User:SylvXIII/Flag

Preface
Flagging (or Flag Running), also known as the act of carrying a Flag with the intention of capturing a Tower Flag Stand or Obelisk Flag Stand is an innate part of Guild Wars' Player versus Player (PvP) experience. While Flagging is mostly done in the 8 versus 8 environment known as Guild versus Guild (GvG) where a full character (Flagger or Flag Runner) is often dedicated to the task of Flag Running as it is very important, there is no such thing as a "Flagger" in 4 v 4 PvP and flagging is done (or not) by anyone willing (or ordered) to flag. When a team seizes control of an Obelisk Flag Stand by putting their flag on the stand, the enemy will be subjected to being the target of Obelisk Lightning or Fireball damage, depending on the map. In fairly close games, having control of the obelisk flag stand can help you win a game because of the additional flag stand damage. This article, written around flagging in 4 v 4 PvP, will introduce the basics of flagging, general flagging strategies, map-specific strategies, motives for flagging or not and general flagging tips.

Geographical Matters

 * Flags are located on the floor of each team's starting pit at the beginning of a game.
 * The Blue flag and the Red Flag are equidistant from the Flag Stand.
 * Flags are only located in maps where a Flag Stand can be captured.
 * Two maps of 4 v 4 PvP have a Flag Stand: Heroes' Crypt and Brawler's Pit.
 * There is only one Flag Stand in those maps and they have a fixed location.
 * Those maps are accessible by playing Random Arenas and Codex Arena (It was also possible in Team Arena before they removed the PvP Format)
 * A Flag is a Bundle

Effects of Flagging
When a character carries a Flag, he sacrifices many things in order to carry a burden that might pay off or not. Among those effects:
 * Slower Movement Speed (20%ish)
 * Inability to use Weapon Sets
 * Triggers Herald's Insignia's armor bonus.

Flagging Mechanics

 * Clicking on the flag while being adjacent to it will put the flag in your hands.
 * When a Flag is put on a Flag Stand, it disappears from its holder's hands and respawns at its original location and gives the control of the Flag Stand to the team who just captured it.
 * Assuming a Flag Stand is captured by a team, if the enemy team put its flag on the flag stand, they capture it.
 * If a team that controls the Flag Stand attempts to put in another Flag, it will not work and the flagger will still be holding the flag after trying to capture an already controlled Obelisk Stand. If an enemy flagger captures the Flag Stand, it will become possible again to use the flag to capture the stand.
 * When a player dies while holding the flag, the flag will drop to the floor exactly where the player died.
 * Picking up an enemy flag on the floor will return it to its original location as well as displaying a message such as "The Red Team has returned the flag of the Blue Team." on your screen when the Red Team returned the flag of the blue team and vice-versa.
 * Attempting to pick-up an enemy flag at its spawning location will send back an error message. (You cannot pick up that item.)
 * When carrying a flag, a "Drop" button appears on your screen. Successfully pressing this button will drop the flag on the floor at your character's location.
 * At the beginning of a game, the flag stand is neutral and does not inflict damage on either team.
 * In Heroes' Crypt, many colored tapestries around the Flag Stand indicate the color of the team currently controlling the flag stand. At the beginning of the game, when it is neutral, the color of the tapestries is a grayish blue (to differ from Blue). When the Red team has the control, the tapestries are red and when the Blue team has the control they are blue. The damage done to the opposing team by controlling the flag stand comes from the three Obelisks around the Obelisk Flag Stand in an (approximately) area range.
 * In Brawler's Pit, if the Red team captures the flag stand, a red flag will appear on the stand and if the Blue team captures it, the red flag will disappear and a blue one will appear (those flags are facing the direction of their home team's starting pit). When a game is won (Victory message displayed), the flag animation will disappear and look neutral again even if still under the control of either team. The damage done to the opposing team from controlling the flag stand comes from 6 statues around the map. The fireballs will hit anyone close to those statues. (2 Statues on the elevated area where the flag stand is and 4 on the starting plateau outside the starting pit's doors.

