Azura's Star NA PC Thread

Nihang

yodased wrote: »

I am thankful for the friends I have gained through PvP and the sharing of recipes to cook the majestic potato. @SumoPwr and @remorseless kill me 100x for every time I kill them ,but they are really nice and helped my potato game immensely.

Well wishes to all!

@Remorseless is a lover not a killer.

Taylor_MB

*slow claps* for EP getting together a group of 15ish 561CP players to cap the map when no one apart from the skeleton oceanic crew is online. You are doing exactly what everyone (including a lot of you) hated about the DC last campaign. Irony is apparently such a difficult concept to understand.

And please don't use the excuse that there were 2 bars DC, they were a raid of a nub PvE guild going between Nikel and Vlast dolmens for 2hrs.

1 Emp keep left, lets see how the 5 non-cp AD online do.

Minalan

Taylor_MB wrote: »

*slow claps* for EP getting together a group of 15ish 561CP players to cap the map when no one apart from the skeleton oceanic crew is online. You are doing exactly what everyone (including a lot of you) hated about the DC last campaign. Irony is apparently such a difficult concept to understand.

And please don't use the excuse that there were 2 bars DC, they were a raid of a nub PvE guild going between Nikel and Vlast dolmens for 2hrs.

1 Emp keep left, lets see how the 5 non-cp AD online do.

Those were EP who got fed up with true flame last night after they lost every single keep on the map while three barred.

Obviously, you had to pay the price for their defeat. I hope they feel better about themselves now.

Jamini

This weekend was exceedingly fun, and frustrating.

Fun because the IOTE leader (@Emperor_Brandon ) made a push for #1 AD to try and get emperor.
Frustrating because he and TM's Komodo were basically neck and neck for the #1 AP slot all weekend (I don't think either of them slept longer than 4 hours apiece.) so neither could lead a push to crown due to competing for top slot.
Fun because on Saturday there were multiple close fights, a few great scroll runs, and a lot of drunken /zone shouting.
Frustrating because every morning between 4am-2PM a 50-man Oceanic zerg tried to turn the map blue.
Fun because, for once, it felt like all three factions were very close/tied.
Frustrating because I know tonight I'm going to log in to a blue map and 800 score deficit on AD. Again.

Anyway, keep fighting the good fight folks! See y'all tonight.
(Ca-Caaaa*Hic* aaaaaw!)

Kartalin

AD could have gotten emp multiple times over the weekend if a certain guild was interested in doing so. But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it. Really frustrating. So I played DC yesterday all day, had some fun times defending emp at Ash and thereabouts.

Heike

Kartalin wrote: »

AD could have gotten emp multiple times... But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it....

RoB could've cared less what AD player got Emp, and fought almost 24/7. So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

We DID, get massive AP amounts and were able to pick up and help out some new players, but would've loved help in dealing with the EP zergs and getting emp.

The fights at Ash and Nickel, as well as at the gate between, were classic. Win some, lose some... they were fun.

And even though EP overnighted the map, emping at 6:30AM, we'll be back at it today/tonight.

(Anyone else getting tired of green rings of Cyrodiil's Light at dolmens? lol )

PenguinInACan

Heike wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

AD could have gotten emp multiple times... But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it....

RoB could've cared less what AD player got Emp, and fought almost 24/7. So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

We DID, get massive AP amounts and were able to pick up and help out some new players, but would've loved help in dealing with the EP zergs and getting emp.

The fights at Ash and Nickel, as well as at the gate between, were classic. Win some, lose some... they were fun.

And even though EP overnighted the map, emping at 6:30AM, we'll be back at it today/tonight.

(Anyone else getting tired of green rings of Cyrodiil's Light at dolmens? lol )

Komodo is TM. I don't know of any of us that wouldn't push for him. Must have been some other guild running on AZ.

Kartalin

Heike wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

AD could have gotten emp multiple times... But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it....

RoB could've cared less what AD player got Emp, and fought almost 24/7. So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

We DID, get massive AP amounts and were able to pick up and help out some new players, but would've loved help in dealing with the EP zergs and getting emp.

The fights at Ash and Nickel, as well as at the gate between, were classic. Win some, lose some... they were fun.

And even though EP overnighted the map, emping at 6:30AM, we'll be back at it today/tonight.

