Costume Brawl 2008

Well, I attempted to condense as much vital information as possible into one GW-sized clipboard:

Yes, I had to leave out the apostrophe in "don't" to fit that in. F*** you, anet.

If we start spamming this line every fight maybe people will smarten up...

(Oh and an additional f-you anet for making me reorder my bar every single match. Maybe I would actually have time to paste multiple lines if I didn't have to do that.)

+1

+2

Who's also going to realize that you don't have have to be dead center on the shrine for the cap. On 2 of the 3 maps monks can reach others for heals on the edges but I guess the PVE crowd has their mini-map totally disabled.

Leeroys are always good fun, cough when they aren't on your team . Melee who also decide to try and kill rangers which have their own block/condi removal/self heal and a snare are pretty pro too especially if the other team has healers and a rit while the damn ranger has weapon warding, yet they still attack it. After seeing this countless times my head starts to hurt.

I truly wonder how dumb is the general world population? We were born with a brain, use it or you make mice look smart.

Trouble is, that's exactly what they do in da movies...

But its important to realize that leeroying works in the movies, we should always strive to stretch reality

It isn't so much that people are dumb, as they are young. I always get mad at the idiots in GW, and then I remember that they are probablly all like 12 years old. After realizing that, you can rest easy.

I came to the same conclusion about reading stuff about American politics on the internet. At first I was REALLY frightened that all these racist, sexist, brainless people's vote counted the same as mine... then I remembered they are all probablly too young to vote.

This is starting to become annoying. Can't nearly have a normal game anymore without facing an enemy team with 2/3+ people with the same tag. This is always resulting in a certain big lose, because you are grouped with the few 'honest', mostly bad, players against a group of perfectly synced people.

FIX SYNCING!

I'm gonna say monk because I'm definately not a melee player. Ele was good on the damage but w/o a healer pretty squishy. Rit a nice support damage, but I mostly like the monks smite removals. Sig of Judg. is a nice interrupt if timed right. and Reversal does a double whammy w/ it causing dmg to foes and negating damage on allies.

And a note: no matter what profession you're playing..... =/ plz for the love of God don't run into a mob where it's 5v1......you will most likely just help the other team get a point -.- that has got to be my biggest pet peeve.

Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy comes to mind... besides if it averages at you being the only competent player in the team, why not just head to Asia Korea? Or role mesmer.

I didn't like the assassin build at first, at least not compared to last year's, but now I love it after having a 22 win streak on my assassin. Was in a random group too (I don't sync Costume Brawl.) The team was two monks, a rit, my sin, and the fifth char started out as a ranger but eventually got replaced as a warrior. My win streak ended cause the server booted me. Not sure if others got booted or not.

Most epic minute long battle took place in the three shrine area against a team of two rits, a monk, a sin and a mesmer. My team had the outside shrines and they had the center. Good spiking and KD was the key to victory for my team. Once we wiped them the first time, there was no recovering. Had to say it was the funnest battle so far. Never had one so intense.

I usually always head to the center at the start of that 3 shrine map, if we wipe I get BC, if we're near BC starting off I usually ask one person to go there or I go. I've lost getting center first and I've lost getting BC first, it depends on what you're fighting. I've won both ways too.

I keep getting wiped by 2 monk with a rit or 2 rit with a monk teams too. It's getting a bit annoying. I mean I can't solo all 3 by myself. Longest streak I had today was 5 I think. Necros>Sins though, if it's not 1vs1. Cause they just plague signet you and hex you with everything so you can't do much to them because any damage you do is negated by Insidious. Kind of crap in some situations. But I suppose they'd be useless with anything else.

I think I'm going to start carrying Alleji's quote on my clipboard. Nothing's better than being in a team where you hear both of the following:

"STAY TOGETHR NUBS 5 CAPS SHRINES FASTR"

and

"STAY AWAY FROM BATTLE CRY IT'S USELESS"

Who will teach warriors they don't have to stand motionless on the center of the shrine to cap while casters/rangers pummel them from afar? I swear I see this in 20% of matches. Thankfully I am usually lucky and its the other team

I have ran into very few sync groups and they all sucked. Don't know what your problem is.

