Guild Wars 2

As the title says. Any guilds looking for some more players?

DeWolfe.2174:

“Global Theaters of War” = no thank you.

I completely disagree with your nonresponse to his detailed proposal. It still could use some tinkering but the world model has been outdated for a very long time, and looking into why it doesn’t work for the majority of wvw players is probably one of the most important tasks for the dev team. That, and scrapping the new maps, or getting rid of the duplicate bl’s.

New with the patch:

When DS ends naturally through decay or through damage taken, any actions currently being performed are interrupted.

This includes ressing, stomping, and other actions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DS-nerfed-again

I would like # 289

Anchoku.8142:

Blood Magic is a distasteful investment for me. Only wells CD reduction feels worth doing. WoB was nerfed and I am still trying to figure out why. It is not as if Necro’s group heal was game-breaking. Heal and vampiric scaling are weak.

Maybe it was a combination of putting wells traits in a healing line. Wells are deservedly popular so healing has to be bad.

It was nerfed for one reason.

Anet wanted a new aura, and they didn’t want Necros to be able to supply the field for it for too long.

They thought they did the adjustment correctly, only they did not, and I don’t think they will acknowledge that.

I know for a fact that at least some of these threads are read by decision makers.

Troll Thread from a few days ago was deleted. For the same reason, I am certain they ignore troll posters like some of the posts in this thread.

When someone responds to a well thought-out post with:

“Whateva, didn’ read. Because some necros have signed up for the touney, that proves your idea sucks”

Its pretty clear the Developers know which posts to read, and which posts to discount.

They can also see which classes you primarily play. If you post that necros are perfect, yet you don’t play them, it doesn’t help your argument.

Just a thought.

As flow said, Axe is 600 range.

The problem with axe is – as many people have said – its autoattack is one of the worst autos in the game. 3/4 cast time with reduced aftercast (thanks patch) that requires a target to hit. This means no hits through stealth, no pass-by ambient kills, and the worst part, players can walk into you and avoid the attack entirely.

Its damage/power ratio is very low as well.

Axe is solely used for #2 and #3 skills in power builds with axe training.

Dagger auto (even with range limit) is so far above Axe its not even funny.

To improve axe, I would suggest the auto become an aoe (3 people max) requiring no target.

Narkodx.1472:

Apokriphos.7042:

According to the Q/A response I got, the developers balance the classes using strictly team Pvp. Using this rationale, Necromancers are supposedly most balanced there.

I don’t agree with that assessment or the approach in general; ignoring all other game modes for balance purposes seems ridiculous in any game, let alone GW2.

The current meta tPvp necro build running terror is strong enough to be ‘competitive’ at higher end tPvp. It relies on a lot of automatic fear procs, supported by the same mindset that gave us the recently buffed Nightmare Runes. However, other classes with higher potential skill caps will dominate said necro, given both players are equally skilled, because our strength is balanced around those involuntary procs.

snip

Yes all class balance is with tPvP in mind – which is how it should be the game should not be balanced for 1v1 or WvW roaming or Pve or anything else besdies the only competitive format we have – Class balance should only be for competitive formats

This is a huge problem; balancing a game solely through team PvP when most of the development is focused on PvE.

Lets state some truths about the Necromancer:

-Necros are inherently a selfish class.

-Necros have low to no group utility in high end dungeons.

-Necros have no leaps, no vigor, long cast times/recharge rate, no combo fire fields, and their class mechanic is meant to be everything from our escape to our substitute for invulnerability that every other class gets innately.

Because of these issues, the Necromancer is strong in 1v1, in tPvp, where players don’t run off and reset the fight, because you are forced to fight around possession of points using your DS as a 2nd life bar. Anywhere else, the strength of our class falls off drastically.

As I said before, the current meta necro build relies on automatic fear procs through Nightmare Runes. Once Anet nerfs those runes (and I believe they will), the build’s strength in tPvP will be drastically reduced. No other meta build has such glaring weaknesses, and it is a huge design flaw to make a meta build built around an overpowered rune set and then call the class ‘balanced’.

You can redesign a celestial ele if they nerf the strength runeset (again) and it will still be part of the Meta. Not so with the Necromancer.

According to the Q/A response I got, the developers balance the classes using strictly team Pvp. Using this rationale, Necromancers are supposedly most balanced there.

I don’t agree with that assessment or the approach in general; ignoring all other game modes for balance purposes seems ridiculous in any game, let alone GW2.

The current meta tPvp necro build running terror is strong enough to be ‘competitive’ at higher end tPvp. It relies on a lot of automatic fear procs, supported by the same mindset that gave us the recently buffed Nightmare Runes. However, other classes with higher potential skill caps will dominate said necro, given both players are equally skilled, because our strength is balanced around those involuntary procs.

