Guild Wars 2

Baldrick.8967:

I remember all those arguments from people saying guilds are the saving grace of wvw and some even suggested it should be guild based.

In reality, guilds are mainly the problem, as they hop from one server to another saying they are looking for better fights but in reality just want to bandwagon somewhere.

Actually, what you just said just proves that WvW guilds make the WvW Even if you don’t like it, WvW is based on WvW guilds and famous pugmanders.

I suppose it was considered as yet another buff for defenders. It’s much better than other defensive buffs, like the hp sponge walls and gates, tactivators, supply ripping trebs etc. At least the aura promotes, theoretically, fights instead of hiding behind walls. So maybe it’s a good concept. What I don’t like is the aura range – it’s way to big, which makes fights outside of structures even mor unbalanced.

C’mon, I think world linking is quite ok. Maybe the issue is: unfortunate terrible matchups in EU (t2, t3, t5) and stall/inert glicko rating in NA (t3, t4, t5)?

As a fan of fights instead of watching one guy pressing 2 on cata, I have one ultimate solution: remove the walls!

Indeed the current meta is extremely boring especially in 15v15 or 20v20 – just run on com tag and spam skills… But still it’s much better than recent pirate ship… I really miss old days, where you needed frontliners, backline and focus party. This comp was much more interesting to play and watch. But I really have no idea, how to change the current meta. Yeah – revenants’ dwarf, durability runes and mesmers’ boon copy+resistance are the key skills for current meta. Full boon share builds are really a kitten, but most guilds just do not play that comp and just do not want to gvg against others with that crap. You can only see some not much respected guilds on borderlands, who stack 2 mintues of all boons before they even leave the spawn… Nevertheless, I think, that improving boon strips is really a wrong direction – don’t pour salt on the wound.

Personally I think it all started with the power creep builds after HoT. GvG players just needed much more sustain. Now you just can not play any zerked backline or focus anymore, since half of the classes could one-shot you at 1200 range. This is the core issue imo… You need to increase survivability of all members, and then there is no need for backline, so all run a “ball formation” and spam sustain skills.

Not in EU top tiers. The very top guilds can not wipe an organized PUG blob anymore. Anet tried hard for years to make it impossible for guilds to stand against a blob. You need about 3 good guilds of 15+ to wipe a PUG blob led by a good commander. But of course any recognized WvW guild can destroy with 15 man an unorganized force of 30. But this are two different things.

@Nash: why don’t you just make a guild, get about 20-30 professionals, who think same as you, that there nothing more satisfying than capturing a tower, and do the job all the day for fulfilling your winner’s attitude Or buy a tag and become the number 1 pugmmander on your world. Play as you wish, but pls don’t call other people stupid just because they don’t care about what you care so much…

If you want your pvp badge displayed on wvw maps, I want my wvw rank and server displayed on pvp match

Seriously – the less icons on players names in wvw the better.

I don’t have this problem, but serveral guildies reported the same issue. Players on wvw maps are displayed in one place, but they physically are in different places. Only the minimap shows their proper position. Often players disappear at all, and are shown on minimap only. There was for sure some bugged change to rendering/positioning introduced with last patch.

@OP just try to join a good WvW guild. Maybe you’ll see how much fun and incentive you can get. Guild pride, personal development, commitment and competition with other guilds can be much more exciting than any “season”. It worked for me at least.

I don’t care about the scoring as long as good fights between similar forces go on on alpine borderlands. Linking is good for increasing population on WvW maps and an option for servers balancing. Often relinking will also make transfers less atrractive. And all that is good.

The risk of often relinking is possible imbalance betwen unlinked and newly linked servers. But this shall be managed by improved matchmaking, i.e. score of linked servers shall be somehow divided between those servers after unlinking.

T1 became train wreck, at least in EU, because strong servers were linked with low pop/low transfer price servers, while other not linked top servers were locked for months since they were full. This made even greater imbalance. If the relinking were done once a month, we would never had such situation. The overpopulated servers could be unlinked just after a month to avoid disaster.

Why there is no option for NEVER EVER DBL!?!?!?!? I’d love to vote for deleting all the dessert borderland code, burn all backup files and brain wash the guys who designed them just to be sure it never gets back Of course I voted for 1 DBL and 2 ABL, since this makes still at least two borderlands playable. But if there was an option for no more DBL I’d choose this one 1000%.

Actually I voted against the world linking. But the truth is I’m ok with world linking in general, but against the current implementation. The cancer of current solution is linking top server with lower pop server. Look at the T1 – you linked Deso with Vabbi. As long as Vabbi is low/medium pop server you just made perfect way for all bandwagonners who can transfer to the top server for curious little price. Moreover, the more people go to Vabbi, the bigger imbalance between Deso&Vabbi and the next servers, i.e. Piken and Riverside, since those servers are FULLLLL. If the servers merge was intended to balance the population, you actually did the opposite….

