GvG

[Lurker Wyrm]

Heh, I'm not being deliberately snide or dense... You had mentioned last week that you wanted to try a DIFFERENT build, that you "had something in mind," though you continue to play coy and still won't reveal it... I am trying to shake it out of you!

edit: Posted below.

Eh, I like Axe Rake for the Crippling effect that it has; I have a tough time actually hitting that moving foe, so I haven't become a big fan of Bull's or Protector's.

It's your choice, I was just throwing it out there as an option. Similarly enough though, using Rush will allow you to be at a constant +25% boost which should enable you to hit the person running away. Also, the reason I was against it was more because as we get more co-ordinated, we're going to be knock-locking people in place as we spike them; we'll hit them with 1 KD and then as soon as they get up and before they can go anywhere we hit them with another. Axe Rake is better in a pressure build where you're not always able to do a co-ordinated spike.

As for Sprint vs Rush, the only problem with Rush is that it's adrenaline dependent.

That's the reason I tend to like Rush more than Sprint. You can keep it up all the time once you're in combat and you don't have to worry about not having energy for it. The only downside is you can't use it for that burst of speed every now and then when you just want to get across the map in a hurry.

I don't use Shock at high enough frequency that I am typically unable to activate Sprint.

Just remember, Shock (more importantly, the KD effect it has) will interrupt, which can be more important at times than keeping someone in place to hit them. For example: someone putting up a spirit you don't want to see go up and they have an evasion stance active.

[Lurker Wyrm]

W/E
Axe: 16 (12 +3 +1)
Strength: 10 (9 +1)
Tactics: 10 (9 +1)
Air: 3
Shock
Cleave
Dismember
Bull's Strike
Sprint/Rush
Frenzy
Heal Sig
Res Sig

R/Me
Marksmanship: 9 (8+1)
Wilderness Survival: 11 (10 +1)
Expertise: 14 (12 +1 +1)
Melandru's Arrows
Seeking Arrows
Debilitating Shot
Dual Shot
Savage Shot
Distracting Shot
Troll Unguent
Res Sig

E/Mo
Fire: 16 (+3) (+1)
E Storage: 10 (+1)
Healing: 9
Protection: whatever's left
Glyph of Sacrifice
Meteor Shower
Rod's Invocation
Fireball/Immolate
Ether Prodigy
Heal Party
Extinguish
Res Chant

Me/E
Air: 5
Illusion: 12 (10 +1 +1)
Inspiration: 11 (10 +1)
Fast Casting: 10 (9 +1)
Glyph of Energy
Gale
Conjure Phantasm
Images of Remorse
Accumulated Pain
Drain Enchant
Power Drain
Res Sig

Me/Mo
Domination: 14 (12 +1 +1)
Fast Casting: 10 (9 +1)
Inspiration: 10 (9 +1)
Protection: 3
Mantra of Recovery
Energy Burn
Shatter Enchant
Diversion
Power Leak
Remove Hex
Draw Conditions
Resurrect

Mo/Me
Divine: 15 (11 +3 +1)
Protection: 11 (10 +1)
Inspiration: 10
Blessed Light
Signet of Devotion
Guardian
RoF
Prot Spirit
Mend Condition
Drain Enchantment
Revealed Hex

Mo/Me
Divine: 13 (12 +1)
Healing: 14 (12 +1 +1)
Protection: 4 (3 +1)
Word of Healing
Orison of Healing
Signet of Devotion
Infuse Health
Healing Touch
Heal Party
Mend Condition
Convert Hexes

A/N - Flag Runner
Dagger: 12 (10 +2)
Critical Strikes: 13 (11 +1 +1)
Shadow Arts 12 (10 +2)
Death's Charge
Disrupting Stab
Temple Strike
Twisting Fangs
Shadow Refuge
Shadow of Haste
Dash
Plague Touch

edit: switched the fire e/mo for an offensive rit.
edit 2: put the fire e/mo back in place of the rit.

[Sir Salamandastron]

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was so excited about LOST starting, I forgot about GvG! Argh! I'm an idiot!

Anyway, I hope it all went well for you guys last night. I plan to be there on Monday!

Take it easy.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Well, as it turned out, you weren't the only one who had other priorities. Most people wound up just doing their own thing anyways, so we never really got off the ground.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I have a suggestion to make. Now that Heroe's Ascent is 6 team member parties and we don't have to worry about getting people to the hall and all that stuff, I think it would be a good idea for us to go there on nights like this past Weds. where attendance is low, especially since we're usually missing 2-3 people when we do have low numbers. We might even consider doing HA on a Monday when we've got plenty of people and the line is not someplace friendly (aka well inside Kurzick territory).

Heroe's Ascent is a pretty different arena style than GvG. For one thing, matches usually only last 4 minutes and it's played as a tournament, meaning if you win you move on until you make it to the Hall of Heroes. After you get there it's a matter of capping the central altar and holding it for the 4 minute matches that are held there. This is also how you get fame and rank (and the animal emotes i.e. deer, wolf, etc.).

