Mostly Harmless

I have started to play the frontline classes for my guild's GvGs (usually hammer), and I was wondering if I could recieve some suggestions to make me a stronger, smarter player. I realize that a large portion of tips are only viable in certain situations, but if any tips you could supply me with would be appriciated. Another area I was curious about is what your warriors due to practice. Is there any special way you practice to prepare for GvGs? I consider myself a decent warrior who understands basic tactics, but I could use some help on the higher order skills that make players excellent.

Don't restrict yourself to a weapon attribute, there isn't a reason you can't play all of them effectively.

Things you should know, being a damage dealer you have to:

- maximize your output, whether is skill use, or travelling between targets, and using your judgement on which target to attack (prots, distance, how it kites, self defense all come into play)

- run different builds, be very aware of how your skills work and work together (eg. bull's striking a taret and manipulating your attack buffs and shock to interrupt the cast after they stand up, or in this specific case, how your hammer knockdowns chain together).

- Random Arena is great way to practice things like self survivability, not so much for efficacity, i suggest using a resource such as #gwpickup on the irc server irc.gamesurge.net and joining gvg pickups there.

- In GvG, watch yourself play, all the time, don't watch other people, see if you sat on a target for 10 seconds doing no damage because it was dark escaped.. see if you stood around for X seconds, see if you attacked a warrior (bad target selection) while your team wasn't under pressure.

- Willingness to listen and adapt. It seems you've done the right thing already by asking for help, you're on the right track.

- Learn your weapon swaps.. if you're running hammer.. I suggest.. Vampiric Hammer, Elemental Hammer, Wand + Shield combo with +energy, +30 +30 swap for when you're running around or getting spiked.

Warrior stuff in no particular order

Maximize your capabilities. This starts with skillbar and equipment. Think of what your trying to do. If it's spike, look at your damage and tools. Backbreaker/crushing/prot for example is 3 quick hits and deep wound with a 4s stun. You'll have to wait longer on backbreaker, and if BB or crushing misses you lose a lot. If you're more pressuring, Crip slash/gash/sun and moon is continous damage and snares and will get in a ton more hits over time and condition application.

Equipment is vampiric/elemental/usually a wand/spear + shield for adrenaline building, hitting archers, maybe +15 mana if you need to emergency cancel frenzy or something. +30 weapon +30hp shield helps with hammer, other you can use zealous with axe or sword.

Synergize with your group. If you've got ice snares, get your ele to lay down snares on your target and train for damage. If you've got good enchantment removal, power through prot on targets. If you've got a smiter, maximize your positional effectiveness for AE while maintaining good dps.

Conversely, if you've got icy shackles on you all the time, put your ranger or ele to work and shut it down. Same thing with necro or mesmer hexes. If it's chain aegis and prot, switch targets a lot, get interrupts down, and/or remove enchantments.

Know what you're attacking, and how effective your dps is. Rangers are 60 AL, but always survive unless they screw up bad. Midline casters usually suck and run around randomly in between casts. Also if they move using the keyboard, more DPS for you. If you find morons that don't know how to kite, you know where to put DPS on if you don't have a better target. Tons of people(including "higher ranked" guilds like running superior runes. That's -75 hp to start with, so go ahead to abuse their low hp and make monks freak out.

Play a monk. Learn their patterns, how they use spells and manage energy. If you know their rhythms, you can screw them up and exploit it. If they play too far back, force them to come forward by spiking tanks sometimes. If you've got teleports you make their preprot marginally more difficult, if they ever do it anyway. Hammer and Scythes(and sup rune axe warriors) like to make Spirit Bond go off often. Don't be stupid and give people HP for no reason. Conversely, conjure sword/axe warriors shouldn't be hitting through Shielding Hands and Shield of Absorption when possible.

Learn the knockdown animations. With good timing you can bull's strike then shock before a target can cast a 1/4 skill. But don't go too early or you waste a lot. Hammer KD's are different timing depending on attack speed buffs/debuffs.

No one does this, but you can move in between attacks. If you know where your target is going to kite before it does, you can move a few inches between swings to gain position and lose nothing. Just don't do it too early or you lose your swing. Sometimes you can drive-by prot strike or bull's strike on Ice and not get snared because of the way Ice pulses.
RA is fine to practice builds and positioning or survivability in. Just don't get frustrated. Pickup groups also aren't bad to learn in. Either way, expect people to suck and don't count on anyone.

