Guild Wars 2

What is the point in posting score updates, you know http://mos.millenium.org/na exists right? And I think it goes without saying nobody’s on the edge of their seat over this match.

The EB JP is not different depending on which keep you enter from, and you only need to do it once for the meta. The Garnet/Emerald/Sapphire sanctums you see in the achievements are the JPs in the NW of each borderlands. So it won’t be that difficult even if you are the same color the whole time.

It is a bit weird everyone else changes colors but it doesn’t make much of a difference. Feels like we’re hardly ever red so I’m kind of happy about it.

DevonCarver.5370:

We’ll get some sort of schedule out as soon as we have the matchups. I’ll post it up on the forums and then we’ll find a way to get it out more broadly as well. The matchups aren’t locked in until the season actually starts. So, while EU is ready, NA won’t be ready for 6.5 more hours.

Any reason you couldn’t just publish it with rank numbers instead of server names, and we can figure it out for ourselves? I mean you must have known the schedule from that perspective for weeks…

Yeah I’m not sure it’s since beta, but it’s been a very long time you’ve been able to stunbreak it. Perhaps certain select stunbreaks still weren’t working? I can’t remember it ever not working recently, across multiple classes, and SS/Inf Sig/RfI all definitely worked . It was nerfed slightly though, as it no longer rounds up.

What may have been confusing some people was that after stunbreaking you’d usually still appear as a frozen, grey character (but you’d be able to move and use skills normally). It is somewhat surprising a lot of thieves don’t seem to have noticed this, were they not using their own stunbreakers when opposing thieves stoned them? Kind of funny to think about.

Victory.2879:

Fighting in the JP achieves nothing for your server, contributing nothing to the overall fight, and are just an opportunity for thiefs and mesmers to gank players from above, preventing others from getting their achievements.

But I guess that sort of cheap shot/cheap thrills appeals to the same people who were abusing chaos storm last night….

And, I am not telling others how to play, I’m pointing out that JP’s have no place in wvw and should not be included in the ‘WVW’ meta achievement.

The reason they don’t remove them entirely from wvw is that if they did and kept them as pvp areas they would be completely dead zones apart from one multi screen/account playing player watching the screen waiting for someone to come along so they can gank him and make themselves feel proud that they can ruin someone else’s attempt at completing a Jump Puzzle.

You keep saying “JPs have no place in WvW” and haven’t actually given a reason why. Apparently Anet disagrees because they went to the trouble of making them, and are now adding achievements to encourage people to go there. Maybe you should come up with some actual justifications for your argument?

You can say it isn’t WvW but that’s frankly meaningless, WvW is whatever the developers define it as (for better and for worse). Doesn’t help you win isn’t much of an argument either, this isn’t a job and I don’t have to spend 100% of my time in game maximizing PPT in any way I can.

Why do people keep mentioning pistol whip with sigil of paralyzation? It didn’t even increase the stun duration of pistol whip under the old system.

All stuns were rounded up before today. A half second stun (what pistol whip is) would round up to one second even with the +15% from para. The problem was a 1 second stun with +15% duration would round up to 2 seconds. So please stop mentioning it in threads about pistol whip.

Anyway good video, hopefully we get a response on whether this was intended. JSharp posted about buffing warriors because hammer would be nerfed by the paralyzation fix, where were our S/P Thief buffs huh??

Actually I haven’t even bothered playing much WvW today because of horrid lag spikes since the patch. I was on long enough to see a load of Mag players get gibbed for standing close enough to a wall with mesmers on it, despite chat already pointing out the bug. And it was funny!

Not really sure what comparable glitches people have been banned for though. As far as I can remember most of the exploits they’ve handed out bans for have been things that impact the market (golems, karma weapons, snowflakes, etc).

You appear to have missed the point of my post. I’m a WvW player and I don’t go into the JP to play a jumping game, I go in there to kill other players while they’re trying to play a jumping game. That is the whole point of a JP in a PvP zone, and there are none of those outside of WvW. Achievements for doing it will supply those players.

You can finish the meta without doing any of the JP achievements so nobody is forcing you.

Anyone who reported people for that, thinking they’d get banned, is seriously delusional. Just a funny bug that was bound to get fixed quick and it already is, no harm done. Try growing a sense of humor…

I disagree. That kite on the dome was great for the JP, so many people were in there. Loads of PvE players to grief and I actually saw servers grouping up to push in and retake the thing. Nowadays they’re all basically dead, so much effort went in to designing them and there’s never any fights there. It’s going to be great fun on the day of the patch, all the most achievement-obsessed players will be in there trying to knock it out as quickly as possible.

