Curse

Ss Executioner · Apr 02, 2007, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Yeah, I noticed that. That was pretty ingenious. Also, a lot of guilds seemed to have 3 or even 4 purge sigs in their build. Looks like they all were afraid to get rolled by SB/RI.

I think you could bring a N/Mo with Holy Veil in a lot of builds (tainted, reapers, SV), you just don't try to maintain it on everyone if you're not facing SB/RI. Extra hex removal never hurts.

The necro could go into the match without any attributes set. If its heavy-spirits and hexes on the opposing team set his attribs up with empthasis on soul reaping. If not - just set them up normally.

You can not bring your attribs down in a match... but you can bring them up. Just don't have anything in anything.

-Sam

Ensign · Apr 02, 2007, 11:11 PM // 23:11

Well if you're running a Reaper's Mark Necro, like most people do, then you're going to have 14 Soul Reaping anyway.

Hex removal only works to an extent, because it's all so costly. Purge Signets aren't the silver bullet they might seem to be, because they're so slow - long to cast, long to recharge, and it slows down that character like mad from hammering his energy. The better hex teams aren't creating these huge stacks either, just 2-3 deep that wreck you combined with everything else, so they're almost getting a good deal out of their hexes even if you Purge. Against weaker teams, you can get away with Purging away really big stacks, but against the strong teams at the top of the tournament brackets, you're not given the time to Purge at will.

The only really good counters are the elites, Expel and Divert, but either one junks up a character in any other matchup...and ends up getting rocked by Signet of Humility in any case. It's really nasty. =/

Peace,
-CxE

Shadowleaf · Apr 02, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

The Holy Veils definetly made the critical difference. Divert, Dwayna's Kiss and Shielding Hands won't serve to catch the initial spike otherwise and you'd need to depend on infusing it every single time before using the other stuff.

Thom Bangalter · Apr 02, 2007, 11:54 PM // 23:54

well, obviously you need to figure out your headpiece now.

Thomas.knbk · Apr 03, 2007, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ss Executioner

The necro could go into the match without any attributes set. If its heavy-spirits and hexes on the opposing team set his attribs up with empthasis on soul reaping. If not - just set them up normally.

You wouldn't have to do that actually. I seriously doubt you need 14 soul reaping to make this work. 10 would probably be enough, which is something you can probably afford on any necromancer character.
Holy Veil on a necromancer is not like Divert. Divert is godlike against hexers, but pretty useless against non-hex teams. Holy Veil on a necro is godlike against SB/RI, but against other teams you still have a solid character. I mean, it costs you one skill slot. The biggest handicap would probably be that you can't go /E for GoLE, but if people think it's worth it to sacrifice their elite slot for Divert, I think it's worth it to sacrifice one skill slot on a midliner too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowleaf

The Holy Veils definetly made the critical difference. Divert, Dwayna's Kiss and Shielding Hands won't serve to catch the initial spike otherwise and you'd need to depend on infusing it every single time before using the other stuff.

Yes, it did. In fact, while observing it I didn't see too many spikes because a 4 second Soul Barbs is too easy to interrupt.

Ensign · Apr 03, 2007, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Sacrificing your Glyph of Lesser Energy for a Holy Veil is a really big deal. Bigger than changing elites on a lot of Monk bars. It's not something you should seriously consider doing unless you have a good expectation of facing SB/RI or some other spirit spam team.

Peace,
-CxE

selber · Apr 03, 2007, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Well, you overrated the SB/RI build a bit. Or underrated eFs knowledge. The Veil on the Necro was indeed a very, very good choice, but eF could do this, because iQ lost game 1 with a quite risky (in my eyes) build and they knew you would run something iQ considers "exceptional" - SB/RI. So in conclusion you lost versus eF with game 1. The Natures on the Warrior was a very bad choice, - I think if you had run what you did versus OUT when they played SB/RI you could have won the first game (2 Rangers...). The mindset "just bring more than they can shutdown and overtwist it" failed. Then again eF prooved to be the best guild in this tourny over and over (BHA vs. EW would be another example of a small tweak that makes a huge difference). Good games.

