Quote (Jekel @ Feb 11 2011 05:46am)
vtpk history lesson
was originally founded in late early 1.10 as op smite.1337 this was the home of many pre grief vt legends such as (fusa/giovanni/Mak0) The original founders of op smite.1337 which was meant to replace temple as it broke up after grief (grief was not recieved well in those times) were Clos/Nem/Bib
in early to mid 1.11 vtpk moved to the d2gm website as well as channel op vtpk, this spawned an era of new vt duelers now known as legends by some, a few of the ppl on that list include (clos, bib, Immunedvd, One.8, Gtoes, Shib, Seraph, Aube (he started towards the end of this era but made a big impression winning first on the vtpk ladder and placing well in several tournies), Izmini (he was also towards the end of this era and most of the time he spent atop the ladder was during the most inactive periods of this time frame he is worth mentioning but not a true legend imo.) Ekvis (the only v/c to ever be #1 on the vtpk ladder).
after that vtpk slowly died off due to banning etc as we all used bots to lvl our vt's to 96+ and got banned it slowly faded from east as a dueling style and has only been recently renewed through this ladder.
i am mainly sharing this to keep the history of this dueling style in tact as many of the original players no longer play have quit or just simply moved on to something else. To finish things up here is a complete list of every vt to ever be #1 on the vtpk/temple/op smite.1337 dueling ladders. Those marked with a * had more than 1 appearance at #1, those marked with 2 *'s held #1 for 1 month or more with no defeats.
Fusa **
Gio **
Mak0*
Bib **
One.8 *
Gtoes **
Shib*
Seraph (luke) *
Immunedvd *
aube
izmini *
Ekvis
Nem
Clos *
If i forgot anyone or miscounted your time at #1 i truly apologize it has been a long time and im doing this strictly from memory. But i feel this is mainly correct the only person i could be wrong about is aube cause he beat me 2 times back then but i think 1 was for a tourney and the other for the ladder making it 1 appearance at #1 before vtpk broke up after the ban wave.
p.s aube we are still 2-2 in sets we should do an epic rematch for fun sometime to break the tie.
also if anyone would like my old vt's build lmk id be glad to give it out it to help the newer players, i would like to support the ladder however i can vtpk will always be a part of diablo i love i only wish it was as popular as it once was.
Also in response to luke with pb+20 IAS gloves there is no reason not to smite while your frozen you can win smite vs smite vs a axe grief build or a pb build that doesnt use ias gloves pretty much 100% of the time with both players frozen as you are still smiting at nearly full speed while they are 2 bps lower. Phaseblade grief>zerker but you have to wear the ias gloves to.
Nice to see some history even though I would like to dispute some of the years you mention lol (no offense :D). I'll just go ahead and fill in a few things that not many people know today. Temple is old old old. It was founded in 1.07 by bladeoffury (friend of mine who quit in 1.10) and was mainly a place for friends to duel and hang out. It wasn't really a v/t dueling place back then but all classes even though pal v pal duels were the most common. Most players quit before 1.10 came out cause it changed the game so much and others were banned. I think I was the only one who actually still played V/T the first couple of months of 1.10 before re-finding mak0 in a pub game lol (if you talk about old school, me and mak0 had our first v/t vs v/t fight in 2001 lol). Then strength_honour came back and we had a group of around 8-10 players in temple daily (me, strength_honour, mak0, bladeoffury, aeon, slate-, bushball, elusive, foniseltoastes, handofelysium, vindi66, romvs and a few more i don't remember). 1.10 was more fun imo since there was more variation in setups due to grief being a ladder item only. That thing that we in temple did not like grief isn't true at all. We were all waiting for ladder to reset but it took such long time many people quit and when 1.11 finally came out it was mostly me, mak0 and some newer faces such as kaerrevival, aragon666, hydralisk, mrpink in temple. Giovanni came later and I think I only dueled him like twice. The rest of the players on your list I've heard of but I never dueled them because they came after I semi-quit after a few months of 1.11. I actually never heard about vtpk until much later and I never participated on any V/T ladders except briefly on a ladder in 1.10 in the pvp forum that failed pretty quickly. I tried to play more often in the end of 1.11 because jarrod wanted me to v/t duel again but I didnt have the motivation. And yeah, all the people I've mentioned have quit except me but I only melee duel nowadays. I haven't touched a V/T in 3 years and would need a lot of practice to get back in shape lol.
Not trying to hijack your thread guys. It's nice to see that there is still V/T dueling going on!