Guild Wars 2

I can’t open the list to see if friends are on. Neither clicking the icon bar or typing “Y” work.

I noticed this last night and submitted a report to ingame support. The the problem still persists today.

Anything I can do about this at my end?

Ranger is perhaps too easy if you just sit back and use the longbow from 1500 feet while you let the pet tank your foe. As far as I remember, it’s relatively fast as well,

It’s no big deal unless you want to do some PvP, harder level 80 content, or some organized WvW.

I recommend that you use your melee weapons to avoid creating bad habits.

Necromancer is a little more complicated since there is no pet, no 1500 range bow and death shroud to handle.

You might not know which class you like at level 80 until you get there, and your role might change depending upon what content you are doing. Leveling is pretty fast, say an hour per level (though for your first character or 2 no need to hurry things, feel free to take your time and “smell the roses”). Also once you have achieved the equivalent of a level after level 80 (or from PvP) you get a book that grants you a free level for any of your characters.

Malevolent’s analysis is correct. 5-4-3 locked Tarnished Coast in tier 1 with 2 overstacked servers. And for some strange reason, BG and Maguuma were left open while TC and some of the others servers were considered full.

Rather than putting a flimsy band aid on the problem this week by joining 2 lower tier servers to TC, they should have manually dropped TC to tier 2, giving them a break for a week. While it is tough to keep a persistent WvW world balanced, things could have been much better handled.

It’s mind boggling that they opened BG. In 82 time periods this week, they had 71 1st place finished and 11 second; ZERO 3rd place finishes.

Tier 1 is the most lopsided tier this week. Yet BG was open for transfers because they did not have sufficient number enough players playing?

Both BLs have their flaws. Let’s also not forget that the old BLs were also often pretty vacant during non-peak hours. And as others have said, changing the BLs won’t do anything as long as the server player imbalances remains the same.

The old BLs also were effortlessly karma trained by the larger side – not a good thing in my opinion. And once they took garrison, it would take hours to the waypoint back – that is if it wasn’t karma trained again prior to the waypoint being completed. (Though this can be changed in the Alpine BLs) The new BLs are a tougher to crack, though they are also a pain to sentry.

I find fights in the new keeps more enjoyable, since there is more room to maneuver. Buffed Lords is a great idea as it slows down a karma train to some extent and allows some time for a response. Also, zergs can’t just steamroller a 5 man group without taking some time to get there and locate them, which is a good thing.

But the keeps and the map is too large for the current number of players (aside from reset night) and small scale skirmishes are much harder to find on the new BL.

Alpine BLs were better, but they were also flawed. They were too easy to karma train, and losing a WP in garrison was so disastrous since citadel was far back from Hills and Bay (Desert BL is not as far from Hills and Bay). It was also much easier to 2 v 1 the home side, too much so in my opinion.

You did well one week, but it takes a few week to catchup, else servers could push 1 week and then negate months of less points.

One problem with the current system is that rarely does the 3rd place server in the tier face the upcoming server so they can duke it out. (This does not hold in the EU as they are more equally distributed).

I’d tell you server mates to push the PPT. SoS doesn’t really belong in tier2 with their current numbers and I believe it would be more fun for everybody (including SoS) if they dropped to tier 3.

There’s a lot of great advice for the OP in this thread. As an older player who clicks quite a bit, I figure I would add my thoughts which are as follows:

1. You need to find the right build/profession combo for your skill/dexterity level. Bear in mind that no build works well in all circumstances (solo roaming, small group roaming, zerging, etc.) and it is always tough to deal people running small group or solo ganking build, when you are trying to run a large group friendly build.

2. Build: You have 2 stun break (one on demand) which is good but unless I am mistaken, only a condition clear tied to your heals (now improved in the patch to remove 2 conditions, but still rather minimal, especially with only 14k hit points). There’s a lot of condition roamers out there, many of whom who are highly mobile and/or have some stealth. You’re also running a meditation trait with no meditation skills slotted aside from Renewed Focus which is on a long cooldown, .

