Guild Wars 2

Swamurabi.7890:

drcraig.9403:

Swamurabi.7890:

Strider Pj.2193:

Swamurabi.7890:

drcraig.9403:

Breaking up BG won’t work. Last time I checked BG had about 147K accounts. The WvW community is a very small portion of all those accounts. We’d coordinate, pick a low pop server and absorb their WvW community. Even if we lost some players we’d get some back.

BG has played by the rules since launch. We’ve dealt with win trading, double teams and server linking. We’ve manged to stay on top and played by the rules at the same time. We should be punished for that?

Begging Anet to wipe out a community just because it’s bigger or better than yours is pretty sad. My advice would be to take responsibility and try to strengthen your own community. Another option, and one I think Anet would like a whole lot more than angering one of their biggest servers would be for you and people like you, is to drop $30 and by and alt account. It would help you avoid BG and it would help Anet increase their revenue flow.

Nice spin there, the same “rules” that you play by are the ones that also prevent any other server from competing equally with BG.

You don’t have to break up BG as a server, just the small fraction that plays WvW.

Still doesn’t solve the hibernators. Or hibernation to open a closed server.

Since Anet reads the forums AND they have time to not only look at what happened with HoT but to fix it for PoF I’m sure we’ll see something from the WvW devs on this subject.

The tears have been falling for years so I wouldn’t count on it. Server linking is not only fair it’s the last ditch effort to give everyone a chance to win. But hey breaking up our community is fair right? Laughable!

What is laughable is that you actually believe that linking is fair.

You and all the other “BG defenders” should create an alt account on another server and see what WvW looks like to most of the other players.

Been there, done that, actually moved off to other servers too

Still a joke

This thread is silly

Plenty of BG players have moved off in search of less blobby fights, myself included. The reason why BG’s still so strong regardless of the dozens of guilds and hundreds of players that have moved off in the past year or so is because there is a group of very strong leaders on the server.

Servers live and die from their leaders, commanders and active community members (in that order). The only 2 other servers that even come close to having what BG does is Maguuma and Jade Quarry. Even the server I’m on right now has little to no cohesive leadership – everyone just plays how they want (which is great, but not great for making a server successful).

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Balthazzarr.1349:

ahh.. people that say Rangers aren’t useful in a zerg just don’t know how to play Ranger/Druid imo. They can be very useful although not as supportive by any means as Guards etc… One caveat… field fighting is not a place for Rangers or Thiefs… I agree that they really don’t support the team the way it needs to be supported…

but…. When you’re needing some good range and straggler picking the Ranger is great for that. AOE on walls, taking down things at 1500 range etc etc. Frequent enough in a fast moving group that it’s useful.

A havoc team is a better place for a Ranger after all is said and done, and/or roaming.

Thiefs? Well thiefs are good little 1v1 beasts in the roaming world… hiding and hitting from behind before you can fight back and so on. In a group? I love to see them because they drop like flies and nothing makes me happier than pummeling a thief into the ground.

As a thief main in WvW, I love being in group fights (even ZvZ). I will admit it took me a while to figure out why thieves are useless in bigger group fights. Most don’t know what they are doing and some better ones will go for anything outside the AoE rings in the middle of the fight.

I have been in zerg fights were I maybe downed once/twice due to losing map awareness. I will, in fact, aim for the driver if I can confirm who it is and wait for the to move outside the rings, otherwise I aim for backline/sideline condi necros, LB/sw+wh druids and glint revs. More often than not, they all die before I do :p

That’s what you should be doing as a thief or ranger in a ZvZ fight. Unfortunately, the vast majority of GW2 players are too brain dead to even realise how to play their class. The only thing that PvE teaches them is to follow after the tag like a lemming from event to event. Makes it so fricken hard to command those people, especially as they also don’t get on voice comms.

300g is nothing in WvW now. I barely play and make 5-10g every time I tag up, even including food and siege expenses as a commander.

Ruq.5396:

I think some of these designations are based on the upcoming expansion, however I agree.

Tarnished Coast, for instance is considered full and is at the bottom of the barrel for WvW currently. There needs to be some rebalancing of server populations and it starts with allowing people to move servers without paying a Very High gem fee.

