They don't understand my characters!

[WarBlade]

So there I was, with Kronin Thistleknott leading Riara Renthese through Perdition Rock to Ring of Fire when she started uttering some truely bizarre assertions:
- Warriors are tanks
- Warriors are the centrepiece around which the battle is joined (not exactly those words but some other mantra with roughly that meaning).
- That I had said something like "We need a warrior who can take a hit." Referring to a recent People vs. dragon Glint fight, where what I said was more like, "We need a tank who can take a hit," thinking of putting Kronin himself forward for the role as I recall.

And proceeded to use Devona's Riara-directed combat tactics to illustrate how "warriors" are supposed to behave . . .

. . .

Needless to say I had a fairly powerful WTF moment over that one, after already being astounded by some of the prior assessments. Here's me, veteren primary warrior player of a thousand battles running a fairly un-tank-like hammer build who's observance of Riara's pearls of wisdom would be a surefire way to either A.) Drain a monk's energy supply flat in no time. Or B.) Die.

The whole episode made me think back to a PvP run where a monk on my team tried to direct everyone to his called target and threw a fit when both warriors, my Ragnar and one other, sensibly switched to something else. The monk left the game and left us high and dry.

Or the times where I've run up against a sword and shield based R/W and found myself facing a "tank".
Or the times where I've entered a RB game with Somewhat Zen and repeatedly had to insist on the inclusion of Mhenlo etc.
And so many other times where people have made false assumptions about those playing alongside them or outright dictations as to what they should be.

One thing is clear about Guild Wars and that is its wealth of character diversity. If the Primary and secondary professions mixed weren't enough to loosen up a character's predictability then surely the range of attribute and skill options would throw any preconceptions out the window, but apparently not. And given the tendancy for RB'ers to experiment I suspect I'm not alone . . .



So here it is. Clearing the air. My "Do you get it now?" thread . . . or something like that.

In alphabetical order:

Ice Blade of Realms
Elementalist/Mesmer

PvE
Primary Function: "Nuker" Long ranged blasting
Secondary Function: Caster shutdown, energy leech, knock down and slow down

Concept: Ice Blade is quite literally a walking ice cube. His Elementalist side lets him cool things down and his Mesmer side sucks up energy.
Notes: A lot of fun to play, I can blend in to most teams and really play a significant part in most games. My one attempt at running him in random PvP had me quite surprised by how unsuitable he turned out to be in that role. I think he could really come into his own as a flag runner's wingman or base defender in a guild match, but that remains to be seen.

Kronin Thistleknott
Ranger/Mesmer

PvE
Primary Function: Leech shutdown
Secondary Function: Multi-purpose applications

Concept: He's based on a minor character of the Kender race from the DragonLance series of books.
Notes: The ranger body provides the look and the mesmer skills contribute a "sewing the seeds of chaos" factor that matches Kenders quite well. The domination staff lends itself to replicate the Kender hoopak staff too.

Ragnar of Syvesten
Warrior/Monk

PvE
Primary Function: "Ninja"
Secondary Function: Big pinpoint damage with some knockdown and moderate tanking ability on the side.

PvP
Primary Function: Hunting down runners
Secondary Function: Pinpoint damage dealer

Concept: None really. Ragnar is my first non-beta character and I initially built him blending my old passion for Diablo II Paladins and the Clan warriors of BattleTech. His current green and yellow colour scheme is based on the banner of Clan Jade Falcon. Syvesten is a village where my father is from in the north of Denmark.
Notes: With Ragnar I've developed a 4-skill attack combo that when left unchecked has been known to wipe out Elementalists before the fourth hit even lands. He's kind of like how Diablo II's Werewolf often turns out: Front-line equivalent of a glass cannon. Ninja is an occasional GW term for characters who head back behind enemy lines, make a kill and scarper, hopefully before getting killed in the process. To that end Ragnar is an all or nothing kind of guy - It's either "Full steam ahead!" or "Retreat!"

