Curse

kmg0 · Mar 11, 2006, 03:47 AM // 03:47

With so much discrimnation on the American servers of rank, how do you survive? I got a good guild but they aren't into HoH, just GvG. It's also a guild of personal friends (real life) so I can't leave them. And my friends, well, not many

. Being Rank 1 with 48 fame (IWAY an even bigger

) I cannot join any group except for that desperate "invite self we're gonna lose!!111" which I see a lot. How does a player in GW like me get to such an accomplishment such as R3? I really want to be able to play with good players in Guild Wars. I mean I got a FoW helm, +1 mil exp, good armor, and I've played GW for 8 months now. But in Heroes' Ascent, it's either "IWAY LFG or R6++". I ask you posters, to give someone advice for me. Thanks!

Oh yes, I've tried search for suggestions but

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Lorien of Mandos · Mar 11, 2006, 03:56 AM // 03:56

Hopefully this thread won't turn into rants about how hard it is for unranked players to start HA and earn their rank...

Anyway - you are going to be forced to PUG if you are unwilling to leave your GvG-only guild. The best advice I can offer is to spend some time in random arenas earning faction so that you can unlock more skills and play more builds. Starting on the road to rank 3 is the hardest part, you may have to start forming your own teams with other unranked players to be able to get in at all. Watch some fights in observer mode to see what type of builds are out there, read forums and ask questions. Start building a friends list with good players you meet. At no time should you complain in the game to others about not being able to get a team because youre not ranked - we all went through it and we all fought past it, whining will get you 0 sympathy.

All that said, the friends list is the most important aspect (especially if you cant join a guild that likes to play in HoH).

[EDIT] Just noticed that you list your profession as W/Mo - you are going to have a very hard time getting on a team as that combo - you will need to unlock a lot more stuff. Tanks are great in PvE when your enemy is AI triggered by an aggro-circle, but in PvP tanks are useless as your opponents are smart enough (usually) to attack weaker targets 1st.

kmg0 · Mar 11, 2006, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Yeah, I'm also a Monk and Necro. I can unlock any skills needed. I got a lot of Elites too. Thanks for the advice.

Lorien of Mandos · Mar 11, 2006, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Monks are in high demand and so are necros (to a slightly lesser degree) so if you can play those roles well you will do fine.

Monk skills you should have unlocked for HA (elites listed 1st): Word of Healing, Spellbreaker, Restore Condition, Martyr, Shield of Deflection, orison of healing, healing seed, dwayna's kiss, heal party, healing touch, infuse health, aegis, mend ailment, protective spirit, guardian, reversal of fortune, holy veil, convert hexes - also have some energy management stuff from the mesmer line, inspired hex, channeling, etc etc

As far as necro goes, probably the most called for skill would be Spiteful Spirit (as an elite), also corpse control skills such as consume corpse, necrotic traversal, putrid explosion, well of profane are fairly common as are enfeebling blood, shadow of fear, etc etc - you can also try blood spike, if you need the skill list for that just searrch these forums - there are tons of posts about spike here...happy hunting

Horace The Great · Mar 11, 2006, 10:19 AM // 10:19

yes if you not r3 it sux very hard, i am almost r3 now
well you just need to start at unranked groupes (yes there are)
when under r3 IWAY is/was a good start.

XzyluM · Mar 11, 2006, 10:51 AM // 10:51

Most of my friends have moved to Europe servers or simply have their friend list consisting of most if not all European players. Why? Because all you see in American districts now is IWAY. While it my win halls, I've yet to see them hold it for any decent amount of time. That's another reason America never have favor now. If you look at the people winning halls for America, it's IWAY teams. The fact is, that's why we only have favor for 2-4 hours at the most. I know a very large potion of ranked players that are pretty good that have moved to Europe server because everyone in America wants to IWAY. Sorry, but IWAY isn't going to prove anything and you're not going to get much out of it.

kmg0 · Mar 11, 2006, 12:23 PM // 12:23

XzyluM brings up a great point I considered. I thought of going to the European servers. They'er good and probably kinder. Today my new friend got booted out of Iway after winning fame because he wasn't a real W/R. Come on, you guys won 1 battle. But in the end if nothing works for this, I'm probably going to switch to EU servers.

Dzan · Mar 11, 2006, 05:27 PM // 17:27

I take it you aren't in a guild. People that join decent guilds don't have to worry about finding random teams.

S!carius · Mar 11, 2006, 08:18 PM // 20:18

He said that he is in a guild and we isn't going to quit. Anyway, back to the problem at hand, getting to rank three sucks. But there are several non-ranked teams that do very well. I also don't have R3 yet, but I was on one PuG (non ranked) and we won many battle together, won 4 in a row the first time, 5 the second, 3 the third, ect.. So there is some hope out there.

ehanks · Mar 11, 2006, 08:44 PM // 20:44

Actually, I really don't think it's that hard to get to R3. I'm in a small guild that is almost exclusively PvE. I really like the guild, and didn't want to give it up, but also wanted to get in to pvp a lot more. I have managed to get a couple of guildies hooked on PvP, but of the 180 fame it took to get to R3, probably only 30 of it was with guildies.

The real secret is to find and start a decent build that works well without too much coordination. That's why IWAY was so popular. I didn't IWAY much, I mostly did "balanced" builds. In the end I settled on a setup like this:

Axe warrior/target caller
E/Mo (ether prodigy/air/heal party)
Mesmer (either migraine or e-denial)
Warder (glyph of energy/obs flame)
Curse Necro (normally SS)
3 monks

These are common builds that you can find pugs for fairly easily in HA. And there doesn't need to be any serious communication in-match, though of course the build is better if you do have good communication.

Some tips:

Get used to starting groups.
Ask for specific things (balanced group needs SS,warder, Axe warrior,...)
Let people reroll to make what you need.
DONT leave groups after one loss...try to refine before scrapping it.
Start building up a good Friends List. When you have a good group in HA, put them on your list and contact them soon (before they forget who you are)

Don't get discouraged. Some nights I would play for a couple hours and not get a single fame point. Then the next night I would regularly get 3 wins in a row. When you're pugging sometimes things just won't go as well as they should.

Good Luck!

Druids Arrow · Mar 11, 2006, 09:13 PM // 21:13

Don't think moving to Euro servers is the way, tbh, your better off hanging around in International Districts, however, many players there can be rank elitist.

Cheise · Mar 11, 2006, 10:52 PM // 22:52

I'm having trouble fidnign decent teams to play with. An d im tired of hanging in a channel 3 hours without getting any fame. My guild is mostly into PvE but really nice. I post this and add my in game name because i hope some of you will pm me in game and invite me to a tombs game !

In Game : Loluro Chreman

Billiard · Mar 11, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

If you refuse to change guilds and your current guildmates only want to GvG and not HA, then you have painted yourself into a corner really. The easy solution is of course to change guilds to one more oriented to HA. A secondary solution is to recruit more HA oriented folks into your guild.

In any event I really don't see a lot of merit to letting this thread go much further given the off topic posts that people are making. Pugs are tough all around in game, and finding good pugs is rough. That's one reason why this game is called "Guild Wars" - things are in general much easier when done with a guild.