3,. Healing Gear: You have quite a bit of healing gear in your build, but are not using staff, which offers a good return on investment (1:1 on staff 3). On the other hand, you do have selfless daring heal on dodge trait which does offer a good return , but because your precision is low, it’s not going to trigger as often as you want (and the low precision kind of wastes your investment in ferocity). You are running heal on aegis (.5 ratio so healing does help there) which does synergize well with your trap, trap trait, retreat utility and renewed focus, though you should slot shelter when you are running around the map in small groups (or perhaps always as it does synergize with your heal on aegis trait and I believe heals allies as well?)

I’d think about swapping the really expensive toxic stones for some cheap 5/3 precision food if you’re still equipping cleric gear and taking the Honor line to bump your precision up a bit. I’d also dump the boon duration food for something different as you’re not using staff (though it does help your swiftness) and I’d consider changing the runes as well. I’d run melandru if you want to go defensive, and pair it with the saffron bread to give you -45% stun/condition duration reduction. If you’re the guy dying often, it should be your allies who are running the mercy runes grins.

As far as camp flipping goes, healing gear doesn’t really help you much. While it will give you some sustain, if will also take the camp much NPCs way longer to die. With such low precision in a power build, you’re not doing much damage – “hitting like wet noodle is the phrase often used in this forum”. Looking at this another way, if you rolled a ranger, equipped an exotic longbow and some exotic armor and then went to take a camp you would realize how easy it was compared to your current build that you would start chanting Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, a cultural reference that you would no doubt get as opposed to some of the young kids in this thread.

Feel free to whisper me in game if you want to discuss things more.

There’s a lot of great advice for the OP in this thread. As an older player who clicks quite a bit, I figure I would add my thoughts which are as follows:

1. You need to find the right build/profession combo for your skill/dexterity level. Bear in mind that no build works well in all circumstances (solo roaming, small group roaming, zerging, etc.) and it is always tough to deal people running small group or solo ganking build, when you are trying to run a large group friendly build.

2. Build: You have 2 stun break (one on demand) which is good but unless I am mistaken, only a condition clear tied to your heals (now improved in the patch to remove 2 conditions, but still rather minimal, especially with only 14k hit points). There’s a lot of condition roamers out there, many of whom who are highly mobile and/or have some stealth. You’re also running a meditation trait with no meditation skills slotted aside from Renewed Focus which is on a long cooldown, .

3,. Healing Gear: You have quite a bit of healing gear in your build, but are not using staff, which offers a good return on investment (1:1 on staff 3). On the other hand, you do have selfless daring heal on dodge trait which does offer a good return , but because your precision is low, it’s not going to trigger as often as you want (and the low precision kind of wastes your investment in ferocity). You are running heal on aegis (.5 ratio so healing does help there) which does synergize well with your trap, trap trait, retreat utility and renewed focus, though you should slot shelter when you are running around the map in small groups (or perhaps always as it does synergize with your heal on aegis trait and I believe heals allies as well?)

I’d think about swapping the really expensive toxic stones for some cheap 5/3 precision food if you’re still equipping cleric gear and taking the Honor line to bump your precision up a bit. I’d also dump the boon duration food for something different as you’re not using staff (though it does help your swiftness) and I’d consider changing the runes as well. I’d run melandru if you want to go defensive, and pair it with the saffron bread to give you -45% stun/condition duration reduction. If you’re the guy dying often, it should be your allies who are running the mercy runes grins.

As far as camp flipping goes, healing gear doesn’t really help you much. While it will give you some sustain, if will also take the camp much NPCs way longer to die. With such low precision in a power build, you’re not doing much damage – “hitting like wet noodle is the phrase often used in this forum”. Looking at this another way, if you rolled a ranger, equipped an exotic longbow and some exotic armor and then went to take a camp you would realize how easy it was compared to your current build that you would start chanting Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, a cultural reference that you would no doubt get as opposed to some of the young kids in this thread.

Feel free to whisper me in game if you want to discuss things more.

This would be for small group play (1-5 or more).

