Guild Wars 2

I skipped my dailies yesterday and I woke up dead this morning.

RIP.

Merchant Of Shadows.1526:

Waiting for new content is very hard for me as I want everything RIGHT NOW.

Most people get over that phase when they’re above 10 years old or so.

Yet another whine about actually having to put some genuine effort in to actually earn an achievement/title. People want everything to be easy mode these days and get upset when faced with something remotely challenging which may require grouping up in an MMO or having to use one’s brain and adapt to complete.

nGumball.1283:

MMOs aren’t created to be so easy that they don’t even require you to try.

The problem is, most are. Including this one. Players are not used to the prospect of failure in video games these days. Hell, people are not used to the prospect of failure in life; kids these days are given “final runner-up” medals when they finish last at school sports races and whatnot to shield them from having to admit the prospect of failure. Everyone’s a winner in today’s society, and darned if you hint otherwise.

The world, and gaming in particular, has fully embraced this celebration of mediocrity to the point that people feel something is wrong with the game if they can’t “win.”

The simple fact is, a druid simply isn’t needed in large scale public zerg fights as any potential roles it fulfills are performed better by other classes.

In large scale zerg fights, it’s all about the boons, CC and AoE damage. Any class incapable of providing these things on a substantial scale isn’t really part of the large scale “meta”. Thieves aren’t “meta”, engi/scrappers aren’t “meta” and druids aren’t “meta” all for similar reasons: because they’re competing for spots in a group when any potential roles they fulfill are simply performed better by other classes, or other classes offer more by way of versatility.

Is it possible to play a “backline druid” without being completely dead weight? Sure. But you’ll probably be inherently contributing less than other, meta classes around you. Highlighting this is not a slight on the player personally; it’s just the way the class works even when played to its absolute fullest capacity when compared with other things. The singles you pick off with a longbow are either going to get rezzed or their loss is going to be inconsequential to the outcome of a fight anyway whereas the elementalist next to you who just downed 5+ people with a single meteor shower is pulling a lot more weight. The water fields you provide can be provided by elementalists just as well. The barrage you use on downed enemy groups would be a lot more effective if it were a lava font, meteor shower or necro wells.

You say “WvW is meant to be all-inclusive” but that’s an opinion and not fact. Commanders run their squads the way they want to and not all commanders and guilds have the same mindset when playing the game mode and as a player it is important to recognize that. Some commanders play “for fun” and let people run whatever they want. That’s great and all and maybe they’ll even win some fights if they outnumber their opponents or are fighting similarly disorganized militia groups. As soon as they come up against a highly organized group though they’ll likely be punished for playing suboptimally. Other commanders/guilds are only having “fun” when they’re winning fights, on the other hand, and treat WvW as a competitive PvP game mode. They will prioritize winning fights at any cost and by ensuring people are running meta classes with solid builds which are in synergy with their party and the rest of the group more broadly.

You’ll often notice a lot of the hardcore fights players with the latter mindset rarely, if ever, follow the “play whatever you want for fun” commanders; myself included. The reason for this is often that we recognize our approaches are completely different and our mindsets are often incompatible. We’d not have fun following such a group and the group wouldn’t have fun if such players became vocal and criticized their approaches or composition. The same should be expected to be true if you’re a casual player and you’re attempting to follow a more hardcore group. If you’re not willing to deal with the personal criticism that often comes with the territory or being told to switch classes for the wider benefit of the group overall and removed from the squad, you should simply stay away and follow the “for fun” commanders or form your own group and run it the way you want. You have no inherent right or entitlement to be in our squad or to play with us if you’re not willing to conform to the group’s approach and playstyle and you shouldn’t expect the commander and/or group to change their mindset purely to accommodate you, just as we don’t expect other commanders to change their approaches to accommodate us either.

As an aside, I define “team player” as someone who is versatile and willing to play whatever class would benefit the group most in any given situation. My main is obviously elementalist, but you’ll sometimes see me play guardian, necro, revenant or whatever else is needed by the group at the time despite me often having a lot less personal fun performing those roles. Ranger/Druid is actually my preferred 2nd/off-main which I use in sPvP a lot but rarely bring to WvW because I recognize its limitations. This is playing for the team. People who are rigid and almost militant in their class choices are not team players and are usually very undesirable to have around for almost any group. If you truly wish to be a team player, consider the needs of the team first and foremost and be flexible in your class selection and what role you play so you can, for example, hop on a guardian occasionally when the group is crying out for them, rather than staying fixed into playing longbow zerk druid come hell or high water. Only then will you gain respect as a player among more hardcore groups. If that’s too much for you, just stay away from us and continue playing how you want elsewhere because you’re not going to change our approach to WvW which we’ve held for 4 years just as we’re seemingly not going to change yours.

