Guild Wars 2

Korda.3928:

theres a PoF sale on cdkey .com , its 26$…
is that legal, i dont get it

If you have to question the legitimacy of the vendor, then its better to just outright avoid it. Get it from someplace like gamestop, large retailer, amazon, steam, etc. That way, if you do purchase a bad copy, you will at least have some recourse and possibly get your account back if its banned.

Kahrgan.7401:

Dot’s should never be bursty. The damage should be spread overtime, 2 ticks shouldn’t kill you, and if it does, it needs to be fixed.

Burn damage scaling needs to be reduced by 20-30%

Poison traits need to be switched to bleed traits, as poison already has an effect of reduced healing. It does not make sense for poison to be able to tick for 3k + an additional effect.

IMHO entire game is too spammy and DPS based limiting tactical and counterplay. Too many builds can 1 combo (nearly 1 shot) others. This is what needs to change, across the board.

The lack of more tank / support / heal style build variety is what has led so many players to ditch this game mode. Not saying its the only thing, but it is a very large contribution to it.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

How often are they evaluated? I’ve been trying to transfer for weeks now and nothing is working

I feel like the only server that should be truly ranked full, is BG. Everything else should be open.

loki.7928:

Hey fellow WvWers

I’m looking for my perfect WvW/Zerg Class..

What do i like?
Sword and Shield!!!!! I just love it so much. It needs atleast have Sword and shield in the spec.
Support I just love to support my Guild with Buffs(Heals is a cherry on top for me).
Heavy Armor is a small plus but not a must.

A ranged weapon/spec for World bosses/fractal is plus(doesn’t need to be support).

Its doesn’t need to be a PoF elite spec. A Core or HoT spec is fine by me.

Atm i’m kinda torn between Support Herald and a Chronomancer. I didn’t Really got the time to try and test the Firebrand. But that might be a pick to.

Hi

Just FYI, if you go full support on rev, avoid shield because it roots you and causes you to die, be constantly out of position whenever you use it. Also ventari / herald is a truly great support build, but requires a lot of healing power and outgoing healing effectiveness stats (around 1400ish minimum).

If you enjoy sword and shield, I recommend guardian and warrior. Sword + shield spellbreakers (warriors) will be pretty good in upcoming expansion. And current mace / shield guards are good also. You can swap the mace on guard for more offence and less defense and go a bit more hybrid if you like.

DeWolfe.2174:

All that really needs to happen is the WvW community has to come together to hit BG hard. Once it becomes an unpleasant experience, the fair-weathers will slow down and some will transfer off. It’s simply too easy and that’s what perpetuates the population.

Nope. Last time that happened they bailed to EOTM for a month or so to the point where BG became open again and it got even worse. This might work, but only if BG is perma closed, permamently and unlike rest of WVW, has their EOTM and PVE populations counted towards population, so its not as easily manipulated.

Yuffi.2430:

Blackgate has been a very successful WvW server for a number of years now, and dominates NA T1. Unfortunately this domination is leading other servers to artificially adjust their play in order to drop out of T1 or to avoid going up into T1. Players are choosing to do this in order to have a better gaming experience – they are not happy with the current situation. This “race to the bottom” is not good for the game or the majority players, and it is time to do something about it.

Breaking the domination by a single, popular, well populated and coordinated server requires intervention by Anet, and will result in a big change for that server. However painful this may be, it needs to be done for the benefit of the majority of players on the other servers.

I can’t imagine that Blackgate players will be happy with this idea, and I completely understand any desire to see their successful server continue as it is. However all good things must come to an end, and there is precedent for Anet to intervene for the good of the game: linking was introduced to solve a WvW population problem, it was done for the benefit of the majority of players despite the protests of many people who were to be linked. When all the dust has settled, and despite the issues linking still has, the population spread is better than it was and WvW is better for it.

It’s time for Anet to step up to the plate again.

The one thing that is certain is that what is happening is not good for WvW and we can’t rely on players themselves to sort this out. We need Anet’s help; the question is what should they do?

Here’s a possible solution:

• Announce that Blackgate will be closed in 2 months, and give players time to transfer to any open server of their own choice.
• After the 2 months, close Blackgate. Promote the strongest linked server to host. Create a new linked server with a new name. Reduce the FULL status cap on all WvW servers to a fair level (perhaps 1/24th the total active WvW population) to stop any single server having dominant numbers.
• Require any players who have not transferred from Blackgate to join an open server. The new link server will help with providing places.

This process would redistribute the Blackgate players across a number of other servers, and the lower full server population should ensure no single server achieves the same domination through numbers, because a host + link could have more players, and with Anet controlling the linking of servers any domination by a combination would only last until the next relink.

I’m sure Anet would be interested to read other constructive solutions too.

It is true. BG is in its own tier. Their coverage is insane. In the past 2 weeks I think out of all the times I have seen BG pop EWP and not port entire map que through it is maybe 1-2.

None of the servers they are facing (including my own currently) want to stay in T1 longterm. Only now and then for novelty of actually seeing / fighting such stupendous blobs.

Unfortunately, I really don’t see any solution to this whatsoever except break up BG to bring it to the level of other servers, and that won’t happen due to a wide plethora of reasons.

For sustain, Ventari revs will also be very good. Their heals are powerful, consistant, don’t rely on boons (traits pending) thus limiting corruption liability, fast and easy to execute no water fields + finishers required, and some of them can be executed while stunned or disabled.

Both flavors, power and condi are going to be OK. The power heals are more powerful and overall more support focused while the condi is more of a hybrid.

