Another week, another wonderful reading experience with The Structure! I hope everyone’s dealing well with their GW2 withdrawals! Just remember there’s the stress test on Wednesday (June 27) from 10am to 2pm PDT (1pm to 5pm EDT, 5pm to 9pm UTC)! This week, we’re going to talk a little bit about eSports and Guild Wars 2. I’ve written about GW2’s eSports viability on my blog before, but this time I’m actually talking about what kind of stuff we’re seeing already that makes it fully-castable.

Naturally, there are the essentials that you have to mention every now and then but shouldn’t talk about much. How much time is left in the match? Who’s ahead in the score? What’s the point-lead like? Which team has which objectives? At the current rate, who will win? Who’s favored to win? They’re really obvious, but we still have to mention them.

It’s also a little bit obvious, but you can talk about the teams in the match. Eventually, certain teams will be known for certain tactics. Certain players will become known for playing certain professions. As the game progresses after launch, we’ll see a lot of different team compositions coming out that will offer a variety of things. Supposedly, five-mesmer teams were ROFLstomping during the last beta.

I would certainly hope someone can tell who’s winning here.

Most of the stuff about the teams in a match are things that should be discussed going into the match and at the very beginning of it. During the match, there are a lot of different map tactics we’ve already seen going on that become crucial. Skills that give Swiftness in an AoE are already becoming a thing, and when it comes to high-end competition post-launch, they’ll be huge. Getting to your first objective and beating the other team to the first objective by two or three seconds could be the end of the match.

Think about it: two very even teams are lined up with almost identical compositions and the entire match is very even. But, the red team got both their objective and the middle objective two ticks earlier than the blue team in the match. That’s four points that the blue team shouldn’t have lost by. If you start thinking about being seconds early on killing Svanir or the Chieftain, you’re really thinking about a huge difference. There are a lot of matches in the hot join SPvP scene that end with a kill on one of the two Forest Creatures. If both creatures spawn when it’s 450 red to 470 blue, but the one nearest the red team spawns two seconds earlier, it’s game over if the blue team can’t somehow steal the kill.

If the other team had a creature kill instead of us, they wouldn’t have won here, but they’d at least be caught up to us.

Much as how you split your initial workers in StarCraft 2 is a huge deal, it will be equally important how teams split up at the beginning of matches. Is it better for their comp to send just one person to the objective nearest their base or will they need two to defend it if the enemy sends one over at the beginning? How many should they send toward the middle and how many should they send toward the Forest Creature or trebuchet or enemy’s objective?

On each map, there will be significant things to look at. Trebuchets can be very effective at killing enemy players out of the clock tower, so it will eventually be necessary to have someone destroy the enemy’s trebuchet. But, when will be the best time to do it? When will we see the time allocated for it? There’s a lot of things that, when you really get into high-level competition, will make some teams look like utter noobs, even though the majority of players will be wondering why it’s bad.

I personally thought this was the best time: when there was nothing else to do.

Here are a few things you could do when you get really picky with people. Blind condition only causes the next hit to miss. If you see someone get blinded and waste their big attack on it, they’re being noob. It also doesn’t stack, so if you see a player blind a player that’s already been blinded, the blinding player is a noob. If you see a player take a jump from one roof to another when it would be a second faster to drop to the ground, that player will be a noob.

Casting obviously isn’t about calling all of the players noobs. Casters have to be good at the game, sure, but many of the players in the matches are going to be better than the casters. But, when you really stop and think about a lot of what we’re already starting to see developing in tactics, and start looking at a lot of footage, there’s a ton of stuff out there that we’ll be able to fill matches with for commentary without digging into pointless things.

Casting isn’t about calling people noobs, but bunching like this deserves it.

Not having a spectator mode obvious puts a huge damper on all of this and puts eSports on the back-burner. ArenaNet knows the necessity of spectator mode to eSports, though, and they’re going to get it to us after launch (building a good PvP system is first priority). In the mean time, go look at some PvP footage. There’s a lot of PvP footage in the GW2WvW video gallery to go through. While you’re watching it, think about them critically. Put yourself in the place of a caster: what would you talk about? What do you see people doing that’s exceptionally good or pathetically bad? What do you see people doing that gives them a clear advantage over others?

