Guild Wars 2

When you approach a watchtower, it applies the marked debuff on you.

But, do enemy players see an orange dot on the map even if you are stealth?

Same issue. Dolyak stance doesn’t do anything. No boons and no stance buff

Could we have a second Eternal Battleground Map?

There is always a big queue on this map so it would be nice to have 2 instances of it so everyone can enjoy it.

I would say it’s pretty active at the moment. Even tier 4 servers will queue multiple map on week days.

Thank you so much for this and I mean it

Gliding has been one of my favorite thing in the game since HoT and I’m glad that WvW will finally be able to benefit from it!

Also, I’m sure you have carefully thought the territories system and that being able to glide into objective is just needless worry!

I might be the odd ball here but MMO doesn’t equal grind to me.

Maybe it’s because I don’t care at all about armor skin, dye or having 1% stronger stats. What I find interesting in MMO is the community and what I find challenging/interesting to do is try to organize the players to achieve complicated things group wise like raiding or wvw guild run.

The social aspect is where all the fun is.

I don’t know why but I have this strange addiction about building and doing jumping puzzle.

Any guild out there that specialize in jumping puzzle?

You can see some of my work here : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/creations/Afala-s-Jumping-Puzzles/first#post6146248

Go Lexx Go!

Mind if I command jumping puzzle?

Thx for your input

Sigfodr.9576:

NumenorLord.6539:

Power Ps Warrior. Basically spam hundred blades and arc divider, swap to mace shield when it’s time to break. All gear is easy to obtain. Plus you’ll always be welcome to all raids.

Can power PS still do the job, sure. But it will not be welcome in many groups. The last few nerfs to power war hit it to hard. It is not a build I’d recommend someone to pick up atm.

But which one will do better. A condi PS with poor rotation or a power PS with poor rotation?

For condition damage, the easiest seems to be revenant I think: http://qtfy.eu/build/Revenant

You only auto attack and spam 3 skills.

Talindra.4958:

hi I think easiest dps profession to play for raids currently is condi ranger

http://qtfy.eu/build/ranger

scroll down to condi ranger and check out.

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback, but condi-ranger doesn’t seem that easy to me to play. Not only the gear will be very expensive but also the rotation is complicated. You constantly have to swap weapon to activate “quick draw” and then you need to use a specific skill for optimal DPS. Also, the rotation has 28 steps

1. Sharpening Stone
2. Entangle
3. Crippling Shot
4. Poison Volley
5. Swap weapons
6. Quickdraw – Bonfire
7. Throw Torch
8. Splitblade
9. Winter’s Bite
10. Flame Trap
11. Viper’s Nest
12. Ricochet (auto attack)
13. Splitblade
14. Bonfire
15. Winter’s Bite
16. Splitblade
17. Throw Torch
18. Swap weapons
19. Quickdraw – Poison Volley
20. Crippling shot
21. Poison Volley
22. Crossfire (auto attack)
23. Flame Trap
24. Viper’s Nest
25. Poison Volley
26. Crippling shot
27. Swap weapons
28. Repeat from step 5

Did you mean that if the ranger just camp axe/torch it will do good enough DPS, if not I don’t think it is simple enough for what I’m searching.

Durzlla.6295:

Sorry if this is offtopic, but the Hammer Guard build is a good raid build? One of my friends is new to the game and wants to play that, so an easy to use build for guard would be great lol

Can it do the most DPS in the game? No

Can it do enough DPS to kill most raid boss just by auto-attacking? Yes

So, it’s the kind of build that I would recommend to new players as they can solely focus on raid mechanic without worrying about crazy DPS rotation.

I’m looking for the easiest raid builds to play.

Those builds don’t need to be optimal or even near the top of the DPS benchmark. They just need to be easy to play and do good enough to kill a boss even if everyone is doing similar DPS. Think about something foolproof.