Nah, people should still pay a gem fee to move

but

TC being at the bottom while still being full is my point. There’s such a gigantic divide between the top “full” servers and the mid/bottom “full” servers.

Heck, there’s a huge difference even between say, SBI and TC, despite both of us being marked as “full”.

There’s 10 full NA worlds and 11 full EU worlds with only 3 and 2 on Medium respectively.

I think it’s time to either expand the number of tiers, or relax the population requirements to reach full on worlds a bit, especially with expac coming up

Servers like Blackgate and Jade Quarry will probably still remain full, but it’s pretty clear that a lot of servers can’t match those two in particular, even when they’re both on full status.

Happens to me sometimes when I’m tagged up. The whole group starts wondering where the heck I am :PP

Honestly, the best way is to go to those servers, join their forums/discords/teamspeak servers etc. and ask them yourself

Light aura currently provides -10% incoming condi damage. Why not increase that to 33% so that it’s the same as prot?

I feel like this is an interesting discussion on squads and servers in general

but….

also a completely dead horse

Staff is still EXTREMELY strong on guardian, but it now lacks any kind of pressure. It’s purely for support (skills 2~5) now.

Oh well, we’ll adapt and change

NA bias!

decent list though I guess?

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Reverence.6915:

grifflyman.8102:

Yea BG has a massive guild called ASIA. They PPT hard.

ASIA is on Dragonbrand…?

Correct, perhaps he means AHMA.

I don’t find AHMA do much PPT though always PPK.

AHMA are mainly play a pinsnipe guild like FOO.

And yet none of the guilds mentioned can be considered massive :/

grifflyman.8102:

Yea BG has a massive guild called ASIA. They PPT hard.

ASIA is on Dragonbrand…?

Not a lot of OCX/SEA guilds left in the game in general.

MuscleBobBuffPants.1406:

Serenity.6135:

He did not say it was the “BIG” update that some people are waiting on, for some reason. He simply said it was a big update. I take that statement to mean that any updates they have for WvW, will not require players to have to wait for something like an expansion. So if they have something to release they will just release it as part of normal updates, most likely alongside future Living story episodes every couple of months.

Its just weird to keep waiting for it, that kind of BIG update for WvW with new content. How many more months for it? Especially since he used the word big to describe it, and as far as WvW was concerned, it wasnt that big. And I dont think I am being too critical of it, but it felt like a reskinned PvP pip system. I am thinking new content as in new siege, new maps, new mechanics etc.

New maps are fine if they’re well designed (take your time please anet and don’t repeat the desert borderland disaster). New mechanics are fine if they don’t negatively impact the pace of fights (again thinking of desert borderlands). New siege is just an all out terrible idea.

I’ve been having the same issue against HoD this week. Massive 2-4k ping spikes as soon as we near their zerg.

Zaxares.5419:

It also depends on which timezone you are playing in. I think we still have decent’ish numbers during prime time (although we did indeed lose most of our old core WvW guilds), but TC is like a ghost town during OCX/SEA. It’s always been our weakest period, and while there’s regulars who do their best to hold down the fort, we basically can’t muster enough numbers to deal with the sizeable zergs that our opponents can bring against us during these quiet periods, let alone try to take offensive action apart from forming some small havoc squads to ktrain a bit.

I’d hardly call it a ghost town. Just super uncoordinated crowds of people.

Ahka.6705:

Reverence.6915:

TC’s fat as heck man

Every time I’ve faced them in the past few months, even though they lost a ton of guilds, there were still SO MANY FREAKING PUGS! In fights, they’re pretty easy to beat if there’s a commander leading that knows what they’re doing, but it’s like a hydra. You kill their group here, they show up elsewhere to take a keep/tower. So annoying

When was the last time you’ve faced TC? We usually have 1 decent sized group that constantly map hops to try and keep our main objectives, which we normally end up losing in the end by having to chose 1 over another.

It’s actually funny reading “TC is fat as heck” from someone with BG in their sig…

I’m currently on SBI and SoS if that answers your question.

