Guild Wars 2

The problem with “things to fight for” is band-wagoning. If you offer superior loot for victory, people flock to that side. Same with permanent bonuses. Honestly, they have done a really good job balancing out rewards for participation and victory as well as competitive parity with the cost being that temporary rush of motivation you get for fighting your “hated” opponents.

Basically, for every one highly motivated individual there are several go with the flow types who just want to play for a bit. They will flock to the easiest experience which inherently imbalances things as quantity has a quality all its own.

There is a reason why things are at the current (sometimes boring) equilibrium and that is because of systems put in place to keep the players from blowing it all up.

I just came back after months of not playing (got burned out on WvW). Figured I’d give the expansion a try with then new PvE. Meh.

Then jumped back into WvW. Holy cow! I forgot how good it was. Now with the rewards and the new maps and the new mechanics it is very entertaining and a viable path to play as the main game while PvE is a secondary path.

I know the shine will wear off eventually (it always does). But if they pursue a strategy of tweaking and small updates it should keep me entertained for many months to come.

Didn’t play DAOC. Played WAR which had maps about the same size (factoring in the mounts) as this and spent few weeks playing ESO which has monster sized maps. I have to say, I don’t like the larger map. Too much running from encounter to encounter and back from nearest spawn if/when you get killed.

Just personal preference, ofc, but the maps are just about right as is. At most I would support making them 10-15% bigger but that is only on high pop realms. EotM is already a pretty good sized map and you can spend a lot of time there not running into anybody to fight…same on the current maps.

…winning season 1. Seriously, those of you complaining about the rewards must have never played on any youth sports teams when you were growing up (or haven’t yet while you still are).

You win your league and you get a cheap plastic trophy, maybe a plaque. You don’t get money and you don’t get some special ball that lets you beat the other teams in your league even more easily.

You train and sacrifice just to win….that’s it. And if that’s not enough you go play something else. Same deal here.

Neko.9021:

An Ascended Weapon of your choice with the stat array of your choice. It has an awesome skin with particle effects. Make it Account Bound.

No.

I am a bit surprised they didn’t have better cosmetic rewards but anything that can be seriously used in WvW should (somewhat ironically) not be a reward for winning the WvW season as it would just continue to throw off balance.

The character leveling scrolls were a nice touch. BTW, I’d probably just pay for some of those outright.

I have no clue what most of you are talking about wrt the signet being too strong. Maybe you are talking about sPvP or maybe PvE. In WvW it pretty much works as intended which is good passive healing.

Why only good? B/c there are at least two classes that can burn through it very easily (Mesmer and Engineer) with Necros also having a relatively easy time of it as well if you don’t stun the crap out of them. It also doesn’t stand up to burst particularly well. If my warrior wasn’t specced for mobility he would go down to burst rather frequently.

I would feel really bad for players of classes that say they can’t bring down a Warrior except it’s the same for Warrior players. Mesmer and Engineers are absolutely beastly to try to bring down with Warrior (at least the builds I have tried). Every class has at least a couple of counter classes for it or at least classes with builds that are good to counter certain particular builds….and in my book that is just fine. If a thief can’t down a warrior without exceptional effort, too bad. They get to crush a bunch of other classes pretty easily.

And just to head off the “of course you are going to defend a warrior as you probably main one”….well I do. But I also have 4 other exotic geared 80s I play including the laughingstock Ranger (which can beat most warriors I run into btw) and a thief so I have some pretty good points of comparison.

Sreoom.3690:

…and SoR are the winds beneath BG’s wings ;-)

I do believe you guys (JQ) get BG next without the benefit of SoR being around. And then you get to see us (SoR) next without BG being around again. Gonna be interesting what you are saying then…

Probably not. The reward mechanics are set for the game and it rewards blobbing and zerging above all else. When your enemy’s server gets so stacked it cannot be beaten and an emphasis is placed on winning and it becomes evident you cannot win….then why would you fight?

The smart thing (from the losing server’s perspective) is to deny the enemy server their entertainment value so they get bored and their population starts to either stop logging in or transfer to another server (possibly the losing one) to get better queue pops or more even fights.

I don’t know this is happening on SoR (on which I play but I am not privy to the various guild councils), but if I were “in charge” of the server and trying to make our server win (which is the goal established by ANet) then this is how I would approach the current situation…use our “lack of morale” as a weapon against our enemies and retool for the next matchup.

