Costume Brawl 2008

Yea, thats the problem The people dont know how to cap or follow map pings or arrows.

I ping three locations on the map for a split, type <2 1 2> (you should know what map this is by looking at that command by now), and everyone else just charges together as a pack of four headless chickens. I draw circles around individual dots on the map and an arrow for which way to go. They either go the other way, or everyone else also follows them. They cap one shrine, then see the enemy and go in and start fighting, they lose because we have no shrines, or well, because I cant cap them all fast enough on my own and they just stand and fight without a monk ('I got an OMG what are you doing monk?' while my whole team was fighting and I was frantically trying to cap shrines on my own with no help from the rest of the team.

This is a team game, true. But it is a team game which requires splitting to cap, people need to seperate and go for different shrines or you will not win. It is far easier to win from morale and small gankings by splitting and capping then it is by charging in as a group of 5 to just clobber the enemies - the latter will just get you killed if the enemy team controlls both health shrines. The best time to fight is only after you have contoll of both health shrines at the least, and someone should be trying to keep the other shrines as well at the same time (4-1 split after you controll the health shrines). If you dont, then you should be avoiding combat and trying to cap.

But when you get a good team that know what they are doing, it is awesome.

qft, most people have no clue what they're doing, it's even worse than ra

We have solutions for that in RA and CB

*Sync*

Brings us back to my point. I'm surprised anet doesn't consider it an exploit. The guide for CB even says "five randomly selected allies".

You know what I hate too? People who stand in the middle of the shrine UNTILL it's capped! I mean, you can stand a whole shrine away from it and still be capping it, and you could be moving to the next shrine already while still capping it, 5 seconds you're losing....

Ancestor's Rage. Which isn't even "good" unless if the enemy team is dumb just like SH/SC damage is since they nerfed it.

Bad bar is a bad bar.

Yes but they aren't, which is why Izzy made them deliberately bad is so they wouldn't stall the game (which they would) or make people dependent on having 1 (also would).

Maybe if the enemy team is retarded and balls up. Every self heal on each of the bars can outheal 3 Smite Hexes/Conditions damage.

Alas, 5 randomly selected allies who all enter at the same time, is still randomly selected from a list of players who entered. You can't sync very easy in the Costume Brawl however, as there is 8+ districts almost everywhere except the super hidden foreign ones. (and good luck finding 5 people all willing to lose so you can farm Gamer/ToTs if you want to do a double synch)

EDIT:
i'm done replying, I've said everything that needs to be said, you keep posting screenshots or beat X/Y/Z in 1v1, don't back anything up with good data except for data gathered from bad players. I could post a screenshot of my 20+ wins as a Monk too, but it doesn't mean anything cause the bar is still bad and the enemy teams even worse. You're the only one (!!!) defending the bar in any real way, and you're doing a rather poor job of it and this is just degrading the thread's quality, so I'm done with this silly argument.

I must have horrible luck then facing a sync team on average 1/5 matches. Oh and multiple times I entered after losing to a sync team and guess what, first team we face is the same sync team. Furthermore, those exploiters (At least we agree it's exploiting right?) don't get flushed out since there is no 10 win cap like in RA. I can't comment on how easy/hard it is to sync (have no clue), but the point is it's an exploit so why the f u kc is anet not nerfing it?

Actually no, they can't. Especially rangers and assassins are easy to own for 2-3 monks. Try playing a monk, please.

The main difference to RA isn't that the CB monk does less damage, but that 2 of any other class can easily own 1 CB monk. The tankability of a CB monk is nowhere near that of a normal Mo/W build.

Not really, there are several people that rank it as one of the top three builds and consider it better then the others. Likewise you are the only person badmouthing the build in any real way, and failing to realise that this isnt high end PVP. People will look at it and go 'lol smiting sux'. You are no different to them. Others will take the bar and make full use from all of its skills and sail through the brawl in multiple monk teams. You are just taking up your pet hatred for healing breeze and smiting and failing to realise how decent the build is in this situation for the costume brawl.