TC’s fat as heck man

Every time I’ve faced them in the past few months, even though they lost a ton of guilds, there were still SO MANY FREAKING PUGS! In fights, they’re pretty easy to beat if there’s a commander leading that knows what they’re doing, but it’s like a hydra. You kill their group here, they show up elsewhere to take a keep/tower. So annoying

I can’t believe this is being still talked about

There’s not enough leaders to spread between servers. There’s probably still enough true leaders left to run 3, maybe 4 servers well. Without these leaders, WvW will die a pretty quick death.

Servers didn’t die to due bandwagons and such, they died from their leaders leaving the server/game/going inactive, resulting in their followers also going with them or going inactive. Once that core’s gone, that server dies pretty quickly unless a replacement is found.

GW2 as a game doesn’t really promote leadership. There’s no rewards for maintaining or leading a community in this game. Often, it feels like a giant waste of time.

Good riddance to EoTM.

Let it rot

I have a resounding “Mehh~” attitude to this problem. Guilds will move up or down depending on what they’re looking for. Most people are lazy and would prefer to move to a server with existing structure and leadership rather than set one up themselves (understandably so, way too much time invested).

We moved away from BG for our own reasons. Other people moved to BG for their own reasons. Guilds move around all the time. It really doesn’t matter.

Glicko is awful for our current team setup. I’d rather get 1 week of an awful matchup rather than 3 weeks in a row of getting matched with servers that are 1-2 tiers in population above us. I’ll still come out to fight if I have time to play, but man it’s boring when we’re up against 2-3x our number.

There’s not enough commanders/leaders willing to lead dead servers back to life. No guilds left like War Machine that are able to solo carry entire servers. There’s no point to get rid of links at this point because even now, there’s not enough leaders to go around to keep servers alive and healthy.

Probably just your server OP.

Currently chillin’ on SBI and there’s tons of people as soon as you put a tag up. BG goes without saying that it’s packed most times of the day, though so are their competitors right now too

I just find it very annoying when they roam in packs, so I could get locked down multiple times, then get vaulted on on my head for 15k crit despite having over 3300 armor.

When they’re by themselves, not much threat at all

Feelsbadman

Currently on around rank 4k. Not playing WvW much anymore except during weekends cause of RL commitments (gotta pay dem bills). Probably still get 15-20 ranks a week though? No boosters used. Not that hard tbh

I’m so dam close to mithril rank

Rednik.3809:

Reverence.6915:

If you run with an organised group, it’ll be extremely useful in winning fights. If you’re not, I would recommend running glass cannon instead.

And dying during very first push. No one should run glass cannon in wvw unless he is already experienced and know what to do.

There’s different schools of thought on that. I started WvW as a glass cannon ele. It taught me how to position very early on, as opposed to creating bad habits by building tankier and putting myself in bad positions just cause (before any power creep had started/couple months before S1 started). Obviously WvW is very different now, especially with how stupid broken both healing and condi is, but unless you’re missing a brain, you’ll quickly learn how to position yourself in a zerg when you’re running with pugs.

That being said, vast majority of GW2 players are playing without their brains switched on, so yeah…

Healers are at a weird spot in WvW

Guardians and eles can pump out heals like no other, while at the same time pumping out decent DPS. Other classes are absolute garbo at it (yes, druids are currently garbage at healing in WvW).

If you run with an organised group, it’ll be extremely useful in winning fights. If you’re not, I would recommend running glass cannon instead.

tufury.7263:

hmmm what do u think my best option is im on Henge of denvari just stay on there and level then maybe get a transfer one day i really dont know

HoD has a couple of guilds that run around during OCX. Should be fine?

Ah the ever lasting conundrum. Whether to stack on an already heavily populated server and have people to play with, or go to a smaller server but occasionally have no one online at that time

My guild and I moved to SBI, and while that server has a lot of people to play with, it often lacks a commander tag to bring everyone together, resulting in well, not a lot of people on the maps until a tag comes out to play

holodoc.5748:

Reverence.6915:

Well, to be honest, if you’re following the tag, the correct thing to do is to join their teamspeak server if they’re advertising one. Otherwise, get off that particular tag and follow someone else, or put up a tag yourself.

There is no “correct” thing to do. If you are following an open tag (usually blue) then you are not obliged to do anything. TS is a courtesy on both sides, the one providing it and the one choosing to use it or not. However it’s by no means a required tool to play WvW efficiently or successfully.

