Guild Wars 2

Hello!

I think that we agree that there is still room left for improvement in WvW. I don’t want to touch touchy subjects like PPT, nightcapping, GvGs or balance. I would like to add some of my ideas (and some stolen from other people) for the small things, that would (at least I think) make WvW a bit better.

I have posted some of my ideas before, so if you are a veteran, you may have seen some of them, I reworked them mostly and added a lot on top of them. It’s a long read, so please take your time before bashing it. I hope you enjoy, and add your own toughts, comments! Let’s begin:

New masteries part 1:

1. Supply carrier mastery – 5 levels at max, every level for 20 ability points, all levels do the same thing:

- You can place 1 supply in keeps, towers, SM for every 2 supply you have (So at max level you can carry 5 supplies to a tower/keep for 10 supplies)

2. Salvage mastery – 5 levels – every level for around 15 points

lv1 – You now have a chance of gaining 1 supply on stomp kills (only works if you were the one who finished it)
lv2 – You can no dismantle siege you (and only you) placed – you get a fixed amount of 5 supplies back
lv3 – You can now take 1 supply from enemy supply stacks (supply huts) with a 1 min cooldown
lv4 – You can now convert enemy rams and arrow carts to your side after 20 secs of uninterrupdetd channeling
lv5 – You can now convert any enemy siege

3. Golem mastery revamped

I think the bonus health/toughness and the bonus power/prec was not the things golems needed. They were overpowered already. So instead of adding stats to it, add more utility and puposefullness. So:

Instead of bonus power/prec: The Siege Golems spin attack (Whirling Assault) now detects enemies on your minimap within 2000 range (not stealthed ones) and displays them as red dots

Instead of bonus toughness/vitality: The Siege Golems pull attack (Pull) now repairs walls and gates whitout using supplies. 1 Pull equals 1 supply spent. (Variant: The Pull skill now repairs walls and gates – repairs double the amount you would repair with your repair mastery for the same amount of supply).

4. Defence mastery – 6 levels

lv1 – (5 points) you build Burning oil, Mortars, and Cannons faster
lv2 – (10 points) while moving inside a keep/tower you run 10% faster
lv3 – (15 points) gain 3 stacks of might, when a friendly NPC dies near you
lv4 – (15 points) while near a lord you gain the commander’s presence buff
lv5 – (25 points) 10% cooldown reduction on all siege that are inside a friendly keep/tower
lv6 – (50 point) You can now help the workers upgrade the tower/keep but you can only use 10 supps at the time with a 5 min cooldown

New masteries part 2

5. Capture mastery – 5 levels

lv1 – (5 points) you capture ruins 20% faster
lv2 – (10 points) gain 20 sec swiftness after you captured an objective
lv3 – (15 points) you gain 5% more armor while capturing inside a capture circle
lv4 – (20 points) conditions you gain last 5% shorter while inside a capture circle
lv5 – (25 points) All NPCs in an objective claimed by your guild gain 1 level (or 2)

6. Dolyak escorter mastery – 5+1 levels

lv1: the player gets an aura that gives nearby dolyaks 10% damage reduction. can stack up to 80%
lv2: dmg reduction raised to 15%. dolyak and guards have retaliation
lv3: you can slap the dolyak to give it a short 50% MS-boost
lv4: dmg reduction increased to 20% (still can stack up to 80% )
lv5: if a dolyak reaches an allied structure while under the effect of the aura, it delivers 5 additional supply

BONUS LEVEL (optional) lvl6 – You can now get on a Dolyak. While riding a Dolyak, it has 10% incresaed move speed that stacks with any other speedbuffs, and you gain new abilities.
(A 2000 range circle would pop up, that continues to move on the dollies path, that you cannot leave, or the dollie kicks you off and goes back to it’s regular path)

Dollie abilities:

1. Urgency – Speed buff – +25% move speed for 5 seconds
2. Ram – small AoE Blowout
3. Cry of the dolyak – The dolyak let’s out a cry of pain filling nearby allies heart with fury, 3 stacks of might, and aegis
4. Roar of the dolyak – Grants allied Stabilty, and Fear to the enemy
5. De-mount – Get off the dolyak

