User:Raine Valen/Musings/Michelle

Let's talk about play style.

Defensive vs. Aggressive

I much prefer to play aggressively, period.
GW isn't my first MMO; I played Rappelz before this (it was bad). I had a few characters there, but the one I was the best with was the DM (Dark Magician). It was a terribly designed class; it had no armor worth mentioning, no sort of real defense... They were pretty bad in PvP. But because of the terrible design, it kind of forced this philosophy on me: destroy the opposition before they destroy you. Because, though they had no armor worth mentioning, they could blow out tons of damage: it wasn't uncommon to kill something before it got close enough to touch me. In fact, that's how most of it went, because I'd be dead in a couple of hits.
Sure, it was a caster class, so it had some anti-rape skills. Nightmare put a target to sleep until they were attacked (or for about 10 seconds, whichever came first), Lightning Strike could stun a target for a couple of seconds (actually, that was maybe a 1/10 chance of happening, and it took about a minute to recharge; Woo-hoo! A stun every ten minutes!), Windy Field slowed down everything in the area. Oh, and they had an evasion buff that made them damnably ha to hit. Of course, it lasted five seconds and recharged in two minutes. They had some pretty decent tools. But the fact still remained that if you got near one, you could kill them without any sort of resistance.
So options as a DM were limited to the following: kill things or be killed by things. No defenseway.
I blew. People. Up.
See, this was how a fight would go:
Match starts. I put target to sleep. I wait until the effect is about to expire (gives it time to recharge), then remove half their health with one imba spell. I run around in circles until sleep spell recharges. I put target to sleep. I launch another (not quite as devastating) nuke at them. When they get close, I use my evasion buff. I spam spells on them until they die. Fight ends, I win. Untouched.
That was the philosophy, and it stuck.
Dead opposition doesn't have superior tactics. Dead opposition doesn't have superior skill. Dead opposition doesn't have better equipment, they're not more familiar with the gameplay, they are no longer threatening. Dead opposition is dead.
In that same game, I had a rather nasty PKing habit. Just because. I didn't even meet half the people I took out. I just did it. I'd spend hours (AFK, lol) waiting off the debuffs that came with killing people for no reason, just to do it again. Hell, I'd keep going with the debuffs on a good many times. Oh, I'd start up parties, get eight people together (on Global chat, no less!), announce where we were "headed" (you'd think they'd understand, after some point, that I probably wasn't where I said I was), and create havoc. People out farming? Blown up. People running between towns? Blown up. Questing? Blown up.
I remember there being this one really awesome skill, Thrust Arrow. I never went on PK sprees on my DM, I reserved that for my Strider. I guess they'd be like lightweight warriors in GW terms. Or Dervishes. They had a permanent movement speed buff, dual-wield powers (Assassin Impact let you double-strike, lol), quick-hitting attack skill chains, and that same lol-you-can't-hit-me evasion buff that DMs had. They used dual daggers (or a dagger and shield), dual swords (or a sword and shield), or a crossbow. Well, they were supposed to, anyway. I used a two-handed sword, which was technically for a different profession. Let me explain. You see, attack skills in that game all had a .25 second activation and no aftercast. When you have 6 Savage Slashes on your bar, you don't do it with a sword, you use a hammer. Same deal there: big damage fast > small damage fast.
But though that weapon killed people, PKing would never have been possible without the crossbow and Thrust Arrow. What Thrust Arrow was was an attack skill that knocked your target back a couple of feet. It was pretty useless, in all honesty, for what it was supposed to do. But it did do something that made it super useful: it knocked people off of mounts. Normally, people would see me coming with my "look at me, I'm a PKer" flag, then mount up and take off, and I could never catch them because I couldn't shoot while mounted and dismounting would mean that they'd get away before I could get the kill. So I'd get close, Thrust Arrow them, then weapon swap to the sword before they could do anything. Kill count +1.
I had a love/hate relationship with the people on that server. You see, they hated that I'd kill them for no reason. Dying in that game wasn't respawn in town 2 minutes from where you died. It was lose 4% of a level and start in town 20 minutes from where you died. I'm sure it sucked for them, but I didn't really mind it (I got killed a lot, either for attacking too many people at the same time, attacking things at a higher level than I could handle, or, most commonly, being hunted down after a good PK spree when people complained to the level 9000s in their guild). But they loved having something to do. Farming is boring. The quests in that game sucked more than Factions (They were ALL either "Kill x of creature a, y of creature b, and z of creature c", "Collect x of item a", or "Kill boss a". All of them. No exaggeration. Literally ALL of them.). Even the people that came to kill me on a regular basis (there were anti-PK guilds, it was so annoying. They were all KoS-listed) liked me. Though they'd never say so if asked, of course.
The people on that server were the PvE crowd, and I introduced them to PvP by force. Most of them thought it was exciting. And getting QQ threads on the official site (This is where I found out that people loved me; all the level a trillion people who'd been hunting me down supported me. The poster of that thread being an idiot also helped my case.)... Publicity is heady.
But that's beside the point.
The DM philosophy stuck with me: kill things before things kill you. Dead opposition doesn't have superior strategy, technique, equipment, planning, skill, or anything else. Dead opposition is dead. "Killing someone is the best interrupt, snare, and shutdown in the game." So I play aggressively, because it's so much more rewarding.
And, TBH, more fun.