Somewhat Zen
Monk/Ranger
PvE
Primary Function: Fire-support/Heal-support
Secondary Function: -

PvP
Primary Function: Marathon runner
Secondary Function: Extreme range Fire-support/Heal-support

Concept: I made the character and decided a few hours later that a zen archer would be a neat idea (normally the concept comes before the character).
Notes: My first true 50/50 split in a game dominated by tweaking the hell out of things to get highly focused cookie cutters, Somewhat Zen has proven to be amazingly effective all over the game. When the group needs to damage she adds in skills like Barrage to the mix and when the group is suffering I throw the mental switch and have her become the healer. This is the most problematic character for me to get through the pre-mission team chat. People don't understand or quickly forget that her healing ability, while highly useful, has been developed to operate in general ways as a long range support tactic in conjunction with her bow and more importantly another (primary) healer. This effectively makes her a good compliment to any other monk on the team covering general needs while the team mate (or henchman) focuses on spot heals and/or protection. Another major difference with her to other healers is Zen's standing postion is governed by the reach of the bow moreso than by the reach of her heals eg. Other monks are often in the cluster of casters while Zen will be on the fringe somewhere or on a higher elevation.

Monks sometimes have a rough time directing henchies normally, but not Zen. She just twangs away happily at key targets while going back to the healing and the henchies follow the designated target.

My limited PvP experience with Somewhat Zen recreates her into something even further removed from other healing monks. Usually other monks will stay with the group, heal the group and use self-protection, healing and even smiting tactics. Zen just runs away. Normally what happens is monks are like some kind of rabbit to a greyhound and have the universe come charging after them to gobble them up. In Zen's case the pursuers generally break off to deal with the more immediate threat leaving me to either return to take potshots at the range limit (and toss in some healing) or drag some lone warrior all around the map. This isn't a bad thing usually. It tends to cut a 4:4 fight down to a 3:3 with Somewhat Zen lobbing off Heal Team to unbalance things back to something like 3.1:3. In either case her boon and bane are the list of slowdown skills in the game. She works well with teams that have a few of these up their sleaves and is living dangerously when the enemy is packing them.



So there it is. Two characters who wield unexpected weapons and actually make some use of their secondary profession, one warrior who isn't much of a tank and a walking ice cube. Ice Blade is easy for the people to wrap their heads around, but the others have a tendancy to inspire no end of debate.

[Havral]

I feel for ya. If you do anything that's beyond a typical cookie-cutter build then you get shouted down for it.

My main character takes the worst elements from a W/R - Swords, Strength, and Beast Mastery for a pet, and blends them into an unholy fusion of killability.

And then I PuG, I get people telling me I should drop my pet, go for hammers, switch to Tactics. When my pet dies, people complain.

You want to know something? Rangers have no real way to heal their pet. The best skills available to the task available to non-monk rangers are Comfort Animal (Which sucks) and Healing Sprin (Which sucks). Rangers can't heal their pets unless they take monk as their other profession (Hmm, I'm strongly considering remaking Kari as a Mo/R instead of a Mo/W, Healing, Smiting, and Beast Mastery or Healing, Marksmanship and Beast Mastery). The sad truth is that I've had better luck with henchgroups in keeping my pet alive than I have with PuGs - Alesia/Mhenlo know from time to time that throwing a heal on the pet will benefit the group as a whole.

PuGs, on the other hand, let the pets die. This is a horribly bad idea when the pet belongs to the primary tank in the group, since that's 8 seconds noskill death penalty, 8 seconds noskill revive penalty, and no adrenaline until I can build it up. It's also one less tank in the group - Yes, I let Bledri tank. He can safely occupy one or two enemies without suffering too badly, and those enemies could be killing the spellflingers, who would complain, who would be dead because they didn't heal the pet.

The fact is, I don't want to be a cookie-cutter character. My second character is lauded for being a minionmaster N secondary, but when they don't see fireballs flying around from the E prime they ask why I'm going with Earth magic instead of the expected fire. Vortik is a pretty damned good nuker, can strip HP from enemies like nobody's business, keeps a self-sufficient supply of energy, and can even tank with either minions or (And this causes quite a few PuGs to piss themselves in horror) himself - Magnetic Aura+Eruption blindness ftw.

Hooray for diversity. It won't help much though, not until we can strip away the notions of conformity...

[Zed-F]

Hooray for diversity. It won't help much though, not until we can strip away the notions of conformity...