Guys, this is about large scale pvp, not about skins… The less skins, the better. We gonna fight here, not watch landscapes!

Thank you for the old good alpine BL! Our guild had yesterday so much fun on borderlands! Finally no more running simulator, but so many exciting fights

Current meta for 15v15 skirms on guild arena looks more less like: 4 guardians, 2 revenants (herald spec), 2 engineers (scrapper spec), 2 necromancers (reaper spec most often), 1 warrior (berserker spec), 2 elementalists (usually tempest spec), 2 mesmers (chronomancer spec).

The squad is divided into 3 parties. Usually you put 2 guardians, 1 revenant, 1 mesmer, 1 scrapper into 2 parties. The rest goes into 3rd party. The gameplay on guild arena are is much less a pirate ship, because the arena is to small and looks rather like a point defense in PvP, so expect lot of mess and skill spam on point. You got little to none place for maneuvers, the whole squad moves together in one ball, so there is no place for movement strategy nor separate frontline, backline and focus party (which is a shame imo). You put much more into defense, boon sharing and condi cleanse, since the ranged powercreep builds after HoT can wipe your team if you do not maintain high survivability. Guardians are your party core, they give stabi, prot, etc. (of course you do not use bows). Revenants run glint and dwarf for defense, they give you lot of prot/damage reduction, fury, might, boon sharing. Engineers run scrapper builds, they give you smoke fields for engaging the fight and reveal the opponent team. Mesmers give boon sharing/upkeep and resistance. Necromancers run condi builds very often (for more survivability). Warrior of course built for killshot.

Of course detailed comps for different guilds may vary depending on the play style and skill, but this is a general comp to start with.

Dara Potocska.8196:

Rather than making many players suffer longer under the performance issues while we continue to look for a fix that works, the decision was made as a team to disable the event.

Great news! Praise the gods ot Tyria!

Any chances you stop looking for a fix and leave it disabled? PvE events, dinosaurs dopping power cores and mega lasers, like other crap you added with HoT, really do not fit into WvWvW…

displayname.8315:

GvG guilds have arenas now and what do fashion forward people get??? NOTHING

Not really, guild arenas are to small for GvG. Whoever designed them, probably never did GvG… You can stand in the middle and spam AOE all around the arena. Not much place for maneuvers/regroups. Not to mention other issues like visible enemy names, pve builds, terrible shiny floor texture.

+1 to the OP. Seems devs do not understand that WvW is not EotM and there are still players, who do not want cheese on WvW. There are still people looking just for fights, where two groups of players fight against each other without all those cheesy mechanics introduced with HoT.

Hell yea! More CC, less stabi, more ranged bomb and more choke points. All what all WvW players wanted so badly. All brought to you with HoT. The fights are now so exciting!

I fully agree with the OP. Nerfed stabi + even more buffed hard CC with HoT is in my opinion very wrong direction. I loved strong melee position in large scale battles. It made the fights more dynamic and interesting. But obviously the devs think different – they want to buff backline casters with tons of AoE and CC who just stand and spam all the skills. What they added to HoT (dragunhunters traps, mesmers wells) simply shows that they don’t give a kitten about melee fights. Look at all the choke points on the new BL maps. It was also designed just to promote mindless ranged skills spam. Look at the relatively small guild arena – it also promotes spamming traps and wells all around…
This was discussed so many times, that I don’t believe there is any chance to change the combat style direction. Either the devs want the battles to look like it or they had no idea why the WvW was so unique and exciting game mode and they destroyed it unaware… Either way – just a shame…

I strongly second the request. JPs is something beyound my interest, I don’t like platform games, I consider it as a content for much different kind of gamers than me and will never ever do JPs in this game. Even items for legendary collection was a matter of hiring a skilled mesmer with portal. So good to know yet another content is not for me…. Unfortunatelly it means bye bye winterday…

If you left because of previous ridculous, bad wvw changes and you hope now, after the expansion, it got better, then: NO. Can’t think of any good change to wvw introduced by the expansion. Most of the changes were bad, some very bad and a the rest just terrible.

I wonder how it was possible to destroy all about organizeed wvw fights with only one totally broken skill of one class. Nobody at Anet ever considered how a 10k dmg hit every 2 seconds at 1200 range will spoil wvw? Our skimishes are now all the same – the team with more revenants win. Just stand and spam 2, you win, thank you.

Our guild moved to low gold and have now lot of fun on new borderlands. There are still guilds running there and looking for fights. So we now play everyday except weekends. Of course this is a focused point of view – we do not intend to jump around all those slopes, kill saurs, run between those stupid rocks, do meta event, nor take structures (spamming sieges is so boring)… As long tehere are some open fields on new bls and some organized groups, we are happy. If anything makes us worry, it is of course the revenants cor skill, which is totally broken and makes fights dumb and unpredictable.

