Guild Wars 2

SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026:

When one decides what to do in a game it should be apparent what gives what rewards, from the sounds of it, everyone who played WvW before knew it gave kitten all and played it anyway, hence they made a decision about it, they hardly made the decision with a motivation “if I zerg a ton now maybe I will get rewarded sometime in 2017”. Retroactive rewards by their very nature are dumb since they reward players for a non-decision.

Ashen.2907:

When I play in PvE in my favorite zones I do so without motivation for a given or specific drop, a precursor for example, so should chance of said dropping be eliminated from anyone who does not specifically state what exactly they might be hoping for as a reward?

No, of course not. Every specific drop I’ve ever gotten has been, “a non-decision.” There is however a somewhat common, reasonable in my opinion, assumption that your time and effort spent in an endeavor in game will be rewarded by the game. Correcting what some might consider design errors in this area is not a bad thing.

Non-decision in this context refers to the fact that doing the thing giving the reward was made without knowledge of the reward, not regardless of if there was a reward or not.

But you are aware of what the rewards are/have the possibility to be, personally I don’t think extremely low drop rate items such as precursor drops really have a place, but this is hardly the place for that discussion.

I am all for WvW giving rewards and I think it not giving good rewards from the start was a bad decision, however everyone who played the gamemode were perfectly aware of it and clearly played it for the actual fun of it. Giving out rewards retroactively has as clearly shown done nothing but create animosity.

I am fairly certain every single MMORPG player is aware that not all parts of the game is equally rewarding

SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026:

The difference between a rank 1032 and a rank 9791 player is not comparable, the only difference is that they have played differently/for different amounts of time.

Ashen.2907:

Or the difference between these two individuals could be that the higher ranked individual is more skilled, perhaps due to much more practice. The difference between these two individuals could be a matter of the lower ranked player being more skilled at individual play while the higher ranked is more knowledgeable about commanding….we do not know what the difference is without examining the individuals so it is questionable to claim what the, “only difference is,” without doing so.

Keywords here are “could be” and “we do not know”, hence giving them different rewards seems a bit weird, no?

SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026:

rank in WvW means absolutely nothing.

Ashen.2907:

A puzzling inaccuracy. Earlier in your post you claim that it does mean something, giving an example, and here you contradict yourself. Rank means something, potentially one of the most important things to the developer…how much you play

What I obviously mean is that rank means nothing as a skill indicator, which it does not, that much should be clear from the post.

Rank is a combination of a few factors, mainly how much WvW one has played, and how much of that time was spent doing the most “rewarding” activity, which happens to be omniblobbing, which is very nonconductive to skillful play. Beyond rank 482 or so, it has absolutely no impact on ability to contribute, before that there is situational differences.

SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026:

And to people saying that high ranked players are the ones keeping the gamemode alive, that is completely insane, most of the high ranked players have gotten it through omniblobbing. Omniblobbing is killing the gamemode and is what makes many players steer clear of WvW. Omniblobbing is the reason there is lag in WvW among being among the reason actual fights are hard to find.

Ashen.2907:

Some interesting, “no true scotsman,” arguing there.

When you say, “most,” what percentage do you mean?

Just arguing against the omniblobbers who claim to be the reason the gamemode is still alive, while i believe they are the reason many people avoid it.

Gonna make a rough estimate that about 100% of the people with a rank of 6k+ primarily zergs or used to primarily zerg in WvW as reaching it any other way while not impossible is truly a massive time investment.

DeadlySynz.3471:

SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026:

Note this is coming from someone who joined the game exclusively for WvW and has only done PvE for rewards to use in WvW and don’t actually thinks rewards should be easy

Current system has a few problems

Unreasonably high time investment for low ranks 40+ hours/week is a completely insane time requirement for max progress. Solution: Double pip acquisition across the board.

Pips/rank, ranks to be honest are a joke, they almost exclusively reward zerglings and punish roamers, I have actively played WvW for close to a year, my rank is somewhere between 900-1000, I get +2 pips/tick, someone who might have zerged for 3-4 months just spamming 1 with their lootstick could be getting +6 by now, I have never in my life zerged and the very thought of zerging disgusts me. I can see getting more rewards for up to 482 rank points as that is the point where one has all the useful “Rank Abilities”, maybe make it 500 to make it an even number. Solution: Remove rank pips, maybe give 1 or 2 pips for reaching the rank where rank points stop being useful, perhaps even up to 1k but that would be stretching it.

