Guild Wars 2

Fishrock.5207:

No Demo Character Slots show up for me.

I had two in the preview weekends, and my characters from those still show up in the API (`R I P Boons` and `Op in Wvw`) – on gw2efficiency at least.

Empty or filled demo character slots are just not displaying on my character select. My 9/10 regular slots are the only ones there (as usual).

Same here, I don’t see any demo character slot. Stress test successful, am stressed.

What I’m most worried about is the environment you are creating in WvW: even more boon stripping/corrupting (that will make impossible for melees to push) and even more, strong, aoe condition application, on the same classes that already are meta.

This makes for a future where the raids will be mostly composed of Guardians / Firebrands and Necromancers / Scourges, with some Revenants, Elementalists / Weavers and Spellbreakers thrown in the mix. Everyone else doesn’t have the range and the AoE pressure necessary to play in the environment you are creating.

A few words on the elite specs I tested:

• Mirage is bad. The mechanics are borderline between broken and uninteresting, and the implementation is really cringeworthy. Most importantly, it doesn’t provide a new role for Mesmer in any game mode.
• Scourge: the boon corrupting is over the top, but it’s kinda balanced by the lack of a second health bar.
• Spellbreaker: a warrior with even more survivability and the option to create death zones for an entire zerg. What’s not to love?
• Weaver: for pvp, I believe swapping the off-hand skills BEFORE the main hand skills would make way more sense since most utility/CC are on the off hand and that’s what you want to have when you swap attunement.
• Soulbeast: fun and nice to play.

since it’s the elite skill, it would be nice to have the reflect on only during the cast and not after the cast, but… you know, we’re talking about mesmers

pinkglow.3429:

I’m going to roll mirage wvwvw, good or not I can see myself having some fun (former shadowpriest in wow, used to being UP in pvp most of the time :P)

shadow priest had a good EH boost from the shadowform (and still access to heals if he needed to), good sustain with shields, good control and great damage, Mirage has none of that

pinkglow.3429:

However, I imagine a lot of people here are more veteran mesmer players so I need your help to make it work

I will mostly solo, but every now and then join the zerg. What would be best weapons and gear and spec for it? I’ve asked in so many threads and made my own but only been met with silence Must be many of you who have speculated about it?

I can’t honestly recommend tanking Mirage over core Mesmer for roaming. Forget about zergs with a condi Mesmer (or Chrono or Mirage), we don’t have any reliable way of applying conditions in large scale fights.

Self-Deception: the description was so underwhelming I haven’t even tested it.

Renewing Oasis: I’m trying hard not to compare this with Unhindered Combatant and Escapist’s Absolution from Daredevil, but I can’t. And it’s definitely not as good as either of those.

Riddle of Sand: I didn’t test it. Does it apply only on the mesmer’s first Ambush or are the clones affected too? If the latter, it could be good, if it only applies on the mesmer attack it’s poor, again.

Shards of Glass: I played with this for a while, but from what I understand this only applies to clones that actually reach their target and manage to shatter properly and on top of that, we already said elsewhere that the whole mirror mechanic is so clunky it doesn’t even make sense to try and reach them.

Mirage Mantle: this is like… 12% uptime on protection? And it’s a master tier trait…

Mirrored Axes: I didn’t test it but seems on par with the other weapon traits.

Infinite Horizon: many asked for this to be baseline, but I’m not sure it would be good for PVE. Someone suggested to greatly increase the effects of Ambush skills for the mesmer, to make this trait feel less mandatory, maybe that would be a better option.

Elusive Mind: I’ve seen strongly polarized ideas about this trait… I don’t think it’s as good as some people think it is. I find it’s actually quite underwhelming considering the amount of conditions and condi-covers there’s in game at this moment.

Dune Cloak: again, I compare this to what other classes have, for example take Demonic Lore or Feed from Corruption from the Scourge… how can this be considered in the same tier? ANet, you need a reality check.

Axe

The autoattack felt poor on power, like pretty much every other autoattack for mesmer. On the bright side, this autoattack doesn’t even have useful side effects like the sword AA. /s

Lingering Thoughts: it’s hard not to compare this attack with Daredevil’s Staff 2. The power component sits at only 1.2 multiplier, versus a 2.1 multiplier on the DD Staff, but this one has a condi component so it could somewhat balance out, maybe, on a hybrid build. The real problem comes with the clone generation mechanic, that simply doesn’t work except maybe on the PvP golems used for testing. Also, the movement component is restricted to only melee range, so it can’t really be used as a gap closer. Bad from every possible point of view.

Axes of Symmetry: I think I have some footage where I try to hit a Moa NPC running around and I fail about 50% of the time, because the teleport ports me on the opposide side of the movement direction and the leap fails to connect because the NPC moved out of range in the meantime… Now imagine trying this on an enemy player. Guess what. You miss. I ended up using it just for the evasion component and the retargeting mechanic. Also, it works only on axe clones, that you won’t have (see above) unless maybe you spam Mirror Images before using this.