I used to run a double melee stealth trapper, but with all the HoT overpowered stuff and the nerf of the trapper runes, I wonder if there is a decent trap build out there.

PPK change: It should be point per stomp, not point per kill. If people do care about the score (PPT), then they will avoid fights due to losing ground from these encounters. PPStomps doesn’t reward the blob that spams 1 and has a decent risk/return tradeoff.

Rally/revive mechanic changes: I like it in theory, but you’re going to need to do something to help frontline. Buff stability maybe?

Catapult changes: Many guilds are in the process of unlocking the +5 buff, so bear this in mind.

Jwoww.4315:

It’s a lessen that Anet will learn the hard way by loss of player base, you DO NOT make a massive change like this, untested, and expect things to fall in place.

The big question is whether is it salvageable.

They also changed reset night to make things more convenient for them as opposed to the player base. Golem week, no swords week", EOTM and now this fiasco.

The counter argument to the “my small guild should be able to +5 easily” is that why give such give such a buff to smaller guilds? A larger guild should have some type of an advantage – otherwise it is better to have 8 5-man guilds claiming everything on the map. Also on home BL, the large guild often uses their +5 buff to claim garrison to give the +5 bonus so their buff is tied up. A better argument is that player supply capacity needs to be increased or that the requirement needs to be made somewhat less difficult.

Pre-HoT, the bank guilds of individual players would often have enough influence to +5 structures which doesn’t seem right.

Devon, check your notes. I believe you were referring to EOTM.

If you removed the rewards from EOTM, there’d be only 5 guys there, and 3 of them would be the the EOTM designer’s wife, grandmother and ex-wife/dog.

People go there to level alts, k-train or farm badges for their legendary.

People go to WvW even with the bad rewards. WvW is an end in itself. EOTM is a means to an end.

The base game was an unbelievable value. You got 5 character slots, pvp, wvw, dungeons, fractals and 5 starting cities with many zones. The base game has given me more entertainment value per dollar spent than any other entertainment purchase thus far in my life, and I can’t see it ever being beaten until Wal-mart introduces a holodeck.

Compared to the base game, the answer is a definite no. We got 4 or 5 new zones, some raids, 1 borderland map (that the wvw community hasn’t exactly warmed up to), zero new character slots, 1 new class, a bunch of elite specializations and maybe a new pvp map. Not much compared to World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade expansion.

I bought it because the base game was such an unbelievable value so I bought it to support Anet in the hope that they will improve WvW. The new maps (both PvE and WvW) with all the verticality can literally give me a headache at times. This combined with Anet’s disregard of the player’s concerns over the new WvW map makes me tempted to ask for my money back.

Auto upgrades are the least of the problems with the new map and can be easily tweaked. The auto upgrades has the benefit of eliminating upgrade trolls and reducing PvDoor.

A few have argued that auto upgrades help the larger/overnight server, yet the auto upgrades can help the defenders, as they are able to defend their structures as opposed to their whole BL get flipped in minutes by a karma train. Some in this thread want auto upgrades eliminated and also want to add waypoints in the side keeps which would also assist the larger server.

One problem with the auto-upgrades is that they make supply camps largely meaningless. The upgrades should be perhaps made more dependent upon yaks.

The idea that upgrades should be dependent upon one player showing up and ordering it is busy work for no real benefit.

Honestly lads, they should have retroactively reduced all badges, karma and cash gained from EOTM and then tossed all the cowards that go there off one off the cliffs.

And if you couldn’t pay back the coin you earned from that sordid place, they should put you into indentured servitude and force you to follow around the real WvWers while wearing a fool’s outfit (the one with the bells on the head piece).

You guys got off cheap!

babazhook.6805:

I am responding to your argument. Please read what you posted. You have reading comprehension problems. If you are simply going to drop half of a post and respon in kind without going back to the orginal post than you are responding OUT OF context which is disingenous. See the post two above this one which contains the one I responded to in its enitirty.

No you weren’t. Nobody in the thread said anything about Trapper Runes being the only source of stealth. The issue is the runes COMBINED with the stealth on the weapon skills/utilities plus teleports. You did not address anything in this thread.