Ryouzanpaku.1273:

So during the yesterday’s stress test I have tried my best to test Mirage in open world… and results are quite underwhelming. To me it is like adding Mirage to basic Mesmer is actually downgrade in many ways:

- Mirage cloak:
— loss of movement is TERRIBLE – I was getting hit by AoE’s all the time while on any other class I would be simply outside of the AoE thanks to normal dodge
— combine this with root while using scepter ambush (probably only ambush which is usable now) and result is terribad
— overall Mirage cloak is offensive tool and loss of dodge movement is crippling in aoe heavy environment
— fix would be easy – just add instant blink to Mirage cloak with dodge range – then Mirage Cloak will be purely advantageous compared to normal dodge

-Ambush skills
— not worth of using in most cases (except for scepter where the root while casting is terrible too)
- ambush window is way to short – some of the autoattack chains are actually longer (GS)

-Mirrors
— was not able to use them to any real advantage – may be L2P issue

Overall:
– I had no problem playing open PvE – but it is no achievement as one handed monkey can do so with every class
- playing Mirage felt very clunky, there was no real flow felt
- I pretty much completely ignored shatter mechanic as it contradicts with Mirage heavily

Well yeah… I am depressed as I do not think I will be able to play my favorite class…. at least new map is gorgeous so I will enjoy it with some other toon.

When the beta weekend was here I gave mirage a whirl in WVW and utterly hated it for the exact reasons you stated.

Lack of movement on dodge limits playability, can’t double dodge through chokes or through opponents, etc. Causes mispositioning.

The mirrors were completely useless. More often then not they would appear in middle of AOE fields where I was completely unable to get them cause insta death. This is FAR FAR FAR FAR worse then clones / phanatsms dying in zergs.

When you put the 2 together, mirrors in enemy AOE fields that insta kill + lack of mobility on dodge, its just screwed. Completely, totally and utterly.

I will absolutely not be playing a mirage in its current iteration until these 2 issues are solved, or not ever if they aren’t. Its way, way better to just stay with chrono.

And on top of that, axe felt extremely underwhelming. Also nearly a useless weapon due to enemy mobility and its range (or rather lack thereof).

So from my perspective, thumbs down for mirage.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You don’t use all 6 Trapper runes, just the first two. The 4 and 6 piece bonuses are worthless for Necros.

When people say “Nightmare/Trapper” they mean 4 Nightmare Runes and 2 Trapper runes so you net +30% Condition duration.

Meh, sounds useful for PVE boss fights, but outside of that its a waste.

You ceirtainly don’t need anywhere even near 100% duration in WVW on anything other then your main DPS condi due to insane cleansing. Even on the DPS one, its only useful if not doing group stuff.

In PvE dinky and small mobs die faster then you get full stacks of everything on them anyways, again, full duration = waste.

In SPVP, I don’t know since I abandoned it after it got boring when A-Net made everything DPS only.

So whats the point of 4x nightmare + 2 trapper ? I’d rather take something that gives either extra stacks or even extra condi, or even stacks some power on top of condi. yea it will do less on things like raid bosses and golems and on paper, but its practical application throughout vast majority of the game far outweighs that.

Incidentally, just out of curiosity, does anyone know if the 7% bonus from Superior Rune of Flame Legion applies to power portion of DPS only or does it also apply to condi damage dealt ?

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

when you play in full zerker, it is extremly risky in wvw, and it should be highly rewarding as well if you can avoid death by using superior skill.

In most instances, power + Prec + ferocity does reward skillful play with quick kills, especially against those who don’t stack vitality or toughness.

However when someone with full zerk stats comes up against anyone with Vit + Tough builds, the damage mitigation is to hi. Zerk damage against someone with full Sentinel stats is mitigated by about 1/5th. Since these builds are basically polar opposites of one another you would think the mitigation would be 1/2 right in the middle, but instead its mitigated by way too much.

Builds that use Vit + Tough are overpowered in that they can still take an additional stat and be effective like condi or Power. Either Zerker needs a buff (power/prec/feroc) or vit/tough stats need a nerf.

playing a risky squishy build, should be handsomely rewarded as it requires the most skill, and instead it is often outperformed by someone playing a tanky class who makes a ton of mistakes and spams the 1 skill.

I disagree with you completely. I play all classes, albeit, some of them just to know their skills / builds due to time limitations. I also play all flavors, full (glass) DPS, full tank, full sustain, condi, and some inbetween hybrids as well.

And I can tell you, you got it exactly backwards. There are some really kittenetly OP zerker builds for WVW. Hammer Revs, thieves and chronos to start off with. Druids and warriors are not bad either.

If you are running a zerker build and you failed to down your opponent, if glass in 1 combo, if tank in 2 combos, then that is entirely 100% on you, not the game. If you let them put up protection, block, gyro or whatever else mitigation they have, or you continued your combo while they popped it, or simply picked a wrong spot and they got LOS on your attack, which I see soooooooo often, these things are all 100% on you and your personal L2P issues.

IMHO its the exact opposite. Bunker builds LACK sustainability right now and I hope the next expansion metas move towards more of it. I want more tactical combat where people can actually think about and use their skills and different combo, where there is actual counterplay.

I am vastly against 1 or 2 shotting ( or comboing) people, against perma CC, against passive skill procs, etc. Basically anything that shortens the combat (in which you currently can get one shot or 1 comboed) and limits active counterplay I want to see gone.

There are good reasons why SPVP lost so many players and the rest of it deteriorated when A-Net removed the amulets, don’t take my word for it, go check out their forum. And I absolutely do not want that for WVW.