Especially in light of the recent bug fix to DS, please also correct this Death Shroud glitch.

Jim Hunter.6821:

This was my original thought but I’m afraid this would end up with people manipulating the score by getting a good lead and just logging off for the week. That’s why I feel a temporary hard cap is a better solution. It might suck for some people at first but in the end it would improve WvW.

Players, or servers, can feel free to get a good lead and then log off. However, I don’t think that will happen.

As a fellow WvW player, you should know:

We play for the challenge.

We play for the fun of randomly encountering an enemy in different places every time that you must outsmart to beat.

We play for the Sandbox PvP aspect of it, where you can mine nodes, do quests, use siege and duel all in the same place.

In addition, doing as you say would be much less important if individual player kills were incorporated into the PPT system.

Good luck winning if your lead is whittled away every time someone on your artificially empty server dies.

nirvana.8245:

So many terrible ideas that would screw over WvW dedicated players and guilds that have spent the last 2 years building upon their servers and communities. How can yall throw out such rediculous ideas to Anet? Are you trying to destroy this game mode and its dedicated players?

Don’t like our ideas? Then provide your own.

Imbalance in player population is a huge issue in WvW, as the Devs have acknowledged in this very thread.

Take a look at the current matchups. My server is utterly smothering the other two servers in with it, which causes less random players to log into WvW.

This is of course because everyone wants to be on the Largest server, because – easy wins, ego boosting, and free bags.

In World vs World, Balance is nonexistent.

Some players may like it that way. Perhaps because they enjoy greatly outnumbering their foe(s) and dancing on their poor, sword-ridden corpse. Or perhaps because they like the feeling of decimating, with certainty, whomever they come across that is of less number then they.

However, I don’t feel this is the way it should be. Players stack servers during “tournaments” so they can be on the most populated, guaranteed a high position and reward. Is that how you want your game to work?

ArenaNet, why not auto-balance WvW? You already do it to some extent with Hotjoin.

The idea will work like this:

Autobalance occurs when one color outnumbers the lowest by 10 or more.

Then all players on the large population sides are notified that – if they remain in this map they will be moved to EoTM or placed in Queue. They will have 1 minute to decide which to choose, and then forced to EoTM.

This is the idea.

The benefits of this change would greatly reduce server stacking, off-hours PvDooring, and make WvW a more balanced and also more challenging game mode – requiring more skill and less simple numerical advantage.

Example:
Green: 45
Red: 40
Blue: 38

No change.

Green: 55
Red: 40
Blue: 38

After 2-5 minutes like this, 8 random Green players would get a pop-up telling them to please queue for another BL or move to EoTM. They could then move to another map if they so choose.

Numbers become:

Green: 47
Red:40
Blue:38

The result of this change would also allow massive groups of players to be challenged because they would know that there are almost their number on the map somewhere.

This would promote stronger organization among the servers.
It would promote more skillful gameplay.

Guilds would still be able to face off on eachother, but there would be less of an imbalance when they do so. Individual players in WvW would feel like their presence is more impactful.

This system is flexible.

It would work during resets when massive numbers of players flush each color (during the 2-5min ‘adjustment time’ the populations can change) while simultaneously addressing the night-cappers/coverage problem that occurs in off-hours.

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

• population caps
• merge servers
• Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

Merging Servers won’t work.

Players want to join the server that provides the most wins for the least effort. Unless the newly merged server does that, players will simply hop somewhere else as things are.

Battle Groups (GvG) could work in its own game mode with pre-enforced player limits, such as teams of 50 going at it.

WvW is too dynamic, and its open world join/leave layout directly conflicts with organized, balanced GvG in any sort of rated scale.

If we are going to keep the current structure unchanged, what we need is the third option.

I have written my idea before and see variations of it in this thread, so I will link and repost again for convenience.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Balance-in-WvW-Who-likes-1-vs-Zerg

Please help me bring this bug to the developers attention. I made a bug post for it and would greatly appreciate keeping it higher in the bug forum.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necro-Bug-Interrupted-during-Death-Shroud/

JonathanSharp.7094:

Apokriphos.7042:

What are your thoughts on current Class Balance in Dungeons, sPvp, and 5 man roaming WvW?

Are there any plans to make classes that lack group utility useful in these game modes? Perhaps more frequent balancing, as in GW1?

Hey Apokripho (cool name btw)!

@balance in different game types: Class balance for those 3 game types differs, based on class and the game type, obviously.

For instance, in WvW, swiftness is a very important tool, while being less crucial in Dungeons (if you’re in fights a lot of the time). What we usually talk about in balance discussions is how some class specs will be stronger in one game type than they are in others, and that’s ok.

