Guild Wars 2

You cant get more of a resounding endorsement than that!

Please upvote this thread on Reddit!!!!!!! We must get this in front of the right people even if they do not want to hear it! Our gamemode depends on it.

Last night as we engaged we would leap into crisscrossing Dragon banners and invuln players with turtle banner. This needs to be addressed and fast!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gw2WvW/comments/40sbj9/wvw_tactivators_war_room_banners_broken/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/40smw9/crosspost_wvw_tactivators_war_room_banners_broken/

+1 to the OP. Seems devs do not understand that WvW is not EotM and there are still players, who do not want cheese on WvW. There are still people looking just for fights, where two groups of players fight against each other without all those cheesy mechanics introduced with HoT.

Completely Agree with Grimaldi, I love WvW and pretty much only log in to play this game mode. I have multiple accounts in multiple tiers (1/2/3/5) and can tell you if something doesn’t actually happen soon (enough promises) this game mode will completely implode. At the moment its only the diehards that are left and hanging on by a thread, we keep hearing changes are coming with very little examples/discussions of what these changes are going to be.

Banners and airship needs to go but lets be realistic here, someone spent a lot of time and money designing these so the chance of them being removed is slim to none (no one likes to admit failure) so here’s a few suggestions instead.

- Make airship hit once (twice at the most as it does crazy damage) and increase the cool down to 30mins. This will still give an advantage to the defenders and make it tactical instead of spamming it every time its on cool down.

- Make banners only useable within a certain range of the structure they are activated from. Decrease the uptime to 10 mins (long enough for a defense) and increase the cool down to 30 mins and only allow one of each banners per side to be activated per map.

There you go ANET criticism with a solution.

+1 to Grimaldi. Also a T2 player, yes I can dodge a big carpet of damage but it’s really ugly out there right now. Die hards holding out for WvW to stay fun and at least fair within reason, are at risk of leaving. New blood may just be peeking into WvW (including legendary hunting people looking for whatever Gift of (Whatever) which requires wvw rank 30), this is kind of the time to make a good first impression, as opposed to steamrolling with criss crossing banners.

I do not know what kind of rebalance (shy of removal) would be worthwhile… narrower / limited AoEs, longer CDs, tweaks of wielder defiance, shorter duration, chance for them to break like a Silverwastes Shovel after a few uses or what, but current iteration is kind of poor.

While I knew that pick / focus can and should go find banner wielders, I’d forgot that denial of a T2+ walled objective to produce more banners was maybe a good idea to deny someone their next banner. Duh. Maybe that’d be a way to express disapproval of weapons of mass destruction.

I have to agree with this even tho the person posting is not let’s say ever going to be on my friends list. The banners seriously need a nerf.
With the new specializations and upgrades etc wvw has turned to nothing but cancer.
Large groups running mostly nothing but Dragonhunters, Kill shot berserkers revenants with hammer and mesmers. These are probably the most broken classes there are right now and pair all that with the banners and it’s just aids.
And as for the argument of the small vs. large groups. Anet has always been for the blobs. They created WvW around blobs. So the smaller guilds and groups are always going to get the shaft from Anet. This is the kind of stuff that happens when Anet only listens to morons that are on t1 blobbing servers that rarely go into wvw at all. And they only listen to them cuz they are popular on YouTube or twitch or wherever.

Its time go to back and Fight like the old days

I support this!

+1

I’m starting to wonder if anet thought this through.

+1
starting to wonder if anet actually read any of that, obviously they doing the opposite of what wvw players actually want.

Get rid of the stupid OP banners. It’s making zerg wars P2W.

Another great job, ANET! /sarcasm

There needs to be a max number of banners on the battlefield limit. And the cool down needs to be doubled. And the banner itself needs to be toned down quite a bit.

100% support OP. Here’s a link to a post I made about these banners the other day:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Banners/5904230

+1

Come on Anet, have you seen what several dragon banners beside each other look like? It’s like fighting on a carpet of fire. Or how about… put rams down on a gate, guy with banner jumps out, lays down fire across the door, killing anyone trying to play the game as intended and runs back inside cause he has a break bar and can’t be cc’d fast enough. Or the massive zerg that sits in their keeps waiting for their new banners to spawn because they won’t leave without one. Nothing about these banners says fun to anyone who has to fight one, please remove!

+1

I support this!

