Change to Heroes' Ascent

As we now have a ‘new’ HA would it not be a good idea, like the GVG ladder reset, to use this opportunity to reset everyone’s fame back to zero?

yea, might as well send all the pve char to pre-searing with lvl 0 ^^

I dunno, we faced Tomb Cruise/Eternal Ecstasy's IWAY early last night and it looked like they had a hell of a lot more pressure than in 8 man (in 8 man when I faced them their pressure generally...sucked >_>). After killing off their 1st 5 they all rezed and owned us. But then again we were running a solo meteor shower spike gimmick.

Oh, I don't mind losing. Never have. I don't even mind a little trash talk. What I'm referring to is being pm spammed for no reason other than the fact that I don't have an emote. Or when we do lose (and sometimes when we win), the other team throwing insults and profanity rather than "gg" or any other good natured response.

As for the guild/alliance, we do HA together, and lately we've even started holding regular practice sessions and HA nights. But as I said, we're a small group, so getting together at the same time is difficult at best. The reduction in team size will actually help us a bit, as it'll be easier to form an all guild/alliance team, which all leads back to my point that the change is good from ANet's perspective, since it attracts new players (their only source of income) to the game by making it easier for them to learn and join in the fun. (Remember "fun", the reason you're supposed to play the game?)

As for the Flame supaet, thanks. I was a bit worried no one would flame the post, and my point would be lost. Thanks for making it for me. If you'd like to make it for me again, feel free to flame some more. I won't be responding to any additional flames on this thread, so I'm an open target!

LOl, it's not enough that half of the people quit, let's make everyone quit.


I didn't want to say anything untill I tried it, and I just did some 6v6 and I'm telling you, I don't like it. And all of you saying it's easier for new players now, well, it's not, burial mounds is gone, broken tower is 3v3 and scarred earth is gank city.

Yup... I really hate this update.

Now unless I'm missing something here from the update... Wasn't there mention of New maps..? All I'm seeing is making a few maps gank fests and taking one out..

Just teasing, never was flaming. Getting pm spam for being low rank? never heard that before. Were you try to get into a high rank group? Why does it has to be an all guild/alliance group when you guys are that small. Nothing will change. If you're a newbie/low rank, and you try to run a non-gimmick build, you still lose to those newbies who have the same rank as you running a gimmick build.

As for the poster who said degen/pressure build is a balance build. They're balance build in 8v8 but not in 6v6. Cause in 6v6, every degen/pressure team has a crip shot ranger, a hex alot necro or mes, two monks, a warrior or a interupting ranger, that's 5 slots already! How is it a balance build when 5/6 slots has its function predetermined? in 6v6 I see a lower possibility of balance builds because you needs at least 2 monks to keep the party healthy. Then you only have 4 slots left. In 8v8, even if you have 3 monks, you still have 5 slots. Balance build=multiple damage sources, multiple counters, and some skills that are for specific maps. As a result, in 6v6, there is less "balance" in builds.

Burial mounds was just Underworld redux anyway.

Vimway is being played, but generally not winning Halls. It'll be completely dead the millisecond Nightfall ships thanks to Vocal Minority.

There are a lot of people running Air of Enchantment Smiters. So bring counters. Removing zealot's fire kills their damage, for example.

I was hoping for more in terms of map changes. The altar matches are still broken and lame, I think. Maybe even more broken and lame.

Good to know, although now my flames are 0, which is a bit disappointing...

Oh yeah, it's happened to me, and guildies have told me similar stories. In my case, I joined a group who was advertising without a rank requirement (apparently by mistake). They asked for an emote, I told them I was rank 0 (at the time), they booted me and then three of the guys spent the next coupld of minutes pm spaming "GET LOST NOOB!".

It doesn't have to be, it's just easier. With an all guild/alliance group, everyone already knows and respects other players. You don't get booted for making a mistake in one match, and you get constructive criticism after your done. Basically, everyone tries to help everyone else get better.

I've never been in a PUG that did that. Similarly, if we have say 6/8 and we pick up two PUGS, odds are good that at least one will rage quit if we lose the first match.

Maybe things won't change in the long run, but in the short run it upsets the balance for everyone, giving a rare opportunity for groups and players to get in and get some experience.

Just as an example: How can we ever get good at countering a spike, when every spike team we go up against has their timing down perfectly? When you lose a match in less than a minute, you don't learn much...

