Curse

JR · Apr 24, 2006, 05:07 PM // 17:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

[...]

Good answers. It seems you are very well versed in how to approach a split, and have obviously a lot of experience with it.

I do advocate building with enough spike disruption and facing spike 8 vs 8, it is always a consideration in builds I put together. However I had always thought of splitting as a fairly solid tactic against spike, should you need to. In a lot of previous battles it almost seemed like an auto-win strategy. I suppose the difference is the lack of decent guilds running a solid spike these days, the only spike you do face tends to be lower ranked guilds who got to where they were purely with that build and have very little real experience.

I am however slightly puzzled by something; why do you run spike? You definately seem to be of the (largely correct) impression that pretty much all top guilds run a large amount of disruption, so why do you stick to spike yourself?

Patrograd · Apr 24, 2006, 07:06 PM // 19:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I am however slightly puzzled by something; why do you run spike? You definately seem to be of the (largely correct) impression that pretty much all top guilds run a large amount of disruption, so why do you stick to spike yourself?

Its a time thing

We have as a Guild probably 15-20 hours a week in which we can play together. We are mostly older guys with jobs and wives and mortgages and all that good stuff.

Because of this restricted time basically we want a build that will allow us to get in and out really fast and turnover alot of battles with a reasonably high win percentage (say 70-80%). The great thing about spike is that you win or lose for the most part really quickly, we are playing about 4 battles an hour on average. Although we could probably get a higher win %age using a balanced build, our experience is that each battle typically lasts longer, much longer in fact, and so the overall points yield per hour is lower, and so lower rank. Spike is a farming build if you like.

We dont play enough battles to seriously compete with the top 20, and never are likely to, so we take the view that if we lose those games to those teams, its no biggy, and those guys will beat spike mostly. But other than them the amount of teams that can cope with spike is really very small, and this gives us a good shot at a top 100 finish, despite our really low number of hours played, and so a kind of perverse fame and fortune on obs mode. Who knows, maybe one day we'll all get divorced (quite likely if I keep on playing GW 20 hours a week

) and then we can launch a serious attack on the top of the ladder. In the meantime, we'll farm our points, and get called noobs by all the scrubs we stomp, and generally have a blast

icemonkey · Apr 24, 2006, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Honestly patro is right about most of this and JR- about other parts.

but about splits...Its not a tactic to win by its a tactic to stall by.
Pretty much the teams that will be proned to split from start or at all even are the korean teams. Their matches are one huge stall tactic all goaled towards setting up for VOD and then makling a killing blow when they are in a position of strength and the others a position of weakness. Its so subtle, I'll give some examples

WM during the first GWWC the matches in the round before their loss to evil, if you remember they ran around killed NPCS built up a bunch of DP and basically looked like they were gonna lose. But its was a 30 minute stall and at VOD they won.

Also, RenO vs EW on Ice hall, last playoffs. RenO playd this map so well, they were losing 8v8 to EW who run an extremely good mixy adrenline spike. But reno started a great stall. They ran people around as diversions and EW followed like a lost little puppy, RenO wasnt doing much sometimes jsut running loops allbut the whole time RenO also set up some crucial flag caps and some NPC deaths. In the end RenO distracted the body guards at VOD and won because of it. They didn't do much NPC assasination, they didnt need to they knew how to play the map EW didnt.

the take home message is, you don't need to split, you should beat them to their face. All the top guilds whoop spikes in their face with pressure and disruption.

if you split realize that it is for setting up something for VOD, it is a stall and you better know the map. Don't think you are gonna split up and then all of a sudden you will just win both 4v4 skirmishes.

JR was saying this but he didnt actually come out and say that the split is a stall and a diversion.

