Hi, ok, so in this post i'll basically be detailing the Warrior profession in Guild Wars including stuff like their attributes, weapons, skills and generally what they do within the PvP scene.
So, what is a Warrior and what do they do? Well Warriors are essentially powerful killing machines, if played well a good Warrior will cause A LOT of pressure to the enemy team and will be your own teams main offense. In PvP the Warrior has only 1 job and that's to kill stuff! Everything else on your team will be co-ordinated to this one goal, helping the warrior to kill things as fast as possible.
Ok so if we delve a bit further into the Warrior class we can see what makes them such powerful sources of damage. While Warriors are strong damage dealers they are also notoriously good at midgitating damage done to themselves, this is primarily because of their high armour rating of 80 + an additional 20 against any physical damage (dealt by hammers, swords, axes, spears, daggers, scythes and bows), compared to the low armour rating of the Caster professions which stands at only 60.
However the Warrior has only got a very small energy pool compared to say the energy pool of an Elementalist. The Warriors energy pool stands at a base value of 20 and regenerates at a rate of 2 energy every 3 seconds (indicated by 2 arrows to the right on the energy bar aka 2 pips of regeneration), which is quite slow. For comparison the Elementalist has a base energy pool of 30 which regenerates at a rate of 4 points of energy every 3 seconds (indicated by 4 arrows to the right on the energy bar aka 4 pips of regeneration).
This small energy pool is counteracted though by skills that rarely exceed a cost of 5 energy and attack skills that are powered by adrenaline instead of energy. You gain one strike of adrenaline everytime you successfully hit with an attack and most attack skills will cost from 4-10 adrenaline.
The Warrior has 5 different attribute lines there are(along with their definitions):
Strength [Primary Attribute]: Strength increases the armour penetration of your attack skills by 1% per attribute level. Strength also improves the effectiveness of skills that keep you alive, and those that inflict damage on your opponents.
Axe Mastery: Improve Axe Mastery to increase basic axe damage and damage dealt by axe skills.
Swordsmanship: Swordsmanship increases basic sword damage as well as damage dealt by sword skills.
Hammer Mastery: Hammer Mastery increases basic hammer damage and damage dealt by hammer skills.
Tactics: Tactics improves Shouts and Stances that give you and your party an advantage in battle.
Strength is the primary attribute of the Warrior and therefore cannot be used by any professions that choose to take the Warrior as their secondary profession. Most builds in PvP will run quite a high level in the strength attribute as it has some very very nice skills and the additional armour penetration allows the Warrior to do even more damage.
As i'm sure you can tell, the weapons the Warrior uses are the Axe, Hammer and Sword. Each of these will have it's own advantages and are balanced equally with pros and cons. Firstly I will explain what you must do to wield the weapon.
Each weapon will have a certain requirement e.g Axe "X" will have requires 9 axe mastery, this means that in order to get the full damage from axe "X" you will be required to have at least 9 points in your axe mastery attribute, if you do not meet this then the axe will do an insignificant amount of damage but can still be equipped, most frontline characters will run more than 9 in their desired weapon though in order to maximise the damage output from their weapon skills. If you exceed this requirement or equal it, the axe will do full damage. This principle carries true throughout all professions and weapons, but the required attribute will vary and the value of attribute will vary but will not fall below 9.
The Axe - The axe is a very fast swinging melee weapon, this means it hits every 1.33 seconds and has a maximum damage range from 6-28, this means that on any given swing the axe may hit for anything between these figures and while that may not sound a lot, when you consider that damage is being done every 1.33 seconds, it really does add up and that's not including using any axe skills which generally have +dmg advantages. Most axe skills use adrenaline and so not a lot of energy is used and the adrenaline cost for the skill can be built up quite quickly. Axes also only require 1 hand to use and so allows for a shield to be used on the offhand.
The Sword - The sword is also a fast swinging 1 handed weapon, which hits every 1.33 seconds as well. A sword will have a maximum damage range from 15-22, this means that while the maximum damage the sword can inflict is lower than that of the axe, the variation between attack damage will be smaller. Also unlike the axe, the sword is more of a mix between adrenaline based attacks and energy based attacks and are not focused so much on damage, instead the sword is more geared towards conditions, such as bleeding ( a condition which causes 3 pips of health degeneration) and deep wound ( a condition which decreases your maximum health by 20% with a maximum value of 100).