Target nearest is your friend. So is the "T" key. Target next isn't as good.

Your hotkeys need to be usable. Weapon swaps don't help if you have to tab 4 times to get to your HP swap.

etc

Thank you for the prompt and quality information. Your responses hit on everything I was wondering and more. It will really help with my overall playing and enjoyment of the game. I truly appriciate the effort put forth to help me improve and I intend to visit #gwpickup frequently and practice these suggestions so I can help to glorify America.

also idle in #mostly!

Base Ranger armor has 70al with 30 additional towards elemental ><

imba

Originally (like, way before release) the design was supposed to be Warriors > Rangers > Eles > Warriors

(remember Warrior armor being weak to lightning?)

But yeah, I guess that went out the window at some point.

In terms of upping your survivability, winning matches in RA with just heal sig will help a lot

Thanks ryse for reminding me. This was posted on our internal forums:

Warrior Handbook
Tactics pertaining uniquely to the Warriors of Mostly Harmless
Don't think I'm doing this for you guys, by god, this is very much for me

Index
1.0 General
2.0 Positioning
3.0 Targetting
4.0 Communication
5.0 Splitting

1.0 General

1.1 Be aggressive, deal damage
You're there for one purpose

1.2 Use your intuition, Don't be scared
Don't be afraid to be assertive in your strat calls or decisions.

1.3 Use your skills when you have them
Don't save skills for a spike, more pressure is your reward, exceptions apply.


2.0 Positioning

2.1 Know where your heals are
Use your radar

2.2 Don't waste time running around
Attack


3.0 Targetting

3.1 Spikes before even numbers
Get in the habit of calling spikes before even numbers.. for base res's

3.2 Attack incoming flaggers
It is the splittable Warriors duty to push up and pressure the flagger. Crip Shot can assist.

3.3 Attack outgoing flaggers
Unless of course, it's a tank. More time spent flagrunning by enemy teams means less damage or less defense from the other team.

3.4 Attack different targets
Distributes pressure and protection, exceptions apply.

3.5 If protted, switch
To the nearest soft target of course

3.5 Coordinating spikes
Coordinate a spike on a target out of position, or generally terrible.

3.5Focus Single Monks
If monks have split from the center team, target it and focus it.


4.0 Communication

4.1 Communicate what needs to be shutdown
Helps you, helps your team.

4.2 Communicate movement control
Communicate when you need it, where you need it.

4.3 Call and coordinate your key skills
Knockdowns or "You're All Alone!"


5.0 Splitting

5.1 Evaluate your userfulness
Split or collapse accordingly

5.2 Split vs Ultradefensive
This concentrates the melee hate on a single target middle, easier for removal.

5.3 Collapse
Look for opportunities to collapse.

5.4 Hinder Their Runner
On splits, kill or stop their runner.

5.5 Don't Oversplit
There is such a thing




If things need to be added.. post them, I'd like to keep this up as reference, mostly for me, but i guess other people can read it too

Dont attack rangers with elemental weapons, use physical
Dont attack warriors and paragons with Physical weapons, Use elemental :]

not to mention, you probably shouldnt be attacking them at all... but if they are wiping, it makes things go quicker ^^

Vs a paragon you better off using your non-elemental set since they don't have the innate +20 vs physical that warriors have, and no one runs the stalwart insignia since centurions is 100x better.

you guys said to use vampiric, ive been using sundering, elemental, high health switch and a bow or wand... which is better overall dps, vampiric or sundering?
also, why is it so bad to lineback warriors. Doesnt it preserve your monks energy? especially now with the cripslash wars linebacking helps alot and against bad ranked guilds that like to overextend its easy to pop wars that dont know when to extend

For general purpose(and just about everything really) Vampiric is superior. My comrade Narc Ism can fill you in details, if he gets bored.


In general it doesn't achieve much. You lose offensive pressure, you don't stop their pressure, and in general wars are stupid hard to kill. Cripslash is general purpose and recharges quick though, so if you peel with it, you won't lose much. The old linebacker was designed against warriors, but it could still pwn just about anything, or at least contain it for awhile.

http://www.oildrip.com/calc/calc.php


http://www.pat-burt.com
http://www.oildrip.com
http://www.wtbgirlfriend.com

when looking at the sundering look at this value:

cAvgC

for average dps with 20% sundering.

and

nAvgC

for vampiric