Guild Wars: Out of the Mists of the Past

I have, understandably, been somewhat ambivalent about Guild Wars lately. On the one hand, I'm not picking up GW:EN, I'm really not planning to any time soon, and I'd sooner shove an active stick blender down my pants than get deeply involved in things again. But on the other, I can't seem to help logging on to run some mission or quest whenever I have a spare few minutes - the way I always envisioned doing. Because, at its heart, the game is still fun and engaging for me and decent enough as a time-waster. It's like I know there's this big, important event happening, I know I should be involved, but I can't quite bring myself to care. And I can't quite figure out why.

Still, while I'm not gazing into my navel or stealing a few moments storming Glint's Lair because, you know, I never really have slain the prescient beast on my own and it's far past time I corrected that, I've been getting nostalgic. Like someone wistful for their salad days will idly flip through a yearbook or a stack of pictures, I've been revisiting the shattered ruins of old haunts. Looking at old threads, old conversations, to walk with the ghosts of a time long gone. It's just fascinating to me to look at the arguments from the past. Bold statements that Elmos would sound the deathknell for primary Monks. Epic posts arguing that skill crystals and the ninth slot they brought with them would be the game's downfall. Builds of a past when people were still trying to find their way. Strat that would be laughable today being bandied about as revelation. How much time, how many bytes did we waste in caring about things that turned out to not matter? Or did we, really, waste them at all? Were those kind of things necessary to get where we are today? Did we have to make those mistakes, miss those insights, to gain the knowledge we carry forward from now? It's the sort of thing that keeps me awake nights, staring at the ceiling and wondering how it might have been, if only.

Here's just one example, from the old days at TGH. This is a conversation I missed since I was in the middle of launching Guru at the time and, thus, persona nongrata. But, if you think I'm going to dredge up an old instance where I was holding courts – saying, for example, that Hunter Shot was useless (Missed the numbers there. Prot Strike, I got right away. But Hunter's was like that for Rangers. It's not about the effects, which have never been too thrilling, it's all about that quick recharge, letting you pour more damage into the spike that was about to explode all over the PvP scene. And I completely did not get that, made a jackass out of myself shitting all over the skill, until someone pointed it out to me. I think that's about when I realized that I was in way over my head and needed to get out.), that Wastrel's Worry Mesmers had no place in the game (Which, obviously, they do. But at the time Energy Drain and e-denial were stupid crazy broken. And there was no reason to do anything but abuse the hell out of them and put a butt helmet on two or three different enemies at a single time. Any Mesmer not doing that was a poor one. Operative word there being was as e-denial got swiftly nerfed in the pants and Korean teams using Dom Mes with Wastrel's just ravaged people in Taiwan. I hear Chuck was taunted mercilessly about this because he was right there with me shouting “Don't use Wastrel's, use ENERGY DRAIN!!!” from the megaphone.), and any other gross lapses in judgement – well, you've sadly overestimated my intestinal fortitude.

It's a thread from the tail end of January, 2005 – a time before release, but a time when monthly BWEs were giving everyone a taste of the game and, as I said, Guru was in the midst of taking off (A reason, perhaps, why a lot of the heavyweights I remember from back in the day neglected to weigh in. They were all busy crashing at the new place and enjoying the refined, upmarket atmosphere that the founding troika had provided. Inde might have been running - bankrolling - things, but it was really Spooky, THX, and I who'd worked like mad to pull the thing off. THX was the linchpin. He did the lion's share of the work behind the scenes, as the hardworking, affable glue holding everything together because of how much everyone respected him. He was the guy behind the databases, the projects, like the skill directory and more that really drew people in. Spooky's involvement immediately legitimized us in the eyes of nearly everyone involved. Even then, we all knew he was a rising star destined for greater things. His deft touch with the written word created the charm, the little plays on words and forms and encouraged everyone involved to try just that little bit harder. Me? Well, I set the tone. I was always comfortable playing the heavy, the black hat, the abusive mod drunk on his own inflated sense of power, to whip everyone into shape, if need be. But more than that, I like to think I brought my own kind of legitimacy, my own kind of authority, that drew the right kind of collaborators and commentors to the site. Would they have shown up if my timelost friends had picked someone else to invite into the fold? I'll never know. But I like to think I was known for the intelligence, for the attention and care towards detail that I brought to a discussion and that there were plenty of people out there who wanted to talk to me in those days. And that helped to establish the Guru as a place to be for a hardcore crowd that had grown disillusioned with the other available options. Nowadays, of course, it's an intractable swamp, a hive of wretched stupidity which has collapsed in due to the sheer weight of its own uselessness. I, of course, say that in the nicest way possible. But you have to remember, that wasn't what we, what I, set out to create. In the early days, we wanted to be the next Lurker's Lair. The three of us, together, our goal was quality, not quantity. And all the attention, all the massive influx of new and clueless, all stemmed from that commitment to being just that little bit better than everyone else.). And the original poster's someone who'd clued into the potential of Crip Shot did the sensible thing, for TGH, and ran to the boards to bitch about it.