The Hammer - Unlike both the sword and the axe, the hammer is a slow swinging, dual handed weapon. This means that you cannot equip a shield while wielding a hammer. The hammer has an attack speed of 1.75 seconds and so is a lot slower than the axe and sword, however, the damage it deals is also far greater at 19-35 per hit. Like the sword the hammer is also a mix between adrenaline and energy based attack skills, with more adrenaline skills than energy based and the hammer is geared towards knocking down (KD'ing) opponents. This is a very very useful thing to do, as once the opponent has been knocked to the floor he can neither run away or cast any spells, the KD duration is 2 seconds but this can be prolonged to 3 seconds with the use of an insignia placed in the warriors armour, the absolute maximum time a KD can last for is 4 seconds but this 4 seconds can only be applied by 1 skill in the game.
Tactics - Tactics is not used very often by warriors in PvP as most of the skills under this line are based on defense rather than offense and when playing in an organized team the warrior will not need to take any defense, he can leave this to his monks.
Shields - If a warrior is wielding a 1 handed weapon, he or she can then also equip a shield, which will have a armour rating of 16, shields require either 9 attribute points in strength, which most warriors will have already or 9 attribute points in tactics. Shields are not just used by Warriors though, they are also used as a defensive set by backline and midline characters as well. This is because even if they do not meet the requirement of the shield, the shield will still grant them half of armour rating, so they will recieve +8 armour rating from wielding a shield.
I think that pretty much sums up the basics of the Warrior profession and I will not go into actually playing the Warrior as it is by far one of the hardest professions in Guild Wars to play, you could nearly write a book on it =P
Here is a listing of all the different skills available to the warrior class along with their descriptions:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_skills
The golden skills are elite skills, you can only have 1 of these in your bar of 8 skills.
And here is a list of current effective Warrior builds used in PvP under the W section:
http://www.pvxwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Category:All_working_PvP_builds&from=Team+-+TA+Balanced
However, if a build here is rated anything other than a 5 (Great), it won't see much competitive play.
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Monday 10 November 2008
Professions and Positioning
Hey, ok so in this blog i'll start to explain each of the different professions, their role in PvP play and what there main goals are, starting with a brief overview.
Essentially the 8 different positions can be split into 3 different catagories which are Melee professions, Caster professions and Ranged professions, assuming you're not running some wierd build like a monk with a sword =/.
A melee profession is basically close combat, they specialise in doing most of the teams damage through a range of close combat weapons. Warriors, Dervishes and Assassins are all primarily melee professions.
Monks, Elementalists, Mesmers, Ritualists and Necromancers are all Casters, this means they fulfil their roles in the team not by close combat but by casting spells, hence the name "Caster". However in order for the caster to cast a spell on the enemy they have to be within a certain range, it cannot be done from anywhere on the map.
The ranged professions include the Ranger and the Paragon. These professions are neither close combat or spell casters, instead they inflict damage on the opponent from a range similar to that of the caster but through weapons like bows and spears instead of close combat weapons. Spears have a range slightly shorter than that of the caster and bows have varied ranges depending on the type of bow used at the time, I will expand on this in the Ranger section.
If we take a look at the most competitive forms of PvP (teams of 8 vs 8) the professions can be further sub-divided into Frontline, Midline and Backline, this stems from their general position on the map when in combat.
The Frontline professions are essentially the same as the Melee professions, Warriors, Assassins and Dervishes, these 2 traits are dependent on each other, as if the profession was not doing close combat damage, then they would not be in the frontline. Generally speaking the Melee professions will lead the way into the other team and will always be at the frontmost position in order to deal damage to the enemies Mid and Backline.
The midline positions (Paragons, Mesmers, Necromancers, Elementalists, Rangers) are technically speaking the hardest to define as at any point during the match they can also be at the frontline (rare) or the backline (more common) although taking an average they will be found most often somewhere between the front and the back of your team (hence midline). As you can see these characters are mostly a mix between casters and ranged professions and this again influences their positioning. These characters will be doing damage to the enemy mid and backline as well, but because they do not need to be in close range they will not be pushed as far forward as the Frontline.
