Here's a challenge, make a GvG build that uses at least 4 warriors. I like warriors and love making warriors, so I thought I'd see what everyone else would come up with for an 8 man team using at least 4 warriors.
Note: We all know that warriors are easily countered, so don't post how dumb it is because of skill X and skill Y.
Build Challenge - Warrior Build
Vindexus
Tellani Artini
Must resist urge to divulge new guild build..
Yukito Kunisaki
most impressive...
JimTheMighty
I'm fairly new to this game, but I guess I shall give it a shot. Unfortunately, I believe this build would only really work well in a close-quarters annhilation match, but perhaps it can work in GvG (I haven't really played much GvG, so I don't know how closely it ends up resembling an all-out slugfest).
The idea is basically to keep up a Quickenning Zephyr and spam Blackout on everyone. When matched in even numbers and kept within range of the Zephyr, you can keep Blackout up on their whole party and win by virtue of the fact that you have 5 relevant characters while they have 2 or 3. Again, I'm pretty new to this game and haven't played in many arranged teams / read many forums, so I don't know if this has been done to death or it is not viable for some reason, but it seems like a solid concept to me.
The first 3 characters are Me/R, who's job is to keep up Quickening Zephyrs and to hold Blackout on anyone with an interrupt (they will have 14 ranks in domination so that their Blackouts last 7 seconds--they need to hold back the interrupt because if a Blackout is interrupted things can fall apart pretty quickly).
Domination Magic: 11 + 3
Inspiration Magic: 7 + 3
Fast Casting: 5 + 3
Wilderness Survival: 11
Abilities:
Quickenning Zephyr
Physical Resistance
Leech Signet (In case something goes wrong)
Mantra of Concentration
Drain Enchantment/Shatter Hex/Power Leak
Rez Signet
Energy Drain {E}
Blackout
Shatter Hex, Drain Enchantment, and Leech Signet are designed to minimize the damages caused by whatever enchantments the opposition came into battle with and to hopefully alleviate the potential damages of any spells that got through the lock (ie somoene had to pause to cast a rez). I believe that with 8 ranks in fast casting you can cast Energy Drain or Channeling and still get in the next Blackout before the last one ends, but if this isn't the case because of aftercast someone let me know (I could allocate some more points to Fast Casting--and yes I am aware that Blackout doesn't fast-cast).
The fourth member is a monk. Though the monk can only cast 1 spell every 7 seconds, he does not have to contend with anything other than a standard focus fire, so against most parties he should be able to keep up the healing that is needed, especially since everyone has Physical Resistence. He is also a Mesmer / Monk, and looks very much the same as the last character.
Domination Magic: 11 + 3
Fast Casting: 5 + 3
Inspiration Magic: 7 + 3
Healing Prayers: 11
Abilities:
Orison of Healing
Healing Breeze
Ressurect
Physical Resistance
Power Leak
Channelling
Energy Drain
Blackout
The monk will keep blackout on an elementalist in a standard party, or a 4th disrupter if there is one. I think his role requires no elaboration (note that again I am making the assumption that you can cast your healing / energy drain in the gap between Blackouts)
The remaining 4 members of the party are W/Me. It is their job to ensure that the game ends relatively quickly once the lock is set up. I am unsure if these warriors really belong in this party, but since this is after all the point of the excercise I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Their blackouts will only last 6 seconds (meaning that they will have to hit blackout the instant that it expires) and for this reason they should cover the least dangerous targets--namely warriors and monks.
Strength: 10 + 3
Hammer Mastery: 10 + 3 (Hammers because I believe they do the most damage in a no-skill slugfest)
Domination Magic: 11
Abilities:
Blackout
Physical Resistance (to be cast before the fighting begins--or after a rez signet)
Rez Signet
Leech Signet (after rez signet or in case something goes wrong)
Backbreaker
Heavy Blow
Crushing Blow
Staggering Blow
Again, just keep up blackout and deal as much damage as possible. Only the first 4 abilities should be relevant, but if you kill a couple members of their party and they manage to take down your Zephyrs and break the lock, if victory is possible I figured that keeping them on the ground just long enough to get in a good amount of damage (and keeping Blackout on the monks) might win it.
General Notes:
If a blackout isn't up in time (unfortunately this will probably happen a lot) if the party is synced up roughly (but not exactly) their should be a leech signet or Power Leak ready to keep things under control.
Hopefully without offensive skills they should have a hard time dealing with 3 Zephyrs. If they manage to take 1 of them down, another one should be back up right away though. If they aren't staying up (perhaps the opposition has more warriors / rangers than we'd hope) the rangers can effectively spam (1 / 10 seconds) them and make their life really hard. When it is necessary for one of the rangers to recast a Zephyr, first put up a Mantra of Concentration to ensure that you won't miss it. Also, targets should be shuffled to minimize damage (targets should also be shuffled when someone needs a rez--2 opponents will have to be left open unfortunately :\ though only for 3 seconds if the monk takes the rez).