The threads quality is degraded by people complaining about the builds, not by people that are enjoying playing them and having fun.

It is like saying - RC prot monk is a good build, but take it into an area where there is not one condition and it now becomes a bad build. Word of Healing is a great heal, but take a team with a ZB monk or even two other WoH monks, and all they do is waste the conditional heal / energy gain by casting them on the same target so they now beome bad.

55 HP monk is a brilliant skill bar for farming. Take it into GVG and it fails.

The smite monk build is brilliant in the Costume Brawl, but yes, it would suck terribly anywhere else. None of your reasons for disliking the monk build apply to the situations within the costume brawl, they are only valid in other parts of the game. All of my reasons for liking the build apply to the costume brawl where it is a highly decent and efficient build, it is a very good build here, but it wouldnt be good anywhere else, just like a 55 HP monk in a GVG match. That is why your points are moot and make no sense because you are not applying the build to where it is supposed to be used. Every skill in the game is bad in some situations as I described, but they can work brilliantly in other situations, as the monk build does in the costume brawls.

From the reason behind your posts, I highly doubt that you have even played the costume brawl yet or realise how it works. People who can adapt and know how to play the monk build and have used it reralise how good and effective it actually is. Likewise, people who have monked in 2 or 3 monk teams also will realise how brilliantly the smite skills add up on top of each other.

It is comparable to Searing Flames, take one SF elly, and it isnt too useful. Take two and they are far far better. When you increase the number of monks in a costume brawl, their efficiency is increasing in a similar manner, but of course, you wouldnt know untill you have experienced it yourself.

Amazing. A bad build can win when given a 3 to 1 advantage.

The point is, there is nothing that a monk significantly adds over the ritualist, while the ritualist has stronger damage, stronger heals and stronger protection.

The spammability of the Elementalists' hexes only leave disruption as a decent work. Conditions are better cleaned up by a Necromancer, and for the most part they are covered. Well, unless for some reason the Ranger doesn't have Apply Poison up or the Assassin isn't disrupted mid-chain already.

Apply Poison covers conditions.

Again; winning is meaningless. If you was doing most of the shrine capping, then you just invalidated your own post.



So, it's only 4 seconds out of the 20? That isn't nearly enough to render a Dervish with both an IAS and an IMS active useless, or a Warrior who's built enough adrenaline for Rush. (Furious Spears)

Coming out derogatory like that is pretty funny; you can say we're QQ'ing, but that's just like saying we're not even presenting an argument and avoiding it the same way you did before.

Like some people are saying, sure the rit bar looks/is better then the monk's. But I've won far more games as a monk (games don't matter I guess :/). The monk bar seems more playable. The rit bar, idk, just doesn't feel right.

I'll just keeping playing the crappy monk bar...

Lol Monk doesnt suck he rocks

Use it properly

Lets your warrior /assasin/ranger/dev aggro Once he starts gettingth heat spam the 1st skill insta damage ,spam remove hex and condition , heal him in betweeen , cast the 3 smite skills the attacker drops drastically .


And on 1 on 1 except for a necro no one could down me .

Ysterday we had a run of 8 consecutive wins We only lost when 1 of our teamates quit in between and we were outnumbered

You can't "aggro", and some people actually catch on and stop attacking the person you're using shit on.

You're not helping your own argument either; you're saying it works versus bad people instead of using even an average player as an example.

How exactly do I invalidate my argument by shrine capping in a 3 monk 2 warrior team? There are two other monks and they were killing and keeping us alive. If the builds were as bad some people say, then having 3 of them on a team should be a disadvantage, not a benefit.

This is a one sided argument for me. People who have actually bothered to play the monk are doing well, find it a good build and are having good success with multiple monks. People that keep on arguing about it being bad are obviously not even playing it.

