Guild Wars 2

It has been a while now and let’s look at what happened after the change.

The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Fights more often than not end in one side simply disengaging.

Is this the kind of WvW we want?

I play ranged, I play melee. These fights are very lack luster if you’re not playing your scumbag ranger alt.

Revenants are the new stab bots.

Gav.1425:

It has been a while now and let’s look at what happened after the change.

The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Fights more often than not end in one side simply disengaging.

Is this the kind of WvW we want?

I play ranged, I play melee. These fights are very lack luster if you’re not playing your scumbag ranger alt.

More like hammertrains were completely immune to anything ranged could do, hence GWEN. How can you call that balanced ?

Just FYI, my current favorite WvW toon is a flamethrower engi …. while I do have range on my mortar, it isnt my weapon of choice so I cant kill anyone with it, its not for the fields though, for some added utility, my FT is basically melee but less stab then guard or war, hell even my necro in plague, DS or lich gets more.

So you neitehr need a ranger, nor be a cog in a hammertrain. It is false for you to make such a claim.

Tongku.5326:

Gav.1425:

It has been a while now and let’s look at what happened after the change.

The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Fights more often than not end in one side simply disengaging.

Is this the kind of WvW we want?

I play ranged, I play melee. These fights are very lack luster if you’re not playing your scumbag ranger alt.

More like hammertrains were completely immune to anything ranged could do, hence GWEN. How can you call that balanced ?

Just FYI, my current favorite WvW toon is a flamethrower engi …. while I do have range on my mortar, it isnt my weapon of choice so I cant kill anyone with it, its not for the fields though, for some added utility, my FT is basically melee but less stab then guard or war, hell even my necro in plague, DS or lich gets more.

So you neitehr need a ranger, nor be a cog in a hammertrain. It is false for you to make such a claim.

Hammertrains were not immune to everything, just to hard CC like stun.
GWEN turned into NEER (necro,ele,ranger,engi). GWEN had some melee and some ranged, now melee is the only option for com mander and even that is changing and you see more and mroe commanders on necromancers.
Its not only stability, but stat changes influenced it more. Earlier it was not possible to oneshot tanky warrior from melee train. Now mesmer can just oneshot you.

I disagree with most of what the OP says. My experience suggests that Hammer and tank trains are still alive and well.

Boon stripping still works great, and now there is less immunity to CC, giving it value and allowing other professions a little room to fit and find value in a large force.

Indeed, the meta havent even changed. GWEN is stronger than ever after the trait changes. Its still melee train with a ranged backline. Plays exactly like before, with somewhat less stability. Engagements can drag out a bit as you need to time your assault after the enemy dropped the bomb, but once there the melee train usually roll all over them.

This is my experience fighting T1-3 EU servers at least.

Couldn’t we have traits or specializations to let support roles grant at least an extra stack + duration of stability?

The stability changes are over exaggerated.

GWEN certainly did NOT turn into NEER in EU top tiers. Guardians, Elementalists and necromancers got even stronger in the recent patch. Necromancer needed the buffs, but I simply fail to understand why already super powerful builds like staff or d/d elementalist or meditation or shout guardian needed to be buffed more. Many commanders, including me, continue to play as warrior (guardian commanders are probably the most frequent).

LB pewpew rangers were already common before the patch. Engineers were the least played profession and I have heard many who played engi main switch to other professions now. I am mostly playing warrior (commander) after the patch. Engineer suffered a lot in the recent trait changes (and tons of bugs). You can read more about this in the engineer specific forums. Somebody suggested to play a flamethrower engineer. Retaliation still hits FT too hard and some top enemy zergs have more or less permanent retaliation on them, so…

The recent trait changes buffed mesmer to overpowered level, thus making it making it #1 profession for small scale roaming and fights. I can imagine that many thieves changed to play mesmer, because everybody and their uncle is searching for the next easy mode (low risk and high reward). Recently I was leading roughly 8 of us vs 10 enemies and roughly half of the enemy players were mesmers. The number of clones was hilarious, but I feel the mesmer has too many escapes and too much stealth comparing to what amount of burst they can set from stealth. Mesmers can spam stuns too much using mantra of distraction and confounding suggestions trait.

