Curse

Kyp Jade · Dec 08, 2008, 04:44 PM // 16:44

AB can be a pretty complex arena, until you figure it out. The only thing AB really lakes to make it a good arena is timed deaths like in GvG or tombz. 20s death every time puts in too much randomness.

Once you figure it out tho, its really simple. RUN AROUND AND KILL SHIT

Basics, when to cap, when to mob. Capping is important when scores are either close, or you have point disadvantage. Mobbing is important when you have advantage, to be certain you keep that advantage. Mobbing also doesnt mean run around with 8+ people as tho it was a group. Mobbing means collapsing if you use gvg terms. It means your team goes and joins in a fight that a allied team is in the middle of, to quickly wipe the other team, and then move along.

Shrine importance, the only shrines that really should have an affect on your thinking is the res shrines, because enemies you kill will res there, and can end up behind you, that doesnt mean always go cap the res shrine, because often times it can be the most difficult shrine to cap. Keep an eye on this one, and if a enemy team just left it, go cap it behind them.

Killing, since there is no time killing in AB, it doesnt matter when you kill someone, but when you face a group, its best if you can kill in 5-15 second intervals, because it makes it more difficult for them to reform, and will a lot of times end up with solo enemies running around.

With that in mind, you categorize three kinds of people, skillbars and group composistion are completly irrelevant to overall strategy. You can obviously run into terrible groups with no healer, or good groups, this guide assumes your a good group.
Categories:
Groups
Mobs
Idiots (people that solo cap)

Its important you keep in mind where the other team is, what what category is there. That is how you decide what to cap, and what to countercap. How each category is handled varies.

Groups, pick fights with them at will, countercapping them is good, if you have someone good with aoe, attacking them while they cap a shrine is amazing. Engaging a group is just as important as capping a shrine.

Mobs, two distinctions here. Mobs chasing you, and mobs capping shrines. Run from mobs chasing your group until you get a favorable position to fight them with (another team of yours, on your own ele shrine, etc) follow mobs capping shrines. When you follow a mob thats capping shrines, you quickly gain time advantage, because your group of 4 is countering thier group of 8+. The other benifit is the mob will break apart more often than not, where 1 group in the mob will turn around to face you. WHich is always advantageous, because 1: you broke apart the mob without doing anything and 2: the group facing you will also have to deal with shrine npcs that you just capped, or be in a disadvantageous position.

Idiots, snare and kill them, never spend more than 10 seconds, if you judge you cant kill the idiot in 10 seconds (SF sin, defy pain war, flashing blades), snare it and move on. The tank builds cant cap well on thier own, so you have little to worry about leaving the defy pain warrior to his own devices, because while he is spending 1 minute to cap a shrine, you can be gaining points for your team from any of the above strategies, while he is doing nothing for a minute, or more often just dying to NPCs or an idiot from your team.

Maccarelly · Dec 08, 2008, 05:30 PM // 17:30

From a Kurzick point of view, the strategies undertaken in each map are more of a deciding factor in the outcome of the fight than the builds/people involved.

Ancestrals - Pretty simple tactics are required. Make sure the 2 central shrines are held and chase the Luxons around the place. Large map - snares, hard to avoid mobbing as the map just invites you to run in circles. Repair the doors.

Grenz - Kurz advantage not so advantageous at the start. The Kurzicks are able to quickly cap their initial 3 shrines and if the central shriners move on to the res shrine they will always get there first. But the outer 2 shrines are very difficult to cap/aswell as taking the opposing group out, due to the ele power and warriors durability therefore I tend to move my group from outside to the opposing ranger shrine, allowing the oppostion team to move on and thus leave their shrine to be taken. Key to the win - holding the central res shrine, this is only because it gives you better access to the field on ressurection.

Saltspray - Long map - speed boosts/snares will provide. Is rarely used as a map.

Etnarans - is basically Grenz in reverse, the Kurz tactic has to avoid the central shrine to start off with, the luxons will always make it their first! Key point is to try and hold the central shrine after you have capped it - again huge advantage for ressurecting people.

Kaanai - bring aoe and be prepared to outrun the luxons, key point is to try and cap inside their base...which will be a lot easier if you take out the outer base protectors.

