Guild Wars 2

Stability in its current state is an issue. The issue spans from a few things, so lets address them one by one;

The first issue with Stability, which applies to boons in general in WvW (and the rest of the game) is there is currently way too many. This is an issue from a balance stand point, but the current direction of balance seems to be to up the number of boon strips. I don’t think this is a good direction to take WvW in, as with increased/more frequent boon strips we see stale fights where people refuse to push for fear of stability being corrupted/removed – causing them to effectively instantly die. An ideal fix for this would be to tone down the number of boons applied from skills and passively – causing there to be no need to further increase boon strips; however since that is a far fetched hope a ‘quick fix’ for WvW would be to alter the boon strip mechanics in WvW, to where instead of boon stripping all of a person’s stability stacks it strips 3. This means that even with the current boon strip creep we seem to be seeing people will not be afraid to push – as they do not have to worry about their stability being instantly gone (and them dying).

A secondary issue, which almost directly ties into the first, is the random nature of boon strips. The random nature of boon strips is a change I feel neutral about everywhere except WvW, where it causes issues like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wEzocIAiqo . The feeling of popping a skill to have it instantly negated with you literally having 0 counter play is not a good one, especially when that skill is essential to being able to push in WvW – the crux of the overarching meta. We have seen the consequences of not being able to push before, with the ‘pirateship meta’ buzzword that people use. This was one of the most boring times to play WvW, with neither side wanting to push for fear of instant death. The fix for this point could take many forms; you could re-implement a partial boon strip order, with stability late in the priority list, you could implement a full blown boon strip order which is uniform for every boon strip skill (something that has never been in the game), you could give stability a ‘grace period’ where it can’t be corrupted (~1.5-2 seconds would feel good). You could make these changes affect all the gamemodes, or just WvW.

Personally I think stability as a mechanic needs an overhaul. The direction I would take with this is a ‘breakbar’ style approach. Each stability granting/stun breaking skill increases your breakbar by a % – up to a cap of 100% and each hard CC takes from the breakbar (with a cooldown on how quickly CC can affect it, much like the current 0.75 ICD). When your breakbar hit 0 no explicit stun or daze effect happens – but instead you become vulnerable to hard CC (i.e a knockback or pull would now work on you). The breakbar would have a steady degeneration to it, and all soft CC (chill, cripple, immob etc) would still function as normal (with the exception of fear, which would affect the breakbar and could only be applied once the bar is broken). I would show a small blue bar under the health bars on the party and squad UI to show the breakbars to the rest of the group. This gives you a visual representation of if you can make a push or not, it allows other group members to see if they should use ‘breakbar filling skills’ on you and it allows the enemy an easier to read visual prompt on if they should CC you. This removes the whole “boon strip” issue from Stability entirely, as it moves Stability of the boon bar and into a game mechanic.

Love that that dungeons weren’t even acknowledged.

Proposal Overview
Guild Commander Tag
– A commander tag unlocked via influence (10,000) and guild WvW kills (100,000 across the entire guild) OR influence (20,000) and Merits (50). Both options should be added to keep acquiring the tags simple and easy for all game modes that use it (disregarding sPvP, which doesn’t currently involve commander tags). Once it has been researched all players in the guild with a commander tag get an orange (guild coloured) icon – that is only visible to players representing the guild AND players that right click the guild commander and join squad (the option would still be usable even though you can not see the tag). This means public invited players can still join in with guild events and coordination can be kept.

Goal of Proposal
- To allow guilds to do closed events and split off from the ‘casual community’. Content in this game is moving towards a guild based direction, in the form of organized world events and WvW guild ‘raids’. Please don’t keep restricting the player base by enforcing public only commander tags. Currently in WvW guild groups run without commander tag – using the target system to track the group leader. This is sub-optimal as it then strips the target functionality away from the group – which you could use for single target focus. A guild based commander tag would resolve this problem completely – and still not prevent public players from following; only they would be strongly discouraged. For large scale PvE events you often see commander tags when a guild is running it – mainly because multiple groups need to keep in contact with position information all the time and the target functionality wouldn’t work. By introducing guild commander tags you allow for Wurm and Tequatl runs by guilds to be more organized and more private by cutting down on the public players present. This means guilds have a bit more control over who takes part in their guild world events (an upgrade unlocked via the guild panel, yet can be consumed by everyone – not really fair considering its large cost. Also when this system is used you get little notification or credit to the guild, unlike a hero banner for instance) but can still allow public access.