Simonoly.4352:

I can’t imagine the difference in stats between a fully geared Exotic player and a fully geared Ascended player will be significant enough to put anyone at a major disadvantage.

It’s a shame we’re getting another tier of gear, but I imagine it will be pretty easy to ignore if all you want to do is WvW. If anything it will be even sweeter stomping all those Sunrise and Twilight wielders

The difference between alive and downed in this game is 1 health point. If 5% more damage (for example) allows you to reduce the number of blows you need to deliver to win a fight by 1, you will win far more than 5% more of them.

For (highly simplified) example, two people enter combat with 15,000 health and do 500 damage per blow. It will take them 30 blows to knock each other down and, in the end, it will come down to timing as to who gets the last blow and wins.

Now, one of them does 525 damage and the other does 500 damage. It will still take the 500 damage person 30 blows to down the other guy. But it takes the 525 damage guy 28.57 (read 29) blows to win. He now eats through the other guy’s health one full blow before the other guy has a chance to take him down. In the simplified model he now wins 100% of the time instead of 50%. In reality it will be somewhere between there but more than you probably think.

I have won (and lost) a lot of battles in WvW based on getting in a good blow that takes them to zero before they can get a heal or blind or teleport off. 5% (or 1% or 2%) will have a non-linear affect in the number of wins and losses someone has in groups or in 1v1s.

Lambent.6375:

I don’t think it will be a big issue, unless you run solo in WvW, or are a small man skirmisher, and they don’t really design content around that.

Plus, a lot of things you’ll need to make the ascended weapon will be attainable by doing normal WvW

Compared to some of the gear tier jumps I’ve seen in daoc, which is known for its RvR, this makes me shrug my shoulders.

Heh…not to pick on you per se but how’s DAoC doing with its sub numbers these days? Or how is Warhammer Online (another game with crappy vertical gear grind) doing?

Every time you add a gear tier in a PvP game you make it more difficult for people to get back into the game. This won’t kill off WvW today, but it will get it within a year or so IF they keep going in this direction. They say they won’t, but then again they said they would just have horizontal progression as well so….

Also, for the PvE-ers….they will certainly be adding new content that is aimed for people with Ascended gear in the future b/c people will complain even more about how easy it is to complete the stuff. So gear gating (enforced by programming or by players) will take effect. Always has, always will in these games.

It has been said elsewhere, but I’ll restate the problem with any vertical progression in a PvP game let alone time-gated vertical progression. It cuts off new blood from joining the game since it becomes increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to catch up to the original players.

There have only been a couple of long-lived PvP games of which I can recall that have succeeded with this kind of model. WoW can be treated as a one-off since no other game has replicated its popularity. EVE has time-gated vertical progression but the time sink is exponential in nature and it takes place in the background by using the actual passage of time.

Let’s put it this way. You go into WvW now with Rare gear and you can expect to have your butt handed to you by anybody with half a brain in Exotics which is about a 5% power difference. However, at least you can go get a set of exotics for 10-15g and go about your business. Small grind but not a big deal.

Now they add time-gated ascended gear. You are either constantly working on it or you are not. And if you are not, you will wake up one day and find out you are behind and there is no way to catch up except to start the time-based treadmill. Maybe that is a couple of weeks…maybe it is a month.

Then they add some more time gated gear. And that takes a couple of weeks. And then they add some more. Throw in they are constantly adding these “wonderful” new WXP abilities and where you could once enter WvW and be relatively competitive with a few hours of work now requires months of work.

And people will say “Eff it” and move on to the next game. I know I will b/c I learned my lesson from playing Warhammer Online how this will end. This is the path they are on and it is in direct opposition to what made GW1 a good enough game that they got a shot at GW2.

You have a well thought out post but, in the spirit of discussion, I would like to present a couple of alternative points of view.

To your motivating point that roaming doesn’t help your team, I’d like to note that 1 or 2 people can have a huge impact on the enemy supply chains. I have personally (solo) shut down all supply from two camps for the enemy for upwards of 30 minutes at a go. Yes…they stupidly did not guard their stuff but the point is they were “zerging” and I took advantage of it and punished them for it.

As for your supporting points:

1) removing the AOE cap, as mentioned elsewhere would only make zergs stronger and result in insta-aoe death. The math has been done multiple times on this forum so I won’t repeat it here.

