Curse

Van Goghs Ear · Aug 17, 2006, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Since I realized there has been a huge influx lately of awful builds brewing up from the plague that is RA, I thought I'd offer some insight into some pretty standard and common builds and roles for the player just starting out in TA and looking to get some Gladiator points or just have fun in TA without the headaches of blind PUGing or being reduced to only being able to play in RA.

A guide to successful PUGing in TA:

For starters, not all PUGs in TA are built equal which can be said for any of the arena areas. You have to know what kind of PUG to look for. The way I see it, the most common kinds of PUGs are as follows:

-A random mish mash of people running awful builds who will simply take whatever players they can get because no other reasonable players will take them. To know what to look for these groups typically do not have a monk, have fire eles, have 'tanks', etc.

-There is also the 'test' PUG who is usually claiming to be testing the build that is going to rock the meta game. These groups are usually very unsuccessful and filled with players who have not thought out dps calculations and require their opponent to act in a predictable manner to be successful.

-The other most common PUG, and the one you should be looking out to join is the balanced PUG. This PUG may not be the best group or the best build, but they are at least thoughtful enough to form a balanced shutdown that typically consists of some sort of healer/prot, an anti melee shutdown, a caster/monk shutdown, and some damage to take advantage of targets being shutdown so you can advance to the next match. You should be looking for these PUGs not so much to win 10 consecutive matches for a point, but rather to find players in the same boat as you. These players have some awareness of the metagame and at least know what not to run. Find the ones you like and the ones you thought were very skilled and get them on your friends list.

The Ultimate Goal of PUGing:

Eventually your goal will be to weed out the bad players and get the good ones on your friends list so you no longer have to PUG it.

How can you help your PUG?

First, you can help your PUG by being familiar with relevant builds to the current metagame. Here is where I will come in to hopefully assist you. To begin with you need to know what kind of group you are joining to bring the proper skills or builds that will synergize with the rest of the group. For example, If you are going to bring a curse necro as your form of melee shutdown, the group you're joining will probably require one other dedicated hexer or else the pressure will be easy for the opposing team to manage. The key to these sort of pressure builds is to make sure that you are overloading on a particular type of pressure hence making it to hard for the support to keep up. If you bring some hexes and some conditions, they will easily be dealt with. If you bring lots of hexes or lots of conditions you will find your enemy having difficulty to cope with your pressure. There is also the stance of a more balanced approach resulting in your support classes shutting the enemy support classes down. By doing so you will ensure that your damage dealer(s) can do what they need to do.

Individual build types:

The Shock Axe W/E

axe 16
strength 12
air 6

weapons:

set 1
zealous axe of fortitude and a strength shield +30 health -2 dmg in a stance

set 2
vampiric axe of fortitude to switch to or an elemental axe (for attacking other warriors) or idealy both

set 3
try to bring a wand if you can to build adren.

skills:

Shock
Evicerate (E)
Executioner's Strike
Bull's Strike
Disrupting Chop
Frenzy
Rush
Res Sig

Role: This Character's role is typically to build adren on an enemy support class and then spike on a different target during a called spike usually involving a blackout on the monk or a diversion. You can use bull's strike to mitigate kiting or harrass someone who is on your monk. Disrupting chop is great to beat down diversion spammers or stop the enemy from resing a fallen ally. Rush is used as a cover stance for frenzy and can provide an excellent opportunity to lay in a bull's strike on a kiting monk or mesmer. This build synergizes well with most balanced groups as a tried tested and true form of damage.

The Gale Dom Me/E

Domination 14-16
Fast Casting 9
Inspiration 10-12
Air 5

This particular Dom mes uses an elite that does not involve or require attributes therefore I feel it is perfectly acceptable to run it without a superior rune if you so choose to. I leave that to the discretion of the user.

Weapons:

set 1
+5 energy axe of fortitude
+12 energy offhand with +30 fortitude and 20% recharge on domination spells

set 2
-5 energy axe of fortitude
Shield with +30 health and -5 damage 20% (this is for your minus energy set if you have wither, malaise, or an edenial on you, swap to this set to mitigate damage or remove energy denial hexes)

skills:

Blackout
Diversion
Shame
Gale
Shatter Enchantment
Drain Enchantment
Expel Hexes (E)
Res Sig

