Curse

snikerz · Mar 10, 2010, 09:11 AM // 09:11

sarcastic or not, back in the days(before inscriptions) you could judge a warrior based on their helmet, platemil was associated with a +1 strength helmet, and in PvP, all the helmets were unique to identify so you could tell if someone was using a +1 tactics. W/Mo's commonly use swords, with their elite being healing hands(now defy pain) and equip themselves tactics shields, and spam healing signet.
as i said i been playing in RA for 5 years and notice every stereotypical warrior setup
obviously not the case anymore since all the basic pvp hats are the same from the picture you provided.

Not sure if you noticed but i linked your post about swords in my OP, you mention swords are crap except for cripslash who are generally run by shock warriors(W/E) seeing any other variation is a high chance of a newb

I could write a detailed post on each profession on what to look out for, but that would require hours of typing which i cant be bothered doing.

thefinalxD · Mar 10, 2010, 10:13 AM // 10:13

get pro with this

r/mo
mend touch,
natural stride,
lightning reflexes,
melshot,
concussion shot,
apply poison,
savage shot,
dshot,

urania · Mar 10, 2010, 10:17 AM // 10:17

if you want 25 you will wanna have:

1) strong physicals with a lot of disruption: either a decent ranger (or two) on your team and good damage dealer, preferably a hammer or prage, sw sins are decent too but they'll just die to linebacking like flies.

2) hexover: probably the best build for RA, most typicaly a dom mes with things like vor (preferable) or pblock along with bf, shame, emapthy and a necro (be it half-blood half-curse nec with barbed sig, life syphon, oppresive gaze and insidious or full curse nec with soul bind [preferable if you have a damage dom mesmer] or ce/wail and ff+ps) along with either a mb spammer, a water ele with shatterstone, a good ranger (poison spread wins) or some good melee damage (preferably ws derv). But yeah, most important is that you get the 2 hexers and that the 3rd one isnt totally nub. however, i made 25 with 2 blood and 1 curse necros, and a xinrea's rit, so yeah. hexes and life steal win.

3) cond overload: anything with rangers, ws dervs, sins, oppresive gaze mesmers or necs etc. - without wildblow you'll die to mel resilience monks and ff necs will own the whole build.

4) random high damage builds - most typically with a strong melee (ws derv, hammer or prage), MB ele, rtl ele or shatterstone ele and ranger. i even saw tripple sin (with coward, enraged smash and another one i cant remember) builds work (the glory of linebacking......) but those would probably wipe to hexes.

5) bot mesmers - yeah, the little buggers plague ra too.

last but not least, synching is gay - do it only if another synched team out needs to be kicked out.

otherwise, if you see random proffs without secondary, multiple healers or in general insufficient damage/shutdown in your team, resign is the way to go.

RhanoctJocosa · Mar 10, 2010, 10:36 AM // 10:36

learn to play ranger and monk well, and you will rake in glad points. monk is obvious, but rangers can do so much for you in RA. tab-poison is key, try focusing your interrupts on things that actually HAVE to be shut down for your team to work... no point trying to keep bsurge down if you have a full caster team, it's stupid. of course interrupt rez sigs, keep assassin chains down, don't let empathy/insid/feint land on your physicals (or you) if you can help it, keep other rangers' apply poison down... list goes on.

if you have a bad ping it's a lot harde to play ranger effectively and most of the time the only good you are doing for your team is spreading poison and sometimes interrupting a woh or a rez.

also everyone will have varied opinions on syncing... i don't have much patience at all with games so after 2-3 bad teams I usually quit GW and do something else. for me syncing just saves me time and effort. Some people think its annoying as RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO and completely defeats the purpose of 'R'A. Its true, but each to their own~

snikerz · Mar 10, 2010, 10:37 AM // 10:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

if you want 25 you will wanna have:

1) strong physicals with a lot of disruption: either a decent ranger (or two) on your team and good damage dealer, preferably a hammer or prage, sw sins are decent too but they'll just die to linebacking like flies.

