Guild Wars and Expansions

[brianeyci]

Finally got the balls to play Team Arena. Unlocked it winning about six matches in a row in Random Arena.

It's a totally different game than fighting the AI. Our team, me and ad, kept dying, over and over. The fault was kind of spread around, but for some reason we were getting outhealed even with two monks in our party. I saw a monk last fighting three other people, and manage to heal to boot. I don't like blaming people, especially monks, so this is the time to talk about it, not in the game.

You were right about the glyph Ad, it was a waste. But at the same time, as long as I'm the last or one of the last people to die, and I can attack and drain a caster of their energy, I'm doing my job. If I'm tanking and I'm the last to die, my skill bar doesn't matter -- I'm doing it. With my mystic regeneration, zealous renewal and heart of holy flame, I manage a 120+ holy damage attack with self-healing. I'm going to try running guild wiki builds later today, they've got more damage but not by much.

As for "protecting our monk" or I'm not sure how you want me to do that. I'll go for the enemy monk all the time, and in my opinion so should you. There's no way to protect our monks except to attack theirs, and there's no way to protect you from an enemy by standing next to you or attacking someone who's attacking you. Attacking their soft targets like casters and monks is the only protection there is, there's no way to hide behind another character, and another character can't bail another character out simply by being near them. This is not the AI, the player will not switch targets to the closest player as soon as they're "helping out." Helping you by attacking a war who's killing you is pointless, the war's got 80 armor. My skill bar was a little fucked last night and I wasn't doing enough damage or canceling stances well enough to drain enough monk of energy, but accusing someone of being in their "own little world" is a little tiresome when I'm the last one to die and I'm attacking the enemy monk and casters, like I should be, like a sin should be, rather than attacking a war with 20 more armor and evasion stances or a ranger.

If your sin is dying a lot, you've got 70 AL just like a dervish, and somehow you have to deal with it... run, I see sins run a ton in randoms as soon as they're doubled up. I asked you to call targets, so I could "protect" you as you wanted, since attacking the same thing and dropping them's the only real protection, but you seemed to call only one thing to start the battle and then nothing else after. If you want I can call, but the team should follow one player's calls. If nobody's calling, it should go monks, casters, melee, and sometimes I was chasing the enemy monk and I didn't see you with me. Dervishes deal with attacks with either lots of armor, regeneration or more hit points, tons of ways. All of them not bad, and Melandru might be better than Balthazar for certain situations, but not that time since 40 armor and 33 speed allows me to chase down enemy casters and take half as much damage, and immunity to conditions is not that great when we had two monks to remove conditions. I don't know how a sin deals with damage, because I have no idea how to play a sin, but please don't say I'm not doing my job if I'm the one who's not dying.

If you do not like that my dervish is the last thing to die, it's because they don't go after it, not because I'm messing around or not "protecting our monks" or not doing my job. My dervish is the last thing to die, means nothing, it's going to happen a lot when we lose, and wars and dervishes will always be the last things to die which is why I chose a melee class. If you don't like your sin dying fast, please don't bitch about it. I can no more "protect you" than I can protect the monk.

For our sake though I don't think our monks were doing shit... I expected two monks to easily take care of each other and themselves, given what I saw of monks in the random arena beng chased by three wars and still surviving.

Brian

[Ar-Adunakhor]

As for "protecting our monk" or I'm not sure how you want me to do that. I'll go for the enemy monk all the time, and in my opinion so should you. There's no way to protect our monks except to attack theirs, and there's no way to protect you from an enemy by standing next to you or attacking someone who's attacking you.

Like I said before, you disable the attackers. I was adamant about you having cripple, and this is one of the main reasons. When the monk is being jumped by a war or some other damage dealer, you run over and cripple the attacker so the monk can kite him. Blind, weakness, and several other class-specific abilites are all useful for this, and are there because they are needed. Also, you can body-block in GW, it's just hard to do.

Attacking their soft targets like casters and monks is the only protection there is, there's no way to hide behind another character, and another character can't bail another character out simply by being near them. This is not the AI, the player will not switch targets to the closest player as soon as they're "helping out." Helping you by attacking a war who's killing you is pointless, the war's got 80 armor. My skill bar was a little fucked last night and I wasn't doing enough damage or canceling stances well enough to drain enough monk of energy, but accusing someone of being in their "own little world" is a little tiresome when I'm the last one to die and I'm attacking the enemy monk and casters, like I should be, like a sin should be, rather than attacking a war with 20 more armor and evasion stances or a ranger.

You need to pull these attackers off of the monk, and the only realistic way for a dervish to do that is cripple, with weakness being a runner-up due to the damage reduce. The best thing, though, is to slow him down so the monk can get away from his spiking/knockdown/interrupts and get back to healing. He will then most likely attack you, because at that point it is either attack you or waste a huge amount of time waiting for cripple to dispel.

