Guild Wars 2

Going to throw this out that I’m the weirdo, but I will say it.

I like the state of WvW and find it my most enjoyable mode.
I like the fact that in the past few months, I’ve seen several servers slip into and out of t1 t2 and t3.
I like desert BL more than Alpine.
I like the current state of roaming.
I don’t mind the condi mess out there or the fact everyone runs dire/trailblazer.
I will continue to play the game mode and small group roam because it gives me a fun open world pvp feeling that I dig.

I know everyone hates wvw lately, and everyone has valid concerns, but there ARE plenty of us out there who enjoy the mode as well.

totally not a condi chrono…
;-)

Justine.6351:

totally not a condi chrono…
;-)

Lol no. Power thief, power rev, and a d/d ele

About to do power Chrono though.

Me and my friends DO enjoy WvW but its hard sometimes with the current state of things, aka most things posted on this fourm plus others. But overall i still play it daily and just hope things get better

I’m definitely not UNhappy about the state of WvW, at least as far as how amusing, entertaining and fun it still can be. Over the life of GW2 there have been prolonged periods when I had a lot less fun in WvW than I do now.

For example, I have multiple screenshots of different matches in which one team owned every single structure on all four borderlands. That used to happen not all that infrequently. I haven’t seen it for a very long time. I can remember, particularly during the rise of various bandwagons, entire matches where we didn’t do much more than sit in Citadel and hope for a brief respite to recover a northern tower for a few minutes before the vast hordes returned. Even what we think of as unbalanced matches now have a lot more ebb and flow than those days.

I’m no roamer but I hear that outside of T1 roaming is better than it has been for a long time. Everyone seems to think the fights are better at all sizes of engagement. It’s not all doom and gloom.

On the other hand, the numbers of people playing is way, way down and the interest and commitment of those who are still here seems a lot lower than it was. Commanders are thin on the ground and squads that would have been near-full three months ago are lucky to raise twenty-five people now. A big engagement is 20 vs 20.

The real issue from my perspective, though, is the complete collapse of meaningful competition. Yes, the fights are better but for me a fight is no fun in and of itself – it has to be a fight for something. It’s not necessarily about PPT per se but there has to be more of a reason behind fighting other players than just trying to show off. I’d rather lose a fight over something worth fighting for than win one over nothing.

The current league (NA) is a disaster. Manual score adjustments and the utterly inadequate Glicko process means no win or loss has any significance. The entire thing needs a complete overhaul. I would definitely do away with the whole concept of a never-ending ladder system for a start. There need to be start and end points and movement between teams needs to be controlled.

We don’t need Seasons in the old sense so much as we need the whole competition to be seasonal. We already have the two-month rhythm for linking. Perhaps we could have a one-week window before the links each time and then ANet could lock all servers, look at the populations before deciding on the next set of links, reset whatever needs to be reset to start everyone off on an equal footing – and then keep all servers locked until the next one-week window.

I enjoy the Kitten out of WvW still. I’d still like to see changes in regards to Ascended/Legendary rewards, but I have a feeling those will come one day.

I’m content with WvW now, but as a seasoned WvW veteran (since 3-months post launch); it was on the ups from 2013 – 2014, then it started to become stale and started trending down, and it took a large spike after HoT meta.

Anet did a good job balancing stability, but the learning curve for being more than a warm body in WvW significantly decreased and it encourages more casual gameplay. This casual gameplay is good for the game. However, there are many WvW balancing issues that need to be addressed and it’s not just classes specific.

Skill balancing, Scoring, unbalanced rewards compared to PvP/PvE, and population balancing issues.

I enjoy large scale WvW combat, GvG, roaming, and outnumbered fights. But, those players styles are starting to move towards k-train mentality and daily farming, because there’s nothing encouraging players to continue engaging in those players styles.

well good for u OP, still ive foundplayers who still love to fight empty towers and castles and find that skillfull and rewarding as well.

who can blame them? none..

I honestly don’t care what they change in WvW. I don’t follow the scoring changes or any of that nonsense. I just run around killing things. Roaming is as good as it’s ever been (since there have always been and always will be obnoxious builds to fight against.)

Only thing they’ve ever done to WvW I didn’t like was the DBL because it made roaming significantly harder and less fun. Couldn’t find or get to enemies.

Edit: Oh and that time they made it so contested objectives didn’t show swords was also a bad change, as it made it harder to find enemies again.

I agree too. When I reach a point where my frustrations at population balance or something reach a fever pitch, I’ll leave for a bit. This past week I have had a ton of fun (and I hope our opponents have too). But I realize a lot of this seriously depends on which time zone I play in. That is an aspect I’ve tried to keep in perspective.

Can you clarify a few things? You’re a bit of an anomaly and thus rather interesting~

What do you enjoy about roaming? Is it engaging other roamers/small-groups or taking enemy structures or something else?

You said you don’t mind the condi mess. Can you elaborate on your interactions with it? Do you participate in large-scale battles? Do you face other roamers/small-groups that use condi?

I enjoy it too.

But I think much potential was wasted. They have not been sctive in giving communities tools to maintain them and the balance remains haphazard.