With love!
- Tiff

I wish it was just a 1 hour debuff or something which fell off after the time expired. Having this effect on for the entire day blows. It gets old fast, particularly in PvP environments like WvW. It’s not enabled in sPvP arenas and it shoulda been disabled in WvW too. It was pretty distracting whilst I was trying to command earlier.

Join the Jade Quarry hordes in our noble and benevolent crusade to eradicate the TC vermin from T1 in time for HoT, lest they wreck us all with 50 open-field shield generators guarding their ACs and ballistae.

Truly, we are doing the work of the six gods who shall guide us to glory and bags.

I’ll just keep it simple by saying actual WvW players are interested in fighting other players/groups without a myriad of gimmicks and nonsense. They want to pick a build, gear and skills for their class, learn how they work most effectively individually and how they synergize with their team, then use these against other people who have done the same. Commanders want to pit their forces, composition and tactics against enemy commanders, with the victory going to the commander and team who can outwit and/or outmaneuver their enemies and perform the best in combat. That is the most ideal scenario for an enjoyable fight, at least, and one people take the most pride in winning.

So where do the gimmick banners fit into that equation? The answer is that they don’t. There’s a reason the use of siege has generally always been frowned upon during open field fighting scenarios, and that’s because people enjoy fights in the manner I have outlined above, without OP gimmick spoiling the enjoyment of the engagement. Banners fit firmly into the “OP gimmicks” category, and I honestly fail to understand why such items were seriously considered for implementation as their use is directly contrary to what most WvW players would consider to be conducive to promoting a fun fights environment.

All it requires is the basic understanding of what many WvW players constitute as a decent, fun fight, which I outlined above, to realize why any fight aiding/manipulating gimmick, both present and future, are probably a bad move for the game mode.

Siege is fine and expected when assaulting/defending a structure, but not in the open field. Similarly, if banners have to exist, their use should be confined, in my opinion, to being used in the defense of the structure in which they’re slotted. They could give a nice advantage to the (probably outnumbered) defending force in a final “last stand” type of deal once the gate/walls have been breached. Allowing large groups to run around with these in the open field is ridiculous, however, and usually results in a a tit-for-tat escalation by the other force who then brings their own banners to the party. The net result is usually an unenjoyable fight for all concerned as the outcome comes down to who can cheese the most players down with their banners before the other. When it degenerates to this level, people then start logging off or doing other things because it’s simply not fun to deal with or participate in, win or lose.

- T1 Commander, Jade Quarry.

Cake.4920:

Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?

Why bother creating a flawed system when its probably less than 20 people across all servers who siege troll people? Just ban the people deliberately trolling when people send videos of them. It’s not hard.

^ This. Please listen.

Ban the tiny, tiny minority who are partaking in this now and set the precedent that it is an actionable offense and it will all but eradicate it forever. We do not need changes to the core mechanics of how siege and supply work.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, basically it’s a little like professional wrestling. ANet picks the winners and losers before the match, and you just play out your role.

Maybe they are intending to move away from eSports and trying to create their own genre of “eSports Entertainment”.

Merchant Of Shadows.1526:

Tiffany.8576:

Merchant Of Shadows.1526:

Waiting for new content is very hard for me as I want everything RIGHT NOW.

Most people get over that phase when they’re above 10 years old or so.

I appreciate your insulting me when I offer up my current opinion on the state of the game. I’m sure you’ll go far in life.

You’ve not really offered up any opinion. All you’ve posted is the rather childish cry of “I want, I want, I want and I can’t wait!” and “The game is stale for me.” Who cares? Go play something else if you feel you’re done with the game until the expansion or whatever. No-one’s forcing you to keep logging in. At the end of the day, it’s a game. If you’ve got nearly 3 years of enjoyment out of it up to this point for your original investment in the box price, I’d say you’ve had a pretty good deal compared with most other games out there.

