Curse

Ser Jaremy Ryker · Feb 28, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

“If you know both yourself and your enemy, you will come out of one hundred battles with one hundred victories. “
- Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”

The first few seconds of a match can be the most critical to your team’s success. In this period you are evaluating your team make-up, securing a tactically advantageous area of land, evaluating your enemies and trying to formulate your strategy.

The following is a list, so that by looking at the enemies’ class-combination you can know what build to likely expect, their strengths and weaknesses, and the strategy to apply against them. Note that just because they have a certain class combination that doesn’t mean that this will 100% guaranteed to be the build. (I have, for instance, played pure Mesmer with a warrior secondary just to throw them off.) Making generalized assumptions without verification can be a costly mistake. This is more of a ‘first impressions’ strategy guide and is geared more towards less experienced pvp’ers and applies more is the less organised arenas.

Class: R/N
Likely Build: Touch Ranger
Strengths: Ability to deal decent amounts of damage while healing self
Weaknesses: High energy demand, must be within touch range
Style of Play: Tend to spam touch attacks
Strategy:
- Stay out of touch range. Cripple if possible.
- Tend to focus on eliminating the rest of the team first
- The energy demand is still relatively high with high expertise. E-denial takes advantage of this.
- Blackout will totally negate their effectiveness for a short time period. Diversion will lock out their touch skills for an extended time if you can time it right while they are spamming.

Class: Me/W, Me/R, Me/A
Likely Build: Illusionary Weapon Master
Strengths: Constant, moderate DPS. Immune to blind/evasion
Weaknesses: Weak armour, relies on enchantments, limited spiking potential
Style of Play: Melee, sometimes with riposte skills
Strategy:
- Focus fire will eliminate them very quickly due to low armour
- Enchantment removal can render them useless
- Cripple and kite as they can be very reliant on being within melee range

Class: E/D
Likely Build: Echantment Stacker
Strengths: High tankability
Weaknesses: Limited Damage
Style of Play: Stack enchantments (armour/healing), tank, and spam stone daggers
Strategy:
- Ignore entirely until they are the last foe. Their damage barely even qualifies as ‘limited’.
- Some may use sandstorm, so be careful to move out of the area
- Amour ignoring damage or health-stealing can take them down quick
- Echantment removal or interrupting their enchantments when casting leaves them very weakened

Class: W/E
Likely Build: Shock Warrior
Strengths: High Armour, respectable DPS, knockdown and insane spike
Weaknesses: possibility of exhaustion, reliant on adrenalin and melee, frenzy damage
Style of Play: Can be very unpredictable. They will tend to build up adrenalin and then look for a weaker target and hit shock, frenzy, attack combo (usually eviscerate/exec)
Strategy:
- Never ignore. This build is very threatening, it is not one of the warrior builds you target last.
- Adrenalin denial (sympathetic visage, etc) and blinding will reduce/eliminate the damage (they can still shock though)
- E-denial can be moderately effective as they tend to have a low energy pool.
- Focus fire when they activate frenzy to do double damage
- Cripple and kite

Class: N/me or Me/N
Likely Build: Mega-Hexer
Strengths: Ability to shutdown your team
Weaknesses: Low armour, damage is punishment form
Style of Play: Hex, hex, hex. Shutdown melee, or shutdown casters, or sometimes both
Strategy:
- Hex removal
- Try to spike these foes relatively quickly in the match. One of the highest priority targets.
- If you are at an advantage you can sometimes attack/cast through the hexes if you can finish then off quickly
- If they are anti-melee heavy request caster support, if they are anti-caster request melee support

Class: Rt/caster
Likely Build: Spirit Spammer
Strengths: Ability to fortify position given time
Weaknesses: Low armour, long casting time
Style of Play: Set up spirits for a tactical advantage and try to draw enemy in
Strategy:
- Rush and eliminate before spirits are setup if possible
- Caster AoE spells to eliminate spirits if they are clumped closely
- Interrupt spirit summoning (ranger’s can excel at this)
- Try to draw enemy out of spirit range
- Know which spirits to eliminate (e.g. one’s providing defensive or strong tactical bonuses to the party)