By forcing major changes to the way the system works, we now have a chance to learn the new builds as people are developing them, rather than after they've been playing the exact same build for a year.

Basically, going back to my main point, by changing the way HA works so dramatically, ANet is shaking up an entrenched, somewhat stagnant, area of the game. It'll force inovation on everyone, and bring a lot of new people in to at least try it. If it's broken, they'll adjust again.

Personally, I'll start worrying about the long term future of Guild Wars when they stop making major changes like this. That'll mean they've given up on the game, and it's on it's way out...

It won't only be attracting new players, it will be loosing soo many. Much more then it gains, therefore the only source of income (more players) won't be there as they will have less. You are also saying "fun" is the reason you are supposed to play the game? Well many more people prefer 8v8 and so the element of "fun" is no longer there.

No doubt luck can be a big factor in the outcome of 3 teams vs. each other matchups but at the same time clever and proficient tactics and skills can often pull the rug out from under both opposing teams and leave them thinking "How in the heck did that happen?" as they lose.

I didn't expect GVG teams who never played Tombs to win. Rather, I merely expected them to not say "Tombs takes no skill" just because they got massacred by IWAY because they had no skills at Tombs. If they had instead said: "We got massacred by IWAY because we are a top GVG guild that sucks at Tombs, although we appreciate that Tombs does indeed take a lot of skill", that would have been fine.

As for those who think gimmicks are going to go away in one or two weeks, no, they're not. Any build which inherently requires more than 1 hour to form and the use of TS or Vent - ie: any non-gimmick build - is never going to be common other than among "hardcore PVP players". Therefore, gimmick builds will always still be King in 6v6 or with anything else Anet ever does to Tombs. Better to accept that reality than to keep raging against something that can and will never be stopped.

Personally, I could care less about HA or PvP in general, although I do try it every now and then just for the heck of it. But at the same time, I'm wanting a deer emote. Oh well, these changes won't bother me at all.

Some people are just hating this because their own builds wont be at its maxium power because of the 6v6 change. I personally hate it and like it,6v6 means less torment and the downside of this is lack of power equals lack of winning. I Shindo,The Nightmare,thank Anet for this update...

P.S.Should have added the double fame win also o_O

My first ever post on these discussion forums. Main reason for posting is in reaction to the changes implemented to HA.

I myself got excited about the changes. Maybe they realised how flawed some of the maps are and they decided to replace them with new ones... or maybe they redesigned the old maps to cater for the smaller teams. Obviously, 6 man teams would use up less space than 8 man teams. Not to mention on larger maps with more teams like Courtyard and HOH, 3 teams of 8 = 24 players. Now 3x6= 18 players. Thats 8 less players in the courtyard. Talk about no-mans land. Hows the air over there? Suffice to say, i welcomed some fundamental changes in the Tombs maps.

My main point is this.

''Exciting map changes''

What did this amount to? Do tell,

Anet do tell....

I log on this morning before i went to my lecture, anticipation building up akin to when i used to prepare for my rugby games at school >< lol

Took out Burial mound from rotation.
Added switches to Scarred earth so you can open gates whenever you want.
Increased number of teams on Broken tower to 3 (like the old days).
Reduced timer count to 4min on Broken Tower and Courtyard.

The excitement overcame me, i lost bladder control, i screamed with joy, and i danced like a maniac until the doctors came to take me somewhere ''safe''. I clawed frantically at the carpet as they dragged me away from the desk. All the while shouting ''Tombs has been saaaaved!!!!''

THEN, i opened my eyes and read the update notes again.

I dont care about the changes from 8 man to 6 man in Tombs. To be honest, all i need to do is adapt my idea on how builds work and move on.... no crying from me on that part. Change is not inherently a bad thing, the way you react to change is what dictates your role in the new environment.

What i find totally unbelievable is that Anet have not changed what i believe to be the major stumbling point of Tombs. The maps. 8 vs 8 was not flawed, 6 vs 6 is not flawed. Its the environment you give to the teams that dictates how the battles are fought.

Just to highlight my point.

I watched a Scarred Earth match today. Just any old random one. I wont say who was playing.

Ill call the teams A B C and D.

A fights B

C fights D

A defeats B and makes its way towards the area C and D are fighting.

