Guild Wars 2

Imaginos.3756:

If you want me to fork up cash for these sundries then put the old designs back in the store so I have a choice for something more then some ugly kitten jack in the box. Do that and like the spice, the money will flow.,,,

I’m in the same position. I really don’t like the bone pick, but I can live with it. But the jack-in-the-box is a ‘no-way’ item.

Also, I think they should just have them all in the store all the time. Let people get what they want to get and stop punishing people who weren’t playing the game when those items came out (like the molten pick, etc.) or were taking breaks or just weren’t going to drop all those gems on a soul-bound item…

DarcShriek.5829:

Anet does something nice, and people complain. The forum is batting 1000.

It’s a very legitimate complaint. ANET should refund the gems as a courtesy to those who substantially invested in those tools. And that’s regardless of whether I think they were foolish to drop all those gems on all those tools when they were soul bound.

Failing that, allow them to be reset and sold on the AH.

But to devalue their investment then not compensate them… That’s a bit unfair.

jazzllanna.1278:

I have no problem with the skin being soulbound per character but what really stinks is that if I want to get this new armor I have to lose the phoenix armor because the set is celestial and the runes are traveler. I would have to pay over 70 gold to replace the runes and 30 days of making the stupid celestial crystals to use this new armor skin. It is cheaper for me to buy a new phoenix set than to use the transmutation splitters and the cost/time of the set I am currently using are too high to make again.

Can we please have armor/weapon skins that are gem store items available more than once on a character that has unlocked it?! Make it character bound if you want it on more than 1 character then by all means make us buy more but for the same character it is not right.

I know this has been asked multiple times but the cost is getting to high to get new sets for each skin. I would think you would sell more skins if people did not have to factor in the rune/stat costs every time they wanted a new look.

I refuse to buy anything that ends up soulbound from the gem store.

The simple reason is that I have EIGHT characters, one of each class. I will, eventually, have 11 characters, one of each gender of each race. (I have two human females as I was suffering from Nolan North burn-out at the time I created them.)

I don’t want to pay 800 gems for a pickaxe that can be used by only one character. A calculation that would have changed if all 8 could equip it (like the reward skins).

I don’t want to buy an outfit that costs 800 gems for just one character. A calculation that would change if all of that armor class could equip it (even though I doubt I would, it’s the point of the matter), like the reward skins.

I certainly don’t want to play the dye lottery, and pay thousands of gems, to complete the dyes for all 8 characters. Though I might think differently if I had one shared dye pallet.

OTOH, I have spent thousands of gems in the gem store. (3 character slots, 3 inventory panes, at least a half-dozen BL kits, minis, etc.) I’ve also purchased thousands of gems for my daughter’s account.

But what I’ve purchased has almost always had ‘complete account’ benefit, either directly or indirectly. And it’s like this because I’m not ‘just’ THE one character, I’m THE ACCOUNT. All the characters are mine and I, like a good parent, refuse to play favorites…

I also, as a consumer, refuse to be exploited. And this ‘soulbound’ decision, in my book, pushes past my acceptable limit. So, I don’t buy. YMMV.

Personally, I think you have an insight and there is some fairness to your proposition. The only real issue is the ‘old boys club’ may come to dominate the queue, discouraging newer, younger players. The very people we need to cultivate as the old-guard burns out…

Oh please, yes, remove it. It’s just annoying.

Three minutes into WvW at least half of the SBI players on the SBI map (SBI) went black-screen and were unable to move or play the game. CTRL-ALT-DEL was the only solution.

Of my five-man party, four of us went black screen. The client worked to the extent I could access the F11 options. But I couldn’t log out, I couldn’t access any other menus or do anything but reboot the game.

Eviator.9746:

Pinko.2076:

It’s intellectually dishonest to say that it’s an either/or situation. The system implemented this week was a hamfisted attempt to do what players wanted. People should express outrage in hopes that it gets adjusted or changed entirely.

It’s not intellectually dishonest, because those are the only two choices we’ve been given so far.

We’ve known about this system for weeks and saw the potential of unbalanced matchups. Nobody came up with a better idea. Did you?

Yes. When you do stuff like this, you limit the potential movement. You can use a smaller randomization factor. You can keep the factor, but put limiters on the allowable movement such as your rise (or drop) cannot be more than three rankings. Your total match-up spread cannot be more than 6 rankings.

But what they did would get you in trouble in a freshman design course — a huge factor with no limiters allowing dramatic differences in ranking. You’ve got the #20 server playing the #8 server (Europe). You’ve got the #5 server playing the #13 server (US). You’ve got the #25 playing the #13 server (Europe).

That kind of result went from beyond silly to completely unthinking.

Mandar.9813:

It’s going to be really hard to please everyone. People want NEW matches, but they don’t want to face people immediately in their tier EG people they have recently played. That means it’s either going to be people higher or lower than you. If you make the range of variety too small (so as to get a more “fair” matchup) then we get stale matchups because that’s how it’s been done up until now. If we they add more variety you are more likely to get a disparity and “unfair” matchups.

What did people expect when they were told there would be more variety? More variety means pulling from a bigger pool, and a bigger pool means a greater range in the “skill” of the servers, which inevitably means you’re going to face drastically harder or easier servers some times.

Just relax and enjoy WvW, and keep in mind that this first week will help in establishing the new selection system.

I for one choose the fresh experience than the same kitten every week, even if it means sometimes it’s easier, and sometimes it’s harder.

Not really. You put limiters on the up-and-down movement. No more than three slots up or down. No more than 6 ranks differential in the server rankings.

