A lot of friends and I have been talking about writing a friendly but in-
depth guide to help newcomers to Guild vs. Guild (GvG) battles in Guild
Wars get their feet wet and gain a greater understanding of the tactics
and strategies that are intrinsic to competitive play.
A simple serach on Gamefaqs and a few of the community forums shows
a lack of coverage on this scope, and as such, I'm going to try my best to
base this guide on my experiences, which you could certainly disagree
with. As such, this is not a guide for someone completely new to Guild
Wars, nor is it for a veteran player looking to compete in the top 300. This
guide will cover basic player vs. player tactics in the context of GvG, such
as kiting and communication, but will also cover GvG specific tactics
such as flag running and Victory or Death! mechanics.
The goal of this document isn't to cover any specific era or metagame of
Guild Wars, with assumption of the theory that the metagame may
change but the core strategies and tactics will not, and as such specific
metagame dependent tactics will be avoided as much as possible.
I hope this guide will be beneficial to those of you looking to take your
games to the competitive level, as well as those of you just looking to get
your feet wet.
As of the current version (0.5), the guide is still largely incomplete and
help from the community may be required to fill in some of the blanks and
correct whatever errors I still haven't hammered out yet. Thank you for
your support, and I sincerely hope you've found this guide useful.
As for copyright, feel free to take any portion of this guide and post it
whereever you want. I don't really care if I get credit for it, but maybe a
Kudos here and there won't hurt.
Of course, Arena Net holds all rights and licenses to Guild Wars TM, blah
blah blah, as is accordant to GAMEFAQ submission rules.
-Daek
[b]Section 1: The Build, the Skills, the Team, and the Plan[/b]
You have eight players and 64 skills. The other team has eight players
and 64 skills.
You have a base with a guild lord and a handful of non-playable
characters (NPCs) and so does the other team.
You have a flag, they have a flag.
You have a thief, they have a thief (sometimes).
These are the resources you are given, and how you play them is entirely
up to you.
While it's true that there's no one build that can dominate the metagame
(sarcastic jokes about hexes on jade aside), it doesn't mean that any
random build you slap together is going to get you the same distance. A
GvG build is different from, say, a Heroes' Ascent build in that GvG
battles tend to last a bit, and versatility and endurance should be your top
priorities. While it's true brute force and gimmick builds will still work with
the right players, these builds still need to be adapted to the GvG
environment.
The best way to build a team of eight is to make the build around the
team, instead of the other way around. What I mean is just simply going
into observer's mode and taking down the #1 guild's build when you don't
have a player who's used to playing the class for a key position and
putting someone completely new to the position on that position is not
going to end well. Understand the limits of the strengths and weaknesses
of your roster of players before you decide what build to run. Put players
on positions they feel most comfortable and have the most experience
playing.
If you don't have a player in your roster that's experienced with playing
the ranger class, don't roll a build with a ranger. Remember that your
team's performance is rated at the level of your weakest player, so
making sure that everyone is comfortable with the position he is playing
goes a long way to forming a solid build.
There are extensive resources out there with recommended GvG builds,
and it is not in the scope of this guide to recommend you a build to run.
Just remember that any build your team feels comfortable playing has the
potential to be a strong build. Likewise, any build your team feels
uncomfortable playing is going to be a weak build, even if the #1 guild on
the ladder is running it.
It is key that your entire team knows the build inside out before entering a
match. By this, I mean at the very least, every member of your team
should know what the other seven players are running. This knowledge
becomes vital when the players need to be dependent on each other for
specific tactics or rendered aid. A monk, for example, can call for a
blackout on an opposing warrior that's two whacks away from full adren,
but he can't do that unless he knows the mesmer has blackout to begin
with.
It sounds stupid and elementary, but I've played with teams that behaved
otherwise, and paid for it.
Pre-plan the responses your build will take in reaction to enemy tactics
before you enter the match. Establish how you plan on dealing with splits,
who to send back, in what order, and how to coordinate the manuever.
