Curse

Trinity Fire Angel · Dec 22, 2009, 06:10 PM // 18:10

I am glad i got pugged by a R9 group back over a year ago when i was R1. they just picked me up as an ele, said; "play SH". Put on my E/P build, and went from R1-R3 in about 4 hours of play with this group. I didn;t mind being a build bitch, but i am sure that if i had of failed i would have been out if i didn;t do my job correctly. Song, Make Haste, Heats in the right spots. etc.

not saying i am skillful, just that i know enuff about playing ele, that and because all i ever observed in Gvg and HA were the ele characters up until that point. :P

anyway, this post has kind of inspired me to come back to HA and continue again. good one Borat, glad that some high ranked people still care...

as a side note, rank =/= skill, had a McTigga monking in RA and he failed miserably. spiked out in the first 5 seconds, blamed it on lag and then raged leaveing us 3 to fight on our own. nevertheless, we beat the other team 3v4 even tho they had a monk still.!!?!?! go figure...

Killed u man · Dec 23, 2009, 05:40 AM // 05:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabiosx

A pug is someone who you play with for a day, watching someone play so closely is a waste of time, if you are watching them play this carefully it means you arent doing your job.

BTW microing dont always work, it really depends on the players. The few times that ive pugged nowadays Ive always beaten borat in every map I met him in so Krill your statement is opinion, and he always says pugs ftl, fail pugs when he loses LAWL when my group was pug as well! But I do appreciate that he plays super weird builds.

Concidering you're from WoOM, I wonder firstly WHO you are. I can only assume Fierce and Licious, as he's the only guy I know that actually plays other builds than balanced.

And if it's you:

Obviously, because you don't take pugs. If you condider a guy who doesn't play in your core, but is a friend of a friend who plays in some other guild's core, a pug, then sure.

I'm forming 7 man pug teams most of the time, and the ONLY friends I have left usually only want to play bitch bars. You can hardly call a team, which has the fire ele and rit pugged a "pug".

Tough I admit loosing to WoOm pretty much every time I face them. But I'm not ashamed of admitting that, because we both know who rolled who (with balanced or any other build) when [Dent] core still played. We DESTROYED teams (Pretty much every known HA and GvG guild who dared venturing in HA) playing balanced.

But yeah, with all of my core gone, and me having to pug ATLEAST 4 people per group, always on key spots (mesmer, monks, ranger), I admit I always get outplayed by WoOm (Fierce) on every map. But I can assure you, it's not my calling which fails...

diabiosx · Jan 27, 2010, 03:21 PM // 15:21

hey how you guess borat ? lol, yes its somewhat true, i wont make my own pug unless i have a FL mesmer/prot as they are most important positions. xD

encore · Feb 02, 2010, 08:30 AM // 08:30

Well today's HA isnt really good, you can see a lot of high ranked (about 10-11) playing pretty, if not very, bad and trying to pug, and then complain when losing without even having vent, trying to spike with the chat, whereas some old r11 iway player, people whom we used to reject, and who was a friend, is now often holding halls with balanced.

And i also agree on the fact that language matters. A lot.

TheHaxor · Feb 15, 2010, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

3) Guilds

[I]Pay attention to guild tags. A guild tag is more than 2 brackets with some letters in between them. It's a tagsign which tells exactly how and what the player plays.

In the old days, if you pugged somebody with the tag [SoG], you knew you had to put this player on an easy bar. Offensive to some? Bullsht... It's the truth. A tag gives you a base on which you can judge a player, and in reality is one of the 2 things that can help you determinate how good a player will be. (Rank and Guild)

Thats why the guild tag is a guideline, not a rule. But the in the large majority of cases, the guild tags truly displays what you will get. There is several renowned HA guilds (and tag) for the builds they play. If you don't think someone from a hexway/rspike guild is up for the task, simply do not take him.[/build]

This stuff is true to a certain extent. However, I've found in my experience that people that are not known (ie. low ranks) can be just as effective, and in many cases better than, as people who are known (ie. high ranks). I've noticed that many times the lower ranked player will listen much better and be more willing to execute different strategies. I never expect them to do everything right from the start, but after the match is over we discuss what went wrong and what to change the next time. I find the lower ranked player is generally more open to criticism. The key is obviously not to just scream at them when they mess up.

