Curse

Maika Boila Radovu · Mar 20, 2006, 07:03 AM // 07:03

First off I'm hoping this is in the right section. If it isnt please feel free to move it.

Now on to the main point.

The guild I am in is a very good PvE guild and an awesome guild for quality of members. We however are a little lacking in the GvG department. We maintain a rank of between 1500 and 1000 usually. There has been a fair bit of discusion in the guild about being more competitive and I was hoping to get some info from some of the top ranked guilds.

My question is this. As top ranked GvG'ers how many people do you limit GvGing to? We have about 50 members so I was wondering if you guys always take the same 8 with 1 or 2 backups or if you have it open to everyone.

Second question is how often do you GvG, practice, and just generally go over new tactics and ideas? How much time do you devote to each thing? I am looking for as much info as you'd be willing to share.

Thank you in advance for anything you can tell me.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Mar 20, 2006, 07:20 AM // 07:20

We just do lots of TA and GvG twice a week with usually thesame 8, but we like to sub in different people.

Clusmas · Mar 20, 2006, 09:38 AM // 09:38

One:
We have 15 members. Everyone gvgs. In your situation, if you want to be really competitive, I'd do up a 'gvg roster' of no more than 20 people who are allowed to gvg. Although this may not be in the nature of your guild and people will feel left out and probably leave or whine. So it's your call.

Two:
Gvg everyday. Being a gvg guild, we devote pretty much all our time to gvg. Outside of gvg, private forums are the place to discuss tactics and what not, or even on vent/ts in between (or even during!) matches.

JR · Mar 20, 2006, 09:57 AM // 09:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clusmas

One:
We have 15 members. Everyone gvgs. In your situation, if you want to be really competitive, I'd do up a 'gvg roster' of no more than 20 people who are allowed to gvg. Although this may not be in the nature of your guild and people will feel left out and probably leave or whine. So it's your call.

If you want to be *really* competitive, I would say have a first string squad of 8, who will get priority to play together every time you GvG on certain nights.

tafy69 · Mar 20, 2006, 10:31 AM // 10:31

Select something like 10 people as Core GvG players, these guys will get priority to play. And only sub in 1-2 others if you cant fill the team with Core members.

Patrograd · Mar 20, 2006, 12:26 PM // 12:26

We have a core GvG group of probably 12 players, but will sometimes sub players in depending on availability. These players will play as much as is possible the same role in the team every time. Having your build hot wired from your brain to your fingers makes a huge difference

We used to GvG as often as we could, six nights per week, sometimes more, but we found it hard to maintain consistency. You cant give 100% so often IMO, and if you cant give it 100% you're going to get rolled. So now we GvG 4 nights per week, when we know that our best players are likely to be on, and this gives everyone a chance to really switch on properly for those nights, they are no longer routine everyday "ratings farm" sessions. The rest of the time we will usually lark about in Heroes Ascent with silly builds getting steamrollered by low ranked PUGs on obs mode for laughs.

New tactics and ideas are a constant, everyday 24/7 discussion. Evolve or die ;-)

LightningHell · Mar 20, 2006, 01:49 PM // 13:49

I'd love to have a Guild like that...but I play so little. I'm sad.

From most Guilds my friends are in, I would think 8-10 people who are *Core* PvPers.

icemonkey · Mar 20, 2006, 04:07 PM // 16:07

From my experience the more people you have in your guild the harder it is to GvG, The whining and complaining and the ability to control quality of players on the team bogs everythign down. You can;t tell if you're build is good if you do not have a consistant group of players. Not nescessarily consistantly the same people but consistantly experienced and savy PvP players.

My guild tries to GvG a couple hours per night 5-6 days per week. with about 12 core players. and the guild is a total of like 15. You need to limit the GvG players and this will prolly cause problems with the rest of the members of the guild.

as far as practice, TA can be good. But PvP experience in general is what you need for all players. If you get seriouse about GvG and try to learn from your mistakes you will get better but you will lose along the way.

Billiard · Mar 20, 2006, 05:17 PM // 17:17

XoO is large guild so I'll share how we deal with this:

We have 3 main GvG divisions now, two of which have near 100 players and a newer EU time based one that has 35 or so. Each of these main divisions GvGs as often as we have 8 people on that want to - which is usually 3-5 times a day now it seems.

When these divisions GvG they run the first 8 people to show up in the guild hall, and then rotate other folks in each match as needed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we run builds (whichever one the match caller wants to run, and we have a lot posted on our forums to choose from), on the other days we run Grab 8 and Go - basically people get to run whatever build they want, with some modifications to help coordinate with the team.

Anyway with larger guilds I agree that there can be some down time between matches. In order to deal with this you all really ought to settle on a build in advance and then practice a bunch before you decide to make major changes or scrap it. Since you probably can't bring the same 8 each time, try to at least have people play the same roles each time they run with the team in order for them to get better at that role. People waiting to rotate in should have a character from the build rolled and ready to go, and they should be listening to the current match in order to pick up some pointers as to how things are coordinated. I also suggest warming up in HA a but before going into a GvG with new folks.

Anyway its not terribly hard for a group of inexperienced folks to maintain a 300-500 ranking with a little practice and coordination. Breaking the top 100 or top 50 though take s bit more expertise and dedication.

Medion · Mar 21, 2006, 03:36 PM // 15:36

My guild is trying to become better now as well. Last two seasons, we only went in when we were with the good 8 people. This season we decided to go in any day there were 6+ people online. Most of the time it still are the same people who come, but this gives us good practice. When we don't have 8, we just grab henchies, and to be honest, we aren't that bad. We are not in top 1000, but with henchies that isn't a thing we are focusing on really.

At this moment, we have about 4 or 5 guildbattles a week, with about 10 people who have done a guildbattle in the last two weeks.

