Curse

jacketate · Oct 15, 2006, 09:14 PM // 21:14

when i observe GVG battles i notice that a lot of guilds run gimmick builds that centralise around 1 idea e.g. IWAY or B-spike.

All the best guilds win with a good balanced guild but lesser guilds hav major problems against the gimmick builds, is there a set up you can run which can stop these gimmicks as my guild suffers problems playing them.

Xasew · Oct 15, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

*edit* Screwed with the editing.

Spikes are effectively countered with interrupts(vs Obs Spike only Psychic Distraction is good), Migraine, Arcane Conundrum, Infuse and such. But remember that if you start taking skills to counter some gimmicks, you might lose defence/offense against non-gimmicks, which might overall be a bad thing. So be careful when swapping skills, because it might backfire. Also, against spikes a good idea is to practice splitting and tactics overall.

Man I'm tired, I can hardly figure out what I'm writing myself.

Thom Bangalter · Oct 15, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

It's easy, really. Just play the metagame. If everyone is running obs flame and b spike (which was the case this season) just run the counter to it, i.e. migraine mesmers and lots of interrupts. Make it balanced enough that you can win agaisnt non-gimmick teams, and voila! You've got yourself a build.

stueyman2099 · Oct 15, 2006, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xasew

vs Obs Spike only Psychic Distraction is good

More Blackout please.

JR · Oct 16, 2006, 12:15 AM // 00:15

We run a Dom Mesmer and a Cripshot with Blackout, and infuse on me. It pretty much makes spike free rating, no matter what variety. We haven't lost to spike in more games that I care to remember with this build.

Thom Bangalter · Oct 16, 2006, 12:19 AM // 00:19

according to guild history you wtf pwned us earlier today, though I wasn't on.

Remember, spiking=nub.

Wasteland Squidget · Oct 16, 2006, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

according to guild history you wtf pwned us earlier today, though I wasn't on.

You guys weren't running spike then. You were running some smite build on Burning Isle.

As far as beating the gimmicks, it's primarily a matter of building against them. You have to pack enough counters into your balanced build that you can survive against a variety of gimmicks while still doing decently against other builds. You also need to be prepared to change things up as the metagame progresses (which it does VERY quickly at the end of the season.) Hexes and spike have both been quite popular, so we ran a dual-Blackout build with NR. We started to take losses when we ran into several VoD builds that were designed to run around in circles for 20 minutes, since we didn't have a lot of movement control.

You also need to play pretty well, especially if you're not as experienced playing against spike. Organize targets and arrange which characters will be interrupting/shutting down which spikers. Your warriors will be up harrassing their spikers, so they're also in a good position to call when the spike is happening and where it will hit, based on the facing of the enemy casters. Splitting is good, but don't overdo it - you need your disruption at the stand, and preferably enough pressure to create at least some threat so they can't spike too freely. We were able to beat a few well-known spikes by sending just one Bull's Charge/Plague Touch warrior into their base as the match began and disrupting them at the stand. The warrior could drop NPCs delay their flagger enough to give us constant boosts, and eventually they folded under pressure at the stand.

The end of the season is always hideously bad for this stuff, as everyone tries to farm rating. Every build in the last week of the season should have stuff like Shields Up, Infuse Health, Purge Signet, ect. Even with all this stuff, it's not infrequent that balanced builds get smashed by the gimmicks and tanked. That's why a lot of the top 10 guilds played in smurfs today - they didn't want to risk a tank to some random spike guild that they didn't have the counter for.

Lews · Oct 16, 2006, 06:48 AM // 06:48

What about us JR?

Wasteland Squidget · Oct 16, 2006, 06:54 AM // 06:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lews

What about us JR?

AFIAK, we've never played you guys on that build. We lost rather badly when we played you on triple smite, a build with 0 spike disruption.