That way you don’t have #5 playing #13. Or, even worse, you don’t have #25 playing #13 and #20 playing #8.

It was a good idea. Just stupidly executed with an excessively large randomizer making too much movement.

So, we have new WvW match-up system. Which has a randomization factor to shake things up. Which, based on what’s happened in WvW so far, was WAY TOO BIG:

For example, jsut 24 hours (or less) into the matches:

RIng of Fire 83,000, the other two servers combined: 9,500
Dragonbrand 48,000, the other two servers combined: 23,000

And there are more lopsided matches. I just picked a couple of them to illustrate the point.

The consequences of these brutally non-competitive matches has been to drive a lot of the WvW people out of WvW on the overwhelmed servers. After all, when you can’t hold the spawn towers your own borderlands… Why bother? Which, is currently what’s happening on many servers as people get tired of having NO CHANCE.

I know my otherwise very-heavy WvW guild (on Stormbluff Island) has already packed it in. We’re not a high-tier server (#13). We can’t cover like a high-tier server. And we’re so completely outnumbered that we can’t possibly win. Dragonbrand was fielding single-guild zergs bigger than our entire SBI zerg.

So we have come to the obvious conclusion that we should not waste our time and resources on a completely hopeless matchup. Which gets to the flip-side of the coin — Dragonbrand players get punished by our non-contesting.

Let’s face it, if the people losing don’t play, the winners may be racking up the points, but they don’t flip the towers, keeps & camps as they’re not changing hands… Which means no event XP for them, no karma for them, no WvW XP for them, no badges for them, no fighting for them. Nothing. Just sitting in WvW with their thumbs in their rear-ends hoping that next week it’ll be better…

I guess ANet really should have thought it through. Put a limiter on how far up or down a server could move and a ranking differential test as well. Maybe three spaces up or down with no more than a 6-slot difference between the top and bottom server. That way you’ll limit the crazy match-ups and give people at least a chance to be ‘respectable.’

But pitting the #13 server (SBI) against the #5 server (Dragonbrand) or the #25 server (Arborstone) against the #12(Gandara)… Or some of the other crazy matches…

Yeah, that’s not going so well. After all, there was a REASON for those huge differences in ranking…

It’s a joke. SBI has no chance. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen ANet do with game. Actually, I think it is the dumbest. The random seed was just too big and made some outrageous results.

SBI, already too small to compete successfully in in Tier 4, you gave us a Tier 2 and a Tier 3 to complete against? I mean, here we are, reset night, and people are already giving up for the week as it’s clearly hopeless as we are completely out-manned on every map. Our 25 man zerg hits their 60+ man zerg and BOOM! Wipe.

Wipe. After wipe. After wipe. After wipe. At least we get the outmanned buff. But it’s a joke. We have ZERO chance to even make a respectable tick. Way to drive people away from WvW… What’s next in the joke match-ups, Ferguson’s Crossing against Sanctum of Rall?

You really should have used a NARROWER/SMALLER random seed to prevent horse-kitten like this. Make the necessary changes, but slowly and incrementally. Instead of so large and over-the-top so a server gets crushed with no hope of competing.

Chris.3290:

All three are PvE heavy servers, one of the reasons this match is so fun.
Sorry MrKnieves, I’m just taking the SBI people’s excuse for granted, because any other theorizing would be insulting.

Unless you are claiming that CD is pulling out all the stops this week, then SBI is fading without an explanation.

Either way, unless things have changed for good, CD’s position is pretty stable in points.

There are two reasons, which I think are obvious to anyone who is a hardcore WvW in this match-up and to bring them up would start a pointless flame war. But it’s not CD. Has nothing to with CD. Everything to do with SBI and SoS.

I have my Mouse 3 button set to forward to the next target. I just go click’ click click click until I get my target… It’ snot hard.

Also, for the record, T4 & T5 have plenty of big zerg-on-zerg during peak and reset. It’s just, with SBI, we have COVERAGE issues. We had 8 people, if we’re lucky, on at night so we lose all our stuff to SoS and CD.

Mostly in WvW where I use it for combo fields, taking down siege and interdiction/condtions. Also for farming in Cursed Shore.

I don’t mind the RTL nerf because after months of watching it (and occasionally abusing it) in WvW…

But I have to agree the other changes are suspect as the non-D/D elementalists already had major survival problems. A staff elementalist is already well behind the 8-ball and has virtually no chance in any kind of one-on-one encounter against an equally skilled, equally-equipped person.

I know when I run into them in WvW, I kill them with impunity. I know when I play mine as staff, others look at me as ‘fresh badges.’

The Eternal Grace.3157:

I’m having a hard time liking my engineer. I really want to use the grenade kit because it’s awesome and traits fit it well…also got a little bored of the flamethrower. But I seem to not like it much because they’re all ground targeting skills unless you’re underwater. *This is really annoying because I have to constantly hit 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-3-1-1-1-5-1-1-2-4-1-1-1-1 over and over. *Please at least make the first skill auto-attacking and target locking. If I have to occasionally hit 2, 3, 4, and 5 to ground target, that’s totally fine. It’s just really annoying to have to ground target every single time with my auto-attack. Please change this.

This, plus the grenades nerf, plus grenade flight-time, is why I’m no longer a 100nades/bomb engineer.

I would love to have a target-lock option that kept the grenades hitting the target. Or at least the ground where the target was….

Plus, throwing the next set of grenades should not be limited until the end of flight-time. I found grenades to be a great short-range weapon, but when you went long-range, they just fell apart due to how long the gap was between throws.