To make the scenario more clear, imagine a group of players that can’t follow any kind of DPS rotation even if their life depends on it. And, if you try to give them a DPS build that require some sort of rotation to be efficient, they will pull horrible DPS.

For example, a hammer guardian is very easy to play as the only thing you need to do is auto attack and you can pull a good enough 15k DPS. Sure, it’s horrible compared to what is possible with optimal build and rotation, but it’s good enough and you can’t screw up.

What is the dps meter in this video?

I’m interested in the dps per skill breakdown. Also, is it legal?

joneirikb.7506:

Which is why I really would love to hear ANet’s actual vision/goal/purpose for WvW, since it is meaningless to argue if WvW should be casual or competitive, unless we know what ANet wants with the mode (or wanted).

This is the most important thing Anet needs to decide and communicate. The gameplay of WvW is still great but it feels like there is no direction to the game.

#5. The news channel

We need to talk about WvW. We need to know what is going on in our server, in our match up and in other servers. We need to know about the drama in other servers, which server is imploding, which server is getting bandwagoned. Which server is doing great and which one is doing poorly and why. We need to know what is going on in WvW.

It’s like having an election where no one is allowed to talk about it. It doesn’t make sense.

We all know that the match up forum got closed because it was full of hate post, insults and uncivilized conversations. I don’t think that reopening it would be any different sadly. But the point still stand that WvW needs to be talked about. Players have the right to be informed about what is happening.

My suggestion is to create a news channel just like we watch on our TV. Basically, appoint a bunch of journalists, aka willing players, that will gather the interesting news and present it to the rest of the player base in a format that is not “toxic”. These journalists would be allowed to post as much as they want about what’s going on in WvW.

Yes, I know, it’s a strange suggestion. I don’t even know if it would work. But I firmly believe that WvW needs to be talked about for it to be healthy. So, if you have a better suggestion please step up.

Conclusion

I expressed a view that I have rarely seen in this game or on this forum. I figure that most of you must be scratching your head right now wondering what the hell I’m talking about and that’s fine.

It’s hard to define WvW and define what it needs because everyone plays it differently. To do so, you need to take many steps back and try to look at the global picture.

I see WvW as a political campaign because at the end of the day the server with the most players and most coverage will practically always win. So, the path to victory is basically to convince more players than your opponents to play for you. I find it pretty similar to what politicians do during elections.

Tell me, how do you see WvW?

So many people want to “fix” WvW. But if you don’t know what WvW is, how can you fix it?

At the macro level, WvW is a political campaign.

Every week your goal is to convince as many players as possible to come “vote” for your server by showing up in WvW. The server with the most “vote” win.

Often, you will see players complain that WvW is not fair that other server has too many players. Indeed, it’s not fair but deal with it. If you can’t convince players to show up for your server, it simply means that you failed at WvW. Sorry to point it… The good news is that it doesn’t mean you don’t have fun even if you lose!

The political campaign is currently broken

Sadly, the political campaign doesn’t work at the moment and hence WvW suffer a lot. It has lost its soul.

Below, I will explain why it’s currently broken and how we can fix it.

#1 You need to have an identity

This is the most crucial point ever. How can you convince someone to play for you, when you don’t have an identity. Who will he be fighting for? The alliance of server A, B and C that will be destroyed in a few weeks? No one has an identity anymore since server link. Not the host that need their links to perform and even less the linked servers that even lost their name.

Sure, something needed to be done about empty low tier server but server link was not the right solution. Since I experienced it myself, a server with low population is not a problem as the game is still fun even if you only have 30 players total instead of 200. The problem is when you ask those 30 players to cover as much objectives as 200 players can. You can’t stretch 30 players on four big WvW maps and hope it doesn’t feel empty.

A better solution than server link would have been to change the number of map depending on the population in each tier. For example, tier 1 have four maps they can play in while the bottom tier only has one map they can play in. You can see going up in tier as a reward since you get access to more map. Another solution would have been simple server merge.

