Guild Wars 2

I am a sentry. I get a kick out of standing guard, vigilantly tick siege and always keep my team informed. I wholeheartedly love sentry duty, and will hang out at a tower for hours on end. I like watching the overall map ebb and flow and, in between enemy attacks, doing the little things like calling out movements in Team to help a chat suppressed commander. I’ve got great music, my teammates on Mumble to joke with, and a laptop parked nearby to keep occupied during the more quiet times. Over the last couple of months I have grown to thoroughly enjoy this part of the game.

With that being said, currently I feel as though I’m being penalized for playing defensively. The new WvW perks are great, but at this time defense feels severely underrated in this new system. It really bites to invest so much time in a BL and not see any noticeable movement in my WXP. I would be several ranks higher if I gave in and ran with the zerg (which I have a couple times, I can’t deny, and it felt dirty the whole time XD). Today for example, I spent about 10 hours in TCBL and only gained one rank because most of that time was spent sitting on a keep calling incomings. I realize that I gained some WXP from our successful defenses, but what about the times in between? The two hours they didn’t hit that particular keep, leaving sentries like myself out in the cold, lonely WXP-less abyss. I would like to max my supply capacity at some point this year to make sieging up or repairs on the keep I usually sentry just a tiny bit faster. It’s looking rather daunting at the moment though. However, I don’t think I should have to ask my server-mates for some kind of rotation of sentries in order to run with the zerg to gain my personal ranks. That can get messy quickly, especially with militia groups who aren’t using a VoIP service, and it breaks down the momentum. Look I know that sentry duty is a personal choice. I don’t have to sentry, I want to, but if I feel this way there are probably other players out there that feel the same.

Okay, so that paragraph was probably very whiny, but there it is. I’ve vented.

I wish I could say I had some grand ideas that would work perfectly, but I don’t. Everything I’ve thought of has been Pro and Con’d out. Unfortunately the Cons win mostly due to the AFK’rs or bots that would stream in, choking already strained queues on the high population servers, and overall ruining the fun of WvW. I’d hoped that I could at least end this with something brilliant, but right now I’ve got nada. I guess if nothing else this is a “Hey, over here! What about us?” post. So please, don’t forget about us Anet, think of something brilliant to give us stalwart protectors a little love and experience.

Yeah, what you said about afkers/botters being an issue is probably the main reason amazing people like you can’t have nice things. A program to make you spam 1 (heck, i could do it with my lego NXT robot if i wanted to) is just so easy that staying in the game inside a keep getting free credit would be done by a lot of shady individuals during their offline times.

An idea I was thinking of would be some kind of keep maintenance that could be completed while scouting, or some kind of scout route that pops for completion every now and then. Nothing like keep walls falling down over time as this would mess up lower tier servers, but maybe a small event comparable to a dolyak kill, where a beam fell down in a supply depot that needs to be fixed. Or a series of small flags around the outer walls that you have to tap in order to get credit comparable to a supply camp flip, spawning every 10 minutes. Again, botters are the main issue here, but some incentive to get us more people like you can’t be a bad thing

I feel that lose also, though I admit not having your longer term experience. The discouragement has not outweighed “taking one for the team”. Unhappily my pocketbook will likely run out before my sentry enjoyment does (Ain’t that always the way of things?).

You are not alone out there. I noticed several dedicated sentries this weekend. Without your effort our server would not have the success we enjoy.

Maybe ANet will recall their Milton…
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”