Guild Wars 2

juno.1840:

The TP explains it all — you don’t even need to guess. The prices are higher than they were before the excessive drop rate was in effect. That’s all the evidence you need.

Drop rates are probably the same, the difference is there are far fewer dyes coming into the trade post with the mass bot ban.

John Lucier.5486:

Halo.8976:

John Lucier.5486:

There was zerging on both sides since saturday, you are only making yourself look bad

It’s because I’m perfectly fine with other servers zerging us =)

Well in that pic, the numbers were pretty equal actually, looking at the minimap, the majority of us is behind you out of the pic.
Equal numbers + siege+ only way to get in are choke points = extreme advantage for defenders.

There is really no way to tell how many Ebay attackers are in that pic due to culling.(minimap dots can be used to see how many Mag people were there)

Gorefiend.9678:

Maguuma should be very scared after this match. What it showed was that your pugs are just as susceptible, if not even more susceptible, to being de-motivized and quitting than Ehmry Bays. Here is why:

*It took Ehmry Bay at least a day to really have people start not showing up due to score. It only took a few hours for the same to occur on Maguuma. So congrats on the win, but be very worried if you are to start losing again.

note: Before some genius tries to make this argument, no, there is a difference between people not showing up and not having people available to show up (early morning Ehmry Bay). Well, at least over the last weekend, hi KISS.

As some others have stated, Mag has lost (often by a large margin) every match since the last time our servers were matched together. Losing is not that big a deal to us.

Now if Mag were to continue winning, THAT is when I’d be worried. Queue times would go up, fair weather transfers would start moving over, and the core of what makes Mag fun to play on could potentially be diluted. I’m not even a WvW regular and have never actually spoken on Mumble, but some of the best times I’ve had in WvW have been when we were losing (epic standoffs at Pangloss for instance).

The only thing I hate about getting stomped is losing access to the jumping puzzles, because for some reason I can’t get enough of them.

I always come back to med kit for the antidote and swiftness+crit potion. The bandages are helpful while you are running away, but I’ve never found them very useful for healing other people (but then again, maybe I’m just not traited for them).

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yeah that’s true, but it’d be nice if we didn’t have to coordinate, waste multiple peoples’ time, and so forth just to achieve something that should be readily available.

I think siege weapons should stay soulbound, even though it would greatly benefit me if they changed to account bound.

My reason has to do with the jumping puzzles. If siege was account bound and not soulbound, then a server dominating the EB JP could just portal up alt after alt after alt and load up with at least 10 free siege weapons a day to transfer to their ‘main’ WvW character. This would give winning servers a huge advantage.

I realize that people can already do this, but at least they actually have to PLAY the alts who own the siege in order to use it. The way it is now, I may end up defending a keep on my main and run out of arrow carts. If I could transfer all my siege to my main, then he would have a stack of like 20 of them at almost all times.

Yeah, Mag is being much more competitive with DH this time around than a couple weeks ago in our last matchup which is good to see. Last week DB and Mag were neck and neck the entire time with FA way out in front.

Oh and if you are low level in wvw you can still contribute if you are handy with siege weaponry and running supply and repairing things, or at least that’s what I do if I’m on an alt. Support abilities that aren’t affected by level help a lot too (condition removal, feedback, etc).

Mesmer and thief are currently the best. I’d give the nod overall to mesmer for the added utility, but a thief is better at gibbing stragglers.

I mostly play an engineer, and a grenade specced engineer is decent at defense and zerg vs zerg standoffs, but if your idea of an engineer is ‘turrets’ then don’t bother, you will be extremely disappointed. Turrets die very fast, have a limited range, tend to shoot at things you don’t care about, and have long cool downs making them very frustrating to use (they are handy to use while operating siege weaponry though).

Convert your gems to gold and use the gold to level up professions. That’s probably the best you can do.

I like EB and the jumping puzzle the way it is….