Ambush skills

Mirage Thrust: the only Ambush I actually liked. It gives us new options for interrupting, although it still has it’s problems, as someone mentioned this ambush creates a clone and can overwrite phantasms for PVE players, and the clones interrupts DON’T proc our interrupt traits.

Ether Barrage: N/A didn’t test it

Split Surge: it’s so underwhelming I initially thought GS didn’t have an ambush attack. Can we have something like the KAMEHAMEHA thing holomancers get?

Chaos Vortex: according to WP, this is “insane”. But when you actually play the game, you realize how poor this attack is. And it’s projectiles-based, again.

Ambush Assault and Wave of Panic: N/A, didn’t test, I thought underwater combat wasn’t a thing anymore ANet?

Mirage Cloak: if you compare it to Daredevil, it’s worse in every possible way. We don’t get another endurance bar, we have very limited endurance regeneration, even slotting Dueling, the movement on the sides and back is crippled by how the movement works in GW2 (did anyone try it with action camera?), we don’t get any meaningful way of customizing the dodge for condi/power/other builds. Also, the notion that any pvp player would be fooled by the blur effect is absolutely ridicolous.

Mirror mechanic: Mirage doesn’t get any movement speed bonus, mesmer doesn’t have any decent access to movement speed. And our secondary mechanic is obviously “walk towards the mirror to activate your primary mechanic”. How didn’t anyone see a problem with this? Also, we have very limited ways to create these mirrors. The only possible way I can think this could somewhat work is by wasting Jaunt to get to the mirrors. As usual, mesmers have to work hard against their own mechanics to achieve any result.

Utilities

False Oasis: has a long cast and heals over time; it creates a mirror after a while (the description is somewhat confusing: is the creation of a “mirage” important in any way?). I don’t see any reason to take it over any other heal since the mirror mechanic is pretty hard to use in any pvp context.

Crystal Sands: in theory our best option to apply some aoe conditions, in practice it pales compared to what Firebrand, Revenant and Necromancers/Scourges can field. Just another gimmick.

Illusionary Ambush: this felt like the most consistent of the utilities, when paired with main hand sword gives a nice option for a gap closer.

Mirage Advance: a shadowstep with a long cast time and a short range. Not worth taking over blink.

Sand Through Glass: this could make sense if it had 10s cooldown. On a 30s cooldown it’s just pointless.

Elite

Jaunt: the extremely limited range make using it really painful. I ended up either using it for safe stomps (burning 2 charges) or to run away from angry zergs (using all the charges). I guess it could make sense also in a gs burst from close range, and for some condi application on a condi build.

To summarize even more my previous feedback: Mirage is a gimmick that doesn’t bring a new role for Mesmers in large scale battles, it doesn’t change our class mechanic that is notoriously broken in large scale, it doesn’t bring any good ground targeted AoE or any other utility for the group.

As for small scale roaming, it can do some funny stuff, but we already had several good roaming builds for both Mesmer and Chronomancer, so it doesn’t add anything of value there either.

Infusion.7149:

Also, losing alacrity from chrono is very bad. Alacrity makes sieging structures easier.

That was supposed to be “fixed” ages ago.
(Hint for ANet: it’s not.)

Fay.2357:

I still dislike clone death traits. I’d much rather have an elite spec mechanic something along the lines of…

Your illusion skills no longer summon illusions but provide a temporary boost or effect depending on their original function. iLeap becomes a on-target teleport, phantasms become skills that the mesmer actually uses i.e. spinning through mobs with GS, leaping attack with sword, etc. Skills that summon illusions would fill up the illusion counter for a short time (3-10 seconds? Idk) and you could then use modified shatters with an amped effect depending on the current illusion counter.

I love the feel and idea of mesmer but I hate the extreme limitations of the illusion mechanic.

I imagined something pretty similar back when we were having fun designing and posting cool elite specs ideas that ANet could ignore, a few years ago

I think I called it the Veteran or something like it. I’ll link the post if I find it.

Yeah, I would love to play something like that.

Deceive, verb:
1. to mislead by a false appearance or statement; delude.

Dear ANet, I’ll give you a couple of ideas for “deceptions” I came up with in the last 10 minutes, involving mesmer illusions, without any change to base class mechanics.

• Fake Shatter: stealth our Illusions, create copies of those Illusions that run to the target as if they have been shattered.
• Symmetry: all the Illusions not currently being shattered mimic the mesmer’s movement around their target.
• They are all the same: the mesmer swaps place with one of their clones. If there is no clone available break the targeting , teleport the mesmer somewhere around the target and create a clone that attacks the target.
• Is that a clone? All clones instantly play one random animation for the same weapon (for example a sword clone would play the animation for Blurred Frenzy, and so on).