#2. Server transfer is normal, even desired

This will be my most controversial point but bear with me.

The “game” in WvW is literally about convincing as many players as possible to fight for your server. To “win”, you must play it like a politician trying to get votes. Would it makes sense if every voters that wanted to changed their votes to you would have to pay hundred of dollars to be able to change their vote.

Changing your mind and wanting something else is normal, as is server transfer. Just accept it. Trying to put too much barrier on server transfer will only hurt WvW as you can’t play its main “game”, which is convincing players to come play for you, if they can’t transfer to you easily. Sure, transfer should not be totally free but the cost should be more symbolic.

#3. Randomness is not good

Would it make sense to you if during an election you were told to come vote for the candidate of your choice, but then, at the end of the election we would discard all the votes and just roll a dice to determine the winner?

Surely, you would wonder why you even bothered to vote at all since it doesn’t really matter.

Well, that’s exactly the problem we have right now in WvW. At the end of each match up we roll a dice to determine who win the match up and get the chance to move up a tier. It’s ridiculous…

Initially, this randomness was introduced to help with match up staleness and glicko hell, but it was not the right solution. If there was a problem with glicko, you should have fixed glicko instead of introducing a new problem.

#4. Get rid of glicko

It doesn’t work. Glicko is not a good ranking system for WvW. The ratings change too slowly for the change in population. It also creates all sorts of other problems like big gap between tier that you can’t overcome. Don’t try to adapt it either, just drop it.

Designing a good ranking system for WvW is not hard and there is even a multitude of possibilities. Here are three rules that will help you design a good ranking system :

• Rule 1 : If a server completely dominates the other servers in its tier, it should move up.
• Rule 2 : If a server is completely destroyed by the other servers in its tier, it should move down
• Rule 3 : If a tier is competitive, no server should move UNLESS there is a great imbalance in the thier right above or below this one. (see first 2 rules)

The exact details of this ranking system don’t really matter but if you follow theses three rules it will be good enough.

Is everyone complaining about endless fight currently running a bunker build, then fight against another bunker build and finally complain about the fight never ending?

A fight against 2 damage focus build player/group usually don’t last endlessly.

What do you usually see when two zergs charge each other?

Personally, I usually see half the zerg of the smallest force dead in the first 10 seconds of the battle. It doesn’t really make great fight. Would it be more interesting if the fight last longer? I think so and here is my suggestion :

Double the health of everyone in WvW

What do you think?

I think it’s a fact that a lot of us used to care deeply for their server, so here’s my question :

What made you care for your server?

Was it just the name? Was it the community? Is it because “that’s the one I picked and I ain’t moving” stubbornness?

I’m just curious.

So based on user feedback so far the team should be :

Team 1 : Human female
Team 2 : Asura
Team 3 : The rest

I think we are good to go

RodOfDeath.5247:

From what I hear, they want to create smaller wvw maps and populations I guess. There’s word of gvg but honestly, gvg is dead and that train left a long time ago. it’s a bit clueless on their part yet again whoever they a listening to.

From my point of view, this would be the best thing they could do for WvW.

Don’t confuse the GvG that we know with a WvW centered around guilds instead of server. Personally, I would like for WvW to be competitive but it can’t be in its current format because :

- it’s too big : there are so many players in the server that it’s impossible to really organize
- it’s 24/7 : most of the time you cannot be in WvW
- not enough opponents : so it’s impossible to create a good ladder with balanced match up
- no identity : for competition you need people that care. Without identity caring is pretty hard

As I see it, reforming WvW around guilds instead of server fix 3 of the 4 problems above. Also, EotM should stay so we still have a place to karma train, form newbie and mess around.

Would 4 vs 4 work better or worse than 3 vs 3 for WvW?

I’m asking just to get your opinion and it’s not a feature request. Please exclude from your answers the fact that the maps are not designed for 4v4.

Just color for everything should be fine or give the color a name like you did in EotM.

