List of historical DoA tactics
This is a list of DoA tactics sorted by period. All of those were part of the DoASC meta at some point.
Non speed-clear
Those are tactics that mostly killed everything group by group, without tanks, proper balling, or avoiding of enemies. They are not considered real speed-clear, but were capable of much faster completion times than a balanced group.
- Ursanway used Ursan Blessing spikers to mindlessly kill everything with a backline of two monks to keep everyone alive. Ursan was nerfed in August 2008.
- Frostway used DwGs for damage, and the combination of Greater Conflagration, Winter and Mantra of Frost for both energy and damage reduction.
- Glaiveway used DwGs for damage, and a mixed backline.
"Old School"
Those tactics mostly describe the midline (spikers). They all relied on one or two tanks to ball or pull the enemies and a 2-man backline to keep everyone alive. You can see the general team setup here: http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Archive:Team_-_DoA_Caster_Spike
- Cryway used multiple spikers with echoed Cry of Pain. Cry of Pain used to deal all its damage upfront, and was nerfed to the current form in June 2009.
- FoCway used multiple necros with Feast of Corruption.
- RoJway used multiple monks with Ray of Judgment. RoJ was bugged and didn't cause scatter, but was eventually fixed.
- Shitterflames used mostly Searing Flames elementalists.
- Rainbowway used a combination of different nuker builds (Unsteady Ground ele, RoJ monk, FoC necro, VoR mesmer, and others).
Trenchways
Those tactics relied on Necrotic Traversal to pull one to four Stygian Lords to the wall, allowing the team to kill them without going into (some) trenches. By this point, the spikers were mostly Mesmers (one VoR, others mostly E-Surge, but also Keystone or Echo), and a single SS necro was sometimes used. The backline was composed of a Monk seeder and an Emo bonder, but the specific builds had some variants. Necrotic was nerfed to have shadow-step restrictions in February 2013.
Post-necrotic nerf (current meta)
Current tactics are historically the most similar to each other in terms of splits and builds, all sharing the introduction of a new spiker role, the MLK.
- FBGM Tactics are the tactics with generally the most variations for speed improvements. They have EoE on monk and shadow-steps on everybody.
- Golt Tactics are the safest 6-0 tactics, with Echo on monk and extra spiking power.
- French Tactics are somewhat inbetween. They have EoE on monk but allow for more build variation in the spikers.
- DoA 3-3 are safer and more robust tactics, typically used for teaching new players. They take the name by doing tendrils in two waves, thus not having an IaU, but the specific builds and tactics can vary, depending who runs them.
- fam Tactics were [fam]'s tentative in bridging the gap between FBGM Tactics and French Tactics. Very similar to both, and not used any more.