(Anyone else getting tired of green rings of Cyrodiil's Light at dolmens? lol )

Yeah Komodo is in TM, and we were really pushing for emp Friday and Saturday but there were only 8 of us tops so it wasn't going to happen without the cooperation of other guilds. RoB is blameless in this, I'm talking about IOTE. And I understand why they didn't push when their guy was in 2nd place and not 1st, but then they didn't show up to push for their guy when he did get to 1st for a little while.

We haven't been running the same sized groups as we have in the past. I think a lot of our people are really frustrated with the stam proc meta and haven't been pvping as much, or even logging in.

Grunim

Kartalin wrote: »

Heike wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

AD could have gotten emp multiple times... But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it....

RoB could've cared less what AD player got Emp, and fought almost 24/7. So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

We DID, get massive AP amounts and were able to pick up and help out some new players, but would've loved help in dealing with the EP zergs and getting emp.

The fights at Ash and Nickel, as well as at the gate between, were classic. Win some, lose some... they were fun.

And even though EP overnighted the map, emping at 6:30AM, we'll be back at it today/tonight.

(Anyone else getting tired of green rings of Cyrodiil's Light at dolmens? lol )

Yeah Komodo is in TM, and we were really pushing for emp Friday and Saturday but there were only 8 of us tops so it wasn't going to happen without the cooperation of other guilds. RoB is blameless in this, I'm talking about IOTE. And I understand why they didn't push when their guy was in 2nd place and not 1st, but then they didn't show up to push for their guy when he did get to 1st for a little while.

We haven't been running the same sized groups as we have in the past. I think a lot of our people are really frustrated with the stam proc meta and haven't been pvping as much, or even logging in.

Yes, our groups have been smaller lately. We had at most 5 people running together today in Azuras.

PenguinInACan

Grunim wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

Heike wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

AD could have gotten emp multiple times... But because Komodo was atop the leaderboard at that time and not the guy they wanted to get emp, they decided not to push for it....

RoB could've cared less what AD player got Emp, and fought almost 24/7. So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

We DID, get massive AP amounts and were able to pick up and help out some new players, but would've loved help in dealing with the EP zergs and getting emp.

The fights at Ash and Nickel, as well as at the gate between, were classic. Win some, lose some... they were fun.

And even though EP overnighted the map, emping at 6:30AM, we'll be back at it today/tonight.

(Anyone else getting tired of green rings of Cyrodiil's Light at dolmens? lol )

Yeah Komodo is in TM, and we were really pushing for emp Friday and Saturday but there were only 8 of us tops so it wasn't going to happen without the cooperation of other guilds. RoB is blameless in this, I'm talking about IOTE. And I understand why they didn't push when their guy was in 2nd place and not 1st, but then they didn't show up to push for their guy when he did get to 1st for a little while.

We haven't been running the same sized groups as we have in the past. I think a lot of our people are really frustrated with the stam proc meta and haven't been pvping as much, or even logging in.

Yes, our groups have been smaller lately. We had at most 5 people running together today in Azuras.

Not my fault everyone decides to get sick this time of year....I'd play more if the hospital didn't mandate my clinic hours....

Cypriot122

Miss you Marek

Grunim

@PenguinInACan

Cypriot122 wrote: »

Miss you Marek

Miss you too Marek

Jamini

Heike wrote:

So, to hear that TM didn't push because of that is f*cking infuriating. Sorry.

IOTE didn't push hard (we did push, but not as hard as we could have). TM was pushing, but they have more quality than quantity.

We mostly didn't push because the people who normally lead our groups were busy farming AP or helping farm Imperator farm AP. When your best player is sidelined and your leadership is busy repping walls all night, it's very hard to make a coordinated push. Knight Blader is a good crown, but he's just not as good at wrangling randoms/allies as Brandon is yet.

Kartalin wrote: »

but then they didn't show up to push for their guy when he did get to 1st for a little while.

Probably because our guild-master passed out from getting less than four hours of sleep several days in a row and was comatose when we really needed him to lead. Also he took #1 during Oceanic primetime and spent most of it defending against Flood. Crowning an AD emp at 6AM EST would probably take a miracle with that numbers difference. (Go look at the post Josh made about it.)

I've got no hard feelings, and I'll happily push alongside you guys to crown anyone. But I'm not in the majority of my guild on this. Personally, I made it abundantly clear that I felt that we should work with TM to crown Komodo first, then see if we could crown Imperator later on. Others disagreed, and I'm only one person.

