Oni Firestarter scrie:
As part of an effort to re-post all relevant articles from the old kiSu site, I'm adding this to this section. This article was written by Oni Firestarter.
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I always rant at people after GvGs about these same simple concepts. And I realized it would just be more effective to put them down on "paper" a few times so people can read through it.
If you have any questions, Im pretty easy to reach @ Oni Firestarter in game.
1) Team Overview
1a) The Strat Caller
This is the only time I will use that term in this thread, strat callers are only used, with bad teams. The title strat caller suggests that this player is responsible for all things strategy. This is why teams lose. Because there is one player trying to position everyone, tell them what to do, and ultimately, it ends up playing like a single person trying to mash away on 8 keyboards.
Decision makers. That is what each team needs. They are not there to tell people what the options are, only to decide. Let me give an example: Your team comes to a fork in the road, one path goes left, one path goes right. Everyone in the guild should be aware of both options, but if every player decided on the path on their own, half might go left, half might go right. And that would be bad. What a decision maker does is keeps people on the same page, decides between alternatives.
Of course, there is alot of strategy involved in making decisions, but the key thing here is: EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN A GVG MUST UNDERSTAND THE STRATEGICAL IMPLICATIONS AT EACH POINT IN THE GAME - THE DECISION MAKER ONLY COORDINATES BY CHOOSING BETWEEN THE OPTIONS.
Lets give a real game example: Its druids at VoD and you have a slight npc DISadvantage. So you head out to stand. Monk A gets pin downed by one of their archers, and the decision maker calls for a vine bridge gank. The monk that got pin downed gets left behind and killed. After the game, when people try to figure out what happened, the monk says "i was pin downed before the call was made, thats not my fault".
He is 100% wrong. It absolutely is his fault. He absolutely should have known about the options available, and NEVER EVER should have been in a position where an archer could hit him with pin down.
1b) You are not an elementalist.
You are only playing one. You are not actually a warrior, you do not carry a huge ax and hit people over the head with it, you hit buttons in your computer in the living room.
Where am I going with this? Everyone in this game should be playable on almost every position in this game. If you can only play one type of char, you are doing something wrong.
There are some specialty chars, such as spike callers, twitch interupters etc that you need to practice before you can do it well, but for the most part, secondary wars, flag runners, paragons, stand elementalists, you should be able to understand what is going on with every character in a GVG, and understand how that character works.
Its amazing to go into matches where a teams warrior has no clue about what sig humility on a WoH can do at certain parts of the match, and then loses it in vent when a team full wipes because their heals got locked down after they got hit by AoE or their ele was split off dealing with a split. Don't get caught into this cycle. If you aren't decent at every character in this game, GO PRACTICE. Until you understand how all these characters play and fit together, you will always only be decent, never good.
1c) No one owes you anything.
If you only read one sentence in this post, read this one: No one owes you anything. Anything you are given, is done so as a courtesy. People seem to think that players are supposed to tell them where to go, what to do, what to shut down. No. You are absolutely responsible for your own tasks. You are absolutely responsible for your positioning.
How many times have you played a game, where some split goes into the base, the rit says he needs help, no one goes, and at the end of the game, the ele says "well, no one told me to go back". WHY SHOULD ANYONE HAVE TO TELL YOU TO DO YOUR JOB? Its your JOB to go back and deal with that offense, you should be MOVING as soon as that ranger and warrior start moving. But players seem to have this notion that they go wherever their caller tells them to go.
2) Personal Responsibility
2a) Get your shit done.
This leads in from the last point, that no one owes you anything. Take responsibility for EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. This is the number one thing that will make you better at this game. But before I go into details, lets take a further look at the word "responsibility".
This doesn't mean you need to go emo after every mistake you made. It doesn't mean that you are completely isolated and cant get help, it means that YOU NEED TO OVERSEE YOUR TASKS. You might need to delegate stuff out, you might need to get help, or you might just need to get your shit together. But at the end of the day, it is absolutely YOUR responsibility to see these tasks through.
