Strategy Guides/Guild Battle Tactics

Guild Battles combines the competitiveness of PvP with the team work found in monster hunting. The great thing about guild battles is that every fight is different from the other. There are a lot of guilds that your guild can fight against. Every guild is also trying hard to improve themselves (adding more to their attack/defense stats, buying Deianira and Resistances, recruiting more powerful players from other guilds, setting up new gate formations). So even if your guild gets to face the same guild more than once, you may find that each encounter is different.

To start with, there is really no perfect, absolute strategy when it comes to guild wars. This guide only provides a few guild war tactics and maneuvers that your guild can use and modify so that it fits to your style. Whether these tactics would be effective for your team or not depends on your guild members themselves: their build and availability whenever there is an engagement.

Communicate with your Guild
The most important aspect of guilds in general is communication between members. During guild battles, communicate with your guildmates on your battle strategy like which gate to hit, when to hit, share about who you can beat, who is going to hit who etc. You don't want to be a divided group when you are up against a strong, active adversary.

Class Selection
Remember to set your class before the guild battle is initiated. Once the fight starts, you can't change your class for the current battle anymore. Communicate with your guild on your schedule so you could change classes if you need to (esp. if you are switching to Rogue or from Mage for Guild Monsters).

Cleric - The best class hands down, with a support general that further pushes them ahead of the other 3. Clerics heal and revive weakened and stunned allies, affecting your guild score. They are essential in any guild battle. It's hard to imagine a team without clerics winning consistently. Your strongest guild members should be clerics.

Mage - The second best class. They can counter cleric healing with their splash damage although it's made less efficient by Sanna. You can take down enemies you can't beat by using mages. Although clerics are the best, a few mages are very handy when cleaning up a gate. Decent players should take the mage class.

Rogue - This class is the best for guild monsters but not so much in guild battles. This class can save you token by dealing more damage to an enemy, especially so if they have insane health (3000+). Quite handy but not really necessary. A prime target for suicide strikers.

Warrior - The worst class of the four. Warrior hints that they are not a serious guild battle players. The warrior bonus is very weak, it's better to equip an attack boosting general instead of relying on the +10 to att and def ability. Warriors are another prime target for suiciders.

If you are trying to farm for coins/points, avoid rogues and mages. Stick to clerics so you can prolong the battle until the 5 hour limit. Warrior is also a good choice but considering you won't have healing abilities as warriors, your opponents may stomp you out and end the battle early thus preventing you to efficiently farm.

Also note that the only ability that works in guild battles is Resistance. The other 4 new ones (Whirlwind, Evade, Polymorph and Heal) are for guild monsters only. So remember to set Resistance as your class upgrade.

Equipped General
Try to equip your best attack boosting general when attacking (Xira, Aurora, Azriel, Malekus, Elora etc.) and your best defending general when on stand by (Halcyon, Corvintheus, Ambrosia, Celesta). If you are confident of your stats on getting a victory, you could use other "effect" generals:

Deianira

The best all-around guild battle general. She adds 20 more damage to your output regardless whether you win or lose. So even if you are sure that you will lose, it is better to put up Deianira so you can chip a bit more health from your enemy.

Sanna

General for Clerics. Sanna improves your healing by 40%. It may not mean much but in the long run it adds up and would cost your enemies a few more tokens than normal to bring your health down again. Use Sanna when your gate really needs healing like if a lot of members have half health or less. When reviving stunned players, she will force an enemy "clean-up mage" to use 2 tokens to re-stun instead of 1. Use her instead of the Azriel with Signet of Azriel combo. She is more efficient and much, much, much easier (maybe even cheaper) to obtain.

Sylvana with Signet of Sylvana

General for Mages. She improves your mage splash damage by 10%. Not as effective as the cleric counter part but she's the only one that supports mage characters. The problem is that obtaining Sylvana and her Signet is extremely difficult. She's a chest general and her amulet requires 2 legendary drops that require an insane amount damage on the Army of the Apocalypse just to have a shot of getting one to drop.

Lotus with Signet of Lotus

General for Rogues. She improves your Rogue extra damage by 30%. Although Rogues are not really necessary classes in guild battles as the two above, if you are playing as one, use this instead of Deianira if you have both of them. Obtaining this combo is just as difficult as Sylvana's although her chest set costs more.

Although the Warrior class has generals that helps them in their ability, the boost is nothing really special that you will be better off using Deianira or just picking another, more useful class altogether.

Health Modifiers

The generals Vincent, Crissana and Serene as well as Darius and Sanna, if you have their equipment, modify your health stats. You can use these to give you a boost (or handicap) in guild battles. Before the battle starts, equip either Vincent, Crissana, Darius (if you have his Terran Plate) or Sanna (if you have her Saintly Robes) to increase your health for guild battles. Avoid equipping Serene as she decreses it but if you like to give yourself some handicap, you are free to do so. Vincent will give +150 health @ level 4, Crissana will give +40 @ level 4, Darius with his armor will give +80, Sanna with her armor will give +30 while Serene will deduct 140 from your max. Among these generals, Darius is the most accessible and is also the second best health modifier.

