Guild Wars 2

Tried for 45 minutes but — time for dinner.

No worries — SF will be fully transferred there by weeks end. I’m planning to try again early in the morning.

Am trying right now. Much appreciation to you guys for doing this to help us out. Mad props to both the gesture and the coordination to be able to pull it off.

Wanted to put this back up as a reminder that the people raging/QQing about mesmers are a minority.. and having a thread to focus the nerd rage doesn’t reflect the community as a whole.

Mesmer portals are perfectly fair for anyone who has an adaptable strategic mindset.

Unless your server, your guild, or your account doesn’t have access to creating mesmer characters — there’s nothing ‘unbalanced’ or ‘unfair’ in their capabilities.

Its a strategy. Available to both sides. And anyone who thinks it doesn’t take skill to be a good mesmer — clearly hasn’t spent time playing with a good mesmer. Anyway — my detailed thoughts on this are in the OP.

bump.

Yup agreed – nothing left to be said/done on the DEVS matter. Back to the score update/match info.

Hey guys! New footage of DEVS! We just had this sent in from an anonymous source. It’s apparently the ‘meeting that took place between the GM and his liutenant’. You can see some of the ‘elite players’ skimpily dressed in the background.

Yaro.3251:

Baelish.9850:

A good mesmer needs an intelligent, experienced knowledge of the terrain, and relative distance to pull off a good portal bomb. Otherwise the portal will fail. And though I’m sure there’s sloppy players just throwing portals down out there without regard or intuition to the distance cap and how it relates to the terrain they’re in…

Mesmers do not need an intuition for that. Just minimap properly ajusted. And only if reauired distance reaches “red zone”. Which happens not that often in the battle where you don’t have a lot of time to pull it off.

I beg to differ. I’ve seen the difference between good and bad mesmers… and the in between. We have a mesmer commander who’s trained up other mesmers… and I’ve yet to see anyone who can rival her ability to drop a bomb with the right distance in some of the perfect spots. She knows the map like the back of her hand because she knows its her job to do so.

Other mesmers learn from her, and I’ve seen them clearly get better over time. Because its a very specific skill, and I’ve heard/seen people not pull it off as well as others.

Once again, I’m sure there are many mesmers out there who keep things simple. But the ones who don’t… it takes skill, patience, and intelligence.

This mesmer I speak of is not only good for bombs… her intuition of the map is good for knowing exactly where to drop ballistas and trebs for counter-siege, etc. intuition of distance on a map is more than just adjusting the mini-map…. which is not nearly accurate enough to show you great spots for hiding, getting behind the enemy when they’re outnumbering you and think they’ve got every approach covered, etc. There’s vertical aspects of the terrain that have a lot to do with that. And a good mesmer knows that stuff better than others because that’s where their advantage and contribution to the team lies.

Hiding your numbers during a fight and getting someone to an opportune spot during a fight… especially heavily defended siege… takes a lot of skill and experience. And I’ve seen way too many mesmers try and muck it up to chalk it off as easy.

So, yeah. Keep things simple, and the requirements are simple.

Creslin.1758:

I’m with you man.

There is seriously nothing OP about portal. The only legitimate complaint people have regarding portal has to do with the rendering bug, which is NOT a problem WITH portal…it is a bug, and should be fixed.

IMO, portal is an ability that allows a smaller but well organized group to have a tactical edge over a big brainless zerg.

Thank you — for adding this very clear, simple piece of logic.

It’s really not that hard to stop a portal bomb, or to overcome one. I remember when people were crying over ‘turtles’… which used portals to cram people into one place spamming AoE heals… and even that was absurd. Because most organized teams could decimate them with a flash-built ballista or arrow-cart.

But now that turtles were ‘fixed’ (never saw a problem with em, personally. They were annoying but we took em down quite often. Was blown away to hear of random PVE kids in dungeons saying theyre not coming back until turtles are ‘fixed’)….

And yet… after turtles are nerfed, now people are whining about portals in general? What’s next? Crying about ppl having superior siege, built using their skill pts and collections of standard blueprints? Crying about thieves being able to be invisible for longer than 3 seconds near a dolyak? Crying about people playing in groups larger than 4 after 12pm ET? Crying just because… well, you feel like crying while playing GW2 because you saw a cheesy Ryan Gosling movie?