They should have more defense related achievements though, the whole meta just screams “join a karma train or you’re wasting your time!”

Pretty sure every server’s voice comms is filled with comments of “man server X is so full of bads!” and “we’re wiping these idiots with smaller numbers over and over”. I don’t think it’s a quality unique to Mag. Nobody is going to say anything about how badly they just got crushed in a 1v1, sorry but that’s just how people are.

And anyway it’s not so much that the bad players will be transferring, rather that people with a bad attitude (i.e. leaving when the going gets rough) will be. Better to lose fairweathers at the bottom of Gold than to absorb them at the top of Silver, bottom line.

Josh Davis.6015:

This is a tooltip error. It still works correctly at 3 second intervals.

From the other thread.

It seems the same to me. Got a load of conditions for 10s from a risen plague carrier, SR removed one on entering stealth then one every three seconds as expected.

EDIT: I was also able to remove 2 conditions with one BP+HS, one on entering and one at 3 seconds. Or maybe the clear on entering stealth just doesn’t count for the cooldown? I dunno.

cyyrix.6105:

Haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere yet, but it looks like a major nerf inc. for Shadow’s Embrace (1 condi removed every 10s in stealth instead of every 3s). Will be interesting to see if that’s counter-buffed somehow.

(Dev hovers over the tooltip at 33:47 into the stream)

Ugh that will be horrible if it goes through. Hopefully it’s just something they’re messing with on the dev servers and it’s not changing tomorrow. More than tripling the cooldown? What the hell…

nytehex.3267:

sorry, but I choose winning.

This sentiment is why Mag ending up top of silver would be a total disaster. Getting smashed in Gold for seven weeks is a small price to pay for avoiding an infestation of win-obsessed transfers looking for an easy ride.

If you care about winning please just go bandwagon a T1 like everyone else and leave Maguuma alone.

Kalorian.1935:

Vergil Huragok.3967:

And the yak finishers are temporary until the next season as well, I imagine much of the other rewards are pretty much standardized

Also, I’ve seen the finisher described as a “stack of yak finishers” which makes me believe it is a limited number of time-limited consumables similar to how the cow finisher you could buy from the gem store used to work.

Good point about the stack thing, that’s actually in the news story I linked but I missed it. Although the consumable finishers were changed when they introduced the permanent ones, they are no longer a time based thing and are instead uses. When you use a consumable finisher item it goes into that finisher menu as five individual uses. So a full stack would allow you to finish 1250 people with your super cool dolyak.

The weekly rewards have already been added, you now receive 1-3 bonus WvW rank up chests based on how your server placed in the previous week’s matchup. They’re account bound and you have to rank up to get them, so if you win your next three ranks will give you two chests. These are pretty much worthless as we all know.

The season reward chest will be based on how your server places in their particular league, so 3rd place in gold, silver and bronze will (I think, anyway) yield the same reward. No one knows how big the difference between 1st place and last place rewards will be, nor do we have any idea what the chest will contain. In order to get your season loot you have the finish the new meta achievement (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1no65h/hidden_wvw_league_achievement_founds/).

Also, the winner of each league will get a dolyak finisher, colored depending on which one. So 1st in gold gets a golden yak and so on. Most of this info can be found here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-world-vs-world-season-1/

Yeah the whole “transfers will get the reward for the server they started the season on” clause doesn’t really seem like enough of a deterrent. Once it becomes clear how much the servers in the bottom positions of their respective leagues will be getting steamrolled we’ll probably see a lot of movement off.

At one point I actually re-read all the announcements about leagues because I couldn’t believe they weren’t stopping transfers during the season. Or locking you out of WvW for the duration if you transferred, or something significant to encourage people to stay put. Seems kind of obvious really, but I guess that transfer money is just too good.

Chris.3290:

Why do you think SBI and SoS, two former WvW champions,

Can’t believe you actually typed that with a straight face. All hail the wisdom of these great champions of yesteryear!

Oh and the last time Maguuma played a T1 was JQ in September. You should check out the thread if you think Gold league will get Mag to shut up about anything, probably the funniest matchup thread in a long time.

