Guild Wars 2

Something that makes you notice the ending of the skirmish better. Who won. Maybe better timer. Subtle things that would make people pay attention more.

Also I think new skirmish could reset camps. Again emphasising seperate sections and equalizing the field and action for start of skirmish!

Hey yea I’ve been using your numbers. But I started eye balling the numbers I was getting on bomb AA and Fire Bomb, it looked like AA was doing more damage when rocking the full condis&boons and then I did little bit more dps when I left it out (non conclusive obviously). I was thinking it is probably because of some extra modifiers for power damage that you might not have 100% in your calculations?
So in a real situation adding in the condi attack fire bomb is better because you might not have all of your Power modifiers up.
Or is fire bomb better even with max power modifiers on? What modifier do you have for the bomb kit?

Guess I’ll have to redo these xD

And hey what about the weapon damage the toolbelt skills use? Is it static or kit dependant?

Recorded new vids for power engi depsing. Raid stuff. Random rambling included.

Power engi damage scales with the condis on target so there are a few videos because of that. I could update realistic 8 condi one later because probably I could do it better, but I really don’t get motivated to record much. Especially when only thing my pc can handle to record is potato quality testing area x).

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-world-championship/

“To earn a spot at the World Championship, teams must first emerge victorious in the double-elimination qualifiers on August 6 and 7. . . . The qualifier will be open to existing Pro League teams.”

I don’t care there is a topic about this already, there should be 5 of them. Because this is simply mad. Just by qualifying for PL half a year ago should not give a team exlusive attendance rights to a tournament that was advertised as “Wild card tournament”. Basically a tourne where a new team could come in with no looking into past and jump to the top tournament.

The PL already made the “gw2 pro team scene” super exclusive and everyone outside of it was left out to soloque. And those inside had such small amount of real games per week. PL qualifiers and wildcard tournament were the only thing these guys outside of it were waiting for and perhaps practising for. Wildcard was supposed to place everyone on equal starting point again.

GW2 PvP has always needed more team activity in the base level, more bad teams, more average teams and more better teams – just more teams! And they need tournaments to play! Who is going to replace the top teams when they break up, if the 9th team in line has never played a tournament game or ever played a game against the top 8.

This exclusivity is so bad for the PvP community. Why would anyone outside of top 8 play if they are not even given a chance to participate.

Sab

Mechanics and DPSing are not a seperate thing. They happen simulationsly and create the boss as a whole. Boss that does heavy aoe dmg but doesn’t have a timer is not much of a encounter, but add a time limit there, suddenly you have to optimize your setup, playstyle, targetting. The combination makes the encounter (and various other things).

You have to deal with Green circles and have the green team DPS during that, coming melee range inbetween. Using slowass necros and engis instead of 4 shortbow thiefs.
Gorse you have to drop single lava fonts on orbs instead of triple, you DPS boss while moving to the wall and you don’t send your druid, only PS and rev to do the snareing for loosing dps there as well. And you don’t preemtively throw people up on the cannons.

You are not doing the real boss mechanics if you are easying your way through them without caring about the timer or other parts of the boss.

I would be suprised if power engi wouldn’t be among the top. 25might, fury, decent quickness, high vuln easy to achieve with good choises.

You absolutely cannot create dynamic scoring with zone population. What will those people do that play off prime or whole day, if their time-zone is scored minimally? They will quit.
Imagine a Population-Time graph, a flat line with peak on prime currently, after such a change a peak on prime but zero everywhere else! People have to understand this.

Then dynamically modifying score with population balance? You are 15v40 in zone, ’EVERYONE LOG OFF, you are ruining the server!!!!". Creates hate, salt and toxic. Instead of trying to gather numbers to fight back people will hate on others and want them to log off.

Essentially capping scoring by creating these Skirmishes already is such a huge equalizer for timezones that you don’t need to destroy off peak ppt to be something less.

My simple suggestion for scoring changes for WvW. I won’t go into details but talk about the general problem and solution. Feel free to add your ideas and details.

I think scoring is a important factor in making WvW feel alive and important. Let’s get this out of the way right away, in following discussions (or any for that matter) PPT =/= PvDoor, cap tower waypoint away, run away, hide in keeps.
PPT is the driving force of a immersive impactful combat focused WvW, the oldschool WvW. rosetintedclasses It is gonna take a while for people to start caring again but I believe.

The problem with current scoring system are:

• You cannot feel your impact on the match up
• It is difficult to evaluate if you did well during your playtime, guild raid
• Numbers are large, score is ticking, how much we get in a day again? How, can we still win? What if we are 220 for 5 hours and they 115 for 12? If you get what I’m after, you shouldn’t need a calculator to check how much you have to pwn to win. Or look at graphs to figure out at what time zone are you loosing the match up.
• It is easier to gain lead by offpeak capping

This leads into people not caring about the score, objectives flip who cares, stay blobbed loose everything because ninja caps blame pvdo and there just isn’t a goal in any of this. While people should be splitting, countering ninja caps, doing ninja caps of their own, be on a ticking timer! Trying to constantly outmove their opponent. I remember in the olden_golden_times we were constantly on the move and once fight was done we instantly moved again to counter the other server or quickly take advantage of this wipe… by PPT!
This kept the WvW experience intense and varied.

Suggestion is very simple:
Take notes from PvP by creating shorter scoring intervals for WvW so people can evaluate how they did, can see their impact and feel important.

Currently: 7 days Match Up, One pool of points, PPT 15minutes tick.
Score in the end of the week “300k 200k 100k”

Suggestion: 7 days Match up, 6 hour sub-War aka 4 per day, 28 a week , …
sub-War #1: 00-06 the night cap, sub-War #2 06-12 the morning cap, sub-War #3 the day cap, sub-War #4 the prime time.
And at the end of the sub-war points would be granted to the overall 7day pool based on static point for Gold, Silver, Bronze + PPK + Bonus points. (notice win is a win, 6000 1000 500 equals to 3500 3000 2500, equalizing the offpeak capturing)
Bonus points could be based on special objectives during the sub-match and on who holds the captures in the very end.