Limits of Flagging

 * When changing weapon sets to a different one than the one you were on while picking up the flag the last time you picked it up, the flag will drop on the floor at your character's location.
 * When successfully using a Shadow Step skill while holding a flag, you will successfully shadow step, but the flag will be dropped at your character's location before you shadow stepped. (You can however use Teleportation with a flag or any other item without dropping it)
 * After successfully casting an Item Spell, the flag will be dropped at your character's location and you will hold the item that you summoned for the item spell. Picking up the flag while holding another bundle will make you drop your bundle and pick up the flag.
 * When a player dies while holding the flag, the flag will drop to the floor exactly where the player died.

Flagging Strategies
This section will introduce some flag running strategies in 4 v 4 PvP. Please take note that the statements made in the General Strategies are general and will not apply to every specific case as a golden rule.

The Runner
Because holding the flag makes makes you completely unable to use any weapon, physical damage dealers are certainly not the best flag runners. Casters, who do not need weapons in order to cast spells, can hold the flag and cast spells at the same time, although less effectively than when holding proper weapon sets. For this reason, if there is a caster in a group, he should be the one carrying the flag. Let me temper this last statement immediately: Healers should NEVER run flags. The survivability of a healing character needs to stay pretty high in order for the whole party to survive. If the healer cannot switch to a shield set because he is holding the flag, he might be outdamaged, get interrupted (no 40/40) and is less efficient in his job when holding a flag. Now what happens if a team is made of 3 physical damage dealers and a healer? It's pretty simple, one of the physical damage dealers should run the flag. While they can drop it a little in the back if needed, the sole fact of bringing in a moderately close range of the stand it is a backup plan if the other team decides to capture (cap) the flag stand first. This is a typical gimmick priority order of who should be flagging: 1-non-healing caster, 2-Physical damage dealer. I will introduce strategies that will however be exceptions to this order later on in the article.

Watching Your Opponents
In any situation, keeping an eye out to see if any of the enemy players is holding their team's flag is a basic thing to do when you are flagging. In Heroes' Crypt, where you cannot see your opponents at the beginning of the battle (when the doors open), you will have to get closer to your opponents in order to do so. If out of all the four enemy party members, none of them is carrying a flag, capturing the flag stand without a worry is something you will be able to do. If you are within Radar range of your enemy's starting pit, holding you Alt key (default key) will show if the flag is there or not. If it's not, then it's somewhere else (dropped on the floor somewhere, in someone's hands).

Flag War
Before we begin, I will introduce the term Flag War for future reference. Flag War is a state of the game in which a player from each team is constantly running the flag (since each team is capturing the Stand after the other) until one of the player gets bored, a team is defeated or the battle is drawn out of the Flag Stand's reach (neutral zone). Flag Wars are generally found in Brawler's Pit where the distance between the flag stand and the flag is considerably short in opposition to Heroes' Crypt where it takes a large amount of time to run back and forth to capture the stand.

General Strategies
The general strategies introduced in this section are mere guidelines to any flag maps. Because the two flag maps in 4 v 4 show many differences, the strategies will be viewed in depth in the Map-specific strategies section.

Capture the Flag
This is by far the most basic strategy of flag running and is almost trivial to mention. It consists of watching your opponents and determining whether one of their party members has a flag or shows intentions of going back to its base to get hold of one. If not a single soul from the other team fits the previous description, then push over to the Flag Stand and take control of it. All you need to do at this point is to engage your opponent in range of the damage boost from the stand in order to have a map advantage in battle. Often, inexperienced player tend to rush in and capture the flag without taking a look at their opponents who then proceed to capture the stand within a few seconds after its first capture.