Class: W/Mo
Likely Build: Wammo Tank
Strengths: Tanking and self-healing, sometimes stancing and riposting
Weaknesses: Only moderate DPS or spiking
Style of Play: Melee. Tends towards Mend and rush, but experienced players can be very effective (you can tell because they'll having mending touch to eliminate conditions)
Strategy:
- Ignore until the end of the match. The damage output is not threatening.
- Watch for a hard res (some actually might take one)

Class: E/Mo
Likely Build: Elemonk
Strengths: High energy pool, decent healing/protection, tend towards Air for blind and gale.
Weaknesses: Does not excel in any one area.
Style of Play: Party support
Strategy:
- This can be a very frustrating/strong opponent.
- One of the higher priority targets, kill quickly if possible
- Request caster support if they are blind-spamming (anti-caster Mesmer)
- Try to harass while focusing on eliminating another soft target.
- Interrupt any long-cast spells (1s or more)
- Watch for hard-res used with Glyph of Sacrifice

Class: R/Me
Likely Build: Cripshot Interrupter
Strengths: Versatility, ability to apply pressure/frustration, ability to interrupt
Weaknesses: Relatively low armour, moderate damage, relies on Line-of-Sight
Style of Play: Cripple, Poison, Interrupt, Evade
Strategy:
- Condition removal is very important
- High priority target for melee if they are keeping your casters from casting. Ignore if they are stance/evasion spammers.
- Secure advantageous ground (i.e. behind walls/rocks, up high) to limit the line-of-sight (especially when casting a long spell or heal/res-sig, etc)
- Rangers are typically among the last to be targeted, and as such, may have a false sense of security that can be exploited with a coordinated spike.

Class: R/W
Likely Build: Thumper
Strengths: Fast attacking, ability to almost continually knockdown.
Weaknesses: Relatively low armour for melee.
Style of Play: Melee with a pet
Strategy:
- Cripple and kite
- Anti-melee punishment hexes or blind
- Wait for them to rush your monk and focus fire
- Anti-knockdown measures (Ward of Stability, etc)
- If using RaO it can be negated by eliminating pet (also provides brief skill blackout)

Class: Mo/A or Mo/W
Likely Build: Return Monk or Stance/Ripost Monk (sometimes Smite)
Strengths: Healing/Protection and ability to kite melee or deal back damage to melee
Weaknesses: Low armour, can be less focused on ‘monking’ (more focused on self survival) compared to other combinations
Style of Play: Heal/protect, kite and use return/riposte when faced against melee
Strategy:
- Lower priority target especially if there is another monk type (applies when you're melee)
- Harass while you pick off other foes
- Request support (if you're melee) if they enter stances or starting kiting/cripple

Class: A/x or R/A
Likely Build: Generic spike assassin
Strengths: Insane damage from spike combo
Weaknesses: Low DPS outside of spikes, spike combo is chained (i.e. each attack must hit), low armour, high energy demand
Style of Play: Guerilla hit-n-run spiking
Strategy:
- If other team does not have a rit, play defensive and wait/bait for the sin to shadow-step to your monk and then spike
- E-denial so they can’t use their attack chains
- Stacking Anti-melee hexes such as empathy, insidious parasite, blind
- Evade during attack combo to defeat the attack chain
- Do not over-extend from your team or you might be picked off.

Class: Me/E or E/Me
Likely Build: Ele or Fast-cast Ele. They tend towards one element (usually fire-damage or air-blind)
Strengths: Fast-casting spike damage (if Me primary), High energy pool/management (if E primary).
Weaknesses: Low armour, skillbar tends to be reliant on one attribute, tends to have long casting time.
Style of play: Caster
Strategy:
- Anti-caster hexes (such as backfire/diversion/migraine) with melee support
- If they are blindbots request caster support and chose other target if appropriate
- Interrupt spells while being cast (Power Block can shut down their whole skillbar)
- Knockdowns
- Winter can limit damage (from burning) if they are a searing-flames/burning ele.