• This would instantly create a goal: LETS WIN THIS SUB WAR! Goals bring meaning to PPT, creates alive WvW.
• Bonus points would make sure people try to the very end
• Section off the experience so you can properly evaluate things and the new data allows to coordinate raid leaders to different sub-wars if you want.
• Allows for timed bonus modifiers. Anet can make the last hour give double PPK, first hour give triple points from Camps and Dolyaks, timed event at 3 hours THE ORB RETURNS…
• Rewards, score pop up, server notification feels good man.
• EQUALIZES NIGHT CAPTURE because all sub-Wars give static points for the 1st/2nd/3rd. So winning night capture will not be any more better than winning prime. It is essentially a scalor to the scoring which kind of creates a cap. And just as importantly it doesn’t make any time zone worse which is super important everyone deserves to impact the score.
• Allows for camp resets, supply resets, tower, keep resets after a sub-war or 4 of them. It is important to still keep continuity in WvW so resetting large objectives is not a good idea. But experimenting on resetting the supply count in them, resetting camps and so on could be a nice spice! Bonus ending modifier, drain supply in enemy keep by holding the adjacent supply camp at the very end of the sub-war.

So all in all I think this simple change would bring more meaning to PPT, more ways to evaluate how you are doing as a individual, guild or server and allow anet to add in interesting spice into the matches based on captures, time.

Problems:

• correct point ratios for winner, second, third of sub-war. And their relation to PPK+Bonus.
• too easy to see if you can’t win the week anymore -> counter act with rewards for winning subwars
• not worth to push it to the end of subwar if you have secured 2nd spot and can’t surpass 1st. -> counter act with comeback mechanics and bonuses that follow to the next sub-war (supply/objective resets), rewards

The core stability in large scale is Stand Your Ground. With the current 0.75s immunity in most situations you will get the full 5s immunity from it. Similarily you might expect atleast 3s from IC. On paper these numbers don’t seem much but they are getting close to the old Stab which really created a distastleful ease in rushing through any amount of opposition with a huge melee ball. That situation has to be avoided.

0.75s is definetly on the upper boundary, so perhaps 0.5s remove immunity would work better to keep CC dangerous and make people watch their stab stacks.

A single stack of stab is not much in large scale wvw because if there is CC, there is usually bunch of it in the same place (bad play now), so that single stack will not help you get through it (remove immunity is not cc immunity). But as a consiquense of the remove immunity a 2 stack Stability is a lot better. That allows you to dodge/run through stacked CC with the single stab left on your boons.
This should be kept in mind if remove immunity is lowered and AoE stab skills on other classes than guardian are buffed/created. Be super careful with adding more though, because that will simply be extra on top of all the double guards, who will always and always be in the wvw meta.

So in spirit of, 1 stack of stab is nothing, 2 stacks is worth it.
Rock Solid: Stab*2 for 3s in 300 radius
Evasive Arcana: Earth dodge if evade, Stab*2 for 3s in 300 radius.
Throw Elixir B: Unblockable, Radius 360
Well of Power: Pulsing 1*Stab 1s
Ranger Idea #1 . . .
And noone else!

Would be too dangerous to give any AoE stab for warriors for various reasons. But as Shout (the “low” stab war) change I would make Shouts heal without traits and take inspiration for Vigorous Shouts from Ranger Spirit trait. With VS, On My Mark would also strip 1-2 boons, Shake it off would also aoe blind, Fear Me would also cripple, FGJ I don’t know but not stab! FGJ blast? Also all shouts would do 1s of area weakness so they can be skillfully timed against burst attacks (the weakness of a sustainy setup like shout war).

Would be great to hear some input how the amount of Stab is working out in practise, in the 15-25 numbers and in the blob numbers.

Our match up all borders were populated with only little bit bigger EB que. The Dbl are pretty darn great now in high pop.

GW2 needs more skills like slick shoes not less. Not many skills require you to move you whole character to land a skill and has multiple different tecniques to use for different situations.

There is huge difference in slick shoe in great hands and average hands. Can’t say as much about many other CC skills.

Had no idea poison grenade had same power as chill when did that happen.

You can get ever so slightly higher EP with the ferocity food and zerk+valk assuming spotter. Nothing significant, just habit from wvw marauder itemization.

Some numbers for all those who it may interest, from condi and power engi in the new testing area. Simulating a optimal raid setting perhaps.

In video stationary 4mill 30k condi, 29k power. And mobile 1mill 27k condi, 30k power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibRCp1vQpqc&list=PLMdLyt-5r_24ISvEQ2wmrk8b0Cpspa_WN

…

Exellent post! Interestingly I had just recently dreamed of similar idea, a WvW time line with important updates, guild histories, gvgs, top ppt drama. In a form of timeline infograph.

Dude… this survey is incoherent.
“How in control of your own survivability would you like to be?” Umm well about a number six worth! Or no, I think 3. Umm sec, what number would describe current ingame situation, nvm.

“Would you be willing to give up some of the combat pacing for better visual acuity?” Do I have to? So umm my answer is number five ! (?)

“Transparency vs Character Customization” My answer to this is number three! What ever that means, I will come back to you with specifics later!

I’m happy with the season. Ofc there are balance issues and there could be changes. But over all quite happy.

I’m afraid you are stuck in the circlejerk of hate. It is not in human nature, and in average personality of a MMO gamer to shout out praises if they are happy (the assumed state).
If something is awful, 5 out of 10 people will say out loud kitten this is TERRIBLE.
If something is average, 4 out of 10 people will say out loud lol this was bad.
If something was good, 1 out of 10 people will say out loud this was worst thing ever.
If something was great 2 out of 10 will say out loud this was pretty ok.

People don’t tend to spam posts about how great things are, it is good to do so sometimes to keep positive outlook and kitten what things are working. But it is way more constructive to criticize the negatives. Hence negative sounds the loudest.

daum, I hope ze pugs never realise that by simply inviting 5 people from hotm will magically make them 100% winrate. It is impossible to loose!

5mans are so rare, and probably not even in TS. And even if they are, it probably just distracts them.

But wasn’t Sword #2 supposed to be shot 3 static directions?
So that the revenant can hit them on a single target if you stack inside enemies hitbox. Atm it’s a 600 ranged homing missile nuke 3×1.0 = Killshot/eviscerate skill on a 4s cooldown. Something that I find abit too much.

enrage timers are there so that you cannot run 2 healers with 2 support tanks with 6 warrior unkillable setup. By not using enrage timers it would actually be limiting for designing encounters because it would force every fight to have mini enrage timers (updrafts and so on) in every fight. Or 8 tempests with -40% prot, -10% frost nova, -10% dmg food and 2 Revenants spamming Dwarf elite, THOSE ELES ARE IMMUNE TO DAMAGE!

