Guild Wars 2

Geez, stop with all the whining about corpse dancing. I never see anyone from SF doing that (not that I wouldn’t think it was funny—and I understand the sheer elation that comes with finally stomping those stealth-loving thieves and mesmers, but it’s poor form).

I mean come on, most of us are too tired from always chasing you all the way back to your keeps that we hardly have the energy to dance all the time….not to mention that if we also spent time dancing…when would we find time to sell all the phat lewts you guys drop?

I want to know how often NSP and HoD fought each other this weekend?

I had a blast with SoF this weekend, but it was one mad scramble after another, repelling and/or retaking one tower/camp after another. From my perspective, it seemed like every battle was SoF vs NSP or SoF vs HoD….I think I only ran into one NSP vs HoD battle (which I immensely enjoyed watching from a distance). Was that just my imagination or do I need to get out more and see the world?

God I hate those kitten necro/rangers you guys have! It seems like 50%+ of your characters are those two classes, which makes it a kitten for us to press into your well-defended keep areas.

That said, the fast moving open field skirmishes were a blast! Fun Fun!!

Didn’t enjoy being jumped by your stealthed thieves while I’m just running along, minding my own business…. Even if you only stomped me once or twice that way this weekend, it scares the bejeezes out of me every time it happens, so stop it!

Firey Disco Ball
SoF Elementalist

Enough nonsense – Let’s get things straight . . . I’m on SoF and in my view, historically all of T8 was primarily zerg until the recent transfers.

ET and FC can shut the hell up regarding how great they were, holding off masses of SoF . . . it didn’t happen . . . certainly not consistently. The fact is that SoF masses overwhelmed both ET and FC consistently, holding most, if not all of each of the 4 maps on many occasions. When you hold that much ground, you find that you end up playing a fireman, putting out fires continuously, zerg rushing wherever ET or FC started pushing in, to beat the ET or FC mini-zergs.

From what I saw, neither ET, FC or SoF showed any significant coordination or skill that was head and shoulders better than the other. Some players are good, some are bad, most are mediocre (including myself). . . Nothing to be proud of. Certainly nothing ET or FC could muster required SoF to change strategies or to use any strategies other than the most basic of tactics—head-on attacks. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.

With the server transfers, the dynamics of the battles changed substantially. New guilds from other servers showed how unsophisticated all of the server armies’ strategies were previously. Now ET and FC started holding choke points against slightly superior numbers and using strategies to hide numbers in order to launch surprise counterattacks against SoF seiges in mass (often using overwhelming numbers at any given location) and to rout SoF seiges, with battles now taking an ebb and flow.

The battles have turned out much more interesting, with each server being able to hold ground and it has changed strategies in battles substantially. Much more seige (instead of simply 2-3 flame rams at a gate) are being used to push back defenders and to hold off counterattacks. Choke points are being held, flanking counterattacks are being used by both sides. Seige attackers are even paying attention to being swarmed from behind (no more putting a character on autoattack against a gate in order to go get a sandwich) and people on both sides are actually putting up barriers to control movement of characters which would otherwise overwhelm defenders.

Case in point…prior to the server transfers, I NEVER (as in—not once) was stymied during a rush in any “narrowed” territory (whether it be a canyon or a hole in a wall or gate) by someone casting and maintaining barriers that actually physically blocked me from being able to close ranks with defenders. I did see numerous uses of conditions fields, but conditions that would be stacked on me while charging through narrowed territory were generally more manageable in the past, letting me simply run through the condition fields in most cases and removing them. Now I’m finding narrowed territory to be denied by barriers that prevent all movement or by concentrated conditions that are killing fields.

And SoF is adapting its strategies to be much more effective against such strategies. I believe it’s also changing SoF from melee-centric classes to more ranged attack.

I for one welcome the changes and increase in strategic play and ET’s and FC’s increased numbers due to server transfers….but don’t kid yourself. All of the servers’ strategies inevitably equalize once people learn from mistakes. SoF may not move to as coordinated strategies as ET and FC may be forced to, if SoF’s numbers continue to be higher (it won’t have to). But SoF’s strategies have and will continue to evolve (likely just enough to counter whatever it runs into) and in the meantime, some ET and FC armies have become forces to be reckoned with…resulting in much more enjoyable battles and sophisticated gameplay.

Veryviolet Warrior
Firey Disco Ball Elementalist
BigTuffGuy Guardian
Princesspink Mesmer

Thanks, that’s helpful.

Following up on jamesigall’s comment above:

“When attacking a tower, you press your aoe ability, and aim the center of the circle (the mouse) near the very lip of the wall. This gets you ~50% of the aoe over the edge and able to hit enemies on it.”

Wouldn’t that mean that as a defender, I would only see semi-circles on the battlements? I’ll look more closely tonight, but my impression was that the circles were full circles or almost full circles, which really confused me as to how one might target to accomplish that.

The circles were definitely not the larger diameter that elementalists use (with blasting staff trait upgrade) and they primarily put conditions on me, not only dd. I’ll have to pay closer attention to see which conditions.

Any mesmers out there have any idea how you target the top of battlements for maximum effect?

Or perhaps the circles are even ranger/necro or other classes AOE…I see tons of red circles on the ground during zerg battles and, other than the mesmer domes, I haven’t figured out how to tell one red circle from another or predict what conditions/damage the circles will cause.

I’ve been playin GW2 for only a few months now and just started WvW….so forgive me if my questions seem obvious to some of you.

When defending battlements on a tower, I often see that attackers create red circles on the battlements from below (mesmer condition AOE?) that encompass the entire front tower battlements.

As an attacker from below, where do you target to create that effect?

Are you placing your targeting reticle at the base of the tower or high up on the wall, with the center of the targeting reticle at the top of the tower wall?

It often seems like almost an entire red circle appears on top of the battlements, not only half of a circle, so it seems to me that placing the targeting reticle at the top of the tower wall would only result in half of the circle appearing on the battlements.

Also, are those red circles only mesmer AOE? For example, I’ve never experienced an elementalist meteor shower on me while on the battlements, so is that deep targeting unique to certain classes?

Similarly, when I have used my elementalist (staff) or warrior (long bow) as attackers against towers, I can easily target defenders who get close to the edge of the battlements (line of sight), but I’m not certain that elementalists or warriors have the ability to target deeper onto the battlements themselves (to try to take out defenders, arrow carts, etc. that are set back from the edge). If so, which skills/traits are useful for elementalists and warriors to use in seige for the purpose of attacking deeper onto the top of the battlements themselves?

Similarly, when defending, other than using arrow carts set back from the battlement’s edge, what should an elementalist or warrior do while defending a zerg? To get near the edge of a tower is often suicidal due to the red rings of death or moving into line of sight of attackers, but I find my defending options (particularly as a longbow warrior) fairly limited due to my also not having line of sight to most of the attackers near the gate.

I’d appreciate any insight you guys have!

I suppose I can live with having to specify level ranges,

but I hate the fact that if I want to compare different weapons or armor, I can’t do a search that only shows the types of weapons and armor that my character can use.

Am I missing something?