Guild Wars 2

The CD starts before the rock leaves the Cata. The point at which the CD starts (the end of the charge) is the significant number for calculating DPS.

Old system was X damage every 5 seconds.

New system is 2X damage every 5 + ChargeTime seconds.

If ChargeTime is 4 seconds, that means that over a period of 5 charged shots (45 seconds), the new system deals 10X damage. In the same time period, the old system would deal 9X damage. That’s an ~11% DPS increase.

My initial calculations used a 3s ChargeTime but that appears to have been brought on by server lag.

Given the uneven staggering of the shots, that 11% DPS increase would be rather difficult to eyeball in the field if there’s only 1 cata in play on each wall. It’s not going to make a huge difference there, but it will be devastating when a zerg drops 6-8 catas on a keep.

Those are very curious test results.

You say there is exactly 5 seconds on a charge, but unless something has changed in the past week, this cannot possibly be true. Not only did all previous tests yield 3-4 seconds to charge, but the official charge time is listed at 4.25 seconds. Did you count the time to fill the charge bar or the time from first button press to fire? These are not the same number. The latter is about 5 seconds since it includes the firing animation, but since the animation happens after the CD starts, it does not affect DPS.

It’d be nice if it announced who pulled it in team chat along with a link to the waypoint. That would make trolls obvious and allow smoother operation for legitimate users since they would have to try and spam shift+click.

I don’t want the old way because it wasn’t ready on command and had a cooldown of just 3 minutes. I like being able to pop an enemy’s EWP and then apply pressure while it’s on CD.

As a daredevil, I regularly dodge through entire zergs using evades/mobility. Usually it’s to distract them and buy time for something else.

Before I played GW2, I thought that thieves would be evade based. Based on the promo materials, I expected a class with a bunch of mini-evades and/or conditional evades that had to stay a step ahead of an opponent to win a fight. Instead, core thief is just supposed to stealth as much as possible. When DD came out, I hoped it was closer to the class I wanted way back then…but it’s just an obscene amount of dodges layered on top of everything else. Now the ideal is to spam stealth, attack, then spam dodges until stealth comes back up.

I don’t care too much about the balance side of things—that whole situation is too much of a mess to be worth the trouble. I do think you’re right that the amount of evades is way too high, though in the situation you mentioned it’s probably ok. Trading all of your damage for evades is w/e—but the amount of damage you can keep while still having ~10 evades in a quick fight is a bit much.

Would not expect any changes. It’s nowhere near the most ridiculous thing around.

It’s not about numbers so much as force. If you can utilize various force multipliers to create more pressure with fewer people, you can win.

E.G. Yesterday I was harassing a T1 enemy Airkeep with 2 random people from my server. We had never met before but loosely communicated in map chat about who was going to slap which Yak and who was knocking down which wall. After about half an hour, we managed to sneak 2 people into the lord room while the ~5 enemy scouts were distracted retaking camps and stopping our third person from knocking down a wall other than the one we entered through. We capped the keep. In this instance, since we had greater mobility as the offensive force, we created a larger problem with our 3 people than their 5 people were able to handle. I consider this the Natural Offensive Force Multiplier.

We then defended the keep from a handful of assaults because they didn’t bother cutting off supply and only attacked in a group. They forfeited their NOFM by refusing to use their mobility to their advantage. After several failed attempts, they brought over 15 people and several golems. We still stalled them for a long while and drained the keep of supply before they flipped it. In this instance, we used our walls, siege disablers, siege and chokepoints as Natural Defensive Force Multipliers. Since the enemy was all in one place, it was fairly easy to ruin their day. We managed to project a larger force with 3 people than they could with 15.

If one server has players that can consistently take advantage of force multipliers, they can win with fewer numbers. They won’t win every fight and hold on to every objective, but they’ll do enough that they come out on top.

On the other hand, blobbing is not a force multiplier. Some fight guilds can use advanced tactics to that end, but a blob in and of itself is just a chunk of static force. It is a strategy that is only ideal when your opponents lack blobs of similar size and are unable to take advantage of force multipliers to even things out.

Wouldn’t it be top GvG guild rather than top WvW?