The backline is then your monks, these should always be furthest away from the enemy team but still in range of your own team. This is because they are your healers, they keep your team alive and will be a priority target for the enemy team, another reason for them not being pushed up as far as the midline is because there is simply no need for them to be. They will not be dealing any damage to other team ( conventionally anyway) and so they do not need to be in range of the other team.
Now those of you who are really paying attention will notice I have not yet included the Ritualist in a frontline/backline or midline position. This is mainly because it can be played as either a backline or midline position and so can't really be put into either category. When played as a full healer it will be backline and if played with an offensive build it will become a midline class.
In the next blog I will start to give some in depth information on each of the individual professions.
Essentially the 8 different positions can be split into 3 different catagories which are Melee professions, Caster professions and Ranged professions, assuming you're not running some wierd build like a monk with a sword =/.
A melee profession is basically close combat, they specialise in doing most of the teams damage through a range of close combat weapons. Warriors, Dervishes and Assassins are all primarily melee professions.
Monks, Elementalists, Mesmers, Ritualists and Necromancers are all Casters, this means they fulfil their roles in the team not by close combat but by casting spells, hence the name "Caster". However in order for the caster to cast a spell on the enemy they have to be within a certain range, it cannot be done from anywhere on the map.
The ranged professions include the Ranger and the Paragon. These professions are neither close combat or spell casters, instead they inflict damage on the opponent from a range similar to that of the caster but through weapons like bows and spears instead of close combat weapons. Spears have a range slightly shorter than that of the caster and bows have varied ranges depending on the type of bow used at the time, I will expand on this in the Ranger section.
If we take a look at the most competitive forms of PvP (teams of 8 vs 8) the professions can be further sub-divided into Frontline, Midline and Backline, this stems from their general position on the map when in combat.
The Frontline professions are essentially the same as the Melee professions, Warriors, Assassins and Dervishes, these 2 traits are dependent on each other, as if the profession was not doing close combat damage, then they would not be in the frontline. Generally speaking the Melee professions will lead the way into the other team and will always be at the frontmost position in order to deal damage to the enemies Mid and Backline.
The midline positions (Paragons, Mesmers, Necromancers, Elementalists, Rangers) are technically speaking the hardest to define as at any point during the match they can also be at the frontline (rare) or the backline (more common) although taking an average they will be found most often somewhere between the front and the back of your team (hence midline). As you can see these characters are mostly a mix between casters and ranged professions and this again influences their positioning. These characters will be doing damage to the enemy mid and backline as well, but because they do not need to be in close range they will not be pushed as far forward as the Frontline.
The backline is then your monks, these should always be furthest away from the enemy team but still in range of your own team. This is because they are your healers, they keep your team alive and will be a priority target for the enemy team, another reason for them not being pushed up as far as the midline is because there is simply no need for them to be. They will not be dealing any damage to other team ( conventionally anyway) and so they do not need to be in range of the other team.
Now those of you who are really paying attention will notice I have not yet included the Ritualist in a frontline/backline or midline position. This is mainly because it can be played as either a backline or midline position and so can't really be put into either category. When played as a full healer it will be backline and if played with an offensive build it will become a midline class.
In the next blog I will start to give some in depth information on each of the individual professions.
Friday 7 November 2008
An Introduction to Guild Wars
I've decided that I will infact do most of this blog about Guild Wars and since I have nothing else to do i'll start now =P I'm not going to explain all the mechanics of the game in one blog, instead i'll just break it down into a series of blogs, with each one looking at a different aspect of the game (although staying within the pvp side) and then moving on to detail the progress of my current guild GvG Scrubs [prOs]. Yes, we are pro =D
Ok so, what is Guild Wars? Guild Wars is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, which was released in 2004, it is made up of 3 seperate games, which can be combined to create 1 big world or just played seperately. There is also an expansion which you do need a previous game to play.
Guild Wars is not a conventional MMORPG though, it has also been called CORPG which stands for Co-Operative Online Roleplaying Game. This is mainly because the world which Guild Wars is set in, is not one persistant world, where all players play in the same map and can meet each other wherever they go. Guild Wars is mainly composed of areas called Cities/Towns and Explorable areas. Players can interact, trade and chat within a Town or City and can also form "Parties" which is essentially a group, this party can be a maximum size of 8 people in the higher end areas of the game, and 4 people in the starting areas.
