Guild Wars 2

akamon.2769:

i’ve never noticed it though. can you skip the animation to the extent of Trung’s clip? see first demonstration.

You need to strafe left, then strafe right (or right then left) quickly to trigger the animation skip. If you are fast, the hammer can be brought down faster than is shown in Trung’s clip.

Now upon further review of the clip and my own testing. I’m not even sure if it does apply the symbol faster anymore. If you watch the clip carefully, you’ll see that even though the hammer is brought down earlier, the symbol of protection only shows up once the cast bar for the 3rd attack chain reaches its end. That’s the same even if you didn’t animation skip. Could we get someone else to independently verify that there is indeed a speedup in symbol application?

Also, if you try to do MB once the hammer is brought down, but before the cast bar reaches its end, symbol of protection won’t be applied.

Let me try to put this topic to rest once and for all.

First of all, you don’t have to dodge to speed up the animation. All you need to do is strafe left, strafe right quickly during the 3rd chain to speed up the symbol application.

This, however, doesn’t increase your DPS as you will start the 1st hit of the next chain at the same time as if you didn’t speed up the animation. This can be easily verified by going to the heart of the mists to test it on the golem. Just go to a golem, cast retreat, and count the number of AA swings in 60 seconds with or without animation skip using steady weapons.

But this does affect PvP as it potentially allows hammer users to burst out the same damage over a shorter period of time. But it isn’t even that much shorter actually and the burst damage isn’t a lot (at least an order of magnitude smaller than what thieves are capable of). As such, I don’t think this needs to be fixed as it only provides a negligible edge.

To sum up
1) You can animation skip by strafing left and right
2) It doesn’t provide a DPS increase
3) PvP-wise, it provides a tiny edge in terms of burst damage
4) If this gets “fixed” and ends up ruining hammer for PvE in any way… well, let’s not go there.

The bugged FoV is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

power: 1,840
Precision: 1,797
Toughness: 1,938
Vitality: 1,347

Critical Chance: 46% (66% with +15% from Right-Hand Strength and +5% from accuracy sigil)
Crit Damage: 66
Armor: 3,149
Health: 15,115

@DiogoSilva I don’t think you see the point of the thread. As Schakal already pointed out, this is a communication issue, not a balance issue.

Again, I started this thread because Anet has shown its willingness to split SY for PvP balance and left PvE untouched, and yet two patches ago, SoW is changed in the name of PvP balance but ends up affecting PvE builds with symbols.

Many people would have been perfectly fine if Anet said they nerfed SoW because of any of the speculated reasons that you posted here. But no, Anet said they nerfed it because of retaliation.

All we are asking for here is consistency in how skill balance is done.

So, please stop derailing the topic on hand. If you or anyone else wants to give your educated guess about why SoW is nerfed because GS is too versatile, too linear, too overpowered, too AoE, too mindless, too overused, by all means, start your own thread and we can discuss about that. But this thread is not the place to discuss about all these things.

The first thing that came to my mind after reading the Save Yourselves split for PvP/PvE was: why didn’t they split between PvP/PvE when they changed Symbol of Wrath?

With the SY change, Anet has shown its willingness to split skills to balance PvP without touching PvE, and yet, the Symbol of Wrath nerf 2 patches ago was directed at retaliation in PvP, but ended up as a serious 50% uptime nerf to any PvE GS builds that synergizes with symbols.

That’s not all, SoW is now changed to increase damage by 10%. I certainly hope that isn’t the response to the SoW nerf because the damage increase did nothing to address the 50% uptime nerf to symbol builds.

Your bonus system is a huge snowballing mechanic, and in fact a worse one than orb and downed state combined.

I have no idea how you model all the details like population fluctuation, time period, etc, but from the close and small final numbers, I’m going to guess that you model the tower and keep to change hands more often that is currently the case in WvWvW.

I’ll just illustrate the snowball happening here by taking EB as example. In fact, I’ll only look at the 3 keeps. Despite lacking in NA prime time presence (but not sorely lacking), server 2 should be able to hold its keep at all times. What’s the bonus score after a single day? It’s at least 20*24 = 480 points, 2 days and its at least 960 points. Now during the first oceanic prime time, server 2 will be able to cap all other keeps, thus resetting the bonus points for all other servers to 0. So by the second day, server 2 will be enjoying a 480 bonus points on its keep while every other server’s bonuses are small. It gets worse and worse as the match progresses.

So, unless you publish in more details your model, I have a hard time buying your proposal.

It’s a pity the WvWvW issue isn’t asked (I didn’t see any, or it didn’t get enough upvotes) in yesterday’s AMA, unlike the FoV issue where a statement is finally given.

A better explanation of what’s happening with Symbol of Swiftness

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/59597-swiftness-from-symbol-of-swiftness-doesnt-stack-in-duration-correctly/#entry1873412

By the way, are we going to have a list where we request for better worded traits and skill descriptions? Lots of them don’t tell us the exact numbers, for instance, how much does SoA detonate heal for or what is the damage increase per boon for power of the virtuous (interesting behavior)?

It won’t work because the matches would then be decided by who has the most bodies during the offpeak period of those prime times.

My 3 coppers.

1st copper: Most players play within a few specific hours of the day.

2nd copper: Nightcapping is part of a bigger balance problem. Suppose you have a nightcrew (“night” could be from the perspective of any time zone, it doesn’t matter) that is able to fill the WvWvW quota, but it gets so badly beaten up by the other servers during this particular time slot that your server has no chance of winning at all. Well, guess what, all the arguments against nightcapping, i.e. no chance of winning, wasted effort, etc. all applied here. But without the nightcapping argument, what could the players from other time slots do except move to a winning server?

