Guild Wars 2

SrebX.6498:

Kraljevo.2801:

A good warrior is still an asset to any squad. You have one of the best elites in the game, and you’re one of the top damage dealers in the squad. That goes for both condi and power btw.

As far as guild groups go, who cares? The game in its current state is about as competitive as a bag of rice.

I disagree. The AoE damage Warr is capable of is very limited, and he’s a pretty selfish class outside of that, which is extremely bad for WvW.

I’m saying that as a WvW veteran and as a Warrior main- The truth is that is no reason to bring more than 1~2 warriors per zerg, and these 2 warriors are there for 1 skill only- Warbanner . There is nothing else that makes bringing a warrior worthy over any other class.

^ This for the most part is the answer. Hammer F1 stun is still a really nice skill, but really one of the least viable classes in larger groups. It isn’t even so much that warrior sucks, it is just that so many other things are more useful to the group than warrior. If you wanted a warrior for CC because of hammer stun, you’d be better off having an ele who can CC more at range, heal the group, provide more boons, etc. Or a Guardian who can CC more between hammer and staff while also providing stability and protection.

It is still viable, but it is one of the least useful since it isn’t the best at anything in larger group play. Smaller groups is a very different situation though from my experience. Condi warrior is probably the MOST useful in smaller group play if played right because of the insane damage it can put out to single targets (and some small AOE.)

If you like warrior and you’re good at it, play it. Just know, it isn’t the most useful thing for the group and you’d be better off playing just about anything else besides medium armor classes. Medium armor classes are all terrible for larger group play, so just be glad it isn’t as bad as a thief, mesmer, or ranger lol.

Consensus on warrior builds still the same? I’ve been away from the game for 2 months now lol.

I also want to make mention that my condi warrior was never my favorite thing to play. I prefer my roaming power guardian build personally. The only reason I played condi warrior is because we fought 10-15 man groups with our 5 people more often than we ever fought even. When out numbered like that, having as much damage and survivability as possible is absolutely necessary. So yep, we ran that cheese as hard as we could. In fact, our comp had 2 of my condi warrior, 1 full heal ele, 1 hybrid guardian and a power rev. So we had an incredibly tank comp with a lot of heals and a ton of damage between Condi and the power damage from the guardian and rev.

For 1v1 fights, I always prefer my guardian because it takes more skill to play well and I don’t win by pressing 2 buttons lol..

Torbjorn Swiftmarch.6401:

XTR.9604:

Let me know if anyone has any questions in this thread or by pm on the builds. I have been away from the game for about a month now finalizing my wedding plans, building a race car, and playing other games. Most of the builds should be current right now.

As someone who states on their blog “ANET keeps promoting skill-less game play” the direction and essence of your guide and promotion of brainless condi spam is highly ironic.

I’d like to see more skilled players in WvW. Less condi spam and players hiding behind gear.

I’m glad you’ve left. One less condi spammer yay.

Builds like my condi warrior existing are because ANET is promoting the skill-less game play lol. The only way they’re going to notice that it is incredibly over powered is by people playing it. I imagine I’ll be back at some point in the near future, but I do hope that they start paying better attention to builds like these. I have plenty of game play video that proves how incredibly strong it is if they needed proof lol.

Let me know if anyone has any questions in this thread or by pm on the builds. I have been away from the game for about a month now finalizing my wedding plans, building a race car, and playing other games. Most of the builds should be current right now.

Still running my still incredibly OP condi warrior build in WvW.

http://xtremetheory.com/wvw-roaming-condi-warrior/

For WvW roaming, I definitely recommend my condi warrior build. Incredibly strong for roaming, only down side is mobility (lack of swiftness), but if you have a revenant friend to roam with you or something like that, it is no problem. I have the builds, skill rotations and a lot of game play videos in the link below.

http://xtremetheory.com/wvw-roaming-condi-warrior/

Ahnlok.3897:

Condi spam meta not over yet?

Why would it be over? Condition damage hasn’t been balanced yet and people can still be as tank if not more than a power player running Soldiers stats, and still deal as much damage if not more than full zerk. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep taking advantage of the strongest thing in the game until ANET does something about it as they should have over a year ago.

Duke Dark Hart.1385:

I’ve been on CD for maybe a year now through all types of fluctuations and i stay because i love it. It’s home. both my self and my guild even if we are small have poured our hearts into CD. Tonight a blanket statement was made by someone i respect that’s a major voice on CD even if that respect only goes in one direction. That if you don’t use TS than your not an asset because you aren’t really helping. I’m sure a lot of people feel that way. I know its a big help in wvw. But it was really the first time in a year i felt like wow kitten my server.

Even if we were roamers which we aren’t we are a small ops guild of seasoned vets that responds to all major calls from tags and larger guilds for aid. I feel like that’s a pretty big kitten you to people that put in time and effort but don’t use TS. I guess i just needed to vent because if I didn’t i was gonna seethe about it until i moved my entire guild to a new server.

First of all, if you’re roaming or with your own guild, anything a commander says shouldn’t apply to you anyway. Second, if you’re following a tag/group and you’re not in TS with them, then yeah you’re borderline useless.

If you’re ever following a decent commander, be in teamspeak, then watch what people die most often in fights, then check to see if their name is in teamspeak. You’ll find that very often, they’re not in teamspeak and died because they didn’t hear the commanders directions. You can’t coordinate things like fake pushes, portals, quick pull backs to regroup, skill call outs like water, stuns, etc, or anything when people aren’t in teamspeak. So yes, useless is the word I would use.

Chaba.5410:

XTR.9604:

Yep. My guild has not played GW2 since the patch. We log in, see every map is queued on CD, log off and go play Paladins. These links are a disaster after this patch.