Please note: I would rather see good changes to our broken class mechanic, I’m posting these just for fun.

@Fay
I was hoping you would prove me wrong…

I re-created my demo Mirage three times, each time trying to give it another go with a fresh mind, but as it is now and for what I can imagine WvW will be after the release, I can’t think of any role viable for it in large scale fights…

I agree with your suggestions to make Mirage at least “playable”, but I’m not sure if it would become “desiderable”, after testing Scourge and from what I’ve seen of Firebrand….

Disclaimer: I play mostly organized group WvW and some WvW roaming. I don’t play PVE raids nor sPvP. I endured dozens of hours in PVE to craft Astralaria in hope that one day I would get to use it on my mesmer.

Another important disclaimer: although I played with the default Carrion set for a while, most of my testing has been on full zerker (as full as I could with the demo exotics).

I didn’t like Mirage.

If Spellbreaker is “a mesmer through the eyes of a warrior”, Mirage feels like a thief through the eyes of a mesmer, and I dislike thief.

Mirage is another “duelist” gimmick that doesn’t bring a new role for mesmers in large scale fights. It doesn’t solve THE problem: shatters reliance on illusions that die instantly in large scale. It doesn’t provide us any decent ground casted or point blank AoE nor any other “unique” utility like Portal or Veil.

On top of this, the idea that the blur-effect dodge would fool any decent PvP player is insulting: the mesmer is still easily spotted.

I should probably go over every trait and spell, but I’m so disappointed I don’t feel like doing it.

I’ll try to summarize my thoughts. The BAD things that come to mind:

• No dodge jump. One realizes how important it is for his positioning only when he’s forced to play without it. AWFUL.
• RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG. Even if it confuses the opponent, most of the time I was as confused as them by my position after using Axes of Symmetry or Illusionary Ambush.
• The gap closers on Mirage Thrust and Axes of Symmetry are so slow and obvious that they very rarely land.
• Jaunt is clunky as hell and ridicolously short range
• Sand Through Glass 300 units and 30s cooldown… :°)
• Mirage Advance is shorter range than thief’s Shadowstep (and in range for Headshot, sigh) and has a (huge) cast time… are we supposed to use every single spell from stealth or just dodge-cast it? Because if we don’t, these skill WILL be interrupted.
• Shards of Glass: in all the hours I played I took advantage of this maybe one time, and actually saw the mirror maybe 3. Sure, L2P issue, but feels extremely underwhelming.
• No movement speed bonus, no decent access to swiftness. Gonna have to retrieve that old Traveler Runes set.

It’s not all bad. There are some good things too:

• Mirage Thrust, even if it’s too obvious, when it lands it’s good and you can use it to chase or run away
• Dodge stomp/ress
• Double Jaunt stomp
• Can actually chase runners with a combo of Blink, Mirage Thrust and Illusionary Ambush
• Jaunt for very short blink spots (saves Blink cooldown)

Nobody can predict how the meta will change, but the trend I see is heavy condition and boon strip/corrupt, and that means the “melee ball” will have a hard time once again (when resistance is stripped or corrupted, everyone gets melted by the insane amount of conditions). So… condi pirateship? We’ll see. But if that is the case, there’s no place for Mesmer, Chronomancer or Mirage in a similar scenario.

Easier than what? And what are you planning on doing in WvW? Zergs? Solo roaming? Small group? Guilds?

I personally dislike the whole gliding idea. It will be just another way for enemies to run away from attackers and the game mode is already starved of fights as it is.

But the territories thing is interesting. It opens up a way to make strategic decisions more important, for example by giving each territory bonuses/maluses (for example: damage reduction on guards/walls/gates) based on the other adiacent territories.

Now I feel bad for having focused on the legendary back instead of going for the armor.

If I knew this would be coming, my decision would have been different.

Artaz.3819:

Menaka.5092:

I was thinking that the total number of stomps in WvW would probably be a good statistic, alongside the rank, to account for when calculating the pips.
Roamers stomp their victims more often than zerg players, so it could balance out nicely between the varied WvW population.

TL;DR: add a pip bonus based on the total number of stomps in WvW, so veteran roamers with a low WvW rank will receive rewards at a rate similar to their fellow zerg/karmatrain players.

That would just encourage Scrappers in zergs for selfish play though (maybe a different objective but seems kind of selfish). I get A LOT of stomps with Function Gyro. Run over enemy zerg, enemies lying on the ground, target victim, Function Gyro (stab trait), Profit.

The aoe damage often kills the downed targets before the end of the cast, I don’t imagine you would be able to stomp dozens of targets per fight, right? (also, it would only benefit one scrapper per downed player)

In the worst case, anet could disable the mechanic for gyro stomps (unfair, I know).