3rd copper: Now let’s flash back to the time before ANet showed us WvWvW. Suppose ANet now instead show us the following WvWvW:
Divide WvWvW into 4 time slots of 6 hours each, and each time slot gets its own elo ranking. That’s right, each server is going be matched with other servers of equal strength during each particular time slot. At the end of each time slot, WvWvW status gets recorded (territory, siege and upgrades), and the status is loaded and continued during the same time slot next day.

Think now: will WvWvW not being persistent 24/7 kick up a kittentorm as huge as nightcapping currently does? (hint: look at my 1st copper)

Mira.4906:

I think it is a little early to talking about limiting wvwvw to time slots since there has only been 2 1-week matches. I know on my server we got rocked the first week, but now we have found 2 other servers that compete with us. I don’t like rotating servers every 6 hrs since upgrades and defense would be worthless as we will spend 30 min attacking npcs to capture towers and keeps instead of spending time to attack the other servers. Also this is a greater disadvantage to the lower ranked servers than the top ranked server. I’m pretty sure the top tier of servers can demolish the lower ranked servers in 1hr allowing them to push those servers to the spawn for the next 5 hrs. Also the weak servers will be pushed to the spawn by some of the mid tier servers and the only time that they can be competitive is when they are facing the 2 other lowest ranked servers.

Another issue I see is that you will be paired with servers that have different peak times. If one server can’t field a large population during the 6 hours then that match will be won by the other server by default.

Nope, two of the issues that you pointed out are not going to happen.

Upgrades and siege are part of what gets recorded at the end of the time slot. They will still be there the next day.

As for servers getting paired with servers with different peak times, nope, that doesn’t happen either. Each time slot has its own elo ranking. So as time progresses, the server should be facing server with about equal strength during the time slot. Just to reiterate, a server could be paired with different servers for different time slots, and the pairing is decided by the elo ratings for that particular time slots.

Let me preface by saying that yes, I agree that night-capping is fair and the server with a better around-the-clock coverage deserves to win.

What I don’t agree, however, is that the current WvWvW implementation is fine as it is. Seriously, when you have people hotly debating night-capping from day one till one month post-launch, it is a sign that there are serious issues here.

Many people have already pointed out the core issues and I’ll just summarize the key points.

Night-capping is not fun
It is not fun if you have no hopes of winning for reasons outside of your control (recruiting players from other time zones? Yea, right, as though one could force players to join your server).

It is not fun to see your effort rendered worthless overnight.

It is not fun that leaving the spawn point is a huge pain at the start of single day.

Night-capping requires no tactics or coordination
Two of the biggest draws of WvWvW are its tactical and teamwork aspect. Many players have been drawn in under the impression that the server with the best tactics and coordination should win. Even when outnumbered, a well coordinated server with superior tactics should come out ahead.

But instead having better coverage becomes the sole determinant for the outcome of most WvWvW. Tactics? Coordination? Who cares when all those don’t matter.

Night-capping is not fun, and requires neither tactics nor coordination. It’s the complete opposite of what WvWvW should be.

And now I’m going to propose a way to fix this. The new implementation is still going to be fair, and there will be no discrimination against players from other time zones in any form. WvWvW is still going to be 24/7 (almost). Because similar ideas have appeared before, do read the whole idea instead of reading the first sentence and immediately jumped to the conclusion that this is not a fair solution.

The Fix
Divide 24 hours into say, 4 time slots of 6 hours each. Each time slot is going to run a separate instance of WvWvW.

Let me elaborate this further from the perspective of a server, say server A.

On day 1 hour 0 of WvWvW, server A gets paired up with server B and server C according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The WvWvW is initialized with the same territorial control as is currently implemented. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 6th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 6, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server D and server E (D and E could be B and C, but it could also be some other different servers) according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 12th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 12, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server F and server G (could be B, C, D, E or other servers, you get the point now) according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 18th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 1 hour 18, WvWvW reinitializes and server A gets paired up with server H and server I according to the elo ranking for the current time slot. The 3 servers then fight for 6 hours. At the end of the 24th hour, the current WvWvW status (territory and siege) is going to be recorded.

On day 2 hour 0, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 6th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 6, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 12th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 12, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 18th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

On day 2 hour 18, WvWvW resumes from the status recorded at the end of the 24th hour of the first day. Fight continues for 6 hours. WvWvW status recorded.

Repeat till the WvWvW cycle is over.

Pros

• No more night-capping
• WvWvW is still fair. Players from all time zone could experience and contribute in a similar fashion to WvWvW.
• WvWvW is more balance as during each time slot, servers should be matched with other servers of equal strength.

Cons

• WvWvW is no longer permanent and persistent (well, in a sense, it could be argued that it is actually more persistent for the players who only play during a particular time of the day).
• Some downtime in between time slots as server needs to record the current status and then load the status for the next time slot.
• Recording and resuming the WvWvW status is likely to be a huge resource drain on the physical servers (need comments from people with experience in managing servers).

That’s it. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Bonus (2) of superior rune of sanctuary gives +20% frozen duration while the minor and major version gives +5% and +10% to boon duration.

Given that all other runes have a linear progression in the bonus as we go from minor to major to superior, I have a feeling that it should have been +15% to boon duration but for some reason it got messed up with Superior Rune of Svanir, which does give +20% to frozen duration for bonus (2). The confusion is probably because rune of the sanctuary is obtained by trading tokens from Honor of the Waves, where we fight Sons of Svanir.