Guild Wars 2

Chaba.5410:

“Keep defense needs to be returned”

Please no. Poor objective offense/defense balance is a big contributor to blobs. It used to be that a 5 man squad could work on taking a tower against 2 defenders reasonably. Then they buffed the damage on arrow carts. Then they added siege disablers. Then they added the desert bl and dragonbanners that could one-shot siege because everyone who defends cried about blobs and Anet tried to appease them. Now you need a 10 man squad who can carry more supply to take it against those 2 defenders. And then everyone wonders where all the smaller groups went…

Re-tuned not returned. I was simply trying to say ‘it needs to be reassessed and rebalanced because the way it is now doesn’t work’ in as few words as possible.

I can see how making keeps easier to assault can force large blobs to break up though, perhaps it should be made easier, access to siege reevaluated, and some sort of bonuses for taking multiple points at the same time put into effect.

These types of changes could also bring back small groups that harass enemies and mess with supply distribution.

Thanks for all the insightful posts, it’s a bit disheartening to hear.

I find blob counter play to be very uninteresting after a while, if you’re a small group it just seems to boil down to everyone hoping on condition necromancers and trying to herd the cattle with marks and pick a few off at a time until you can thin the ranks enough to engage.

The long drawn out battles are too tiresome when it’s one after the next.

I’m sure there are more skilled and insightful people that can offer suggestions on how to fix WvW but from my perspective supply costs needs to be reevaluated, keep defense needs to be retuned, each siege needs to have a specific purpose and be the best at that thing and only that thing, supply starving should be more meaningful (I think a good place to start would be not allowing players to map hop with supply), all things that contribute to a blob needs to be reevaluated (such as boon share), and ideally WvW skills need to tuned differently.

I guess that’s a lot of things but it can boil down to reassess supply and it’s purposes and reassess class skills in WvW format.

However, I hear from a lot of players that many of these changes won’t be done because the demand for WvW is not that high comparative to other game modes.

When did WvW become so much about massive groups zerging around?

I know this happened some times in the past but never to this extent and smaller groups could do more to make an impact in the game. Now it just seems like the ideal is to get a few tanks, a few support (tempest + druid?), a mesmer or two to spread boons around, and then 30 condition damage build players to fill out the ranks.

Being in a small group and flipping camps doesn’t seem to impact too much because the zerg just runs place to place to restock or TPs between Eternal Battleground or Borderland to move supply. It doesn’t seem to be much of a pressing issue.

Even T3 towers seem pretty easy to take with the zerg, especially if the enemy doesn’t have the numbers to compete or don’t have just the right amount of time to respond.

It just seems like the entire original balance of WvW has gone out the window, which is a shame because it was one of the great unique things about GW2 imo.

They should have 3 points that are required to activate for Bloodlust and one of them should be in each borderland.

I think this style of map is the best as a continuous ring around the ‘eternal battleground’ with the main keep only opening up for battle once in a while.

This requires teams to fight against both sides and there is a middle land for a ‘push and pull’ type point system. Once in a while the central area opens up and it’s a large battle to get in there and take everything for your team (this ends once the lord has been taken).

Can anyone recommend me some good WvW Condition Necro builds.

I’ve been gone from the game since Well Bomb was a thing and I heard that’s not really viable anymore (if it is someone let me know, I heard some stuff about Runes of the Chronomancer maybe helping with Wells?).

I’m mostly running with a squad, not trying to roam as a Necro as I heard that’s still not a very good thing to try and do.

The alternative is that I leveled a Mesmer to 80 so I can just be an alacrity bot I guess xD.

Yuffi.2430:

I don’t think Anet can go back to individual servers now. The “guest” servers have gained no score since the linking concept started, and Anet have already said they have no idea how to allocate score to them should one become an independent server.

The best we can hope for is that Anet could do a full reset: delete all servers and create new ones with new names and zero score. It would take time to settle down again and over time similar problems might develop if not managed, but it would be a fair solution.

Another option is to have WvW teams that are not based on your server at all. For example have each player choose a human God to represent (just a random idea) and then have them face off for the glory of that God.

For example Grenth vs Lyssa vs Kormir

Start with something new that players can bond with instead of just trying the server idea again which probably has a level of stigma associated to it for some of the player base.

Pets and minions yeaaaaahhh!!