It's fascinating, with the benefit of hindsight to see just how correct he was. Crip Shot was grossly unfair, amazingly so, and it was going to come to dominate Warrior builds and the style of play in the months ahead. All because of the points that are made in the thread – its low cost, its low recharge, and how it eliminates many of the commonly available counters, like Deflect Arrows (Shield's Up didn't even enter into the picture. Probably because, at the time, it sucked an noone cared about it. I love this kind of stuff.), because it ignored Blocking. And Evading, a mechanic that's now relegated to the boneyard of history.

But more interesting to me is reading the reaction. There's Blackace, good old Blacky, spreading malicious disinformation about Expertise.

There's good old Scaphism, for another example, arguing that a blind bot screwing over a Crip Shot Ranger is, at best, a tactical draw. Something that might have made sense at the time, but runs counter to the experience and development of the game. Erasing that Ranger, even for a time, even at the high costs mentioned, is worth it. Not because of things like e-management and more powering the Ele through the gap but because by taking that Cripple out of the picture, the Eles team has just gone on a power play. They're blasted open that elusive window of opportunity and now their Warriors, their melee attackers are running impeded all over the field. The Ranger's team finds their targets kiting away with ease, lacking that snare they've been relying on to train. One team's offense finds that a critical piece of their opponent's defenses has been blown away. The other finds their offense hamstrung by a missing component. That's the sort of tradeoff a seasoned team, a good player, makes handsdown.

And, there's Falconer (Seriously, what happened to that guy? He used to know what he was talking about. /metajoke.) saying that Crip Shot was a wasted slot because people “rarely block or evade”. And he was making sense because this was back in the days before SoD and Wards and Aegis everyplace and all the countermeasures of the modern game just weren't used. Weren't even on the radar for the smart people who thought about the game, who followed it, who tried to dissect it into discrete pieces of understanding.

The calls in the thread for changes to Crip Shot were, actually, what ended up happening, for the most part. It got linked to Marksmanship – not really the problem but an important step – and more importantly, had its cost amped up to make it harder to keep the entire team snared for long periods of time. And creating a tension between pumping up your Expertise high enough to actually use the skill and keeping your Marksmanship at a level where you still got a useful snare. That pretty much took the Ranger out of play for a while. Until juicy new skills like Mending Touch and Natural Stride along with BHA and BA brought them back to the forefront. At the time, though, Cirp Shot Rangers with Distortion were the order of the day (I have this pet theory that there's really only one bow Ranger build at any given time. Just like Dagger Sins, some people use last meta's model, some people experiment to find the next's, but there's just one popular, effective build that's the best at doing what you want that character to do. Other classes have a bit more variety but, ever since R-spike went the way of the dodo, the only thing that changes about a Ranger is the particulars. You've bolted D-shot and a prep and a run/block stance to that bar and only need to pick the elite flavor you want – these days I imagine the choice is between Broadhead's or Burning still although I'm completely guessing. But the actual archetype hasn't advanced far from the Crip Shot days.). Which was an important, metashifting tweak.

Now, though, Crip Shot's been rebalanced back down to 10 energy, making it insanely cheap again. And the crazy thing is that it doesn't matter. Crip Shot used to be the skill. The one that the game revolved around, the one that forced build decisions and tactical adjustments. Now, there's just no way those cripples stick in a metagame that eats conditions raw. There's too many good skills for dealing with them. Too much of a focus in the planning to deal with them. And too much experience hard won by keeping the frontliners clean of blinds and more besides. They could put Crip Shot at 5 energy and I wouldn't be tempted to run it any more than I am tempted to run Pin Down (You'd need some kind of really condition heavy pressure team just to make it fly. Something like the old Tainted Flesh builds. And I'm not sure those really work anymore.). Just not as effective anymore. The game's passed it by.

But in that thread, no one knew it. No one had even encountered Ranger Spike yet. Crippling Shot was another menace on the horizon that someone was smart enough to catch only to be shouted down. It mattered back then. Just fascinating. Staring into the abyss of that past.