Guild Wars Prophecies nostalgia - Ranger spike for GvG or Hall of Heroes |
- Prophecies nostalgia - Ranger spike for GvG or Hall of Heroes
- Nostalgic Traveler's Diary: It ain't me... it ain't me... I ain't no consul's son...
- SoOSC efficiency question
- Keyboard Gangsta [SupG]
- A plea to ArenaNet
| Prophecies nostalgia - Ranger spike for GvG or Hall of Heroes Posted: 16 Jul 2021 06:57 PM PDT Hey folks! Back with another Prophecies PvP nostalgia post! It really was an exciting time and a lot of you have been leaving words of encouragement about these posts. I love making them, and since you guys are liking them too, I've been inspired to make more. (Check out my other Prophecies nostalgia posts here) Today I'm writing about a build that's near and dear to my heart: ranger spike. Spike back in the day came in all shapes and sizes: air spike, blood spike, earth spike, mixed spike, etc. But one stood out among the rest, and that was ranger spike. I will elaborate more below, but the main advantage of it was that the spikers were a bit less squishy when compared to casters, and the whole point of the build was to maximize the total damage on each individual arrow. The damage with this one was out of control. If you could get a good caller and have a spike that was "on", you could roll over most teams in GvG or Hall of Heroes. I'll be sharing about both arenas, since the build and theory behind it is basically the same in both. If you've followed my posts at all, you've seen that balanced builds nearly completely overtook spike builds in competitive play. This was near ubiquitous in the second-half of Prophecies (early 2006), at least for serious players, but the one build that did survive the spike meta and was still seen as viable was ranger spike. I hope today to be able to explain to you why. So without further ado, here's the build: 4 Rangers - All with base skills: Dual Shot, Savage Shot, Punishing Shot, Read the Wind, Res sig. If you could fit it you might take whirling defense as well. Probably a Pin Down in there. Then you had various utility on each: R / W - Swap out Punishing Shot for "Charge!". Can also use "Shields up!" (good vs. other ranger spike, it was common back then!), Watch yourself! (as general defense). R / Me x2 - Drain enchantment, maybe inspired hex for hex control. R / Mo - Hard res? I can't remember. R / E for Hall of Heroes could use Ward Against Foes for relic-running maps. You could even use that in GvG to slow down enemy splits. Hell, we may have even used an R / N with Blood is Power, but that was pushing it! The secondary skills were sort of customizable, which allowed for some minor creativity, but things like "Charge!" and drain enchantment were almost always seen. You also have spirits distributed throughout: favorable winds and winnowing (for extra damage), frozen soil (you use it when they die to prevent res). Favorable winds was quite ubiquitous, I think, because it was tied to marksmanship. Winnowing not so much because you had to invest in wilderness survival. Frozen soil was decent even at 0 or minimal wilderness survival (though I think it was kind of gimmicky and not generally used by serious teams, since you could just as easily screw yourself over). In Hall of Heroes you would probably have someone with Fertile Season for holding the last level (more HP = harder to die, for everyone, but that's fine because your only objective is not to die/keep ghostly hero alive). Some variations used Kindle Arrows, which was a lot more damage, but Read the Wind makes arrows go twice as fast. So if you were using Kindle Arrows, you'd need to make sure you had Favorable Winds down to provide the same effect, otherwise the spike would be too slow. Read the Wind was the favorite to avoid this problem, and there was more than enough damage with a good spike. Very important for all rangers to use a vampiric bow for +5 damage on each arrow, as well as a hornbow for the 10% armor penetration. Me / N Fast cast orders necro - Order of Blood, Order of the Vampire, Rigor Mortis, Drain Enchantment, Blood is Power, Rend enchantment. Hall of Heroes: Consume corpse, well of the profane. Those of us who were cool (GvG and Hall of Heroes): Vampiric Gaze. This guy throws up Order of Blood and Order of the Vampire right before each spike, causing a huge increase in the damage on each arrow. Rigor Mortis is used when we know the target has a blocking stance like Whirling Defense, etc. Rend Enchantment is used when we know the enemy has a crap ton of enchantments that can't be taken off easily with drain enchantment alone (in Hall of Heroes, probably use for the Ghostly Hero). He doesn't really have enough