I will hope these split balance continues.

i quite enjoy wvw as well because of the mix of pvp i get from it, for example 1v1 roaming, situations where you are under siege by a massive force and somehow survive, big running battles going to and fro and small skirmishes between a few players etc. Even the occasional bow to the duelers is nice to see and gives a bit of life to the server.
I do struggle however to get a feel for a real sense of overlying objective or goal and server purpose which i personally think is one of the big issues.

I think a good middle ground could be an end of week reward for 1st/2nd/3rd -
some kind of proc that pops up a nice reward screen with a few statistics that incorporates your contribution and a choice of reward perhaps.

Well i think that good players can enjoy game. I would probably enjoy WvW too if i could l2p.

Hit them hard then run away screaming, seems to work for me :P

Junkpile.7439:

Well i think that good players can enjoy game. I would probably enjoy WvW too if i could l2p.

Meh l2p is overrated

Stacjehstachehstackehbombbombwateromfgonmeonunistallgameuscrubs

I still enjoy WvW as well and in particular using a wide variety of builds in a wide variety of gear dependent on my mood. I do not stick to one toon for weeks on end. Sometimes I am on a raw power build, others a condition build and while I play every class I tend to favor thief , warrior necro in that order.

I find if things are getting stale I just switch to a different build and toon. I do not think it important that one win every match but that one has fun doing it.

Unlike so many that complain about condition builds , I really do not have a problem with them. Indeed if I am in a certain mood I will take my power thief (1 of 5 different builds) who only has trickster as cleanses just to see how well I can do. If it a must win this fight moment I will swtich to another build better able to handle the same.

I tend to look at WvW like I do Golf. I am not great at golf but what makes it so enjoyable is having those moments where all goes so well for several shots in a row and you get stoked over those good shots rather then focus on the ones that did not work. In Golf it not so very important you beat all the persons you are playing with in order to enjoy yourself. I tend to view wvw the same way.

I think for the most part I still have fun. Condi’s are ok to deal with, not so bad.

I do think a lot of classes have balance issues that I’d like to see use skill rather than an entire build carry them but that’s any mmo honestly.

I’m not the best roamer but when I do get a win or my party takes out another group, it is pretty sweet

Same as OP. Never stopped playing.

Sviel.7493:

Can you clarify a few things? You’re a bit of an anomaly and thus rather interesting~

What do you enjoy about roaming? Is it engaging other roamers/small-groups or taking enemy structures or something else?

You said you don’t mind the condi mess. Can you elaborate on your interactions with it? Do you participate in large-scale battles? Do you face other roamers/small-groups that use condi?

A combination of both honestly when it comes to roaming. I enjoy solo / duo / trio roaming and going against like sized or larger groups. I enjoy the challenge that steps from 2v3 or higher for example. I enjoy taking enemy towers and whatnot and then even larger to see if I can. One night I took fire keep solo in DBL just to see if I could. (Of course I learned the proper movements to never be hit by the lord’s frontal AOE knockback at around 4% health.)

I tend to not participate in large scale battles, but I have in a defense/attack combo. (Was very common when JQ was fighting SoS for example.) Condi hurts, no doubt, and there are some classes that can just wreck with condi, but I always count that as a weakness. When I play my thief, between shadowstep and the new signet, I have no problems with Condi as long as I cleanse it on time. Blinds help with the rest. On the rev, if I mess up a block or evade, I get bombed by condi and I get wrecked. My fault.

Of course, in larger scale fights, condi is everywhere and thus you need someone to help counter it of course. I do generally play power mostly myself, but my most common duo roaming partner is a condi player. I do have a condi reaper I roam with, but that’s more for hilarity than actual functionality.

I do tend to really enjoy roaming on classes that are not “popular” to roam on though, like my necro and my ele.

Yes, I often face small groups that have condi as well. Some of the fun that comes from that is yelling over discord or skype to my buddy that I need to reset because I got condi bombed etc and coming back to burst the condi class down while my friend goes full defensive etc.

I like that wvw and objectives allow mobility to reset and allows the terrain to be used against me and for me (hence I like DBL for its many hills / rocks / whatnot.). I like spvp too, but the requirement to defend a point rather than an objective or a guard or a wall irks me a bit.

I should have also asked what server you’re on and class you play~

At any rate, it sounds like you’re on a Thief, Rev, Necro and Ele mostly? Specifically, a build of thief that can disengage at will and runs an anti-condi set-up. That makes sense as you’d then have ample access to anti-condi stuff. I tend to run on a Thief or Warrior, mostly. As a warrior, I have plenty of cleanses and can sort of dance with condi though it’s not what I’d call fun or engaging—it’s just a matter of cycling my cleanses and hoping I don’t run out before they do. As a thief, I don’t have much cleanse and thus don’t fight condi people at all. To do so would require a huge shift in skills and traits that would render my play experience unrecognizable.

Part of that is curiously punishing condis like Torment and Confusion, though. They’re a little more powerful than the norm because they have ‘counterplay’ in that you can not move or not use skills…but it’s not real counterplay because those are not viable options. They make it fairly impossible to continue fighting unless you have an immediate cleanse…and they can be reapplied with impunity by some classes.