Other points to take note of;
Ignore Wammos, 55s, SFs, anything overly self defensive etc
Don't attack base defenders
Don't expect to win everytime
Have a healer in your team and carry a self heal
Don't intentionally split from your team
Run away if you need to - wasting the oppositions time is an effective tactic
If your shrine points NPCs have been taken let them remove your cap from the point, then recap to bring the npcs back
Use the ressurection device usually situated on the 2 monk shrine
Have a good build
Use a pvp char if your pve chars aren't good enough.
And most importantly use your brain in making decisions.
Don't go afk, if you do prepare to be reported and called a t~~ser

O Mika Nakashima O · Dec 08, 2008, 06:28 PM // 18:28

Please don't be limited by the difference between the words "strategy" and "tactic." Posting any winning method that the thread participants don't know or don't mention is good.

In the thread #1, 05-21-2008, I list the so-called strategies,

Quote:

1) Cap
2) Fight
3) Defend

And look for elaborations and new choices. For example of elaboration,
1) Avoid inefficient capping by controlling the capping flow observed in U-map, your POVs, and text messages.
2) Fight after the estimation of winning chance.
3) Know what shrine or position provides a good platform to defend the incoming skills, DMG, and armors.

For example of "possibly new" choices, I tried to discuss:
1) Amplified Map Points (AMP): Emphasize and control the floating areas most players pass by. Basically, see it as you build a camp there, where you buff allies and debuff enemies. I never had a chance to test this

2) Point Counting, as being analyzed recently

OP's official goal:

Quote:

to develop a new choice or elaborate the existing strategies.

OP's personal secret goal:
Find those who are good in AB by this thread and then play with/against them in game.

Concerning faction rate, I heard that vanquishing has faster rate than AB. So PvE (as HFFF) still has faster rate than PvP. Sigh, A-net, match the rate... Be fair and balanced.

arienrhode

Thanks

Desma The Infinite

Quote:

I will now go in depth into U Map Reading manipulation.

Classic!

The best analysis posted so far.

Quote:

Btw Mika, Everyone is doing fine in the game

Great

thank you

tmakinen

Quote:

I'm actually writing a rather long strategy guide to AB right now and will post it here once finished

Can't wait!

AzNChicken

Azn, thank you for the letter! I really hope I am not retired

A good player like you must have tons of invites already

Gregos Nielsen

QFT

Quote:

I would think this to be obvious, and I believe what the OP wants to do is analyze how to evolve our thinking from here.

Quote:

they want to ask questions such as "How can we be aware of what is happening" or "How can we score more than our opponents most efficiently" or "Why is this way of playing more effective"; these are are what I prefer to call the "how" and "why" questions. They are questions that evolve beyond assumptions and seek to analyze what many call "strategy" of the game.

Quote:

You may not want to take part in analyzing the strategies of Alliance Battle, but there are those who believe it is vital to understanding the game and evolving the level of gameplay that is present in the game at the moment. Let them contribute to this discussion without being hindered by your assertion that you cannot, to put idiomatically, dig any deeper than the surface.

Desma The Infinite

Quote:

Get on top 100 GvG ladder. Then go win 25 AB matches in a row at the hardest map. Come back. Tell me which was harder

Now winning 25 in a row at the hardest map just became my new goal, lol. dr trinity...

For those who think winning 75% of AB is good enough, I would tend to achieve >95% and 300 points advantages by this thread, no matter what teams I got/face, only if I still played AB...

Kyp Jade

How do you decide the timing? By common sense, it looks good though.

Bobby2 · Dec 08, 2008, 07:01 PM // 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyp jade

It means your team goes and joins in a fight that a allied team is in the middle of, to quickly wipe the other team, and then move along.

I thought this sentence deserved some love (AB = Assassin Battles)

Kyp Jade · Dec 08, 2008, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Prelude to wall of text, is that I feel alliance battles is what cap points in tombz should be.

How do you decide timing?

First, look at the points. Points in ab are decided two ways. Body count, and shrine count. Points are allocated every 7 seconds, 1 for each shrine controled. And then 3 points per player kill.

Whats worth your time?
look at shrine capping, just figure that every player is worth 20 seconds, because thats the amount of time it takes a solo player to cap an unmanned shrine. (obviously its more than that if the shrine is manned, at most it takes someone 2 minutes to clear and cap a shrine.).
Also, it takes the average group 10-20 seconds to cap a manned shrine.
Figure mobs take an average of 10 seconds to cap a manned shrine.

Your overall thought as a caller (the guy who draws on the map saying go that way) is how can I gain points right now, or very soon.

If you look at it this way, fighting a group has twice the value of capping a shrine.
This is because the oppurtunity cost of capping the shrine (which is the points you would have gotten from capping the shrine) is less than the oppurtunity cost of killing the group.

