This past weekend was a double faction weekend for Fort Aspenwood and The Jade Quarry and I'm pretty sure it went unnoticed by most people in the guild, as well as most people in GW. However, I was bored and since it's nigh impossible to get even 4 people for AB/TA these days I decided to play them and, to my surprise, enjoyed them more than I thought I would. Here are some of my thoughts from this past weekend.
Fort Aspenwood:
Aspenwood is decidedly skewed in favor of the Luxon side, since all you have to do is kill a bunch of Kurz NPCs, using the rather potent firepower of the Siege Turtles as artillery support; whereas the Kurz have to defend the Fort from the siege as well as run amber in order to increase the speed at which "God's Vengeance" is completed. That's right, there is no easy victory for the Kurz, you have to sit there and wait for the thing to complete on its own. As a result, the Luxon side is a lot more populous than the Kurzick side and therefore people on the Luxon side will have a longer wait to get in. It's not bad, but when there were 2 districts (it never went beyond 2, though) you could wind up sitting in the outpost for 5-6 recharges (about 3 minutes) before going in.
The biggest problem with Aspenwood, as well as every other randomly picked team assignment in the game (and probably other games as well) is people that will just leave the game, either before it starts or in the middle of it. During the weekend I'd say about half the games I played had at least 1 person leave. By Sunday night (i.e. the last few hours of the event) it was unplayable since I was unable to join a game without anyone leaving. Several times more than one person would leave and by that point it would be impossible to win since the Kurz could easily swarm the turtles and kill them before they had a chance to get into the fort. At those points all you could do is forget about the mission and just kill whatever Kurz came along, even if you wound up fighting the same people 10 times in a row. I'm not exactly sure why ANet seems to love random teams so much, but it's become very detrimental to GW gameplay and one of the biggest reasons these missions (as well as all the others: RA, Dragon Arena, Snowball, etc.) are not taken seriously by anyone. In my opinion it would be far better for the mission if you could pick teams, and be able to go in with at least some semblance of a plan.
One of the things you have to take into consideration with the random assignment is that you can't really depend on your teammates to do anything other than c-space gaming; however, I did find that if the Kurz had taken over one of the amber mines several Lux would break off the assault (unless we were already in the area attacking Gunther) to recap the shrine. Unfortunately, having a monk on your side was not always a guarantee, so you have to create your own build to make do without one. I started out as a channeling/resto rit in order to provide support for the turtles, but after having troubles with interrupt rangers that were able to keep the turtles outside the base just by interrupting the siege attack (annoying, to say the least), I decided to change my tactics and switched to a water ele with glyph of immolation + steam for blind, using Shatterstone for damage. This actually worked out quite well for me and wound up being the build I stayed with for the rest of the weekend. You don't need a res for this mission since you auto-res after 3-5 seconds, nor do you need a run skill since the distance between the Luxon starting location and the inside of the Fort is very small. There is also no death penatly here, so dying isn't really a big deal (and can be beneficial at times).
This was the bar I ended up with:
Water: 14, E Storage: 11, Healing: 8, Fire 3
Glyph Of Immolation, Steam, Shatterstone, Glowing Ice, Freezing Gust, Water Attunement, Healing Seed, Healing Breeze
The build worked rather well and I was able to deal a nice amount of damage with the Shatterstone -> Freezing Gust combination (or by using Glowing Ice if I wanted to conserve energy). I found out, as the battles wore on, that the glyph + Steam combination was a nice source of damage to spellcasters and not just useful for the blind vs. physical attackers. If I wanted to get an NPC kill in and there were no monks on our team, I would glyph + steam, then Shatterstone + freezing and finish with Glowing. The damage was enough that if anyone else was targetting the NPC (or if I got a second Shatterstone off) it would kill the NPC. The triple hit from a Shatterstone combination is also nice for dealing a decent amount of damage through prot spirit. The only time I would have energy issues would be if I was spamming Shatterstone + Freezing without being killed for a while. It got to be pretty annoying once or twice when I would want to be killed for the energy recharge but people wouldn't target me, or I would still be able to kill them even with depleted energy reserves. Sigh. There were a couple times where I was about to die and got a Shatterstone off, which would kill someone with its second hit right after I died. That was kinda cool.
