Curse

Warskull · Aug 19, 2006, 04:39 PM // 16:39

The random arenas are an easily accessible arena available to all players. In these arenas you are pair with three random allies and face four random opponents. While victory or defeat can sometimes be out of your hands, you can stack the odds in your favor. If you are a new player looking for a little more success in PvP or a higher level players looking to farm some gladiator points, this guide should help you out.

The play level in random arena is fairly low, thus to have consistent success you will have to carry your team. This plays very heavily into character choice. The two best ways to carry your team are keeping them alive or killing the enemy with ruthless efficiency. To keep your team alive some form of monk is ideal. When it comes to killing power a pressure build is usually best, thus warriors and thumpers are very strong choices. However a spike build can also work such as an assassin or elementalist. The key is the ability to score kills quickly and efficiently. A third option is a shutdown style build or slower killing degen style build. However you influence on the team is limited in these roles and you are at the mercy of the rest of your team and have to be prepared to swap teams quite often.

The mechanics of random arena must also be kept in mind. Teams that lose are broken up and the weak players are returned to the player pool for future matches. Teams that win continue to play. Thus a team that wins 2-3 matches will often be faced against teams that just formed and may have weaker players or weak team construction. Keeping this mechanic in mind, it is in your best interest to get out of weak teams as soon as possible. Strong teams rez quickly, tend to output damage, and play aggressively. Indicators that your team is weak and will not last long are slow rezing, large amount of hesitance (especially after one player has gone into the enemy), and weak DPS. If you feel your team is weak, leave at the end of the match (or if they leave you dead, just leave then.) Usually, a team that you feel can last for five matches is a team worth keeping. As a monk it is especially important to leave if your team has weak DPS or weak rezing. You can’t kill as a monk. Thus if your team can’t output damage matches will go very slow. In addition it is very easy to carry a team who can output even mediocre damage as a monk. This means you have great success team hopping as a monk and can go in and out to find that team you feel can go the full ten.

The biggest part about being successful in random arena is being a strong component to your team. You want to be a backbone to your team and push them towards success. The first key to being a strong part of the team is carrying a rez sig and being fast on the rez. In random arenas matches are won or lost on the rez. Ideally you want a player back on his feet within five seconds of death. I’ll go into RA as a thumper and kill three enemy players before I die. My team will then proceed to lose the match because they fail to rez me while they let the enemy rez chain back to full strength. If you are playing anything other than a monk, you need to have a rez sig in your bar. If you are playing a monk and are not confident in your abilities, a rez sig doesn’t hurt in RA. Playing aggressive is also a great boon to your team. The goal of RA is to kill the enemy. The only way to win is to kill all four members of the enemy team. Thus you need to output damage and encourage your teammates to output damage. Unfortunately, most RA players are quite bad and afraid of dying. This means that you will have to lead the way. Push aggressively into the enemy, do not give them a chance to assess your team and develop strategy. Knock the wind out of them early and keep the pressure up until they die. If your team does not follow, this indicates they are most likely weak players and you are better off with a new team. Aggressive conflict lets you know your team’s strength very quickly. If they are weak, you are better off re-entering and getting a new group.

Assess the strength of the individual players on your team. Often times one or two players will be decidedly better than the rest. This lets you know who is worth supporting and who gets priority on rez. For example, you are playing a Boon Prot. Your teammates are a W/Mo stance tank, a thumper, and an interrupt spam ranger. The thumper is outputting excellent damage so you should prioritize your healing and condition removal on him. Meanwhile the W/Mo for the most part is dead weight. You can toss spare heals on him, but you aren’t very concerned with the enemy trying to shut him down (he is already doing nothing for your team.) Lend support to the strong players and don’t waste effort supporting the weak players. Rez the strongest players first.