Role: This character's task is primary shutdown and keeping your support and warrior clean of severe hexes. Get your teamates to call their hexes in team chat or vent in order to know what you should bother getting or just let sit if it isn't doing anything. You should begin getting used to shutting down 2 seperate targets at once. Your goal is to keep the monk shutdown while also potentially mildly shutting down one target on the opposing team that is gimping your team's ability to cause damage. If it is a severe case, you can swap to primarily shut this target down and get your warrior on the monk. Use diversion to try to interrupt key skills: Draw conditions if you have a blinder, expel hexes if you have an ineptitude mesmer, Distortion if your warrior's target is spamming it to mitigate pressure. Blackout enemy monks, casters who are giving you problems, or enemy warriors to kill their adren. Try to divert a monk's divine boon by shattering them, galing them and then throwing a diversion on them. Try galing and diverting a monk on a spike, this gives the monk an option to either save the target and divert a key heal (ie. reversal) or allow the target to die. You can also use the gale dom to lock down a toucher giving your team issues or divert the lead or offhand attack of an assassin. This build provides you with the versatility to shutdown numerous types of opponents, not just monks.

Melandru's Ranger (Enchantment hatred) R/Me

Marksmanship 14
Wilderness 11
Expertise 12

Weapons:

set 1
Vampiric Recurve bow of fortitude

set 2
Vampiric shortbow of fortitude

skills:

distracting shot
savage shot
dual shot
debilitating shot
pin down or inspired hex
melandru's arrows (E)
Whirling Defense
Res Sig

Role: This build works best in a high pressure build, usually with an apply poison thumper and an ineptitude mesmer. The role of this target is to spread bleeding, interrupt ememy support casters, and pressure enchanted targets. Use debilitating shot to pressure the enemy monk.

The Wild Shove Assassin A/W

Dagger 16
Critical 13
Tactics 3

Weapons:

set 1
zealous daggers of fortitude

set 2
elemental daggers of fortitude

Skills:

Shove (E)
falling spider
twisting fangs
distrupting stab
fox fangs
horns of the ox
wild blow
Res sig (or death charge...this is tricky and depends on how confident you are with your team. I recommend a res sig)

Role: This assassin is great for hunting spirit spammers, trappers, touch rangers, etc. Wild blow the stances and go to town, use shove as an unconditional kd to get a pesky skill that you must get like displacement, or anything else of that high priority. Chain your combo in different orders, especially if you need to cover your deep wound, make sure you run it in a combo before you run falling spider. This build works extremely well in high pressure situations. It can put pressure to pretty much any class including warriors, and you should be able to solo anywarrior with relative ease, aside from one with dolyak sig. There is nothing more satisfying than completely dominating a no-good ritualist on the opposing team.

Bunny Thumper R/W

hammer 12
Beast master 12-14 (this build can be run without a sup rune and is a good idea based on the low armor class for this melee character)
Expertise 9

Weapons:

Set 1
Vampiric Hammer of Fortitude

Set 2
Elemental Hammer of Fortitude

Skills:

Ferocious Strike (E)
Crushing Blow
Hammer Bash
Irresistable Blow
Tiger's Fury
Run as One (or Comfort animal, brutal strike, apply poison)
Charm Animal
res sig

Role: Same as a warrior. Very high pressure/KD. Works great in pressure oriented builds. The major weakness of the thumper is his low armor and the fact that if his pet dies and does not have a res, he is just a relatively weak warrior. Works well in balanced builds, with a melandru's ranger, or an earthbind rit build.

Inepticlubsy Mesmer Me/N/Mo

Illusion 16
Fast Casting 10
Inspiration 10

Weapons:

Set 1
+5 energy axe of fortitude
+12 energy focus +30 health 20% recharge on illusion skills

Set 2
Low energy set

Skills:

Ineptitude (E)
Clubsiness
Spirit of Failure
Images of Remorse
Distortion
Drain enchantment or Inspired hex (based on what your team might need)
Price of Failure or Draw conditions (again it is situational)
Res Sig

Role: High damage shutdown on Warriors, Rangers, Assassins, and anyone using a weapon to attack. Look for frenzy warriors as they will be your sweetest score raking in around 300 damage from an ineptitude and only using 10 energy in the process. This can place massive pressure on the enemy monk. Spread images around on targets and use it to cover spirit of failure. SoF is the bread and butter skill of this bar and your primary energy management. Use it in conjunction with distortion if a warrior is attacking you to actually gain energy from using distortion. A solid ineptitude mesmer can easily manage a couple melee characters. If you do run an inept mesmer it is fairly essential that you have a target pressuring/shutting down the hex removal of your foes (ie. expel hexes mesmer).

Strategies for Success:

-Do NOT monk stomp. You shouldn't need to have more than one ally tending to the monk, if you do, there is a problem with your build/tactics. Sure during a spike it's fine, but during regular play you should be pressuring as many targets as possible to mitigate the damage coming through to your end.