I highlight an example of a player that I would take in pugs back when I was playing. He was rank 1 the first time I took him into the group. At this point in the game, I didn't really care as long as they had the skills necessary to run the bar. This player was one of our frontliners and figured out very quickly that knocking stuff down in AoE was going to generate kills. His play improved drastically from match to match. I think the first time we entered we won halls and got a little over 40 fame. By the end of the week, this player was rank 5 from just pugging. I wish all players were open to criticism like this one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

4) Observer

Probably the most important factor in pugging. Observe alot... It's something I do naturally, when I don't feel like playing myself, you can usually find me observering (and flaming ) HoH and GvG matches.

This has given me a nice edge in knowing pugs. I can immediatly tell wether or not I should take XX-pug, because I've seen him play/fail on observer.

So when you're obsering matches, don't just observe the general play, but also select people at random, and look at how they play. -weapon swap, die on 40/40?!, etc...-

I think you put a little too much merit into observer. One of the biggest flaws is that you can't hear what the player is communicating to his/her teammates. It may very well be the case that the player isn't that great at "clicking skills," but maybe their target selection is good and they possess tactical prowess. These are things you can't judge simply by watching a player on observer. Also, you have to consider that you can't effectively watch all members of the team at the same time. Being a team game, this can't be overlooked because if your team looks like shit a lot of times you look like shit right along with them.

I'm going to choose to example myself here (not saying I'm a great player, but this is just a fitting example). I remember you talking shit on me because I was missing some of my quarterknocks. You were right I should have been hitting all of them, but it wasn't for lack of trying. I have spent loads of time doing it in isle of the nameless on the dummies and the moving targets. I have spent loads of time practicing it on real people in RA. My issue stemmed from the fact that I use a rig that gets 10-15 FPS usually and average to below average ping. The problem is that these numbers are constantly fluctuating to the point where they end up in a range that is completely different than my "control" experiences. The reason I played warrior when I did is because I generally called the tactics. Normally, I played the prot monk slot and I would call tactics from there. However, when we needed a capable frontliner and had someone that could play a prot monk to a decent level, I would play warrior (since it's a pretty natural position for someone who calls tactics).

The thing you overlooked in this situation is that me missing a quarterknock never resulted in a lost match. Generally, quarterknocks had very little to no influence on the outcome of the match. You failed to observe the fact that we were raping and pillaging the other team as a result of coordinated offense because you were simply paying attention to my skill usage. Was all of that because of me? No. Everyone was doing their job, including myself (ie. knocking shit down in Jesus beam).

Killed u man · Feb 15, 2010, 05:55 PM // 17:55

True, but I never said a person should be judged on a single match.

I doubt I raged at you, or anyone, for failing and not costing us the game. I nag alot, I admit, but that's solely cuz I expect top notch play from R9/12+ people, and is that so weird?

And I severly doubt I kicked you, and if I did it definatly wasn't because of something trivial like not being able to Qknock. I usually only kick people when they either:

Are french or german and have no clue what I'm saying. (Resulting in a obscene amount of "lul" and "xd" and "you suck" in team chat)
They lost us the match in a pathetic way.

TheHaxor · Feb 15, 2010, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

True, but I never said a person should be judged on a single match.

I doubt I raged at you, or anyone, for failing and not costing us the game. I nag alot, I admit, but that's solely cuz I expect top notch play from R9/12+ people, and is that so weird?

And I severly doubt I kicked you, and if I did it definatly wasn't because of something trivial like not being able to Qknock. I usually only kick people when they either:

Are french or german and have no clue what I'm saying. (Resulting in a obscene amount of "lul" and "xd" and "you suck" in team chat)
They lost us the match in a pathetic way.

It wasn't from any groups we were in together. It was when [Nion] was on obs all the time since the guild was top50. It was also during the height of our arguments on here. Perhaps it was just you trying to flame me.

Terrible Surgeon · Feb 16, 2010, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Masmar

Yes, it is. Even doing it ingame is discrimination, but you can get around that. Posting something like that in public forums is just stupid and arrogant

(above was said regarding Borat's opinion that communication is essential in HA)
Wow, so its a bad thing to kick a pug who can't speak whatever language the rest of the team does? I think you're an idiot. Communication is key to succeeding and its not discrimination because of this.

Corporeal Ghost · Feb 18, 2010, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

I think you put a little too much merit into observer. One of the biggest flaws is that you can't hear what the player is communicating to his/her teammates. It may very well be the case that the player isn't that great at "clicking skills," but maybe their target selection is good and they possess tactical prowess.

This is just not true. You can see good and bad target selection as well as tactical play on obs. There are very obviously some people that "get it". Movement is usually the biggest tell. Granted, it's harder to see whether or not someone has good target selection than to see if they're quarterbreaking or whatever, but it's not impossible. It just requires that you, the observer, know how to pick targets, or pre-prot, or split independently, or whatever it is you're looking for.