If you go to morale all thats going to happen is the other team is going to cap energy and battle cry, then the game becomes a 5v5 where the enemy team has huge buffs. Unless your team is far better then them in 5v5 they wipe you, then its game over.

even if it's difficult to find a decent team, costume brawl remains a very good source of zkeys / gamer points / ToT

I think Anet should add points for consecutives in other minigames

I had 3 or 4 teams of players who KNOW their stuff. One of the team had the composition: 2 Rit, 1 monk, 1 war and 1 ele. Sure, you can argue the 60% of the team have healing powers, but its not invincible. And each match the highest score the opponents have was a 15. Pretty good, and getting into pugs w/ these kind of people who KNOW what they're doing>sync team.

The problem with that logic is that not trying to kill and running away means that the other team can't get points from killing you, either. Yeah, a big 5 on 5 brawl may get you points faster than capping shrines continuously, but it's likely that at least a few of your teammates will die as well, resulting in fast points for the other team.

Splitting at the beginning, getting an early capping lead, and then running and capping from the (nearly inevitable) mob that forms as the enemy tries to chase you down (quite often screaming, "RUNNING N00B!" or the like) is a guaranteed win, if done properly. Don't give them an opportunity to kill you, and you take away their opportunity to mount a come-back.

Having classes capable of snaring or slowing down opponents (hintrangerhint) makes this strategy work much better.

We had 2 Monks + 2 Rits + War synced earlier...so beast.

A good player should be able to look at the opponent and know if the fight is winnable, and if it isn't they should know if escape will be possible if things go south. If the answer to both of these questions is no, then don't fight! If you are an ele and a ranger or a mesmer come after you, you BETTER start running your ass off. If its a 2v1 you should be running as well unless the matchup is incredibly favourable (say, 1 ranger vs 2 warriors while you have battle shrine). All matches should start out by trying to get the capping advantage because it helps fighting, not because you'll get 2 points over the course of the entire fight.

Oddly enough, I haven't heard the usual "OMG NOOB STOP RUNNING AND FIGHT ME!!!111" once yet. And I have found the average costume brawl player much more receptive to strategies and teamwork then the average AB/RA player. You get a few retards that think dumb stuff like capping morale works, but thankfully most players seem smart enough not to play zergway into a 5 man group, though a lot more players could spend more time watching around and running away from 1v1's before an enemy ranger comes up, cripples you and turns it into a 2v1.

Yesterday I got grouped up with a ranger, an ele, a monk, a rit, with myself as mesmer. All of them smart (2 actually started the first match with a copypasted strategy just as mentioned by Alleji). Other teams got their shit ruined. 20-1 wins were common and half of the teams quit after being spawn camped for awhile.

I've heard that a few times. My elementalist and ranger get that for kiting the warriors around. It was funny today though when I was on my ranger. This warrior was trying to take a morale shrine from us, so I headed over to him by myself. I started to kite him and he got pissy. He eventually died and called me an idiot. I told him he shouldn't have tried to solo a ranger. A few seconds later, after my team won and I was in the next battle, he whispered me and was like "I'm sorry I called you an idiot. Your build is really good. What is it?" lol. I told him to just play a ranger in Costume Brawl.

I know it's not perfect, but you have very limited space to work with if you just want to copy/paste a message. I can't exactly go into details. :P


And I started pasting that every run. I think it helps a bit, I actually managed to get some people to go battle cry instead of the center on that 3-shrine map... also serves as an idiot test. If people flame you for it or still 4 of them rush off to the center, I tell them they failed my idiot test and tab out for a couple minutes (like right now <.<).

Team chat is from the start of the match. I pasted my line once, everyone went for middle, the usual. Then I went to solo cap the battlecry shrine, killed a wammo without him getting into melee range and tigered his corpse:



Brightened up my losing streak a bit.