Yep, got a few friends/guild members not playing because of not wanting to bother with queues. Also like last night had a guild member get dumped out of WvW and sat for an hour in queue to get back in. Unfortunately by the time he got back in that was end of scheduled rally.

We only have a couple hours to play from the time that I get home from work and have to go to bed for work the next day lol.. So sitting in queue for any time more than a couple minutes is long enough to make us go play a different game all together. Anet finally got those PvE players to go into WvW though, so mission accomplished I guess. Out with the old veterans who don’t want to wait to play, in with the PvE players who will PvE while waiting in queue for the #REWARDS. lol

Yep. My guild has not played GW2 since the patch. We log in, see every map is queued on CD, log off and go play Paladins. These links are a disaster after this patch.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

XenesisII.1540:

Welcome to WvW, where earning rewards was never easy or fair.

so then why don’t they fix it?

Because they don’t actually care about WvW players even though we generate a good bit of income by paying for server transfers, gems for gold because there is no good method of earning gold in WvW for things like food, armor, etc. Those of us who have been playing WvW since the beginning are used to it. We’ve never really been rewarded. The reward tracks basically allow us to pay for our food in WvW at this point lol…

Asur.9178:

XTR.9604:

How do you figure they’re unreasonable?

Go start a new account in a low population t3 server and tell me how fast you can climb it. You’ll have your answer. If you’re not willing to do that, then you have your answer as well.

Okay, and to your point – go start a new account on any server and tell me how long it takes you to farm a legendary in PvE. Really not hard to blow your argument out of the water.

Asur.9178:

PabbyGaul.9682:

PvE’ers pve forbthe rewards..All about them rewards and it kills them they cant get it.

WvW’ers dont wvw for rewards. All about that satisfaction that comes with a hard fought battle and kittench teamwork.

Nonsense. If you truly believed this, then you wouldn’t be so upset and be so aggressively against the idea of a reasonable requirement for those said rewards.

In their current implementation, they are grossly unreasonable for newer players and those players in lower tier/population servers. Are you really going to pretend to be so ignorant to that fact, simply because of how upset you are over the state of WvW for the past few years?

You are aware that the changes in this patch didn’t fix any of those issues, right? All it did was try revitalize WvW by attracting players from other areas of the game, similar to what they attempted with sPvP. You do realize that the attempt will prove to be a failure once these players leave of frustration, right? Similar to last sPvP season – it was dead.

So, those players you so nonchalantly complain about and blame are there in an attempt to help the game mode that you so claim to care so much about; but, behave in an extremely contradictory manner to it.

There’s reasonable requirements for end game rewards, and there’s unreasonable requirements for end game rewards. This just happens to fall under the latter. I’m not for making the requirements stupid easy, no. However, it should be acquirable in a reasonable amount of time, with a reasonable amount of effort. As I said before, in my opinion, 1k is a perfectly reasonable amount for more than one reason.

As I already said, try thinking logically about the situation instead of letting your grudge-filled emotions drive your opinion in the matter.

I actually give a kitten about the game and it having a healthy population is beneficial to me. So, I am all for attracting new players and keeping players that may already be frustrated from being in lower tier/population servers. Therefore, I am ALL FOR A NERF to the ridiculous requirement currently in place.

At this time, I think I’ve used the term “reasonable” more than enough to get my point across. If you still have problems understanding it, then you cannot be helped.

How do you figure they’re unreasonable? For those of us who have been playing WvW for years exclusively, we’re happy with this requirement because it means our work in WvW is paying off for us after we’ve been neglected for years. You won’t be seeing many veteran WvW players running around with any of the new legendaries because of how much PvE they require. They’re not obtainable for those of us who have limited time to play and want to spend our time enjoying the game in WvW instead of grinding in PvE. So you guys can go spend your time out of your element in WvW if you want our rewards just as we have to be out of our element in PvE to get your rewards. I know it might be hard for you to understand, but there are MANY players who are EXCLUSIVELY WvW players in this game and do not want to do PvE for any reason.

Zaxares.5419:

I can see where you’re coming from, but as a veteran of many gaming communities past and present, let me just caution you that a refusal to consider changes that bring in and keep new blood is, in the end, a recipe for disaster.

And we’ve all been telling anet this for years, but they don’t care lol. They do what they see fit as best, player feedback truly does not matter and never has. It is exactly why WvW is in such a terrible state right now and has been since they changed the way stability worked.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Asur.9178:

DemonSeed.3528:

If they are interested in the game mode then shinies would be secondary to it, not the defining reason why they are there.

Yes, because that’s exactly how people’s mind works. /s

At this point, I’m getting the impression that the ones acting so high and mighty, and being willfully ignorant don’t actually care about the state of “their game mode”. They are simply filled with unnecessary grudge (this is actually worse than sPvP). This has also been becoming far more evident from map/team/squad chats in WvW since the patch.

Every single logical argument is presented with the same 2 counter points (which are filled with errors and grudge), with literally no consideration of what is actually brought up: I played for so and so years before the patch, therefore I deserve rewards and you don’t unless you play so and so years…or…people don’t need an incentive to play and start liking a game mode.

Well, you can continue on being willfully ignorant, but you’ll only be killing “your game mode”. I must thank ANet for the great job they did by stirring up a kitten storm with their effort to improve “your game mode”, that you don’t actually seem to care for – people like you, being willfully ignorant seems to only care about themselves. Well, I’m sure you’ll enjoy your dead game mode soon enough.

PvE’ers pve forbthe rewards..All about them rewards and it kills them they cant get it.

WvW’ers dont wvw for rewards. All about that satisfaction that comes with a hard fought battle and kittench teamwork.

