The reason why you have to run away from the cradle of power is that the NPC’s which
are strong in their own right; respawn every 20 something seconds which is a huge
pain. With other players who can root you, slow you, this is probably the best PvP
experience we had as everything was on the line to get this out as because of the
attention we had drew to the alter, we wouldn’t be able to take it again for at least
a couple of hours. We found the best tactics to get the orb away was giving it to an
Elementist who can use lightning to escape and water to heal up and negate damage. If
we couldn’t use an ele, we’d choose a guardian for their pure survivability. Team
work is key here, dying for the orb carrier can mean they’re wasting their precious
crowd control on you instead of the real target and it’s completely worth sending a
partys worth to suicide attack into the chasers to buy some time.
In Guild Wars 2, the main mass PvP is a Server vs. Server vs. Server affair, so
things get messy and anything can happen. There are three ‘home worlds’ and the
eternal battle grounds the main focus is the Stone Mist Castle, a point of glory for
servers and guilds a like, but besides keeps what is the big focus of the home
worlds?
Orbs of power.
In W3, in each home world, there lies an orb of power which gives each team a
respective 5%+ additional health to each team. 5% might not seem like a lot at first
glance, but remember the figures we’re working with here, each character usually has
around 20,000 hp, so 5% is 1K extra hp. But what if you were to own all three? That’d
be a massive 3K extra HP to all allies and NPC’s (including keep lords) making
everything entirely more difficult for the other team. These orbs are precious and
must be guarded (or taken back) at all costs. There is a saving grace, however. Orbs
of power can only be ‘stolen’ onto a taken keep of that world, so a team has to not
only take a keep, they have to take a supply point to keep that keep fortified then
they have to defeat the numerous defences at the Orb alter and get all the way to the
keep without dying.
It’s no easy accomplishment. It takes either a medium group of people who can
communicate and get the job effectively (A lot of organized guilds come to mind) or a
VERY large zerg of your server comrades to completely crush the opposition. The
guards are tough as it is, let alone getting chain cc’d and busted down from above.
They get to respawn right back there and you have to run all the way back. It’s
supposed to be hard to do, and it is.
When you read the Cradle of power, you’ll find a cone like entrance allowing 2
different paths up. Both paths are very heavily guarded with the strongest NPC’s in
W3. In the centre not on the ramps, is the Keeper of the Orb. He is as strong as a
raid boss, has lots of CC and can pretty much one shot targets. Plenty of DoT’s is
the best way to deal with him, keeping him locked up or focused on an immune target.
The moment the lord dies, you should grab the orb and run. You only have a small time
to ‘capture’ the orb before it resets. If you die, it resets so you need to pick
someone tanky, fast or someone who can heal themselves. You cannot teleport with the
orb, so there is no cheating in running away.
The reason why you have to run away from the cradle of power is that the NPC’s which
are strong in their own right; respawn every 20 something seconds which is a huge
pain. With other players who can root you, slow you, this is probably the best PvP
experience we had as everything was on the line to get this out as because of the
attention we had drew to the alter, we wouldn’t be able to take it again for at least
a couple of hours. We found the best tactics to get the orb away was giving it to an
Elementist who can use lightning to escape and water to heal up and negate damage. If
we couldn’t use an ele, we’d choose a guardian for their pure survivability. Team
work is key here, dying for the orb carrier can mean they’re wasting their precious
crowd control on you instead of the real target and it’s completely worth sending a
partys worth to suicide attack into the chasers to buy some time.