Don't wait until you're in-game with a base under attack message to
argue about who should go back and how it should be dealt with.
Understand the majority of your damage source and how to break
through common defenses that could potentially stall your offense. For
example, if you are running two warriors and a paragon, don't wait until
7:00 of doing no damage before discussing how to react to chain aegis
and constant blinds. Likewise, if the only hex removals in your build are a
veil and a purge, it's time to talk about what to do if you run into a hex
heavy team. Talk it out. Have some discussion. Your build doesn't need
to have a GOOD response to a certain tactic, but a crappy tactic like
"well, if they pull x on us, then we're pretty much boned. Just run around
for 25 minutes and hope our lord head shot critical cyclone axes their
entire team" is still better than not talking about it at all.
Preparation is half the battle, and if you still lose, at least you'll know why
so you can improve your game. This isn't to say you have to account for
everything that could possibly happen, as improvisation is still a very
large part of the game, but at least make sure you're planned against the
more common tactics.
[b]Section 2: Killing the Guild Lord Wins the Game[/b]
There are a lot of ways to play the game, but there's only one way to win
it: kill their guild lord. This is not to say you should gun directly for
the lord at 2:00 into the game. That's called a full team wipe. Think
of the game as a round of Chess. To force the opponent king into a checkmate,
you first have to work your way to him, through position, material, and
time. In Guild Wars, these goals can be analogously translated to playing
for position, playing for morale, and playing for Victory or Death! (VoD).
These goals are not mutually exclusive and good play means keeping all
three in mind through the entire span of the game. There's certainly
trade-offs and prioritizing involved, where one goal is pursued at the
expense of another, but none can be fully ignored.
Playing for position means a lot of things. It mean pushing into the enemy
side of the flagstand when your flag runner is running towards your stand,
it means falling towards your NPCs when your monks are low on energy
and need some pressure relieved, it means putting down a ward vs. foes
at a strategic location, it means in position to access their catapult when
Victory or Death rolls near, and a host of other things. Knowing when to
push, when to fall, when to collapse, when to split, and when to hold is
vital to playing well.
Snares, wards, spirits, and teleportation are some examples of tools to
help you play for position. The most important thing to recognize is that a
team, without exception, plays at the pace of its slowest member. The
best way to control where the opposing team is playing is to control the
movement of a vital role. For example, if you want to stop a team from
falling towards their NPCs when you have the pressure up, maintain a
snare or knockdown on one of their monks. Where are they going to go?
Nowhere, unless they are willing to sacrifice the monk. Likewise, if you
want to push the opposing team off you, begin by pushing their vital roles,
such as the monks. If you push the monks back, then their extended
frontline will be vulnerable, and will be forced to pull back or take
unmitigated damage.
A common tactic to force initiative on position is splitting. Splitting is the
act of dividing up your forces into two groups to achieve two different
goals simultaneously. One group could hold the stand for morale, for
example, while the other knocks out vital NPCs in the enemy base. Some
builds are specialized to split proactively, but all builds should be built to
deal effectively against splits or have the option of splitting themselves.
Splitting can pull off some of the pressure or defense or weaken the
opponent team significantly at VoD if they choose to ignore it. However,
your team also faces many of the same problems - with one difference:
you have the initiative. The general rule of thumb regarding splits is never
split if you don't need to and never refrain from splitting when the
alternative is put your Guild Lord under threat.
Position also translates to team cohesion. Casters can't cast outside their
radius, rangers and paragons can't hit beyond a certain range, and that
translates into bad news for melee classes if they over extend beyond the
radius of support offered by their midline and backline. It's vital that the
team are always in position to support each other. Everyone needs to
know where the wards are, where the traps are, and where each other
are so they can respond well to pressure. This is not to say overextension
is always unacceptable. Sometimes, melee needs to overextend to push
a kill, push a position, or collapse on a target of opportunity. It's
acceptable to overextend as long as the entire team is aware he's
overextending, including the overextender. Communication is vital. Let
your team know you're about to push a kill or push for a flagger.
