Curse

pork soldier · May 29, 2006, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Guildwars is surprisingly like real life, you might have to make friends with the other participants if you expect to achieve anything worthwhile.

ps: there's always fort aspenwood if you can't get a pvp group.

BeowulfKamdas · May 29, 2006, 11:01 PM // 23:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I actually rate Team Arenas higher than HA, in terms of competition. You get some damn good teams in there, and skip all of the gimmicky crap and bad attitudes. Innovation works, and you are not limited in your build by bad gameplay mechanics.

There is of course the few teams who scraped in through from Randoms, but it doesn't take long to get past them.

I agree completely, if only I could get more people to understand. JR, you rox my sox.

Dzan · May 30, 2006, 08:18 AM // 08:18

The problem I see with "testing builds" in random arenas is that you can get a very skewed idea of what is good and bad.

Lets say I see a War/Ele shock axe build on the forum, arguably the best all around warrior build there is and I want to test it in RA.

I get on a team with no monk and the people who are there are lame. The battle starts and suddenly I'm slammed with a covered Spiteful Spirit and I'm killed in about 12 seconds by a touch ranger completely helplessly.

Repeat that senario about 10 times in a row and if you didn't know any better you might start to get the idea that the Shock Axe build totally sucks and touch rangers are the best thing going.

The basic problem is the biggest message that you get from random arena is "You can only depend on yourself, build accordingly." The problem is that the rest of PVP in guildwars requires you to do the exact opposite of that, so anyone who cuts their teeth in RA is going to have a rude (literally) awakening when he tries to play in other venues with his RA mindset.

Thom · May 30, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Random arenas, a few points:
1) Some people have fun in RA and enjoy the change of pace. I have my days were I'd rather RA, than put up with organizing my team.

2) RA is more helpful than PvE when it comes to learning pace and skills.

3)There are some builds that absolutely pwn in RA but are useless most everywhere else. I have a modded IW build which has carried RA teams to long winning strings for months. The build has absolutely no place anywhere else in guild wars, but that isn't the point. A good player can have a favorite RA build and not come away thinking he is a god. Bad players tend to get inflated views of themselves playing such builds (although my IW build isn't exactly skill-less since it involves weapon switches, cover enchants, target selection and "combos").

4)In testing we would play tons of random arenas since it only required 8 people total to pvp. Ensign whould joke about how that much RA made bad PvP players. He is largely correct.

5)RA can be a good proving ground for new players in certain roles: namely monks and dps builds. Your support builds get almost nothing from RA, but it can be a good way to practice pacing your dps and dealing with pressure as a healer. You never know what you are going to get, which gives you a good vocabulary of hexes and conditions and how to deal with various situations. As long as you realize that you are only practicing a facet of the game, you can learn.

6)RA is an interesting place to learn to play damage builds. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is just a mess.

7)Competition in RA isn't completely random, it is self selecting. You are as likely to face a team with several wins as you are a horrible team. Each round half the teams are weeded out along with a certain number of "top teams", those with 10 wins. In a steady state, this means that about half the teams are freshly joining and half have at least one win. Under this assumption .25 of all games played are between teams with a least one win (hence forth "winners") among your winners therefore, your group is also self selecting. That is to say, that better teams are likely to stay in the winners group and win mutiple games. Without working out all the math involved in this, it is fair to say that there is a type of self selection involved which makes things not entirely random. It is no suprise that you will see a good number of interesting teams and solid individual builds while playing RA. This almost never leads to TA ready teams by 10 wins, but an RA team getting a TA win isn't unheard of.

8) I love TA and would rank it above RA and HA in terms of preference.