Curse

Almighty Zi · May 29, 2006, 12:39 PM // 12:39

I can't say that I wasn't disappointed with this championship. I was really hoping to see EW play more of its deaths charge, warriors cunning+frenzy warriors and to see how the other teams would respond. I did find the final boring to watch but I can't blame EW for taking advantage of spiking on the imperial map.

I don't know what Anet were thinking bringing the imperial isle map into GvG. It heavily favours spike teams to the point where unless the opposing team invest heavily in spike counters then the outcome is almost inevitable.

If the imperial isle is to stay then I would like to see the size increased slightly and to either make it a doorless map where you have to build the bridges or for it to have more teleport pads to provide more movement options. As it stands now, a spike team simply can camp the middle portion of the map and keep spiking down the guild thief whenever he appears so that the opposing team cannot run a split gank.

Anyways, congrats to EW for winning.

Lorven · May 29, 2006, 01:34 PM // 13:34

About Imperial Isle - In a seasonal GvG, You have a 50% chance (I think) to be the guesting guild in the guildhall picking. So , If your running a spike build which relies on Imperial Isle like FoC does, Your taking a big risk because you might end up playing in Warriors Isle and being totally screwd. So maybe just remove imperial isle from play-offs? I do agree theyre pretty mean when you know your the guest guild.

M3lk0r · May 29, 2006, 01:41 PM // 13:41

Firstly congrats to EW and iB

Euro ftw

Quote:

Originally Posted by just call me jimmy

If people stop watching you, then you have no audience. If you have no audience then being rank 1 looses it's luster.

Complete and utter bull

Top counter strike tournaments like the CPL have given out more then $3mil in prize money. These matches often give out live telecast which are watched by hundreds of thousands people worldwide. Do these top teams use shotguns and TMPs because they are "fun" to play and watch? No, they use 1-shot-kill snipers and couldnt care less what some random kid thought they should play like.

Fixing and balancing builds/maps is Anet's job, winning is the players job.

Dzan · May 29, 2006, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorven

About Imperial Isle - In a seasonal GvG, You have a 50% chance (I think) to be the guesting guild in the guildhall picking. So , If your running a spike build which relies on Imperial Isle like FoC does, Your taking a big risk because you might end up playing in Warriors Isle and being totally screwd. So maybe just remove imperial isle from play-offs? I do agree theyre pretty mean when you know your the guest guild.

Not true. You only play on it if you are playing against teams higher rated than you. When you are rated like 1000 that means it will be close to 50%, perhaps even more, but when you are #4 like EW 90%+ of your matches will be on other bases.

Zeldawind · May 29, 2006, 04:26 PM // 16:26

ill add my point of view.

I hated the finals. But thats prolly cuz im a person who enjoys korean play style a lot:P. Splitting all the time and playvery aggressive in general. I hate spike builds which is prolly the reason i hated the finals mutch. Ive already said to the guild i hated the finals cuz of the lame FoC spike which is perfect on imperial hall. And in the third game well i expected iB to run FoC spike aswell, dunno why though but the only game i enjoyed was the second one.

But all in all id rather have seen a old classic WM vs EvIL final.

But gratz to EW sorry for iB. But iB would have won from EW in a split build cuz EW always run some sort of spike build. But GG to EW again.

TheOneMephisto · May 29, 2006, 04:44 PM // 16:44

The second game was amazing to me. The recall warriors just made my day...

bgnato · May 29, 2006, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Recall warriors were great. Very good move, i liked it very much. And by the way, i wonder why in the 3rd game iB didnt have Heal Party and i think it was more than obviously, that EW gonna use the FoC spike again, cuz they won that way the #1 game in first place, and second that this build i nearly unbeatable on Imperial Isle, and they knew that they'll play there. But still its kinda impossible to counter that build on that guild hall, so it was a good try by iB. W8ing with impatience the ballance update

I dont like spike much so i dont wanna see it in GvGs

(the fact, that we didnt win a single game against decent spike build for ages, is nothing in common with my wants

)

Schorny · May 30, 2006, 12:22 AM // 00:22

Beeing able to dictate 2 of 3 maps is a big advantage as you can prepare your build especially for that map you know you are going to play on.

EW took nice advantage of it, allthough it was boring to watch (but you really can't blame a team for playing to win instead of playing to look good).

So basically EW showed us how big this advantage can be - that's the only thing one should reconsider: is it really fair to dictate 2 of 3 maps.

and there is no difference between playing a "balanced" build versus playing a spike build. It's all GW. Spike is pretty unpopular because on lower levels you'll earn more wins with spike than with other styles of play - because to counter spike you need to play well. So bad spikes often beat bad non-spike-teams.

But at that level EW and iB plays, spike is quite riscy to play, because a spike lacks flexibility and good teams can punish you for this.