C has wiped all but 2 of team D, however

Team A opens the gates and interrupts the fight, allowing the 2 remaining players from team D a chance to escape from team C.

So Team A and Team C are fighting, and eventually Team A gains the upperhand. At which point 3 members from Team C decide to run from the fight to escape.

Now we have 2 players from Team D and 3 from Team C running around scarred earth. While Team A... the clear winners of a tough fight, are forced to chase them around for what was close to 10 extra minutes after defeating its opponents before finally wiping the last players and moving onto the next map.

Sorry about the long story btw.

Scarred Earth is now the 3rd map in rotation. If you win, you gain a whopping huge reward of 3 fame.

Now Team A who won Scarred earth, had just spent close to 15min to win 3 fame. Lets assume Underworld took 4-5min, and Broken tower took 4 min to win. Team A spent so far has spent, over 20min to win 3 fame. I admit, the maps following scarred earth have little problems with them. Relic runs have a set timer, the priest swap tends to be a good fast map, courtyard now has a timer, final relic run has a timer also, and hoh well is hoh. But Scarred earth really needs a change.

Wat happens if i have only 1-2 hours a day to play? If this is true, and i start the game at rank 0... how long will it take me to earn rank 9 if tombs fame comes this slow? I might as well forget reaching rank 9.

In summary,

i really am worried for the new pvp players who are a vital part of the pvp community. Not only is a 6 man team much more intimate in terms of pressure to perform, but it seems like Anet has not done much to encourage new players to keep coming back for more. Especially if they finally do reach Scarred earth and then witness the various ''lamers'' who find it funny to run around instead of accepting defeat with dignity.

For an old timer like me, i stopped tombing as a regular one reason being seeing this type of behaviour being employed by some teams. There are many reasons why i frown upon it, but the main reason being, its a waste of my time.

I was looking forward to these ''exciting changes'' because i thought they would eradicate the awful strategies employed by teams to exploit the maps to their favour. I dont frown on teams who ''USE'' the map to their favour like line of sight, elevated positions and choke points etc. But it seems like the EXTRA space on some maps were left behind as an afterthought of older times like when Scarred earth was occupied by 8 teams instead of 4. (or was it 6 it was so long ago).

Thank god they removed burial mounds, because it also suffered from this EXTRA space as a legacy of its 6 vs 6 nature. I would cringe when only after 1min into a battle a bloodspike team would hop off for a sunday jog around the outer areas. If they removed this map from the rotation... why not Scarred earth??? (im sure we can think of some ingenious ways of making the running around impossible if we really wanted to be honest... didnt need to totally cut out maps)

i must apologise everyone, ive ranted for too long. Mods feel free to cut it down if you want.

later

Lorekeeper

QFT. Lots of friends left the game, and my guild practically stopped playing crippled HA. I guess more will leave soon. We dont like the new system AT ALL, and lots of us gave dozens of arguments against the change in the coresponding thread in Heroes Ascend subforum.

We got 2 great game modes. Now only one left ( gvg ). They took away half of the fun. I cancelled my Nightfall CE pre-order, and I'll wait what will happen next... not so sure about buying it anymore.

OK where are those "new" or "low rank" player who think that 6v6 will help them a easier time to get into ha. Please speak up now. What you think? are you being accepted by higher rank players? Do you still get own by a certain build?

Well said Lorekeeper. In 8v8 there are more open to mistakes and a certain bad skill use by players. But in 6v6, every move is more significant. Now I require that everyone in my group to be around my rank level. Back in the 8v8, I won't check everyone's rank. In 8v8, with one bad player, my group can still win at least a couple matches on average. But now, you can't afford one bad player. only 6 per team. Have fun getting into teams newbie. If you think that hoh is better for newbie now, please think again and post what you think. Please post. I want to know if any newbie feel it's easier for them to getinto hoh and work their way up now.

good post, yes. new players sud speak up speak up.

I'm not really a "newbie", per se. I've been playing GW for over a year now. I wasn't big into PvP until December or so of 2005. I've been gradually accumulating rank since then, sometimes in large bursts, sometimes in small. Mostly because if I do too much of something at once, I get bored of it... that whole ADD thing, you know. I'm at 147 fame as of now. Mostly all gained through balanced or build tests with old guilds.

