Guild Wars State of the Game: meet Heart of Ashes and Dust

The latest issue of NCsoft‘s Guild Wars State of the Game is all about the Japanese guild Heart of Ashes and Dust, and how the small team of eight members managed to become the third guild to win monthly Automatic Tournaments (ATs) twice. Learn more by heading over to the full article.

Japanese guilds are far from dominant in the Guild Ladder of NCsoft‘s MMORPG Guild Wars, but a small group of eight manged to prove that Korea is not the only Asian country with topnotch players by winning November’s run of the Guild Wars $100,000 Tournament Series. The latest issue of State of the Game is all about the innards of Heart of Ashes and Dust, and how the team managed to become the third to win two monthly Automatic Tournaments (ATs).

Leading the guild is Andkun, followed by subordinates Smith, Aris Kick, Fle, Mashiro, Rufa, Pixy, and Noji. As former members of guilds Free Will and The Atomic Clock Tour, the group aimed to actively participate in PvP on the get-go. After playing two to three hours a night, they earned over 1,000 victories from 1,300 matches since March this season. Guests participated in some of those battles because of the guild’s low head count.

Lag is one of the Japanese team’s biggest struggles, but aside from that, they are successful with proven-effective balance builds. For lag-filled days, they run Paragon spike, a heavy Hex build, or an Assassin split. For them, gimmick builds don’t demonstrate a player’s skill as much as balanced builds, but rejecting gimmick build ideas like what great guilds like Delta Formation and Esoteric Warriors do is a weakness

Another problem is the time difference between Japan and the west where most guilds come from. According to the Japanese team, they have to be awake three in the morning onwards to participate in monthly ATs. During those competitive moments, they observe opponents as much as they can when not playing.

The long-running Supernova Jpn guild is the team’s friendly rival and scrimmage partner, though Heart of Ashes and Dust has eyes on prominent guilds like Esoteric Warriors who they can play against to improve.

For the full Guild Wars State of the Game, click on the link below.

Via Guild Wars