Curse

LifesRestorer · Mar 28, 2007, 09:17 PM // 21:17

nope was never a problem tbh. even at the start of 6v6 it wasnt a problem. if you are playing these supposed 'interrupt warz' builds then that means you have 2 interrupters for each ghost. now correct me if i'm wrong, but shock warriors can interrupt a song with either shock or d-blow.

i don't mind the rotation in halls. it makes the team prove themselves worthy of holding by being able to cope under different circumstances each game, which eliminates the uber defensive holding build everybody was complaining about. KC just makes it a most probable loss for the poor team that ends up getting ganked and the winning team is usually the one who spikes hardest.

B Ephekt · Mar 28, 2007, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gimme Money Plzkthx

I refuse to believe that any decent players ever had a problem capping against a pure holding team in 8v8 halls (note: this does not include builds like spirit spam WAYYYY back).

I'm not really sure why you quoted me, but I agree.

FoxBat · Mar 28, 2007, 09:23 PM // 21:23

While I already expressed misgivings about kill count, I have to wonder whether those complaining about builds have watched observer mode at all. Pressure thump-spiritway with daze, dual trappers, aegis chains, and water eles are pretty common in HoH, because winning kill count is more about your positioning and sometimes luck than your build. (If you're in the center and not astoundingly better than the two teams ganking you, you lose.) The DP-free rezes in HoH along with the need for running/splitting in AB and snare/run in relic contribute significantly to degen/hex being worthless. As long as kill count stays out of HoH, good teams will build for the other modes because you can often enough out-skill/out-luck teams on the other maps, which has always been the case forever and is what led to rotating objectives in the first place.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Mar 28, 2007, 09:24 PM // 21:24

I'm not entirely sure either, you said something about what you refuse to believe (I'm too lazy to go back a page), so I quoted. Anyway, 90% of the players saying 8v8 holding was lame/stale/WorseThanAnythingElse need to stop sucking.

Randomway Ftw · Mar 28, 2007, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by B Ephekt

Granted, Song did make capping ridiculously easy, but it was just as easy to counter.

Bolded part is the most important part. The fact is that song is a skill made to allow less skiled players to cap againsrt interrupts.

Its not about capping against song, its about song making interupts ineffective for holding.

If your start dying then, what happens? It's not as easy to counter as you think, while interupting the skill is not an issue, what happens if the paragon is on the other side of the altar and you can't get to him in time, earshot is a huge range, you can't go up onto the side to interupt the ghost because you will not be able to interupt song. You can't hide because you have to stay in range of the paragon or other guy with song. Even with a longbow, you are tied to a moving player putting you at great risk, and potentionaly putting you at risk for getting knocked down or spiked.

If it was so easy to hold against song then why were interupt based builds almost never run following the release of nightfall?

LifesRestorer · Mar 28, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gimme Money Plzkthx

Anyway, 90% of the players saying 8v8 holding was lame/stale/WorseThanAnythingElse need to stop sucking.

QFT. complainers were probably iwayers

Im In A Build · Mar 28, 2007, 09:44 PM // 21:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifesRestorer

which is why it sucks. when you lose down not because you couldnt beat either team, but when you lose because its 12 on 6 and you get ganked for being more of a threat to the other teams, it's just stupid.

in holding you would get 2 v1 anyway if both teams were good and honestly the same scenario can happen in king of the hill if 1 team is stupid they will attack a non holding team and elimnate all there chances of winning thats just tough luck

as for the whole killcount debate guess what shitty holding maps encouraged gay builds as well at least with kill counts the builds encouraged are high dmng that can actually kill something in under 10 mins so 1 v 1 dont take RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing hours because both teams pack so much defence to hold

and to follow with liferestores and gimmie moneys logic anyone complaining about killcount and non holding objectives are total scrubbs that could only play dual paragons when ef was broken yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy

now for the most important question ever-whats the point of this thread

garbad - why are you angry at the world!

gasmaskman · Mar 28, 2007, 10:06 PM // 22:06

My only problem with Kill Count is Courtyard/BT. If it's removed from both those maps, then I'd be happy. Very happy.

And, replaced with the *NEW* 2-second, no energy King of the Hill on BT, and some kind of capture points on Courtyard.

B Ephekt · Mar 28, 2007, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

Bolded part is the most important part. The fact is that song is a skill made to allow less skiled players to cap againsrt interrupts.

Its not about capping against song, its about song making interupts ineffective for holding.