Dawdler.8521:

Using total number stomps and kills is a silly score metric, so I think it’s a bad idea. This puts WvW players into boxes that doesnt really exist to begin with – I can solo roam on my scrapper one hour and zerg on my necro the next.

Such bonuses outside of WvW rank should come from active gameplay, stomps or kill counts, ie what you have done since you joined WvW this session and reset when you log. Should stomp top out the bonus earlier (just like WXP gains)? Of course. A single stomp should equal 5 normal kills or something IMO.

I might have worded it a bit confusingly, but I only meant to use the total number of stomps, not kills (since kills have been farmed exactly like ranks in the past).

My idea is that WvW rank does not reflect how “veteran” a roamer is, compared to a player that spent most of their time in large scale zergs.

Let’s say the total contribution of additional pips based on your “experience” you get is 10, make that you can gain up to 6 based on your rank (derived mostly from zerging and PPTing), and up to 4 based on how many stomps you performed (derived from small scale fights and roaming).

Dunno, seems a tiny bit more fair..?

K THEN.5162:

Although I am a roamer myself and would love to have more rewards, keep in mind that WvW is based on large scale battles with many players duking it out at once. If Anet wants to focus on smaller scale battles then they would direct their attention to pvp

Roaming has always been part of WvW. The existence of smaller objectives (ruins, shrines, camps) and the stomp bonus on the borderlands buff is testament to that.

It just seems like the pip rewards are skewed in favor of zerg play and karma trains and I’m throwing there ideas about how to make it a bit more balanced.

/shrug

While the WvW ranks have been and will probably be even more “farmed” by zergs and karma trains, small scale roamers will probably have – on average – a lower rank than players that spent more time in zergs.

This will probably mean that they will receive rewards slower, and that doesn’t sound really fair.

Since the number of kills would probably follow the same pattern as the rank, I was thinking that the total number of stomps in WvW would probably be a good statistic, alongside the rank, to account for when calculating the pips.
Roamers stomp their victims more often than zerg players, so it could balance out nicely between the varied WvW population.

TL;DR: add a pip bonus based on the total number of stomps in WvW, so veteran roamers with a low WvW rank will receive rewards at a rate similar to their fellow zerg/karmatrain players.

it happens on all fields, and without a logic that I can see… at some point in wvw I had null field and chaos storm up and one looked normal, while the other had the red circle around

Simonoly.4352:

“Arcane Thievery: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 35 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP only.”

Why not in the rest of the game?

It would clearly break the finely tuned balance in PVE and WvW. /s

Silverkey.2078:

You forget one important detail on mesmer balance:

• We’ve been looking to improve the support role for the revenant. Alacrity will now be available through the Salvation specialization line, allowing Ventari’s Tablet to project it at a constant rate.

and just like that, 1 year down the line, our CLASS SPECIFIC buff is not class specific anymore

well played ANet

I just don’t have any faith left in ANet.

Every balance patch since June 2015 took a dump on WvW that is the only game mode I really care about.

Mesmer always had problems in large scale because our class mechanic simply doesn’t work (shatters don’t land, clones are annihilated instantly), I had some hope for wells, but they turned out to be just too clumsy to cast (same range and 3x cast time compared to necro wells!) and with negligible damage and/or utility…

After the changes to boonshare, mesmers have no role left in a group: they don’t provide enough utility, being vastly outshined by revenants, they obviously don’t provide enough damage (especially in the current, very tanky, meta) where warriors and necros are king or sustain (healing with mantras, lol).

It’s no surprise that there’s only a few mesmers left in wvw, and most of them are roamers with condi builds similar to the pvp ones.

What do I expect from this patch? More disappointment.

It really feels like going half the way, being able to put symbols on targets with a keybind but not being able to target the symbol with a keybind, would it be possible to add this feature to the game?

Or maybe allow the tab targeting to privilege enemy targets that have a symbol on them…

OriOri.8724:

Finished the story now. Yea…. Its almost like ANet isn’t even kittening aware of how kitten mesmer is in a PvE environment, especially if you are alone. It is horrible game design to make a story update one that is trivial on just about all classes except 1.

if you have to design your PVE so one specific class can keep up with it, the problem seems pretty obvious to me: that class is sub-par

Gonna link a few old ideas:

• Nightmare
• Ethereal Archer and Illusionary Veteran

And I’m gonna throw in a few more ideas I was toying with but didn’t have the time to developt into a spec design.