EDIT: Yeah I’m blind it was August.

Can you think of a way to award WXP that wouldn’t make zerging the optimal way to gain ranks? Even if capping points didn’t award any and it only came from players, you’d only need to win one zerg fight where you tag 60 people and contribute nothing to get more than a roamer probably will in a whole day never losing a 1v1-3. Spamming aoe autoattacks in a blob is just as easy and useless as pressing 1 on a ram to take an undefended keep.

In answer to your question, the point of the ranks is to keep the mass of people that make up the zerg playing by giving them something for their time invested. Why don’t roamers need equal treatment? Because roaming is actually fun and allows you to improve as a player over time, and so is intrinsically rewarding. Zerging is not, which is why they created this extra layer of reward.

Honestly there’s a lot of really cool things they could do here that would add real depth and go some way to making unbalanced matches more fun. Double WXP for taking 1st place’s stuff would be great. Even better would be some kind of voting mechanism, so if enough players from two servers tell some NPC at spawn they want an alliance then the see each other’s names as yellow or orange instead of red. They can still attack each other and take each other’s structures.

So mechanically not much would be different, but it would solve the three biggest obstacles to a 2v1 right now: planning/communication difficulties, most players on all sides being ignorant of the plan and casual players’ insatiable desire to kill anything with a red name. An option to disable friendly fire against your allies from another server would be awesome too, but it’d have to be on a per player basis. It’d also be good if the voting NPC could give you info on how many team kills or structure steals have occurred since the alliance has been active so people could make informed votes.

evilapprentice.6379:

You are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Thief already has plenty of gap closing openers, and shadowstep isn’t such a strong/brainless stunbreaker as to necessitate a nerf.

I agree. Why exactly would I use this new Shadowstep to engage? It not being a stunbreak any more doesn’t make it good for engaging. The idea of having to prepare your stunbreak in advance sounds interesting in theory, but it sort of contradicts the purpose of a stunbreak: to save you from a vulnerable position. Also I sincerely doubt anyone would use it that way in practice. You’d just use it as a ghetto stunbreak the first time you get CC’d, since it’ll still be able to move you far enough away to avoid most follow up.

You should really explain in these threads why you believe these particular things need to be changed at all. Shadowstep isn’t particularly OP in my opinion, and this forum isn’t overflowing with complaints about it. “It should be used to engage” is a pretty flimsy reason, and is just an opinion that you don’t justify.

Because if it were comparable then all the maps would be queued 24/7 with PvE heroes farming rather than fighting. People who played back at release will remember when escorting dolyaks would give you event credit even if the caravan was not attacked. We had crowds of 40+ players humping those yaks all the way to their destination, while teamchat was filled with people crying for help defending garrison or whatever. It would have been hilarious if it weren’t so sad, and that only rewarded you with XP and karma.

I mean, look how popular karma trains are already. Imagine if they were actually rewarding!

Miss Firesss.3704:

I was capturing a bloodlust point yesterday, an FA guy came up, we waved at each other, then he took off to go back to his group. It was really nice to see some honor in this matchup. I can’t count how many times myself and an enemy have run past each other and just kept going, since we were on our way to different objectives and didn’t need to interrupt each other.

Interesting definition of “honor”. Some might view the pacifism of you two lovebirds as quite the opposite. After all, as that guy by the portals is so fond of saying the mists needs world defenders, willing to put their lives on the line. I don’t recall him crying out over and over for friendly folks looking to make some friends. You know fighting other players is meant to be the point of this whole thing, right? Actual combat isn’t just an inconvenient delay on the way to the next circle you’re determined to stand in.

Well in some cases they might just be using the hole above the gate to fire over a wall, but I’m going to assume the situation you’re talking about doesn’t allow for that possibility.

While FOV hacks exist, you don’t need one to do what you describe. Eyefinity/Vision Surround (software that spreads the game across multiple monitors) will get you a wide enough FOV to do this, and you can also put the game in windowed mode then shrink it vertically to get a ghetto version of the same effect. Neither of these are against the rules, though I’m sure the red posts confirming that have long since been quietly deleted (along with most of the threads on this subject).

As to why Anet hasn’t removed this “functionality” from the game, I’m not really sure. They’re probably unable to limit AC fire to the basic FOV while still displaying a larger one, so I guess they’d have to discontinue multiple monitor support in order to stop this. Maybe they have some sort of business deal with AMD/Nvidia that prevents them from doing so. Or they just don’t want to because the issue isn’t prevalent enough.