Greedy Gus · Apr 24, 2006, 09:14 PM // 21:14

I can't say I really agree with you icemonkey. All of your examples and experience seems to be from observing playoff matches, where it's a decidedly different play environment. Yes, during playoffs many teams run splits with the intention of stalling and playing a VOD strategy. But in the ladder season, that's extremely counter-productive, because the more matches you play, the more rating you get. If a team is splitting in the regular ladder season, just looking for rating, they're looking for numbers mismatches and engagements that favor them, to punish you and finish the game.

STINGER · Apr 24, 2006, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Split is still a solid tactic, but it is beatable. It is not a choosing to loose tactic. Now, when a team is prepared for your split and can counter it you need something else to do.......those that dont have something else to do will go 8v8 as they have no choice.

There are many ways to win at this game and some of them look pretty ugly at times.

Teh Mighty Warrior · Apr 24, 2006, 09:17 PM // 21:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by All the Evil

well even on the fire island thing you can just run through the enemys team (usually they dont bodyblock) und split that way
a mate of mine is playing rspike in gvg, and mostly they react on a split with jusdt a quick rush. the left 4 enemies should be no problem, fast kills, und in their base you should be faste since you got 8 ppl (and not a 4ppl split)
somehow, if it works the gvgs takes about 3 mins i think =)
interrupt works pretty good, but mostly they'll be able to spike even if you take one spiker out, and stand devided so cry of frustration just hits one (know what i mean?! damn english ;D) so you'd need a lot of disruption...
at all, versus rspike shields up is imoh the very best, even if you cant use the 50% block you got a huge armor increasement
versus elespike, hm didnt see that very often, and i think there its done with one interrupter and a protspirit
my 2 cents here =)

Well, if the other team decides to split, I (e/mo) and a monk just camp the lord, healing the npcs as neccessary and making sure blind stays on the warriors. So splitting is usually not a problem, unless it's frozen isle, but that map just ends up being VoD 75% of the time. Yea, interrupting one person doesn't do much, but interrupting two becomes a problem. About the shields up, you were right, I forgot to mention that. Nothing you can do about that except for rigor.

Dzan · Apr 24, 2006, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

Sure, there are some great spike teams around, as there are some great warrior teams around, and this statement could be apllied to both forms of build equally. And yet, when you see two or three warriors on the other team your natural reaction is not to split, and yet you see three or four rangers and you split, despite the fact that the warriors pose you a far greater threat (if we are talking here about top 100).

If I may answer this...

The reason is, as you said, most spike teams will do a 6/2 split, with only one group that has offensive game and one group that is no threat to kill anything. That gives you at least the potential of creating an advantageous situation.

If you split against, say, War Machine, you will likely get a balanced split in which each group is more than capable of beating either of your split groups. Since you don't gain an imbalanced split against the balanced team like you do against spike there are no potential advantageous situations to be gained, personnel-wise.

Bio-Flame · Apr 24, 2006, 11:52 PM // 23:52

From what I read from PAtrograd's posts is fairly obvious that their Spike build is running a very heavy "anti-split" strategy - loads of slows, gales, crippling shots, etc...

Well, this is a rock-scissors-paper game after all. You can't make a build that wins 100% against a strategy and still wins against the others.
Sure, you can make your spike build geared towards winning vs. splits but you'll be sacrificing your ability to win 8vs8.

See, 8vs8 a spike team should win most of the time- unless of course they face a heavy "anti-spike" build with loads of CoF and such. That's the objective of a spike team, playing together as a full team and winning due to amazing concentrated firepower.
Most spike teams ignore blinds and such since they use martyr (and sometimes 2 copies of martyr). There are several tactics and skills that will turn the tide to the spike's favor.

Naturally, the opponents reactio is to split to counter this "natural" advantage.
Now if the Spike team takes it to "Yomi layer 2" then they'll adapt against the other team's counter tactics, and use skills that are more effective against splits - such as slows, gales and etc...
Of course, by doing this you'll be weakning your build against full 8vs8 matches.

My point is that while the spike team can be built to effectively deal with splits then obviously they will weaken themselves against 8vs8 matchups. In the end,there are only 64 skills available.....