The occasional over-extension aside, it's vital that the team moves as
unity. If a push needs to be made, the entire team needs to do it, not just
the warriors or the midlines. Everyone needs to push as one and fall back
as one. Out of position players are easily picked on and taken out.
Another important goal to play for is morale. Everyone starts at zero
percent death penalty (DP), but as you take deaths, you start accruing
DP. You can reduce DP by scoring kills and capturing the flag, the latter
can even net you a hefty +10% morale bonus. Successfully playing for
morale involves three things: push kills, stay alive, and hold the flag. The
first two will boil down to a whole nest of factors that anyone not new to
Guild Wars PvP should be familiar with, while the third is something that's
unique to the way GvG battles work. On every map is a flag stand,
usually located in the middle of the map. Sticking your flag in it and
holding it there for two minutes will net you a "Morale Boost", reducing
your DP. If your DP is 0, then you'll get a one time 10% morale boost.
Suffice to say, this is vital to winning the game. Successful GvG builds
will incorporate some form of flag running, and the skill exhibited by the
flag runner can easily determine the outcome of the game. If the
opposing team holds the flag and is getting constant morale boosts, then
it means none of your kills will matter, and the battle will rapidly turn
uphill. Controlling the flag successfully is intimately related to controlling
the position of both your team and the opposing team. Putting the
opposing team in a position where running the flag becomes difficult will
put your flag running ahead in pace. Failing to do so will cause undue
pressure on your flag running and give you a liability that your support
may not need, in addition to all the other stuff that's going on.
Of course, another way to gain morale is to kill the opposing team. There
are generally factors outside of the few that you have direct control over
for that, but putting the DP on the right targets is something you DO have
control over. Spot the vital roles to the opposing build. If it's a spike team,
then no brainer - take down the caller. Put DP on him over and over
again until little effort is required to knock him out. For other, more
balanced and versatile builds, the vital targets are slightly more difficult to
spot, and will depend on communication from the rest of your team to
identify. For example, if the opposing team has a particularly good
mesmer power blocker shutting down your backline, then trying to put
some DP on him should be the first order of business. Likewise, if that
particular snare ele with bliding surge is the main element preventing
your melee damage from pushing through, then that's your vital target
right there. Monks are, of course, always vital targets, but they are usually
harder to push kills on, due to their position and auxillary skills.
The same applies to your team. Identify the vital player in your build and
call opposing pressure off him and keep his DP clean at all costs. If you
are facing a hex dominated pressure team, then make sure to watch your
hex-eater mesmer - both his position and his DP. It's much better to have
heavy DP on one important target than slight DP on three auxillary
targets.
The last general goal to play for is Victory or Death! (VoD). VoD happens
at 20:00 after the clock starts, and a different set of rules are put into
play. For one thing, you do more damage but have less max life. For
another, the NPCs in your base will begin to push towards the middle,
where they will engage the enemy NPCs. All gates that require thieves or
locks will open, and remain open. At 25:00, the Guild Lords themselves
will start walking to the middle, forcing the match to be decided.
Understanding the inevitability of this and playing to give your team the
maximum advantage when it occurs will make or break the game.
The easiest way to prepare for VoD is to add elements into your build that
work exceptionally well at VoD. Anything that does area of effect damage
is a good bet, and usually helps with offsetting an NPC disadvantage.
But this guide is going to focus more on how to play for VoD during the
match itself. One way to swing the favor to your end is to target the
enemy's NPCs before VoD occurs. This can be done by a hard push, or
with a split. Unless the enemy wants a re-enactment of Seven Against
Thebes, then they will have to respond to such a move. The three most
important NPC targets should be the knights and the bodyguard, but
archers should not be ignored as they do add a good amount of damage
if gathered up. Sometimes it's neccessary to sacrifice position at the
stand or concede a morale boost in order to put pressure on the enemy
base through a split, while other times it's neccessary to sacrifice NPCs
to relieve pressure on your stand.
