Curse

Bacon Was A Monk · Feb 12, 2007, 01:32 AM // 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by s w o r d y

could HA get any sadder

whats even sadder is people still play guild wars...

they give you guys 8v8 and you still Q_Q about it.

Franco Power · Feb 12, 2007, 01:52 AM // 01:52

Bacon they haven't given us 8v8, they gave us 8v8 for a week with stupid retarded altar maps.

Wasteland Squidget · Feb 12, 2007, 01:53 AM // 01:53

One of the more amusing things about this weekend has been the 'balanced builds.' Specifically, the way that so many of them are absolutely terrible. Choking Gas/SA rangers, 3-monk backlines, death necros, ect. were all good in the holding 8v8 meta because they were relevant to the silly "Protect the NPC" meta of old HA.

Many of the templates in the old HA were absolutely horrific when it comes to actually playing Guild Wars, but you ran them because they were useful in holding an altar. You didn't bring Choking Gas guy because he was a strong versatile character, you brought him because he can interrupt an enemy ghostly and prevent a cap. You don't bring a death necro because he's good, you bring him because Well Of The Profane and Putrid Explosion on the dias won games. You didn't bring pure healing monks because healing is a good line (it's not), you brought them because it's useful for making a non-kiting ghostly's red bar go up when Profane or mass enchant removal are flying around.

All the best balanced builds in the old HA were built around dias, but now that dias is no longer relevant, it's funny to see the old templates still see play. You see teams with a trapper or a third monk who apparently haven't thought at all about why that guy is there, or what his purpose is in the build now that holding is gone.

Epic Monkey Battle · Feb 12, 2007, 02:02 AM // 02:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nadia Roark

While I agree that it's better to run 2 prots and 1 heal (rather than the other way around), Divert Hexes is a poor choice imo. Try running a ZB and a RC, with one or both of them carrying a Purge Signet. If you know how to use Purge Signet correctly there is absolutely no reason to waste an elite on Divert Hexes. Also, if you're running GoLE + Aegis (which is a good idea with two prots), Glyph+ZB is suddenly remarkably superior to channeling in terms of energy management. Got a guy who's <50% health? Here; have ten energy! I've been running the Glyph/Aegis/ZB bar for a while now and I'm literally beside myself at how easy it is to keep my energy up.

Divert has fallen more or less off the face of the meta (except in paraspikes, which curiously I have yet to play against) largely because of the jagged/hexspam nerf. I used it a lot at first, but after a thorough evaluation I've decided that Purge Sig is far superior. The recharge is kinda a kick in the pants, but it's not meant to remove every hex--you just have to have a team that knows what the important hexes are and that they need to call them.

I agree with you here, I was just using those 2 as a quick example as I was half asleep as I wrote my post, but as it still stands, 8v8 brings far more utility than just 1 charachter as the poster had said.

tacitus · Feb 12, 2007, 02:15 AM // 02:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Many of the templates in the old HA were absolutely horrific when it comes to actually playing Guild Wars, but you ran them because they were useful in holding an altar. You didn't bring Choking Gas guy because he was a strong versatile character, you brought him because he can interrupt an enemy ghostly and prevent a cap. You don't bring a death necro because he's good, you bring him because Well Of The Profane and Putrid Explosion on the dias won games. You didn't bring pure healing monks because healing is a good line (it's not), you brought them because it's useful for making a non-kiting ghostly's red bar go up when Profane or mass enchant removal are flying around.

Im surprised at you for coming out with something like this Squidget.

The conversation has already dealt with sgas rangers and how they were only useful because of alters but thats only true to an extent. cgas is very good against caster spikes such as bloodspike. yeah i know its not hard to interupt most of the skills but the aoe was useful since in a normal bloodspike the target could start running away making the spikers ball up when it came to the follow up spikes. Also when these teams tried to make body blokes on relic runs and spike from that position found cgas to be a real problem. Now thats leaving aside teams that are just stupid enough to ball up without any encouragment.

As for the death necro, this is different because profane well was normally a wasted skill since most teams carried cc or some other corpse control if they were serious about holding the hall anyway. Most death necros were tainted and were used in many pressure builds from old school iway to balanced teams running a tainted amongst other conditions like posion/bleeding spamming rangers or hexs etc. In many cases profane was dropped for wards or other utility on this character anyway when consume corpse was common.

The 3rd healing monk may end up being dropped from the meta game but that depends on a lot of factors such as the quality of the monks, what other defence your team has such as spirits wards etc.