Killing a group is worth 12 points, which can take between 15-60 seconds
Capping the shrine is worth 1 point for every 7 seconds you hold it.
a) Best case scenario, 10 seconds to cap, worst case 20 seconds to cap
b) If you had capped the shrine instead of killing the group (assuming it took u the full 60s to kill them) you would only have gained (60-10)/7 = 5 points.

12 pts vs 5 pts, so killing them is worth twice than capping the shrine

The relative gain of killing group instead of capping the shrine is 7 points, vs a relative loss when you ignored the team to cap the shrine.
Because you cant predict how long it takes to kill a group, I instead view fighting a group with the same value of capping the shrine.

When I have the most uber ab monk in the game on (aura) and someone that knows what aoe does, then I will try to engage teams on the shrine im wanting to cap, because then the oppurtunity cost of capping the shrine goes away since I am doing that at the same time I am killing the group, giving me the chance to get the full 12 points worth for killing the team.

-----------
When you can view AB like you would basic economics, then its easy to decide where your team has the highest value.
-----------

Also, never expect your other 8 players to be worth a damn, always go in with the mentality of 1 group vs 3 groups, and use your other groups as buffers. Just pay attention to where they are so you can decide what has higher costs, ignoring a passing group, or capping the shrine they just left.
----

Finally, of most importance is when someone on your team asks you to kill someone, and then rank corpse and trash talk, ALWAYS do so, otherwise AB gets incredibly boring.

Kyp Jade · Dec 08, 2008, 07:15 PM // 19:15

2nd post, which I havent seen mentioned in this thread, is the general mentality you should also have on all of the maps.

EVERY map you should have the same choices on, except for the two base maps, which just put 1 layer on top of those.

attacking a base map: Blow up all the doors and have your nuker explode wall NPCs when your passing by. Dont go in the base without an escape route, because wall NPCs do big dmg, and dont go in the base with only 1 door exploded, because you will get locked in, and then the other team will lol at you because your new worth is only 2 pts per 7 seconds since your team only has those 2 shrines.

defending a base map: keep doors repaired, cap and hold the bridge with the 2 res shrines. Once this is accomplished it becomes stupid easy to contain the enemy teams, and its basically already over at this point.

Red Sand · Dec 09, 2008, 12:31 AM // 00:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

The relative gain of killing group instead of capping the shrine is 7 points, vs a relative loss when you ignored the team to cap the shrine.
Because you cant predict how long it takes to kill a group, I instead view fighting a group with the same value of capping the shrine.

The problem I always have with these analyses advocating killing a team for the point value is that they assume that your team will kill the opposing team. There are two other scenarios that are never taken into account:

1) The other team is better and they kill you. At least you can rez and be back in the fight in 20 seconds plus whatever run time on top of that.

2) The other team and you are equally matched and neither can score a kill. That's even worse than getting killed. If you are stalled in this way and you don't have more shrines than the opponent, you are losing, no matter what the score.

glacialphoenix · Dec 09, 2008, 08:11 PM // 20:11

About the U map, which I know some people have already mentioned:

In maps besides Kaanai and Ancestral, I think it's relatively easy to predict which direction a mob is capping, and it's pretty common (at least when I play) to hear people go "mob at SE going to SW". This prediction should apply for fort maps as well. If you see the enemy taking down shrines that have powder kegs, it's a fairly good sign that someone's going to bomb open the fort doors and storm the base.

Yet people never do this. Maybe it's just me, but I frequently find that the base is ignored, possibly because people think "it's safe, you have to bomb the doors to get in". When I suggest that the base is being attacked (doors already bombed open, even), there are people who say things like "dude, check your U map, it's not under attack yet."

Nobody should be waiting for the shrines to turn the opposite colour before you decide to run from one end of the map to the other to cap it. It's true that having your U map open 24/7 is good, since it helps you to keep tabs on everything, but you should not be waiting for something to change on it before you make your move. If you've captured all the shrines, don't wait for someone to recap one before you do something - go around and make sure there's no enemy team trying to backcap/recap. This last one applies to all maps, of course.

Also, targeting. If Mr. Frenzy Warrior refuses to die, you might want to target the monk behind him healing him. Pinging targets helps. Listening to people who ping targets helps too. It's amazing how infrequently people target the monk, especially since it seems a lot of monks in AB don't have much in the way of survivability.