Granted there are some bad sync guilds but don't I'd like to assume that the majority of the syncers aren't to terrible at the game. Then again I've only played Costume Brawl a few times this year and never went into American districts or anything like that so I could be mistaken.

You and the guy you blanked out are both pathetic. I don't see your point.

Not all the time, look at my screenshot on the page before this one (or the page before that, don't remember). We won after being down 10-3.

Yes I like this way as well. Most of the time you'll catapult to a win in a min or so and they'll resign.

The morale shrine holding thing is far more risky. It's assuming you'll be run into by a less powerful group, but if you aren't they could very well kill you all and then have the shrine advantage too, pretty much wiping your win without a lucky dash for shrines after that. It can work, and you can get the same resign effect after they get slaughtered once or twice, but it's just not as smart a way to play unless you really know your team is good and not just "oh look we have some healers let's camp."

Capping is better than killing on the larger maps - you're not going to get many points if the other team is holding most of the boost shrines. Obviously if you have a shrine lead, then killing the other team is better, or if the other team is just that terrible. Typically I'd prefer to get a lead in terms of map control first, though, and then collapse on individual targets to get quick kills.

The exception imo is the 3-shrine map, where taking the shrine on your side of the map and then holding the center and just killing the other team is pretty awesome.

My best results have been using the tactic: split 3 + 2, cap, reform, and pick off the other team (which by then is all over the map). At best you get 5v1's or 5v2's, at worst you get a 5v5 brawl with you controlling at least 2 shrines.


EDIT: also, CB is my new favorite type of PvP. Mowing down the opposition with My Cold Sea in the speakers was pretty freaking epic.

Obviously not playing on *THEIR* server peak time. I can verify from experience that their servers lag hard, and the interrupts are worthless mostly (mediocre on 2s, OK for 3s).

It doesn't help their servers are 500-750ms laggarts (with plenty of 1.5s spikes).

Sure I gotcha - my ping is reported to me as 112/125 consistently.

EDIT: so I still dont see any explanation as to why *one* must expect to loose at least 6 matches before getting on a team that runs a 10-20-30+ streak. If there wasn't an EXPLOIT issue with this game format, then it should be more like 50/50 win/loss or 30/70 - not 16/83.

What you have is sync teams and *rollers* playing 80% of the active slots, and *pugs* joining to loose to those winners. Pugs don't face pugs, and winners don't face winners. Bad design. I think some jackass coder messed their *elimination/ladder* code bigtime.

But hey - sure makes for some *FUN SEASONAL EVENTS*.

EDIT**
Pretty lame I only got 15 TOT's for this - that's like 6 minutes PvE grind (NERF ALREADY). 40 minutes and 2k balth to I guess (yawn)...

Well, after talking a couple days off and coming back to it, things are SIGNIFICANTLY better. I don't know if all the newbie players just lost interest in it or if everybody has just learned the meta by now. But 4 out of 5 teams I joined today actually used smart tactics without prompting.

point of costume brawling is to carry your team to victory.
i just hate ppl who run into 3-5 enemys alone, or don't kite/run away from enemy's.

What I find funny is that everyone thought the monk build was [email protected], yet I find it to be the best build for the type of gameplay. Normally at the start of the round I explain how to cap and not get killed then group up and take single targets. The biggest problem in CB is people not picking the same target to take down.

I find it funny everyone thinks this pile of shit is shit yet I think it's a B-57 Canberra, but that doesn't make it a B-57 Canberra now does it?

Numerous people have stated why the Monk build is bad with actual in-game Costume Brawl related reasons compared to the other buids, if you aren't willing to do the same, why would you even bother going lol you think it's crap but it totally owns i own all the bad players!11!1!1!