I don’t frequent these forms too often anymore, but here’s a late reply

Yes, that is the correct thing to do. That person is leading their squad. They set it up how they want. If they don’t want to have someone not in teamspeak in their squad, that’s their right. If they don’t want non-TS users on their tag, that’s their right as well, especially since ANet refuses hidden/guild commander tags. You can go follow another tag, put up your own tag, or roam if you’re not happy with their rules.

Some good points being raised in this thread though

1. Disabilities

Yes. This is a huge problem. Those with disabilities should never be forced into teamspeak. I know I had a couple of people with hearing disabilities explain that to me so I knew to keep them in squad and not force them to join teamspeak. They even joined along later in advertising teamspeak. Also had a person that required hearing aids to hear, but still enjoyed being in teamspeak. Each person is different. Find a commander that is still happy to have you along.

2. Elitists in TS

Yeah… This is an issue. It’s extremely irritating to listen to. Having commanders call out random kitten and blaming random people that aren’t in their guild just feels bad to listen to. I’d leave the channel if that were the case

3. Noisy chatter

Okay, so it’s not for everyone, but TS3, for a lot of people, is a place to socialise with other people on your server. These are the people you have to play with day in and day out (server transfers aside). You’ll find a lot of times, that it will be the same people following specific commanders with a specific group every time. People will find their niche in their server and just hang around them. Each server is a huge community after all.

If you still prefer your music though, what I tend to do is to mute everyone but the commander, and have my music playing through my speakers, while TS3 audio goes through my headphones. Works a treat

Honestly, it’s generally better, if you’re following the tag, to join their teamspeak. If you can’t or won’t, just don’t join that tag. Such a simple solution.

Well, to be honest, if you’re following the tag, the correct thing to do is to join their teamspeak server if they’re advertising one. Otherwise, get off that particular tag and follow someone else, or put up a tag yourself.

2k rank isn’t even a lot. I’m at just under 4K rank, getting around 5-10 ranks every night I play (2-3 nights a week tops). Used to play more, but also used to do all the roaming and scouting stuff more often too. Barely stepped foot into eotm except to level a couple of characters. Prob got max 200 ranks there out of my 4k.

Just play every night with a guild and look for the big fights. That’s where most of the wxp is. You just need to be good enough to get the kills to win the fights. Those big SMC fights used to net me like 15-20 ranks an hour. Get good enough at the game mode to avoid dying while contributing to fights is the best way to get ranks.

Tiny Doom.4380:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Meh, everyone knows YB are siege humpers

If only. Sadly, those days died when DK and most of the Commanders and long-timers that supported him drifted away at the beginning of this year. We seem to have few people left who know how to place siege effectively and even fewer who care to try. The culture of keeping most structures fully sieged throughout a match is long, long in the past and if there are any Commanders left who care about holding what they take for more than a single skirmish then they certainly aren’t playing in my time zones.

I can’t speak for NA primetime, which I never see, but for the other 16 hours of the day it’s mainly Commanders looking for fights, be that open field or over structures. The purpose of taking or defending structures in order to own them for the maximum amount of time throughout each match, which I have always taken to be the essential and intended mechanic of the game mode, appears to have fallen by the wayside and without that goal there is no particular reason to favor siege engines.

Although I’ll never move my YB account, having played there since beta, I am increasing playing my other accounts on servers that, these days, seem to have a much greater appreciation and understanding of siegecraft. YB may always retain the reputation of the “siege server” but unless something changes it will be a reputation based on ancient glories not present practices.

All those guys went to Maguuma

Most servers have decent OCX presence these days. We’ve actually pretty successfully spread out.

SBI tonight had around 20-25 on EBG. FA runs pretty heavy at that time with up to 3 guilds depending on the night. JQ and BG still have the ability to queues maps during that time.

It honestly depends more on the commanders/guilds than the servers themselves. A good guild or commander can galvanise players and have them play even while outnumbered.

Just find a guild and go to their server

This game is still fun as heck

It’s also become casual as heck

Adapt or get left behind

To be fair, each guild is different. Taking my own guild as an example – there was a pretty extended period of time where we ran 15-20 every night, training new players, theorycrafting builds etc. It wasn’t sustainable. It required too much effort for the leaders in the guild to maintain recruitment, show up for raids etc. and it was affecting my own RL (to the point where I had to extract myself from video gaming for a good month).