When attacking the enemy team, deconstruct them rapidly. If the enemy player has a monk assess his healing capabilities. Some monks are great at healing themselves but suck at healing other players. Other monks are fragile themselves. If a monk is hard to kill while you are on him, try swapping targets to another fragile target. If a monk is preventing you from killing targets, he will need to be focused on. Sometimes you can kill through his healing. Put a high priority on stopping enemies that shut you down. If the enemy has an anti-warrior hex necromancer, when you see an opportunity, kill him. This enables you to finish the rest of their team quickly. Kill enemy players who output damage before those who soak up damage. A stance tank doesn’t hurt your team much and can be safely killed that. That thumper who just turned your monk into goop is high on the priority list.

Finally, some good RA builds that can carry a team quite well.

Quote:

RA Boon Prot
Mo/Me

12+1+3 Divine Favor
9+1 Prot
9 Inspiration

Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Signet of Devotion
Mend Condition
Holy Veil
Contemplation of Purity
Divine Boon
Energy Drain

Quote:

RA Thumper
R/W

12 Hammer Mastery
11+1+3 Best Mastery
6+1 Expertise

Irresistible Blow
Hammer Bash
Crushing Blow
Ferocious Strike
Comfort Animal
Charm Animal
Run as One
Rez Sig

Quote:

Shock Warrior
W/E
12+1+3 Axe Mastery
8+1 Strength
10+1 Tactics

Eviscerate
Executioner’s Strike
Axe Rake
Healing Signet
Shock
Rush
Frenzy
Rez Sig

Vindexus · Aug 19, 2006, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Great read, Warskull.

I think more emphasis needs to be put on ressing your teammates. Also, it helps to just say "res" in chat as soon as you die; sometimes your team won't rez you simply because they don't know you're dead.

Neo-LD · Aug 19, 2006, 10:13 PM // 22:13

I agree with all that was said. If there were an RA section on these boards, it should be completely locked and this would be the only thread. This is honestly the best and only advice that RA-ers would benifit from reading.

btw Monks cant have 9+1 Inspiration.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Aug 19, 2006, 10:39 PM // 22:39

Good read. You focused a lot on the melee characters and monks should be doing, but sort of left out shutdown characters like a flashbot ele. I've played a lot of it in RA and TA and it can shutdown most DPS from teams because of the lack of communication between teams. The DPS on an ele isn't great but it works out rather well with timing (for example hitting warriors in frenzy or hitting with your orb as they heal sig. I go with a modded version of a flashbot that looks like this:

Flash Bot E/Mo
Air=12+4
Energy=12+1

1. Air Attunement
2. Elemental Attunement
3. Aura of Restoration
4. Blinding Flash
5. Lightning Orb
6. Lightning Strike
7. Enervating Charge
8. Resurrection Signet

The damage on this is pretty good when used against targets that are either soft or stupid (warriors who don't know how to cancell frenzy). It works well and has a decent amount of self healing with Aura which is also a cover enchant for the two attunes. Blinding Flash and Enervating Charge will shutdown the DPS of most anybody except for /N's with plague touch.

I just like people to see how one character can shutdown a entire team with tabing and spamming blinding flash. This build can imo carry a bad team because of its shutdown.

art_ · Aug 19, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

Hmm, while i agree that certain principles ( a monk, decent damage) can be very useful to getting a winning run in RA, they are by no means necessary.

Also I would advise any character you take into RA to have a self-heal wherever possible. For that reason I wouldnt recommend taking a thumper. Theres nothing more annoying than degenning to death whilst being unable to do anything against a kiting foe. Basically self-sufficiency is important in RA, and you should have that in mind when deciding on a build.

Master Fuhon · Aug 19, 2006, 11:34 PM // 23:34

First off... interrupts are money in random. You can do alot of damage from the simple act of preventing an opponent from ressurecting an ally or denying a self heal. Keep the guys with the rez signet unable to use it, and camp a tough to kill energy dependent character when he gets rezzed because it's the best chance you'll have of killing him again.

Most of this stuff is good. I just have issues with the survivability and the overall contribution that the two melee builds have on a random arena's team.

