Curse

Makkert · Jun 21, 2006, 09:15 AM // 09:15

This is the new video of Servants of Fortuna [SoF].

Another TA video. Enjoy. We managed to get a 50 conseq with this build (left tired and exhausted), as well as beat a team with one member from WM and one from EvIL.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.ph...98783A29AFC5C7

enjoy. It's probably not the most brilliant video around, but still decent.

~ Makkert

sno · Jun 21, 2006, 02:46 PM // 14:46

Seems like a fairly standard dual smite build, nothing terribly innovative about it tbh. You have 2 different builds on the video, one with a w/e and one with a w/mo, so clearly the melee is fairly a minor part of the build, the base is the dual smite.

It's not a bad build by any means, but any good team with adequate caster-hate and the necessary "kite from smite" mentality would likely own you. Granted good teams aren't easy to find in TA, even those with members of good guilds. Congrats on the 50 though.

Arya Nibelrund · Jun 21, 2006, 02:56 PM // 14:56

Thanks we quitted after the 50th because i was falling asleep on the keyboard

I'm curious to know how many more we would have had if we hadn't to stop.. We had some troubles with only 2 teams, the other 48 were quite easy to defeat. But we won even against teams loaded with anti-casters skills, but i won't say any detail about our build.

sno · Jun 21, 2006, 03:06 PM // 15:06

In TA it's not hard to get an infinite streak if you have a decent build with good players. As you said the challenge is in only a few matches, if you can win those you'll easily be able to plow through the many garbage teams you'll inevidably face.

Quote:

But we won even against teams loaded with anti-casters skills

Having anti-caster skills doesn't mean they have good caster-hate. I'm talking much more specifically about tactics, ie. kiting and targetting. If you know who to shutdown and who to kill first, it becomes much easier.

Quote:

but i won't say any detail about our build.

Why post a video and then say something like that? What was the point of posting the video then? >.< In that case a blacked-out screenshot of "consecutive wins: 50" would have been much more appropriate

yesitsrob · Jun 21, 2006, 03:18 PM // 15:18

I actually recall on the run of 50 we came across numerous many well known good teams and beat them. I wouldn't go claiming that dual smite is easy to beat especially in a team with solo monk which is the majority - I have warriored when we've done this smiting (with bulls strike though, which should have been what was used on video imo blah) and ganking a solo monk was not at all difficult. No it's nothing special but it's extremely quick faction and it is very capable of beating good teams, and it has, and will. often.

Kiting from the smiting is much easier said than done when the warrior carries 2 knockdowns and is windborned a significant amount of the time, and killing us is quite difficult as AoE makes the booners healing a pretty easy task.

I'd strongly have to disagree "good" teams will "own" us, largely based on the evidence that they haven't a lot of the time, although we have obviously lost some matches to good teams

Makkert · Jun 21, 2006, 03:22 PM // 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Seems like a fairly standard dual smite build, nothing terribly innovative about it tbh. You have 2 different builds on the video, one with a w/e and one with a w/mo, so clearly the melee is fairly a minor part of the build, the base is the dual smite.

No, it's not super innovative, nor did I ever claim it was. But seeing some questions in this forum about smite builds, I thought it would be nice to share this video.
As for the different warriors, that is mostly based on the player preference of the player playing the warrior, as well as the fact that we tried different warrior builds. Personally I agree with Rob that we should have had Bull's Strike ofcourse in the video, laziness from our side.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

It's not a bad build by any means, but any good team with adequate caster-hate and the necessary "kite from smite" mentality would likely own you. Granted good teams aren't easy to find in TA, even those with members of good guilds. Congrats on the 50 though.

I think you'd be suprised how hard it is to kite from a warrior that is kept clean with 2 smite hexes on smiters, hex removal on the booner for hexes. Draw conditions on smiter and normal conditionremoval on the booner for conditions. Also Windbourne tends to kind of keep the pressure on, despite kiting.
Then there is the issue that if they have warriors or assassins, they will have to come into melee range themselves of a target that could be smited off with Zealot's to keep pressure high..

Caster Hate: yes, this is the way to stop it. But it takes quite a bit. I have doubts if a single anti-caster character would be enough to stop it tbh.... Maybe a very good mesmer or ranger could. We've faced some builds with a pretty good single mesmer that certainly we're able to put the pain on us. But in the end, the casterhate wasn't consistent enough to stop it.

That said, mass hexing does work to shut down, if played right. Every gimmick build has counters, and this one is no exception. The statement 'any good team with enough casterhate' is pretty logical therefore. It's like saying: if a good guild has enough counters to your build, you lose. Well, that's pretty logical statement imho, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that one up

.

I'm somewhat puzzled on the remark that 'good teams are hard to find in TA' (ok, I can follow here) but: 'even those with players from good guilds' (what exactly does make a good TA team according you?

)

EDIT

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Why post a video and then say something like that? What was the point of posting the video then? >.< In that case a blacked-out screenshot of "consecutive wins: 50" would have been much more appropriate

Lol, i agree here. There is nothing secret or special about it.

sno · Jun 21, 2006, 04:07 PM // 16:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makkert

Caster Hate: yes, this is the way to stop it. But it takes quite a bit. I have doubts if a single anti-caster character would be enough to stop it tbh.... Maybe a very good mesmer or ranger could. We've faced some builds with a pretty good single mesmer that certainly we're able to put the pain on us. But in the end, the casterhate wasn't consistent enough to stop it.

