Mistress Hrin's Granado Espada Blog

Hrin Interviews Granado Espada’s Regional PvP Champions!

After a ferocious and dizzying spectacular battle of wits, strategies and moves spanning 3 hours, two teams faced off in the final showdown. They were from Malaysia comprising of gamers Nuub and cara while Team Ravage comprised of gamers RavaNa and Voyage from Singapore. With live commentary blaring in the background, the teams were out for blood. More than 20 plasma screens broadcast the action across the entire party venue, fuelling gasps of excitement and cheers from pockets of supporters.

The atmosphere was electrifying. Though the largely partisan crowd rallied behind the Singapore team, took the lead right from the start and never looked back. Comprising of seasoned G.E. gamers "Nuub" and "cara" from Cervantes world, emerged victorious as Granado Espada's PvP champions with a 2-0 straight win.

After their final showdown at the Regional PvP tournament held during the GE Raid Party at Zouk, Hrin finally gets the opportunity to have some quiet moments with the four of them… NOT.

My original fantazzzies of this interview revolved around us happily training in a squad together as I question them casually on the moves and grooves from their gameplay and PvP strategies. Getting them all together in the same map concurrently proved to be a difficult enough feat:

“Hrin! Can postpone the interview by 1 hour? We PK-ing now…”

1 hour later.

“I trying to clear my baron points. Wait ah…”

3 hours later.

“10 minutes more! I recovering my lost items! Just now in baron mode, lion kill me and I drop my items…”

Many hours later.

Finally, all of us assemble at Theringunen Lakeside, a peaceful place of rest. RavaNa is unable to squad with us since he still has 100,038 baron points to clear.

Tourney Planning 101: Choosing Your (Tourney) Lifetime Partner

Hrin: How did you choose your team mate?

Nuub: I trust cara so I called him.

Hrin: Oh so you guys knew each other even before Granado Espada?

cara: yeah. We used to meet up every week to play LAN games together.

Hrin: How about Voyage and RavaNa?

RavaNa: I knew voy since day 1 of Closed Beta Testing so I just knew it had to be him~

Voyage: Yeah… It was love at first sight! LOL!

Tourney Planning 101: Working Out The Relationship

Hrin: What did you do to prepare for the tournament?

Voyage: We practiced 1v1 fighting each other, every night for about 1 hour. We mainly trained our reaction speed and how to avoid AOE skills.

RavaNa: We also did a price check – to see how we can maximize the 20k vis given to us. Other than that, we also thought about the various scenarios that could happen during the pvp tournament and how to counter them.

Hrin: Impressive! It seems to me that you guys devised both defensive tactics and counter measures. How about our GE Champions, cara and Nuub? What kind of preparation did you guys make? I am all ears in eager anticipation!

Nuub: 0 times.

Hrin: … I am speechless.

cara: LOL! Yeah we only discussed the strategy before sleeping, the night before the tournament cos we had extra time and no GE to play…

Nuub: yeah we actually talked about the strategies with crimz and sabre (another Malaysian finalist team from their faction)

Hrin: So both of you teams deployed the same strategy yet your team made it all the way to the end. Why do you think that was so?

cara: Different usage of elementalist.

Hrin: That’s interesting. Can you elaborate more on this?

cara: SECRET!

Nuub: haha...

The Art Of PvP War: Secrets Revealed!

Hrin: Speaking of secrets, what are the other ‘secrets’ of PvPing that you do not mind sharing with your fellow GE gamers?

Voyage: No secret. Just lots of planning, team work and researching of information.

Nuub: Bravery to take risks. Teamwork was important. cara covers my back, I cover his. Amazingly, our team work was good all the way to the end.

cara: Yeah! No secrets, just guts and team work. Whenever I was getting ganked, Nuub would cast Elemental Strife to damage and immobilize the opponent team. Teamwork FTW!

Nuub: I’m proud to have a partner such as cara. Oi cara! I am promoting you! How much are you going to pay me? ^^

cara: 2 vis.

