Edition10
Gamer's Mantra It's nearly the end of November, and some of you are probably wondering, "Where's the next Gamer's Mantra?", or even "Where's Kalendraf?" Suffice to say, my job has been keeping me extremely busy over the past two months, and events in real life consumed much of my remaining free time. Since early October, I've barely had anytime to play Guild Wars, let alone write another Gamer's Mantra. Fortunately, work is beginning to settle down somewhat, and once again, I'm starting to get a bit of free time to devote to the game I enjoy. In my few recent playing sessions, I've noticed some interesting trends. In PvE, there seems to be even more consolidation of character types than I originally recall. It seems whenever I'm trying to join a group, all anyone asks for is tanks, nukers, or healers, and that's how players seem to be stratifying themselves as well. Most of the groups I've partied with lately feature several Warrior/Monks, a couple Monk primaries, an elementalist or two and a couple other random classes. Any resulting success using such a party likely tends to reinforce this idea that you need tanks, healers and nukers for a good party. As a result, when players look toward making their next PvE character, they are probably far less willing to experiment, fearing that either they won't get invited or that their resulting build may be sub-par compared to one of these other arch-types. That former fear can be real - it is often difficult to get invited into a party if you aren't playing a proven well-known commodity, especially if the party is comprised of newer players who aren't willing to try playing with other builds. But the latter fear is not valid. In fact, a build that is different can actually be better for a party. Diversity among characters in a party is a strength, not a weakness. What does diversity in a party mean? Most players would probably say it means you need some warriors, monks, elementalists and other characters for a good party balance. However, diversity goes even further than that. In addition to primary classes, diversity relates to your skills, you methods of dealing damage or avoiding it, and even your style of play. In fact, party diversity is such a huge topic that one could probably write an entire book on the subject just for Guild Wars characters and party formation. Rather than do that, I'll try to explain a few aspects related to party diversity and how you can use it to improve your party builds. Avoid overlapping skills A diverse party will have few or no overlapping skills that don't stack. In other words, you don't want all your warriors to equip Sever Artery, since bleeding does not stack. Similarly, you probably don't want all of your elementalists bringing along the same kinds of spells that cause blindness, slowness or burning. For example, it's not useful to Immolate a target that's already burning or blind a target that was already hit by Blinding Flash. Multiple necros or mesmers should be cautious not to bring the same identical hexes either, since a target can only be affected by one Life Siphon or one Conjure Phantasm at time. How do you avoid this? Talk it over as the party is getting assembled. If you see another character that might use similar skills to your own, a simple discussion between you in the team chat can quickly reveal whether a potential overlap exists. If one does, you can swap out that skill for something else that might be better, or try to coordinate your attacks in the game to avoid stacking the condition, hex or whatever overlap may exist. Avoid interference Of course, not all forms of diversity are necessarily good. Certain water hexes end prematurely with fire attacks. Crystal Wave will remove conditions from the foe, conditions that your allies may have worked very hard to bestow upon the enemy. Meanwhile, a knockdown of a foe may prevent that foe from triggering backfire, empathy or mind wrack damage. It's not always obvious when certain skills may interfere with others, but after a while, you should begin to spot the ones which can be problematic. As with the overlapping skills, the best way to avoid these issues is to discuss your skills with your team beforehand, and then change-up your skill bar accordingly, or coordinate your attacks in the game to avoid interference. Diversify your damage Most players seem to understand the value of elemental vs. physical damage, but then seem to completely overlook the other damage types that exist. In many cases the other options can be even stronger choices. Damage over Time (DoT) hexes like Life Siphon or Conjure Phantasm and conditions like Bleeding, Burning, or Poisoned provide a way to deal considerable damage that totally ignores the target's armor. In addition, there are several spells like Energy Burn or Vampiric Gaze that entirely ignore armor as well. Against foes with very high armor classes, you'll sometimes find that these options are superior in their ability to quickly defeat a foe compared to physical or elemental attacks. This is a good example of where the overly-simplistic Tanks, Nukers & Healers party build doesn't always cut it. A party comprised only of typical warriors, elementalists and monks can have significant difficulty defeating certain heavily armored or self-healing foes. Merely including a necromancer or mesmer can easily change the outcome in these battles by using skills that totally ignore the target's armor, or turn their own spell-casting against them. It's also possible to swap weapon types to have diversity among the various damage types like slashing, blunt, piercing, earth, fire, lightning or cold. Not all of those choices may be available for any one character, but across a party they can be. For example, my own N/W has three swords - Fiery (fire), Icy (cold) and Barbed (slashing) - as well as wand across the 4 weapon slots. As a result, I can quickly switch to a different weapon to provide some level of diversity in my weapon choices. Though I lack anyway of providing blunt or piercing damage, even this small degree of choice allows for a greater damage diversity within any party I join. Melee vs. Ranged In PvE, you can make many battles much easier by pulling the enemies using a bow, wand, stave or ranged attack spell. In addition, fighting an entire skirmish at range sometimes occurs due to terrain. It's important that everyone can pull their weight in these situations. While the non-warrior characters likely have a wand, stave or spell to allow this, warriors should pack some kind of wand, bow or skill that allows them to attack at range as well. (Note: You can find bows that deal up to about 9-12 damage w/ no requirement. Go exploring in Old Ascalon and one should eventually pop up.) On the flip-side, even a ranged character can get swarmed and face multiple up-close attackers. If this happens, you should have some kind of option in your disposal to help. Ranged spells still work up close, but it may be advantageous to also include a touch spell or point-blank spell that can help you shutdown the enemies. Skills that allow you to run away, improve your armor or blind your foes are equally worthy of consideration here. Certain missions and maps are far more notorious for this kind of swarming behavior by the enemies, so in those locations, it may be worth changing up your skills to allow yourself (and your party) an option to deal with this situation. Energy vs. Adrenaline Another thing to consider in a party is how many adrenaline-based skills vs. energy skills your group has to choose from. Lots of energy skills allow for many up-front options, including possibilities like spiking your enemies to death. But if you rely solely on energy skills, you may find your group struggling in areas where energy is crippled (vs. Ether Seals for example). Adrenaline skills build up and become more useful in the middle to later stages of a battle. Thus, your warriors will often become even more effective as the battle wears on. Around the time your casters need to take a break to recharge, your warriors should be ready to demolish something. If your party has too many warriors with too much adrenaline dependency, the party may struggle in the early critical stages of certain critical battles, and there may also be a sizeable group tendency to rush to optimize the adrenaline use which in turn overly strains energy-based characters, especially monks. As some of you probably know by now, seeing groups that continually spam "Need Tanks", "Need Nukers" or "Need Healers" in staging areas is a major pet peeve of mine. I'd much prefer to see those groups embrace diversity and invite characters that would best complement their party rather than just calling out for some simple arch-type they've seen spammed by countless other groups before them. My advice to them... Diversify your party! |