Proposal Functionality
- A orange coloured commander tag unlocked by guild unlocks (prices broken down above) that can only be seen by people in the guild – or people who right click the person with the tag up (even thought they can’t see his tag) and join squad.
- When guild-representation are swapped with a tag up of guild colour the colour is switched to blue.
Associated Risks
- Cuts out public players who do not know about guild events. This is a good thing from the guilds point of view, but a bad thing from the public players. I think this system strikes a good boundary with the right-click-squad functionality not completely cutting them out. (Allowing for organization)

Well you need a Brown and a Polar Bear and a longbow and a short bow and you need Apothecary’s armor and Settler’s weapons. 30/20/20/0/0 traits, but don’t take any major traits – they are overrated. You basically just spam everything, and for utilities you run Search and Rescue, Protect me and Guard. On your elite run Spirit Of Nature for amazing party support. If anyone goes down you’ve got it with loads of rezzes for all!

If you ever actually need to heal run heal as one, but I don’t think you will ever actually go that low. Have fun showing off your Dreamer!

Zamiel.2130:

Zplus.4217:

WvW hacks? Where do we start?
Cross profession skills hack (eg. Elementalist who uses death shroud, warr who uses ele skills.)

Saw that today, an SOS warrior (had two warrior signets showing) using Mist Form.

Superior Rune of Vampirism
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Vampirism

Personally I would like to see none of the proposed subdivisions take priority at the current time and instead look towards an optional reduction of visual noise. While not directly within the WvW teams hands(?) I would like to see an option for “Adaptive Culling” where, when activated the game will automatically reduce model quality/the number of player models shown to maintain a playable framerate in the large scale clashes which would then be automatically turned up again outside of these fights (perhaps with a slider to alter the severity of the culling); this alongside a better Effect LOD option (where you have it broken down into multiple layers (detailed below)) would make the large scale clashes a better experience for everyone. Persoanlly I have an overclocked i7 at 5.1GHz with dual-overclocked-980TIs and can’t maintain 30fps in large scale clashes with Effect LOD off – so I dread to think how lesser systems are handling it, and I feel that adding “adaptive culling” QoL changes would help in this area.

I mentioned that I would like to see Effect LOD broken down into subparts; these are the following divisions I would like to see:

- Friendly Effects
- – Combo Fields
- – Crowd Control Fields
- – AoE (AoE effects that have no Combo Field or Crowd Control associated with them)
- – Projectiles
- – Melee Attacks
- – Auto Attacks (Would also be filtered by projectiles and melee attacks depending on the attack)
- – Other (i.e Coalescence of Ruin, Dragon Banner etc would be toned down by this. Skills that do not fall into any of the other areas)

- Enemy Effects
- – Combo Fields
- – Crowd Control Fields
- – AoE
- – Projectiles
- – Melee Attacks
- – Auto Attacks
- – Other

- Exceptions
- – Always Show High Damage Skills (i.e Coalescence of Ruin, Gunflame, Killshot etc. High damage (might have a wind up) skills that need to be dodged)
- – Always show Party Skills (Always shows skills used by your party/subsquad)
- – Always show Squad Skills (Always shows skills used by your squad)

These would all ideally be sliders, so we could alter the severity of the LOD on each type (all ideally with a checkbox to toggle ‘automatic culling’ on the effects as well, to optionally increase the severity of the culling when the framerate drops . If checkbox is not checked then the maximum amount of LOD is the level the slider is at (i.e. if the slider is at maximum and the framerate drops with the box unchecked no LOD will occur. If the box is checked then LOD will happen, up to the severity shown by the slider). The slider would prioritize skills closest to you; so with a slider on “enemy autoattacks” at 10, only the 10 closest enemy auto attacks would have effects (they would still have animations). It is important that this is a number, not a %, as it allows the user to precisely control the minimum amount of effects shown in fights. A slider would range from 0 (no skills of that type shown in heavy fights) to 100+ (the same as unculled, so no matter the intensity of the fight no culling would occur on that type, unless the checkbox was checked).