Ranger traps do damage as they added damage to the frost trap at some point. Perhaps Pepper’s suggestion above should be examined.

Those who complain against any adjustments to score during off hours aren’t demanding that they be treated equally. They are demanding preferential treatment. They want the efforts of 30 people to count more than that of 130. Currently, the efforts of the low population times have a disproportionate effect on the score.

There’s a reason why California has more electoral votes and congressional seats than Delaware.

It seems odd to change the reset time since people have revealed their desire to play more often during that time. One would assume that you want the game/score to matter the most when more of the players are online which is the weekend. I usually arrive late to reset but it is still a special event for me and the queues are fairly minimal in tier 2 on a full server.

Friday night is also a community event in a game with an already weak sense of community. Since the advent of the megaservers, in my opinion there’s really only 2 strong communities left in GW2 – WvWers and the RPers (both which took a small hit with the megaservers). Perhaps you folks aren’t particularly interested in fostering community. Or perhaps WvW doesn’t bring enough to the bottom line or the new date is simply more convenient for you. But to the player base, the change seems almost vindictive in its arbitrariness which is certainly not your intent.

I’m holding off on my purchase of HOT. Golem week, “no swords” week and EOTM and now this could leave one to conclude that Anet is somewhat tone deaf with regards to its WvW player base. (edit: I really want to buy the expansion as the game has been an unbelievable value of entertainment per dollar spent. I’ll buy it out of guilt even if i don’t want to new specializations/reaper; Just try and listen to the community a bit more.)

It’s also good that people are upset. It would be bad if people didn’t care and weren’t so passionate about the game.

Friday night WvW is a ritual. You’re turning a day when players are both excited and available into a meaningless karma train exercise.

Why don’t you have the reset on Monday so the days when most of players play becomes meaningless?

Nobody is belittling your contribution. Most players realize that your contribution is immense, holding waypoints when outnumbered, etc.

With respect to PPT/score, it is difficult to make a decent argument as to why off hours scoring should be equal across time zones since the vast majority of players on NA servers play during NA time. A server gets 15 new NA players and it is no big deal. A server gets 15 new OCX or SEA and the balance of power shifts.

This is why JQ has been the number 1 server for years. They’re rarely ahead after reset (at least when I was in tier 1 on TC), but they cap stuff when everybody else goes to bed.

To rephrase the question, scorewise – why should 15 players in Australia, Taiwan or Singapore count more than 15 players in the US or Canada? California and Ontario have more legislative seats than Delaware and Nove Scotia – so why not weigh the scoring by time period?

PPK will lead to less fights. And if there is anything this game doesn’t need, is more PvDoor.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Nausicca.6038:

Ansau.7326:

You can melt people in seconds and they allow to face outnumbered fights, which requires tons of skill and are more stressful than duels with a power burst build.

PU + the pledge + passive dmg + high toughness ( and vitaly when using dire) must be so stressful to play.
As stressfull as condi trap thief.

He’s talking about outnumbered fights specifically.
Give it a try, it doesn’t matter how long your stealth period is, when you’re outnumbered and you’ve only got 3 stealth skills on your bar, you will run out.
Maybe it’s not fair that pu condi can win a 2v1 in WvW roaming, but it’s been said before: WvW solo roaming pretty much requires being able to win 2v1 by definition.
The moment they try to balance it is the moment solo roaming stops being a thing entirely.
You’ll still get wrecked when you try to wander the Borderlands alone, it just won’t be a solo mesmer/thief/ele that kills you.

What you’re saying is “don’t try to balance an overpowered build, because roaming requires an overpowered build so don’t bother balancing it.” Listen, we all have our favorite toys and don’t like them taken away regardless of the effect on others. But what are the other classes supposed to do. Roll a mesmer? I joined 3 mesmers while on my trapper ranger and we just destroyed stuff. I felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards.