I get the feeling that for a lot of people, things are still relatively new and they haven't gotten to the point where they are ready to experiment or accept experimentation in others. They're still working on their first characters, and haven't really learned all the basic strategies & tactics yet for themselves. They just come across some of the harder missions and want to surround themselves with cookie cutters like themselves to give themselves a feeling that they have the best possible companions and the best odds of making it. Unfortunately they don't realize that so many cookie cutters don't know that much more about the game than they themselves do. It's a lot harder to find people that use tactics and know what they are doing than it is to just look at what class they are and what skills they are using.

Then again, we may never get to the point where people in general accept non-cookie-cutter builds in the PuG community. In the D2 community, cookie-cutterism never really faded away; balance changes with each new patch made for new cookie-cutter bandwagons for people to jump on, and jump on them they did. That's why team variants are my preferred venue for variant play; at least you have companions who know and respect what you are trying to do, because they are doing something similar themselves.

[KingOfPain]

Hooray for diversity. It won't help much though, not until we can strip away the notions of conformity...

We maybe able to make some influences, however small they may be. We can nominate RB for the GotW, not for fame but recognition. Recognition that there are people like us, RBers or otherwise, who enjoy diversity and the use of skill and tactics. Recognition that it is okay to be different, to let other variant minded non-Rbers know they are not alone. Recognition from AN.

But, we are not ready yet.

I was just talking last nite with a few guildies of oragnizing a team or 2 of nudist to save Tyria. We would use our characters who have finished the game so we can do the quests with the Sorrow Furnance update.

If we can pull off a quest or 2, we will have some thing more for the GW communities to read about.

But that is not my motivation to want to organize this team. I still want to do it, GotW or not.

KoP

[WarBlade]

You want to know something? Rangers have no real way to heal their pet. The best skills available to the task available to non-monk rangers are Comfort Animal (Which sucks) and Healing Sprin (Which sucks). Rangers can't heal their pets unless they take monk as their other profession (Hmm, I'm strongly considering remaking Kari as a Mo/R instead of a Mo/W, Healing, Smiting, and Beast Mastery or Healing, Marksmanship and Beast Mastery). The sad truth is that I've had better luck with henchgroups in keeping my pet alive than I have with PuGs - Alesia/Mhenlo know from time to time that throwing a heal on the pet will benefit the group as a whole.

PuGs, on the other hand, let the pets die. This is a horribly bad idea when the pet belongs to the primary tank in the group, since that's 8 seconds noskill death penalty, 8 seconds noskill revive penalty, and no adrenaline until I can build it up. It's also one less tank in the group - Yes, I let Bledri tank. He can safely occupy one or two enemies without suffering too badly, and those enemies could be killing the spellflingers, who would complain, who would be dead because they didn't heal the pet.

Just a note on healing pets from a Monk's perspective: They're not easy. They're like every other ally in that spells like Heal Team will bypass them and in resorting to single-target spot heals the healer then faces another recipient sucking at the teet. It's hard enough trying to deal with 8 patients before one considers adding veterinarian to the job description for team mate 9 or 10.

I have healed pets though. They are definitely second priority, but if the energy is there, the team is well and one pet is sick, then a Heal Other is usually energy well spent.



Have you tried Symbiotic Bond at all? I'm looking at your mentions of Comfort Animal and Healing Spring both sucking and knowing that Healing Spring is proving to be quite useful for Kronin (where he can be under the influence of Serpant's Quickness or Whirling Defence and create a localized regeneration field either in the back-line artillery bank or front-line tanks) as well as considering that you are presenting single-skill Ranger options against multi-skill Monk options and coming up short. Consider that a Monk's healing is the product of most of a skill bar and two or three attributes. By contrast you are talking about two attributes and one or two skills. How does the pet healing work when you use:

- Comfort Animal for a direct heal.
- Call of Protection to stem the damage.
- Symbiotic Bond to cut away a whopping 50% damage from the pet for a couple of minutes as well as grant a modest regeneration.
- Troll Unguent to compensate for the bond at your end.

. . . Before even talking about protective stances and assistance of your monk companions to your own character.