BUT

Anet put the ‘mystic fountains’ in there for a reason. I think somebody should be able to, with skill, be able to stealth past a force guarding the jumping puzzle, and currently there are a few ‘choke points’ (mostly in the arena) that prevent that from happening because there are certain points that can be spammed with arrows that even a stealthed person HAS to travel over. Due to being put in combat with any damage, there is 0% chance that a person, no matter how crafty or good they are, can make it. up to deal with the camper.

The reason I say this is that I tried a stealth run when the EB maze was full of bad guys, and it was very TENSE and FUN. I ended up falling and failing (I just can’t go through it fast enough to keep my stealth active yet), but it was still fun. Arrow carts spamming a single spot make those kinds of stealth runs impossible, which I don’t believe was the intention of Anet when they added the mystic fountains.

So in summary, PVP in the EB puzzle is fine, but there should somehow be some alternative for people to fight back against people non-stop arrow carting an arena lamp (or any other single point chokepoint). Maybe alter mystic fountain buff or make an alternate path to the top of the arena.

I would like to see three different themed borderland maps ala DAoC realms. They could be themed differently much like the three sides of EB.

No, I just mined Ori from EB this morning.

The locations often change, and sometimes they pop up in very out of the way places that aren’t part of the normal path.

Make sure you join a group. I get a lot more tokens when I’m in a full group.

Oh and siege weapons are your best friend. It only costs 6s to buy an arrow cart or ballista (or you can get them free at the JP) and once you learn to set them up and use them properly you can get a lot of loot bags.

Videos like that make me realize just how terrible I am at the jumping puzzles. To be fair, I’ve only done the EB one twice, but I’m impressed by the speed at which you are able to complete the jumps. I use swiftness the entire time and I still take a long time to line up my jumps (and fall down regularly).

I still see candycorn nodes pop up in my side vision (and on my minimap) only to disappear moments later.

My 2 cents concerning the weekend fighting (I play on Maguuma):

Overall, I had a ton of fun this weekend. I kicked some butt and got my butt kicked all over every map, which is how WvW should be. I saw each side do very stupid things, and each side do some very clever things. This is why we play WvW! Personally, if I didn’t lose sometime I would quickly grow bored of the game.

Hacking etc.

I think we can all agree that generally the people who discuss WvW here are all against it, but there is nothing we can do about it. Yes, it is VERY frustrating when it happens in the game, but we just have to hold out hope that Anet will take care of it. None of us can stop cheating players from moving to our server and doing whatever they want to do.

Also, some Mag players are still a little annoyed at how loudly and publicly some DH players and guilds condemned our entire server as a bunch of cheating lowlifes in the last matchup, even going so far as to attempt to formally ally with Northern Shiverpeaks in some sort of righteous crusade against ‘exploits’ such as stacking and portal bombing. I realize that is was probably a small minority of DH people, but it was a very LOUD minority.

Stonemist and Supply

I think this has already been disproven, but it bears repeating. I spent a fair amount of time in EB this weekend and when Mag had SM they had organized crews JUST for watching yaks, defending supply camps, and running supply from supply camps for siege and weapons. I spent a good deal of time porting back to our keep, running to a camp for supply, running to SM, building a siege (or repairing a wall) and doing it all over again. At no point when I was on did SM have anything close to a supply shortage, which was amazing considering the amount of random people (like me) running around.

Anyway I had a lot of fun this weekend, so my hats off to both DH and DB.

I play an engineer, mesmer, and necromancer (so far, as well as a ton of below level 10 random class guys) and honestly by default the necromancer is the ‘toughest’ of the three based on his pets, lifetaps/heals, and special ability.

The mesmer is a different kind of ‘tough’. Can’t take damage well, but with enough illusions and misdirection can solo very difficult things due to the monsters wasting attacks on clones.

Lastly my engineer feels the squishiest of all three (which is weird, since he is the only one with medium armor) BUT I have not traited him for vit or toughness (to be fair, I have yet to train my necro or mesmer that way either and he still feels squishier). One nice thing about the engineer though is that he’s better at running away than the others due to having basically infinite swiftness with the 10 point tools trait.

