Pre-Release Builds des ArenaNet-Teams

So, da wir ja auf unser neues Forum umstellen wollen...

In einer langweiligen Stunde habe ich folgenden Artikel auf dieser Site gefunden habe:
guildwars2pvp.com
Hier finden sich übrigens recht viele spannende Facts die es häufig nicht bis in die allgemeine GW2 Community schaffen.

Aber zurück zum eigentlichen Artikel: Izzy, welchen wir ja alle kennen, spricht darin über die Builds, welche ihr PvP-Team meistens bei internen Matches verwendet.


ArenaNet’s own PvP dynamo Isaiah ‘Izzy’ Cartwright has given us an exclusive look into the builds that the ArenaNet team used at the Gamescom ESL exhibition match and PAX! He’s included a load of information on each build: Classes, roles, skills, and the theory involved. There’s a lot of insight on the strategy (and even a section on equipment) that allowed Team ArenaNet to go undefeated at both Gamescom and PAX. Enjoy!




Main Build

Solo Ranger
Weapons: Longbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Entangle
Elite: Natures Renewal
Holds the trebuchet by winning 1-on-1 fights with Nature’s Renewal.

Forward Necromancer
Weapons: Dagger/Focus & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Consume Conditions
Utilities: Well of Darkness, Ghost Armor, Blood is Power
Elite: Lich Form
Holds the furthest capture point and collapses in the middle of the map.

Center Guardian
Weapons: Sword/Shield & Scepter/Focus
Heal: Shelter
Utilities: Judge’s Intervention, Contemplation of Purity, Meditation
Elite: Sanctuary
Holds the center capture point with a warrior.

Center Warrior
Weapons: Sword/Warhorn & Hammer
Heal: Aggressive Refrain
Utilities: Fear Me, Enduring Pain, Frenzy
Elite: Battle Standard
Holds the center capture point, scout on roof and collapse on any capture point.

Back Warrior
Weapons: Sword/Shield & Hammer
Heal: Mending
Utilities: Shake it off, Frenzy, Enduring Pain
Elite: Battle Standard
Holds the closest capture point, supports in the center, or mans the trebuchet.

The above was our most successful build because of its adaptability, as it becomes a strong team-fighting build and collapsing build with a necromancer and a warrior. We often ran an Elementalist instead of the Necromancer, depending on how Chap felt (and if he was happy with the F keys on the keyboard he was playing with ).

The weakness of this build is its reliance on the center capture point of the map. If you ignore this capture point completely and focus on the other two capture points, this build becomes a lot weaker. We ended up moving the guardian to hold one of the other capture points, but then the warrior couldn’t respond as well as usual from the closest capture point to the furthest point. You can then trap us in some uneven fights. The second PvP team at ArenaNet often beat us by just ignoring the center capture point, or just keeping it neutralized.



Split Build

Sandbag Engineer
Weapons: Rifle
Heal: Elixir H
Utilities: Rifle Turret, Thumper Turret, Smelling Salts
Elite: Supply Crate
Holds the closest capture point, surviving as long as possible until the thief comes to his rescue

Split Theif
Weapons: Shortbow & Pistol/Pistol
Heal: Signet of Malice
Utilities: Apply Poison, Caltrops, Haste
Elite: Invisible Stalker
His role is to collapse on people.

Split Theif
Weapons: Shortbow & Pistol/Pistol
Heal: Signet of Malice
Utilities: Apply Poison, Caltrops, Haste
Elite: Invisible Stalker
This one collapses on people and also keeps enemy trebuchet shadow-trapped.

Forward Necromancer
Weapons: Dagger/Focus & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Consume Conditions
Utilities: Well of Darkness, Ghost Armor, Blood is Power
Elite: Lich Form
He can push to any capture point and hold out to a thief collapse.

Trebuchet Necromancer
Weapons: Staff & Dagger/Warhorn
Heal: Consume Conditions
Utilities: Bone Minions, Ghost Armor, Bone Fiend
Elite: Lich Form
Summon minions/place marks use trebuchet.

This build was all about the two thieves who would collapse on the trebuchet, or the furthest/closest capture points.  We often let the enemy take the center capture point because the thieves could neutralize/harasses it easily. This build’s weakness is its total dependency on the thieves. If the enemy has a build that can deal with them, using for example a quick spike, you’ll end up losing most of the time. Offense-heavy team builds that push at the trebuchet can also cause this build a lot of issues as collapsing becomes worthless.





Double Rainbow Build

(No idea where we got the name from; I think Tirzah and I came up with it to hide the fact that the build was from our second team but it stayed that way since then)

Camouflage Ranger
Weapons: Shortbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Camouflage, Entangle
Elite: Quickening Zephyr
Camouflages and hides close to a caputer point, waiting for people to be spiked.