energy for Blood is Power but it's there as an emergency option for monks, etc. Consume corpse and well of the profane are Hall of Heroes skills, for corpse control and also to wreck enchantments on groups of enemies. The cool part about Me/N was you used the fast casting to get the orders and other spells up as quickly as possible. If there was enough energy to go around he could even use Vampiric Gaze to participate in the spike. Usually, however, energy was scarce. Backline: Hall of Heroes - 3 monks - 2 healing and 1 prot. To be honest I don't remember what the meta was on these. Definitely Channeling on all 3, as that skill was the bomb in Hall of Heroes (lots of enemies close by to get the energy boost from). In hectic battles you could basically be on full energy the whole time. GvG - 2 monks - divine boon healers with Offering of Blood (before it was nerfed), and Manta of Recall after that got nerfed. Divine boon allows you to play a traditional prot. monk (guardian, prot. spirit, reversal of fortune) while also healing with each spell. Flag runner: I can't remember what I used or what the meta was.. I think it was probably an E/Mo with Ether Prodigy and Heal Party. That would be: Ether Prodigy, Heal Party, Healing Breeze, Lightning Orb, Lightning Strike, Blinding Flash, Windborne Speed, etc. For those of you who don't know, Ether Prodigy allowed you to spam the hell out of Heal Party, giving a lot of support to the monks. Healing Breeze would be used to heal yourself as a flag runner, or a monk during a split, or NPCs, etc. Blinding Flash was good for dealing with splits. The Lightning Orb and Strike would be used in tandem with the spike when available at the flagstand. Windborne Speed was used to run the flag. Build ethos - The idea is that the spike caller calls a target and says "this guy"... in "3, 2, 1". This guy is the cue for the Me/N to get both of his orders up. Rangers should have spirits up and Read the Wind up at all times. They use Dual Shot -> Punishing Shot in rapid succession on "1". If there's a need for Rigor Mortis, Rend Enchantments, Drain Enchantment, etc., the target caller will call that out before counting down as well. Rangers using drain enchantment should use Drain Enchantment -> Punishing Shot as the enchantment will be ripped just before the target is hit, so the target is not given away. Do note that as Punishing Shot and Savage Shot are interrupts, they fire almost instantly. So there's almost no delay between Dual Shot and either of these skills, especially if Read the Wind is active. Savage Shot is used when Punishing Shot is on cool-down. If a Rigor Mortis (or Rend Enchantments) is needed, the target caller will make that clear ahead of time so the Me/N can get both orders up and then apply the spell right before the spike lands. The reason this spike is so effective is because dual shot gets the all the bonuses on both arrows: vampiric bonus, hornbow bonus, read the wind bonus, favorable winds bonus, winnowing bonus, Order of Blood bonus, Order of the Vampire bonus. Not only do you get all of that on the first two arrows, but you get it on the follow up with Punishing Shot / Savage shot as well. So basically you have 3 bombs hitting the hell out of the target all at once. I don't remember the calculation exactly, but you were easily looking at 800+ damage depending on the target (warriors a bit less, if you could catch them in Frenzy that was the best). The bonus from Vampiric Gaze or the E/Mo flag runner is hardly necessary - just a bit to compensate in case the spike was imperfect. Ah, and in case anyone isn't familiar: the idea with all spike builds is to down a target before the enemy monks have time to react. When executed perfectly, the target dies instantly and without warning. Ranger spike was unique in that it did this very effectively; much more effectively than previous spike builds. Video - Unfortunately, this video was after the Prophecies meta, so some things changed. But you can get the general idea still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbav7Hl3jM Not the best spike, either, but beggars can't be choosers. Special tactic vs. split builds (GvG) - Split builds were the bane of spikes. Guilds like Illicit Awakening [iA], who were one of the top ranger spike guilds, and my guild (who were not, lol), used the Nomad's Isle guild hall (sand theme). Why? Take a look at the image: https://imgur.com/a/OxdG44T Battles would obviously take place at the flag stand. If the spike was good, most balanced teams would split some players off to go start attacking the NPCs. This was a common way to disrupt a spike team, since all spikes, including this one, need