I doubt player will really identify themselves to an alliance name that change every 2 months just like they don’t identify themselves to the host name. In that case, you might as well just go for what is simple and easy to remember for the players : color.

@op I’m all for improving EotM but…

What are you trying to fix exactly with that big list of complicated changes? It looks like a solution without a problem…

It might help to understand why you want those changes if you express what it could improve. For example :

Problem : Many players don’t like the map design of EotM.
Solution : Introduce map rotation between EotM and EBG.

It would create more balanced match up, but sadly it’s missing a very important part : group identity.

You can’t build your group identity when it’s destroyed every 2 months and you are placed with completely new players. And, without group identity, caring is impossible.

The reason WvW was so awesome is that people cared about it. Players would go out of their way to try and improve their servers. Why would you want people to care right now when they don’t feel like they belong in the group they are placed in? They don’t of course because it doesn’t make sense.

Sure, linking brought more activity, opponent variety and balanced? match up, but WvW lost its soul in the process. We had a clear goal in the past : make our server #1 and stay there. It didn’t matter that it was a completely ridiculous goal because at least we had one. What exactly do you want people to fight for right now when servers don’t even have an identity because of the linking?

It’s hopeless…

Chaba.5410:

Plopping objectives down on a hexagon in mirror fashion isn’t design.

You mean like EBG right : most successful map for WvW and by far the best design yet. At the base the map is basically a 3-way symmetrical map like you complain about but this is just the base. Once you decide on the general layout you can start adding all the other stuff around.

KISS is the way.

I want a small map. 3 towers on the side and 1 single camp in the middle.

The donut is the best idea.

All the other ones are terrible…

Hello fellow raiders,

I’m doing a little survey about the difficulty of forming groups for raiding : whether it is pug group or guild group.

1. Do you find it difficult to form raid groups?
2. If yes, would you call forming a good group the biggest challenge in raids?
3. Would you have any suggestion that can be implemented by Anet to improve group forming whether you find it difficult or not?

Thank you for your answers!

Blaeys.3102:

I’ve said this same thing many times.

The counterargument that most give is that they timers are there to discourage “cheesing” the fight in all Nomads gear or something.

My response is, so what if people want to do it in all Nomads or something else non-meta that allows them to do the fight slower than the current groups? I say let them.

Just add in gold/silver/bronze reward tracks based on how fast the boss is killed. That way, you still reward the work the current groups are putting in – while opening the fights to a wider array of play styles.

This would allow players and communities to control their own kind of “easy mode.” Guilds looking for a more casual experience could take groups in designed around experiencing the fights rather than killing fast.

To me, this would be a win-win. Rewards would still be based on skill, but the experience would be open to a wider range of playstyles.

I like this idea.

kroter.1326:

Outside of primetime WvW is held together purely by pugs, not guilds. Many just won’t bother to join a guild and switch to EOTM instead.

This is a fantastic idea!

Frankly, I don’t see any difference between pug WvW and EotM. It’s the same disorganized mess of poor quality play.

Please, let’s merge pug wvw and eotm and create a new guild based competitive WvW. No point in having 2 nearly identical casual mode like eotm and the current pug based WvW

Hesacon.8735:

Perfectly balanced match-ups are a myth, you’ll never get them across all tiers at the same time. For example T3’s matchup is balanced, but T4’s is not. By locking T3’s because it’s balanced, you keep T4 unbalanced.

What needs to be aimed for is the best chance at a balanced match.

I designed my system exactly to deal with those situations.

Since tier 4 is unbalanced enough it will force a change in tier 3 even if tier 3 is balanced.

On the other hand, tier 1 and 2 are not unbalanced enough to need a change so the system is not changing them at the moment.

Korgov.7645:

Gudradain.3892:

Straegen.2938:

Scoring isn’t the problem, scoring is the symptom of a problem. They can jack around with how points are calculated all day long but it won’t change population and coverage issues which are the actual problems.