Just 2 different mentalities. Its one little little thing …one little thing rank gated is not going to break the game mode. I dont post much but I dont want the squeaky wheels to get all the grease. If they dont cave most of the pve’ers will get frustrated and leave due to the “play =shinies” memtality and those that learn to enjoy wvw might learn why wvw’ers have continued to play for 5 yrs on the same maps. Maybe they learn how zergs actually function…maybe one day they will realize why their “mindless” zerg was so effective when they discover what the acronym TS stands for…

Very well said. +1

Asur.9178:

Also, can we stop with the segregation? WvW rank is essentially PvE. Majority, if not ALL, of the people sitting at extremely high rank abused EotM k-trains before it was nerfed. I’m also willing to bet that majority, if not ALL, of the players tooting their horns with illogical grudge filled reasoning (I spent so and so number of years playing, so it’s fine) are all from higher tier servers, or spent server hopping in the past to those higher tiers. People at underpopulated and lower tier servers have a MUCH harder time gaining ranks…and if you think they don’t, then you’re fooling yourself.

WvW rank is not essentially PvE lol… The time I spent with the more skilled WvW groups that no longer exist got me a lot of ranks from kills. Not from PvE taking camps. Also keep in mind that EOTM didn’t even exist yet until I was rank 2800 personally. I’m now around 3600 with around 5000 hours in WvW, primarily roaming and for about a year there I was playing primarily with GvG guilds.

Also, I spent my WvW time hopping servers. I’ve been everywhere from the #1 server to the dead last server and back to several of them several times. Another thing you PvE players don’t have to worry about, paying for server transfers in a game mode that doesn’t make you any money lol.. People can rank up easily no matter the server they’re in. You get more WXP killing players generally if you’re doing it on a large scale, but you can get plenty of WXP by taking sentries, camps, towers, and keeps.

Zalavaaris.5329:

That content was also available to you btw. And the best part? It didn’t require you to spend all 5 years there to get it!

Asur.9178:

Here’s the thing you forget about those “PvE” players and their content. You’re not locked out of any of it, even though you make it sound like you are. In fact, you can easily make progress towards ALL their content without leaving WvW, with the exception of HoT legendaries and raids. None of their content requires you ~2 years of constant grinding of the same repetitive content. They are already forced into your content to make their precious legendaries and more.

You also fail to account for new players who are trying to get into the game. Do you think these players will think well of the game when they see the JRPG grind involved for something they want? No, they won’t. There’s a reason why Aion failed extremely hard when it was initially released within the first few months. JRPG grind is not fun.

Your logic behind why a horrifically thought out requirement shouldn’t be changed is pathetic and riddled with personal grudge at best. If you really cared about the game and the game mode, you’d want it to be more inviting of other players – not drive people away.

Also, can we stop with the segregation? WvW rank is essentially PvE. Majority, if not ALL, of the people sitting at extremely high rank abused EotM k-trains before it was nerfed. I’m also willing to bet that majority, if not ALL, of the players tooting their horns with illogical grudge filled reasoning (I spent so and so number of years playing, so it’s fine) are all from higher tier servers, or spent server hopping in the past to those higher tiers. People at underpopulated and lower tier servers have a MUCH harder time gaining ranks…and if you think they don’t, then you’re fooling yourself.

ANet’s mistake in this case was they made the decision based on the players’ state in higher tiers. They failed to account for new players and those in lower and underpopulated tiers when they came up with the requirements. It is infinitely easier for players in higher tiers to meet the requirements compared to others, unlike in “PvE” or raids. There are far too many external factors that hinder your progress. Personal skill plays an extremely minimal role in your progress.

Let me clarify for you. Those of us WvW players that enjoy fighting other players, not PvE were forced to participate in PvE in order to get things like legendaries, ascended armor, selectable stat ascended trinkets, etc. I don’t know too many WvW players like myself that want to do PvE ever. WvW players never had an option in OUR game mode to farm these things besides the trinkets, we’ve always had to go out of our element to the grindy boring PvE land.

Some people enjoy all aspects of the game and that is cool, but to many WvW players like myself, doing PvE is a chore and there is nothing fun about it. It is a time sink of unenjoyable repetitive boringness for me and I have never enjoyed a single moment spent in PvE in this game.

- I had to do PvE to get living story to unlock the WvW reward tracks for my ascended selectable stat trinkets.
- I had to do PvE in Fractals to get my rings and back piece infused and rings attuned.
- I had to do PvE in Fractals to obtain ascended armor and my back piece.
- I had to do PvE to get map completion to be able to make my legendary weapon.
- I had to do PvE to get dungeon tokens for making my legendary weapons.
- I had to do PvE to get my elite specs done on all of my characters when HoT launched.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. And what have you been forced in to my game mode (WvW) to do? One reward track for gift of battle. ONE REWARD TRACK since the beginning of the game… And the PvE players complained their little hearts out about having to spend a few days in WvW to complete it. Us WvW players haven’t had a choice but to play the game mode you enjoy and we don’t, so enjoy getting that treatment back. I really don’t feel bad for you.

Marko.2906:

pls, bring back the times where we followed our raid leader with the ctrl + t red mark in guild raids. those were happy days.

Those of us who run tagless still do this and have been doing this since the beginning of the game.. That is exactly what we’re tired of and why this thread exists.

Yep, one issue I hope they stand their ground on. The PvE players who have now invaded WvW for rewards have had nothing but rewards and constant content for nearly 5 years while the only new thing WvW got was a map no one likes and reward tracks after 3 years of asking for WvW to give us some kind of rewards.

Lionwait.4815:

Anet just doesn’t understand. They are a closed minded when it comes to WvW development. Hell… It only took them 4 to 5 years to give us WvW rewards. <face palm>

Don’t Get me wrong. I love the game mode. It just saddens me to see a mode with so much potential being taken care of like mowing the lawn once a year.

I believe the problem lies with to many artist developers and only a few tactical developers. And those tactical developers work on class balance.

Exactly as I’ve felt. I still enjoy the game, but the lack of useful updates that we’ve been asking for now for years is just disheartening.

