Guild Wars 2

Game Update Notes – March 18, 2014

“World vs. World
The Commander buff is now only displayed to friendly players.”

So, this change went through a few patches ago… what was the reason for it? I think that being allowed to see enemy tags was a fair way to allow smaller groups engage larger groups with a definitive target. Was having a larger force not enough of an advantage?

I guess killing the guy leading the charge is out of the question ? Its really not that big of a deal, there are far worse issues then being able to see the Commander Buff to complain about.

This change doesn’t make much sense to me. Shouldn’t you be able to single out the enemy commander and down him/her to create disarray among a group? This is a tactic that has been used since the dawn of war. You wear the brass, you attract attention. The danger is a part of the job. As someone who has a commander tag (although not used too terribly often) I always knew the risks of tagging up and taking command. I could be a target.

I’m not saying this because I protest the change. I could even stand to benefit from it. But it just never made much sense overall. shrug

Well you should easily be able to identify most commanders anyway.

Tbh I dont see this as a bad change, quite the contrary its good for small groups. 5 men with a commander engaging 5 men without obviously mean the commander is easily picked out and targetted when he really shouldnt be. Yeah I know you dont need a commander tag for 5 peeps, its an extreme example.

I see this move as a prequel to expanding the use of commander tags – private guild tags for 5-10 peeps would be very bad to show on the buff bar for the enemy… One can always hope :/

I would initially agree that the buff should remain visible to enemy players. If their argument would’ve been that they are angry that their commander is singled out then it’s no good because they could also single out the commander of the other team.

However consider the situation of a guild raid vs pug raid. Guilds often run without a commander tag and therefore the guild raid will have a pretty significant advantage over the PUG for being able to see the commander. Coupled together with the fact that guild is more organized than a pug raid, the pug raid would get wiped a lot faster when the commander is targeted and killed.

So I can understand why they removed it. Even though I personally am fine with the risk

Let the enemy see the buff, it’s always fun to display a fake tag and watch the idiots chase after the wrong person into an ambush or our own zerg.

I don;t care one way or the other. I just any time spent on this was a waste of resources considering all the other things that need attention.

cuz killing a pug driver was flat out OP.

so like the way large groups are run, everyone is listening to a single person spew voice command spam at 1000 words per minute over ts. if that leader is easily identifiable by a stupid buff the enemy can see, all you have to do is find him and kill him and suddenly everyone writhes around like a headless snake.

so people got around it by dropping tag and telling their group to target the leader. and suddenly, a poor mans tag is infinitely more viable than a commander tag because your enemies have to think a lot to figure out whos leading.

and that is why this change is good and useful.

its not gonna stop people from not tagging up, because for example guild groups still dont want rally bait leeching their wxp, but it removes 1 of about 3 reasons we had for not tagging up in situations where a tag is useful.

Because scrubs were crying about being primary targets, that’s why. Scrubs cry – anet nerf. Didn’t you get the memo?

Anet is doing some follow up on the commander CDI and you guys complain?
Yes, it is a low hanging fruit, but I’d rather have a few low hanging fruits more often than go hungry a year, waiting for the main issue to get worked on.

Imho, it will be a good change, as it would allow other than heavies to lead, at least in pugs (guild raid leader is pretty easy to spot – always the first to start).

People asked them more changes, more often, than big changes once in a while.
They do that, and I raise my hat to them, for getting to work on some issues.

I say, good thing to start with low hanging fruit before climbing the tree, instead of waiting for the higher fruits to fall…

I always enjoyed abusing that buff icon to distract my opponents. I don’t often rep, but there is a way to keep the buff icon without actually representing. So often times people will see me with the icon in PvE and WvW even though there’s no taco over my head.

Rather humorous when I’m targeted and they think they’ve crippled the force’s leadership only to find its still steamrolling.