Showing Posts For Chaede.7348:
… the damage numbers mean nothing if they enemy is hidden and rarely result in the badges the OP wants. Trust me.
Chaos storm does significantly more damage if the enemy takes any hostile actions, it shuts them down. Denial is a tactic.
IBerserker was more powerful because you didn’t need LOS, you could activate it and move out of threat range. it was a little more powerful than you give it credit.
The Crux of the issue is that this is a team game. Sometimes you have to spam the door or guard paths to keep to prevent reinforcements. Mesmers offer a ton of WvW utility and are one of the best dueling classes in the game. That their options during a siege are on the low side, comparable still with warriors, guardians and rogues despite minor descrepancies is a non issue.
Basically, learn to be a team player in a team situation, enjoy the benefits your class does bring and participate in the most effective way for your team in the given situation.
Portalling and Timewarping as utility more than make up for a slight reduction in raw damage against people defending that actually stand in AoEs.
I recently transferred to IOJ and support this message. IOJ has so far proven helpful and friendly with a strong active WvW population. So far I have yet to face a queue to get into any of the maps.
Got to Ferg Crossing, they need the numbers far more than Kaineng and there are other like minded small strikeforce guilds (ENVY) that are like minded.
OP is under the impression that most classes have more options during a seige than a mesmer. What the OP doesn’t realise is that mesmers had far more options than most during sieges. Basically the playing field is a little more level.
To give a decent run down (for badges since that appears to be the focus).
Guardians – Scepter gives weak AoE to a wall. That is the only ranged option we have in a seige to get badges, else it is auto the door with the rest of the zerg. This is pretty much the same in seige defense.
Warriors – longbow, 2 aoe one is the F1 skill, otherwise it is auto the door with everyone else. Also these aren’t likely to kill anyone
Thieves has already been explained. Weak aoe on short bow and not much else to plant on a wall.
Classes with average AoE wall capability
Engineer with grenades of flamethrower through door.
Ranger with long bow, the AoE has a similar cd to chaos storm but again not that great.
Classes with good AoE wall capability
Staff elementalists have good AoE wall capability
Staff Necros with talents to place Wells are decent as well.
I just think the OP needs to adjust to realise that Mesmers are in the same boat seige wise and count their lucky stars it was OP for as long as it was. Also someone needs to man the siege, WvW is about being a team player not all about badge glory for 1 person. Play the team game. Mesmers are still one of the strongest classes in WvW.
Playing less, feeling less motivated to play.
Reasons
Ascended Gear: So this just did what every other MMO has done, invalidated all the time I have spent in gearing my character so I can do it again and again in a pointless cycle. No thanks, I have better things to do. I am a completionist, I like have the best gear I can but I don’t like shifting goal posts in a game that promised none. Agony is a thoughtless mechanic and subpar game design. I thought Anet was better than this.
Fractal: I love and hate this. I like the design, I hate it added a better way to get everything including better drops. I hate the fractal level system. This dungeon has single handedly made it harder to get groups. Now no one runs the old dungeons. Groups for fractals are bracketed by level. I play on Ferg Crossing during Oceanic peak. Good luck to me to find a group.
Empty world: Seriously its like the world builders started with a beautiful rich vision and then the content team left it empty. So many interesting maps and places that are now pointless. I have 100% world completion, but it felt hollow. Where are the stories, where are the unique interesting things on some of the non starter maps? I find caves with nothing in them, whole areas of Divinity’s Reach have nothing to do in them. They are beautiful but other than eye candy there is nothing going on. For example, Divinity’s Reach has officers for each of the three orders and no reason to go there, no special stuff, no special missions, no reason at all other than POI’s to get. I was hoping for more. Field’s of Ruin is another such map. So much potential wasted. More stuff to do in cities, more reason to seek things out rather than spawning an unrewarding dynamic event. DE’s were a good start place but have become progressively bland and add no impact my character or the world really. Anet, you promised more!
Basically, I think my biggest frustration with the game is they had such a good vision of what they wanted to create and then someone came along and decided their vision wasn’t good enough or wasn’t going to satisfy bulk shareholders. It stopped being a great game for the players and became about ‘how little can we give for a dollar to make more money,’ rather than sticking with ‘how can we make this the best game with our design philosophy.’ Make a great game and people will come, make a clone and it will die like all the others.