Haziq.3907:

I see a lot of Trailblazer users but does the extra condition duration pay off given the amount of cleanses in large scale fights ? + Dire is a lot cheaper..

I am only interested in large scale zerg vs zerg

Ideally you want a mix of both. Throw in there some viper / sinister as well, and for upcoming scourge, might think about some shaman, apothecary or seraph or other stat sets with condi + healing on them.

There will be plenty of times where running full dire / tb is a complete and total waste, and there will be sometimes where you will wish you had a bit more survivability, thats when you switch a few pieces of gear.

ArchonWing.9480:

So bag slots were on sale and I have an extra one to put on one of these characters. I have not looked into the new elite specs beyond holosmith at all, and I was wondering which one looked more promising? And yes I have them at level 80 and I currently find both around the same in personal preferences to play.

Currently, I use herald for zerging and DD for small scale/scouting, and that’s so dull I didn’t really have to bring it up. Though I hear Revs are going to be obsolete because of other classes’s power creep?

Or neither, and you think something else is better? I already have max slots on guard/ele/engi so those need not apply.

And yes I realize nerfs make everything speculation, but I ask more towards your idea towards the concept of these elites and how fun they are to play/use.

I’d go with the rev for a simple reason. You will do much more solo / small stuff on thief where bags will fill out a lot slower, whereas much more group stuff on rev, where bags will fill out much faster. Therefore it makes more sense to add more bagspace on the rev.

Rangerdeity.5847:

Its easier to use and has more features including proper role/permissions management. Why is everyone still using ts3? i mean i know it still works and its not terrible but honestly how long would it take for servers to take the free upgrade?

For me I still vastly prefer TS over discord, primarily for 2 reasons.

1. As stated above: CComs – extremely important and main feature not present in discord.

2. Discord is new and lacks full range of protocol support as well as often has issues running with various security features. Even default Win 10 firewall will often block its updates on anything other then crappy settings. It has serious difficulties running on some of the best VPNs as well as using encryption, etc. to the point where it just won’t run at all.

The 2nd reason is far more important then the 1st. I understand many of you do not care for security, but many people do, and disabling it, or parts of it to run a gaming chat app is not an option.

My choices of primary sets are:

For condi – scepter + torch
For power or celestial – axe + warhorn

2nd set can be whatever you like, obviously staff is nice in many situations but you can go with whatever you feel like playing.

Now that the OP mentioned it, there could be a bug.

Last weekend I noticed this as well several times, though not particular to daze, I did not see daze icon, I had stab on and it was not stripped, the icon was still there, yet my toon felt as if it was stunned. Basically rooted in place and unable to use any abilities / skills, while I still had stab on.

Its entirely possible that there were some “under the hood” changes made to base mechanics in part of preperations for the expansion and how stab interacts with new incoming skills / abilities and stuff may not work properly. There could be several bugs at play seperate or even together:

1. Perhaps the stab icon is bugged and does not disappear like its supposed to when stripped.
2. Server lag or server not properly receiving / registering stab vs some skills or under ceirtain conditions, you still have stab client side but not server side, server side overrides client side.
3. CC abilities bugged. Stab will not work under ceirtain conditions vs CC abilities as its supposed to due to new changes, or lack thereof.

etc. etc. There could be many things affecting this and happening. Bummer I didn’t think of it sooner, I’d have checked my log and taken some screenies of it but was too excited to play new specs and dismissed it as weird stuff due to server lag.

Frostball.9108:

By this i do not want to imply that the design of the spec is good. They kittened up with the design of some traits and skills, some of them blow. Thats a fair argument and something that probably should be addressed when some of the traits are just flat out unplayable.

What i want to put forward is that mirage is far from underpowered and something id argue to be at least one of the best specializations for now. Mirage definitely doesnt need an all around buff but rather a new look at some of the skills and traits that are underpowered and flawed.

Im not going to go into how some traits like stunbreak on dodge should not exist. They will always come up anyways but to give some perspective, its like daredevil dodge on steroids.

With exception of stunbreak trait I found it to be quite underwhelming and bad in design and play.

its ok in 1 v 1 scenarios and small useless dinky stuff but thats about it. try anything more serious and falls flat on its face, mainly for 2 reasons:

1. Axe is pretty horrible. Too limited by range and clunky mechanics. I can see its uses on constrained areas, like maybe spvp cap points, or slow or immobile targets that don’t move around or dodge / evade so that they stay within the range of the axe. But like I said, useless in anything more serious, only good for dinky crap.

2. Mirrors are unusable as they require you to get to them and most of the times they pop in hotzones that you have to go around and avoid not get into them to get the mirror because that causes you to automatically die in about 0.05 seconds or waste your good defensive CDs to get to a mirror so that you don’t down doing it. So the mirrors are entirely useless.

Flumek.9043:

Hello.

So far I am heavily dissapointed with this trait / mechanic. Why does it even say it counts as 3x shades?

• The only real benefit is lower cooldown, which HAS TO be comboed with another summon trait to take advantage off.

• No triple damage or triple ammount of barrier/cleanses (dmg op, but for barriers I wouldnt mind healing 5k per 10s) … I know its for minor traits – but a better uptime is not a GM worthy mechanic changer

• 3shade + you hits 15+5 poeple…. big shade + you hits 10+5

• its a bit easier to hit…(IF youre invested in the summon proc) … waow

IDEAS:

• Id take a small BUT STRONKer shade aka “ventari tablet”. 3x cleanse and 5k barier, small but movable…. for damage it would also be ok if only the summon trait procced 3x corupts

Hi, I tried out several builds running 3 small and 1 big shade respectively. So this is my take on it that will hopefully answer that question.