Skynet.7201:

As the elected community manager of the Darkhaven Alliance [DHA] and one of the managers of HVN, I am here to address the video submitted earlier.

The offender was acting alone, and not on behalf of any of the leaders or officers of our alliance, and this is currently under investigation.

We appreciate this being brought to our attention.

In response to the allegation that there are two more, we will be looking for proof.

DHA consists of over 25 worldwide guilds (and growing). We are currently getting our “day shift” organized in order to create a better gaming experience for everyone so that no one has to depend on the “night crew” to clean things up.

Despite the less than desirable position this week (and likely next), we have been able to review what we need to improve, and regroup.

We welcome guilds to join DHA, regardless of whether you are the only person in your guild, or you have a small number. DHA has a friendly atmosphere. There are no egos and all of our commanders work together. It is an exceptional setup that I am personally proud to be a part of.

We would like to thank Crystal Desert and Yak’s Bend for an amazing week. Of course, there has been a bit of frustration, and no one likes to lose, but I can safely speak for DHA to say that we have had a really good time and have enjoyed the challenges.

Feel free to send me a mail if you are interested in joining DHA. See you in game, happy gaming!

I hope DH remembers this before they go about accusing other servers like they loudly did in their last matchup.

Oh I also give candy to the ‘happy halloween!’ human girl because she seems happy and nice. I bet the santa human kid by the bank who runs up to you and calls your costume lame gets the least of anyone!

Radiodread.8469:

You remember that fight against NSP? Remember how great that was? Well the core of that server remains, but we need numbers. We are indeed the underdog again, but we’re fighting back. All of our fickle players went to SoR and then Maguuma the week after.

Wait wait, who has come to Mag? Mag has not been in 1st place in any wvw matchup for quite a while. I think maybe you have Mag mixed up with DH but I’m not sure.

Mine is the little charr that says ‘Sweeeeeeets!’ because the first time I gave him some candy I had good luck with the bags (not endless tonic good luck, but more than just candy corn in nearly every bag).

martillos.3790:

Props to mag in pag cave that was a fun fight you guys had ton of siege.I had to get on my mesmer and had my guild port in and end that fiasco.You guys got alot of kills in the meantime though

That was pretty hilarious. There were many times throughout that night that if you would have charged in you would have seen a coordinated group of humans all dancing perfectly in sync in the middle of the cave. Towards the end of the night people got a little bored and a large number of people waypointed out to hit something else, so there wasn’t as many people on defense as there had been. Shortly after was when you guys had the successful portal bomb that broke the defense. I stayed in until the end and got to see you guys finally rush in and take the point, and WOW there were a lot of people rushing in. You guys really wanted that supply camp!

For what it’s worth, my suggestion is that the devs add a few powers, maybe one or two from each class, that specifically combat this. The AE cap is actually a GOOD thing, so instead of scrapping it entirely I suggest making a few abilities ignore the cap in creative ways (not just ‘ignores AE cap and does a lot of damage on a high timer, otherwise you’ll just have a group of people with that ability insta-gib groups of other people when they all do it at once).

Some examples:

A ground targeted confusion spell that hits EVERYONE under a very small radius. In normal fights this would act sort of like a confusion grenade where it might hit a person or two, but a stacked zerg could all get confused with a well placed spell. Replace confusion with blind or daze for similiar results.

Some sort of knockback ‘bomb’ type ability (like Big ’ol Bomb) that may be tough to place but provides unlimited knockback to an area. Some sort of earthquake or windstorm or something could provide a similar effect.

An AE poison (or weakness or vulnerability) cloud with no AE effect.