As far as WvW is concerned, necros needed no buffs. Marks and wells were already a hot commodity.

AOE classes and player numbers are even more important than before, before a small organized group could defeat a much larger disorganized one, now only matters number being in aoe damage or in players, more than anything

The changes to stability have made it harder to fight a group that outnumbers you. This may seem like how it should be to some people but what it really means is that game mechanics have nerfed skill and group coordination.

In the past an organized, skilled group of 25 could fight an unorganized group almost double their numbers to a standstill or victory. This is not the case now because the CC will overwhelm them. I dont mind that stability is a stacking mechanic but the rates for group stability is geared towards small scale fighting. fighting numbers that large means a frontline has to burn all of its cooldowns to just push into the enemy.

I remember back when people would sit in a ball and share boons and buffs while ranging the other group before the dps and boon aoe cap. That was not fun dynamic combat and neither is this,

Aeolus.3615:

AOE classes and player numbers are even more important than before, before a small organized group could defeat a much larger disorganized one, now only matters number being in aoe damage or in players, more than anything

This seems to hold true most of the time. Now even a slight disadvantage in numbers e.g. having 25 % less than your enemies will usually lead to a loss e.g. 32 vs 40 puts the first in a serious disadvantage. There is so much hard and soft cc, AoE etc. that larger numbers can win most fights with numbers.

WvW seems to have taken a massive population hit since the stability change. This could be down to the summertime, and most of the optimists in my server community are certainly putting it down to this.

I was expecting HoT to be released around September, but having read this, I think it’ll be next year. If that’s the case, then I think we’ll definitely be able to tell whether the population has dwindled significantly or not.

The stab changes more than anything favors the bigger blob who will have more ccs. In the old meta stability had a set duration no matter how many people you were going to dive into; it was balanced in a manner to give a better chance to the smaller group.

That said, smaller groups of hardcore players have and will find new ways to win against large blobs… If they don’t then they will leave the game.

Tongku.5326:

Gav.1425:

It has been a while now and let’s look at what happened after the change.

The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Fights more often than not end in one side simply disengaging.

Is this the kind of WvW we want?

I play ranged, I play melee. These fights are very lack luster if you’re not playing your scumbag ranger alt.

More like hammertrains were completely immune to anything ranged could do, hence GWEN. How can you call that balanced ?

Just FYI, my current favorite WvW toon is a flamethrower engi …. while I do have range on my mortar, it isnt my weapon of choice so I cant kill anyone with it, its not for the fields though, for some added utility, my FT is basically melee but less stab then guard or war, hell even my necro in plague, DS or lich gets more.

So you neitehr need a ranger, nor be a cog in a hammertrain. It is false for you to make such a claim.

People who think tanks were immune to everything are the biggest problem, what they were immune to was stupidity. Ranged blowing EVERYTHING on inc was and still is a problem. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a Tank Train stopped in their tracks to a well timed static or line or wall, or countless other CC. Now lets look at wells and venom share, Stability does not over ride immobilize so again your argument is flawed.

Bad player blowing everything they have all at once were the issue, the same could be said for parties blowing all their stab at once. Good groups had Guardians rotating stability, just like other classes should be rotating their CC.

It’s kind of easy rotate stubility when all players are guardians. One good idea would be remove aoe stubility skills from game.

Gav.1425:

Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters.

No it wasn’t, and no there weren’t.

AoE boonstripping is either random, or deliberately targeted stability last (i.e Wells). And Mesmers were very rare indeed in the Hammertrain meta. Within the huge mess of boons (swiftness, aegis, retal, protection, regen) and the easy to reapply more (aoe) stability, boon stripping was never effective.
There was no counter to hammertrains either, just another hammertrain.