I personally haven’t run into a lot of banner problems but it is really easy to see how banners effect outnumbered fights for both sides. If you’re the smaller group with banners, you can one shot the enemy zerg. If you are the zerg with banners, then you really need to reevaluate how you play WvW if you lose. If both sides have banners the zerg should win but it is necessary for the smaller group to have banners to stand a chance. Unless the zerg is actually full of first time players.

For me though, there already has been “needed things” in zerg fights since the game came out etc. like guardians, certain builds, invisibility. Seems we have to add banners to that. I have played since headstart, I’ve been in multiple fight guilds, and in my opinion, banners don’t really take away skill. Most classes press a couple of buttons at most in zerg wars and use a few more in certain situations. (I have played every class in group combat WvW and know the rotations.) Banners are just another thing to look for in a comp, like revs were at the beginning of HoT. Anet might need to tone down how hard it is to kill the banners because the banner carriers survivability is way to strong in a 50v50 situation though.

I also like the idea of only letting the outnumbered sides be able to active tactivators, but why would WvW players buy the expansion for wvw upgrades when you can only use them if your server is outnumbered…. Anet rushed the banners out the door like a bunch of other HoT stuff. The WvW overhaul wasn’t ready and they needed something to seem alluring for WvW guilds to work towards. Banners have become their own class because of how strong they are. They need balance updates just like any other class or at least make it to where a 60 man can’t have banners against a 10 man.

As above, make them available only to outnumbered servers. Make it so that outnumbered has to have been up for 10-15mins before the banners or airships can be activated to stop map hopping abuse.
DONE. Was that hard?
Makes them work as a ‘outnumbered helper’ as intended.

Argos Helios.4965:

As above, make them available only to outnumbered servers. Make it so that outnumbered has to have been up for 10-15mins before the banners or airships can be activated to stop map hopping abuse.
DONE. Was that hard?
Makes them work as a ‘outnumbered helper’ as intended.

Instead, if you have the outnumbered buff the banner effects that hit you are cut by 60%. Since outnumbered can come and go it would be hard to disallow the use of the banners. Would the banner vanish if the outnumbered buff suddenly appeared on your server in the BL?

I would like to point out that anet has always looked at wvw as the casual game mode and ALWAYS was trying to get spvp on the moba esports level. It doesn’t look like they will change this focus so I feel these valid points will be heard on deaf ears like always.

Khalamity.4025:

I personally haven’t run into a lot of banner problems but it is really easy to see how banners effect outnumbered fights for both sides. If you’re the smaller group with banners, you can one shot the enemy zerg. If you are the zerg with banners, then you really need to reevaluate how you play WvW if you lose. If both sides have banners the zerg should win but it is necessary for the smaller group to have banners to stand a chance. Unless the zerg is actually full of first time players.

For me though, there already has been “needed things” in zerg fights since the game came out etc. like guardians, certain builds, invisibility. Seems we have to add banners to that. I have played since headstart, I’ve been in multiple fight guilds, and in my opinion, banners don’t really take away skill. Most classes press a couple of buttons at most in zerg wars and use a few more in certain situations. (I have played every class in group combat WvW and know the rotations.) Banners are just another thing to look for in a comp, like revs were at the beginning of HoT. Anet might need to tone down how hard it is to kill the banners because the banner carriers survivability is way to strong in a 50v50 situation though.

I also like the idea of only letting the outnumbered sides be able to active tactivators, but why would WvW players buy the expansion for wvw upgrades when you can only use them if your server is outnumbered…. Anet rushed the banners out the door like a bunch of other HoT stuff. The WvW overhaul wasn’t ready and they needed something to seem alluring for WvW guilds to work towards. Banners have become their own class because of how strong they are. They need balance updates just like any other class or at least make it to where a 60 man can’t have banners against a 10 man.

Khal I think you make some great points but what I think you seem to dismiss which is the real issue most of the guilds, drivers, and hardcore wvw players have with the banners. Unlike set comps, builds, etc, 2-3 people running the banner in a large scale fight can determine the outcome of the fight.

We run set comps, builds, food, because we want to be competitive in a skill based environment and maximize our effectiveness. If the other team runs two guardians in a party and your team runs 1 guardian in a party out of 50-70 people that in and of itself will not decide the outcome of the fight. The skill, strategy, and coordination of the group can easily compensate for that lack of guardian or extra bear bow ranger. Put simply, a few people running the wrong builds, classes, food buffs will not decide the outcome of a large scale fight. However, the banners do.