---
The Jade Quarry:
I think I should mention this first: before this weekend I had never gone into the Jade Quarry. At first it was because I was always more interested in Alliance Battles and not the competative missions, and after a while doing the Jade Quarry became impossible since, well, nobody ever goes there. The latter didn't really change much this weekend: there was never more than 1 district with no more than 15-20 people in it at a time; however, there were enough people that you could get a game in without much of a wait. There is no definite advantage for any one side and the game is played out in a somewhat similar method to Alliance Battles in that you have to capture certain areas and those will lead to you scoring points. When you control a quarry site, a turtle (or juggernaught if you're on the Kurz side) with spawn to carry a piece of jade back to your base, scoring you 1 point. Along the way are several archer shrines which you can capture in order to add more damage to your side and to help kill the carriers. The first team to 10 points (or whoever has more points when time runs out) wins.
One thing worth noting about the shrines here (and in Aspenwood as well, but it's less important for Aspenwood) is that shrines aren't capped the same way they are in most other situations, most notably Alliance Battles. In order to cap a shrine all you have to do is kill all of the NPCs guarding that shrine and it will change hands automatically. You can have a rather interesting time if there are 2 AoE eles on opposing sides capping a shrine over each other. I actually had 1 match where I basically stood in one place recapping a shrine against a Splinter Barrager - the shrine was changing hands so fast that most of the time the NPCs there didn't live long enough to do anything. It was quite humorous, albeit slightly annoying.
Leavers are another big problem with this mission - much moreso than with Aspenwood. Losing just 1 person on your team can cost you the match. The last few matches I played were lost because people were leaving. I had to stop Sunday night after several matches in a row where people would just leave, my last one being a match where 4 people (half the team) left and it was impossible to even leave the base because of how one-sided the match became (side note: this was the match where I sat in the base and exchanged taking over the NPC shrine with the Barrage guy). I'm not sure why so many people feel the need to just quit a mission in the middle of it, but it is seriously annoying. Perhaps harsher penalties are needed to discourage the action (such as having your account suspended for 10 min every time you do so) or maybe more incentive for people to stay around (i.e. better lucky loser bonuses - you would get 1600+ faction for winning, maybe give half that for losing?). Side track: I have noticed that people will be more likely to leave the more one-sided the battle is.
Much to my surprise I found I enjoyed this mission moreso than Aspenwood, if only because it was a more even fight. The goals are easy to pick up on and once you get the hang of it the mission becomes very playable for people of all skill levels, which is a mixed blessing. After my first match it became pretty obvious that the water ele I had been using for Aspenwood was not really appropriate for here since AoE shrine capping wound up being more important. I quickly changed to a Savannah Heat build and never looked back.
My build was:
Fire: 14, E Storage: 11, Healing: 8
Savannah Heat, Searing Heat, Teinai's Heat, Immolate, Glowing Gaze, Flame Djinn's Haste, Fire Attunement, Healing Breeze
I used the same equipment for this as I did with the water build, only changing the double 20/20 wand/focus, the +15/-2 focus (I just used the water wand with +15/-2 since there's no attribute req for the energy) and the headpiece. I also didn't bother lowering Healing for more E Storage because, well, energy wasn't an issue at all with this build (with either build, really).