WvW is by it’s very nature, at least to non-zerglings a gamemode played more heavily during some periods and less heavily during others. Some weeks I’ve clocked 70+ hours easily, others 10 or less, simply due to a matchup being more or less fun (some servers basically only have omniblobs, and no groups smaller than 20 except for the few solo thieves that run away, while other servers got plenty of 5-15 sized groups that are actually fightable). Solution: Unfinished chests should carry over from week to week, so for example if one doesn’t play for a week, then plays twice as much next week the rewards are the same, but with a limit of maybe 3-4 weeks.

Now to adress this thread

When one decides what to do in a game it should be apparent what gives what rewards, from the sounds of it, everyone who played WvW before knew it gave kitten all and played it anyway, hence they made a decision about it, they hardly made the decision with a motivation “if I zerg a ton now maybe I will get rewarded sometime in 2017”. Retroactive rewards by their very nature are dumb since they reward players for a non-decision. Legendary Insights being farmable before legendary armor was okay-ish due to the fact that how one earned them, what they gave and in what quantities they were needed were all common knowledge.

Comparisons to new players getting ascended armor/agony resistance are completely baseless. These are items any player can get with just a gold cost and they actively impact their performance regardless of their skill level, a good player with ascended will be stronger than the same player in exotic, no matter how you slice it. The difference between a rank 1032 and a rank 9791 player is not comparable, the only difference is that they have played differently/for different amounts of time. When I was rank 45 that never stopped me from completely obliterating many rank 5k+ zerglings when they were caught alone, rank in WvW means absolutely nothing.

This is coming from someone who only plays WvW, is hardcore about it, wants the backpack, but won’t quit over not getting it soon, nor will I stop playing once I got it.

And to people saying that high ranked players are the ones keeping the gamemode alive, that is completely insane, most of the high ranked players have gotten it through omniblobbing. Omniblobbing is killing the gamemode and is what makes many players steer clear of WvW. Omniblobbing is the reason there is lag in WvW among being among the reason actual fights are hard to find.

While I agree largely with what you say, we have to be real here about what WvW is designed for: World vs Wold. Not Roamer vs Roamer, not 5v5, 2v8, or 7v17. It’s designed for large scale battles hence blobs, there is no ifs, ands or buts about it.

I’d guess if they shrunk the map size down to say 20 players per side, WvW would be dead in less than 2 days. For people that want smaller battles, go PvP; WvW is and always will be meant for blobbing. It just sucks when one is on the receiving end of it with a much smaller group.

Large scale doesn’t have to equal blob. blob is a very specific way of running a large group that basically comes down to stacking for the super unintuitive reason that stacking is the counter to AoE which is it’s own problem, the blobbing is also what makes large scale fights require no skills as it is really just all about stacking ontop of the commander and out-target capping your opponent, which is why I hate it and why it causes lag,

Note this is coming from someone who joined the game exclusively for WvW and has only done PvE for rewards to use in WvW and don’t actually thinks rewards should be easy

Current system has a few problems

Unreasonably high time investment for low ranks 40+ hours/week is a completely insane time requirement for max progress. Solution: Double pip acquisition across the board.

Pips/rank, ranks to be honest are a joke, they almost exclusively reward zerglings and punish roamers, I have actively played WvW for close to a year, my rank is somewhere between 900-1000, I get +2 pips/tick, someone who might have zerged for 3-4 months just spamming 1 with their lootstick could be getting +6 by now, I have never in my life zerged and the very thought of zerging disgusts me. I can see getting more rewards for up to 482 rank points as that is the point where one has all the useful “Rank Abilities”, maybe make it 500 to make it an even number. Solution: Remove rank pips, maybe give 1 or 2 pips for reaching the rank where rank points stop being useful, perhaps even up to 1k but that would be stretching it.

WvW is by it’s very nature, at least to non-zerglings a gamemode played more heavily during some periods and less heavily during others. Some weeks I’ve clocked 70+ hours easily, others 10 or less, simply due to a matchup being more or less fun (some servers basically only have omniblobs, and no groups smaller than 20 except for the few solo thieves that run away, while other servers got plenty of 5-15 sized groups that are actually fightable). Solution: Unfinished chests should carry over from week to week, so for example if one doesn’t play for a week, then plays twice as much next week the rewards are the same, but with a limit of maybe 3-4 weeks.