The fact is it only takes a T2 structure to utilize those banners. Let us use Blue EBG 1/3 as an example. It is quite normal to have at least a T2 Keep and T2 Langor. Infact you can actually check the frequency those two structures are flipped over a 24hr period and you will find that they are far more likely to be T2 or greater than not. Then let us throw Bravost into the mix which is flipped more so than the other two but still is a highly infrequent occurence. Now we are up to 3 structures producing banners, a situation that is normally occurring most of the time throughout the day. This is not an anomaly, this is typical.

Furthermore, the side that owns SMC creates a buffer on their 1/3 and makes having even more banners a reality. Soon the peripheral towers can reach T2 as well, coupled with SMC. I think it is quite easy to extrapolate the effect of this. In fact it reminds me of the orbs and why they were removed. In a game about parity and competitive fights exacerbating a losing situation for the other servers is a horrible way to convince others to play. We saw what happened with the orbs…they did not.

I also say, for those not experiencing this problem, as more guilds gain access to these banners, and more see the outsized power they bring it is an inevitability until this is addressed. Hopefully someone will start recording footage, or we will have to create a situation where we run around with 9 of these banners, 1shotting zergs to demonstrate just how inane this really is.

Fully agree Grim. I know in T2 they are terrible in NA prime. The ideal situation would be that as a tier we would agree to not use banners, but all it takes is one guild to not agree and make the banner available in a tower. Then the cycle starts again. The biggest problem as you said is that 1-3 banners can completely decide the outcome of a large skill fight. AND on top of it the banners are low skill high reward. Fire the dragon banner carpet and watch as zergs melt. Even with the other upgrades it makes those awesome hour+ fights in lords of SMC not possible. Or even extended fights in open field unless you are camping near one sides keep. Please, Anet take a look at your players and actually listen. An overwhelming majority are looking for mostly even large scale fights. We don’t want cheese tactics. We don’t want all these ‘awesome’ new features. It’s part of the reason the new BLs aren’t played nearly as much as the old ones or EB. Too much not large scale fighting.

Noyalty.7849:

- Make banners only useable within a certain range of the structure they are activated from. Decrease the uptime to 10 mins (long enough for a defense) and increase the cool down to 30 mins and only allow one of each banners per side to be activated per map.

This is in my opinion the best compromise.
It’s very unlikely that Anet will remove banners but this is a realistic solution.

I believe they’ve seen and read this thread. There are more red posts than I’ve seen in quite a while (in this forum). I hope they take this thread to the table when they have their next “dev team” meeting.

agreed. get rid of all these overpowered addons. they destroy wvw beyond repair and are about 1000000 times worse than the disaster of orbs, fly hacking and culling togehter…..

I agree fully with the absolute fact that banners specifically are forcing players out of WvW and this cannot continue.

As the GM of a guild that has all of the banners and upgrades unlocked, my view is that every banner along with the SMC airships should be removed immediately. Not in a few months time…. Not even in a couple of weeks… Now! They are completely breaking the game mode that I and my team love to play and have done since beta.

Banners were fun for a couple of days until everyone realised just how stupid they are.

If you do nothing and bury your head in the sand with this one Anet, you will lose every single WvW guild very quickly as it is absolutely no fun to fight against 3 banners in any size of fight and I 100% resent that the only way it can be countered is by using these banners ourselves.

This mechanic is almost void of any skill and would be better kept in PvE.

There are many things that have been introduced to WvW recently that need addressing but banners are the number 1 concern for our community at the moment and it simply has to be removed.

Please don’t mess about and tinker for weeks with the damage they do or protection they give. Just get them out all together.

There has never been such a massive misjudgement with adding something into the WvW mechanics as banners have been and I really hope you listen to the WvW community on this point as we are the ones that actually know and care how WvW works on a daily basis.

/salute

Fellfoot.8156:

I believe they’ve seen and read this thread. There are more red posts than I’ve seen in quite a while (in this forum). I hope they take this thread to the table when they have their next “dev team” meeting.

But which threads are the devs posting in? The one about how arrow carts work. The one about the perennially bugged walls. The one about invisible tags. It’s just the threads of minor (to really minor) importance that they’re showing up in.

Where are they in the threads that discuss the total failure of the new BL? The threads about having to endlessly grind in PvE for upgrades (that we already had pre-HoT)? The threads about terrible balance? This thread?

Looks like they’re just here for a bit of lip service (though the fact that they realize some presence is necessary is already pretty amazing).