Sure if you have nice way of creating encounter without hard enrage. Like constantly spawning exponentially more and more seekers that eventually you would get overwhelmed if you don’t kill boss fast enough.

Never let your dreams be dreams. Cmon guys, you can participate in AG and ESL even if you were a clicking monkey. You are not gonna be the mvp or win ESL but none of these messages here should stop you from trying to build your circle of friends, guild and work into getting regular duo/trio/5man ques and into AG/ESL. You will only become better by playing against better players, ofc you are ESL material. You show good mentality anyway, making such post.

1. Never if, should of, could of about the previous game/fight. Always talk specifics about the next step. Say what will you do better next time (specifics, not “just dont die/loose”).
Big mental difference: “I shouldnt have engaged on far” “Next time if I see 2 DPS against me, I will disengage early and not feel obligated to stand on point”.

2. Focus on your own gameplay and do not seek excuses from allies/specs. Don’t be the guy who always has questions, why something? why …? why…? But doesn’t expect an answer. Does one asking “why did you go far?” expect you to answer it ? No.
Again, ifshouldofcouldwouldof… NOT “WHY didnt anyone stomp that guy?!” “Next time we need the mesmer distort stomping and everyone else cleave”.

3. Never seek excuses from the specs but obviously know your match ups and respect the enemy, never think you are always the #1 player in the match. Don’t charge in at 25% against some necro/power rev / druid who had great burst opening on you because omgomg he is gonna decap me. Respect, refresh and reengage. . .
4. TRY YOUR HARDEST. Bring you best every kitten time. Don’t be the guy who is messing about, breaths nervous hard, dies and instantly seeks excuses from allies are too bad.

Find a friend who stays calm, tries his hardest everytime and wants to improve. Duo que with him regularily. Get another friend, get some trios going regularily. And that is not too far from having a group for AG. And so on. And never never pretend you should instantly win the tournament, or that if you are a 5-man you should instantly 100% winrate everything. You are just going to loose against a 3 man proleague """""""""PUG"""""""" and rage quit.

Engineer definetly has a place in a raid. Obviously alot of things can be done by some other class too but that is how everything is!

- VG needs atleast 2 condi classes because Red split is immune to direct dmg; Engi is (when played well!) among the best condi dps. (Engi makes a great choise)
- VG: Healing turret, Mortar Water & Blasts. Extra heals are very useful when running the Green orbs and in split phase. (Pretty much engi exclusive)
- VG: Big ol Bomb, Flamethrower #3. Knocking back Seekers is needed during the whole fight. Also a cheeky chill can slow them down. (Pretty much engi required due to how much you have to do it)
- VG: Engi can tank it (but in the end everyone can)

- Gorse: SlickShoes can do the whole breakbar alone! This is why most groups always have 1. (engi exclusive)
- Gorse: Split phase a engi is very good at solo snareing one of them. + has no problem assisting another snare if there are problems. (there are others who can snare solo too)
- Gorse: Not necessary but you can drop a blind field (bomb, mortar) on mob spawn stopping potential knockbacks and dmg. (engi exlusive)
- Gorse: Heals. Engis and eles bring additional AoE heals (#6) to the raid while dpsing. Very helpful.

Sabetha: No specific reasons. Quick./Alac. scale great but only on a very well played engi so only then you can be in mes party sitting in middle. Engi has the self sustain to not die on jumping cannons when something goes wrong. But this is the fight where engi isn’t as required. DPS with Healing turret, thats always good.

I fully support this, so does everyone in my guild and this is among the most agreed on balance issue in WvW since launch.

There is much information in the reddit post and original post. I’d like to remind about the number values.
Coalescence of Ruin has modifiers 1.25/1.75/2.25 (I think last one should be 2.18 but wiki says different) that you can land every ~3s no matter what else you are doing

These numbers are ridicolous! While keeping in mind that Revenant has survival tools compareable to a cantrip staff elementalist while having significantly higher passive survival with higher base hp and armor. This skill is extremely simple to use and can be used without targets. And there is no decision making or opportunity costs in using Facets vs doing damage. All this while being the key boon provider and ranged!

Changes
Hammer #2 flat out has to get a damage nerf of modifiers -> 1.25/1.5/1.75 and 50% one shot trait adressed

and then one of the 2 options:
Cooldown increased to 3-4s
or
Energy Cost increased to 10-15

Energy Cost increase would be a more interesting option so there could be some decision making in Herald gameplay, Facets or more #2s. This is a general problem on Herald at the moment, you can just instantly pop 3 Facets up and not affect your gameplay. You can combine both changes.

Remember that Herald is still amazing boon class, Rite dwarf, other weapons… You could make Hammer #2 heal enemies and Revenant would still be part of core compositions! But current Hammer Herald out damages everyone in the raid with eyes closed and a single skill.

-Sab

Good write up, liked the first half but some disagreements with that later parts.

Responding to OP
I like the pointing out of Objective cascading, particularily the NE&NW towers in the vanilla-BL as a example which was great. There was a certain natural flow you would progress in that map. With the new map it is quite harder to say what is next place to move.

But defending being hard? Perhaps you can make a argument for it in Towers but even in there and especially in the Keeps there are huge tower highgrounds to place catapults and trebs. And there are plenty of places where you can place Arrowcarts that cannot be hit with ground targets BUT can be hit by ranged #1 spam projectiles. That is perfect because the #1 can then be reflected by skills or Deflector shield. Stop thinking there is always a 60 man blob vs 5 defendors. What happens to the 20 attackers vs 20 defendors with uncounterable siege.

I very much love the scaling on the keep lord health, giving alot more time to respond. I do not know however if it keeps scaling against a 50man but it should. And the sentry dots are a huge help.

