Guild Wars 2

Anet please fix culling asap. This is clearly game breaking. I will explain.

Yesterday’s wvw we faced a zerg with 6+ thieves or mesmers, who would take turn stealthing their whole zerg. They would retreat, rally to their commander(s), and a thief or mesmer would stealth their whole team. Then the whole stealthed zerg comes back and attacks right next to us. Due to culling they must have stealthed a total of 10 seconds. Needless to say many of our team are dead before the culling even ended. And since they got 6+ guys with group stealth, they did it over and over again.

We all read all those complains about permanent stealth thieves. Now imagine a whole zerg doing that, again and again. You just see a ton of damage poping up against your WHOLE zerg, and like half of you are dead before you even see your enemies.

I was so temped to roll a thief or mesmer yesterday it aren’t funny. This is the first time we see this happening. But I imagine this kind of “tactic” would be the new standard in the near future. Every single zerg vs zerg would be ghost vs ghost. No one can see each other. And if you are not a ghost, you got no chance.

Anet please fix this asap thanks. The whole wvw could be ruined by this bug.

culling is an issue they are working hard to fix is it not?

as far as group stealth it is hard to make a clear judgment call on whether it is causing balance problems until the culling issue is fixed.

one thing we should never do is get up in arms too quickly about something being “overpowered” when large organized groups are taking advantage of it. those sorts of groups of people are always going to be doing things that break other groups less coordinated than them and we often lose sight of the fact that it is their skill and coordination that is winning and not necessarily any individual overpowered tactic.

as far as zergs “popping up” against other zergs that is just too hard to comment on with the culling issue being what it is. I suggest you see how things look after some sort of culling fix is implemented.

In the meantime you could try running with smaller teams doing smaller group objectives if it is causing you stress.

You don’t need to stick around and deal with their kitten. Just back the hell off till they get visible again or spam traps, marks and every other kind of auto trigger AoE for detection. Especially if you know they went stealth.
It’s not like it’s hard to deal with a team which did blow half their cooldowns for a sneak attack.

plus what bug?
Works as intended, move along.

naphack.9346:

You don’t need to stick around and deal with their kitten. Just back the hell off till they get visible again or spam traps, marks and every other kind of auto trigger AoE for detection.
It’s not like it’s hard to deal with a team which did blow half their cooldowns for a sneak attack.

plus what bug?
Works as intended, move along.

Not to take their side
Because I really don’t care about culling, I’ve stated many times that I think it’s much less of an issue than people think it is.

But all it takes is a Mass Invisibility or two for an entire group to get their sneak attack. That is far from “half their cooldowns”.

You need to learn battle tactics and how to move on the field. If you see them retreat and you know they are going to do this, then back off. Most AoE stealth that can hit more than 5 people only lasts 3 seconds. Give yourself 5 seconds running room or AoE where they were to hit them ahead of time. Do not complain about organized play if you cant adapt to a situation please

I agree with the OP. I think that the stealth as implemented in this game is about the most imbalanced mechanic I’ve ever seen in a pvp game.

Columba.9730:

I agree with the OP. I think that the stealth as implemented in this game is about the most imbalanced mechanic I’ve ever seen in a pvp game.

You must not have played a lot of pvp games…

fivekiller.1432:

culling is an issue they are working hard to fix is it not?

as far as group stealth it is hard to make a clear judgment call on whether it is causing balance problems until the culling issue is fixed.

one thing we should never do is get up in arms too quickly about something being “overpowered” when large organized groups are taking advantage of it. those sorts of groups of people are always going to be doing things that break other groups less coordinated than them and we often lose sight of the fact that it is their skill and coordination that is winning and not necessarily any individual overpowered tactic.

as far as zergs “popping up” against other zergs that is just too hard to comment on with the culling issue being what it is. I suggest you see how things look after some sort of culling fix is implemented.

In the meantime you could try running with smaller teams doing smaller group objectives if it is causing you stress.

Its been almost half a year and culling still isn’t fixed. This should be on their priority.

Culling is in their priority list; it just isn’t at the top of the list. I really don’t understand the real problem. Why don’t they just give us stick figures if rendering is an issue. At least that way we know what’s in front of us. I could care less how things look if I’m dead all the time.

SwiftWing.8192:

Culling is in their priority list; it just isn’t at the top of the list. I really don’t understand the real problem. Why don’t they just give us stick figures if rendering is an issue. At least that way we know what’s in front of us. I could care less how things look if I’m dead all the time.

my suggestion was just to show the name tags.

seeing the red names alone would at least give me some kind of indicator as to how many people are in an area.

either way.. a small improvement like what you or I suggested would be a huge improvement. perhaps we’ll see at least that much soon.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Columba.9730:

I agree with the OP. I think that the stealth as implemented in this game is about the most imbalanced mechanic I’ve ever seen in a pvp game.

You must not have played a lot of pvp games…

Wow pvp server, dark age, Aion, Lotro, eve.

Yeah, group stealth can lead to permo stealth if a bunch of mesmers and thieves hide in a keep and aoe stealth each other the whole time and be unseen, but Anet is highly unlikely to change AoE stealth…

I find it hard that there was enough coordination for that. Half the players I meet don’t even know once they leave shadow refuge they get revealed buff. Was it a guild? Pugs?

IT might just be a culled zerg, which happens a lot, and when two zergs meet, it can feel like certain enemies are invisible for 15+ seconds.

Columba.9730:

eve.

so Titan doomsdays were cool with you then.

Once you see it a few times you will get used to it- and there are several very effective counters to it, guardian skill springs to mind as well as mesmer temporal curtain, etc.

Of course effective communication helps too- get most people on your server ts or vent and it becomes much less of a problem as you know which guilds tend to run it and can just call it and be ready to counter. If they back off , bunch up and suddenly disappear it’s quite a large clue!

CHIPS.6018:

Anet please fix culling asap. This is clearly game breaking. I will explain.

Yesterday’s wvw we faced a zerg with 6+ thieves or mesmers, who would take turn stealthing their whole zerg. They would retreat, rally to their commander(s), and a thief or mesmer would stealth their whole team. Then the whole stealthed zerg comes back and attacks right next to us. Due to culling they must have stealthed a total of 10 seconds. Needless to say many of our team are dead before the culling even ended. And since they got 6+ guys with group stealth, they did it over and over again.

We all read all those complains about permanent stealth thieves. Now imagine a whole zerg doing that, again and again. You just see a ton of damage poping up against your WHOLE zerg, and like half of you are dead before you even see your enemies.

I was so temped to roll a thief or mesmer yesterday it aren’t funny. This is the first time we see this happening. But I imagine this kind of “tactic” would be the new standard in the near future. Every single zerg vs zerg would be ghost vs ghost. No one can see each other. And if you are not a ghost, you got no chance.

Anet please fix this asap thanks. The whole wvw could be ruined by this bug.

Sounds more like they were organized and you guys weren’t. It wasn’t culing it was people using their available skills effectively. So you tell me you had no thievs or mesmers that could stealth you? Of course an enemy is going to keep using a tactic if your not doing anything to counter.

The elite skill Mass Invis is max 5 players on a long cool down.