-Learn to adapt to targets that are shutting your build down. Mesmers do not NEED to focus exclusively on monks, they can switch to shutdown a Blinding flash ele for example that is shutting down your warrior. Diversion on a Blinding Flash is nasty. So is shattering Ele enchants like ether prod and dual attunments. If you have a strong knowledge of builds, then you will know exactly how to beat the team your facing before the match even starts.

-If you lose, don't just press enter again and go. Ask yourself why you lost, was it your tactics, were you out played, or was your build simply unable to cope with the pressure the enemy was dealing. If that is the case you may have to make adjustments. THINK about everything

-Be aware of everything, scroll through all the targets first, try to predict what they are running, who needs to be on what, how you should be positioned, which class will likely be doing what, etc. For example if I see a Me/N and N/A, chances are they're going to be doing an SB/RI spike. I make sure we position our interrupter as the front most target and move him in to interrupt the soul barbs, if for some reason he misses it, if he's the only one in range, the expel mesmer or blessed light monk can immediately pull it off having him selected since he's the only target in hex range. Thoughtful moves like this can really change the face of the battle you're fighting in.

-Know WHY you are doing what you are doing. So many times I've seen scrub NR/Tranq groups keep wasting their time putting NR and Tranquility up against us when we are running the same build. What a waste, if I had a oath trap/spirit spammer on my team like that, I would go back to AD1 and kick him from my group. Wasting 10 seconds on skills that have no affect on the opposing party is an absolutely obscene waste of time and potentially a game costing action. Move beyond skill spamming and understand why and when to use each skill.

-If you still play a lot in RA, stop. It's only teaching you bad skills and builds. Learn to play real PvP in a team scenario. Unlearn everything you have from RA aside from how to kite...but based on what I've seen in RA, most people in RA never learned that either.

-Instead of trashing or cursing out people who beat you, try to befriend them, because they are better than you and can probably teach you a thing or two.

-Practice.

I will post more builds later, but I'm done for now, and if there are any requests for specific successful team builds I can try to accomodate, or if there are any questions in general on how to successfully score lots of gladiator points, because we all know the competition in TA has certainly increased a far cry from what it was before titles.

GL

I'll try to add BL monk and some other builds to the post later.

TheOneMephisto · Aug 17, 2006, 08:25 PM // 20:25

some stuff to add, advertise for organized teams if you're trying to get into a team, look for guild teams and teams on vent/TS, try to get into a guild playing a lot of TA or at least befriend people in guilds like that, etc. (aka too lazy to think of other stuff.)

Oh and don't get your hopes up too much, building a friends list takes a LONG time.

remmeh · Aug 17, 2006, 11:11 PM // 23:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Van Goghs Ear

-Instead of trashing or cursing out people who beat you, try to befriend them, because they are better than you and can probably teach you a thing or two.

doesn't help when they're being cocky about it

JR · Aug 18, 2006, 08:33 AM // 08:33

Excellent post, much appreciated. Stuck for as long as you keep it updated.

Legendary Shiz · Aug 21, 2006, 03:17 AM // 03:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by remmeh

doesn't help when they're being cocky about it

That sucks, but the majority of players will help you or at worst ignore you.

D E L E T E D · Aug 21, 2006, 06:21 PM // 18:21

I agree that a key to sucess in Team arenas is the use of communication. If a player say that he/she/it doesn't have vent or ts then you might want to rethink even playing with them. As you get better at ta running without vent is a little easier because you probably know your teammates, but if you are puggin a whole team i would definitely use vent/ts.

As for the builds, idk if this is really going to change the skill level of the PUG type player.

Legendary Shiz · Aug 21, 2006, 06:46 PM // 18:46

lawl tripple post

It might not raise the skill level of the PUG, but at least they won't be running some crappy build. They get a chance to run something that is useful, and gives them a chance of winning.

BTW nice ava personally, I think you should echo the heal sig. So it's frenzy + heal sig + heal sig ftw

Van Goghs Ear · Aug 21, 2006, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by D E L E T E D

I agree that a key to sucess in Team arenas is the use of communication. If a player say that he/she/it doesn't have vent or ts then you might want to rethink even playing with them. As you get better at ta running without vent is a little easier because you probably know your teammates, but if you are puggin a whole team i would definitely use vent/ts.