2) Maybe. Although siege wasn’t as huge a problem until they upped the power on ACs. They had made it a bit worse with the WXP specialties. However, the counter to siege is siege. You just have to be organized enough to set it up.

3) The NPCs are already too easy to take out. I’m on a high-pop server and I can solo camps on my ranger and warrior often before anybody reacts. For parties of 4-5 people the npcs are merely a speedbump. Also, standing around defending isn’t fun so you need to reward it. However, rewarding just standing around will lead to people abusing it. Tricky situation.

4) Swords are there to guide folks to the fight…i.e. the fun. However, I actually blame swords for encouraging the zerg actually in a different way. On a high-pop server you actually try to blow down the gates so fast no swords appear so you don’t give the enemy time to react. This usually involves getting lots of golems together which requires lots of supply and support to move effectively and safely e.g. a zerg.

5) Waypoints. They should definitely eliminate the ability to zone into a contested waypoint during the timer switch. That’s just kind of cheesy (but effective).

Anway, I appreciate your post but I simply don’t think zerging is as much of an issue as people make it out to be. There are a ton of rewards to be had for both kinds of play although I will admit that there are probably not enough small man objectives out there (if you don’t like slaughtering yaks). However, it is my understanding they may be remedying that a bit with their new orb replacement system.

Just to provide a counterpoint on longbow warrior in WvW. I use it all the time to fairly good effect. It provides a long lasting fire field with Combustive Shot that ticks for 700-800 on many targets and you combine it with Arcing Arrow you suddenly nail 5 people for 3-5k damage depending on circumstance as well as provide might to friendlies in the blast radius. Also you have access to two skills that can fill up your adrenaline instantly so you can use that fire field every 7-10 seconds depending on your setup and rotation. It is also a pretty decent counter-stealth weapon since you can AOE well.

The key, ofc, is to be prepared to use it as a melee weapon. You get past that mental hurdle and it works well.

Thing to remember about the warrior in general is each weapon set usually has a particular thing it does really well, a couple of things it does okay and some things it is horrible at. LB is good to excellent in zergs, good to excellent in sieges, okay in 1v1s and underperforms other weapons in small-group fights.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Tyr.1965:

it’s really stupid and unfair to people who only enjoy WvW.

Your attitude is really unfair to people who enjoy both.

How is allowing equivalent progression in terms of game economics in WvW unfair to anyone? Especially considering WvW can cost a fair amount of cash in the various consumables.

Scrambles.2604:

Xirin.8593:

Evilek.5690:

Demandrer.7068:

Brilliant thank you for assisting my thread nice to know 9000 or people alsofeels it stupid!

90% players is so bad in PvP,PvE, 8% players are good players who learned to play against all classes, just only 2% of the players are pros.

You’re in category 90%.

Hah. Funny that you used those specific values. My buddy and I have a term we throw around a lot when talking about GW2 players: the 90%ers.

tldr; high-five for accurate post.

I used to get owned on my Ele in WvW by thieves, so i made a thief to learn how to combat them.

…now i just get owned on my Thief, haha.

I wish more people in the game and on these forums had your sense of humor.

This is a testimonial, not a revelation. After getting driven into the ground over and over again by condition spammers I finally decided to try out the Runes of Melandru and Lemongrass Soup which I had seen mentioned multiple times here on the forums. The difference in survivability was night and day.

I was able to stand toe-to-toe with condition spammers (necros and engies the prime culprits) and shrug off most of their stuff. They still hurt me, but they could rarely get that critical amount of conditions built up to push me over the edge.

We are still weak against conditions compared to other classes. But the runes plus the soup turned me from a relatively easy kill into actual opposition. Anyway…if you are a warrior and haven’t tried this combination yet, you owe it to yourself to give it a go.

P.S. The builds I was running were the following. These are provided as point of reference for at least what worked for me and what can work with this combo. I’m sure there are many more builds that will work and are probably more optimal.

GS/Sw&Sh
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR8ejkOBvFP+OMxBEMDN8KuMgCmQpYOqDA-jUyAYMBZKCMVKQZvioxWGLiGreBTVuoalLg3gRrGA-w

GS/Hammer
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJARSjkOBvFP+OMxBEMDNkLuMgCmQpYOqDA-jEyAYMAqUgyeFRjtMWENW9CmqcR1KXAvBjWNA-w

I run a pure zerker ranger in WvW and it is a thrill ride (not claiming in any way, shape or form this build is good although it works for me). The build is as follows:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQNAT3fjEVx1FWCWoWCg1DC7bwuA2DDZ8RvgCW9A-jEyAYLBZKSgoSwJviox2GKiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-w

I will also note that this build is actually fairly survivable (decent 1v1 or 1v2 if the other guys don’t know what they are doing and reasonable ability to escape pursuit) due to signet of stone and the CC you have available via LB, traps and pets plus healing spring for when you get loaded with conditions.