their spikers together in order to deal maximum damage and have an effective, instant spike. Notice the blue line - that's where the enemy team would go, using the portals, to get into the base. They would eventually make their way to the Knights, Bodyguards, etc. Sometimes we would have the E/Mo back hassling them with Blinding Flash, Healing Breeze, etc. And then guess what? The red line is us. R / W uses "Charge!" suddenly and the whole team collapses back on the ganking squad. Most teams except the best were caught unprepared and their escape was cut off by us folding back - we could spike 1-2 of them if not all of the ganking squad in rapid succession (pin down would be used to hold them in place). In other guild halls there's usually two escape routes, but in this guild hall two kind of converge into one. This strategy worked very well for those ranger spike teams who were able to employ it effectively, and we actually had great success with it. What happened? I think some things were nerfed. Read the Wind was nerfed so that it no longer added any damage bonus. Ranger spike in modified versions was still around for awhile and maybe still to this day, and the video I shared above is actually later in the game's history than the period I'm referring to here. But nothing ever compared to the glory days where a good ranger spike like Illicit Awakening could be a top 10 guild, or a guy like Power of My Rangers could hold the Hall of Heroes for hours on end. Fun fact - For spike builds, before going into a match, you would have everyone type in /jump and then have everyone spike with the enter key on "1" of a "3,2,1" countdown. If everyone jumped in sync the spike was "on", if not it was "off". You would repeat this until everyone figured out exactly what their individual lag was and everyone was in sync. Sometimes it worked better than others. If you had a regular team it was easier. My experience - As I said, ranger spike is a build that's near and dear to my heart. I was a 14 year old kid, and kind of a shoddy player, but I was the leader and caller for my guild. Despite not being amazing players, with ranger spike my guild nearly made it into the top 100. That wasn't really saying much even back then, but hey, there were people who did a lot worse. We definitely had some nice winning streaks with this. Hope y'all enjoyed! As always, feel free to ask anything, and if you remember anything I've missed, please do share! [link] [comments] | ||
| Nostalgic Traveler's Diary: It ain't me... it ain't me... I ain't no consul's son... Posted: 16 Jul 2021 10:52 AM PDT
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| Posted: 17 Jul 2021 02:09 AM PDT Hey guys I was just wondering what you think is more efficient - running the typical dervish/ranger build with favourable winds or running a dervish/mesmer. I prefer the D/Me (arcane echo) but I get a lot of people getting annoyed because I'm not playing the meta. The way I see it, favourable winds is a bit cumbersome, takes a while to cast etc. As most of the run is not really dependent on GDW/Favourable winds apart from Fendi my thinking is that the quicker you can get GDW and maintain it on 5 rangers, the better for Fendi. GDW is +20 damage per ranger and Favourable winds is +6. I appreciate the double speed on the arrows - but isn't the damage the same regardless of how fast the arrow flies? It's not like firing speed increases. So GDW quicker and on two more rangers than D/R = +40 damage and more knockdown. Favourable winds on 5 rangers = +30 damage and faster arrows. Is there anyone more informed on game mechanics that might be able to shed some light on which is statistically better? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 16 Jul 2021 04:22 PM PDT Hi, super long shot, but I've just logged back in after probably 10 years and found myself guildless. I started Keyboard Gangsta [SupG] back in maybe 2010 which had some decent GvG success, and from googling the name, continued long after I left the game. Is there any chance anyone remembers the guild/was a member or still is? I'd love to get the guild back for purely nostalgic reasons! Cheers - if anyone still plays GvG and wants a rusty player let me know! [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 16 Jul 2021 07:44 AM PDT Please rework Vow of Revolution - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW) to 5 energy cost, 0.25s cast time and 20 seconds recharge with the following effect: or alternatively (obviously not causing scatter): I don't like seeing this skill being utterly useless. Dervishes deserve better. [link] [comments] |
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