Sour Attitudes of HA

i been playing gw's for near on a year, only ventured into hero's ascent with friends or guilds which i have been in, and just before the 6vs6 weekend i had 8 fame, i wanted to join a pvp guild so i could learn the game, and saw and then and then and [then] were winning alot, so i asked about, well i was told i was a noob and that i didnt even know my way around, which was kinda true, and rejected, was told that i'd never beat them too after i said i'd come back to beat them one day, and bet 100ecto's and 100k to the same end by illusion from there guild,

so i become iway lol.. im a monk always liked the character but there i was getting in teams and going all battle crazy true warrior style, and in the weekend 6vs6, i managed to get well over r3, nearly r4 now, and now im a blessed light/woh monk, lol

so does this mean im a good player, or bad player for that matter, or does it mean i learned how to play a specific job and done it well?

what people seem to forget in places such as ha, is that we are all capable of learning, just depends how much you want to,

and i'll be more then obliged to take ur items and money illusion ..

Healing Swan [MEOW]

Wow, what the hell is up with all the bashing of HA players by the PvErs?

Let me just set something straight. Everyone knows that nothing in life is free. People come straight from PvE and get offended because they can't get into high ranking groups. It's not going to happen! It's like being mad because you just graduated middle school as starting pitcher on your local baseball team, and you're mad because the Atlanta Braves won't draft you.

You need persistance. I'm speaking from my own personal experience. I was an officer in a PvE guild for more than three months before I decided I wanted to try out PvP. I got both Protector titles and both explorers 95% on my mesmer. I never once eBayed gold, and I've got FoW armor on my mesmer and 15k on all 4 other PvE characters. Please don't start flaming me about how PvPers are no-nothing assholes.

When PvErs go into HA, they have to be willing to start at the bottom of the ladder again. It's hard after being good at PvE, but it's the simple truth. No matter what you think, rank and fame is a measuring stick to experience and time spent in Tombs. Before I had any fame, I thought the exact same way you do. Now that I'm almost rank 8, I can look back and see that the experience matters.

Build your friends list. Unlock skills. Join unranked PUGs. 180 fame will come sooner than you know it, and with it, your first emote.

Hm. I must have been in all the wrong districts, but I dealt with cocky knowitall asshats through Tyria AND Cantha. I went through Prophesies with my mesmer back when it was hard for "mesmer n00bs" to get a group. PvE is just as elitist and full of assholes as PvP. If you aren't a tank, nuker, monk, or MM, it's hard to get a group!

"I'm using Martyr on GvGers!"

Nice try, but top 20 GvGers are on Obs Mode every single second of play time; the only time HA guild make it onto Observer are when they win HoH itself, or go against a top 100 guild on the way there. Plus top 16 gets silver capes. gg.

It's really just the way things work. As above poster said, pve is really full of assholes and noobs as well; I do understand what you mean by "mesmer noobs" era, but I don't think it's over anyways, I have hard time getting into some groups. The point is, it's really hard to prove that you are a good pvp player if you do not possess rank, and almost impossible for _new_ players to get into this system. But hey, we will have 6x6 from now on, look at the new opotunities and don't waste them.

To those of us who IWAYed when the build first started, it was like a rebellion against rank elitists. All of them had gotten their ranks from Spirit Spam and Air Spike. Probably the "Golden Age" Guardian described was durring the forgotten Wamo era and early Air Spike.

Well, look at it now. All those rankless people I IWAYED with back in the day are now ranked 7-10 and are completely elitist XD The opressed become the opressors.

See, what you need is a good gimick that hasn't been done before and ambitious players to run it with

I just register because I need to put more detail into this time line.

Let's start 14 months ago:

Era 1: The time of the elementalist

At the start in HA, you will find mainly ele air spike builds or elementalist builds. I have to say this was the golden age of Korea, they hold halls and favour. Koreans owned this game and were the first to use wards and other stuff.

In this time rangers and warriors pretty much couldnt get into teams!!

Era 2: The revenge of the rangers and how thry change the game!! The Long and long SPIRIT RANGER SPAM ERA!