Nuub: -_-

RavaNa: Yes, covering is important especially when you have multiple characters to control.

Voyage: Team work matters a lot for us as we were using MCC that can cover each other.

Hrin: All of you come from Cervantes world (server), which is said to be the most hardcore PvP server. Did this help in your climb to the finals?

Voyage: Hmm… I guess so. Cos the people you PK or duel with in your server are all pretty skilled, hardcore players so your standards of PvP skills increase.

Nuub: I would say being in one of the most hardcore factions in the most hardcore server makes a difference. You learn a lot about PvP and use of weapons, items etc from your faction mates.

Hrin: RavaNa, legend has it that you are one of the top PK-ers in Cervantes. Did that contribute in any way to PvP?

cara: LOL! 100, 038 baron points overnight!

RavaNa: Haha… well, experience helps.

The Characters: Which MCC way to go?

Hrin: So tell me, what MCC combination did you guys choose as your team of 3?

cara: Fighter, Wizard and Elementalist

Nuub: Elementalist, Wizard and Emilia The Sage

Hrin: cara and Nuub, you guys chose a pretty interesting combination of “We don’t need no healers”. Tell us how this was derived.

cara: I found out we could buff faster using pots directly instead of casting spells. So we decided to be completely offensive and high damage dealers and just go in and kill or be killed.

Hrin: I notice that five out of the six characters that you guys chose are all magic-based classes while there is just one melee class - a fighter. Why did you choose to have that ‘lone ranger’?

cara: We wanted to have as many AOE (Area of Effect) casters as possible with minimal cool down time. That solo fighter was chosen to be the tanker and to cancel spells cast by our opponents.

Hrin: It looks like your risks paid off well. I’m a huge fan of magic-based classes as well. Although it is often argued that magic casters are ‘paper’ since they are so fragile and are better at PvE rather than PvP, but I’m glad that you have proven that theory to be wrong! Many fragile creatures, when combined, can be a devastatingly powerful force indeed! How about Team Ravage?

Voyage: Elementalist, Wizard and Scout

RavaNa: Fighter, Elementalist and Scout

Hrin: Wow… totally different tactics from cara and nuub. Both of you have scouts! Going for defensive tactics?

RavaNa: We rather use classes that we are very familiar with since we don’t really like taking risks. Voy’s MCC combination in GE is Elementalist, Wizard and Scout as well. We needed a fighter as a tanker so I used the fighter in my MCC selection.

Voyage: We also wanted a more balanced team in order to be prepared for any scenario given to us. By choosing this combination between the two of us, we could safely balance up any flaws and weaknesses that each of the character classes may have. So we have a tanker (fighter), 2 AOE damage dealers, 1 wizard for buffs and supporting role and 2 scouts to heal and defend.

The Unconquerable Mount “Rushmore”

Hrin: So all of us witnessed “The Rush” tactic whereby the two of you used potions to buff instead of the conventional spell-casting, and took advantage of the time factor to rush to the enemy when they were still unprepared and buffing themselves to launch the first wave of ‘Elemental Strife’ attacks on them. This proved to be highly effective. Who came up with this idea and what was the inspiration behind it?

cara: I came up with the ‘buffing with pots’ idea and Nuub expanded further on it with the idea of ‘The Rush’ since we had the advantage of time.

Nuub: Banzai all the way! Just rush and choke them at the stairs while they are still buffing themselves! We were pressing the buff pots at the same time as we were rushing to attack them!

Hrin: Yeah it took all of us, the audience, by surprise as well. I can only imagine the psychological war that was already won when you took your mentally unprepared opponents by surprise! Nice one, guys.

cara: Actually we had no confidence in our first match because we were up against our faction leader. In that first round when we defeated them, the game marshall said that the match was disqualified because one of their characters was unable to move. We were scared that our tactics were revealed and it would not work again. But Nuub and I just agreed that we will still go ahead with the same tactic anyway and it worked all the way till the finals!