One thing is certain though, it’s not a high priority issue for them.

JobCreator.1956:

Kaspur.3705:

Glad I could deflate your chest pumping.

Those pumps they were carrying were cylindrical, pretty sure they weren’t for their chests…

Uh, you guys know the phrase is “chest thumping”, right? Please ensure your kitten talking makes some sense.

I don’t really think there’s much any individual can do to maintain their server’s stability, they’re made up of thousands of people. Everyone will have a different idea of what will improve the server and I don’t really see how you can convince them all to follow whatever bright idea you have.

Anyway, for Maguuma I think a couple of things have kept us in roughly the same position for quite a while now. First and foremost is not bothering with recruitment, because after all if someone is willing to transfer once they’ll probably be willing to do so again. Often with good reason, it’s natural when recruiting to paint a rather rosy picture of your server which can lead to transfers becoming disillusioned with the reality of it once they arrive.

Secondly Mag has always had a terrible night presence, which I think has actually helped us remain stable because most win-focused players would rather not see all their hard work undone while they sleep. This makes a bandwagon forming much less likely. Also since we’re used to seeing everything wiped out overnight by servers with better coverage, Mag players tend to view the scoring system with a considerable amount of disdain. So streaks of wins or losses don’t really have that much of an effect on morale.

I’m slightly worried about the leagues though, as we’re in a bit of a catch-22. If we end up in silver, a lot of our organized NA guilds will probably get quite bored outnumbering basically every other server in the league during that time slot and might consider transferring to rank 5/6 simply to have something to do. On the other hand, if we’re in gold then what little oceanic presence we have and also our more casual players might transfer or quit entirely because getting spawn camped for 7 weeks straight is just too depressing for them. That’s all just speculation on my part though, and I imagine everyone would probably return after the season is over either way.

To avoid confusion in the future, refer to them as Football and Handegg. Say what you see…

I hope you guys realize bemoaning Maguuma’s lack of class is pointless. This isn’t a friendly round of golf and we’re not going to compliment you on a jolly fine putt. Trolling on the forums ups the ante to everyone’s benefit, I’m sure SBI derives greater satisfaction from killing us than FA. Would you really prefer a circlejerk thread where we all pat ourselves on the back for wiping each other?

Plus it ensures Mag doesn’t get ruined by a bandwagon, as all the honorable warriors out there (who oddly seem to make up the majority of transfers) wouldn’t dream of going to the troll server.

scuzbutt.8140:

When you lose to SBI this week and your server is crying and replacing their broken keyboards just remember that SBI will welcome you in with open arms in case you want to come and see what a real server looks like.

Don’t know why you put half of your response inside my quote, but whatever. Anyway I didn’t make any posts in here saying how much SBI sucks so please address those complaints to the relevant posters. The average SBI does seem to be somewhat lackluster in terms of individual skill compared to other servers we’ve faced recently, but I just attribute that to the weeks and weeks of rolling lower tiered servers teaching everyone bad habits. I’m sure in general there are similar numbers of bad players on every server.

Regardless, in answer to your question: no! In a 24 hour format a difference in population is much more significant than a minor skill gap between the average Mag pubbie and an SBI one. Not sure how you’ve failed to notice this if you’re not a new player…

And oh yes I’m sure you transferred right before the bandwagon started rolling. Funny how everyone who transfers does so right before everyone else, isn’t_it*? I think you’re the second person in this thread alone to make such a claim. Quite the coincidence!

*filter is kittened

Anet don’t want a situation where there’s a reason to turn away people of your own server (see: their justification for the Outnumbered buff staying useless), they believe more people must always be better otherwise we will begin abusing each other. So for example a 10 man group is taking a tower, some new player rocks up to try and help, suddenly the cries of “gtfo noob killing our dps” start flying.

Of course the rally mechanic already gives guild groups a good reason to turn away useless uplevels, but the WvW team was saddled with that ill-considered mechanic long ago and I doubt they could remove it if they wanted to.

Don’t mean to be harsh, it just isn’t going to happen.

scuzbutt.8140:

The only thing that matters at the end of the week are the points.

You must be new to this game. PPT=population, the final score only shows you the relative size of each server. Try to find a reason for playing that isn’t a number you as an individual have next to no influence on.