Ensign · Apr 03, 2007, 11:56 PM // 23:56

Why do you think swapping out a Ranger for a Warrior was a very bad choice? I don't think our big problems that match had anything to do with that choice at all.

The belief we had in running SB/RI in game 2 wasn't that it was some sort of unbeatable build, but that eF was less likely to expect, and spec against, SB/RI when we did not have map choice - since SB/RI is significantly weaker on split-friendly maps. I did expect them to run Jade against us. I don't have any idea what their decision process was but clearly they guessed correctly.

I don't appreciate you trying to judge and criticize our thought process when you don't have any clue what was discussed or have any insight into why decisions were made. Criticize the choice, and ask if you want to know why it happened. Don't pretend to know what we were thinking.

Peace,
-CxE

selber · Apr 04, 2007, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Don't get me wrong. I don't pretend to know what you were thinking, because I can't. If that's taunting, fair enough. In fact it would be interessting to know the reasons for your buildchoice for game 1 and why you had choosen this build over others (Split/SB-RI). You had mapchoice after all.

(For the 2 Ranger thingie: 4 Meleechars never worked from my expierience, it *could* have had in this special case, if they would have specced only for SB-RI (for example), but eFs mindset is more to run what they believe they are good at and *not* trying to get confused by all this "what could they run" and devaluing their build in order to have special counters.)

Ensign · Apr 04, 2007, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Well the decision process started right after we lost to eF in round 6. It was clear at that point that the eF skeleton was the strongest in the format, and that they were exceptionally good at running it. The problem thus being, that we knew what the best build was, but we couldn't just switch to it - because to win the tournament, we'd have to beat eF in what would be an effective mirror. Rightly or wrongly, I don't feel that we could have practiced enough with it in two weeks to give ourselves a good chance against a very strong team with a ton of practice not just playing the build, but playing the mirror (scrims with EW).

When you know you're the underdog in a matchup, you need a build advantage. This has been gone over in other posts here and elsewhere, you try and polarize the matchup into harder buildwars, more RPS, and hope to get a good matchup. Sometimes that works well and you pull a win out of your ass against a better team (game 3 against EvIL, GWFC)...sometimes it blows up in your face and you look like a bunch of morons (game 3 against WM, GWFC).

So why the build we used for game 1? Well, the archtype because that's what the dice said to do. *grins*. But the Warrior vs. Ranger decision came because we were afraid of running three shooters against a team with "Shields Up!" - we had a plan against Aegis and the hexes, but we couldn't deal with the shout. More melee isn't a liability if you're not spiking very much and are just pressuring different targets with each guy. To an extent, we were right...though NR was much less effective than we wanted it to be, we did a decent job dealing with the hexes and Aegis. Unfortunately for us, while the build was reasonably hex and Aegis-proofed, we were all kinds of vulnerable to Rangers, and Jeppe took a giant shit on our Monks with Broadhead. None of our tools ended up mattering because we were all dead. Oops.

The thinking for Game 2 was basically just that they would be less likely to spec against SB/RI when they had map choice, since the biggest weakness of the build in ladder play is to strong splits like those eF can run. Of course they guessed hexes for reasons I don't dare speculate about, and hit, bringing some very creative and strong counters. The result was a 20 minute deathmarch until we blew up at VoD.

Summary: we were unwilling to fight a straight mirror because we thought, given the amount of practice on the skeleton, that matchup was really unfavorable. We gambled with somewhat-randomized builds to try and get an advantage 2 games out of 3 against them that we could pull a victory out of, and whiffed twice - the first, because of overlooked matchup issues, the second, because they hit perfectly on their guess. eF was the best team this season, and without the hoped for build advantages we got pummeled.

Good games, and well played by them, sometimes the cards don't land the way you want them to.

Peace,
-CxE

Thom Bangalter · Apr 04, 2007, 07:48 AM // 07:48

Out of curiosity's sake, when you rolled for builds the first time, what did each number represent?

grub · Apr 04, 2007, 01:00 PM // 13:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

They had actually put in some nasty counters to the build that aren't as obvious as SB/RI. The biggest one was Holy Veil on their Reaper's Mark Necromancer. He was getting supercharged by our spirits as well, and was using that energy to maintain Holy Veil on *everyone*. That particular build choice was amazing, it had the exact same effect as a permanent Nature's Renewal on our hexes without messing with their enchantments, or being vulnerable to being chopped down, at all.

