Curse

Lord Darksoul · Jan 30, 2008, 01:33 AM // 01:33

So here's the story.

My guild leader (possibly soon to be ex-leader) wants to start a HA divison. About 3 of the people had a decent glad ranking (2+) or commander title or a rank 3 hero. The other 5 (more if you include the back-ups) have practically nothing that 300k-400k Balthazar faction unlocked.

I don't consider myself a PvP God, but I think I know a bit about how the game plays. I've done a fair bit of every PvP, and my guild leader and I have gotten into a disagreement over how to start the HA team.

He believes that IWAYs suck. Which I do too, but that's about the only thing we agree on. I was to start with pressure builds, which will be easy for a newly-adjusted group to use (IMO) and won't require too much multitasking for a team still getting used to the first few maps. He, on the other hand, wants to start with R-spikes and balanced builds.

My arguement is that we need to know what the map looks like, fight enough teams to see their builds, and just get into the swing of working with one another. That's why I want a decently simple pressure builds. He, on the other hand, beleive that by jumping into R-spike and balanced will give us a head start into playing that and hopes that we can skip adjustment steps from pressure to higher end builds.

I've been telling him it's like making a baby learn to run without teaching him to crawl and walk.

We've tried both methods. Pressure we've been doing fine, winning a few fame. R-spike we've failed pretty badly. Our fastest spike kill time is 58 seconds in the Zaishen beginning. Balanced I don't even think they've won once even against the Zaishen.

He refuses to admit he's wrong, and still believes with time that we'll get the hang of playing balanced with completely inexperienced players who still have trouble spiking at the same time and listening to the caller.

So please, experienced players give me advice on what I need to do to make this guild work. Is he right to make the guild run balanced and R-spike with guild members who don't even know what comes after Underworld, or am I closer to right in us running pressure builds to get the hang of the first few maps?

wuzzman · Jan 30, 2008, 01:53 AM // 01:53

R-spike is not a high level build. If your guild leader wants to do the guild version of iway(rspike), then your not going far with balance. However I just go along with playing whatever he wants. If your right about the general experience of most of HA'ers in your guild, then your guild leader will quickly get frustrated with not getting past underworld because his members can't even do the jump test. You won't learn anything with iway, but neither will you learn match with rspike either. Lose lose situation.

Your best bet is to get him to play balance and only balance. That way, though it will be painful, very very painful, you will eventually get good players out of both your members, yourself, and your guild leader. And hell if your lucky you might form a synergy together.

Divinus Stella · Jan 30, 2008, 01:57 AM // 01:57

You cant really get any easier than ranger spike, its roughly on par with iway.

Your best bet is to play a build with simple templates like fire eles and a dervish to carry some sort of focused spike.

I think its more important to play as a group than anything else, dont worry too much about builds, just focus on finding roles that people like and communicating well. A team that plays together often will win with any build.

Son Of The Axe · Jan 30, 2008, 03:31 AM // 03:31

hmm i can see your point about r-spike as inexperienced players can spike 3...2..1 in great temple but often have trouble doing so under pressure.

Learning to play as a team is #1, but i agree that pressure and gimmicky builds might be the way to go and mix that up some balance along the way so you get more of a feel for balanced builds and how to use tactics to your advantage.

Div · Jan 30, 2008, 03:46 AM // 03:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Darksoul

Balanced I don't even think they've won once even against the Zaishen.

Then you need to relook the skill bars you are putting into that team. Sure, learning how to play balanced is good, but playing a badly designed "balanced" team gets you nowhere. Since you can't even kill the Zaishen, I'd venture to guess that it is a pretty bad balanced build. Posting your build here would help break it down and see what the actual problem is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

You cant really get any easier than ranger spike, its roughly on par with iway.

"Balanced builds are as good as the worst player. Spike builds are as good as the caller." If the caller isn't experienced with something like rspike, even an easy and broken build will appear hard to run. Plus since your backline isn't very experienced, they are unlikely to keep you up for a long time. If your first few spikes fail, then you're pretty much dead.