@class group utility: I hope I’m reading your meaning correctly on this one. We try to make sure that we spread this stuff out into different “buckets” for each class. So if you have a ton of damage in a spec, you probably won’t have as many ways to dole out tons of CC as well. If a spec does have that, we try to bring down one of those aspects of the spec. For instance, the new Ranger specs we’re seeing dish out a TON of damage at range, but they are relatively squishy if you get right on them (compared to say, a defensive Guardian’s ability to tank damage), and they have no way to really deal with enemy boons effectively.

@more frequent balancing: We do 2 major “modes” of balancing – one is the feature pack balancing, which just happened this week. We try to put out a lot of new stuff for the classes, and try to spread out the changes. Once that happens, we watch the game for a while and listen to the players. This can happen in game, it can happen in VOD’s, Twitch, Youtube, the forums, etc.

After we give a patch a few weeks to settle, we then look at our second mode of course correcting, which is done by making smaller changes if we feel they’re necessary (shaving down something that feels way too powerful, or bringing something up that feels way too under powered), while also scoping out balance changes for the next feature release!

Hope that helps!

-Chap

Dear Mr. Sharp,

I really appreciate you for taking the time to respond to my question, and for giving us – the players – more insight into how balancing decisions are made.

Do you think it would be possible to include the aforementioned game modes (High-end Dungeons, 5 man WvW roaming) when making future balancing decisions?

Currently, a class that might seem on relatively equal footing in one game mode can be completely unwanted in other game modes, such as Dungeons.

For example, the Necromancer class may be balanced for sPVP but in speed-run Dungeons/Fractals it has the fatal flaw of no group beneficial ability (reflect, teleport, mass stealth, mass quickness, boon stacking, etc) to justify its party slot. Boon removal, as some have mentioned, does not seem very effective in dungeons.

According to these threads (below), excel spreadsheet calculations, and the current meta, most players seem to agree:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Best-to-worst-dungeon-dps-classes
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-group-DPS-Calculator
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Guide-How-to-speedrun-dungeon
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Class-for-dungeoning
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/ONLY-guard-warrior-ele-dungeons-fractals

Will future balances take these issues into account so that all classes will be more equitably valued in all game modes?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Apokriphos.7042:

Hey Chris,

We really appreciate you responding so frequently in these forums, even to negative posts. Communication is always a good thing, and I really dont think anyone else has responded to player concerns as much as you.

What are your thoughts on current Class Balance in Dungeons, sPvp, and 5 man roaming WvW?

Are there any plans to make classes that lack group utility useful in these game modes? Perhaps more frequent balancing, as in GW1?

Hi Apok,

I will ask some better informed folks to chip in and have a discussion with you.

Cheers

chris

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/29

Obviously I am excited, as I made the post and got a reply.

However, I can’t wait to hear the balance developers discuss this in real time. It will give us in the community who care most about class balance an “ear to the floor” of their design philosophy, and perhaps a chance to convince them of our thoughts.

Hopeful the developer team will take a look at this issue

Hey Chris,

We really appreciate you responding so frequently in these forums, even to negative posts. Communication is always a good thing, and I really dont think anyone else has responded to player concerns as much as you.

What are your thoughts on current Class Balance in Dungeons, sPvp, and 5 man roaming WvW?

Are there any plans to make classes that lack group utility useful in these game modes? Perhaps more frequent balancing, as in GW1?

Tim.6450:

Apokriphos.7042:

1 field (staff marks, haha)

we got 8 fields in normal land based situations.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_necromancer_combo_skills

1 field (staff marks, haha), and almost no finishers on any weapon. Did you really need to selectively quote just that part?

Those fields are basically for well users only. Not only that, but with no usable (non 20%) finishers on our ‘land’ weapons, we can’t make much use of them solo, unlike all other classes.

Necromancer brings nothing to the table for group utility.

Better to post a bug report. I don’t think developers read this forum. It’s more used as a place for us to let out our feelings and cool down.

There have been a lot of upset threads from players who primarily play Necromancer lately.

This is partially due how much we care about our class, but it is also due to how map explore, trait/bag slot/item unlocks are bound to a single character. Many of us are forcibly stuck to this class above and beyond the point by which most people would have long abandoned it while our role as a class continues to be nerfed to obsolescence.

We don’t just complain to complain, we complain when something sucks (and we applaud when something is awesome). Eventually we run out of energy and stop complaining (it’s tiring being mad), but that doesn’t make it suck any less, that just means we’ve given up caring.

I took this from Mystic’s post in an earlier thread, and I felt obligated to share it here.

The problem with Necromancer isn’t related to a single trait or feature, such as Death Shroud. The problems with the class are myriad.