It was still heartbreaking to watch Branden try and get #1 and constantly slip behind for a variety of reasons. (Primarily, IOTE is really lacking in members with destro ulti's for tagging/wiping zergs. We also are kind of hurting for reliable healers. Some of us are working on this deficit.) Komodo is just flat-out better at farming AP and it showed.

Kartalin

Jamini wrote: »

Komodo is just flat-out better at farming AP

Well, you don't get AvA Rank 50 Grand Overlord by running scrolls all the time. Plus he's had a ton of experience doing this.

Jamini wrote: »

Primarily, IOTE is really lacking in members with destro ulti's for tagging/wiping zergs. We also are kind of hurting for reliable healers. Some of us are working on this deficit.

I would argue that destro ulti's are not the end all be all for fighting outnumbered, but it's absolutely helpful in doing so. I've gone from DW/S&B to Destro/S&B this update with my magplar to be able to use it.

TM generally runs 25-50% magplars, depending on who's on. Now, not all of them are dedicated healers -- all of us dps to some extent -- but we have the ability to throw out heals on demand if things get tight which is essential. But you really need at least a quarter of your group healing when fighting zergs, more depending on the skill of your opponent. At the same time though you can potentially have too much healing and not enough damage so there has to be some flexibility. But this alone is not necessarily what pushes a team to victory. Coordination through voice comms is essential, with a single leader making the final calls so that there is no confusion.

Right now we're at a point where so many people are running around with stam proc builds and following the meta, but if you look at groups like ours, we tend to have mDKs and mSorcs in group regularly and certainly more magicka builds than stamina. It works against larger groups because the emphasis is on AOE. DKs can lock down groups with talons and other cc, mSorcs throw down all kinds of damage and tag people with mages fury for when they hit execute range, as well as negating groups to interrupt their healing, magplars roll through with destro ulti, aoe dots, radiant on low health targets, and do this while maintaining heals to the group. This is while we still have a few stam builds keeping up pressure with raw damage, and if none of that kills anyone we have an excellent bombblade that sneaks in and blows the whole thing up. That's when we're most effective I feel. The builds that your group is comprised of and their relative numbers can make a big impact on your overall success. Once we get to about 8-12 people in our group with the right build synergy we can devastate larger, less coordinated zergs. Unfortunately we have struggled to get more than 6 lately

I hope you find that helpful, and thanks for the insight into your guild and for wanting to support us.

WhiteMage

That Templar ratio, doe. With that many magplars, you don't have to have a dedicated healer

Jamini

Now now, we don't run scrolls all the time. Last time I checked, Emperor_Branden was only about 200k behind and the two of them were #1 and #2 for AP for all factions.

Right now in IOTE we have a lot of players who just started/came over from BwB, or are on their first toons (like I am). We have a fair chunk of diversity, but many of the players that run with us are either zerglings that were recently picked up, or are still adjusting builds/practicing combos. The lack of healers and CC-oriented characters is mostly due to the lack of diversity in Cyrodiil in general.

I personally run on our discord nightly, and I know we encourage coordination heavily. Teamwork is a work in progress, and it certainly isn't happening overnight. As far as I know, I'm the only person in my group with any interest in playing as a team chains/talons/blocktanking (Already have my next set planned out after the proc meta gets nerfed. Until then... Cheese all the way!) We have a few people learning/building healers and mag builds, but as said before these things take time to migrate and learn.

Right now when we are hot, we are hot. And when we are not, we simply are not. That's just how it is.

Would love to run with you guys more however.

Micah123

I think the difficulty with a guild/group that is picking up new members from BWB and adding cannon fodder pugs from zone chat is that you don't end up with the group synergy. I shouldn't speak for everyone but I feel like a lot of the zone people spamming LFG are the ones emulating the streamers builds. 8-12 people with good synergy and a group oriented build mentality will wreck a 24 man raid of proctard streamer wannabe's. Problem is most people would prefer to blow SH!T up than support a group.

If I can offer 1 piece of advice it would be to work on the core group of people that are tight knit and your best players and find build diversity for that group, once that's starting to work, help out the new meat shields to grow a bigger core of solid group players. If people aren't interested in working with your guild/group and wanna be 1vX streamers, let em go, their goals don't align with yours.

Jamini

Micah123 wrote: »

I think the difficulty with a guild/group that is picking up new members from BWB and adding cannon fodder pugs from zone chat is that you don't end up with the group synergy. I shouldn't speak for everyone but I feel like a lot of the zone people spamming LFG are the ones emulating the streamers builds.