If the charge time varies with server lag, it would certainly explain the discrepancies. I tested 20 shots to come up with the 3 second time so I was very surprised when the retest suggested it was 3.5.

I’ll try and retest when there’s noticeable lag…perhaps I’ll have to visit SMC.

Since there’s a threat hanging over false reports, player’s I’ve talked to have been reluctant to report using ‘botting’ when there’s no botting involved. That means that offenders may go unreported because players are unsure on what to report them for and don’t want to risk being accused of a false report.

But, alas, I guess there’s nothing to do but wait.

It’s definitely a more widespread issue than I previously thought.

I was able to confirm with Anet that botting is the correct reporting category—despite the offense not involving botting. But despite the multiple reports and the fact that I catch this guy red-handed without going out of my way, nothing has been done. If they wanted to stop him, they could. So, if they’re not going to worry about it, it’s fairly pointless for any of us to worry about it.

It’s probably asking too much from the folks that advocate abusing known bugs in their very own WvW tutorial videos.

Went in game to test it again. It could be 3.5 seconds for the bar to fully fill. I’m using the tick timer, so it’s hard to pin down fractions of a second. You must remember to account for the delay of the shot animation—it’s ~5 seconds until the rock hits a wall right in front of it, but not that long until the bar fills and it starts firing. Since the CD starts when the button is released or the bar is filled, that animation delay doesn’t affect dps.

For reference, it would have to be exactly 5 seconds to leave maximum catapult dps unchanged. Less than 5 seconds will increase it and more than 5 seconds will decrease it—assuming the damage multiplier remains constant at +100%.

It could be 2.75 or 3.25 seconds, but I really doubt that. It’s certainly far less than 5 seconds.

This is a wonderful opportunity to harp on everything I don’t like about Anet’s development team…that said, I think we should cut them some slack. Unlike the first couple of years, I think they’re actually trying now.

The reality is that Armored Yaks don’t do much of anything. They aren’t more resilient against condi damage and still die to power unless escorted. The escort bubble is far more effective. Some argument can be made that it’s an earlier upgrade and meant to have less impact, but that shouldn’t make it useless. We should also consider that camps had 3 upgrade tiers when this system was released and have since been collapsed to one.

That means that Armored Yaks were meant to be a less impactful upgrade that could be comboed with things like Speedy Yaks to have a more tangible impact. They were never meant to stand on their own or in competition with the other upgrades.

The problem is not so much the original design as a massive design change that was made without considering all of the fallout—a reoccurring issue with WvW. Perhaps they’ll revisit it and make it right. Perhaps it won’t take a year. Perhaps they’ll do a complete job too.

It’s too early to totally give up hope.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2nU8tZxoTQ

Where is this from?

I know it’s fake, but I get nervous when they mention WvW.

+1 for idea and humor

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted the services of such an NPC, but unless there’s some tech issues preventing it, it seems like a good QoL thing.

I’m not disputing what you’re saying. I know (now) that the ‘botting’ tag covers much more than just botting. What I’m trying to do is improve the clarity of the name, not change the function.

I checked that sticky before making this thread. It didn’t seem appropriate to post there, so I posted here.

I contacted them via support ticket and they said use the in-game report. I saw there was no relevant in-game report and went back to support tickets and they said to suggest a name-change on the forums. So here I am.

It’s fine if the category is broader than just botting, but since there are categories that are ostensibly used to filter reports, it would make sense for their names to somewhat accurately reflect their purpose.

If Anet wanted to boost catapult DPS, then this change isn’t a total loss.

If they meant to increase damage from afar without boosting catapult DPS in every situation, then they could either increase the charge time, decrease the bonus damage, or decrease the base damage.

I’m not asking for a nerf to catapult’s previous damage. Rather, I’m wondering why they were buffed and if the buff was actually intended.

I’ve spent the last two weeks going back and forth with support about how to report a player who is using multiple accounts to cheat a system without actually using bots. The final suggestion was that I report them for botting even if they weren’t.

Support

The category that you would use for the incident that you were describing would go under botting. This would count as executing a function for the purpose of staying active in the game while not getting removed from WvW.

One may note that botting is not necessary to fall under definition of ‘botting.’