Speaking of survivability, a decent amount of hp would be nice, too. Especially on the monk. One less death on your side is 3 points the other side isn't getting, and running away if you know you can't beat them - stalling tactics aside -means you can go on to do something else that would earn your side points. If you're a damage class, you can go on and cap another shrine. If you're a support class, any additional bit of heal/prot/whatever may rob the enemy side from points gained from killing your allies.

the Puppeteer · Dec 10, 2008, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by kedde

how to win at ab:

Don't be retarded.
Don't play with retards.
Hope your team is less retarded than the opposing.

qft -

Snow Bunny · Dec 10, 2008, 11:54 PM // 23:54

If you're not talking a lot of shit, you're not ABing correctly.

RoyaleOneTwo · Dec 28, 2008, 10:24 AM // 10:24

Ok, I must admit, I haven't had time to troll through all previous 14 pages, and perhaps my post will be ignored also, but aside from calculating to the nth degree all the minor details, the most important action in AB is the U map.

Learn to read it and you can tell where the pressure will come from, where you can apply pressure and where to go next. It amazes me some of the ignorant play i've seen on AB maps. I think clockwise/counter clockwise mobbing on ancestral or kaanai is ridiculous.

And on those two particular maps I hate the fact that groups feel they have to run right at the start instead of holding their shrine and waiting for the enemy to come to them. -To their group and their shrine NPC's.

Are we agreed that clearing and capping inside the base is the key to winning for the away team?

But the very worst mistake an AB player can make is not fighting in the cap zone. To either hold it or take it. There's no excuse to not be putting pressure on the capture of a shrine.

Syntonic · Jan 04, 2009, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Sand

The problem I always have with these analyses advocating killing a team for the point value is that they assume that your team will kill the opposing team. There are two other scenarios that are never taken into account:

1) The other team is better and they kill you. At least you can rez and be back in the fight in 20 seconds plus whatever run time on top of that.

2) The other team and you are equally matched and neither can score a kill. That's even worse than getting killed. If you are stalled in this way and you don't have more shrines than the opponent, you are losing, no matter what the score.

Any experienced PvPer can probably guess in a short amount of time whether they will win or will possibly lose a fight in AB. Most AB fights don't take nearly as long as TA fights due to lack of rezzes so the person who dies has to run back to rejoin the team etc. By that time, one of the two teams will probably have reinforcements as well compounding the problem. You should get a feeling about retreating and then ping furiously and draw on the map. If you need a visual aid, look at your health bars/dead teammates compared to theirs. If your monk dies and they are still going strong, well, that's a huge flashing sign.

If you are with a group of friends, they should be used to you scribbling on there or you might even be on vent (somewhat overkill for AB unless you are just talking trash and goofing off.) If the teams are equally matched and it becomes a drawn out fight 4v4 and your side is still losing, then you probably won't win regardless because it says your side is being outplayed and one or both of the other teams aren't pulling their weight. In short, your scenarios have very little weight to them in my opinion. The only way you could win in that scenario was somehow you tied up the other TWO groups which isn't possible since you are at your limit already with that one group you are currently facing. I don't know about your PvP experience but personally, I have next to nothing of worth in terms of PvP titles etc and even I can guess how hard a battle will be. Even if you don't get a feeling, you should be able to make an educated guess from what professions are on the field against you. 3/4ths of the time, that's enough - the other 1/4th you might have to pay slight attention to the skill bars quickly to find out what they are running and catalogue in the back of your head.

Normally, if you have a good bunch of players, you might have trouble on one or two other teams in 1 out of 10 games where you might have to formulate a quick battle plan (which for me consists of pinging the player and skill that's giving me the most problems to my team mates like crazy - unfortunately, I'm sure that annoys the other allied teams as well but oh well) but you should still eventually win despite the fact they get reinforced by a few stragglers or a portion of another team (who keep dying.) You normally don't find "good" players playing semi/seriously in AB. Either the good players are scrubbing or doing something for fun with a profession that they aren't necessarily too talented in. In fact, in all the whole time I have played Alliance Battles (decent stretch of time), I think I've only encountered maybe a handful of groups at best that qualify as "good" playing somewhat seriously and only remember one (a peace and harmony group where I got the distinct feeling of getting outplayed even though the battle took a bit of time.) And no, I don't consider myself as good and I'm not sure if those players would be considered good either but they definitely outplayed us. We lost that game regardless of avoiding them (though I don't think we had to make a conscious effort to avoid them, we just didn't encounter them again) - the other two pick up groups couldn't stand against them either. I've seen/met others (gold capes, top 50 guilds etc.) playing AB but they definitely weren't remotely playing seriously.

Any monkey can make a bar that can cap a shrine.

choclatedippednillawafer · Jan 05, 2009, 11:01 PM // 23:01

4 player toucher team ezpz.