An easy example is a ranger being blinded when Aegis goes up. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TELL PEOPLE AFTER THE GAME WHY AEGIS WASN'T SHUT DOWN. Effectively, what you are doing is that as soon as you get blinded, you are dissolving all responsibility. You need to either delegate the task elsewhere, create a new game plan, ask for someone to shut down the blinds, call for removals or change your team wide strat (split?) in order to get your task done.
The same goes for flaggers. You are the flag runner, it is YOUR JOB to see the flag get to the stand. But when you are off supporting your split, your character cant exactly continue to put flags in. DELEGATE. And no, dont just say "cant get flag, someone else deal with it". ASSIGN IT TO SOMEONE. Ultimately, they might delegate it somewhere else again, but make sure that SOMEONE ELSE knows that they are now in charge of getting that flag in (eles are good bets - they typically also have the time to talk on vent and figure out who is best to go if they cant). Just because you are split doesn't mean you dissolve all responsibility.
2b) Respect your teammates.
I've seen this alot from spike callers. They dont show up to their spikes on time, they pick targets with unstrippable weapons on them, they miss their bull's strikes. And they dont realize the burden they put on the rest of their team that put in their spike damage. Again, it doesn't mean you need to go all emo, but if you dont recognize those mistakes, and dont respect your teammates, you wont get better. Often times in a balanced build, your midlines are trying to do a variety of different tasks, and you are asking them to stop what they are doing for a second, and put damage into this spike target. And so when you call a shitty target, or miss your KD, they might have thrown 15 energy for nothing because you fucked up, and then have to deal with whatever happened while they went to your target and spiked for you.
This goes for mesmers as well. If your warrior
cant make it to any spike targets, if your warrior cant build because blinds are being re applied before they expire, it doesn't matter how godly you are at twitch pblocking guardian, respect your team and work on those eles.
2c) Know where you need to be.
This is one of the biggies, and it carries on from point 1C). IT IS YOUR JOB TO BE WHERE YOU NEED TO BE. I've played with a few players, who I eventually had to kick, and when I did, I told them - "the problem is, you are never where you need to be". Their response was "but, I go wherever you tell me". Exactly. And thats why they are never in the right place.
IF SOMEONE HAS TO TELL YOU WHERE TO BE - ODDS ARE YOU ARE ALLREADY 10 SECONDS LATE. They have taken time away from whatever the fuck THEY were supposed to be doing, to tell you are in the wrong place. That means its probably getting pretty close to too late.
Now, this doesn't mean that teams should be ramboing all over the maps and not coordinating, but rather that you should understand your roles and tasks, and go about doing them.
So if you are the snares on your team, and you see the morale timer get to 1 min on a split map, you should ALL READY be trying to figure out if a boost can be forced. And you dont need to just rambo off, but as you start to leave stand: "oni, im leaving stand to push boost". And if for whatever reason, your decision maker DOESN'T want that, they can say no. And nothing really is lost. But if they DO want that, you are all ready positioned for it.
2d) It is your responsibility to be heard.
I've heard so many people bitch about this, its nauseating. "no one listens to me", "i said it, but no one heard", "vent was too busy". Its all bullshit. And I always ask them "did you call the person by name?" and the response is always "....... no, but I Shouldn't have to". Whats that? MORE DISSOLVING RESPONSIBILITY? DO WE SEE A TREND HERE?
Yes, YOU SHOULD DO WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO TO GET THE JOB DONE. If that involves screaming an individuals name over and over because they are going to kill your guard, then you do that. There are very easy ways to be heard on vent:
If you are a quiet person, just cuss. People hear when calm people get angry or swear. Especially girls.
USE NAMES - people always hear their names. Hell, people often hear anything CLOSE to their names.
ASK UNTIL YOU GET A RESPONSE. If you dont hear that confirmation "yep, gotcha, roger, on it", THEY PROBABLY HAVEN'T HEARD YOU.
3) Communication
3a) Expectations
It is NOT Enough to report facts. You learn how to report facts in Grade 2. It doesn't cut it in highschool or university. And it doesn't cut it in GvG. "there is stuff in the base". NO WAI? REALLY? THE WHOLE "BASE UNDER ATTACK" only shows up on your screen.