If your start dying then, what happens? It's not as easy to counter as you think, while interupting the skill is not an issue, what happens if the paragon is on the other side of the altar and you can't get to him in time, earshot is a huge range, you can't go up onto the side to interupt the ghost because you will not be able to interupt song. You can't hide because you have to stay in range of the paragon or other guy with song. Even with a longbow, you are tied to a moving player putting you at great risk, and potentionaly putting you at risk for getting knocked down or spiked.

If it was so easy to hold against song then why were interupt based builds almost never run following the release of nightfall?

You said interrupting Song was “unreliable.” In my experience this wasn’t the case; it was as reliable as interrupting a ghost ever had been, which is to say it worked about 90% of the time. Yeah, people will make mistakes or a team will get off a lucky cap sometimes, but that’s just alter maps for you.

When I was still tombing, the meta was still interrupt heavy. People still ran PD mersmers/eles, and CG rangers. At the time, I was running kgyu-style pressure with two seeking rangers, a PD Mesmer and Shock and Dblow on the warrior. Later I ran a build with a warrior and 3 eles, one with PD the other two with leech sig. Aside from the occasional fluke I never had trouble capping or holding against Song.

I don't remember interrupts falling out of place until more front-loaded heavy pressure builds and heroway started coming around. (I quit tombing around this time though so maybe I missed something.)

I always thought interrupt fests were lame, and that Claim Resource should’ve been a 1 or 2 second cast to make it harder to consistently interrupt a ghost. I never liked the fact that you could lose your ghost after 2:00 and still win just by interrupting, or that you could win simply because you were the last to cap and the other teams interrupted each other for nearly 2:00. It was just so much easier to spam interrupts than it was to counter two teams, which usually had 2 interrupters per team.

Granted, I participated in this meta just like everyone else, but I never liked that mechanic. So, I never really minded Song. It was a nice, easy counter to the equally easy interrupts. It wasn’t hard for a good team to counter though, it just gave you some more options.

As for dieing, positioning was how Song got interrupted consistently. “In earshot” is pretty small compared to longbow range and spell range. As long as you could identify the characters that could shutdown your interrupters (gale/shock, blackout, humility, blinds, etc) or hurt your monks early, you’d cap and win about 90% of the time.

Randomway Ftw · Mar 28, 2007, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by B Ephekt

You said interrupting Song was “unreliable.” In my experience this wasn’t the case; it was as reliable as interrupting a ghost ever had been, which is to say it worked about 90% of the time. Yeah, people will make mistakes or a team will get off a lucky cap sometimes, but that’s just alter maps for you.

When I was still tombing, the meta was still interrupt heavy. People still ran PD mersmers/eles, and CG rangers. At the time, I was running kgyu-style pressure with two seeking rangers, a PD Mesmer and Shock and Dblow on the warrior. Later I ran a build with a warrior and 3 eles, one with PD the other two with leech sig. Aside from the occasional fluke I never had trouble capping or holding against Song.

I don't remember interrupts falling out of place until more front-loaded heavy pressure builds and heroway started coming around. (I quit tombing around this time though so maybe I missed something.)

I always thought interrupt fests were lame, and that Claim Resource should’ve been a 1 or 2 second cast to make it harder to consistently interrupt a ghost. I never liked the fact that you could lose your ghost after 2:00 and still win just by interrupting, or that you could win simply because you were the last to cap and the other teams interrupted each other for nearly 2:00. It was just so much easier to spam interrupts than it was to counter two teams, which usually had 2 interrupters per team.

Granted, I participated in this meta just like everyone else, but I never liked that mechanic. So, I never really minded Song. It was a nice, easy counter to the equally easy interrupts. It wasn’t hard for a good team to counter though, it just gave you some more options.

As for dieing, positioning was how Song got interrupted consistently. “In earshot” is pretty small compared to longbow range and spell range. As long as you could identify the characters that could shutdown your interrupters (gale/shock, blackout, humility, blinds, etc) or hurt your monks early, you’d cap and win about 90% of the time.

Defeating song is not an issue with a build dedicated to doing so, the fact is that song makes interrupts a lot less effective as a secondary strategy for holding an altar. It leads to a 100% failure rate of simple things like a warrior dblowing the ghost as the last action in winning a map. It is results in an autocap if put up at the right moment. The fact is that song makes interupts ineffective when you don't have a lot of them.

