Guild Wars: A Good Night
Well, I guess I should let the cat out of the bag. Apparently, there's a rule that anyone who blogs about Guild Wars has to join XoO. I know, I was as stunned as you are, but it's right there in the Terms of Service. So, I've been drafted into their ever expanding hordes.
I kid, XoO's been around for a long time – if memory serves, they were one of the teams that were trying to get into the test through OGaming (Back when my fellow Guru founders THX and Spooky were running that show. I was over at TGH and not dealing with XoO but my own bunch of guilds – basically, ANet wanted to include some more guilds in the test to help a lot of things. And they let several fansites vet and submit three for potential invites.) although I might be thinking of Amazon Basin. In any event, they're a big, established guild that regularly GvGs. Which is exactly the right fit for me at the moment, I think. Here's my PvP Rit flying the flag:
Anyhow, I got a brief spin in GvG the night before and last night I was back in the Weapon Rit build again for a few more matches. I managed to spend some time roaming around the Isle of the Nameless with Carson in tow before I was summoned to the squad. That brief amount of practice combined with the time I spent on the Rit the night before made all the difference – I was definitely much more effective (Although far from mistake free. But I wasn't struggling with the controls and that's, you know, a good thing.). I managed to take part in four matches before it got too late. And although we only went 2-2 I think it was a very good night.
For one, it was good just to get some wins – I hadn't been having much luck in the GvGs to date. But beyond that, we went up against some very good teams. Two top 100 guilds (even though, you know, the ladder's crap at the moment and it doesn't mean as much as it used to, it still takes a good team to get up there.) including the awesomely named Guild Drama [sigh]. Took them deep into VoD and managed to win against Rebel Rising [rawr] (They had a drop at the start of the game but, still.). We also had a match against another division of XoO who were running a Paragon spike. And our other win was against a low-ranked team with a difficult turtle that we had to deal with.
The victories were good but so were the losses. You can learn a lot from failure, after all (As Clamatius said last night, lose enough and eventually you learn that people will get frustrated and ragequit.). Especially if you're willing to learn from your mistakes and build upon your successes to get better. It's in talking about these things, discussing them, going over the matches that players and teams learn (That and, you know, playing a lot of matches. But that would be why I joined up with XoO in the first place.). We got outplayed, sure, and saw what good teams were really like. But we weren't outplayed badly. And, you know, I didn't feel all that out of place. We might not be challenging for a spot in the top 16 but the upcoming tournament
should be a blast.
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6 comments:
Your link for [sigh] wandered off somehow.
I like their Pacific division's name too - Drama Down Under.
I still think the Rt/E is necessary for that character slot. Without the long-lasting snare of Ice Prison or similar you're going to have trouble reliably killing a good monk yoyoing in and out of their inner NPCs. However, compared with the Rt/A, it does have the definite drawback that the standard counter to Eurosplit is to have something rage in the ritualist's face till he breaks due to the poor e-management.
For reference, the bar I tried was something like:
Weapon of Remedy
Vengeful Weapon
Weapon of Warding
Generous was Tsungrai
Soothing Memories
Ice Prison
Teinai's Prison
Flesh of my Flesh
Ah, good old cut and paste failing me once again.
I was going to make a point of mentioning it tonight but I think I'm in agreement with you on the Rt/E - the Rt/A might be the easier character to learn that role on but the inclusion of snares is much more important. The Dark Escape/Death's Retreat is nice but it's not going to stop the Rit from getting spiked down if there's more than one attacker on them. And when there's not, then Weapon of Warding, the heals, and kiting should be enough. The biggest problem that I have, though, is the energy. Run hard enough and then you're up a creek. Switch to spot duty and you're stuck kicking out the occasional Weapon of Warding.
I had the opportunity to mess around with some variants in the RA last night. Didn't get to try any Rt/E as I was having too much fun with Death Pact Signet and all. Maybe I'll try and make sure I have the time to test that version tonight. Although I think I'm going to try and swap Generous was Tsungai for Mighty was Vorizun because of the energy issue - it means dipping into Communing but with the Water skills, I can spare the points - though Soothing Memories helps there, too.
Another thought I had was dropping the res or one of the snares for Glyph of Lesser Energy.
Saw a build like that you posted somewhere. I tend to think on the gank that a hard rez isn't very important. As you've said, it's the Rit that's going to be downed first, if anyone is. And in the case they're not, Flesh of My Flesh leaves both the rezzer and the rezzee too vulnerable. So, yeah, if you're going for the Ice Prison thing then GLE would probably be appreciated (It doesn't help you much with the other skills which I guess would trigger GLE as well, but if you're trying to snare two targets or beat spot hex removal it'd be great). Though I do think the two Ice Prison's might be a bit much. What about Blurred Vision to help against Warrior and/or Assassin pressure?
Blurred isn't a bad idea but then you really, really need the Glyph. Freezing Gust was another thought.
Glyph helps you with Weapon of Warding too.
Yeah, you do need GLE (There's also, you know, switching this around for an E/Rt with some ES - you lose out on a few points of Restoration but otherwise...) but I was thinking Blurred and Ice Prison might be better than dueling snares.
I don't think it would help out that much with Weapon of Warding. It's, you know, 10 energy so you're not getting the full savings which, you know, irks me. That you catch two spells with it helps but you only save 20 en instead of 25 that way and that's a big enough difference to put me off and unless you're careful you could follow with one of those spammables and blow the whole thing. With two spells on the bar that cost 15en and can be synced up with GLEs recharge, that's not a big concern and I wouldn't mind catching Weapon of Warding with it occasionally but I wouldn't put it on my bar for that reason. Also with all the spell spamming this character does, you'd need to cast it right before - you couldn't queue it up and wait for an opportunity - and I find when I need Weapon of Warding I need it right then. Changing it back to a 2 second cast version would be bad. We're in Monk territory here where casting efficiency is even more important than energy management. I'd put it up for Ice Prison or Blurred and then it would rope me into casting Weapon of Warding next as that's the only thing I'll get a decent return on - that's falling into a pattern that an interrupter can exploit.
Now, with the current item spell, Weapon of Warding thing I'm doing along with some hefty Ele stuff, it becomes a lot more viable. But there you run into a choice between dropping one of the spammable heals or weapons (Weapon of Vengeance is nice but keeping that and Weapon of Remedy flowing constantly is a huge drain and, I think, you could live without it.) or only going with one Elementalist skill (along with GLE).
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