Skills and traits that swap friendly to unfriendly and vice-versa

• A trait that allows your ethereal fields to change the “allegiance” of enemy fields below them, making them work as if they were launched by the mesmer’s faction.
• An utility skill that applies a debuff (not a condition) that changes the “allegiance” of all the player’s skills for a few seconds. Friendly fire!
• An utility or elite skill that changes “allegiance” for a single player for a few seconds so he can be affected by his allies’ skills as if he was an enemy (and he can’t be helped by his allies with condi removal and heals).

Skills that mess up with the enemy skillbar

• utility skill that puts a random weapon skill in the enemy skillbar (except autoattack) on cooldown
• utility skill that puts a random utility on cooldown
• utility or elite skill that inverts movement for a very brief time (2-4 seconds): pressing forward will backpedal, left will go right, etc.
• elite skill that puts the enemy elite skill on cooldown
• elite skill that swaps the position of skills on the enemy skillbar randomly or based on a specific pattern (for example swap utilities with weapon skills) for a few seconds

While it is true that skirmishes have compressed the score you can gain by “night capping”, it is also true that at the same time they compress the score you could have gained by having a strong prime time collecting many hundreds or thousands of kills.

Coverage is now even more important than before. If you have enough people to win skirmishes during all the “off-peak” time, you can get by by just doing that, you don’t even need to show up for the two skirmishes during prime time. We have seen Baruch Bay blobs avoid fights because they knew they would lose them, and by doing that they would lose the skirmish. I completely agree with rewarding “smart” playstyles, but there is something wrong when it makes the game less fun to play.

Thankfully that seems to have only lasted a few days and I didn’t see any public commander obsess and burn out over the skirmishes. It really helps that the UI has no indication whatsoever of the status of the current skirmish: unless you play with the main WvW window (or an external website) open you can live in ignorance about the current skirmish, and ignorance is bliss.

From what ANet said, they wanted to control the “runaway scores”. Yet they plan to increase the points-per-tick granted by upgraded objectives, making it easier for the server with the most coverage to win his skirmishes. If ANet is trying to get people to attack upgraded and defended objectives to “reset” the scores from the enemy, I think they’re ignoring the elephant in the room: objectives are usually upgraded because the server has a larger presence in WvW.

In the end, skirmishes fit “well” with the overall WvW system in the sense that they seem half-finished and at the same time they miss the point.

This game wants to offer a 24/7 large scale pvp game mode, yet after 4 years we don’t have a “index” to find guilds or public commanders that can cover specific timezones. And moving between servers, especially with the current flux of server links is not really ideal for guilds or public commanders.

The matchup system has been broken since the start, favoring “balanced” matches but only taking into consideration raw scores: so you end up with servers like Baruch Bay (sorry guys, have been fighting you for the last 3 weeks so you are my most current example) that seem to have a prime time that is shifted about 3-4 hours compared to most EU servers. If they lose the two “prime time” skirmishes, but they win the two skirmishes after those, the match is “balanced”. The system completely ignores the players and guilds on both sides that wanted good fights and fun and found nothing to fight except a few stragglers.

Do you want to keep the current “servers” system and do something useful with the skirmishes? Here’s my feedback: use them to create a profile of the server that takes into consideration it’s strength during the various timezones. Add to the profile also the percentage of points gained from kills, because that’s important to determine how hungry for kills each server is. Use those profiles to calculate server links (taking into account the population data of course) and matchups. Make servers that have similar profiles fight each other.

I believe this would make the game a lot more fun to play, while you think of a better system.

I wish I could disable all friendly nameplates except those from Party/Subgroup or Squad.

For example, if I’m playing WvW or open world content with a few friends, I usually don’t join the “blue commander” squad because doing so makes it very hard for me to identify where my party members are. By disabling all allies nameplates, including the squad, but keeping the Party/Subgroup active I could join the squad and still be able to see where my friends are.

When I’m raiding, instead, I could disable all allies except my Squad so I can focus on where my group is while reducing the clutter a bit.

Would be even better if we had more options like keep the nameplates for specific players, like allies in our friendlist or commanders.

The same goes for enemies: at the moment, from what I recall, you can have “all players” and/or “all enemies” showing. I would like to see “all enemy players” instead (not the NPCs).

Also – maybe, but this could have pvp implications – allow us to disable all pet nameplates.

And since we’re talking about nameplates, can we have the commander tag to show up before them? Visibility of the commander tag is a problem, especially if the commander is Asura or a tiny human sorrounded by huge charrs.

babazhook.6805:

There a reason I dislike Pvp. it because of the amulet system and all of the restrictions on sigils and runes.