On giving critisism and improvement
When giving out suggestions everyone should keep in mind what is reasonable and what could be improved with the tools at hand. I like when people actually give out a specific suggestions that are implementable. That is the key to good critisism and improvement – not to point at flaws because that is easy but providing solutions. (something I wanted to point out, OP didn’t make this mistake)

Monoblob and counterattacking
A monoblob is detrimental to the action in the map so any changes should incentivise splitting up to atleast 2 raids and smaller roaming parties that try to disturb the minor objectives / ninjaing.
Though in my opinion it has been incentivised all along. While I encourage Guilds to take all fights they can boldly and accept the challenge and find creative ways to win against the odds. There is a serious lack of simple strategy: Counter attacking, to counter the blobs. Too many times you see 50 man blob attacking say SM, 15 people gather up to defend in order to delay the blob by 10 seconds and then dying. Instead of simply making calculated choise to leave SM and move instantly for counter offencive: Forcing the enemy blob to either 1. Cap SM, loose home tower 2. Split up (awesome!) 3. Abort SM mission.
For pugs to stay and bend over “defending” SM with their 15 man is exactly what the blob wants you to do. Stop doing it and counter attack, atleast then you have a chance and create some gray hairs! And maybe the monoblob will have to rethink its strategy.

Couple of ideas
Couple ideas I’ve had a while back to perhaps help the situation, non map specific. And like the OP said, the map, the PPT and the meta game needs to encourage FIGHTS!

1. New point calculating system for the match up

• Currently:* 1 Week, points ticking every 15minutes, into a single huge point pool
  -> Consequence: A player, a group, a guild feels powerless and insignivicant. We captured a keep, 2 towers and 5 camps today, did we make a difference, did we do well?
  -> While on paper the potential point gain is constant, the time zones are not equal, because it is easier to get 500 ticks in morning cap than prime time.

• Improvement:* Split the day into 6 hour time sections – let’s call it Game.
  EU, UK time: 00-06, 06-12, 12-18, 18-24.
  You calculate PPT normally inside the Game and once the Game ends the servers are given points based to the Weeks total score. At the end of the Game the scores might be 4000/5000/6000 → Which sum to the Weekly score 1/2/3, or +bronze/silver/+gold medal. Give out some lewt for participateing in this event and hell give out some statistics for people to look at once the Game ends!
  -> This makes time zones more equal (contrary to now) because a server can’t run away with the victory just by morning capping. Winning the prime and the morning will give same points.
  -> More immediate results and your contribution feels much more significant. Your contribution is not lost in the 300k points at the end of the week.
  -> You can take pride in always winning the prime time, or the Game you play. You can have a whole plan set for a 6 hour Game with guild movement and so on.
  -> Allows servers to better understand and plan the timezone coverage, -> better action.
  --> Anet can easily implement modifiers how much Weekly tally each Game is worth (prime more for example) – I dont think this is good idea though!!!
  —> Anet could and should implement events and comeback mechanics to happen at the end of the 6 hour Game. To prevent people calling the Game early! Kills worth more in the end, supply gathered for the next Game, what ever. . .
  - You can argue if objectives/siege/upgrades/supply should be reset after the Game to further equalize the match up, but continuity is very important for WvW though so resets can’t be that dramatic.

I think this would be a great way to make WvW PPT feel much more immediate and engaging. I’ve done some spreadsheet calculations on old matches that have been played on this and it had desired effect in equalizing score but at the same time the #123 was often the same in even matches (prime focus) but reduces the servers with 500 tick bursts. The biggest effect should be still felt by the player by being more significant to the outcome.

2. Smaller idea I’ve had about Supply – a risky one but I think the concept is valid. Currently the 40 man blob can and will have 40×20 = 800 supplies very easily. Because supply is easy to get and you don’t need much of it. The 20 defendors will have 20×20 = 400. It is pretty much a default to run around with maxed out supply – what if that wasn’t the case. What if the limiting factor in supply was actually the supply and not how much you can carry it. Making blobs supplies not scale directly with more numbers.
-> Blob 40×10 = 400 and defendors 20×20 = 400! Aka both teams dried out same number of camps -> Same end supply because player cap wasn’t the limiting factor..
- To make this happen you would have to lower the supply camps give instantly 100/100 would become 50/50. Move supply to the dolyaks and by upgrading the cap would increase fast to 150/150 and more.
Hopefully increasing the value in flipping camps, upgradeing them, dolyaks and reducing the supply imbalance in blob vs less because available supply is the same.

This idea is not fully fleshed out and might have quite some counter arguments that I haven’t thinked of.

You rotation lasts 37s on the scrapper video. Is something different? Rotations won’t be faster in practise than on a training dummy.
Mistake on N23 of Hammer page. Lowering condition damage by 16k.

So actual DPS number should be closer to 17k if the rotation is indeed correct.

Perhaps people jokingly have suggested lolo add Trapper runes to PvP. And now they are actually getting added? What the heck.

I don’t really care how meta powerful they are gonna be, but Trapper runes simply won’t be good for the game. Adding in long duration stealths for cheesy condition builds just in all honesty won’t be fun or good for the game and people will not be exited to fight against these even if they arent metabattle builds.

I’m just wondering, why, why are they being added. What good does this do.

From your language it’s obvious that you like to talk in the extremes and state things as simple, incredibly, easy, obvious, extremely laughably ridicolous facts.

PVP basic game design: TTK (time to kill).
…
TTK is one of the most basic concepts of pvp design.
…
It is the most essential and basic in pvp game design when it comes to balance (also some of the first you will run into in any course if you actually educated yourself, which any serious dev should have done if they want a job or want to keep a job within the industry).
…
It is actually an INSANELY simple concept of pvp gamedesign and extremely important to get right.
(which there really is no excuse because you can just make an algorithm which calcs the exact needed numbers for the TTK to match overall for all roles/classes/skills)
…
Now my complain is that in GW2 the TTK is off by so much it is laughably bad, meta builds will completely and utterly destroy full dps builds (as an example).
Only VERY few build setups is valid and you can EASILY make builds, which is 100% impossible to win with (which completely proofs that the TTK of skills/classes haven’t been done correctly).
…
“Hire a competent balance designer which is Actually Educated within game design (meaning he actually took the education or at least followed up his old education with the courses of this decade)”
Moreover, get all classes, skills, etc. into a spreadsheet and fix it up OR get a mathematician/programmer to make an algorithm to do it for you.