So, while it may seem to Patrograd that the "best" way to deal with spike would be facing them 8vs8 head-on, I think he must realize that might just be the best way to defeat his team's version of spike. It isn't necessarily true against all spike builds.

Wasteland Squidget · Apr 25, 2006, 12:00 AM // 00:00

What else is a Ranger spike team doing with their slots? Sure, Punishing Shot is nice and all, but Ranger spike can work perfectly well if you're using elites on things like Cripshot and Charge instead.

The biggest advantage of spike is that it is an offense that requires very few skillslots to be effective. That being the case, you can spend almost all of your slots on utility, on defense, on tricks which will help you force the enemy into the situation you want.

Since Split is a strong tactic against spike, they're going to spend slots on countering splits. They won't significantly weaken their 8v8 play by doing this, because the primary offensive skills for a spike in 8v8 take up 1-2 slots per offensive character.

latbec · Apr 25, 2006, 12:14 AM // 00:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teh Mighty Warrior

Most spike teams will have the Fire Isle map, so if they are playing at home, splitting is not an option.

I have never been a big fan of the fire island map as home field for a spike team. It forces the opposite team to go 8 vs 8 against you. Sure, you will easily outdamage rank 200+ teams, but below that rank, many teams will possess the ability to shutdown your spike. And like Patro said, amazingly on a map where splitting is encouraged, many of these teams (that would have fought 8vs8 and won against you) will choose to split, throwing away their victory.

Patrograd · Apr 25, 2006, 06:23 AM // 06:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by latbec

I have never been a big fan of the fire island map as home field for a spike team. It forces the opposite team to go 8 vs 8 against you. Sure, you will easily outdamage rank 200+ teams, but below that rank, many teams will possess the ability to shutdown your spike. And like Patro said, amazingly on a map where splitting is encouraged, many of these teams (that would have fought 8vs8 and won against you) will choose to split, throwing away their victory.

I agree with this strongly. The Fire Map is for teams that never want to split (so for example a team carrying bonds/barrier). We use Nomads for our home base for a number of reasons, mostly because it is a map that looks like one you can split on without it actually being, another because the two base gates are VERY close together, and another because it is very easy to position yourslef in such a way as to protect your base and dominate the flagstand.

We used to have the fire map as our home base, but as latbec points out, this forces to teams to get in your face, which if they are good teams we dont really want.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bio-Flame

My point is that while the spike team can be built to effectively deal with splits then obviously they will weaken themselves against 8vs8 matchups. In the end,there are only 64 skills available.....

In fact we sacrifice offence to strengthen our anti split. Because our tactic is based around mobility we dont play with spirits. This can make our spike look ragged, and the success percentage is lower than if we were to use favourable winds/winnowing etc, but we can use that spirit slot for skills like like dodge. As long as we get those spikes in hard and fast we make up for the relatively low kill %age with rapid fire spiking. I have never played either with or against a team that spikes as often as we do. The great thing is you dont really need any energy for ranger spiking, so you can maintain that 5 second spike cycle for a long, long time. As long as the target selection is good (and to be honest, alot of spike teams we play have shockingly poor target selection) we can achieve enough kills against teams that arent actively disrupting us.

But yes, we are weak 8v8 against a good team, which is pretty much what I've been saying, as is every other form of spike I've ever played. Spike is damage in predictably timed packets, using skills that almost exclusively are 2 second cast/activation, where the spikers all turn to face the person they are going to kill for those 2 seconds. This is naturally weak against a good team as they can predict with reasonable accuracy when the damage is coming and who it is coming against.

JR · Apr 25, 2006, 09:19 AM // 09:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by icemonkey

JR was saying this but he didnt actually come out and say that the split is a stall and a diversion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

This is a VoD tactic, winning yourself the NPC advantage whilst running them around and denying them kills.

I thought that had pretty much covered it?