7. Executioner (mastery) -This would have 9+1 levels, each level doing something against downed people.

lvl1 – (1 point) you gain 1% increased damage against downed enemies
lvl2 – (2 points) you gain 2% damage (total) against downed enemies
lvl3 – (3 points) you gain 3% damage (total) against downed enemies
lvl4 – (4 points) you gain 4% damage (total) against downed enemies
lvl5 – (5 points) you gain 5% damage (total) against downed enemies
lvl6 – (10 points) you now finish off (stomp) enemies 10% faster
lvl7 – (10 points) for each downed enemy near you (1000 range) you gain +5 to all your stats
lvl8 – (15 points) you gain 10% damage (total) against downed enemies
lvl9 – (20 points) for every enemy dying near you you heal 1% (or maybe even 2%) of you maximum health

BONUS LEVEL (optional): lvl10 – (25 points) – enemies that you are currently finishing off (stomping) cannot rally

8. Scout mastery – 5 levels in total, all for 10 points (doesn’t work against stealthed enemies)

lvl1 – Your minimap now displays 1 enemy (with a red dot) if he is whithin 400 range of you
lvl2 -Your minimap now displays 2 enemies (with a red dot) if they are whithin 800 range of you
lvl3 – Your minimap now displays 3 enemies (with a red dot) if they are whithin 1200 range of you
lvl4 – Your minimap now displays 4 enemies (with a red dot) if they are whithin 1600 range of you
lvl5 – Your minimap now displays 5 enemies (with a red dot) if they are whithin 2000 range of you

Can be turned on and off somehow. (Like add a switch in the WvW mastery panel)

Traps and tricks

We could use some new traps as well, and revamp the ’old’ ones. The siege disabler is utterly broken so I’ll begin with that.

Siege Disabler revamp:

It would work in the same manner it is working now, only:

1. After a siege has been hit with the disabler, it gets disabled.
2. You can repair your disabled siege with supplies, each piece of siege costs 1/10 of the original cost (eg.: so 4 supps for normal ram, 10 supps for treb, 15 for omaga)
3. After repair, your siege gets a buff, and cannot be disabled for the next 10 (maybe 15-20?) seconds

The attacking force probably has less and more limited supplies than the defending force, so eventually the attackers will run out of supps. But 1 guy holdinp up a group of 20 for half an hour is just BS.

For a new trap, here’s an idea:

Detector trap:

Same cost and everything as other traps. You place it, and when an enemy walks into it, it gives a signal on the minimap for everyone on the map (similar to party members pinging). After triggering has an 1500 (2000?) range.

What does the range do? Well, it counts how many people are in whithin it’s range and displays colored crossed swords (or any other icon) on the location after the ping for 5 second (or 10, whatever). White swords for 1 to 10 people. Blue for 11-20, Green for 21-30, etc.. Numbers can be varied.

Why would this be good? Scouts could finally leave their keep/less scouts would be needed, and they could actually participate in other stuff. You know, fun/rewarding stuff.

Achievments

Make WvW a place people would like to visit, even if for nothing else, to get some Achievment Points. Get the daily WvW achies out of the current dailies (or not), and add a weekly version of them. They could be the same every week, just keep resetting them at every new matchup. Have like 10-12 of them, all for 1-2 APs.

Example of realisticly doable achies each week (feel free to add any or take away):

- Kill 50 players (2 AP)
- Take 20 sentries (1 AP)
- Take 15 camps (1AP)
- Take 10 towers (1AP)
- Take 5 keeps (1 AP)
- Take 1 SM (1 AP)
- Repair more than 100 points of damage to a structure (1 AP)
- Defend any 25 objectives (2 AP)
- Use any 5 traps (1 AP) – And I don’t mean deploy, they should actually be set off by the enemy
- Ress 20 people in WvW (1 AP)
- Build 5 Keep/Tower siege (1 AP)
- Take any 5 objectives while the outnumbered buff is up (2 AP)

That’s 14 APs total for al achies done. That’s about the same amount you get from the WvW based dailies anyway. What this would do is let people get things done at their on pace and all troughout the week.