These are just off the top of my had and some may very well be game breaking or bad, but with a little thought I think some intelligent ‘anti-stacking’ abilities could be handed out that are not overpowered but are extremely effective against groups of people all standing in the same spot. (sort of like feedback). I think this is a better option than just raising or removing the AE cap, because then you end up with roaming groups of insta-gib glass cannons abusing culling and group stealth to warp into the middle of a large group of players and wipe them out before they have any chance to react.

As a bonus, I would like to see these abilities work in such a way that a well coordinated stack team could work together to minimize the damage (everyone spread now! everyone re-stack!) because I think coordinated teamwork is a good thing. Consequently, I would like to see a well coordinated anti-stack team have some more options that siege weapons to deal with them.

Fodux.5379:

You should come to Dragonbrand man. From what you described we have exactly what you’re looking for. We are constantly outnumbered but when we’re on in force Epic times are had. We lose in points because we just don’t have the numbers to keep up, but we still show up every day.

See this post and you’ll get a better understanding of the culture here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Dragonbrand-Official-Hard-Mode-Server/

Good luck with the server search.

Mag is pretty much in the same boat. In fact, if you look at our matchup this week you can see just how close Mag and DB are to each other.

Mag commanders (and pretty much everyone I’ve played with) rock, so keep on fighting the good fight as long as it is FUN. Really, there is no need for you to lose sleep or neglect work so that we can keep a pretend tower in some pretend world blue for another couple of hours.

Also, as more people get experience I think it will open up more, and the public mumble is a wonderful tool for community building as long as people keep it fun and civil (which it has been the few times I’ve popped in). As it is, I think people are afraid to lead because normally Mag is very much outnumbered, so odds are sooner or later you are going to run into a zerg and lose.

Also, don’t stress about losing keeps you’ve helped to take. Sometimes what happens is one side or other makes some progress in EB and then the overpopulated/winning server realizes what is happening, transfers over and rolls right over everyone again. I’ve poked my head into EB a few times in the past couple of days and often there is an enormous force of FA literally camping the exit to the spawn. Yes, there is a side exit, but it’s hard to get 15 people motivated to fight when there are 40 just waiting to pounce on them the moment they leave the keep.

Having Stonemist for some reason seems to be a key factor in bringing the casuals out of Lions Arch (reminds me of DAoC battlegrounds when your side took over the keep in the middle). I should know, the first time I ever went to WvW was when my side had SM, haha.

Going to a bank in the grove was just an example. I realize everyone can do everything at LA, it just makes all the other cities vacant and somewhat pointless aside from early personal story quests. If I could WP directly to the crafting area at DE for example, I would probably do that just to mix things up. As of now it’s a hassle with a bunch of extra loading screens, so I don’t bother.

I think most of the people saying that are on the winning servers that just max out population on a map and run around flipping all of the camps, towers, and keeps one after the other while the other servers are asleep, busy elsewhere, or just completely overwhelmed.

They basically get the same rewards but never die, and thus don’t get the same repair bills as the losing servers. Also, they usually dominate the PVP jumping puzzles which is a good way to get a lot of free blueprints.

Apologies if this has been suggested (and I imagine it has), but my suggestion is to make it so that travel is free from any city WP to any other city WP.

My reasoning is that currently it IS free, but it is a hassle with an unnecessary amount of load screens.

Say I am at the PVP gates at Lions Arch and want to travel to the bank area of the Grove. Currently I would:
WP to the city portals in LA (load screen)
Zone into the Grove (load screen)
WP to the bank area (load screen).

My suggestion would change this to:
WP to the bank area in the Grove (load screen)

I’m not suggesting free travel to any cities (only city to city travel, just like how WP to WP in a city is already free). I’m just a little tired of looking at load screens. As a side benefit, I think this would cause the population to spread out a little bit more and spend more time in cities other than Lions Arch.

My advice to the DH people who keep crying over the Mag server doing things like stacking….. quit now before your server moves up any more tiers, because you really haven’t see anything yet.

Also, I have never seen a winning server complain so much in a matchup. Not just winning by a little, but a lot. What’s the deal?