Love the post and discussion OP.
My 2 cents. Newly introduced game mechanics allow an extra avenue for exclusion that wasn’t there before. I think most people will agree that being excluded from an activity they wish to participate in based on their current situation by other or game mechanics is not ‘fun.’
The game has recently introduced new mechanics that encourage segregation. I cannot join a level 6 fractal group if I have not done every stage along the way. It can be difficult and frustrating to find a group to do the additional stages if I missed the bandwagon. This will only get worse with time as more people get to level 20+ fractals, no one will want to join you for 1 – 19 so you can play. This is even worse online as internet relationships are more and more fair weather friendships (as evidenced by studies that social media is leading to a loss of empathy in the current teen generation).
This gets worse when you add the gear requirements and gating for conditions like agony. Suddenly, I need to grind for gear as well as fractal levels to play with most people. Sure people will say get your guild to help you or make friends to help you do it but that is a false argument. How do I make friends if I am excluded from guilds and groups based on the fact that I am not in good enough gear/have right fractal level? It’s catch 22 and the train has left the station and getting further away all the time.
We have seen this time and again in other MMO’s. Blizzard had to introduce badges to try to help bridge the gap so more than 5% of the population could see high end raid content. Badges meant your could grind non gear gated dungeons for badges to get skip tiers of gear. Even then it was an imperfect solution.
Guild Wars 2 promised to be different. It promised a level playing field that all could participate in even if they had missed months of game play. Lost Shores changed that. Suddenly it said ‘you can’t play on the football team unless you have completed XYZ training camps and acquired X brand shoes.’
Anet can blame the changes on human nature and not their mechanics but the reality is they provided the tools for to enable exclusion. This is backed up by hard game mechanics (fractal level and agony condition).
To answer the OP’s question with an my opinion. This is not so much a left and right situation. It is about creating game mechanics which encourage or hardline reinforce anti social behaviour. I believe in working a certain amount for something, I don’t believe in spending huge amounts of time on a leisure activity to compete when their are no real world tangible rewards.
I believe game mechanics should encourage inclusive behaviours, they did it in Aion (rewards for high levels helping lower levels quest) rather than mechanics that encourage segregation, there is enough of that in the real world and it is a false argument. One of the early posters brought up laws of physics to justify a social argument. Firstly, that is a bad comparison, one is a set of laws not influenced by humanity/culture that is limited by our understanding, the other is a social concept that is dictated and manipulated by culture through media. There is a reason why theory X for management styles is on the decline in terms of credibility and sits at the bottom of Maslow’s triangle for hierarchy of needs. You can’t use laws of physics as a set of rules for human nature. That is like applying physical laws to the ability to my character to throw fireballs in game. Apples and oranges so to speak.
TLDR: Games should be designed to be inclusive with mechanics that encourage the best qualities in human nature, rewarding helping others. The current shift in game direction encourages exclusivity through hard coded mechanics and objectively is bad. You can create mechanics that reward people for being inclusive while encouraging higher skill caps or a sense of accomplishment. They are not mutually exclusive.
No, all guild influence bought rewards are gone when you move servers. For some reason Anet thought this was a great idea.
No you gave hyperbole and accused people of wanting to get precursors for free. You made blanket statements filled with negativity without any constructive backing. I merely quoted you and commented on where you had made grossly inaccurate comparisons and assumptions. I read your post.
In short, you are upset because you worked hard to grind ridiculous amounts of gold to get your precursor. You are upset because the event increased the drop rate slightly and a few more came into the market and dropped the price very temporarily (its already on the way back up). Things like this happen all the time. Say I buy a suit for $200 and a week later it is on special for $100. I can’t complain to the store that they didn’t tell me it was going to be on sale and expect them to reimburse me or even care.
Precursors had 2 ways of being obtained before the event, and until they put in the scavenger hunt there are still only the same two ways: Save ridiculous amounts of gold and buy from TP or get lucky with a random drop from forge, chest or mob.