We ran a spike build with 2x PS + Seeking + RTW spikers, 1 X PP/SD MES with PD, and one ele. It was designed to interrupt songs + ghosts, and it was very effective at doing that, for someone reason people refuse to interrupt seeking arrows. The problem was the lack of a rend or rigor, and the slow spike meant that it was a bitch to take teams off the altar. However, we only ran this for two days before the first objectives change test weekend, and I pretty much raged the game after that.

I saw interrupt based builds disappear around the release of nightfall, it is possible that people were just scared away by song of concentration, or that interrupts in post song halls were not viable unless you dedicated even more of your build to them.

elektra_lucia · Mar 29, 2007, 04:04 PM // 16:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

It's not that it was difficult to face Heros its that, its not fun to face teams of AI bots running the same bad build over and over again.

There is too high a chance of failure when interupting song of concentrations, to make it worth attempting. It's not difficult to interupt the skill, its difficult to interupt everything necessary unless you have a large amount of interupters, and what happens if the paragon starts bringing mantra of resolve?

The comments about the skills were made as a pre emptive response to the people who show say "lolx, those skills sux, they are encouraged by the lame objectives !!!11!!!1eleven"

I'm aware of that of that but this thread is not supposed to about the pros and cons of brining spellbreaker.

Unlike you to write such a small ammount to such a big reply. Uhm, not just the paragon bring song... Sometimes ele's would bring it as a secondary. Anyway, to answer your question - mantra of resolve is a stance. Wild blow > mantra of resolve. Dblow > song.

PD mesmer > ghostly.

Gale > ghostly / or song.

There is enough interupts / knock downs in most builds to make it easily possible.

If everyone was bringing mantra of resolve, you'd see a lot of people bringing wild blow.

Quote:

I'm aware of that of that but this thread is not supposed to about the pros and cons of brining spellbreaker.

For altar holding, a lot of people brought spellbreaker - you even brought it up yourself. So pardon me if I was replying to your post, which just so happened to be self-proclaimed (by you) off topic.

Anyways, there are easy solutions for the things you have stated. I guess you are just bad at this game.

Quote:

I saw interrupt based builds disappear around the release of nightfall, it is possible that people were just scared away by song of concentration, or that interrupts in post song halls were not viable unless you dedicated even more of your build to them.

Many of the teams which hold over and over are using a PD mesmer. Sure it's possible people were scared away by song of concentration. People bad at this game.

Death_From_Above · Mar 29, 2007, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

I'm talking about improvements, because the changes to HA other than the party size issue were improvements.

Like I said, you cannot see them. You are blind to them.

Tinkering with party size was never one of the improvements.

WTB a complete sentence.

Kill count i take it your implying. Just because something has some benefits it does not always make them good. With kill counts the problems outway the benefits therefore it cannot be counted as an improvement. Its like saying you kill someone. Due to the fact that person takes up less space which you could say is an improvment to the world. That overall its an improvement. I think not. Btw im blind to them am i? I believe not, i just realise how to make a distinction between fact and fiction. If tinkering with patry size was never one of the improvments why do you imply so much that it was, dude your contradicting yourself here.

WTB ? Explain please.

As for your last comment. Aka the no, then why do u assume you know what i think or how i feel to change. What ever method you use it is clearly wrong. Therefore i suggest stop using it because it dosent seem to be getting you anywhere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

Anyway, to answer your question - mantra of resolve is a stance. Wild blow > mantra of resolve. Dblow > song.

PD mesmer > ghostly.

Gale > ghostly / or song.

There is enough interupts / knock downs in most builds to make it easily possible.

If everyone was bringing mantra of resolve, you'd see a lot of people bringing wild blow.

For altar holding, a lot of people brought spellbreaker - you even brought it up yourself. So pardon me if I was replying to your post, which just so happened to be self-proclaimed (by you) off topic.

Anyways, there are easy solutions for the things you have stated. I guess you are just bad at this game.

Many of the teams which hold over and over are using a PD mesmer. Sure it's possible people were scared away by song of concentration. People bad at this game.

From posts iv read he seems to be better than you. And a war taken wild blow, isnt that overcomplicating things. Basically you would have to take a couple more interupters then. Song is a trashy skill it only destroys the whole point of interupting to cap. Basically song means, someone caps. I spend 40 secs whipin floor with them and killen ghost. Other team caps, team i whipped floor with res up for come back. we whipe floor with other team ect. Basically how many times and how long will it take to do all of this?