Obviously, the thumper has no self heal. I'm usually finding opposing thumpers to either be without a self heal or a pet rez. It's a tough call on telling someone which to bring, so basically I wouldn't consider it a strong individual build.

And the warrior has issues when I'm trying to consider a build that is both strong and independent. The random nature of the arenas doesn't make frenzy a great choice. You have to worry about the double damage on all mesmer hexes, elementalist nukes, and generally being an easy drop on a monkless team. You run a shock axe to practice for higher level pvp, not to farm random. When thinking about building a warrior, you need to worry about all the conditions, hexes, and stances you will face from your opposition and then make use of your secondary to fulfill this requirement (ie. plague touch, mend ailment, hex breaker, swift chop).

These tactics might be new to some experienced warriors, but there will be an overload on what you are used to facing. Don't ever go with too many self protect skills because the same batch of warrior counters with own you every time. Hence, the double riposters, 3 healing skill wammos, and stance tanks offer little help for the things a warrior is already strong at.

To generally win in random arena, you don't run a melee premade for the sole reason that everyone is already built to farm them. The element of disguise works in these short battles, and it is generally good practice to call out the skills that an opponent is using and hope the rest of the team knows how to counter. One good monk is an automatic 10 wins and two strong teammates with solid interrupts can take almost any team the distance. Some exceptions, but a guide doesn't need to go into detail on everything.

Remember, no mercy and no trash talking.

Red Locust · Aug 20, 2006, 03:01 AM // 03:01

Nice guide, but I don't agree with having the thumper build on there as they're way too fragile. Whenever I play, say, a shock axe warrior in RA, I just steamroll these guys before they even get past me. Then I use them to milk all of the enemy's rez sigs as I take him down more and more easily everytime. They need to be within melee range which makes them vulnerable to warriors, they can't kite and be effective at the same time, and they have no decent self heals. Might as well go with a warrior.

I also want to add the cripshot ranger, which I think is the best RA offensive build. It can win games very easily provided you don't hit incredibly bad luck with the other 3 teammates.

Ranger/Mesmer

Expertise: 15 (11+4)
Wilderness Survival: 9 (8+1)
Marksmanship: 10 (9+1)
Illusion Magic: 8

Crippling Shot [Elite] (Marksmanship)
Apply Poison (Wilderness Survival)
Savage Shot (Marksmanship)
Distracting Shot (Expertise)
Troll Unguent (Wilderness Survival)
Storm Chaser (Wilderness Survival)
Distortion (Illusion Magic)
Resurrection Signet ()

This build is really the second best thing to run in RA, after the boon prot monk. It is practically immune to melee, spreads degen on everything, disables warriors and casters, and once someone dies you just play the rez-denial game and win. The only problem with playing this in RA is that you're not playing the monk and hence your team might go down before you can get anything going, but that's a common problem with every non-monk RA build.

Greedy Gus · Aug 20, 2006, 03:04 AM // 03:04

I'm glad you touched on the importance of getting out of bad teams quickly and getting back in enough that you find that money team Warskull. Just like in poker, you want to get as much money in when it's good and minimize your losses in bad 'pots'.

This is also why I take a lot of issue with Master Fuhon's response. Frankly, I've been farming glad pts this past week with a very strong warrior build with only endure pain as my self-survivability. I run a build that allows me to precisely dismantle even the best enemy team, as long as I have a decent boon prot teammate enabling me, and 2 other people on our team that have a pulse.

I feel that this is a better use of my time than running a self sufficient build preparing for when I have no monk, where I have a much more difficult time picking apart a good enemy team's defense. I'd rather go on 3-4 different runs with teams, winning between 0 and 2 matches in a row, and then land on that money team I'm looking for and get 15 wins. Rather than play a build that will almost always win 4-7 matches in a row before getting sent back to the beach by a better specialized enemy team.