I didn’t say I like it. But I see a big problem when the game is balanced around PvP (with all the restrictions) and in WvW you have access to far more damage, far more tank or even both at the same time (for example, Dire gear).

babazhook.6805:

In WvW all players have access to the same gear. If they choose not to use a certain set it is their choice.

this is definitely not true… many pieces acquired through PvE require a huge time investment that not every player is ready to make

babazhook.6805:

If you want perfect balance you might as well demand only one profession one amulet and one set of runes to choose from.

there’s no point in putting in my mouth words I never said and I would never say… I don’t think “perfect balance” is achievable, what I want is for the builds I play against to be fun to play against

babazhook.6805:

The issue with WvW is not the choice of gear. It is the types of traits that have been added such as those cascading passives, the overabundance of AOE, the endless boon stacking and power creep.

part of the power creep is indeed a gear issue

HazyDaisy.4107:

How about add recognition for the servers in guest positions? Something, anything, glicko percentage, server nameplates, SOMETHING!

IMO, nothing else Anet chooses to fix or change going forward will make a difference to those servers unless they start getting some sort of kickback for their server for the efforts they are putting forward.

If they intend to keep working with the server linking system, this is definitely a good point.

Justine.6351:

It doesn’t feel like I am pvping, it feels like I am meerly killing people who can’t play the game because their builds play the game for them

that’s exactly how I feel sometimes and it’s horrible

Jim Hunter.6821:

Menaka.5092:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Only made it about a quarter of the way through the book you are writing before I got tired of seeing the same common theme in all your ideas which is basically “bring a blob”.

Your ideas seem better suited for eotm than they do for WvW.

I don’t get your point: nobody defends in EOTM.
My idea is: siege counters siege and slows down the attackers. If you want to kill the attackers, you need people. If you don’t have people to defend, you lose the objective.

And that’s why your suggestions sound like they should be in eotm. Making blobbing even more rewarding than it already is doesn’t help WvW.

how does reworking siege make blobbing more rewarding?

Jim Hunter.6821:

Making rams stronger by having multiple people man them makes small groups less effective.

you need supplies from 5 people (without mastery/+5 supplies upgrade) to build a superior ram, then those 5 people man it, how would a small group be punished by this?

Jim Hunter.6821:

If the only way to get things done is by blobbing harder you will only end up with more people quitting when there is no tag running, more bandwagoning to the bigger servers and more k-trains without resistance.

How would this improve WvW?

it wouldn’t and it’s definitely not what I would want for the game
I still don’t understand what brings you to think these changes would make blobbing even more rewarding

Paavotar.3971:

I still think the enemy marking etc. are bad addon for WvW. Scouting and map awereness are something players should do.

it wouldn’t prevent you from doing it, it would only help those servers that don’t have enough people enjoying scouting to cover all the maps

also, consider it only works for objectives you hold, while players can scout “in enemy territory” so to say

morrolan.9608:

Build templates are badly needed. I frequently run with the zerg then zone off to scout. I need to be able to change builds on the fly.

That’s the biggest request from the whole community (not only WvW!) that hasn’t been solved yet. It’s about time, I completely agree.

Bond.4602:

Some nice posts from the op

I don’t know how to fix the population issue. I do know that I like belonging to a named server, seeing the same commanders on the map, the same people. My concern which having instances in three colours would be that you would lose this feeling of belonging to a server and the degree of ‘pride’ that comes with that.

I know! I kinda like it too, but a faction system would not stop a community from creating, for example, a “server map” overflow that they can join from the map list

And you could always keep your favourite commanders in your friendlist to see where they are and join them

Glass Hand.7306:

I don’t think it’s that difficult to balance WVW. All that is needed is to apply DR to server population. Servers that have above a certain threshold in population get DR on rewards. Slower progression on reward tracks, debuffs on damage, RI, rank progression etc.

ANet stated multiple times that they don’t want for an ally to join you to be a bad thing – ever. It’s one of the tenants of this game, “more is better”, so I really doubt they would go that way.

Xillllix.3485:

You made a good effort posting all these threads here, but don’t forget Anet isn’t paying you. You shouldn’t have to do their job.

I did it for fun (and glory ofc)

OriOri.8724:

This suggestion seems to accomplish nothing but support blob wars. Its fine if that’s what you like, but a lot of players don’t like blob wars. And quite frankly in the current state blob wars are already heavily rewarded, if ANet were to change anything it should be to encourage other ways to play WvW (namely smaller groups).

I’m sorry but I can’t see how this system supports blob wars… if anything, it rewards playing better and smarter, by attacking multiple objectives at the same time with smaller groups so that a defending blob could not save them all.

Having multiple smaller groups sounds more fun to me than single zone-blobs.