According to me, the only way to fix the coverage issue is to get rid of the 24/7 aspect of WvW.

This essentially means that you would battle different opponents depending on the time of the day.

Would you be fine with that?

No, I would not. Even my small guild has members playing at different times of day. Putting members in different instances would erode the fellowship.

I’m not exactly talking about different instance but rather :

Between 1 to 4 pm you face server A and server B
Between 4 to 7 pm you fave server C and server D
Etc.

Everyone on your server would play together in the same instance but a new match would start every 3 hours for example.

The problem with coverage is that every server have a different coverage profile so no one is a good match for no one.

Johje Holan.4607:

This would definitely be better than the current matchmaking, so would Gudradain’s suggestion. But I still think neither allows for quick enough movement of servers up and down the rankings. And either not the proper variety, or not enough variety in the case of Gudradain’s.

I just one to point that the problem with 1 UP 1 DOWN is that introduce too much variability.

Also, the system I describe would do very well if a tier 1 server suffer from a mass exodus for example. It would replace that server to the correct tier as fast as 1 UP 1 DOWN but then it would stop once it finds the right tier.

@OP

I took the time to carefully reread your post to understand the difference with your suggestionand 1 UP 1 DOWN and… It has the same problem as 1 UP 1 DOWN : it will break a perfectly balanced match up and push a server up anyway.

You need to keep perfectly balanced match up intact as much as possible because those are the most interesting match up you can be in. Variation when nothing is wrong is not a good thing.

Also, your system introduce a new problem that 1 UP 1 DOWN doesn’t suffer from. For example, let’s take SBI falling down to tier 4. Imagine for a moment that DH utterly destroyed SBI in the match. Which means that SBI rating would go down a lot and DH rating would go up a lot. But, since SBI rating was so much higher than DH at the beginning of the week, even after their loss they would still have a higher rating than DH and be pushed up to suffer in tier 3 for another weeks.

Straegen.2938:

Scoring isn’t the problem, scoring is the symptom of a problem. They can jack around with how points are calculated all day long but it won’t change population and coverage issues which are the actual problems.

According to me, the only way to fix the coverage issue is to get rid of the 24/7 aspect of WvW.

This essentially means that you would battle different opponents depending on the time of the day.

Would you be fine with that?

What you are describing is basically one up one down, has been discussed a lot in the past and has many problems.

For a better ranking system, I would suggest this one :

http://coveragewars2.com

Hello, if you are interested in a new ranking system, you might be interested in the one described here.

http://coveragewars2.com

@Chinchilla Is one of the goal of your change to make WvW competitive? If yes, you are not going far enough.

Indeed, WvW cannot be competitive until you remove the 24/7 factor but you also need to remove the 4 maps factors as there are too many players required to make it controllable.

For WvW to become competitive, they need to make it guild based, on one single map for a period of 4 consecutives hours max and probably only on the night the guild is available to raid. So basically PvP but in a WvW setting.

My point is that what you are suggesting is such a big change that if they were doing it, I would prefer that they go all the way and make a real competitive mode to WvW.

Obviously, the casual mode will need to continue. So one competitive and one casual.

But back on topic, the ranking system I’m suggesting is just to fix the glicko mess in the easiest possible way.

Johje Holan.4607:

This is good. But I think it could be better. For example I don’t think this produces enough variety.

Take T1 for example. There are basically four T1 servers; TC, DB, BG and JQ. They should switch in and out of T1 on a regular basis regardless of how big the victory in T2 is. Heck I would even say throwing Mag into T1 for a week would be good.

And I don’t think it should be CD that goes down to T4. It should be a rotation between CD, YB, SoS and SBI. Maybe you can put some factor in the equation to create different matches if the scores are within some boundary.

It’s a good point. Let me explain.

Algorithm details

The algorithm objective is to create balanced match up. As long as the match up are balanced it will not change them but as soon as a match up is unbalanced enough it will switch server around in order to find better match up.