Survivor: Fighting Your Own Mates

Hrin: So, all of you are from the same faction. How did you guys feel having to fight with your fellow faction members?

Voyage: We were quite relaxed as we were up against our own people.

Nuub: It feels like our daily GvG practice for colony war.

cara: We were all joking with one another backstage before we went on stage for the Finals. We even named our PvP room name for the Finals: ‘YAKISOBA’.

RavaNa: Yeah. Either way, we win as a faction.

Nuub: It was a Yakisoba finals so no hard feelings because we are all friends.

Voyage: Actually cara paid us 1000RM backstage to let them win so no hard feelings ^^

Nuub: RavaNa said if I let him win he’ll give me the FHM chick’s info.

cara: nice!

Tourney Aftermath: Walking Down Memorable Lane

Hrin: Were there any interesting or memorable matches or moments that occurred in the tournament?

cara: YEAH! Our very first match was against our faction leader and our very last match was against our own faction mates! MEMORABLE TO THE MAX!

Nuub: Yeah… we didn’t know there was such a thing has veteran stats! So we did not add that additional statistic till the finals against RavaNa and Voyage. Other than that… RavaNa forgot to equip his LOE (Lord Of Element) bracelet in the finals! ROFL!

RavaNa: HEY! NEED TO SAY THAT OR NOT?!

Hrin: HAHA! Gee… this sure reminds me of a classic story that was going around the server during Closed Beta Testing (CBT) phase when RavaNa challenged someone to a PvP duel with his musketeer… and forgot to buy bullets!

RAVANA: ShhHH!! Don’t mention that in the interview okay!

Hrin: *changes topic* Moving along… so how about you Voyage? Any memorable scenes from the tournament?

Voyage: Yes! I remember our first match, the guy we were up against ran to us… and cast blizzard on the staircase instead of us… LOL!

Tourney Aftermath: Reflections

Hrin: What comments do you guys have on the PvP tournament?

Voyage: Well, I enjoyed the tournament because I got the chance to try out the Level 100 veteran characters and their stances.

cara: Yeah it was fun! I do hope there will be more characters to choose from though and also no restrictions on the MCC combination, for example, the choice of being able to use 3 elementalists, rather than only one from each character class. Oh yah! One more thing is to let us add our own skill points, rather than maxing out all the skills. There was a tactic I wanted to use with ‘Invisible Stalker’ but the maxed out ‘Invisible Stalker’ was 40 seconds which was too long for the strategy I wanted to use.

Nuub: errr more time to prepare ourselves would be good, at least 10 minutes would be good.

cara: yeah! Because of the shortage of time to prepare, I went in with the wrong stance. I wanted to cast flame ground, but elemental strife came out instead!

RavaNa: SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME!

Nuub: All nuubs! -_-

Voyage: We hope to have more time to try out the veteran stances as we didn’t use any of them before so we didn’t know what they can do.

Crystal Ball Gazing: Potential Tournament Formats

Hrin: What types of PvP tournament formats would you like to see in the future?

cara: Faction vs Faction please!

RavaNa: 1 vs 1! I sure go!

Nuub: 2 vs 2 is fine with me.

Voyage: I hope to see a server vs server format. Hrin, you?

Hrin: Nice one Voyage! I’d like to see a ‘War of the worlds’ format as well. Hmm… well, personally, I enjoy seeing the fruits of teamwork. I think a format whereby 15 v 15 to overcome an ‘obstacle course’ of various mob bosses and a race at the same time to see which team can reach the end of the dungeon first would be interesting. Other than that, I would love to see players fight it out in one of the scenic locations in GE. Other than just the eye candy factor of gorgeous scenery, players can also make use of the properties of that terrain as part of their strategy! That would certainly call for innovative and creative ideas!

Thank You Speeches & Whatnots

Hrin: RavaNa has been lamenting to me that he never got a chance to make a ‘Thank You’ speech on stage. These are your golden moments, guys. Go ahead and make those speeches now. Of course I’ll edit to shorten them if it gets too long-winded :p