Monday November 2 2009 Wrapup

Got another 15 wins with pugs today, running cleave, palm strike, poison arrow and peace and harmony.

I'll stop a little bit to talk about today, because I think today was special. Today we had very little spear attacks and no dervish elites worth running. But there were still a lot of people who had to run dervish and used balthazar, and still teams that went two midliners and relied on assassin as their only melee.

Today really separated who understood Guild Wars from people who don't. A person who doesn't understand Guild Wars would look at today's skill list and think, low damage because no wounding strike and no spears. Especially someone who's been playing Codex for the past week and taking a dervish every single day. People who understand Guild Wars know that a warrior, with 12 strength and 12 axe, even with a pathetic attack skill like cleave is amazing DPS. Guild Wars is made around the warriors. Everything else is either made to shut down warriors, heal through warrior damage or is a bad copy of a warrior. If anyone is still playing this is what I ran:

Distracting Strike
Leviathan Sweep
Cleave
Penetrating Chop
Fear Me
Desperation Blow
Balanced Stance
Resurrection Signet

The strategy I used to win was simple, attack their assassin. Distracting strike ruined their chain, and leviathan knocked them down in the middle of their chain when the rt put weapon of warding on the assassin. And when the assassin got pissed and went after me, I was immune to critical.

Note that I don't have the awful lacerating chop skill. Also this was a special day that warriors don't need IAS... normally they do, but cleave charges so fast that you shouldn't need bezerker stance. Desperation blow with balanced stance for a chance for deep wound.

Anyone still playing can probably get 50 wins with a pug with balthazar derv, cleave war, palm strike assassin and p&h monk with cripple.

(Un)Surprise of the Day: Assassins wearing two superiors and falling like flies (lol).

Saturday October 31 2009 Wrapup

Well finally decided not to play with a PuG and played with a champ group. The leader made us run spike, and we were getting beat by bonetti's defense and protector defense balls. Which I kind of predicted would happen but I didn't want to say anything. Wanted to see what they could do, and it wasn't much at least not today. Spike is overrated as hell on Codex, and vent even more overrated. So those of you who can't get into high ranked groups don't worry it's not that much better. A small rank g3 or more is enough to clear out pure noobs. Or better yet play with friends. And spike fails, like I thought. Well maybe I'm not being fair because today was a really high defense day but I don't see spike doing any better on a blind or snare day.

Anyway the strat today was bonetti's defense with protector defense ball. Three people chaining it. So I suppose you could use vent for that. And people were getting 50 streaks with it.

Good night and Happy Haunting.

(Un)Surprise of the Day: Leeroy sin rushing in alone to kill priest on res map and couldn't do it and getting owned when other team notices and falls back on him (lol). If you want to gank, at least make sure you can do it!

Friday October 30 2009 Wrapup

Not much time to play today so doing the wrapup early. Very high defense meta today: trick seems to be bring a mind burn elementalist with strip enchantment then bring your own ebon dust paragon and keep protective spirit and three other enchants on him all the time. The third can be anything: ranger is great but so is a shatter sin (even with no deep wound lol) just to deal with ebon and make sure its off.

Unless you get an organized group, best to stick with monk, mind blast elementalist with strip enchantment, dervish paragon with ebon dust aura + one optional player.

Daily Surprise: Mind burn ele *works* not just because of mind burn, but because elementalist's huge mana pool is perfect for strip enchantment. And also because attunes are less important to strip than... you guessed it, ebon dust aura. They're not going to waste their time stripping your fire attune when there's ebon dust, conjure and prot spirit to rip. But especially dust. Ebon dust arena indeed lol.

Thursday October 29 2009 Wrapup

As I predicted WoR and Glimmer are in with double healers. Shockingly very few mesmers around even with migraine and spirit shackles. Spirit shackles plus cover hexes ruins a dervish and assassin so I even expected spirit shackles on things like warriors or paragons. But I guess nobody wants to shut anything down, they just want to rely on healing and damage.