Animations would still continue to play as normal (animation drop down is for that).

With the “adaptive culling” option for player model number and quality I would also like to see them transitioned to sliders (like the proposed effect LOD changes) and again, broken down into friendly and enemy. You could build them in as part of the effect LOD system, by adding “Models” to the list of effects and having an exception for Party models and Squad models.
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I know this is not specifically the WvW team’s area, but these changes would have huge positive impacts for the large scale fights often observed in the WvW gamemode, with a knock-on effect in PvE with the world boss fights having increased FPS. These suggestions would help improve the QoL for players playing with any type of rig, and would help improve individual skill level in the fights.

Can you have a simple way of requesting the current patch number (so I can cache stuff with each patch)?

warriorjrd.8695:

LJMaster.6214:

I hate the word blob. I had a group of 45 and I was running without tag, 35 DVG, 10 friendlies, and it was absolutely epic on viz bl! What am I supposed to do? Turn some guildies away and tell our friends to stop following us? Why does it matter if GoD run with 40 people and you run with 20? Maybe if you acted in a different way you’d have more than 19 friends That ZBs guild I mentioned earlier were epic, they had about 45 also and because they were incredibly organised they could achieve anything, with a group of about 20 you can have some nice fights, but you can’t exactly dominate a battlefield.

It was fun fighting against ECL and the other SFR guild on viz bl tonight, apologies for not remembering the tag. We’re struggling a bit for coverage this week, or maybe we just need to organise our foces more. SFR are very impressive with their organisation, it is really impressive.

Whether or not you can help it, if you run with a large number of players, thats a blob. It doesn’t matter if it’s one guild or 80% one guild and 20% another. And I think what you meant is you hate the negative taste attached with the word blob. The reason blobs are looked down upon is because when you blob, you usually force the other servers to blob so that they can counter you, and when two blobs meet in combat the server simply cannot handle it. Also when smaller guild group are trying to work on squad play and get some nice smaller scale fights and then they get steam rolled by 60 people it’s pretty annoying. The fact remains is that every server blobs and there’s nothing you can really do to stop it.

Let us look deeper into this. Blobbing is used as a term to define a ‘zerg’ of 45+ players in most contexts. There should be no reason why they are frowned upon and no reason they force any special counter. Blobs can be stopped by a much smaller group of players if they know what they are doing – I know this as I have done it. Blobs are not something WvWers should hate on or use as an insult, but should embrace them as part of the system. Instead of complaining about the blobs we should start to respect them. There is no reason someone should feel offended to be part of a blob or stop it. The same goes with golem rushes, and ACs in open field fights. Yes, we should use them. Why? As it will let us win. You can’t deny yourself an advantage because it ’doesn’t feel right’. You should use every legitimate tactic to win – blobbing included.
td;dr – Blobbing is fine.

The heal skill has AoE condi-cleanse of several conditions, which seems a little imbalanced for WvW. Please tell me that this isn’t use-able in WvW – as I don’t see condi-cleanse in a party being balanced. “poison, torment, confusion, and toxin” will be cleansed – meaning effort by the enemy zerg to stack these conditions will be redundant.

Poison is the main one for zerg play, as it also stops heals from being as potent as usual. With that cleanse being available it just reinforces a zergs ability to stack and blast a water field to survive. This also will counter treb. poison clouds as well, as when they are gone you can just pop this skill and they will have had little effect on your party (past the draining supply effect).

Also, as it removes confusion that destroys some builds (perplexity and engi/mesmer builds to name a few) that rely on that condition. By giving all classes another way to cleanse it, you’re just devaluing those builds more. If you are introducing this heal skill as a way to ‘fix’ perplexity runes I see this as a very lazy fix.