Oh, and if someone who knows how to play both a monk and a ritualist has already tried them both and actually prefers the monk, I think they have a much more valid point then the elitists complaining about smiting and healing breeze being a bad build when they cant even correctly apply their logic to the game where it is being used.

Likewise, 55 and 600 hp monks are bad bars because they fail in GVG ...

I have played the monk and can survive against and outdamage all the other classes in the brawl. It is called Reversal of Damage, try using it, it works wonderfully in this game. Such a seriously underated skill, but then again, so is the whole smiting line just Because they arent used in 8v8 PVP.

And how exactly do you come to conclude that anyone that gets beaten by the smite monk is a bad player? It seriously doesnt matter how good you are at playing any of the melee builds. Try to gank me 1 on 1, stick around fighting and you'll be dead in no time.

You cannot outdamage H Breeze and Reversal of Damage spam with any of the brawl classes before I would end up smiting you to death, regardless of how good a player you are. Because my smite monk build is much better in costume brawl then yours is.

"doing most of the capping yourself".

If you're doing MOST of the capping yourself, you aren't necessarily in a good team.

Oh, I've played the majority of the bars including the Monk.

What. Yes, different builds suck in different formats, but this build sucks in all formats for reasons already noted.

Smiting just sucks outside of Reversal of Damage, Smite Hex and Smite Condition. Those three skills build the line, but at the same time it doesn't make it viable for healing unless accompanied by DBoon or SBoon in terms of 4v4, or in this case 5v5. You can't uphold more than two people with just these skills. And yes, Smiting was used in 8v8. I believe it is still used now, although a Ritualist heavily outfclasses it.

The monks arent supposed to uphold the whole team, just increase the survivability. If the monks were pure healers, there would be no importance to the health shrines.

The monks are not meant to be overpowering healers, the point is that you need to cap and then kill to fit the purpose of costume brawl.

You miss the whole point of costume brawl if you expect that the monks are supposed to be pure healers, but even still, several monks on a team is very hard to beat unless facing a similar team.

After the event is over, I am actually going to try a similar smite team in hero battles, purely for fun to see if I can make a full team of smiters work there.

By the way - When you controll the relevent shrines in Costume brawls, skills recharge 25% faster, and cost 25% less energy. This offsets the drawbacks people pointed out before about the cost of Healing Breeze and the recharge on the signets.

I understand this; my point is that they have no form of healing -at all-, which makes Ritualists alot stronger at doing... everything a Monk does.

8 energy is still a lot of energy for Healing Breeze, and 14 recharge is still a lot on signets.

*Sigh*

The more I play Custom Brawl the more I realise how many retards there are in Guild Wars. Seriously, I think I'm hexed in someway that I'm always getting teamed up with these idiots that don't even get the basics of teamplay.
To win a teamgame, communication is an important factor. Typing isn't handy at all, I know, but you have this awesome thing called a minimap where you can draw and ping stuff on !

Maybe it's just me, but I think none of these people even look at the minimap. Every game I try to explain how the team should be split and who should be capping which shrine - with text and the minimap - but when the gates open they all rush to the nearest shrine no matter what I friendly asked them to do =-/

Enough about the monk...even though I think they are imba >.< honestly, they are nigh-on impossible to kill, especially if there are two of them, oh jeez! Takes a lot to take one down it feels like.

How about mesmer love =) I've killed monks 1 v 1 with that baby. The key is to cry their signet of judgement and interrupt their cure hex or one of their healing spells :O Though they usually catch on and I have to chase after them.