Since you are a multi hundred million dollars company so you not having such basic concept locked 100% down is not ok.
Especially in a game you “pride yourself” on being a pvp “gem” and wanting an esport.

Perhaps you read this on a introductury course for table top games. While that is probably true for a turn based game or a MOBA, or something like that.
I do not think solving outcome of absolutely perfectly played duel is as simple for a interactive combat like MMO. Or solving what even happens in a perfectly played fight anyway. There would be incredible amount of variables in such a problem, what skills you dodge, what do you blind? Do you blind, dodge, stunbreak, absorb and condi transfer? First minute both players are perfectly kiteing and avoiding every single attack? This is such a huge problem and full of questions.

I’m referring to your claim that TTK is such a incredibly easy thing to apply for a game like GW2. It is not.

And secondly, what sense would such make anyway. People don’t play perfectly, would I balance um say S/D thief based on perfect gameplay that it can avoid every single attack attempted by the enemy, while this doesn’t reflect reality. Or that Fresh Air with full deck of arcanes will instantly kill anyone – perfect gameplay is based on reacting right.

Thirdly why base balancing of a teamgame on a 1v1 model.

While GW2 balance obviously isn’t perfect and I’m not trying to defend that. But your post is quite simplistic and bold in it’s claims and narrow in it’s ideas…

I have had somewhat similar problems and I did system recovery due to it, because messing around ended up messing my computer completely.

For me I guess I have to pin point this on updateing AMD catalyst 15.7.1 – perhaps…
I get GW2 error already when trying to go forward from character screen. If I’m full screen I get completely stuck but windowed I can atleast get out.

I’m going to try finding older drivers next I guess.

Same here I have not been able to queue for PvP since Friday!

Since the servers got stuck on Friday night and people got stuck inside pvp matches after they ended.
I cannot get a pop from unranked nor ranked queue (waited 30 minutes multiple times).l
Duo que doesn’t taxi me in, 5 man que Abandoned the que the instant last person accepted it. I have been in other zones (WvW) after it, I have been on different character.

There needs to be some response to this, alot of people have this. This effectively means I cannot play the game at all!
Going hotjoin would be too embarrassing.

Anet needs to keep a eye on the amount of boons in the game coming in HoTs.

With each class getting three full spec lines and bunch of new skills coming out,
there is a danger that boon usage will become (in many cases it already is) uptime use instead of tactical timing use.

Many traits are being merged together means extra boons that we didn’t have before. And when boons starts to get capped (perma) during fighting it removes skilled timeing and removes value from boons skill because you already have the boon. Everything becoming more powerful is in a way fine, but boons have a cap (perma) so it doesn’t work the same.
If you think about “uptime” rather than “timeing” it is bad for the game. It essentially removes things from the game, ‘regeneration, fury, swiftness, vigor are now all baseline’.

This happens already in 5v5 settings, not just larger.

They can for example
- Not make new skills and traits that give easy solutions for boons, like guardian energy symbol should be 10% energy per tick, not vigor. It is a skill shot after all.
- Flat out nerf all boon skills slightly, to help the situation a bit
- Make boon skills abit more positional
- im sure there is alot of things…

I just rushed this out because it was in my mind, in any case hopefully Anet is keeping track of the amount of boons and how easy they are to get in HoTs. If we think about Uptime instead of Timeing, it is not good!

Sab

Tyldor.9078:

+1 ofcourse.
…
My opinion is that Anet could have done more to support the organized raid sized groups rather than promoting blobbing, but the real GvG feeling is something that the developers can’t boost, it’s the GvG community really.

…
A competetive scene is created together, with guilds putting time and effort into getting better for the sole purpose of being recognized as the best guild around. Acknowledgement of Anet could boost this consent to get good, but will it revive the scene? It’s not a new game anymore, WvW maps will be changed into PPT/ defensive objective hugging environments and the revenant hype will die down sooner or later. I doubt Esports, tournaments and leaderboards are a good idea for the GvG scene. Like someone mentioned earlier, GvG was a gamemode designed to escape the harsh reality called WvW. Whenever Anet drops the idea of turning WvW into a huge Point Per Tick environment and actually adds elements ( without outside-combat mechanics ) which encourage fighting, the scene will more likely revive than having eSport hype train coming over ( something that will never happen because GvG’s are too complicated to turn into eSports ).

…
…
The only problem that this community has, is that the newer/less experienced guilds are getting smashed if they’d try to go higher up. The difference between top tier GvG scene and the other tier(s) of the scene are too big. They’re going through evolution the majority of us posting here gone through 2 years ago. The only way to close this gap quicker would be publicing and ecouraging more informative posts. Most veteran GvG players will mention synergy, coordination and communication to be the key part of their success, but we forget that the lower tier GvG guilds are still figuring out builds and trying traits that we flagged off 2 years ago.

TL;DR – A more open communication and cohersion between top- and lower tier GvG guilds would boost the community up.

Oh Tyldor you put it so nicely in your posts. Exactly to the point! Please everyone backtrack and read these.

It is not esports, leadersboards and such things that will make WvW and GvG grow.
It is the improvement of the average guild, increase in skill and number of solid guilds, that will change the WvW environment and make GvG scene the best it can be!

( I talked alot about this a page back)
The core issue is in how WvW is played and what kind of numbers are used that is key to solve for healthy WvW (more like GvG). It is also hard for a average guild to become better when they can always just say ‘they were more, 10 pugs’ and so on, people don’t run similar numbers, they never have to face it and say ‘ok we lost in fair battle, what can we do better?’.

There is a huge difference between top ~4 and other guilds in each region. But this huge difference comes from very simple things that are done better.
The hardest part of improving is starting it, once you get it rolling the it all happens automatically. That is why triggers like leader change, reqruits, new patch, new video, new month what ever excuse you can find is key to improve as a guild. Time to go over the basics againg, perfect things to make everyone to be on the ball and what is the plan. Instead of staying average, you will never improve from there without asking simple questions like hey I know this seems simple but when are you useing your waters againg?, when are you timeing your shouts? Stability? What weapon should I open the fight? … These are the questions that a average guild never asks because for some reason there is this embarrasment of going through basic stuff and perfecting it. This is why “#1” guild can kill “#10” without talking in TS with troll builds, everybody knows their basics and what is the plan.