Paavotar.3971:

1) Trying to cap an objective with small ninja group would be a bad idea, because on most of cases those events fail and you don’t want to feed the enemy points unnecessarily. You are better off just moving as a group killing players than trying to take objectives.

well it’s a risk/reward thing… if you don’t think you can’t cap an objective, then it’s probably better not to attack, it comes down to how many points you would get from capturing it, how many they would get from defending it and how many you could possibly make by going around killing enemies

Paavotar.3971:

People would blob up more because failed capture event would lead into points for the enemy, so you better capture that objective when you attack it. People would just look for a best moment to capture something that is undefended or something that is almost impossible to defend.

blobbing already works like that, sadly… more people means more supplies and an easier cap
on the bright side, defending against that big blob with this system means keeping a big number of enemies busy while gaining points

Paavotar.3971:

If there is no enemies, there is no points. If you get a good head start on the match, you can disappear from the match up and lower the amount of points the enemy servers can obtain.

the other 2 servers fighting each other would easily gain back on you, since the system rewards activity

Paavotar.3971:

It would be a valid tactic to log on only during night, and capture every T3 objective, gaining a lot of points and logging off and not defending your objectives and hoping the other servers cap them when they are still T1. Rinse and repeat for maximum points with minimal PvP.

let’s imagine a server doing that: they log on when the enemy objectives are T3, capture them all during the night, then log off until the enemy objectives are T3 again… they won’t gain any more points in the meantime, while the other 2 servers are still gaining points by capturing, defending and killing each other

assuming the points gained by kills are about 30-40% of the total (right now, but it could be more with the new system), you’re giving up about a third of your points by not playing

Paavotar.3971:

Long sieges would be bad for attackers. If you can’t cap it fast, you would be better off to just move to next objective and try a fast cap later on.

long sieges are boring!
and it’s definitely smarter to back off and go for another objective if you can’t take that one only because “it’s T3 and by just by holding it, the enemies gain points every 5 minutes”… I think this system would incentivate smarter/better play instead of painful headbashing over objectives for hours

SailorSpira.9371:

I like the points for defending, it’s something that a lot of people just give up on when it’s not an easy win, because as you said majority of the time they can just cap it back later.

My concern is with the no points for structures held, only taken and defended. When you are in an out numbered time zone, part of the strategy is to back cap paper objectives so the larger server has something to do rather then focusing on your few remaining upgraded keeps and spawn camping. Where as with this system I would be just feeding the larger server more points and would be more effective just letting them cap everything (defending a push or two on fully upgraded objectives) and logging out thus limiting the total amount of points they can gain, until the time zone shifted and my server was the dominate force.

this is an interesting point, thank you for bringing it up!

in one of my other posts I suggested some ways to work around this horrible thing that is “unbalanced population” over time zones/servers, so ideally I wouldn’t want for this situation to happen at all because it’s not funny for anyone

but assuming it happens, if a less populated server goes around capping back undefended t0 objectives and the enemies cap them back, the net score is 0 because you both gain the same amount from capping the same objective, so you wouldn’t give the enemies any more point, but you could gain point compared to the third server and maybe get a second place in the matchup instead of the third…

right now if you can’t cap back the objectives and the more populated server holds them for the whole night, they gain points for doing basically nothing, with this activity-based system, instead, you don’t lose too many points if you don’t have the people to cap them back

SailorSpira.9371:

I also think your "Multiple objective bonus”, just gives more benefits to larger servers. Who have the people to multiblob.

again, the unbalanced population is a different problem and requires different solutions

but consider that if they attack 2 objectives at the same time, they have to split their forces and you have better chances to defend at least one of them, thus denying the enemy the multiple-cap bonus

that said, from my experience, splitting a blob is hard… if you have multiple groups on a borderland it’s usually organized groups (guilds), and as a defender I would rather have many 15-20 man guilds to fight than a single 80-man blob

Svarty.8019:

Some iffy ideas here (even more damage on rams?!), some good ideas.

You’re right, rams already do a lot of damage, but as I mentioned, the numbers could always be tweaked, for example ANet could tone down the damage from a single-manned ram to account for the possible damage with more people manning it.

Svarty.8019:

• Will all of this take more than 10 minutes of development time, though? This seems to be all they are willing to spend on WvW.

I know. But I had to try.

Svarty.8019:

On your point that

If you want to defend an objective against a blob, Bring Your Own Blob!

I would mention that a lot of the time the reason a large number of defenders man arrow carts is that they lack a “Fights Commander”. In this situation you are, in fact, fighting a blob in another guise – but they haven’t got the Commander to open-field it.

I know, that is a different problem and should require a “meta” solution: at the moment everything is left in the hands of players (because player X knows commander Y that is currently in another borderland and can page him for help). It would be nice to have a mechanic for that in game. One of the suggestions I made previously was to make Team Chat readable across all maps, so it would be easier to call for help.

In the end, I believe that if you cannot fight an enemy, you should lose the objective. I know losing is not fun, but in the medium term if you keep losing you’ll hopefully end up against enemies you can face and that will be more fun for everyone

Jayne.9251:

Population balance is on the players. You can’t put this on Anet. Players have created this issue.

ANet is in the position to incentivate or force players to balance out, but so far they failed to achieve that.