The monk build IS bad compared to a good PvP monk build, but it's pretty well balanced for CB. All the builds have weaknesses, e.g. the necro is pure anti-physical and totally helpless against casters, the mesmer has an energy management skill for elite (and no hex removal)... and the monk build lacks tanking skills and has healing breeze as main healing skill.
A good WoH monk build would be completely imbalanced in CB, and in the context of CB the monk build works well.

That song is nice, going to have it going while playing CB ^^.

No one is arguing if it is good or bad compared to PvP monk builds, that would be retarded. It's a bad build in the Costume Brawl because the Ritualist is better in every way and has 2 elites, heals for more, has a way better prot, has the best offensive buff in the game, has life stealing, etc. The Monks removal is a non-issue and rarely is important.

In the end, it is a nice change of pace for the game, as many of us have been playing the same game more or less for 40+ months. If you dont like CB for one reason or another just dont play it and stop your wahmbulance!!

No one has said they don't like Costume Brawl in this thread. At all. Ever. Who the hell are you talking to?

Balance discussion =/= wahmbulance. It = something to talk about in the thread instead of just going YEAH THIS RULES or YEAH THIS SUCKS like every single thread in Riverside degenerates into.

I think pretty much everyone in this thread agrees that the Costume Brawl is awesome, or at the least interesting and fun.

Well about time that people see that the MONK is an OFFENSIVE WEAPON. I can not tell you how many times I have been kicked out of a group cause i enjoy SMITING things to death.

I would respond with if a monk was not OFFENSIVE why on earth would they give you OFFENSIVE SKILLS???

Woot

So without arguing, if Rt is better, monk is still better than 7 other professions. Call the build bad makes no sense.


And why, for some reason unknown to me, every thinks that your team will play against 5 GvGers in the opposite team? Monk has Smite Condition and Smite Hex, and both of these are GREAT. In just about every game I'm doing AoE dmg which Rt can only do with Ancestors and even then..

You enjoy smiting and the group enjoys winning. That's why you get kicked.

Makes about as much sense as: If men weren't supposed to nurse infants why on earth do they have nipples???

There is 4 offensive damage casters in the Costume Brawl: Elementalist, Mesmer, Ritualist, and Monk. Out of those 4, 2 of them are also supportive backlines: Ritualist and Monk. (The Ele has no other ally heal spells, ditto for Mesmer.)

Out of those 2, the Ritualist heals for more, does more damage, and effectively has 2 elites (WoW and Caretaker's, WoW is just that good.).

In balance discussions you have to assume everyone that is playing is good. Why? Because if you assume everyone is playing is bad, then nothing is balanced and one could argue Peace and Harmony is the best spell in the game of Guild Wars.

To answer your question, this is why the Monk sucks for the last time:

Now, good players, get this: they don't ball up. If they don't ball up, your AoE isn't doing much. Even if they don't ball up (note: this includes AR too on the balling up or being close) good players are almost always split in this mode, which means at most you're going to hit 2 people and that is if you're lucky. 70 damage is outhealed by every self heal in the game (of which only the Ranger, Monk, Paragon, and Necro don't have. The Monk can outheal it eventually, the Paragon bar just sucks, the Necro can outheal it eventually, and the Ranger is godlike and laughs at your 70 damage and destroys you). It's a non-issue that isn't going to bother anybody with 600+ Health by itself. Reversal of Damage is a non-issue because it relies on someone hitting it. A good player is going to be able to notice which target gets RoD'd because they are aware, and adjust their playstyle accordingly. No one with an adequate skill level is going to sit on you and spam shit on you while you RoD yourself for all eternity unless if they are sure they can make it through. They'll change targets. Healing Breeze is only good if the enemy team has no Necromancer. Even if the enemy team does have a Necromancer, it's an incredibly ineffecient heal (that half the time won't even actually heal, just prevent degen, it's also one of the most ineffecient heals in the game next to Mending and Orison) that any good team can outspike because every melee bar in the CB is a Spike bar (cept the War, which can obviously play Pressure effectively too), as is the Ranger's. Vigorous Spirit is an okay heal in this game mode, but if they have 2 damage dealers that coordinate in even a mediocre manner, you're done for and it won't save you and neither will your RoD.