However you are right in suggesting that many players do make these teams with what is seen as satndard builds because it is easier than making new builds especially with pugs. However I would not be surprised that if 8v8 was permanent things like death necros remained in some balanced teams.

What I do feel is holding back the diversity of builds is the kill count maps. If these were removed for a different concept or even random on broken tower and courtyard like they are in the hall pressure and shutdown builds would be far more common than now. At the minute a lot of people are unwilling to take pressure teams when you need to score kills as fast as possible.

Hanging Man · Feb 12, 2007, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Ok so this thread should be closed and burnt. Constant pvpers complain on the forums about the state of HA.

6v6 is terrible give us 8v8 back. So Anet decides to give yall a weekend of exactly what you asked for. HA back to 8v8 and now we get more and more complainers.

So what would you prefer 8v8 or 6v6? Now I'm not gona argue on the new altar map because I haven't played it but 8v8 is what the people want. You got exaclty what you asked for

Wasteland Squidget · Feb 12, 2007, 03:01 AM // 03:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by tacitus

The conversation has already dealt with sgas rangers and how they were only useful because of alters but thats only true to an extent. cgas is very good against caster spikes such as bloodspike. yeah i know its not hard to interupt most of the skills but the aoe was useful since in a normal bloodspike the target could start running away making the spikers ball up when it came to the follow up spikes. Also when these teams tried to make body blokes on relic runs and spike from that position found cgas to be a real problem. Now thats leaving aside teams that are just stupid enough to ball up without any encouragment.

I think you're reading my post as saying "Choking Gas man is completely useless", which isn't what I said at all. Choking Gas was brought along as a way to make your ranger useful until he could turn on Seeking Arrows and interrupt a ghost on the altar forever.

That said, if you're building a character specifically to beat caster spike teams, is Choking Gas Man really the best you can come up with? When I build to beat a caster spike I bring domination mesmers and KDs and other templates with a variety of uses besides disrupting the spike. A guy who's only purpose is to interrupt in a tiny AoE wouldn't even make the list.

CG Man is a one-trick pony who gets steadily worse as the other team gets better. Sure, you hit multiple casters with the tiny adjacent AoE when a dumb Bloodspike PuG balls up in their wards or bodyblocks. The question is, what is CG man doing outside of those perfect situations where multiple casters with 2s+ spells are hugging each other? The answer: Not very much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tacitus

As for the death necro, this is different because profane well was normally a wasted skill since most teams carried cc or some other corpse control if they were serious about holding the hall anyway. Most death necros were tainted and were used in many pressure builds from old school iway to balanced teams running a tainted amongst other conditions like posion/bleeding spamming rangers or hexs etc. In many cases profane was dropped for wards or other utility on this character anyway when consume corpse was common.

This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. You brought corpse control into Tombs because you were worried about Profane on the altar owning you. You brought Profane because you didn't think you'd meet corpse control. Corpse control was brought along precisely because profane on the altar was such a powerful effect, and the rest of the stuff (Tainted Flesh, Wards, ect) were on that guy to make him useful on the way to the hall.

I agree that Death Necros are effective in something like IWAY though. Any build like IWAY or Thumpway where a lot of things die will make a death necro look good. Putrid and Death Nova can go insane in that environment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tacitus

The 3rd healing monk may end up being dropped from the meta game but that depends on a lot of factors such as the quality of the monks, what other defence your team has such as spirits wards etc.

Reading this, I'm not sure you understand why the third monk saw play. A third monk doesn't really replace off-monk defense. In practice, 3 monks is inefficent and leads to a lot more overhealing and redundancy than you need. Once you get past 2 monks, you're always better off with blindbots or wards or Aegis than a third monk, because those will reduce the damage you take and allow your two monks to get the most out of their heals.

The reason you brought 3 monks is because the ghostly takes a lot more damage than a halfway-decent Guild Wars player, by virtue of the fact that he doesn't kite. He'll stand there and let warriors beat his face in, so it was much harder to mitigate the damage on him. You needed 3 monks pumping him full of health AND a lot of off-monk defense to hold effectively. The third monk wasn't really brought along to heal your team, he was brought along to heal the ghost on the altar.

masta_yoda · Feb 12, 2007, 06:07 AM // 06:07

ummmm anet didnt exactly give us back the 8v8 we wanted (or at least i wanted).... the 8v8 many others want is old school with no kill count and normal hoh objectives.

Rey Lentless · Feb 12, 2007, 08:11 AM // 08:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lifeinthefridge

No whats sad is I thought you quit gw and your still trolling forums

agreed

I don't know why it would be a surprise to see old balance builds played this weekend (even when they aren't ideal compared to the new win conditions). It's been active since... Friday.