Anyway…I would most definitely not recommend a zerker build to anyone not willing to invest $$$ into getting exotics for it.

I’ve been running a zerker LB/SB ranger up until the patch, then I switched to a zerker LB/Axe&Torch ranger once the range was equalized to 900. Really didn’t affect my play much other than I’m not as effective in pursuit now in WvW but I’m better in large battles.

I do wish they would reduce the cooldown on Barrage and/or get rid of the reflective damage that comes back on you from it. Otherwise I actually like the longbow.

Also, I’d be a little more than worried about what they mean by “active” condition removal. The ranger already has a at least a couple of ways of wiping off conditions (I use Healing Spring myself). If they want to make it something like they did with with my warrior toon then watch out since it flat out sucks.

Personally, I’ve written off the pet. No game I’ve played has done the AI right on them so when the pet actually does something useful its just a bonus.

I cannot comment on the other play styles since I simply haven’t tried them (I have a bunch of alts so I make each of them fit a different play style and use the one I want when I want something different

No need to record. It does full cooldown. Been this way forever and a day. If you PvP you probably have just gotten numb to it.

Arkard.3970:

Aethilmar.3951:

If it is broken, it will show them exactly how broken it is and force them to make a change before they lose too many players.

That assumes competence, which has been shown to be non existent.

If you don’t assume they can fix the stuff in the game, then you might as well quit b/c the game will die rather quickly if they can’t.

I think this is a case of hubris on their part in that they found a good fix but waaay too late but are too proud to admit it. This solution would have worked months ago, but things have changed. The populations have sorted themselves out already.

Maybe the new system will sort itself out in a couple of weeks. Maybe it won’t. I can’t speak to that since I didn’t design it (nor would I have).

There are only a couple of things you, as players, can do to show them how messed up it is. You can either quit or play as hard as you can to drive the weak servers into the ground….no mercy.

If the system isn’t broken, it won’t matter as it will self correct. If it is broken, it will show them exactly how broken it is and force them to make a change before they lose too many players.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’ve personally held a tower against a group of 30 by myself before. It isn’t that hard to figure out how to do it, either. I went up to a vantage point that gave me a view of the door, and then built a superior arrow cart up there by myself. I sat there waiting for awhile, and then when a large enemy group came up and started making rams, I rained down damage against them and they had to abandon their pursuit. This group lacked the wit to defeat me, so I was all proud afterward.

That said, I wouldn’t mind more equipment that either punishes large groups or strengthens the little man. The hard part about this is that most things that help the little man also help the big one even more. Take the AoE limits. Now, a lot of players are saying that removing the AoE limits will benefit the little guy, but the fact is that it benefits the giant zergs more. Without the AoE boon limit, zergs would be running around permanently under maximum might, invisible, and with 100% uptime on retaliation. So instead you would have to get rid of the AoE limit for just damaging attacks, but even then this leads to more abuse via retaliation, since instead of just 5 ticks you can now be hit for 50 ticks. Removing the AoE cap, even on just offense, makes the whole game about retaliation then.

Lets say you want more mobile siege that isn’t as expensive as golems, letting groups get mobility and strength. That’s nice, until you realize that zergs can make them too, and so zergs change from giant balls of players to giant balls of players and roaming chariots. Since the bigger groups have more people and more supplies that have better abilities to make these things.

Lets say you want to make damaging traps in WvW. It sounds great, because when players bunch up they’ll take a ton of damage, and with the low cost of traps it can make defense and offense better. But then, the zerg balls get these traps, too, and suddenly your small group can’t wander anywhere because damage traps litter the field and are in every camp, every tower, and every keep.

Lets say you want to remove the in-keep waypoints. That way, it is easier to assault different points on the map while making it harder for a giant zerg ball to rush in and stomp you. Problem is, the giant zerg ball can do this too, so without the sheer numbers to defend the towers and keeps the zerg ball will just run through everything, smashing through defenses like they’re paper while taking everything and your group can’t get there fast enough to defend. Because they stay together they stay alive, and by staying alive they can maintain more presence at the frontlines.