Class: Mo/Me
Likely Build: Generic monk
Strengths: Incredible healing and protection abilities, quick cast times
Weaknesses: Reliant on enchantments and e-management
Style of Play: Party healer/protector… can tends towards being tankish
Strategy:
- Coordinate enchantment removal and spikes
- Harass so they focus on keeping themselves alive while your team picks off another opponent
- Coordinate e-denial on the monk with pressure to try and drain their energy pool.
- Apply consistent knockdown pressure, gale-blackout chain, diversion, etc while spiking or spiking other target

Class: E/W or N/W
Likely Build: Meleemancer
Strengths: Moderate DPS or spiking, might not be entirely reliant on melee
Weaknesses: Low armour for melee, lower potential for casting, lack of healing if E/W
Style of Play: Cast n’ Slash
Strategy:
- Enchantment removal as they will tend to be reliant on this to survive in melee range or for added damage (e.g conjure element or dark aura)
- Watch for riposting is you are going to melee
- Mix of anti-melee and anti-caster hexes to limit functionability

Class: W/N
Likely Build: Plague Touch Warrior
Strengths: Decent damage and Spiking, protection against conditions, high armour
Weaknesses: Damage typically not as high as other warrior builds
Style of Play: Melee that will transfer conditions. Some might dabble into Blood (with limited effect) or Curses (with long casts)
Strategy:
- Medium priority target
- Don’t apply conditions unless they are crippled and you are out of range or would still be at a tactical advantage if transferred back to you.
- Standard anti-melee hexes or knockdowns work well.
- Difficult to melee against as they can apply and transfer conditions (deep wound, bleeding, etc)

If there are any class combinations that I missed, or any information I missed in the ones above, please send it in.

Yanman.be · Feb 28, 2007, 03:18 PM // 15:18

A/W = [skill]shadow prison[/skill] [skill]burst of aggression[/skill]

A/E= [skill]shock[/skill] sin

A/N=some curse hexes usually, to trigger black line.

W/R=iway pet ( I still see those )

Mo/A=[skill]return[/skill][skill]dark escape[/skill]

Mo/D=[skill]Vital Boon[/skill]/some dervish protection skills

Mo/E = [skill]Glyph of lesser energy[/skill], [skill]kinetic armor[/skill], [skill]glyph of renewal[/skill], [skill]divine spirit[/skill]

Rt/A= [skill]spirit's strength[/skill] spiker

Rt/R= [skill]spirit's strength[/skill] spiker

carbajac · Mar 01, 2007, 10:25 AM // 10:25

Heh, I like how watching a W/Mo for a hard res is included in their strategy. Anyway, you can also stop an E/D with enchantment stripping or interrupting Stoneflesh.

I've also seen:

E/x with [skill]Blinding Surge[/skill] or [skill]Blinding Flash[/skill]

A/x with [skill]Dancing Daggers[/skill] + [skill]Entangling Asp[/skill] + [skill]Signet of Toxic Shock[/skill]

Trixz · Mar 01, 2007, 09:30 PM // 21:30

None of these are real builds that anyone uses.

Effigy · Mar 02, 2007, 01:06 AM // 01:06

It pretty much applies to RA I think.

carbajac · Mar 02, 2007, 01:35 AM // 01:35

Yeah, I think it's obvious where one would encounter these builds once you read that a touch ranger is the first build you should familiarize yourself with.

widowdaballa · Mar 03, 2007, 11:29 AM // 11:29

D/P= Anticaster

That's me! in RA/TA at least. lol

moko · Mar 03, 2007, 02:52 PM // 14:52

Quote:

Class: Me/W, Me/R, Me/A
Likely Build: Illusionary Weapon Master
Strengths: Constant, moderate DPS. Immune to blind/evasion
Weaknesses: Weak armour, relies on enchantments, limited spiking potential
Style of Play: Melee, sometimes with riposte skills
Strategy:
- Focus fire will eliminate them very quickly due to low armour
- Enchantment removal can render them useless

+kiting.