One of the things I found with this mission was that, while the area is small enough, having a run boost helps with getting to and from the shrines when you need to do so in a hurry. Another thing I noticed with this mission was that the people in it were really... not very bright... I was able to kill other players by stacking Savannah Heat and Searing Heat on them - they would not move out of it. At first it was humorous, but after a while it became disappointing - I would have liked a bit more competition from my opponents. One match there was a Thunderclap ele that was more annoying than anything (which, having "Annoying was" in their name made it obvious that that was their goal) but, unfortunately, they were easy to deal with. All they would do is Thunderclap someone and then spam Shock Arrow and Lightning Javelin. They also seemed to like targetting me for some reason, so there were a few times where all I did was dodge the projectiles and draw them back to an NPC shrine where they would quickly die. Or, if there was a teammate around I would just stand there dodging and let my teammate kill them. Or, if they targetted someone else, I would dump Savannah Heat on them and they wouldn't move (like I said, very few people actually moved out of the AoE).
Having a monk on your side isn't really neccessary as most people won't bother targetting the carriers, partly because they don't show up on the party window. Even so, it's more important to make sure you have control of the mines so your own carriers can earn points. The extra shrines are almost as important to have since those Longbows are perched above the floor of the map where the mines are, which means that, while they won't engage until something enters their aggro or attacks them, they will be able to continue attacking even if someone runs away, thanks to their longbow + height range. If I forgot to use Healing Breeze on myself when going after a shrine of 3+ rangers, well, I died. Also of note: the mesmers you have to kill at the mines have some nasty anti-caster stuff, so zerging them isn't really that great of an idea.
Overall, I think I had more fun in The Jade Quarry than I did in Fort Aspenwood, if only because there was more to do than just follow the turtles and kill any blue dots that came close. In the end, I earned enough Balthazar Faction for ~6 Zaishen Keys and ~7 faction donations.
Fort Aspenwood:
Aspenwood is decidedly skewed in favor of the Luxon side, since all you have to do is kill a bunch of Kurz NPCs, using the rather potent firepower of the Siege Turtles as artillery support; whereas the Kurz have to defend the Fort from the siege as well as run amber in order to increase the speed at which "God's Vengeance" is completed. That's right, there is no easy victory for the Kurz, you have to sit there and wait for the thing to complete on its own. As a result, the Luxon side is a lot more populous than the Kurzick side and therefore people on the Luxon side will have a longer wait to get in. It's not bad, but when there were 2 districts (it never went beyond 2, though) you could wind up sitting in the outpost for 5-6 recharges (about 3 minutes) before going in.
The biggest problem with Aspenwood, as well as every other randomly picked team assignment in the game (and probably other games as well) is people that will just leave the game, either before it starts or in the middle of it. During the weekend I'd say about half the games I played had at least 1 person leave. By Sunday night (i.e. the last few hours of the event) it was unplayable since I was unable to join a game without anyone leaving. Several times more than one person would leave and by that point it would be impossible to win since the Kurz could easily swarm the turtles and kill them before they had a chance to get into the fort. At those points all you could do is forget about the mission and just kill whatever Kurz came along, even if you wound up fighting the same people 10 times in a row. I'm not exactly sure why ANet seems to love random teams so much, but it's become very detrimental to GW gameplay and one of the biggest reasons these missions (as well as all the others: RA, Dragon Arena, Snowball, etc.) are not taken seriously by anyone. In my opinion it would be far better for the mission if you could pick teams, and be able to go in with at least some semblance of a plan.
One of the things you have to take into consideration with the random assignment is that you can't really depend on your teammates to do anything other than c-space gaming; however, I did find that if the Kurz had taken over one of the amber mines several Lux would break off the assault (unless we were already in the area attacking Gunther) to recap the shrine. Unfortunately, having a monk on your side was not always a guarantee, so you have to create your own build to make do without one. I started out as a channeling/resto rit in order to provide support for the turtles, but after having troubles with interrupt rangers that were able to keep the turtles outside the base just by interrupting the siege attack (annoying, to say the least), I decided to change my tactics and switched to a water ele with glyph of immolation + steam for blind, using Shatterstone for damage. This actually worked out quite well for me and wound up being the build I stayed with for the rest of the weekend. You don't need a res for this mission since you auto-res after 3-5 seconds, nor do you need a run skill since the distance between the Luxon starting location and the inside of the Fort is very small. There is also no death penatly here, so dying isn't really a big deal (and can be beneficial at times).