G v G Game Plan:
Clearly, your opponent is not just going to sit within range of the Zephyrs and get wailed upon. The general plan of this build is to establish control of the middle and max out your morale bonus. Spirits can then be laid down slowly to approach the other guild hall until you can effectively force them to fight you directly, hopefully being able to max them out at their 60% dp. At this point you have almost undoubtedly won, even if several members of their party survive.
Obviously it won't be so simple in practice. A large number of serious problems may arise when their party is capable of moving out of the spirit's range (or rather, out of your range when you stand at the end of the spirit's range). Since setting up another spirit takes a significant amount of time and is quite dangerous, and since you do not have the ground control of most parties with 3 rangers, this will require a lot of creative and very well coordinated playing on the part of this party. The warriors with physical resistance turned on should be able to stand their ground extremely well, and so can tail a runner as far as need be, keeping blackout on them most of the time they aren't knocked down (if you have the adrenaline you can actually keep them knocked down/blacked out constantly).
And that's it. I haven't included item choices because, to be quite frank, I am not familiar with many of the accessories available to high-level characters. The primary concern with the warrior is getting up enough mana to cast blackout every 6 seconds. I do not know if there is some item to increase the energy regeneration of a warrior or some equivalent of a zealous bowstring, but the choice of hammer is not essential and a change would be welcome to accomodate the strain on your energy base.
The idea is basically to keep up a Quickenning Zephyr and spam Blackout on everyone. When matched in even numbers and kept within range of the Zephyr, you can keep Blackout up on their whole party and win by virtue of the fact that you have 5 relevant characters while they have 2 or 3. Again, I'm pretty new to this game and haven't played in many arranged teams / read many forums, so I don't know if this has been done to death or it is not viable for some reason, but it seems like a solid concept to me.
The first 3 characters are Me/R, who's job is to keep up Quickening Zephyrs and to hold Blackout on anyone with an interrupt (they will have 14 ranks in domination so that their Blackouts last 7 seconds--they need to hold back the interrupt because if a Blackout is interrupted things can fall apart pretty quickly).
Domination Magic: 11 + 3
Inspiration Magic: 7 + 3
Fast Casting: 5 + 3
Wilderness Survival: 11
Abilities:
Quickenning Zephyr
Physical Resistance
Leech Signet (In case something goes wrong)
Mantra of Concentration
Drain Enchantment/Shatter Hex/Power Leak
Rez Signet
Energy Drain {E}
Blackout
Shatter Hex, Drain Enchantment, and Leech Signet are designed to minimize the damages caused by whatever enchantments the opposition came into battle with and to hopefully alleviate the potential damages of any spells that got through the lock (ie somoene had to pause to cast a rez). I believe that with 8 ranks in fast casting you can cast Energy Drain or Channeling and still get in the next Blackout before the last one ends, but if this isn't the case because of aftercast someone let me know (I could allocate some more points to Fast Casting--and yes I am aware that Blackout doesn't fast-cast).
The fourth member is a monk. Though the monk can only cast 1 spell every 7 seconds, he does not have to contend with anything other than a standard focus fire, so against most parties he should be able to keep up the healing that is needed, especially since everyone has Physical Resistence. He is also a Mesmer / Monk, and looks very much the same as the last character.
Domination Magic: 11 + 3
Fast Casting: 5 + 3
Inspiration Magic: 7 + 3
Healing Prayers: 11
Abilities:
Orison of Healing
Healing Breeze
Ressurect
Physical Resistance
Power Leak
Channelling
Energy Drain
Blackout
The monk will keep blackout on an elementalist in a standard party, or a 4th disrupter if there is one. I think his role requires no elaboration (note that again I am making the assumption that you can cast your healing / energy drain in the gap between Blackouts)
The remaining 4 members of the party are W/Me. It is their job to ensure that the game ends relatively quickly once the lock is set up. I am unsure if these warriors really belong in this party, but since this is after all the point of the excercise I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Their blackouts will only last 6 seconds (meaning that they will have to hit blackout the instant that it expires) and for this reason they should cover the least dangerous targets--namely warriors and monks.
