a limited AI and will continue to attack the first thing they see in PvP players will actively pick the best target to kill.

Haha, how often do you play in the CAs? I'm sure this guy is tanking those lovable mending wammos all day long. It's a baaad pvp build though. I ran into a wa/el running a lame pve tank build a while back with me running a spinal shivers wa/ne, 2 monks and a low damage necro. We killed his teammates but couldn't take him down. One by one my teammates left, while this guy was bragging on his build because 'all four of us couldn't take him down'. Well, he had no snares and no running skills (no room with all that AL boosting/slowdown crap). So in order to enlighten him on why his build sucked for pvp I spent 45 minutes running around the arena (I had 0 running and healing skills myself) until he finally gave up and left. I'm not a grief runner but that guy had it coming.

Savio · Jan 02, 2006, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rico Carridan

By the way, if you actually look around, you will find that builds like these get posted every couple of weeks, this is nothing new.

The funny/sad thing is that every time someone posts one of these, they always say, "I don't think anyone's posted a build like this before."

That aside, anyone with a skill interrupt and/or armor ignoring damage will tear you apart. Or actually, pretty much any experienced PvP player, which you don't actually see too often in CA. I really, really doubt you faced down anyone really good.

Amazingly enough, my PvP setup for CA usually includes a skill interrupt and an enchant removal, and sometimes Wild Blow if I'm a Warrior. I don't have problems with griefers at all.

Warskull · Jan 02, 2006, 11:29 AM // 11:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Savio

The funny/sad thing is that every time someone posts one of these, they always say, "I don't think anyone's posted a build like this before."

That aside, anyone with a skill interrupt and/or armor ignoring damage will tear you apart. Or actually, pretty much any experienced PvP player, which you don't actually see too often in CA. I really, really doubt you faced down anyone really good.

Amazingly enough, my PvP setup for CA usually includes a skill interrupt and an enchant removal, and sometimes Wild Blow if I'm a Warrior. I don't have problems with griefers at all.

Wild Blow is still an extremely underestimated skill. It is extremely nice to have in a build these days. You are sure to run into trapper or caster runner mantra of resolve and wild blow greatly helps you disrupt their spike by breaking their stances. The loss of adrenaline sucks, but when used well wild blow is an asset to a build.

Darkpower Alchemist · Jan 24, 2006, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Sad to say,but the previous is right. I,myself have changed builds to deal more damage and survive less,but you must find balance in order to be successful. Dolyak signet is a last resort type skill. Not a first encounter skill.Better to try things like kinetic armor(if a W/E)Phys Resistance(if a W/Mes)or the various protection prayers of the W/Mo and still deal damage than the current build you are employing.It just isn't productive.