Or just bandwagon to another server after this one starts losing. If you can figure out the transfer screen!

Yeah the issue with this is there’s no real justification for removing TA F/U in particular. I mean, if we ignore the bugged final boss it’s really no more or less fun/challenging/exciting than any of the other TA paths, in fact I’d argue it has the best boss in the whole dungeon (Vevina). And there are certainly “worse” and more aggravating dungeon paths in the game. SE path 2 or HotW 2/3, even Arah 4, are much more out of line with the other paths in those particular dungeons than F/U is. Basically what I’m saying is if F/U deserves to be removed the same could be said for the majority of the dungeons in the game.

It just seems to me like they’re removing it because it fulfills their need for the LS to change the game world in a permanent or meaningful way; a bullet point on a press release. It is completely arbitrary, and F/U only ended on the chopping block as a matter of convenience.

Imagine if they did set the match for the final week as Mag/SoS/SBI and straight up gave the winner the 6 spot (so in essence ignore the rankings for determining that position).

I’m probably dreaming too big though, most likely the RNG matchups for the last two weeks will determine who is 6th and we won’t even fight each other. However, in such a hypothetical showdown Maguuma would obviously win as we have the highest population of sad losers who would take a week off work and defecate in a sock to make it happen.

No matter how dumb it was to do what he did, sending him any kind of harassment after the fact is even more idiotic. It’s just asking to have this thing turned around to make the GvG community look bad for taking things too far (see: stream spamming going on far too long).

Starting a duplicate in General Discussion was also a mistake, even if the responses in there from PvE players are hilarious. Makes it seem like you’re trying to rally pitchforks for a witch hunt.

The mental gymnastics in these GvG threads are great. Seriously, GvG is a conspiracy to trade WXP? Have you people never ridden the karma train? It’s like a WXP IV. A GvG, on the other hand, involves a lot of waiting around and is generally not an efficient way of acquiring kills, WXP, or anything else. As anyone who has seen or played in one would know.

But no, it’s all an evil conspiracy of exploiters, sticking it to the working man on his arrow cart. Who will speak for the PPT obsessed siege warrior? His needs have been ignored for too long!

Siphaed.9235:

Orbs were in since the game’s Beta and were only removed for exploiting reasons around Nov 1st because of the excessive exploiting (that was griefing massive amounts of players due to the score imbalance because of it).

Actually, this is wrong:

Habib Loew.6239:

After a careful reevaluation of orbs of power we have decided to remove them from WvW in an upcoming build. As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back. In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game. Under the circumstances we believe that removing orbs completely is a better choice than attempting an in-place redesign/re-implementation as it will immediately put a stop to all orb hacking. It is likely that orbs, or some orb-like mechanic, will return at some point in the future, but only after we are confident that they will not exhibit the sorts of issues that we see with orbs today.

The snowball effect is actually mentioned first, and the hacking is an additional reason. Presumably with the move from something that could be placed in a t3 keep, to five points in the middle of the BL, this issue is considered solved. I’m not convinced it is, considering the wide differences in population between servers. Not to mention you need to take the buff for yourself, rather than just neutralizing it for your enemy.

Vena.8436:

If I neutralize the central nodes, I do not undo that yaks have delivered 33% more supply than mine, for example, or 25% faster upgrades. That is done and done, and the server losing the buff has only lost efficiency.

You can undo the extra supply or upgrades though, by taking the structure and resetting it. There’s also more opportunity for counterplay if the enemy commits people to holding the buff, as if they hold those you can threaten the supply lines to nullify the benefit. Also with +stats fights won (that would have otherwise been lost without it) and the structures that change hands as a result won’t be undone by removing that buff, they just lose efficiency in future fights. So the planned implementation has the same problem, from a PPT-focused perspective.

I’m pretty sure the very win condition of WvW would disagree with you. Siege, upgrading, and capture points are the core mechanics of WvW by definition of how WvW decides who wins. PvP is a means to that end and it is a mechanic therein.

I guess it’s a matter of opinion then. If winning is your primary reason for playing, then you’d consider the win condition all important. That doesn’t make much sense to me in a 24 hour uneven numbers format though, since whether kills or point holding decides the final result the determining factor would still be coverage. None of the changes I suggested would alter the results of any matches, nor will the planned Bloodlust with +stats. Almost every match is decided before it begins. I play because the combat is fun, and this change will make it less so by virtue of more uneven fights and a general boost in effectiveness for servers who were already dominating.