Once a party has been formed the players go through one of the exits in the town where the explorable area is loaded just for the players currently in that party. If any seperate parties exit through the same way, a new map will be loaded for them, which will consist of the same enemies etc etc but will not involve your party. This is called an Instance and once within an instance you cannot change any of the skills you currently have with you.
This party formation essentially creates the core of Guild Wars, it is meant to played in a team, while there is nothing preventing you from forming a 1 man party, you will procceed to get owned =P Although in certain cases people can go out solo, but this is only done for farming gold (money), which I will not go into.
Now, onto the basics of the game.
Assuming you own all of the Guild Wars games (which I do) when you go to create a character you will have a choice of 8 different "Professions", these are the Warrior, Necromancer, Monk, Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist, Assassin, Ritulist, Dervish and Paragon. I will explain each of these in depth in a future blog.
Once you have choosen your proffession you can choose whether to play a female or male character and then customize the visual appearance of your character and then you will be loaded into the first town of the game.
Each profession has a skill bar, this can be made up of a maximum of 8 different skills, including 1 elite skill (these are as the name indicates, better than average skills), this composition of 8 skills is what we call a "Build".
Now, there are 2 types of profession. Your primary profession and your secondary profession. Your primary profession is the profession you picked at the start and will dictate your visual appearance, the armour you can wear, the amount of energy you have and also your primary attribute (will go into this later). Your secondary profession, the options for which are the same as the primary profession (warrior etc etc), gives you access to all of that professions skills, but does not allow you to wear armour from that profession or use that professions primary attribute. This creates and absolutely enormous possible combinations for the 8 skills that you can take with you into an instance as each profession has over 100 different skills.
Most professions have 4 attributes (3 normal attributes and 1 primary attribute) however Warriors and Elementalists have 5 (4 normal attributes, and 1 primary), all of your chosen professions skills are tied to these 4 or 5 attributes. So if you choose to be a Warrior/Elementalist, you will have in total 9 attribute lines or if you choose to be a Monk/Ritulist you will have 7 attributes in total etc etc. You are given a set amount of "Attribute points" and so can raise the level of the desired attribute, this in turn will increase the power of all the skills attached to that attribute. So, while you may have access to the skills which are tied to the Elementalists primary attribute, you will not be able to increase their strength, as you can only access the Warriors primary attribute if your primary profession is a Warrior. As you only have a limited amount of attribute points you cannot raise all of your attribute lines to a reasonable strength and so generally most good builds will only use skills from 3 different attribute lines, as spreading the attribute points any thinner than this usually results in a less than effective build.
That was a longer blog than expected, but explaining the basics of the game is usually what takes the longest and once they are understood, most other things are easy to explain. So in the next few blogs I will start detailing what each of the professions strengths and weaknesses are and how they are used in competitive play.
Ok so, what is Guild Wars? Guild Wars is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, which was released in 2004, it is made up of 3 seperate games, which can be combined to create 1 big world or just played seperately. There is also an expansion which you do need a previous game to play.
Guild Wars is not a conventional MMORPG though, it has also been called CORPG which stands for Co-Operative Online Roleplaying Game. This is mainly because the world which Guild Wars is set in, is not one persistant world, where all players play in the same map and can meet each other wherever they go. Guild Wars is mainly composed of areas called Cities/Towns and Explorable areas. Players can interact, trade and chat within a Town or City and can also form "Parties" which is essentially a group, this party can be a maximum size of 8 people in the higher end areas of the game, and 4 people in the starting areas.
Once a party has been formed the players go through one of the exits in the town where the explorable area is loaded just for the players currently in that party. If any seperate parties exit through the same way, a new map will be loaded for them, which will consist of the same enemies etc etc but will not involve your party. This is called an Instance and once within an instance you cannot change any of the skills you currently have with you.
This party formation essentially creates the core of Guild Wars, it is meant to played in a team, while there is nothing preventing you from forming a 1 man party, you will procceed to get owned =P Although in certain cases people can go out solo, but this is only done for farming gold (money), which I will not go into.
Now, onto the basics of the game.
Assuming you own all of the Guild Wars games (which I do) when you go to create a character you will have a choice of 8 different "Professions", these are the Warrior, Necromancer, Monk, Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist, Assassin, Ritulist, Dervish and Paragon. I will explain each of these in depth in a future blog.