Napalm Flame · Jan 06, 2009, 06:52 PM // 18:52

My advice for AB is to run palm strikes. Dual palm strikes with shadowsteps, a supporter and a monk. Support options are smite monks, VoR mesmers, LC/SS/WoD necroes, hybrid fire/water E/Rts or bsurge air/water hybrid, cripshot/mels/ba ranger or just another palm striker.

Why abuse palm strike? Here's why. Movement movement movement. Being able to shadowstep gank a target is great. The palm strikes are the master splitters, they can chase or escape from targets, and with another good palmstriker you can set up ganks, traps, dualspikes, syncspikes and other very strong plays, ripping through lone, stray targets or even 12 man mobs, depending on the utility you run. Particularly strong on the 4 most common maps as you have a lot of bridges or walls to abuse.

Of course, if you have a thing for wastrel's collapse, and don't need any pressure, wastrel's collapse is an option.

Shursh · Jan 08, 2009, 06:07 PM // 18:07

bring [Weaken Knees] and [Shameful Fear]...AB is all about running

erk · Jan 10, 2009, 08:50 AM // 08:50

The quality of AB'ers on the kurzick side seems to have dropped right off, you can pan around the staging areas and there are only a few players at any given time with a kurzick title. In the game they are doing all the same old noob faults, engaging the enemy out of capping range of a shrine, not splitting up into groups of 4 to cap faster, running PvP solo builds that take forever to clear a shrine etc. I don't know if the Luxons are having the same issues with "noob creep" I have enjoyed playing AB over the years, but now it's very hard to get into a team of experienced players unless I can get some guildies to come along.

glacialphoenix · Jan 10, 2009, 09:48 AM // 09:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

The quality of AB'ers on the kurzick side seems to have dropped right off, you can pan around the staging areas and there are only a few players at any given time with a kurzick title.

Not like a Kurzick title meant much in the first place anyway, right? I mean, Kurzick was more popular than Luxon because of the HFFF, which only got nerfed pretty recently. You can have an R9 Kurz title guy who got it all through HFFF, and a R5 Kurz who got it purely through AB, so I don't see how the titles are any indication of how good a particular player is at AB...

erk · Jan 12, 2009, 05:24 AM // 05:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by glacialphoenix

Not like a Kurzick title meant much in the first place anyway, right? I mean, Kurzick was more popular than Luxon because of the HFFF, which only got nerfed pretty recently. You can have an R9 Kurz title guy who got it all through HFFF, and a R5 Kurz who got it purely through AB, so I don't see how the titles are any indication of how good a particular player is at AB...

There is no shortage of Luxon HFFF techniques, just do a search on Luxon HFFF on youtube for howto videos. Plenty of r12 Luxons around too.

If a person was a HFFF farmer, you would think they wouldn't bother to play AB.

I still think the title is a reasonable skill guide most of the time, though it use to be a lot better.

I play AB cause it's fun when I am bored, and it's a little different to just smashing the opponents team like most other PvP.

bungusmaximus · Jan 12, 2009, 12:31 PM // 12:31

There's a pretty awesome HFFF thingy called hard mode nowadays.

My 2 cents on strategy? from a kurzick point of view:

Kaanai: Hold the bridge with the res points, don't storm the fort if you can get cornered inside (ie save it for the last), watch out for mobs because the map is small. Abuse chokepoints like hell.

Etnaran: Run, don't rush for the center, tag-team the folks that come from the right spawn and after that split up again (free kills in the pocket). Splitting is really important, if you mob on etnaran keys you better just /resign because the map is large and you need presence everywhere so you can react quickly when you have to defend a shrine.

Saltspray: Don't get stuck on the bridge, I usually like the shrines around the edges better because they give you 'battle rage'. Use the bridge to stall when the luxons mob it, it's shit easy to defend.

Grenz and Ancestral: Get a good read while you wait to get into a game, roll keyboard with face->win.

Desma The Infinite · Jan 22, 2009, 02:35 AM // 02:35

What Shrush said with the Weaken Knees, and the shameful fear combo is quite interesting

Try it with soul barbs? See how fast it can kill :P Anyways that's what hex removal is for. I've realizied how much hexes have taken over the game, hexes were never that big previously, and recetly hexes are being seen everywhere from RA to HA =/ Not cool if you'er a warrior like me.

faintheartness is bad. But that's why you have monks to remove hexes

Btw mika, You need to come back to GW some time for some ABs :P You still owe me ectos ;D btw I finally got my tiger. Was some fun after holding halls for 11 consec, followed by another 9 consec hold the next day.