And the OP needs to define "pressure" since it's often synonymous with "balanced." Or are you talking about "pressure" like IWAY or thumpers? Because that's usually referred to as "trashway," a build that is good for starting PvPers just to get some fame and get used to the game. If that's the case, by all means run it to get some experience. If it isn't, I don't see how you can do well with "pressure" but not with "balanced."

Lykan · Jan 30, 2008, 04:15 AM // 04:15

If your inexperienced in HA r-spike is not the way, its not all about 321 spike, its about timing and teamwork, rangers who know what they are doing and you need a caller who knows every detail of every map and how to call good strats, which is why your failing at it. (Fyi a good one kills the zaishen in less then 20 secs)

You say your trying balanced but you dont say what your build involves. Post what your trying to run here.
You need to look at your members and see what they are best at, its no good having a player who never played ele before on a snare or a warder, likewise for mesmers. See what your members are good at and work a build around that.

Lews · Jan 30, 2008, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Lot's of people suck at rspike. Like. Amazingly suck. You guys would be amazed if you saw a good rspike team play, how fast they would rape everybody. Rspike isn't on the level of iway, since iway can be played, and be played good. Rspike can be played horrible, bad, good, and amazingly.

elektra_lucia · Jan 30, 2008, 04:50 AM // 04:50

IWAY can be played horrible too but I don't think you're really grasping the point anyway.

Lews · Jan 30, 2008, 04:51 AM // 04:51

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Son Of The Axe · Jan 30, 2008, 05:59 AM // 05:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Then you need to relook the skill bars you are putting into that team. Sure, learning how to play balanced is good, but playing a badly designed "balanced" team gets you nowhere. Since you can't even kill the Zaishen, I'd venture to guess that it is a pretty bad balanced build. Posting your build here would help break it down and see what the actual problem is.

"Balanced builds are as good as the worst player. Spike builds are as good as the caller." If the caller isn't experienced with something like rspike, even an easy and broken build will appear hard to run. Plus since your backline isn't very experienced, they are unlikely to keep you up for a long time. If your first few spikes fail, then you're pretty much dead.

And the OP needs to define "pressure" since it's often synonymous with "balanced." Or are you talking about "pressure" like IWAY or thumpers? Because that's usually referred to as "trashway," a build that is good for starting PvPers just to get some fame and get used to the game. If that's the case, by all means run it to get some experience. If it isn't, I don't see how you can do well with "pressure" but not with "balanced."

well yes by pressure i meant "trashway" but was trying to put it in nicer terms

But yea you really just need to run "trashway" until you understand how HA works and get a more general feel for the maps.

elektra_lucia · Jan 30, 2008, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Quote:

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Calling wrong targets. Using d-chop badly.

I don't play IWAY so I can't really give loads of information but the bottom line is, you can mess up =P.

r-spike is pretty easy to run. That's partly why I don't see why iA had so much respect from people :/. Guilds like sOap should of had so much more =D.

Horace The Great · Jan 30, 2008, 03:36 PM // 15:36

R-spike is not easy to play, first of all you need a good spike, that's not so hard. Second, you need good monks, R-spike only uses a few interrupts as control and 1-2 snares so it is not really easy to monk in a R-spike group.

The best build you can play as a low ranked is a pressure build with area dmg. And then keep modding it more to a balanced build. A lot of people think other pressure builds, like hexes and e-denial iway are very easy to play and players just have to spam skills, but that is really not true. Of course it's important to spam fear me in iway, but by only doing that you don't win (much). Same as hex, by only spamming hexes you won't win (much). Area dmg is easy to use, but still watch the field were to put it, don't spam skills.

Kyp Jade · Jan 30, 2008, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Builds with lots of AoE are among the easist to play, Look at the standard HA mindblast ele.

Mblast
Searing Heat
Teinais Heat
Rodgorts Invocation

Spamming these 4 skills can result in tons of pressure if you place them in correct spots, however most of the time I run across a fire ele running that, they put thier aoe on a target thats standing all by himself and then he gets out of AoE. You really accomplish nothing from this.

When you cast AoE at a lot of balled targets, yes they will move out of it, but theres a mad scramble and momentary loss of coordination on the other team when this happens, so not only do you apply damage pressure, you gain your team 1-3seconds of breathing room. Thats a long time.