Gate Formations
Setting up your gate right is your first line of defense in guild battles. Most guilds like to set-up a "pillar gate" which consists of the guilds' strongest and most active members. They are mostly made of clerics with a few mages for anti-cleric attacks on enemy gates.

Even with the "pillar gate", it's good to have all gates covered so the enemy will not have a "freebie" in the form of a weak, inactive gate. Try to set up a few strong (cleric) members onto the other gates so that they will not fall easily and force the enemy spend more tokens on trying to kill off that gate.

People who are online at similar times are good to be placed together into one gate. This is so that they can actively support each other during guild battles. With no supporting guildmates from the same gate, an single active player can spend the rest of the battle stunned. Unless you are trying to farm, stunned active players are never good.

If your guild is small (less than 25-30 members), then you wouldn't have to worry much about this one.

Battle Tactics
This is where we cover different battle tactics you can employ during guild battles.

Hit the clerics first

The only good enemy cleric is a stunned enemy cleric. Hitting and stunning the clerics first means that they won't be able to heal and revive allies and thus lock their score into place. The active ones should take priority so that you won't have to deal with their healing as you begin your attack. It is recommended to focus on one gate at a time. If your active players are outnumbered on a gate, evaluate your situation. If you feel your team can't keep up with their numbers, move on to a different gate where you have more control on who gets and stay stunned.

Mage Suppression

This is a tactic employed when an enemy cleric suddenly enters the battle and starts healing his/her stunned gatemates (or if one of your guild members lose to an inactive cleric). Use a mage's splash damage to save tokens and re-stun those revived players. It's also quite handy when suicide striking a cleric (if you have no other choice left) for the same reason as before.

If you are on the receiving end of this tactic, you can use Sanna to heal and revive your guildmates. This will force mages to spend two tokens instead of one to re-stun you. With two attacks, your resuscitated guildmates can use the delay in between attacks to start attacking/healing again before the enemy mage can finish the clean-up.

Suicide Strike

Even if your weak guildmated can't defeat anyone on the opposing guild, they can still assist you by continually losing or "suiciding" against players to lower their health count thus affecting their score. Use Deianira to increase your damage. The best classes to suicide against are Warriors and Rogues as their ability are individual-based. Other than getting only half damage, there is absolutely no harm in throwing yourselves at these classes.

The mages are a bit dangerous as they can damage your gate with their splash damage ability. Try to avoid getting a guildmate stunned when suiciding on mages. Clerics are the worst classes to employ this tactic. Only do this unless you have to, like when you have to stun this player to finally lock their gate out of the fight. If there are already stunned players on the opposing gate, try to get a mage for clean up so you could have control the gate especially if there are online clerics just waiting for the chance.

Stock and Awe

This method involves stocking tokens instead of using them up as soon as you get them. How much token you want or need to stock will depend on your situation. For example, an enemy gate has 4 active but weakened clerics. Stock 4 tokens and stun them all in quick succession before they have a chance to heal themselves.

On a large scale, try to get your guild use this and eliminate an enemy gate or two in one swift strike.

Let them make the first mistake

Similar to the tactic above (Stock and Awe), this involves waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Use one token up so you maximize your regen, then wait for the enemy to start getting throwing their tokens in. You can then pick your target/s (among the enemies that entered the battle) and bring them down, preferrably their whole gate if possible.

Playing it Safe

Although a bit underhanded in my book, this is a legitimate tactic that is not prohibited by the game's rules. You can choose to test your target first by engaging him to battle outsite the guild war. Go to the guild page of your adversaries and find the keep link of your target. Duel him/her and see if you can win. If you can, unleash your tokens in the guild fight. If not, pick another target. Your tokens are limited so make them count.

Be warned that by doing this, you can turn a friendly guild battle into an ugly bickering between right and wrong. Keep that in mind if you plan on using this tactic.

Tips
These are not really tactics but just general tips on how to approach different situations in guild battles.

No need to Stun If the clock is ticking down and your scores are close, choose targets that are low in health and try to weaken them below 200 health. There's no need to stun them as being below 200 counts them as "out" in the guild score. Use your remaining tokens on other targets. Use Mage Suppression to keep them below 200 in case the clerics in the same gate are going all out trying to get themselves back above 200 health. Of course, if there is still pleny of time left, you have to stun.

Do not tempt fate Unless you are intentionally tryin to effeciently farm guild coins/points, do not to lose to a healthy inactive cleric when there are already stunned active clerics on the same gate. If you are unsure of a victory avoid attacking clerics. Tell your guildmates to do the same. You do not want to undo the work on keeping those actives down. Tokens are only limited in guild battles so try to not waste them by reviving the enemy yourself. Attack non-clerics or move on to a different gate with no stuns yet. You can also ask one of your mages to assist you as a security measure in case you lose.