If your sin is dying a lot, you've got 70 AL just like a dervish, and somehow you have to deal with it... run, I see sins run a ton in randoms as soon as they're doubled up. I asked you to call targets, so I could "protect" you as you wanted, since attacking the same thing and dropping them's the only real protection, but you seemed to call only one thing to start the battle and then nothing else after.

My death usually happened after our monk dropped, since I had the highest danger-to-squish ratio after the healer. Interestingly enough, I was almost always on the offensive. I was rarely ever double-teamed or even fought 1v1, due to their assist train on the monk. Also, I only called at the start to highlight the monk and make him a priority target, not to tell you to focus on him to the exclusion of all else. Remember how many times we killed the monk only to have him ressed 3 seconds later? We need to focus on the low armor classes, but not so much that we don't pull people off of our own low-armors.

If you want I can call, but the team should follow one player's calls. If nobody's calling, it should go monks, casters, melee, and sometimes I was chasing the enemy monk and I didn't see you with me.

I wasn't there because the monk was running around kiting you while maintaining enchants on his team, and I was off trying to pull the wars off our squishies while having a spike build. It didn't go very well. Though, I did impressive amounts of damage considering that they had 100 armor against me.

Dervishes deal with attacks with either lots of armor, regeneration or more hit points, tons of ways. All of them not bad, and Melandru might be better than Balthazar for certain situations, but not that time since 40 armor and 33 speed allows me to chase down enemy casters and take half as much damage, and immunity to conditions is not that great when we had two monks to remove conditions. I don't know how a sin deals with damage, because I have no idea how to play a sin, but please don't say I'm not doing my job if I'm the one who's not dying.

The job of the tank is to take and deal damage, not to be the last one alive. You disable people hitting our squishies and force them to either fight you or run around uselessly while taking damage from you. Alternatively, on offense, you disable your target (generally with cripple, but blind works too) and beat the living piss out of him with damage skills. Balth is a good choice, of course, but I prefer Melandru for the lack of conditions and huge health boost.

If you do not like that my dervish is the last thing to die, it's because they don't go after it, not because I'm messing around or not "protecting our monks" or not doing my job. My dervish is the last thing to die, means nothing, it's going to happen a lot when we lose, and wars and dervishes will always be the last things to die which is why I chose a melee class. If you don't like your sin dying fast, please don't bitch about it. I can no more "protect you" than I can protect the monk.

Once again, protection involves taking the hits and forcing them to either attack you to minimize their opportunity costs, or be stupid and run around being kited. Make them attack you. Cripple, slows, weakness, blind, and several other unique things do that. I wasn't attempting to bitch at you for the rapid deaths, but instead at how low our healing rate was. I assumed this was because you were using a build more suited to PvE and lacking in disables... but it could have been the monks sucking at healing, or that I was simply not as good at spiking as the enemy damage dealers.

For our sake though I don't think our monks were doing shit... I expected two monks to easily take care of each other and themselves, given what I saw of monks in the random arena beng chased by three wars and still surviving.

I don't know what was going on, I also expected a lot more healing. The best I could come up with is either we weren't doing our jobs and keeping them off the monks... or the monks sucked. I don't claim to be a PvP god, but I didn't think that I was the reason we were dropping as fast as we were.

Also, I would like to throw in here that I have seen multiple dervishes who are able to damage like champions in some RA matches, today. I didn't really see what skills they were using due to dying so fast, but Twin Moon Sweep was among them, and it is quite possible that Harrier's Grasp was as well. They also used an Avatar.

[brianeyci]

Well the basic combo is dervish monk with an Avatar of Melandru and Wearying Strike, with draw conditions to help out the team, along with a whole bunch of attacks and anti-kiting skills. But it all depends on the monk, because there's limited or no healing at all in RA, and going mystic with Balthazar and tons of enchantments gets you through the 5 you need to win in RA. It sucks in TA, but if the healing sucks or is non-existant as in RA, running a lot of regeneration keeps me alive a long time.

The best defense is a good offense. If our monks are dying we should be killing their monks, crippling their monks. It makes sense because their monks have 60 AL.

In all we need a good monk to do anything, it's hit and miss. I tried a guild wiki build, and it is not bad, but still dying a lot more than killing in TA.

My only problem about you whining about my skill bar (yes it was whining) was I know nothing about sin, and you seem to know everything about dervish even though you don't play one. Complaining about my skills blows when it looks like the main reason why we're dying has nothing to do with skills and everything to do with overall sucking. I seemed to get no heals at all last night.