Ranger got toghether and BANG ranger spike was born, then the bonder become more famous, but there was a twist: This rangers little by little started to use spirits and abuse them.

For 3-4 months Anet didnt nerf ranger spirits and HA was 90% ranger spirit spam builds, it was disgracefull, but abused and Anet took ages to nerf them.

In that time you could have 2-3 spirits of the same spirits, it was ridiculous. I was running one of the only smith teams and I'm not talking about healing balls. I'm talking about proper smith with 8 monks!!! What an era, it was newbi era.

Era3: Ranger spirits get nerfed and the era of the balanced is born aka: Mesmer and Necros become popular!!!!!!!

This era is relative short or long depends how you see it, This is time when Migraines, E.surge builds are born, this is the era Have funn GG IS born and sir conversman start winning hall more regularly.

Necros become stronger also, ranger spike is strong also with power of my ranger still going strong.

This is for me the golden era, because you could see Balanced teams with 2 Mesmers (migraine or surge), you had ranger spikers, you had ele spikers, you still could smith with 8 monks, but then IWAY started was born around the end of this period. But botton line in this time you could see so many different builds, you will find Hex builds with full Mesmer teams and full necro teams, double smith with E/Monk and 2 Ws etc.....

Era 4: IWAY and the anti-IWAY builds

Iway changed things, Math started to dominate and the anti-WAY builds started.

This is for me the decline of HA, I don't mind IWAY, but because of this build a lot of builds desapear, IWAY took advantage of the poor balance of ranger spirit and dominate hex builds aka full mesmer grps died, a lot of balanced combinations died.

In this era, also 2 things happen, Elementalist for nerfed becoming more of a support profession.

What I didnt like of this time is that balanced team got stuck with the : 3 monk classic build + Warder in this time is when IWAY was the noobie build, because any good team with a good warder and 3 decent monks will destroy them and it was true.

Also E.Surge become more popular and the classic build: 1 W, 2 Surgers, 1 trap, 1 warder was the most popular balanced build to counter the wave of invasion of IWAY noob teams.

I made so much fame by killing IWAY like this thank you lol.

Era 5: Smith is flavour of the month and gets nerfed in 3-4 weeks.

Then suddenly E.surges get nerfed and smith becomes more popular and then HA become the smither and IWAY builds , but smith get nerfed very very fast.

Between era 4 and 5, you have blood spikers coming strong, but not that strong until the ritualist is here, once the ritualist was here it basicly become stronger.


Era 6: faction makes gimmick builds stronger and kills creativity.

I got desapointed with faction, instead of killing IWAY, bloodspikes it made them stronger and made balanced teams weaker!

Yeah the actual balanced team build got nerfed a lot of changes had to be done, but it was ok. balanced teams still manage to adapt and survive, but making HA a bit harder to handle. Rangers interup become more common also.

The ritualist gave a lot of defence to the B-spikers, IWAY evolved and introduce apostacy + Mesme fast cast, the IWAY + rit was a failure. Ranger spikers evolve and manage to survive.

In the other hand, Eles got a boost and area of dmg got a boost what was good, but ritualist and assasin didnt bring nothing to the metagame, it was crap, they brough nothing to HA.

Era 7: VIM and Interrupt-way

That is how I would describe the present HA situation, in 2 completely unrelated statements. The Lower levels are swarmed with VIM, for a reason I still cannot fathom (since they never win anything), IWAY declined significantly and isn't really a strong presence anymore. Blood spike became an actual clean spike build with OP gaze, rather than QZ-based pressure...

The second part is mostly related to Hall of Heroes itself. A good portion of the teams in HoH are balanced who successfully slog through all the VIM noobs at the lower levels. These teams run 2 choking gassers, obviously warrior interrupts and more often than not, leech sig on monks. Oh, did I mention PD? Once in a while, you see that as well. This leads to complete bullshit in Halls: the game turns into a giant interrupt-fest once the holding team's ghost is dead and most of the time, that's how teams hold. The most retarded part about it? The holding team can be completely wiped out at 1:00 and the other two teams are perfectly capable of interrupting each other for 10 minutes through spell breaker, ward of stability and harassing each others' chokers.