Casting and specifically even moreso re-casting 3 shades is clunky in fast paced high mobility combat combat. This is where 1 shade comes in. But there is a huge downside to using it on condi builds. It takes out a huge chunk of DPS because now your torments no longer burn.

I found the single big shade absolutely ideal suited to running heal / support / power based builds. It actually lets you do bigger heals / barriers if you are healing power based, as well as more damage due to not having to take time to re-cast the small shades if you are power based.

It does suck for condi though, as the DPS loss is too much and puts it well below what you end up doing with small shades traited for burns on torment, thus not having the big shade.

I would vastly prefer to run the big shade because I think the 3 shades is too clunky, but I prefer condi DPS due to all the corrupts corrupting boons into torment + cripple, and with burns on torment the DPS loss from traiting big shade is self explanatory.

I think that is actually working as intended balance wise, make condi powerful but difficult to apply cause of shade recasts, while heals / barriers etc. easier to apply, but not sure, would need actual a-net response to confirm.

Hope that helps

The 3 shades are just too clunky to use. Shade casting / recasting takes so much time it significantly reduces any of those DPS or support gains the spec has because you can’t use them in fast paced organized combat because you are casting / recasting shades.

the single shade trait eliminates vast part of the dps. while picking it up opens up a bit better support, its still quite clunky. its just too slow and limiting.

i do like the torch as it is now, that is a nice offhand.

on the roaming / small scale side, it does better, especially in hybrid builds.

i have 3k armor, 24k+ hp and got insta gibbed by 1 backstab + 1 heartseeker from a deadeye (just cause they’re deadeyes doesn’t mean they have to wield rifles) just before i logged and came to check the forums. how effective is having a barrier when you don’t even get to cast it ? forget about if its big / small, you don’t even get to use it.

so how does scourge compare to that ?

After having a bit of time to mess around with it, I am going to try out a celestial build, with the 1 big shade traited instead of the small ones to reduce having to cast them so much since having to recast shades all the time seems to be the crutch of the spec, and if you go single shade and have to ditch burn on torment for it it automatically reduces your condi DPS by huge amounts.

it will also not be condi focused, it will still do ok condi damage, but it will be an all-around kinda toon.

the condi bomb part of firebrand is greatly dissapointing to me, especially axe.

the tomes + mantras when traited though are great. i see a ton of uses for them in organized group play. but it is weak in 1v1 or small scale.

firebrand is well worth taking over guard / DH just for additional cleanses and more stab + group stunbreaks. definetly not for DPS though.

damage wise, while it looks good on paper and in theory, it may be good on DPS testing golems or PVE targets that do not move much, it is worthless when going up against any high mobility target, including all pvp / wvw and some pve.

So far, after playing it for a bit and having a chance to try out a few trait / gear combinations, axe seems completely worthless to me while the tomes and traits for them are decent.

Axe for me was utterly useless. Its lack of range + cast times make it worthless both for small scale / roaming and group play due to targets simply avoiding being hit by it.

the tomes and their traits combined with the new cleansing and stab mantras have some serious potential though, especially in organized group play. just really need to get to know all 15 new skills to become proficient at them, hehe

thats going to take a bit of time

if i rememebr correctly it rotates, though there is a general trace route ip provided by a-net, but i forgot what it is or how to find it.

you might have better luck asking in the support forums for this.

Ragnarox.9601:

Firebrand is worst elite spec in pof for wvw and pvp. Maybe one step higher than renegade.

I disagree with you. All you have to do is ditch condi and axe, much like you’d run DH without a bow. Just focus on the support traits of it.

Axe is definetly a sucky weapon for WVW both in large and small scale. It needs to be either all insta or have its range vastly increased. But if you go for old fashioned functionality, you have tons more stab, group stunbreaker and all comes with tons more cleansing while providing mad amounts of quickness.

Hmmmm tough issue….

If only there was someway to get off the overstacked servers and be more of a part of the solution instead of part of causing this problem in the first place ….

hmmmmm

if only ……

Makuragee.3058:

So today I have been kicked out of a fractal party cause my dps was not maked out, they confirm using dps meter. So now people can use dps meter? So arenanet you change your mind? Can I ask a refund of my entire account cause I clearly remember back a couple year ago dps meter was illegal and thats was one of the reason I started playing this game. To avoid kittens players. If I recall the user agreement speak of this? Did anet change the user agreement without notice or I miss something?

the game is trying to become more WoW clone like I guess. complete with add-ons, 2nd jobs (raiding job after you come home from work), toxicity, hamster wheel gear tiers etc. etc.

I would really like the CEO of A-Net to come and comment on the general game direction, specifically the degredation of its original vision and how it was marketed and sold.

Klipso.8653:

The Condi meta is and has been overwhelming power.

While we have toughness to mitigate power, the closest thing we have to Condi mitigation is having our revs spam resistance.

I suggest a new stat that functions the same way as toughness does, but for Condi damage.
This will require players to evenly split both stats to gain survivability. Having toughness act as a catch-all for both would make it too strong, but if there’s 2 different stats players had to choose between then it would be balanced.

hello from power rev, power guard, power scrapper, power druid, power mes

also, l2p from the above, and i have the builds for the classes i didn’t mention, just not enough time to play them.

Malkom.5607:

Yes, I do know lots of people love the new gliding in WvW but as one who has been playing WvW for a few years now this gliding has completely ruined the game for me.

By the way, I can glide, so my disbelief and disappointment has nothing to do with so-called Pay to Win. I do have a HoT account on Fissure of Woe and Free-2-Play account on Anvil Rock.

