A.net's awesome 1up builds

As you see, A.net clearly plays and understands their own game. Those builds are top notch!

Edited the picture for truth, with my crazy Paint skills.

I like how they all carry res

Lol, taking Light Of Dwayna into HoH is like screaming 'Kill me!' over all the
channels. Horrible skill, you're down 25 energy, your allies are at 25% health,
and have no energy.....


EPIC BUILD.

The official interview is located here:
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3144221

These builds are obviously quick drafts which have been cobbled together 5min before the interview. As mentioned in the iQ forum, it's obvious the format is not consistent (runes/skills/comments). I'm not even sure these builds were supposed to be good. May be the original request was unusual or original builds, and may be it's been published as good builds.

Yes it's sad to see the ANet tag on these builds, but I wouldn't say it's the best they can do.

I'm sure they know about awesome builds that no one has tried yet. But why would they tell us, the game isnt supposed to be about cookie-cutter builds.

oooooooooh...
I have Elementalist/Mesmer

"11+4 Healing Prayers 10+3 divine prayers ... boost divine prayers"

divine prayers eh?


The builds are decent in theory and fail in practice.

Yeah i love Monk builds with only 10 an + energy spells, they sure play the game ...

I'm unfamiliar with 1up.com, but I find the whole article rather... lacking, and unrealiable.
Specially fun the comment on korean guilds. I don't know what the experience of other players are, but upon facing several korean guilds on HoH I really can't say they have the upper hand here. They are just like any other opponent, sometimes good, sometimes incredibly stupid. Your mileage may vary.

That being said, i wouldn't recommend those builds to anyone. Hell I wouldn't recommend ANY build to anyone, go find your own by playing.

The R/W isn't too bad if you replace cyclone axe with say...swift chop or wild blow.

I tried it in arena and was doing a decent job. Best part is when I start blinding the warriors and kicking the crap out of them. Frenzy isn't too bad when you have over 500 health.

Pathetic. And to think ANet actually wasted the time to make that post up, and do the graphics, and all the flashy stuff. Any true GW player will see that, and know that ANet is blowin it out thier butts. Very poor form ANet. Very.

Oh, please. They're not going to give awesome builds on there. The point is to give less experienced players some ideas, not create FOTM builds.

However, I didn't fail to notice that even with their builds every single one has Resurrection Signet. One day, it won't be so overpowered and the other resurrection spells will actually be useful. One day, we might actually have 8 skill slots instead of 7 and a Resurrection Signet. One day. But probably not anytime soon.

I'm surprised they didn't post some Waymoe build in there. :P

the point to that was to get noobs to put a rez sig in every build i think...

You guys don't understand Shinsei. He was waiting for Anet to post an Uber build, and he got....this crap! It's outrageous! It's against the netiquette!

I can understand his disappointment and sarcasm. Ahhhh, I remember when Anet used to give away fantastic builds for the top 20 Guilds!!!! They were indeed good times!!!!!!1111!!!!!

LOL! The Necro/Monk is using a res sig. Couldn't even think to put on a ressurect, rebirth, or such!

Dwig

These build were provided as mere examples for various skill possibilities for each class combo.

Were you expecting ANet to just provide you the best build possible which everyone would use? Stop depending on others to play the game for you. Find good builds yourselves.

Thus Shinsei, your whole point is flawed.

if you want an uber build go make one. there are literally billions of combos on this game.

Contessa Xcutioner> Monk LFG Tombs - bringing Healing Spring FTW!! - INVITE ME! I have the /rank bunny emote!
Contessa Xcutioner> yes the one from monty python with sharp pointy teeth!


The other day I was afk in TA and came back with 3 blind invites waiting for me.

So I post this in the main channel:
Monk - 0 rank 0 fame - bringing mending and rebirth ftw - invite me!

I lost all 3 invite's in less than 5 seconds.

Another fun one is be in dragon's lair(or somewhere else impossible):
LFG - kill my doppleganger - fighting our way there - 5 slots left

And then I get people trying to come along and even more trying to tell me you can only solo the doppleganger. Which is much funnier because they aren't thinking about the fact that I'm ALREADY in dragon's lair.

Ahh good times.

I can't believe you're serious. My post was ironic sir, it's as clear as a shining sun in August.

I was expecting A.net to atleast provide some builds that work. I can make my own thanks. If A.net refuses to provide usable builds in their premade templates, the least they can do is provide some decent ones on a sidebar in some random article. Believe it or not, I'm actually thinking of the GW's. If it's going to take 2+ months for a newbie PvP'er to get to know what works and what doesn't, simply because A.net refuses to provide that new beginner with the tools and information he needs to jump into PvP, that certain PvP'er is going to be long gone and onto another game. News flash, PvPers dont necessarily have the best patience. What happened to "If you're a PvPer, this game's made for you!"? And no, PvE does not teach you PvP.

