How my casual team held HoH without Uber characters

Premise: I don't want to brag about my skills. I'm a casual gamer who has to learn a whole lot of tricks, I don't play 10 hours a day, I don't farm too often. I'm looking for a guild who plays some serious PvP but I'm no superman.

My original build is a W/E, a very adaptable char to me...I go for air+hammer when I want to play the anti-caster, I choose fire when I want my DPS to raise, and earth when I want to tank. Don't like water.

The typical whiner (there are too many these days) usually states "hey, if you don't grind like a mad and don't have all the sup runes you won't be competitive, cause even the slightest advantage multiplied by 8 can make a big difference".

False.

No one denies that having superior runes and uber items help, obviously, but it's not necessary all the time, and not strictly required to be competitive at a good level. Here's the demonstration.

Two days ago I tried a premade PvP healing monk. Just had a Major Vigor on him, nothing else, and I never played a monk before. After, say, 8 hours of play (split into two days obviously), I get to the Hall of Heroes, but my party gets wiped out immediately. None of my party members were in Guilds with ranks in ladder. We didn't use Ventrilo, but decided before fighting which skills to choose, who called targets and a bit of strategy. I didn't know anyone of those guys.

Today I played in the Hall of Heroes again...I didn't know anyone in the grp, we didn't have Vent. This time three of the players were in ranked Guilds, but only one was in a G between 200th and 300th, another in a G between 400th and 500th, and the last one way under 600th. The others were un-ranked, and mine was a simple premade char (besides, I've little experience as a monk but I think I play decently).
The most hilarious thing, though, is that one of us left right before the HoH, so that...tadaaahhh! The eighth member was an Archer Henchman. I didn't even think we could get close to a victory, since our opponents were the Koreans H E L L, a Guild ranked 83 in the ladder (just to make you understand what this mean, the well known and greatly skilled Idiot Savants are ranked 296th with an impressive record of 5 wins and no losses).

I enjoyed the fight, we could stand our positions and understand each other's needs even though we couldn't communicate through Vent. We played well as a whole and didn't make many mistakes.

Guess what? We won.

With a team like that, with no Vent, with one henchman, we shouldn't have, but teamplay and clever strategies made the difference.
I won't say my in-game character nick, I won't say the name of the other players because I don't know them and it wouldn't be fair. Besides, as I said, I don't want to brag about a victory in the HoH, I'm just glad to post this to show all the skeptics that teamplay, intelligence and skill ARE the core of this game.

Since skeptics by definition might not believe what I'm saying, well, this is my first victory in the HoH and thus I took a load of scrshots, so everything is documented. If you don't believe me, PM is the way...you'll have all the information you need to blush.

My "Not Uber Team" was composed by:

Mo/E
W/Mo
E/Mo
E/Mo
W/Mo
Mo/Me
Mo/E (me, aka the premade monk)
Archer Henchman

A team of 4 people and 4 henchman could take the hall at the right hour.

utterly devoid.

Anyone can get to the HoH with lucky timing, if you end your pvp fight right when the HoH is done you will be jumped to it.

Also HoH map is a threeway map where the middle can be doubleteamed a noob team can win it by luck quite often. Next 83rd ranked guild means nothing.

Next, How long did you hold it? Because that is the only thing that means anything.

Also your point is a good example of tombs and the games low competition atm.

Congrats of the HoH win. As for comparing guilds based on the ladder, the ladder is completely out of whack right now, seeing as most of the top guilds aren't GvG'ing. They are all grinding to get decent stuff, then they will start GvG'ing with their real builds. This is why Fianna isn't on the ladder as well. The ones that are on the ladder decided to go on the ladder so they could challenge KOR at e3.


There definately are opportunities to beat the HoH, you just have to get in when all of the good guilds aren't up. Like.... Noon GMT.

Winning HoH doesn't nessecarily take skill depending on the situation. Was it 1v1? Were they trying something new? All these factors come into play. I've held HoH with henchies before, but that doesn't mean henchies are viable for PVP. It's novelty, with picking on noob groups or experimental groups.

I've read the same sentence in dozens of posts: "simple PUGs have little or no chance to get to the HoH, guilds or PUGs formed by famous guild members have". We were less than a simple PUG, we had one premade and an Archer Henchman. Not a Healer Henchman, an Archer. That was grotesque.

And no, it was afternoon GMT. It happened in the hours when Korea holds the HoH 90% of the times, US gets it some hours later. I live in Europe and play on american servers, so that I have to usually wait for the night to travel to the UW/FOW.

There wasn't little competition. We sweated like crazy to get to the HoH, we sweated like crazy to beat those H E L L guys. Eventually, we did it.

As a PUG, your perspective is skewed and what you were up against actually was little competition. If it had been worthwhile, you'd have died (faster than you did already).

And that that you keep trying to make this into some glorious Braveheart epic when in fact holding HoH for one round is laughable only speaks further to your lack of experience.