Am I the best player? No. I don't know everything and I'm willing to learn, but I know a lot more than a lot of the people that I have to party with in order to gain maybe 1 or 2 fame in an hour. So much so that they just give me a headache. I accepted a long time ago that until I gain rank, these are the people that I'm going to have to party with, regardless of how much I just want to scream noob at them.

My guild is strictly a friend's only guild. We're small. We don't have enough people, period, to start up a guild-only group. We resort to PUGs, that's fine... whatever. If they do well, they stick with us and we keep trying. If they don't, they either leave, or we boot them and pick someone else up. No problem. If I'm the only one on in my guild, and I feel like playing some HA I roll in by myself to look for a group.

6v6, honestly, is making it harder for unranked people to not only find groups, but put together groups (I never figured it would make things easier though, only harder). Both were enough of a pain in the ass before. If I look for a group, I end up sitting around for close to an hour spamming what my build is, that I can switch to any build needed, and that I have both TS and Vent with no results. Trying to put together a specific, non-gimmick build now is a pain in the ass too. I'm not going to put my effort into a group that's just randomly thrown together - I want an actual build. Everybody's looking for bloodspike, vimway, smites, or a ranked group. I spent close to 2 and a half hours earlier putting together a new 6-man pressure build. My boyfriend and I can cover the two most complicated parts of the builds and all we need are fillers, more or less, for the rest of the parts. Nobody wants anything to do with it though, because they're all about the quick, easy way out (smites).

I'm not really complaining. I'm over it. What's done is done, and I'll deal with the outcome of it and eventually squeak my way to rank 3 by whatever means necessary. Simply stating my experience so far with the 8v8 vs. 6v6 difference and that I feel it's harder to find a group. I definitely see how this change will drive people away from HA altogether.

Thank you anet for loosing half of my HA guild and also me, HA was what i liked. Got rank 9, i worked hard ive invested huge amounts of time and effort into it, i was looking forward to rank 10 or even more.Now HA is turned into a playground for 13 year old kids. If i knew they would do this, honeslty i wouldnt of wasted my time liking and playing this game.

If there is something left, that is a little bit of GvG and thats it. Im NOT purchasing Nightfall , Guild Wars was my only MMO. Ive accepted all the nerfs, skill balancing and i was even waiting for an AUCTION house , i really tought you can do it, but forget it.


Anet played a very smart tricky game, made double fame and 6 vs 6, so newcomers would like it and force the veternas to like it FOR THE MOMENT. Right when HA was cleared up and was getting even more enjoyable 6 vs 6 came along.

GREAT JOB Anet!, your amazing!

NOT!!!!!

No and yes respectively, of course. I'm fairly indifferent to those particular questions, though.

...Because it's become a lot easier to put PuGs together now that you only need to muster six players. And since I play PuGs more or less exclusively, 6v6 means that I will occasionally play HA. 8v8? Never. I tried it a couple of times and the hassle of assembling a team that no-one will /ragequit outweighed the fun by a considerable margin.

Now, it's plain that PuGs at the level of professionalism that I join (read: none) are never going to take Halls. Doesn't bother me much, I'm in there to fight a couple of rounds and experience some variety in my PvP diet.

/Starting a scrubway. Rank and mics are for sissies! Filling slots with henchies if necessary.

I'm done with topic as well, no point in discuss or making new build in hoh any more. 20 days later, heroes will be here. It is confirmed by Gaile that you could use your heroes in gvg and hoh. That'll screw up whatever pvp in hoh meant before. It may be fun, and I will buy nightfall for sure. But I realized that the pvp experience in guildwars has being changed forever.

To quote an earlier post"I was willing to accept the nerfs,skill balances,and was even waiting for an AUCTION house...."This reminds me ambiguosly to a smaller scale of when Sony opened up something called Station exchange(a company supported auction of in game items and characters in the MMPORG game Everquest).Seemed like a quick fix to some and heavy blow to the gaming community to others.Guilds broke up and a lot of people cancelled thier subscriptions to the game.Did Sony benefit from this in the short term and long term?Really do not know.But maintaining interest in a game is vital to long term success and reducing the number of variations in it will cause reduced interest very quickly.Have been watching a lot of the matches on observer.Ranger degen,dual smite,and variations of iway.Was seeing more new builds or modificaions of them in 8v8 recently.

I've found forming groups is much more easier now, I have a modded conidtion pressure/smite build I ran succesfully during the events and now I ran it successfully yersterday, it was quite good and worked for us.