Conversely, if I’m fighting a power build with all my cleanses slotted, I have a lot of dead weight in my build.

It seems you love roaming for the sake of roaming, which is great. How do you feel about the big picture things? I usually spent my time scouting/roaming but eventually stopped playing because there just wasn’t much point in doing those things in match-ups. Partially due to population imbalance and partially because putting in effort to boost PPT is a totally fruitless endeavor. When it became apparent that combat was also not enjoyable and Anet had no discernible plan for the future, I couldn’t find a reason to keep playing.

Signet of Agility + Shadowstep. Not only do they cleanse condis, they have practical uses regardless of who you are fighting.

Or some combination of that and Acro/SA/escapist’s absolution/HiS. You don’t need them all, of course.

thief and mesmer are both in a good place for anti condi and disengaging ganks. Gotta admit, roaming on thief is just plain more fun.

I’m here with you!

Desert BL is amazing, thank you very much.

My only problem with WVW is that it ‘s population is either awesome and you have leaders and trains or you go in and there’s no-one and you can’t really play. I have to try sync my gaming hours to try play when most Americans are on, but it can be frustrating when I want to get a good 2-3 hours of WVW in but there’s nothing happening and I end up logging out of WVW.

But when you get a good time and people are all on, it’s great.

Sviel.7493:

I should have also asked what server you’re on and class you play~

At any rate, it sounds like you’re on a Thief, Rev, Necro and Ele mostly? Specifically, a build of thief that can disengage at will and runs an anti-condi set-up. That makes sense as you’d then have ample access to anti-condi stuff. I tend to run on a Thief or Warrior, mostly. As a warrior, I have plenty of cleanses and can sort of dance with condi though it’s not what I’d call fun or engaging—it’s just a matter of cycling my cleanses and hoping I don’t run out before they do. As a thief, I don’t have much cleanse and thus don’t fight condi people at all. To do so would require a huge shift in skills and traits that would render my play experience unrecognizable.

Correct. d/p thief, power shiro/glint rev, and d/d ele.

d/p thief has plenty of condi cleanse, running both signet and shadowstep. (bandit’s defense as my other utility.) It’s important to remember one of the biggest ways to avoid condi is to not be HIT by condi. Most near all condi attacks are block/evade/blindable. And thief has plenty of blind/evade, and a decent block on low cooldown for those stunned oh kitten moments.

That said, you do need to build for what you expect to face. I always try to build a “well rounded” build and occasionally alter my build if needed. For example, if I’m finding I’m struggling vs tons of condi players i will change my build to adjust PI to escapist for the extra cleanse. On my power rev, it’s all about the blocks/invuln frames (UA etc.) to avoid condi. If you get hit, time to find the nearest rabbit or critter and shiro port out to reset for a few if possible. D/d, I have cleanse for days in my standard build so not a huge worry.

Part of that is curiously punishing condis like Torment and Confusion, though. They’re a little more powerful than the norm because they have ‘counterplay’ in that you can not move or not use skills…but it’s not real counterplay because those are not viable options. They make it fairly impossible to continue fighting unless you have an immediate cleanse…and they can be reapplied with impunity by some classes.

Agreed, Torment/Confusion suck because combined they leave you little options, but minimizing movement until a cleanse/block comes up is important. IE, if I have confusion stacks the worst thing I can do is try to use my rev’s UA for evasion because it hits me 5×. Instead, I try to stand there and get off a sword 4 block or a staff 3 block while waiting for staff 4 or glint heal to come up. Sometimes it just comes in too fast and I made too many mistakes to really keep up. (IE, standard chronoshatter builds are heavy on the illusions in the first part of the fight, but then have moments where they are much slower on clone generation assuming I avoid hitting their blocks etc. If I blow my dodges or blocks before those clones have hit me, I am screwed generally.)

Conversely, if I’m fighting a power build with all my cleanses slotted, I have a lot of dead weight in my build.

Agreed, it’s all about building properly. I prefer a balanced build myself for the reason that I am not sure what i will run into. That said, power players are far easier to beat with condi cleansing skills than condi players are with skills with a power oriented build. :P

It seems you love roaming for the sake of roaming, which is great. How do you feel about the big picture things? I usually spent my time scouting/roaming but eventually stopped playing because there just wasn’t much point in doing those things in match-ups. Partially due to population imbalance and partially because putting in effort to boost PPT is a totally fruitless endeavor. When it became apparent that combat was also not enjoyable and Anet had no discernible plan for the future, I couldn’t find a reason to keep playing.

I definitely enjoy roaming primarily. big picture things, I do my part for the server. I scout, I cap when I can, I help out for emergency waypoints etc. My buddy and I tend to ensure we keep DBL mostly for our server (Which is JQ) if we can, at least camp/tower wise. We don’t really enjoy the large scale zerg fights, except when they are small scale defense vs large zergs. (Like our garri vs SoS awhile back. We kept them at bay until the numbers got too high, retreated to inner just to regroup, and waited for our lord and savior commander to appear with the zerg, split their zerg with a mass rush, then theyd port out leaving us to hold it again. That was intense fun.)