We all know there’s an expansion coming out. That will solve the “staleness” factor in the interim, although pretty much all MMOs/games in general suffer with players consuming content way faster than developers can produce more of it. That’s just the nature of the beast. With MMOs, the community usually sustains people’s interests in the long term when the content does get rather stale until the next batch is released. People just have to be patient in between those periods and either find something they can still enjoy to do in the game with friends, or find something else to do entirely in another game or whatever.

What a joke. JQ has been getting double teamed in a co-ordinated manner every SEA/EU time for months. Not so fun when the boot is on the other foot? What a pity.

I’ll openly say I want TC to get focused out of the tier. Your siege humping is beyond ridiculous. Fighting TC is boring. It will be a great breath of fresh air should FA come up instead of you. Go play siege wars with YB. We actually want decent fights.

The people trying to justify this are missing a key point which I feel is an important one, and which Anet have already highlighted. There shouldn’t ever be a scenario where it is desirable to fail at completing an event objective and pit players looking to play the event as intended against players who are trying to manipulate it by failing. That is always and forever going to result in a situation where people get annoyed and insults fly around, which isn’t the desired way the GW2 community should develop.

I’ve farmed the Blix event myself, yet I am still able to acknowledge that the entire notion of intentionally failing something is ridiculous as a concept and undesirable for the aforementioned reason. It should be fixed and so should every occurrence where “failing” something is actually more beneficial than succeeding in future. Failure should mean failure. The goal should always be that everyone is working together to succeed at the objectives set. That’s when community harmony typically prevails and we get less of these toxic arguments and insults, and that’s how I like it.

Gotchaz.7865:

I don’t see how bringing the old maps would help. I’m on a T1 server and prior to HoT coming out the BL’s were a ghost town.

We’re on the same server. No they weren’t.

In a Utopian situation, this feature would be so good and one which would enhance gameplay immensely. In reality, however, this would suck so much and probably doubly so for females. No thanks. I’ll continue to enjoy picking and choosing who I converse with in private TS servers and accepting the no voice comms limitation which comes with solo queuing. Quite honestly you don’t even need voice comms if your situational/map awareness is good anyway.

I did it, but I also don’t see how much you can conclude from such a short survey. This seems lacking. I’m almost surprised this was signed off by your dissertation advisor.

The poll is flawed in the sense that the majority of people generally do not like the DBL at all. They think it’s a bad map for WvW play, even though it was improved slightly since its creation. The reasons why it’s bad from a WvW perspective are well documented and without wholesale changes to the map which would essentially change it into a completely new map entirely, it will never be fit for the purpose for which it is intended.

The issue with this poll is it creates a situation whereby the majority of people who dislike the DBL map, when not given an option for it to not be included entirely, will inevitably pick the option which involves the least amount of DBL possible. A lot of people, therefore, will not pick the rotation option as that would involve 3 months of play exclusively on the DBL map. This is the only reason why I picked the option for mixed BLs, with 2 ABL maps and 1 DBL map: because I want the least amount of DBL, whilst always having an ABL map to play on.

The problem with this is, I do not necessarily think mixing maps in the same matchup is a good idea. If you care about score and having at least the chance of a balanced match, it’s terrible actually. I can envisage the server who draws the DBL having a disadvantage as there’s less incentive for people to defend the towers, they take longer to get to and take back and probably less people (and commanders) on the server willing to port to the DBL and play there in the first place. This could work both ways though as the servers who get the ABL will probably be continually pressured on their home borderlands as there will be lots of people looking to play an ABL map, whilst there could be vastly fewer people pressuring the home BL of the server with the desert map simply because it’s an undesirable map to play for most.

So yeah. I don’t even agree with the option on the poll that I actually chose. I don’t care personally as I don’t care about the match score and play the game mostly for fights on the ABLs, so my choice is conducive to allowing me to have continued access to ABLs without having to wait 3 months. This might not be the healthiest option for the WvW game-mode taken as a whole, however, and it concerns me that this particular poll is so flawed in that sense.

Each and every one of them has their own situational uses which make them powerful when those situations crop up.

Ballis are a great counter to enemy siege.

It’s amusing. The other month people were up in arms because Mike O’Brien insinuated that very few people played the WvW game mode exclusively. Now when you ask where all the WvW players are, you’ll be told “they’re in PvE.” Guess he was right afterall.

