Curse

Wrynn · Aug 02, 2006, 10:55 PM // 22:55

Umm, so you respect them for basically exploiting broken skills?

RSpike was overpowered in the early days of the game, If you wanted to be top 100, you ran RSpike. Why? Because there was no effective counter to it. It was overpowered and overused. Same thing with Spirit Spam in tombs. Basically the only people who could "win" were the friends of the people holding. "Oh yeah, our inventorys are full, so if you get here, we will give you the altar." Or how about the people that exploited the "move ghost off altar" in HoH bug? Are they to be respected for their abuse of game bugs? Everyone ran smite eles for a while? Why? Because you had casters with basically unlimited energy dealing out a ridiculous amount of damage.

If D/Mos stay the way they are, its not adapting to the meta game, its right back to old RSpike. It WILL BE the meta game, simply because there isnt effective enough counters for it (that can also counter a balanced or whatever)

The high end pvp in GW is SUPPOSED to be strategy and coordination, getting 8 people together with skills that work together to be an effective build. The D/Mo build this weekend had none of that.

So heres what Ill congratulate spearmen on:
GJ on having broken skills handed to you by the dev in your guild and then exploiting them in a 12 hour gvg marathon.

I still think its rather stupid of ANet to have the ladder unlocked for that weekend. I understand the drive to bring people to "pvp" as that is intended to be the end game, but there are better ways to do it than leaving IWAY and D/Mo.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 02, 2006, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

Umm, so you respect them for basically exploiting broken skills?

RSpike was overpowered in the early days of the game, If you wanted to be top 100, you ran RSpike. Why? Because there was no effective counter to it. It was overpowered and overused. Same thing with Spirit Spam in tombs. Basically the only people who could "win" were the friends of the people holding. "Oh yeah, our inventorys are full, so if you get here, we will give you the altar." Or how about the people that exploited the "move ghost off altar" in HoH bug? Are they to be respected for their abuse of game bugs? Everyone ran smite eles for a while? Why? Because you had casters with basically unlimited energy dealing out a ridiculous amount of damage.

Exploiting bugs specifically isn't worthy of respect, but winning is. If a team wins the game then they do earn whatever respect comes from winning the game. If their methods are 'easy' or 'take no skill' then everyone else should be using them too and winning just as much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

If D/Mos stay the way they are, its not adapting to the meta game, its right back to old RSpike. It WILL BE the meta game, simply because there isnt effective enough counters for it (that can also counter a balanced or whatever)

The high end pvp in GW is SUPPOSED to be strategy and coordination, getting 8 people together with skills that work together to be an effective build. The D/Mo build this weekend had none of that.

Agreed. If the D/Mo build stayed as it was, I would quit GW.

The teams that won over the weekend beat everyone else because they were willing to play the stupid game Arenanet handed us. I don't respect the Spearmen for their player skill at Guild Wars without that kind of build, but they did win and I don't begrudge them the rewards of winning. It's just like when EW won the playoffs with their broken FoC spike - it doesn't matter in the end whether the build requires 'skill' or not, it matters whether they won or lost.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

So heres what Ill congratulate spearmen on:
GJ on having broken skills handed to you by the dev in your guild and then exploiting them in a 12 hour gvg marathon.

Didn't you also have the same broken skills handed to you? Why wasn't your guild in the top 20 like Spearmen? Everyone had access to the same skills this weekend, and we were all playing the same game. It's not like they had any special advantage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

I still think its rather stupid of ANet to have the ladder unlocked for that weekend. I understand the drive to bring people to "pvp" as that is intended to be the end game, but there are better ways to do it than leaving IWAY and D/Mo.

Agreed completely. Frozen ladder would have been a much better time for this to happen.

Divineshadows · Aug 03, 2006, 12:10 AM // 00:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Agreed. If the D/Mo build stayed as it was, I would quit GW.

/signed

I am of the same mind. The D/Mo or Dervish builds in general (signet of piety anyone?) staying at any level of power close to what was shown this weekend, I will quit guildwars.