I disagree that a lot of the old balance builds were only suited towards holding and weren't that useful on the way to the HoH. Death necros used to be rather powerful with 0 cooldown putrid's (that did more damage I believe at the time). Even w/ cc spammers, profane usually found it's way onto the altar. SB was common for relic runs w/ only profane and chilblains going through it at the time and having a 3rd monk w/ a rather crappy elite was still useful enough for the 2 relic runs. The common 2 mes builds (migraine or mind wrack) were easier to deal with against a 3rd monk as well. E-Drain and channelling used to be significantly better as well and would commonly be on the monks helping w/ pressure.

If by some miracle we get 8v8 to stay again, I'm sure the balanced builds running will quickly improve.

The Silver Star · Feb 12, 2007, 08:16 AM // 08:16

I personally have not logged on to play 8v8 kill count, i too wanted 8v8 back but i felt that the new system was more of a problem than 6v6. I however would play 8v8 with the OLD maps, these new maps require nothing but more high DPS builds to farm the first few maps. And with 8 players this makes it much easier imo.

Yanman.be · Feb 12, 2007, 08:27 AM // 08:27

My guild has been running 4 sins ( 3 sp/boa and 1 moebius-db ), 1 weapon rit ( splinter weapon ftw, vital weapon ftw ) and 3 monk backline, with bonder ( bond, barrior, vital blessing ). Never lost a 1v1, except 1 relic run where we lacked some coordination.

Kill count was a bit harsh. Try not to get ganked.
We kinda owned kill count because once we started killling, we couldn't stop. We had like 12 points in 1 minute.

Murder ball...It was ok. Shadow Prisoners snare, we run with dash. Lost in HoH because I rubberbanded the last 3 seconds.

We had plenty of damage, utility, healing, and health. 8v8 more. Or 6v6 during weekdays, 8v8 weekends.

Patccmoi · Feb 12, 2007, 03:04 PM // 15:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yanman.be

My guild has been running 4 sins ( 3 sp/boa and 1 moebius-db ), 1 weapon rit ( splinter weapon ftw, vital weapon ftw ) and 3 monk backline, with bonder ( bond, barrior, vital blessing ). Never lost a 1v1, except 1 relic run where we lacked some coordination.

Kill count was a bit harsh. Try not to get ganked.
We kinda owned kill count because once we started killling, we couldn't stop. We had like 12 points in 1 minute.

Murder ball...It was ok. Shadow Prisoners snare, we run with dash. Lost in HoH because I rubberbanded the last 3 seconds.

We had plenty of damage, utility, healing, and health. 8v8 more. Or 6v6 during weekdays, 8v8 weekends.

Some guildies did very good with 5 sins too, 3 SP/BoA and 2 Temple Strike, winning every map till HoH. But honestly is that less gimmicky at all than a Rt spike? It's just a different sort of spike where instead of doing one very hard spike on 1 target you do multiple weaker spikes on many targets. It's not like it's anything close to balanced.

It's the same kind of 'bring tons of spiking chars' mentality that kill count leads to.

tacitus · Feb 12, 2007, 03:20 PM // 15:20

Squidget,

Im not saying cgas is the best i can come up with I was just using your own example. :P

I do see what your saying about people using the same templates but I dont think its as bad as you think. The skill that was best suited for keeping that silly hero alive on alters healing seed has been dropped by most teams now due to the lack of alters so in some sense people are adapting.

On the issue of third monk I think it will stay common depending on 8v8 being kept and kill count maps being changed and thus making shutdown pressure teams more common. If all it takes is one migraine mesmer with other forms of cover hexs to shut down a teams healing most people will bring that. Now i used migraine as an example but in general shutdown teams will make a huge comeback if teams only have 1 healing monk. The prot monk would not be able to keep up on his own in a 8v8 situation unless you are killing them very fast.

Overall the basic templates will change but i dont think they will change that much because of the lack of alters but who knows wouldnt be first time im wrong :P

Patccmoi · Feb 12, 2007, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by tacitus

Squidget,

Im not saying cgas is the best i can come up with I was just using your own example. :P

I do see what your saying about people using the same templates but I dont think its as bad as you think. The skill that was best suited for keeping that silly hero alive on alters healing seed has been dropped by most teams now due to the lack of alters so in some sense people are adapting.