NPCs have roles outside of VoD. Making the other team pull your
footmen or your knights before they've put sufficient pressure on you can
quickly turn the tables. The extra pressure from the NPCs could be
enough for you to make a counterpush or at the very least relieve some
of the pressure on your monks' energy pool, allowing them time to
recuperate. Likewise, when you're on the offensive, don't aggro the
opponent's NPC's until you feel sufficient pressure has been applied. If
sufficient pressure has been applied, then sometimes aggroing a few
footmen or a knight is a good way to burn the opposing team's monks'
energy by forcing them to watch an extra target and knock out a few vital
NPCs before VoD.
At VoD, all the hard work you've done in playing for the previous two
goals - position and morale - will bear fruit. Good position will allow you to
catapult their NPCs (the time to fire is at 20:19 to have the best chance at
catching everything) or allow you to snare them in the path of your NPCs
before they reach the stand, if they pushed too far without watching the
clock. DP is compounded by the decrease in life at VoD, and a target with
DP on him will get taken out even more easily. At VoD, the best targets to
focus on are their offense. Identify targets using area of effect skills and
take them out right away. Move down the offense priority list by targetting
their melee, knights, bodyguard, support, archers, shut down, and last,
monks - unless when an opportunity presents itself. There will be a lot of
targets at VoD and it could get hectic, but that's what separates a good
guild from a mediocre guild. A key thing to note is to relentlessly chew up
their damage. Sit on their warriors, harrass their midline, and force their
monks to go deep set before yours do.
Be careful of last minute splits at VoD. With no NPCs and all gates open,
your Guild Lord is vulnerable. Understand and evaluate the possibility of
a split (or even a full team gank) and respond accordingly. Watch out for
bodyblocks and make sure your monks are in position to fall to the Guild
Lord if a threat is validated.
Play it safe, play it smart, play it well.
[b]Section 3: Roles, What They Mean, and How To Play Them[/b]
Monks (backline):
Every team needs monks, well, usually. Usually, balanced builds tend to
run two core monks, not counting smiters or whatever. You are the
team's primary source of damage mitigation. Red bars will drop, and you
will make them go up again. Generally speaking, there are two ways to
mitigate damage - prevention and recovery, translated in game into prots
(protection spells) and heals. Generally speaking, it's much more energy
efficient to prevent than it is to recover. Throwing a prot spirit on a target
before two warriors and a lightning orb falls on him is always going to
cost less energy than healing all that damage over with orison.
Prevention is very specialized, however, and will not work ALL the time.
That's why damage recovery is always an important aspect of the game.
Bottom line: make sure your monks got both prevention and recovery
covered.
Pre-protting is a must. Watch where the enemy damage is focused and
be there ahead of them. If you see two warriors converging on a target
and you KNOW they are going to release adren, don't wait for them to get
there to start your protting. When there are warriors in play, try to keep a
subconscious count of how much adren he has. If you've seen him train
someone for half a minute without using an adren attack skill, then you
know he's got a full tank of adren and is ready to release. That's when
your finger should be twitching on that prot and watch carefully where
he's going to end up releasing that adren.
Following that same line of thought, watching the enemy is going to be
much more important than watching your own team. If you're getting
harrassed by a shut down mesmer, then watch what he's casting. When
you see diversion going off, assume it's going to come on you and pause
casting as it finishes. It's a good (probably the best) way to not get half
your bar diverted. Likewise, your teammates should call out incoming
diversions when they see it go off, to save you some work.
The best way to do this is to recognize the animations of certain key
spells and abilities and recognize them going off without clicking on the
person using them. If you see a broad head ranger run next to you and
starting start that lengthy attack animation, he's not stretching his arms.