Quote:

Class: E/D
Likely Build: Echantment Stacker
Strengths: High tankability
Weaknesses: Limited Damage
Style of Play: Stack enchantments (armour/healing), tank, and spam stone daggers
Strategy:
- Ignore entirely until they are the last foe. Their damage barely even qualifies as ‘limited’.
- Some may use sandstorm, so be careful to move out of the area
- Amour ignoring damage or health-stealing can take them down quick

you dont mention enchant removal against enchant tangs? gg.

Quote:

Class: Rt/caster
Likely Build: Spirit Spammer

gogo stereotype!

Quote:

Class: E/Mo
Likely Build: Elemonk
Strengths: High energy pool, decent healing/protection, tend towards Air for blind and gale.

as this actually applys to RA..lol. heal party or aegis for 4 people is decent? or healing breeze spam? not really.

Quote:

Class: R/Me

wow go play the game. hardly anyone uses blackout anymore. :|

Quote:

Class: W/Mo
Likely Build: Wammo Tank
Strengths: Tanking and self-healing, sometimes stancing and riposting
Weaknesses: Only moderate DPS or spiking
Style of Play: Melee. Tends towards Mend and rush
Strategy:
- Ignore until the end of the match. The damage output is not threatening.
- Watch for a hard res

lmfao another stereotype. not all wammos are stupid, just the mending ones, seriously, you are encouraging leavers in RA by saying all W/Mo = nubtanks.

Quote:

Class: Mo/A or Mo/W
Likely Build: Return Monk or Stance/Ripost Monk (sometimes Smite)
Strengths: Healing/Protection and ability to kite melee or deal back damage to melee
Weaknesses: Low armour, usually not as effective at ‘monking’ as other combinations

ROFL?!?!?!?!

Quote:

Class: Me/E or E/Me
Likely Build: Ele or Fast-cast Ele. They tend towards one element (usually fire-damage or air-blind)
Strengths: Fast-casting spike damage (if Me primary), High energy pool/management (if E primary).
Weaknesses: Low armour, skillbar tends to be reliant on one attribute, tends to have long casting time.
Style of play: Caster
Strategy:
- Anti-caster hexes (such as backfire/diversion/migraine) with melee support
- If they are blindbots request caster support and chose other target if appropriate
- Interrupt spells while being cast (Power Block can shut down their whole skillbar)
- Knockdowns
- Winter can limit damage if they are a searing-flames/burning ele.

no it wont limit damage. you just take a differennt type of damage, damage should be the same if you dont have + armor against water (i think?)

also decide on this; either FC spike, or shutdown, but not a mix of both. newbies would probably get the idea of E/Me with hexes. -_-

Quote:

Class: Mo/Me
Likely Build: Generic monk
Strengths: Incredible healing and protection abilities, quick cast times
Weaknesses: Reliant on enchantments and e-management
Style of Play: Party healer/protector… can tends towards being tankish
Strategy:
- Coordinate enchantment removal and spikes
- Harass so they focus on keeping themselves alive while your team picks off another opponent
- Coordinate e-denial on the monk with pressure to try and drain their energy pool.
- Apply consistent knockdown pressure, gale-blackout chain, diversion, etc while spiking or spiking other target

where have you been the last months? boons are dead?!