So, we get another four hours of play time in on Wednesday. Not much, but its better than nothing.

Alright guys, I’ve got more work lined up as I can get to it while working towards the new PC coming in a few weeks. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what to expect over the next week-and-a-half or so (depending on available time). So, here are the projects I’ve got lined up:

New, updated guides to each of the professions. Each of these will be a bit more detailed than the last ones, so it may actually take a full two weeks to get them done. I’ll be starting them either tomorrow or this weekend.

I’ve still got to put together the footage I’ve got of the Ascalonian Catacombs run I did on explorable mode, which is a daunting task.

As fulfillment of a request, I’ll be doing a video about boons, conditions, and other effects. It will be similar to my post on the matter, but hopefully more informative.

As per another request, I’ll have a video coming out on making well-balanced PvP builds. This will be a bit more in-depth than the post on the matter for The Structure.

Speaking of, The Structure will continue as normal each week, going live here when I write it and live on GW2 WvW each Friday.

I’m still looking for more requests, questions, etc. to help customize the content I do to my readers and viewers. At the very least, let me know which professions you’d like to see the guides done for first and I’ll try to do them in order of popularity as I get more requests for each one. Request posts and videos as you like. Videos will take a little more to do since they involve more work than simply writing, but that’s simply to make sure they’ve got the proper amount of quality (or I may just be fighting with Youtube some more).

As a reminder, submit any requests or questions via my email, the questions/requests page, or by replying to this post. What do you guys want to see?

So Richie Procopio brought this up on GuildCast tonight, and they had him write it on the site. But, it seems that anyone subscribed to ANet’s Youtube page received notification of a new video, “Rata Sum, Capital of the Asura in Guild Wars 2 – UK PEGI Rated”. The video is listed as private, so even those with the link cannot see it. This is obviously full-on speculation into the wild, blue yonder mode, but this could be indicative of the adorable little critters being in the next beta if ANet has a major video of Rata Sum available. We know their starting story is complete as PCGamer got to play through it a bit ago, but does this mean it may finally be our chance?

Might want to give this one a while for Youtube to finish processing (taking their sweet time as usual) higher video resolutions. Either way, this is how I spent my Saturday night, running around in WvW kicking dolyaks and taking camps. If you’ve read my WvW Strategy article from a while back, this is basically exactly what I talk about doing with a small group of friends in video form!

This right here is why GW2 is so much more enjoyable, even as an unfinished beta, than the other MMO’s out there.

Didn’t do anything fancy for this one, it’s just some footage of me on my engineer winning some SPvP. Tomorrow I’ll have a decent-length video coming out of myself and a couple of the GBTV people running around in WvW doing some damage.

This should have come out two days ago, but I’ve been dealing with a lot of software and Youtube issues. This is my video of 80% of the WvW Eternal Battlegrounds jump puzzle dungeon. I’ve never played through any part of a videogame so ridiculously frustrating and addicting. When I  agve up on my ele the first time, I announced giving up about half-an-hour before I actually gave up simply because I couldn’t stop no matter how angry I was getting at it.

Another week, another column for The Structure! So, I made a fair number of builds over the weekend. Some worked out alright, some of them worked really well, and some of them I got ROFLstomped every time I saw another player. They can’t all be zingers. Anyway, as I was looking at some of the talents and some build possibilities, I had a few ideas about how to make a build that really facilitates learning the gist of SPvP and combat better than others. This time around, we’re going to look at one.

Different Levels You Have to Learn

There are actually some similarities here.

In everything you do, there are always multiple levels you have to focus on. If you’re playing an instrument in a wind band, you have to focus on the sound coming out of your own instrument, then you have to focus about matching the rest of your section, and you also have to think about blending with the rest of the band. If you play football (soccer), you have to think about your own technique to direct the ball. You have to think about that defender in front of you and how to beat them. You also have to think about the rest of the players on the field to know when you’re offsides, who’s open, etc., what the score is and how much you need a goal or a stop.