But then its irrelevant and doesn’t do anything.

Then increase the number of points rewarded for a stomp with Bloodlust to the point at which it does do something and is relevant. But then I only suggest that because I don’t care about the final score, so I imagine you’d have a problem with that too. I don’t really care whether the points do something or not, they could be worth nothing and I’d still go there because it looks like a fun place to have a fight. Or just make them each worth 5 PPT, in addition to the current 1/2/3 points per stomp and some amount of + gold/xp/wxp for 3/5. Anything but stats.

Vena.8436:

Yes, let’s completely imbalance the core of WvW (supply, yaks, upgrades, supply capacity (are you nuts?)) so that “combat isn’t affected unfairly” in a format where combat was never fair. (To think you’d want to the stronger server to actually WP, fortify, and repair faster, and readily carry more supply than you over +150 stats… is a bit mind boggling if one were to be thinking about it from the point of view of WvW mechanics.)

While we’re akitten let’s also cut down the trees in the south, cull those pesky spiders, and barbecue those hogs, all for the sake of “WvW” and “combat”.

PS: Canceling a servers buff, given your suggestion, wouldn’t undo their reaped benefits (ie. they will have their better supplied, upgraded, whatever-ed keeps and zerg) so there’s almost nothing lost to them aside from efficiency. Moreover, once they are fully fortified and upgraded, they won’t care about the buff anymore and will now simply crush you without having to divvy up resources to controls aid buff.

Whereas canceling a servers buff, when stats are involved, cancels the stats and they simply don’t have them anymore.

Well, I wasn’t saying the buff should be all those things instead of stats, just that they were more interesting alternatives. I didn’t specify any percentages or specifics, they were just suggestions I’d seen posted elsewhere that sounded better to me. Yes 150% faster yaks would be crazy but 33% would only really be equivalent to having one person giving each yak swiftness. And there would still be reason to hold the buffs after a particular BL is upgraded, as you’d still have the points for stomps part of the mechanic (which is a decent idea). Plus remember the effect is not limited to the current map, so holding 3/5 on home BL would still be worthwhile to help you upgrade other maps.

Also I disagree that siege/upgrading/capture points are the core of WvW. To me PvP, fighting other players, is the core of WvW and the rest are mechanical elements added to enhance it, because a simple kiling field with no objectives wouldn’t be as complex or fun in the long term. After all you might play WvW with the structures, siege and capture points removed for a little while before getting bored, but I can’t see anyone playing the upgrading, yak escorting and siege building metagame at all if there weren’t other players there trying to kill you.

Honestly I’d rather the buff were entirely reward orientated, which wouldn’t step on either side’s toes. +50% XP, MF, WXP. Maybe to make the buff more meaningful, you get twice or three times as many points for stomps. I don’t think that’s enough of a “gamechanger” for Anet though, which is why I made those other suggestions.

Shemsu.8721:

It wont, and shouldnt convince them. Personally I could care less either way about the stat points, though i love the stomp ppt part. However to argue against a WvW development for GvG (ie NOT WvW) reasons, is just not going to work, and it shouldnt. Thats like arguing against a sPvP change for PvE reasons. GvG is NOT WvW, it should not even be considered when making changes and developments regarding WvW. They can go stroke their kitten in the sanctum

Fine, don’t consider it. Plenty of non-GvG players have posted saying they oppose this, mechanics that favor the most populated server in a match are bad for obvious reasons that have been pointed out over and over. Straight stat buffs are also the least interesting means of giving a reward for holding these new points, and lead to confrontations that would have been even before feeling like they were unfair.

Yes uneven fights are part of WvW’s appeal and a big reason why many (including me) prefer it to sPvP, but that doesn’t mean Anet should make it mechanically impossible to have an even one. What I find amusing (in a depressing way) is that most of the people posting in support of Bloodlust seem to be doing so because they want GvG to fail/be ignored.

No to the buff, or more specifically no to a buff that effects combat. Better options are faster dolyaks, faster upgrades, more supply capacity, or any number of other sensible things that have been suggested.