Last night in WvW was a complete shambles with people gliding all over the place and enemies just jumping of the tallest cliffs in order to escape.

At our Citadel, instead of running down the steps, some of our own players were simply gliding down to the North West Tower so giving our enemies there little time to recover – very unfair to our enemies. The distances are already relatively short in the Alpine Borderlands but gliding has made them insanely short.

Seems no where is safe now – earlier so many lonely paths between steep cliffs where you knew you were relatively safe unless a stealthed player was about, but now people can just glide down from cliffs to you. Doesn’t matter whether its an enemy coming to attack you or a friendly coming to help you, we need distance to matter in WvW.

Lag, what a terrible time last night, teleporting to our Citadel while standing right outside was taking 30 seconds or more, sometimes a minute. There wasn’t a queue so the map wasn’t full. Perhaps the lag was just a coincidence or my network route had problems.

Sorry I’ve got no positive suggestions as still in shock.

Anyhow, for me, a truly wonderful amazing game ruined. Guess I’ll read more, give it while and reflect, perhaps its not as bad as I think.

P.S.
I’ve just seen some more posts where people love the gliding – could be I’m a dinosaur.

You know, I was actually thinking about these 2 towers quite a bit since gliding went live and played around with it.

And the thing I would do to it is very, very simple. Tie this particular one to the outnumbered buff. Yup.

If you’re outnumbered, you can glide from citadel territory into the towers. If not then can’t. This would be a great change. Would be effective on your own BL only and only when its difficult to defend (cause outnumbered). Would not affect blob vs blob or small force vs small force and would not give tactical advantage when going offensive.

Only defenders in a pinch would have this tactical boost on their own turf, which is exactly and precisely as it should be, but often isn’t.

CharonXeno.4869:

This is now the second week that the Red Team in WvW faces the brunt of disadvantages due to “Glide into hostile objectives” exploits (e.g. Gliding from Pangloss to Ogrewatch, bypassing gates and walls rendering Ogrewatch indefensible).

Since Red Team is (by ranking) already the “weakest” Team, this adds even more disadvantages to them. Will there be any compensation for them / consequences for those that use the exploit (bypassing hostile gates & walls?) or will Arena.net just shrug and say “we don’t care, sucks to be you, don’t forget to buy the expansion”?

Obviously this and a few other spots need to be fixed / addressed. But they are not sure yet if gliding will become a perma feature in the game mode, thus fixing and patching it now is quite a waste.

Once they have a commitement to keeping it, then fix it and it will be very nice. But yeah, it does suck in the meanwhile.

Personally I hope they keep gliding, just fix the spots and bugs and provide some additional counterplay to it. Specific stuff vs gliding players. And it will be a lot of fun.

Hmmm an anti-gliding bali buff, that would be kinda cool.

Maybe add another skill to shield gens too, something that would just mess with gliding players, instead of damage, yank them out of the air or just immobilize mid air for a while.

Many many possibilities for interesting counterplay here. Hope some of it comes along.

I play guard quite a lot, both WvW and PvE and I think this change was just completely not needed.

I tried the changed staff and basically the buffs it got to its healing / utility side are negligible from practical wide application point of view. They do next to nothing and make no difference, while the range reduction does make a huge difference to this weapon. If A-Net wanted to go this far then they should have compensated the other skills much better, instead now the utility is not worth keeping it equipped over the loss on the AA.

So we’ll end up with yet another useless or rarely used weapon on yet another class affecting quite a lot of builds.

Overall this was a bad change.

Pros and cons of it with some questions

Will WvW mounts have their special abilities or just mount for speed / transport ?

If former then I do not want them in WvW, but if only the latter then it would be actually very nice.

Based on the current beta, mounts used for transport will be still slower then a lot of classes / builds using high mobility builds today. This will alleviate a lot of the swiftness imbalance and ceirtain classes / builds having to run either speed runes or traitlines / utilities that do not fit with their build / playstyle / theme. it won’t solve these issues, but would be a step in the right direction.

So my vote is yes for transport mounts, no to mounted combat or OP specials in general.

Brutal Augus.5917:

Over the past couple of days we have had alot of posts on these WvW forums making claims like “all veteran WvW’ers hate gliding” and “my whole friends list quit game over this”. In the interest of giving ourselves an actual idea of how the experienced WvW population feels about this, I have made a straw poll. I realize that not everyone will listen to me and there is no way to restrict who does or does not vote but I would like to ask those who haven’t been here since launch not to vote in this poll. I am making this straw poll with the intention of polling those players who have stuck with the game mode for the years we have had it available for the specific purpose of testing the claims mentioned at the beginning of the post.

Here is the poll:

https://strawpoll.com/dkk6fey5

Lets try to keep the conversation constructive

I like it overall. It needs some work, locations, restrictions, bug fixes etc. obviously need to be addressed, but overall its a very nice change. I like it a lot.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

So now that they have upped the amount of pips we all get, and they upped the weekly ticket cap to almost double the previous cap (which might I add was an excellent decision) where are all the people who were vehemently opposed to any changes to the pips and/or ticket changes?

I don’t see how this change, which was proposed awhile back, and was vehemently opposed by so many was such a bad idea? I don’t see anyone complaining about it now, and I don’t understand why so many were so resistant to this change which really helped a lot of people out, and made getting rewards in wvw more realistic.

Keep in mind that the reward tickets and pips were not as much needed before the most recent changes, mainly ascended to legendary. Now, if you wanna gear all your toons in flexible gear, you’ll need a ton more tickets, hence the caps went up.

Mysteriax.6049:

Why Should We Add Back Tier 5?