To better convey that info, perhaps the report option could get a name change?

If I may direct you here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Details-on-Catapult-Changes/first#post6684059

You don’t have to charge the catapult at all to deal the same damage as before. If you do charge it to full on every shot, you’ll deal 25% more DPS than before.

There’s not much of an advantage to placing them further away. Just place them at minimum range and charge to full for a free damage increase.

If you fire at less than maximum charge, you still get a DPS increase over the previous maximum catapult DPS.

-Catapults deal the same damage with no charge as they did before.

-Catapult full charge time is 3 seconds.

-Catapults deal roughly 100% more damage when fully charged.

-The CD for throwing a rock is 5 seconds.

-Fully charging every shot results in a 25% dps increase.
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Those of you who are into math may have noticed that the new way to get maximum DPS out of a catapult is to charge it to full. The effect is as if you fired 2 shots in 8 seconds. Compare to tapping it twice, which takes 10 seconds. In an 80 second period, this means that full charge will deal 20 shots of damage whereas tapping will deal only 16 shots of damage.

What this means is that catapults have been flat-out buffed. You can still place them snugly against a wall for maximum defensive positioning and will enjoy higher DPS than before. You can also place them further away and enjoy the same or higher DPS as the old proxy catas.

Why did Anet make this change? I don’t know, though I’d love to find out. They already reduced wall health/toughness (on DBL and EBG only) in an earlier update. Perhaps they wanted to further increase the rate at which walls fall? It used to take about 2 minutes (123 seconds) to break into Hills inner assuming a 20-man zerg with 400 sup. Now it will take about 100s. Likewise, it used to take 4 minutes (258 seconds) to break into a side keep inner on DBL. Now, it will take 3 minutes (205 seconds).

If they meant to give players an incentive to assault from range instead of proxy, they screwed up. Players can retain all of the benefits of proxy catas with even higher DPS. On the other hand, since charging will always result in a DPS boost, assaulting from any range now results in faster wall destruction than the previous best case.

What I expected they were going to do with this change was decrease the tap dps and increase the charge dps and charge time. This would allow players to use proxy catas, but would keep their dps the same. It would be as simple as keeping their current damage formula and increasing the charge time to 5 seconds. At that point, catas would do the same damage as old proxy catas from all distances. It would still be a damage buff, but it would only buff the situations that players never bothered with.

The current implementation will result in the same, stale gameplay with even more heavily skewed risk/reward.

Catapults are responsible for a huge chunk of the problems with siege, so their removal does make the whole process feel better…but catapults are also the engine of choice for havoc since clearing gate guards can be problematic for solo/small-team groups.

I agree that it has become easier to defend, but it has also become harder to harass an enemy keep.

I want catas back asap, but I don’t miss proxy catas and the inexplicable shield bubbles.

While I agree, I think we ought to live with it for a while and see if it becomes less jarring. It’s info that needs to be conveyed.

I thought they were disabled because they were doing ~250% of their previous dmg without a charge and much more with it. I really hope that part wasn’t intended…

EBG and the BLs are very different games. That said, I don’t think EBG would work if there were multiples of it…there must be 3-way action at all times or the map falls apart.

It’s amazing how much a community will put up with as long as there’s hope. Red posts, even the off-topic or silly ones, make me feel hopeful.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

This is not intended. We’ll look into it.

This is like a dream come true~

Also, is this the best way to get your attention? I have a growing list of discrepancies and bugs that I’ve sort of given up on reporting or simply don’t have an avenue to report in the first place.

Been about 2 weeks~

I didn’t mean that in response to what you said. I just meant to give some info I thought was missing. Anyway, I agree with you.

That said, I’m not sure how they could deal with this specific situation in advance. No matter what the system is, there will be a way to abuse it—in WvW at least.

I don’t want to buy cancer drugs from the doc that gave me cancer.

Given how much we all enjoyed the bunker meta, this frightens me.

I’m assuming you didn’t like what HoT brought. If that’s the case—no, you won’t like the current state of WvW.

To give a better answer, I’d need more info on what things you feel are good or bad.

Kills in OS do not count for PPK.