Lord Natural · Mar 29, 2007, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

There are certain life reasons, not the game itself, that are the cause of this. I'm talking about improvements, because the changes to HA other than the party size issue were improvements. Is it perfect now? No, but it's a lot better than altar holding ever was.

Like I said, you cannot see them. You are blind to them.

Tinkering with party size was never one of the improvements.

I don't follow how limiting the type of viable builds constitutes an improvement. Even through the worst of the fotm's we've been subject to, there was always the freedom to make (and have success) with any number of builds. The nature of the kill count objective denies traditional builds and completely promotes scrub trash, with no relevance to anything outside Alliance Battles -- and now HA. Will a good team still have success running their build rather than a gimmick? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact that kill counts are a complete mess.

I could deal with rotating hoh objectives, but with 24 people now in the mix, even that will be a disaster, on relic runs especially.

The only positive change to come from HA is the updated chest and increased sigil prices. 8v8 is only a positive change if altars are restored.

Patccmoi · Mar 29, 2007, 07:55 PM // 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Natural

I don't follow how limiting the type of viable builds constitutes an improvement. Even through the worst of the fotm's we've been subject to, there was always the freedom to make (and have success) with any number of builds. The nature of the kill count objective denies traditional builds and completely promotes scrub trash, with no relevance to anything outside Alliance Battles -- and now HA. Will a good team still have success running their build rather than a gimmick? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact that kill counts are a complete mess.

I don't find kill count limitating viable build type nearly as much as people make it out to be. We change our build nearly every night trying things and we go through kill counts most of the time. Hell, a few days ago we ran condition pressure with a Cripshot and a Tainted, 2 chars offering very little direct damage, and we did well in there. All you need for current kill count is good movement around the map and some way to actually kill a focused target.

Teams with 2 hexers are popular now with like 1 Migraine + 1 Spiteful, doing a mix of degen and shutdown with 2 melee killing stuff.

I'm not saying kill count is currently great and should be kept as is, but what i read on forums (mostly from people who actually say they quit HA or nearly too) and what i face/play in HA is 2 totally different world. If you believe forums, all you see in halls is still 2 Eles + 2 Sins when i don't think i face that more than once every 10 games now, and usually in UW or Burial.

You know the old holding also favored certain builds and discouraged others, people are just used to the favored ones and kinda forget the discouraged part. Builds had to be much more defensive to successfully win in HoH in general than they would need to say win a 1v1 or relic run. There's no real reason why you would've needed a 3rd monk if it wasn't for saving a non-kiting NPCs standing in the middle of everything for example.

master_of_puppets · Mar 29, 2007, 10:28 PM // 22:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

I don't find kill count limitating viable build type nearly as much as people make it out to be. We change our build nearly every night trying things and we go through kill counts most of the time. Hell, a few days ago we ran condition pressure with a Cripshot and a Tainted, 2 chars offering very little direct damage, and we did well in there. All you need for current kill count is good movement around the map and some way to actually kill a focused target.

Well you must have gotten lucky in the kill count maps because if you had a match where one team was noob then you would have lose for sure because the other team would have most likely been able to kill them faster and get all the points. Thats probably the thing I hate most about kill count maps is that you can lose for no good reason, it depends on what the other two teams are. Basically the outcome is determined not by a good team but the noob team.

Quote:

I'm not saying kill count is currently great and should be kept as is, but what i read on forums (mostly from people who actually say they quit HA or nearly too) and what i face/play in HA is 2 totally different world. If you believe forums, all you see in halls is still 2 Eles + 2 Sins when i don't think i face that more than once every 10 games now, and usually in UW or Burial.

There has been a decrease in the exact same 2 sins, 2 sh build but it doesnt mean that there is variety people are just running slightly modified versions of that. I went into HA yesterday and I can say that at least 85% of all teams we faced had at least 1 boa assassin or SH ele. And no its not only random pugs who run it, ive seen several top guilds running metway since its so effective at kill count.

Quote:

You know the old holding also favored certain builds and discouraged others, people are just used to the favored ones and kinda forget the discouraged part. Builds had to be much more defensive to successfully win in HoH in general than they would need to say win a 1v1 or relic run. There's no real reason why you would've needed a 3rd monk if it wasn't for saving a non-kiting NPCs standing in the middle of everything for example.

yeah holding can defenitely be improved but even the old version is still better than any form of this kill count trash. One way could be to make the ghost move around and move out of AoE.