Once you have choosen your proffession you can choose whether to play a female or male character and then customize the visual appearance of your character and then you will be loaded into the first town of the game.
Each profession has a skill bar, this can be made up of a maximum of 8 different skills, including 1 elite skill (these are as the name indicates, better than average skills), this composition of 8 skills is what we call a "Build".
Now, there are 2 types of profession. Your primary profession and your secondary profession. Your primary profession is the profession you picked at the start and will dictate your visual appearance, the armour you can wear, the amount of energy you have and also your primary attribute (will go into this later). Your secondary profession, the options for which are the same as the primary profession (warrior etc etc), gives you access to all of that professions skills, but does not allow you to wear armour from that profession or use that professions primary attribute. This creates and absolutely enormous possible combinations for the 8 skills that you can take with you into an instance as each profession has over 100 different skills.
Most professions have 4 attributes (3 normal attributes and 1 primary attribute) however Warriors and Elementalists have 5 (4 normal attributes, and 1 primary), all of your chosen professions skills are tied to these 4 or 5 attributes. So if you choose to be a Warrior/Elementalist, you will have in total 9 attribute lines or if you choose to be a Monk/Ritulist you will have 7 attributes in total etc etc. You are given a set amount of "Attribute points" and so can raise the level of the desired attribute, this in turn will increase the power of all the skills attached to that attribute. So, while you may have access to the skills which are tied to the Elementalists primary attribute, you will not be able to increase their strength, as you can only access the Warriors primary attribute if your primary profession is a Warrior. As you only have a limited amount of attribute points you cannot raise all of your attribute lines to a reasonable strength and so generally most good builds will only use skills from 3 different attribute lines, as spreading the attribute points any thinner than this usually results in a less than effective build.
That was a longer blog than expected, but explaining the basics of the game is usually what takes the longest and once they are understood, most other things are easy to explain. So in the next few blogs I will start detailing what each of the professions strengths and weaknesses are and how they are used in competitive play.
Thursday 6 November 2008
Ok, so, first blog...
I know I said I would never start doing one of these things, I had always loathed the blogosphere, mainly because people weren't blogging for fun but because they were blogging to try and get money. I realise this is no different than say, going out and starting a business or whatever but there was something I didn't like about this, just one of those annoying fads that will fade away into the horizon in a few years.
However saying all that, some guys in my ICT class were creating their own blogs on this site, not to make money but just to detail the adventures we have in ICT, which is always a pretty hilarious class =P This reminded me of when I used to write a journal on another site, which I always found pretty relaxing and fun but eventually got bored of it. So now i've decided to start up again on this site.
I'm not entirely sure what i'm going to blog about, just whatever I feel like at the time, I was thinking about maybe doing a blog about Guild Wars (mainly the PvP side) which is a competitive MMORPG and about my Guilds progress in Guild vs Guild battles, but it really would take a tremendous amount of explaining due to the complex nature of the game so i'm not sure about that.
Chances are the blog will mainly just be about the day-to-day ongoings in my life, which might be a bit boring, but hey, gives me and excuse to avoid doing schoolwork!
I know I said I would never start doing one of these things, I had always loathed the blogosphere, mainly because people weren't blogging for fun but because they were blogging to try and get money. I realise this is no different than say, going out and starting a business or whatever but there was something I didn't like about this, just one of those annoying fads that will fade away into the horizon in a few years.
However saying all that, some guys in my ICT class were creating their own blogs on this site, not to make money but just to detail the adventures we have in ICT, which is always a pretty hilarious class =P This reminded me of when I used to write a journal on another site, which I always found pretty relaxing and fun but eventually got bored of it. So now i've decided to start up again on this site.
I'm not entirely sure what i'm going to blog about, just whatever I feel like at the time, I was thinking about maybe doing a blog about Guild Wars (mainly the PvP side) which is a competitive MMORPG and about my Guilds progress in Guild vs Guild battles, but it really would take a tremendous amount of explaining due to the complex nature of the game so i'm not sure about that.
Chances are the blog will mainly just be about the day-to-day ongoings in my life, which might be a bit boring, but hey, gives me and excuse to avoid doing schoolwork!
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