[brianeyci]

After playing a few TA's it looks like the key to winning is a balanced group. We need one monk, one ritualist, one warrior/dervish and one kind of spiker, maybe a sin burster or an ele blinder. I can't see myself winning 5 random TA's ever, especially with unbalanced groups.

One thing you're right about is not always going after the monk in all circumstances. In fact it seems rushing up is stupid, and most groups wait for the other group to run in. But when the general melee starts it seems to be the best idea to target softies like monks and casters.

When fighting eles it seems to be a good idea to run around in circles and waste their meteor showers.

EDIT : I just saw an awesome monk, half mesmer crippling things around her on her own (mostly me) and running around. Most of the monks I see don't get "help" from other players and manage two wars on their own. It almost takes 3 focusing on a monk to drop it, and in a 4 man TA it's pretty difficult unless you've got the right team. It was a guild team, two melandrus and a derv along with a necro.

[Thunderfire]

Here are two common dervish builds


D/Rt
- Avatar of Grenth {E}
- Wearying Strike
- Victorious Sweep
- Crippling Sweep
- Harrier's Haste
- Extend Enchantments
- Sight Beyond Sight
- Resurrection Signet

D/K
- Avatar of Melandru {E}
- Wearying Strike
- Victorious Sweep
- Wild Blow
- Harrier's Haste
- Harrier's Grasp
- Imbue Health
- Resurrection Signet

take these two and add a monk and a support character.

A good combination would be a weapon ritualist(spams weapon of remedy and vengeful weapon) and a monk with divert hexes.

[brianeyci]

Thanks Thunder. I can't do the Rt since I don't have factions, but your builds are very close to what I'm running right now. But I haven't run across three other good people in the TA yet. Obviously either I'm doing something wrong playing these skills, or I'm not pairing up with the right people. Probably a combination.

What's your nick. Our guild is really kicking up, up to nine people now, five or six of them pvping or interested in pvping. If you want to join up Thunder we'd be honored, we need people with real pvp experience, TA and HA, and so far I've got one or maybe two in the roster with any serious experience at all. I want to recruit at least one person with an earned /rank emote, who really knows what he's doing.

EDIT: They're not SD.netters mostly, actually they're mostly not, so it's not just a bunch of people hanging together. As far as I can tell at least three or four of them are more serious about pvp than just casual. So no worries about joining a chatting or social guild.

EDIT: Why wearying strike with Grenth, aren't you worried about the 66% less damage? and why Sight beyond Sight over Mending Touch?

[Ar-Adunakhor]

Blindness is everywhere now, and you don't want to be constantly wasting time and energy using Mending Touch when you could be beating on someone. In addition, it provides a third enchant to max Crippling Sweep's duration. As for the weakness, if you have a monk he will probably be drawing it anyway, just be sure to call when you use it if you want him to snatch it.

[Thunderfire]

I am from europe so playing together can be problematic. My PvP characters are

Lini Castaspella E/x
Eve Desertheat Rt/x
Gartha Tosch x/x mostly Necro or Mesmer

[brianeyci]

Blinding surge looks so cheapass... so it looks like dervs have to run Melandru or have Sight beyond Sight? A pity, I really hate the idea of everybody running one kind of skill and forcing everybody else to run another skill just to deal with it. I can unlock ritualist skills and sbs is Nightfall so maybe I can go ritualist secondary, I'll try it now. If not it looks like I'll be forced to run Melandru forever. Which is not so bad... I like the idea of helping out the team with draw conditions, but if there's just one viable nightfall-only derv build that's kind of a letdown.

Thunder no worries. So you really have a rank emote? If not that's cool too . We really need someone who does, who has some kind of idea what to do. Doesn't matter that you're in Europe, we'll figure something out.

[brianeyci]

Anyway, figured out it's really crippling to pvp with a laptop running it under 10 fps. Sometimes I load 30 seconds into the fight, and switching targets and keeping track of things is hard to say the least with the lag. I was going under 5 fps at times. Not only that, but I can't stand the idea of loading a minute late and my team losing because of it. Why don't they raise the gates until after you're fully loaded? Who knows. Even if they did, the lag throws off my timing and it's not very enjoyable.

It was a good two weeks of obsession, but it won't work until I get a new computer. PvP that is. PvE, we'll have to wait for everybody to beat Nightfall. Guild members please look at the message of the day, and download and send that e-mail as soon as you have a chance. Maybe two or three weeks from now, we'll make an "event" probably a journey into the Realm of Torment since most people seem to have Nightfall. If I take two or three weeks off, it should give everybody a chance to finish the game, not everybody can play eight hours a day like I did for a whole week when I was sick with a high fever .

