GuildWars2PvP.com: Team ArenaNet interviews (2011-10-07)

[Centaur]

After the performance of the Team ArenaNet pvp team at Gamescom and PAX, guildwars2pvp.com managed to get interviews with all five members of this team:

Part 1 – Jon Peters, Systems Designer
Part 2 – John Corpening, Programmer
Part 3 – Isaiah Cartwright, Lead Systems Designer
Part 4 – Tirzah Bauer, Environmental Artist
Part 5 – Jonathan Sharp, Game Designer

I will use this thread to post all five interviews, starting with part 1, featuring Jon Peters, which is now up on their site:

Have you picked up any tricks or sneaky tactics in your many hours of play?

JP: Two words: Savage Leap. To me, this is one of the strongest skills in the game. It can be used at close range, to move around the map or as an escape. I wouldn’t say I really picked it up though. Any sneaky tactics are in the game essentially because I designed them. Here is one more tip: if you are attacking a capture point, do bring defensive skills. It takes time to get there and so you want to make sure that if you invest that amount of time, then you’ll survive. If you are defending on the other hand, bring offensive skills to be able to kill the guys who are attacking your capture points, thus forcing them to make the run back there again.

Read the full interview here.

The other parts will be posted when they are available.

[Centaur]

Part 2, featuring John Corpening, has now been posted, and can be found here.

Do you have a favorite team strategy or composition?

JC: Each profession brings something significant to the table in PvP. I think a good mix of professions gives a team a lot of flexibility in how they deal with opposing strategies. Guardians and warriors are great for capping and holding capture points. Rangers and thieves are great at quickly moving and skirmishing around the map. Elementalists and necromancers bring a lot of damage and support abilities into the fray.
Our team has a number of strategies. One of my favorite tactics is to send two heavies to center, a necromancer to the enemy capture point, a person on trebuchet, and a person floating to where there is need.

Any singularly awesome moment you’ve experienced in a match?

JC: There have been a number of exciting moments for me while playing PvP, but I think the one that stands out was the fight against Samantha Whale from Boon Control during our exhibition match at gamescom. She attacked me at the trebuchet with a storm of necromancer minions. The fight was tough, but I managed to force her to make a tactical retreat. I chased her but noticed she was leading me into a trap set by her teammates, so I doubled back to start firing the trebuchet again. When I got back I found her minions nibbling on my trebuchet! They had done a considerable amount of damage but I managed to clear them out before the trebuchet went down. I thought that was a great move on her part.

Check out the full second part here.

[Centaur]

Part 3 of the interview, featuring Isaiah 'Izzy' Cartwright, can be found here:

Any singularly awesome moment you’ve experienced in a match?

IC: I think my favorite moments was a game we had at ArenaNet where Tirzah and I were guarding the center capture point with our guardian and support warrior combo. This was my old warrior build where I used axe/warhorn for causing ranged vulnerability right before our 2-person spike. Our second ArenaNet team ran the split-thieves build for the first time and it was annihilating Tirzah and me at the center capture point. After placing poison and caltrops in the area, they just had to plink us and our healing couldn’t keep up. As soon as we got too close, they simply had to teleport away. It wasn’t a fast victory because the guardian/warrior build relies on us holding the center capture point, so this was paralyzing us. Tirzah and I had to adjust our tactics completely to a super instant spike instead of our normal combination of Flurry and Zealots Defense, which is a good spike but takes over about 4 seconds. In this situation, the thieves could teleport in between us and escape death. So I started spiking with the axe skill Eviscerate after a vulnerability was applied and Tirzah would use Judge’s Intervention to teleport to the thieves when they’d attempt to teleport away. We spiked them right when they were trying to retreat. This quick change in our spike front-loaded our damage and stopped the thieves from playing hit-and-run tactics. After a couple kills, we were able to collapse on Chaplin to secure 2 capture points and came from behind when we were down by about 300 points. We ended up winning by something like 3 points that game. It was an epic 500-497 game; definitely one the closest games I’ve ever played and one of the more memorable comebacks we’ve ever had.

Check it out!

[Centaur]

The fairly short part 4, featuring Tirzah Bauer, has now been posted:

What’s your preferred character profession and weapon sets?
TB: I definitely am a female asura guardian.

How do you usually fit into the team dynamic in Conquest?
TB: I would usually guard in a middle position with Izzy and assist the other two capture points if needed. The Clocktower was pretty much my home though.


Do you have a favorite team strategy or composition?
TB: Dual engineer with thumper turrets at the Clocktower was a ton of fun.

Any singularly awesome moment you’ve experienced in a match?
TB: In our matches against Boon Control, KatieChops had an identical race/profession makeup and fighting with him was always hilarious. Two little asura guardians duking it out!

Have you picked up any tricks or sneaky tactics in your many hours of play?
TB: If you are targeting the enemy trebuchet while at the base of the ramp, you can use the guardian skill Judge’s Intervention – it teleports you to your target and grants vigor to surrounding allies – to teleport right up to the trebuchet. You can then combo that with the Shield of Absorption knockback and throw whoever was controlling the trebuchet right off the platform! Then you can proceed to destroy the trebuchet before they have time to run back up to you.

You can find the full interview with her here

[Centaur]

Almost missed the fact that part 5 had already been released:

Do you have a favorite team strategy or composition?

JS: I enjoy running very different builds in back-to-back games. I like running a “spread” build where we split up and fight at multiple capture points at once, followed by a “zerg” build where you move from one capture point to the next in large groups. I also enjoy playing different classes in back-to-back games, as it gives my opponents more to think about in terms of countering my builds.

Any singularly awesome moment you’ve experienced in a match?

JS: Any time you take a 2-on-1 or 3-on-1 by using your elite skill and efficient play is an awesome moment.

Have you picked up any tricks or sneaky tactics in your many hours of play?

JS: Where to start….? One sneaky tactic is to memorize opponent animations for key skills: in particular, healing skills. Once you have a strong grasp of the animations for heal skills, you’re able to fear, stun, and knockdown your enemy while they try to execute these skills.

Read the full interview here

[Sirthomas77]

Thanks for posting these! I've enjoyed reading the first 2 and cant wait for the others.

[Centaur]

Yeah, it gives some great insight into how their team operates and into GW2 pvp in general. I thought this reveal by John was also really interesting:

Have you picked up any tricks or sneaky tactics in your many hours of play?

JC: One of my sneakiest moves was when defending the trebuchet. I would set my Spirit of Nature’s Renewal at the edge of a cliff as soon as I would see an enemy approaching. When fighting with a ranger in the enemy team, you need to make sure to take down that spirit first or the ranger becomes really hard to kill. As soon as my enemy starts to attack my spirit, I knock them off the cliff with a point blank shot. If they have taken enough damage from the fight then the fall damage can finish them off. I’ve won many fights using this exact move.

Definitely something to keep in mind and watch out for when you run into a similar situation...

[Sirthomas77]

Being a guardian I wont have that problem, Wall of Deflection ftw
lol I cant get enough of the skills tool, been planning out my PvP and PvE strategies.

Anyway, do you know when the other 3 will be up?

[Centaur]

No idea. The first was posted on Friday, the second on Tuesday. With a little luck, we'll get part 3 before the end of this week...

[ComplexNuber]

Somewhat random question but I thought of it now that Centaur mentioned it in that quote. Has anyone ever seen a spirit in-game in GW2? I've looked all over the wiki and am pretty sure there is not picture of them.

I'm certain a gameshow gameplay video somewhere would have it but would be much easier if someone already knew where to look.