Curse

InfernalSuffering · May 28, 2007, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by gasmaskman

They wanted to win.

Anet not giving us better skill balances is very disturbing. Ever since the "within earshot" buff to all rit skills its been chaos.

And paragons? They've been imba since they were created.

They did want to win. They did win. With gimmicks.

This thread and that tournament should be a landmark reminder for ANet as to how badly we need these skill balances. It's very disturbing to see people running paras down the line and win. Repeatedly. Of course these are "the best" in guild wars right now but even giving them a viable option to run 8 ritualists is very disturbing. I really want Gaile or Izzy to come in here and tell us to our face that they were picturing 6 paragon teams winning tournaments when they created the class. Were 8 ritualist teams supposed to hold halls? was that their design? No. Right now it seems like ANet is using [skill]Blood of the Master[/skill] on their PvE minions to make them drown out the PvP community's growing complaints.

Where's my [skill]diversion[/skill] when I need it....

Ensign · May 28, 2007, 05:00 AM // 05:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

However, besides those 3-4 European powerhouses, the rest of their time zone ("conference", if you will), is extremely lackluster.

Sure, they are lackluster. However, they try harder, they execute more advanced strategies and tactics, and generally give you a better match than the crop of tier-two American teams.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

The overall level of play at every single position was lagging terribly behind the standards being set in America.

Is this based off of playing in both metagames, or from sitting in observer mode? Because from playing against them, I've only concluded that the Euro teams understand what is going on better. I won't comment on individual micro or whatever, because that could very well be better on American time than on Euro. But virtually every American team crumbles in the movement game. Euro teams are much better at responding to movement, or using proactive movement themselves. There are some exceptions of course (Guild Wars Nomads comes to mind) but most American teams act like they haven't learned anything since HA.

My gut feeling is that the types of mistakes being made are much different in the different metagames. Americans are much more prone to making huge, game losing strategic blunders. They're also much worse at punishing said mistakes. Those are harder to recognize if you don't practice that game regularly. Euros on the other hand make far fewer of those, and are better at punishing them. Perhaps Euros are winning the game on a significantly higher level that (potential) differences in individual playskill aren't as important.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

American prime time was filled with guilds that were all playing at a level very similar to eachother, and far higher than that of the mass of europeans.

That was true a year ago. That has not been true since the GWFC. Europe has surged forward since then, while America has regressed. As I said before, every meaningful advance in the last 3 months has come out of Europe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

Whereas American prime time was filled with tough competition and games so close they turned on a single mistake, Euro times were filled with a sea of comparatively terrible players ignorantly flailing at eachother as mistake after mistake, opportunity after opportunity passed them by.

That does not match up with my experience at all, not during the QQ / eF era. Chalk it up to playstyle differences if you want, but Americans have been significantly worse at dealing with the tournament game for quite a while. This has been realized in recent tournament results, with European-dominated top 8s and winners all year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paddypower

Rawr .. well.. we kinda felt that rawrs monks wouldn't last long against a huge preassure build like this, and even if they could, if we took out a few npc's it would be auto-win, so we ran this, and it was auto-win, no problems really at all.

Were you concerned about Recall-split at all? Did you just discount that as a build choice, or did you think you had a good enough game against it that it wasn't a breaking point?

Peace,
-CxE

Skye Marin · May 28, 2007, 05:15 AM // 05:15

Xinrae's Weapon.

10 energy. 1 second cast. 15 second recharge.

That would handily and fairly remove over half of the gimmick builds out there.

Living Parasite · May 28, 2007, 05:48 AM // 05:48

Too bad communing doesn't have anything good other than vital weapon.

akurun · May 28, 2007, 05:52 AM // 05:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skye Marin

Xinrae's Weapon.

10 energy. 1 second cast. 15 second recharge.

That would handily and fairly remove over half of the gimmick builds out there.

It's 25 energy, 1/4 second cast, and 30 second recharge.

It's also an elite, almost totally worthless against any rainbow spike or non-casterspike build. It also negates a total of one spike, and disables for only 14 seconds, even with 14 communing. Communing is also a really bad attribute line to have to be investing in. The list of useful communing non-elites consists of vital weapon and nothing else.

Build Wars is bad.

BlackEagle · May 28, 2007, 09:15 AM // 09:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by akurun

It's 25 energy, 1/4 second cast, and 30 second recharge.

I think he means that if those changes were made it would solve it.

But it wouldn't. You have to take a rit, invest points in a bad line and it's an elite. It would only partially stop caster spikes, which really aren't that prevelant at all. And any caster spike has at least 2 different spikes skills (Bspike: OG/Shadow etc.)