I think players enjoy winning (bandwagoning) at least as much as they hate not having fights because the borderlands are empty.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Only made it about a quarter of the way through the book you are writing before I got tired of seeing the same common theme in all your ideas which is basically “bring a blob”.

Your ideas seem better suited for eotm than they do for WvW.

I don’t get your point: nobody defends in EOTM.
My idea is: siege counters siege and slows down the attackers. If you want to kill the attackers, you need people. If you don’t have people to defend, you lose the objective.

It’s done!
Overall, the notes I posted today are something like 40k characters long.
It’s the results of my thinking about WvW over the last months and years.
I hope you’ll enjoy the read, I hope it’ll spark some (constructive) discussion and I really hope ANet will be able to gather some good feedback and ideas from it.

We’re 4 years in and WvW still struggles at being considered a game mode on his own. Some steps have been taken, albeit very late, to fix some of the stuff that is broken, but the most important things are still “in development” after 10 months since the release of the expansion.

Skill balance and power creep

This isn’t the most important, but for me it has been the most annoying problem with WvW for a long time.
Balancing around a 5v5 conquest game mode with nearly entirely different gear is not working very well for WvW. I made a separate thread to discuss this problem more in detail and offer some ideas and possible workarounds.

Population imbalance

This is by far the worst and the hardest to solve. We want lively maps, full of bloodthirsty people killing each other, but we don’t want long queues. Even with server linking, we’re far from this. I made another thread discussing this problem in detail with a few ideas on how it could be solved, but TL;DR: make only 3 factions and map overflows that can scale in number during the day and during the week when the active WvW population grows and shrinks.

Scoring and nightcap

Frankly, I think this is the easiest to solve. I posted a long thread discussing all the details, but TL;DR: remove PPT and make the scoring based on capturing and defending objectives and number of kills.

The WvW guild upgrades system is completely broken

TL;DR: going from starting your guild to dropping your first Guild Catapult it’s gonna cost you around 2500g and a few weeks of your time. No, it’s not funny. I posted all the gory details and a few ideas on how to fix it in another thread.

Siegeing is boring and siege weapons are OP

We play games because it’s fun. Sitting there for half an hour watching trebs firing against a reinforced wall is not. Having your blob killed by a bunch of enemies sitting on arrow carts and cannons is not great fun, either. I posted all the changes I would make to siege in “excruciating details”, as Taimi would say.

Rewards and recognition

Between the reward tracks and the new vendors granting access to HoT gear in WvW, ArenaNet closed most of the gap that kept WvW lagging behind the other game modes. We still lack access to all the stat combinations from the vendors, but what we really need is the recognition of our efforts as WvW players and WvW guilds. We want to brag about our game mode of choice. Yes, we want a ridicolously good looking legendary backpack. We want shiny armors and weapons. We want titles and preposterous finishers to throw in our enemies faces. We want ladders to show our enemies that we’re better than them.
I created a separated thread to discuss this .

Quality of life

QoL comes last in “importance” and “urgency”, but we all know how it could greatly improve the game experience for everyone. I posted a few ideas but these forums are filled with other good ideas to improve our favourite game mode.

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

These are only a few ideas I had saved in my notes, but these forums have many more ideas to make the game mode better and more fun.

• instead of a huge announcement at the top of the screen that often covers the fight, I would like to see a more discreet log on the side, with everything that happens in the map: objective flips, enemy sightings by the guards (with numbers? and guild tags?), objectives under attack, etc…
• all guards should mark enemies on the map, at least in a limited range (the Tower scouting guild upgrade extends the range further)
• make WvW eventful to enable new players to “automatically fit in”
• create a system in game to list guilds and their recruitment status

After so many years, we’re still a long way from having proper rewards and recognition for guilds and players in WvW. Something has been done, the reward tracks are a very good addition and the opening up of vendors selling the HoT gear and sigils is another good one.
But we want and we deserve more.

These are a few things I would personally like to see in game.

• a system to acquire exotic and ascended gear with the stats we want, automatically updated with the newest additions to the game
• exclusive WvW rewards (legendary backpack, armor sets, weapons sets, etc)
• guild and personal wvw ladders
• guild ladder based on objectives captured (with bonuses for upgraded stuff), objectives defended, objectives held for longer, camp flipped, dollies killed, kill ratio, etc…
• once a ladder is in place, the WvW upgrades system could be tied to it
• cool siege skins and other cosmetic stuff (different tower/keep skins?!) for the top ranked guilds
• player ladder based on similar stats and on the contribution to fights (damage, healing, interrupts/CC, etc)
• unlock better personal rewards based on the personal ladder rank (exclusive skins, finishers, titles, badges near the name, etc)
• add fun, new achievements as a way to keep people entertained and to offer a challenge to veterans