JR · Mar 21, 2006, 03:43 PM // 15:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medion

My guild is trying to become better now as well. Last two seasons, we only went in when we were with the good 8 people. This season we decided to go in any day there were 6+ people online. Most of the time it still are the same people who come, but this gives us good practice. When we don't have 8, we just grab henchies, and to be honest, we aren't that bad. We are not in top 1000, but with henchies that isn't a thing we are focusing on really.

At this moment, we have about 4 or 5 guildbattles a week, with about 10 people who have done a guildbattle in the last two weeks.

If you want to improve, I would seriously suggest dropping the henchies and having regular practice.

Billiard · Mar 21, 2006, 04:07 PM // 16:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medion

My guild is trying to become better now as well. Last two seasons, we only went in when we were with the good 8 people. This season we decided to go in any day there were 6+ people online. Most of the time it still are the same people who come, but this gives us good practice. When we don't have 8, we just grab henchies, and to be honest, we aren't that bad. We are not in top 1000, but with henchies that isn't a thing we are focusing on really.

At this moment, we have about 4 or 5 guildbattles a week, with about 10 people who have done a guildbattle in the last two weeks.

If you are short a couple of folks you should hop onto #gwp on IRC and ask if anyone wants to guest. There are always good players there willing to help other folks out with GvGs.

hellprowler · Mar 21, 2006, 04:11 PM // 16:11

The thing about GvG is you need to not only know your opponent, but know your team if you want to be in the top 100. XoO's method is fine and all, but frankly, I never expect them to be in the top 50, and I don't even think they expect it. That's fine if they understand that. To be in the top 50 you really need to know your teammates, their tendencies, actions, play calling, etc...

Playing with the same 8 people over and over again really helps, not only do you get GvG experience, but you start to understand what your team likes to do, so you can work to that advantage. One example is monks, knowing what your teammates do as monks really helps, so you can conserve energy and time that way. For example 1 monk (I can relate to this) likes to use big heals whenever a player's HP gets less than 50%, ok monk 2 should realize that and don't use big heals as much, so they can conserve energy. Granted there will be situations when that monk can't use a big heal, and of course with experience you will learn all of the possible situations.

Maika Boila Radovu · Mar 21, 2006, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Thank you everyone who took the time to reply. I really appreciated you sharing your knowledge with me.

If possible I would also like to know what kind of time investment top guilds require of members and how they spend that time. How many hours a week do you spend GvGing. How many hours are spent on the forums, etc?

It doesnt have to be exact but I am trying to piece it together so that those in the guild have an idea before they begin of the expectation of time.

Thank you again.

Medion · Mar 21, 2006, 06:07 PM // 18:07

@JR
I know henchies aren't the best thing in the world, but we figured it's better that way then not doing GvG at all.

@Billiard
Could you explain what IRC is? I saw it mentioned on the 'how to make connections' at IQ also, but I have no idea what it is, is it some sort of Ventrillo/Teamspeak?

Parkerbsb · Mar 21, 2006, 06:31 PM // 18:31

IRC is a chatroom program like ICQ

Patrograd · Mar 21, 2006, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medion

@JR
I know henchies aren't the best thing in the world, but we figured it's better that way then not doing GvG at all.

I dont think it is to be honest. With henchies you cant really plan any sort of strategy, play any sort of build, or really hope for much more than the odd win against similar hench-orientated teams, I think you'd learn more about gvg from spending the evening watching obs mode as a group than you would going in to fight with henchies.

Billiard · Mar 22, 2006, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medion

@JR
I know henchies aren't the best thing in the world, but we figured it's better that way then not doing GvG at all.

@Billiard
Could you explain what IRC is? I saw it mentioned on the 'how to make connections' at IQ also, but I have no idea what it is, is it some sort of Ventrillo/Teamspeak?

You use a client like mIRC in order to chat on servers with other folks. I think the program is pretty self-explanatory, you just need to get it going then head over to #gwp or #guildwarsguru to find folks.

ghezbora · Mar 22, 2006, 12:34 AM // 00:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maika Boila Radovu

The guild I am in is a very good PvE guild and an awesome guild for quality of members. We however are a little lacking in the GvG department. We maintain a rank of between 1500 and 1000 usually. There has been a fair bit of discusion in the guild about being more competitive and I was hoping to get some info from some of the top ranked guilds.

My question is this. As top ranked GvG'ers how many people do you limit GvGing to? We have about 50 members so I was wondering if you guys always take the same 8 with 1 or 2 backups or if you have it open to everyone.

You really can't have 50 members play and be a competitive guild. It's one or the other. My ~50 member guild just split because of this. A half-dozen or so really wanted to be competitive, and the rest of the guild wanted to be a casual "everyone gets rotated in" kind of guild, so we decided it was in everyone's best interest for us competitive folk to form our own guild.

If there's only 10 people that want to GvG anyway, then it won't be a problem, but don't try to force different mindsets to operate in the same guild. You'll just be forced into some combination of snubbing the casual players and trashing the serious players' rating.

Red Locust · Mar 22, 2006, 08:29 AM // 08:29

The way SoF does it, we have different "squads" for various skill levels and goals, so that like-minded members can get to play with each other. Ultimately, however, pretty much everything is open to everyone.

I think that unless you're a guild of not much more than 10 people, trying to form a core group of exclusive gvg'ers is the wrong way of going about doing it. You're essentially telling the rest that they're not good enough and should just sit back. This is a game, after all, and bench warmers aren't really getting much out of it. You've gotta draw the line at some point and accept that you're not gonna be the number 1 guild with so many members, and that forcing most of them off to the sidelines is really not worth it. And there's no reason to think that you can't reach a decent level of competitiveness just because you have a big gvg roster, it just takes some more work.