Dextus Ironheart · May 28, 2007, 09:17 AM // 09:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Were you concerned about Recall-split at all? Did you just discount that as a build choice, or did you think you had a good enough game against it that it wasn't a breaking point?

Peace,
-CxE

We were almost certain that rawr would only be able to run hexes/balanced so it wasnt a huge problem. Even if they did run recall split we could just pick off a few npcs before vod then turtle till 25.

Yue · May 28, 2007, 09:24 AM // 09:24

"Euro teams are much better at responding to movement, or using proactive movement themselves. There are some exceptions of course (Guild Wars Nomads comes to mind) but most American teams act like they haven't learned anything since HA."

I hope that's a joke. You might think DAii is great at movement, but I have to disagree with that. I've played against them and obsed them before many times, and they're terrible at movement. They beat the majority of the guilds they play with recall split on corrupted, which gives them a heavy advantage. It's really not difficult to exploit recall, and just because they know how to use it does not make them actually better players. They make horrible positioning mistakes even with the advantage of recall on their side. They win matches from their build, but lose matches because they don't have enough individual player skill or competence to properly exploit it.

That aside though, I'm sure Euros are good, but a large majority of that is exploitation of imbalanced skills. There's a reason why it's a common stereotype.

Dextus Ironheart · May 28, 2007, 09:33 AM // 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

That aside though, I'm sure Euros are good, but a large majority of that is exploitation of imbalanced skills. There's a reason why it's a common stereotype.

Perhaps you should use whats availible to you instead of being so static. Yes hexes are indeed very stupid, para way for that matter is. However less of this is being played as of late in euro times. Besides your obvious hexway guilds there always seems to be some fun balanced v balanced play when your up against any of the guilds you actually care about playing (PnH, EW, eF, vD). Oh and for the record assume we're as bad as you like but i dont see a top euro guild we havnt beaten with balanced aside from eF (which i might add love to hex it up). Oh and on the side of american guilds, have never lost to Honk with balanced either? as for any other decent american guilds i dont think we've ever had chance to play one.

Paddypower · May 28, 2007, 11:35 AM // 11:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Were you concerned about Recall-split at all? Did you just discount that as a build choice, or did you think you had a good enough game against it that it wasn't a breaking point?

Peace,
-CxE

well paragon way is so strong that, even if you split a monk off against 90% of teams they still have huge trouble killing, becuase they have sent so much to attack the base, basically what i said over vent was... all we need to do is clear some npc's wait till 25, and its a win, i have watched Rawr quite a lot throughout the season, becuase Chop Chop is a friend of mine and i watch him play a lot, i really didn't see them running Recall split becuase i had never seen them run it before,

Blame the Monks · May 28, 2007, 02:12 PM // 14:12

I think Ensign is right -- euros have been more dominant than the US for a long time. "Eurofarming" may have existed a year ago, but not anymore.

As my guild(s) are inactive atm, I didn't get to play in this tournament. But some of the most competitive matches I can remember in recent history have been against euros (MH v EW, cow v PnH, cow v EW). Some people may be surprised by that given the cow/qq "rivalry," but we never felt like QQ was our most serious competition. We believed we could outplay all the other american teams pretty easily, but the euro meta seemed stronger than ours. We always felt like EW, eP, and iQ were the three we had to beat. (And I don't recall ever beating one of those three in a game that matters, which is why we were second tier I suppose.).

The gap will only widen, I imagine. Once in a blue moon now, we get people online to play. Then we think : "oh yeah we can wait 20 minutes to play one game against a rank 90 team who runs hexes on jade." GvG competition at its finest. So we go play dota or sc. When there is no one to practice against and all the good teams are gone, why bother?

The american pvp scene collapsed or got assimilated, and doesn't show signs of revival.

Trevor · May 28, 2007, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dextus Ironheart

Perhaps you should use whats availible to you instead of being so static. Yes hexes are indeed very stupid, para way for that matter is. However less of this is being played as of late in euro times. Besides your obvious hexway guilds there always seems to be some fun balanced v balanced play when your up against any of the guilds you actually care about playing (PnH, EW, eF, vD). Oh and for the record assume we're as bad as you like but i dont see a top euro guild we havnt beaten with balanced aside from eF (which i might add love to hex it up). Oh and on the side of american guilds, have never lost to Honk with balanced either? as for any other decent american guilds i dont think we've ever had chance to play one.