Necromancers have longer cast times and longer cooldowns in both weapon skills and utilities.

Necromancers don’t offer much if any group utility in Dungeons that isn’t better offered by another class.

No reflects, 1 field (staff marks, haha), and almost no finishers on any weapon.

Necromancers have 1 source of stability that can be used while untransformed, and you can only do so by flashing DS and eliminating any benefit from the supposed “Second Healthbar”.

Necromancers don’t have access to vigor, no access to leaps, no access to dodge enhancement, no access to teleports without preplacement.

Necromancers have the worst downstate, as many polls have agreed to.

You can’t just take an ability, like Death Shroud, and say Necro would be OP if this changed because you can imagine a ranger, theif, warrior, ele, etc being OP with DS.

It isn’t even remotely the same.

Necromancer was balanced around DS from the Beta, and its all been downhill since then.

By the way, Vampiric Traits do scale. They scale horribly. No Necromancer would ever play Apothecary by the way, we don’t have enough survivability to manage a kill while wearing with, with aforementioned extra long cooldowns and almost no DS buildup when playing Condition Weapon Necro.

Healing Power Vampiric
1388 38
1223 37
923 35
465 33
300 32
0 31

If that was the case Necromancer would have received changes that gave them group utility.

They received NERFS to the miniscule amount of group utility they had (Well of Blood).

Bumping this post

Given the recent observations, I went ahead and posted a bug report of this issue.

It does seem like a bug. Why would they give us the ability to perform actions in DS if we can’t perform an action we started when entering DS?

Interact now works while in Death Shroud. However, activating Death Shroud interrupts all actions.

As a 0 cast time skill, it should not interrupt skills being performed by the caster mid-performance. This interrupt defeats the purpose of gaining interact in Death Shroud and must be a bug.

Why give the ability to perform actions in DS if we can’t perform an action we started when entering DS?

Link to video

Thanks for confirming.

Before Plague:
[img]http://i57.tinypic.com/2jam6nb.jpg[/img]

During Plague:
[img]http://i58.tinypic.com/2m7vjie.jpg[/img]

manveruppd.7601:

Xae.7204:

They’re all pretty bad right now. I would put a Signet there instead of the Elites if I could.

Plague is still great in pvp, makes you tankier for those few seconds you need to survive while help arrives. I normally run Golem when I’m queueing solo and Plague only in organised groups (where you can actually EXPECT help when you call for it), but with the nerfs to charge I might switch to Plague full time.

Please see my recent post. Plague form no longer gives any bonus toughness.

I am looking to confirm this from the Necro community:

I just tested Plague Form post patch and it no longer gives any bonus toughness.

Was it always this way or stealth nerf?

Cannot Upgrade Elegant Tailor’s Backpack with Jewels.

Although it says it is upgrade capable, no upgrades can be placed in this item.

Arghore.8340:

What we lost though:

A. While I realise that from the 150/200 or so skills per profession in GW1, even with a dual profession system, only a small portion of them were actually used in the most viable builds. But due to the large amount of skills, ‘balance’ changes were almost always interesting as skills faded in or out of the meta.

Also, due to a large amount of builds usually involving 4 to 5 skills (including an elite), there was the option to gear 3 to 4 skills to your individual preference or play style. And where there were specialized builds (all 8 skills were needed), they usually involved an entirely different play style (f/e BiP builds) that were a challenge to learn and offered a nice change of pace, and were only needed in a few specific maps.

The amount of skills and the build options in GW2 are really saddening, objectively speaking there are roughly 4 builds per profession, which are cut apart and mingled together. Due to ‘balance’ choices, only 1 or 2 of them are actually viable, and within these builds there is absolute no freedom to do your own thing.

although I realize that I’m likely fairly biased, as just messing around with builds was something I liked doing on a regular basis; simply trying to find something new or interesting.

B. The reason for dumbing down the skill system was said to be done due to a lack of understanding from players, in regards to the complexity of the game. Same was said for conditions and buffs.

But I would argue that the current system in GW2 is even more complex, yet, the complexity isn’t an interesting one based upon build choices. It is complex due to the large amount stat combo’s and trying to figure out which one would benefit your build the most.

Now look at the conditions, GW1 had 10 of them, GW2 has 12. I will say that the amount of ‘Boons’, which can be compared to ‘enchantments’ in GW1, has received a considerable reduction, from 261 enchantments, down to 9 boon effects. I am sure I do not have to explain how this made the boons less interesting as a play style. The same can be said by removing the 264 Hexes that were in GW1, because ‘yes’ in a sense they can be viewed as ‘conditions’, so the reduction was there, from 274 individual hexes & conditions down to 12 conditions.