TheHaxor · Feb 18, 2010, 03:33 AM // 03:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

This is just not true. You can see good and bad target selection as well as tactical play on obs. There are very obviously some people that "get it". Movement is usually the biggest tell. Granted, it's harder to see whether or not someone has good target selection than to see if they're quarterbreaking or whatever, but it's not impossible. It just requires that you, the observer, know how to pick targets, or pre-prot, or split independently, or whatever it is you're looking for.

It is true. You can't hear what is being communicated by the team, so it may not be an issue with the player as much as it is the team's tactics. This isn't a discussion that is restricted to warrior play. Following a bad game plan doesn't make you a bad player. It makes you a team player on a bad team. There is a key difference. You have a much better chance of being successful following your team than you do going against what they're trying to do, even if the strategy is a poor one.

Corporeal Ghost · Feb 18, 2010, 10:00 AM // 10:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

You can't hear what is being communicated by the team

This is true, but it is irrelevant. There are plenty of players that are bad at micro but overwhelmingly good at tactics. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm saying you can see the fact that they're good at tactics by how they play the game, how fast they respond to new situations--often pre-empting the designated "caller"--where they stand, how they adjust to disruption of plan A. There are loads of things that do not require good ping, frame rate, or being microed in order to do correctly, and most of these are observable. I merely went with the Warrior example because it's what we were talking about before.

Are there players that slip through the cracks here? Absolutely, but it's pretty rare that someone is a tactical genius and it doesn't show on obs, provided you know what to look for. It's also pretty rare that tactical geniuses playing for teams terrible enough to hide them even make it to obs mode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

You have a much better chance of being successful following your team than you do going against what they're trying to do, even if the strategy is a poor one.

This is entirely dependent on the quality of the team you are playing for, as well as whether or not you intend to stick with them for awhile or treat them as pugs you will never see again. That is, I will let my future teammates make the mistakes so I can point them out after the match because I care that they get better. The pugs, I will do everything in my power to remedy tactical errors during the match.

If you're playing with a quality team that is, for whatever reason, doing it wrong (odds are I'm not as I don't have any friends), then it's a much better idea to follow the plan.

TheHaxor · Feb 19, 2010, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

This is true, but it is irrelevant. There are plenty of players that are bad at micro but overwhelmingly good at tactics. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm saying you can see the fact that they're good at tactics by how they play the game, how fast they respond to new situations--often pre-empting the designated "caller"--where they stand, how they adjust to disruption of plan A. There are loads of things that do not require good ping, frame rate, or being microed in order to do correctly, and most of these are observable. I merely went with the Warrior example because it's what we were talking about before.

What is being communicated is extremely relevant as communication is extremely vital in a team oriented game. You can only really evaluate someone well without hearing the communication by playing in the match against them. Why? In this case you will know your team's tactics and what the opposing team should do to counter them (at least you should). You can easily decipher what they are trying to do because you know what you are trying to do. You simply can't get an extremely good feel for a player unless you watch them on obs millions of times and they just fail at every opportunity. This isn't very likely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

Are there players that slip through the cracks here? Absolutely, but it's pretty rare that someone is a tactical genius and it doesn't show on obs, provided you know what to look for. It's also pretty rare that tactical geniuses playing for teams terrible enough to hide them even make it to obs mode.

I've seen plenty of fail HA groups get on obs and I've seen plenty of good HA players play for fail HA groups. It happens... a lot. It's impossible to avoid at this point unless you play with the same group of people over and over.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

This is entirely dependent on the quality of the team you are playing for, as well as whether or not you intend to stick with them for awhile or treat them as pugs you will never see again. That is, I will let my future teammates make the mistakes so I can point them out after the match because I care that they get better. The pugs, I will do everything in my power to remedy tactical errors during the match.

Trying to amend tactical errors mid-match in a pug is almost always fail due to the fact that not everyone ends up on the same page. It more often than not ends up being an argument, which is detrimental during a match. Criticize after a match, not during it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

If you're playing with a quality team that is, for whatever reason, doing it wrong (odds are I'm not as I don't have any friends), then it's a much better idea to follow the plan.

It's always a better idea to follow the plan if no one wants to change it mid-match. You aren't going to win a match by being a hero.