OTOH, I think it’s great they gave us the ability to throw grenades without LOS. That used to drive me nuts, as well.

rivx.3267:

air blast adds duration to a burn already in effect they worded the tool tip wrong.

I agree with ft5 such a long cool down for such a mediocre ability. I wish the burn on ft1 was with the first hit as well but if they did that might as well get rid of the 10% on burn damage and just buff the damage 10%. Flame throwers biggest problem is retaliation you basically nuke yourself if you hit the max 3 if they have retal up. I’ve did 90% of my health in one burst before I could react and stop.

Ah, so that explains it. I kept hitting mob after mob after mob with it so I could see how it was working my (relatively) new flamethrower build and I kept getting nothing.

So, it’s #1/#3 or #4/#3. Not #3/X. Good to know.

signahead.7281:

On the downside, there are certain engineer builds that really bother my hands in a carpal-tunnel, repetitive stress sort of way. The HGH build that a lot of players love is one of them. If you’re prone to repetitive stress injuries, then a (potentially) super-clicky profession like the engineer may not be a great choice.

Yeah, I have similar issue. My left hand is partially paralyzed from some nerve damage I sustained a few years ago, so the Function keys are difficult to reach and I don’t have the fast-click handspeed or dexterity to run a ‘high-click’ build like the HGH engineer or the D/D elementalist.

But I do what I can do and still enjoy both classes, even if I can’t be the king of key-mashing.

Jacksonxxxxxx.4930:

Hey guys so i’ve had Guild Wars 2 since December but i still haven’t mained a character. I’ve played every class pretty well except the mesmer, thief, and guardian, but out of all of them i seem to really like the engineer. How do you guys feel about the engineer? I currently have a level 38 sylvari engineer and im wondering if i should stick to him because i’m pretty tired of restarting. So please comment with your opinions thanks!

I have 8 level 80s, one in each class. There is no ‘best’ class. What there is, is the class that works best for what role you like to fill.

FT 1 – Flame Jet. I have no major problem with this skill. I get 10 attacks and crit on 6 of them plus a very good burn. Add in Incendiary Ammo, and that first attack can really put a major hurt on an enemy.

But from a conceptual point of view… It should burn from the beginning. The direct DPS should be lowered and the burn made a 2-second burn of greater intensity (ie, it should be far more condition than impact).

FT2 – Flame Blast: Damage is fine, but it gets bugged. Too many times it shoots into the floor instead of up-the-slope. The DPS of it is ok, though it should be a BLAST FINISHER.

FT3 – Air Blast: It’s bugged or was nerfed without changing the tool-tip. It’s supposed to (according to the tooltip) put a 2-second burn on the target. I spent a good 45-minutes this AM in Frostgorge, Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore gathering and killed scores of enemies. Not once did it apply a burn.

FT4 – Napalm: Takes too long to fire. If you fire early, enemies dodge-roll through it or go around it. Therefore, no burn. If you fire later, the enemies have gotten to you before the line of flame gets out there.

FT5- Smoke Vent: It’s probably one of the most worthless skills in game as a single auto-attack from the weakest weapon in the game will negate the 5-second ‘blind.’ Making it worse, it has a TWENTY-SECOND COOLDOWN.

I have 8 characters and I use every #5 skill in every build/weapon set they have and find virtually all of them to be excellent to outstanding skills. Except this one which is as close to worthless as they come and not worth the 1-second animation time.

Bring back Backdraft. Or make it so it makes a 4-second smokescreen that grants protection from projectiles like the thief’s Smoke Screen which is actually useful!

Flamethrower skill three (air blast) is supposed to apply a two-second burn. I’ve been farming materials all morning on my engineer and have been noticing that the NEVER (as in 100% of the time) inflicts burning on the enemy. I’ve killed, according to my stack of accuracy I’ve built up, at least 25 enemies. Most of which solo (vs group) kills and, therefore, had targeted.

There are no flames. There is no condition icon. Nothing but a knock-back with an interrupt.

Yet the tooltip clearly indicates I’m supposed to be getting a 2-second burn.

If your attack is weak, having a high critical rate won’t do you much good. 200% of a wet noodle is just two wet noodles. You have to balance it. Plus, if you’re dead because you’re running a berserker build and are squishier than a mud-flat… Well, 200% of ZERO is still ZERO.

That comes from the perspective in that I do a lot of WvW. So doing well there, versus dungeons or events or whatever has its circumstances that are similar in some respects, but vastly different in others. So anything I say… Well, it’s colored by my experience which may, or may not, be helpful.

So, in WvW I run a hybrid Knight/Soldier armor and Valkyrie weapon build. My trinkets are Berserker/Knights/Soldier trinkets. I use beryls as my upgrades on my Soldier trinkets because they not only have precision, but they also increase my critical damage output (and vitality) which is well over 200% damage on a critical vs the 150% base critical.

I run 0/30/30/10/0. I use Superior Runes of the Ranger.

Over-all, I’m happy with the build. I think I crit around 50% of the time without maintenance oil, precision boosts through my sigil or any food buffs. And I have decent attack (including the 5% damage boost because I have pets) and armor almost as good as my guardian’s…

jwaz.1908:

Coming from someone who has used Ranger axe A LOT (I have Frostfang for god’s sake), axe is not good for ANY pvp situations.

It has little to no survivability and single-target damage is nonexistent.