I just seet hat winning fame is alot more harder now, There should be atleast one more 1 vs 1 map after underworld.

No Noob team is going to get past Broken Tower as it requires capping skills similar to halls etc..what is going to happen is noobs will remain noobs, those who already got thier ranks will rip them apart very easily...then the ranked groups will waste alot of time in Scarred Earth for a joke amount of fame...

The Fame should now be made dependant upon how many teams there are.

Scarred Earth should offer fame for defeating the one team, maybe 2 fame and 3 fame for defeating the second team.

Its the most hated map.

Anet, your decision of 6 vs 6 is right, but the way you handled the maps makes it look miserable. Caps on 2nd map? You guys really think newbies will ever get past it?

They may win underworld but will n ot go past maximum scarred earth.

Yes I supported 6 v 6 decision but with these kinds of maps, I say no ty, 8 v 8 and old maps is better.

unlesswe get 6 v 6 with better maps and more fairer fame distribution. I hope you reading this Gaile.

Maps is a major problem. Not 6 v 6.

You, obviously are a new tomber? Because experienced or long-term pvpers not do not mind Scarred Earth. Broken Tower is not the hated map. With an alter 1v1v1 so early, there is a high chance that "new/noob teams" will be there which will screw up all tatics...

Broken Tower is more of a toos-up, depends really.

Scarred Earth is fine now. I do not know why they took out Burial Mounds. I agree that it is harsh going from UW then straight to Broken.

I do not mind the fame distribution...But that is because I am not forced to try to get rank x,x,x.

I was always against the 6v6, it just...killed tombs. Made it more noob-friendly, and, at the same time, it shuts down noobs at Broken Tower.

Now every build will contain a CG or Migraine. And by reducing the player count, of course now you have a smaller variety of builds to run, with 8v8 while running a three monk backline, you can try many many builds with five players.

With 6v6 it greatly reduces the swapping around of characters.

Well if nothing else Slaughtering the pickup teams in Underworld is fun for a bit.. But 15:0 most being won in less than 3 minutes is quite nice.

Broken Tower, again nice, you get some good teams occasionally but going up against 2 teams who are running around with no idea what to do just makes it pathetically easy.

Scarred earth is where it gets interesting.. Don't think I was in one game there without some very high ranking guild or well-known team-leader-lead team. Had a number of very very good fights when it was 3 teams, had a few very fun 2v1 fights with us on the recieving end. Later matches though are FUN. There really aren't any scrub teams getting skips so you know you're going to be having a good fight.

But one big problem they REALLY need to take care of is runners.. It's to the point it's something you HAVE to take into account for damn builds now when you've got an idiot running around in circles, even worse when a guy jumps into a random group with nothing but run skills/evasion stances.. It's one thing if for dealing with relic maps you have skills to snare the runner and such.. but when you go for a different tactic on them and don't have a single snare skill or ranged degen there is NOTHING you can do, We resigned 2 matches against these idiots where otherwise the team was down and out in under 2 minutes on underworld and we spent 5+ minutes trying to catch guy.. It's even worse on Scarred earth where theres absolutely no way to bodyblock the guy and they can just endlessly run in circles.

But it is Bloody annoying as hell..

if anything why doesn't anet make HA 10vs10 or 12vs12. I know we have Alliance battles that have 12vs12 but imagine getting set up for a huge battle organized and massive fun. You might say that it will take forever to build a team, but think about it. Now we have more professions and we can bring in heroes. Heroes cut party formation time by alot. so 10vs10 or 12vs12 in HA would be awesome.

What do you think???

6v6 or 8v8

really makes no difference people will still play and still complain.

Something that would be nice to shake things up would be having different types of matches to hold halls. There could be a relic run one time, next an altar holding, next kill em all and keep it random.

It would also be nice to have grps in HA that enter randomly like RA, there could be an incentive for this like double fame (perhaps triple becuase this would be tough as hell) for being in these types of grps.

Anyways thanks anet for at least trying and listening to people suggestions. I have enjoyed just about every weekend and update made if not just for the playing aspectof it but also these outrageously funny forums. No matter what you do there are always going to be whiners, but in my opinion keep up the good/hard work.

