04 Jun 2006 at 15:02 - 3
In RA, you could either run some gimmick build and hope that your opponents are too foolish to counter it(or they brought gimmick builds themselves), or you could try the tested-and-true builds, and hope for a balanced team. While the first may gain you more faction(especially true for some gimmicks), the second is the one that will get you streaks more. It just depends what you want, really. Also, running a "balanced" build in RA will give you more experience when you go into organized PvP than running a gimmick.
(Note - a gimmick is a build that has glaring weaknesses and emphasizes on a particular strength. Alot of people in RA seem to rely on the enemy team not having a monk, like the elementalist turret build, the "super-damage-in-a-few-seconds-and-nothing-after" builds, builds that have tons of warrior counters and nothing else, etc).
I'd say, take a build from here, switch out one damage or support skill for more personal survivability, and try running that. After a few games, take the build further, see what works for you and what doesn't, experiment with skills, and tweak it accordingly. A *very* important point though: For example, just because a team of warriors stomps you in one round doesn't mean you should spec out completely in warrior hate. That's the main point in RA, it's random, so if you spec out in one particular direction, you will inevitably get a team that you will be completely worthless against.
Also, always consider either bringing *good* damage to your build, or some form of interruption/shutdown. I can't count the number of times that teams in RA have failed to kill me beacuse they had a bazillion of survival stances, but no real damage/shutdown/interruption to stop one monk...