This was the bar I ended up with:
Water: 14, E Storage: 11, Healing: 8, Fire 3
Glyph Of Immolation, Steam, Shatterstone, Glowing Ice, Freezing Gust, Water Attunement, Healing Seed, Healing Breeze
The build worked rather well and I was able to deal a nice amount of damage with the Shatterstone -> Freezing Gust combination (or by using Glowing Ice if I wanted to conserve energy). I found out, as the battles wore on, that the glyph + Steam combination was a nice source of damage to spellcasters and not just useful for the blind vs. physical attackers. If I wanted to get an NPC kill in and there were no monks on our team, I would glyph + steam, then Shatterstone + freezing and finish with Glowing. The damage was enough that if anyone else was targetting the NPC (or if I got a second Shatterstone off) it would kill the NPC. The triple hit from a Shatterstone combination is also nice for dealing a decent amount of damage through prot spirit. The only time I would have energy issues would be if I was spamming Shatterstone + Freezing without being killed for a while. It got to be pretty annoying once or twice when I would want to be killed for the energy recharge but people wouldn't target me, or I would still be able to kill them even with depleted energy reserves. Sigh. There were a couple times where I was about to die and got a Shatterstone off, which would kill someone with its second hit right after I died. That was kinda cool.
---
The Jade Quarry:
I think I should mention this first: before this weekend I had never gone into the Jade Quarry. At first it was because I was always more interested in Alliance Battles and not the competative missions, and after a while doing the Jade Quarry became impossible since, well, nobody ever goes there. The latter didn't really change much this weekend: there was never more than 1 district with no more than 15-20 people in it at a time; however, there were enough people that you could get a game in without much of a wait. There is no definite advantage for any one side and the game is played out in a somewhat similar method to Alliance Battles in that you have to capture certain areas and those will lead to you scoring points. When you control a quarry site, a turtle (or juggernaught if you're on the Kurz side) with spawn to carry a piece of jade back to your base, scoring you 1 point. Along the way are several archer shrines which you can capture in order to add more damage to your side and to help kill the carriers. The first team to 10 points (or whoever has more points when time runs out) wins.
One thing worth noting about the shrines here (and in Aspenwood as well, but it's less important for Aspenwood) is that shrines aren't capped the same way they are in most other situations, most notably Alliance Battles. In order to cap a shrine all you have to do is kill all of the NPCs guarding that shrine and it will change hands automatically. You can have a rather interesting time if there are 2 AoE eles on opposing sides capping a shrine over each other. I actually had 1 match where I basically stood in one place recapping a shrine against a Splinter Barrager - the shrine was changing hands so fast that most of the time the NPCs there didn't live long enough to do anything. It was quite humorous, albeit slightly annoying.
Leavers are another big problem with this mission - much moreso than with Aspenwood. Losing just 1 person on your team can cost you the match. The last few matches I played were lost because people were leaving. I had to stop Sunday night after several matches in a row where people would just leave, my last one being a match where 4 people (half the team) left and it was impossible to even leave the base because of how one-sided the match became (side note: this was the match where I sat in the base and exchanged taking over the NPC shrine with the Barrage guy). I'm not sure why so many people feel the need to just quit a mission in the middle of it, but it is seriously annoying. Perhaps harsher penalties are needed to discourage the action (such as having your account suspended for 10 min every time you do so) or maybe more incentive for people to stay around (i.e. better lucky loser bonuses - you would get 1600+ faction for winning, maybe give half that for losing?). Side track: I have noticed that people will be more likely to leave the more one-sided the battle is.