Living Legend · Aug 03, 2006, 01:16 AM // 01:16

yeah that stuff is jacked up

Greedy Gus · Aug 03, 2006, 02:44 AM // 02:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I think a lot of teams (especially in the top 50) chose not to GvG that weekend simply because of the risk. With classes running around that were clearly not thought out, the risk of a rating tank is extremely high due to a build issue. Even if you were running the D/Mo build, who's to say some low-ranked guild wouldn't find a counter in the unbalanced skillsets and give you a -25 with it?

Well first of all, there's nothing really on the line this season. If you're just in the top 50 because you've played a low amount of games with a good win/loss ration, then maybe you might be scared of a single loss, but teams that belong up top will be there regardless of spot tanks.

Sure, as it was a beta weekend you should probably keep an eye on obs mode. At least during AM primetime when we play, only EnS and spearmen were running D/Mos, and they were both top 20 already.

I'd estimate that the teams who had the most fun this weekend were ones who were playing and experimenting with new builds, whether they were "overpowered" or not. Like Ada wrote, it's pretty clear which teams actually have the ability to create builds. Rifts were running an awesomely unique build full of the new classes, and did very well. PUG was also running a unique build but they had a leg up on the buildmaking. As far as my guild, I didn't get too crazy but slotted a paragon into an existing build where it fit perfectly and we had a great time during the weekend, including a 4 minute loss to EnS and a VoD win against Rifts. And I think it's clear than spearmen and EnS had a ball.

Still, it seems everyone cries that the sky is falling whenever anything new comes out. Even if only two teams are running the 7 D/Mo build well, somehow you see it as "either play D/Mo agaisnt D/Mo or get tanked by them". In actuality a lot of people were running their old builds and others were running their own unique builds.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 03, 2006, 03:39 AM // 03:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Well first of all, there's nothing really on the line this season. If you're just in the top 50 because you've played a low amount of games with a good win/loss ration, then maybe you might be scared of a single loss, but teams that belong up top will be there regardless of spot tanks.

Whether anything is 'on the line' this season probably doesn't matter for most top 100 teams. There are maybe a dozen teams who really have a shot at the trip to Leipzig even in a real season. Everyone else in the top 100 is just playing for rating and rank as its own reward. There's a thrill to constantly trying to improve as a guild and see how high you can get, even if you're not getting any cash prizes for it.

Sure, if a top 100 team gets tanked 50 rating in one night due to Nightfall builds they can probably get back up pretty quickly, but why would they want to get tanked in the first place?

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreedyGus

I'd estimate that the teams who had the most fun this weekend were ones who were playing and experimenting with new builds, whether they were "overpowered" or not. Like Ada wrote, it's pretty clear which teams actually have the ability to create builds. Rifts were running an awesomely unique build full of the new classes, and did very well. PUG was also running a unique build but they had a leg up on the buildmaking. As far as my guild, I didn't get too crazy but slotted a paragon into an existing build where it fit perfectly and we had a great time during the weekend, including a 4 minute loss to EnS and a VoD win against Rifts. And I think it's clear than spearmen and EnS had a ball.

Still, it seems everyone cries that the sky is falling whenever anything new comes out. Even if only two teams are running the 7 D/Mo build well, somehow you see it as "either play D/Mo agaisnt D/Mo or get tanked by them". In actuality a lot of people were running their old builds and others were running their own unique builds.

While I agree that the two teams you mention probably had a lot of fun, a lot of it comes down to playstyle. Personally, I simply don't have much fun playing Guild Wars in a random meta like the one we had during the preview weekend. While build choice is certainly a part of skill in a stable meta, you can rely on the fact that both teams are aware of the builds that are out there.

The metagame of that weekend came down to "Who can find the most ways to abuse broken skill combos?" Trying to exploit skills or mess around with builds isn't way I play this game, I play for the tactics and strategy involved in playing an actual match. My favorite matches are the ones where each build has some counters to the other and the fate of the match rests on who uses their skills the most effectively, rather than what skills you happened to bring.