Bane Signet serves as useful disruption utility, however the other classes have better forms of it that affect everyone instead just of just offensive classes. Castigation Signet is decent damage but its second effect is pretty much never needed unless if you are just spamming skills for some retarded reason. (probably to keep yourself alive with your subpar Vigorous Spirit). Signet of Judgement is the best skill on the bar, being a ranged insta knockdown on any class, which makes it one of the best disruption abilities in the game.

The removal effects of Smite ___ are not needed. For Smite Condition, let's run down the conditions encountered:
*Degen ones: Ritualist can outheal these without a sweat.
*Blind: Waiting it out isn't a difficult thing to do, and there's only one source of blind anyways.
*Deep Wound: While this is one of the best conditions in the game, it's nearly a non-issue in this mode. Every class has insane mobility except a few, and self protection. Proper kiting and being smart makes this not so bad. If a Deep Wound would cause you to die, you were most likely dead anyways in this mode. Even if you could remove it, every application of it in this game mode is covered by another Condition.
*Crippled: The only scary condition because it stops mobility. Too bad that every class that inflicts it can cover it or have it covered making your Smite Condition useless against it anyways.

Smite Hex:
*Faintheartedness: Recharges faster than your Smite Hex, hurts your melee, but it doesn't matter because of...
*Parasitic Bond: Recharges faster than your Smite Hex, pressures, is a cover hex, you'll remove this a lot. Enjoy not getting off the real hexes!
*Insidious: Is scary for bad players, can be waited out (no necro is gonna be dumb enough to just spam this on you, even with high energy), you'll have to be aware to pull this off and not have it covered but it's definitely one of the few dangerous hexes.
*Suffering: Strong AoE pressure but if your split it won't do much, can be outhealed.
*Empathy: See: Insidious.
*Shatterstone: You don't even want to Smite this unless if your on crack.
*Freezing Gust: A (stronger) Cripple that recharges faster than you can remove it.
*Ice Spikes: One of the deadlier hexes, but it's not that big of deal. It doesn't last too long. But if you can remove it and must be Monk, go for it.
*Hidden Caltrops: Recharges fastlike (ie: as fast as your Smite Hex.) and is going to burn your energy because you have to Smite twice to really get it off, which means you can't Smite anything else for a short bit. A decent Assassin isn't going to poof in as you do this though (unless if they are full health or close to it), which is why it's kinda lame to do this anyways.

Hooray!

So now that we've figured out that there's very little reason to use either because the damage is a non-issue cause of splitting and can be outhealed and because of stuff being covered or able to be ignored anyways and their heals being subpar because of no DB/SB, that their HoT is ineffecient and doesn't actually heal most of the time, that their other HoT is gonna die to spike, that their RoD is useless to anyone with half a brain, and that their signets are mostly useless, let's see what the Ritualist has.

The ritualist has (for the last time):
A spell that does more damage than anything on the Monk bar, gives them instant health (an actual direct heal mind you) and has better e-management than anything on the Monk bar.

One of the best unstrippable damage buffs in the game.

A direct heal that heals for a very damn good amount that they can use forever and ever because of having good e-management. (114 HP, instantly.)

The most broken unstrippable protective spell in the game that is considered by many to qualify for Elite Status. (Weapon of Warding)

A spell that not only gives them more energy management than anything on the Monk bar, but outdamages everything they got too.

A party wide heal that outheals everything the Monk has (net total healing) and makes them last super long in fights because of the Armor buff.

A decent damage spell to harass meleers against the Ritualist / linebackers on their frontline in addition to your other damage spells.

A spirit that does good life stealing damage.

Everything they do they do better than the Monk bar except for the removal which I already just established is a non-issue and not very important. (useful, but not game breaking useful, which is the point of their removal.)

