Tales From Observer Mode: The Legacy of Finn MacCool

I was having a pretty rough night in the Arena. Although I finished strong and managed to eke out about 2k faction in a little over an hour (The faction rewards in there have been raised, too, so my sense of whether that's good or bad is off. Still, I'm happy with it considering my win/loss record on the night.) but the night started off in a depressing manner with a string of crushing defeats. I was running a Blind/Blur guy I've been tinkering with using Blinding Surge and Blurred Vision to shut down opposing physical attackers along with Enervating Charge and Shard Storm for covers as well as to provide a little bit of an offensive punch (Not killing anything myself, mind, but a bit of ranged damage to finish someone off when they're low never hurts.). It's nothing special and I'm still trying to figure out the rest of the slots for what will give me and my team the best chance and all. But I like it because it gives me an opportunity to practice scanning through the enemy team, remembering durations, and trying to prevent melee spikes with a well timed hex or blind. No one bothers to call out their spikes in the Arena, either, but paying attention to who's injured and trying to work someone down myself is almost as good, too. The first few matches I think I had some poor teams and was the unlucky squishy who got targeted by the other team first. As the night wore on the game seemed to slow down and I was doing much better which, of course, is what I was looking for.

Still, those initial fights were disheartening. I was convinced that my build was the problem and I needed to switch things up – maybe even find how some other people work this kind of character, that sort of thing. So I took a quick break from the fighting and hit the observer button while I mulled things over. Just a quick break to reflect on what I was doing and what was going wrong. But the first game sitting in the observer queue caught my eye: Guess Who Fails At Game Balance versus The Fianna[1] (The ladder appears to be going kerplow at the moment – the percentages get all funny and I get an error “C: 00x3” whenever I try and move off the front page - or I'd link to them as well. They're on the ineligible guilds list, though.). Putting my Arena plans on hold, I loaded up the match and settled in for the view.

As I've mentioned before, I was at one point involved with the Fianna. They were basically the club team for TGH which I was also, you know, involved with at the time. And for a while there – around the first BWEs – they were one of the most fearsome guilds around – one of the real hardcore PvP squads that rolled up everyone else game in and game out. I, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with that. With release and attrition and everything they fell off the map. And, you know, I'm not sure if they've reformed or have been quietly plugging away for years or what. As of last night they were at #141 on the ladder placing them just off of the GW TV schedule. And their status as ineligible means they can't take part in any of the tournaments. But I was intrigued to see them in action again.

I wasn't disappointed, though, as their match with [izzy] quickly turned into a tense battle. [izzy] was using a pretty standard frontline Derv pair with two Paragons and a Monk line featuring Divert Hexes and Healing Light. Not much different than I saw them running last time I saw them in action. Fianna's build, on the other hand, interested me. It featured two Hammer Warriors using the whole Steady Stance/Desperation trick to fuel not just Fear Me but Hammer Bash as well. They were both /P and used Signet of Remedy (New skill on me, looks like a keeper, though.) to keep themselves clean of conditions. Backing them up they had a midline with a Searing Flames E/Mo with a Blinding Surge E/Mo flagger – both of whom carried Heal Party. A Necro hexer with Reaper's Mark and Parastic among others as a cover. They also had a Mes with Panic which while I'm not exactly a fan of any hex that costs 25 energy it worked pretty well considering the Fear Me! e-denial and its ability to punish signet use. Nice build, I thought, and one that delivered quite a bit of pressure.

And it was that pressure that took its toll, eventually. The battle took place on the fire map (So, you know, it really was like old times.) which probably hampered [izzy] since they couldn't split. It was a slugfest at first and neither team could make much headway as they traded flags. Fianna kept pressuring [izzy]'s Monks, though, and sapping away at their energy while knocking them down and eventually they cracked. One went down, then the kills started to pile up. Fianna charged into the base on the heels of their retreating enemy and began to work on the NPCs. They got pushed back a few times but managed to keep [izzy] on their heels and work down their NPCs until VoD hit. With [izzy] only having a single Bodyguard left to face the complete horde of [Fi]'s NPCs it was a forgone conclusion.

Since [izzy] was ranked #12 at the time and only lost once more on the night that might seem like a bit of an upset but two points. First, [izzy]'s got the worst PPG of the top 20 with only 160 points in 218 games. They've lost almost a quarter of their matches and their PPG of 0.73 reflects that. They're where they are because they play a lot of games but, I think, they're starting to normalize. Second, you can't really trust the ladder's rankings right now. Not only is it, as I've said before, thrown into chaos by the k=5 change, a lot of the better guilds have been laying in wait for the tournaments and the rebalance to go live.

After watching that game I decided to give my build one last try before switching to something else. I lucked into an open spot on a sync team (Although, not a very good one) and got some victories. We lost after only a few, though, but that seemed to change my luck and I had several more strong runs to close out the night.

[1] – Fun fact. The Fianna is a Celtic term for what amounts to a bunch of privileged offspring of the wealthy who waited for their inheritances – today these would be trust funds but back in the day it was, of course, huuuuge tracks of land – by heading out into the hills and acting as mercenaries and highway robbers. When there was war they were, of course, expected to serve in the army as crack troops. Gotta love the Irish.