The Great PvP Revival of Summer 2010!

[Khunlin]

Apparently Jupiter is only 6 fame away from her next rank and DECIDED NOT TO TELL ANYBODY.
How could we, the Almighty Republic, who once ruled the Hall of Heroes with an iron fist, allow this to pass? WE CANNOT! So, what I propose is this:

We pwn HA.

Obviously, it has been many moons since we were even remotely capable PvP'ers (I've realized during the WiK that my monking skills have all but vanished), so we can't jump straight in to it.
Consider this a rallying call, o' sleepy members of the Republic. Surely, if Kiwi, Nick, Mura, Malae, and our potential new guildmate Astarael (probably misspelled! OH NO!) join up with us and do a week or so of casual warm-up (Balanced AB's, doing the WiK Bounties with PvP-training builds)... we can get those six fame.

What say you?
Post whether or not you're too lame to do some casual PvP/hardcore PvE with us. Astarael, if you see this, you're welcome to join us even if you don't want to leave your guild just yet!

[mura]

With PvP, my interest largely depends on what builds will be run. So when you start sharing those then we can start talking.

[Triia]

I'm in, but you do realize that this might be a vicious cycle, no? If Jupiter gets her six fame, then I only need 16 to get my next rank. We might just have to continue and then who's close? Unless it's just too painful, of course... which is probably why Jupiter and I got so close without continuing in the first place.

I have no idea what's going on in the HA metagame but I'd love to have a comfy spot like my runner position. One that I just become familiar with. Is that possible in HA? ...I miss running....

[Malae]

HA has gone far too long without our mighty presence. They have forgotten the merciless destruction we wrought upon them, they have lost respect for the greatness of HLR. They are to be made examples of!

I'm in.

[Jupiter]

I'm out....
ok, jk.

With my name actually in the first line of the thread, how can I NOT join? Duh.
*does a dopey happy dance for being mentioned*

[Kaiser]

That was sad... I actually had to witness the dopey happy dance.

With that, I guess I shall have to come along too.

[nickwolf]

oh i am in for sure

[Khunlin]

I think we all played pretty well in the last scrim last night, so it might be worth obsing yourself so you can be like "Hey, I'm awesome, but I still see two or three things on which I can improve so that we can hold Halls for six days"
I've watched just about everybody, so cold, cruel KhunlinAssessments(tm) are available on request for the low, low price of your sense of self-worth.

[mura]

May 29, 2010 14:12:11 GMT -5 Khunlin said:

I think we all played pretty well in the last scrim last night, so it might be worth obsing yourself so you can be like "Hey, I'm awesome, but I still see two or three things on which I can improve so that we can hold Halls for six days"
I've watched just about everybody, so cold, cruel KhunlinAssessments(tm) are available on request for the low, low price of your sense of self-worth.

I wouldn't mind hearing some feedback. Who needs self-worth? ;D

[Triia]

*sigh* Yep... I guess it's for the greater good and all.... Go ahead, lemme have it (thought I hope there are a least a couple positive points included in our assessments).

[Khunlin]

Alright, I'm going to preface my comments, as usual, by noting that we all played as well as I've ever seen, so these comments are what I (in my clearly infinite wisdom regarding Guild Wars) think would help us to play even better together.
Here are my notes about myself:

Khunlin
-- Overprot. Watch for weap spells on them before using PS against one war
-- Bad positioning -- was often behind their backline
-- Clicked Shames that I was aware of while on my midset on PS. Find more elegant solutions when I have to stop a spike (RoF on lowset)
-- Didn't swap shields
-- Didn't get out e-denial set vs. Shame mes
-- Post-protting with PS
-- Wasn't doing enough for the frontline/general hex removal
-- Shouldn't have ditched Mura on the portal run
-- Some good Balanced Stance casts mid-KD, but was too slow sometimes. Either pre-Bal Stance or work on reaction time

And general notes for our warriors. Yes, I know how frustrating it is to play against a brick-wall defensive team (trust me, I know D:), but here are some things that I find help to keep some pressure up:

Warriors
-- Always be swinging at things! If you're snared, c-space is your friend. Even if it's not the best target, you're still getting adren and dealing damage. Even if you're Blurred/Blind, chances are a monk like me won't notice and will prot your target anyway, so you're still causing energy pressure! Works extra well on spikes--the monks are going to flip out and superprot the target when all three of you run at him, even if two of you are blind. Nick was our star pupil in this case--he was pretty much always swinging at SOMETHING.
-- In case of snare-heavy, bring a Furious spear! When you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere, snared to Hell, you can still build adren to bring the pain when you're back!
-- Watch for bad Recup placements and take it down. It's VERY powerful and hurts a lot when it goes town (plus you get adren!)


Mura! Keep in mind that you were playing very well (you and I were undefeated!):
-- Try to bring a shield set. When you're getting pummeled, it can reduce damage on you by around 20%! Switch back to 40/40 when the wars give up
-- Our hex spam was obviously working to keep their frontline down, but if we're up against a team that's a bit stronger on hex removal/disruption, you will want to be a bit more tactical with your casts. You were doing well catching warriors in transit with snares and leaving them out in the open, but would sometimes spend snares on ones that were standing still, fighting our warriors. Yes, it upped the damage and covered some of our other hexes, so it worked, but you'll have to aim to catch the warriors in the open against a good midline.
-- In that vein, there are two basic hexing strategies: Spread or Stack. You can either mess with all of their warriors a bit (watching for ones who are on their own and snaring them) or you can focus more on one guy. For example, there was a while where I had Malae on me and I was kiting him in wide circles out in the middle of nowhere. If you had locked down on him, you could make him take 15-20 seconds to get back to where he could hit somebody, and would DECIMATE their DPS. Obviously, you can switch between the two strategies throughout a match.
-- In general, you were doing well with the cast 'n' kite, snaring a war and then running. There were a few times when you'd snare and then keep casting, so they were still hitting you. You could make a point of taking a few steps away before casting to drop their DPS a bit.

All in all, well done! I know their frontline hated you, so you must've been doing something right?

Triia:
-- It's a bit hard to judge, since you weren't facing human warriors/rangers/mesmers and didn't have a human prot. That build is also defined by its energy, so without being able to see you e-bar, it's hard to make assumptions, but here they are:
-- You were very strong on the Resilient use, protting targets getting pummeled and whatnot as you should when we're getting trained. Something to keep in mind (and communicate with the monks) is that, if we have two human monks, you'll want to emphasize what you can do that they can't. When we're getting trained, Resilient is an excellent, unstrippable prot. However, there was also a lot of degen pressure, and your bar is very, very strong at redbar. Keeping Recup up more often (yes, it's hard to know when it goes down, but try to get used to seeing the +3 regen on the bars and you'll remember when it's down) and leaning a bit more on Kaolai/Soothing could help with redbar and allow the monks to focus on prot. Again, with the Hench Prot, I think you did just what you should've. When we have 8 people, you might want to ask whether the monks want you to lean more on party-wide or prot, or both!
-- Again, you had good Recuperation placement and Resilient Weap use
-- You were quick on the res 80% of the time, which was good. You might want to try using your 40/40 Resto to res when possible, dropping Kaolai if the party needs some redbar anyway
-- Good NPC protting when we pushed your base.

I haven't typed this much about a video game in a long time D:

[mura]

Yeah, I didn't bother shield swapping since Muranodo isn't set for PvP; I didn' t see any purpose in the light mood set. But I'll be making shields for my typical PvP ele. I also didn't have different energy sets which would have been useful when the mesmer shutdown got to my energy at later points by stripping Water Attunement and Mirror of Ice.

I'll keep in mind the other points though. They were informative. Hopefully, I'll remember them while playing actually.

[Kiwi]

OH GOD. I'VE MISSED SO MUCH.

I think I'm in, but it's been ages! D: So I'm probably 10,000x as worse as I used to be. BUT I'M IN.

[Khunlin]

You'd best come monk for us, then! IT IS DECIDED

[Kiwi]

Wait... what? Me... monk? ARE YOU MAD, MAN?