Killing the Enemy Flagger
In a situation where each team has a caster holding the flag and is heading towards the flag stand, there are 2 major outcomes: both flaggers drop the flag and engage battle or both flag runners hold the flag and engage battle. For the latter, the strategy "Killing the Enemy Flagger" is self-explanatory. It consists of killing the enemy flag runner before your enemies kill yours. This can be done by outpressuring the flagger (camping him until he dies, not recommended if the flagger is protted/has effective self-survival skills) or by the mean of coordinating all your damage on the enemy flagger with specific timing so that the enemy healer (if any) cannot possibly outheal such a large amount of damage (see Spike). Once the flagger is killed, someone from the party should quickly go ahead and capture the enemy flag. If possible, it's best to call it (holding the Ctrl default key and pressing spacebar while selecting the flag, or holding the Ctrl key and double-clicking on the flag) so that your flag holder can get the message and get in range of the stand and capture it. In any case, it's best to wait for the official message "The Red Team has captured the Flag of the Blue Team" (or vice-versa) before capping. Once in a while, the enemy killed flagger might be so pissed at what just happened that he might walk all the way to the base in order to get another flag after you capped it, thus entering or not a Flag War.

Of course, if your team is the team that got its flagger killed, then you can flag again (risky, time is precious) and risk engaging a flag war or try to save your flag by picking it up from the dead body of your ally before your enemy can get to it. Proceed afterward to transfer the flag back to your non-healing caster (if needed, as you might be a non-healing caster yourself) although coordinating this is usually done by the mean of a Voice chat program so it's not something typically done in a random arena group. Of course, another response to this is to try to kill their flagger and get his flag before he can use it. Along with snares and bodyblocking, your team might be able to take the enemy flagger down before he can possibly reach the stand, turning the map into a whole neutral area unless someone is energetic enough to run the flag again.

If you lose the control of the flag stand and cannot seem to turn the tides around, consider retreating to a neutral zone.

Retreating to a Neutral Zone
As the name says (my strategy names are not very original), if your team ends up in a situation where the opposing team has control over the flag stand and you can't seem to turn the tides around, consider retreating to a neutral area. A neutral area is a place where the damage from the flag stand cannot reach you or your opponents, therefore negating the flag control advantage to either side). The process is usually not a straight run for it but more of a progressive retreat as your enemies could decide not to follow you (only if they have the morale advantage, aka they are going to win when the timer expires out) and you would end up having to go fight to the stand again with an obvious disadvantage. In Heroes' Crypt, the Obelisk Lightning will only reach whatever is in nearby range of the Obelisks (apparently) while I'm not quite sure where it is when you're in Brawler's Pit, I'm pretty confident the starting pit areas (Red and Blue's) are neutral (to confirm). (Map-wise, you retreat on Heroes' Crypt and you engage Flag War on Brawler's Pit)

Dual Flagging
Dual flagging, like the name suggests is a strategy used by running two flags instead of one at the beginning of the battle. It consists of having one character, typically a character with a IMS (increase movement speed), running and capturing the flag as fast as possible while followed by two of his teammates (healer here, if any) and having a last party member stay at the starting pit in order to take the second flag. The second flag will appear once the first flag is used to capture the stand. While the second runner is running, the enemy team, seeing as how you captured first, will capture the stand in second, thinking that they will have an advantage (if they are not dual flagging that is). However, when your second runner will capture the flag stand a few seconds after, that advantage will be turned around as you will have made the enemy team waste their flag while controlling the flag stand: it's like they did not even bring a flag. The risk taken from dual flagging is the one of engaging a 3 versus 4 battle at the beginning of the game. Because it will take considerable time for the second flagger to reach the stand, the enemy will have an advantage during that time and unless you are confident in your team to keep up the bars despite the difficulty, then it is not recommended.

Dual Flagging on Heroes' Crypt is deadly, as most inexperienced group will not notice your strategy or at least not do anything against it. A simple counter would be to retreat. In Brawler's Pit, dual flagging comes with a greater risk as your second runner is exposed to possible danger while the rest of the team is pushing to the flag stand, hence why your healer should keep a look out for your second runner and your second runner should have some sort of self-survival if possible. It can also easily evolve into a Flag War on that map. Finally, suppose that both teams are dual flagging, then the team that captures first will be at a disadvantage if the full dual flagging maneuver is done by both teams. Therefore, if your first flagger is a caster, you will have the advantage but if the two first flaggers are casters, it becomes a flag war and/or a "kill the flagger" situation.

Flag Dropping
This is a typical strategy that's based on the 2 flaggers dropping their flag before engaging a battle or at least one of them. When the flags are on the floor, it's pretty easy to just move ahead, pick it up and go put your flag on the stand. That's the basic.