I guess we will have to see when the patch hits how this will impact the game, but adding more condi-cleanse to all classes is going to upset the balance a bit no doubt.

Even when you have in world bubbles disabled the new Job-o-Tron back item still shows the in world bubbles. This is annoying for people who are recording and have deliberately disabled the in world bubbles due to them clouding the video. If all NPC dialog and all /say chat are not shown, why is it that this back item gets through?

Redball.7236:

There’s no need for sarcastic replies when someone actually wants advice.. come on guys.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBlYD7koiqgjswqCWLDErH7Z/BizIRHyfoUA-jwxAYLBZyfgoCwJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVDA-e

I use this on my ranger for fractals.
You have sword ready for if you feel like you can comfortably melee something, and shortbow for the rest of the time.

Warhorn provides good group fury as well as you have spotter which is a great partywide DPS boost along with frost spirit.

Armor is Berserker but if you don’t feel like you can survive in this, swap in a few knights pieces.

Search & Rescue and the elite spirit can be slotted in if you’re in a group where the rest of the team goes down often.

You basically linked my build I told them to run but went with inferior traits, skills and armor. I fail to see why you think this build brings any benefit to the table when you have my super support build already. Yes, maybe this ‘build’ would superseded the Guardian meta, but in all honesty I think you are about as trash running that build as a Engineer is in dungeons (I mean do people play them?). I strongly object to you concerns with my build raised – as the skills chosen bring ample party support, an abundance of pet buffs (added damage) and a good trait setup. I don’t know why you chose to take a negative approach when communing your idea of a build (if you could even call it that) to me. I have no inclination on why you immediately took a negative stance and forced me into this reflexive defensive one, I take it it is because you are a bad ranger player and tried to take the hate out on me. I suggest you stand down before this escalates further.

If this is and advertisement for yourself or dF I would never play with you. You’re running the signet and still go downed, you tome without stability – you GS leap the wrong direction and you’re using your stability as a personal stun break. To top it all of your staff orb is never detonated/cast without interruption. You are being heavily carried in this video – I really wouldn’t use it as promo material. By the way, get on tag.

I just wanted to say something on these matchup threads before they are removed.

For those that don’t know (and why should you) I have become leader of Da Pain Train [PT] on Desolation, after Ins For Da Wagh paused playing the game. As this is now the last chance to say this I would like to thank Gandara, and AR for the amazing play this week; along with all the other past servers we faced. Before you get the wrong idea of Desolation from these threads allow me to assure you I know most of the fights we outnumber you 3:2 at least, and I know that the in-game and forum hate you get for being ‘bigger than Deso’ when we outnumber you. I wish to apologize on behalf of these people, and the foul reputation they have given Desolation over the the last year.

I also know that several members from PT have been contributing to this awful behavior. For this I am greatly sorry. Everyone in PT who has done such a thing has been spoken to by me, and were all of them told not to repeat their actions. I wish to show that while I lead PT I will not tolerate what is currently the norm for Desolation players, I want to make a difference in our reputation. I had wished to wait a few weeks so you could see the new PT, however as these threads are closing I was rushed into making this thread.

I understand many of you will not believe these claims to be true about PTs future, and the movement away from the 80-man-blob nature, but I assure you I am making an effort. PT now has a guild build spreadsheet – with guild recommended builds, and has halved in size in the recent weeks. I am truly trying to create a better guild for Desolation to be proud of, unlike some guilds we are home to.

Finally I wish to thank everyone who has fought us. It maybe hard to believe after some past Desolation comments, but I am grateful that you kept returning to fight even after wiping, always trying in fights and for the wipes you put our zerg through. Without failure we cannot hope to improve, so when you capture towers and keeps, or wipe us in open field or defending I remember and learn from the experience. You are helping both me become a better commander and player, as well as educating the people who follow me. Thank you for the matchups.

[Forgot to say, feel free to mail me in game or whisper me about any of this. Also, if you wish to fight PT we raid (open and closed) from 7pm onwards on Tue,Wed,Thur and try for Fridays (if reset queue lets us) and then do PuG commanding on weekends. ]