Balanced vs. Gimmick vs. Randomway

It has to start off balanced. I've got no problem changing things around a bit, but it will be based on balanced.
While I enjoy (live for) winning, it's not really a win in my book if it wasn't fair. I don't want to beat teams because I run imba shit, I want to win because I'm better. By that same token, I have no problem accepting a loss given that the other team was better than me. I say gg, and I mean it. Now, when I'm monking RA with a fairly good team (I don't sync. Take that crap to TA, imo) and we lose because I can't heal or prot anyone because I've got VoR and Backfire on me and the person who needs to be healed has Lingering or MoI on them, then it's not a gg. It's just grieving. Getting called a nub by wars who Crushing Blow me as I'm standing up isn't gg. It's "This is bs." I don't want to make anyone feel like that, I don't want anyone to say, "Oh, Raine just won because she used MoI", I want people to think I'm a good player (or not) based on the way I play.
So it starts off balanced.
I went through my gimmickway phase. "Hey, everybody, let's run rspike/SF/Hexway/smiteway/some other broken shit!" It got old. Really, really fast. Winning didn't feel like any kind of accomplishment. It's like passing a test by cheating, or some such. And so I stopped.
Gimmicks just aren't respectable, in my eyes. Even against great players running Sway, it's hard to see past the Sway. Even against a good mesmer running VoR, it's hard to see past the VoR.
One of my guildies calls it [Apex] honor and [DF] honor. [Apex] was always win however you can, because a win is a win. [DF] was always win by skill.
I guess I'm a [DF] girl.
Randomways are fun. BYOB, I love it. Running Tabway (Stand in an outpost. Hit <tab> a lot. Send party invites. Tabway.) is fun. But srs bsns? No, not even. Whatever happens in a randomway pug happens because it's a randomway pug. Getting a couple of fame Randomway is "LOL you just lost to randomway!", losing is "lol randomway". No big deal, either way. Tombs isn't srs bsns, nothing to lose, right? Just go in and have some fun...
But when it comes down to srs bsns, it's got to be balanced-ish.

PvE or PvP?

PvP, hands-down.
There was a period in time when I absolutely loathed PvE. The AI is horrible, the goals aren't fulfilling, and monsters have skills designed to piss players off. Like Trample. I mean, come on. Who thought that skill would be fun? Then H/Hing... oh, God.
So I started Pugging. I love people, really. Even pugstars who can't play worth a damn are more fun than Dunkoro. Bad attitudes, I can deal with. In fact, those are often the most fun of all. Once I started playing with players more, it became a lot less... unbearable. While I'll occasionally still solo something for a set of armor, I typically reserve my PvE to groups.
But PvE is nothing compared to PvP.
Playing in an ever-changing environment against foes that adapt to your strategy, with builds that actually make sense... where there's a real challenge... that's just so much more fun, to me.
Even if it's just AB or RA, getting together with other people (remember, I love people) to compete is really a tier unto itself. The competition, the victory... it's thrilling, and I love it.