+1

I support you too

Just throwing it out there:

How about banners are only available when a server has outnumbered buff? As soon as that buff disappears the banner disappears

I’ll just keep it simple by saying actual WvW players are interested in fighting other players/groups without a myriad of gimmicks and nonsense. They want to pick a build, gear and skills for their class, learn how they work most effectively individually and how they synergize with their team, then use these against other people who have done the same. Commanders want to pit their forces, composition and tactics against enemy commanders, with the victory going to the commander and team who can outwit and/or outmaneuver their enemies and perform the best in combat. That is the most ideal scenario for an enjoyable fight, at least, and one people take the most pride in winning.

So where do the gimmick banners fit into that equation? The answer is that they don’t. There’s a reason the use of siege has generally always been frowned upon during open field fighting scenarios, and that’s because people enjoy fights in the manner I have outlined above, without OP gimmick spoiling the enjoyment of the engagement. Banners fit firmly into the “OP gimmicks” category, and I honestly fail to understand why such items were seriously considered for implementation as their use is directly contrary to what most WvW players would consider to be conducive to promoting a fun fights environment.

All it requires is the basic understanding of what many WvW players constitute as a decent, fun fight, which I outlined above, to realize why any fight aiding/manipulating gimmick, both present and future, are probably a bad move for the game mode.

Siege is fine and expected when assaulting/defending a structure, but not in the open field. Similarly, if banners have to exist, their use should be confined, in my opinion, to being used in the defense of the structure in which they’re slotted. They could give a nice advantage to the (probably outnumbered) defending force in a final “last stand” type of deal once the gate/walls have been breached. Allowing large groups to run around with these in the open field is ridiculous, however, and usually results in a a tit-for-tat escalation by the other force who then brings their own banners to the party. The net result is usually an unenjoyable fight for all concerned as the outcome comes down to who can cheese the most players down with their banners before the other. When it degenerates to this level, people then start logging off or doing other things because it’s simply not fun to deal with or participate in, win or lose.

- T1 Commander, Jade Quarry.

Agreed.

While banners have counters (hello, gank team), they are absolutely over powered and not fun. And, unfortunately, seem to be most likely to be run by the biggest blob on the map. Even though I have them unlocked, I don’t slot them in an objective unless we start running into them on the other side – but once we run into them, the escalation starts. Mutually assured destruction, anyone?

Dragon banners make me hate this game. Lets give zergs more advantages.

Gimmick wars 2, what else?

Game is about that as much i hate it…. themepark game hardly envolve much besides insert very very strong gimmick as content to hide some aspects of the game, they are limited by default to that, wvw was bad structured/designed to acomodate future good releases, as the WvW flaw is its own design.

But at least they could had iterated that stuff better, on the golem week as much players hated they were using it, if people uses and hates the same mechanic, that mechanics works after all, it is being used….. same happens with tactivator, ship, next is the charr panzer, this thing hardly fit on a themepark setting unless broken op or balanced and since is not OP will not be used.

Stop using it until Anet removes it, otherwise it will be improved to something even more gimmicker, that is how ANet works.

GW2 is a heavy dumb gimmicker game.

I agree that while the new banners sounded fun they are so overpowered that in what should be an even fight it changes it so that if one team has 2 or more running dragon banners they don’t even need any skill to use. All you do is point it and spam 1. Combined with a turtle banner for the invulnerability and it takes all the fun out fighting. There is no more skill needed nor is there any strategy needed. WvW isn’t EoTM- leave dragon banners there. Or at least nerf them and lower the amount that can be had to only able to be activated in an owned Keep not the towers.

+1

Bumpity, bump bump.

This must stop immediately. Almost all veteran WvWvW players hate the new war room upgrades: banners, aerial strike etc. WvWvW is bleeding players at rapid rate.

anet has abandoned wvw….

wvw overhaul is coming later this year…….later…..thats too late

The outpouring has been amazing. We have to keep the energy up and keep the post active, and start making videos. But in the mean time. I started compiling a list of all the guilds and their commanders/leaders. Militia commanders/leaders. Server Leads too! If you can help me, I tried my best but sadly the list is not nearly complete enough. If you give me what guild you represent, I am happy to update/add your guild/server.

I think when they see just how many of the key voices from across all tiers are upset it will cause them to take even more notice!