And yet, most players think that is fine. They have no problems saying "i told you there were people in the base, and you sent nothing back". Who is "you"? Who is this "you" person that is supposed to do this rit's job for them? Oh yes, the "strat caller" ( yes, I know i said I wouldn't use that word again). How hard is it to see people in the base and say "There is stuff here?" Some rits even go a "step above" and will even tell you what classes they are!! Very Happy
The point I am trying to get out here is, facts dont cut it.
Get used to talking as the following:
Fact
What it means to the team
What you think we should do about it.
Examples:
"There is a ranger and war in the base, they can probably kill me, i need the ele back to survive.. we can probably kill them with a war"
"Im being blinded on their aegis, if we cant shut down that aegis, I doubt we'll get kills, I need the mes to get on the aegis for a bit"
"Im being hexed up that I cant build adrenaline. We aren't gonna get kills at this rate. Either we need shut down on those hexers, or we need to think about splitting"
"I have a ranger at the front door to the base. He cant kill me, but I cant get a flag past him. They boost in 1 minute and I need a war back to get him off me"
It all follows the same trend.
3b) Show intensity.
It amazes the stuff that people DONT call. For example, pleaks. Pleaks should be called anytime you think you hit someone hard. A good rule of thumb is, if one of their chars is bitching about it in THEIR VENT, we should be talking about it in OUR vent. Why is this important? If you are pleaking an ele hard, suddenly his water attunement becomes pretty critical. And odds are, he is going to fall far back to put it up. If the team is aware of this, they can pick up TONS of positioning when he falls back ,and your ranger can chase him all around the map to dshot it. And suddenly , their ele is fucked, and its game over.
Snares! How many times are people routing a team, and the snares doesn't ping targets???? As soon as teams are running, your warriors dont get to pick their own targets, the snares chars are picking the targets for them. And half the players in this game dont say shit. It is not only your job to communicate, but also to make sure people hear you and
understand you.
4) Whats it all mean?
I'll finish off by saying, I am probably better on every class in this game, than any player in Kisu on their "best" chars. That isn't because I click buttons better, odds are your mesmers get way more interupts than I do. Maybe you get two pblocks for every one pblock I get. But I scream about it on vent, and then ping the other monk, and we kill it and win. Its great that you out pblocked me, but I beat you.
This goes across the board. You can be the best warrior in the world, and pressure all these amazing targets, but if they rest of the team doesn't understand what you are trying to do, you aren't going to score kills.
You can be defending ganks as well as anyone in the world, but if no one knows exactly what you want back, you aren't going to get it back, and you will die.
I can go on and on and on with examples:
The point is, what separates decent players from good players has never been key clicks. It has always been about coordination.
That is what GvG has always been about: Coordination.
Until that is the emphasis of EVERY KISU player, you wont see results. I can teach you all about smart bulls strikes, I can teach you how to get your bulls strike reliably on 3,2,1 spikes. I can tell you about how to target players for spike. I can teach you about where to pressure to get results, when to split, when to collapse. But none of that will help you until you know how to coordinate.
Do people understand why 3,2,1 spike works so well in this game? Because its the easiest form of coordination. All that damage gets coordinated with a simple 3,2,1, countdown. And coordinated teams win. Uncoordinated teams lose.
And EVERY SINGLE player has a role to play in that coordination, not just one "strat caller." By all means, have someone as your decision maker. It will probably be your most experienced player - and when decisions need to be made, s/he will make them. But they are not the person in charge of coordination - every single person down your roster is.
They only choose between alternatives.
Being good at GW has NEVER been about key clicks, it never been about the twitch 3/4 pblocks, or the quarter knocks, or anything else. They make good players better, but they have never made bad players good. Coordination is what makes players, and teams win.
Feel free to distribute this, and I can usually be reached ingame @ Oni Firestarter.
Cheers,
Oni
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I always rant at people after GvGs about these same simple concepts. And I realized it would just be more effective to put them down on "paper" a few times so people can read through it.
If you have any questions, Im pretty easy to reach @ Oni Firestarter in game.