Gav.1425:

Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

The balance was, 80% Warrior+Guardians get blanket CC immunity for the duration of the fight, while a few necro’s and ele’s stood at the backlines throwing in a bit of aoe.
Everything else was not really part of the hammertrain meta, and boon stripping wasn’t effective.

Gav.1425:

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past.

Thank goodness. Dullest meta we had, and we had it for almost two full years. Nothing interesting about “press stability, spam 1, run into enemy blob”. Fights ended very quickly, most professions and builds had no place at all in this meta. It was the most exclusive meta we’ve ever had in WvW.

Is this the kind of WvW we want?

Compared to the dull, exclusive, stale hammertrain meta? kitten yes.

But i get why some people are kittened. They rolled a Warrior or a Guardian and went with the Hammertrain meta. For two years they were the golden duo above and beyond all else. Sucks that isn’t neccesarily true anymore.

Anyway i’d wait to see what Revenant does, that profession has some gnarly aoe projectile counters.

I’m fairly ignorant in terms of zerg fights, but if the meta is now more ranged than ever, isn’t reflection a bigger thing than before? Sure, many AOEs are not reflectable (wells, marks, meteor shower…) but many ranged AA are.
I am just a mesmer who has mostly roamed but is interested in zerg fights if only my server had a larger population…

Terrahero.9358:

But i get why some people are kittened. They rolled a Warrior or a Guardian and went with the Hammertrain meta. For two years they were the golden duo above and beyond all else. Sucks that isn’t neccesarily true anymore.

Anyway i’d wait to see what Revenant does, that profession has some gnarly aoe projectile counters.

I would agree with you if the new meta would not be to stand in 1200 range and press 1 for ranged attack. Its more dull than having hammertrain.
And with current change in stats where going deep will just kill you because of all that damage, reverting stability is good idea.

Gav.1425:

[b]The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Those all sound like good things to me. It’s rewarding good coordination and punishing mindlessness.

And your last sentence is complete nonsense. Learn2play.

Hule.8794:

Terrahero.9358:

But i get why some people are kittened. They rolled a Warrior or a Guardian and went with the Hammertrain meta. For two years they were the golden duo above and beyond all else. Sucks that isn’t neccesarily true anymore.

Anyway i’d wait to see what Revenant does, that profession has some gnarly aoe projectile counters.

I would agree with you if the new meta would not be to stand in 1200 range and press 1 for ranged attack. Its more dull than having hammertrain.
And with current change in stats where going deep will just kill you because of all that damage, reverting stability is good idea.

Good thing that is not actually the new meta, and you are simply posting over exaggerated hyperbole.

Your arguement is much more a testimonial for a need of evaluating skill damage then it ever will be for changing stability.

Stability is in a good place right now, despite what the naysayers and doom criers would have us believe. It still serves its purpose but no longer gives complete immunity, opening the way to more varied and more tactical engagements than before. You actually have to think before you leap, literally.

Harlequin.8593:

Stability is in a good place right now,

As a guardian, I understand how comical and wrong this statement is

Silverkey.2078:

I’m fairly ignorant in terms of zerg fights, but if the meta is now more ranged than ever, isn’t reflection a bigger thing than before? Sure, many AOEs are not reflectable (wells, marks, meteor shower…) but many ranged AA are.
I am just a mesmer who has mostly roamed but is interested in zerg fights if only my server had a larger population…

Shhhhhh… nobody’s supposed to know that.

It’s not even the hard CC or even the massive “1200 ranged dps” that ends up killing people, but we’ll leave that for another day.

That being said, I do believe stability stacks could use adjustments and them not stacking in duration is another issue (though it can be worked around). For example, I think the warrior’s balanced stance which only gives 5 stacks of stab on a 40s cooldown is a bit too weak.