Throw up your stance or strafe away because there's a broadhead
coming your way.
Know your surroundings. Be aware of where your wards and traps are
and be prepared to run through them when you're under pressure. If
there's a good ranger on the opposing team interrupting the occasional
skill, then know where potential cover is, be it that one shack on Warrior's
Isle or the foliage around Weeping Stone. Arrows can't fly through walls,
but your heals can. When you're not casting, run. Keep kiting and
strafing. You never know when an orb is going to fly your way.
Communication is another important thing to keep in mind. Don't leave
your team wondering why everyone's dead when two seconds ago
everything was fine. If your elite is diverted or sig of humilatied, let your
team know so they can react accordingly, whether by playing more
defensively or start falling back on their frontline. If you have shame on
you, call it so the other monk can get it off. If there's a certain character
on the other team that's owning the crap out of you, don't stand there and
take it; let the rest of your team know so it can be dealt with. Talk with
your other monk. Let him know what's going on. The entire team plays on
the robustness of your energy bar, so make sure they're updated on its
status. If you're low on energy, call it. If you think you're going to be
dipping low on energy soon, call it. If you have to switch to your deep set,
call it. Call it, call it, call it. If you think your team needs to know
something, tell them. I can't stress enough how important this is.
Midline:
I won't go too deep into this class, there's simply too much variety to talk
about. This class includes a variety of support classes like mesmers,
rangers, and elementalists. Their roles are legion, but one thing is
certain: they lack the armor of the frontline and the mitigation potential of
the backline. That puts them at odds in terms of position. Bottom line: you
don't have 90AL and you can't pre-prot yourself, so pretty much you have
four ways to stay alive: W A S and D. Move. Kite. Position yourself where
you can adequately perform your role, but always remain in a position
where you have enough lee-way to proactively kite away before the
damage shifts to you.
If you're playing a midline character with a bit of burst damage, like an
orb, shatter, or e-burn, be on the look out for warriors on the other team
frenzying inside your cast radius. Be diligent. If you see a warrior frenzy,
punish him for it. Throw an orb at him, shatter his prot spirit, or smack
him with a burning arrow. Never let a frenzy go unpunished. While it's
impractical to shift your entire damage potential after one frenzied warrior
before he cancels it into rush or dash, you can certainly put some extra
damage on him and force him to cancel early.
If you have area specific skills like wards or traps, call out when you
put them down so your team is aware of where to kite through for help.
If you have multiple wards, don't overlap them on top of each other.
Create figure-8 configurations to increase coverage. That's pretty much
it, really. Every midline class plays out differently in some respects,
but they all share certain commonalities.
Flag runner:
You run flags. Your job is to bring the flag from your base to the flag
stand, capture it, and maybe help out with split defense and capping
catapults. You know Sylvester Stallone in Rambo? He would make a
terrible flag runner. Your job may be to run flags, but that doesn't mean
you have to monotonously run along the same road in the same
predictable pattern. Call out to your team when you're prepareing to
capture. If you see your team taking a lot of pressure at the stand, double
check with the monks before you move in. Make sure they have a decent
tank of energy left and can effectively mitigate you through the process.
Watch the clock. Always be aware of who is in control of the flag stand
and how much time you have to take it back.
If capping the flag means you're going to die in the process, it's a bad
idea 90% of the time. They're just going to cap it back and you'll be dead.
If your entire team is mired deep inside your base, and you see a window
where you can ninja past them for a cap, it's a good way to relieve
pressure - just make sure you can survive. A conceded morale bonus is
not going to lose you the game, especially when you haven't put any
significant DP on any of them, but having a flag runner dead with 60 DP
way out in the middle of nowhere can.
You have more roles to play than just running the flag. Whether you're an
ice elementalist, a secondary monk, or a fire elementalist, you can add
unexpected pressure and damage when you're up there at the stand.