1) Team Overview
1a) The Strat Caller
This is the only time I will use that term in this thread, strat callers are only used, with bad teams. The title strat caller suggests that this player is responsible for all things strategy. This is why teams lose. Because there is one player trying to position everyone, tell them what to do, and ultimately, it ends up playing like a single person trying to mash away on 8 keyboards.
Decision makers. That is what each team needs. They are not there to tell people what the options are, only to decide. Let me give an example: Your team comes to a fork in the road, one path goes left, one path goes right. Everyone in the guild should be aware of both options, but if every player decided on the path on their own, half might go left, half might go right. And that would be bad. What a decision maker does is keeps people on the same page, decides between alternatives.
Of course, there is alot of strategy involved in making decisions, but the key thing here is: EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN A GVG MUST UNDERSTAND THE STRATEGICAL IMPLICATIONS AT EACH POINT IN THE GAME - THE DECISION MAKER ONLY COORDINATES BY CHOOSING BETWEEN THE OPTIONS.
Lets give a real game example: Its druids at VoD and you have a slight npc DISadvantage. So you head out to stand. Monk A gets pin downed by one of their archers, and the decision maker calls for a vine bridge gank. The monk that got pin downed gets left behind and killed. After the game, when people try to figure out what happened, the monk says "i was pin downed before the call was made, thats not my fault".
He is 100% wrong. It absolutely is his fault. He absolutely should have known about the options available, and NEVER EVER should have been in a position where an archer could hit him with pin down.
1b) You are not an elementalist.
You are only playing one. You are not actually a warrior, you do not carry a huge ax and hit people over the head with it, you hit buttons in your computer in the living room.
Where am I going with this? Everyone in this game should be playable on almost every position in this game. If you can only play one type of char, you are doing something wrong.
There are some specialty chars, such as spike callers, twitch interupters etc that you need to practice before you can do it well, but for the most part, secondary wars, flag runners, paragons, stand elementalists, you should be able to understand what is going on with every character in a GVG, and understand how that character works.
Its amazing to go into matches where a teams warrior has no clue about what sig humility on a WoH can do at certain parts of the match, and then loses it in vent when a team full wipes because their heals got locked down after they got hit by AoE or their ele was split off dealing with a split. Don't get caught into this cycle. If you aren't decent at every character in this game, GO PRACTICE. Until you understand how all these characters play and fit together, you will always only be decent, never good.
1c) No one owes you anything.
If you only read one sentence in this post, read this one: No one owes you anything. Anything you are given, is done so as a courtesy. People seem to think that players are supposed to tell them where to go, what to do, what to shut down. No. You are absolutely responsible for your own tasks. You are absolutely responsible for your positioning.
How many times have you played a game, where some split goes into the base, the rit says he needs help, no one goes, and at the end of the game, the ele says "well, no one told me to go back". WHY SHOULD ANYONE HAVE TO TELL YOU TO DO YOUR JOB? Its your JOB to go back and deal with that offense, you should be MOVING as soon as that ranger and warrior start moving. But players seem to have this notion that they go wherever their caller tells them to go.
2) Personal Responsibility
2a) Get your shit done.
This leads in from the last point, that no one owes you anything. Take responsibility for EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. This is the number one thing that will make you better at this game. But before I go into details, lets take a further look at the word "responsibility".
This doesn't mean you need to go emo after every mistake you made. It doesn't mean that you are completely isolated and cant get help, it means that YOU NEED TO OVERSEE YOUR TASKS. You might need to delegate stuff out, you might need to get help, or you might just need to get your shit together. But at the end of the day, it is absolutely YOUR responsibility to see these tasks through.
An easy example is a ranger being blinded when Aegis goes up. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TELL PEOPLE AFTER THE GAME WHY AEGIS WASN'T SHUT DOWN. Effectively, what you are doing is that as soon as you get blinded, you are dissolving all responsibility. You need to either delegate the task elsewhere, create a new game plan, ask for someone to shut down the blinds, call for removals or change your team wide strat (split?) in order to get your task done.