Design problem with both of them the human mind can only process about 7 different things at a time; preferably you subcategorise anything that comes above 6 (maybe even 5). So having 12 different conditions is cognitive bad design, it doesn’t make it one bit easier than having 274 different things … It would have been cognitively better to subcategorise in something like: Conditions (5-6) , Effects (5-6), Curses (5-6), Hexes (5-6). Obviously the same can be said by boons, subcategories like Boons (5-6), Enchantments (5-6).

C. While I acknowledge that the large amount of damage types in GW1 may have been confusing (fire, ice, shadow, physical, etc http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_type ); doing away with them entirely made the game increasingly more boring, and to some extend less believable. Burning a Lava creature is one of the most laughable things in GW2 and somewhat of an insult to the RPG genre as a whole…

Here the same cognitive limit applies (as with conditions & boons), limiting this feature to 6 would make it easier to comprehend and process. F/e limiting them to elemental types (fire, ice, earth, water, physical) and resistance to them would have been enough to provide an interesting and believable system. Add to this Defiance and you have a system of 6…

D. Where the system in GW1 consisted of ‘7’ stats, 1 being the profession specific stat, and 6 (2x 3 – 3 for each of 2 professions) typical stats, with corresponding runes. With a corresponding restriction to the min-req. on weapons. Staying within the cognitive limit (or close to it at least).

We now have 16 different stats, where some of them are also a ‘hidden’ combination of 2 of them. Not only runes provide stats, but also the armour, and the weapons, as well as traits. Well I have already pointed out how the GW2 system is more complex in a boring sense, and more confusion than GW1. This is the how and why in my views.

I agree with everything you said here. Really succinct synopsis on the differences between the games.

Any system can be manipulated. After all, that is why we are in our current situation -with massive server stacking for easy wins.

Addressing your point , there are a variety of things you can do to combat a guild purposefully leaving all at once to combat a golem rush.

You could make it so that queues adjust based on this system as well.

Sure they can all leave at once to try to game the system and disrupt your rush, but now they are all stuck in queues on other maps. Queue could be the number of the lowest pop server +10, same as autobalance.

You can also have the readjustment occur during longer time periods. Instead of 1 minute, it could happen every 2,5 or 10.

You could also limit it to happening only outside of combat.

This system could be versatile as it needs to be and would still allow for much more skillful play.

This would result in less numerical advantage being the only decider in a win.

GW2 developers switched from GW1 massively customizable skill system to a more limited skills to weapons bind for GW2 for ease of balance. It is reasonable to assume that this would make their job easier in this game.

We can’t overstate how tough achieving true balance is. Grouch and the rest of the Balance Team have their work cut out for them.

However, I feel there are many ways to make their job easier. Quantifiable means to demonstrate class success in various Game Modes. John Smith frequently demonstrates his use of statistics to control the growth of the GW2 Marketplace.

Why can’t the same principle be put to use for Class Balance for the highest skilled modes?

Soloq and Teamq should have verifiable class distributions at the highest rankings. You see favored classes in Paid Tournaments, and I am sure developers can see this information too. Once this data is collated, can the developers see which classes are good, and which need help?

The same should be possible for high end dungeon runs based on the class distribution and time the instances are opened and closed. This data is already available through informal player polls.

Lastly, I imagine most developers would feel that players would always be incentivized to seek improvements for their favorite class to the detriment of others. Even including this doubt, Necromancer supporters are justified based on the aforementioned concrete player polls – specifically for Downed Skill Utility, for sPvp High End Tournaments, for High End Dungeon Runs.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen high end dungeon requests that specifically say No Necromancers.

It is common knowledge among players that Necromancers need more help to be wanted in Skilled Team Play, the stated focus of GW2 for the future of ESports.

Developers, please take a second look at this class.

Again, thank you everyone for your replies.

dancingmonkey.4902:

You just solved your own problem with a comment here. Go play in the edge of the mist. You can have balanced fights in there. If your so keen on it being an option for everyone else, then go do it yourself.

It is common knowledge that Edge of the Mists is the least balanced game mode that Arena Net has developed. It revolves around uplevels following a commander to PvDoor keeps and towers while avoiding other Zergs.

In fact, a player just posted reaching maximum rank while following such a Zerg in EoTM. What EoTM has accomplished is devaluing the concept of WvW points since they are so much easier to achieve in EoTM.

Dancingmonkey, you should play EoTM so you can understand this game mode.

I noticed some responders are from Blackgate. Blackgate is currently (as some of you have said) the Most Populated Server for coverage and numbers in WvW. My proposed suggestion would force Blackgate to be challenged more then they are currently.