As for the builds, idk if this is really going to change the skill level of the PUG type player.

the builds are not about changing the skill level of the pug. They are here to give the pug'er a standing chance at getting into a pug that is at least half way decent. If you aren't running something that can fit the style of play of most groups, then you won't get into a group that can actually make a lasting run of at least 5+ consecutive wins.

for example:

e/mo 1 has skills like stone shards, armor of earth, earth attunment, obsidion flame, healing breeze, etc.

e/mo 2 has blinding flash, lightning orb, ether prodigy, draw conditions, etc.

both e/mo's will probably get into a pug group. Now let me ask you, which e/mo has the likeliness of getting into the more informed/educated/skilled pug? Which e/mo will be more likely to slit his wrists because he hates life?

by playing with the better pug, the player has an opportunity to see how a good solid pug opperates as opposed to how a bad one opperates.

You run the standard builds for a while, learn to play, get confident, get people confident in you. Find out what works for you and what doesn't and then you can start getting creative.

even the mighty TA guild needs a 'shove in the right direction when it comes to effective team building. Builds are the foundations to developing high level pvp skills. Granted the build is not enough on it's own, it's the responsibility of the user to push the boundaries of build design based on knowledge gained from playing said build.

sno · Aug 21, 2006, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by D E L E T E D

I agree that a key to sucess in Team arenas is the use of communication. If a player say that he/she/it doesn't have vent or ts then you might want to rethink even playing with them. As you get better at ta running without vent is a little easier because you probably know your teammates, but if you are puggin a whole team i would definitely use vent/ts.

As for the builds, idk if this is really going to change the skill level of the PUG type player.

Quote:

Originally Posted by D E L E T E D

We([TA]) seem to run very well with each other using very little or no vent communication to play. We do this by playing ta with each other every day and no exactly how each other moves, spikes, etc. etc.

Interesting contradiction. No matter how much you know who you're playing with, the things you need to be communicating are the things the other team is doing. The other team is the one that wants to get you all killed, your job is to make sure they don't.

TheOneMephisto · Aug 21, 2006, 10:07 PM // 22:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Interesting contradiction. No matter how much you know who you're playing with, the things you need to be communicating are the things the other team is doing. The other team is the one that wants to get you all killed, your job is to make sure they don't.

Well, the main thing is that a) everyone should already know what the other team is doing and b) we can go deal with what they're doing without people telling us.

Of course, I'm not saying that you shouldn't use vent once you're good or anything, and I'm sure deleted isn't. I'm jsut saying that if occasionally you want to run a fast run or something and don't feel like setting up, you can actually run without vent with a decent percentage of your effectiveness intact.

sno · Aug 22, 2006, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Well, the main thing is that a) everyone should already know what the other team is doing and b) we can go deal with what they're doing without people telling us.

Of course, I'm not saying that you shouldn't use vent once you're good or anything, and I'm sure deleted isn't. I'm jsut saying that if occasionally you want to run a fast run or something and don't feel like setting up, you can actually run without vent with a decent percentage of your effectiveness intact.

Well of course a good team can do alright against mediocre teams without communication. To beat a truly exceptional team though, or a decent team that out-builds you, you need full communication among players. Why people build only to beat mediocre teams is beyond me. I always build and play to beat everyone, regardless of their build or skill.

xAzNxStYlEx · Aug 23, 2006, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Originally Posted by D E L E T E D
We([TA]) seem to run very well with each other using very little or no vent communication to play. We do this by playing ta with each other every day and no exactly how each other moves, spikes, etc. etc.

lol, TA used to be in DBD alliance, and using no communication for them sound almost... hard to believe, everytime they want me to play with them, vent time, everytime qweer tell me it;s a great game when they fought against DBD and lost, there will be some sentence about deleted Yelling on vent, LOL.
Anyway back to the subject.
jus to make it simple-r. Every Ta build need to be somewat like thisIncluding PUG
Dmg Dealer: warrior, thumpers, air spiker(havent use air spiker cause of rit)
Melee Shut Down: ss necro, blind bot, pof+sof mes, inep mes.(keep the monk safe:-))
Monk Shut Down: Mes/?, can be necro for gaze of contemp, ele for gale, monk for draw condition, etc.
Healer: boon/prot, blessed light, er... woh?
This is somewat like balance, but to me, when u making a new build, u should think about these roles first. because, it's very important which help u in long run.
like i saw build that's concentrate on one thing but lack of the other thing.
rezq usually run 3 thumpers, against my team, it's gg cause our mes/mec can handle up to 3 melee dmg dealer.
some team running 2 monks, strong defense but usually with 2 monks, u kinda over heal, waste of mana, strong defense but weak offense, even if u are running 1 warrior and 1 monk shut down.
so my advice is, keep ur team balancing out and stuff.
Ignore the spelling btw

D E L E T E D · Aug 23, 2006, 07:11 PM // 19:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Van Goghs Ear

even the mighty TA guild needs a 'shove in the right direction when it comes to effective team building.

