Guild Wars 2

I want to say how discouraging it is to make significant progress on capturing anything, and the enemy not have to try at all to wipe you out.

Fog, airship defense, emergency waypoint, banners, etc

I like that ArenaNet is trying to spice things up, but they may as well give fury and might for killstreaks if this stuff is allowed. That’s how unfair these things are.

I feel cheated when a group pulls the emergency WP and changes BLs at the last minute to destroy your last 20 minutes of effort, and I feel bad for following my commander when he does the same thing.

I sort of agree on some of your points but…

We were using emergency waypoint 3 times in a row to save our EB keep during one evening. And it felt great! It still makes me smile and thats what the game is about, making people happy and giving enjoyable memories.

That WP is a blessing if you are outnumbered and have to fight 2 enemy groups in separate maps. As every good thing, I am sure it can be abused and blobbed down to boringness too.

Atm I am looking at the Airship in SM our enemies who also have more people placed there, and I know SM wont be flipped during this matchup. And its sad because part of WvW is ruined for a week.

FogLeg.9354:

I sort of agree on some of your points but…

We were using emergency waypoint 3 times in a row to save our EB keep during one evening. And it felt great! It still makes me smile and thats what the game is about, making people happy and giving enjoyable memories.

That WP is a blessing if you are outnumbered and have to fight 2 enemy groups in separate maps. As every good thing, I am sure it can be abused and blobbed down to boringness too.

Atm I am looking at the Airship in SM our enemies who also have more people placed there, and I know SM wont be flipped during this matchup. And its sad because part of WvW is ruined for a week.

What helps the little guy helps the big guy even more.

Well, with the new upgrade system they actually have a way to balance tactics and their effects on making objectives harder to cap – make it even longer to get to T3. No seriously, just keep overall objetives and T0-2 to maintain the pace of sieges.

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

I also disagree.

Tactics make guilds really feel like they matter in WvW. Perhaps the idea needs some rework in some areas but its overall a good thing for this gamemode.

some upgrades are good and others bad

airship defense and dragon banner are sort of silly.

watchtower and e-waypoint generate fights. You had to deal with e-waypoint before HoT, now you only have to deal with it 2/13ths as much. So, those are great although I think ewaypoint should have a much shorter cooldown. Hardened gates I’m kinda miffed with, I think it should reduce damage by 80% instead of 100%. In general they need balancing

Rocknull.2986:

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

Yes, as with all Guild Hall upgrades, they require a lot of grinding in PvE maps, lots of gold/materials to simply throw away. And thats the part of problem, in order to get them, you and your guild needs to grind many-many hours outside of WvW. Which, if you happen to run WvW-guild, is nonsense. Whole Guild Hall upgrade system is such a horrible mess designed to make sure players spend their time anywhere but in WvW.

Rocknull.2986:

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

So hard in fact it’s only feasible to achieve by larger guilds, which has in turn caused a large portion of the smaller, organized WvW teams to stop playing the format or the game entirely because of how grossly expensive and time-consuming the process is. Fighting out-gunned went from allowing some amount of freedom and cohesive play to be rewarded to quite literally disadvantageous and slower in every way.

Rocknull.2986:

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

That’s not the issue.

The issue is when you knowingly use them in ways like having a reaper with “Deathly Chill” pull Chilling Fog. That’s crazy damage and hurts people way too much. Having things like Banners and other devices run impacted by the character using them build? That’s stupid design.

Also the cost to maintain the Tactics is a pain… too. I mean, look at T6 server for instance. They can put tactics on and lose them in like 24hours, then replace the tactics… Same applies to T2 servers, but in one particular case a week or so ago, the over use and abuse of emergency waypoints, and airship bombardment… and the over use of dragon and other banners. I mean wow. Yes, they nerfed banners some, but they still over used… Good grief.

Yes, you can avoid pretty much all their attacks, but its a pain… for new players and for those that don’t fully understand how they work. I can dodge them and in fact love the conditions that dragon banner gives me cause I consume it for healing. However, its annoying.