I acknowledge that this change, if implemented, would cause players who had paid gems to transfer to this server for an easy win to be upset. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

However, the end goal is a good one, skill would become more rewarding in WvW then sheer coverage and numbers.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

No one has addressed any of the major questions I raised in my previous response so I will relist it here:

Simply saying that the current Server Point Dive (see this very forum) pre tournament or the rush of transfers to high numbered servers is simply PvErs who will leave once they finish massively understates the current problems with WvW.

Wvw is not a real skill based battlefield. It is becoming identical to PvE World Bosses, where massive numbers of players fight (via gems) to be on the most populated map so they can win. Thats it.

As of now, there simply is no way a lesser numbered server can compete with a greater numbered one. It makes the upcoming Tournament predictable – and the server stacking is all the proof in the world.

Thank you for the comments. I will address each separately.

EnemyCrusher:

Issue #1: You seem to believe there would be a direct boot to EoTM.

According to my proposal, players over the maximum limit would be able to choose to requeue for their current map, or any other BL as well. Only not choosing would move them to EoTM.

Perhaps players who were forced back in Queue multiple times could get some sort of limited protection against autobalance – rewarding players who are more active in the Borderlands.

Issue #2: Non-participating players.

Every Server will be affected by players randomly deciding to use a borderland, which ultimately means -> over the course of a match these non-participating players on each server will cancel each other out.

Issue #3: Golem Users.

The lack of mobility of 20 suits is easily exploited by a more mobile server. You can have your 20 golems sit on an objective but the more mobile server will take the rest of the map. If this was implimented, it would actually work against the golem users favor – because the other teams would use tactics to exploit their weaknesses (mobility).

Gennyt:

24/7 WvW End All By All.

Simply because World vs World is going 24/7 doesn’t mean huge number imbalances are all of a sudden OK. 24/7 simply means coverages from all hours of the day are important.This also doesn’t excuse huge number imbalances across the servers.

My suggestion would aid in the removal of Massive PvDooring during the off-hours of your 24/7 that have a disproportionately huge effect! on current scoring.

So.

If you are sieging a t3 keep and the opposing side loses enough numbers to cause autobalance, that means your Server was outnumbering them to start.

Why would you think it would be fair, fun or challenging to gain an even larger numerical advantage during your attack?

Simply saying that the current Server Point Dive (see this very forum) pre tournament or the rush of transfers to high numbered servers is simply PvErs who will leave once they finish massively understates the current problems with WvW.

Wvw is not as of now, a real skill based battlefield. It is becoming identical to PvE World Bosses, where massive numbers of players fight (via gems) to be on the most populated map so they can win. Thats it.

As of now, there simply is no way a lesser numbered server can compete with a greater numbered one. It makes the upcoming Tournament predictable – and the server stacking is all the proof in the world.

vincecontix.1264:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT_sa59Zkgw

You’ve posted this link three times in the space of 1 day, even though you are getting the same response in every thread you post.

It seems clear you have a motive.

[img]http://i59.tinypic.com/2kfrjc.jpg[/img]

I posted these suggestions already but they will probably get more feedback in the Necromancer Subforum. I will take for granted the developers don’t want us to have access to reflects, teleports, leaps, dodge skills, stability, escapes, invisibility/stealth, or quickness. Feel free to add your own.

The underlying theme of these changes would be to increase Necromancer value in 5-man teams in high end Dungeons and sPvP.

[For Downed State]

Change Fetid Ground skill in down state to behave identical to Well of Corruption. In turn, increase recharge.

This will give necromancers their thematic boon conversion ability on down, and making slightly less guaranteed finisher use, similar to all other class downed abilities.

[For High-end Dungeon Running PvE]

Give Necromancers traits that directly benefit the party they are in.

This can be similar to ranger spotter, allowing for the boosting of one or more ability. This could also be something like Bone Wall or Bone Bridge (used during the last Living Story) that allows for the Necromancer to create a tactical physical obstructions that NPCs must destroy to reach the players (analogous to reflect walls) or allows Necromancer party members to use the Bridge to cross to another part of the map quicker then walking around (like mesmer portal).

[Deathshroud] Options – (these would need to be balanced around decreased deathshroud for increased group utility).

Always show utility and heal cooldowns in deathshroud.
Make Life Blast/Plague Blast a projectile finisher.

#Allow for use of utilities in death shroud by sacrificing 1/3 of your total DS lifebar.
#Heal or vampiric ability use in death shroud by some reduction in total DS lifebar.

[Staff Changes]
Increase staff autoattack speed.
Change staff auto attack to apply 1 stack of torment (5sec) on hit.

In its current form, Staff Auto is so slow most players can simply outrun the animation. Adding torment would be a slight buff, but sorely needed.

[Axe Changes]

Axe auto should not require a target to strike.
Axe auto should cleave (at least 2, as dagger post patch).