Can we be honest for a moment, and just admit that you’re upset you were killed when you thought you were about to easily win while spamming your 1-5 keys?. That having a zerg running in one direction towards a smaller group didn’t work for you as easily as you thought it was? That Pvdoor isn’t the only way to win an objective?

Portals add color to this game (literally and metaphorically), and I like them. I don’t play a mesmer… don’t know even the slightest about them other than they can drop portals and make clones.

And I’ve been killed/foiled many times because of a portal bomb. I never whined that it was unfair.

But if you can’t take it.. then please go back to killing dragons and leave PvP for those of us who like variety and can handle beatings now and again… and actually -like- everything not being super-predictable in an already rather predictable environment. I mean, WvW is so repetitive… if you’re honestly surprised by a portal bomb still, then you have that beatdown coming. Usually most experienced players know when to expect them.

/rant off.

Mesmers have had enough nerfs. Their role in WvW is important, and we’d like to keep it that way.

Please reply in solidarity to support mesmers if you agree. The whining over their portal ability by a vocal minority of QQers has become ridiculous. To me, the fact that they sacrifice one of their utility skills on something that only benefits party members, is enough of a sacrifice on their part for them to be allowed to use it.

Mesmers have already been nerfed in terms of damage output recently (or so I understand. I don’t play mesmer so I don’t know the details… but something about their ‘berserker’ ability’).

And yet, they may get nerfed again because people are crying over their portals. Saying they’re “ruining the game” (they’ve been in the game since the beginning, buddy. Did you just join WvW yesterday?)

They’re a strategy. If you think it doesn’t take strategy to pull one off, especially in tight circumstances when you’re cornered and outnumbered… then you probably don’t play in a skilled group of WvWers. And by skilled, I mean strategically intelligent. I’ve seen attempted portal bombs fail constantly.

A good mesmer needs an intelligent, experienced knowledge of the terrain, and relative distance to pull off a good portal bomb. Otherwise the portal will fail. And though I’m sure there’s sloppy players just throwing portals down out there without regard or intuition to the distance cap and how it relates to the terrain they’re in… those mesmers aren’t the one who make differences in really tough fights. Because in really epic fights on T1 — a sloppy mesmer gets roflstomped before he/she can drop anything. And given my experience with 2 of the T2 servers, I doubt its any different there.

Portal bombs are also easy to counter. Though they usually change the gameplay a bit, they don’t stop a good team that knows what to look for and has quick reaction time. If a portal bomb is capable of completely owning you when you would’ve otherwise won a fight… you may need to face the fact that your response time sucks as well as your vigilance in minding your surrounding.

here’s a video of SF during the 1st week of SoS/JQ/SBI match… where we got last place and most ppl were doing PVE and not even logging on. We were horribly outnumbered the entire match and still, you can see us countering portal bombs at 8:30 that are fielding huge, superior numbers by blocking a potential portal and having good communication/response time. You see dozens of people attempt to portal in, and then immediately portal back because of the ‘feedback’ we threw on it preemptively (which is just plain funny. What a buncha wussies. They had superior numbers. They could’ve made a serious dent in our flank regardless of our readiness. They just didn’t want to be wiped for the sake of making an impact).

At 8:30 in the video, you can see Hoschi slam into the portal bomb as everyone disappeared. Notice also how he knew it was coming, because our team had GOOD COMMUNICATION.

I think a can of worms was opened once we started making suggestions at all… as everyone wants to add their own…

It would be better to stand in solidarity with one simple concept:

That Anet addresses the WvW issue NOW… not waiting for 5 months after launch to start making the first, even minor fixes.

I mean… don’t we have an entire dev team dedicated to this area of the game?

Would they please make some goals for some more minor changes, prior to whatever major ones they have planned in February… and release them sooner rather than later?

Some of the T1 servers are now to the point of not having queues in Eternal Battlegrounds on a saturday during primetime. Its absurd — the population has dropped severely and much of it isn’t coming back.

Just give us SOMETHING! anything! At all! We need some changes right now.

There’s literally been nothing. Removal of orbs. And a max on AoE heals. Those aren’t additions… they’re subtractions. And though they helped stabilize the matchups and outrage for the respective weeks they were implemented…

this game (WvW) hasn’t had any changes since beta. Its just plain absurd. Why not just sell us the software for WvW and let us make our own private matches with it. If you’re not going to update it… what’s the point of playing it like an MMO?

Please just… add something. That’s all.