2) hexover: probably the best build for RA, most typicaly a dom mes with things like vor (preferable) or pblock along with bf, shame, emapthy and a necro (be it half-blood half-curse nec with barbed sig, life syphon, oppresive gaze and insidious or full curse nec with soul bind [preferable if you have a damage dom mesmer] or ce/wail and ff+ps) along with either a mb spammer, a water ele with shatterstone, a good ranger (poison spread wins) or some good melee damage (preferably ws derv). But yeah, most important is that you get the 2 hexers and that the 3rd one isnt totally nub. however, i made 25 with 2 blood and 1 curse necros, and a xinrea's rit, so yeah. hexes and life steal win.

3) cond overload: anything with rangers, ws dervs, sins, oppresive gaze mesmers or necs etc. - without wildblow you'll die to mel resilience monks and ff necs will own the whole build.

4) random high damage builds - most typically with a strong melee (ws derv, hammer or prage), MB ele, rtl ele or shatterstone ele and ranger. i even saw tripple sin (with coward, enraged smash and another one i cant remember) builds work (the glory of linebacking......) but those would probably wipe to hexes.

5) bot mesmers - yeah, the little buggers plague ra too.

last but not least, synching is gay - do it only if another synched team out needs to be kicked out.

otherwise, if you see random proffs without secondary, multiple healers or in general insufficient damage/shutdown in your team, resign is the way to go.

ding +1

this guy knows what RA is about

Sethellington · Mar 10, 2010, 11:09 AM // 11:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Ghoul

You want to treat RA as srs bsns you sync. You just want to mess around and get "lucky" with some glad points you click the enter battle button at your own caution.
edit: playing a good monk I hear also gets the glad pts alot so long as people run decent builds

Yes but it is a common known fact that if you're not a monk, there's never going to be a monk on your team. Then after you get fed up and roll a monk, you'll be 1 of atleast 2 or 3 monks on your team. Fact.

Stranger The Ranger · Mar 10, 2010, 12:50 PM // 12:50

G6 here, I suck at monk so I never play one, most of my G-points come from:

Ranger (BA, Barbed/Poison Arrow, Magebane, R/P Enraged Lunge)
Mesmer (PBlock Dom, PLeech Dom, PD)
Warrior (Coward Axe, Coward Sword, Cripslash, Shock Axe, DevHammer)
Assassin (I used to experiment a lot around the SP/BoA-era, back when Impale was 1/4 cast time 'n stuff >_> and I don't play him that much anymore due the lack of viable options, but I'd say abuse Seeping Wound while you still can :>)
Easy-mode (Corrupt Enchant, Wail of Doom)
Elementalist (real men use Mind Shock)

Quote:

Originally Posted by snikerz

Not sure if you noticed but i linked your post about swords in my OP, you mention swords are crap except for cripslash who are generally run by shock warriors(W/E) seeing any other variation is a high chance of a newb

Coward Sword <3 (then again... Coward Axe is better)

distilledwill · Mar 10, 2010, 02:11 PM // 14:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stranger The Ranger

Coward Sword <3 (then again... Coward Axe is better)

QFT

Coward is the balls. I used to run it all the time, and its even more fun now with the tactics buff. Run both bulls and coward for super fun time.

aefghuys · Mar 10, 2010, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

if you want 25 you will wanna have:

1) strong physicals with a lot of disruption: either a decent ranger (or two) on your team and good damage dealer, preferably a hammer or prage, sw sins are decent too but they'll just die to linebacking like flies.

2) hexover: probably the best build for RA, most typicaly a dom mes with things like vor (preferable) or pblock along with bf, shame, emapthy and a necro (be it half-blood half-curse nec with barbed sig, life syphon, oppresive gaze and insidious or full curse nec with soul bind [preferable if you have a damage dom mesmer] or ce/wail and ff+ps) along with either a mb spammer, a water ele with shatterstone, a good ranger (poison spread wins) or some good melee damage (preferably ws derv). But yeah, most important is that you get the 2 hexers and that the 3rd one isnt totally nub. however, i made 25 with 2 blood and 1 curse necros, and a xinrea's rit, so yeah. hexes and life steal win.