But higher population (i.e. that ability to cover a larger number of capture points) should never reward higher individual combat effectiveness.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

Points are king in normal WvW. Duels and GvG may be fun, but the main focus is the scoreboard over the course of the week. The buff gives a decent chunk of bonus stats, and extra points to your server when you stomp people. You take it off, you’re presumably killing less people (from the decreased stats), stomping less people, and getting your server less points.

tl;dr: If you were to manually strip the buff off of yourself you’d essentially be hurting your server’s chances of winning the match.

So? By this logic everyone must be constantly doing whatever will help their world gain PPT as fast as possible otherwise they are hurting their server’s chances of winning the match.

If I don’t attack a solo uplevel because it’s pointless I am hurting my server, he could be carrying supply that will turn a siege. If I decide I’d rather play a new build/class than the one I have 100s of hours on, I’m hurting my server because I may lose fights I would have otherwise won. If I go into a queued map without full ascended/exotic gear I’m hurting my server because some guy with better stuff could have taken the spot.

Everyone “hurts” their server constantly while playing the game normally and saying something is wrong because it doesn’t improve your chances of winning the match is crazy.

Menaka.5092:

A good middle ground would be a “honorable fighter mode” that gives a stat debuff equal to the current buff from the borderland bloodlust, leaving the “gain point for your server on stomp” mechanic active.

Good idea. Stick some NPC at spawn who you talk to in order to receive it, problem solved. And I fail to see how it could be technically difficult for Anet to implement.

Now watch this suggestion get completely ignored because it makes too much sense.

DevonCarver.5370:

No. That is not a possibility at this time. The point of the buff is to affect the WvW game mode as a whole disabling it on your character would lessen the value of the buff to a server and completely invalidate the whole point.

Can we have some kind of answer as to why the game needs another snowball mechanic that favors the server with a population advantage?

Please just swap the Outmanned and Bloodlust buffs, something like:
Outmanned:
No armor damage, +150 to pow/pre/etc
Bloodlust:
+20% MF, +20% XP and +20% WXP (for each 3/5 held). Keep the stomps = points part.

Everyone wins.

Gamadorn.2659:

“As the first season progresses, each world will have a shot to earn points every week based on its standing. First place awards the most points, but your side will still get some points for lower rankings too. At the end of the season, the points will be added up and the world with the most points will get a cool trophy and a unique custom finisher. However, there will be smaller rewards doled out along the way, and even if you don’t participate in WvW, you could be on the receiving end of some goodies if your server does well.”

Thanks for the quote. So it seems winner of the league will be determined by medals, and glicko will essentially cease to matter once it starts. At least, that’s what I think this means, since “ranking” in this context seems to mean how you finish in a particular weekly match, i.e. 1/2/3 decided by points. Bit confusing since when they refer to “ranking” in the context of who is in what league they mean glicko ranking.

Anyway the whole thing sounds like a total mess regardless. Hopefully the finisher/trophy will be the only thing that is rewarded based on who wins the league, and everything else will be based on participation in some way. Pretending anyone outside of T1 has a real shot at winning is insane.

DevonCarver.5370:

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server.

Quoting this again. Yak’s Bend stands no chance against DB or FA. Four leagues for NA really seems like the more sensible option. NA has more diversity in population than EU, so more leagues not less would be logical. Is “the matches wouldn’t be varied enough” really that big a problem? They’d still be more varied than the original system, and slightly less than the current one.

Also I’m a bit confused. Who is in which league is determined by the rankings, which are determined by glicko rating. But who wins the league (and gets the best rewards) won’t be determined by glicko? Or will it? And if so will the glicko ratings be displayed in game?

And if glicko is the determining factor, will some sort of value be put on ranking movement? If YB by some miracle finishes 5th, surely they deserve whatever the best reward going is.

Thank you for giving a purpose to all those pink MF rings from fractals that have been clogging up my bank. But what about the runes? Please tell me we’ll be able to choose from any rune when converting our cherished, hard-earned MF runes! And the claws? We can convert them to another crafting mat of the same tier, right?

Don’t leave us hanging, inquiring minds want to know…

crossoverAtt.9680:

If I get beat in a 1v1, the person who downed me had better have more than 3-4K health left if they are silly enough to come over and try to stomp me, because that’s how much damage I can do in the 3-4 seconds it takes them to run over and finish the stomp. At that point I rally, with more health than they had a few seconds ago, dodge roll backward, and unleash everything. I think it’s kind of lame, but that’s the game’s philosophy. Why do you think the stomp animation is so obvious and so long? Interrupt me! Kill me now!