Because there were so many people doing the event over the weekend, more than probably do Claw of Jormag or w/e in a standard week the amount of precursors available went up. We have no info supporting that the drop rate for precursors in the Ancient Karka event was higher. All we know is the exotic drop rate was higher. We also know that more people took part in this one event than any other during any week in the game recently. More people participating = more drops = more precursors.
I was basically saying your above rant was unfounded, lacked a motivation other than elitism or gold selling and made horrible assumptions about players wanting other methods for getting a precursor. FYI scavenger hunts take time just like grinding gold or using the mystic forge or events. Time = money so it really isn’t any different. Its just you feel that scavenger hunts are free your wrong. Scavenger hunts are as free as grinding gold, doing events or using the mystic forge. Unless you are paying real $$ for gold the game is all free except for time spent.
I am definitely working on the precursor scavenger hunt, but like others have said, things like this take time and I want to get it right. Not to mention, it’s not the only thing on my plate. Please do not expect to see the precursor scavenger hunt in the next patch. I may be awesome, but I am still only human and this is a fairly large amount of work to get done and done right. Please be patient!
That would be a slap in the face of those who bought their precursors and drop 100s of gold in forge like the ancient karka event was as well. YOU use that event on purpose to drop the cost of precursors another slap in the face. It is very apparent as you posted about it being your concern about the cost. So one or two weeks later do you make a event that dropped around 350+ precursors. Lets put this into perspective instance one you bought a game for 60 bucks 2 weeks later that game is free slap in the face no? So for the people your gonna screw over who worked there butts off trying luck in the forge finally got their precursor/ legendary how will you compensate them? To be honest If you keep doing stuff like that you really are going to ruin the game its been two month since the game came out those complaining about precursors there going to keep complaining because they want it for free remember that.
This sounds like a bitter and ill thought out post to be honest, no only have you made logical fallacies as well as over exaggerated the situation, you have made blatantly untrue statements.
A couple of things. No one said they wanted precursors for free, all people have claimed that they wanted a non gold grind/buy or Mystic Forge lottery way to do it. So your last statement is false.
In no way does someone getting their precursor via a method cheapen how you got yours through gambling in the forge or grinding gold, anymore than that someone that got it in the first dragon event chest they ever did. Your efforts for it were rewarded in the end, how does a scavenger hunt or other activity to get it ruin the experience and sense of accomplishment you got from your stroke of luck? It doesn’t.
This is a very different situation to ‘buying a game and it being free 2 weeks later.’ One increased drop rates and alternate methods doesn’t equal free, a closer analogy would be a choice of buying an item for full price or having it possible to buy a raffle ticket to get the same item as a reward, and then the item going on sale a few weeks later or a new store opening up with the item at a cheaper price due to increased supply and or competition.
Hardly a slap in the face and if you feel that way then perhaps you need to care more about real world things than digital items in a game. Also making false claims and dramatising issues in a game is hardly constructive feedback.
The only reason you might have a valid concern about alternate methods of getting precursors or a marginal increase in supply is if you were one of the few trying to control the supply of precursors for profit, normally because you also represent a 3rd party illegal gold seller hoping to encourage people to spend real $$ to afford a precursor. If this is the case you won’t get much sympathy or support here, nor for ‘I spent hundreds of gold buying an item which has no gone down in price’ when this is the order of things in the real world too. Basically, the 100’s of gold you claimed to have paid is the price of being an early adopter or someone who wants to be one of the first.
There are only 2 class developers for all 8 classes. We aren’t going to see any improvements or dev interaction any time soon. They are too busy buffing warriors. Anet has a seriously small, understaffed and 1 dimensionally focused class dev team.
Too busy hiring new content developers and not enough time fixing the broken parts of the game.
For the record I would love some developer engagement on a meaningful level but its probably not going to happen.
Lol at the Carcinogen’s post. Sadly very true.
Elementalists are an example of poorly thought out design. I am guessing Anet changed the vision and team working on them.
A class that is pretty much forced to attunement swap to be almost as effective as other classes with trait-lines specialising only in 1 attunement. So I get to specialise in 1/4 of the the skills class gets.