John Corpening.9847:

Finally, regarding swinging ye olde banhammer, that’s an option but if we can make some reasonable adjustments that greatly reduces the need for that option it will really be the better way to go. I would very much like to steer clear of falling back to that option in this discussion.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
John

The problem is, you’re trying to brainstorm ideas about changing the system when the number of serious abusers worthy of action can probably be counted on two hands. We do not want a system which is has potential to impede everyone or add a greater potential for trolling. We just want the tiny minority of trolls removed from our environment because it sucks when it happens.

There is no system you could ever design that will address this which itself isn’t open to abuse or doesn’t seriously impede legitimate siege placers. It requires human judgment. I guess the best idea would be to allow players to vote on dismantling siege (and returning that supply to wherever it came from) but even that is open to abuse and voting on 20+ pieces of siege doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend time.

This whole problem needs to be kept in perspective. There have only been a tiny handful of instances where big scale siege trolling has caused a problem. If reports of these individuals were actioned, one of which has been involved in this type of conduct for multiple seasons, then I do believe we’d have no problem at all as a precedent set of removing these folks (either from the game entirely or just WvW) would be enough to discourage it. A case of an accidentally placed piece of siege is acceptable from time to time. When someone builds 10+ flame rams at a supply depot even after being asked not to do it though is just blatant abuse and they should be warned/banned from WvW as appropriate.

That’s my 2c anyway.

As I said elsewhere, XP is a 13 year old OS which isn’t even supported by Microsoft anymore. I wouldn’t even expect ANet to keep supporting it. It’s long past time to upgrade your systems if you wanna run modern software.

Please don’t ruin a decent map by trying to fix what isn’t currently broken. Thx.

I’ll kill people I come across. This isn’t “childish”, they’re in a PvP zone and they’re fair game. They could be scouting and/or killing yaks or sentries even if they are mostly there for vistas, etc.

GW2 is fine. This isn’t WoW, which is a good thing.

Endless gear treadmills suck and so do dungeons where it’s impossible to die even as a completely new player with no idea what’s going on.

I thought I was the only one who lost my mouse cursor from time to time in combat. Glad I’m not the only one, haha. Yeah, it does tend to blend in really, really well sometimes.

It was an awesome concept. Even just the concept of teams progressing to fight other teams who had also progressed whilst those who lost were kicked back to the lobby and had to begin from the start again was a good one. It created much more fun matches at the end of the scale against good teams due to the lesser teams having been eliminated previously in the tournament. The HoH matches themselves were almost always competitive for that reason, because the teams had proven themselves in order to get there to begin with. It was essentially a self-regulating matchmaking system which, by and large, worked well.

Even Random Arenas worked the same way. If you won with your random team, you would move on to the next match with your same team and the system tried to match you against teams who had a similar level of win streak, often causing fun matches as the best teams stayed together until they lost. I think winning 10 games in a row awarded a point towards a title track or something, if memory serves me correctly.

I think the concept of tournament-style progression would be an interesting idea to explore for a game mode anyway.

Wait… there are actually people who care whether they “win” or “lose” in EoTM? Wow.

Just hop into real WvW (Eternal Battlegrounds or the Borderlands) and fight for your server. You’ll find lots of people who care there and a relatively balanced matchup, being T1. EoTM isn’t considered important or relevant by WvWers because, well, it isn’t. It’s just a champion farm/ktrain where people go to level their alts.

I resent the fact that EoTM access is provided on the WvW panel. I wonder how many new players decide to try out WvW and stumble into EoTM as their first experience of the game mode and form their opinions on WvW based on their experience there.

Gotta be honest, I never saw the fascination with raising some arbitrary figure in a database which is meaningless. The whole concept of “AP hunting” seems quite strange to me. I play the content I enjoy for fun. The rest I don’t. Doing stuff you don’t enjoy just to increase some number or getting obsessed with logging in daily just to get +1 point etc. is just… odd. Why turn the game into a chore/job? lol.

My advice is just to forget about your AP, focus on playing the content you enjoy, ignoring the stuff you don’t and only logging in when you feel like it. You’ll probably get more enjoyment in the long run and won’t get burned out doing pointless stuff for a few extra, meaningless points or getting angry at ANet for adding some stupid achievement which takes ages and gives AP. If you find it a grind or don’t want to do it because it’s not enjoyable, just don’t do it. Just go do something you will enjoy or have fun doing. Games are meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun yet feel the need to obsess over grinding out some “achievement” for a few extra AP anyway, you’re doing something wrong imo.

