Curse

Captain Robo · Feb 02, 2008, 06:21 AM // 06:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

At least put the Vengeful pot on a Warrior to take advantage of much higher base armor from that class; you get good skills like Dolyak Signet as well to reduce the damage coming in to managable levels.

This is more of an indicator than anything of how bad things are. When you have Ensign sounding off on Dolyak signet...

Goddamn. Hell I lag too much to play Guild Wars anymore, and I think this is a problem.

Dervish Kid · Feb 02, 2008, 06:34 AM // 06:34

Alli have to say to that is practice makes perfect..or not?

Divinus Stella · Feb 02, 2008, 12:48 PM // 12:48

I'd rather face a build that camps until VoD than a build that does nothing but shadow step around the map until VoD.

Theres so many dedicated splits around and the AT map rotation forces people to play on absolutely stupid maps like corrupted that the only way to win is either play a dedicated split yourself or just try a build like SpNv did and sit in your base.

A couple of nights ago we were playing against a super mobile Bank style split on imperial and had to resort to body blocking both doorways for 18min listening to some american kids complain in local chat, as soon as VoD hit it was pretty much over for them, it was one of the most boring games ive ever played and its getting more common, just wasting time until VoD and outplaying them.

The chance of getting a decent balanced guild or PuG atleast once per night makes up entirely for all the crap, just wish it would be a more frequent occurrence.

Iotan · Feb 03, 2008, 01:30 PM // 13:30

In a related story, HAnD ran a particularly disgusting build today on Wurms using 2 Mesmers (Enchanter's Conundrum) and 2 Rt/Rs with bows...
Also they had 4 healers and healing skills on the Rits. I have to assume it was for killing NPCs because it was just terrible otherwise...

They didn't play it very well (losing NPCs with 4 monks???) and not once during the 21 minutes did they run a flag or cap the health shrine. The purely VoD builds are great and all but why can't anyone come up with one that isn't pure bullshit?

red orc · Feb 03, 2008, 03:23 PM // 15:23

And the build that will win next month MT will be something like:
SOR - para
SOP - para
healer - monk
SOR - monk
anti melee - mes
anti melee/caster - mes
guided waepon, gole, glyph of energy, ghostly weapon - rt/ele
edge of extinction, fertile season, oath shot, predatory season - r

Way it works: you sit on your ass in your GH untill VOD, monks protecting NPCS para protecting group.
In VOD monks continue protecting NPCS, RT spam them with weapon spells and we wait for eoe to do it's work.
Many ppl in this forum can make this build much more powerfull, but I guess the point is clear.

Killed u man · Feb 03, 2008, 03:42 PM // 15:42

Why does it matter?

They were probably "fooling" around, and if they weren't, atleast they are trying stuff... (More W,W,P,R,ME,E please)

The idea is pretty solid, if you can sacrifice 2 party members as 600 Dual smiters (With SB/VvK) for VoD, and simply have 6 other defensive bars...
For Teh PvE noobs: SB > Shatter Enchant + 600 > Shatter aswell

Farm NPC's at VoD = win win...

@ guy who posted about rits with bows:

That's actually an old build of mine: Nightmare weapon => Dual shot + dshot, ending up in a "small" 172 life stealing spike... The Rit healing is nice bonus on top of the spike U get...

Dodo The Extinct · Feb 03, 2008, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Why is VwK so bad?

...I thought it was creative

DutchSmurf · Feb 03, 2008, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iotan

They didn't play it very well (losing NPCs with 4 monks???) and not once during the 21 minutes did they run a flag or cap the health shrine. The purely VoD builds are great and all but why can't anyone come up with one that isn't pure bullshit?

You must have missed their next match then. If I remember correct they won that one by spikehealing their lord just before 28 minutes.

Ec]-[oMaN · Feb 03, 2008, 04:44 PM // 16:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

You must have missed their next match then. If I remember correct they won that one by spikehealing their lord just before 28 minutes.

Sounds like GW at it's finest!

shoogi · Feb 03, 2008, 06:31 PM // 18:31

And maybe they were just joking with themselves, which sounds much more probable?

Winstar · Feb 03, 2008, 08:20 PM // 20:20

I don't think any of this was a joke, its teams trying to find an effective strategy against sin split. Since the monthly many people complained saying things like "why didn't you just spec against it if you knew it was coming". Well these are attempts to spec against it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodo The Extinct

Why is VwK so bad?

...I thought it was creative

Its not that its not creative, nor is it that there is something wrong with trying to out build someone when u know what they are going to be doing on a certain map. The point from the beginning was that one would be driven to these measures highlights that things are in a bad state at the moment. In the end, it seems to me anyway, the game has become more and more about what happens after 18 minutes and how effectively you can keep up and farm NPCs instead of being about player interactions throughout the match. This is at bottom less fun than the alternative.

There is a difference between aplauding someone for trying take advantage of game mechanics to find a way to win, and saying the game itself is in a good state. So, yeah, don't hate the playa hate the game.

dies like fish · Feb 03, 2008, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

The idea is pretty solid, if you can sacrifice 2 party members as 600 Dual smiters (With SB/VvK) for VoD, and simply have 6 other defensive bars...
For Teh PvE noobs: SB > Shatter Enchant + 600 > Shatter aswell

Tried it in a pug a during ladder freeze. The 600 gets owned by a mesmer once sb goes down and the smiter just gets raped.

Killed u man · Feb 03, 2008, 08:51 PM // 20:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by dies like fish

Tried it in a pug a during ladder freeze. The 600 gets owned by a mesmer once sb goes down and the smiter just gets raped.