In WvW and sPvP, ranger shortbow is much, much more useful, since it has a lot of survivability (cripples, evades, dazes), and does a lot of single target damage.

:rollseyes:

But doesn’t give a speed boost which means you’re burning a Utility Slot to get your 25% flat boost. And even that’s not all that great as you’re going to get caught from behind by all the 33% speed boosters who can catch you fairly quickly.

Honestly, I can’t tell you how many rangers I’ve offed on my warrior who maintains a constant 33% boost because they think that 25% constant is ‘good enough.’ Only to find out that when we’ve blown through the front-line of the enemy zerg to wipe the back-line first… They have just found out that, no, it isn’t…

(And yes, you can have a constant 33% boost with a warrior. It’s easy to do.)

I find the signet really only works well in the zerg when you’re being boosted by all the warhorns and elementalists. And, of course, if you miss a few boosts, or you’re on a havoc squad, you’re ending up at the end of the conga line and ripe for being picked off as a straggler.

Personally, I think short-bow is a great weapon, especially for dueling. And can be quite useful in a zerg if you’re replacing the longbow you equip for sieges. But I think your advice is a clear failure in general WvW where sustained speed really does matter.

I use Axe/Warhorn to go with my longbow in WvW. Though the truth is I don’t like any of the Ranger’s melee weapons all that much.

But, with that being said, I find Axe 1 to be helpful when fighting a more numerous foe as it bounces on three targets. It’s not great damage. I’ll not pretend it is. But in big engagements, the whole mano-et-mano dueling thing doesn’t work very well…

Plus as I need the speed boost Warhorn 5 gives me and Warhorn 4 does some very good damage… Also, Axe 3 is pretty good in that it has chill and lets your pet’s next attack inflict weakness. Plus, unlike the sword, the animation requirements don’t foul up my fighting style…

In the end, though, it’s the better of two options that don’t thrill me…

Ikarushka.9564:

Pinko.2076:

MrKnieves.4162:

So Mag is ready to get ROLFStomped on Friday? Enjoy!

It’s okay, we have a contingency plan to all log off when things get hard. We call it the CDNA.

Ironically, that is exactly what you will do In fact, you guys will complain about the exact same things; while whoever has a bigger presence will tell you stories about how epic they are and how much of fodder yall have always been.

That’s exactly what they’ll do.

JaironKalach.4938:

MosesZD.7428:

By which you admit you win by numbers. It’s been obvious as a coal-pile in a ball-room you simply out-cover SBI and CD combined, but at least it’s nice for someone on Mag to admit it..

You think you just won a victory there? There isn’t anyone on Mag who doesn’t admit that and hasn’t admitted that… Yes. We have the overall better coverage. Of course, right now, I’m pretty sure that CD has the best coverage for this time period, given where our team is at on CD borderlands. Near as I can tell, SBI has been taking advantage of the fact that CD is busy. A wise decision. But all I’m talking about here is overall scores and coverage.

As far as actual battles… Sometimes we win outnumbered, sometimes we have total zergs get wiped… Is there a surprise there? My belief has been that our overall (including our general population) is a little stronger than on most servers. But that was possibly truest a while ago when we first hit T3. I’m not sure of it anymore.

All the time mate, all the time. We constantly read the chest-beating in these forums how your ‘skill’ wins all your battles… When, in fact, you can just zerg the holy crap out of CD and SBI and do your 12-golem rushes against 10 defenders…

Dahkeus.8243:

idari.4273:

all classes are good in their specific roles.

So, all classes are equal, everything’s cherry berry and sunshine? Somehow I’m skeptical.

Come on, I’m not asking people to categorize classes into “ZOMG OP! OP!” or “USELESS!!”, but rather I’d like to get a temperature of what works and why.

Even if a class may do one role better than another role, how useful do you think that role is in WvW?

Warriors are best because of F1 Hammer, Endure Pain (which can be traited and utility skill slotted for 10 seconds of combined invulnerability) and one-handed + shield for another 3 seconds of blocking attacks…. Add in 3500 Armor class and 32K HPs with a shout PTV build… They laugh at danger….

Guardians are best because they buff the heck of groups and can heal up/condition remove to the point it’s virtually impossible to kill them. Especially when they’re running heal-builds w soldier runes…

Necromancers are best because they can condition-down those annoying mesmers in no-time flat plus consume the conditions the mesmers drop for heals! Way cool, that….

And so on and so on and so on…

It’s all rock-paper-scissors… And the question was just silly, though some people did point out the obvious — what’s best depends on you, your build and the rock-paper-scissors of class strengths and weaknesses….

The culling issue and stealth issues are resolved. It’s sucks when you’re a smaller-pop server playing over your head fighting a crap server who can’t stay with the big-boys but field huge zergs on every map and win fights by blowing you up by stacking Mass Invs plus exploiting culling.

JaironKalach.4938:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

That’s because if we so much as sneeze at Maguuma, it seems like they empty out Lion’s Arch to come take everything back.

Not entirely true. Look at the past hour. You just sneezed at us a few times: took all the camps on MagBL, took some towers… We ignored you. But then you got greedy and went for west keep. We had to remind you that we weren’t asleep, just busy.

By which you admit you win by numbers. It’s been obvious as a coal-pile in a ball-room you simply out-cover SBI and CD combined, but at least it’s nice for someone on Mag to admit it..

Esprit Dumort.3109:

As much as it sucks, it’s a legit tactic, and it is unlikely Anet will change that.

Take pride in the fact that two servers are working together against you, that’s how much of a threat they think you are.