But the fact of the matter running imbalanced skills to win makes the game stupid. You can pull a gimmick build to win a tourney no one really cares about, but it's just testament to why the game sucks right now, and the American PvP is dead.

EDIT: Oh wow, I just realized [Cry] comes from a Dragonforce song. Stupid Euros.

Phelann · May 28, 2007, 05:11 PM // 17:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

I hope that's a joke. You might think DAii is great at movement, but I have to disagree with that.

I think DAii are the only sub top 20 guild that actually knows how to back the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up before they die. For that alone they deserve points.

Although they are full of themselves.

Ensign · May 28, 2007, 09:53 PM // 21:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

I hope that's a joke. You might think DAii is great at movement, but I have to disagree with that.

I don't know if I would say great. But they are one of the few teams in the American timezone that focuses more on the movement game than 8v8 fighting, and their build reflects that. Yes, they run a rigid split that's full of teleports. But they are competent at running it, they know how to use their teleports in multiple ways, and they're good enough at getting out at the right place and time.

Point being, that they actually use that avenue of the game to try and win matches. If you look at the top of the American metagame, virtually no teams there are a threat to proactively put guys into your base. They fight you 8v8, and send guys back if you put someone in their base. That's it. If things go badly for them 8v8, they just lose. Any proactive splitting is entirely a reaction to getting beaten in the big fight, and those splits are usually too late and too poorly conceived.

That contrasts strongly with the european metagame, where virtually every competitive team is a threat to put guys into your base. Sure there are some teams that can't, or won't, but like the American teams that can, that's an exception.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

They win matches from their build, but lose matches because they don't have enough individual player skill or competence to properly exploit it.

That may be. It may also be true that Americans have better micro play skill than Europeans in general - that's not something I tend to look for in obs mode. However, with the way the two regions play, the Americans are applying insane micro to a game of checkers, while the Euros are "bumbling" through the equivilent of Guild Wars chess matches.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

That aside though, I'm sure Euros are good, but a large majority of that is exploitation of imbalanced skills. There's a reason why it's a common stereotype.

The funny thing to me is that it's taken as a negative stereotype. "Oh, those sorry Europeans, they know how to use the good skills!" Seriously, it's like the American community is proud of being scrubby.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trevor

You can pull a gimmick build to win a tourney no one really cares about

I don't think that any tournament in Guild Wars has ever been won by a team that picked a gimmick and ran the table with it. Gimmicks have won individual games and matches, even some very high profile ones. But no team that couldn't at least threaten a variety of strategies has ever won anything in this game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trevor

but it's just testament to why the game sucks right now, and the American PvP is dead.

I think that "American PvP is dead" is a phrase that's said because the cool kids are saying it and parroting the cool kids makes you cool. I don't deny that there's some dissatisfaction with the state of the game from all sides, and that several of the old top players have quit. However I think the "GW PvP is dead" has more to do with the HA crowd and the quitters doing so very vocally and explosively than an actual death of competitive PvP.

Just to refresh your memory about the "golden ages" of Guild Wars activity:

Going into the GWWC playoffs, there were six, possibly seven guilds that were playing Guild Wars on a competitive level during American hours - in order of ladder finish, EP, Te, TT, EnS, iQ, BoA, and possibly SNA. Things dropped off hard after that. Europe had four teams: EW, Val, RUS, and LuM (RUS wasn't ever a serious threat though, and LuM was up and coming). That was the extent of your western Guild Wars scene at the time - 10 teams.

GWFC seasons. Every season was marked by half a dozen American teams, no more. In the first season the legitimate contenders were Te, Rift, iGi, Char, KGYU, and iQ. There were a lot more American guilds at the top, that were able to get there running "dumb gimmicks" (spikes of some sorts). By the end of the third qualifier season, things had changed significantly...Rift had finished its steady decline and flamed out at the end, while both iGi and Char had blown up over the course of the season. Te was struggling to push for Germany, while KGYU and iQ were really just hanging in there. MH had finally gotten their shit together and went on a huge tear earlier in the season. Everyone was sick of the ladder metagame, which was dominated by SB/RI spikes and triple thumper, triple smite - the sup build.

Europe on the other hand was essentially 4 teams through the entire season - EW, iB, emt, and PnH - with EW and iB (the Valandor / LuM super team) being clearly dominant in the tournaments.

If you look over the history of American PvP in Guild Wars, it's pretty clear that at any point in time, there were only between 4 and 6 guilds that were worth anything playing the game. Is that terribly different from how things are right now? Not at all. In fact I think the American population feels remarkably similar to how it felt at the end of the Factions seasons - 4 guilds forming the real top and playing with any amount of seriousness, with a bunch of guilds in the process of flaming out and new guilds stepping up.