Quote:

Class: E/W or N/W
Likely Build: Meleemancer
Strengths: Moderate DPS or spiking, might not be entirely reliant on melee
Weaknesses: Low armour for melee, lower potential for casting, lack of healing if E/W
Style of Play: Cast n’ Slash
Strategy:
- Enchantment removal as they will tend to be reliant on this to survive in melee range or for added damage (e.g conjure element or dark aura)
- Watch for riposting is you are going to melee
- Mix of anti-melee and anti-caster hexes to limit functionability

or just sum up as extremely bad and easy to kill?

also i dont think you know NF exists - theres dervs and paragons.

sorry but i think this thread is trash. it doesnt even give the proper image of builds, even for newbies. try adding appropriate information, good builds, and decent counters. maybe link them to the wiki link with the elite or at least some good counters so its easier to sum up - this would take lots of time & work, but THAT would be worth it. i dont think you're gonna bother with that, so dont try. half finished work is ftl. :\

maybe others will help updating, but its seriously gonna be a long list, and no new players will bother reading that. anyways gl if you wanna give it a go.

African War Lord · Mar 03, 2007, 05:35 PM // 17:35

anyone agree the guy above me is a jerk?

Windjammer · Mar 03, 2007, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Me/A Jerk
likely build: Douchebag
Strengths: Knows somthing about the game. Makes some relevant points.
Weaknesses: Totally misses some important points. Arrogant, condescending.
Style of Play: Makes statements interspersed with short, seemingly witty, indirectively insulting quips. Makes a point of using knowledge of game to insult others and make him/herself look "leet". Any usefulness of their posts is actually a secondary effect.
Strategy:
-Mostly ignore. Their damage is minimal and illusionary anyway. They are a cousin of the Troll and require attention and belief to be effective.
-Don't totally discount input. Though they should be mostly ignored, do look through their posts for useful information. Their usually is some, though it is actually a secondary effect. Ignore the insults and tone of their post, but look through it for relevant content.
-Don't reply or refer to the post, even indirectly. Doing so only empowers them more as it implies belief and attention.

Good thread BTW. It is worth it. Such information is generally useful, even if not always totally precise (R/N touchers "...high amounts of damage..."? That should probably be "...modest amounts of damage at best..." The ignore strategy is right though, all they are is low damage dealers that are harder to kill than killing them is worth.)

moko · Mar 03, 2007, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by African War Lord

anyone agree the guy above me is a jerk?

im not really. while i think this was a good idea with a nice intention, i believe it wont help newbies that much. thats why it can use some helpful updates.

for example, listing snaring against a touch but not against an IW mes might confuse them, as they both require close-up range.

paragons and dervishs in there would be really nice, too. so new players actually have an idea that they should seriously kite that melandru dervish and not try to cripple it because its immune to conditions.

seriously, look at it. he would have to list a million of class combinations, all with their strengths, weaknesses and counters, in a nicely detailed way so a newbie can actually learn from this.

and some of these he listed are actually rather weak..couldve been something more deadly.

and i really hate that w/mo part. theres already enough leavers in RA (omfg serious business in RA - still spoils fun) when they see a W/Mo when its actually a decent player with mending touch.

basically, i was trying to say (in my very own harsh way), that these things should look like the W/E he listed, because THAT one is a GOOD one. same as the assasin, thumper, spirit spammer (except its a stereotype :I) and hexers.

Ser Jaremy Ryker · Mar 05, 2007, 02:17 PM // 14:17

Give the guy above a break, there really is a lot of insightful information up there, he makes some good points and he probably is more experienced than I am. I've started making a few edits on the original post.
I did not include much about Dervs or Paras as I actually am not as familiar with them as other classes (this is one spot where your help would be appreciated).
There are hundreds of different builds possible, but I was trying to highlight the more common ones you might see (in RA/TA) and am not advocating the use of some of the weaker ones. Also, I am against leaving at the start of the match based on not liking your team buildup - I prefer to give it a shot before making a decision like that (e.g. there are some very deadly 'wammos' out there).
Yeah, this list isn't complete yet, and I did miss a couple of things... that's why I'm asking for your input.
Thanks,

krakenstar · Mar 05, 2007, 03:36 PM // 15:36

As a pretty new player, I found this article helpful. As it was advertised, its Build ID 101. That means for RA/AB players mostly. From what I've seen its acccurate enough for it to be very useful.

For all you complainers, if you are unsatisfied please feel free to write your own more advanced build ID article for the other formats.