+1 for GvG and improving average skill level of guilds and making WvW to be guild centered.
-1 for leaderboards (sure go ahead as a after tough when everything is good), esports, queing systems.

2/2
Why did the WvWvW culture develop into 50+man zone blobs. Instead of 2020202020 split. This is a subject of what ifs for the beta days.
What Anet failed to do (didn’t want to) was to incentivise a static raid sizes and focus on guilds. There are multiple small things there could have been to start of the evolution of WvW to the right direction, like (at launch), the WvW became runaway arms race with numbers (10 man cannot kill the guild, guild cannot kill the blob, megaguild becomes 30+ and kills the blob, guild cannot kill the megaguild) (first blob guilds and blobs (50+) were national guilds and server). This has since toned down, the time of megaguilds is dead (actual good guilds running regular 30+), and amount of static king of ruins fights have increased because killing a full zone blob is very difficult with 20-25 compared to 35.

Private commander tags, colored tags, commander guild tag on map, maximum squad size and a reason to join it (master calls, alert or something, commander skills), guild size has to be upgraded for larger, guild banner you can carry, guild tabard, guild halls, guild banner shown in LA if you the king, these are just things with “commander” and “guild” in them there is plenty more from mechanics, map layout blablabla and so on.
OS with 20v20 showmatches “supported” (aknowledged, encouraged) by Anet at and after launch, w/e (so people know 20 is your goal, not 35).
Big part of the 20 man ideology (24) was born from WAR because that was our idea of WvW, without this influence WvW would be a mess.

So… The moment I see someone mention e-sports and money with GvG I cry of anger and frustration because simply that is not possible even in the wildest dreams so don’t even mention that (cmon).
Then people mention que systems with supported tournaments, I cry out of sadness – the WvW culture could be different and we wouldn’t have to be thinking about these things. I think of practicalities and it is not really possible because takeing away GvG guilds from WvW means death of WvW and the people in these guilds want both spontanious openfield fighting and controlled GvGs, not just latter! Aka not possible or good for the guilds nor WvW.
If people ever pick up on the core issues of " WvW should be different so we wouldn’t need GvG" or how Anet should have and should design new maps (EotM), guild&commander changes and all changes to guide and push the culture to be guild centered not random community blob centered. I jump of joy and I don’t have to do these posts.

1/2
*TLDR in the second post, had to do some formatting for the size

Hey I’ve been in the top part of GvGs all the time since all the way from the start ( [RG] [VII] [TA]). Since January 2013 or what. I want to give my yearly 2-cents about this subject and bit of history.

From “hey you smelly donut TUPs come east of your spawn we are waiting for you!”
into “SiN my brother come down south to windmill, bring all you got, we keel you!”
into 20 of your best down to windmill at thursday 8PM, with timers, with positions. And now ofc OS.

This is a touchy subject and rises up periodicly just like in the past and half of the posters always have wrong approach to this subject (might be abit better nowadays). A toxic one for the well being of WvW or progress in my opinion.

What ~half of the people always forget/don’t realise is that GvG (or large-scale TDM) did not born for e-sports, it was never about e-sports, ques, instanced arenas, pricepools, money. And it should not be. (hey sure let’s have a long standing tournament with some gems and gold but this is not the core issue!)

It was born to make WvWvW BETTER!

To make WvWvW into a playground of equal sized guilds battleing it out in spontanious manner all around the map (aka equal number gvgs born from “ppt” meta game).
It was a tool to fight against the blob mentality (you can only bring 20 sorry), it was desperate tool to ensure fair and equal numbers! It was a way to drop out the pugs following you around (they should find a GUILD!) ruining fair fights, and to avoid that zoneblob facerolling and lagging out everyone.
Essentially our dream (and I’m sure many of you hold the same) was and is that lets say with a zone cap of “100” we have 4 guilds of 20 guys from each server in the zone, with 20 left for roaming/camp parties and afkers (20/20/20/20/20). Instead what we have had (50/30/0/0/20).
Why do we have skill lag, why do our computers fry? Because PEOPLE DO NOT “GVG”. If everyone had 20mans skill lag would be so much more rare in practise (let’s not get to tecnicalities here) and all computers could handle the environment better (no more 15 fps fights).

I have always wondered if 5x 20v20s at the same time, all around the map in different areas would cause similar pressure on the server and cause skill lag. Like 60v60v60 in a single place does. ?

Certainly the former is much smoother on the user computer side and there is practical factor that in multiple smaller fights people might not affect as many targets all the time. But is there theoretical difference on server side.

Finland SFR, problems started after last patch, cannot login most of times and disconnects.

0 –
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 11ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% pos6-2.br1.stk2.alter.net [193.10.252.46]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 —- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% ae1.XT1.FFT1.ALTER.NET [140.222.232.65]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 31ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae0.GW8.FFT4.ALTER.NET [149.227.16.46]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 33ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 213.71.135.138
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 —- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% 206-127-157-86.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.86]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 —- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% 206-127-157-102.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.102]
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 30ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 206-127-159-152.ncsoft.com [206.127.159.152]

Quite missleading conclusions and comments. People who do comparations like this, and actually most of the “general populus”, think that if item is better at a stat distribution A it is true always.
It cannot get much more wrong than that! This just guides people further from the truth. Do not compare individual stuff in a black box!

This chart has only armor? What use is that?? Everyone uses more gear than that. And the STAT VALUES change based on your WHOLE setup.
While in the latest dmg system with ferocity it is true that you truly wanna max out that power at almost any cost. These numbers don’t have much meaning even if one of the conlusions is in the right direction.
You do not plug in stats of a chest piece into the Direct Damage formula and call something better and something worse, that has nothing to do with.
You do not plug in stats of 3 or 5 pieces into the Direct Damage formula and call something better and something worse.
You plug in the stats of WHOLE setup with clever and reasonable boon and healing taken “model” to get real situation EHP and EP values to compare different gear setups and stat distributions.
This is one of those low level of theorycrafts that give out some numbers but do not actually reflect something real in game.