We recently moved servers and restructured the guild. We now run with 3-7 a night, but we have more fun, are more relaxed and actually enjoy WvWing a couple hours a night, a couple nights a week, compared to when we were on our previous server (a server all of us still consider “home”), where we were literally getting flamed in team and map chat every time we formed up, just because we wanted to do our own thing once in a while.

Have we found any new recruits from our new server? Nope. Doesn’t really bother me. Our guild is tighter than it has ever been before and we now chat with each other more outside of the game than inside. That, to me, is a bigger sign of success than just pure numbers.

Of course, there are other guilds that mass recruit, build up a massive community and carry the server from there (Tidal Legion comes to mind), but those are far and few in between. Most people don’t have the time and energy to maintain such a massive guild. It’s seriously a full time job. I was putting 7-9 hours a day into maintaining the guild when we were running 15-20 with a 80-90 man roster. Looking back on it, it’s just stupid how much time I’ve put into this game without enjoying it.

Eh, I disagree with this sentiment.

I have 3 different accounts all with commander tags – 2 of those accounts are under rank 150 while my main is around rank 4k.

I play and tag on all 3 accounts for different purposes.

It does me no good if I can’t tag on my alts just because they’re new accounts, because I am a veteran player with plenty of experience playing WvW

Our guild still uses D/WH frontline shout eles for sustain, cleansing and auras. Staff eles for ranged support (got buffed most recent patch), and the occasional D/D for roaming.

Mesmers aren’t focus group either what the heck

HoneyBadger.5691:

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

Whether it’s telegraphed or not isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that the skill itself is overloaded. Heck, most staff DDs I come across now use it as an evade/mobility skill rather than a damage skill, basically resulting in no way to lock them down with their 3 base evades + weapon evades + sigil of energy procs.

Surge of the Mists was nerfed for the exact same reason. I don’t see why Vault can’t get the same treatment.

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I would much rather full glass cannon power players than full bunker condi players.

At least the glass cannon build has significant counter-play built in with the fact that they will die when you sneeze on them

Namer.9750:

Aphs.9528:

if these guilds had any brains they would move to SoS since they already have 1 time slot covered for tier 1 .

O.o SoS has no timezone that’s fully T1. Only our NA does okay in T2.

That said, SoS will welcome any guilds that want to transfer there (so long as you don’t bring the rest of the bandwagon with you ;D, we don’t want one either).

It’s unfortunate, but it’ll be either SoS or SBI that gets pushed to T1, much like how Mag did.

Mag’s population was fine when they first hit T1, pretty good and even numbered fights were had in the main prime times (was kinda bad outside prime times). It just got out of hand when everyone and their dog bandwagoned there, which is what’s going to happen to either SoS or SBI (or both) by people looking for a free ride up the glicko ladder.

Nah, BG won’t open anytime soon, we still get 4 map queues on reset. I think the current server limit only allows you to get like, 2-3 map queues on reset tops unless you sacrifice all other time zones aside from the two main NA time zones.

Servers with the weakest coverage don’t even need to turn up now to be rewarded. Smart move

Yes, it’s what you should expect – organised groups crushing unorganised (or lesser organised) groups. It happens to every server, every tier.

Also, it’s usually not a 2v1 on purpose, but simply players taking advantage of easier kills/caps on the weaker side.

Adamarc.7463:

Chaba.5410:

Anet should stop rewarding PPK when an opponent has the outnumbered buff. And the API should separate out kills and assists.

Could even change PPK so it’s only awarded to the server that has the outnumbered buff – that way blobbing is no longer the best way to get PPK and the outnumbered buff is actually a little bit useful.

Or 3 points if you have outnumbered buff and 1 point if you don’t, just so that you’re still rewarded for winning fights as a guild group away from the main blob.

Akashi.3245:

shagwell.1349:

If the nerf for epidemic comes everyone will run DH, REV and maybe a few ELE only. Great diversity incoming.

Power necro is still a thing you know.

Shhh… nerfing epi will be the death of necros!

ahaha…