Guild Wars: What the Heck is a Scrub?

Clamatius and I had a good chuckle about this the other night. But, okay, picture this:

You can have your choice of two Monk/Warriors. One's running a Zealous Benediction build tricked out for the latest metagame play – RoF, heavy on the quick skills, light on the preprotting, and every other trick that someone's ever thought up. The other's going to cast Mending, Live Vicariously, and Retribution and head straight for the nearest foe and start hacking away. Which one would you rather have as your teammate?

Here's the thing, though, would it change your mind at all to learn that the ZB build was lifted from somewhere else and was being run by someone with very little practice (relatively speaking) with it? And that the melee Monk monstrosity was something that person came up with themselves and used day in and day out?

Yeah, me neither. That's because as Clamatius and I said last night, “We might suck but at least we know enough not to use Mending.” (Seriously, Izzy, that thing needs a nerf. Now. Everybody uses it so it must be good.) That one fact alone pulls us out of the teaming masses of clueless people who play the game. Because we might not be good – yet – but we at least know what's bad. And a lot about what it takes to be good.

It's that distinction that makes us scrubs and not nubs.

And yet, it's the fact that we'd never consider running Mending that makes us scrubs and not, you know, actually good players. They'd have put it something like “We might be sucking but at least we know when not to use Mending. And when to use it.”

Let me back up here and explain just what I'm talking about. There is in Guild Wars – as in so many other places[1] – a hierarchy. There are many bad players and fewer mediocre players and a precious few good players and perhaps a handful of excellent players. That's just the way things go thanks to the harsh rule of the inverse square[2]. No matter what your skill level making that jump to get to the next level is difficult and most people are going to drop off along the way – for any number of reasons.

There are many ways of ordering it but I do it thusly. At the very bottom of the pyramid you have the n00bs. These are the people who've just started playing the game and have absolutely no idea what's going on whatsoever. They're not familiar with the rules and the mechanics, have no clue about the metagame or what's good or not. They just play and have fun ignorant of even their own ignorance.

It doesn't take much to climb past that point. A little bit of experience or some knowledge and they become nubs. At this point they understand the rules of the game. Say, the way the controls work and the difference between a hex and an enchantment, maybe. But they have no understanding of what even makes something a good skill to use or not. They might or might not be naturally talented – have great reflexes or a knack for making the right decision but that doesn't help them if they're running junky stuff.

Beyond that you have the scrubs – the people who know better but are still held back from being truly good. There are many reasons why someone remains a scrub but it mostly has to do with their limitations. Either self-imposed or naturally made, even though they have that understanding that a nub lacks there's a barrier to their advancement. In most cases, this is a failing of natural talent – they just don't have the reaction time, for example, to think and act at the speed the game requires. But it can also be because they have a set of self-imposed rules they and they alone follow. If you've ever met someone who, for example, refused to play IWAY because it was “cheap” then you're dealing with a scrub[3].

Past that you have the actually good or pro players. The ones who not only know what to do but aren't bound by any limits or preconceptions in how to put that knowledge into practice.

Got it? Here's a handy refresher:

• N00bs – Don't know what to do and don't know how to do it.
• Nubs – Don't know what to do but might be able to do it.
• Scrubs – Know what to do but don't know how to do it.
• Pros – Know what to do and how to do it.

A pro player wouldn't bat an eye at running Mending. If, of course, that skill was the right one to use. They wouldn't think twice about not running it, either. They care about what works and approach every skill and every build with an eye towards making it better – they don't just copy something mindlessly, they take a good, long look at what they're doing and understand why they're doing it.

That's not easy, of course, especially if you want to, you know, actually be right more often than you're wrong which is why there are so few pro players[4].

That's the big difference between the best player and an average one. Sure, there's things like talent and experience and activity to consider but, really, it comes down to who thinks and who doesn't. The vast majority of players don't think. Not the right way, in any event. Just being aware of what amount to some very simple and basic things vaults you ahead of the pack. But that's also a difficult thing which is why there are more people who are trapped in incompetence and mediocrity than there are who'll ever be anything resembling good.

And, yes, that includes me and you and probably everyone else you know who plays the game. Face it, we're not good and getting better takes a lot of work and effort. You have to play and practice and struggle and learn and adapt and hope you're good enough that it matters. Remember, I'm not talking about not being bad – almost anyone can do that with a little bit of effort. I'm talking about being good.

If you really want to know what a bad player is then wait until the next time you're about to insult someone else and take a good, long look in the mirror. Because a scrub's someone who'd never take that step at all.

[1] – If you're reading down here it must because you want an example. Okay, to pull one out of the air, you might have noticed the NaNo winner's banner over there on the right. If not, feel free to ogle. That's a rare and precious thing that only gets handed out to those brave, foolish, and dedicated enough to write 50,000 words in a single month – that's about a 175 page book, by the way – and I have it there not just because I've forgotten to remove it but because I'm one of the few who did so (Wonderful event. You should try it if you haven't already, by the way.). Almost 80,000 people signed up this year and, of those, only about 13,000 managed to crawl to the finish line. I know this because the NaNo people keep statistics on this kind of thing. That's a 16% winning rate, by the way, which is about what it's been for the past few years – ever since NaNo really began to expand and get to a point where statistical measures could be used. But, here's the thing. There are much more detailed statistics available or which can be derived. For instance, of the 80k people who just signed up, only 42k bothered to input a word count at all. Counting out the people who didn't bother to continue, the winning percentage rises to 30%. Look at the number of writers who posted on the boards – about 23k - and the winning percentage gets even higher. A similar phenomenon happens for writers who come back for a second or third year – the veteran effect in action. And for writers who donate to the program – ownership of something is generally a pretty strong motivating factor. My point here is that if you were to come up with some way of measuring just how successful, how skilled, someone was at NaNo you'd find that the number of people would get smaller as the group got more successful. A very few would be really successful, maybe half would be mediocre (The average word count for people who bothered to log one was, in fact, about 25k or halfway to the goal) and the largest group would be the people who are just hopeless – in this case the 38 thousand people who didn't bother to put in their word count at all. Same holds true for things like wealth or athletic talent or intelligence and any number of other things. And, I'd hold that the success distribution in Guild Wars is the exact same way. I'd just, you know, need to see some figures before I could prove it.

[2] – That's right, I just got all Pareto up ins.

[3] – It's only “cheap” according to their personal code of e-honor. In other words, they don't like it so they won't do it. A sure warning sign of scrubhood if ever there was one. If they're going to say they wouldn't play something like that because there are better ways of winning and they'd rather run something that has a better chance of winning, well, you might not have a scrub on your hands after all.

[4] – Probably a lot less than anyone thinks there is.