For the record, the build I've been having success with:

Quote:

W/x

12+3+1 Axe mastery
12+1 Strength

Eviscerate {E}
Executioner's Strike
Distracting Blow
Protector's Strike
Rush
Bull's Strike
Endure Pain
Resurrection Signet

Endure pain just gives me that HP buffer to ease the reaction-time pressure on the monk, and through kiting and good targetting/interrupting I minimize the damage I take.

Zinger314 · Aug 20, 2006, 04:47 AM // 04:47

I play with a build that is infinately better than Red Locust's build. Much better.

Quote:

Ranger/Mesmer

Expertise: 13 (12 + 1)
Wilderness Survival: 14 (10 + 4)
Marksmanship: 9 (8 + 1)

Poison Arrow (Elite)
Kindle Arrows
Savage Shot
Distracting Shot
Troll Unguent
Storm Chaser
Distortion
Resurrection Signet

Crippling Shot becomes a hassle in RA due to it's high Energy cost and the fact that Crippling doesn't do much anyways (in the Random Arenas, very few people know how to kite)

Poison Arrow, however, with a +33% Poison Head, can keep poison for 25+ second. That's a long time. About the double the time Red Locust's build can do.

Kindle Arrows also is key, since it can do much more damage against Warriors than any other Ranger build (due to physical resistance bonuses)

And Troll Unguent gets a full +10 Regen with that setup.

It's gotten me most of my Glad Points.

Morganas · Aug 20, 2006, 05:06 AM // 05:06

As far as team switching goes, don't switch out (or worse, leave in the beginning) if your team has no monk, if it seems that you have 3-4 solid offensive characters, i.e. shock warriors and thumpers, everyone's a good rezzer, and no softies. If you do get a glad point, it will come much quicker than a monk team would get it.

Most RA monks are very mediocre, and you're often better off without them, and most of my RA glad points either came when I was monking, or when I had no monk at all.

JR · Aug 20, 2006, 05:27 AM // 05:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

I play with a build that is infinately better than Red Locust's build. Much better.

Crippling Shot becomes a hassle in RA due to it's high Energy cost and the fact that Crippling doesn't do much anyways (in the Random Arenas, very few people know how to kite)

Poison Arrow, however, with a +33% Poison Head, can keep poison for 25+ second. That's a long time. About the double the time Red Locust's build can do.

Kindle Arrows also is key, since it can do much more damage against Warriors than any other Ranger build (due to physical resistance bonuses)

And Troll Unguent gets a full +10 Regen with that setup.

It's gotten me most of my Glad Points.

And this is why I refuse to have an RA section; uninformed people post garbage, based on success in an area where quality matters little.

Master Fuhon · Aug 20, 2006, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

I'm glad you touched on the importance of getting out of bad teams quickly and getting back in enough that you find that money team Warskull. Just like in poker, you want to get as much money in when it's good and minimize your losses in bad 'pots'.

He is consistent in his descriptions for success, as defined by the task of getting gladiator points. Balthazaar faction is a means-to-an-end too. You give a false impression about gambling, with all the risks on netting consecutive groups with no healer, getting bad healers, getting teammates with no rez, having good teammates leave to go GvG, and getting beaten by a pure shutdown build who locks down your healing and rezzing ability.

Bad teams with monks are the ones you can't predict consistently. Run a pure damage build, and you can only win with a monk. Run a more balanced build, something like you'd use on a base ganker, and you could win with a bigger variety of teams. My builds would only swap in one skill to remove shutdown, and a self-heal for an easy kill on someone who makes a poor decision to split from the group. There's something called the gambler's fallacy that makes people think that quitting the first team increases the odds of having a better next team. I hope there are real odds based on a larger portion of the good players being monks in random arena since that is who you are counting on to win.

Here's where I agree: When you play a monk, you have to discriminate if you are carrying a team to victory. Flashbots and Cripshotters are smart. There is a failure to mention that melee and survival-caster heavy with 1 strong disruptor goes the distance. I have to assume that the information is given based on the observations of a few people, so as more people contribute your argument will either develop or break down. An unbiased perspective is very important when constructing a strong argument.