Except that Europe has stepped up and is fielding half a dozen legitimate teams right now. Americans have less of a ladder presence, at the top - ironically, because the game is better balanced now and you don't have DEER and other random gimmick guilds holding top spots anymore. However quality of play all the way down the ladder has improved substantially. There's actually a real metagame in the rank 100 range now, while that was a complete wasteland a year ago.

Yes, Korea is gone. But that's really the extent of the losses right now. Throughout the rest of the game, GvG play is about at the levels it has always been. The differences are entirely in mood and perspective.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paddypower

well paragon way is so strong that, even if you split a monk off against 90% of teams they still have huge trouble killing, becuase they have sent so much to attack the base

That's the impression I've gotten of the build as well - that the Paragons provide so much defense that a single Monk can keep them up if a team has split off enough offense to threaten the base through a Monk.

Thank you for confirming your reasons for running the build on split-friendly maps.

Peace,
-CxE

selber · May 28, 2007, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

If you look at the top of the American metagame, virtually no teams there are a threat to proactively put guys into your base. They fight you 8v8, and send guys back if you put someone in their base. That's it. If things go badly for them 8v8, they just lose. Any proactive splitting is entirely a reaction to getting beaten in the big fight, and those splits are usually too late and too poorly conceived.

It's the biggest weakness of US-teams for sure. Guilds like Rawr or FFs are a bit closer to the EU-meta, IMO. I also like Vibe, because they are different and have some good ideas sometimes.
Eurospike, Eurosplitt, Eurohex have become synonyms for good and effective builds. A bad thing? Heck, even the Paraway Cry was palying, was only seen in EU-timezone by me. Btw: We also had such a build (5 Paragons) for the playoffs, but some people said it would be too risky, because you can't effectivly punish teams that put everything on your monks faces except to spike down their guys. That's how we won vs. Meow all the time in the ladder - and reviewing the game vD vs. Cry, the suspicion was somehow correct.

I really don't understand this EU vs. US debate and how some people cry about Europeans would be so bad. Think about it: If this would be the case, we wouldn't have 3 guilds in EU who won tournies, but just 1 in US.

If someone would ask for a reason why GW is more popular in Europe, I would also say it has alot to do with the language barriers. I mean, PnH is a german guild, eF drunken fins, RUSCORP - obvious, AR are italians, RiP frenchies etc. There is no popular pure californian guild I know. For other reasons - I don't know, maybe GW just lacks a bit in fast, instant action for the mainstream-taste there? Nah, forget that, GW excels in the MMO-genre at this point...

p.s.: wow, these forums are slow for sure.

Greedy Gus · May 28, 2007, 11:58 PM // 23:58

Ugh, DAii is not very good. They completely lack flexibility, nearly incapable of adapting if their preset plan doesn't work. I think we lost to them once in a VoD game, then beat them under 8-10 mins the next 3-5 times facing them. The best match was our final time playing them, actually smurf v. smurf on frozen isle, which was a drawn out 25-min win.

As far as Europe/America pvp goes, it's absolutely no coincidence that eurospike, eurosplit, eurohex, etc. have been coined as such. These builds are hardly revolutionary, it's just that there are a huge amount of '2nd-tier' european guilds that are perfectly happy copying the latest build that is easy to play & win with, no matter how little player skill is required.

As far as american PvP dying, I think ensign is right that there have probably been the same amount of top contenders as always, but again I feel it's the tier right below that which is nearly dead. Whether or not the players are too "scrubby" is debateable, but the general feeling is that the game could have been so much better at actually promoting player skill and seems to get shallower & shallower as the competitive level rises.

Phelann · May 29, 2007, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

As far as Europe/America pvp goes, it's absolutely no coincidence that eurospike, eurosplit, eurohex, etc. have been coined as such. These builds are hardly revolutionary, it's just that there are a huge amount of '2nd-tier' european guilds that are perfectly happy copying the latest build that is easy to play & win with, no matter how little player skill is required.

As far as american PvP dying, I think ensign is right that there have probably been the same amount of top contenders as always, but again I feel it's the tier right below that which is nearly dead.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensign

If you look at the top of the American metagame, virtually no teams there are a threat to proactively put guys into your base. They fight you 8v8, and send guys back if you put someone in their base. That's it. If things go badly for them 8v8, they just lose. Any proactive splitting is entirely a reaction to getting beaten in the big fight, and those splits are usually too late and too poorly conceived.