Long story short, don't post how the game might actually play as advertised in a certain situation which may equate to fun. Since there have been a thousand other situations where this probably would not have worked because of this odd reason and this rarely used but incredibly specific build because everybody MUST win all the time or its not worth having fun. The Koreans must be defeated and the Europeans have to shine our shoes.

For God's sake the guy had fun with a sub-par non-optimized pug that won and he was pointing out that it is possible. I know all of the "this game sucks because of this reason" crowd knows it's possible but you fruitloops only post about the flaws in the game. One guy makes a post with a POSITIVE light for those of us that haven't been fortunate enough and all you can say is you suck, you got lucky or this is so uncommon its not worth mentioning. I for one thank this average joe for taking the time to post his positive experience since it is all too common to only make a post when you dislike something and feel like you can't do jack about it. The rest of us fix it or move on and enjoy the game! /dismount soap box.

Congrats, but there are some important questions like how long did you hold it for? How often do you manage to get to the HoH with such a team? It's a good achievement and you organised yourselves well. I hope this inspires more casual teams to put in that extra effort and discuss what everyone is going to do and when etc. More organisation and better communication (even without voice) can make a BIG difference.

Yes, of course. H E L L wanted to try something different, a strategy called "get defeated by a common PUG to make it seem a glorious victory".

Said by someone who wished us stomach cancer in a previous post and stated that using the Alt+F4 trick is a good strategy to make noobs disconnect while bragging about his Uber Guild, well, this comment loses a bit of credibility. I'm surprised you're not banned yet.

Absolutely. I just posted my positive experience, and how I had fun at a pretty decent competitive level without getting mad and playing 10 hours a day. To win often and hold the HoH several times probably requires some more grinding and a lot of experience, but I'm not even denying that.

Well that surprises me a little, I've had very, very little success with random groups. I'd say the average random group in the tomb has a extremely high change of havning brand new players and about a 90% chance of 1 or more leaving within 1 match. Just last night we had like 5 warriors and no healers
I'm in a guild now so I am not really expecting much competition with random groups (although a few groups have been good) the teamwork required is extremely high. I keep hoping I get a good group but then I think of the possibility I am the limiting factor.

Well - I'm just posting to say congrats, and I'm glad to hear you didn't need TS/Vent, a guild, etc.. to hold the HoH. Definitely an inspiration to those Casual PvP players that thought that was impossible to do.

Do you really consider 4 hours a day casual? I play around 2 hours a day and I consider myself more than casual...

Maybe they were trying something different, and it didn't work. It must not have been very good, in any case.

Uh-huh. Did you have an actual rebuttal, or do you plan to just going to drag stuff from other debates in here until everyone forgets what you was being discussed?

Congratulations, awesome run.

Not really much compared with the several hour win streaks a fully farmed LuLu team can do .

Everyone is a sub-monk or primary monk class. Everyone is self-sufficient in healing. I am not surprised at the win.

Lmao. The possibility we won just because we played it well scares you as hell. Well maybe H E L L let us win cause they thought we were nice guys. It always happens with Koreans, doesn't it.

Oh no, PUGs are evolving. Run for the hills.

And you're missing my point. If you had played it well, you would have lasted longer than a single round.

First of all congralutations on your win. It's always nice to hear of real PUG's getting to the hall and holding it (as long as they didn't take it from us hehe )

Although I truly appreciate your kind words for our guild, guild rankings on the ladder at this point really mean nothing. You should never assume defeat or victory just because the guild you're playing against is or isn't ranked. There are many many good guilds out there with bad ladder rankings because they choose not to participate in GvG. In fact, the only reason iQ even has 5 wins is because at one point we wanted to participate in the E3 beat the devs competition which required your guild to be ranked in the top 100. We played the 5 matches to get in the top 100, weren't able to play in the competition and haven't GvGed since.

Again congrats on your win. I hope you can repeat


That's not necessarily true. There are many factors in the hall which you can't control which can result in loosing the hall after winning it. It doesn't necessarily mean you played poorly. Also, a build can be stacked in offense making taking the hall easy but have poor defense, making keeping the hall close to impossible (unless you get lucky).

Also, since the title of the post is "How my casual team held HoH..." maybe you could give some tips on what you did to win. Or even simpler just say what you felt your team did to be successful. I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated by all the PvP newcomers out there looking for a taste of success in tombs.

I run with starter armor as level 12 trough the deserts.
None of my characters is fully infused.
I rarely have any runes on anything.

Im just a Mesmer that kills a lot of elementarists and monks, their runes cost 5-10 times as much as mine, and I dont use them.

When i search a team with the agrument that brainpower is more important than the Level of a character, the equipment or the ammount of healers and Air-eles in the team, i get soooo insulted.

Final exams probalby took a toll for player base.

Hey Jasper, how about you be happy for the guy and not spout stupid comments saying, "oh if you were any good you would hold it for like 5 billion times!!1!!!"

I am happy for him for having that experience. Maybe you will get into a guild that does PvP a lot and will hold it many times over.