I don't know myself, having not played much with pets, but maybe a smorgasbord of skills is a more appropriate comparison to the smorgasbord that a Monk represents than simply throwing out two skills and proclaiming their lack of value?

[Havral]

That sounds like a good plan, I'm just going to have to find some room on my skill bar for Symbiotic Bond and Call of Protection.

My current skill bar currently stand at the following, I know it's a poor, almost newbish choice (But right now Deep Wounds are cumilatively stacking, which is a major swordsman boon), but on the whole it's pretty good at spiking a copious amount of damage once the enemy hits below 50% damage.

Sever Artery - Gash - Power Strike - Final Thrust - Resurrection Signet - Charm Animal - Comfort Animal - Sprint

I'm thinking of going:

Savage Slash - Final Thrust - Brutal Strike - Resurrection Signet - Charm Animal - Comfort Animal - Symbiotic Bond (Might have to buy it) - Call of Protection

I'm not entirely sure about either Savage Slash (I'm poor at interrupting) or Brutal Strike (Would be useful for spiking, but like all pet attacks it doesn't seem to do that much damage) so I'm open to suggestions. Anyway, I'll give it a shot as it stands tonight and let you all know.

Edit: Hmm, Ferocious Strike looks like it could be useful too, Adrenaline boost, decent (for a pet attack) damage, I'll just have to capture it.

[Seijin]

What if some of us with pets go adventuring together?

I'm sure some pure BMs could carry around these skills.

Call of Haste (all pet shout) - 30 seconds, 25% increased speed and attack (25 sec recharge)
Call of Protectio-n (all pet shout) - 120 seconds, 1-12 base dmg reduction (11 sec recharge)
Revive Animal - all pet rez

It would only take one person each to keep CoH and CoP on constantly.

Basically you could do something like this:

BM #1
1. Troll Unguent
2. Charm Animal
3. Comfort Animal
4. Call of Protection
5-8. Attack Skills, Pet Attacks, Support Skills

BM #2
1. Troll unguent
2. Charm Animal
3. Comfort Animal
4. Call of Haste
5-8. Attack Skills, Pet Attacks, Support Skills

BM #3
1. Troll unguent
2. Charm Animal
3. Comfort Animal
4. Revive Animal
5-8. Attack Skills, Pet Attacks, Support Skills

Could pretty much do anything you want after that...interrupter, dmg dealer, condition spreader, pure BM, or trapper.

For added damage and chaos...take along a curses necro with minions or wells. And add in two monks...preferably without pets so their skills bars don't lock up if their pets die.

Would be interesting to see 4-6 pets on the field actually being utilized.

[Zed-F]

The nasty thing about Symbiotic Bond is that it's a stance, which means that a lot of the protective skills you might normally use as a ranger go out the window. You'd probably need to rely on enchantments for damage mitigation since you personally are going to take considerably more damage than usual. Troll Unguent is very efficient on energy but not very efficient on time; using Unguent regularly is not a good way to get a lot of offense going. And by itself, a pet won't generate a ton of offense either; you'd need the ranger himself to be doing a repsectable amount of damage as well to make a really viable character.

There are a couple ways you could do it. A smite/protection monk with a pet might work. Similarly a Necro with Aura of the Lich, Dark Bond, or some other damage reduction spell could do the trick. Your usual array of armour/evasion/etc. skills will not help, though, since the damage from Symbiosis is probably applied directly, bypassing armour entirely -- at least that's my guess.

For me the really annoying thing about pets is that they won't listen when you target an enemy, you have to actually attack with a physical attack to get them to run in, at which point the pet is useless for grabbing aggro.

[Havral]

Ah well, I don't have any other stances on my skill bar, except for (rarely these days) Sprint.

[Zed-F]

Some more interesting notes I found out:
- You can only have 1 shout active at a time, presumably per player. Call of Haste, Call of Protection, and Otyugh's Cry (which will give pets +20AL for a time) are all shouts.
- I seem to recall something in recent game updates to the effect that Pet Attacks now function just like shouts. I'm not sure if this means they count as shouts for the 'only 1 shout at a time' limit but I'd hope not.
- Guildwiki lists Symbiotic Bond as a Shout in some places, and as a Stance in others. I had thought it was a Stance, but this would need to be checked up on.