Good Job OP!

Icy DS · Mar 30, 2007, 04:07 AM // 04:07

I hope this thread doesn't make people dumber.

Brian the Gladiator · Apr 02, 2007, 04:02 PM // 16:02

With regaurd to paragon and dervish questions:

From my experiance in RA, paragons are very rarely used. When I do see them I see people using Para thumpers, if you know what that is, or P/R spear chuckers. I have, on the other hand, seen some Motivation Paragons but very rarely. The main reason for this is because using your chants and shouts on 4 people is very unaffective when compared to use on 8 people.

Unlike Paragons, Dervishes are very hard to place with stereotyped gimic builds. There really aren't any gimic builds for Dervish except possibly a Reapers Sweap high damage build or a Avatar of Balthazar tank build. I have seen some Avatar of Melandru dervishes as well but somewhat rarely.

Realm of Fiery Doom · Apr 10, 2007, 04:14 PM // 16:14

Is the 55hp a viable PvP build as well?

jjtrasher · Apr 10, 2007, 04:30 PM // 16:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokone

im not really. while i think this was a good idea with a nice intention, i believe it wont help newbies that much. thats why it can use some helpful updates.

for example, listing snaring against a touch but not against an IW mes might confuse them, as they both require close-up range.

paragons and dervishs in there would be really nice, too. so new players actually have an idea that they should seriously kite that melandru dervish and not try to cripple it because its immune to conditions.

seriously, look at it. he would have to list a million of class combinations, all with their strengths, weaknesses and counters, in a nicely detailed way so a newbie can actually learn from this.

and some of these he listed are actually rather weak..couldve been something more deadly.

and i really hate that w/mo part. theres already enough leavers in RA (omfg serious business in RA - still spoils fun) when they see a W/Mo when its actually a decent player with mending touch.

basically, i was trying to say (in my very own harsh way), that these things should look like the W/E he listed, because THAT one is a GOOD one. same as the assasin, thumper, spirit spammer (except its a stereotype :I) and hexers.

/agreed with what u said

although, you were a bit harsh ><

Samurai-JM · Apr 10, 2007, 07:05 PM // 19:05

funny because what mokone said was mostly right. Nearly every part of the original post was saying what the poster believed people usually used, and it was full of... kind of bad info, although some of it will be helpful to new players. Most of the builds listed are just outdated or weaker than the other builds.

And seriously, not many people use touchers, IW tanks,or blackout rangers. people have even grown away from mending and meleemancers! And plz, don't get me started on the pointless annoyances known as earth tanks...

Brian the Gladiator · Apr 10, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ser Jaremy Ryker

Class: E/W or N/W
Likely Build: Meleemancer
Strengths: Moderate DPS or spiking, might not be entirely reliant on melee
Weaknesses: Low armour for melee, lower potential for casting, lack of healing if E/W
Style of Play: Cast n’ Slash
Strategy:
- Enchantment removal as they will tend to be reliant on this to survive in melee range or for added damage (e.g conjure element or dark aura)
- Watch for riposting is you are going to melee
- Mix of anti-melee and anti-caster hexes to limit functionability

The term Meleemancer is what it is for a reason. It is a necroMANCER using a MELEE weapon. This does not include an elementalist. I have only ever seen an E/W using a hammer and aftershock and that was a very very very long time ago and it is also a noobie noob nubtard build that doesn't even need to be adressed because of how bad and rare the E/W hammer is. One thing is for sure, however, and that is that an E/W is not a meleemancer.

Ahrims Assassin · Apr 10, 2007, 11:06 PM // 23:06

This is a very helpful guide, thanks for making it. The one thing I would like to add is for Dervishes. Over the past week or two in RA the major dervish build seems to be D/W Lyssa Avatar with Wild Blow. I think it may be listed on Wiki in case you want to look up strengths and weaknesses. Once saw three in one game. I don't know if it'll last long enough to become like these builds, but I thought I might as well mention it.

Peace.