See, I knew this would happen. Rather than just dealing with the tiny minority of people who perpetuate abuse by handing out bans (trust me, only a few bans would be enough to make people think this wasn’t so cool anymore), we’re gonna end up with a convoluted system which penalizes everyone and makes it a lot more annoying to legitimately siege up our towers and keeps.

gg.

This is this guy’s first post in the WvW forum.

GG.

I’d roll a skritt. And I’d pay gems for the privilege. Just sayin’…

With the addition of the Minstrel’s amulet, I found bunker guardians to be in a good place as the extra vitality felt necessary for them to deal with the power creep. I was pleased to see an “old school” spec still being kept relevant and assumed that’s one of the reasons they added the Minstrel’s ammy to begin with.

With that amulet removed, this is unfortunately no longer the case. I concede the amulet was OP when used by rangers, but the classic bunker guard still felt balanced. I have not tried to play bunker guard w/ the cleric’s amulet in this meta, but Firebird’s assessment of its non-viability seems accurate with all the extra damage/on-point cleave.

I’d really like the balance situation of the bunker guardian to be looked at in coming balance patches, specifically their 13k HP pool w/ the cleric’s option.

It’s a shame there seems to be quite a lot of animosity between the guild mentalities of PPT focused and GvG/fights focused guilds. Thankfully this isn’t really the case on YB and that’s half the reason they were propelled to T2 to begin with.

YB has a solid PPT-focused core which knows it can rely on calling our open field guilds for help defending/assaulting a structure if the need arises. Speaking for us, we’re more than happy to help out in those cases because those situations naturally cause fights to occur in the vicinity. If we’re called to defend, you will see us immediately push out and challenge whoever is attacking in the open. If we’re called to attack, feel free to hop off your siege and engage us in the same way. Our presence is an open invitation to whoever wants to fight at that time!

The two mentalities can co-exist together and they largely do on YB, which makes for a non-toxic, collaborative community where the PPTers get their tick wins and we get our baggies. Trying to create a divide between the two disciplines or pretend one is more important than the other can only be detrimental in the long run. YB recognizes it needs the PPT sustain to stay in the tier and our open field guilds will work to support our PPT core to achieve that, whilst having fun with the diverse fights those activities naturally encourage (seeing how we do fighting under enemy siege coverage, fighting heavily outmanned, etc.)

Furthermore, today’s PPTers are often tomorrow’s open field fighters and even drivers. Speaking personally, when I first got into WvW, I was focused on the score because that was the driving force between winning and losing. I wanted to win (who doesn’t, right?) so focused heavily on PPT. As I got more involved in the format and more involved in organized groups engaging in epic, coordinated battles I saw how fun the fights were and my mentality shifted from being score focused to improving my play in combat situations to be more effective. Fights and scrims are now the primary reason I play the format.

As a guild, we recognize the latter point. As a result, we will tag up and encourage pugs to play with us and join us on TS sometimes to train their open-field fighting skills with a view boosting the server’s open field core more widely. We also occasionally have commander training days where we allow people who don’t normally command drive for us if they want to learn and talk about ways to improve and give tips whilst this happens. All of this, again, is looking to contribute positively to the entire server’s community by hopefully bolstering our fights core and helping to train tomorrow’s drivers for that focus.

I think more people should recognize the two mentalities have to live in harmony for continued success in both areas and each could learn something from the other. I personally think YB is the server who understands this most which, in my eyes, makes them a server most likely to be a long term, stable T2 resident which seems to be working great for all involved right now.

You have just discovered one of the multitude of reasons why most PvPers, I’d guess, have auto-targeting off.

I agree, the Shatterstone buff is ridiculous. Needs a nerfin’.

Must have burned through a hell of a lot of catas today to get back their 1/3.

I was hoping for a better match too, especially considering all the talk of a push by CD for gold to begin with.

Oh well. Hope we get some fun matches and fights in the tournament. See y’all in the field.

I am predominantly a WvW player. Try doing nothing other than that for a month several hours a day. You’ll know what being unrewarded feels like.

I think you’re looking for the EoTM portal, sir.