And that stuff can back-fire. A couple of weeks ago IoJ did that with DR. Since it was DR that started the process, we spent a week crushing them at every opportunity.

So, while they were clearly better than IoJ and could have been a legitimate contender (and at least solid second place) had they gone straight with the competition, we drove them into third by leaving IoJ alone and focusing on them.

I think the tiers should be should be by participation level, not score. I’m on SBI and despite the BS out of the Maguma forum warriors, we spend half our day ‘out-manned.’

I logged on about an hour ago and went to EB. There were four of us, two of whom were doing “fight club” with Maguma/Crystal Desert players by Spelden’s. Meanwhile the Maguma Zerg was procing orange swords on the camps as they were grabbing supply.

And this goes on every day. We get, three or four times a day, completely rolled up by Maguma because we can’t even cover one map, never mind FOUR maps like they can.

JaironKalach.4938:

Gravy.7589:

Nah, just chest thumping a bit bout our defense in SM. All in fun :P

That was interesting. You guys basically destroyed us in open field. You probably should have had that counter treb a lot earlier, though. I was rather amused that I was able to get 4 holes in your wall, with no resistance for a while. In the end, we also made some rather rudimentary mistakes. To whomever said that we need a particular style of zerg in EB in order to be effective…. Yeah, I think you’re right. We tried some strategic play but the mindset for split forces just wasn’t there. Oh well…. It was a fun battle and good work SBI.

It wasn’t quite that. We left the holes on purpose as we didn’t have anywhere close to your manpower (once again) as we had to defend both SBI AND EB with our zerg.

Obviously you wouldn’t know that. You come from a player-full, coverage-full server.

But it’s why we kept fighting Mag and CD in the inner-keep areas. That’s why you saw so many of us rushing in from behind your zergs to wipe you in the Lord’s room of Garrison, SM, Overlook, Bay, Hills, etc…

We had no choice. We can’t cover two maps. Heck, most of the time we can’t cover one. So, last night, we were spread way too thin for all we owned and had to beat back the Mag SBI zerg, the Magr EB zerg, the CD EB zerg (which gave up around 10PM and they went “outmanned” on EB until I logged off at midnight) and CDs SBI zerg.

As it was, we spent most of the night hopping maps. Which is why we’d start on one of your towers to take away your treb locatiosn, then run-off and disappear. We were having to get out of combat so we could rush to Garrison or Hills or Bay. This was also why we didn’t spend a lot of time counter-trebbing. We didn’t have time or supply (we were constantly repairing while being unable to protect our yaks (supply chain)).

I understand you wouldn’t know all this. But that’s what happened.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Gravy.7589:

Tonight was rare for us in having that many show up in EB. Kinda sucks fighting equal numbers for once doesn’t it?

Huh?

Mag usually faces unequal numbers and is the underdog.

Oh please. That’s load of horse crap and I’ve got my daily “Outmanned Buff” screenshots to prove it.

We’re mostly out-manned all week. Same goes for CD, as I’ve seen them, a couple of times this week, have the out-manned buff, though they (overall) have far more coverage than SBI. I NEVER saw a Maguma sport the “Outmanned Buff” even once.

So, the truth is yesterday was the first day we fought equal numbers and we kicked your butts. Your excuses and chest beating to the contrary. I, with a support/bunker engineer pulled in 198 badges as we wiped you a good half-dozen, if not more, time when you tried to re-take SM.

OTOH, this afternoon we lost SM and the rest of our stuff on EB as there were just FOUR of us on the map by 1:00PM (CDT) and I was the ONLY person in SM. And on SBI + CD + EB we had, maybe, 25 people combined including the people doing map completion and jumping puzzles.

And that’s how it goes, on SBI, for hours at a time. We’re lucky to be able to keep our camps up from havoc squads as we can’t spare the men to patrol.

So, for some Maguma players to pretend they aren’t steam-rolling from numbers so they can beat their chests while lying… Whatever….

We had ONE day of almost equal numbers and we owned you. Otherwise, we just never had the numbers all week long.

I, for one, am glad. And I think it will be an an issue for the thieves who’ve abused the culling issue instead of developing good, robust builds and actual skills.

In fact, I think of it this way… You know how thieves are frequently complaining they have troubles in PvE? That’s because the server doesn’t have culling to deal with and those NPCs can stay of them appropriately. There’s no two-seconds of ‘free attack’ and then drop back into stealth.

In WvW, I, frequently, could never see thieves. I hear the damage… I see my HP dropping. I watch the bleeding. But I’d never see the thief.

With the end of the culling issue, I suspect WvW will become like PvE to thieves. And there will be much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Anatolian Turk.4057:

long story short, before the last patch i used to easily solo the quggan camp (the island in the middle of the boderlands) with my berseker thief quickly and without any problems. Post patch, now it requires more than 2 people of all lvl 80 exotic/ascended gear to capture this camp. It has come to a point where i dont even bother going there anymore because of the insane spawn rates of the kraits. Everytime i kill one krait another 3 spawns. And the veteran krait with all those knockbacks and insane damage just makes life harder. who else is having problems taking this camp solo?

I’m glad. It should be tougher.

To the DR Forum Warriors:

Has it ever occurred to you that you lose because you make fundamental mistakes? Take the simultaneous garrison assaults last night (DR & SBI).

30 of you were on SBI trying to take our garrison with a golem rush while 30 of us were on DR trying to take yours using rams. We had nobody defending garrison but a lookout. YOU had at least 20, mostly AoE specialists (and of that, a LOT of longbow rangers), defending your keep.

