Curse

GZS_FREK · Feb 10, 2006, 08:20 AM // 08:20

Hey all my name is nocturnal and i am teh new officer of PvP for team Turlington Strike Force (TtSF). i have a few questions for the community and hope u all can help me out.

1) What is a big down fall for msot new GvG guilds?? and waht can i do to not follow this same path??

2) is it better to practice lots in Heroes ascent before GvG or sacrifice the guild ranking and jsut get into GvG?? Or better yet do lots of unranked GvG??

3) what is a solid build that a guild could use to understand GvG and to becoem better??

any help woudl be greatly taking plz dont bash or be rude

wheel · Feb 10, 2006, 08:35 AM // 08:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by GZS_FREK

Hey all my name is nocturnal and i am teh new officer of PvP for team Turlington Strike Force (TtSF). i have a few questions for the community and hope u all can help me out.
1) What is a big down fall for msot new GvG guilds?? and waht can i do to not follow this same path??

The downfall for most new GvG guilds is not really learning why they lost and not making a concerted effort to learn about higher level play. Play a lot of matches, observe top guilds play, learn their builds, develop your own builds, learn why certain skills are good and why others are bad, etc. Don't worry about your guild ranking. Just play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GZS_FREK

2) is it better to practice lots in Heroes ascent before GvG or sacrifice the guild ranking and jsut get into GvG?? Or better yet do lots of unranked GvG??

Don't worry about Heroes' Ascent. Just play GvG. It's a completely different atmosphere, and it's like comparing apples to oranges. "Sacrifice" would imply that you had any guild rating to lose in the first place. Guild rating is extremely overrated. I'm much more concerned with getting better as a player and as a guild than the number attached to our guild. Because in the future ladder seasons, and in tournament matches, your rating now means nothing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GZS_FREK

3) what is a solid build that a guild could use to understand GvG and to becoem better??

Try out Ens's build. Or one of our builds.

tafy69 · Feb 10, 2006, 09:23 AM // 09:23

Yeah dont do HA ever, just GvG lots and use some1 elses build.

Tips for the new Guilds:

1. Use vent or TS
2. Try to keep battle formations with monks in the backline, those NPC archers help out a lot
3. Have your 60AL casters run to the backline if they are getting heavily hit or spiked
4. Pull you entire team back if running into energy problems on the monks, or you will have a chain death scenario
5. Flag control is very important, have the flagger tell you hes going to cap the flag or he may be spiked without you even noticing untill its too late.
6. If the enemy falls back to their Guild lord, camp outside and make sure you dont let their flag runner out
7. Make sure everyone knows what to do vs a spike team or a split team, who goes where etc
8. Have your warriors take endure pain, casters with distortion if you can.
9. Watch for them ganking your lord at VoD
10. Have fun

Patrograd · Feb 10, 2006, 12:12 PM // 12:12

Well, we started out in September with absolutely no GvG experience at all, but finished the ladder in the top 300, and were in the top 200 for quite a bit of that

Firstly, as has been said, tombs or whatever its called now is no practise for GvG at all. Its good for fine tuning skills, reactions and team discipline, but the kind of builds and tactics run in tombs, are nothing like those in GvG for the main part. You can take a great tombs build and it will suck at GvG, and vice versa.

Second - you need voice comms, and every single member of your team on voice. If a member doesnt have a headset, dont let him GvG

Third - play GvG, alot. organise a fixed time every day where every one in the guild knows you will be doing GvG. Have a forum where people can let you know about availablity and where builds can be discussed. You should be aiming to fight 30 + battles per week.

Fourth - pick a build and stick to it. learn it inside and out, making minor tweaks as you go. In time you will have a good working build that everyone understands.

Fifth - set targets for the team, short medium and long term. Everyone needs motivation to improve.

sixth - FRAPS. record all of your battles and get the videos (preferably with voice recording) hosted somewhere. try and make sure everyone watches those battles

Seventh - Obs mode. watch it, study it. not so much for the builds being run, but for the way that the top teams are playing - watch their movement, watch what they do in certain situations

Eighth - learn from every loss and every win. A fight against a really top guild is a great opportunity for you to observe first hand the kind of movement and tactics of a top team. Take such losses as you incur against these as a great opportunity to improve. You only improve by playing better teams than yourselves. When you win, understand why you won, understand what you did right and/or they did wrong. After each and every battle have a quick discussion of the things that were good and the things that werent so good.

Last - dont be afraid. be aggressive both in team build and tactics.

As for builds, well there isnt really a right or a wrong build. You need the build that is right for the players that you have, and this you will discover over time. Start by copying someone else's build if you must, but change it if need be as you go along to suit your players and playstyles. just because it works for war Machine or IQ doesnt mean it is a build that is suitable for you to run.

GL & and above all HF

Billiard · Feb 10, 2006, 04:24 PM // 16:24

The beauty of the current matching system is that if you really are bad when you start, you lose rating and get matched up with similarly rated teams (not perfect though as it depends on who is on). As you improve, you move up in rating and the teams you face get better. If you can handle those, you move up more. If not, you go back down until you can. So as was mentioned above, don't worry about rank or rating but play a lot as a team and learn and have fun. We do that with new people all the time and usually within a week folks that were brand new to GvGing get a handle on things and can perform fairly well against 200ish level competition. Once you know your build inside and out and have played in say over 100 times you should be fairly proficient and have a chance at making top 100 even.