Agree wholeheartedly. That's also why our policy is to kick people out of our active group if they aren't on crown. (Not the guild. Obviously.)

8-12 people with good synergy and a group oriented build mentality will wreck a 24 man raid of proctard streamer wannabe's. Problem is most people would prefer to blow SH!T up than support a group.

Can't disagree there at all. That said, certain roles in a group certainly can run procs. I know I run Viper+Tremor, but since my build is predominantly a tanking/CC build the flat damage is a natural fit to boost up my output to make players think twice about attacking our squishies while also hitting them with a slow. (Plus I'd run pierce armor anyway)

I can't say how much I love diving a group and locking them down right before a big ulti strike however. It's glorious.

If I can offer 1 piece of advice it would be to work on the core group of people that are tight knit and your best players and find build diversity for that group, once that's starting to work, help out the new meat shields to grow a bigger core of solid group players. If people aren't interested in working with your guild/group and wanna be 1vX streamers, let em go, their goals don't align with yours.

Thank you for your advice. To an extent we were naturally doing this, especially with our members who hop on our voicechat/discord. It's a slow process, but overall we're having a lot of fun with it.

--

Report on the Events of 11/29/2016

Last night I ended up with crown (T.T), leading a group of 8ish IOTE and 4-6 pugs.

Early on we blocked several blue back-cap attempts against even/greater odds. Defending Roe, Wiping at Brindle (There was a full raid PvDing the keep. We got there late and got slaughtered on the flags) , Black Boot (An easy defense, but it would have been lost if I hadn't had a few of us watch the keeps.) , then retaking Brindle, and finally transiting to Alyessia to resecure it against the blues who had taken Sej (That ended up becoming a fairly tough defense. We had to repel DC, then EP who stormed down after clearing Sej. We lost the inner and outer doors at one point, and it was mostly held due to good point defense, lots of oils, and three Forward Camps that we held the keep.)

After defending Alyessia, we pushed Sej with the usual bridge zerg to take a break and unwind from a hard-fought win. Naturally we wiped when the entire EP zerg decided to sit on the walls. Rather than push Sej a second time and wipe again, I took our crew around west and we started a front door seige at BRK (expecting that EP would respond promptly since Sej is veyr close to BRK). Naturally this drew most of the Sej defense crew to respond, which we happily fought on the keep towers. Shortly after we wiped Sej flipped, and we respawned as a group at Cropsford and helped a small group of three AD flip Drakelowe.

After that, we shifted back north to join the massive Siege that had started at BRK.

And what a siege it was. We regrouped at a forward camp south of the keep and rode north to try and join the seigers. Zone chat had reported a front door breach, however the defenders had already repaired the door (this caused our group to circle the keep.) When we reached the south side we rejoined the people who had returned to Sej and rode north in a field fight against the defenders, ending up with a wild rolling battle south of the keep. Mostly thanks to the effort of our healers we were able to regroup and revive without spending too many respawns push east to take/join up with the group that had taken the mine.

What raged afterwards was one of the best field fights I've ever been able to participate in. Both sides had some, but not excessive seige, and both our group and Ezra's EP group pushed and pulled across the fields while we worked to re-flag the keep. At one point we had a pair of very good EP (and one DC) gankers attacking our backlins/try and burn our camps, which I and a few of our people on voice were able to stall/stop. More than once we had red pushes out of the keep threaten our seige or resource, only to get pulled out of position, ultimate bombed, or wiped with fire ballistae.

Even once we, eventually, flagged and took the outer wall the fight didn't slow. The defenders had set up two coldfire ballistae on the inner, slowing the setup of our seige. We had to keep at least one person back at the resource to watch it for the gank-team that was determined to kill our camp (as well as watch the breach/backs of people in the field. More than once I came on a group of 2-4 AD who had been wiped by one or two people.) After I replaced our lost FC some Red players managed to repair the outer wall, forcing the handful of us outside to break it back down while the larger group inside forced down the inner postern.

The final push into the keep was rough. IOTE grouped up and made the initial push into the keep. A few of us were slow to respond, and I jumped the bit a little on diving through the beach. Two of us made it up top to kill/distract a few of the defensive seige/oilers, which allowed the bulk of our forces fighting behind the breach to rally up. After the first wipe those of us who had been together respawned, and we got our team together and pushed in with the bulk of our allied forces: clearing the roof, then the breach, then dumping hot, sticky love on the remainder of the EP players clustered on the front flag.