Now to adress this thread

When one decides what to do in a game it should be apparent what gives what rewards, from the sounds of it, everyone who played WvW before knew it gave kitten all and played it anyway, hence they made a decision about it, they hardly made the decision with a motivation “if I zerg a ton now maybe I will get rewarded sometime in 2017”. Retroactive rewards by their very nature are dumb since they reward players for a non-decision. Legendary Insights being farmable before legendary armor was okay-ish due to the fact that how one earned them, what they gave and in what quantities they were needed were all common knowledge.

Comparisons to new players getting ascended armor/agony resistance are completely baseless. These are items any player can get with just a gold cost and they actively impact their performance regardless of their skill level, a good player with ascended will be stronger than the same player in exotic, no matter how you slice it. The difference between a rank 1032 and a rank 9791 player is not comparable, the only difference is that they have played differently/for different amounts of time. When I was rank 45 that never stopped me from completely obliterating many rank 5k+ zerglings when they were caught alone, rank in WvW means absolutely nothing.

This is coming from someone who only plays WvW, is hardcore about it, wants the backpack, but won’t quit over not getting it soon, nor will I stop playing once I got it.

And to people saying that high ranked players are the ones keeping the gamemode alive, that is completely insane, most of the high ranked players have gotten it through omniblobbing. Omniblobbing is killing the gamemode and is what makes many players steer clear of WvW. Omniblobbing is the reason there is lag in WvW among being among the reason actual fights are hard to find.

Dawdler.8521:

Cevni.2049:

Since the epidemic changes, the skill has been bugged beyond belief, starting out by often instakilling you and your allies.

On behalf of every WvWer in existance (except maybe you):

Good

Downstate meta lover spotted

CrimeMaker.8612:

This is a general question. This isn’t towards WvW balance, this isn’t towards PvP balance and this isn’t towards PvE balance.

Why is the Arena net balance team trying to push condition meta and builds so much?

This part is mainly for WvW and PvP some of it might also effect PvE

Condition builds are boring to play, requires no skills, they are brain dead, half of the players have quit the game(from WvW and PvP), other half hates it and just hopes one day conditions will get nerfed because all condition meta doing is draining these players who are still left to quit the game. Condition meta is forcing players to quit the game. Everyday players are quiting literally because of this brain dead play style.

Now the dps on movement food gets nerfed because it’s too strong? Have you seen some of the condition damage food and utilities balance team?

Honestly if you keep for condition meta and builds this game will die faster than its suppose to. More than half the community doesn’t want to deal with conditions and no this isn’t my personal statement this is the statement of 80% of players who have quit the game and other half who is about to.

Also if you want to maintain players and want them to have fun nerf condition damage and stacking and please nerf the op passive healing in. Balance two of these things GAME WILL BE FUN AND PLAYERS WILL ENJOY THE GAME AND OLD PLAYERS MIGHT JUST RETURN.

For starters there are quite a few flawed assumptions and statements here. There is no “condi meta” in PvE, for open world/fractals/dungeons you can run with basically w/e. If youre talking raids, the highest dps builds atm, on large hitboxes are 3 Power Ele Builds, followed my condi Engi, on small hitboxes, condi engi has does the highest dps but has one of the harder rotations to pull off so the “least braindead”. But tbh what is the difference between doing condi damage and power damage in raids, doesn’t really matter.

Now to WvW. Epidemic arguably the reason for the so called “condi meta” got a big nerf. That Condi classes would be more braindead is simply not true, there are tons of braindead power builds and tons of braindead condi builds. I mean just off the top of my head any daredevil builds, the vast majority of warrior builds, dragonhunter as the broken and brainless power builds. There is however braindead condi builds aswell, condi chrono, condi PU mes, condi D/D daredevil. Overall there is a lot of braindead builds, this is not a concept limited to power or condi.

How is playing condi necro for example any more braindead than playing longbow dragonhunter (in smallscale) that is.

Or if you prefer largescale, how is condi necro (the only actual condi build in WvW zergs iirc, I try to avoid it) any more braindead than staff 1 spam mercy rune guardian?

Another thing to keep in mind when discussing this is to please refrain from emotional hyperbole and made up statistics, it really drags down the level of the discussion. I know that you have no stats on how many people are quitting due to this “condi meta” you’re describing.

Thank you for the informative and descriptive video. Seems as if Anet already resolved this issue now, so kudos to them.