The point is not to rain on his parade, rather make him realize that luck had alot to do with his victory, and that advertising PUGs winning HoH if most of the competitive teams come back would be silly. But then again, if this doesn't get any better, henchmen are going to reign supreme in tombs. The competition is simply lacking.

I was going to say "Don't rain on his parade" but then I realised, if you're going to start a thread about yourself, then be prepared to take all the critisism...

If you want to interact with any people, be prepared to take criticism

... I can't work out whether you're "For" or "Against" my post, M... wtf is with that smilie!?

For your post... not sure about the smilie myself...

Um, okay to keep within the rules of this forum I aint gonna make a post asking what you mean by that last post, so I'll ingrain it into a post about guild wars.

Ahem.. *clears throat*

I *I'm* have never *confused* been to *by your* the *last post* Hall of Heros

Sorry, it's late (at night)

I meant I agree with you post (whichever my other post was referring to), and I have no clue how that smilie snuck in there.

Grats to the OP. It ain't easy for a true PUG to take the HoH.

Congrats for winning the HoH.

And people should never underestimate PuGs when you see one on the HoH. Sure they may just get lucky and got there on their second battle or whatever, but more often than not they may actually be a good team that earned their way there. Our guild made this mistake a while back. It was a 3-way fight between us (holding the HoH), a high ranked guild in the BWE, and a PuG. We figured that the other guild was a much bigger threat than the PuG so we plan to engage them first. So all of us waited until the 2 min mark and then we and the other guild proceeded to wipe each other out while this PuG stay in the back and managed to kill our ghost and sneak in theirs in the last 15 second. We managed to kill their ghost but ours (and the other guild's too) had been dead so they won. LoL.

congrats, although its expected with that Mo heavy party...

What I notice about that team, Not a single "support" class. Monks, warriors, and elementalists only for the HOH, eh?

Congrats on the win.

Still, there's nothing to argue about really. You can't draw a conclusion, either negative or positive, about the effectiveness of PUGs to take and hold HoH based on 1 win by a PUG. All it shows is that is possible to win HoH with a PUG, but not that everyone can do it or that it was won because of skill and not luck or vice versa.

This thread is not about myself, my only objective is to show people what happens if they find a good group and play cleverly as a team. I didn't boost my skills, I even said that I'm far from experienced as a monk.

Surprisingly, right after I posted this thread, I found another very good PUG. Sheer luck? Maybe. No ranked Guilds whatsoever in our party, but this time we had ventrilo and discussed about our skills for about 30-40 minutes. When we entered the Tomb, expectations were high. Too bad we were beaten in the first two matches because of some issues with our skill combos. We changed our builds a little bit and tried again. We made our way to the HoH taking out many good PUGs and a couple of high ranked Guilds. Needless to say, I was surprised again. We eventually entered the HoH and took it from Koreans. Then we held it. We held it 5 times in a row, against some of the well known ranked Guilds (mostly ranked 1-100). Apparently, our build worked (notice: two of us had premade chars ). In the end, we were beaten by the Treacherous Empire, 6th in the ladder and absolutely astonishing in play. They were nearly perfect. We could hold our ground but eventually got beaten: one could distinguish the difference in perfect timing (and pure skill) between us and then. They really moved as a whole: I don't know if their build was superior to ours on papers...what I know is that they were on another planet for team-play.

I've obviously taken a load of screenshots again in case annoying and negative people (sooo many wander around these forums, posting things like "hey, nothing great, my Uber Guild can hold it for 8 hours in a row with Henchies") don't believe me. I'm now totally convinced PUGs can hold the HoH if well organized, not only against simple parties but also against pro Guilds in some cases.

Thank you, it's a pleasure to receive congratulations from someone competent in PvP.

I don't think I could teach anyone anything, so I'm not in the position to give hints or suggest strategies. Besides, if I were so skilled to actually be in that position, then I wouldn't.
I'll just remark the general good things to do, in my humble and not-to-be-taken-as-gold opinion.As I said above, discussing about what skills to choose and possible combos, or about how to move, was not wasted time to me. We waited more than 30 minutes before entering the Tombs, but it was definitely worth it. While we played, we knew perfectly when we had to body-block them or to create a little bottleneck to make the opposing party less effective. We were constantly informed of each other's conditions and level of mana/hp. We timed the attacks and fell back to recharge and regroup everytime a strategy wasn't successful. We didn't make major mistakes and could exploit our builds, of that I'm pretty sure.

It felt like playing chess.

I hope this can help well built PUGs not to lose hope.

Glad to hear you were able to win with a PUG! The naysayers are just scared that there may be non-guild competition out there
Now I may actually try out the HoH (if I ever find it, that is....)

Taphoo

You exhibit Hubris.

Why do you assume that he faced no competition? Is the guild he said they defeated no good?

Or do you simply build yourself up by tearing others down?

No, you are missing the point... they WON.

That is what the original poster said... he was just making the point that it IS possible.

Damn get off your high and mighty horse you pompus piece of .....

woot!!

Well said.