Of course, relying on AoE and only Aoe only works against bad teams. I will use an old build as example, 99% of the builds damage comes from 2 SH fire eles.

2 ES wars
2 SH eles
1 Water ele
3 monks

this is about as basic as you can get, and it already has tools for the fun maps available. But, look at the build, the ES warriors dont really do damage, just lots of KD. The water ele really doesnt do damage, just lots of snare. The fire eles do damage. 3 of the 5 non monks are there to help force the fire ele damage to happen. Builds like this are only viable because of how ridiculous fire AoE can be when people get stuck in it. Dont fool yourself that youll win all the time, it does take some effort to force bad posistining on the other team so u can ATTEMPT this in the first place, but it does work, you should try something basic like this first I think

just as an edit, if you do decide to to this, it works better when you make the wars and eles work in pairs, so two callers, (1 warrior call for 1 ele, 1 warrior cal for another ele). But this is VERY difficult to do with unskilled players and I never really did this often, in fact I soon abandoned the 2nd warrior for a mesmer because my other warrior was really fail at GW, and I had a good mesmer avaialable to play for me. Also timing is an issue, you want to Earthshaker to arrive at the same time as the SH does, so I called from ele (midline calling ftw), if your warriors cannot handle that it is also an option to look into. Sure call 3-2-1 spikes a lot, but most of your time should be pressuring bad posisitining by the enemy.

TheHaxor · Jan 30, 2008, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

Builds with lots of AoE are among the easist to play, Look at the standard HA mindblast ele.

Agreed. That bar is pretty easy to play well. I'm not saying some people aren't better than others at it, but it is pretty easy to pick up on.

@the OP: I would run something that does a lot of fast damage in order to get quick wins (like what Kyp posted). Your monks are not going play well right away so they are not going to be able to hold up for too long. After a while you can switch to a build that gives more utility when you get better play from them, but for now that build is a perfectly fine learning tool. The most important thing with that build is that your warriors call good targets (ones in a ball so they get owned by AoE). You can really tell the difference with that build when you get good warrior play.

Dronte · Jan 30, 2008, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

Calling wrong targets. Using d-chop badly.

I don't play IWAY so I can't really give loads of information but the bottom line is, you can mess up =P.

r-spike is pretty easy to run. That's partly why I don't see why iA had so much respect from people :/. Guilds like sOap should of had so much more =D.

Thats true. Its more different to play (it used to be at least) against a r0 zerg then a r9+.

Morgoth the dark · Jan 30, 2008, 06:40 PM // 18:40

For start, you need a caller. A good one if you are doing rspike. Without this guy, you wont get far. That's probably your most experianced PvP player - you. Try to learn how to call, and how fast to call. For start, you might want to call randomly, but the most efficient way to call is on the timer, becuase timer doesnt lag like vent does. So if you have this guy you are on the right way.
Now you need to handle your playmates. Go to the balths and try, try and try spikes allover. Make them actually read the skills and what they do. They will use skills more effeciently if they know what they do, right

?
You might test the vent lag with /jump tests, to see how laggy they really are.
/jump in 3, 2, 1 and you see who's staying behind. Other tricks will come in time.
and make shure you have good players on monks, your team is gonna fail hard if your monks suck.

Divinus Stella · Jan 31, 2008, 03:36 PM // 15:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Horace The Great

R-spike is not easy to play, first of all you need a good spike, that's not so hard. Second, you need good monks, R-spike only uses a few interrupts as control and 1-2 snares so it is not really easy to monk in a R-spike group.

LOL?
Ranger spike monks are the worst of the lot, its the easiest and most braindead part of the build.

elektra_lucia · Jan 31, 2008, 04:10 PM // 16:10

rangers have a lot of defense/armour against the meta and r-spike often runs 3monk back line. Go figure.

agreed with kyp.

Monk Gsb · Jan 31, 2008, 04:15 PM // 16:15

run 2 d/a with aoe and splinter / warmongers rit. its so easy its not even funny.

Horace The Great · Jan 31, 2008, 06:22 PM // 18:22

If you think high armor will save you, I think you are wrong. The best defense is control. If you control you win, that's it.