The guy from reddit nailed it – I think exactly the same:

Revenant hammer #2 skill is being broken in WvW for 1 month. So how can you even say anything about wvw balance. This skill is spamable, on 2s cd, it is aoe skill, there is no red circle/effect, you can not see this skill in wvw to dodge, it can hit people 8-10k or even more.

You have introduced more hard cc skill with elite specs, and did nothing to improve stability. It is now cc fest, who first spam enough cc skills wins.

I’m playing much less WvW than before the expansion. It’s actually not because of the new BL map itself, but because there is much less people playing WvW in general. So for now I’m only playing WvW during our daily guild raids, while before the expansion I did it much more, playing with pugmanders.

For guild raids we always go BL, but now we spend most of the time running across the dessert looking for any enemy. We’re not interested in taking empty structures, so we look for any fights, and those happen now quite rarely.

The map itself is not that bad, since there is lot of open space for nice fights. The problem is it’s hard to find any1 for fighting. There are of course some annonying and just stupid things on the map, like for example those rocks emerging from the ground around “garri”, teleporting lords, lava turrets, unnecesery verticality. All this isn’t helping in anything but is just annoying. Not mentioning the mid map event – did it once and won’t be do ever again – dull and boring PvE crap.

The new map has just too much cheese I’m not interested in. But it’s playable. What worries me much more is the ongoing shift in WvW fighting strategy. More and more long range hard cc (e.g. recently introducet wells and traps) without any stabi buf drives the WvW fights in a direction I really don’t like. Add to this to much op siege simulator instead of real fights. I suppose, that after the blobbing guilds finish farming the PvE ingredients for upgrades like auto turrets, there will be no reason to go to BLs at all. And all this makes me to consider stop playing, not the new BL.

To the OP: I fully agree that the ridiculous requirements for guild WvW upgrades are a fail. But won’t agree, that it killed www guilds. Maybe it made life harder for small havoc groups with about 5 people wanting to flip not defended upgraded structures. But I think maybe it’s a good direction. I’d hardly call a 5 people group a WvW guild that has been killed by missing +5 upgrade…

Nevertheless farming SW shovels to get guild WvW upgrade is ridiculous dumb…

I want to join this positive feedback thread and also thank for the new DESERTED BL. Finally no blobs, no k-training, no queues, nothing! The map looks so gorgeous. This is what all WvW players wanted for long. Thanks for reading all the feedack from all beta weekends! Finaly more PvE content and long awaited vertical, huge map with fortified gates and auto turrets. This will make large scale PvP battles even greater. Special thanks for constantly teleporting NPC lords and those cool rocks that come out of the ground, which brought me to the next level of expirience.

Aeolus.3615:

The old BL’s were completely karma train maps(imo that is the wvw fights most talk for sure…and they want that back), they also had alot of flaws.

Everything started to help the larger servers after the big patch, even if they are unorganized they have plenty of more chances to win plus stealth from SM…

K-training wasn’t caused by old BLs layout, nor by lack of cheesy pve mechanics, but by 1) players mentality, 2) rewarding players numbers over players skill. All different mechanics introduced to WvW for all previous updates were focused on: 1) limiting efficiency of smaller size skilled group in favour of the mindless blob, 2) giving bigger advantage to structure defenders. This started with increasing AC’s power, terbuchets stealing supplies, stability nerf, and pirate ship meta. By design this was intended to discourage blobbing/k-training, but made something completely opposite.

I remember the very early WvW battles, where a good organized group was able to wipe a much bigger pug blob and claim fortified structures. For now both of this is no longer possible, since the numbers is the main factor of victory. More numbers = more supplies, more sieges, more cc, more ranged aoe, more stabi removal…

And all this will continue to be the same after the expansion. Introducing all the new crappy pve mechanics will not change it, it only makes playing on BLs more annoying and tedious. What could discourage k-traing is however bigger map size and longer time needed to claim a structure (e.g. lord killing time). But bigger map size makes the BLs to look empty and results in less chances for any fights. This makes easier to take empty structures, which leads back to k-training… Vicious circle…

Johje Holan.4607:

Why does Anet do half the things they do for WvW?

I think it’s a number of factors:

1. They love cheese; like stealth, Golems, falling to your death, ambient creatures, etc.
2. They don’t really know what to do with WvW.
3. Therefore in their minds, the more cheese the better.