I usally run a team support skill for the sole reason that I'll have used it 2-3 times on a teammate during the run to net flawlesses to rack in faction. Hex removal to help an assassin deal with the arcane echo ss or spirit shackles that kills his build, and healing seed on a guy lying on the ground getting beaten on by a pack of warriors/thumpers/assassins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Endure pain just gives me that HP buffer to ease the reaction-time pressure on the monk, and through kiting and good targetting/interrupting I minimize the damage I take.

You're using endure pain, which pretty much only helps you if you're taking damage. Then you go even further to mention mitgating damage on your warrior. My comments were specifically about the annoyances that warriors face. Blindbots, SS/Insidious, Empathy, Touch Rangers. You could have another one of those life transfer necros just feeding off your whole group, while the monk is fending off cripleshotters and dom mesmers. Your monk is guaranteed to have much worse on him than you do when you play as a warrior. I think the idea of running a high dps/low support warrior would completely contradict Warskulls motto of being a strong teammate.

I think that there is a goldmine to be discovered within Gus's warrior build that states: when a warrior is facing heavy shutdown, each of his attacks must account for more. He makes enough of his high strength attribute by using Protector's/Bull's Strike. Frenzy is not always godly on a warrior in PvP, and there is a point where the armor ignoring bonuses on attack skills are helping more than the consistent DPS that a IAS would offer. I am also a big fan of distracting blow interrupting two guys at the same time in the bunchups that usually occur in choke points on a few of the maps.

Gus, off the top of my head, I think there's a 14 axe/13 str/9 tactics split that should work with a similar pure warrior build having a heal sig to combat degen and the empathy/ss hexes. An overall damage decrease, but the evis/exec combo is well know for the deep wound anyway. I also assumed you wanted to wear sentinel's, which also wouldn't be necessary. I like to see a warrior build that can actually attack through ineptitude/clumsiness to waste the mesmer's cooldown, or one that removes blind and puts a strain on the flashbot's team. Flexible tactics are better because otherwise all warriors could be dealt with the same.

Ss Executioner · Aug 20, 2006, 06:58 AM // 06:58

I completely agree with this post.

However Warskull. On your RA Boon Protection Monk. I'd recommend a skill swap. Instead of Holy Veil bring Inspired Hex. Hell, you have attributes into inspiration anyway, why not GAIN energy for removing hexes.

Good post though, maybe we'll see less W/Mo with Glad's Defenses

Kruzing Low · Aug 20, 2006, 07:33 AM // 07:33

naw, even with the new premades the dolyak signet and glad defense warriors are still out there
i bring drain enchantment along with energy drain on my RA monk
helps against illusionary weaponrists who are all over you, and rit spammers
i brought inspired hex for a while, but after a while was noticing i was always the target of hexes, sometimes mesmers would cast ineptitude and empathy on me, so e-drain and enchant drain works better with a 20/20 wand and offhand

Nightwish · Aug 20, 2006, 07:57 AM // 07:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

And this is why I refuse to have an RA section; uninformed people post garbage, based on success in an area where quality matters little.

Zinger is right, regarding the effectiveness of Crippling Shot, as a large majority of the players in RA does not know how to kite. So I do think his post is quite relevant to RA scenario. It is not like he is suggesting a build for GvG.

But I think apply poison is the the better way to go for spreading poison.

JR · Aug 20, 2006, 08:02 AM // 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightwish

Zinger is right, a large majority of the players in RA does not know how to kite, which makes Crippling Shot not that effective. So I do think Zinger's post is quite relevant to RA scenario. It is not like he is suggesting a build for GvG.

I am personally far more concerned with what happens when I get a good team that goes to TA, rather than a bad team that will inevitably lose within a few rounds no matter what I do.

doesnotspeak1 · Aug 20, 2006, 11:10 AM // 11:10

im really newb is that the updated verison of all the comments and stuff?

so i know i could make it without any mistakes

but I was wondering how would you put your stat points?

i dont even have the game but I like to learn more before I buy anything. but im completly sure im gonna buy it

could you pm me with the correct info stats/skills? or just reply to this

Thank you.