Mayby the OP is aware of this, but this lack of connection to something that is actually sensible and ingame is not addressed. Sure the problems of EHP and EP calculations when concerning conditions and EP is mentioned. And the “Points to note” marks that OP actually does do conclusions based on this.
Like, what sense is it to say(chart and opening statement) ‘Valkyrie is almost same DPS as PVT’, hell yea it is if you have 916 precision. But that doesn’t make much sense does it. And what sense is it to say knight is so terrible compared to PVT when you don’t take in account any other items, high might uptimes (that is oh so popular now with STR runes), food and … everything else, Base health!!

Sorry to be harsh and forward. But I’m not here to bs.

- Sabull

1. Customisable commander logo that shows in the map. Like the guild logo. Shows squad size when mouse overed in the map. This should be something cool tbh, like guild logos. Raiding under the guild banner!

2. Commanders can que up couple RTS style commands in the map that they will be doing. Commander (tag) is Briar → Shift + Mouse A (Attack, G gather, D Defend) pressed on Bay creates a attackish looking opaque tag of that commander with dotted line leading to it from the commander.

3. For everyone map has list of the commanders in zone. Can be in WvW tab aswell. And you simply choose there which of the public commanders you want to see on the map.

4. Commander can choose the publicity. Show: All (Public), Squad, Guild.
Tbh, it would be great if people could run Show All, but it wouldn’t shout ‘EVERYONE COME’. Show all but not public.

→ 5. Choosing publicity of the over head tag and map tag seperately. In general people want to show their general location in the map. But don’t want everyone to stack on them in combat.

Made a discussion video about why I think featureless circle arena is very very bad (kitten) for how interesting and depth the GvG deathmatches have. It’s slow and casual but it’s true talk.

Empty arena brings really boring fights, with no different feel and storyline. Compared to the vanilla area we have currently. Alot of depth has evolved to every hill and corner in that area, that does not happen in a circle pit. Lower viewing value, and through time lower playing value.

Arena has to have small, smooth features that leaders can use to coordinate with and direct the fight. Different types of gameplay rise if the area has different sections.

Can you make a 15 minute discussion about a circle with red and blue torches? No depth.

Diminishing returns are one of the worst things that can happen for a pvp game.
A passive solution, when there already are plenty of ways to counter act them.

DRs are passive often hidden immunity, making using skill non reliable. If skills do not do what they are expected to do, how can you have a good pvp experience.
They take a whole venue of skill away from game, lockdown -> dmg.

YOU choose to break the stunchain, not diminishing returns. They turn fights into pure DPS vs DPS. Or DPS vs healers shooting gallerys as in many other games.

If CC chains are problem, then we must reduce the duration of skills with overpowered durations or too low cooldowns. Or give players more tools to break them. DRs are the WORST solution.

If they made us immune to stuns, when we are under a stun. So people have to time their stuns properly one after another. Instead of overlapping them. Often leaving room for a dodge. That would already be huge.

Mash Hog.5672:

Sabull.5670:

I think you are heavily undervalueing Air XI – Tempest Defense.
…
Don’t count this trait out for calculated and planning burst ele. 20/30/0/0/20 experimental, 10or/30/10or10/30.

Surround yourself with a Shocking Aura when disabled (fear, stun, daze, knockback, knockdown, launch, float, or sink). Deal more damage to stunned or knocked-down foes. (25 second cooldown)

I agree with you when you say that shocking aura is an amazing skill, it has saved me from many backstab thieves and the such. After 6 months of playing D/D, I would be crazy to say that Shocking Aura isn’t a godsent gift to elementalists.

My issues with this trait is:
1. …

It’s fine reasoning, although I don’t second on this ‘if you get cced even once, you are insta killed anyway’ type of idea. Best thing about it is that it always interupts something. And due to low cd I think it’s solid trait even as GM. Just saying don’t count it out.

Anierna.6918:

Sabull.5670:

There are thefeely wishy washy answers like many above.
And then there is the average damage answer. Which you get from using say gw2buildcraft.

@ Sabull: gw2buildcraft is one of many calculators for effective power – not “average damage,” as you put it. They are totally different things. Effective power is only useful in comparing damage within the same profession with the same wep set and rotations. Average damage can be used to compare specific builds within AND between classes, but requires a LOT more work to calculate. Certainly more work than your quick use of gw2buildcraft to provide your own “wishy washy” answer.
…

Cmon mang, if you know what they are you should know they are essentially the same thing. Effective describes the average situation, hell it’s directly calculated from average damage….. Just leaving out weapondamage, skillfactor, modifier and armor as a common factor. And in determening bloodlust vs perception, they are not a variable… I do not know why you jump into rotation calculation, thing that I have helped Zelyhn personally on, including that list.

So it is doable in buildcraft.

I think you are heavily undervalueing Air XI – Tempest Defense.
Shocking aura is very very good skill and with Dagger/focus you have great source of stuns/knockdowns, when combined with that trait. Plus the survivability from focus, which you would miss on dagger offhand.

Add a warrior friend for additional CC and you will be golden. Don’t count this trait out for calculated and planning burst ele. 20/30/0/0/20 experimental, 10or/30/10or10/30.

There are thefeely wishy washy answers like many above.
And then there is the average damage answer. Which you get from using say gw2buildcraft.
With your 10might and perma fury + base, bloodlust gives 3% more damage on average.

If you can find a way to pump out the power further in cost of precision, you can easily get another 5% more dmg on top of that with same amount of stats (based on my quick test). Although that can be challenging if you are really fond of that extreme toughness sustainy type gearing.

ImProVocateur.5189:

…

Sabull.5670,
I enjoy your participation in these mathy topics. Let us not forget that there is something this math supports – gameplay. Ultimately, I hope to get a good value comparison between Earth and Water.

Why compare Earth and water? Thats useless. Those 300 points are just a small portion of the total stat pool and their value totally depends on the total stats.
And traits overshadow the passive stat points totally, because you prolly can get the perfect balance in V and T no matter which you spec….

Video 1:00, you have normalized to 1836 right? Going under it obviously gives lower than base health EHPs (with low vit). Tool above simply has [Number below]*1836/916. Longevity, EHP, hits to kill. However you want to call it, it is the same thing (assuming calculations are correct). Which the tool seems to be doing, calculating EHP in bottom right.

Video 2:00, thank you for showing a user friendly example case of the cutoff point I told about.
And after the cutoff point the optimal path ratio of total health and armor is idd 10.
Because cut off point is 10/1, and then we add point equally to both.

