Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Kids, protect your backline.

Alliance Battle, at Grenz.

A minute or so in, my team went out the front door of the spawn, captured the resurrection orb shrine, crossed the bridge, and captured the central resurrection shrine. We cut left, towards the elite warrior shrine, as the team to my right heads for the elite elementalist shrine. A group of luxons head to my left, towards the mesmer shrine, and is met by the four of my teammates, who try to stall them.

They're losing.

Seeing that the warrior shrine is clear, other than NPCs, I break from my team, and rush the luxon flank. I soon find that what I initially took as the entire luxon team was actually only half of their team, plus a minion mancer and his army. Next to him is a monk, in front of them are two elementalists, and past that, their frontliners are pounding my teammates. My attacks are already fully charged, so I pick a target. I opt for the necro, who's already wounded from sacrificing health. I run down my skill bar, left to right. Backbreaker, Pulverising Smash, Protector's Strike, Mighty Blow. The necro dies faster than the monk can respond, and the minions go wild, attacking everyone. I alternate between Lion's Comfort and Enraging Charge, and charge my attacks back up, this time turning my attention to the depleted monk, whom I spike down in similar fashion. By this point, the elementalists have noticed me, and I start getting pounded by Liquid Flame and Rodgort's Invocation. Even still, caught between me and the minions, they don't live long enough to finish me off (I hit one for 120 with Protector's Strike, as she tried to retreat).

By this time, I've gotten backup, and, the four teammates who engaged initially have managed to finish off their frontliners. We take the shrine, double back to capture the rangers shrine, and pull off a 507-174 win. Granted, the map was in our favor, but it was decisive.

Pulling off a 4 person kill streak, without support, under pressure from multiple elementalists, is insane, and I should never have pulled it off. I could have been easily stopped, in multiple ways:

1. The necro could have stopped trying to summon, and moved up to the midline, while flagging his minions on to me. I would have been trapped, and picked apart, while I tried vainly to create and exit for myself. This very thing happened to me yesterday on my ranger, when I over-extended myself.

2. The elementalists could have paid more attention, and started attacking me before I killed their monk. Even with Sentinel's insignia on my armor, I only have 100 armor to elemental damage. Liquid Flame should have been hitting me for at least 105 a pop, after armor, and Rodgort's would have done around 60, but set me on fire (14 hp a second degen). Both of them could have killed me before I was able to build up enough adrenaline to kill the monk, and with monk, they would have survived an attack from me if I changed targets.

3. The frontliners could have paid attention to their support. Granted, I was only one target, but as soon as the necro went down, at least one of them should have broken off and come to attack me, if only to bodyblock me and try to keep me away from the monk.

4. They could have had more than one monk for that many players. Alliance Battles are one of the most casual PvP environments you'll find in any game, but not being prepared is still not being prepared. Furthermore, the monk they had should have had Guardian, or something similar like Disciplined Stance or Shield Bash, to relieve melee pressure. Even an offhand Blinding Surge could have shut me down.

Fought a lot of Alliance Battles today (dumped over 15k Kurz faction before work), but this moment stuck out in my memory. More so than the warrior that was using Lava Arrow and Flame Storm, at least. God bless him, he certainly fought his ass off with that build, as badly as he did.

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