Hello there!

I’m from the YB side and I can say that a lot of us are enjoying this match equally as much. There’s been some fun fights involving both SoS and FA. Tier 2 seems to be a great place to be if our first match in this tier is anything to go by. =)

Thanks to everyone involved. Keep bringing the fun (and bags :o hehe.)

I’d rather not remove the only thing that makes server choice relevant now. I agree server identity and individual WvW communities are important to preserve. Most of what killed other games for me was the incessant need to ‘merge’ zones and remove the very concept of an individual server community in the process. Doing so literally tore down server communities overnight in other games and it sucked.

Narkodx.1472:

3. I knew this update for commander colors was going to be a joke

In proper WvW, it’s great actually.

Baldrick.8967:

Tiffany.8576:

Baldrick.8967:

Who cares? If Anet cared, they would just disable loot drops from players in OS (which would probably kill off what’s left of the gvg scene).

What? You think people GvG for loot? lol…

Did I say it was gvgs doing it? This isn’t gvgs, this is loot and kill faming- but killing off all loot in OS would be the fastest fix to the problem which would also make what’s left of the gvg scene even smaller.

You said it would kill the GvG scene if they disabled loot. That’s just absolute nonsense. No GvGers care about loot in OS. Disabling loot wouldn’t make a lick of difference to GvGers.

Furthermore, you should be thankful to the people who prevented you killing the grub for they were merely preventing you from sinning by breaking the 21st WvW Holy Commandment:

21) Thou shall not kill the holy grub.

jheryn.8390:

Tiffany.8576:

The Stone Summit would disagree that there are no mounts in GW lore:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Dolyak_Master.jpg

1. They are not player characters.
2. Stone Summit are gone.
3. Wrong Guild Wars game.

lol, lore doesn’t have to just apply to player characters to make it credible and GW2 is set after GW, inheriting much of the original game’s history in lore terms so the game is irrelevant too.

My point is, it wouldn’t be a ridiculous notion in the world of Tyria that people started using mounts as many are trying to suggest. It’s already happened with Dolyaks as I’ve shown, albeit admittedly in a limited scenario.

The Fastcar dude is a known troll on YB and no-one takes him seriously. He’s widely known to post on alt accounts/have shill accounts post threads like this purely to get people talking about him or his guild of, like, 3 people. He then “brags” about how good he is and how many people are complaining/talking about him when in reality it’s just him talking about himself or shill accounts as no-one else cares since he’s irrelevant. He must be really insecure or something, lol. He makes up all kinds of nonsense. Most people on YB just laugh/pity him as he’s been doing this for years.

The OP is yet another alt/shill account as someone said earlier. His earlier posting history is pretty much comprised of the same nonsense from a year back:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Shonuff-2354/showposts

-yawn-

This behavior isn’t even amusing on a troll level. It’s just bizarre and sad, tbh.

Congratulations. You’ve just figured out why no decent player would use A and D to turn their characters and why no decent player would click their skills, all at once.

Just watched Match 1. Some random observations:

At the start of the game you blast the lightning field with Acid Bomb. That’s good, although this is the first and only time you use Acid Bomb in the whole game. You should be making more use of this skill by deploying it on points during team fights for extra cleave, on downed enemies etc. You can also use it to blast the water field from your Healing Turret for additional healing. Additionally, you can deploy/blast your Healing Turret in the lightning field at the beginning of the game for extra swiftness in addition to the Acid Bomb.

Speaking of healing, you could be getting a lot more value from your Healing Turret if you made better use of the combos available to you. After deploying the water field, you should be using hammer 3 to leap through it for additional heals or the aforementioned Acid Bomb. I don’t think I ever saw you utilize a combo in a water field and this is key to an engi’s high sustain when pressured. Definitely something to learn/work on. Your F1 skill is also a water field which can be used for combos.

The guardian on your team makes some interesting rotations. Gets home decapped by rotating from home -> roads for no real reason, then moves to mid to 5-man it whilst side capped. The mesmer pulls off to deal with close while you sustain mid and get kills at around the 4 minute mark. Your team is in a reasonably good position at this point.

You lose the team fight at mid by 5:30, but your guardian fully capped far and your revenant got the beast steal at home from the necro. It is important to note that you are 4v5 at this point on the map, as your druid disconnected at around 5:25 and took a minute and a half to get back into the game.