Corporeal Ghost · Feb 19, 2010, 01:49 AM // 01:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

I've seen plenty of fail HA groups get on obs and I've seen plenty of good HA players play for fail HA groups. It happens... a lot. It's impossible to avoid at this point unless you play with the same group of people over and over.

Fair enough. I don't obs HA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheHaxor

Trying to amend tactical errors mid-match in a pug is almost always fail due to the fact that not everyone ends up on the same page. It more often than not ends up being an argument, which is detrimental during a match. Criticize after a match, not during it.

It's always a better idea to follow the plan if no one wants to change it mid-match. You aren't going to win a match by being a hero.

I can't even tell you how many matches myself and a couple of friends have won for horrible guilds by simply ignoring our wiping monks and running off to kill the opposing guild lord.

TheHaxor · Feb 19, 2010, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

I can't even tell you how many matches myself and a couple of friends have won for horrible guilds by simply ignoring our wiping monks and running off to kill the opposing guild lord.

It does happen. However, I don't think this scenario is very likely against a capable team. Plus, this is even less likely due to the HA format. I can only think of three scenarios off the top of my head that would be similar, but all three require a lot of help from your team as well. You could run off and kill the ghost on relic run, but your team still has to be able to cap relics. You can run off on cap points and get points, but it's still going to require the rest of your team to be effective in order to outscore the other team. The third one I've actually personally done, although its much less likely than the first two. Hold up the priest on annihilation as a monk long enough for your team to res. This still requires your team to wipe theirs.

My only point is that you should evaluate players a variety of different ways. Observer mode has certain strengths, but you have to consider its weaknesses as well and address those accordingly.

Vincette · Apr 29, 2010, 09:28 AM // 09:28

I'm french, and i want to say something :

Ranks : Its not easy to know if someone,who u dont know,is rly good or not. Just because u dont even know if this guy play his profession as well.
Even if u pug a strong r13, if he never or a few played a profession he will fail be sure.

So u can find some r7/8 who play always the same thing, be sure they will not fail, or the are retarded.
Just pug ppl u know, and i know bala its hard.

Langage: U cant imagine how its hard to understand english or american ppl who are speaking on vent or Ts, much harder when several ppl speak in same time.
Its like that ur accent is weird for us. I played many times with italian or germans, their accent is clear.
So make an effort for us, speak clearly and slowly, and if the guy didnt understand what u said, NEVER flame, he will get stressed and will fail.

And its a game, we are all humans be fun

bungusmaximus · Apr 30, 2010, 11:58 PM // 23:58

Me standing in id1 with no guildies online:

1)Tab add 5 ppl and prot.
2)add hench monk.
3)Press enter battle before anyone can object.
4)see what everyones worth, if team sucks disband and repeat from step 1, if team has potential fill in the blanks and start playing for real.

Got me quite some fame that way without having to go through the tedium of forming up for an hour. Some people aren't pleased when you form like this, but meh, ppl should know a randomway when they see one.

Rolain · Aug 03, 2010, 12:43 PM // 12:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by KZaske

HA is the only PvP I am really interested in. I started playing AB to get a handle on basic PvP concepts (I went from r5 Kurz to max doing AB) then played a few rounds of HA. I started showing up in the hall for groups got a few pugs and got lucky enough to make it to the Hall of Heros, once. I am now an r1 hero and have not even gone back to try to get into a pug in months. At the time pugs were forming, but they almost never actually enter battle because the leader would get an offer from a ranked group and say so long loosers.
If HA really is dead enough that pugs are actually going into battle I for one say it is a good thing. A chance for me to improve as a player and get my wolf emote.

BTW: the only time I made it into the Hall of Heros it was with a randomway unranked pug.

Willing to bet everything in my storage that you didn't even come close to winning that Halls. As the reverend doctor said "Don't PUG".

Nemo the Capitalist · Aug 03, 2010, 03:17 PM // 15:17

I hate randomway although, funnny at times.

Edwards · Aug 03, 2010, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Dead hour halls holding with heroes + randoms is how I got my r9.

Even with only hench monks available now, randomway/BYOB is still enough to farm underworld/fetid with.

Krill · Aug 03, 2010, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo the Capitalist

I hate randomway although, funnny at times.

Randomwaying during dead hour can actually get decent amounts of fame because it's so quick to form and easy to refill after losing. You usually get a mix of fire eles and whatever else is broken in the meta, which is enough to kill stuff in the deathmatch maps.

An easy henchway / randomway pug to form during dead hour is a full randomway with the hench monks and whatever or a hammer warrior with the SH (Suzu) + MoI (Bacchi Coi) henchmen.