I can't number the amount of runners i've pizzowned with wastrel's worry. They'll be low health and just take off, 1 hit of worry and I can walk away, know within 2-3 seconds their dead. What is even funnier is being above or beneath a bridge with the enemy on the other side and you just start spamming wastrel's worry. i've taken people down to 25% health with that one skill alone because the VAST majority of people have no idea whats going on.

lyssa's aura is almost always on after you cast it, because you will be casting spells about 90% of the time and have very little downtime. (Then again, I was using the Magekiller staff, which is even better than the staff given to you at the match, being all but 1 skill is domination magic )

assassins go so fast with their chains i've killed many in seconds just with empathy and MAYBE one energy burn, when they use heart of shadow I just click ether feast to heal also. It's a little trickier with warriors, once they get to about half health or below they'll hit the lion's comfort, if you can cry (of frustration) that then you are golden and either they will smack themselves to oblivion with empathy or take off running, of which you use energy burn or wastrel's worry.

I remember beating up on a warrior, i'm down to like 40% health and an ele was right behind him at full health after the war went down. Cry of frustration + power spike (or whatever it's called, I get the names confused) then overload. or better yet. hit the ele with wastrel's worry then interrupt their next skill :O

in the 3 weeks i been playing a mesmer I've grown to LOVE them.

must be nice to face bad players who don't know what WW is or people who attack through stuff huh

All I do is get the bad players on my team. This is probably the 6th time I've had 2 or more Paragons on my team.

every team i've been in today has 3 or more rangers...gg

Heh, I know how you must feel. I haven't had a paragon on my team yet, but it seems like opposing teams have a paragon 3/4ths of the time. I think I have seen more paragons last night then I have in all of PvE since nightfall.

Yeah, the mesmer can kill any opposing class that decides to stay and fight them, their main problem is smart players run away and they have no snares. That's why War Cry is the most valuable shrine, the passive speed boost makes you insanely good at hunting down any single players trying to cap. Really the only problem with mesmer is that their heal requires them to be in battle to use.

BTW, you shouldn't be using the magekiller staff, the +60 health won't do a thing in the brawl. A 40/40 set will give you mods you can actually use. Same goes for armor, load it up with +armor and -condition length runes. Just about every profession here is doing half their damage through conditions and only two professions can take them off, and one of them sucks (necro).

I think they assume it's some kind of fun mini-game when it's more like an alliance battle with a similar level of coordination needed. Which is probably too much for this holiday game. It should be more like 3-skill bars and 2 shrines per level if they really want everyone to understand it. On the other hand it's very easy for a couple smart players once grouped to go on a streak forever.

I don't know if anyone asked this, I haven't bothered to check, but how long does it take until we get points per shrine capped? I remember that when I cap with my team it takes forever for the points to increase. I doubt that it matters anyways, but I'm just curious.

To be honest I think there should be a fully organized version of Costume Brawl aswell, the same way RA has it's own organised game. Same goes for HB; I'd like to see an organized format, a random format and a hero-based format for all of them.

Today was horrible. About every team I got had 2+ para/necro's in it, or didn't load, or were afk, or just didn't even try to cap/kill something and just suicided everywhere.

on the bright side, if you finally get a good team, you make 20+ con wins every time.

Really now, we all know how bad you are. Please stop confirming it over and over again.

My posts about syncing have been deleted by a mod. This thread is about Costume Brawl and I think syncing in Costume Brawl is a valid issue. The sync thread is already closed so I can't post there. So I'm bringing my point up again.

Why is anet not nerfbatting syncing? The guide for costume brawl even says "five randomly selected players". Yet I've faced on average 1 sync team every five games. Several times I re-entered only to face the same sync team. Seriously seems like a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing exploit to me. What's worse is that there is no 10 win cap like in RA, so syncers don't get flushed out.

I must be incredibly fortunate then, because I rarely face synced teams. Saying that, I can't abuse Warriors' Endurance Axe (<3) in CB so I've not been in there for a bit.

I just did my first few matches: 6 different opposing teams in a row with only monks, rits and warriors. Are there any people left out there NOT synching? (Except for the poor sods I end up teaming up with?)

I'll get my gamer points come Wintersday.

Only seen one obvious synch-team today, and two rits obviously controlled through keyclone (not sure that's really an advantage to their team!), but the fighting seemed pretty fair to me.