Make it count. Every time you're up at the flag stand, make your position
known. Snare their warriors, blur them, help your monks get some energy
back by healing/protting the team, or throwing in a critical burst of
damage on a spike. Your time is limited. Never stay longer than you have
to, and risk conceding a bonus.
Frontline and Caller:
This guide, being non-metagame specific, will not cover how to call for a
hardcore spike build, but rather try to focus on calling for a balanced
build. Usually, the caller is going to be a frontline character, such as a
warrior. The reason for this is relatively simple: the frontline is closet to
the enemy team and therefore have the best peripheral vision on what
everyone on the other team is doing. Another reason is usually the
warrior is the one that needs to build adrenaline for damage, and he's the
best judge of when the damage potential is highest.
Calling in GvG doesn't just mean broadcasting a target and counting
down, it also means calling for the right damage at the right targets at the
right time. Not every target needs to be spiked, unless that's the only
option offered by the build. Calling for damage, snares, shutdown, and
positional blocking are also the responsibilities of the caller. The caller
needs to know the potential and skill level of every player on his team,
including his own. Knowing how much damage and how fast they can
come is vital to calling well.
If you need something special on the spike, like a gale or black-out on the
off monk, make sure you call it and give your team as much time as they
need to identify the off target in preparation to do what they do. Always
pay attention to how much pressure you are taking and how well the
monks are mitigating it. Don't wait until the monks are deep in their
highest energy set before deciding to pull back. If your team identifies a
threat to you, such as a particularly nasty mesmer or a snare ele, don't
ignore it. Rely on your team to provide feedback on what's going on from
their perspective and always communicate your intentions.
Remember that dead people are ressurected back at base every 2:00. This
means if you can take out a key target at 1:95, 3:95, or 5:95, just
before the ressurection timer, you can effectively remove that player from
play (his team won't have time to ressurect him before the timer
ressurects him) until he takes his time to haul ass back up here. If the
key target is, for example, a monk, then you have a good shot at
collapsing their entire team. Be aware of this and make sure your
damage potential is maximum at these key times and make major
pushes or spikes to get that kill and force a "base res". Adren full at 1:47?
Save it for 5 more seconds.
This works the other way too, when you DON'T want an enemy to
ressurect back at base. An enemy monk is almost dead and out of
position at 5:57? Wait until after 6:00 before you kill him, so his body gets
stranded at out of position land, far away from the rest of his team, with
no chance of ressurection for two full minutes.
Always look for targets that are out of position, over extended, or simply
not kiting. Everyone makes mistakes during a match, but it's the team
that captalizes best on these mistakes that emerge the victor. If a midline
is out of position - punish him for it. If a warrior is too over-extended,
punish him for it. If a monk is dropping a sig of devo on the front line,
punish him for it. Always be on the look out for mistakes on the enemy's
part. A mistake that goes unpunished is an opportunity lost for victory.
[b]Section 4: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them[/b]
One of the most common mistakes I see when playing with newer guilds
is a bad decision when it comes to dealing with an enemy split. The
enemy has split. You spotted the split. What do you do? Remember that
indecision is just as bad, if not worse, than a bad decision. You don't
have the luxury to talk it out. You have to make the right decision within a
rapidly closing time window. Every second the enemy proceeds with the
split undisturbed makes your response window one bit narrower, until
there comes a time when your response becomes too late, and next thing
you know your bodyguard is lying dead with three enemies wailing on
your guild lord. This is where pre-planning and experience comes into
play. Teams lose to splits because they ignore the split when they can't
afford to, and when they split more players back than they need to. This
kind of decision comes with experience, but just remember: if the
opposing build is more splittable than yours, always try to force them to
8v8.
Everybody needs to kite. "Oh, but he has snares anyway and will just
outrun me" and "I have Shield of Deflection on me and the other monk is
watching me so I don't have a to kite" are stupid excuses not to kite.