With the upcoming release of Path of Fire, WvW populations are expected to skyrocket. Although queues are positive in that they represent an active WvW population, they are negative in that they can lead to burnout and an eventual decrease in active WvW population. An extra WvW tier will spread out population, reduce queues and improve matchup balance.

Plus, EU already has a fifth WvW tier. The concept has already been implemented for two years in another region, and proven successful.

How can Tier 5 be implemented?

In another thread, I read a great suggestion as to how to implement Tier 5:

hunterAS.5107:

Remove all server links from T1 and T2 servers (6 servers no longer have links)
Add in a fifth tier (This will help to alleviate the bandwagoning individuals and queues)
Everyone from T3 on down would have 1 matched server.

This process would be done during the upcoming server re-linking at the end of August.

Using Tier 5 to Balance Server Populations:

The servers in Tier 5 may be High or Very High rather than Full, offering a place for guilds from overstacked servers to relocate. Once those Very High or High Tier 5 servers enter Tier 4 or Tier 3 and are competitive, they would be placed in Full to prevent bandwagoning unless population disparities are still a problem for that server.

Also, if a Full server enters T5, it would not be unlocked unless its population was Very High or High. This prevents servers from gaming the system to be open for transfers.

This would allow population to be slowly relocated from the most powerful servers to the less powerful ones, improving matchup balance.

EDIT: Using Tier 5 to Reduce Lag

A Tier 5 match-up can also be manually affected to reduce map capacity on different WvW maps, thus decreasing the size of map blobs and improving the lag issue for players. And, it offers a competitive scene where smaller guild groups, havoc groups and roamers play a larger role.

Benefits:

• Reduces queues
• Helps balance matchups
• Works hand in hand with the 1Up 1Down system.
• EDIT: Can be altered by reducing map capacity to reduce lag for players and offer a less blobby WvW environment.

What are your thoughts?

Based on HoT and how it went my thoughts are exactly opposite of yours.

After HoT launch WvWvW lost a huge amount of players. Main factors were:
HP grinds for elite specs which at that time you had to PVE for, thus preventing people from playing WvW. General P2W style powercreep.
Even more players leaving due to HoT elite specs imbalances and them getting fed up with it.
DBL map, and how horrible it was.

So based on history, while there might be a very short upsurge in WVW player populations, I expect WVW to have even less, not more players pass the initial novelty stages.

Making an extra tier of servers and screwing up links etc. even more just to accomodate short term influx for 2-3 weeks, while in the longer run they will most likely need to remove the bottom tiers altogether, is a very bad decision.

I hope that this time around a-net pays some attention to WVW balance and not drive even more people away. They seem to be doing much better in this area in general now, but I’m not holding my breath for it.

keep in mind that a lot of WvWvW players are actually PvX players and will go check out the new PvE stuff on top of all the above, just like they did in HoT.

No.

I disagree with almost everything the OP wants. He / she wants a return to the days where only few builds and only on a few classes were basically viable.

CC builds were worthless because of stab, condi builds …. don’t even get me started here. Condi builds were so incredibly bad its not even funny, on top of that people were running around with -80% to -99% condi duration.

After playing nothing but power builds for 1st few years of the game I find it boring as hell and I’m glad that meta is gone. Its time for zerker or G T F O to take its own medicine and G T F O.

The only 2 things I agree with is general HoT powercreep, in particular the removal of stats from traitlines which eliminated trade offs in spec focusing so you end up with too much defense on offensive builds and too much offense on defensive builds etc. And the increased stat weights of 4 stat pieces have greatly contributed to the current situation and need to be toned down across the board.

The other thing I do agree with is combo fields, it would be nice to see some new and effective combo fields instead of more passive procs and traits.

Last but not least ,as it has been stated above, the percentage of unexperienced players that will just roll over has greatly diminished and that will not change no matter what.

I most definetly don’t want to return to the days of GWEN + stab. It excluded far too many people from effectively playing. And in fact, I would like to see more inclusive stuff, so that they do end up having bigger roles in groups then is currently the case.

TheBravery.9615:

I think before the PoF expansion releases, we need to step back and take a look at the stabiilty mechanic again. CC was supposed to remove stability, but instead boon hate would become more effective especially when we get scourge and spelbreaker.

Idea: Change stability so it’s no longer a boon, but instead grants you a break bar.

look at it this way, your opponents will have just as much boon strip. hence stab = balanced.

build wise on the otehr hand, i most ceirtainly don’t want to go back to the insta stab gone days, but neither back to stab only days where half the builds in the game were excluded from wvw (and many still are) due to lack of stab.

Willkilliam.5012:

Yes we had Pips and Yes there is a new Expansion coming soon, but….. its all to late. The WvW community isn’t as big as was at the start of the “Pip” update but the problem with that update it didnt bring much new content to WvW that people could enjoy in the moment. Even if there is a big WvW content update the population will struggle due to the neglect of content the last few years. (PvP received much more development over WvW and Pve which is a no brainer)

I’m currently on one of the servers / links thats taking a huge population triple punch. 1st is the living story, people taking time off, then a lot of our commanders are on vacation, so no guild runs and no guild led runs, then on top of that 2/3 matches we’re up against the T1 dropouts while we’re a T3/T4 server.

A lot of people are just not showing up, or showing less and less and for shorter periods of time. Biggest detractor here is the continuing T1 style blobs that just don’t belong in our tiers, they need to G T F O to their own tier and stay there. Otherwise when people do come back from vacations , pve and whatnot, half the regular players will be forever gone and it will take another 6-12 months to refill the server / ranks yet again, if ever.