 * The flaggers are both casters. I recommend never dropping for obvious reasons. However, if you're in a safe spot away from everyone else, consider dropping it temporarily only to gain an advantage from your weapon sets. Pick it up again when an enemy comes near you. This might end up in neither team capturing the flag, hence why dropping it and having the advantage of your weapon sets will benefit you.


 * One flagger is a caster and the other is a physical damage dealer. If you're the physical damage dealer, drop it. Go ahead and try to kill the enemy flagger and keep an eye on him/her in the mid-game. If the enemy caster pushes over to pick your flag, there isn't much you can do other than killing him before he can do such a thing along with bodyblocking, snares and kds if possible. If you really can't kill, consider capturing the stand and running another only if it's a really close game: they might not notice you. A caster flag runner is better than a physical damage dealer so if your enemy wins control of the stand because they had a caster you couldn't kill, it's no big deal: consider a little retreat. Now now if you see one of your enemy go back to get another flag after you captured it, feel free to go ahead and overextend to kill that flag runner only if you can : know when to stop when things go bad. If you're the caster, hold the flag, sneak up to pick the enemy flag mid-game (or ask an ally to do it for you) then proceed to capture the stand. If the enemy physical damage dealer is stupid enough to hold the flag during 3 minutes without doing anything then just have a good laugh.


 * Both Flaggers are physical damage dealers. Avoid wasting time and drop it. You can either make a run for it and pick the enemy flag, go back, pick yours and capture or do that same thing in the middle of the game. Nothing special here.

To sum it up, when a flag is on the floor, overplay your opponent.


 * Fake that you have captured the flag stand by dropping your flag right next to the flag stand (where it will physically not be seen) if you're a physical damage dealer against a flagging caster. Wait for him to capture the stand then put your flag in and laugh. (does not work against smart players)


 * Stand right next to the enemy caster flagger when he picks up your flag to pick his. (Tricky)

Map-Specific Strategies
I will assume that the reader knows both maps and where the battle usually are on those said maps. Otherwise, here is a link to Heroes' Crypt and Brawler's Pit. My descriptions of some areas might not be very accurate since I'm bad at doing this in English. I will also add that as a general rule, flag war is mostly engaged on Brawler's Pit and Retreats on Heroes' Crypt. This is NOT ALWAYS the case as a flag war can be engaged in either maps, therefore other than the terrain differences, the strategies remain the same on both maps.

Heroes' Crypt
Since I've already explained Dual Flagging, I will simply add a note that it is a very effective strategy to do in this map. The time it takes to go back and forth to take a flag and capture will most likely give you a fair advantage if your enemy decides to go back after engaging. It might, however, pay out in specific situations. Decent knowledge of the map will make an experienced player know when to press his "Alt" key to see if the flag is in the enemy starting pit.

Capture the Flag : Hiding the Flag
Upon walking towards the middle part of the long corridor where the Obelisk Flag stand is adjacent to, you will notice stairs going up and the walls of the elevated plateau. This very simple strategy consists of hiding behind that wall where your enemy cannot see you before engaging a battle. Whether you are a caster of a physical damage dealer, if your enemy flag runner does not know you are there and carrying a flag, he might just go ahead and capture it mindlessly as soon as the battle engages. I strongly recommend for a player with a movement speed boost (Natural Stride, Sprint,...) to be the one flagging in this map for the purpose of quickly running out of your enemy's sight before he can notice you are holding a flag. Knowledge of the map pathing, positioning on the less elevated part of the door before the game begins and an IMS will help you into accomplishing this strategy. However, experienced players will not fall for such a trap so consider handing the flag out to one of your non-healing caster or dropping it when you notice your enemy's not falling for it.

Retreating to a Neutral Zone : Go out of the Obelisks' range
Usually, the battle is done in the middle of a long corridor with the Obelisk flag stand adjacent to that middle part. The flag stand's damage will reach the middle part of the corridor and even a little part of the bridge. If you lose the control of the stand for whatever reason, backing up progressively in the said corridor will negate the flag stand's effect. Engaging the battle in the raised area is a safe way to negate both the flag's advantage and the height advantage. The lowered part of the map is safe too, but not recommended as it's tricky to good fight casters with the middle bridge around as they can use it to gain positioning advantage.