Even if you're a warrior - if you're being wailed on, KITE! Move out of the
way! If you're a little wary about losing position from kiting backwards,
then kite forwards or around in a circle. W A S D are the four counters to
more things than you might realize. Incoming orb? DODGE THAT.
Incoming dervish train? KITE THAT. Incoming blurred vision? GET
AWAY FROM THE OTHER WARRIOR! It's amazing how much stuff you
can kite off. Also, don't wait until the warrior or dervish is right
next to you before you start kiting. Start moving as soon as you see
that crazy bastard with a hammer running up to you. You might not get
a chance to if you wait for him to get close enough to hit Earthshaker.
Don't park on one character for the entire game if you want to interrupt
something. Yeah, your team is screaming at you to D-shot Restore
Conditions or divert Blinding Surge, but parking your mouse cursor on
him the whole game just makes you a predictable and avoidable threat.
Once your target is aware of what you're trying to do, he can take
measures to defend himself against it and make you less effective. The
monk can kite behind an obstacle before he casts, and the B-surge ele
can just call for a veil 24/7. You becomes a much more valuable player if
you tab around a bit switching from target to target, looking for
opportunities. Perform your secondary role, like spreading poison or go
around denying their monks energy. When you see that animation of the
key skill you're trying to interrupt flash over the target's head, quickly
switch and hit D shot, or count down the recharge time and hit diversion
just before the next cycle. Be unpredictable.
Rangers can interrupt everything, including attack skills. Attack skills are
actually usually the easiest skills to interrupt. If you see a warrior
with full adrenaline rush towards your monk, chances are, he's closing
in to unload. Just when he gets close enough, just throw him a D-shot or
savage or something, and voila, there goes his damage potential. Don't
make the mistake of thinking interrupts should only be used on the
enemy's mid and back-lines.
A lot of teams have trouble with dealing with dervishes because of their
forms. All dervish forms have a downtime. When that downtime window
opens, go crazy and try to take them out. Dervishes don't have as much
armor as warriors, and without their form, will prove much easier to take
down.
A team pushes position based on how much energy its monks have. If
the monks are low on energy, don't push too hard. A few ways to allow
your monks to get energy is to have your frontline fall on the enemy's
frontline and park them with knockdowns and damage if they frenzy.
Sure, you'll lose a bit of position, but your monks get a bit more breathing
room. When faced with a choice of pushing deep to take out a key
objective and wiping because your monks are low on energy, and giving
the enemy some ground and your monks some recuperation time,
choose the latter. Good communication allows the caller to make faster
and better judgements when it comes to juggling the monks' energy with
team positioning.
Some teams have a weakest link. Don't just go around attacking their
strong players when you can dismantle them by exploiting their weakest
link. If you notice a player on the enemy team that's clearly not very good
at this game, go after him full time. If a mesmer is consistantly out of
position, or if a warrior loves to frenzy constantly in your backline with
reckless abandon, make him your best friend. Call him out to your team
and have everyone watch him for the mistake to happen, then punish him
for it. It weakens their monks' energy pool, and sometimes their weakest
link can pull their entire team into making one, huge mistake - the kind
you can exploit to win a game.
Don't infuse an archer or a footman unless you're pretty damn confident
you're going to win and just want some freebie points. For that matter, if
keeping an archer alive means you're going to drain your entire energy
bar, don't do it. Let the bastard die. Why? Archers don't kite. Footmen
don't kite. Knights don't kite, but it's worth keeping them alive because
they actually put out decent damage. Remember earlier in the guide what
happens to things that don't kite? That's right - free damage. Save your
energy for targets that do (hopefully your team).
[b]Afterword[/b]
That's all for now. This just a very preliminary version of the guide that I
hope can be expanded upon by input from players much more
experienced than I at the game. If you have something to add, please let
me know from my contact information below. I know there are a lot of
typos and probably even more grammatical errors in this guide, so any
help you can give to proof read it would be appreciated. I hope you find
this guide useful.