Unholy Feast should be a whirl finisher.

What do you guys think?

TexZero.7910:

There is no incentive to stack for this season. It’s week by week. Enjoy getting a skin regardless of performance.

According to https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-world-vs-world-fall-tournament-2014/ there is no reason that Jade Quarry or Blackgate would ever lose to lower populated servers, even if they only fight eachother once.

Assuming a top tier server loses its first match against other top tier servers, it will still win all other matches based simply on its superior population and coverage.

Players will still benefit transferring to these servers so they can guarantee accruement of more tournament tickets.

There should be no incentive to pile onto the strongest server simply to get more tickets. It should be your server’s skill in battle, not numerical superiority – that wins you tickets.

In the primary post of this thread I listed my thoughts on the Necromancer and its state in each game mode.

Below are my suggestions on how to improve the game modes for Necromancer.

[Downed State] Change Fetid Ground skill in down state to behave identical to Well of Corruption. In turn, increase recharge to 40s from 20s.

This will give necromancers their thematic boon conversion ability on down, and make it slightly less guaranteed to use a finisher on a necromancer, similar to all other class downed abilities.

[High-end Dungeon Running PvE] Give Necromancers traits that directly benefit the party they are in. This can be similar to ranger spotter, allowing for the boosting of one or more ability. This could also be something like Bone Wall or Bone Bridge (used during the last Living Story) that allows for the Necromancer to create a physical obstruction that NPCs must destroy to reach the players (analogous to reflect walls) or allows Necromancer party members to use the Bridge to cross to another part of the map quicker then walking around (like mesmer portal).

It would be completely random whether or not a player is pushed back into queue. It could also behave like sPvP Hotjoin. Everyone gets a message and the first 8 to choose yes are taken.

The whole point of this suggestion is to prevent or slow down PvDooring during off-hours play. If one side is losing so badly that they refuse to play – that is a very good reason to prevent massive zergs of the winning team dominating the map.

As a result, numbers would become less of a factor – and individual skill would become more important to the resulting match.

There are some servers that simply don’t have the numbers to compete but their individual player skill is high. This would allow a top tier 1 server to compete with a bottom tier one. Individual player skill would determine the winner, not ability to amass massive numbers.

Some guilds do transfer WvW servers to fight more even numbers. If a server truly doesn’t have the numbers to field players for World vs World I would hope Anet would simply step in to correct this.

However, stacking a server is the simple result of wanting to reap the rewards for being on a winning side while just contributing numbers and not necessarily skill.

This is what my idea is seeking to address.

I’ve been here since the Beta. Players like myself rarely post on the forums except when we feel we have something worthwhile to share.

You may not like my idea dancingmonkey, but the reality is that World vs World is not balanced – in any sense of the word. Something must be done (my idea, something else) to change that and move the bar from Sheer Numbers —-———>> to Skill as a deciding factor in matches.

Server stacking is only a symptom of that larger problem.

Would there be a chance (in my above example, 1/55) you would be balanced away from your friends? Yes.

Could you queue back into that borderland immediately after? Of course.

Assuming my idea was implimented, you could always play with your friends:
if you are persistent (via queue) you can play with them;
if you don’t mind EoTM you can play with them;
if you prefer the Sanctum you can play with them.

You can play with them in a BL too, you just have to deal with the 1/55 chance.

Isn’t it more fun to be challenged then steamroll?

The reason there are so many threads (17+) is probably due to individual player passion and hope that something can still be changed or added to before the release of the feature patch.

I believe there is a place for both the combined thread and new ones that elaborate on an unremarked idea. My thread is focusing on the idea that the Necromancer needs something that makes them uniquely valuable as a group member (thieves stealth, mesmer portals, guardian reflect, etc), not just as an individual.

Something only the Necromancer can do, or something that only it can do best.

In World vs World, Balance is nonexistent.

Some players may like it that way. Perhaps because they enjoy greatly outnumbering their foe(s) and dancing on their poor, sword-ridden corpse. Or perhaps because they like the feeling of decimating, with certainty, whomever they come across that is of less number then they.

However, I don’t feel this is the way it should be. Players stack servers during “tournaments” so they can be on the most populated, guaranteed a high position and reward. Is that how you want your game to work?

ArenaNet, why not auto-balance WvW? You already do it to some extent with Hotjoin.

The idea will work like this:

Autobalance occurs when one color outnumbers the lowest by 10 or more.

Then all players on the large population sides are notified that – if they remain in this map they will be moved to EoTM or placed in Queue. They will have 1 minute to decide which to choose, and then forced to EoTM.

This is the idea.

The benefits of this change would greatly reduce server stacking, off-hours PvDooring, and make WvW a more balanced and also more challenging game mode – requiring more skill and less simple numerical advantage.