The really ironic thing is that just a couple of months ago europe was playing the most stagnant 8v8 game imaginable (except ef) and doing just that. Or if they did split it was the way vD used to it with the "hey we can split two guys lets continue to split two guys they have sent some defenders lets keep splitting two guys why would we ever want to split more than two people thats just silly!" mentality. (or eurosplit "lets split 3 guys the whole match" etc)

Thankfully now thats changed.

Guardas · May 29, 2007, 03:55 AM // 03:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

"Euro teams are much better at responding to movement, or using proactive movement themselves. There are some exceptions of course (Guild Wars Nomads comes to mind) but most American teams act like they haven't learned anything since HA."

I hope that's a joke. You might think DAii is great at movement, but I have to disagree with that. I've played against them and obsed them before many times, and they're terrible at movement. They beat the majority of the guilds they play with recall split on corrupted, which gives them a heavy advantage. It's really not difficult to exploit recall, and just because they know how to use it does not make them actually better players. They make horrible positioning mistakes even with the advantage of recall on their side. They win matches from their build, but lose matches because they don't have enough individual player skill or competence to properly exploit it.

That aside though, I'm sure Euros are good, but a large majority of that is exploitation of imbalanced skills. There's a reason why it's a common stereotype.

Very ignorant and biased.

Lets clear up one thing here: We do not profess to be the highest skilled players in the world. However, the reason why we are where we are is not because of our build. If that were the case we'd have been top 50 our first season. All I ever hear is "Recall is broken and it's the only reason you even win". Sour Grapes, take your losses like a man just like we take ours. We play the way we like to play. We do not conform to the meta nor have any interest in conforming to it, we just adapt.

I can't tell you how many games we've actually split people on burning and jade. Corrupted isn't the only place we win.

American guilds have forgotten how to split properly. The majority of games we play recall is not the deciding factor. Infact FFs, many of the games we played against you our split has killed your poorly formed one straight up with no escape (recall or otherwise) necessary.

Please keep telling everyone we suck, I love being underestimated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Ugh, DAii is not very good. They completely lack flexibility, nearly incapable of adapting if their preset plan doesn't work. I think we lost to them once in a VoD game, then beat them under 8-10 mins the next 3-5 times facing them. The best match was our final time playing them, actually smurf v. smurf on frozen isle, which was a drawn out 25-min win.

I'm not even going to try to dispel your notion that we can't adapt, that only works to our advantage. You also have a conveniently forgetful memory seeing as we've played SoF atleast 10 times through the seasons and have split almost evenly if not evenly. And while you may insult us, I do have a compliment for you. You're one of the few guilds that is actually a challenge when we have our full core playing.

As a final note: The split may be dead on American time and it truly saddens me. The greatest trait that GvG holds is the ability to outsmart your opponents. Many guilds do not use this and so GvG had degenerated into glorified HA matches where everything is essentially "Who can kill the monks faster" via whatever 8v8 pressure is currently the rage.

Phelann · May 29, 2007, 04:13 AM // 04:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guardas

As a final note: The split may be dead on American time and it truly saddens me. The greatest trait that GvG holds is the ability to outsmart your opponents.

Ok I'm not with gus here, but saying you outsmart your opponents when you are just running a 3 person static recall split is a bit silly!

Greedy Gus · May 29, 2007, 04:28 AM // 04:28

I'll apologize for my tone; I never had a personal issue with guildwars nomads, all of the players seemed nice. However, I feel very strongly (though maybe not as much as Neo) that recall split & corrupted isle do not take much player skill to be successful at. I feel that they are a slap in the face of true split tactics and skill which make use of fluid movement, collapses, and positional 'see-saw' control.

My guild was one of the first to run an aggressive 6/2 split with heavy offense on both sides (months before QQ perfected it with the thumpers & assassins when factions came out), as well as one of the first to really push 5/3 dedicated split (we ran what was essentially eurosplit on meditation before NF, and then dT's version months later became the popular eurosplit). This past season in SoF, even though we ran a very balanced build, I put a lot of emphasis on more fluid movement, splits in multiple directions, counter-splitting, etc.

So before I get accused of being just another american 8v8 'HA' style player, I'll point out that I'm even more saddened if real split tactics are dying out in the Am. timezone. But recall is easy-button splitting, and using corrupted is retarded if you're actually good at splitting because collapses aren't feasible. It's already been mentioned that they're looking to rebalance corrupted.