Vindexus · Feb 11, 2006, 10:50 AM // 10:50

I cannot stress this enough, the number one fault I find in most other teams and especially players, even from top guilds, is lack of communication.

Remember, GvG is all about making decisions; the more information you have, the better decisions you can make. This works both for making personal decisions as well as making larger scale tactical decisions.

Allow me to give a few examples.

You're playing the sole warrior in a heavy hex build, such as our Bigger Big Build. Before you do anything you need to know wether your team is dying or having trouble killing. This helps you decided wether you're going to spike a monk or an offensive character.

If a player on your team tells you that a Dom mesmer is interupting all of his offensive skills, it might be a good idea to get on that mesmer and force him to kite. This is a decision you could not have made if the information was not passed along vent.

If you've come to the conclusion that your team needs to go more offensive than defensive, then you must select which monks to spike. You're using a heavy degen build, so if someone has told you that #7 is a Heal Party monk, wheras #8 is a boon prot, then you have the information to decide that #7 is a better target.

If they're running two monks that are roughly the same, and your mesmer calls out that he has Migrained #7, then you know that spiking #8 is a better idea than spiking #7.

These are some pretty specific examples, so I'll present some more generic ones.

Wheel: "They're running a Trapper."
Vindexus: "Get out of the chokepoint."

Information = better decisions.

Wheel: "This dom mesmer is really hurting my energy as a monk."
Vindexus: "Spike this target (the dom mesmer) in 3...2...1"

Another good decision based on information passed along vent.

Remember though, you want to keep vent chatter discernable, so keep it short and to the point.

"ZOMG DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT!?!? I JUST DISTRACTING SHOTTED THAT BITCH'S HEAL PARTY LOLOLOL!!!!"
is not as good as
"Distractinged #7's Heal Party"

To sumarize, your players and your team will make better decisions if they have more information, so pass information in a timely and accurate manner using ventrilo.

As a side note, copy someone's build, it'll save you the trouble of wondering "did we lose because our build sucks or because we suck?"

Billiard · Feb 11, 2006, 05:59 PM // 17:59

In addition to Vindexus' point above concerning communication, I think you also need to be decisive when you do make a decision. A lot of times you'll have a small window of opportunity in which to take advantage of a situation (you down one of their two monks right before an even minute and he res's at the base for example). If you act quickly and decisively good things can happen - even if the decision is not the optimal one. If you spend too much time figuring out or discussing what you should do in the situation, then the opportunity will be lost. Usually an experienced person leading a match will recognize what is going on and start issuing orders quickly (and maybe loudly). Disagreeing, discussing, or outright disobeying at these points can cost you a match.

dargon · Feb 11, 2006, 10:08 PM // 22:08

One thing to note about vindexus last point with regards to copying someones build. Just because you have a copy, doesn't mean it'll work as well for you. Case in point. Two teams have the same build, one has been practicing it daily for 6 weeks, the other only got it 6 hours ago. More than likely, the first team will beat the 2nd senseless with the build because they know it's in's and out's, to team 2, it's just a bunch of skills that may or may not work well together in a certain combination.

Vindexus · Feb 11, 2006, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by dargon

One thing to note about vindexus last point with regards to copying someones build. Just because you have a copy, doesn't mean it'll work as well for you. Case in point. Two teams have the same build, one has been practicing it daily for 6 weeks, the other only got it 6 hours ago. More than likely, the first team will beat the 2nd senseless with the build because they know it's in's and out's, to team 2, it's just a bunch of skills that may or may not work well together in a certain combination.

Exactly. But now the team that loses knows that it isn't the build that made them lose, so they don't have to worry about that. If you don't have to fret over wether your build is good or not, you can focus more on becoming a better team made up of better players.

tafy69 · Feb 11, 2006, 10:21 PM // 22:21

copying some1 elses build is definately the way to go for inexperienced teams. You can concentrate on learning other things like tactics, target calling etc.

Patrograd · Feb 13, 2006, 08:31 AM // 08:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindexus

Exactly. But now the team that loses knows that it isn't the build that made them lose, so they don't have to worry about that. If you don't have to fret over wether your build is good or not, you can focus more on becoming a better team made up of better players.

Hmm

I'm not sure about this. it may just be that they are no good at running that particular build. Perservering with a build unsuited to your players play styles is the short route to the bottom of the ladder.

Take a Guild made up of caster specialists and run a build based around warriors and you will quickly fall down the ladder. Play a build suited to each players strengths, and tweak that build as you go along.

So by all means start out by copying someone's build that looks like it will fit you, but dont be scared to change it to suit you even further after a few runs once you have a handle on how the build actually works in practise.

Also be careful copying builds at the moment, as lots of teams, even those right at the top, arent taking things at all seriously at the moment, and are either testing out wierd stuff in advance of the season proper next month, or just mucking about having fun.

wheel · Feb 13, 2006, 08:39 AM // 08:39

You've got a lot of builds to choose from. I wouldn't suggest playing a build like Rift's or iQ's because they cater to extremely specialized playstyles. Playing a spike build really teaches you nothing about the game if you don't already have a good understanding. I would choose a build that is strong in 8v8 situations but also is able to split well. Don't just copy the build though. Watch the guild in observer mode a LOT. Learn what they do vs spike, pressure, hex/degen, split. If you're running the same build as a certain guild and kind of try to mirror what they do, you'll see what is successful and what isn't much quicker than if you're running their build and just try to play it on your own. By the same token, you're not going to learn how to play your build well if nothing is similar to it that you can watch to better your playstyle.