Been playing paladins. Hopefully anet will start caring about this game some day.

Teon.5168:

Not saying that Delirious is or isn’t a good player…….but you do realize that someone playing wvw in a different manner that you do, could be just as efficient and effective as you are? Wvw doesn’t have to be only played in the manner that you play it to be “correct” or “efficient”.

Plus there are other variables, such as server, link, amount of spare time one has to play, etc……

Am glad that your manner of play seems to work so well for you……but it is not the only way to play wvw.

Spare me the politically correct state of mind please. I call things as I see them. If you’ve played as long as I have in WvW and I am a significantly higher rank while running the same or similar number of people in a group, then clearly I did something better. I didn’t spawn camp for 5000 hours in WvW and I did not zerg around with blobs for my ranks. The most I ever cared to run with was when I played with the 15 man “skill groups” that were GvG guilds and only went out for fights. Most of the time, we’d never cap a camp, sentry or anything with those groups. Just fights.

Delirious.3108:

XTR.9604:

Delirious.3108:

I play this game for 4 years and i don’t have 2k.

Then you didn’t spend that long in WvW or you didn’t spend your time in WvW very effectively. Capture objectives and kill players, easy to get WXP. My group runs 5 people for about 3 hours a night on raid nights and I usually get 5-10 ranks per run depending on who we’re fighting against.

So you are telling me that this wvw should be played only in big zergs trying to ppt all the time, forget the fights and do nothing besides that?

Well, i don’t think so. I play as a roamer and until last year i was on a big guilds.
There is no right or wrong. It is still an absurd require so much of a player for a game, it is not health at all and dissipate that idea only shows anet doesn’t care.

And btw, what bothers me the most is not the rank requirement (still ridiculous for a upgrade of an ascended set) are the pips needed to get the rewards that is an absurd.

Reading comprehension skills need to be used here. I specifically said that I run in a group of 5 people. What part of that sounds like we play in a big zerg ppting all day?

Delirious.3108:

I guess this is my fault that i used my time playing this game as a roamer and it is less valuable than someone blobing.

As a roamer, I again say that you were not doing a good job roaming if you aren’t getting good WXP in the process. I don’t run with blobs, I run in a group of 5 people who avoid the blobs and do our own thing for our own fights and we also cap objectives along the way. That is how you get to be a useful roamer to your server as well as get fights. If you’re just standing outside of the enemies spawn waiting to pick up bad players on a thief, you’re not a roamer, you’re just being a bad solo player.

Delirious.3108:

I play this game for 4 years and i don’t have 2k.

Then you didn’t spend that long in WvW or you didn’t spend your time in WvW very effectively. Capture objectives and kill players, easy to get WXP. My group runs 5 people for about 3 hours a night on raid nights and I usually get 5-10 ranks per run depending on who we’re fighting against.

Gop.8713:

shagwell.1349:

kittened as a roamer. Playing from start and on rank 1001.

Yeah, the roaming doesn’t really seem to be getting rewarded :/

I can play for hours a night and only get one or two levels . . .

That could be intentional though. All the focus on the update is on getting comms to tag up and getting ppl into squads and parties, so they seem to want to encourage more group play and less solo play in wvw, which does kind of make sense if you think about it lol . . .

The way I look at it is wvw was fun enough before the patch that I played for hours a night, and nothing about the patch changed wvw, it just changed the rewards, so nbd, right . . ?

Roaming is plenty rewarding if you’re doing it right. I run around looking for fights, but between fights, I’m taking sentries, camps, towers, some times even keeps. My group of kittens objectives frequently to bring fights to us. I even do this when I am solo roaming and take towers frequently solo.

theSacred.1942:

So we have similar situation to last two PvP seasons. First ANet introduced ascended armors so people started playing, and next season they killed it again with grandmaster marks (that was also added to fractals). Here they wanted to resurrect WvW but set rewards bar so high, that this mode will be dead again when people will understand that they will never to be able to get rewards.

Also, just to remind you, ANet, ascended armors are not shiny legendary things, they’re just a bit better than exotic but are required for fractals for example… People search for easy ways to obtain them because they don’t want to craft but you blocked all other ways to get them. Good job.

We’re nearly 5 years in to the game, being rank 2000 is NOT that big of an accomplishment. My main account is around 3700 and my ALT account is around 900. It is not that hard to get WvW ranks.

Entenkommando.5208:

GrahamW.5397:

Entenkommando.5208:

You forget that not everybody is running ktrain 24/7.
I’ve played hardcore WvW for at least 2 years at around 3-4 hrs of WvW each day, I’m not even at rank 1000 and I won’t let anybody tell me that I’m not dedicated enaugh or don’t deserve the rewards yet.
Even if you are rank 1000 you’ve spent a dozen times more hours in this gamemode than any PvE or PvE player.

I’ve also made over 20 ranks since the patch, but that’s with birthday booster and the highest player participation since the last tournament. That is in not a single way representative for your average WvW life.

Unsure what you’ve been doing for two years, i play for 2-3 hours a night and get 3-4 ranks minimum an hour. If you play 3-4 hours a day to not even be at 1k you have to be not getting ranks at all when you play, which is nearly impossible if you’re actually playing. You can literally run around for 20 minutes capping camps and sentries and get a rank or two.

Oh you know…Guild raids, scouting….all the good stuff you never got rewarded for.

If you mean like WvW raids, then your guild apparently wasn’t very effective. Also, back when I scouted (except I called it roaming and I’d call out where I saw enemy groups in chat) a bit, I was constantly solo back capping camps and sentries. As I got better, I even started solo capping towers with guild catas and have been doing it for years since.

Sounds like you didn’t use your time very effectively in WvW if you truly spent any real time in there. I have around 5000 hours in WvW.