I wrack my mind with this frequently. I’ll think of something that I think will help out the little man, but then I think about it more and I discover that it’ll help out the big groups more. At the end of the day, pretty whomever has superior numbers has the advantage. The best things I can come up with are the removal of the AoE damage cap (which CAN bite you back but won’t always), and damaging traps which indeed are more effective against tightly packed groups. At the same time, this will make things harder for smaller groups, but it can give them an edge if used right.

A lot of people in this thread are so busy arguing over feelings they are missing the facts. Blood has a pretty good analysis here so it bears emphasizing. Just about every notion in this thread about how to let small groups “compete” with large groups will have serious side effects.

I have many memories of taking on larger (sometimes much larger) forces in small groups and beating them under the existing rule sets. I also have many, many, many more memories of getting my butt kicked by larger groups.

And, you know what, that is okay. It is supposed to be hard for a small group to beat a larger group. That is what makes it awesome when you finally pull it off. It is supposed to mean something when you accomplish the impossible. You are supposed to stop for a second and say “Holy crap, did we just do that?”

Some things to think about:

1) Generally speaking small armies get crushed by larger armies. Inconvenient fact of war often glossed over by movies, romantikittenerature and first person shooters.

2) The skill in small group combat is not getting caught by the larger force, ambushing reinforcements and harassing the enemy. Small groups are generally not meant to destroy large groups except under extreme circumstances.

3) People who often consider themselves to be part of the “small skilled group” fighting the “mindless zergs” in games generally can’t handle getting killed very well so they like to blame other factors for their loss rather than accepting they picked a fight they couldn’t win. It was this way in EVE and this way in WAR and it is this way in GW2.

4) I guarantee anything they do to attempt to satisfy the “my small group has difficulties beating a larger group” crowd will either make the larger group more powerful (via Law of Unintended Consequences) or will completely unbalance combat in general and drive off the masses. Once again saw this happen in several other games and I have seen nothing here that makes me believe they will fare any better.

Ungood.3054:

Also, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but, we need to pause and realize that Anet has no real need to keep people playing. With the new move of MMO’s being more F2P or a 1 time fee, designers, and developers get to make the game they want to make, and let the people make the choice to stay around or not. Since the era of the sub went away, so did the need to keep players running the hamster wheel.

If players get bored, burned out, and feel the need to move on, such is life. If players are enjoying it, then play, have fun, enjoy it. There is no contract anymore, no need to slave for the sub, or a feeling of losing anything by taking a break it, you can come and go as you please. It’s liberating really.

I mean, I could be missing something, but, when I see players staying in a game that they feel discontent with, they can’t be doing anyone any favors, least of all, themselves.

I mean, it seems from the post that people are, for lack of a better way to put this, forcing themselves to play a game they to the point of harboring aggression or hostility towards it. Maybe contempt? Really, it hard to put a name to it, but no matter what it may be called, it’s not a favorable environment for anyone involved or witnessing it.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that GW2 or any MMO, no matter how complex it is, is really just a means of entertainment, like a book or movie, or even some console game, if you are not having fun playing, it’s not entertaining, and you are not enjoying it, perhaps it is time to move on, find something new, try some other war games, or whatever.

If you feel that DAOC or Warhammer Online was better, then go play that, get a fresh look, and see, maybe it is all you thought it was, maybe it’s not. Go sample, try new games, and have some fun.

Ungood….what are you doing here posting on these forums? You make too much sense. :P

As to the OP, you are wrong. As others noted small group roaming is alive and well. You need to be somewhat mentally tough to do it, though, since you are going to wipe early and often and usually to unbalanced numbers. OTOH, it is a good challenge and requires that you pick your targets (human and otherwise) carefully.

I play on SoR against JQ and BG so I know full well about zergs and how you need to time them and watch out for randoms who come in and try to disrupt you capping a camp or control point.

And, quite frankly, the whole point of small group play is to force the enemy to respond to something while your main force takes an objective. Capping a camp, while useful, is quite often just an added bonus. If you can get the enemy to send five or ten times your numbers to come after you and stop you from harassing the back lines….you have already helped your side win since they won’t be adding their strength elsewhere.

I pretty much only do WvW in this game and, as has been noted, getting laurels that way is pretty easy (I have 120+ atm). I have only been “forced” to miss a couple of laurels b/c the there was one too many PvE requirements that I didn’t want to take my time to do.