Once again I think the biggest issues that need fixing in order to both keep and grow the WvW population are:

1.) Commander/raid group UI
2.)outmanned buff being PvP related
3.)revamping of the obsolete, orbless borderlands maps (diversity… 3 different maps. Please!!)
4.) a ranking system for guilds within a WvW match-up (contribution to points, amount of dolyaks sniped, contribution to defense, kills, etc.) to motivate people to play for reasons other than the point total.

These are 4 things that would fundamentally change WvW completely and for the better… and they are 4 things people across the board have been asking for since launch (the borderlands maps being the same was a complaint even before orbs were taken out… now we want them to at least have more incentive to create fights if they’re going to remain identical).

Please, Arenanet… don’t abandon us. We didn’t sign up to play WoW. Most of us still here hate that game. We don’t care about more gear, more drops from mobs, or any of that.

We just want to have fun killing eachother in ways that don’t feel like you’re consistently playing the same level on Mario again and again. Is that so much to ask?

Couldn’t agree with this post more.

WvW is repetitive and boring at this point, and without the orbs, increasingly so.

I understand the problem the orbs created: extreme advantage to the side with numbers in terms of strength to the point where other teams had no chance. And also the extreme damage to morale of players on servers as a whole when orbs would get hacked.

But keep in mind that the first problem, of orbs creating overpowered servers… could’ve been fixed with an important update that I think ANet could make as easily as tomorrow: let the outmanned buff be a PvP buff like the orbs! Even without the orbs still around… the outmanned buff should give people an actual advantage. Especially now, that WvW population is declining and people find themselves outmanned very often.

Here’s the bigger problem, however, that came from removing orbs:

The borderlands maps lost their significance! Their major significance was that each of them held an orb of power, and had keeps on three sides that could hold said orbs.

Now they’re just large maps that add little to the point tick in comparison to EB.

I like Jang Gun’s idea of creating something in the middle island to fight for. I think instead of an orb, though it should be a keep… because having a waypoint on the middle island would give your team a huge strategic advantage on the Blands map… and thus everyone would fight for it.

I also think that the Garrison should be a castle, since its the major keep near the home turf of the server’s borderlands. If the orb aspect of the borderland’s significance is gone… a castle should be added (like EB), and a few new keeps (center and bottom island perhaps?)… and maybe more towers. A castle on each borderlands (just upgrade garrison on the map)… would create a huge shift in focus for the people there because of the incentive for points.

Because PvP on the borderlands maps right now consists mostly of map hopping to grab undefended areas for point ticks, and to find decent fights.

But I’d be much happier if you just redesigned those maps and made them 3 different maps.

Because right now 3/4 of the maps we’re using are not only identical… their main purpose has been destroyed, and thus their layout is obsolete. (whats the point of a giant, spread out map that gives advantage to the people in either corner if there isn’t some object like an orb to fight over that’s involved?).

Without orbs… borderlands maps should at least resemble EB more in that they have a castle like Stonemist, and other ways to fill in the empty space that divides the servers into zones and makes everything predictable.

I think map updates, commander/raid UI, and fixing the issue with the outmanned buff giving no benefit to PvP… are the 3 biggest issues making WvW boring as hell for many players.

All guilds on all servers are suffering losses in numbers right now. It’s not just the holidays… its the fact that 1/3 of Guild Wars 2’s gameplay focus… one of the most heavily advertised aspects of the game before launch… has had no updates since beta except for removing orbs and fixing the AoE heals having no maximum. Meanwhile many complaints for updates to obvious problems in the functionality of the game have been ignored.

As such… many players feel that their requests and wishes are falling on deaf ears. ANet seems more concerned with damage control (AoE, orb fixes) than actively enhancing the game (commander UI complaints, outmanned buff having no benefit).

We may not be as numerous as the PvE players… but pound for pound, we’re more dedicated. WvW players usually play for 3-4 hours at minimum. Sometimes 7+ (kitten can get crazy sometimes. 3 hours bay defenses… holding off 2v1s, etc..) …

And the first update, of which we’re hearing no details about… is happening in February?! Seriously?? 5 months after the launch, you add some new things… and they’re sounding to be likely either gear related or just fixes to problems.

To the player… it sounds like you’re saying “thanks for putting many hours of your day, many times a week and in some cases everyday… consistently into this game. We’ll check in on you twice every year to maybe add a couple of things. Thanks for the cash. Peace.”