Entenkommando.5208:

You forget that not everybody is running ktrain 24/7.

Actually, the majority of my ranks are from roaming with a 5 man group. We generally played 5 days a week for 3 hours a night, some nights longer if it was a lot of fun. This has been how we’ve been playing together for 4 years. I have never been one to zerg around with any ktrain blobs.

I think the rank is perfectly acceptable. I’m around rank 3700 personally from actually playing WvW since I started playing the game. I had to go to PvE land for my legendaries and ascended gear and spent a TON of time in PvE that I was forced to do because of it. PvE players need to just deal with the amount of work you need to do for the WvW rewards just like we had to deal with the amount of work it took in boring PvE to get the things we needed from there.

http://xtremetheory.com/wvw-roaming-condi-warrior/

Not sure the difference you’d need for PvE compared to WvW, but the build above is the condition build that I run in WvW. It is very high condi DPS and very tank at the same time. I also have several game play videos and skill rotation guides there.

http://xtremetheory.com/builds/

I’m always updating my builds for both roaming and group play as I notice changes that would be useful.

Stand The Wall.6987:

just create a squad and have the commander leave. simple. this is a non issue.

Clearly you still don’t understand the problem since this has also been discussed in this thread. If the commander leaves the party, all lieutenants are demoted and all markers are cleared. So no, not a non issue. Still very much an issue. Not sure what the point of coming in to a thread and replying without reading any of the information posted is.

http://xtremetheory.com/builds/

Roaming is what I’ve always done primarily in WvW, all of my builds are on my website listed above and in my signature. Several have videos of game play as well.

xikira.3264:

If you want to just run with your guild there are three options available for you.

1. Run a tagless squad and have your leader targeted. My friends and I have done this before when we have tags to be training to become commanders it works well. You can still see the target in fights.

2. Choose a tag color that is not being used on the map explain in map chat that you are a closed guild group. Most people will respect this and wont try to intrude or at least that is how it is on my server.

3. Make a squad and close it so no one joins unless you invite them.

Theese are your options anet will not change their stance on this because there is already enough tocxcity runnning around the wvw maps.

Clearly you didn’t read anything that has been said in this post lol.

1. Been doing this for 4+ years already, but if we want to call a target on an enemy, it makes it real easy to lose the driver. Already discussed this if you had read anything more than the first post.

2. No one cares what you say you want and people will follow your tag if it is the only one on that particular map rather you want them to or not. So we run tagless anyway as usual and aren’t given access to the features of the commander tag we paid for.

3. Closing the squad doesn’t do anything at all besides make it to where people can’t join the squad. They can still see and follow your tag, your tag is still visible on the map, and the problem is still there.

I’m holding out hope that ANET changes their stance on this since we’ve presented them with a good bit of information on why this is a good idea and how the other game modes have the ability to exclude others just fine while being able to have all of the commander functionality. I know it is a lot to read through, but you might learn something.

Dawdler.8521:

XTR.9604:

In PvE raids, you can CHOOSE who can come with you and exclude anyone who you do not want to join you. It is instanced with the squad, so pugs can’t just come in to your instance and cause your group to wipe. In WvW, pugs can come to your tag rather they’re in the squad or not because they can see your tag. So PvE has a choice of which elites to let in to their squad for raids, but we do not in WvW. Understand better?

Hate to be the bringer of bad news after 5 years (better late than never I suppose) but you dont have a choice who runs next to you whether you are in a closed tagless guild squad or not. You cant control players build or gear and you cant control how elite they are. Because they didnt join to play with you. They joined to play WvW.

But yes, now I understand better. You dont really want the server based WvW we’re all playing, you want something you can control.

I’ve been running with just my group tagless without pugs for a long long time. Once we knew how pugs were, we’d just troll people who try to follow us, hop maps, waypoint randomly or lead them into a fight we know we can walk through but they would die and keep moving lol. Trust me, I’ve mastered the art of shaking pugs, but I can’t shake them if I have a tag visible on the map. It is easy to do when running tagless.

Strider Pj.2193:

XTR: I can understand you want to run closed. But if it is just five of you, what part of the squad UI do you actually need? With five, between VOIP, party comp, etc, I can see no benefit of the squad UI to you.

In what way would that UI actually help?

Having a tag on my head or some kind of symbol besides the target that we use to focus players down would be pretty useful for keeping the group closer together. It is easy to lose me in a fight some times, especially when we’re fighting very outnumbered as we usually do. The ability to use the special markers from the squad would be incredibly useful for targetting multiple enemies, that way each of my guys can be lieutenants and each have their own target marker that we could each use to call our own targets. Like if my marker that I designate for me to use is the X marker and I says “my target on the necro”, they know to go to the one that has the X to focus down the necro first. We can also keep track of where the enemy driver is to dodge front line trains as they push while we focus the backline out. I can also put a marker on our heal ele so that we all know where he is in a fight easily and get to him if we get split up for heals. So many advantages.

The thing is, MOST groups in this game do not utilize the features of the squad because skilled groups are a thing of the past in this game. My guild would make FULL use of it and it would make us incredibly stronger as a group to have those abilities.

Dawdler.8521:

I read what he stated and I have no kittening idea what its even supposed to mean. Exclusive squads? What? Its the same system in PvE as WvW. Are you talking about locking the squad? Because you can lock the squad in WvW.

Even so, there is absolutely nothing stopping pugs from following you into battle if thats what your goal is. Hiding your tag wont make your group invisible.

Sounds like a reading comprehension problem. Let me break it down for you.

In PvE raids, you can CHOOSE who can come with you and exclude anyone who you do not want to join you. It is instanced with the squad, so pugs can’t just come in to your instance and cause your group to wipe. In WvW, pugs can come to your tag rather they’re in the squad or not because they can see your tag. So PvE has a choice of which elites to let in to their squad for raids, but we do not in WvW. Understand better?