If on top of that the expansion turns out to worsen things even more like HoT did, then you can just forget about those players coming back to WvW, or the game entirely in many cases. If it improves things then many will be back.

Fashion Mage.3712:

RabbitUp.8294:

zealex.9410:

healer guard is kind of a niche forebrand brings it in line with druid tempest and scourge.

The only healing firebrand has is locked behind a 45s cooldown tome, good luck with that.

That cooldown can be reduced quite a bit via traits I think.
The main issue is that healer guardians are not even remotely tanky, and thus will not be able to function with the minimal range from the new tomes. If you’ve ever played a healer guardian in PvP, it becomes clear that standing in close-range for too long will get you killed almost as fast as a glass staff ele. If something is squishy, they either need mobility or long-range to survive. The Firebrand has neither and doesn’t look remotely tanky to me.

A damage/support spec will never, ever function in close range (outside PvE) unless it’s also tanky, in which case it’s broken because it just excels at everything. Bad design is bad, as usual.

I kinda agree. The axe range. or rather complete and total lack of it kinda kills it. At 130 you cant hit anything thats even semi-mobile. Add to that jumping around, switching directions on the fly, etc. etc. and it becomes a useless weapon outside of PvE where targets are too stupid to move.

On all my specs I avoid all 130 range stuff pretty much across the board because of the above mentioned reason.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Tongku.5326:

They said in the trailer that its a support focused spec ? Shouln’t that be called something like “twinkle tickler” or something like that ? Scourge implies disease, ripping off somones flesh from their bone with sand, draining their life, menacing stuff, not “support”.

And no stab will make it useless in WVW, maybe if they work Foot in the grave somehow into it ?

I thought it would be a fantastic elite spec for WvW zerg fights actually.

Reaper currently fills the role of a Front/Mid-line bruiser that sticks to the commander and provides the beef to push up against enemy zergs.

The Scourge would function more like a Back/Mid-line Condi Support class that can use the Shades to provide buff for teammates while dishing out substantial condi damage too and soft CC in the form of cripple / boon corruption.

The AOE nature of the shade skills are fantastic for crowd control.

The lack of stability and mobility is not as critical in WvW zerg fights because if you use the Scourge as a Back/Mid-liner, it would be more about positioning.

I currently use core Necro full zerk well-bomber for zerg fights in WvW as I felt it was more the back/mid-line damage dealer that I preferred over the brusier style shout Reaper.

I’m totally excited about having the Scourge providing a condi/support alternative to a pure zerk core Necro as a back/mid-liner in WvW.

That only works in pure pugs up to a semi-organized mid skilled pugs. When you get to organized and more serious stuff there is no such thing as frontline / midline / backline anymore and hasn’t been for about 2 years now. Its about as outdated as water fields for heals, which are still used as main group sustain in pugs, but not above. Thus anything based upon those concepts is null and void and the stab is critical.

Unless this spec can replace ventari revs or replace druids or something like that I don’t see it being a good part of an organized group, your main role as a reaper / necro regardless of your build is to deliver DPS, not be a healer. In order to become the healer, your abilities (spec, gear, general build) need to surpass the current healing builds.

I would like to know what happens if someone picks Soul Reaping with Foot in the Grave + Scourge traitlines for their build. Does Soul Reaping just largely not do anything ? Or is it getting updates to encompass Scourge ?

I can kinda see the lifeforce traits being effective, but what about the ones that are currently shroud specific ?

MMOStein.3872:

I’m not playing a condi spec. Ever.

Condi is the most boring kitten ever in this game, I literally hate every condi build I tried and they are always like 7 times more expensive to gear. Plus isn’t condi getting nerfed anyways?? Why would I play into a meta that they are already trying to nerf to the ground. Scepter is boring, Staff is literally kinda trash, and you are the second slowest class in the game.
I hate how some weapons are power and some are condi because sometimes I really just like the aesthetic. I would love to use torch on necro but too bad it’s condi and locked into scourge. Thank god GS is power otherwise I would have never played this boring class If gravedigger/AA animation was a little bit faster it would be perfect.

Guess I will be maiming another class for PoF because I am not playing a condi/support spec. The same situation with Revenant. I love power rev but they getting a condi spec too, which I understand they need a range conid option, but I wouldn’t be caught dead playing it. Power is more fun and engaging in PvE, WvW, and PvP.

/end

Thats funny.

Considering I am sort of opposite, though I do play all classes and still some power based toons.

But what I find funny, is that having played the game since beta, I got so sick and tired and bored of zerker and related crap about (at about half its age), that I actually quit it entirely. It was the condi updates that made me come back and take a 2nd try and continue to keep me playing.

I also disagree with you about the boring aspect. I found spamming and mashing buttons for power attacks a lot more boring then condi. Condi can be far more tactical via its timing and rotation use in all game modes then power, and tahts what I want, is to see and experience more tactical and attrition based combat instead of one shotting people.

Why not just stock up on bunch of dungeon and map currencies and don’t spend anything until expansion hits and you get to try out some things ? Add to that some crafting materials and some gold and you’ll be set.

A lot of exotic gear you can even get free for karma, WVW badges, etc.

Shaogin.2679:

I used to see this response alot when requests came up for things like raids, tanks, healers, mounts etc. All of those things are in the game now despite the strong protest of these apparent WoW haters.

So I guess we can go back to asking for anything now, and just ignore the naysayers. What’s next? Capes? Built in open world voice channels?

Edit: Before you start your rant, allow me to clarify that I in no way think any of these changes make GW2 a WoW clone. I was simply stating that it was the response I always saw from people that were against these changes. I was simply interested in what other changes, that were previously deemed impossible/unlikely, people would like to see put in the game now.