Guess what? You have no right to be able to win 1 v. 2 or 1 v. 3. unless they are in PVT gear on the way to the zerg unless you are far more skilled then the other like a really good glass thief (which is rare but there are some).

I understand that they don’t balance for 1v1 roaming, but why encourage overpowered FOTM builds? There are so many more mesmers now both in WvW solo and small group stuff, and then there’s the mesmer/thief combo.

Stealth isn’t much use in PvE and you can’t cap a point with it in pvp, so I have no idea why they buffed PU? Anyway, that and/or Pledge is going to get nerfed at some point.

There was a balance in tier 2 (FA/SoS/YB) until a bunch of tier 1 guilds decided to transfer over in order to create a 4th tier 1 server. As a result, many fight guilds left these servers but YB wasn’t really affected due to their massive influx of players.

I’m on TC and there has been considerable discussion on our server forum discussing that one should not be a jerk to the other 2 servers but this is counterbalanced by the need for us to maintain our glicko rating so that we don’t remain here, since it is not much fun for us.

This imbalance was due to the NA player base congregating in the top 3 tier 1 servers which lead to stale matchups. (EU servers don’t seem to have the same problems as they are more spread out) Hence some players took it upon themselves to orchestrate this fiasco. As a result of this unprecedented player migration, Anet closed entry to the top 4 NA servers.

I blame the guilds that transferred over to YB and their megalomaniacal leaders who did not care about the affect on tier2. Anet also seems partly responsible, though I am not sure what they could have done to avoid this.

As other have stated, trapper rangers have numerous weaknesses.

Most of the complaints these days about stealth revolve around PU mesmers, so I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Thank-you for these changes.

Welcome to this forum Zach!

Their glicko system is flawed and unsuitable for a game where there is such limited interaction between participants. WvW is not a chess ladder.

It’s as if Serena and Venus Williams and Sharapova were the top 3 tennis players in the world AT AGE 90 BECAUSE THEY ONLY PLAY EACH OTHER! TC, BG and JQ could have 5 people playing all week and as long as the results were close, the matchups would not change.

Once can assume they could have manually alter the matches, but Anet has a either has a ridiculously bureaucratic mindset and refuses to make changes, or they simply don’t care. Now a vibrant tier2 has been destroyed (though we can also partially blame the geniuses in the player base who decided to take matters into their own hands).

The apothecary weapons to not belong in your power build. 2 benevolence sigils are not needed unless you plan on swapping out 1 at some point. Multiple sources of regeneration is likely overkill (guard, h. spring, dwayna runes plus you have rejuvenation trait for yourself).

For small group fights I’d go with a condition build.

Good thing I’m going away for few days so I will miss most of the remainder of this “event”.

A really poor attempt to inject something different into WvW. It really shows how clueless they are about WvW.

1) Used in WvW zerg play until the recent change to Chilling Darkness.

2) It’s next to worthless with Chilling Darkness nerf.

3) Reverse the changes to Chilling Darkness. If not, explain what drove you to nerf Ch. Darkness and how both the well and especially the trait in their current form would fit in any build.

And for God’s sake, get better feedback from the player base.

They’ll quickly ban people for anything that will affect their bottom line asap (which I fully understand). WvW is a low priority for them, so to put it mildly they are lax in their enforcement.

On the other hand, regarding the TC wvw siege troll – they do nothing. They could tell him not to claim any keeps with his troll guild or put up any siege or you will be banned.

But they take an excessively legalistic and lenient approach with endless appeals and proof beyond a reasonable doubt without looking at the track record of this individual in question . It is fine not to look at the history of an individual in a criminal trial, but such a high standard is not needed in a video game – especially with such limited GM presence.

Texas executes people with far less evidence.

On the other hand, Anet lets the psychopaths roam freely in WvW.

You can delete this well from your utilites now as without Chilling Darkness it is worthless.

GG Anet. I bet you have a huge file folder full of complaints about Well of Darkness and Plague lol.

What’s the point of a 2 second chill on a blind on a 5 second cooldown as a trait?

Enlighten us.

