Editorial | 9/6/2010 at 11:59 AM

MMO Co-Opportunities Volume III: Guild Wars

In light of all the recent information and reveals for upcoming Guild Wars 2, I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate this month’s MMO Co-Opportunities volume to the first Guild Wars. I won’t lie to you, fellow co-opians; Guild Wars has a near and dear place to my heart. Much of that is attributed to extremely strong team play where you have to trust your teammates implicitly and not question their judgment because frankly, you’re too busy focusing on your own role to nit-pick theirs.

There are two (often overlapping) communities in Guild Wars: PvE players and PvP players. Since we focus on co-op here, I’ll solely be focusing on PvE aspects of the game for this article. I really saw no other choice but to honor two extremely unique systems/concepts in Guild Wars: builds and synergy.

Let me back up a moment to make sure we’re all on the same page here. Guild Wars has 10 professions: 6 core (meaning they come with any of the campaigns) and 2 additional professions for each the Factions campaign and Nightfall campaign (to play the classes associated with the 2nd and 3rd campaigns you must own said campaign). When you create a character, you’re selecting that character’s primary profession for forever. All of the professions are available, however, as a secondary profession. These you can unlock and swap in town whenever you feel like playing a different secondary class. The secondary profession you have chosen at the moment allows you access to all skills of your primary and secondary profession, but some of the skills of your secondary profession may be weaker due to lack of access to the secondary’s primary attribute (only primary professions have access to a special primary attribute) or certain bonuses to attributes you’re allowed on gear of your primary class.

So you have your primary and secondary class. Now what? In Guild Wars, you only get 8 skills at any given time. 8 doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but let me assure you that this limit on skills and the associated system is perhaps the most defining part of the game. You have free range to choose whatever 8 skills you have access to at the time based on what skills you’ve unlocked, and you can change these skills whenever you’re in a town. In time you may have hundreds of skills to choose from across multiple secondary classes. How on earth do you choose which of these skills you should use as the 8 you’re allowed? The answer is synergy and builds (this time, we’re talking about it on a personal level).

Synergy refers to the ability for skills you have equipped to work well with each other. It’s a rather loose term. One example of synergy may be using skill Devastating Hammer (knocks target down and inflicts weakness) followed by Heavy Blow (if used on a target suffering weakness, target is knocked down and you strike for additional damage). A slightly different concept of synergy may be using skill Enervating Charge (inflicts weakness) after using Blinding Flash (inflicts blind) to use weakness to “cover” your more important blind when you feel you might be in a situation where your inflicted conditions may be removed (when removing conditions one by one, the most recent one applied to a target must be removed before the ones buried underneath).

A build is any full or partial set of skills that works well enough together that you personally or the community at large feel it’s acceptable to use more than a couple times. There are entire websites and wikis dedicated solely to Guild Wars builds because with so many skills available and only 8 skill slots the possibility are nearly endless. Many of the popular builds get lovingly named, often quite distinguishable names. There is also constant tweaking or changing of skills, so a build that may be very strong one month might be considerably weaker the next.

Well this is all well and good, Tally, but where’s the gosh-darn co-op bit of this? I’m please to inform you co-opians that TEAM synergy and TEAM builds also play a very important role in the game, and this is where things can get extremely interesting. Many of the missions (set instances where you and your teammates experience the story of the campaign) are casual enough that your team doesn’t need a very strict plan to complete it. Certain missions, elite missions, and often bonuses associated with many missions, however, do require coordination, and for these team builds are often conceived.

If you’ve play an MMO or two, you most certainly know about the idea of a group composition (e.g. healer, tank, a couple dps, etc.). Guild Wars has build compositions. For example, there was a popular team build quite awhile back for one of the elite missions, Tomb of the Primeval Kings. It was called B/P, as it consisted of mostly B/P rangers, B standing for the elite skill Barrage and P standing for pet (rangers get access to one pet that they have charmed; it accompanies them whenever they have the Charm Animal skill equipped). The team build was composed of 1 or 2 monks who had a large amount of freedom of what skills they brought (just limited or no enchantments, and often a semi-spammable spike heal), a Minion Master necromancer who focused on raising minions, a battery necromancer (specialized in keeping the monk(s) and other necro supplied with energy, or mana in layman’s terms), and the rest filled up with B/P rangers. Since the mobs in the area did a crazy amount of damage, the build focused on creating a wall with minions that the necro created and pets from the rangers. When the pets died, they left exploitable corpses for the necro to keep raising minions as his/her minions died.The battery necro kept the energy flowing along with some other utility skills he/she had brought, and the rangers spammed Barrage (a skill that shot several arrows to hit several mobs all at once) and interrupts when a dangerous skill needed to be interrupted. If you had good or experienced players, this build could rip through the area like no one’s business. If someone wasn’t doing their job, the team could easily wipe.