Also could add a Weekly chest for doing all of them containing:

- 1 Liquid WXP of 1 Rank or ½ rank (no idea what’s it called)
- 5 pieces of random siege (trebs, golems and superior siege is less likely)
- 1 guaranteed rare item (or better)
- 20 Badges of Honor
- Bonus: Themed items (like 5 trick-or-treat bags, dragon coffers, etc. during festivals/Living Story events)

It gives players a sense of completion, and something to work towards to, both veteran and newcomers. Also culd attract more people to actually try out WvW. The seasonal stuff in the weekly chest could get WvW-ers to get a taste of LS as well.

Upgrades

I wrote some costs, but it would actually be better if all the costs in-game for upgarding would be lowered in gold, and maybe compensate that with upping karma costs (you know, the useless currency that WvW-ers actually have).

With that said:

1. Sentry (yes, you read that right)

Name: Advanced training
Cost: 2,5 silver, 0 supplies

After a short period, say 5 mins, the sentry becomes an elite tier (silver) NPC. Everything he does is the some, except for an HP, armor, and damage buff. The damage buff should be enough to kill a Dolyak with no upgrades (caravan guard).

Advanced guards also give passing friendly dolyaks a short speed boost (5-10 sec).

2. Supply camps

Hire Caravan guard, Hire additional guards and Increased supply deliveries are fine imo.

Strengthen guards is not… so:

Name: Promotion
Cost: 20 silver, 250 karma, 200 supps

Supervisor becomes an elite tier guy, the rest of the guards become veterans.

No more camp flipping with just the 2 of you. If you think this would be OP, just think of camps with mercs in them. Not too hard.

3. Towers, Keeps and Stonemist Castle

Here’s an idea for Reinforce doors:

Name: Reinforce doors
Cost: same as was before

Reinforce doors now adds spikes to the the door, granting retaliation to gates.

PvD that you blobster.

Also this could be a seperate upgrade branching out from Reinforce doors. You could buy gates separate upgrades like: Spiked gate (retaliation), Frost gate (chill on hit and to rams), Poison gate etc..

Name: Raise Guard level
Cost: same as was before

In the lord room 1 guy becomes elite tier, rest are veterans from now on. On the doors and walls 1-1 guys becomes an elite.

New branch for towers/keeps/SM:

Utility branch including 3 upgrades: 1 – Build defenses faster and cheaper, 2 – Siege decay buff, 3 – Fixed respawning normal Arrow carts

Name: Upgrade training
Cost: 12 silver, 400 supplies (for keeps – changes accordingly to towers and SM)

You build fixed (mortar, cannon, oil) siege and non fixed siege inside the keep 20% faster, and you have a chance to recover some (0-4) supply when useing all of yours when building inside a tower/keep/SM (on top of cashback from supply mastery)

Name: Built to last
Cost: 20 silver, 800 supplies (changes accordingly to towers and SM)

Siege now lasts an extra hour in you structures.

Name: Build Arrow carts
Cost: 25 silver, 1000 supplies (for keeps – changes accordingly to SM)

All gates now get a fixed arrow cart (or just inner) location – on these carts, you can actually zoom out, and see what you are shooting at.

4. Mercenary camps

4 brand new upgrades. Only 1 upgrade may be purchased at a time

Name: Additinal toops
Cost: 10 silver, 15 mins

Outgoing forces now have 3 extra members

Name: Replenish troops
Cost: 5 silver, 15 mins

The merc camp now replenishes it’s troops over time (the event meter goes up after a while)

Name: Train tacticians
Cost: 10 silver, 20 mins

After the camp has been taken, the some of the mercenaries (or an extra team maybe) head out to attack a nearby tower (thus tagging it)

Train commander
Cost: 10 silver, 20 mins

With all troops now goes a commander, granting minor buffs (health and damage) to nearby allies (NPCs and players alike).

Bloodlust change

If you want people to care about Bloodlust you should add a reward for it. Don’t make it into seperate events. Hand out the reward when you actually get/take Bloodlust. 200 WXP should be enough for motivation (same as a camp). All people get credit, who left the cap circle in the last 20-15 seconds (or just the people who are actually there when the cap happens).

Add a merc camp (or something) in the middle of Bordarlands

Right where to Quaggan island used to be. Why? 1. Cause more fighting around Bloodlust. 2. Cause that area is completley useless.