You kind of threw after losing the team fight at mid as you rotated, for some reason, from the losing fight at mid to the close neutral area to 1v2 the necro. Rotating to far to +1 your guardian may have been a much better option here, as it was your point and very likely the enemy team would come to plus him from the fight they won at mid. As it stands, he unfortunately lost the 1v1 to the enemy revenant quite quickly anyway but if you were there you could have killed the rev and kept control of far, or sustained the team fight on that node if rotations came in. Your revenant could have disengaged from the necro back to home and your mesmer was on respawn, who could have took the home defense with the revenant if need be. Even assuming doing what you did and rotating towards home was a reasonable call at the time, losing home node whilst you took a pointless and lengthy 1v2 off-node was quite costly.

The game was certainly not over by this point and your disconnected druid got back into the game at around 6:45. You both rotate to home briefly to full cap the point (poor map awareness on your part as you should have seen the druid coming from spawn to do exactly this) and your guardian gets a far decap. He is going to have incoming though as the enemy players who ganked your memser in the roads (the rev and the druid) rotate to defend far. Instead of you rotating to far and taking the 2v2 on a neutral node, you chose to rotate to mid and take the 2v2 on an enemy capped point. Your guardian dies 1v2 and it takes you an eternity to decap mid, then you eventually lose the team fight there.

Meanwhile the guardian off respawn gets another far decap, then attempts to steal the far beast from the necro. He unfortunately fails to get the steal and is left in an unfavorable 1v1 with the enemy necro at the beast area, with the far point being neutral. At this point in time you’re tunnel visioning on pointless fights in the roads below mid. The enemy team is 35 points up and in your mind you should be thinking about what plays you can personally make to win the game. Far is still decapped by this stage and the winning play here is to try and force the 2-cap by going to full cap far, or at least taking the team fight there and hopefully winning it. The guardian could have brought his awkward 1v1 back to the node, or you could have got the gank on the necro then 1v2’d the enemy who rotated into the far node and then fully capped the point. At this point in the game, you would have still won on a 2-cap without needing additional points from kills or beasts.

Instead, you waste time in the pointless roads fight, waste further time by briefly moving towards mid then chose probably the absolute worst option available to you by randomly deciding to 1v2 the close beast which is of zero value to your team whatsoever at this stage whilst the guardian dies to the necro and far gets fully capped by the enemy, taking away your only chance to win the game. The rest of your team continue tunnel visioning on mid and losing the fights. The game is over at this point.

The close nature of the score should tell you that this match was certainly winnable and you could have made the difference necessary to get the W, but missed several opportunities to potentially do so. You may have still lost the game anyway due to situations on the map outside of your control, of course, but you should strive to always play to win and make plays that put your team in the best possible situations. You definitely missed several chances to do so in this match and looking over your gameplay and identifying these potential situations then applying them in future games could certainly help improve your ability to do so.

Only briefly watched match 2, but it’s more of the same. Poor use of healing combos, tunnel visioning on the mid point when it’s an unfavorable fight (especially on Foefire where it’s incredibly difficult to decap mid if they have bunkers there) and pushing far would make more sense, staying in fights where you’re outnumbering enemy elementalists on your capped nodes allowing them to waste your time, etc. All these you should work on.

Good luck.

I find it strange that people could forget to pick up their tickets, tbh. On my server at least, I saw numerous reminders from folks in map chat about collecting their tickets. Then people in my guild reminded us constantly in guild chat. Then, to top it off, people on TeamSpeak reminded people a lot too. I would say if you were a genuine WvW participant, it would be next to impossible to forget them at least on YB. Even if you weren’t, it was clearly stated in the mail anyway that you had to pick them up. You can take a horse to water, but can’t force it to drink I guess. You had more than a few days to collect them. You had the entirety of the week’s match, from one reset period to the next. That’s a lot of time.

I’m not saying you’re one of them, but the users most likely to lose their tickets here are people who aren’t genuine WvW players who likely hopped into EoTM for 5 minutes to get their achievement meta and expecting to claim their rewards off the back of the people actually putting a hell of a lot of time into the seasons. Excuse me if I’m not entirely sympathetic in those cases if they forgot to pick up their tickets. =P

The link for Yak’s Bend is incorrect. The community site is: http://yaks-bend.com