Lord Natural · Mar 30, 2007, 03:30 AM // 03:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

I don't find kill count limitating viable build type nearly as much as people make it out to be. We change our build nearly every night trying things and we go through kill counts most of the time. Hell, a few days ago we ran condition pressure with a Cripshot and a Tainted, 2 chars offering very little direct damage, and we did well in there. All you need for current kill count is good movement around the map and some way to actually kill a focused target.

Well like I said, a good team will find ways to win without devoting a large portion of their build to one particular HA mechanic. Take relic runs for example; A good coordinated team with only a few skills dedicated to the task at hand will usually beat a less skilled team with perhaps double the amount of snares. But in a 3-way scenario, all too often the luck factor comes into play.

Let's say I'm running a build with condition pressure, and roll into Courtyard facing an unranked random group, and an Ass-Nuker pressure group. My team begins to pressure the inexperienced group, while the full pressure team simply unloads on them. While we're building adrenaline, spreading conditions, etc., the hapless team has been standing in 4 Savannah Heats, has already been 2x Prison spiked and quickly wipes. Chances are I'm losing right now, in which case I'll engage the pressure group and simply hope that the inexperienced group doesn't res and c+space double team us back to the Zaishen.

The best teams are the exception and always have been, but in general the strategy for these kill count maps seems to be -- Get in, do what damage you can before drawing double pressure, then retreat, rinse, repeat. It just takes longer for a shutdown or degen group to do their thing, in which case they run the risk of drawing a double team, and having to retreat before the job is done.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing the point, but it's just my opinion that in the past a good balanced group was always a step above, simply because they had the counter to everything. IWAY/Melee pressure? You've got ward(s) and other shutdown. Caster spike? Pack interrupts, and, if we're going back a ways, fertile season. What was more, none of the objectives worked against this type of team -- That is, few FotM's had the versatility to excel at every game type. Now, for the first time that I can recognize (not counting phases with extremely broken skills), a balanced group can actually be at a disadvantage on a map, simply because while they're "wasting" skill slots with shutdown, a scrub build such as Ass-Nuker is picking on a hapless team and racking up a huge score. It's just a change in the fundamentals of the game and it feels... weird.

Skyy High · Mar 30, 2007, 10:22 PM // 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifesRestorer

which is why it sucks. when you lose down not because you couldnt beat either team, but when you lose because its 12 on 6 and you get ganked for being more of a threat to the other teams, it's just stupid.

That happened before kill count too. I distinctly remember many teams trying to double team any IWAY teams they saw on 3 way (or more) maps. Or even better, the holding team dropping spirits in Halls so the two remaining teams couldn't kill each other for 10 minutes. Those kinds of things are annoying, but they're part of the game whenever you have more than 2 teams fighting on the same map. You can't dictate player tactics.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Mar 30, 2007, 11:18 PM // 23:18

The problem with killcount is it forces you to run offensive builds, and you cannot bring enough interrupts and utility to counter a spike effectively.

Mr Jazzy · Apr 04, 2007, 07:11 AM // 07:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by masteroflife

Mods please delete the above post. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. If you don't pvp, don't post in pvp forums. You don't see us spamming ur pve forums.

Now on topic:

Anet had changed halls again and again. I am willing to put up with all kinds of nonsense changes (keyword "put up with"), if they remove kill counts. Where is the old balanced build where skills actually mattered.... A better questions is, how many people are still in HA? As days goes on, i feel more and more discouraged to HA. They claim that they want feedback. There is a entire thread on how killcount is NEEDED to be removed. If that's not feeback, then i don't know what is.

Off-topic:

Haha, I really like how this guy was offended by Vital's mock post. Try looking at Vital's profile. What do you see?

Ohhh, he's in [OUT]. Hey, wait a sec, isn't that a top 20 GvG guild? Hey, isn't GvG a form of PvP? Hey, isn't "Gwen Was Ten" a core member of GvG? Connect the puzzle pieces and you get a surprise!

2 cents.

luilui · Apr 04, 2007, 09:34 AM // 09:34

Wild blow > mantra of resolve. Dblow > song
didnt read the whole thing but i hope u dont mean ur warrior is going to 1st wild blow the song guy then d blow he's song, becoz if you are then you are bullshitting really.

all these ppl claim they are good at HA, yet i doubt they are high rank, please if you are not rank 11+ don't say you understand HA (not that rank 11+ mean you do, but if you are rank 11- for sure you don't), and if you haven't made a few times 40+ fame runs don't say you understand the old altar mechanism.

those who fail those 2 points should just quit the debate now ......