Well since the "ALMIGHTY" eat players have to make a comment (a sly asshole comment at that), it is necessary that i have to defend everything I say.

I wasn't saying in my previous posts that i don't use vent or communication, I was saying that my guild plays a lot together and sometimes we don't have to be chatterboxes to win. When we play a decent team that we know will give us a hard time communication definitely goes up.

oh god its ziek.

Miss Arcaine · Aug 23, 2006, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Hummm that melandru arrow attributes are retarded... 12 expetise 14 marks.. more like 14 exp 12 marks... sorry about that correction oh mighty van gogh, inventer of all builds on earth, but it was stronger than me. Well, see you in TA and have a good match and yet no need for the gg's unless you win, my friend(This last sentence doesn't apply to the other members of [Eat] which are(IMO) worthy of their reputation).

Van Goghs Ear · Aug 23, 2006, 08:58 PM // 20:58

lol.

please keep flames out of this thread directed at specific individuals as I would prefer that it wasn't locked since I need to make some updates to it. If you have a beef with me that's fine, just keep it out of here.

as for the atts on the melandru ranger, the exp vs marks attributes are by no means going to make or break the build. It's not like a cripshot ranger that's spamming a high energy skill, I've run the build with 12 expertise many times and I have never run into any energy management issues, but then I'm not really spamming interrupts. I like the high marksmanship because of the spike assist capability that the melandru ranger has especially considering how many targets are enchanted in metagame, and it's just not worth upping the WS for melandru's since the break points don't effect the damage output severely.

anyways, I'm not a build inventOr in TA, but I do think we have helped to set a lot of trends in arenas. Oh well, agree or disagree, it doesn't really matter to me what you think. It just amuses me is all when Eat runs a build in TA for a week and suddenly there are direct variants of it popping up. It puts a smile on my face

JR · Aug 23, 2006, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Arcaine

Hummm that melandru arrow attributes are retarded... 12 expetise 14 marks.. more like 14 exp 12 marks... sorry about that correction oh mighty van gogh, inventer of all builds on earth, but it was stronger than me.

14 expertise on a Melandru's Ranger? Please pass whatever you have been smoking.

Cripshots generally roll with about 15, because they are expected to spam a 15 energy skill, Melandrus's come nowhere near that, and you can get away with far less expertise.

Van Goghs Ear · Aug 23, 2006, 09:41 PM // 21:41

please show me where I flamed a specific individual in this thread (which is against the posting rules) and I will gladly appologize.

I even avoided flaming a completely asinine correction (posted in an extremely rude manner, reflecting terrible grammar) to the melandru build for the sake of being civil.

Divineshadows · Aug 23, 2006, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Here is the list of what I consider to be the missing characters from the list:

Cripshot Ranger
Air Ele "Flashbot" (also sometimes see Fast Cast Flashbots but they have no draw conditions which makes me sad)
Boon Prot Monk
Blessed Light Monk (Healing)
Blessed Light Monk (Protection)
Enraged Lunge Thumper
Oath Shot Trapper
Fast Cast Curses
Ritual Lord Ritualist (with either Earthbind or Doom)
Dragon Slasher (bull's charge sword is also seen but it is much rarer)
Persistence Migraine
Offering of Blood Blood/Curses Necro

sno · Aug 23, 2006, 10:20 PM // 22:20

I'd leave cripshot out if this is meant to be for newer players. Cripshot is one of the hardest builds to play (well,) and if run poorly can be a burden on your team. As for oath shot and rit lord, I'd really rather keep random pugs as free of those as possible

. Enraged would be nice, as well as the oob/curse nec, the flashbot, and 2 of the 3 monk builds (3 is just overkill,) but the others really aren't "staples" in pugs.

Van Goghs Ear · Aug 23, 2006, 10:31 PM // 22:31

maybe someone from TA guild could post an enraged build as they have some nice beast master builds that use the skill

but I'm not very well versed in that area

I was planning on posting the following builds still:

Cripshot Ranger
Air Ele "Flashbot" (also sometimes see Fast Cast Flashbots but they have no draw conditions which makes me sad)
Blessed Light Monk (Healing)
Dev Hammer Warrior

I figured one of you guys could post the prot builds as they are also not my area of expertise. As for rits, I'd just as soon not encourage that kind of bad behaviour. Oath shot trappers are a wee bit situational IMO and don't really have a place on this list.

I think it would be nice if this thread could grow into a community contribution.