Verthurnax.2784:

As a casual wvw player with no guild on the current server, once i join EB instance and see no tag i will ask chat if there is any(maybe a public blue comm is defending home bl). If there is none i lose my interest and join the edge of the mists where most likely there will be a tag and i will have some fun there.
If you don’t like to command for large groups, then don’t tag at all. And if your guild is dead is probably becuase those responsible don’t even try to reclut new players inside the guild.

See, this is part of that blob mentality I was talking about. You assume that because my guild runs 5 people because we can’t recruit or because my guild is dead. We WANT to run only 5 people because it is so much better of a challenge to see what a single party of people can do together. We enjoy it. We turn people down ALL THE TIME that ask to join our guild because we don’t need or want more players. We’re a tight group of friends who have been playing together for years and we have excellent group synergy because of it.

Also, not every tag is going to run closed if ANET added this, it would still be the same guilds that already don’t run a tag running a closed squad.

atticus.5284:

Maybe if the “get gud” guilds would spend some of their time teaching, they might get some good fights and some good recruits to boot!

Look, I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to teach pugs and guilds how to build characters properly for best group synergy and in my forum signature is a link to my website where I’ve shared a lot of my builds that I run and would find acceptable for anyone running with me to play. But at this point in the game, I really want to play exclusively with my guild only. I don’t like running more than 5 man groups and I have enough friends lol. Plus, my guild is definitely an acquired taste on teamspeak and we’ve trolled a lot of people away from running with us because they couldn’t handle us lol.

I’ve played with several of the old GvG guilds back when I enjoyed running with 15 people, yes they were very elitist and that was okay with me because I fit in well with that. Back then it was all about being as tryhard as you can be, which is not the case anymore. Now we run 5 man casual and still look like we’re trying hard because we wipe groups 2x+ our size if they exist.

Anyway, there is little keeping me in this game since my entire guild plays several other games together, but I mean come on, at least make an effort to keep people around. I’d like to continue playing and between my 3 accounts, I have put over 5000 hours just in to WvW alone. I think that I may know what I am talking about on what the guilds in WvW have been asking for, this is one of those things. ANET have made themselves pretty clear that they don’t care what the players want since they’ve lost so many people to the stability/CC changes, lack of GvG game mode, no closed squad commander tag, leaving 3 maps of deserted BL for 7 months, not fixing the big balance issues like condition builds being able to be incredibly tank and deal more damage than full zerk players, and the list goes on and on. Paying attention to your players that know the game best is something that they should put for focus on if they want to stop hemorrhaging players as they have been for the past 2 years.

Endless queues, yay for being in touch with your players! We definitely want to sit and wait to play the game with our time lol. I miss when we were voting on changes to be brought to the game.

Dawdler.8521:

XTR.9604:

Any group that doesn’t want pugs are the people you’re excluding from the features a squad provides. You’re excluding my guild and any other guild from having access to things that are a part of the game like being able to target multiple people in a squad and having an easier thing to follow.

Except they are not excluding you. You are perfectly free to use the feature. You just want to use it for a thing its not intended for. You are basicly trying to argue that you should be able to drink from the bottom of a mug. Using the opening at the top is just for those lowly pugs.

Except they are excluding us because if we do use the feature, it will hurt us more than help us since bad players will flock to my tag and cause us to lose fights by running bad builds.

Here is a quick little example of a bad player following me causing us to lose fights. I have a full heal ele that runs in my group. His regen is excellent, keeps everyone in the frontline alive very well. Now, lets throw some bad player in the mix who has a skill that gives regen, lets say a guardian running “hold the line”, they use it and now their regen with no healing power behind it over rides the heal ele’s regen. We effectively lose a MASSIVE amount of healing which ultimately may cause us to lose a fight. That is just one small example of how they hurt us more than they help.

Here is another, said pug has a bad build and doesn’t get on teamspeak. My team secures a down player and we go to stomp him, but bad player who is not on teamspeak doesn’t hear the call to focus on this downed player and is instead being focused because he wasn’t with us, then he dies and rallies our downed player. Depending on the downed player, that rally may be enough to end us. Now we have our bursts on cooldown from focusing this person and they now have the chance to heal up and fight back.

Another fun one, my group running 5 people was fighting a group of 9 people. We were doing well and winning the fight, we had 3 of their people down and another small group of pugs jumps in to “help”, the pugs instantly die because their positioning is bad and they’re not on teamspeak and have bad builds. They rally those 3 people that we worked hard to down, then we lose the fight because we coordinated our attack on those people because they were the enemies with the highest damage output, now we die because we have nothing left to save us from them. You can go ahead and argue that we were just bad and it is why we lost, but 2 times prior to this fight, we beat them 5v9 and then 3 times after that fight, we did it again. The fact that the only time we lost to that group was when bad pugs jumped in tells all you need to know.

I could go on and on and on with reasons why we don’t want pugs running with us and examples of how we’ve been screwed over by pugs following us. But just as Swamurabi.7890 stated, all other game modes allow you to have your squads be exclusive except for WvW for the players with the right builds to join in the action.

There is no reason WvW is excluded besides the WvW dev team being out of touch with their game mode and players. The fact that we make an excellent argument as to why it should be a feature compared to their argument of why it isn’t going to be a feature leads me to believe they either don’t know how to do it, don’t want to do it because it is too much work, or don’t care about their customers.

We already have the ability to have a “closed squad” where people can only join if invited, so what is the harm in making that tag invisible to those not in the squad? I don’t understand.

Ayrilana.1396:

Do the commander markers persist after a commander steps down? Can’t those markers be used in place of a tag if so?

Unfortunately they do not. If they did, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. But as soon as the commander steps down, all lieutenants are demoted and all markers are cleared.