Ritualists are playing very badly today. Probably because all serious pvpers shun ritualists like the plague, but when they need them today they look for one and get PvEs or those who are totally new to PvP. Do not constantly run from a dervish with featherfoot grace or any other melee with a speed boost or snare or cripple, or you get hit in the back for massive damage.

A winning strategy today is to have the warrior cripple the dervish or assassin, the dervish go after the ritualist (who will probably run and get hit in the back because you have featherfoot grace) and the paragon/assassin or other damage dealer help the dervish out. Or you could always go double healer. But if you don't, backlining with a cripslash war/ele with grasping earth is crucial.

Daily Surprise: Assassins using hammer bash and falling spider. To do this well you either have to have macros or be double jointed like Koreans (j/k lol anyone can do it: worth considering carrying two different weapons like hammer and sword if there's critical skills in a line such as knockdown).

Wednesday October 28 2009 Wrapup

Well got one codex point playing with pugs again. Seems like the reason most pugs lose isn't because of bad skill bar but bad tactics. Like attacking their melee to cripple them went a long way to taking pressure off your monk vs high physical teams, and rushing in to their priest right when they're about to res is not a good idea when you're up four reses (yes we lost one like that).

Anyway met a cocky sin who was farming codex points five at a time. Basically he ran sin, derv, rt, mo and farmed points five at a time with double healers (spirit light weapon and monk elite). Copied him and won five and got a lot of wins with pugs, winning 3 losing 1 winning 4 losing 1 that kind of thing.

I am almost ready to make my next guide "How to win 5 in Codex Arena." Stay tuned casual players you'll want to read it.

Daily Surprise: Guilded team with no monk but cruel spear, charging strike, burning arrow and shattering assault.

Tuesday October 27 2009 Wrapup

Today's meta was (is) wounding strike dervish/elementalist with conjure, assault enchantments assassin, weaken knees necromancer/mesmer with anti hex and aura of faith monk/assassin with return.

If anyone is still playing a winning strategy seems to center around disabling the other team's dervish with insidious + shadow of fear, using your dervish to keep their melee crippled then go after whoever is not a /a so they don't return and cripple you (probably the necromancer). Wounding strike is so powerful today that if you can keep their dervish shutdown while your dervish runs rampant, you've probably won.

I saw ineptitude mesmers too but they didn't seem to do nearly as well as necromancers at shutting down the dervish.

Daily Surprise: Someone from eF (or says he is) selling an invite for 100 ecto/month. No thanks lol.

Monday October 26 2009 Wrapup

Well didn't get a codex point today -- spent all day playing with PuGs. Did get four wins with this build:

Swift Javelin
Blazing Spear
Glowing Signet
Cruel Spear
Disrupting Throw
Go For the Eyes
Strip Enchantment
Resurrection Signet

In my opinion better than any blindbot out there. Got four wins with randoms that I asked to spike... pretty simple stuff after charging adrenal I would press ctrl space on my target 3-4 times and all they would do is press t and 1-2-3-4. Had a RaO spear and a sin with Dark Prison teleporting in. Anyway spiking is not that hard: I didn't even have vent.

Daily Surprise: Glimmering Mark eles plus Reaper's Mark necros.

Monday October 26 2009 Wrapup

From now on I'll do a "prediction" early in the morning and a "wrapup" late at night after I've had a chance to play a bit.

Today's healing skills were awful. The meta monk was boon sig, ethereal light, soldier's defense, shield stance and... healing signet (lol). But then people just switched to attacking everything but the monk. It was near impossible to pug it: guild teams would slap vor on the monk the moment the sin was ready to spike.

A friend suggested to me a radical idea: don't carry a monk, carry more damage.

Only an hour and twenty minutes left so no time to test it out, but it could have worked. If tomorrow has bad healing like today, I will try it.

Suprise of the Day: Dervish Assassin Lyssa with daggers.