When we heard you were trying to take ours, HALF of us went back and wiped you guys right as you broke through the inner gate while the other half remained to keep the pressure on while having inferior numbers. *In our defense of our Garrison, besides being out-numbered, we had no siege, no time to prepare as we barely, within seconds of your busing the inner gate down, made it into the inner keep way point. *

Despite being out-numbered by our choice, we, true to our expectations, wiped you. While out manned. The floor was red with DR bodies and I got somewhere around 10 bags. Your zerg never made it to the Lord’s room, dying in the supply courtyard.

Let’s compare that to your garrison defense.

During our assault on your garrison it took us 45-minutes to burn down your seige that you spent 1700 supply MOST OF WHICH YOU WASTED ON BUILDING MORE SIEGE THAT WE KEPT DESTROYING.

Not that it was ‘easy.’ You repeatedly, with your massive AoE knocked our squishy guys down so the heavies had to keep getting them up. And getting them up was a chore because you had multiple catapults and mortars you’d pound us with. But we did it, despite the ground being red with AoE circles and no place to dodge.

Beyond that, you must have had close to a dozen arrow carts in and around the Lord’s Room where we couldn’t take it down from the inner keep. When we broke in, with you having PLENTY OF TIME TO BRING IN REINFORCEMENTS from your SBI wipe, GIVING YOU YET ANOTHER NUMBERS ADVANTAGE, plus all those arrow carts, we still wiped you. And while we were wiping you, you respawned at Citadel, hit the just opened waypoint at Garrison and rushed in again. Where we kept wiping you, despite the constant stream of reinforcements.

So, even with all the siege, and having greater numbers AND the tactical advantage of the citadel-short-run-back and your own waypoint, you lost.

You had us out-manned on SBI. You, in the end, had us out-manned and with multiple tactical advantages on DR. And yet you lost. Twice. With more people (in total) than us in both fights.

So, I say, look to yourselves. Stop pointing fingers. Stop acting like it’s ‘superior SBI numbers.’ It’s not numbers. It’s how you play the game.

earendil.1290:

Don’t mind him. Check his post history – half of his 15+ pages of posts he is complaining about people that beat him (or his servers) with zergs and, in general, people not being on his same level of awesomeness in battle. Oh, and how culling prevents him from showing how awesome he is against the enemy zergs.

I’m sure he’s not the voice of all Devona Rest

I hope not. For their sakes.

Creepy Silent.9801:

Bannok.3152:

Zerg? I hope your not from DR claiming zerg? I

You guys had war machine so I can’t blame you for following in their zergy footsteps. But the only times I ever see DR have a zerg is in our prime time and that’s about it. I’ve been in tier 1 on my days of blackgate and I know its nothing but big groups of +30.

I have pictures to the contrary. AM pictures. PM pictures. Afternoon pictures. Late night pictures. Pictures on Friday. Pictures today. I’ll have pictures tomorrow.

Though, once again, mad props to TRON guild. And that mesmer with the pink-puff-ball hair. You guys rock. We’d love to have you.

Retrospek.4583:

Maverick Holix.1382:

2nd to post wooo!!!!!! this tier is a joke (DR, IoJ). Just wait until any of the T6 servers move up one and kitten stomp errbody.

If this tier is such a joke, then why waste your time posting here?

Must have gotten stomped by DR or IOJ or both at some point, and you’re so affected by it you felt the need to post on a thread that doesn’t concern you. Thanks for that.

I do believe you lost last week, despite many IOJ and DR guilds forming an ‘unofficial’ alliance to double team us. Though, thanks to that, we’ve gained some of ‘decent’ guilds that weren’t interested in playing that game and have come over to SBI now.

Lofat.2406:

Probably won’t always crit, but I’m sure he was running a GC build with high crit. Glad you got your answers. Most people come on here and qq about the op thief that just stomped them and how it’s totally unfair they can’t just push the win button against thieves. You had an honest question about it.

What a strange thing to say. I play all 8 classes. The thief is so incredibly OP in WvW/PvP it’s a joke and anybody can run one and think he’s the King of PvP/WvW because of it.

It’s the same problem WoW had with the Rogues. Made it too easy to come in for the big DPS strike then evade/hide without consequences because there is NO EFFECTIVE COUNTER. Between abilities and culling, thieves are pretty much super-high DPS + perma-stealth.

I watched one of our thieves take on five guys at a supply depot and keep them pinned down for a good four or five minutes. And these weren’t scrubs, these guys were pretty decent fighters who make themselves look as unique as they can so you can recognize them. They WANT you to recognize them. They have ego in being known. They want you to who killed you.

I’d been fighting them on-and-off for hours in harassment squad actions. Sometimes winning. Sometimes losing. Finally got caught and ganked when I tried to solo a quick supply run. Such is WvW.

But this thief who came in just after I died joined the fray. *They couldn’t even hit him. They throw down AoE hoping to hit. They’d swing their weapons around. They’d fan out. They’d cluster up.

It didn’t matter. * One thief with this stupid perma-stealth build just kept doing his thing. Then the rest of squad showed up and it was over in just a few seconds since he could do his thing without any consequences at all.

And pretending that’s it’s a bunch of whiners… Whatever…

What I, and other people want, is either an end to perma-stealth, or effective counters to make these twink-builds suffer the consequences.

You think you’re hidden Mr. Thief? My engineer has the De-Cloaking Field. My Ranger can take the “Blood Trails” ability so I can follow you. My Elementalist has the Ether-Sight ability so I can see your etheric signature. Heck, my thief has the “Mole” trait skill which allows me to ‘spot’ hidden thiefs.