I know arenanet of course -does- care about this game. Logic tells us this. But no objective evidence of any kind seems to point to the fact that they do… and I -want- to believe in this game. I want to believe that WvW is going to be viable long-term.

But in order for that to happen… we need you guys to throw us a bone now. Not in February. Not next year — now.

Otherwise, you’ll be making an update for 1/3 or less of the players who dedicated themselves to the part of the game you’re ‘updating’. You’ll be playing for a half empty arena.

Don’t waste your badges on armor — the karma vendors on Orr give you the same stuff, and karma is much easier to build up than badges for a WvWer.

You can get a full set of power/vit/toughness exotics. Just gotta get different pieces from different karma vendors when the area they sell at is uncontested (in malchor’s leap and cursed shore). Typically the cathedrals and the last area by the zhaitan dungeon entrance.

The only thing they don’t sell is the helm, which you can buy from the WvW badge vendor.

As long as you have 210k karma, you should be good to go, and have your armor set within a day or two, depending on whether u get to the karma vendors while they’re able to sell or not (which is the most annoying part… waiting for an event to be finished so u can buy gear).

5 pieces of gear (everything below the head) and then the invader’s exotic helm.

Save the rest of the badges for the jewelry, which is the real grind-fest. And in fact… I didn’t spend mine. I just purchased power/vit exotic jewelry and am waiting to see what Anet does about allowing WvWers to get access to ascended jewelry thru badges, before I spend mine.

Thanks to all of the new recruits who’ve enriched our gaming experience. We’re still looking for new players, and there’s a big new change:

We now have a very experienced EU commander… the only one on the server as far as I’ve seen. And that means SBi’s greatest weakness, its EU coverage, is starting to be addressed. So if you’re an EU player transferring to SBi — I’d ask you to consider us as your guild of choice for competitive WvW.

We have 7 vetted commanders now, and are still looking for more solid players since we can handle a bigger roster.

If you’re looking for an awesome group on a T1 server to WvW with… look no further

I just want to add to that post that some of the coolest, most dedicated WvWers I’ve met over different servers are from Blackgate. And it has some of the best guilds in the world there now – anyone who goes out to fight them can attest to that.

I’m simply frustrated because on some of our other servers… we’re starting to see numbers wane in participation when an entire map’s efforts for an evening are wrecked by an exploit… and not only is it not acknowledged, but people say “who care”s.

We have tremendous respect for Blackgate and what they’ve accomplished… especially in terms of making the top 2 tiers more competitive and WvW more fun for all.

But it really sucks to see some of the most dedicated players and guilds on your server sitting a match out and the underlying issue get ignored. It’s okay… we’re going to live and we still love playing with you guys. We still have epic, fun fights with BG … but not as many as their should be.

BG players should realize that these few exploiters are hurting their OWN gameplay. Because if the other servers aren’t showing up as much… you don’t get a fierce, fun 3-way matchup.

You’ve organized harder than any server I’ve seen since HoD at the beginning. You deserve a matchup better than what these exploiters are giving you. It hurts people on both ends.

I’m so sorry you feel victimized, blackgate player. You’re definitely the one hurt most by this. Not the people who spend hours playing to get an orb only to see it disappear across the map in 2 seconds while gates and walls are at 100%.

So, sooo sorry that you have to suffer such disgrace as being associated with these people, who some loudmouths on this and other forums from -your- server celebrate and call fair game.

Blackgate has great, very dedicated players who are being hurt by this exploitation, its true.

But Hackgate needs to get its @*&$ together before it ruins its rep and winds up getting double teamed everytime it gets near a T1 matchup. Major guilds are sitting out now becuase of frustration… its a CONSISTENT issue… and its -your- responsibility as a server to weed these people out if they’re out there doing it -consistently-. Its not hard to notice. "Whoa… we just suddenly got an orb with no map coordination or zerg on that side of any kind. Hmm….. "

So anyway… very sorry, poor blackgate player. You’re definitely the victim here. Such a sad, sad, destructive, hate crime. rolls eyes

orb hacks aren’t due to lag. I don’t think people on T1 are blaming and losses, or having guilds decide to now play much this week because of you disappearing before death. Its actually very common and the guy who reported you is simply a tool.

But don’t lump this nonsense together with the larger outcry against orb-hacking. It’s plagued this match-up and caused some of the top guilds in T1 to lost enthusiasm and a few of the hardcore oceanic ones to just sit this one out. And it has nothing to do with you disappearing.