They should just give us a second 1200 range weapon and then make staff condition focused and the other power focused (a bow perhaps?). A lack of alternatives shouldn’t mean a weapon is ‘good enough’ design wise.

In any case I agree that something needs to be done to make it a bit more usable.

Marks
- Trigger after 5 seconds if left alone
- Can be recast to trigger
Cooldowns and effects could also be looked at, they’re a touch underwhelming right now.

Auto-Attack
- Increase the damage but make it deal 10% less damage for each consecutive enemy struck
This makes the pierce effect more of a secondary bonus instead of a focal balancing point.

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

They are just skins. Just because they’re called ‘legendary’ and require more effort to acquire than ascended gear doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than just glorified skins.

There is literally no differentiation between legendary and ascended gear other than visuals.

And the stat swapping and the purple pretty.

If that’s the case, whats your answer then? Would you be okay with it if you just got unique armor skins from raiding?

I’m for unique rewards from raiding. I’m also for unique world rewards, dungeon rewards, crafting rewards, SPvP rewards, and WPvP rewards because I don’t think every single item should be available through every type of content.
It increases the longevity of the game and pushes players to experience and take part in content they normally wouldn’t.

Also, you can stat swap ascended gear can’t you? It’s just more difficult?

At the end of the day it impacts me little because I think nearly every single legendary skin is hideous. I just get annoyed with the “I want X reward but don’t want to do Y content, why can’t I get it from Z easier content or why can’t Y content be catered to my level of skill” thought process, it’s very self serving and elitist.

If by ‘destroy the item at a mystic forge and get, for a notable cost an equivalent item with different stats’ then yes.

Also, I hate being this guy, but you’re dodging the question.