Clearly, I’m not going to convince you, but your insistence that WvW is not PvP earned a double eyebrow raise. Kudos~

If this was happening in OS, I wouldn’t care. Do note that participation can’t be gained in OS, so it wouldn’t work there anyway.

In Tera Beta, I had a couple of battles with hundreds of players on each side. We fought at the city gates, on a bridge, in the river under the bridge, up a mountain path and in the courtyard of a mansion. That was all one fight, btw. I will always remember it for how epic it was, though there wasn’t really much point to it.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the game usually plays out. It was a great RvR moment, at least.

Firebaall.5127:

It’s simply not against the rules.

Do something within the game’s mechanics about it, if it rustles your jimmies to the degree that you feel you must post about it.

……which apparently it does.

I was quite curious about this. Sometimes, people say things are true without actually knowing, but I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.
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https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

While participating in Plaver-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder. This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith, a.k.a leeching.

Since there are two characters that are not participating, this behavior is a violation.

I’d definitely recommend the i5. It’s what I use and some larger battles have a noticeable FPS drop. It’s manageable, but I imagine a step down would not be.

Choppy.4183:

I don’t understand these sorts of posts when getting pips is so incredibly easy. I don’t understand why someone would run two accounts to farm pips for the exact same reason.

According to them, they play Diablo 3 at the same time.

They take a few camps to get T6 participation, then play D3 and check in every 10 minutes or so to stop decay. When necessary, they take another camp or kill some passersby to boost participation up again.

Nevaahe.6308:

I mean, as long as they are not playing both accounts at the exact same time, I don’t see how it is against the ToS. They aren’t really affecting much except a slot in queue, so I almost see no issue here.

They are playing both accounts at the same time. That seems like the least of the issues, though.

That’s pretty cool~ If it’s a consistent change, it should pump up the minimum camp flipping time so that swords at least flash before it’s gone.

What’s new about this?

1. ????
2. GW2 WVW
3. ESO
4. Planetside

I’m here precisely because no one else has bothered trying to do what Anet does. Or, perhaps, not even Anet has bothered trying. ESO has a limited scope with transient teams and very little to do outside of an organized group. Planetside has constant, large-scale teams but is also not very fun outside of an organized guild. Ironically, Guild Wars is the best option for playing guildless. I value a game with a low barrier to entry with fast-paced action and Things to be done. It also needs to have an easy way for a bunch of random people to come together and do big things.

So, perhaps by accident, Anet has easily nabbed the top of the existing crowd. When I’m not playing GW2, I’m not off playing some other RvR game. However, it doesn’t feel right calling them the best…

Malerian.8435:

Snitches get stitches lol. J/K I find it funny this is still a topic. They made this much harder to do now. Curious why you are so concerned about the few that are “breaking the rules”. I imagine if you focused more on what you would like to accomplish and less on what others are or are not doing, you would see more personal progress. Just a thought.

Fortunately, I’m not a thug, so I’m free to snitch all I want.

My personal progress is not impeded by the ~5 minutes a week I spent on this. It has provided plenty of amusement, though, for which I am most grateful.

So, I just checked in-game (took a while, but I haven’t really been logging in much). It turns out that there’s no option for reporting players for this in-game. In other words, the GMs that answered the support ticket didn’t know what they were talking about.

I’ve sent a follow-up ticket for clarification with a full list of the actual things players can be reported for.

I’m pretty sure I reported this over a month ago. I’m not sure why it happens, but I do wish someone would take a look at it.

Killing an enemy in the northernmost part of NWT on DBL doesn’t count for the defense even either—even if you’re inside the walls.

They did mention that the objective for the current territory will display on the UI somewhere. It’s unclear what that means, but if they’re referring to the objectives that already display when in an objective, it should be a small step to allowing participation gain at that distance.

Unlike 2012, you can get pretty much everything you need to play WvW in WvW now. You should also be able to make a bit of gold to buy things off the TP.

TC is also alive, last I checked. They’re not at their peak, but I don’t think anyone is.

Territories are the most interesting part of the update to me, but they didn’t get any emphasis from Anet. I don’t want to assume that anything will come of them if there are no plans.

Fluff (n) – Something inconsequential.