Much to my surprise I found I enjoyed this mission moreso than Aspenwood, if only because it was a more even fight. The goals are easy to pick up on and once you get the hang of it the mission becomes very playable for people of all skill levels, which is a mixed blessing. After my first match it became pretty obvious that the water ele I had been using for Aspenwood was not really appropriate for here since AoE shrine capping wound up being more important. I quickly changed to a Savannah Heat build and never looked back.
My build was:
Fire: 14, E Storage: 11, Healing: 8
Savannah Heat, Searing Heat, Teinai's Heat, Immolate, Glowing Gaze, Flame Djinn's Haste, Fire Attunement, Healing Breeze
I used the same equipment for this as I did with the water build, only changing the double 20/20 wand/focus, the +15/-2 focus (I just used the water wand with +15/-2 since there's no attribute req for the energy) and the headpiece. I also didn't bother lowering Healing for more E Storage because, well, energy wasn't an issue at all with this build (with either build, really).
One of the things I found with this mission was that, while the area is small enough, having a run boost helps with getting to and from the shrines when you need to do so in a hurry. Another thing I noticed with this mission was that the people in it were really... not very bright... I was able to kill other players by stacking Savannah Heat and Searing Heat on them - they would not move out of it. At first it was humorous, but after a while it became disappointing - I would have liked a bit more competition from my opponents. One match there was a Thunderclap ele that was more annoying than anything (which, having "Annoying was" in their name made it obvious that that was their goal) but, unfortunately, they were easy to deal with. All they would do is Thunderclap someone and then spam Shock Arrow and Lightning Javelin. They also seemed to like targetting me for some reason, so there were a few times where all I did was dodge the projectiles and draw them back to an NPC shrine where they would quickly die. Or, if there was a teammate around I would just stand there dodging and let my teammate kill them. Or, if they targetted someone else, I would dump Savannah Heat on them and they wouldn't move (like I said, very few people actually moved out of the AoE).
Having a monk on your side isn't really neccessary as most people won't bother targetting the carriers, partly because they don't show up on the party window. Even so, it's more important to make sure you have control of the mines so your own carriers can earn points. The extra shrines are almost as important to have since those Longbows are perched above the floor of the map where the mines are, which means that, while they won't engage until something enters their aggro or attacks them, they will be able to continue attacking even if someone runs away, thanks to their longbow + height range. If I forgot to use Healing Breeze on myself when going after a shrine of 3+ rangers, well, I died. Also of note: the mesmers you have to kill at the mines have some nasty anti-caster stuff, so zerging them isn't really that great of an idea.
Overall, I think I had more fun in The Jade Quarry than I did in Fort Aspenwood, if only because there was more to do than just follow the turtles and kill any blue dots that came close. In the end, I earned enough Balthazar Faction for ~6 Zaishen Keys and ~7 faction donations.
Alea Jacta Est - Caesar
I live my life by Murphy's Law.
I live my life by Murphy's Law.
![[Image: tongue.gif]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
![[Image: rolleye.gif]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/rolleye.gif)
I suppose there's also the mega-blocking "Shield of Deflection" route.
![[Image: lol.gif]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/lol.gif)
Next he rearmed his spear and actually contributed something to the team effort. The real fun began when I abandoned the spear throwing just as quickly and hopped in there with Ice Blade instead...
). The monks need to ferry a carrier home buffing its speed with MH and protecting it from attacks. With one of such characters, a carrier will survive passing through the bow base even if it's on enemy hands. Plus, enemy carrier killers will have a hard time doing their job. These characters also need to know when it's time to leave their carrier to protect a mine: if their carrier is half a radar away and the mine is under attack, the monk should try hardest to save at least on of the NPCs for the time needed to the carrier to fecth the Jade. This is where FB comes in: mobility is very important for such characters when they're needed. Also, at the start most of the two teams should try to claim the even mine and the one who gets there first gets the first carrier, so FB is a needed speed boost for this task.![[Image: yikes.gif]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/yikes.gif)
![[Image: neenerneener.gif]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/neenerneener.gif)