A skin is also a unique reward. Would raids offering skins instead of unique legendaries be enough?

~~~~

I’m harping on this for a reason. There’s be no conflict (or almost no conflict) if it were just skins. Anet knows this. They also want more people trying for legendaries and people who normally wouldn’t normally do a raid to try them.

Which I’m fine with, let people have unique rewards for wahtever. My dog in this is I kind of want people to admit it’s about the exclusive rewards not the joy of playing hard content.

You say there would be no conflict if they were just skins but what is it that sets them apart from skins?

I’m just trying to determine what the actual difference between legendary and ascended gear is other than the text colour and the stigma.

I’m sure ANet is completely aware of the stigma associated with legendary gear and are using that as a driving factor to get players into raids but at the end of the day there is no stat difference which makes it a lot easier to justify such rewards.

As for your final point, you seem like a smart and reasonable person so I’m sure you’re aware that there are always many people in different camps.
There are those that will raid for the rewards, there are those that will raid for the challenge, and there are those that will raid for a multitude of other reasons (completionism, boredom, playing with friends, perceived prestige, etc.).

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

They are just skins. Just because they’re called ‘legendary’ and require more effort to acquire than ascended gear doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than just glorified skins.

There is literally no differentiation between legendary and ascended gear other than visuals.

And the stat swapping and the purple pretty.

If that’s the case, whats your answer then? Would you be okay with it if you just got unique armor skins from raiding?

I’m for unique rewards from raiding. I’m also for unique world rewards, dungeon rewards, crafting rewards, SPvP rewards, and WPvP rewards because I don’t think every single item should be available through every type of content.
It increases the longevity of the game and pushes players to experience and take part in content they normally wouldn’t.

Also, you can stat swap ascended gear can’t you? It’s just more difficult?

At the end of the day it impacts me little because I think nearly every single legendary skin is hideous. I just get annoyed with the “I want X reward but don’t want to do Y content, why can’t I get it from Z easier content or why can’t Y content be catered to my level of skill” thought process, it’s very self serving and elitist.

Windsagio.1340:

I’d argue the skill thing. Individual skill is best tested through smaller group content. Raids tend to be about logistics and organization as compared to straight up second-to-second execution skill. It’s good for exclusivity however.

Player’s need something to work towards to drive them to continue investing time into the game. This has to be something that feels attainable but is slightly out of reach of the average player.

Raiding at the highest tier requires a lot of individual skill if the content is designed correctly.

What I meant by drive though was more the difference between DoTA and HotS if you follow MOBAs.

HotS has very little skill gap and little progression, there isn’t a large difference between the top 0.1% of players and the top 1% of players or even the top 5% of players. As such the players at the top get bored and leave and the players at the bottom don’t have anything to work towards and see top players leaving and migrate with them.

A large part of game design is psychology. Creating risk, reward, drive, excitement, etc. Giving players something to work towards that they’re so close to mastering but not quite keeps them in the game working towards that. If it’s too easy they lose interest and if it’s too difficult they give up (and many companies remedy this by lowering the difficulty and bringing out content more often).

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

They are just skins. Just because they’re called ‘legendary’ and require more effort to acquire than ascended gear doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than just glorified skins.

There is literally no differentiation between legendary and ascended gear other than visuals.

I posted this in another thread but I’ll repost it here

Burst Phase: Straight forward enough deal lots of single target damage
Add Phase: Lots of cleave or AoE damage
Dodge Ground Effects: Use your dodge. . .
Raid Wide Damage: Use small recovery to not dip too low
Spike Damage: Mitigate and Heal

Soak Effects: Rotate players to soak beams / puddles / breathes / etc.
Kite Effects: Use swiftness to kite adds / ground effects / boss / etc.
Corruption: Boss conditions to boons / Player boons to conditions / Player ground effects into damaging effects
Enrage: Have a ‘timer’ built into encounters

Unique UI Elements: Consciousness / shields / toxicity / etc.
Environment Elements: Area damage cover / interactable items / moving platforms / etc.

ANet can do any number of things but the most important thing is how they tie it all together.

Most importantly I just want mobs and bosses to be smarter. Moving out of ground effects, targeting specific players, etc. Closer to the original AI of the game.

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

Blaeys.3102:

Navi.9308:

Blaeys.3102:

8-12 would have been a perfect compromise.

I also HATE HATE HATE the idea of set number raids.

What if you have 7 people or 13 people? What if you have 35 people? What if you have 60 people?

Here is the thinking behind 8-12 people. Currently, with 10 player raids, if you have 13 people show up, you have to find 7 people to create two groups. With the 8-12 model, you would only have to find 3. With the 7 person example, you would only have to find 1. Finding 1-3 people is a hell of a lot easier than having to find up to nine.

With the 8-12 model, as long as you had at least 7 people, you would never have to find more than 3 people to fill out raid groups for your guild on any night.

I understand why people are against scaling, but I think it would solve a lot of the issues.

As far as keeping raids challenging, there is a simple answer – don’t scale the difficulty, just the number allowed in. They could tune the raids for 10 people and offer slightly greater rewards (in the form of achievements, etc) for groups of 8 or 9 and slightly lesser rewards for groups of 11 or 12.

This would have the added effect of creating a player run difficulty scaling for the raid itself with virtually no effort on the developers’ part – allowing larger numbers of players to see the content and giving the truly hard core raiders an even more intense challenge – win-win.

I completely understand the desire for flexible raids but I feel the thought process completely misses the point.