Swamurabi.7890:

Why is it OK then to be excluded in sPvP and PvE raids and fractals but not in WvW?

I’d love to be in one of the cash sPvP tournaments with one of the top teams except I suck at sPvP.

I’d love to join one of the top raid guilds to get legendary armor but I don’t have the right gear for raids.

I’d love to do the highest level fractals but I’m still at fractal lvl 2.

So why is it OK for the totally unprepared to join a squad of one of the elite WvW guilds?

Excellent point, very glad you brought that up.

Also, just to kill anets argument about how an invisible tag would discourage group play for people who don’t have a group: WE ALREADY RUN TAGLESS TO KEEP THE PUGS AWAY. They’re not losing out on anything. Any group that doesn’t want pugs are the people you’re excluding from the features a squad provides. You’re excluding my guild and any other guild from having access to things that are a part of the game like being able to target multiple people in a squad and having an easier thing to follow. Currently, and since the start of the game, we put a Target on the leaders head and follow them. That is the closed squad we currently have. It has been going on since the beginning of the game. So how’s about helping those of us out who are going to run without a tag anyway for a change.

Hexalot.8194:

Dawdler.8521:

XTR.9604:

Hexalot.8194:

XTR.9604:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Our stance hasn’t changed on this. My response that Xenesisll linked is still the same.

Then you’re just as out of touch with your players as everyone thinks you are. On that note, my guild is down to running WvW once a week or even less because of the lack of your team caring about how the players want to play the game. Every higher skilled GVG guild has quit the game because of it and almost all that is left is what you wanted there to be, just pug zergs. But by all means, it’s your game, keep on displeasing your players and driving them away since you clearly know what the players want more than they do.

LOL another guy who thinks he speaks for the entire WvW population…

Current entire? Nope probably not. But the players who have left the game? They left for the same reasons. Stability changes, CC changes, and the fact that anet thinks they know the game better than the players. The same players who paid for the game, expansion and gems in the game, some or which did this with multiple accounts like myself.

You may like zerging around, but that isn’t for everyone. Many people still enjoy smaller group play and playing with just their guilds against the enemies. After all, this is “Guild Wars 2”, not “Pug Zerg wars” right? There is nothing in this game that pits guilds against other guilds, so where does guild wars come from? Lol. At least GW1 had GvG.

All well and good, but are you saying that they also left because they cant hide a squad tag?

Because that’s what this thread is about. Not stability changes, CC changes, condi meta or whatever. If guilds actually cared this much about the tag I’m amazed they even lasted a week, considering we ran without squads and only had a single kittenty tag with no functions in the glory days of GW2 GvGs.

Exactly my thoughts. A few people (after 5 years) are still mad that ANET ignores their requests for invisible tags, and then come here and try to distill all the problems that are causing people to leave the game down to this one issue… lack of official support for private GvG fights.

If you had to rank all the unresolved problems that cause people to quit WvW (empty servers, condi meta, stab changes, stale game mode, HOT, etc…), would lack of invisible tags even make the top 10 ?

As a guild leader, I’ve tried very hard to keep the game going for myself and my team. Every screwed up thing they’ve done has caused all of us to play a lot more limited or to take an extended break. We all quit the game when desert BL was on all of the maps and didn’t come back until Alpine came back. It took 7 months for anet to listen to anyone and it took them losing the majority of their players to do something about it. I still think that if they reverted stability and removed the CC cap, many players would return to the game. If they added an actual GvG arena that wasn’t tiny like the guild hall arena, utilized WvW rules (instead of pve rules where retaliation is way stronger like in the guild hall), and made it to where you could set team limits where only X amount of people could get in the arena, it would bring people back also.

Having an invisible tag isn’t something a lot of people are quitting over, but it is an annoyance enough to me after putting up with the stability/CC changes, 7 months of being out of the game due to deserted BL, no GvG arena which killed off a lot of groups I liked playing with or against, and the fact that they’re still not listening to player suggestions which have been brought up many times. Again, it isn’t as much about the tag as it is about terrible customer service.

One would think that they’d want to hear from the people who are guild leaders in WvW, have thousands of hours in WvW, and spent a ton of money in the game. But clearly their priorities aren’t on improving the game in the image of the players who have kept it alive, it is on whoevers image whom I’m sure has less hours actually playing and probably has never led a single WvW raid.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Dawdler.8521:

XTR.9604:

Hexalot.8194:

XTR.9604:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Our stance hasn’t changed on this. My response that Xenesisll linked is still the same.

Then you’re just as out of touch with your players as everyone thinks you are. On that note, my guild is down to running WvW once a week or even less because of the lack of your team caring about how the players want to play the game. Every higher skilled GVG guild has quit the game because of it and almost all that is left is what you wanted there to be, just pug zergs. But by all means, it’s your game, keep on displeasing your players and driving them away since you clearly know what the players want more than they do.

LOL another guy who thinks he speaks for the entire WvW population…

Current entire? Nope probably not. But the players who have left the game? They left for the same reasons. Stability changes, CC changes, and the fact that anet thinks they know the game better than the players. The same players who paid for the game, expansion and gems in the game, some or which did this with multiple accounts like myself.

You may like zerging around, but that isn’t for everyone. Many people still enjoy smaller group play and playing with just their guilds against the enemies. After all, this is “Guild Wars 2”, not “Pug Zerg wars” right? There is nothing in this game that pits guilds against other guilds, so where does guild wars come from? Lol. At least GW1 had GvG.

All well and good, but are you saying that they also left because they cant hide a squad tag?

Because that’s what this thread is about. Not stability changes, CC changes, condi meta or whatever. If guilds actually cared this much about the tag I’m amazed they even lasted a week, considering we ran without squads and only had a single kittenty tag with no functions in the glory days of GW2 GvGs.