I've played all the classes since I last posted.

Had a 20 win streak with my ele the other day, but that was mostly do to my team. Had 10 or near that with my monk, but I was owning it up on my monk. I was damn proud of my skills. I tried mesmer too, that didn't go well but I had one good match where I was busting people up. The mesmer build is decent in some situations.

As for paragons, they're annoying I think. I faced one team with 3 paragons on it, I was pretty sure it was a sync team because they all knew what they were doing and it seemed that way because they owned us hard like a team of players who know each other and have synced before, would own.


Haha I had to delete my double post that I didn't know was double posted. Damn interwebs.

I just played a couple matches, but it felt VERY exploity to me. Like PUG versus a Vent PRESET - if all our players stayed in, we might have gotten to 5 versus their 20. Otherwise we scored 1-3 with half a team. Either way, the matches were over in like 4-5 minutes...

It's obvious some exploiting of this nature is going on, as the opposing teams always had that perfect balance of class sans necro/para, while ours always had too many ranger/war with no healers (or if a healer, one who didn't help heal the team).

The character balance with 8 player random teams is usually bad - 5 makes it only that much worse...

hey guys just because the enemy team has a good balance of classes or plays good doesn't make it a synch team, some players don't suck or get a good pair of classes, you know. That's probably why they removed it.

it's obscenely hard to synch if you're not playing in like CHINESE DISTRICT where there's only one district. It checks for teams across all districts in the region you are in, so it checks for teams across all 8+ districts of American districts, etc.

This is my first costume brawl, and I honestly have no idea what there is to complain about. Everything is fair game. Though some people aren't that experienced in pvp, empathy casting mesmers while you're a rit and such, it's still a lot of fun.

Though somewhat rare, good teams do happen. If there's a split going wrong you can always let them know, which actually made a lot of runs go smoother.

Syncing isn't as much of a problem if people actually stayed till the end of the match rather than rage at the start of it. There is no dishonor if the match timer pops up. Making other people /resign or rage isn't fair to anyone. Though, I have to note - some do play through the match.

Example:


Quit raging!

It's hard to synch a team of 5, but it's very easy to get 3 in from ID, I've done it often. There just aren't that many playing.

Also, conditional univeral armor insignia (+armor when you meet a requirement) does not work. I tried wearing ghostforge, and I took exactly the same damage from shatterstone with and without weapon of warding. Haven't checked specialized armor (+armor vs damage type)

A general long-winded telling of my views on CB.

Generally warriors in CB are bad IMO. There are countless time I've seen warriors run in to 2v3 matches againsts monks, necros or mesmers. And I've seen countless warriors try and 1v1 me as a monk.(Which by the way the monk class is beast. Just enough healing balanced with offense, perfect for CB i think)

But to utilize the warrior effective, you really have to have a good team and be able to pressure and use the warrior in a "spike"/switching called targets. Otherwise with a monk on the other team, Reversal of Damage and Bane Signet can stop the warrior in its tracks. If you bait the monk and switch the target, odds are you'll out pressure the monk and then you've just won the skirmish and can continue capping. Yet, this takes some skills, which most people playing CB lack.

On to the real point of this post. CB is not about capping. If you cap in this game, you will lose. Points accrued solely by capping is terribly slow. Points are given like every 1 minute or something. Most games are won in the first skirmish, because 90% of the points come from kills. In the 3-shrine map, the best strategy with a good team is generally flood the middle because the team will ultimately have no choice, but to attack if they are still believing in the whole shrine capping. If the other team doesn't realize whats happening and splits 3-2 or 4-1, its gg. 5-4/3 will win every time. then you track down the stragglers, who after you roll their teammates, will try to come help but too late, and kill them. leaving you hopefully up 5-0. Then you repeat because now they have to attack with a 5 point deficit. I've had multiple streaks of 30, and there has not been a time where this strategy has failed, not even to people with probably better build matchups. Often you go up 5-0 and they resign. 2 minutes of work and a win.