I even had a game on courtyard which ended in a draw, after 3.5 minutes of 3-way interrupting.

well just read it again looked at it in detail and am truly shocked the only reason people like 6v6 was cos of the double fame. i guess anet dont get that. GJ ANET YOU HAVE MADE HEROES ASCENT WORTHLESS

I agree only too strongly about the players making HA worse. The players began abusing it to no end and just RESISTED the attempts to nerf it. Even tho there are CLEAR COUNTERS to it (wards up teh butt) and such. Nobody changes.

Everyone in HA doing IWAY and ViM are like old men, set in their ways, and grumpy about change. Just look at the threads about the change about moany people leaving like it was their only reason for playing......

That simply isn't true. End of story.

Nightfall will add some must-have skills for altar matches; it's quite obvious which ones they are. Note that, in theory, many players will be joining it as well.

So could someone give me a definition of a noob?

Personally a noob is anyone who throws a fit about any issue in the game no matter how good they think they are or not.

Yes I can understand people wanting to play with others with more experiance in HOH, I agree

What I do not understand is the abuse ?? there is simply no need for it, this is from both sides may I add

Onto the attitudes...
I scraped my way to r6, after that it got a great deal easier. Not because I was ranked...(read on) It was painfully slow but due to the fact that I played so much to get there my r6 meant something (no fame farming here). Also meant I filled up my whole flist (if I havent played with you in 2 months you get cleared for someone new I meet). Now I get pms about 4-6 times a day saying "Wanna HA?" not "Bring *specific profession*"

I started my own crappy groups at r0 and asked everyone to join not to rage and to be patient (at this point some people left). After the first match 4 people leave but me and 3 others stayed. Went back to the drawing board and got another 4 people. Lost a match, and we lost 2... rinse and repeat.
Slowly made an 8 man group who wanted to have fun and learn and not rage. Usually all 3-7 of those people were thrown on the flist and I on theirs. Next time I connected I found (from the 2 months of playing) anywhere from 5-10 friends online and r0 scrubs (including me) ready to get our butts beat in HA.
This is how I filled up my flist, not trying to squirm my way into ranked pugs, not crying about it.

PUGS have a right to be elitist if they so wish. It never made me want to quit HA that I couldnt join iA on their next run. Why should they allow me with my paltry 25 fame at the time to join their experience group? I'm just going to screw up their run. They like to play AND win, thats their fun. Why should I ruin it? Why should I use THEIR time to learn instead of learning with others.

I think thats where the attitude adjustment needs to be. People quit too easily when they dont get their r3 in a week or win every match. They want to join higher ranked groups when they have extremely limited HA experience. They want it to be easy and any effort of dedication required by their part should not be brought into question. They want it fast and easy.
You dont want to be bothered with builds or rank or anything? Just want to play vs other people? Goto RA and click "Enter Battle."

You are R0 and got scared away from HA because you couldnt get in a group. As someone said, EVERYONE started at R0. Stop whining and start forming your own terrible, easy to defeat, and newbie groups. Somehow a WHOLE bunch of us managed to work our way up without divine intervention. You can too.

Fast Forward months after me being R0 :
With my flist we make groups and I ask my friends "We are 4/8, do you have a guildie that can play *list professions*?"
Responses are either :
a) no
b) yes
c) yeah, but hes unranked.
If C the usual goes "is he good? if not, will he listen?" If answered yes to either of these, we will take them, because hes a friend of a friend and wont rage. Our RC at this moment is r2 in a r6+ group. (Started r0 with us but had TA and RA experience).
If we cant fill up our group with friends or friends of friends and we resort to LFG, we DO ask for rank. Its the only indication we have that you are anywhere near being decent. If its an r8 group we ask for r7+ (one or so ranks below the average).
Also if you talk trash and /rank corpses, you are out.