Instead of 10 solid skills, elementalist’s get 20 halfway useful skills that accomplish the same as other classes can do with their 1-3 skills on each weapon set. Which means my traited specialty is even worse as my skill don’t hit as hard, don’t combo well with themselves and have longer cooldowns.
Can’t swap weapons in combat meaning I am either locked in AoE combat single target combat, since weapons lock play style rather than being based on damage/utility/support. Conjured weapons will never make up for this as they replace skills and versatility that elementalists as well as taking away equipped weapon bonuses.
Long lead time on some spells making them easy for enemies to avoid.
Seriously, Elementalists need a decent design pass as well as a balance pass.
If traits are only going to affect 1 attunement then the reliance on Attunement swapping needs to be massively reduced. Auto attack damage needs to be on part with other classes.
It would be better if traits were based either weapons or cantrips.
Conjured weapons need to work like engineer kits (where they can be swapped to without cd) and need to use the stats on the equipped weapon(s). That or they need to be a significant damage and utility increase while in effect instead of making up for a lack of versatility from being locked in 1 place style from weapon choice.
Traits need to be made more interesting, specially minor traits. Ele’s need a better way to combo their own traits. Ground target skills need to be faster.
I have 3 level 80s and my ele is by far the most annoying to play with the least interesting spec options. Hell necro’s are considered broken and my Necro is far hardier, far easier to play and capable of better damage than my ele for half the amount of work.
Disappointing patch seems aimed at getting more WoW players and less about Guild Wars players:
Lets see:
Introduce stat creep in gear despite promises not to do so all through development. Need to cater to the WoW crowd to keep shareholders happy rather than just make a good game with solid design principles that you stick to. Bigger numbers =/= better game or more fun except for those lacking accomplishments or a sense of achievement outside the game.
Buff the easiest to play class to attract WoW warrior fanatics, make them feel powerful (warrior being the god class of WoW so may as well try to aim at their biggest player segment).
Nerf… I mean ‘bug fix’ harder to play classes. Seriously though, Ele needed buffs and QoL fixes and an Elite skill worth using. The least they could of done is make Tornado reflect missiles (makes sense somewhat).
Ignore the problems with Mesmer portal, put a nerf on it that does not to address the problem. Hint the fix was actually to limit it to people in the Mesmer’s party only, 30 secs more cool down affects the utility of the skill, does nothing to fix WvW balance.
Ignore WvW problems.
Nerf some more classes that are already harder to play.
Reduce class balance team to 2 people for 8 classes that have a lot of bugs. One of the most important areas of the game for most people gets neglected. In the early months the class balance team should be a lot larger, at least 1 Dev and/or champion (spokesperson) per class for fixes and improvements. Currently, this has been a disaster.
I couldn’t get a rats about new content until existing content is fixed and classes have all had a ‘fun and balance’ pass.
Seriously dropped the ball on this one. I was excited about GW2 for ages. I want to remain excited about it but recently it seems the cash shop is the only real focus. I get you need money to run but people will spend more money if they feel good about the game. Player retention will be higher if you just properly fix and balance what you have.
Seems Anet is putting out half done content and not focusing its efforts. We have half done released classes, half done with multi bugs event chains. Half thought out content in the Lost Shores. Seriously, it just feels like it was not given enough time to address all it needed to. We could have waited until Christmas for decent new content. What we really needed was a solid class pass rather than a bit here and a bit there, leaving some classes weak and buffing ones that didn’t really need it.
(edited by Chaede.7348)
Hi All,
I would like to discuss an idea to improve incentives in WvW to make it more even.
Currently there is not a great incentive for the two weaker servers to attack the winner server. it is more dangerous and more likely to end in a repair bill.
Currently, the out-manned buff is pretty useless and not really an incentive to fight to take on the larger and more powerful server.
Instead, in order to encourage smaller, lower score forces to take the on the larger force make is so that taking their keeps and camps is worth more. Give the bonus for attacking the winning army. Give a risk vs reward scenario where you get a real reward from taking on the stronger server rather than squabbling for second place.
Change the outmanned buff on a map to the old orb bonus. Again this means that a smaller server can invade the stronger server’s borderlands and still be in a good position even if outnumbered. Force the top server to work harder and defend more to stay on top.