Rev hammer 25%+ damage nerfs on everything
(Condi) Mesmers having 6 or so clones due to passives is dumb, double or triple the health of them to compensate though since mesmers can barely shatter in AoE
Warrior’s sustain/Clear potential and arc divider range
13+ dodges in a row from DD and the no-risk-full-reward playstyle of it with also close to infinte cleanses
MERCY RUNES
Guardian ressing/aoe healing/cleansing
Perhaps necro epidemic radius could be 360 instead of 600 (would still be a good skill, 600 radius makes it a kitteneesy)

Yes I would absolutely

atheria.2837:

Ghost.7032:

I will keep this short.
Anet remove or nerf the condi cause in wvw there is no piont to roam or to have fun fights anymore. This is what wvw is now 1 enemy spam a stupid skill. You, remove condi, resistance, heal. Your boons got removed. Heals, restistance, remove condi. CD. Game over. Your scwered.

Either give resistance a longer stack and cannot be removed. Or give more condi removal to other classes and not only DRUID!! Or bring back the good old days where small group was be possible to wipe blobs (with no high condi damage!!). Because now there is 0% chance to wipe blobs

Fix the game… thank god..

The Scene:

WvW Alpine BL

Eight or Ten Friendly Troops

Three to Four Enemy Troops

The result:

Three Friendly Players Downed Without Any Chance To Fight

Forth Player Dead In Two Hits With 1300+healing, 3200+Toughness and Not Standing In Any Red Circles.

If there is no mitigation of condi versus the application of condi, the game is truly and absolutely broken.

Sounds like an L2P issue, let me give you a handful of useful links. If you need any more tips on how to not explode, just ask

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Resistance
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pain_Absorption
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Durability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purging_Flames
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Contemplation_of_Purity
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pure_of_Voice
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Trooper
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Druidic_Clarity
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_C
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Agility
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Conditions
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diamond_Skin
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Water

Personally I’d love that have it removed. But tbh that is never gonna happen. I’d be content with any rather big nerfs to it.

The 5-7 seconds of having to keep them down and then an auto-stomp is a rather novel and imo really good idea.

Having a 1 minute cooldown is also a good idea as there are many fights including the one shown where the downstate truly is carrying his enemies.

Another good solution would be to nerf/remove Mercy runes and some of the better ressing traits (guardian/ranger being the worst offenders).

About whether hammer or any other burst build is skilled or not is irrelevant to this discussion, perhaps hammer for Rev and thief burst should be nerfed (imo burst isn’t a very skilled playstyle). But the downstate problems are even worse for non-bursty grindier builds as the 15%/sec base healing (upto like 30% with traits and runes) is too much for them to be able to get down.

expandas.7051:

Since no one else has given you feedback yet I’ll throw my two cents in.

I really dislike your Wanderer’s based build. You deal next to no damage, you provide negligible healing. You’ve probably got the most armor and health out of your entire party yet because of skill spam you nearly die at 1:15. Aside from boon application (which is extremely aggressive) it honestly feels like you are being carried by the rest of your party members.

I don’t understand your choice for Feedback or Signet of the Ether. None of your traits complement these two skills. Nearly every time I see Feedback its impact is inconsequential. You pop your heal for no explicable reason at 0:40 and then run around like a meat shield in the middle of the enemy while you’re waiting for skills to recharge.

That said, I do like that you’re using Continuum Split in more situations than just doubling up on your Elite. I also respect that you’ve opted not to equip Blink- though that had better be the case with your armor stats! In the future I would recommend chaining CS with Signet of Illusions during after-cast into Signet of Inspiration. You can also leverage other elite skills like Time Warp since you’ve got nearly 100% effective boon duration through Chaotic Persistence.

I am of the completely opposite opinion on the vast majority of your point. Dealing damage or being the healer is not the roles of a boonshare mesmer, the roles of a boonmshare mesmer is to provide boons, zone control and AoE CC. I’d highly doubt the group in question would be doing as well without high quickness uptime. I’d highly doubt he has the highest armor in his group as they run with a Necro (Trailblazer got more armor than wanderer) and wanderer mesmer got just 1-2k hp more.

Signet of the ether resets the cooldown of shield 4, more blocks is good. Feedback has no target cap and provides good defense for a group against projectiles.

Honestly Time Warp is useless outside of very closed spaces. Gravity Well provides a good way to burst down 5 people as opposed to a field that most people accidently walk out of. In the video the mesmer in question often Continuum Splits his shield 4 (to trigger the free Signet Of Inspiration) and then Signet of Inspiration again as this gives more boons than the other.