Now for the 5-shrine maps. The new asuran map is a joke. Who ever controls the middle of this map, controls the top shrine of this map. And who ever controls that wins the match. It really is that simple. From the top health shrine, there are three easily accessible shrines to cap and and also you have the quickest routes to anywhere on the map if you control the top. The energy shrine in this case is a moot shrine. Its the furthest away and you're pretty much stuck with one option, go across the bridge to the middle. So pre-match you have two strategies here. If you think you have a superior build and team, then you can split 3-2 sending one high and one low, sandwiching the team in the middle. This works best with 1 monk/1rt backlines or 2rt or 2 monk backlines as you can split the heals. If the other team splits, you will mostly likely have a matchup in your favor. Either you'll face a split with no heals or you'll face a 3-2 matchup. If you don't think you can win, then you simply skip the cap and run straight up the middle and gank off the other split before the other team can recover. The other method here is to flood the top shrine. If the other team splits and isn't smart, congrats you just wiped their team. If they split and run away, then congrats you can easily cap the top four shrines and force any match up you want.

The fairest map of the three is the second 5-shrine map. (Giant circle with a bridge in the middle - idk what else to call it). On this map you have the same options. Split or ball. If you have 2 healers, splitting is ideal as both splits should have enough to run away if they think they are over powered. With 1 healer. You want to fake a split and gank out one of the oppposing splits. You can either run a 4-1 split and pretty much sacrafice a player in order to gank out their split or you can 3-2 split and fake and swing back around to help the other side because 90% of the time the opposing team while chase the retreating players directly, instead of cutting straight to their teammates.

These probably aren't the best strategies, especially if you get a synced or partially synced, but 90% of time. These will work because, CB is 100% about forcing bad match-ups and wiping the other team, and repeating. In my 100+ games this year, I have NEVER won a game solely because we capped. Capping is completely an illusion to force splits. The only time capping would be useful is if both teams were equal, dead equal, then it would come down to the shrine bonuses. But the others of getting two equal teams, both skill and build, are highly highly unlikely.

Three Best team lineups I've played so far
- 1 Monk/1 Rt/1 R/1 Mes/1 N
- 1 Monk/2 Rt/1 Mes/1 Sin
- 2 Monk/1 Mes/1 N/1 Ranger

I've seen several great Eles and one great warrior in my play. (yes only one warrior stood out) Both could be involved amazing teams. However, the Necro, Monk, and Mesmer, even Ele to a degree, are strongly anti-melee. And to be honestly, probably a bit unfairly matched. But with an appropriate backline, warriors are quick good. Eles have good dmg output, but their lack of overall positive matchups detract from their usefulness from a team.

In short:
Paragons are useless in CB, its not even for debate.
Dervs are eh, but i'd rather have a warrior.
Necros are good anti-melee and general pressure.
Rangers are fair, but it takes a good one to make the build flow with a team.
Eles have great damage, but are weak just like in regular PvP.
Monks/Rt invaluable healing and damage at the same time.
Sins - more than one and they better be splitting and not targeting same person, and you better hope their isn't a monk, mesmer, rt, or necro facing you, otherwise garbage.
Warriors good but have too many bad matchups.
Mesmers are just good esp when played well.

Don't focus on capping. Use it to force splits and matchups in your favor, then roll the other team.


but thats my ten cents.

I had one of these tonight on my monk that went for about 15 consecs. The team was actually really good. We had 2 close calls, this was by far the closest. If you look on the screen where that pink circle is, you can see how close we were too losing, we killed one of their members before that went out.

We had another one just like that but the morale bar was a bit farther down (like a 1/2 inch or so). We were also losing at the start of that round by around 7, and we came back in the last couple of minutes, we were down like 10 to 3.

I lack the nerves to play Costume Brawl.