Anyways, the most common (and easiest to put together) build for HA at the moment is dual smite, but I'd rather not run that since it's a gimmick/fotm build, and I don't like those. It's also very easily defeated.

Second anyways, I do sorta have a build I'd like to try in mind, but it breaks away from the prebuilts a lot (in other words, you wouldn't be able to use a prebuilt char for it). If you guys want to try it I'm game but Seijin, Hureg and I have been going into HA for the past couple of nights with just us and 3 henches. No, we don't make it anywhere, but that's besides the point.

Third anyways... the build (I'll need to make a few fine tunings with attributes, but whatever):
W/E
Hammer: 16 (+3 +1), Strength: 13 (+1) (ZOMG!!!), Air: 3
Sprint, Frenzy, Shock, Devastating, Fierce, Heavy, Crushing, Res Sig

R/whatever
Exp: 12 (+2), Wilderness: 12 (+1 +1), Marksmanship: 12 (+1)
Practiced Stance, Apply Poison, Choking Gas, Savage, Distracting, Whirling, Res Sig

R/Me
Exp: 9 (+1), Wilderness: 12 (+1 +1), Marksmanship: 15 (+3), Illusion: 3
Melandru's Arrows, Seeking Arrows, Marauder's, Dual, Savage, Distracting, Distortion, Res Sig

Me/Mo
FC: 12 (+2), Dom: 14 (+1 +1), Insp: 9 (+1)
Martyr, E Burn, Shatter Enchant, Drain Enchant, Diversion, Blackout, Remove Hex, Resurrect

Mo/Me
Divine: 13 (+1 +1), Healing: 11 (+1), Insp: 8
Spell Breaker, Infuse Health, Healing Touch, Orison, Mend Condition, Healing Seed, Inspired Hex, Channeling

Mo/Me
Divine: 11 (+1), Prot: 14 (+1 +1), Healing: 9 (+1)
Restore Condition, Guardian, RoF, Healing Seed, Prot Spirit, Gift of Health, Convert Hexes, Channeling

[Zed-F]

Last night AB was a bit of a mixed bag. Things seemed to go well enough in the first battle when we had 3 teams who at least had some idea of what to do. In the second battle, things went less well, as one of our teams got replaced with some random folks who didn't seem to do much during the battle. After that, Wyrm had had enough AB, and Hawkmoon, Sal, and I all had to call it a night.

Given that Wednesdays is supposed to be PvP-oriented (HA or GvG) and Tuesdays is supposed to be variant night (at least when Nightfall comes along for LoL, or else when interest in Nudists picks up again) we maybe should revisit what we want to do on Mondays. Wyrm originally started organizing things on Monday as a back-up PvP day. Since then it's morphed into a PvP practice day. Wyrm's commentary yesterday suggests that he no longer finds AB to be fun. While I can't agree with that sentiment, I will agree that it's not very good practice for HA or GvG. The parameters of the battle are too different. From a competitive standpoint, lack of ability to choose your teammates kills the format, since you can't easily gauge either the quality of your team or the quality of the opposition, and since it makes coordination of all three teams all but impossible. Wyrm points out as a source of frustration that you can bring any build to AB and be successful, and the random quality of your allies/opponents certainly contributes to this. Obviously there are tactics involved in efficiently capturing control points and preventing the opposition from doing the same, but exercising those tactics is a hit-and-miss proposition due to the lack of effective coordination between teams. AB is more PvP for the casual PvP'er, than for the serious PvP'er.

That said, most of us still seemed to be having fun, and there has been some support in the alliance in the past for an alliance-wide AB day on Mondays. At least some people in the alliance are interested in seeing an alliance-wide AB day on Mondays make a more permanent return.

So I guess the question is, do we still want to use Mondays as practice for GvG? If so, then probably AB is not the right format for that, and we should do HA or something instead. Personally I've enjoyed our AB outings more than our GvG outings so far, but other people's tastes differ, and I've yet to try HA under the revised format. Perhaps we'll give that a try this Wednesday.

[Lurker Wyrm]

When we decided to not bother with GvG on Monday, I threw out AB as a suggestion because it is so easy to do. The idea was to have people try different builds and get more aquainted with doing something other than their norm. Most people on GvG teams have at least 3 classes they're able to play well (and no, that's not limited to top 100 teams) which allows the guild to play a variety of builds and to experiment. Thus far, for whatever reason, people have been unwilling to play something different. The few times it has happened I felt like I was twisting the person's arm. When people say they just feel like playing whatever they've been playing with forever, we're not making progress. There are so many builds out there that I'd really like to try out (including the one I posted earlier) but can't because we just don't have the players who are able to put the characters together either because people are missing skills/runes or because they aren't familiar with the class enough to know what to do.

That being said, the best way to get yourself ready for the more high-end PvP such as GvG and HA is to do Random and Team arenas. Randoms will help you get comfortable with a build and more comfortable with PvP in general since it's about as no-pressure as you can get. Yes, there are griefers every now and then but you just have to accept that as part of the game. Team arenas help you work together as a team and build co-ordination, which is paramount in GvG. Unless you go in with a lousy attitude, you're going to improve quite a bit on a regular basis. A large part of the battle of GvG is being comfortable enough to not have tunnel vision, another pretty large chunk is knowing how to kite as a soft target (any/all casters). If you're only doing PvP twice a week for about an hour at a time it's going to take forever to get to that point.