I’m personally rooting for in-game voice coms.

Actually, the game has become pretty WoWish and is continuing to do so. Which has led me to quit and abandon large parts of the it.

Add-Ons screen clutter – check
Add-Ons “not required”, yea …. only only technically not required, in practice …. – check
Gearcheck – check, although via API and 3rd party websites, still check
Gearcheck technically not required but it actually is – check
Joblike schedule for end game content – check
Participating in the above mentioned content feeling like a 2nd job – check
Congregation of toxic players and behavior focused on or via the above – check

Lordrosicky.5813:

This will be insanely OP in pvp. The cds are so short

All the new elite specs will be insanely OP in pvp, just like when HoT launched, they need to sell the expantion, once the sales slow down they will all get nerfed.

They said in the trailer that its a support focused spec ? Shouln’t that be called something like “twinkle tickler” or something like that ? Scourge implies disease, ripping off somones flesh from their bone with sand, draining their life, menacing stuff, not “support”.

And no stab will make it useless in WVW, maybe if they work Foot in the grave somehow into it ?

I can fully see this on something like medi-burn GS guard, very high burst potential there, you can practically 1 combo people who are midrange and lower and are unlucky to get your face at the wrong time.

As for the glassy part, you don’t have to run full set of it, can run armor + weapons with some new fitting runeset and sigils, then rings and trinkets etc. something else.

bhaldor.9837:

Rather new to pvp. Playing mostly unranked games. I’m shocked at how nasty and unpleasant some people are in pvp.
Not even asking if someone is new or work out a plan. Just flying off the handle and using extreme swear words. Its disgusting behaviour, totally uncalled for and extremely childish.
We’re not curing cancer or playing for world piece here! doesn’t hurt to be nice..

Yup.

Yest another reason to ditch PVP. Come to WVW instead, hop on your server TS at prime time during any of the open raids, tell people you are new and looking for some help, you’ll be right down amazed and never look back.

Silv.9207:

There will be two Elite specializzations and that will bring on the table a LOT of Build Diversity!
That will make players able to make a lot of different builds, play in different ways and the matches will be always different.

Actually if you see a warrior is at 100% Berserker and at 90% use a Power build. If we obtain a new elite we will see different builds, different ways to play the same class.

I see for sPvP a great future in terms of build diversity and fun, but for shure there’s different problems that can’t be fixed easy like the troll community, the lack of players that force the MM to pair noob and pro players to fight in frequently unbalanced matches (still if I did a lot of really balanced matches in the last month). And the Ranked will always be really Toxic. everyone want to win and if there’s someone that play to have fun and not only to win he can find bad in that enviroment. In that Unranked grant you more fun if you like to play and don’t pretend to win every single match.

That expansion can bring good news for sPvP and I hope for the better.
We have only to ways and see.

What build diversity ? I like playing tanks, heals, attrition and in general tactical over spammy DPS. I prefer to play and toy with my opponents which is now impossible due to nothing but DPS in one form or another.

Unless they bring back amulets, then what build diversity ? New condi for new elite for extra DPS ? New power based attack for new elite for extra bursty (even way more then it is now) DPS ?

Please do tell about this build diversity, because as I see it it will be DPS or DPS or New DPS or New DPS. Maybe add more dodges and evades so that all of us will be like evade thieves ? Is this what you mean by diversity ?

I do wish and hope this expansion will hit the reset button and undo a lot of the damage that has been done to the game, especially WVW and PVP, they seem to be going in the right direction with the last few months, but I’m not holding my breath.

things I would like to see addressed :

-general HoT powercreep – traits – especially flattening out based stats resulting in not enough trade offs on focused builds of all sorts
-general HoT powercreep – gear / statweights
-general HoT powercreep – player abilities – too many passives and not enough actives dumbing down gameplay significantly
-general HoT powercreep – too many boons
-general HoT powercreep – too many condis, especially generated by non-condi focused players but providing cover thus making counterplay less or in some cases entirely ineffective.

Server lag / A-nets ISP lag – vastly related to the hardware and general network structure unable to handle the above.

Content wise :

Too many vertical maps that feel like giant jumping / gliding puzzles and are grosly unintuitive. While having some of these elements is nice for play variety, there should absolutely not be entire maps like this, or at least not ones that are required for progression of other game elements. They should be entirely optional.

Too many masteries locked behind stupid transform things and whatnot where players can’t use their skills. Very bad. Gaining a total mastery point number should have at least some options as to how a player gets there, regardless if its exploration, combat or mini-games, not just be locked in and unable to obtain a ceirtain mastery or a number of them unless that player grinds unfun and often frustrating content.

Too much content locked behind the above mentioned grind, often frustrating to players.

So these are some of the main points I would like to see addressed via expansion. And like I said, I hope they will be, but I fear that they won’t and things will get even worse.

Lahmia.2193:

kitten raids. So long as we’re still meta in wvw and generally useful most other places, I’ll be happy.

^^

This, X 1000. It’d be nice if necros had a better spot in sPVP as well, I overall quit that game mode due to a wide plethora of crap in it and its general state, but I might go back if I have an interesting new playstyle available to me on my nec or mes, that would also be at least somewhat effective at high ranks.

Juular.4729:

Make it like PvP, you can keep your look.

I have a WAY BETTER idea then that.

Remove the amulet system in PvP and replace it with regular gear + consumables. Bring back the build diversity and fun, so that some of us might actually go back to it for novelty if nothing else.

See ?

I told you its a better idea.