However problem is ofc before the cutoff point, you cannot reach the 10:1 ratio.
So I guess you could say, add to vitality untill you reach 10:1 ratio in health and armor. Once reached, keep it!
Problem in that is ofc, we do not gear building up point from point.
We have stats x and y, and then we wanna know, is this good? Can we improve f(x,y) by changing x and y but keeping x+y constant? Aka can we increase EHP while keeping the same stats constant.
Hence I concider the V&T partial derivates of EHP, or Longevity in your case ( same thing), more useful than the EHP or L.

You video doesn’t concern “New 4m video disputing the theory of increasing effectiveness of more Armo” though. Ofc armor is better than vitality if you skew above the 10:1 ratio in your total stats. You ending conclusion is totally off.

Personally I’ve tough of making a theorycraft serie for the pure nerds who just want to see how the calculations are made, step by step. School style. Results have been known for long, but just for those who enjoy “the pleasure of finding things out”.

Tei.1704:

…
Really it isn’t even hp vs armor because you need both to be sturdy to any real degree. Low armor just means your large hp pool melts quickly. High armor just means your small hp pool depletes slower except to conditions. It’s really a question of what the ratio should be for whatever build.

Yes. For Elementalist the direct damage numbers are:
- Pure burst survivability, aka no healing scenario, aka crowd controlled to hell, what keeps you alive the longest
First get 18360 health (1671.5 total vitality) after that point to point Toughness is equally valuable as Vitality. So if 1000 points are spent on these 2 stats (lets round for even), would be 1794 Vitality and 1038 toughness.

Then adding healing into the mixture. You have to think of the scenario that you want to optimize for. I would not recommend adding Healing power into the equations from this approach, rather use rough numbers.
Let’s say I’m still getting heavility bursted, I would be able to survive and disengage in my scenario (wvw staff elementalist) if I get my main heal off so it won’t be added cos I want scenario where I die. Let’s say I will get water swap+dodge off, for 3k healing before I die.

This simply moves the cutoff point 300 vitality less. To 15360 health and then add vitality and toughness equally. Vitality: 1644, Toughness 1188 with first 1000 points.
It’s best to not to model too much healing in than that unless really long D&D regen style duel is concerned. For my use it is the offguard burst that kills.

For my Wvw purposes, gladly PVT armor with full bers/valk trinkets with 10 air 30 water and correct details in runes&food gives near perfect balance on BOTH T&V and the direct damage stats.

I would say the -condi meta that rose to popularity during summer or so, is the single worst thing that has ever happened to GW2 WvWvW from normal combat perspective.

How normal sized 20 man try to deal with larger blobs? They snare, they stretch the zerg, they get people off guard and kill the stragglers through better mobility.
And what has -condition food+rune (+trait on warrior) done to this? Now the zerg cannot be stopped while they enjoy their PASSIVE near immunity to things that could stop their faceroll.

Whole avenue of skill has been removed from the game, that is snareing and mobility advantage.

This has also ofc increased the viability of pure melee and lessened the importance of good water field coordination. Which for the longest time provided this planket cleanse on the background if coordinated properly. And using other cleansing properly aswell.

I don’t people quite realise how horrible this -condition is for the game and organised combat. The rune alone is fine, but combining everything truly should not be possible. Both + and – duration should have hard cap way below what you can currently achieve.

ImProVocateur.5189:

Lol, so I missed that fact, but there is something very interesting that happened as a result of my big mistake. It proves that bonus damage is not calculated the same. The spreadsheet I posted is correct. Effectively, the wiki formula ((P * WS * SC) / (Armor)) is increased by (0.04 * Tooltip). Therefore, the bonus damage from the Ogre is working off the mean score (2600), not the Armor of the opponent.

Dude? What?
1.04 × 0.7 × 2004 × 258 / 2597 = 144.93

That is the formula. What are you talking about. What are you saying about mean score tooltip what. What. The 4% bonus is a 1.04 modifier around the formula. Just as I have shown multiple times.

I see your edit… Dude just check my pictures and understand what is happening in them. Can you find a situation where the damage on screen does not seem to follow the formula (DONT SCREW UP WITH THE BUFFS OR MODIFIER CALCULATIONS). Take a picture of it and describe the situation. I highly recommend starting from the point of view of the well known formulas, not trying to skew your wierd formulations (based on a mistake) to try to match the actual numbers with new terms.

Please don’t post without providing a showcase of anomalie, that we can even talk about. Unless you wanna say, “ah darn, yeah looks like I just made silly mistake!”.

Nilgoow.1037:

Ogre runes have a 4% damage modifier.

Quoted for the truth. Oh-my-kitten. You forgot to calculate the runes.

Take your air part in your picture.
Power 2004, tooltip 139. Just as expected. Confirmed ingame and calculations.
Damage predicted by wiki equation against heavy golem:
1.04 × 0.7 × 2004 x 258 / 2597 = 144.93, NOT 139.2

Damage shown on the screen 144. Confirmed ingame, fits calculation as I have presented in my pictures aswell. Working as intented.

I understand mistakes happen to all of us and it’s hard to let go of theories you clearly have seen alot of trouble for. So I won’t bash you. Just all this because you forgot to factor in the runes :P.

Good luck have fun!

And lastly all out with the modifiers. Showing attacker multiplicative mods and targets additive mods.
More details in the picture ofc and sorry for the spam. Just wanted to make this clear as these things are close to my <3.

Hoping no typos in the pics.

continueing previous post for another attachement. Sorry for spam.

Picture shows the fireball damage without some attacker modifiers and with attacker modifiers. This time with amulets on.

You have not shown anything sorry. Unfrontunately I cannot attach more than 1 picture per post so I will have to post couple of times for these.
Tbh I can’t understand why I’m even seeing the trouble to do this.

3 pictures that show damage seems to follow the well known formulas for direct damage by +-1 damage point ( rounding). The modifiers behave like I presented before, which might be abit less known as it doesn’t seem to be in wiki.
Varying power, armor, attacker modifiers and target modifiers.

So my request stays the same: If you think damage is calculated differently, you find anomalies. Take a picture of it and take note of all the stats and buffs active in the event. Thats all you need to do.

Picture shows hits without amulets (lower tough and power), one with a modifier, one without. More details in the picture ofc!