Very true, 2 anti-casters would probably be necessary, imo a monk-shutdown and interupter would work nicely, but that would still leave one smiter to do his worst. I think mass hex would be the key to beating this build, as you said. Also a spirit rit would severely hamper the smite damage, as union can be spammed (with rit lord) and would practically deaden most of your smite damage.

Quote:

That said, mass hexing does work to shut down, if played right. Every gimmick build has counters, and this one is no exception. The statement 'any good team with enough casterhate' is pretty logical therefore. It's like saying: if a good guild has enough counters to your build, you lose. Well, that's pretty logical statement imho, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that one up

.

/agree.

Quote:

I'm somewhat puzzled on the remark that 'good teams are hard to find in TA' (ok, I can follow here) but: 'even those with players from good guilds' (what exactly does make a good TA team according you?

)

I can't tell you how many times we've run into iQ, Te, EViL, WM, and loads of other 'known' guilds and simply destroyed them in TA. This is certainly not to say that they're bad players, just that they're not as experienced in TA, or that they're not shooting for TA ownage. This is likely because when they play TA they're usually testing something for GvG, or because they're just messing around. Either way, the goal isn't to be great in TA, but has some other purpose. That being said, teams that are consistantly good competition in TA are hard to find (DtwO almost always has a nice group.)

Makkert · Jun 21, 2006, 04:35 PM // 16:35

I'd like to add GSS (Glint's Secret Service) to the group of guilds one should be aware of in TA. Always a good match.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Also a spirit rit would severely hamper the smite damage, as union can be spammed (with rit lord) and would practically deaden most of your smite damage.

I disagree on this one.
A non-moving spirit with AoE damage flying around, as well the fact that such a spammer is not moving for several seconds? I can't see it being a problem in any way.

Arya Nibelrund · Jun 21, 2006, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by sno

Why post a video and then say something like that? What was the point of posting the video then?

well I didn't know if the guys wanted to tell anything about the build

As it is their idea, I don't think it would have been so nice if I commented on it like: yes the booner takes blah blah blah etc.... while they didn't wanna share the team-build^^
Forgive me i'm the noobest of the guild

Neo-LD · Jun 21, 2006, 05:31 PM // 17:31

lol, thx Makkert. Last week I was havin fun in TA with a couple guildmates and a friend and it was all flawless till we dropped a few to you guys on that build

GGs tho.

Since I monked against this like 4 times I can give a bit of insight. The offense is powerful and will overwhelm most teams with sheer pressure. The more a team packs together, the damage the smiters will kick out. Obviously, then, a good counter is to spread. Once it is clear that just pressure cant kill a team, they will start to spike (shock/evi/rake/exe + both smiters going crazy), which is almost always enough to take down an energy depleted boon prot. However, assuming he has energy left to heal, a monk at more than 500 hp can survive every time because the spike isnt exactly the most deadly.

This build is good on defense too, being as how there are 3 monks and lots of Air of Enchantments flying around. For balanced teams, pressure usually wont work on this team, you have to adrena-spike them out. Hex pressure would work too if thats your build.

Celab · Jun 21, 2006, 05:37 PM // 17:37

seems to me like you were using two builds...

one was a W/Mo mo/e*2 mo/me
the other was a mo/me w/e mo/e*2

but meh, nice video.

yesitsrob · Jun 21, 2006, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Neo: I recall the matches against GSS - that was actually on our streak with the build, and yeh, it was difficult, you did plenty enough to disrupt any form of adrenal spike on the monk. If I recall correctly a signficant number of our kills were achieved by waiting for your warrior to frenzy and punishing him as he was frequently out of healing range.

On the video the warrior has distracting blow, I went with bulls strike, and BS is the better choice imo

, I would say that though.

Neo-LD · Jun 21, 2006, 10:33 PM // 22:33

Heh, it might just be TA but I usually remember games against good guilds too. I cant say that the build we were running was as defined and organized as yours is in the video, it was more like 'everyone picks a good character they feel like playing and lets go mash things' :P We ended up with

1 Shock Axe
1 Melandrus Arrows Guy
1 Dom Mes
1 Boon Prot

Yay for physical hate

Anyways, most teams were just rolled by big physical damage and caster shutdown. However, SoF's smite team was too durable to roll easily, so we had to adrena-spike to get kills. Credit to SoF they were able to spike us more rapidly. (Tho in the last game, we definately almost took you guys 3v4 after we couldnt res our mes anymore :P)

Lastly, though our build wasnt exactly organized it was still fairly decent when matched against yours; bringing a MA ranger vs that team was actually a very lucky pick. All the games were well played on both sides, ggs

fb2000 · Jun 22, 2006, 09:06 AM // 09:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makkert

Caster Hate: yes, this is the way to stop it.

ive had luck with 2 warriors , flashbot (with heal other convert, draw, and i think gale) and boon prot. with a little coordination it does own smiters groups (or so tells my experience with it)

but then again, ive never lost a match with that build this far. too bad the guys i used to play with barely play now... I MISS YOU CRAZY FRENCH PPL ^^