Hmm, for all I care, you put in 6 other monks... The point (rant) of this is that VoD play is overpowered. If yoo make a team with 6 monks, and than your farming duo (Let's say we put in another SB), and simply farm NPC'S at VoD, you win, because NPC's are now simply too much pressure to handle...

It's not about that build in specific, it's about the idea in overal. The way things are going now, you shouldn't be surprised of you start seeing teams with 2-3 para's, 2 monks, 2 rit healers, and then 1 SH fire ele...

Ec]-[oMaN · Feb 03, 2008, 08:54 PM // 20:54

This is NPC Wars!!!

Iotan · Feb 03, 2008, 09:07 PM // 21:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

You must have missed their next match then. If I remember correct they won that one by spikehealing their lord just before 28 minutes.

If it's the one that was on Isle of the Dead I did see it. They had swapped out the Rt/Rs for necros with blood spike skills and some curses. It still wasn't a good build, but the 2 Mesmers were able to spike down archers at VoD which eased the pressure on the GL greatly. I think the fact that they played with such a degenerate build to stall for 28 minutes (the end of an AT) speaks volumes about the current state of GvG. You shouldn't be winning games by not losing them, you should be winning them by winning them.

Also the SpNv vs. sup game went to 28 minutes too. Both teams ran balanced but once both teams had no NPCs left, there were virtually no deaths. So from about 21 minutes to 28 both teams were near full health while the Guild Lords would Cyclone Axe each other for 400. I'm pretty sure this shows that the current "fix" attempt for VoD has not worked well.

Winstar · Feb 03, 2008, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Match Reports from Feb Champs should list NPC skill use and feature interviews with Archers, Knights, footmen and the bodyguard instead of players

Harold Chow: What do you think was the turning point of the match?

Archer: "Well, at first we got obsessed with this one guy on their team who seemed to be taunting us, so we bunched all up trying to get at him. Then all of a sudden my bow changed shape and was all ethereal and when I hit things sparks flew up all over the place. When the smoke cleared we had won. So I went back to the wall."

Burton2000 · Feb 03, 2008, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winstar

Match Reports from Feb Champs should list NPC skill use and feature interviews with Archers, Knights, footmen and the bodyguard instead of players

Harold Chow: What do you think was the turning point of the match?

Archer: "Well, at first we got obsessed with this one guy on their team who seemed to be taunting us, so we bunched all up trying to get at him. Then all of a sudden my bow changed shape and was all ethereal and when I hit things sparks flew up all over the place. When the smoke cleared we had won. So I went back to the wall."

lmao

123456

Legendary Shiz · Feb 03, 2008, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodo The Extinct

Why is VwK so bad?

...I thought it was creative

It is creative. It just was a bad team build since the two eruptions made it pointless.

Not to mention it's one of the more widely used farming skills, so it's pretty lulz to see it used in high end PvP as a legit strategy to win a game.

Torsen1 · Feb 04, 2008, 02:09 AM // 02:09

I laughed at Winstar’s post, but gvg is getting retarded. I fully expected the most recent damage buff to NPC’s to be reverted once it became obvious that it was a terrible idea. Since the change has not been reverted, I have to assume that someone still thinks this is a good idea.

In my opinion, manipulation of AI has become the most important part of gvg. GvG is supposed to be the pinnacle of competitive guild wars play, not an exercise in farming. I understand that NPC’s have always played a part in gvg, but in the past they served to improve the quality of play rather than act as a hinderance. A base full of NPCs is there to provide a second chance to a team that has died, in addition to the tactical element of split play. NPC’s ensure a game that is longer than a hero’s ascent 5min slugfest.

In the past, many games have been decided by clever manipulation of NPC’s, especially at vod. It was more forgivable then for a couple of reasons. First, vod occurred later in the match, so you had more chances to finish things up before vod hit. In addition, player contributions to the vod battle were weighted just as heavily as npc contributions.

In current vod, a knight can often outperform a warrior at the stand fight (depends how stupid the knight is). Teams are no longer blowing each other up at vod, it now requires npc’s for killing to really start happening. This has the effect of marginalizing offensive player contributions under vod conditions. This leads to the theory-crafting of builds such as 6+ monks. I haven’t really seen an effective build that relies entirely on npc’s for offense, but I think this is a symptom of problems in the gvg format.

Reduced vod lethality away from the stand also hurts comeback victories. It used to be that a team which had lost the npc fight still had some chance of winning the game by pushing to the enemy guildlord and killing enemies faster than they can rez despite boosts. With only +15% damage and no health loss these brute force victories never really happen. I don’t know if eliminating this chance is a terrible thing, but I thought it was at least an interesting feature of gvg.

As a side note, the +% damage on npc’s is making ancestors even more ridiculous and essential to victory during a lord vs. lord fight.

I’m not exactly sure what should be done to vod at this point. Simply reverting to +15% damage at vod is going to give us 28min matches, so that won’t exactly work. It might help to decrease the number of archers on some maps, which was increased by ~30% when the staggered walking was introduced. Whatever changes are made, players need to be the focal point of gvg.

Cirian · Feb 04, 2008, 04:38 AM // 04:38

Obs is nuts right now. I saw SpNv's VoD farming build and didn't know what to think... will there be monks with Heal Area to heal their archer balls next?

Team Flamingo were running a fun looking split build the other night with only a single monk. I say Team Flamingo but it was a mix of them, DF and dR. They got rolled by bloodspike once but it was fun watching them swarm all over the map against meta-balanced and pick them apart. Much more fun than watching the usual 18 minutes of dancing around the flagstand until the archers arrive that's for sure

I'm not sure if super split builds are the way to go, but ending the game before VoD is certainly more fun to watch.