At the moment, the way the system works it only encourages a squabble for second place and increases snowballing by the strongest server.
Once again, “they” refers to our whole guild, and I can’t speak for everyone but I can for a lot of people that never do that. I don’t. Heck, we took all of kain with 10 people the other day and it wasn’t just Npc’s.
I am sure the fights you had in Kain were epic 10 v 2’s!
They refers to the ones that were specified as running and online during oceanic night hours. They were representing PRO and thus reflect on your guild. Not my problem you guys have quality control. All I am saying is either stop posting self congratualtory claptrap on the forums when most of your fights seem to either be PvDoor, or DR 3v1 odds. Post some real fights if you are going to big note yourselves after every every keep battle. That and could you ask your oceanic night crew to hang around when the odds are at least even? Surely that isn’t too much to ask.
Saying that happens with PRO everytime you see them and for every member is very subjective. You shouldn’t speak of what you do not know or what’s not entirely true. I can’t flat out deny that’s a lie because maybe sometimes that’s happened? But I can say that in many situations I can say the exact same thing you are, I’ve been in 2 to 1 odded fights and the group I was with, especially my guild crushed them. I happen to WvW everyday for hours and whenever I’m there with my guild I’ve never seen us run or abandon to spawn points. We hold if we can and if not we die and come back. Some of you people need to go take a chill pill or come up with like actual videos of proof. I wanna see you 1v1 some of the people in PRO Chaede.
I wish I could take on a person in PRO 1v1 too but since they never engage unless its 2 or more to 1 that isn’t likely to happen. All I am saying is man up and fight when you don’t have a massive advantage sometimes.
Here’s what I don’t get. There are all these DR people patting themselves on the back so hard their in danger of dislocating their shoulders and yet in every engagement I come across them in during oceanic evening hours they run unless they have an overwhelming advantage, normally at least 2 to 1. Last night was hilarious in DR and FC borderlands. PRO are some of the least sportmanly when it comes to remotely even battles, they just run and run and run. Doesn’t help them much though, we just chase em down or back to their spawn.
Wouldn’t mind except for all the self congratulatory hoohaa is out of whack with what actually happens when they don’t have 3 to 1 odds in their favour. Man up DR and PRO, fight when the odds are even too.
I like the multi guild system. It makes it easier to meet and hook up with people particularly if I play random hours. It makes it easier to communicate with weekend crowd, the pve crowd, the wvw crowd, RL friends, the lonely oceanic weeknight crowd on Ferg Crossing. I am now able to mingle easily and socialise with lots of different people depending on what time or what activities I am undertaking.
In the OP’s example, I think the problem was he didn’t enforce his rules by just removing the people that weren’t acting in the manner that he wished them to. But then, I think guild control should be by inspiring others to follow, not through enforcement of rules. Its a game after all.
Quality control is important, the multi guild system is not the problem. The problem is the OP’s management of guild members. If you have guild rules and expect people to follow them, then enforce them strictly. If people in the guild don’t recognise you as a guild leader than you haven’t done enough to promote yourself individually or earn their respect. Merely being a guild leader in name or by rank is not enough to earn respect. After all, the guild leader has the most privileges in the guild and gains the most by having people representing the guild as they choose where the influence is spent.
The multi guild system allows flexible playstyle, allows those who have different social circles or a wide range of friends that don’t all enjoy the same activities or keep the same hours to socialise and coordinate more easily.
The problem is not the system, its the people. Its the internet after all, the only control is via inspiration, people have to want to support your guild and by extension the guild leader and their rules.
This would be true if it wasn’t achieveable mostly by buying gold. The current system rewards people that exploit for gold or exploited bugged mechanics for precursors. Nothing Legendary about that.
given the amount of complains from people that dont have legendaries and crying about the RNG sytem, I think Anet will eventually cave in and start to offer “welfare legendaries,” like guarantee you will receive just by doing x, y and z.
So long as X,y and z are more legendary than spending 400 or more hours grinding gold and involve more than just farming endless plinx than I am ok with that. You know, if they involved the achievement system more, or completing all event chains in Orr, or finishing all exploreables, jumping puzzles etc than yes, that would be a much more legendary method of obtaining legendaries than just grinding a legendary amount of time or having legendary luck in the mystic forge.