Yanman.be · Aug 20, 2006, 11:16 AM // 11:16

Funny how the Mo/Me in the OP can get a minor run on insipiration magic?

Warskull · Aug 20, 2006, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yanman.be

Funny how the Mo/Me in the OP can get a minor run on insipiration magic?

I'm just that awesome.

Quote:

There's something called the gambler's fallacy that makes people think that quitting the first team increases the odds of having a better next team. I hope there are real odds based on a larger portion of the good players being monks in random arena since that is who you are counting on to win.

If you stay in a bad team there is no chance of them getting better. Re-entering gives you another chance to get good allies, staying in a bad team doesn't.

Quote:

However Warskull. On your RA Boon Protection Monk. I'd recommend a skill swap. Instead of Holy Veil bring Inspired Hex. Hell, you have attributes into inspiration anyway, why not GAIN energy for removing hexes.

Pre-veiling owns! In addition veil interacts very strongly with CoP (2 for 1.) Both inspired hex and holy veil have their pros and cons. Preveiling and the lower cooldown on holy veil let you keep up with hexes easier. Inspired hex keeps your energy up. I tend to use Sig of Devo to manage my energy though.

Quote:

Also I would advise any character you take into RA to have a self-heal wherever possible. For that reason I wouldnt recommend taking a thumper. Theres nothing more annoying than degenning to death whilst being unable to do anything against a kiting foe. Basically self-sufficiency is important in RA, and you should have that in mind when deciding on a build.

Self healing is unnecessary. You can kite, cary damage mitigation, simply plow through the enemy, or take a number of approaches. If you have enough damage output you don't need self healing. I run thumpers in RA all the time with no self heal. It doesn't matter one bit when I kill 3-4 members of the enemy team before I finally die. If you have left the enemy team in a crippled state by the time you die, you have pretty much won the match for your team (unless they don't rez, in which case you don't want them as allies anyway.)

Quote:

Good read. You focused a lot on the melee characters and monks should be doing, but sort of left out shutdown characters like a flashbot ele. I've played a lot of it in RA and TA and it can shutdown most DPS from teams because of the lack of communication between teams.

I don't go as far into shutdown characters because they are more at the mercy of the team. To succeed with a shutdown character you will find yourself leaving more matches and team hopping more often. Most can output some nice damage and hurt enemies, but few have the killing power to get through everything. You can do everything to set up an easy victory for your team, but they need to obtain that victory in the end and many of them are unable to do so. Thus, I focus on characters that can carry the team, even if the rest of the players are bad. If you get other decent players on your team a shutdown character or a weaker spike character with utility can be great.

Quote:

As far as team switching goes, don't switch out (or worse, leave in the beginning) if your team has no monk, if it seems that you have 3-4 solid offensive characters, i.e. shock warriors and thumpers, everyone's a good rezzer, and no softies. If you do get a glad point, it will come much quicker than a monk team would get it.

This is correct. One of the scarriest teams you can run into is four warriors. No single monk can survive four warriors of equal skill level and keep his team alive. If you get four pressure character that know how to play, stuff dies. A monk isn't necessary to win. You just need to be able to score kills efficiently if you lack a monk.

art_ · Aug 20, 2006, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warskull

Self healing is unnecessary. You can kite, cary damage mitigation, simply plow through the enemy, or take a number of approaches. If you have enough damage output you don't need self healing. I run thumpers in RA all the time with no self heal. It doesn't matter one bit when I kill 3-4 members of the enemy team before I finally die. If you have left the enemy team in a crippled state by the time you die, you have pretty much won the match for your team (unless they don't rez, in which case you don't want them as allies anyway.)

You can't kite degen/hexes. If you face a team with hexes you could easily be at half health before you even get near any of their players. The great thing about playing a warrior, is that you can deal with any of this stacked degen with your trusty heal sig.