SPvP is very similar. At the lowest level, you have to think about your own skills. You’ve got to worry about when they’re on cooldown, when they’re off cooldown, etc. You’ve got to think about everything on your weapons, as well. Then you have to worry about the battle going on around you and the other players on both sides. Then, you have to think about the match as a whole. The objectives. The timer. The score. That lowest level of focus, on yourself, is the first one you have to have down. You’ve got to know your own abilities well.

Reducing the Workload For Your Brain

Elementalists have 25 skills to worry about at all times.

To a new player, there’s a lot to try to focus on. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you don’t have a handle on your own abilities, you’re going to get ROFLstomped by everyone you meet, even with a good build. But, if you don’t learn the higher mechanics, it won’t matter because you’ll be dynamite but never actually helping. So, where can you cut out some of the work? Get yourself a build that makes focusing on yourself less of a big deal.

What are the best ways to minimize the focus requirement of your build? For starters, don’t run with something that places a HEAVY demand on weapon-swapping. It’s always important, but if you’re having to constantly flip weapon bars, that’s a lot of skills. Also, you need relatively simply slot skills that don’t require a lot of thinking. The warrior, as it were, is a great place to start, and here’s why.

The Most Noob-Friendly First-Tier Talent

Signets are very simple, straight-forward skills.

In the Arms tree for warriors, there’s a first-tier talent called Deep Strike. It gives you 40 precision for each unused signet you have equipped. It’s that simple. You create a build using a lot of signets and rely on crits for damage. Trait yourself relatively offensively. Take a lot of Arms, some Strength, and definitely some Discipline (to get reduced signet recharges). Then, gear yourself very balanced. Take precision and vitality or a good mix of stats.

For your slot skills, take all signets: Healing Signet, Dolyak Signet, Signet of Stamina, Signet of Fury, and Signet of Rage. If you set up with dual sword or dual axes in mind, you can have a minimal amount to worry about for weapon swapping (just have a war-horn in the off-hand for getting around faster), leaving most of your focus on your first five skills. Definitely learn what your signets do, but don’t use them unless you actually need to. If you’re loaded with conditions and can’t get away from someone, use the Signet of Stamina. If you need to burst people down quickly, use the Signet of Rage. If someone with a big hammer is coming up to try to knock you around, use Dolyak Signet.

With mostly only six skills to worry about most of the time (main weapon bar and heal), you have a lot less to be on your mind. Now, you’re free to spend more time looking up at the rest of the stuff on the screen and think about the other players and the other parts of the map without fumbling around your number keys or looking down at your cooldowns. You won’t be perfect. You won’t steamroll everyone. But, you’ll have an easier time learning it than you would if you’re worried about running around. Here’s some parting thoughts on what to do and not do when you’re starting out.

Sometimes you just gotta hug that floor to get better.

What to Avoid in Noob-Friendly Builds

• Elementalists - They’re easy to get into in PvE, but in SPvP, having four bars is a lot to think about.
• Engineers’ kits - Again, it’s adding that much more to worry about with lots of bars.
• Mesmer - Clones add an entire extra level of thinking to what you do. They’re rewarding when you’re good with them, but not a great starting point.
• Complex profession mechanics - If pets bug you, death shroud bugs you, etc., avoid those professions.
• Skills that switch into other skills a lot - Just a big hassle, really
• Completely dissimilar weapon sets - The more alike, the less to worry about
• Fully-offensive builds - Trust me, you really want that extra padding to make up for your mistakes.

Other Good Places to Start

• Guardians - The high defense is very forgiving.
• Thieves - They’re not overly simple, but there’s nothing overly complicated.
• Engineers with Turrets - Turrets are getting buffed, and they’re largely use and forget until you need to pick up and move.
• Balanced and defensive builds - Again, it really helps having a little breathing room with the health bar.