After the siege most of our group broke for the night and went to bed. (BRK had flagged again when we logged off, but I know for a fact I was tired and several others were going to sleep as well).

--
Overall a fantastic night. Kudos to Ezra and the EP at BRK for holding out as long as they did. Kudos to the AD alliance members with many great defensive and offensive fights. The whole evening was amazing from my perspective!

Taylor_MB

Enlightening.

Jamini

Taylor_MB wrote: »

Enlightening.

Can't tell if sarcasm or serious.

On a more serious on-topic note: Do you prefer hashbrowns, fries, chips, or baked?

save_me_jeebus

What is really interesting about potatoes is that they come in all different colors. Some of my favorite are Red, like the Sangre and the Chieftan. Yellows are ok, but they are one of the most common and lack a distinctive flair. Typically Yellows are either really good or largely mundane and lack substance, although they are considered "big" and "flavorful." Most are quite pale. Some yellows are kind of sweet, but their shelf life is typically terrible and subject to blight. Now the Blues, they are a rare breed and often provide some initial excitement as they are visually stunning, but typically don't quite have the sweetness the yellows have, or the crispness of a red. The other hard part about blues is they are susceptible to rot.

Heike

We should schedule a night where everyone - from all 3 factions - comes down from TF and Haderus to fight in AZ.

lol I think there were more players on DC last night from TF, than there were homed in AZ.

So, thoughts? Maybe we can agree to one night of incredible pop-locked field fights and keep seiges? It'd give Deltia, Fengrush, and the 2 guilds a better fight, than would a bunch of new players and pug groups, too.

Malibulove

You'll never guess what I found today.

Munavar

Actually, @Malibulove you are completely wrong on your interpretation.

The Emp. ‘push’ did not occur until late in the night (after we were hanging around up North {DC side}). You can even see the guest appearance at the start of @Fengrush’s latest video where he was wondering what we were doing up there instead of pushing for Emp. (and no, I was not casting BOL prior to being hit by him. It was more like purifying all the DOTs and roots from those behind him).

We only went back down South when various Home Keeps were being threatened by EP with a likelihood of being lost. We pushed EP’s side to get splinter EP off of Home Keeps when it was clear most of EP was stacking in Ales playing with Fengrush’s (& company) group. It was simple enough decision to take an extremely lightly defended Chal to try for Emp at the end; but the other AD was more interested in running into Fengrush (again watch the video).

Vurian97

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Humphie

Vurian97 wrote: »

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Yeah, Congrats on nightcapping. Go get a piece of mudcake as a reward maybe? :P

Vurian97

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Yeah, Congrats on nightcapping. Go get a piece of mudcake as a reward maybe? :P

You know what is crazy? We were fighting the same amount of people, the difference was, we were coordinated. Hardly a nightcap.

Humphie

Vurian97 wrote: »

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Yeah, Congrats on nightcapping. Go get a piece of mudcake as a reward maybe? :P

You know what is crazy? We were fighting the same amount of people, the difference was, we were coordinated. Hardly a nightcap.

At 3:59am? Well I suppose it is daytime for the japanese zerg. How could I be mistaken?

Vurian97

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Yeah, Congrats on nightcapping. Go get a piece of mudcake as a reward maybe? :P

You know what is crazy? We were fighting the same amount of people, the difference was, we were coordinated. Hardly a nightcap.

At 3:59am? Well I suppose it is daytime for the japanese zerg. How could I be mistaken?

No Japanese zerg around. It was roughly 12 EP going up against 15 DC. To be specific, it was LoDG's new Australian branch.

Heike

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Humphie wrote: »

Vurian97 wrote: »

Excellent work DC on capturing the EP scroll right before server went down for maitenance! We had just under 1minute left before the server went down as we made it to Aleswell with Ghartok!

Yeah, Congrats on nightcapping. Go get a piece of mudcake as a reward maybe? :P

You know what is crazy? We were fighting the same amount of people, the difference was, we were coordinated. Hardly a nightcap.

At 3:59am? Well I suppose it is daytime for the japanese zerg. How could I be mistaken?

Humphie, Erza emped almost 3 weeks in a row at 4:00am...

And yesterday, you yourself made a deal with a certain DC player friend of yours, to stay away from DC and focus AD. Make a deal with the devil and...