Its not welfare if you have to complete skill based objectives and social activities to get and participate in game events. It is welfare if all I need to do is buy X amount of gold to get it.
What do I like about Orr… mostly the scenery. It is really different to most of the things I have seen before. However 3 maps of it with little to distinguish the differences is just too much.
I dislike that the quest chains don’t scale down sufficiently to low population servers. I dislike that a lot of the time they are broken so if I do want to get things that are only available at a specific temple, chances are I will probably have to either wait weeks for that 1 moment when the event chains are working and we get enough people to actually successfully complete the even (fat chance).
I dislike the monotony of 1million undead that 60% of all feel or look almost the same.
I dislike the monotony of the colours used on the scenery and the undead. It looks bland after a while.
I dislike that the only option I have for something different is a bleak icy wasteland for farming high level materials. I dislike that there isn’t a high level map (75%+) for each race/theme. I dislike due to the extremely poor loot that I am locked into magic find gear and grinding for hundreds of hours doing the same few events to make any amount of gold rather than being rewarded for challenging game play or some kind of skill.
Loot in dungeons, event chests (at the end of good non broken chains), wvw need to be dramatically improved. For event chains they should increase the chance of a good drop the more parts of the chain you have completed. Karma is not that answer to the problem of poor loot. Grinding for vendor trash is not fun.
Sorry, off track, Orr just emphasises the problems with poor loot acquisition and how to grind currency because we have no real options.
Issue 3: Slot skills and elite skill
- Most seem to agree that our elite skill choices are overall bad. I tend to agree. I did like a suggestion that we have an option of having Arcane attunement as an elite skill (not a fifth atunement) as suggested in another thread. I would even go for ‘elemental form’ with abilities associated with whatever element I was in. As it stands most people would rather a 4th utility.
- Conjured weapons, if these are supposed to replace our ability to change range like weapon swapping they are poorly lacking. While they can be traited in different trait lines it seems like a lot of investment for a small up time or highly situational skill (much like most elementalist skills).
Weapon choices
- Weapons define range of play in a hard manner for elementalist. Staff lacks single target damage. It lacks the ability to handle highly mobile opponents as landing ground target skills which comprise of most of the damage just doesn’t work. Its feels like it requires your opponent to sit in an aoe while getting auto attacked to do the same damage as other classes are capable of with just auto attack for the most part. It lacks decent burst and combo’s are incredibly hard to pull off. The auto attack animations are also incredible slow and some skills either require a large wind up time or require the elementalist to stand still to cast meaning it lacks mobility.
I can’t say I have enough personal experience with the other weapons sets but there are numerous threads on these forums and Gw2guru that deal with the strengths and massive short comings they have.
Dagger has no ability to contribute during a seige. Elementalists are too squishy to land short range attacks on a gate for very long.
Scepter seems to be a mix between staff and dagger with strengths and disadvantages of both (slow wind up on some ground target skills etc).
Summary
Feels like elementalists are forced into their core class mechanic to be effective, this is highlighted by the heavy investiture that most ‘effective’ builds require into the arcane trait line.
Elementalist weapon choices force a lot of specialisation of a class which is otherwise pigeon holed into cyclic play. It seems a mishmash that is unforgiving especially with a very low health pool and easy to counter play survival mechanisms.
Elementalist slot skills need work, particularly the elite and conjured weapons skills.
I kind of see there is an a slight issue with the current state of elemental skills and the core mechanic. It definitely needs some tweaks.
To give you some background, elementalist is my 3rd level 80 toon to date. I have played a decent amount of all other classes other than engineer. So I have a small basis for comparison. My greatest amount of experience is with staff. I also play a lot of wvw and live in Australia so lag issues can be killer landing ground target skills.
Issue: Elementalist skill and utility
- There is some truth in the statement that elementalists have to use 20 skill to get the effect that other classes can get with 10. Those that think otherwise or think that elementalists have the advantage are kidding themselves. Elementalists are balanced around this, unfortunately there is little to no additional reward for playing it right as an elementalist. While we have greate versatility as an elementalist we get less bang for each of out skills are the weapon set we choose very much specialises us to a role that once we commit to in combat we can’t change. Most of our attacks only do 1 thing or have 1 utility, this is not something that other classes suffer from. Look at the damage/utility set up for other classes (not just mesmer) and compare with the amount of bang per click you get for each skill.