Maguuma
Kryta -Tspatula
CCCP – Sulla
TIE/Pyro – Snoopy

SoS
FIST – Starky/Ganz
TYSM – Coron
BGA – BoaSmid
TF – T Man

HoD
Chef – Katie
Air – Blane
Time – Skyshroud
CA – Tifa

JQ

Porqington
Tiff
CF – Maynard

DB
Tiramisu – rekz
Crixus/lorek – VP

FA

CovN – Zoel
LATE – Xenogear

YB
Militia Commander/Defender – Jatari

It’s not just the Banners, Airship defense is broken also. This must be how Mordrem feel when players pelt them with the airships.

Infusion.7149:

It’s not just the Banners, Airship defense is broken also. This must be how Mordrem feel when players pelt them with the airships.

One has to wonder if these things and the new map are designed to push everyone to the EtoM model -megaserver with constant karma trains… I am starting to think the new borderlands were designed specifically to push PPT and eliminate a lot of the fighting….

+1 on this issue

Driving away people who’ve played a game for years is not what an expansion should do.

Agreed, though players and guilds should come up with agreements about banner/airship usage in their own tiers before expecting the developers to address the issue any time soon.

Tspatula.9086:

One has to wonder if these things and the new map are designed to push everyone to the EtoM model -megaserver with constant karma trains… I am starting to think the new borderlands were designed specifically to push PPT and eliminate a lot of the fighting….

It worked on me. Don’t need to worry about tactivators and banners in EotM. Population problems do not persist for weeks and months at a time. Heck I was sold at no dragon banners.

I love this video, priceless.

Caliburn.1845:

I like the idea of banners, but I do think they need to be nerfed. Primarily Dragon banner.

I would go about it like this.

1) Remove the defiance bar on all banners.
2) Make Moa instantly get rid of banners.
3) Make Continuum Rift not work with banner skills.
4) Reduce range, and increase CDs on Dragon banner.
5) Possibly make all banners melee range only.
6) Move the banner tactivation levers to a locate right outside their respective tower/keep.
7) Make the tactivation levers be able to be destroyed by a long multiple person commune(steal that mechanic from PVE).

Or ANet should do what they need to do and get rid of banners so guilds like yours with minimal fighting talent can stop thumping their chests when they double banner the whole map?

The irony of guilds posting in here about how bad banners are yet they use them every night is not lost on those of us who see you out on the battlefield.

Yes, banners are bad and need to go, but if you’re going to run a guild that uses the banners on a nightly basis while pretending to complain about them on the forums, why don’t you actually STOP PICKING UP THE BANNERS. Or get out of the thread because you are part of the problem. <3

Also fully support OP.

The major problem as it stands aerial is, we may want to rid the world of nuclear weapons but the greatest deterrent of nuclear weapons sadly is nuclear weapons or mutually assured destruction which is paradoxically absurd.

The fact is the conflict continues to escalate unless an agreement can be reached and a timetable for it to go into effect. It forces guilds who do not want to use banners to use them when others run around and then eventually everyone just points fingers at one another blaming each other.

No doubt (though people I play with want to try and not use it), but there’s still the issue of commanders in this thread using banners every night in multiples against enemy zergs with no banner while turning around to bash the banners. If you’re the only guild on a BL using it as is often the case, you’re a part of the problem. Banners should be eliminated all together. Until Anet figures that out… we’re stuck with those who want to fight based on player skill and those who want to pay to win (and still suck in pvp/non-banner fights because player skill went down the toilet).

Aaron.4807:

Caliburn.1845:

I like the idea of banners, but I do think they need to be nerfed. Primarily Dragon banner.

I would go about it like this.

1) Remove the defiance bar on all banners.
2) Make Moa instantly get rid of banners.
3) Make Continuum Rift not work with banner skills.
4) Reduce range, and increase CDs on Dragon banner.
5) Possibly make all banners melee range only.
6) Move the banner tactivation levers to a locate right outside their respective tower/keep.
7) Make the tactivation levers be able to be destroyed by a long multiple person commune(steal that mechanic from PVE).

Or ANet should do what they need to do and get rid of banners so guilds like yours with minimal fighting talent can stop thumping their chests when they double banner the whole map?

Eh? We’ve never double bannered. And chest thump? What are you rambling on about?

We’ve slotted a grand total of one dragon, one centaur, and three turtle banners in our entire existence. Mostly just to get a feel for what they do.

Hi,

I would like to thank you for making this exceptional post. Although the ideas and concerns have been stated, well, all over the place, this is a good way of putting this all in one spot.

Just watched JC on the Guild Chat. Didn’t catch all of it, but he did say banners were being nerfed, not removed.

Edit: sorry, it double posted; the chat in the twitch channel was an absolute kitten storm