In Summary :
PUGS are elitist (with good reason), friends lists arent. Make your own groups and be patient and dont rage on others (people will remember you just as easily for making a scene than for being a great player). If you are really really serious about it, get a voice comm server for 12 people for $3 bucks a month so you can always make groups and have voice comm available (i just canceled my server after having it for 6+ months because all my friends have one ).

Change your attitude as how you approach HA, dont try to change HA's PUG attitude.

GG for exhibiting the same sour attitude that many pvers complain about HAers exhibiting. FYI, a lot of people do HA with their pve characters, so their title being on probably isn't a desperate cry to be let into your amazing PUG group. I know I don't care, let alone remember, to disable my pvp title on the rare occasion I venture into pve, so QQ.

And I'm pretty sure those pvp guys can handle the mission with henchmen just fine as well.


Smith teams?





Yes, I konw you meant smite but you said 'smith' so many times in your post I just found it funny.

This is a very good post, a lot of newcomers to HA could do with reading this imo. You’re 100% correct about friends lists and starting your own groups.

A lot of people don’t realize this one key thing about HA – once you build up a friends list rank becomes irrelevant! When I ask people on my list to come play I don’t ask them if they’re the same rank as me, I simply give then a vent address and a build. When my friends say they can fill a spot in our group nobody asks what the guy’s rank is because we trust that he’s good if he’s being recommended. I have people from rank 0 to 11 on my list, not because of their rank, but because they’re good players who I can talk to and have fun with. Recently, one of the guys who gets asked first to play Word monk for me is rank 1 or 2, but he’s really good at what he does. So don’t get discouraged about rank and the elitism of PUGs, not everyone is like that. I even know a few people who have basically gotten 3k+ fame from playing with r9+ groups since they were rank 0.

HA is all about having fun, find people you can do this with and stick with them.

Many of you don't seem to have much understanding of how a competitive gaming scene works.

First of all, elitism, in the sense that good players only play with good players, makes sense. I'm not going to address verbal abuse or attitudes - those generally come with the territory, and are a result of people who can't control their mouths or their egos. That isn't the point, and there's not much point in complaining about it, because assholes are going to be assholes regardless of your complaining.

New players should not expect warm receptions in competitive situations. Good groups are not going to be responsive to your desires to join them. If someone wants r9 only, they're generally not going to take anything lower unless someone they know vouches for them. Good groups are not going to be tolerant of incompetence or ignorance, because it doesn't make sense for the leader to have to explain to a newbie what the rest of the team considers fundamental knowledge.

A lot of you confuse playing for fun, and playing to win. Casual players are more concerned with the former, in part because most of them will never be good enough to compete with the serious players on any meaningful level. 'Hardcore' players play to win, and they're definitely not going to take less experienced, inferior players.

Furthermore, this sort of environment is healthy for competition. You only see quality, high-level play in a cutthroat environment where everyone wants to win. That's because, in order to beat the next guy, you have to play better than him, outthink him, come up with new and amazing tactics. You're *forced* to keep getting better. When you've got a bunch of competing teams thinking this way, that's when you begin to see really solid playing. Teams that are aren't as focused on winning generally don't produce this kind of advancement, and they do it more slowly than the 'play to win' crowd.

If you want to play with good teams, you've got to put in the work to get to their level. And you no longer have the excuse of, "nobody will teach me!" Obs mode is right there. Study how the good teams play. Study how the individual players execute, study the tactics of the team as a whole.

HA is not newbie friendly, and it shouldn't be. No competitive environment is.

You are forgetting the main problem

"TITLE OR EMOTE OR BYE"

That problem only exists for people who don't know anyone and don't have groups to roll with. And in that context it makes sense because there is no other way to measure ability prior to playing. While an r# might not be ubar l33tsauce, he's at least played enough HA to get that rank.

There are a few ways to play with good teams: you can grind out some rank, you can make connections, or you can make your own team.

That's pure bullshit, I see unranked groups forming everyday. The problem, like I said earlier, is that most unranked players don't want to actually play with people of similar experience or learn anything about HA - all they want is an easy ticket to a tiger.