I think for now I'm going to have to insist that we go back to the original build I posted that uses the prebuilts; with only 1 change, and that being using either a hammer warrior or another axe warrior instead of the sword warrior (or at the very least, replacing Charge with a better elite).

Personally I've enjoyed our AB outings more than our GvG outings so far

I'd imagine that's because it fits more with the style of play you like. Air elementalists (and elementalists in general) are not very useful in GvG unless the entire team using an air spike build or are monk secondary and spamming Heal Party (and using Ether Prodigy as your elite); the team is generally better off with a more versatile utility character (i.e. mesmer). I'm not saying you can't fit them into a build, but it's not going

[Zed-F]

Well, it's true I like running my air ele, but I'm hardly inflexible about it. I didn't play her either time we GvGed. The first time I got to monk, the second to be a curses necro. I would rather have been a ranger, for instance, but those were what was left by the time the call went out for more warm bodies. I think I prefer AB because it's the most accessible format to new PvP players of the ones I've tried.

I can play a number of classes. I have the most relevant skills capped as ranger or elementalist, and the most experience (relatively speaking) with those classes. Other possibilities in no particular order are warrior, necro, ritualist, and monk. For any of these I probably have most but not all relevant skills capped, and less experience with them.

Regardless, for me, practice for PvP is likely to be restricted to when we get together as a group. PvP simply isn't that high a priority on my list of GW things to do, especially with Nightfall on the way. If that means I progress slowly, so be it.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Well, we're going to need a cripshot ranger so you can do that. Off the top of my head the build is something like:
Expertise: 16 (+4)
Marksmanship: 10 (+1)
Wilderness Survival: 10 (+1)
Illusion: 3
Apply Poison, Crippling Shot, Debilitating Shot, Savage Shot, Distracting Shot, Distortion, Unguent, Res Sig

The reason for putting Expertise all the way up to 16 is that it's the breakpoint for 15e skills to go down to a 5e cost, which will let you spam Crip a lot more than you could at a lower level. It's more important to be able to spam the cripple than to have a longer duration on it because of the simple fact that conditions get taken off pretty regularly. The best weapon for spamming it out there is going to be a crippling recurve bow that's +5e instead of 15^50 (although having a damage bow on switch is helpful).

Edit: forgot to mention, the cripshot has 3 jobs while during the match. First, keep warriors and other priority targets (such as enemy flag runner) crippled as much as possible. Secondly, spread poison among the enemy ranks (done simply by hitting "C" to get a target and then tabbing through the team in a tab, spacebar repetition). Thirdly, be a pain to the enemy casters by hitting the monks with Debilitating and using your interrupts to stop spells from going off, or if they have a ranger or rit putting spirits up, be a general thorn in their side.

Well, it's true I like running my air ele, but I'm hardly inflexible about it.

I wasn't singling you out on that one, a lot of other people have been doing the same thing lately.

[Hawkmoon]

...The idea was to have people try different builds and get more aquainted with doing something other than their norm. Most people on GvG teams have at least 3 classes they're able to play well (and no, that's not limited to top 100 teams) which allows the guild to play a variety of builds and to experiment. Thus far, for whatever reason, people have been unwilling to play something different.

I would be happy to try something different. I keep showing up with Axe because I've been under the impression that I'm supposed to get as much experience calling as possible. But I'd be perfectly happy learning some other role as well. The biggest barrier for me is that I don't have many of the elites or superior runes unlocked. For instance, in the realm of superior runes, I think I've got a total of 6 unlocked: Warrior Axe, Warrior Absorption, Monk Divine Favor, Ele Energy Storage, Mes Fast Casting, and Rit Spawning Power. I am studiously working on capping elites for the warrior and monk classes, whenever time allows.

Re: the HA build you posted earlier, Wyrm - I can easily do either the Spellbreaker monk (capped that elite a few days ago!), or the hammer warrior (I capped Devastating; though I'm lacking the superior hammer rune, alas).

I think for now I'm going to have to insist that we go back to the original build I posted that uses the prebuilts; with only 1 change, and that being using either a hammer warrior or another axe warrior instead of the sword warrior (or at the very least, replacing Charge with a better elite).

I hope that doesn't mean that we can't try HA! I'm looking forward to that!

In the interests of building ourselves up for HA and GvG, maybe at off-times, or if we don't get enough folks to show up, we could spend time capping elites that those of us who aren't UAS need - it works sooooo much better as a group! Xyn and Sal helped me cap Devastating on Monday night before AB started up, and their help was much appreciated. It would have been much more of a fiasco with just the moronic henchies along. If y'all agree this would be useful, I'll post a list of what I need to cap - if we can coordinate to go after bosses that are in the same area, so much the better.

And maybe it really is time to have KoP or Gris make a PvP sub-forum under the main GW forum?