The same goes for flaggers. You are the flag runner, it is YOUR JOB to see the flag get to the stand. But when you are off supporting your split, your character cant exactly continue to put flags in. DELEGATE. And no, dont just say "cant get flag, someone else deal with it". ASSIGN IT TO SOMEONE. Ultimately, they might delegate it somewhere else again, but make sure that SOMEONE ELSE knows that they are now in charge of getting that flag in (eles are good bets - they typically also have the time to talk on vent and figure out who is best to go if they cant). Just because you are split doesn't mean you dissolve all responsibility.
2b) Respect your teammates.
I've seen this alot from spike callers. They dont show up to their spikes on time, they pick targets with unstrippable weapons on them, they miss their bull's strikes. And they dont realize the burden they put on the rest of their team that put in their spike damage. Again, it doesn't mean you need to go all emo, but if you dont recognize those mistakes, and dont respect your teammates, you wont get better. Often times in a balanced build, your midlines are trying to do a variety of different tasks, and you are asking them to stop what they are doing for a second, and put damage into this spike target. And so when you call a shitty target, or miss your KD, they might have thrown 15 energy for nothing because you fucked up, and then have to deal with whatever happened while they went to your target and spiked for you.
This goes for mesmers as well. If your warrior
cant make it to any spike targets, if your warrior cant build because blinds are being re applied before they expire, it doesn't matter how godly you are at twitch pblocking guardian, respect your team and work on those eles.
2c) Know where you need to be.
This is one of the biggies, and it carries on from point 1C). IT IS YOUR JOB TO BE WHERE YOU NEED TO BE. I've played with a few players, who I eventually had to kick, and when I did, I told them - "the problem is, you are never where you need to be". Their response was "but, I go wherever you tell me". Exactly. And thats why they are never in the right place.
IF SOMEONE HAS TO TELL YOU WHERE TO BE - ODDS ARE YOU ARE ALLREADY 10 SECONDS LATE. They have taken time away from whatever the fuck THEY were supposed to be doing, to tell you are in the wrong place. That means its probably getting pretty close to too late.
Now, this doesn't mean that teams should be ramboing all over the maps and not coordinating, but rather that you should understand your roles and tasks, and go about doing them.
So if you are the snares on your team, and you see the morale timer get to 1 min on a split map, you should ALL READY be trying to figure out if a boost can be forced. And you dont need to just rambo off, but as you start to leave stand: "oni, im leaving stand to push boost". And if for whatever reason, your decision maker DOESN'T want that, they can say no. And nothing really is lost. But if they DO want that, you are all ready positioned for it.
2d) It is your responsibility to be heard.
I've heard so many people bitch about this, its nauseating. "no one listens to me", "i said it, but no one heard", "vent was too busy". Its all bullshit. And I always ask them "did you call the person by name?" and the response is always "....... no, but I Shouldn't have to". Whats that? MORE DISSOLVING RESPONSIBILITY? DO WE SEE A TREND HERE?
Yes, YOU SHOULD DO WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO TO GET THE JOB DONE. If that involves screaming an individuals name over and over because they are going to kill your guard, then you do that. There are very easy ways to be heard on vent:
If you are a quiet person, just cuss. People hear when calm people get angry or swear. Especially girls.
USE NAMES - people always hear their names. Hell, people often hear anything CLOSE to their names.
ASK UNTIL YOU GET A RESPONSE. If you dont hear that confirmation "yep, gotcha, roger, on it", THEY PROBABLY HAVEN'T HEARD YOU.
3) Communication
3a) Expectations
It is NOT Enough to report facts. You learn how to report facts in Grade 2. It doesn't cut it in highschool or university. And it doesn't cut it in GvG. "there is stuff in the base". NO WAI? REALLY? THE WHOLE "BASE UNDER ATTACK" only shows up on your screen.
And yet, most players think that is fine. They have no problems saying "i told you there were people in the base, and you sent nothing back". Who is "you"? Who is this "you" person that is supposed to do this rit's job for them? Oh yes, the "strat caller" ( yes, I know i said I wouldn't use that word again). How hard is it to see people in the base and say "There is stuff here?" Some rits even go a "step above" and will even tell you what classes they are!! Very Happy
The point I am trying to get out here is, facts dont cut it.