To be honest, unranked players place just as much importance on rank as ranked players do; if they didn't, they wouldn't be complaining about not being about to get into ranked groups.

who cares it is just a game having fun should be the main point.

Pvp should have never ever got any tittles. tittles is what killed pvp.

I went from fresh r5 to r6 in about one week back in March, and I have to agree with you. I was utterly sick of the place at the end of that marathon. The 6v6 + map changes have given me new hope for it.

To go off on a tangent here, I believe this is more of a reflection of the poor state of (on a large scale) American society or even (on a lesser scale) world societies. I had learned how to be civil and polite to others around the same time I learned how to communicate.

You're seeing what you want to see.. unranked teams forming all the time and if you don't see them, ffs start your own.

I'm rank 8 and I sometimes enjoy playing in r3/4/5 balanced groups to help them out and some turn out to be really good teams. I played in a r6 bspike earlier today and we went to Halls. It was better than some of the r9+ bspike teams I've played in, which goes to show RANK, TO AN EXTENT, DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING.

wait...if most of the r9+ people leave...and the arena is flocked by new pve players...then I will have r12 in like a week.

My opinion: low ranked people CAN understand PvP, but are far less likely to understand HA. You can be the greatest GvG monk in the world, but have no idea how to react to HA pressure (noobs who are going to say monk=" make red bars go up lololooolololol" stfu). I'm not a dick when I make groups, I'll generally give you a shot if you're r3+ (unranked, pug for a week to get R3 and learn the game then I'll give you a shot), but if you suck I'll kick you, sure (and when I kick people it has to be pretty bad, I actually kicked a rank 10 guy before because he was crap at assassin). If you're a great monk that's only R3, I'll add you to my friend's list and you'll be the first to get an invite if I make another group, regardless of rank.

In conclusion: Rank can, but might not be a factor in how good you are at playing an HA monk.

EDIT: I only use monk as an example because I end up pugging them the most often (guildies/friends only want to play fun builds, monking = boring IMO)

Start a team youself as a rank 0, is just as trying to catch the a fly with your tunge. It will take forever and you wont get anything out of it.

In other words, yeah, pretend like it's viable to start a new HA group with a team 7 other newbies.

Newbies cannot teach newbies, only good people can teach newbies.

So right!

You know how you can force good players to teach newbies? It's called obs mode. I'm sorry, but new players no longer have any excuse not to learn on their own. If you want to play with good players, you have to put in the work, period.

You can complain about rank and elitism all you want. The fact of the matter is that most good players will not play with newbies or low-ranked players, and that's a *good thing*, the reason for which I outlined in my earlier post. You cannot expect to just show up in HA and be invited into good teams. It doesn't happen in any other competitive game, it doesn't happen in real life (most students straight out of college aren't going to land management positions at top companies), and it sure as hell doesn't happen in Guild Wars.

Rank might not be perfectly accurate, but it's the best system we have. Most players aren't going to waste the time taking an r3 into HA just to find out that, oh, they actually do suck after all. Then everyone leaves and you're back in HA trying to form another group. No. As I said before, the r9's might not all be godly players, but you're more likely to get a good player that has r9 than a good player that has r3. That's just how it is. If you don't like it, you can grind out some rank yourself, or you can stop playing GW. No good teams are going to take you just because you're a nice guy.

I'm sick of all the people who think they're somehow entitled to good groups right from the start, when everyone else had to work for the privilege.

While what you say is definitely true, it does not come with a solution to the problem.

It's impossible for new players (especially those who will come when GWN comes out), to get to rank 3, without a lot, and i mean really, a lot a patience. Noone new to anygame, will spend the next three months losing in HA trying to get to R3.
It's just not going to happen.

What will happen, is that many new players will come to HA for their first time and get sweared at, blaimed and basically not given a chance by anyone, this will either result in them leaving the game entirely(not likely, if they like it much) or just completely stay away from competive pvp (HA, GvG).

Also: I don't have en easy solution for this, but if there were an easy solution, chances are that ANet would have done it already.