As for ‘people blaming losses on hacking’, I know you’re new to T1, but look up some of its history for the past 2 months. There have been bigger, better mass-ups of guilds on servers than you. JQ and HoD had the largest. And they were never accused this much of hacking. I’ve witnessed it myself and didn’t see the point of playing several hours late at night to simply recover something we had worked hard to earn.

If you’re interested in WvW, check us out at SF. I joined it since lvl 1, and we all help anyone new get leveled and geared fast. Not to mention – the people are what make the guild amazing. We’re like an online a^$ kicking family.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Strike-Force-arguably-the-most-fun-WvW-guild-on-Stormbluff-Isle

No offense to all the other heavy WvW guilds out there with whom do great things, as I make the claim that we’re the most fun, but —-

I’ve never been a part of a guild in any game who’s more hilarious and fun to play with. Every night is like a party.

As most people know… its hard to find a guild that’s both hilariously fun/casual while also fiercely competitive. It’s a rare balance. Usually either your guild is hardcore serious, or you’re casually playing in a different guild and having to follow other big guild commanders to make a difference.

Well, in SF we balance the two sides perfectly. You can play casually, and I promise you will be a part of something great every time. We’re adults with lives and we come in game to kick serious a^$

As for the competitive edge, Strike Force was ranked among top 10 guilds in GW1, and many of the cores remain. We know the maps really well and we have some of the best siege placement I’ve seen anywhere, save for War Machine. We also have 5 commanders in the guild.

We constantly fight uneven odds and come out ahead. It’s what we prefer. It’s what makes the game fun for us .

Here are two videos from last week’s intense IoJ/JQ/SBi fight in which SBI pulled out ahead at the end.

No 1. A ninja stealing of the orb assisted and filmed by a guild ally from DA. We were heavilty outnumbered so another guild lured the JQ army north for a 2-3 minute window:

you may have noticed the term ‘push their *&^$ in’ yelled out a few times . Well we’ve coined that term now, and here’s us doing more of that when we ran into an ambush at a camp. Usually with planning we wipe mobs bigger than this. But even when we’re surprised… we don’t back down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9_ked-5Wjx8

SBI’ers can attest to how great of a presence Strike Force brings to any map we’re on, because they’ve seen both awesome and hilarious antics go down surrounding the commander Jedbacca (our guild leader).

But like I said before… even though we’re competitive… its all about having fun . That’s why we build a flame ram at every supply camp we take. So you’ll know who pushed your &%#% in.

And speaking of rams, here’s a hilarious prank we pulled a few weeks ago when we had the T2 match locked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OfxcuPntwSE

I’m making this post because I feel very lucky to have found this guild… and many of our new recruits agree its the most fun they’ve had playing Guild Wars 2. As soon as you roll with us for a week’s matchup, you’re like a member of the family. Anyone looking for a great guild for WvW on Stormbluff Island should have the privilege of being in a guild like this. We don’t care if you rep other guilds doing PVE or sPvP or whatever. It doesn’t hurt our ego if everyone isn’t always ‘representing’. Because when we’re in WvW… you’ll WANT to represent SF when rolling with us and creating mayhem .

So, to wrap this up —

If you’re on the Stormbluff Isle server and looking to link up with a fun crew for more serious, coordinated WvWvW gameplay… Strike Force should be your first stop.

We use mumble for voice comms, but dont require that you have a mic… just get on so you can hear what’s going on if you don’t want to speak. There’s plenty of us doing that already .

And, well… is this a ‘recruitment’ thread? I guess so… but even if you don’t want to join the guild, and just want to roll with us and get on our mumble… give us a shout! We don’t really care – the more the merrier. Many of our members start that way… and we still have close friends from different guilds who get on our voice comm server and play with us regularly.

We have one requirement – that you be a mature person who can be laid back and not cause drama or tension over simply playing a game. We’re adults, and though we play this game a lot, we don’t see it as the end-all be-all of our existence. We just like to kick some a^$.

For those interested in joining the guild, or joining in on our operations from time to time, please respond with your IG name, or send me a PM.

or In Game, either whisper or send mail to Jedbacca or Blood and Shadow.

You will also find that we have a strong presence on the forums at StormbluffIsle.com , where… even if you don’t join us, I hope you’re registered and participating.

See you out there!