Example:
Green: 45
Red: 40
Blue: 38

No change.

Green: 55
Red: 40
Blue: 38

After 1 minute like this, 8 random Green players would get a pop-up telling them to please queue for another BL or move to EoTM. They could then move to another map if they so choose.

Numbers become:

Green: 47
Red:40
Blue:38

The result of this change would also allow massive groups of players to be challenged because they would know that there are almost their number on the map somewhere.

This would promote stronger organization among the servers.
It would promote more skillful gameplay.

Guilds would still be able to face off on eachother, but there would be less of an imbalance when they do so. Individual players in WvW would feel like their presence is more impactful.

What do you guys think?

The necromancer needs more than what was shown in the skill preview last Friday.

The class at its core is completely selfish. It seems the developers designed the class to have mastery over conditions, but damaging conditions – as designed – are completely useless in any sort of group play. Gw2 is based on group play – which means this class is ultimately flawed in most PvE environments.

It has low access to boons (of any type), no leap movement skills, no easily accessible combo finishers or group buff fields, long recharges on skills, and innumerable useless traits (more than any other class I have played). Necromancers are also pigeonholed into one of two elites – plague form or Lich Form – or maybe just 1 now with the nerf to Lich – unless you are lucky enough to have chosen Norn at creation. Minion AI is very unresponsive when used while the character is moving, often sitting idly by as your character dies. (this bug needs work!)

Jumping from Necromancer to Elementalist was an eye-opening experience on how a class should be designed. Warrior & Engineer were equally shocking in their flexibility in comparison.

Were Necromancers designed to be a punching bag class??

Below is a list of game modes and my thoughts on Necromancer status in each. Some players kittenpond to this post will disagree with various points but the underlying point is clear – the changes previewed for the upcoming balance class are not enough.

(In PvE Dungeon Parties): Necromancer is the LEAST wanted class in Dungeons according to several polls up right now in the Dungeon Forum. It has no group boons or group benefits, boon removal (via Corrupt Boon & Traited Dark Path) doesn’t help as bosses reapply almost instantly. Long recharges on skills and no damage avoidance mechanics to avoid certainly fatal blows at high level Fractals make the clkitten then optimal for skips and runs (the preferred method of dungeon gold farming).

(In sPvP): Being a selfish class here forces Necromancer to be the ONLY class required to have a handler to survive upper tier team sPvP. No dodge utilities or weapon skills, escapes, reliable stability or leaps mean that any knowledgeable player simply focuses the necro until downed.

(WvW):
[Zerg v Zerg]- Necromancers will always have a place in WvW Zergs due to the Death Shroud mechanic staying charged from massive deaths and the stacking of pulsed wells for direct damage. Zerg v Zerg, in my opinion, should not reward players so much more by their numbers then their skill on the battlefield.

[Roaming]- Necromancers can duel well with a fully charged Death Shroud and an opponent that does not run away. When this is not the case, as is almost always in WvW, Necromancers fare poorly in this mode. They have no leaps or escapes (barring Norn racial elite – always play a Norn Necro for this mode) and are inevitably crushed by any outnumbering of the enemy. They cannot pick their fights and retreat from bad ones, which ultimately means they do poorly in WvW roaming mode.

(Downed State): Necromancer downed state is tied for weakest according to several player polls. No tide-turning abilities such as mist form, temporary rally, pet help rally, group heal, or stealth invisibility. A downed necromancer is almost always a dead necromancer.

You won’t see Necromancers used in high end dungeon runs, you won’t see them used in high end sPvP (just Zombify?) and you won’t see them used in any game mode where skill is most important.

This is because the upcoming balance changes are not enough – nothing fundimental has changed.

Thus, the class is not balanced for most of Guild Wars 2 and new players should spend their time elsewhere.

Please only respond if you read this entire post. Sorry, no TLDR;

This is a great summary of Necromancer issues/potential solutions in PvX. I wholeheartedly hope the developers take a look at this thread.

Congratulations! Do your best, and good luck!

I transmuted two weapons with Wintersday skins; a staff and dagger I bought with WvW badges and then added Signets to. Later I tried salvaging them and it wouldn’t work. The Salvaging kit, Master, and BL level, just fails.

I also tried transmuting the staff to a Heritage skin, but it still is unsalvageable. I bought another staff from the WvW Vendor and it was able to be salvaged just fine.

Please fix, thanks.

My group and I attacked and killed both individually, but I died before the end of the fight. I didn’t respawn, but was knocked out of view of corpse. When ressed, I got nothing from either boss.

Character: Level 76 Ranger. It also happened to an 80 Mesmer in same group.

Has this happened to anyone else?