Thursday 20 December 2012

A few tips for the new SPvP players around

Here is a three step guide to building your SPvP skills for the newer players.

STAGE 1

  • Stomping
  • Rezzing
  • CC
  • Communication

These are SO important. You need to learn to analyse the situation, but these things are the most important in Tournament PvP. If someone is down and an enemy is too, get the turnaround by stomping the enemy. If the enemy is stomping our player first, CC him, then deal with the situation by either rezzing our player or using stability to stomp theirs. This brings me on to the next point. If you can, bring some CC, bring some Stability. I roll with a Stun on one weapon set and an AoE knockdown on the other. One of these will ALWAYS be up as a get out of jail card for my team if someone is being stomped. My utility 7 is Stability, and although I don't expect everyone to have it on my team, at least two need it. Your Bunker Guardian really comes into their own when they have stability to Stomp and a cooldown or two to help Rez.

The communication comes into this part of things when you are ABOUT to go down. You will never hear me going under 20% health without saying "I'm about to go down" and moving towards someone. You will never hear someone saying "I'm about to go down" without my team's bunker Guardian moving towards them ready to pop a protective cooldown and get them up. This is good play. Think about it and practice it.

STAGE 2
  • Targetting
  • Fighting on point
  • Communication

When you feel like you have mastered the awareness of the downed state, the next step is how to get people there, and more importantly how to get them downed whilst still holding the point. Targetting is self explanatory. Focus fire is needed to get anywhere. An example is one player immobilizing whilst the main DPS unleashes cooldowns. I've done this a few times with individuals on my team and the targeted guy is down in 3 seconds.

As well as this new players need to get better at fighting on points. If you are in a 1v1 or even a 2v2 you need to focus on keeping the point, just in case you lose the fight. This means watching out for engineer big bombs, using your CC to not get knocked off the point and most importantly NEVER get caught fighting out in the middle of nowhere.

Communication, again. Team mates want to hear people telling them numbers of enemy, class of enemy, if you can take them 1v1 (if not then say so and a member of your team should come help! don't be embarrassed about it.), when you're dropping your big cooldowns, when you're dropping combo fields and MOST importantly when you are using hard CC on the target.

STAGE 3

  • Theorycrafting
  • Maps
  • Tactics
  • Communication (is anyone noticing a theme here?)

This is the last stage. Once you have got everything above nailed down. Do not try and do this all at once. This is the distillation of a number of posts I made to my guild over the course of 6 weeks or so from launch. It is like building a house. Get the foundation right, and then build it tall.

Get to know your class. I don't mean what you think I mean. Obviously you all know your class and by this point will have played it a fair bit. What I mean is know it in SPvP. Read blogs, look at builds, try them out. See what other people are finding success with in Tournaments and try it yourself. Work out if something you haven't tried before might be amazingly useful to the team, broaden your skillset.

Maps and Tactics are quite similar. Firstly, know the map from your own point of view. Can you break LoS on Keep? Can you jump up to Clocktower using the houses on Khylo? Do you know the best place to stand to watch Graveyard and Quarry on Foefire? etc etc. The Tactics side of things is watching videos online, playing games, making mental notes of things that worked against you well.

Communication...... Talk to your team. Get practices going. Share build ideas. Create builds WITH each other to get real synergy. If someone is struggling with a build, spend 30 minutes with them on mumble talking to them and helping them out.

Have a go at getting these nailed down step by step and it will really help you get out of hotjoin and find a good Tournament PvP team!

Wednesday 19 December 2012

December 15th Patch Notes

This is just how the patch notes effect a warrior focused on PvP.

  • Whirling Strike: This skill is now a whirl finisher.
  • Tsunami Slash: This skill is now a whirl finisher.
  • Harpoon Pull: This skill is now a projectile finisher.

    Don't think the above is relevant for PvP. Maybe hot-join but frankly who wants to play that!
  • Fear Me: Updated the tooltip to correctly state the range of the skill.
    Useful to know the range. That's about it.
  • Hammer Shock: This skill can now be used while moving.
    Pretty awesome change as this can now be used better to chase people and also aim it properly.
  • Fast Hands: Fixed an issue where the trait did not affect the first weapon swap.
    This was an incredibly annoying bug and I'm glad it's fixed as my double double build needs it!
  • Desperate Power: Now deals 20% extra damage instead of 10%.
    I've never personally used this, but know people that swear by it. Will be nice if you use frenzy/endure pain when you drop that low to have a damage boost off madness.
  • Last Stand: This now properly breaks stun when it triggers.
    Finally. Think that's all that needs to be said. This bug has been a pain in the arse for ages. Makes a good trait a great trait as it always should have been!
  • Furious Reaction: Now triggers at 10% damage instead of 20 and also gives 10 seconds of vigor along with the 10 seconds of fury.
    Ten percent health is a bit late, and the 10 seconds of vigor doesn't really balance this loss out. Got a lot of other ways to get Fury on the warrior so best left alone.
  • Berserker’s Might: Decreased might stacks required from six to five.
    Stacking might has never been a problem really. However, this means that the Versatile Power + Sigil of Battle will pretty much trigger this bad boy. Nice.
  • Increased the velocity of arrows fired from Longbow skills by 30%.
    Some much needed love for a weapon that is essentially useless in PvP.
  • Triple Chop: Changed the timing so that players can no longer cancel their own skill combo accidentally.
    I've never had this problem, but the forums are alive with the sound (of music?) of people bitching about this, so well done ANet for listening and sorting.
  • Healing Surge: Healing surge now heals based on current adrenaline level, and then grants a full bar of adrenaline.
    Good buff to this underused heal. Almost everyone I talk to goes for Mending. I go for the Signet at the moment because I'm a loose cannon.... but this is my favorite heal as I am a fan of 100% adrenaline builds.
    Make of this what you will!

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Papa's Double Double Build

Happy Wintersday everyone and welcome back me!

Been in blog hibernation for a while, but have come back to you now bearing a gift for the festive period. A brand new build.

If you watched any of my clips in the video from yesterday you would see a LOT of me getting my arse handed to me in 1v1. My build was OK in team fights, but if you aren't able to win a 1v1 you need to think that there's either something wrong with you or something wrong with your build...

Now I KNOW there's something wrong with me (one of many I'm sure), but I also came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with my build.

As a result, I went back to the drawing board and kept the concept alive, but made it more relevant.

Build Link

The above build relates to the video below. On the video there is a breakdown of each trait/sigil/rune etc and then a video of how it looks out in hot join. The sound quality is pretty low so I suggest getting a pair of headphones on when you listen to it! If anyone can suggest a decent microphone for me to purchase send me a message or drop a comment here! It is sorely needed.



Here is a slightly tweaked build for those that aren't a fan of Signets.

Secondary Build

There is one thing to remember with this build. SWAP YOUR WEAPONS. Every single time you can. Swap those weapons.

The Unnamed Fight Night December 2012


Seasons greetings everyone!

Sorry for my lack of posting over the last month. It's been crazy at work and what little time I have free I've been spending in game.

However, it is the season to be jolly and so here is a gift for those that still read this. This is a bit of dueling that I arranged for my guild last week. As you can see I get abused by Mesmers pretty badly, but in general everyone had a good time.

If you're looking for a SPvP guild then pop over to www.the-unnamed.com

More Warrior focused content to come tomorrow with a new build and video to accompany it!