Brawler's Pit
In comparison to Heroes' Crypt, the distance between the flag and the flag stand is quite short. The fireball damage a team receives when their enemy has the stand captured comes from some statues (some are really high) in the map. Being out of range of those will not make you receive any damage although those areas are pretty rare to fight in (the lower-elevated part, the starting pits, and [to confirm] a part of the L-Looking stairs going up and corridor leading to the stand).

Capture the Flag : Hiding the Flag
This is the same idea that it is in Heroes' Crypt. The main issue with this one is that it's fairly easy to press the "Alt" key when the doors open to see if your opponent has the flag. A way to counter that is to hide behind the starting walls with the flag at its regular location and voluntarily waste time once the doors open (like casting late attunement and aura) to let the enemy flagger think you're not flagging, only to pick it up after. You can also hide behind the column close to the starting doors and in the L-shaped section that includes a stairway going up and an elevated corridor directly leading to the stand.

Winning the Flag War
As the name suggests, if a flag war is engaged on this map, there are many ways to win it. One strategy consists of having a character throwing some snares, knockdowns and using bodyblocks to slow down the enemy flagger. If done many times, your team should be able to have the flag control 100% of the time as whenever the enemy flagger will reach the stand, your flagger will also be there with a flag in hands. Another one is to have a character overextend to solo the enemy flag runner (twice if needed). Of course, send a proper overextender to do the job. This might push the game to the surrounding location of where the solo battle was as the enemy monk fell back.

Motives for Flagging/not Flagging
The process of Flag Running typically only pays off in games that last for more than 30 seconds. Therefore, there are reasons to run the flag or not. In Brawler's Pit, you can see all the professions of your opponents (as well as your players) before a battle and anticipate the need or not to flag run. In Heroes' Crypt, you cannot see what your opponent is at the beginning of a battle other than the names of players who joined after you (if you know them it helps) so you might as well always bring a backup Flag in case of.

Flagging

 * Balanced vs Balanced setup
 * Stalemate
 * Extra Damage

Not Flagging

 * Waste of time
 * Use another part of the map's pathing at your advantage
 * Quick Games
 * You run a team build that relies on spiking, running away, spiking, and so on.

General Flagging Tips

 * Never accidentally drop the flag, change your interface so that you have no chance of accidentally pressing the "Drop Item" button, get your hands off F1-F4 when flag running to avoid weapon swapping.
 * Pick up the flag on a low-energy defensive set or regular def set. If you die while carrying the flag, you will (let's hope) be resurrected and able to switch to your 40/40 (your casting set) and have plenty of energy.
 * Use a skill without selecting a valid target to unstuck yourself (like Resurrection Signet, a skill targeting an enemy while selecting yourself, etc) or type /stuck to stop the effects of Rubberbanding.
 * Learn the pathing of the maps.
 * Anticipate enemy Bull's Strikes to avoid getting knocked down.

Final Words
Because the 4 versus 4 PvP format has never been competitive outside of Team Arenas and a little bit (~1 month) of Codex Arena, there isn't much to say about the subject as it is a minor part of a minor PvP format. While winning or losing a contest to take over the control of the flag stand does not necessarily means that you will win or lose the said game respectively, I like to think of flag running in 4v4 as a mini-game in Guild Wars. It opens up new strategies of overplaying your opponent and still bring a satisfaction even if you lose the game as well as a way to piss off players you don't like by flagging right at the end of a game so that they take damage while waiting for the next game. It can make you win a game, have fun in a game or bring frustration as your ally couldn't flag properly and was overplayed. It's a balanced PvP game mechanic (Yes they exist...some....a couple...few...) and a pretty major one of the 8v8 Guild versus Guild format which makes flag running an art to which one character is fully devoted. In the end, 4v4 flag running is truly just a glimpse of what flag running can be in GvG, a format to which the game designers of Guild Wars put many efforts into making.