Back to the builds.... they hardly even work well for PvE. They look something similiar to the builds of those in the middle of PvE and haven't yet acquired the skills they want for their build. I really don't see their function, and I doubt they're posted simply as ideas, as their "ideas" (like light of dwayna in HoH) screw you over.

Change the title on that pic to:
"Looking for a good character build? Then don't look down."

If ANeT puts out "builds that work" for the inexperienced to use, how long do you think it will be before the experienced (assuming any success with the ANeT builds) are running counter-builds, thus taking away the success of the ANeT builds?

If ANet posts a great build or six, they're effectively neutering those builds.

How does that change anything?

It's not like inexperienced players aren't copying net builds anyhow. Likewise, people are going to know which net builds are going to be commonly used and will meta accordingly. The only thing different would be people copying their builds from guildwars.com instead of the forums or because someone in their Tombs group group said so. :P

oh cmon...r/w with frenzy...

rest seem solid, cept for healing breeze thing...

Can you name me a pvp MMO where you can go right now and buy, install and your good at it right from character creation? What MMO can you do this and beat the best pvp'ers on day one?

None. It's gonna take a couple months to get good at pvp in any game. People need to get over this fantasy and move on

And you want to make that time even longer by giving the newbeginners horrible advice? Please explain your logic.......

After scanning those "builds" I think they were cut and pasted out of the Prima Strat Guide. They appear about as worthwhile.

Also, the 1up.com is a blanket website that the magazine Computer Gaming World uses as their portal. CGW writers all play WoW, I doubt anyone really plays GW seriously there, thus the obvious ignorance about the Koreans - although the question MIGHT have been a plant by A-Net for CGW to ask to "boost" Korean interest/acknowledgement in the game, and reinforce the "world at war" aspect.

Shrug.

And I've seen this more than I can count - why does anyone make a character, say, a ranger/warrior, then basically run that character as a warrior? Why not simply just MAKE a warrior with ranger secondary? About the only build I've ever seen that remotely works by combining primary and secondary builds is the E/Mo simply because of the HUGE mana pool to spam 5 energy spells. But people insist that W/Mo can be primary healers, that Monks can go dashing into battle wielding a firey dragon sword, and rangers can deal out damage with a chaos axe.

I just don't get it. And articles like this won't make things any better.

I'm all for experimentation, but to me it's more that perhaps the player is either too lazy or too bored - they don't want to rebuild a character, or they are tired of spamming barrage.

That article was also in the last PCGamer when they were talking about GW2 coming out in first quarter 06.

Hey, Shinsei, if you need some fame just go IWAY You don't need to be looking for anet pre-made builds

If you ask me, some of that sounded better than "I'm using mending! I'm using Galarath Slash on I W A Y MAN! I'm using VIGOROUS SPIRIT!"

I don't really think the pre-made, ingame builds are that good either and I don't hear anyone complaining about those.

These are more like comp areana builds and not Tombs 120 fame a day builds.


Seriously, do you think the people who made all of the mathematical calculations for these skills, and how they all work in coherency, to at least some degree, with one another, don't know how to make builds that actually work?

Who cares if they don't provide you with premades. Dont be so lazy that to expect half the work will be done for you.

And yes those builds are mediocre at best, but half of you who knows what you are doing should know a some skill changes can make those builds work very well.

Anyway almost any build is useful. It just depends on the FoTM.

Hell Mending and Healing Hands are not the best monk skills but even a noob can win with it in random arenas several times in a row - yet no self respecting PvE player or GvG/HoH would dare bring those two.

So stop complaining about a freebie. Sheez.

only reason i can see a player making a ranger/warrior then using it only as a warrior is cause they prefer the look of the ranger character to the brick outhouse look of the warrior bodies ^^

it can be a reason, though. take my necro monk. only took necro as primary becasue of the (to my tastes) horrible hair of the monk girls, and lack of blue hair shade.
otherwise, i would have been a monk primary, but the character i was making needed blue hair, so it was ether necro or elementalist, and necromancy and healing are kinda connected, if you come form a ad&d background

Well, some of these builds are worth laughing at, but it's easy enough for someone to figure out what works better. Most of the skills listed are found early in the game, so it's clear that they are made for newbies.