On the issue of third monk I think it will stay common depending on 8v8 being kept and kill count maps being changed and thus making shutdown pressure teams more common. If all it takes is one migraine mesmer with other forms of cover hexs to shut down a teams healing most people will bring that. Now i used migraine as an example but in general shutdown teams will make a huge comeback if teams only have 1 healing monk. The prot monk would not be able to keep up on his own in a 8v8 situation unless you are killing them very fast.

Overall the basic templates will change but i dont think they will change that much because of the lack of alters but who knows wouldnt be first time im wrong :P

It's very easy with the new Rts buffs to have them doing something like Channeling + Restoration and provide very strong support healing if required without dedicating a full 3rd slot for a monk. Honestly a Rt with nothing else than MB&S can already provide serious healing. Could even give him something like Expel Hexes for elite as Channeling and Restoration are 2 lines that function perfectly well without any specific elite.

For example, run something like

Expel Hexes
Spirit Burn / Channeled Strike
Essence Strike
MB&S
Protective was Kaolai
Life
Bloodsong / Destruction
Flesh of my Flesh

94AL Rt that can hard rez, offensive spirit, 2 heal party skill, can do direct healing, remove condition (potentially multiple at once), remove hexes efficiently, etc. If you have any other spirits in the team to ensure than you have 1 up go for Spirit Burn to spike, otherwise use Channeled Strike. Depending on the situation, a char like that can easily assist offense pretty well or defense. Ofc you can set him up differently depending on your team setup, but was just to give an example.

I think that this kind of setup would be much more beneficial to a balanced team atm than wasting a slot on a 3rd monk that is mostly useless vs spikes (spikes have crappy DPS).

Priest Of Sin · Feb 12, 2007, 04:43 PM // 16:43

I wonder... for one weekend, what if they changed everything back to the RELEASE date? Skills, armor, ect were all reverted back. We'd see a TON of crap that could kill each other in seconds. Obsidian Flame, Air Spike, Ranger Spike, old-school Blood Spike, IWAY, Vim-way, Burn-spike... Matches in Halls would last a whole 20 seconds xD

lishi · Feb 12, 2007, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I think you're reading my post as saying "Choking Gas man is completely useless", which isn't what I said at all. Choking Gas was brought along as a way to make your ranger useful until he could turn on Seeking Arrows and interrupt a ghost on the altar forever.

that is true before faction release the chocking gas build was used much

Quote:

That said, if you're building a character specifically to beat caster spike teams, is Choking Gas Man really the best you can come up with? When I build to beat a caster spike I bring domination mesmers and KDs and other templates with a variety of uses besides disrupting the spike. A guy who's only purpose is to interrupt in a tiny AoE wouldn't even make the list.

A domination mesmer will work better to beat a spike , but a the chocking ranger have also other use : he will do a much better job in pressuring a with damage and interupt.

Quote:

This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. You brought corpse control into Tombs because you were worried about Profane on the altar owning you. You brought Profane because you didn't think you'd meet corpse control. Corpse control was brought along precisely because profane on the altar was such a powerful effect, and the rest of the stuff (Tainted Flesh, Wards, ect) were on that guy to make him useful on the way to the hall.

i think you underestimate Tainted fresh necro , alone it was able to pressure the enemy team much better then any other build , support with corpse control , and plus from the standard Tainted bar there was 2 free slot for utility.

Tainted necro was taken for pressure enemy team(and taking ward also on most of time) , plus on altar it was able to set up an usefull profane. not the other way around-

if i wanted just a profane it was much easier on some mesmer or ele.(plus take notice most of time the profane lied unused on the alter becouse the holding team wasn't able to keep up the hero anyway)

Quote:

I agree that Death Necros are effective in something like IWAY though. Any build like IWAY or Thumpway where a lot of things die will make a death necro look good. Putrid and Death Nova can go insane in that environment.

it was very good in any kind of condition build

Quote:

Reading this, I'm not sure you understand why the third monk saw play. A third monk doesn't really replace off-monk defense. In practice, 3 monks is inefficent and leads to a lot more overhealing and redundancy than you need. Once you get past 2 monks, you're always better off with blindbots or wards or Aegis than a third monk, because those will reduce the damage you take and allow your two monks to get the most out of their heals.

that in theory but blind get removed , aegis get removed and don't protect spells and similar

Quote:

The reason you brought 3 monks is because the ghostly takes a lot more damage than a halfway-decent Guild Wars player, by virtue of the fact that he doesn't kite. He'll stand there and let warriors beat his face in, so it was much harder to mitigate the damage on him. You needed 3 monks pumping him full of health AND a lot of off-monk defense to hold effectively. The third monk wasn't really brought along to heal your team, he was brought along to heal the ghost on the altar.

you are assuming your only heal monk will heal undisturbed. that was not true on old 8v8.

some of old monk annoyance.