I don't think it necessarily follows that I'm good or bad at understanding or creating builds. Just that I don't under those circumstances, because an unstable meta is uninteresting for me to play.

Ruricu · Aug 03, 2006, 04:07 AM // 04:07

Ok, so I've read a lot of things, heard of lot of things, and seen a lot of hate against 치 The Spearmen 치. As a proud member of the Spearmen, I'd like to clear a few things up and try to shed some insight on such matters. First, see here. as you can see, 치 The Spearmen 치 are on the ineligible list, and what that means is that we cannot recieve rewards and/or prizes based on the guild ladder. That being said, I don't know what the big deal over our guild rank is in the first place. Anyway, at the start of the PvP weekend, we discovered and created what has come to be known as the D/Mo build or D/Mo-way. Seeing this as overpowered, we set out to do what we normally do, which is let that fact be known. (Much like the ever-popular 22 Flesh Golem Factory) It seems we have succeeded, seeing as half of the Guild Wars Community now thinks we are "noobs who can only play D/Mo way", "Don't deserve our rank", and deserve to be shunned and sworn at in any way shape or form you feel necessary. Honestly, a little bit of that is somewhat funny; just to see how much attention has been brought to it. But this time, it's been getting on my nerves. We did not benefit at all from the weekend, except for some faction, insight on the new classes, and a few Championship points. The fact that D/Mo's are overpowered has been brought to everyone's attention, and our job is complete. So please, just let it drop.

Greedy Gus · Aug 03, 2006, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Whether anything is 'on the line' this season probably doesn't matter for most top 100 teams. There are maybe a dozen teams who really have a shot at the trip to Leipzig even in a real season. Everyone else in the top 100 is just playing for rating and rank as its own reward. There's a thrill to constantly trying to improve as a guild and see how high you can get, even if you're not getting any cash prizes for it.

I'll definitely agree with you here. My guild has only done really well one season, and has never had a shot at GWWC or GWFC. But there is a distinct feeling that these 'fun' interseasons are less competitive overall, and IMO you have to be able to relax a bit, especially if your team isn't playing with money on the line. I concede the point though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Sure, if a top 100 team gets tanked 50 rating in one night due to Nightfall builds they can probably get back up pretty quickly, but why would they want to get tanked in the first place?

The metagame of that weekend came down to "Who can find the most ways to abuse broken skill combos?"

Again with the sky is falling exaggeration nonsense. You're at a higher risk to lose rating due to lag or an error 7 than by getting owned by some magical Nightfall skill combinations. Like I said, if anyone had their eye on observer mode, it was clear that only one team had found an uber-powerful build, and only they and another team were running it (and were top 20 in no time, so not many teams got tanked afterward). As far as korean and european timezones, I scoured through obs mode and could hardly find any team running any new professions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

While I agree that the two teams you mention probably had a lot of fun, a lot of it comes down to playstyle. Personally, I simply don't have much fun playing Guild Wars in a random meta like the one we had during the preview weekend. While build choice is certainly a part of skill in a stable meta, you can rely on the fact that both teams are aware of the builds that are out there.

Trying to exploit skills or mess around with builds isn't way I play this game, I play for the tactics and strategy involved in playing an actual match. My favorite matches are the ones where each build has some counters to the other and the fate of the match rests on who uses their skills the most effectively, rather than what skills you happened to bring.

I don't think it necessarily follows that I'm good or bad at understanding or creating builds. Just that I don't under those circumstances, because an unstable meta is uninteresting for me to play.

I don't know if we could ever see eye-to-eye on this one, but in my mind that's an excuse / cop-out. Liking to always play in a "stable metagame" means you're waiting on everyone else to figure things out and do the work before you risk anything. Deep down do you really believe it's uninteresting?