Another Co-Opportunity that I think deserves mentioning for Guild Wars is the ability to play with friends for small chunks of time if folks don’t have a lot of time. Again, if you’re familiar with MMOs, dungeons/instances often take a considerable amount of time. Sometimes those with children or other urgent commitments will either have to leave early or just decide not to partake at certain times due to this time commitment. In Guild Wars, many of the missions can be completed in 15-30 minutes or less. A large amount of time can also be spent trying to get a party together in most MMOs, waiting for people to log on or to be ready to go. In Guild Wars you can fill up your remaining party with henchmen or heroes, so you and your friend(s) can get going as soon as you want, no waiting required.

Fun/Useful Guild Wars Terminology:

Profession Abbreviations:

A - Assassin
D - Dervish
E - Elementalist
Me - Mesmer
Mo - Monk
N - Necromancer
P - Paragon
R - Ranger
Rt - Ritualist
W - Warrior

Pip: The little sideways triangles displayed on health/energy bars. If they point towards the right, you regain health or energy over time; if they point left, you lose health or energy over time. For health each pip corresponds to 2 health gain/lost per second, for energy each pip corresponds to 1 energy gain/lost per 3-second period Enchantment: Beneficial skills that come in two flavors: ones with a set duration and ones that have an infinite duration (usually maintained enchantments). Maintained enchantments last until the caster is dead, the enchantment is stripped, or for some other reason the enchantment is forced to be removed; however, it is at the sacrifice of one precious energy pip per maintained enchantment. The ones with durations have a myriad of duration times (sometimes very short, sometimes very long) Condition/Ailment: A grouping of debuffs, distinguishable by their yellow background. Included bleed, blind, daze, etc. which can be applied by numerous different skills Hex: A grouping of debuffs, distinguishable by their pink background. Unlike conditions, hex names and effects are unique to the skill that applies it. For example, several hexes may apply degeneration, but the debuff displayed will be unique to the skill used, and the amount of degen may vary from attribute level and from each skill Wammo (also W/Mo): A class combination composed of Warrior primary and Monk secondary, often to utilize the monk’s healing skills and ailment removals Resmer: Refers to a Mesmer that utilizes their fast-casting ability to cast resurrection skills faster than normal. Usually used jokingly or in distain Frenzy+Healsig: Refers to the UNsynergous use of the Warrior skills Frenzy (increases attack speed, but causes you to take double damage) with Healing Signet (a two-second cast skill that heals for a decent amount, but causes you to suffer -40 armor while you are casting it). The result is you taking massive damage if you’re hit with these skills both going at the same time. An on-going joke in the community Ascension: A pivotal point in the first campaign (Prophecies), after which most characters were finally able to achieve max level 20 Drok’s Run: In Prophecies for the most part, any place you could run to, you could enter or do the associated mission. Drok’s runs refers to a very long and complicated run from a relatively early part of the game to a much later part of the game. A runner (or sometimes runners) will load up their group with low-level characters, then drag them through several zones (as when one person zones, it zones the whole group) to large city Droknar’s Forge. The main goal was so those who were run could then buy max-armor armor, making the earlier parts of the game much easier 55’ing: Refers to a myriad of builds almost exclusively used for farming money/items. The point is to lower your health as much as possible (55hp), then utilizes the enchantment Protective Spirit (reduces the max amount of damage you can take from one hit to 10% of your max health) and several regeneration skills to keep health up. From here the builds vary, but the focus is always to kill large groups of mobs relatively fast with a few skills Bunny Thumper: A powerful combination of the Ranger’s expertise primary attribute (lowers energy cost of skills) with the hammer weapon and hammer mastery attribute from Warrior secondary. “Bunny” because they’re rangers, “Thumper” because hammers make a satisfying thumping sound when they hit. Also comes in “Slasher” and “Stabber” variants among others Shutdown: Refers to a state where a player either cannot literally or cannot smartly do very much or anything due to debuffs on them E-management: Refers to the smart management of your energy so you don’t often run the risk of running out, or at least not until you accomplish what you wish to accomplish

Do you guys have any additional thoughts about synergy and builds in Guild Wars? Or any great Co-Opportunities or personal experiences from Guild Wars you’d like to share?