Now we have counters. Now we can make viable choices.

But as of now. Anyone can make a perma-stealth thief and act like he’s the king of WvW/PvP when it’s just ANet messed up.

And for people who don’t trait for thief taking. Let them suffer. It won’t make it impossible. Not everyone will do what it takes to be a thief taker. They have other roles/abilities/interests.

But, please, let’s not pretend the mechanic isn’t one of the most abused PvP/WvW game mechanics and it’s all skill. ANYONE can play a thief and be successful. Anyone.

Yes, there is culling in PvE. What’s worse, is this culling is happening even in relatively small groups. You get 20 players at an Orr DE and half the time you don’t see the mobs until they’ve downed you.

Which is annoying. I’ve done those DEs for months and didn’t have any issues. Then a few weeks ago I noticed the culling.

earendil.1290:

Bannok.3152:

Saturday afternoon, took 25 minutes to get 10 people to start break out in EB for SBI. After finally getting the Mendons with about 14 people, we were met with about 50 from Yaks Bend. Looks like its going to be a bad week to WvWvW. They really need to let us drop faster.

Dropping faster will not improve much the situation.

SBI is just not generating the number of player*hours required for coverage. And in this tier it is no longer about the opposition being suffocating. Whenever we have a half decent number of people on a map we are doing fine.

The number of people still doing WvW in SBI is finite. Good, even great people but not that many. We either ask these people to do extra hours (something I’m totally against) or we try to lure more into a WvW environment that has little appeal right now. When WvW rewards will kick in, a lot of casuals will be back and we will be ready. Maybe not for climbing back to T1, but at least to have a gratifying WvW experience. Which we do have now IMO.

And I honestly appreciate the quality of the opponents we faced since T2. TC back then, YB and CD – all great servers with people who do WvW for the right reasons.

Grats to all.

I think most of your point is sound. However, I disagree vis the ‘numbers’ issue.

Yaks isn’t winning because they’re ‘good.’ They’re winning because they can run multiple huge zergs for most of the day. They are, according to the population indicator (which I’ve been lead to believe accurately ranks by logged-in players) the 4th most populous server as I write this message (11:50AM, CST). Crystal Desert is 3rd.

SBI is 19th.

Both are at “Very High.” Later in the day, they will be ‘Full.’ We’ll make it to ‘Very High.’

So, this has been our day since the population migrations:

First comes the huge waves of Yak’s Benders. When the evening rolls around and we finally get some population, we take back. But then the huge CD zergs start showing up late at night. And we go out, 15 against 60 and die. And respawn. And die. And respawn. And die.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Habib Loew.6239:

Update 2/7/2013:

We’ve been keeping a very close watch on this week’s matchups and, despite our concerns regarding the recent population shifts, it seems that many of the games are quite competitive.

Many is not most. And my impression, from here and other forums, is that most were not as competitive as the final score. That is, an over-whelming lead was taken and then the losing guilds scored junk points Monday-through-Friday to tighten up the score while the winning players went off and got to do other things in the game because there was no way that they’d lose if all they did was ‘hold their own’ for the rest of the week.

Kind of like being down 35-0 at the start of the 4th quarter and scoring three TDs to make it ‘look competitive’ at 35-21…

But the bottom-line is most people I know who WvW on other servers are either face-rolling or are being face-rolled.

JohnDied.3476:

Anymras.5729:

coglin.1496:

Anymras.5729:

We could also use an option for fighting enemies with Reflects or Absorbs Projectiles that doesn’t involve the use of a kit. As it is, we’re the only class that doesn’t have an option in that regard without using a Utility slot just to get around it. (c’mooon, hammer)

Are you saying we do not have the option to reflect or absorb projectiles?

Or are you saying we do not have a counter for that?

Saying we don’t have a non-Utility counter for it. Every other class can equip a melee weapon, or has attacks that just don’t count as projectiles, while we have to use a Utility slot for the same effect.

Don’t other classes (except elementalist) have to use a utility slot to have reflect projectiles? I’d call it even that we take a utility slot to avoid it

Four have weapon skills that block projectiles:

Guardian — Shield of Absorbion (#5 Shield)
Warriors — Shield Stance (#5 Shield)
Rangers — Whirling Defense (#5 Axe)
Elementalist — Magnetic Aura (#3 Earth -- Staff), Swirling Winds (Focus #4 — Air)

Obviously, if you don’t have the weapons, you don’t have the skills…

I play all eight classes. Six of the eight are level 80, including my engineer. Things I think about the engineer:

I think the inability to swap weapons is a shame. I could ramble on and on why it’s structurally unfair to have to give up a utility slot to substitute for the other weapon, but others have come before me and expressed this ‘one-slot down to be equal’ premise quite well.

I think the RNG attached to our elixirs is a crap fest. I know it’s cute and all. But it makes us highly unreliable and spotty in our ability to help in both group PvE and WvWvW. Give us a check-box with the elixir so we can force what we want. Someone wants ‘might,’ fine. Someone else wants ‘healing,’ good for them. Give the player control over his recipe. Or, let me put it this way, if I’m preparing a cherry pie for dessert, it shouldn’t come out brussel sprouts because my oven has an RNG.