I personally strive to understand builds as best as possible and be the best build-maker I can. I learn new things every day from the real pros, but I put in the effort. Right when the Nightfall weekend started, I sat at the priest of balthazar with Notepad open with a paragon and then a dervish, and copied down every skill that I thought would be money, with the 0-12 attribute range. I ended up with 26 skills between the two professions.

Now you can call 2 new professions being introduced a completely random metagame and say that you understand builds and skills, but I identified about 50+ useless or average skills and realized that things weren't so bad. I stayed up and designed a command shout Paragon spear thrower that fit for our balanced war + ranger degen/spike build, unlocked the skills and runes for it, and was ready to GvG Friday and have a blast.

You say you like building in counters and playing a game of skill. I do too. I ran a 13 tactics "shields up" auspicious parry sword warrior in my second warrior slot to defend against 'zulu-way' (r/p spear throwers) and it worked perfectly. Eventually with that build we lost a few and won a lot, against all sorts of builds (nightfall and non-nightfall). The big culmination for me was beating Rifts sunday night in a great match of tactics, adaptation, splitting, and yes build.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 03, 2006, 06:56 AM // 06:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Again with the sky is falling exaggeration nonsense. You're at a higher risk to lose rating due to lag or an error 7 than by getting owned by some magical Nightfall skill combinations. Like I said, if anyone had their eye on observer mode, it was clear that only one team had found an uber-powerful build, and only they and another team were running it (and were top 20 in no time, so not many teams got tanked afterward). As far as korean and european timezones, I scoured through obs mode and could hardly find any team running any new professions.

I think it depends somewhat on when you play. We played on friday night and met two or three R/Ps, but nothing we didn't expect. At our start time on Saturday night we couldn't find an Obs mode match that didn't have either R/P spike or D/Mo-WAY dominating another team.

I'll confess that my views on this were probably a bit tainted by Tombs as well. We ended up trying D/Mo-WAY in Tombs while waiting for GvGers to get on, and 75% of teams we met were also running pure D/Mos. Even without any particular coordination we walked all over pretty much every other build we met in Tombs that night. In short, we realized that 7 D/Mos gives a massive build advantage over anything else, and we also realized that it's quite boring to play.

When we go into GvG we try to take in the best build we can. As near as we could tell, that was the D/Mo build Spearmen was running. The problem is, that build was so boring to run that it simply wasn't worth it for us to GvG that night.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreedyGus

I don't know if we could ever see eye-to-eye on this one, but in my mind that's an excuse / cop-out. Liking to always play in a "stable metagame" means you're waiting on everyone else to figure things out and do the work before you risk anything. Deep down do you really believe it's uninteresting?

I don't think it's "waiting for others to do the work" because I don't feel that build-making is a particularly useful skill over the long-term of Guild Wars. If you design a kickass build that dominates everything, you'll win games for as long as it takes for another team to copy your build into Notepad. If you become skilled and coordinated players irrespective of your build, then you'll continue to win games long after the metagame has died down.

When new skills and classes are released, there is always a short period when the ability to instantly pull together a strong build 'matters.' Any other time and your skill at buildmaking doesn't matter particularly - it's all about your team's coordination.

I really have no problem theorycrafting builds. Like you, I went through the skill lists and marked which ones I thought had potential. I put together a few basic builds and concepts, and messed around with what unlocks I could get to see what worked. When it comes time to actually GvG, I feel that I have a responsibility to my guild to try to lead them to victory. D/MoWAY was the one build that could dominate everything else, making it the natural choice to run, but it was also entirely boring for us to play.

We didn't feel that messing around with random builds in GvG was going to help our play, since anything we might find would be found anyway a couple weeks after release. Likewise, after testing it in Tombs we didn't feel that we'd have any fun running D/MoWAY, whether we gained or lost rating. As a result we decided not to play and wait until a more stable metagame when the team coordination we were used to ruled the day.