3) cond overload: anything with rangers, ws dervs, sins, oppresive gaze mesmers or necs etc. - without wildblow you'll die to mel resilience monks and ff necs will own the whole build.

4) random high damage builds - most typically with a strong melee (ws derv, hammer or prage), MB ele, rtl ele or shatterstone ele and ranger. i even saw tripple sin (with coward, enraged smash and another one i cant remember) builds work (the glory of linebacking......) but those would probably wipe to hexes.

5) bot mesmers - yeah, the little buggers plague ra too.

last but not least, synching is gay - do it only if another synched team out needs to be kicked out.
otherwise, if you see random proffs without secondary, multiple healers or in general insufficient damage/shutdown in your team, resign is the way to go.

very true, dont stoop to that low of a level

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 10, 2010, 08:38 PM // 20:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

if you want 25 you will wanna have...

Note how none of these include the defensive midline trash everyone else wants (possible exception for hexes).

Also note that all of them include either a melee character or a ranger. Get good at the offense and you can carry all kinds of people, plus you randomly get lucky and roll the other two guys to make a 25 build. Defensive builds are pretty much only capable of the getting lucky. In a format where everyone wants to play defense, you need offense to win.

urania · Mar 10, 2010, 10:34 PM // 22:34

^indeed.

i feel the need to add a few more things though... about 70-90% of the time you will land in completely useless team setups comprised out of multiple healers, players without secondaries (its not hard to separate pros that leave out secondaries and nabs that dont know how to choose one), players with lousy secondaries (p/r, p/rt, w/mo (yay), a/r [1 in a 50 of those might have d shot though!) or simply builds that couldve worked well with players that are good, but it just doesnt work out because there's not enough damage (most typically, pd mesmers and necs, 2 b surges etc).

here's a screeny to give a demonstration of the latest new age wammo:

Greedy Gus · Mar 10, 2010, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

Note how none of these include the defensive midline trash everyone else wants (possible exception for hexes).

Also note that all of them include either a melee character or a ranger. Get good at the offense and you can carry all kinds of people, plus you randomly get lucky and roll the other two guys to make a 25 build. Defensive builds are pretty much only capable of the getting lucky. In a format where everyone wants to play defense, you need offense to win.

Disagree with that to some extent. From my perspective, I only play warrior in RA but I'm competent enough to kill almost anything as long as I have one teammate who at least just spams some brainless damage around. So in my experience, I have the most success with a monk on the team plus either a resto rit, blind ele, necro, etc. so my monk actually lives and gives me time to dchop stuff & kill everything.

I know a lot of top players play monk and leave if there is any other defense on the team because they know their defense is already competent and are just worried about killing quickly. I have the flipside of that confidence, and just need to find a team that can live. Having a single monk on your team as defense, at least with the majority of people playing monk in RA, is usually not enough to get a long streak in my experience. They just aren't good enough to deal with everything thrown at them. I basically always get 15-25 win streaks if I have a bsurge & monk on my team though.

I Am Not Ok · Mar 10, 2010, 11:25 PM // 23:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

^indeed.

i feel the need to add a few more things though... about 70-90% of the time you will land in completely useless team setups comprised out of multiple healers, players without secondaries (its not hard to separate pros that leave out secondaries and nabs that dont know how to choose one), players with lousy secondaries (p/r, p/rt, w/mo (yay), a/r [1 in a 50 of those might have d shot though!) or simply builds that couldve worked well with players that are good, but it just doesnt work out because there's not enough damage (most typically, pd mesmers and necs, 2 b surges etc).