What does irk me though, is when I join a group and someone calls me a noob for bringing a particular skill set. I have a blood and fire N/E that is the favorite of my 4 characters. If I tell a pick-up arena team that I'm bringing meteor shower, someone will surely leave. (I find meteor shower VERY effective shield against warriors, just stand in the middle of it and watch the warriors try and attack... VERY FUNNY! )

Some people just think that their build is the most "uber" and if you don't copy it, then you are a noob! What small minds....

Anyway, /rant off

Dwig

Oh my goodness: "take Light of Dwayna into HoH" - and they are serious when they said that! That is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!

Any player who uses that skill in HoH would forever be known as the laughingstock of the game. He would be the Leeroy Jenkins of Guild Wars. And the devs are encouraging that!

Where have you been? That's exactly the problem. The pre-mades are absolutely horrible, and hardly provide newbeginners with a fighting chance in PvP. If they're going to announce this game to be made for PvP'ers, then someone who had just bought the game should be able to enter their account, grab a build that works and actually have a chance at winning, rather than play for an hour or 2 before realizing that the build is amazingly subpar to anything else, then having to retreat to PvE to get what he needs.

Well excuse me for wanting to be able to suggest this game to my other competition-focused friends. Having the tag "RPG" on it, my friends often ask me when talking about getting it, "If you teach me some things, can I just jump into PvP straight off the bat and win enough to provide the faction I need to make what I want later on?". Knowing the reality of the game, I'm forced answer "No. The premades suck...you'll have to do some PvE before being able to compete remotely". They'll usually just say "Screw it, I'll stick to my RTS's then".

It's not particularly this article I'm upset about, but rather the lack of help provided to newbeginning PvP'ers. This is just a nice example of how little effort a.net puts into boosting the competition level amongst the newbs. It was brought to my attention in another thread that there indeed are many people being discouraged away from PvP, simply because they don't know how to get into the competition. Since the topic was on GvG'ing, I responded saying that a team can watch and observe what the others are using, but a newbeginner just has so much patience before what he's doing isn't fun anymore.

I had somewhat of an experiment a week ago or so. I have a pvp-focused friend who was slightly interested in GW. I hooked him up with a trial account. The first thing he did was jump into random arena with a premade DW healer and lose.....and lose....and lose....and lose (I was watching and he wasn't making too many critical player mistakes. The build was just bad compared to today's competition). After an hour he said the game sucked and was about to delete it. I then gave him access to my account and hooked him up with a decent boon prot monk, and he wouldn't get off it until I force logged him. He said it was a lot of fun, but he still wouldn't buy the game because he hates PvE and doesn't want to struggle himself through the faction with a shitty premade build before he can make a decent one.

I don't think (for example, and my own opinion) that I have any particular uber build - in fact I don't think there is such a thing as an "uber build" in this game. I have 5 completely different characters, and I constantly switch skills around with my primary professions just trying out different things, but none of them are the end all be all in GW. Any character can be defeated in arenas and tombs, so anyone claiming to have an uber build are simply blowhards.

I joined a PUG to complete the second 15 attrib quests (the sister one outside of copperhammer mines) with one of my characters. One of the warriors in the group claimed he was the ultimate player with the ultimate build - and died approximately 12.4 seconds after entering the Frozen Forest.

Was just too funny.

In my view calling the DW Monk build bad is being far too kind to it.


It boggles my mind how such a horribly-atrocious build ever got to be a PVP template in the first place. What the heck were the devs thinking when they allowed that?

*goes off to sneak Light of Dwayna into HoH*

Shinsei

I agree with you that the suggested premade sucks, but if you quit because your PREMADE sucks - then really... I think it would be save to say that a lot of things will make you quit GW anyway.

On the list of things that can make you quit horrendous premades should be NOT one of them.

Anyways, even the premade Paladin I have gone in a winning streak of 5 or more.

Complain about the premade sucks? Fine.
Quit because of it? Uhm no. Do something about it. It is a 'taster' and not the actual meal.

Arenas doesn't count. And yes, premades are a huge turnoff to new players. It's like making some players in an FPS not start out with a gun while others have every single one with full ammo. Shinsei has some good points. I didn't even really touch PvP until I'd finished PvE.

Yay for missing the point? I'm not talking about existing players here. I'm talking about potential players. You're not quiting if you haven't even begun. Many people aren't coming to this game simply because it lacks the instant competetive feeling, as I had just explained. Decent premades, ie. premades that work and have the potential of winning (don't care about any fotw, don't care about being the best), or atleast premades that can fit their role (deal damage/support/heal) efficiently, could be the deciding factor of whether or not A.net will attract new customers or not. Thanks for comparing premades to a 'taster', because that helps to prove my point. You want them to taste what PvP can be like. You're not doing this by providing them with tasters that don't work.