Byron · May 30, 2006, 05:31 AM // 05:31

This reminds me of the old [iA] ranger spike and how people used to clammor about how "overpowered" it was. If memory serves, it brought on a slew of imitators. Well, it wasn't overpowered or "cheap" by any means (though it was still in the time when necro orders could stack easily), it was simply a very well thought out and practiced spike. That's what I see of EW's FoC.

EW didn't get into the finals because of FoC spike. IMO, that FoC is even more vulnerable than other spikes due to ritualist spirit range and cast time. It was, however, a good idea considering its been so long unused that most balanced teams don't have many preparations or much practice against it.

As always, if it gets overused (and it may well do so at this point), it will be nerfed.

yesitsrob · May 30, 2006, 05:51 AM // 05:51

There's no doubt that running a spike, especially one like EW run on the Imperial Map is a real winning tactic from build alone. Yes I'm pretty sure it could be beaten given a bit of luck or if you are a lot better than your opponent but it does give you a massive advantage before the match even starts, and yes, it was a pretty dull match from on observers pov.

I saw similar things on observer mode last ladder. When Deer faced EviL for example and beat them, it was kind of hard to imagine how EviL could have actually won the match.

I just worry that next ladder a lot of other guilds could be running this gimmicky FoC spike with Imperial as their home map... and the top 200 of the ladder is largely determined by who got the luck of drawing unprepared higher ranked opponents on your home map with FoC spike. I'd hate for gvg to be filled with gimmicky builds, prefer that would stay in HA.

On FoC spike in general, our guild only came up against 1 last ladder (think it was Real Teazer running it) - we were on druids isle, our own map.. split off the bat had the bodyguards down by 10 minutes, and all archers down by 20.. at which stages they managed to play extremely defensively, at VoD - we fancied our chances... all our NPCs were alive so figured we could really push them from the flag stand backed up by however many archers there are.... this wasn't really the case though... it took 1 feast spike and both the bodyguards and all archers were dead... kind of hard to tell npcs to not ball up. So yeah.. by that time we were pretty screwed, VoD + FoC on you hurts a lot

. I suppose this was largely our fault for not taking down the guild lord quickly enough and not splitting quite effectively enough.

Fighting such a build 8v8 though... it's just packed with so much defense that it really doesn't seem like an option... I don't think any kills were actually scored on the match until about 30 minutes into it.

I'd have to say I'd feel facing FoC on Imperial Isle is a very very big chance of losing, unless your opponent happens to be really bad and incapable of counting.

Guillaume De Sonoma · May 30, 2006, 06:46 AM // 06:46

I couldn't care about weather it is cheap or not, but my only problem is what will this bring for the next championship? Will teams in the first seed(or the highest in their route to the finals) take imperial ilse and run a similar build to what EW did and just rely on their higher rank to allow them to win because splitting will be nearly impossible and they can stop all splits? I like teams splitting and making strategic descissions and if all matches are like EW vs. iB then I would be rather uninterested in the GWWCs.

Congrats to EW for their win and I applaude iB for their great showing of talent and determination.

Zeldawind · May 30, 2006, 07:40 AM // 07:40

btw people your forgetting other things. Thumpers and tainted are really a pwnage build on fthe fire map which a lot of ppl know already. And there are other builds that pwn well on other map. Like split teams can own a team on Frozen and Druids. Heck even jade isle can be pwnd by a build but im not going to tell you which build cuz i want you ppl to find out for yourself. So if you want to take out overpowerred builds on a map make 1 map and everyone is fight on that map.

Well GG if thats going to be done and that will make GvG very boring, because of all the different tactics on different maps is what GvG makes so freaking interesting. My guild loves splitting which our build is designed for we can split in 3-2-3, 4-3-1 or 4-2-2 or whatever kind of split we like but our build is also good in 8v8. If you want to make it to the top your build has to be versatile and can handle multiple situations. By taking out overpowerred builds on a specific map, that will eventually become really boring. Ok necro spike is a bit abused cuz soul reaping is triggered by spirits dying aswell and ppl just keep on using the same spirits over and over which gives energy to the necros all the time thats just wrong. If you find something for that than i thank Anet a lot cuz that will cause Necro spike to be used less.

(btw sorry if my english was a bit difficult to understand:P)

latbec · May 30, 2006, 08:27 AM // 08:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenn_rolfe

Didn't the finals show that build > skill........

Being intelligent and taking full advantage of a map features to win go in the skill category. Outplaying your opponent by predicting what he will play goes in the skill category. Going to the championship and reaching the finals go in the skill category. Skill in GW is not just about running around and snipping your opponent, it's about planning your build according to the metagame of the moment, bring the proper counters, etc... The final was not at all disappointing, it was in fact a great show of mindgame.