On top of that, their Monks had tweaked their bars to be awesome against SB/RI - Jim had Dwayna's Kiss in his variable heal slot, and Conzpi had brought in Shielding Hands coupled with Divert Hexes. The SB/RI spike is one of the places Shielding Hands shines, neutering the Soul Barbs damage something fierce. The other two were wrecking us something fierce, of course.

eF had been doing that all tournament - running the same general build skeleton, but shifting some individual skill choices around to give them the tools they wanted for particular matchups. In that match, they had guessed SB/RI hexes correctly, and brought tools to turn what might have been a hard match into an utter joke.

The lesson: outbuilding a team isn't a matter of bringing a ridiculous gimmick or overloading on targeted hate. It's about making the right choices when filling out a build skeleton to give you the advantages you want. Hats off to eF for doing that better than anyone this tournament.

Peace,
-CxE

We knew that iQ was going to run SB\RI against us in the semifinals, the question was that are they going to run it on the first round or the second round. SB\RI was obviously the strongest build around until i came up with necro holy veil bonder (it was actually night before the iQ match

, lost over 3 hours of sleep because of that

). Finally i came to conclusion that iQ will try to beat us with the updated anti-hex build on the first map as they did vs OUT. Because iQ didn't play SB\RI against OUT i knew they didn't trust the build (or hadn't trained with it enought) so they had to come with that anti-hex build to the first map.
At the moment i know only holy veil able to destroy SBRI, if that build will able to surpass that skill somehow it will be again the best (and the most broken) build out there.
And what comes to builds we ran throught tournament: the only reason to run something else than hex was to distract next opponents to not to run antihex against us (faster and more safe matches for us). That was the reason we lost acid (1-2) with 2 henchmans (orion and stefan) because acid were running antihex build on the first match and hex build on the third.

Sorry about grammar,
-Gruba

Thom Bangalter · Apr 04, 2007, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by grub

We knew that iQ was going to run SB\RI against us in the semifinals, the question was that are they going to run it on the first round or the second round. SB\RI was obviously the strongest build around until i came up with necro holy veil bonder (it was actually night before the iQ match

, lost over 3 hours of sleep because of that

). Finally i came to conclusion that iQ will try to beat us with the updated anti-hex build on the first map as they did vs OUT. Because iQ didn't play SB\RI against OUT i knew they didn't trust the build (or hadn't trained with it enought) so they had to come with that anti-hex build to the first map.
At the moment i know only holy veil able to destroy SBRI, if that build will able to surpass that skill somehow it will be again the best (and the most broken) build out there.
And what comes to builds we ran throught tournament: the only reason to run something else than hex was to distract next opponents to not to run antihex against us (faster and more safe matches for us). That was the reason we lost acid (1-2) with 2 henchmans (orion and stefan) because acid were running antihex build on the first match and hex build on the third.

Sorry about grammar,
-Gruba

eh, what can you do? we're not from finland. Thanks for sharing the thought process though, and enjoy your millions of gold!

Jim1 · Apr 05, 2007, 01:21 PM // 13:21

Was about to post a few days ago, but didn't have time, and Grub covered most things already. Wanted to comment this tho'

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

against a very strong team with a ton of practice not just playing the build, but playing the mirror (scrims with EW).

I wish : )

Me asking Elendar for unrated at #GWP should be a clear tell that it didn't happen. We played 3 unrated games in last two months (asked PUFF to ritspike us on early rounds, then played a warm up with EW on last rounds of swiss, and third was a random match against Honk after finishing swiss rounds), and none of those were with hexes.

That build is so overpowered we didn't need to practice it at all. We played some games over two months ago, but deemed it too powerful for ladder and never touched it outside the tourney.

In fact Grub+Uhvl had never even played the characters they played in playoffs (Grub was Necro or Warrior on Swiss rounds, and Uhvl played DotA). Of course they are great players, but that's pretty stupid.

Ensign · Apr 05, 2007, 06:05 PM // 18:05

Bah we should have just played you with it in the mirror then. Ah, well, overthinking ruins what should be an easy call! =p