here's a screeny to give a demonstration of the latest new age wammo:

nice bar with no guardian and cond removal, u get like 25 wins only if u have FF necro in your team,u will get blindbot at least 3 times on25 wins streak, that bar is only usefull in TA which is long dead

imo best team in RA is ranger that can spread poison and d-shot rezes, and blind bot and monk ofc, and last spot any random nab with any dmg and can get easy 25 wins

fav builds

when i play ele i go earth and i have both dmg and blind+weaknes and easy to get glad points

when i go mes i play PD with diversion/shame/emphaty and easy glad points

on warr i runn devhammer, overpowered in RA, take wild throw for stance removal

necro CE/SB/SV and bar with feint+ff+PS

urania · Mar 11, 2010, 12:14 AM // 00:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Am Not Ok

nice bar with no guardian and cond removal, u get like 25 wins only if u have FF necro in your team,u will get blindbot at least 3 times on25 wins streak, that bar is only usefull in TA which is long dead

since i have no incentive to keep on repeating myself for its been heavily discussed a 1000 times before why hex removal is more important than cond removal and why guardian most often isnt worth it in ra, ill just say you're wrong.
on a side note, >>anything<< that worked in ta works in ra. the times when i actually lose because of my build and not my teammates are very rare.

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Am Not Ok

imo best team in RA is ranger that can spread poison and d-shot rezes, and blind bot and monk ofc, and last spot any random nab with any dmg and can get easy 25 wins

i pretty much summed up best ra options.
to say it again in a nutshell - the closer your ra setup is to a ta one, the better.

at greedy gus, 2 healers fail for mostly 2 reasons:
1) time spent to beat a team
2) great chance of drawing another multi healer team (and those are in abudance in ra)

support (ff nec, mend touch r, hex removal on mes and whatnot) beats additional heal BY FAR.

The Drunkard · Mar 11, 2010, 12:55 AM // 00:55

Back before PwK got repeatedly bashed and reclaim essence was destroyed, I ran a healer with warmonger wep build. Any competent war that wasn't overloaded with hexes on my team could blast through backlines with it- it was quite funny to watch monks try and cast guardian. Ghostly wep was another favorite on my bar back when monks had 3 stances on their bar, it's a cheap antiblock skill. Sadly times have changed and I haven't had much use for rits in RA anymore.

My favorite builds atm are the PD or SoM mes, the standard woh monk, and the wastrel's collapse sin (which is suprising that few people play it since it is extremly easy to spike people with)

Trinity Fire Angel · Mar 11, 2010, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sethellington

Yes but it is a common known fact that if you're not a monk, there's never going to be a monk on your team. Then after you get fed up and roll a monk, you'll be 1 of atleast 2 or 3 monks on your team. Fact.

+1. ^^ 12chars3456

thx for all the good tips. its prolly the most i have gotten out of the RA / TA community. only 11 more points till my g1. i still have no idea how people have gotten to g6... lots of RA/TA i guess.

ps. i have an aussie ping so rupting is not really an option. the only time i have been able to play PD properly was when i was in Ireland and got like a 25-50ms ping. lucky to get anything below 200ms in australia. even Rupty couldn;t hit a 1/4 cast with a ping like that. Monking i can get away with because the lag from my end sometimes means that a dshot that hits won;t always stick. Or an infuse that was not supposed to stick sometimes does. Lag does strange things to the gws servers sometimes.

chaos warrior zane · Mar 11, 2010, 05:17 AM // 05:17

Although pretty easily shut down by PB mesmers, i find Mind Blast ele's to be the most efficient form of damage in RA. very high damage output along with unlimited energy, blocks, healing, KD, and aoe damage. simply unsurpassed. Though like i said as soon as you run into a GOOD ranger or PB mes, you will be useless and will probably lose

jaximus · Mar 11, 2010, 05:55 AM // 05:55

pretty much along the lines of what has been said already, but it needs more emphasis. a strong frontline, good ranger, and monk, with whatever else is your best bet. im g4 and ive gotten nearly 75% of my glad points from 3 bars. i play them so much i know every single thing i can do in a match once i see the players on my team and whos against me.

the dev hammer war----OQgjExTc4MCADrRhpsUALjF+KA
dev hammer is simply the best warrior elite for ra. you have a cheap kd (7 adren charges super fast) with weakness,(id argue the most OP condition in 4v4). you can lineback with just 1 dev cuz you have weakness. bash is better than heavy/yeti for your second knock cuz there is no prereq for the knock, its always gonna happen, so you can target swap and bash for a secondary spike, or knock sigs. hammers are more resilient to weakness than axe wars. yes your damage isnt any good with weakness on you, but knocks are still extremely powerful. prot strike gives you huge damage compression and simply tears people apart.