Monumental incompetence regarding siege trolls by the devs as it is unbelievable that the TC siege troll still has an account. Hopefully the new system will avoid most of the problems, but with less supply overall, things could actually be worse.

Another reason to take a “wait and see” attitude towards the expansion.

1. I stopped roaming on my trap ranger (w. trapper runes) in wvw. The traps work well against NPC who just stand there at sit in them with no condi cleanses of their own. It`s pretty fast and mindless to take a camp with them. But the build doesn’t work vs players because of the investment in trap utility slots (plus a trait) so you don’t get the good survival skills plus the superior condi cleanse from Wilderness Knowledge as opposed to Empathic Bond which kills your pet. You also lose the guaranteed stealth from them which you need since you lack defensive utilities – never mind that any mesmer clone or ranger pet can trigger them, leaving the ranger quite vulnerable to ranger attacks. For WvW the trapper rune set is dead in my opinion – which irks me since I levelled up crafting specifically for that rune.

Eliminating the offhand range and increased bonfire radius from the skirmishing trait is the type of annoying shtick that kittenes off the player base needlessly. It’s not like people were saying “OMG, rangers offhands are so powerful and need to be nerfed” in any game mode.

Quick Draw is a good trait, so much so that many shortbow builds think about taking it. Pets are better (especially vs NPCs), but still melt vs players due to power creep, especially if you take Empathic bond but we see how this plays out once condis are adjusted.

Every organization doesn’t necessarily have a mirror. African-Americans have the NAACP while Jewish people might have the Anti-Defamation League. White Anglo-Saxon Christians have never needed an organization such as those mentioned because historically they have not been discriminated against.

Heterosexuals don’t need a “safe space”. However, drunken frat boys, feminists, evangelical Christians, vegetarians etc. might want a guild where they discuss matters in private or be surrounded by like-minded people.

What is the purpose of your proposed guild?

And as people have mentioned, the LGBT doesn’t discriminate against heterosexuals. It sounds like you want to start a guild to discriminate against or at least exclude gay people – or at least troll them on a GW2 forum.

I get it, you’re unhappy that the Supreme Court ruled against your beliefs regarding marriage. But is this really the forum to bring it up your displeasure over the decision?

Per my Norn Guardian: “All these EOTM cowards with their fancy legendaries who shy from a fight, should be shot taken outside and shot as deserters. I’d do it but fer some reason I can’t use a rifle.”

I know we got Ambidexterity, but the increased bonfire radius and offhand weapon range doesn’t seem to be anything that the player base screamed about in the past.

+1

Deleted as there is another thread.

Kudos to Anet for admitting things aren’t working well and good luck trying to fix things.

In the long run, things are going to get tougher to balance. There are now 4 more traits than before, so there’s more possible things that can go wrong. And it will get tougher with the new elite specializations.

With 3 games modes (PvE, PvP and WvW) and with more things introduced over time, balancing things will become more difficult as time moves on. But perhaps one should have foreseen that imbalances would occur, as more damage/disabling traits were introduced compared with little in terms of defense.

No doubt 3 million purchasers can outthink your small crew, but better feedback needs be solicited especially in the absence of a test server. The changes to the necromancer heal/plague form is fidgeting with something that few people complained about – never mind that necromancers don’t excel in any game mode aside from WvW zerging. You have enough on your plate to balance. Don’t go looking for more problems by coming up with solutions to non-existent problems.

You lost some precision (15% maybe), toughness(300) and condi damage (300) assuming you ran an x-6-6-x-x build. The loss of toughness likely hurt your build, which is already quite glassy.

You haven’t told us what weapons you use. I am assuming you’re not a longbow trapper, but even then you could be running shortbow/x or double melee.

Bear in mind the traps are no longer ground targetable, meaning they just drop at your feet – which in my opinion seriously weakens the rune 6 stealth affect. I’m not sure whether the rune set is viable any more, and it is certainly less fun. This is especially true for your setup with its low armor, so you really the stealth when pressured as opposed to a dire/rabid trapper.

Go Skirmishing, Wilderness for Empathic Bond and either Beast Master or Nature depending on your preference. You might have to change your gear.