Get used to talking as the following:
Fact
What it means to the team
What you think we should do about it.
Examples:
"There is a ranger and war in the base, they can probably kill me, i need the ele back to survive.. we can probably kill them with a war"
"Im being blinded on their aegis, if we cant shut down that aegis, I doubt we'll get kills, I need the mes to get on the aegis for a bit"
"Im being hexed up that I cant build adrenaline. We aren't gonna get kills at this rate. Either we need shut down on those hexers, or we need to think about splitting"
"I have a ranger at the front door to the base. He cant kill me, but I cant get a flag past him. They boost in 1 minute and I need a war back to get him off me"
It all follows the same trend.
3b) Show intensity.
It amazes the stuff that people DONT call. For example, pleaks. Pleaks should be called anytime you think you hit someone hard. A good rule of thumb is, if one of their chars is bitching about it in THEIR VENT, we should be talking about it in OUR vent. Why is this important? If you are pleaking an ele hard, suddenly his water attunement becomes pretty critical. And odds are, he is going to fall far back to put it up. If the team is aware of this, they can pick up TONS of positioning when he falls back ,and your ranger can chase him all around the map to dshot it. And suddenly , their ele is fucked, and its game over.
Snares! How many times are people routing a team, and the snares doesn't ping targets???? As soon as teams are running, your warriors dont get to pick their own targets, the snares chars are picking the targets for them. And half the players in this game dont say shit. It is not only your job to communicate, but also to make sure people hear you and
understand you.
4) Whats it all mean?
I'll finish off by saying, I am probably better on every class in this game, than any player in Kisu on their "best" chars. That isn't because I click buttons better, odds are your mesmers get way more interupts than I do. Maybe you get two pblocks for every one pblock I get. But I scream about it on vent, and then ping the other monk, and we kill it and win. Its great that you out pblocked me, but I beat you.
This goes across the board. You can be the best warrior in the world, and pressure all these amazing targets, but if they rest of the team doesn't understand what you are trying to do, you aren't going to score kills.
You can be defending ganks as well as anyone in the world, but if no one knows exactly what you want back, you aren't going to get it back, and you will die.
I can go on and on and on with examples:
The point is, what separates decent players from good players has never been key clicks. It has always been about coordination.
That is what GvG has always been about: Coordination.
Until that is the emphasis of EVERY KISU player, you wont see results. I can teach you all about smart bulls strikes, I can teach you how to get your bulls strike reliably on 3,2,1 spikes. I can tell you about how to target players for spike. I can teach you about where to pressure to get results, when to split, when to collapse. But none of that will help you until you know how to coordinate.
Do people understand why 3,2,1 spike works so well in this game? Because its the easiest form of coordination. All that damage gets coordinated with a simple 3,2,1, countdown. And coordinated teams win. Uncoordinated teams lose.
And EVERY SINGLE player has a role to play in that coordination, not just one "strat caller." By all means, have someone as your decision maker. It will probably be your most experienced player - and when decisions need to be made, s/he will make them. But they are not the person in charge of coordination - every single person down your roster is.
They only choose between alternatives.
Being good at GW has NEVER been about key clicks, it never been about the twitch 3/4 pblocks, or the quarter knocks, or anything else. They make good players better, but they have never made bad players good. Coordination is what makes players, and teams win.
Feel free to distribute this, and I can usually be reached ingame @ Oni Firestarter.
Cheers,
Oni
Si un link bonus:
http://tigros.ro/gw/eternus-chop-chop-2008-08-10.vrf
Is niste chestii bestiale , dar unele putin cam hardcore...ma rog, hardcore in sensul top 100 guild material.
tocmai pentru ca trebuie sa ai o echipa de 8 flacai valabili ca sa poti face asa ceva. Cand pleci cu o echipa de la 0 si doar unu sau doi de acolo au experienta, nu poti sa ii lasi pe restul sa alerge haotic, asa ca ii "coordonezi". Apoi cand capata experienta si te poti baza pe ei, treci la faza de decision making 