If they would just allow the guild thief to run through the teleporters, that would change a lot of things on the imperial map.

Patrograd · May 30, 2006, 08:53 AM // 08:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by latbec

If they would just allow the guild thief to run through the teleporters, that would change a lot of things on the imperial map.

/agree

Servant of Kali · May 30, 2006, 09:46 AM // 09:46

Quote:

I have to say that the third game is partly iB's fault. I mean, dual attunements and a bonder? Desecrate was having a field day. They should have prepared for the FoC spike since they were probably going to play on that map again and EW had beaten them with it earlier.

Agreed.

Yes, both teams are good, but even if iB says they didnt know what EW will bring, couldnt they at least come up with some other build which doesnt favor FoC/desecrate with 3 enchants? I mean, FoC was after all the most likely choice after all.

Beat_Go_Stick · May 30, 2006, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Ha!

Easy to critique the 2nd place build when you didn't even compete

EW pulled off the FoC build as nicely as it could be pulled off. iB did as well as they could but don't forget that a lot of it is playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with builds at that point. Trying to anticipate what your opponent will bring to the final game has to be quite a brain-teaser.....do they play the gimmicky spike build again or are they thinking that we will think they are going to do that?

Both teams used their knowledge of Guild Wars wonderfully and showed amazing skill in their matches.

As for glenn_rolfe, *chuckle* trolling is well and good but, as is always the case, it doesn't really do much of anything

All's fair in love and war.....and the name of the game is Guild Wars. Keep yelling "Cheap!" from the losers bracket and see if anyone besides friends & family stop to listen

glenn_rolfe · May 30, 2006, 10:14 PM // 22:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beat_Go_Stick

Ha!

As for glenn_rolfe, *chuckle* trolling is well and good but, as is always the case, it doesn't really do much of anything

All's fair in love and war.....and the name of the game is Guild Wars. Keep yelling "Cheap!" from the losers bracket and see if anyone besides friends & family stop to listen

This ridiculous attitude of glorifying anything that wins reflects poorly on those that glorify it.

Stop, have a look at it, think about what it encourages in the game, and how this sort of thing makes for a worse guild wars.

Spike is OK in that it offers another form of a challenge to play against.

But it is still a cheap build to run.

Aiiane · May 30, 2006, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenn_rolfe

This ridiculous attitude of glorifying anything that wins reflects poorly on those that glorify it.

Stop, have a look at it, think about what it encourages in the game, and how this sort of thing makes for a worse guild wars.

Spike is OK in that it offers another form of a challenge to play against.

But it is still a cheap build to run.

How is it "cheap", per say? Even most "balanced" builds use adrenline spikes with assists from caster characters to take down targets. Only the occasional pure-degen build doesn't utilize some form of spike. Balanced builds are somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. Spike builds are experts in one field that lack capabilities in other fields. Each has their weaknesses. The key is exploiting them to gain a victory. If you fight a build that can spike you down with ease, but only with their entire team, and continue to fight them straight up, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy. How much damage you do isn't the only variable in the equation.

There's no place in the GW manual where is says "doing lots of damage to a single target in an attempt to prevent them from being healed is cheap and only used by players who have no clue what they are doing". Focus-fire has been a component of military strategy for eons. If your opponent spreads out to counter every possible avenue of attack, group your forces and push in with overwhelming force. If they can't make counter-moves to prevent your attack, you win. If they can counter, perhaps by pressing in on other fronts forcing you to make a decision about whether to continue your advance or fall back to defend your other assets, and you can't cope, you lose.

Loch · May 30, 2006, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenn_rolfe

This ridiculous attitude of glorifying anything that wins reflects poorly on those that glorify it.

So we're not allowed to congratulate the team who made smart moves and won? Or would you rather them win only if they tie their hands behind their backs first?

Quote:

Stop, have a look at it, think about what it encourages in the game, and how this sort of thing makes for a worse guild wars.

Oh my god! I can't believe that Guild Wars actually encourages players to win! That's not the point of competition at all!

Please define "cheap."

[EW]Elendar · May 31, 2006, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beat_Go_Stick

Ha!

Easy to critique the 2nd place build when you didn't even compete

EW pulled off the FoC build as nicely as it could be pulled off. iB did as well as they could but don't forget that a lot of it is playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with builds at that point. Trying to anticipate what your opponent will bring to the final game has to be quite a brain-teaser.....do they play the gimmicky spike build again or are they thinking that we will think they are going to do that?

Exactly, the only other time in the tourney we'ed opened with foc spike had been the 1st match against emt, we then lost the 2nd map with a warrior build so they assumed we'ed take foc again and had a well prepared anti build but got caught out because we ran warriors again, something they where unprepared for.
Having such an extreme build as foc spike isn't just good for playing it, its good because it forces your opponents to take counters that aren't much use against your other builds