Energy denial : a monk with a focus switch will help to mitigate the effect but still he will only able to heal a fraction of the normal heal.

Migrane : even with holy veil it completly depend on how good the mesmer are. a good one will interupt your spell even without migrane and when the veil get interrupted you will have to really on the other team member hex.

Chocking gas : timing the healing between the arrow help a little but you still get many healing interrupted by savage and dist shot.

see? its not like you can predict without playing and testing how a thing works.

maybe 2 monk backline work now but they don't worked before(even when you are not playing a altar map with a ghost to babysit) i seen many team try that but they always lost against pressure team.

masta_yoda · Feb 12, 2007, 09:18 PM // 21:18

@^^ iA ran a two monk backline(wod and prot) and probably flawlessed most teams. most nr tranq in 8v8 had 2 monk backline.....

Vermilion · Feb 12, 2007, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

...

All the best balanced builds in the old HA were built around dias, but now that dias is no longer relevant, it's funny to see the old templates still see play. You see teams with a trapper or a third monk who apparently haven't thought at all about why that guy is there, or what his purpose is in the build now that holding is gone.

Its sad, most of the pugging I did during the weekend had a 3rd monk, and I didn't really think about it.

That being said, I agree with what others have posted concerned the HA meta as 8v8. Some changes to kill count maps and a skill balance and I think we'll see an improvement. Rit spike isn't even funny its so imbalanced, and that it will allow bad teams to beat somewhat better teams running balanced isn't okay. For someone of a lesser skill level, there is no reason to play balanced. You won't beat more than the worst spike teams, and no decent teams otherwise. I experienced minor success pugging with SP sin etc groups, and those are the teams I see forming most. Besides Bspike/Iway that is..

Randomway Ftw · Feb 12, 2007, 09:55 PM // 21:55

I really hate it when people who hardly ever played HA at all, talk about how much it sucked and how stupid the builds were, I don't really care what you think.

It was fun, it was working fine, ANET ruined it. Lets hope it doesn't take another 4 months to realize this mistake.

Lifeinthefridge · Feb 12, 2007, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

One of the more amusing things about this weekend has been the 'balanced builds.' Specifically, the way that so many of them are absolutely terrible. Choking Gas/SA rangers, 3-monk backlines, death necros, ect. were all good in the holding 8v8 meta because they were relevant to the silly "Protect the NPC" meta of old HA.

Many of the templates in the old HA were absolutely horrific when it comes to actually playing Guild Wars, but you ran them because they were useful in holding an altar. You didn't bring Choking Gas guy because he was a strong versatile character, you brought him because he can interrupt an enemy ghostly and prevent a cap. You don't bring a death necro because he's good, you bring him because Well Of The Profane and Putrid Explosion on the dias won games. You didn't bring pure healing monks because healing is a good line (it's not), you brought them because it's useful for making a non-kiting ghostly's red bar go up when Profane or mass enchant removal are flying around.

ps there are skills way better than others in gw thats why those are used

All the best balanced builds in the old HA were built around dias, but now that dias is no longer relevant, it's funny to see the old templates still see play. You see teams with a trapper or a third monk who apparently haven't thought at all about why that guy is there, or what his purpose is in the build now that holding is gone.

First of all squidget id like you to get off your little admin throne and please stop closing my threads because you don't agree with my opinion first of all, and my thread was opening up a new discussion. Second please don't delete my posts when i'm obviously pointing out an obvious troller. 3rd you complain that your HOLY GRAIL "BALANCED" isnt up to your standards. If you havent noticed 2 more professions and 350 skills have been added to the game since the last time we had 8v8. Second there is no such thing as a defined balanced build its just peoples way of trying to prove there good players because there not running some EVIL gimmik build that was once created by an actual person. Sorry but guild wars wasen't designed to only play with 1 warrior 1 ele 3 monks a mesmer and a ranger. But by the way can you explain the definition of a balanced because im not sure if everyone knows what one is. Also its obvious that people are going to run old templates because there as smart as you and don't know that other skills were added to the game. As for using a trapper and a third monk get over it why cant people use these if these are perfectly fine things to do. Also please give it more then 2 days for more builds to evolve sorry but with 10 proffessions and as many skills that there are a perfect balanced is not going to happen. Im guessing btw your one of those people who only balanced builds take skill am I right?
QQ more please
KTHX BYE