Strength: 10 + 3
Hammer Mastery: 10 + 3 (Hammers because I believe they do the most damage in a no-skill slugfest)
Domination Magic: 11
Abilities:
Blackout
Physical Resistance (to be cast before the fighting begins--or after a rez signet)
Rez Signet
Leech Signet (after rez signet or in case something goes wrong)
Backbreaker
Heavy Blow
Crushing Blow
Staggering Blow
Again, just keep up blackout and deal as much damage as possible. Only the first 4 abilities should be relevant, but if you kill a couple members of their party and they manage to take down your Zephyrs and break the lock, if victory is possible I figured that keeping them on the ground just long enough to get in a good amount of damage (and keeping Blackout on the monks) might win it.
General Notes:
If a blackout isn't up in time (unfortunately this will probably happen a lot) if the party is synced up roughly (but not exactly) their should be a leech signet or Power Leak ready to keep things under control.
Hopefully without offensive skills they should have a hard time dealing with 3 Zephyrs. If they manage to take 1 of them down, another one should be back up right away though. If they aren't staying up (perhaps the opposition has more warriors / rangers than we'd hope) the rangers can effectively spam (1 / 10 seconds) them and make their life really hard. When it is necessary for one of the rangers to recast a Zephyr, first put up a Mantra of Concentration to ensure that you won't miss it. Also, targets should be shuffled to minimize damage (targets should also be shuffled when someone needs a rez--2 opponents will have to be left open unfortunately :\ though only for 3 seconds if the monk takes the rez).
G v G Game Plan:
Clearly, your opponent is not just going to sit within range of the Zephyrs and get wailed upon. The general plan of this build is to establish control of the middle and max out your morale bonus. Spirits can then be laid down slowly to approach the other guild hall until you can effectively force them to fight you directly, hopefully being able to max them out at their 60% dp. At this point you have almost undoubtedly won, even if several members of their party survive.
Obviously it won't be so simple in practice. A large number of serious problems may arise when their party is capable of moving out of the spirit's range (or rather, out of your range when you stand at the end of the spirit's range). Since setting up another spirit takes a significant amount of time and is quite dangerous, and since you do not have the ground control of most parties with 3 rangers, this will require a lot of creative and very well coordinated playing on the part of this party. The warriors with physical resistance turned on should be able to stand their ground extremely well, and so can tail a runner as far as need be, keeping blackout on them most of the time they aren't knocked down (if you have the adrenaline you can actually keep them knocked down/blacked out constantly).
And that's it. I haven't included item choices because, to be quite frank, I am not familiar with many of the accessories available to high-level characters. The primary concern with the warrior is getting up enough mana to cast blackout every 6 seconds. I do not know if there is some item to increase the energy regeneration of a warrior or some equivalent of a zealous bowstring, but the choice of hammer is not essential and a change would be welcome to accomodate the strain on your energy base.
Tigris Of Gaul
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellani Artini
Must resist urge to divulge new guild build..
Yeah, I'm a little hesitant to say what our build is, but I can give a basic outline.
1. W/N
2. W/N
3. W/Mo
4. W/E
5. R/Mo
6. Mo/E
7. Mo/E
8. Me/N
Two monks on the other team aren't going to have a very fun time. Ward Against Melee would've destroyed this build in it's first version, but with some tweaks it won't be a problem. I don't want to give out the skills, which doesn't go with the purpose of your thread, but it is a four warrior build that is fun to play and a pleasant break from the Air elementalists and the Spirit builds.
1. W/N
2. W/N
3. W/Mo
4. W/E
5. R/Mo
6. Mo/E
7. Mo/E
8. Me/N
Two monks on the other team aren't going to have a very fun time. Ward Against Melee would've destroyed this build in it's first version, but with some tweaks it won't be a problem. I don't want to give out the skills, which doesn't go with the purpose of your thread, but it is a four warrior build that is fun to play and a pleasant break from the Air elementalists and the Spirit builds.
UberRusty
This might be a bit off-topic, but this is what I did in Tombs:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../GWAllWMo1.jpg
The W/Mos there weren't very good (apart from top three, I know them personally). But if everyone HAD used the build I PM'd to them, we would have been nearly invincible (from my experience) My W/Mo has survived against 8 people constantly hitting me for around 3 -4 minutes before I pressed a wrong skill and died. Now obviously seeing a party of meatshields IS extremely entertaining, but it's not too bad either. The only weakness I can think of is Soothing Images. (No, conditions don't affect us. :P)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../GWAllWMo1.jpg
The W/Mos there weren't very good (apart from top three, I know them personally). But if everyone HAD used the build I PM'd to them, we would have been nearly invincible (from my experience) My W/Mo has survived against 8 people constantly hitting me for around 3 -4 minutes before I pressed a wrong skill and died. Now obviously seeing a party of meatshields IS extremely entertaining, but it's not too bad either. The only weakness I can think of is Soothing Images. (No, conditions don't affect us. :P)