As mentioned by several people, the issue with the stealth stomp is downed players cannot target the stamper. You probably should lose anyway, but at least you can throw some dirt or some screws at the guy for a few seconds more. However, in a 1v1 situation, that’s a fatal problem, and it only applies to one class.

Okay, let me explain why getting downed first means you have already lost in 99% of 1v1 fights and therefore stealth stomping is a non issue in that scenario. All damaging downed state abilities are limited to 900 range, so even if there were no way at all to cover a stomp your actual window to down the opposing player (and you have to kill them to get a rally, not down them as you state in the first paragraph of your post) is the time it takes for them to get 901 away from you. At that point they can wait for their heal to come off cooldown, damaging you from range to prevent you from bandaging, either from 900+ if their weapon reaches that far or in the case of the Thief with their 900 range they can move in to 899 as soon as you start the bandage then retreat out of range again until they have enough health to stomp. So your actual window to do that 3-4k damage and down them is the second or two it takes them to get 900 range away, which even if you could do it will result in a downed battle which you will probably lose anyway since you got downed first.

Now, let’s consider a team fight where your allies could help you. Here’s a list of some skills off the top of my head from each profession that can interrupt a stealth stomp, provided those behind the keyboard know their skills and how to use them against an invisible foe.

Warrior:
Earthshaker, Backbreaker, Tremor, Skull Crack, Pommel Bash, Staggering Blow, Stomp, Fear Me
Necromancer:
Reaper’s Mark, Wail of Doom, Spectral Wall (last one is somewhat tricky, but not too difficult)
Guardian:
Banish, Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary, Ring of Warding, Line of Warding (tricky to land like Spectral Wall)
Mesmer:
Illusionary Wave, Chaos Storm, Into the Void
Ranger:
Hilt Bash, Terrifying Howl (technically Point Blank Shot and Concussion Shot can be used too but these are very difficult skill shots so I don’t count them)
Engineer:
Magnetic Inversion, Big Ol’ Bomb, Supply Crate, Slick Shoes, PBR, Detonate Mine, Thump, Air Blast, Throw Shield (also a skill shot but substantially easier than the ranger ones)
Elementalist:
Updraft, Earthquake, Comet, Tornado, Gust (skill shot in the same vein as Throw Shield)
Thief:
Pistol Whip, Tripwire though it has similar problems to LoW and SW but can’t be cast from range like those can (though of course you can just stealth the downed person which is better anyway)

If you’re looking to land any of the short range melee interrupts i listed up there and are finding it difficult because the thief could be behind, in front of or to either side of your downed friend, here is a tip. Autoattack the thin air around your downed friend until you see 1 skill on your toolbar change pictures to the second attack in your auto chain, this indicates you are hitting the immobile stomping thief. Immediately hit your interrupt (Banish, Hilt Bash, etc) and you will stop the stomp.

Cosmic Sparklejunk.3514:

I have a question. Has anyone from Anet confirmed how the orb mechanic will function? Do we actually know what kind of stat buff will be bestowed on the server that holds the orb or is it all just speculation at this time?

No, nothing definite has been said. However in the livestream and in various places they’ve referred to this being a new version of the “orb mechanic”, and the following quote from Devon in the GvG thread (which is worded differently from the one he made here) implies Bloodlust will have some sort of disruptive effect on them:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ll post this here as well:

WvW is a game type that we believe very strongly in. We’ve seen that people have been organizing their own combat in WvW and that’s really cool, but WvW requires changes that are not always in step with the gameplay that has been emerging. Our focus is on making WvW as strong as it can be and we will continue to make changes with that in mind. We have been and will continue to discuss these open field battles, but in the meantime the changes we make to WvW will always have that game type first and foremost in mind.

Emphasis mine. If Bloodlust is not going to be in step with an arranged fight between even numbers in an empty corner of the map, it seems logical to assume it will directly effect combat performance.

Pretty good idea actually. Revealed when stomping might go some way to making people feel less “cheated” when it happens to them, and fits with existing mechanics.

Even better, while it might make those getting stomped feel a little better it wouldn’t actually reduce the thief’s ability to stomp effectively. As has been repeated over and over using stealth to stomp is inferior to using Black Powder against anything but targeted, ranged interrupts (perhaps everyone complaining is a LB ranger?) so it wouldn’t actually change anything.