If you’re running longbow, you’ll need to figure it this out on your own.

There’s going to be more complaints about rangers and they might come from the front line. With the new traits, rangers are going to get 1500 range and fast arrows standard and the GM trait is going to give piercing (+10% arrow velocity and 20% cooldown reduction as well).
Zerg guardians running the standard build are going to lose 300 armor and 2000 hp from traits (they will get some stats back from equipment) and don’t seem to be getting much defensive abilities in return.
Compare rangers with necros. Wells, while powerful, have a 900 range; Life Blast has a similar range and does its best damage at 600. And rangers are getting some nice defensive traits with the patch.
With respect to soloing, a 6 year old with the standard longbow traits and the BM pet upgrades should be able to solo a camp inn under a minute.
Personally, I don’t think the zerg rangers deserve piercing fast arrows at 1500; The gameplay is too mindless for little skill and risk. Shortbow deserves piercing, as it its range is 900. The only reason why nobody complains more is that at some point when the frontline does push, zerker longbow rangers can be easily exposed and they are especially vulnerable in a castle fight.
We shall see on Tuesday how things work out but I think we’ll be seeing more rangers in WvW.

As numerous other people have mentioned, the skills on the shield are lackluster, shield 5 is a self root, the focus gets the good stuff (now even better with the adept trait), strength in numbers is better than shield trait for group play;

At least change Shield 5 to a reflect or eliminate the self root (not sure if the latter is possible).

Shield 4 should not affect allies in front of you, but instead around you.

This change makes the trapper build a lot less fun to play. For that reason alone I despise the change. They could increase the trap damage to a million and I wouldn’t care.

Having no stun break would make nervous. You also only have one evade on the shortbow, but no S/D.

You do have bear and LR to deal with Immob, but I get nervous without LR on my bar.

As the others have stated, all servers 2 v1 at some point.

I’m on TC. BG is the more fight oriented of the other 2 servers and is less blobby than JQ in pretty much all time zones. BG also has been known to plays in spurts, hence they were called Hibergate for a while recently.

You need to tell us exactly which hours you play. One problem with going to JQ is that you might be already going to a stacked time period, and spending a large portion of your time karma training undefended structures. This of course is subject to change as players and guilds come and go and an expansion is on the way.

As to your original point:

I don’t like JQ (especially the non-NA) because they blob more, tend to engage in fights where they outnumber the enemy and rely on their non-NA numerical superiority to out PPT the other 2 servers.

I don’t like BG because previously they tend to be the more ill-mannered server – ruder players both in-game and in the forums (not really apparent any more).

So BG are the orcs/drunken frat boys. (Apparently they shout BeastGate in ts3 when they take a keep). JQ are the Borg from Star Trek with their hive mentality. TC is the liberal arts college with the RPers (and more women/older players from what I have been told) . This of course is a vast generality and possibly untrue though a few folks have agreed with this assessment in the past.

Also guilds have moved across servers and there are some players and a prominent guild or 2 that have accounts on 2 of the tier 1 servers – so each server’s culture becomes watered down as players come and go.

And when all is said and done, I really don’t really dislike anybody. Without your opponents, you don’t have a game.

If you don’t want to buy a different mouse, my question is what is the main issue with weapon swapping?

I assume the weapon swap forces you to move your hand too much compared to the other skills. Can you somehow bind weapon swap to your middle mouse button if you have one?

Or just click your weapon swap. It’s not like you’re in elite sPvP.

Greatsword/longbow works fine for PvE and WvW zerging if you want to dabble there when you hit lvl 80. Sword might be somewhat better if you master it, but unless you’re trying to do a speed run – who really cares? Just find a guild with nice people and have fun. And double melee weapons tend to require considerably more swapping.

Get rid of them.

Guards are easy to kill, and it gives an advantage to the zerging blob, as opposed to the defenders who often have to port in from another map. I have them, but getting them was a huge grind in a game that was supposed to be casual.

I’d like to be able to kill my own guards for the buff.