My life seems to have gone all PvP lately, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of me, the Eternal Handwringing Carebear. I'm sure it's just a phase, but last Tuesday saw the first Tuesday N00b Club Fight Club. The first rule of N00b Club is...you do not blog about...doh!
The four of us online that night have various dabbling experience at the PvP side of Guild Wars, but nothing organised or particularly practiced, and I've always thought it was a bit of a shame in my own case. Guild Wars is possibly one of the few MMOs I think has done PvP right.
Levels? Pretty much everyone is capped at L20 anyway, and even if not, can instantly create a max level PvP-only character in any class.
Equipment? See above. All PvP-Only characters get a special inventory window allowing them to make any item they like for free, again, instantly. PvE folks taking part will likely have found any number of decent green/gold items in their travels, and in all cases, the gear isn't that important anyway.
Skills? PvE folks will have likely rounded up and/or bought all the skills they'll need by the time they consider the PvP aspects, largely to get through the PvE game in the first place, and PvP-only folks get a decent enough starting build, and can unlock more skills by taking part and winning PvP.
Rewards? Well, perhaps here some folks might be disappointed. You do get various faction points that you can spend on bits and pieces, but then again, I've never really been in the PvP for the looting - can get that out in PvE land. For me, it's about that actual fighting, when I dabble at all, that is. Anything else seems...tainted somehow. Are these people really in it for the fight, or are they just grinding at this as well?
Practice? One of the cleverer aspects of the game's design...Nifty! even, is that even in the PvE game, most of the monsters are set up much like players, with builds of their own, mostly of the same kinds of skills, and usually come in little teams of their own. If you've played Guild Wars at all, you've had a good introduction to the PvP, even without knowing it.
Personally, I'd always thought I was missing out a bit on an entire half of a game I'd quite liked anyway, so had sometimes thrown myself at the Random Arenas and Alliance Battles, solo. Team PvP though, is a whole new thing, and so rather than go off on another hectic rampage in the PvE game, we hit the Great Temple of Balthazar for a bit of a warm up.
First stop was the Zaishen Challenge mission, largely because we didn't want to embarrass ourselves completely on our first team match. This is in fact a PvE mission, but set out in the style of a Random/Team Arena match, using the same arenas. The challenge allows you to select opponents from a number of different AI team builds, each using different sets of tactics, and needing different skills to beat.
Our initial line up was: Me (Mesmer - Domination/Fast Casting), Our Death-Loving Dervish; what seemed to be a cold-based scythe build, Our Survival-Obsessed Ranger; not entirely sure - something Marksmanship-based, I think, and our Newest Recruit; a Healing Prayers monk.
Our first match in there went deceptively well; the Illusionary Weaponry Team; four Mesmers who think they are tanks. I must admit, I was a bit worried about this one, as I do this a lot myself! The crucial difference here though, is that I usually go Mesmer/Assassin, and then go crazy with Shadow Arts regeneration and damage reduction. These enemies seemed to be Mesmer/Warriors and the Mesmer tends to have a harder time making effective use of the Warrior secondary - well, these did anyway. They put up a fair fight, but probably weren't designed with Dervishes in mind; clumping up on our scythe-crazy Enchantment Tank with satisfying results. I also happened to have Shatter Enchantment on my bar, which helped a lot. Any build based on IW tends to fall apart very quickly if IW itself is removed.
A false sense of security, but an early win did wonders for morale. The next team I picked was a different story; the "Victory Is Mine" Trappers. This team was an absolute nightmare, owning us several times over. This is four rangers who just spend the entire match laying spike and fire traps, which cause Cripple and Burning, massively self-regenerating, AoE regenerating each other, using rez signets and all sorts of craziness. The match starts well enough, but the more and more traps get placed, the more the hurt builds up, and they're very difficult to actually kill, what with all the healing going on. Each time saw us eventually brought down by attrition. I tried adding more and more interrupts to my bar to try and stop the heals, but I can't interrupt all of it. The worst part was the almost tentative way they'd casually sidle up to you while you're busy casting on something else, and quietly lay a fire trap at your feet..."wut?" BOOM!
A bit of despondency set in here, to be honest, as we continued to tweak builds, and in one case, swap character entirely; the Ranger vanishing and becoming a Ritualist. I dropped the "Proper Mesmering" build entirely and went with my guilty pleasure, my IW Assassin build*, which frankly, is Mesmer in name only. These last major substitutions seemed to do the trick, and on the last attempt, we managed to mostly out-damage them, one at a time. Tighter focus with the Target Calling helped a lot too.
A fun exercise, but I was starting to worry a bit, as we continued to specialise and tune our builds, that we were overly obsessing on coming up with a team build that would beat that specific team only. Out in Proper PvP, you have no idea what the enemy team will be using, so more general and flexible builds are probably a better way to go.
At that point, we couldn't get away with any further procrastination, so headed off to the Alliance Battles. From a self-esteem perspective, this is perhaps a little less harsh than Team Arenas or Hall of Heroes, as you're put in as three teams of four, versus 12 of the enemy, so if you lose, it can't all be your fault!
We're Luxons, for some reason I've long since forgotten, and it took a while for the first match to fill up on the Kurzick side, although from the red-blue wavy line on the map (which I'm still not sure I understand fully), it looked like the Kuzicks were dominant. The match started and in we went.
There are a number of waypoint objectives in here, and your team gets points for holding them the longest - the most points wins, so it's not actually about charging at the enemy and butchering them, per se. Quite confusing initially, as your own team of four is the same colour as the other eight randoms on the minimap, making unit cohesion a bit tricky. Clicking your team members in the party list rings them in yellow though, so I started using that to keep up with the others.
It went quite well actually, with the four of us all seeming to understand instinctively that just zerging about in a pack of twelve, isn't the way to win. The enemy team seemed to be doing this a lot initially, and yes, if they come for your four at a waypoint, you'll most likely get steamrollered and lose the WP, which is bad. But, while you're busy getting trampled, your other eight people are off capturing various uncontested waypoints. Efficiency!
As a little team, our final build seemed to be quite effective; our Dervish leads, picking out targets and wading in with the scythe. I then use the Shadow Step short-range teleport as a kind of sword-crazy air-cavalry, of sorts, usually going for whatever support type is backing up the Dervish's primary target; healer, elementalist, etc. Surprisingly few people expect a Mesmer in a ballgown, (complete with fan!) to come charging after them, frothing and waving a sword! By this point, our Ritualist is in range and setting up turret-type spirits, and our Monk is nearby, watching our backs. If the Monk gets aggro, as is often the case, I have another short-range teleport that lets me fall back to defend them and the Ritualist.
A decent enough dynamic kind of approach with a fair degree of flexibility, and one of the unique aspects of the Alliance Battle type of match is that it's all constantly on the move; reinforcements can arrive from any direction, shrines on the other side of the map can fall, your team can get split up by deaths and the whole thing has a strategic element that I quite enjoy, as well as the tactical aspect of the individual fighting.
We won two out of two matches, in part I hope, from our own little team's increasing familiarity with the maps, rehearsal of the tactics, and understanding of what each of us can do. More importantly, everyone seemed to enjoy it, which is a bonus, and I'm sure it'll be something we'll be doing again soon, and who knows, one day we may even be confident enough to try Team Arenas, where it'll just be the four of us, without eight others to back us up...
* Me/A; Ill 16(rune/mask), SA 12, Sword of Enchanting 19% (WTB 20%!), Forgotten Fan, A Crapload of Vitae, Survivors, Vigor runes
Skills: IoW, IW, DC, DR, FN, SR, SPD, DE; Keep IW up all the time!