I love the stab change. I like melee-ing with Necro. My lack of stab is more or less irrelevant since you just have to tank the CC to get to the enemy blob anyways.

Deli.1302:

Gav.1425:

[b]The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Those all sound like good things to me. It’s rewarding good coordination and punishing mindlessness.

And your last sentence is complete nonsense. Learn2play.

So melee players have to find themselves super coordinated guilds/groups in order to have success while all the ranged players have to do is join a random blob and spam red circles.

How is mindlessness being punished exactly?

Anyone who thinks ranged used to be underpowered needs to l2p.

Coldtart.4785:

Anyone who thinks ranged used to be underpowered needs to l2p.

Unfortunately I’d say around 85% of the player base is terrible. They whined about “skilless” hammer trains and yet there they would stand like a deer in the headlights while they got steam rolled. They could have shown their superior skill levels by moving, positioning, communication, hey why not all of the above. I guess it was just easier to complain about hammer trains than to admit being the moron that stood there and took it right up the pooper.

I would be fine keeping Stability like it is if CC spam didn’t exist. CC shouldn’t overwrite and it shouldn’t ever stack. Players need to be punished for mistiming a CC skill, just like GW1 with knockdowns.

If stability removal from cc, not boonstrip, had a 1 second icd it would help I think. Then they could leave the stack values as they are and stability would still be effective. I think the duration could use a little buff if this was put in place though.

ArchonWing.9480:

Silverkey.2078:

I’m fairly ignorant in terms of zerg fights, but if the meta is now more ranged than ever, isn’t reflection a bigger thing than before? Sure, many AOEs are not reflectable (wells, marks, meteor shower…) but many ranged AA are.
I am just a mesmer who has mostly roamed but is interested in zerg fights if only my server had a larger population…

Shhhhhh… nobody’s supposed to know that.

It’s not even the hard CC or even the massive “1200 ranged dps” that ends up killing people, but we’ll leave that for another day.

That being said, I do believe stability stacks could use adjustments and them not stacking in duration is another issue (though it can be worked around). For example, I think the warrior’s balanced stance which only gives 5 stacks of stab on a 40s cooldown is a bit too weak.

It’s the unblockable 2*(x amount of necros) wells being dropped, in conjunction with the unblockable elementalist chill fields, that kill you. Added to that is the fact that every necro and his mother runs spinal shivers so if you get caught you die, and just about every elemelon has lightning rod. Every ranged class just happily drops his circles ontop of the red names not bothering in the slightest to dodge, heal, rotate skills or communicate. Maybe the slightest giggle when you see the unskilled melee players crash and burn in spectacular fireworks to the accompaniment of cold cold spinal shiver sounds.

Melee requires infinitely more skill to play than a ranged class in equal circumstances.

Contest my argument as much as you want, but you know I’m right.

Silverkey.2078:

I’m fairly ignorant in terms of zerg fights, but if the meta is now more ranged than ever, isn’t reflection a bigger thing than before? Sure, many AOEs are not reflectable (wells, marks, meteor shower…) but many ranged AA are.
I am just a mesmer who has mostly roamed but is interested in zerg fights if only my server had a larger population…

It both is and isnt. More carry reflection now, but not really because of the change in the stability, its because the new meta include heavy commander focus from cheezy servers, often with entire ranger squads unloading at once. Most other meta AoE is either Guardian (which doesnt care about reflect) and Necro (which doesnt care about reflect either) with some Elementalists thrown in for good measure (which are mostly brought for statics anyway). Reflects is just a safety net.

Think if some blobs would actually try something else than follow commander straight in overwhelming AoE.

Junkpile.7439:

Think if some blobs would actually try something else than follow commander straight in overwhelming AoE.

Because wvw has no bridges or walls or tunnels or stairways or doorways, right?

Oh wait

I was hoping that recent changes would finally break GWEN.

Nope! It’s bigger and better than ever, but now the difference is nobody will push and fights go on forever sometimes, especially on chokes.