The mercs could have a special guy, who you could speak to, and you could tell him which camp to attack (or maybe even set a sequence on which camps). After they are done with a the camp(s), they stay there to help def.

Custom claim skins

Add Guild upgrades for merits and influence that gives you certain Styles (visual makeovers) to the things you claim (camps, towers, keeps).

These upgrades could be permanent, or last for some time (preferably the build time at least).

It’s just something that would make the guild more unique (which is needed I think), and a bit of variety in the same old buting camps.

Themes could range from: races/professions to stuff like horror/cute, etc.. This would include NPC armor and some of the structures/walls/gates.

Note that this is only visual, everything stays the same.

Random replies to some ideas

Bubi.7942:

1. Supply carrier mastery – 5 levels at max, every level for 20 ability points, all levels do the same thing:

- You can place 1 supply in keeps, towers, SM for every 2 supply you have (So at max level you can carry 5 supplies to a tower/keep for 10 supplies)

^this

Bubi.7942:

2. Salvage mastery – 5 levels – every level for around 15 points
[…]
lv3 – You can now take 1 supply from enemy supply stacks (supply huts) with a 1 min cooldown
lv4 – You can now convert enemy rams and arrow carts to your side after 20 secs of uninterrupdetd channeling
lv5 – You can now convert any enemy siege

For 1 hour my siege would be at enemy disposal. I get that you can dismantle with level 2, but what if you have to quickly move to another map or log off or dc or w/e? No one else can do anything and the enemy will constantly have rams up in front of a paper keep/tower.

I don’t like at all the idea of draining enemy supply. For keeps and SM, when outer is breached the supply amounts should be automatically reduced to a maximum amount (like 1700 -> 1000, 1300->1000, 950->950).

Bubi.7942:

6. Dolyak escorter mastery – 5+1 levels

I like the 5 levels, I escort a lot of dollies and having a bloody enemy capable of just sniping them it’s frustrating. I mean I could somehow prevent if I’m quick with CCs and stuff, but still 9 times out of 10 the average attacker will kill the dolly protected by the average defender.

The TETA (The Tyrians for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) won’t ever allow mounting on dolyaks. Stop asking for it, it’s not gonna happen. Ever!

Bubi.7942:

Detector trap:

Same cost and everything as other traps. You place it, and when an enemy walks into it, it gives a signal on the minimap for everyone on the map (similar to party members pinging). After triggering has an 1500 (2000?) range.

^this

Bubi.7942:

Achievments

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS

Bubi.7942:

Upgrades

[…]
2. Supply camps
[…]

Name: Promotion
Cost: 20 silver, 250 karma, 200 supps

Supervisor becomes an elite tier guy, the rest of the guards become veterans.

The guards are all veterans already short of the quartermaster.

Love most of this, but I don’t like the upgrade to camp/tower guards. Feels like that would discourage solo/small group roaming.

Bubi.7942:

I wrote some costs, but it would actually be better if all the costs in-game for upgarding would be lowered in gold, and maybe compensate that with upping karma costs (you know, the useless currency that WvW-ers actually have).

Haven’t noticed, but THIS is a good idea.

There is no risk of exploit because we need upgrades all the time, and 1.5 g to fortify a keep is kind of “ehm… I need to talk to my accountant”

WvW is a big gold sink, the point is that if you just play defensively you have nothing to throw into the sink.

Bubi.7942:

Add a merc camp (or something) in the middle of Borderlands
[…] 2. Cause that area is completely useless.

I like have some less used areas to sneak in the northen half of the map

I think there are some pretty good ideas here that could be taken to the table.

How about instead of a merc camp in the middle of the map they build a nice dueling/GvG area that is free of objectives and npc’s.

Instead of sitting in the obsidian sanctum hoping for someone to show up, duelers could stay on the map and help upgrade, and defend while waiting for duels.

It would also avoid confusion for people coming across a duel near south camp or one of the other areas.

Scout mastery should se stealthed players to.

Jim Hunter no GVG in WvWvW maps!!!

I’d like to focus on just getting more people into WvW. We need more rewards.

Experience Tomes for Badges.
Skill Points for Badges.
More armor skins for Badges.

I’m also curious if people think EotM is a problem? Is it pulling people away from WvW even in non-queue situations? Can something be done to encourage people to play WvW more?