- Our auto attacks are for the most part subpar damage wise. The debuffs that some provide are so short lived that they won’t remain even on the target for even half an attunement cycle. It would be nice if some of the debuffs lasted just a bit longer.
- Combo fields are very short lived and elementalist lacks many ‘finishers’ meaning it is very hard to utilise and get finishes out of our own combo fields. I would like the skill cap of playing an elementalist to mean more by getting these combo’s right. As it stands this is incredibly difficult at the moment.
- Versatility, elementalists on paper have a lot but in practice it is hard to make great use out of it. Sure knowing when to swap and to what element is a skill, but the reward is rather low, particularly when playstyle is very limited by weapon choice. D/D is no use in a seige for example and scepter has limited use.
- Incredible hard with staff to land ground skills on a moving target. A lot of our damage seems to be weighted to 2-5 skills. I would rather they reduced the damage on those and added more interplay between skills 2 -5 of an element and the auto attack for that element. At the moment this just isn’t the case. Other classes weapon sets offer a lot more interplay of abilities on a given weapon. Classic example is Guardian spin to win or Guardian Hammer combo. Something like (particularly for staff):
Skill 1: auto
Skill 2: Field
Skill 3: blast
Skill 4: cc utilty
Skill 5 defence/heal
Skills 2 and 3 should be easy to combo and skill 1 should have good interplay with skill 2. It would be nice if the field in skill 2 lasted long enough to get an attunement swap to combo in a different element for a different kind of effect.
Issue 2: Attunements & trait lines
- While I do agree that class core mechanics should play a strong part, I agree with the suggestion that elementalists are pigeon holed into having to use it. Other classes (with the possible exception of engineer, i can’t say as no experience with), can emphasize or reduce their reliance on it through traits. Elementalists do not really have this choice, it is pretty much mandatory.
- Over reliance on Arcane trait line in most builds. Few argue that you can make a good elementalist build without a 20 – 30 point investment in arcane. This alone should set off warning bells that something isn’t quite right with how attunements are working at the moment. I feel this is partly because other attunements are grossly lacking in return on vestment and partly because we do not have the choice to de emphasis attunement swapping. It would be nice if we can build a coherent and as effective build focussing on 2 elements which you spend 80% or more of your time in with the other 2 elements only for some situations. There is no effective capacity to build a 1, 2 or 3 element focus build and be as effective as someone who constantly cycles.
The OP is right about the scoring mechanism being borked. Needs to have intervals calculated by relative numbers on players online on the opposing servers.
As it stands, US based servers with large Asian based populations will just about always pull ahead as they will have little competition dominating the map just after US peak hours and can mostly hold the map until the next US peak time with little opposition. Meaning, assuming 8 hours of peak time for each zone, Asian populations will score higher for 2/3’s of the day.
The other thing is it is no fun being against the zerg during low pop times. Map caps need to take into account the numbers of players on the opposing sides that are on the map. Shouldn’t be able to have more players than both other servers (combined) do on the map at any one time.
SniffyCube and Embitter do have a valid point. Due to the flaws in the way WvW score is calculated, those that have the most players on just after peak hours will always win. What Kaineng has going for it is a large number of players based in Asia that can take control of WvW just after peak. It is a very different map during peak hours to off peak. Not much that that 20 – 50 off peak players can do on the other servers during Asia peak hours for Kain. Regularly it is 100 or so Kain players vs 20 or so DR and FC at the moment.
Sadly the scoring doesn’t get adjusted for players online during these hours. For example if scores worked on a ratio that included the number of players online, or factored in a slower score progression or updates during off peak times, server scores would not be so slanted by this.
During peak times, Kain is usually second to FC. Unfortunately WvW balance and scoring is so borked that scores do not at all reflect server skill, only who has the best off peak server population.
But grats to Kain for their off peak server effort, must be hard taking so much with a zerg that consistently outnumbers all other forces on the map 3 or more to 1!!!