Negative. So wrong. You teach yourself by playing with other newbies against good people. I never had anyone hold my hand and teach me a damn thing.

That attitude is the reason HA is the way it is. People dont want to learn for themselves, they MUST be taught. They need a teacher, cant figure out things for themselves. A lot of people dont even bother to read up here on guru what each map type is and how to win on them. They put no effort forth into becoming good, they just want to be.

When we faced a match, and got raped, I looked at what the other people were running. Found out why what we were running was so easily rolled by them. If I got a hex on me I didnt know what it was, I would hold my mouse over it and see what it did. I got to see what the usual builds and FOTMS people ran were, and built accordingly. Soemtimes I would grab a bowl of cereal press B and watch HoH matches. Took off auto camera and found someone running the profession I prefer. I had the same skill bar, but I did not use the skills the same way. So I watched them and learned (I have a few of those people on a "watch" list since there is always something I can learn). Expecting someone to take pity on me and allow me in a group that far exceeds my own abilities takes longer than just forming your own newbie group.

Yeah it will take a long time to get ranked, but not a long time to get good. By the time you earn your first couple of ranks you should be building up a good friends list. People waiting around and complaining that R12s dont hold their hand is more of a problem than the rank itself. It took months for me to get to the level playing feel of R6, but once I did, it was worth it since I played MANY matches as MANY different professions and learned a great MANY things. I also unlocked everything there is to unlock so far, so it was not a waste of time.

How does the saying go?
Give a man a fish, you feed him one day...
Teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime...
Or lazy bastard just watches people fish, grabs a magazine from the newstand or book on fishing, and learns to do things on his own.

This phenomenon isn't unique to HA or Guildwars. As I said, it exists in every competitive environment. Unlike a cooperative environment, people in a competitive scene have no incentive to be friendly to newcomers or beginners. A top guild with connections never has to recruit newbie players to 'grow' a core group, because they already have a pool of talented players to draw from.

Let's take the competitive fighting game scene. Good players typically play amongst themselves. Most of them will not spend the time to teach anybody, because they have no reason to. Anyone is welcome to go to the arcades and play against them, but if you aren't any good you'll only be on the machine long enough to get double-perfected and kicked off by the next guy. So how does anyone learn? Before the advent of widespread match recording, the only way to learn was to find these good players and get your ass kicked repeatedly, while you slowly figured out why you kept losing. It could take months of losing, over and over, to finally be able to take even one round off of the top players. With all the match recording going on now, you can download videos of amazing play from top players every week, and figure out their tricks and tactics. Learning has become a lot easier, if you're willing to put in the effort.

It's the same way with Guildwars, and actually, you guys have it a lot better. You don't have to drive anywhere or fly around the world to play top players - you just get online and go. You have an obs mode that plays matches from top guilds 24/7. Use the resources that you have, they're there for anyone that's serious about it.

I'm not sure what kind of solution you guys are looking for, honestly. Casual players are obviously going to be put-off by the environment in HA, but that's always the case. To draw on my above example, casual fighting game players are the guys that just sit in their living rooms or local arcades and play all of their scrub friends. It's fun and easy, and they'll never be any good. The serious players are the ones that download match videos to study and drive miles and miles to get the shit beaten out of them by top players. It's a lot of work and dedication, but they'll eventually get good enough to make a showing at tournaments and maybe have a shot at winning.

The reality of the situation is, again: if you want to play with good players, you're going to have to put in the work and effort. If you're just a casual player, in it for fun, you're going to have to settle with whatever you can get - usually playing with friends or unranked PUGs.

Where is the need for a 'solution'? Exactly what are we trying to fix? I don't see it.

Very well said. The resources are there for new players to use and learn. They have no excuse to complain that they can't get better because higher ranks won't accept them. USE THE OBSERVER MODE or play, play, play with whomever you can join. Only way to learn is to go out and do it. Nothing is broken so nothing needs to be fixed. There will always be lazy people who are gonna be a step behind the rest because of their dependance on others to do things for them, teach them, and guide them.