Its strength is that it would adapt very fast to population changes. For example, if a tier 4 server received a massive bandwagonning, in only 3 weeks, that tier 4 server that is now overpopulated could reach tier 1.

Currently, the number of point required for a switch is 37. It’s still quite hard at the moment to climb or fall a tier with that number so it could be reduced to improve the match up variation. I think it should be reduced a bit at the moment.

To answer your question

There are 2 things that could be done to increase match up variety.

1. Reduce the number of points required to climb a tier
2. Introduce a random number

About #1, you cannot reduce it too much or it will transform into one up one down.

About #2, this is similar to what Anet is doing at the moment but with the glicko rating. For example, it could help Maguuma to get thrown into tier 1 but I think they still need to get a bit stronger before they enter that ring. About CD, it could definitively push YB down instead of them for 1 week with a lucky roll.

But, do you like randomness? Personally I’m not a fan but it’s easy to add.

The solution is better server pairing. Anyone could see after the first day that CD quad server alliance was too strong for the rest of tier 4.

I agree with you that glicko is not a good fit.

You might be interested in the ranking system described here :

http://coveragewars2.com

Alora Arrowstorm.1268:

Wouldn’t this PPT cap basically kill WvW for some servers once they hit the cap? This would likely help out some servers but others where they have people that enjoy "borderland mom like activities (defending) I think it would essentially have their players not log in towards the end of the week. I don’t disagree that something needs to change but not sure that this would help keep the population going just like many of the other suggestions that Anet has produced, i think that it would hurt more than it helps.

That’s pretty good feedback. To tell the truth I don’t think it would be a good idea, I’m just curious about what the community think such a change would create.

Your concern about the home bl defenders is a valid one.

I’m kinda wondering if everyone would enter a state a paralysis where no one want to flip anything in fear that the enemy server would gain more points by back capping.

Ok, I just had this crazy idea and I can’t yet decide if it’s utterly stupid or if it might be interesting :

You don’t receive anymore tick points for a structure if you held it for more than 8 hours.

I know. It goes completely against everything that WvW is designed for. Usually, you want to upgrade / siege your structure and keep them for as long as possible. But!

I want to know how do you think that this would influence the match up. Tell me

I love the idea!

Had something similar in mind a few months ago

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Raid-Observer/first#post6144101

@OP : Here’s a good and simple ranking system that would fix the issues :

http://coveragewars2.com

SBI would have moved up last week with the system I describe.

This thread is a prime example of why we need a new ranking system :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Anet-Seriously-STOP-Screwing-with-Glicko/first

Just to note that SBI would have moved up last week with the system I describe.

I created a simple ranking system that would fix all those problems. Check it out :

http://coveragewars2.com

I have seen two valid concerns about adding scaling to raid bosses. They are :

1. Super hardcore player are scared that it will trivialized their content as they like the challenge of low manning raid encounter

2. Players in general are scared that they might be more likely to be excluded from raid group if the boss have nearly the same difficulty whether you are 8, 9 or 10.

About #1, yes it’s true that complete scaling would affect the super hardcore raider, but it can easily be fixed by stopping the scaling at 8 or 9 players. Killing raid boss with 5-6 players would still be a pretty good achievement.

About #2, I think player are wrongly scared because this change would help people to play with their friends. For example, if you know a friend is going to be late to a raid, you would be able to start clearing with 9 players and invite him right away when he comes online. Currently, our options are to all wait for him to get online before starting or invite a pug and then tell your friend he cannot raid tonight when he comes online or kick the pug.

It’s pretty clear that this change would help guild to play together but I think it would also benefits pug group. I can’t count how many time the pug group I joined were missing that 10th player and how many hours of time we all wasted because of that.

I see boss scaling as very good and simple quality of life change for the raiding community as a whole and I think the benefits far outweigh the issues.

If you think otherwise, please explain your point of view.