Guild of the week #2

http://guildwars.com/gameinfo/guilds...ts-of-war.html
for those who dont check the main site often

Congratulations SoW! They've always been a fun group to play with or against. And some very solid tips and advice there.

But....Freyas doesn't rate a profile? I claim anti-Guru bias! He only showed them the glory of GvG combat, after all... :P

Spirits of War (SoW) is a smallish guild made up of 40 members

if 40 is small-ish, my guild of 8 members is the size of an amoeba.

Congratulations, SoW.

-Arc

well compared to 10000 people last week I'd say 40 is small.

Anti-Guru Bias indeed.
Well, we can always make Freyas "Mod of the Week" .. even if that does sound like he's some kind of new-fangled way of playing Half-Life.

Congratulations, SoW. I can't read the interviews now, but I know it will be interesting .

Thanks guys.

I can't read the article though as my work blocks out the guild wars site.

Oh and the reason Freyas' profile wasn't shown was because of the coverage for his Assassin Build.

I kinda skipped through it until I saw "Use the random Arenas to test individual character builds." and stopped reading.

Why do I get the feeling they're going to pick guilds that have websites and over twenty members at least for the Guilds of the Week? o.o;

*wonders how they pick them anyway o.O;*

I don't know what the exact criteria is for being selected as "Guild of the Week", and even if I did - I wouldn't be able to tell anyone, but based on general observation: Guilds being selected are Guilds that are in the Alpha test. It seems like a logical conclusion that they might be doing features on groups that go above and beyond in their contributions, yes no?

The Arenas are infact great ways to test individual builds. It's not great for team builds obviously, but it gives you a chance to get comfortable with your skills, how to use them and when to use them before you bring them into the Tombs and GvG. When you're constantly playing against the top guilds you don't want to do you training when the battles count.

As Cain said, my profile wasn't in there due to coverage elsewhere in the article- it wouldn't be good for me to hog all the attention

RealDecoy- the random arenas are good for practicing your skills and testing combo's. The real test for a build happens in 8vs8, but as Cain pointed out, you don't want to be running with a character you're not familiar with when fighting skilled teams. The arenas can get you some practice with your character in a setting where you don't really care if you win or lose. So long as you know the difference between random 4vs4 pvp and 8vs8 pvp, you can get some good practice in for your build. Success in the arena doesn't mean that your build is good, but playing in the arena can get you accustomed to your skills and help you identify problems such as energy management concerns.

The assassin build we ran was fairly similar to the build I posted in an article here. Many of the skills have been changed since that point, leading to the build not really being viable now:the effect of Grenth's Balance has been capped to your maximum health, and rituals have a limited area of effect. However, the build was insanely fun to play, even many of the matches where we lost. The build was an attempt to show that you could be successful by thinking "outside of the box", and I think it worked quite well for that. Since then we've been running different builds with various themes- knockdown+aftershock, fragility+conditions, and similar sorts of ideas.

Thanks for the congrats anyhow, and it was definately an honor to be chosen for Guild of the Week!

Coolness, grats on being guild of the week.

well, like said above, there are some builds you want to try out before doing it in 8v8. the goal isnt to win, just to get a feeling of the build. some builds just may totally suck rocks, and losing becuase of it isnt something we like to do...

Something about testing a build in random 4v4 matches when that build is mainly going to be used in organized 8v8 doesn't make much sense to me, but what do I know? Maybe there is in fact something horribly wrong about just testing a build in the Tombs and losing a few matches that I don't know about.

Oh wait, maybe it's because you guys are so used to testing builds in the Arena in the alpha since there aren't enough players to fill the tombs. I get it now. Thanks.

I'll agree with what has been said about the arenas being a good place for preliminary tests of a character. I wouldn't be reading much into how *effective* a character is based upon some arena runs - arena PvP is far too random for that. But if you've just slapped together a new build, running it through the arena a couple times will give a good feel for things like:

- Energy management. If a character runs out of energy quickly, or has more than he knows what to do with, it'll jump out at you in a dry run.

- Ease of use. Just how easy is it to land an interrupt? Do skills queue up nicely or do you have to time things perfectly?

- Key skills. Play a build for ten minutes and the most important skills on the bar start to jump out, and those which are expendable sit there unused.

Plus you just get a general feeling for how a build plays - a bit of practice in a situation that doesn't matter. On top of that it's a great place to check if skills and combos actually work as advertised. Do skills stack as advertised? There's no better way to find out than to test it yourself, and PvP characters in the arena are the fastest route to a field testing.

I wouldn't take the arena seriously, or read anything into success or failure there - but for quick, dry runs and a bit of field testing, it can't be beat.

Peace,
-CxE

I don't want to push this thread off-topic, but it still makes little sense to me as to why it isn't better to just run the build in the tombs. All the "testing" you can do in the arenas you can do better in the tombs because it better simulates the conditions you'll be playing the build in. To me it would just seem like a matter of getting into a PUG and testing it out. What's the worst that can happen? The group calls you an idiot and kicks you out of the group? Assuming that this game is as popular as people say it will be finding another PUG to test your tweaked build shouldn't be too hard.

I see your point, Chuckles, but I tend to agree with Decoy. If you really want to test a build the best place is the Tombs. Just join up with a PUG and play a few rounds, make a run or so. You'll get a much better party, hopefully, than what the Arena spits out at you and you'll test it in a much more competitive and relevant situation to what you're likely to be facing with it.

That said, the Arena's cheap and easy. If you don't have a lot of time to spend, it's easy to just head there and get in a round or three in the time it takes you to get out of the lobby in the Tombs. I'm not saying that testing your builds there is a bad idea. Testing your builds is important, getting familiar with them is important. It's just that the Arena is a flawed place to get much more out of the testing that how your combos, timing, and management and all that works. You don't get a sense of whether or not it's effective and that's the imprtant thing when testing a build. Unless you're planning on playing in the Arena you just don't get much out of testing there.

Of course, the best way to test your build is along with the people who'll be using the rest of it. If you've got a GvG match set-up, get your team team together and head to the Tombs for a few rounds. Or fight a few GvGs against some weaker guilds lower on the ladder by challenging them. Whatever, you're a team and you need to practice as a team. Testing the individual bits leads you to think of yourself as an individual rather than as a team. Practicing together you get used to each other, used to the way your characters work together, used to communicating, used to your strengths and weaknesses and all the rest.

Personally, I always find the arena to be the best place to break in a build, simply because the quality of the opposition is lower. It gives you time to analyse things as you play, get used to the order you need to hit keybinds in (especially important for a time-crititical setup). You also have a much quicker match turnover, which is handy is you're makingtweaks as you go along. Both GvG and Tombs are too hectic for this, and generally a little too competitive as well. You break a character in in the arena so you can do the build justice, then see if it actually works in GvG.

Now if there was a guild member sparring grounds, this would be a non issue....