Huge differents between HA and GvG, the styles of play in HA will not get you to rank 1, while they may boost your rank to within reach of it for awhile /maybe/ the ultimate result is the same, HA builds in GvG will just get owned, don't believe me go look at the final match, from the GWFC iQ vs WM, they ran a gimmik for match 3 I think it was, and they just had there butts handed to them.

But never fear, your gimmiks still work in HA you can still reduce a party member to 0hp in less than microsecond, the UNBALANCE is still available for you to farm your fame points, (I have r3 it took 15 months of running non-gimmiks to get it, and my RANK means something).

Don't hold your breath there, balance and fare play because ArenaNet or another company cannot provide proper balance has never been a good point ever, people will run what wins the most or has the most success, they don't care if it's a fare fight, they don't care if there ruin a game or someone elses game by doing so either.

The only way you'll ever get change is if ArenaNet starts acting with more dominance and force, and start printing up messages before you enter battle like.. "You cannot enter battle, too many skill bars the same", or some such.

I'm enjoying the changes so far, I give it a thumbs up!

Tell that to all of the people who sat here page after page and welcomed and argued the change because it would do away with builds like this.

What the hell man, what makes your damm builds non-gimmick and mine gimmick? It's never MY gimmick builds. You're not reading my post at all, I am never fear that I cannot get fame in hoh. I was just saying you're WRONG by saying 8v8 is broken because ONE monk cannot heal 8 people spiking on one target. GO find the message. YOU SAID IT. I play hoh for fun not for fame. YES, your r3 means something. Means that you sucks. My rank 6 means nothing. GG

I'll fraps it sometime, and post it, 1 monk cannot react to a single spiked person, sorry I mean't my rank 3 means something to (ME), because I earned it, your rank 6 or whatever you want to call that pile of crap you call a rank, don't mean jack you farmer.

maybe itll be better if HA is 1 vs 1 so you dont blame your team mates if you lose.

Of course one monk cannot, but you said that's something wrong with 8v8, so I say 8v8 in gvg is bad too base on the things you say. But then you tell me gvg is different. But isn't gvg still 8v8, and one monk still cannot react to a single spiked person? you're contradicting yourself, that's what I'm saying.

Again, what makes think that I FARM fame? Just because I'm not rank 3 like you? Where the hell you get that? Did I say something that made you think that I farm fame? What makes you think that your rank 3 is "meaningful"? What makes you think that your rank3 means more than mine or anyone's rank6?

It's not just something wrong with 8v8 or 6v6, you shouldn't be able to throw out that amount of dmg, without some chance of being able counter it, the quite reasonable asumption that the change would effect this dmg output to levels that could bring the game into a position that was at the very least able to be playable vs.

Which it isn't which means it's a problem over all with skill balance entirely, which means Izzy needs to get his butt off those donuts and do some work for a change, even if that change is unpopular with the pack of farming spike morons that are out there.

But then what can you expect from ArenaNet really, when they don't listen to there PvP players in there alpha/beta tester teams, and instead listen
exclusively to the PvE crowd, of course your going to get this sort of crap.

The reason there is/was so much happyness about 6v6 HA is likely because people are stick of not having a chance with crappy builds that are made to expliot a broken PvP game play, in HA.

As for fame, well I believe you said you was rank 6, the chances are you didn't take 15months to get your rank 6, I took 15 months to get to rank 3, because I refused to run gimmiks, and ran stuff that our guild thought up instead, or even ran types of builds but we've always modified them slightly, in verious degrees of sucess and failure.

It doesn't have to mean anything to you, as I said it means something to (ME) because I earned it, and I didn't earn it by pressing 1 2 & 3, and abusing a meta game that is about as balanced as right and wrong.

They didn't make Ha 6v6 because there was too much damage, they did it because people were running rubbish builds and there was no metagame in HA. For example for the past 6 months people have just been running the same stuff in HA whether it be iway, bloodspike whatever. In GvG over the past 6 months its gone from gale warriors to e-denial to smite to condition pressure and now you could almost say spike builds.

With 6 characters builds are now made by putting in defense against things your most likely to come up against, making sure your build has a way of killing things at a decent pace, and then throwing in as much stuff as possible to disrupt ghostly's on capping maps.

This is compared to 8 character builds where you could bring a counter for every build that you were going to face, have enough damage to kill things, and then dedicate 2+ characters just to interupting the ghostly (eg. choking gas).