the magebane ranger----OgMU8mLjzcOCgZzvOv+Y81ImiDA
pretty much the standard ranger bar but i like pin down. overextend at the start and cripple the other teams melee, then pull back, you have 2 stances and this saves your team pressure, pretty much you can pull your team back and have 1-2 kills before the cripple wears off. rupting apply, backfire, vor, METEOR(this one is huge, gotta make sure it doesnt get off), dev/crushing/bash, are all helpful. if you cant reflex woh, then random spam on recharges of woh and patient and usually you can catch them 1-2 times per match and thats generally enough to win.

the woh fortress----OwEU043AzaS8F1EpFTf3ENgaE3NA
dual hex removals, sig of rejuv for anti shame/backfire, and draw to handle ws dervs and blind bots. careful drawing daze, however usually if you patient yourself between attacks against you itll keep you up and sig of rejuv spam. prot staff patient spirit to cover your veils at the start and usually its smooth sailing. i also dont find guardian helpful in ra, cuz you have to run a terrible spec, people dont kite anyway, and a 'preprot patient' with a draw(if theres dw)+ woh generally is enough to catch any ra spike.

this is what works for me, but it doesnt work for everyone. you gotta play what you feel you are best at, because the better you play, the better off your team is. also try and spec in as much passive defense as you can. things like defense mods on your onhands, speccing shields+1 so you dont lose it for weakness, proper insignias, and anything you can do to mitigate damage to yourself and your team.

as for the professions to look out for...

i feel that you should add w/rt to the list of good players. from gvg ive always had to run d-pact on my hammer bars, so they all have 3 points in resto even when i have a regular sig for ra.(i saved my ra hammer template with 3 points in resto so id avoid loading a bar on a pvp war and going in with w/nothing) many of the good hammer wars ive played with are also w/rt. i feel the w/a variant is weaker due to iron palm over prot strike, so you have less damage and conditional bonus kd.

me/rt generally denotes an ha/gvg mesmer, and thats a good thing.

watch for eles to cast attunes on a staff rather than their defensive set, this also is a sign of a good player.

definitely look for people to load on their defensive sets, if they loaded in on something else, generally that means 2 things. either 1, they dont have one, or 2. they died on a not def set. either way, thats bad.

one of my biggest pet peaves is mo/w's that load in with command/motivation shields. i just wanna rip my hair out. ugh!

n/w is one of those iffy ones. i always run shield bash on my necro to keep that pesky d shot off my faint/p-sending. also i spec 6 into tactics and roll with q5/13al shields. sometimes itll be some weird heal sig things or ones with a sword and barbs.

Edwards · Mar 11, 2010, 08:28 AM // 08:28

I haven't RA'd in months, but my old favourites were Mel Shot or BA rangers, Shatterstone Eles, and any bar that had "Coward!" on it.

Rangers and Shatterstone are both multi-faceted bars that are useful no matter what you're facing.

Coward is just awesome, especially in RA where you can either KD spam monks, or force them to sit still and take damage.

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 11, 2010, 11:05 AM // 11:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Am Not Ok

nice bar with no guardian and cond removal, u get like 25 wins only if u have FF necro in your team,u will get blindbot at least 3 times on25 wins streak, that bar is only usefull in TA which is long dead

If you can Veil me as well as Karla can, I will DChop their blind. Not that I wouldn't prefer to have a Draw behind me as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Am Not Ok

imo best team in RA is ranger that can spread poison and d-shot rezes, and blind bot and monk ofc, and last spot any random nab with any dmg and can get easy 25 wins

It's not about getting to 25. It's about getting to 25 in a timely fashion. If all of your matches are 8 minutes long and you have even a 25% (absurdly high) 25-win rate, you're still making fewer glad points per hour than someone who has 1.5 minute matches and only converts 25% into 10 win streaks. Plus you don't want to rip your eyes out from boredom if you're actually wiping their team.

Quote: