GvG Report, 3/2/07

[ajaxfetish]

Well, I can get us started on this one. We had a wait to get the whole team together, but not as long as last weeks. We even had a few more people than we needed at one point or another.

Tonight's Roster

W/Rt-Wyrm
W/E-WB for 2, then Seijin for 3
Me/E-Zedd
N/E-It's a Crime (guest from AB)
N/A-Moo
E/Rt-Fox
Mo/A-Vort
Mo/E-Hawk

We fought a total of 5 battles, 2 losses and 3 wins (and a crapload of faction!)

1st Battle, vs. Orden de Balthazar--loss
In short, we got shredded. They shut down our team en masse. Personally, as the Mo/A, I had signet of humility on me constantly, so no RC, and I was diversioned most of the time, so I hardly dared cast anything else, and I had a thumper keeping me on my back half the time. Needless to say, I didn't accomplish much healing. However, since this was our warm-up round, it doesn't count. Also, we had three players gvging with us for the first time, so they needed to learn the build and basic strategy.

2nd Battle, vs. Antii Virus--win
This was a close one, but we managed to pull off a victory. Apparently this guild is very good in HA. They bought a pair of assassins and assorted other stuff I don't remember, but their weakness was three hero monks. They managed to gank nearly all our npc's at one point or another, so at the end we were all fighting to keep our GL alive. Both WB and our guest experimented with their builds, without anyone else realizing it until we were in the match. From a caster's point of view, the absence of our linebacker role was noticeable, and it hurt.

3rd Battle, vs. Contract Killas--flawless win
Warblade had to leave after the 2nd match, and Seijin stepped in to take his place. As much as WB didn't enjoy the hammer build, Seijin loved it. This group was largely made up of heroes, and was built around fire elementalists. Between their heroway and our growing comfort with the build, we stomped them, stormed their base, killed all the npc's, and took down the GL. Flawless Victory.

4th Battle, vs. Kingdom of Allies--loss
This was the only battle where the other team was ranked lower than us, so we met them in their GH, the Uncharted Isle. However, they were more skilled than their rank let on, and we got shredded again. They used a very heavy degen build, with both hexes and conditions, and kept migraine on both of our monks. We tried a split at the beginning to gank some of their npc's, but had to call it off when the main force was annihilated. It didn't last long, and it wasn't pretty.

5th Battle, vs. Dark by Design--win
This guild was unranked, apparently new to GvG (they also seemed unfamiliar with conventional tactics/builds/etc.) After a bad moment early on when they dropped half our team near the flag stand, we turned it around and dp'd them out, not even making it as far as their GL.

Overall Thoughts
I still don't think we're quite to effective splitting level. We fared much better when we were all together than when we split up. Also, a couple times we had the monks split up, and I realized the Mo/A doesn't have the best survivability when spiked without the other monk nearby (at least not in my hands, anyhow). As in previous experiences, I think the most important thing is for everyone to get comfortable with their roles in the group. We got more efficient and organized as the night wore on. I think the same was true for group leadership. In some of the early matches their was a lot of running around without a clear idea of who was doing what. In the later games the leadership was a lot clearer and tighter. Anyway, I'm a little too tired to think intelligently anymore, and hope the above makes sense in the morning.

Ajax

edit: I had another thought. We're a little slow with firing off res sigs in battle. There were a few times when we lost people and after some time without them coming back up, Wyrm would ask if we were out of sigs already. Then people would remember and raise the fallen. If it's not safe enough for the W/Rt to use the hard res (or right before a shrine res) those with res sigs need to be aware of who's alive and who's not and keep the team on its feet.

[DamadmOO]

My view on the second match is a little bit different then yours. Let me try to write down what happened in like the last 3 minutes.

The other team was doing a better job then us almost the whole match. They were able to push us back without too much hassle and also were using a lot of splitting up and we kinda lost view of all their positions. At a certain time we got a rez in our own GH the moment they were taking out more NPC's. We were able to survive the 2 next minutes without too much dieing. And just after the 2 minute hard rez we were able to kill 2 of their hero monks almost instantly. This forced them to fall back to the flagstand (the GL was starting to move out as well). Once we got at the flagstand we killed their last hero monk and they did retreat leaving their GL behind. Which was not a hard kill anymore :D

I used my rez sig as often as possible. However one time i didn't cast it for like 10 secs on purpose. Cause we were right in our base and there would be a base rez anyway. I thought there was no real rush to get someone back up 7 secs before the base rez. Maybe this was not the best choice, but now i was able to get up one of the monks like 40 secs later

[ajaxfetish]

You're right on the second match. I felt I was getting longwinded, so I tried not to go into too much detail, but as I said it was a close one. That was probably our most disorganized match, and their ganking worked very well. With all our npc's down, I was pretty sure they'd go in and assassinate our GL while we were outside or mostly dead, and that almost happened. We got lucky, plus as I said their hero monks weren't the same as having live ones, and they're the ones we were able to take down when we needed to.

As for holding onto a res sig right before a base res, great! Thank you. I just thought that generally speaking, as a team and over the course of the evening, we had a weakness with ressing.

Ajax

[WarBlade]

Both WB and our guest experimented with their builds, without anyone else realizing it until we were in the match. From a caster's point of view, the absence of our linebacker role was noticeable, and it hurt.

Well I did say I was switching. It wasn't until after I threw away the hammer in disgust... AROSEXNl8MkZwPYgMsLtIAkL ...the game started getting fun.

Edit: I think that's the version with the Sunspear Rebirth Sig. Ignore that bit.


BTW, you guys have to do something about the two-hour preshow! That was insane!!!

[DamadmOO]

BTW, you guys have to do something about the two-hour preshow! That was insane!!!

It was only one and a half hour this time. Last time it was over an hour more :D

[WarBlade]

*shakes head sadly*

15 minutes. That's the target. 30 minutes if there's a problem to iron out.

[DamadmOO]

Problem is that we have 8 ppl interested in GvG atm. If we could get a few more (till 11-12) then we should be able to start all the time. the ppl who can't join in when we have too many can do other things. It is a bit bad for those ppl but we will be able to get a GvG of the ground a lot quicker.

[FoxBat]

Startup time is an issue. I think guest invites need to start going out at 8:40. Also, we need to consider whether it's worth running a hero or two rather than waiting an hour for the last person, we seem to run into enough guilds running heroes anyway. Heroes are also easy to swap out if people show up later.

It doesn't matter much for scheduled GvG, but I think we also need some extra-game contact like AIM if we want to ad hoc pvp beyond just TA.

[DamadmOO]

Heroes can be used. But not in the build we are currently using i think. The only char that could be replaced is the N/E. Tho i think that the hexes will end up on the wrong persons in that case.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Good reports, you made some really good points. Here are my own little additions.

However, since this was our warm-up round, it doesn't count.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I still don't think we're quite to effective splitting level. We fared much better when we were all together than when we split up.

I agree. I think that from now on we're going to stay together as much as possible. If they send a gank to our base we'll have to split though, and depending on what happens throughout the match, we might have to split and go to their base to avoid being undermanned at VoD.

Also, a couple times we had the monks split up, and I realized the Mo/A doesn't have the best survivability when spiked without the other monk nearby (at least not in my hands, anyhow).

That's where the assassin skills come in handy. With Dark Escape at 10s (I think), you should be able to keep yourself alive fairly well during a spike. Mending Touch is also a pretty big self heal once conditions start being applied.

edit: I had another thought. We're a little slow with firing off res sigs in battle. There were a few times when we lost people and after some time without them coming back up, Wyrm would ask if we were out of sigs already. Then people would remember and raise the fallen. If it's not safe enough for the W/Rt to use the hard res (or right before a shrine res) those with res sigs need to be aware of who's alive and who's not and keep the team on its feet.

I think it also needs to be said that you shouldn't save your sig for a monk. As soon as anyone goes down we need to get them back up.

And just after the 2 minute hard rez we were able to kill 2 of their hero monks almost instantly. This forced them to fall back to the flagstand (the GL was starting to move out as well).

One of the things that helped us out in that end-spot was that once we ressed and got the GL out of danger, they retreated and we were able to kill one monk right away and body block another which sealed its fate thanks to the AI and it's inability to walk around objects. This left them with only 1 monk at the flagstand which was easily disposed of and made their GL an easy target.

I thought there was no real rush to get someone back up 7 secs before the base rez.

Smart play. Just remember that, while that's a pretty effective strat if we're in the base, a lot of the time it's not neccessarily a good idea to let someone base res if we're ahead on the field or are pushing into their base.

I think guest invites need to start going out at 8:40.

I think we also need to decide on who we're going to guest in what order. For about 10 minutes or so once there wasn't anything happening because I thought you were asking Basiners and you thought I was asking other people. Being more strict with a "show up on time or wait" policy might be a better idea. We also need to have a better agreement on who we're going to guest and how much time we'll give them to respond before moving on. There are a couple people in the alliance who are pretty good PvPers, do we want to ask them first? Also, making sure the guest has vent should be a higher priority than working them into the build. We've spent quite a while trying to figure out what build someone could use and how they could be a part of the team only to find out they didn't have Vent. That's bad.

Also, we need to consider whether it's worth running a hero or two

Well, I said it in the other GvG topic but I think I'll re-iterate again. I'm very much opposed to using heroes in GvG. If we're stuck at 6 and it doesn't look like we're going to make full capacity then we might as well do HA.

Now that I'm done replying to people...

I've been thinking about the W/Rt, and I think it might be better for me to instead pressure a midliner, rather than go after a monk. I don't know that pressuring a monk is really doing anything all that worthwhile and is something that can probably be better left to the casters. Something else for me to work on.

Also, I wanted to say that we're definitely getting better. A lot of our blunders now are more because of tactictal decisions (not just my blunders of calling for a push or retreat at an innapropriate time) where people are trying to figure out the most effective use of their skillbar (rather than trying to figure out which skill is which). An easy way to work on that is to take your build into PvE and use it there. Also, you might want to take some time to walk around the various guild halls to get a feel for them. The more comfortable you are with them the more relaxed you'll be. That, in and of itself, can improve you more than having a mastery of your skill bar.