What Anet has done to the maps is kind of weird. It was popular opinion that maps were to blame for 8v8 not working in HA. However it seems as though these are the type of maps Anet wants HA to have so they aren't going to change them. They work in 6v6, although capping maps are still very luck dependant when its 3 good teams going at it and a lot of it comes down to politics.

The maps are more fun, theres no denying that Broken tower is very fun with 3 teams and that scarred earth is also a lot of fun due to the gank factor. However, the maps are by no means perfect. Broken tower can be a tough map to win, and it takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes of playing just to get there. Considering the time it takes to get there, you now have to beat 2 other teams, both teams carrying the possibility that their builds are superior on this specific map. So there is a reasonable chance you will lose even if you have the best 6 players in the world. Even if you overcome this and win, you get 2 fame. This is practically nothing even at rank 0 it's only a small percentage of the fame you need to gank rank 1. Then you have scarred earth, a 4 team battle for a massive 3 fame, with once again the possibility that one of the two teams you have to fight will simply just outbuild you. To add another factor whilst your first battle might be an even match, a third team can just run in and take advantage of you both and win so you have to start over.

I really could care less about my rank and I only play HA for fun. Tombs with 6v6 and the new map rotation is far harder to get fame when the old 8v8 and maps. It's ridiculous how little fame you can get for defeating multiple teams despite being reasonably far into the map rotation. Another thing is that you can't actually get to HA and know that you have a decent chance of holding. Its basically a 1/3 chance of winning depending on how good or bad the other two teams are, compared to 8v8 where you could easily have everyone in your team at 1k+ hp and have 7 monks healing each other to win multiple times.

I think at the very least they need to bring burial mounds back, but I still think fame per map will be lacking. Perhaps nightfall will bring about a lot stronger builds that have the capacity to hold and whatnot and it will allow people to actually get decent amounts of fame.

Any decent group will have a copy of Prot Spirit and Infuse. The prot monk keeps key people protted and puts a prot spirit on the person beign spiked, the infuser infuses targets being spiked. How hard is that? If you can't find monks that can do simple things like that, maybe you shound't do tombs?

And be more arrogant about your little rank 3 please.
Prot spirit and preprot, k thx. Even in 8v8 a good team could easily defeat a full spike build through good monking and interrupts, 6v6 makes it even easier due to the spike damage being tighter. The fact that someone seems to think there are unstoppable spikes out there makes me serious doubt how much they actually know about tombs, or even pvp in general.

The fact that you took 15 months to get 180 fame simply means you either 1) didn't do tombs very often or 2) weren't very sucessful when you did. Half my friends list are rank 8-9 people who have been playing for over a year for fun, and haven't spiked, IWAYed or farmed their rank. Most good teams in tombs can easily get 100 fame a day running balanced, this shoud be even easier if it's a guild team like you said. So perhaps you should try using a bit of common sense and logic before you start basing your allegations of "farming" around your poor sucess in tombs.

Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with FoTMs or spikes. For FoTms, there will alway be builds that are just easier for PUGs to be sucessful with, these are what will generally become the 'FoTM' builds because less experienced players can run them sucessfully. I see no real problem with this, as it allows less experienced players to have their fun and still have a chance of winning.

As for spikes, I honestly think Guild Wars pvp would be pretty boring if pressure was the only viable means of killing someone. Pure spike builds are generally pretty easy to beat if your team is competent, so I'm not really sure what the issue is. As for balanced builds that spike (not a rainbow spike - a build capable of pressure and a spike), I think it's a completely valid way of getting a kill against good monks.

Finally... the entire point to pvp, in case you were unaware, is to have fun - it's not to impress other people by playing "honorable" builds. Don't be a whiny scrub, either play HA because you enjoy it or find something else.

LOL, having someone act so arrogant over his r3 is hilarious. It's like a bum saying that his one dollar that he begged is hard earned and means much more than you "REGULAR folks who worked gimmick jobs to earn their money."

iQ ran a gamble with dual smite AOE damage in the GL room, their gamble failed. They certainly didn't run an HA build in GvG. The fact that you cannot recognize that says volumes.

It seems like that last page or so has been filled with personal attacks. Lets just leave each others rank alone, okay? Attacking someone else's hard work because they supposedly got it in a "gimmicky" way or because it seems insignificant to you isn't the purpose of this thread. Lets all be nice and remember that we're just talking about a computer game.