Costume Brawl, Balance and Strategy

They need to finally just give warriors frenzy. Tiger's stance is basically unplayable. Rage Ntouka final thrust sword is a great choice for a creative bar to play, but frenzy belongs in this format.

Got my r3 for HoM I am done with Costume Brawl. A week before it opened I would have said I'd be playing it till it closed, now I'm just glad it's all over.

Oh and at person posting it's possible to come from behind and win. Yes that can happen. 95% of the time it does not, and you just waste 10 minutes which could be used for getting the points you need to stop playing this arena. Just because you had one or two games where you made an epic comeback doesn't null out the fifty that you didn't.

I'm quite confused why there is a strategy thread when this year ANET seemed totally determined to eliminate any form of strategy. Congrats though, you did the job, costume brawl got watered down into c spacebar matches all day every day.

The thing with CB is that it's exclusive to Halloween and thus a good amount of players do it only to get a higher rank in the Gamer title. People leave because playing in the losing team hinders their title grind. IMO leavers should get penalized because they're making the match harder for 4 other players for their own selfish reason. Personally, I would like these minigames to be available more often, maybe then it wouldn't be such a title grind for so many ppl.

edit: typos

Yup, harder penalty for leavers would be good. Leavers don't deserve to play anything.

I hear to combat leavers in the snowball arena, the Test Krewe is suggesting that "red resign" will be coded into the arena.

I agree that Rangers with Pin Down is a little too powerful. Its the only profession that I feel is obviously too strong.

Rangers only have the only viable and spammable ranged AoE that dishes out high damage. While it's easy for mo+rt combo to keep one spiked person alive, two-three rangers provide enough AoE pressure to kill someone, sooner or later, while Sliding part of incoming attacks and Trolling the damage they get.
On top of that, their spike potential with Kindle Arrow + Forked Arrows is just too much.

Live examples:

I just still do not understand why some people keep going in 1/2 vs 4/5. I can tell them not to do it, I can beg them not to do it, I can scream to them, but nothing seems to help. Also, is looking at the map what shrines we already capped so hard? Most maps just come down to 'who has the BC shrine and who has the least retards wins'.

I do not fully agree on the part that rangers are OP. Pin down is easily dodgeable and their damage is really not that great. I can tank 2 rangers with my warrior if they are too stupid to interupt my signet. I recently fell in love with the warrior tbh, the spike with sever-gash-bulls-final is just pretty strong and I can win any 1vs1 fight with a warrior. (ok, you can't win against a smart ele).

^This is pretty much what's wrong with the randomization. If you'd still keep your team after a win you could teach people what they should do and in the worst case scenario (like, someone is being really stubborn) you could just leave your team and try again. Unless you like getting dishonorable, there is no way to do that in a single match. There's simply no way to get rid of stubborn folks. Naturally, this causes the game to degenerate in the way as is detailed above.

Yeah, Warriors are actually the strongest class in the Costume Brawl but it's impossible to capitalize on that because you can't rely on your Monks to keep Cripple off you. Considering the retards you have to deal with, the independence of the Ranger is what makes it the best class for the format.

Pin down is dodgeable when the ranger is using a flatbow from max range to try crip you. If the ranger knows what hes doing then you are more than likely going to be crippled. And the ranger has this crip, a speed boost which also acts as a blocking stance, a condition removal and a self heal. On top of this they have great damage with Forked Arrow and good aoe pressure with Incendiary, and they get a rupt! Honestly they are made for every situation.

If a ranger plays it right they win any 1v1 and can support the team in fights and capping better than most of the other classes.

You can also dodge Pin Down when the ranger is using another type of bow. The idea is that you see a ranger using pin down, you strave to the right and when he fires, he will fire it at a point to you right. After he fired, you will directly move to the left and the arrow misses.

I agree they are a good choice(savage ftw) and are well rounded, but real stronger than other classes? The point is that a good deal of decent to good players have chosen the ranger for their versatility, so you will see a lot of teams winning with rangers. That mostly means that the players are better and not the class itself.

Can't agree, Hob. I uploaded four screens, but had more situations of 4-5 rangers in my team. Most of them weren't 'good players', just spamming spikes on what i called until it went down. They were dying as well, they were standing in one spot fighting a warrior, they couldn't handle squishy ele and shot wall instead of interrupting... Yet that was enough.
There are good players that decided to roll ranger only for CB so they can get more Gamer points/ToTs, sure, but the majority of rangers out there are just tards and idiots - just as majority of CB players in general. It's perfectly reflected by the abilities of people playing the most OPed class this year - as it was visible last year with sins, but this time it's CTRL+SPACE spikefest rather than shadowstep-knocklock-kill.

Im playing Necro this year... adn I must say the build is pretty fun to play. Its overall relatively weak in 1v1 situations because of the Sac skills and the slow recharge of the rest, but its great at spreading conditions and punishing attacking players.

With the amount of retarded rangers its also relatively easy combating them... just hide behind a wall, watch them Cripshot the wall so that it wont run away from them and spam the life stealing and bleeding on him. If on the offchance one does manage to cripple me I just send it back and run behind to the next wall and watch the fun start from point a again.

Note, this does not of course work well against a ranger that knows what hes doing... but for that I try to run with the mob as much as possible because many seem to completely ignore me and try to kill the big Warrior next to me instead... in this case... wait till he gets bleeding, Deep wound, blind, burning and cripled on him... pull the conditions to you... send them to the other team with a big grin and a Ping for your team to know which poor soul has low HP, cant hit you and cant run away from your attacks.

The dervish update got pushed back for this?! And to think I actually supported Anet's decision on that...