Wrynn · Aug 03, 2006, 08:15 AM // 08:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ruricu

Ok, so I've read a lot of things, heard of lot of things, and seen a lot of hate against 치 The Spearmen 치. As a proud member of the Spearmen, I'd like to clear a few things up and try to shed some insight on such matters. First, see here. as you can see, 치 The Spearmen 치 are on the ineligible list, and what that means is that we cannot recieve rewards and/or prizes based on the guild ladder. That being said, I don't know what the big deal over our guild rank is in the first place. Anyway, at the start of the PvP weekend, we discovered and created what has come to be known as the D/Mo build or D/Mo-way. Seeing this as overpowered, we set out to do what we normally do, which is let that fact be known. (Much like the ever-popular 22 Flesh Golem Factory) It seems we have succeeded, seeing as half of the Guild Wars Community now thinks we are "noobs who can only play D/Mo way", "Don't deserve our rank", and deserve to be shunned and sworn at in any way shape or form you feel necessary. Honestly, a little bit of that is somewhat funny; just to see how much attention has been brought to it. But this time, it's been getting on my nerves. We did not benefit at all from the weekend, except for some faction, insight on the new classes, and a few Championship points. The fact that D/Mo's are overpowered has been brought to everyone's attention, and our job is complete. So please, just let it drop.

Sorry, not buying it.
Come in here and say we played for 12+ hours with a broken build because we had fun with it because we were finally able to break top 100. O-K

But dont feed me some crap about "trying to show how it was broken."

Patrograd · Aug 03, 2006, 10:47 AM // 10:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

As far as korean and european timezones, I scoured through obs mode and could hardly find any team running any new professions.
.

On Sunday night I watched in excess of 10 matches on observer mode and every single one, without exception, featured at least one D/Mo squad. After a weekend of smurfing and PUGvG we were going to play on Sunday from main, but decided not to, for the reasons that Squidget mentions. There would simply be no point. We could either run D/Mos ourselves, and learn nothing as the build is sure to get nerfed to hell before the next preview, or run a build designed to counter DMos, with the same sort of result. We could probably have farmed some faction and some rating, but to be honest it was much more interesting and informative to watch observer mode and see how different teams coped with things.

JR · Aug 03, 2006, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

Sorry, not buying it.
Come in here and say we played for 12+ hours with a broken build because we had fun with it because we were finally able to break top 100. O-K

But dont feed me some crap about "trying to show how it was broken."

Why would any normal guild want to break top 100. Two main reasons I can think of:

1) Personal achievement. I remember the first guild I was in that broke top 100, and how good it felt.

2) The respect earnt from being in such a position.

Do you honestly think Spearmen expected to get either of those, running what they did? It isn't fun beating people with broken builds. The first time it is amusing, but soon afterwards you begin to realise that the real fun is in the challenge. Do you really think they expected to earn any respect, running what they did? I sure as hell don't.

Maybe the feeling you are experiencing is jealousy?

miteethor · Aug 03, 2006, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrynn

Sorry, not buying it.
Come in here and say we played for 12+ hours with a broken build because we had fun with it because we were finally able to break top 100. O-K

But dont feed me some crap about "trying to show how it was broken."

Believe what you want.

The Spearmen knowingly formed a Korean guild with no Koreans whatsoever. We did this because having fun is more important than our rank or any prizes. We have no particular need or drive to play in GvG matches, and we play what is fun and whatever everyone wants to do. 7 D/Mo's was fun, and we had even more fun annoying every other stuck-up top 50 team with a holier-than-thou attitude in the process.

We do have a Dev in the guild, and guess what - he works on in-game weapon art. Never once have we been given any inside information about skills or builds, or anything. They are just regular players who use guildwiki and farm for ectos like everybody else. If you want to know what's going in in GW check the Frog-Talks, because that's where we learn this stuff too.

So please continue to cry about the Spearmen and how we have ruined your game, because we are keeping a scrap-book thread of all the whiners so we can remind ourselves why we would NEVER want to be part of such an elitist egotisitcal community like the GW top 50.

JR · Aug 03, 2006, 03:56 PM // 15:56

On that note, I believe this thread is done.