The only time Monk's are useful in any important way is if the enemy decides to ball up all 5 of them, while applying massive Hexes and Conditions at the same time, and you have a ton of Monks, and for some god awful reason they just stand there and you go pew pew pew and kill them all instantly, if the enemy team for some reason can't even do a clean 2 person spike, or if you have a Dervish because you can fuel him with RoD if you really wanted to (although its mostly moot because of the HP/EN values.)

In every other (read: much more likely) scenario, a Ritualist is better. The only Condition and Hexes you have to watch out for are Cripple, Ice Spikes, Freezing Gust, and Hidden Caltrops. One of those is gonna be near impossible to remove anyways (Cripple, every class can cover it in some way.), IS and FG are annoying but eles are definitely a priority target anyways if they exist and you'll probably be fighting them or close to a shrine if you're getting hit with it anyways, and HC is just annoying and going to burn your energy over and over again.

Now, if you can show me how a Monk is useful with good players using actual good tactics including splitting, knowing when to run away and be mobile, know how to kite, and not use stupid stuff like "I just use RoD and spam it on me and they die cause I tank lololo" (no good player would just keep hitting you and let you kill them.), "I just Smite Hex and Condition AoE them to death" (why are they even letting you do this?), or anything related to the heals being good or the disruption (Rit is better and other classes have better disruption) than I'll argue with you then, but until then, no, they are bad.

Does that mean they can't win? Sure doesn't (I never said otherwise). But in a PvP game, you want the best builds so that you can win more. The Monk doesn't have anything substantial that sets them apart from Ritualists in the Costume Brawl that is actually effective in some way. They actually have far less survivability than Ritualists because of PwK and WoW, do less damage, and heal for less. There is absolutely no redeeming qualities in Monks except for their Removal and Disruption, the latter is seen better on other classes like the Warrior and Ranger. The former isn't even an issue that without it you're going to lose the game 100% of the time (and the Ranger's is better cause it removes stacks of Conditions). The removal skills are good if the enemy balls up, or spreads out the damage (damage as in Conditions, Hexes) across more than 1 character instead of piling it all up on one, but rarely if ever will they do this, instead they're going to mass apply them together on someone in a spike which means your SC/SH won't ever burn the appropriate thing which is terrible.

I'll quote Bhavv here from the start of the topic to illustrate my point:
Note: This is exactly correct and I'm not arguing it, he is right, they are meant to be offensive with little healing.

But, The Ritualist is more offensive (higher DPS, higher spike potential, big damage booster) with more healing (every heal they have outheals every single thing you have as a Monk) and more survivability (+24 armor, and a 50% block chance).

Again, if you can show me how they are truly useful over Ritualists, and are going to give me something besides screenshots of you winning 1,298 times or obviously bad play examples like people attacking you through RoD til they die, then I'm willing to think that over, but until then, they are just not as good as the Ritualist in every way, which makes it a bad bar. If the Monk had effective removal (something that could remove more than 1 Hex/Condition, like say, Spotless Mind/Spotless Soul), it'd go a lot farther over the Ritualists and that is with just 2 simple skill changes. As is, its removal isn't worth it, its damage is subpar, its healing is crap, its disruption is selective at worst and decent at best. It has nothing going for it if the people you are playing with it are good. (But if the people playing are bad, anything is good.)

I had 60 wins, Ancient Whitedragon had about 37 wins, the rest had around 5 wins, we lost after this.

All my original teammates left at around 35-45 wins. This is what we had in the original team (as far as I can remember):

1x assassin
2x elementist
1x ranger
1x monk

We would go either 3:2 (assassin (me) and ranger cap a shrine, and snare other cappers with either Hidden Caltrops or Melandru's Shot, and kill them if it was a 2vs2, or leave them snared if they had more then 2) or 4:1 (ranger capping shrines and the rest caps shrines on the other direction).

Earned my around 2600 gamer points and around 300 ToT bags.

By the way, it was just a random team, not synced