But still, in WvW you can do most of the requirements including:
Kill 30 ambient creatures
Collect 20 resources
Underwater kills
Cure X conditions
Do X interrupts
Res X allies
Get 50 kills
Kill 13 types of creatures
…and so on

Anyway, I could do most dailies in WvW in about 30 minutes if I put my mind to it. I tend to be lazy and just let them come which usually takes 60-90 minutes. And occasionally I have to go spend 5 more minutes after a WvW session to go do go finish off one of them in a starter zone (for max speed).

I’ve lost some kills b/c of downed state (power res) and I’ve gotten some extra kills b/c of downed state (someone focused on healing their buddy instead of taking care of me). All in all it is a net neutral to the game as far as favoring one play style over another. However, it can add quite a bit of tension to the game which is generally a positive.

BTW, if you are running a focused gank group, it takes about another 3-5 seconds (sometimes less) to put a downed player down permanently via dps or spiking them. Realistically, it isn’t a big deal. If it is, you need to make some adjustments to your play style and then it won’t be anymore.

Akkadian.7206:

As a member of BG since day 1, if the numbers/coverage and whatever else people seem to be harping about is so “unevenly stacked” in SoR’s favor, the fact that they haven’t been consistently double teamed 24/7 is funny. Yes, the addition of IRON has helped them tremendously and they have rallied and are no doubt stronger than ever, but having been in wvw on a daily basis, both BG and JQ only have themselves to blame. While they constantly fight each other, SoR manages to upgrade keeps, towers, etc. and then push the fight elsewhere. It seems like neither server (BG/JQ) is willing to double team SoR, because both are looking for ppt any way they can get it, which normally involves picking on whatever server is weakest at the time instead of constantly beating on the “bigger bully” together. Just my two cents. If Tier 2 can realize this and double team Stackbrand, it makes my head spin with why Tier 1 cant.

This is both a funny and amusing observation in general. By that I mean when SOR was not in first (which has been most of its existence in most tiers), there was always talk about why SOR didn’t team up with the other server to take out the first place server. There would be lots of chatting about it, active attempts not to attack server X followed by perceived border violations from server X and then talk about why we need to teach server X a lesson to not attack us and attack the first place server instead….which resulted in general warfare with server X while the first place server just sat back and farmed both of us at will.

So it seems to be a common problem (and not just a SOR or BG or JQ one) that the second and third place servers rarely can work together in a sustained fashion to bring down the first place server. Instead what happens is the first place server gets into a position of power and decides which of the other servers will be second or third place for the week.

I believe if second and third place servers actually double-team the first place server, it is an accident at best.

P.S. I should add that talk about double teaming has died down in the most recent months. I think we as a server gave up on trying to ally and just went looking for the fights….which was and is fine by me since you can’t control how others act but you can control how you do.

I do 99.9% WvW activities (mostly solo or small group roaming) and the damage on ACs now is just stupid. They are so good now that the “zergballs” you detest are setting them all the time just for regular open field battles b/c just one can turn the tide of battle.

I suspect what you are really happy about is this weapon will let you farm people far easier than before rather than having to work for it by pulling the gullible out of zergs and picking them off. Good for you. Bad for the game. Enjoy it while it lasts b/c either they tone it down or people will get discouraged and the WvW portion of the game goes the way of the Dodo as nobody likes being blown up by artillery.

Orrrrr….you can get another blob and beat it the old fashioned way in a nice, epic fight.

Seriously, if you want small scale battles you can:
1) go to the other side of the map where the blob isn’t
2) play in one of the multiple arenas
3) transfer to a low pop server or
4) quit the game which will serve multiple purposes of reducing the population and keeping the blob from annoying you.

Zidane.5297:

Jonto.2160:

I for one will be more happy in t2 than the map zergball that is t1. And many others in BG feels the same.

Exactly. Take today for an example on SoR BL. SoR had bluewater camp at T3 with a few players from TWL with someone on a ballista as well.

Four of us from oPP and two fellow BG brethren attack and when we were about to take it, a zergball from TSYM and TIME shows up and wipes us.

They got outplayed and needed to call in backup at a T3 camp for six people, even though they had the numbers advantage.

That is one way of looking at it. Another is you were operating in an environment where you should have known that a “zergball” could have showed up at any time. You chose to attempt to take the target anyway (kudos on going for it) and the forces holding it were able to delay you long enough for backup to come in and crush you.