+1 man!
Add to this all other dull, stupid and not WvW crap like spikes getting from the floor, teleporting lords, lava pounds, auto turrets, bouncing air, no falling damage shrines, etc… I hoped so much WvW is about large scale player vs. player fighs, like PvP, just with greater numbers… Apparently I was so wrong…

Saephaan.7285:

This desert bl killed wvw

Maybe this is a wrong conclusion? New PvE maps caused it, not new BL map. We really need to wait few weeks until people get bored with new PvE content and get back to WvW…

De gustibus non disputandum, but for me the siege wars was always the most boring and stupid thing in WvW. Watching people on one side spamming 1 on ACs, and people on the other side spamming 1 on catas is really dull. Surprisingly new borderlands made shift to actual fights between players on structures instead of just spamming 1 on sieges. And – for me – this is really great direction! Maybe the problem for now is low borderlands population, but I hope that after people finish farming the new PvE maps, there will be more action back on WvW.

Engelsstaub.4356:

Not long ago it was very possible for 15 people to defend a T3, fully sieged keep against a huge blob. Arrow carts were the main part of such defence.

But now ACs are virtually useless. Now you can’t defend anything if you are outnumbered because ACs can’t reach rams.

Thanks then for making karma train blobbing even more easy peasy effortless.

If you believe, that a huge blob shall not be able to take a fully upgraded keep defended by few people, my questions are:

1. In what circumstances do you think an enemy server shall be able to flip a fully upgraded keep?
2. Maybe do you believe that upgraded keeps shall not be possilble to take? Just upgrade on match reset then sit in this keep a week till another reset, and the enemy shall not even bother?
3. Don’t you think, that increasing keeps defence just promotes train blobbing instead of discouraging it?

briggah.7910:

A keep takes a long time to fully upgrade. There should be defensive siege inside them and people using them to protect the upgrades that people payed for. Even towers take a few hours to upgrade. Why should we have less defensive options and make it easier for larger groups to take? A keep shouldn’t be an easy thing to take.

I think this is a faulty line of reasoning. Increasing structures defensiveness and siege power makes of course harder to take it by larger groups. But:
1. It forces you to take even bigger group. This direction promotes even bigger blobbing, since you need tons of supplies and manpower just to break a wall.
2. You profit more from offhours sneaky captures, making server with offhours blob to always win.

Instead of discouraging blobbinng, the direction Anet is heading, just promotes even bigger blobbing and increases match influence by offhours blobs. So thank you, but this is defintely wrong direction. I still hope for some fights in borderlands structures without blobbing, but the current system just forces the opposite.

DJ Klemintino.5781:

Idk i think theyway transfer are now is fine. What is it. 1800 for v high, 1000 for high, 400 for medium and 200 for low?

Its a way to somewhat balance population. It should take you more to move to a very high server. Otherwise it would be bandwagons galore.

True, but… There are no low pop servers at all. This is a bit ridiculus. I think transfer cost shall be more transparently calculated based on current server ranking, not mysterious “population”. So the worst servers shall always be low, and best always high.

Coldtart.4785:

ACs are hated because people that use ACs only use ACs and never fight even if they outnumber you. They just hide in their tower hoping their 111 spam will stop the big mean fight guild and run away when it becomes clear that it won’t.

100% agree. Seen this so many times – even if they outnumber you, they just sit in their upgraded keeps and spam 1 on ACs. I really think, that nerfing ACs will make more interesting fights in structures. I mean real fights, not dull siege spam.

Zachary Stiers.1879:

This is a complex problem. The intention was to make it harder to fire from the ground onto and over walls while still being able to fire from walls downward, but trying to get such behavior is not simple. I do agree that the cases displayed in the screenshots are not great though.

I really like this change Always considered WvW as large scale player vs. player areana, not siege wars simulator. You want to defend, then fight like a fighter instead of hiding behind walls and pressing 1 for devastating damage…

@Rin: The long siege may be fun for many player. The thing is, that increasing the defense capabiliities of keeps wont make the siege longer, it will just make no sieges at all…

@MRA: With all the buffs to defense, that Anet makes for so long (starting with stronger ACs, trebs wiping supplies, thru the recent guild claims like indestructible cannons or invul walls), I think that there will be no place for long, siege, or any siege, in WvW anymore. Anet works hard just to make flipping upgraded keeps impossible, except sneaky attack in offhours with a zerg of reasonable size. This will make no more any fights in the “so cute” new borderlands. Also you, as a defender and builder, could be not so happy, when you will run on your renforced keep’s walls refereshing precious sieges, and no one will ever try to attack…

The good point of this is no more ktrains on borderlands. The bad – dead zones with reinforced keeps with tons of sieges inside. No action on borderlands at all, except – if the opposite server has a good night coverage – a sneaky zerg attack wiping all your keeps in offhours…

TLDR: too much effort in making keeps impossible to take over = no action in prime time, the server with biggest offhours zerg always wins… Actually it happens for long on many middle tier servers.