Usually, people quit due to a spark, or the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back. Way back when, I quit for about 10 months due to them screwing up the transmutation stones and us not being able to get our runes/sigils out of WvW / karma gear. But that was really just an accumulation of a bunch of crap; can’t really remember, think that might have been due to S2. And yeah, I quit for a while cause of the stability fiasco. Recently, I quit because I’ve been getting frustrated with the staleness of WvW, them not fixing glicko, the quality of the players, lack of teamwork, people not getting in TS, all kinds of things, much of which is server related. However, the straw that recently broke my back was my posts and threads getting deleted for about a week.

Usually not just one thing.

I’m not saying those people quit for this reason, but almost every GvG guild I’ve been a part of or talked to would have loved a closed squad tag. Almost all of those guilds quit because of the stab and CC changes. It was simply an example of anet thinking they knew what was best for the game and ultimately eliminating a large chunk of their player base because of it.

My point is that a closed squad with a tag only visible to those in it is something many people have been asking about for a very long time. By that, I mean since the beginning of the commander tag. People want to run with their own groups without having rally bots around. What anet doesn’t realize is how much of a pain it is having people follow you who don’t have good builds and refuse to change builds, play useless classes, won’t get on teamspeak, or even are spying for another server. I’ve experienced all of those things and it is why I don’t turn my tag on anymore that I paid for. Just sad that they won’t add a small feature into the game that would please so many of their players.

Hexalot.8194:

XTR.9604:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Our stance hasn’t changed on this. My response that Xenesisll linked is still the same.

Then you’re just as out of touch with your players as everyone thinks you are. On that note, my guild is down to running WvW once a week or even less because of the lack of your team caring about how the players want to play the game. Every higher skilled GVG guild has quit the game because of it and almost all that is left is what you wanted there to be, just pug zergs. But by all means, it’s your game, keep on displeasing your players and driving them away since you clearly know what the players want more than they do.

LOL another guy who thinks he speaks for the entire WvW population…

Current entire? Nope probably not. But the players who have left the game? They left for the same reasons. Stability changes, CC changes, and the fact that anet thinks they know the game better than the players. The same players who paid for the game, expansion and gems in the game, some or which did this with multiple accounts like myself.

You may like zerging around, but that isn’t for everyone. Many people still enjoy smaller group play and playing with just their guilds against the enemies. After all, this is “Guild Wars 2”, not “Pug Zerg wars” right? There is nothing in this game that pits guilds against other guilds, so where does guild wars come from? Lol. At least GW1 had GvG.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Our stance hasn’t changed on this. My response that Xenesisll linked is still the same.

Then you’re just as out of touch with your players as everyone thinks you are. On that note, my guild is down to running WvW once a week or even less when we used to run 5 days a week, this is because of the lack of your team caring about how the players want to play the game. Every higher skilled GVG guild has quit the game because of it and almost all that is left is what you wanted there to be, just pug zergs. But by all means, it’s your game, keep on displeasing your players and driving them away since you clearly know what the players want more than they do.

And I’m sure this will get deleted because having any opinion other than yours is not acceptable and is hidden from everyone. Another reason I stopped coming this this forum unless I really felt like I needed to.

I was hoping to see this, but I am not sure that we will. I’d really like the option to have a “closed squad” where your commander tag is only displayed to those in your squad. Many guilds want to run with JUST their guild (like myself) to test their own skill out in the world. There are plenty of commanders that want everyone to join them, but that isn’t everyone.

I think this would help to discourage the blob mentality also, which is a much needed thing in WvW right now. Blobs all over the place are why many guilds have quit the game and why my guild runs maybe once a week in WvW now.

Zintrothen.1056:

Condi war, IMO, is actually more competitive than power. If you ask me, Macebow beats power any day, especially now with the nerfs power got.

Mostly a player skill thing. A power warrior can sustain a lot more condition damage with resistance and things like the cleansing ire trait if they know how to play. I find that good power warrior that knows what they’re doing is the hardest thing to beat on condi warrior, but I don’t have much of a problem beating any other class on the condi warrior even if they know how to play well. I personally run sword/torch and mace/shield instead of longbow, but I do see where longbow has its advantages in PvP. The condi damage out of the sword berserk burst is enough condi damage to essentially one shot your target. I generally use headbutt, F2, F1 on sword/torch and whoever is my target generally melts unless they stun break and dodge fast enough. Hitting F2 gives me quickness on my build also, so if I do F1 immediately after, it drops a lot of burns REALLY fast. Then you can swap to mace/shield and shield 4, then 3, then F1 to keep them locked up so they can’t clear the burns. Usually enough to kill anyone with ease.

http://xtremetheory.com/pvp-condi-warrior/

I always use this condi warrior build when I play PvP and it has worked pretty well for me. When it comes to single target fights, I don’t think there is much that can hang with it. It also holds up pretty well in outnumbered fights for the most part, but if you start getting focused out too much, it gets painful.

If you’re sick of being condi bombed on a warrior, you’re playing warrior all wrong. Not sure how you’re playing, rather it is a larger group, small group, or solo also.

http://xtremetheory.com/wvw-roaming-condi-warrior/

I’d suggest my condi warrior build personally if you must be super tank. Power warrior is better for larger groups, but if you can’t stay alive, you’ll be useless. You can at least be useful by spreading some pretty nice conditions to your enemies with my condi build.. I generally would suggest playing a power warrior for larger groups, but if you’re having trouble surviving on a meta power warrior build, this is a good alternative in my opinion.

No offense, but as it currently stands, the build you posted is pretty useless for all forms of WvW game play. It doesn’t do much damage, you’re not running battle standard, so your support is pretty much non existent for larger groups. Also, you’re running GS and mace/shield, which means no hammer and no hammer stuns. The build is 100% useless to every group except soaking up damage maybe. Just trying to help you out, not trying to be mean at all.