The thing is you can melee on nearly any class if you let some other suckers eat the push, you are in a sense merely a parasite on the work of others.

The issue is, you can only push with a carefully engineered group comp and the right support. It makes it that much harder. I have started to play a Guard because everyone else is afraid to push, and I am stuck playing Guard for foreseeable future.

Blix.8021:

Junkpile.7439:

Think if some blobs would actually try something else than follow commander straight in overwhelming AoE.

Because wvw has no bridges or walls or tunnels or stairways or doorways, right?

Oh wait

In these situations you use ballistas, carts, trebs and outplay enemy like kitten with your mad siege skills.

Julie Yann.5379:

Deli.1302:

Gav.1425:

[b]The death of WvW tank trains is the main thing I’d like to point out. Before the change, boon stripping was effective and trains had counters. Ranged and melee IMO had a balance. Tanks leap in for the tank bomb. Range use positioning and boon strips to deal with it.

Now in WvW, unless there is a very organized group with at least 2 coordinated guardians per party, tank trains are a thing of the past. Groups push and pull with a death zone between like two pirate ships circling and firing away. Often times, even an organized tank train has no chance to make it through the range-chase.

Those all sound like good things to me. It’s rewarding good coordination and punishing mindlessness.

And your last sentence is complete nonsense. Learn2play.

So melee players have to find themselves super coordinated guilds/groups in order to have success while all the ranged players have to do is join a random blob and spam red circles.

How is mindlessness being punished exactly?

Depends on your definition of mindlessness.

Mindless play is what got blobs killed by our 15 man gvg comp with only 6 in its melee train. Mindless play used to be spamming your cc on cooldown with no regard for what your opponents are doing. Mindless play now is spamming all your cc on cooldown with no regard for what your opponents are doing and winning because that’s now optimal.

funassistant.6589:

ArchonWing.9480:

Silverkey.2078:

I’m fairly ignorant in terms of zerg fights, but if the meta is now more ranged than ever, isn’t reflection a bigger thing than before? Sure, many AOEs are not reflectable (wells, marks, meteor shower…) but many ranged AA are.
I am just a mesmer who has mostly roamed but is interested in zerg fights if only my server had a larger population…

Shhhhhh… nobody’s supposed to know that.

It’s not even the hard CC or even the massive “1200 ranged dps” that ends up killing people, but we’ll leave that for another day.

That being said, I do believe stability stacks could use adjustments and them not stacking in duration is another issue (though it can be worked around). For example, I think the warrior’s balanced stance which only gives 5 stacks of stab on a 40s cooldown is a bit too weak.

It’s the unblockable 2*(x amount of necros) wells being dropped, in conjunction with the unblockable elementalist chill fields, that kill you. Added to that is the fact that every necro and his mother runs spinal shivers so if you get caught you die, and just about every elemelon has lightning rod. Every ranged class just happily drops his circles ontop of the red names not bothering in the slightest to dodge, heal, rotate skills or communicate. Maybe the slightest giggle when you see the unskilled melee players crash and burn in spectacular fireworks to the accompaniment of cold cold spinal shiver sounds.

Melee requires infinitely more skill to play than a ranged class in equal circumstances.

Contest my argument as much as you want, but you know I’m right.

I actually do agree with most of it, but as you can see a lot of that doesn’t have to do with stability, lol.

Chill, cripple, and the worst offender immobilize kills more people than anything else.

Just want to give my two cents, that being that I 100% agree with the OP.

I used to love driving but since the changes, its so much less enjoyable. For my money, the stab changes made WvW significantly less fun. Range was incredibly important before the change, and now its just silly to run melee. Part of being a driver is having the ability to run around and do things (and IMO commanders/drivers are kinda an important aspect to the game) and the stab changes make it nearly impossible to fight a larger group (which BTW happens all the time since ANET and the WvW community can’t do fair fights/matchups)