Let’s start with a clearer definition. Fluff in WvW is something that does not create a substantial change in how the game is played or why it is played. The Pips update does not count as fluff as it created a reasonable incentive for people to play WvW—even though not everyone was interested in what it offered. Some QoL updates such as floating score numbers should not count since they give information that was previously nigh inaccessible.
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The newest updates (gliding and armor upgrades) are mixed. Gliding is being sold as something that will not impact the game. Much work (map adjustments, territory, etc.) is being done to ensure that gliding will not change the game. Meanwhile, the armor upgrades may count as another incentive in the Pip/Ticket system, but they are a fairly minor change and are unlikely to cause many waves.
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Let me be clear in saying that these are not, on their face, bad updates. Gliding is something many people find cool. It has often been requested as a thing in WvW and Anet has delivered. They found a creative way for it to fit in without completely breaking the game. Cool. Meanwhile, introducing the stat-changing portion of legendary armor should satisfy those that want to change stats on the fly without grinding the more asinine parts of PvE. These are both good things.
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The problem is that they are not essential things. Fluff, like gliding and legendary backpacks, does a good job of getting people into WvW. It cannot keep them there. Players need to feel that the game is reasonably fair and they need avenues to do effective things no matter the circumstances. If that fails, the fluff loses its lustre. On the other hand, essential updates will not grab the attention of people that don’t already WvW. If Reaper’s Chill interactions matched PvP rather than PvE, no one who doesn’t already play WvW would really care.
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Thus, it is important to release a healthy balance of fluff and essential updates. Neither can create long-term revitalization alone. Fluff is good for population spikes, but population retention depends on essential updates.
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There is no need to rehash the essential updates here. Opinions on these are varied and heated. We would do well to note that some things, such as lag, are likely out of the hands of the WvW team. What we can all agree on is that some things need to be addressed or, at least, acknowledged. There is a disturbing trend where Anet seems not to notice indirect effects of their changes. A small, unordered, incomplete list follows.

1.) BL Imbalances: Currently, structures on ABL have more wall health than structures on DBL and EBG. Anet has not commented on this issue.

2.) Wall Hitbox Bug: Shortly after HoT, Anet mentioned that there is a bug that causes walls placed on a diagonal to have a larger-than-intended hitbox. This is very noticeable at NE inner Rampart, N inner Airkeep, S outer Hills and Jerrifer’s among others. Anet has not since commented so we don’t know if a fix is being worked on.

3.) Siege: This is a broad category with varying opinions. We could talk about decay timers, damage versus players, the accidental damage versus siege nerf (which Anet has not commented on), area covered, optimal siege placement, unreachable siege, etc. Anet has not made a comment on what they want siege to be in several years. There’s no discernible direction based on what we have now and it’s tough to tell the intended from the unexpected. The whole system could use a repass or at least a comment on whether this is something they’re going to do.

4.) SMC: With the advent of the new upgrade system, SMC reaches tier 3 in a fraction of the time it took before. It also tends to have plenty of supply on hand instead of being constantly vulnerable during the upgrade. This has had a significant impact on how EBG plays.

5.) Class Balance: This may not be the purview of the WvW team entirely, but there’s plenty of room for improvement that shouldn’t be a huge deal. It is small comfort that they are rumored to test changes in sPvP first given the stark failure of that game mode to produce an enjoyable experience. If nothing else, a clear announcement on how they plan to manage this would go a long way.

No. Not here. Go away.

edit:
To clarify, I think you make good points about the guild arena. However, this isn’t a WvW thing and will never be. There’s a lot of overlap between the players interested in these things, but you’ll have better success posting this elsewhere.

HatSimulator.9362:

People who play WvW almost exclusively like our guild and do GvGs and look for fights dont care about legendary armor or pips granting us less inventory space. All we want is server stability, fixes to siege dmg (like being able to stop a 25 man taking your tower with 3 arrow carts), new and better maps etc.

If your 25-man group can’t take a tower from 3 people, I have serious doubts about your viability as WvW players.

More to the point, I share this sentiment. These updates came out of left field. I don’t think that they’re necessarily bad, but they don’t address that which we need.

One begins to think that the problem isn’t a lack of effort by Anet, but a lack of understanding.