WvW is for most intents and purposes a war simulator and this is pretty much real-life stuff that happens. The only difference is in real-life people don’t get to come onto the forums and post about it afterwards.

For example:

Gen. Lee: “WTF?!?!? Zergballer! 118k men against 64k @TheWinderness! You got no skillz.”

Gen. Grant: “Looser! GTFO”

Gen. Lee: “We will. Better fights in T2 anyway.”

I put something in the suggestion forums about this already as well. Character variety is fun for me and keeps me interested in WvW.

Bottom line is every time they put in vertical progression it reduces the viability of having many alts that are still competitive. They have already added other bits of vertical progression (ascended gear being foremost) and this is just another example.

As a side note, vertical progression in any kind of PvP eventually kills that PvP as new players always have further and further to go to become competitive. The only game I’ve played that handles vertical progression fairly well is EVE and that is b/c they use the concept of roles and loss well i.e. fighting in a really awesome ship means you could lose a lot of in game money.

It is death by a thousand little cuts.

So I made this suggestion based on a games system argument, but I’ll also add an economic one into the mix:

1) I mostly WvW
2) I like to play alts.
3) Anything that is not alt friendly will encourage me to use only one or two toons for WvW.
4a) The less toons I have and actively play, the less likely I (personally) am going to be to spend money in the cash shop to personalize them which is what most of the cash shop options revolve around.
4b) The less toons I have and actively play, the less likely I am to spend time in game which reduces the “stickiness” of the title for me.
5) That means less $$$ for ANet from me (and I have blown about $100 on this game since launch personalizing and gearing my toons to date).

The new WvW xp system is the second (or third) piece of vertical progression added to the game since launch. More onerously, it is character bound and not account bound which makes it particularly hostile to people like me who like to play multiple alts.

You have already established that you count other XP types as account bound, why should this be any different? Change the WvW xp to be account bound.

Preamble: I have an 80 Warrior (first toon), 80 Guardian and 80 Thief….all top geared. I also have a 70 Ranger plus I’ve dabbled in every other class to learn mechanics and such.

Now my $0.02:

My Guardian is better in an assault role such as hitting enemy groups, but has less ability to disengage. I have never tried him bunker so can’t comment there.

My Thief is much better 1v1 and harrassing back lines. Also pretty wicked in zergs with shortbow. And he can engage or disengage at will.

My Ranger (so far), is also better 1v1 and has better survivability than my warrior as well. Fun class once you get the condition cleanse trait.

That said, for team play, my warrior is pretty awesome with a banner and a 0/0/30/30/10 configuration running a hammer and a longbow. Near constant uptime with Signet of Rage, lots of regen for himself (200 per tick in Knight gear, 350 or so in cleric gear) and the group, perma-swiftness for himself and almost for group, decent CC, nice artillery shots with longbow and oodles of survivability (although less than a bunker Guardian from what I understand).

So warriors have at least one role (utility) in WvW they are pretty good at. However, I suspect a lot of disatisfaction with them is based on it not being a role a class with the name “warrior” would be doing.

As usual with all advice, ymmv.

I understand the way the OP is feeling atm, as I felt the same way about it last night and even said something about it in chat in EB. Then I shut the hell up.

I ran with Oldroar in his warbands in WAR and the number one best characteristic I can say about him as a field commander is his stoicism in the face of adversity. This may not make him a military genius but it did make for good times in the game since he didn’t worry about little issues like getting squished by overwhelming hoards of Destruction. He’d just pick himself and his warband up and go out and do what needed to be done again.

So if you are actually worried about sullying the “legacy of Rall”, then don’t complain about others and just worry about what you can do to help your side win.

When I run my warrior in WvW, it is mostly Hammer/Longbow with a Banner of Tactics and a 0/0/30/30/10 trait distribution. Lots utility (group perma speed buff and moderate healing), 75% uptime on Signet of Rage, good to excellent CC and acts as pretty decent artillery with the bow.

Quite frankly, best role I’ve found for him yet as my Guardian and Thief are much better at assault and dps/scout roles (respectively).

Orbs (hacking not-withstanding) were awesome. I loved the whole “XXX has the orb, we have to stop them at any cost” feeling it brought to WvW. Running the orb/guarding the runner was exciting b/c you knew a world of pain was coming your way and stopping them was an adrenaline rush.