Turrets. They’re hopeless. A mendacious cool-down, little power and no mobility. You rarely see them and the last time I saw a turret was on a Level 7 engineer (who obviously hadn’t discovered how bad the were) when I back to Queensdale to farm bandits for butter…. On occasion I’ll see some dropped in Orr for cheesy DE farming, but so many of them don’t that’s notable for it’s oddity. What you mostly see is grenades, bombs and flamethrowers. Give turrets some mobility, like a golem or something. Reduce or eliminate the cooldown. Give us some power. Do not terminate them after time, but treat them in the same fashion as necromancer pets.

Many of the kits/utilities are close to useless and those that are useful, don’t scale well. Mines… They’re not blowing legs off. They’re not making people think “Oh my, better watch out, the engineer is laying mines…” Nope, we’re getting a little knock-back that is then lept over. And the toolbelt aspect of this skill is a horrible joke. Mines should make people think twice, possibly three times… Plus, a long cool-down? You’re kidding me…

Allow engineers to make choices vis utility belt skills. For example, a proposed new ability for equipping the bomb kit: Flour bomb which disperses a 20-second condition of ‘flour’ on stealth enemies (showing them up) in a 480 radius. You could chose to use this instead of the ‘Big Ol’ Bomb. An option, not a taking away. Instead of doing damage, it coats thieves and other hiders and turns them white with flour. That alone will make engineers far better.

Look at weapon dps. And that rifle skill with the knockback. That skill is awful. What’s the point of having a knock back that launches you off the cliff to your death? Or makes you helpless for a precious second in a tight WvWvW battle…

Anyway, lots of good suggestions in this thread. Consider them, please.

Victory.2879:

Easy way to fix zergs- remove the aoe limit. Then there will be a disadvantage to running in a mindless zerg (and advantages too for the more skilled) and some tactics might come back into wvw.

Making people move slower would just be a joke when you think of what it would do to class mechanics, etc

Yeah. I agree. Massed artillery really did in those giant formations armies used to make in the old days. Generals around the world saw what happened in Europe and, over-time, adjusted their tactics.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Yeah, day 2 dailies are nice. Day 1 was a mess. Combo kills were glitching all over the place, spent 1 hour to get 7 then gave up.

I didn’t get a single one for an hour’s worth of trying yesterday. Despite running in large Orr DE zergs. And that was using the Poison Field with my grenade engineer and trying pistols and even my rifle as projectile finishers.

I’ve also had issues with regular melee attacks being dodged and not registering today. Fortunately, I quickly figured out a solution. But it was annoying as all heck.

maddoctor.2738:

Funny how easy this daily is… there are plenty of dead npcs everywhere.

Not where I am. So I have to stop what I’m doing and make a trip to some other area to get the dead NPCs. Then I have go back where I want to be…

It’s not particularly fun. What it is, is a 20-minute waste of my time when I would have killed all the (60) enemies necessary in what I was doing through the ordinary and natural pace of the game (Orr event farming) and gotten the sweet, fat loot my 200+% MF build would have earned me.

At least the healing isn’t any worse, in this case, than the stupid ‘15-kinds of enemies’ garbage that basically forced you out of Orr every day to run around some other area killing bugs and trash mobs 20 levels underneath your level because Orr had all of three or four enemies. Though it is equally stupid as 15-kinds (and we still have it, btw, though it seems to be 13 now).

Worse than this is the new dodge daily that isn’t registering most of time I use it to dodge ordinary melee attacks. For whatever reason, it seems that ordinary melee attacks, even when dodged, don’t hit the timing window for recording as a dodge even though I took no damage.

So I had to go find slow-attack and AoE attack enemies and spend ten minutes dodging them. At least in Orr, those are common — grubs, tar elementals, most of the risen.

But if you’re going to have a mechanic in the game, it needs to work.

Where do we petition to get the person who came up with this stupid revamp of the dailes fired? Because this new system is just STUPID.

And, for the first time since open-beta one, I don’t want to the play the game. And you’re talking to someone with SIX level 80s and has no problem logging on and farming dailes, as boring as they were.

The biggest problem are the combo kills with allies? That’s utter crap. I have no desire to group with strangers. And if my grenade wielding engineer, who’s tagging 5-to-10 mobs per rush in Orr can’t get a single ‘combo’ kill with grenades (poison finisher), pistols or a rifle… You need to rethink this stupidity.

Just as bad as my peeve, my daughter can’t do her dailies without jumping into the tedium pool because she doesn’t craft, isn’t interested in crafting, has no crafting skills and sold all her mats so she has no mats. Forcing her to drudge it out in noob areas to meet this silly “10 crafting” thing is bunk.

I mean, seriously, WTH happened to the ‘fun manifesto?’ Being jerked through hoops on crap you don’t want to do IS NOT FRACKING, FLIPPING FUN. It’s TEDIUM.

You know, TEDIUM. The crap I left the other MMOs for this one.

Reading the OP… Then all the hate and frothing at the mouth afterwards… I wouldn’t answer you either. It’s not the way to get a response. It’s a way to get ignored.

As for the changes. It’s an MMO. People cry. People cry all the time. Nerf this. Nerf that. Don’t nerf my favorite class/build which is so hard to play…

Not matter what a developer does, there’s always a small, unhappy contingent who have to have it their special snowflake way and can’t deal with the fact that what was nerfed was so kitten over-powered it was ridiculous. So there’s no point in continuing to address it. You’ll never be happy with the answer of: it’s fine and the design mistake that made it OP was corrected.

Instead, you’ll just keep whining about it. We all know it.

(Hint, a 100lb draw longbow should be significantly more powerful (and massively out-range) than a 60lb draw short-bow. That short-bow should have never been OP like that…)