In the past, even small guilds could be helpful and claim things for +5 supply and they were really nothing that cause the game to feel highly unbalanced. Now, its all about how much money and time people want to put into it and make the upgrades to use for tactics. It didn’t add a new elements to WvW, it made WvW into a who has the most tactics activated and what tactics. The old WvW was more about skill and planning. The new one is not… I am actually starting to find it boring when in the old system I found it interesting almost always.

DeceiverX.8361:

So hard in fact it’s only feasible to achieve by larger guilds, which has in turn caused a large portion of the smaller, organized WvW teams to stop playing the format or the game entirely because of how grossly expensive and time-consuming the process is. Fighting out-gunned went from allowing some amount of freedom and cohesive play to be rewarded to quite literally disadvantageous and slower in every way.

Yes I’m in such guilds too. We all were highly effective before HoT and guild halls. Yet, now it sucks. Most members actually haven’t logged on since the week after HoT. Why? I can only imagine its cause they saw how expensive it would be for us to level up to even gain the ability to claim objectives… I don’t even like farming and doing all that to make such upgrades possible. It was a lot easier when guild influence meant something cause we could have all the WvW upgrades waiting for when we wanted to use them and it only require time and some gold to get the influence since we couldn’t make enough fast enough to keep some buffs up 24/7.

Well, the buffs are now permanent so….

Yes, its was easier before but now it has its advantages. Tactics make a whole new level for guilds and WvW for example.

I wasn’t aware that a reaper using the chill tactic would damage players with it but thats clearly something broken about it and should be fixed asap.

This is just a balance issue wich doesn’t mean that tactics are wrong but bad balanced.

Mizhas.8536:

Well, the buffs are now permanent so….

Yes, its was easier before but now it has its advantages. Tactics make a whole new level for guilds and WvW for example.

I wasn’t aware that a reaper using the chill tactic would damage players with it but thats clearly something broken about it and should be fixed asap.

This is just a balance issue wich doesn’t mean that tactics are wrong but bad balanced.

Get on a cannon as a reaper with deathly chill, shoot number 3 skill at something. It does chill damage…

Use flame rams or superior flame rams and the number 2 skill… It’ll fear the guards and players and so forth… If traited for it as a necromancer or reaper, it will do a 1k per tick fear damage condition too.

Broken? NOPE! unexpected result yes.

OH try the poison and bleeds with any other class and have them change gear from power to condi damage to power, you’ll see that power gear will actually do very little condi damage from arrow carts and cannons and mortars. I’ve not tried treb yet. In condi damage gear, even the bleeds and poisons and burns from mortar, AC and cannons are increased.

Rocknull.2986:

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

A big guild can afford the costs without any problem. Once they have them many become free to use. They can still afford the costs to make the others.

They already have plenty of people, the boosts just makes an already powerful group even more so. They make personal and group skill and tactics become less important or irrelevant.

Small guilds have disproportionately large costs burden trying to catch up.

The problem is balance, and WvW does not have it in any shape or form.

Serious.6940:

Rocknull.2986:

Don’t guilds have to work pretty hard to get these abilities?

A big guild can afford the costs without any problem. Once they have them many become free to use. They can still afford the costs to make the others.

They already have plenty of people, the boosts just makes an already powerful group even more so. They make personal and group skill and tactics become less important or irrelevant.

Small guilds have disproportionately large costs burden trying to catch up.

The problem is balance, and WvW does not have it in any shape or form.

In additon if people think that gold has any influence in balancing they are plain wrong. If some salty players get together and decide that it’s fun to use those banners they will get the neccessary tools to do it. And if done with the first guild they will do it with an alt guild. Just think were we will be in lets say one year.

Another thing is if you are in a matchup with an enemy server(s) that have off-prime time dominace. Most of their structures will be t3 and they can, compared to you, keep their upgrades, while your server will lose them and wont bother to put those upgrades into their towers/keeps in the first place.

We complained to Arena-Net about the high costs in upgrading pre-Hot. Instead of removing it they just replaced it with another huge gold sink if you want to stay competitive.