In short: I will be scarce, and everybody beat Nightfall already so we can do things as a guild PvE. That is all. As for PvP, we can talk about that more later, when everybody's beaten the game and has access to at least the majority of the skills for their favourite profession. And I have a new computer . Or you can make a PvP character and unlock with faction, but I'm guessing most people will not want to do this with their mains and waste their faction, unless they're thinking of never playing the main game with a certain class.

For team arena we probably need two dervs/wars, a monk, and a caster of sorts. Hopefully when everybody gets their time sheet in I can schedule matches, especially for the people who are not part of SD.net or who only log on for an hour or two every few days like a few of our new recruits... scheduling will be critical for those people, like Thunder if Thunder decides to join our guild.

[Thunderfire]

Blinding surge looks so cheapass...

Blinding surge is cheapass. Bsurge mesmers are sometimes called asshole mesmers because they are so dominant in GvG battles at the moment. Caster shutdown , warrior shotdown and a nasty spike all on one character.

About joining the guild. I am already a member of a local guild where several members live in "let's go to a pub after the match" range. This means joining a different guild isn't an option for me at the moment.

[brianeyci]

This means joining a different guild isn't an option for me at the moment.

That's cool. It probably wouldn't have worked out for you anyway since you're European.

I'll talk to Tasoth about forming an alliance with your guild. Dunno if it's true whether people ally with other guilds to absorb them if they fail, but obviously that's not the case with your guild. What's your guild's name, ours is The Army of One.

Your guild have a skill man, and if our guild allies with yours, can our guild use your skill man. That's our basic need right now.

[Enigma]

Bought Factions today. Going to create my second character. Possibly either a Ranger\Assassin or a Warrior\Assassin.

[bilateralrope]

I just bought Nightfall CE as for some reason it was in stock. Could someone please send me a guild invite. My name: "Meemo of athe"

[Ar-Adunakhor]

I just bought Nightfall CE as for some reason it was in stock. Could someone please send me a guild invite. My name: "Meemo of athe"

Done.

[Enigma]

Having fun with Factions. My assassin\ranger "Prolapsed Anus" is now level 10. I might reach level 20 by the weekend.

[brianeyci]

I thought a little more about it and I might give PvP another "Whirl" (hahaha.) I read up on PvP and there's apparently an AI mode where you can fight an entire AI team. That sounds good to me, and I think our guild can start there, if we suck to much in the TA. There's also a whole bunch of training missions in the Isle of Nameless, and I never went through them. I think I just suck at using my skills.

Loading 30 seconds into the fight's unavoidable, but I can deal with it as long as I don't have a whole bunch of other junk running in the background and I set settings to the lowest possible. It sucks, but oh well.

[Beowulf]

*Pulls thread from the dead*

It's New Year festival time in the land of Tyria. Head to Cantha for the fun and games. Note: Rollerbeetle racing is pretty fun.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

Rollerbeetle Racing is extremely fun, and I have found that the tokens are going for 150 each, letting me average 750 gold per race. Woo, I love event time!

[brianeyci]

Well no factions so I can't do anything with it .

Instead I figured out an incredible water elementalist build for random arena pvp, and got two gladiator's points tonight (ten wins in a row in the random arena, twenty wins, I win slightly more than I lose in the random arena now.) For those who don't know the guild is going smoothly, we've got around fifteen people, not all sd.net people. The link is to the guild forum, not much content there, but anybody welcome to post ideas.

[Gaidin]

Well no factions so I can't do anything with it .

Instead I figured out an incredible water elementalist build for random arena pvp, and got two gladiator's points tonight (ten wins in a row in the random arena, twenty wins, I win slightly more than I lose in the random arena now.) For those who don't know the guild is going smoothly, we've got around fifteen people, not all sd.net people. The link is to the guild forum, not much content there, but anybody welcome to post ideas.

You guys have anything against someone who's periodically forced to stop playing for a month at a time periodically due to work? I've been looking for another guild, but...I haven't been online to look since uni started up again til last night(sucks huh.... ). Anywho...I tend to favor PvE, and the name of my dervish is Elysia Sandstorm periodic month hiatus isn't a problem for non-officers.

[brianeyci]

No we don't have anything against that kind of person.

In fact that's the kind of person we want... people who aren't losers or stupid and put games ahead of real life. We've got a few 27 or 30+ year old married people with lives and kids and the only way they could be part of any guild is take long breaks like that for a month or two and come back.

It goes both ways though, other people have joined and quit because there wasn't enough activity in our guild... we don't have working TA yet, or GvG or AB or HA. About the only thing we have working is random arena and a few builds on the forum with it, and if you want to start random arena a couple people in our guild are good at that already. For PvE we don't have working activities down to the FoW/Torment/UW yet, mostly because most of our players haven't beaten the game yet. Right now in general there's five people online between 9 PM and 12 PM EST, and random hours for the rest.