Who is ArenaNet designing Raids for?

From what I have gathered, based on the information available and things that have been said by developers, Raid content is not something that everyone should be able to just pick up and play. That’s not who it is designed for.

It’s meant to be the highest tier of PvE content, in terms of difficulty, coordination, and understanding of game, profession, and encounter mechanics.

Flexible raid sizes offer nothing to that design goal therefore they’re an unnecessary complication.

Flex works in WoW because all the game has is raiding. All other content in WoW is obsolete once you hit max level (world content, dungeons, etc.).

ANet has done a great job of offering a variety of content to all players however they have nothing that provides a great challenge to overcome and therefore there is a key part of the MMO market that they are not appealing to.

I could go more into the need for high skill content in online games to drive the average players towards something and how that’s good for the overall health of the game and other things but this has already gotten long enough xD

The standard WoW raid design mechanics are pretty straight forward and can be translated into GW2 if you look at them at the basic level

Burst Phase: Straight forward enough deal lots of single target damage
Add Phase: Lots of cleave or AoE damage
Dodge Ground Effects: Use your dodge. . .
Raid Wide Damage: Use small recovery to not dip too low
Spike Damage: Mitigate and Heal

Then you can get into more unique mechanics

Soak Effects: Rotate players to soak beams / puddles / breathes / etc.
Kite Effects: Use swiftness to kite adds / lasers / etc.

Unique UI Elements: Consciousness / shields / toxicity / etc.
Environment Elements: Area damage cover / interactable items / etc.

—

One thing I see a lot is people saying because there is no dedicated tank / healer you can’t do x, y, or z; however, if you flip that argument over you can just say because there is no dedicated tank / healer everyone can do x, y, or z.

For example if they created an encounter where the boss targets the closest, furthest, highest health (or something equally predictable) player then players can easily rotate in and out and ‘tank’ the encounter while utilizing breaks to ‘heal’.

Lots can be done with the system, it’s just a matter of if it will. From my perspective it’s a wait and see type thing.

Technically, according to Robert Gee (who must know what he’s talking about because designer), some professions like Necros and Mesmers are designed to have lots of fields and some professions like Warriors are designed to have lots of finishers.

So your third point is obviously wrong.

Let’s ignore the fact that fire field is the most sought after and surprisingly the one that neither of the field oriented professions bring.

Mesmer (1)
Guardian (1)
Engineer (1)
Thief (1)
Warrior (2)
Elementalist (4)

There I built you the best party, enjoy raids.

Blaeys.3102:

8-12 would have been a perfect compromise.

I also HATE HATE HATE the idea of set number raids.

What if you have 7 people or 13 people? What if you have 35 people? What if you have 60 people?

Scaling is already not perfect and raid encounters are content that is supposed to be challenging and cleared in very specific and coordinated ways. I think scaling takes away from that aspect of it.

GW2 does a great job providing PvE content for solo, small groups, or massive groups but there is no middle ground between the latter two and nothing for the cutting edge to pursue. Raids are meant to fill that gap.

Jahran.8456:

For a long time, fixed raid size has been an issue. You will see, it sucks to be on a bench while the other guild members raid.
In the last expansion World of Warcraft introduced flex raid. It was a true breakthrough. The raid difficulty scales with the number of people you bring. It has been a true success. No more people on the bench. For instance you have a flex raid size between 10 to 20. This will satisfy most of the guilds.

This comment is a little disingenuous no? The highest level of raiding in World of Warcraft is still a fixed size because of balance. Even with flexible raiding there are ‘sweet spot’ group sizes that many people aim for.

Raids are meant to be difficult content for organized groups, it’s not really surprising that it’s balanced around a set size to reduce variables.

—

These reactions aren’t exactly surprising though, there has been a huge shift in the past few years for MMO gamers to expect all content to be tailored specifically to what they want. It’s a very entitled culture.

I just can’t wait for the massive outcry for nerfs to difficult and crying about certain rewards being locked behind raid content.

After taking a long break I decided to come back and check out the changes since I last played.

To me Necro felt very much the same as when I had left, a few tuning changes but nothing major. Many of the optimal builds before seemed to still be the optimal builds. Many of the issues that I had before seem to still exist as well. I would have hoped in so much time more tuning changes would have been made and more diversity put into our build options.

The main thing that brought this to my attention was today I did an organized group event, Triple Trouble (Cobalt Wurm), and the guild that was running it was very specific in how they wanted things set up for a smooth run.
1. No fields that are non-Fire
2. No pets or minions running wild
3. No teleports or other such abilities that cause keg drops
4. No finishes that are non-Blast

As I am leveling I was playing Minion Master build and this posed many issues to me.

I had no access to Fire Fields at all. I have all skills unlocked and I didn’t notice a single Fire Field. My Blast finisher is tied into staff and minions (which are quite annoying to place anyways).

I didn’t have ways to help stack Might.

Playing Minion Master was not wanted by the group nor was playing Wells. If I had access to all my specializations I probably could have gone into a Signet or Corruption build but those seemed like the only options.

The only help I felt I was bringing was Vampiric Presence and realistically you only need one Necro to do so.

It made me feel like not very much has changed at all. I was hoping they would use Necro Elite Spec to put a twist on Necro into more of a ally support playstyle which would have been unique and interesting. Even having a ‘Hell Fire’ type Necro would have been a way to bring fire flavour to the Necro while keeping the overall theme. Maybe in the future we’ll see something like this.

RashanDale.3609:

What ive heard from charr necro sounded okay. not awesome, but good enough.

Though i still think “You are all weaklings” is probably the lamest sounding shout in existence.

I wish the shout was just “You are all weak” the ‘lings’ part is what makes it sound childish and lame to me.