Camouflage Ranger
Weapons: Shortbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Camouflage, Entangle
Elite: Quickening Zephyr
Camouflages and hides close to a caputer point, waiting for people to be spiked.

Forward Necromancer
Weapons: Dagger/Focus&Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Consume Conditions
Utilities: Well of Darkness, Ghost Armor, Blood is Power
Elite: Lich Form
This one can push on any capture point and hold out to a thief collapse

Back Warrior
Weapons: Sword/Shield & Hammer
Heal: Mending
Utilities: Shake it Off, Frenzy, Enduring Pain
Elite: Battle Standard
Holds the closest capture point, supports the center point, or mans the trebuchet.

Solo Ranger
Weapons: Longbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Entangle
Elite: Natures Renewal
Holds the trebuchet as his elite skill makes him strong in 1-on-1 fights.

This build uses two rangers to hide at a capture point while stealthed, then spiking any enemy attempting to capture down. After the kill, you would use the 4 vs. 5 superiority advantage to push to another capture point or collapse heavily. This build is good against the split build mentioned before, because of the rangers’ stealth. This build is at its weakest when the enemy guesses where the rangers are and captures the other two capture points. You then end up becoming a collapse or your team build ends up being suboptimal. Sometimes we’ve managed to get ahead on the score quickly and put the rangers near the enemy base in order to spike people as they just come out.



No Trebuchet Build

Team Ranger
Weapons: Longbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Entangle
Elite: Natures Renewal
One of a 4-player group aimed at killing anything that moves.

Team Ranger
Weapons: Longbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Entangle
Elite: Natures Renewal
Second hunter/killer.

Team Ranger
Weapons: Longbow & Axe/Warhorn
Heal: Healing Spring
Utilities: Sharpening Stone, Lightning Reflexes, Entangle
Elite: Natures Renewal
Third hunter/killer.

Team Warrior
Weapons: Sword/Warhorn & Hammer
Heal: Aggressive Refrain
Utilities: Shake it Off, Enduring Pain, Frenzy
Elite: Battle Standard
The fourth hunter/killer, this warrior specializes in crowd control so taht no one can get away.

Sandbag Engineer
Weapons: Rifle
Heal: Elixir H
Utilities: Rifle Turret, Thumper Turret, Smelling Salts
Elite: Supply Crate
Holds the closest capture point and tries his best to survive!

We bring this build out to deal with teams focused heavily on defense. The damage is so high that it kills people extremely quickly. You can easily control the enemy’s trebuchet and two capture points. The downside is the particular set of elite skills, which caused us to have difficulties in various situations. For example, a player could make good use of the lich form, two players would focus on making fights uneven, we’d get trapped inside the Clocktower with someone using Sanctuary intelligently or an enemy would time a tornado perfectly. Because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket, this build requires that you get ahead fast before the enemy has enough time to adapt.

Anywhere I used a forward necromancer build, we could switch it out for this elementalist:



Forward Elementalist
Weapons: Scepter/Dagger
Heal: Signet of Rejuvenation
Utilities: Arcane Shield, Glyph of Arcane Power, Lightning Flash
Elite: Tornado
This build was mainly Chaplan’s responsibility, as he’s one of our strongest players. We always kept him on the offensive as it forces the enemy to send more people to deal with him. He could often win 1 vs. 2 fights with a well-used Lich form, or trebuchet support, or at least stay alive long enough for someone to collapse on him.





The Roof!!

The reason we like the main build so much is it’s perfect when you have someone placed on the roof and others distributed at the various capture points. We normally know where all enemies are and can call out when they are moving from capture point to capture point, which gives us the time to react and aim the trebuchet. After having played a lot, we found the roof to be one of the most important areas to control.



Equipment

I didn’t list all the equipment that we used, but we have three main equipment setups we set up for the demo games. Among the hundreds that we use internally, we found these three setups to be the strongest. We limited our choices in the demo games to keep it simpler, but as we added or tweaked our items, equipment became a very important part of our build.
Here are the three main setups we had in the demo:

For all players – All attributes are divided evenly . You end up with lower DPS but have a very strong survivability. You normally bring a condition procing weapon to stack damage up. This is the most commonly used setup.
Power/Toughness/Vitality – You get a higher damage than the first setup, with an additional 5% critical chance. However you lose out on procs. This is really good for builds without a lot of skills that can hit multiple targets.
Power/Precision/Toughness – This gives you the highest DPS builds. You’re a little squishy, but with the high critical rate and condition procs, this is only run on big spike builds to get quick kills and run away.
Last, but not the least, we play a lot of different builds and are always tweaking and changing them based who we’re playing with and against. So don’t think for a second that these are universal recipes!