Like reduce karma and badge rewards in EotM for level 80s and increase karma and badge rewards in WvW for 80s? That way maybe the lower level players will choose EotM over WvW? Is that fair?

But I think this is the largest problem… just no practical reason to WvW. Pile on the fact that the gameplay itself is stale because it’s the same old map using the same old ruleset using the same old horrible balance.

Adding more skills and such isn’t going to make people come back to the game or encourage people to WvW more often. Making it fun and rewarding will.

Shadow.3475:

Scout mastery should se stealthed players to.

Jim Hunter no GVG in WvWvW maps!!!

Why exactly? Right now there isn’t a good spot to do GvG. If anet ever does implement some different pvp modes (which I fully support) it will just pull more people out of WvW.

PPT is a joke because the population and coverage is so far out of balance.So if the game mode is broken to the point where playing for PPT doesn’t make sense, why not give people a spot to WvW? There is a very good chance a lot of those people will stick around to help the server when they are done with their match.

Wow Bubi, a lot of really good ideas here. I wish I had time to go through all of them. Obviously I’m sure there’s room for tweaking with most of them but this would provide a solid foundation for changing WvW in a lot of minor ways that would add up to a huge change (for the better probably).

I like the idea of more Mastery categories to spend points on. As long as they’re balanced having options is always good.

As for rewards for WvW and thoughts on EotM? I think the way EotM actually plays is very harmful to WvW. Sure, a good portion of EotMers are PvE players leveling, but it’s also provided WvW players with a new map for ZvZ fighting. It would be way better if you could ONLY enter EotM if ALL 4 of the WvW maps were queued. In addition to this they need to nerf the rewards for EotM and increase the rewards for WvW, including giving me other things to spend my BoH and Karma on.

Simple its so annoying to have some come in to TS or mapchat saying 15 must leave so we can get in and do GVG, with then mean that they will take 20slots doing nothing for the server only mess around doing kitten and then cry cry cry don’t come here kill our op. You have that jumping map you can play at for now, that anet should probably do some type off tournament for GVG I think is good, but it have nothing to do with WvWvW.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Shadow.3475:

Scout mastery should se stealthed players to.

Jim Hunter no GVG in WvWvW maps!!!

Why exactly? Right now there isn’t a good spot to do GvG. If anet ever does implement some different pvp modes (which I fully support) it will just pull more people out of WvW.

PPT is a joke because the population and coverage is so far out of balance.So if the game mode is broken to the point where playing for PPT doesn’t make sense, why not give people a spot to WvW? There is a very good chance a lot of those people will stick around to help the server when they are done with their match.

All of your ideas sound good to me, except this one which I do not understand…

4. Defence mastery – 6 levels
lv5 – (25 points) 10% cooldown reduction on all siege that are inside a friendly keep/tower

allow people to zoom there screen out more on arrow carts and siege

Been thinking about a change to Bloodlust that a-net can do and that is that you need to hold 4spots for 30sec then it is yours.

Because I’m too dumb to know how to do multiple quotes from multiple users, I’m gonna do it the old fasioned way.

@Dawntree:

- I think the dismantle will solve that. If you don’t do it, you are risking the enemy to take it. Altough now that I think about it, it might give some oppurtunities for griefing

- You can already drain enemy supply when outer is breached with treb mastery 5 (or 4, can’t remmeber). 10 supplies/shot destroyed.

- The dolyak rider was worth a shot

- Oh yeah, that’s true, guess it’s just for the quartermaster then

@Stand the Wall:

- I mean by that that you get on all friendly siege inside keeps/towers (have to define what “inside” is) 10% cooldown reduction, meaning all abilities of siege you are on load 10% faster. If too OP, one could add conditions to it like: It only works on keep siege (oil, mortar cannon) or only works while outnumbered, etc..

You can stop discussing how to improve WvW, because it will never ever happen. ArenaNet has shown us exactly what we can expect from them when it comes to WvW.

Which is…. NOTHING

more story is all i think we will see cheers ..more brainless computers to kill

and small updates to wvw and classes

oh ok, makes sense.

Sorry for the shameless bump, but with HoT coming out/being developed I tought maybe a dev will see, maybe not. Who knows.

Good bump this is a were good sugestion.