Guild Wars 2

roamzero.9486:

The closest thing WvW ever had to a condition meta was with glamour mesmers confusion bombing. The current meta:

Stack up as many players into a zergball as possible,
guardians spam staff1 and shouts
staff eles and hammer warriors cast their aoe stun
necros spam wells and marks

Thats the meta.

The meta re: Guardians may be very much in response to the increase in conditions, due to them running the Pure of Voice/Soldiers Runes combo which both rely on shouts. This combo removes 2 conditions per shout and converts one of those conditions to a boon to up to 5 players in an AoE radius. Aforementioned build is particularly useful/survivable in the current environment, which has more conditions and CC’s than I’ve ever seen.

Yep, I tried to post a new topic and my subject kept getting changes to a long string of kittkittkittkittkittkitt, preventing me from posting because topic subject was too long.

Thanks BG and SoR for the T1-type of experience this week. I’ve seen some things I’d yet to see in WvW. For example, this is almost the most people I’ve ever seen in one place on a map. I say almost because this was after ~35 of us were wiped:

Medieval warfare was all about being in very tight-knit formations. In fact the history of war was all about big formations of infantry (and cavalry) until after WWI. It’s possible that it’s going to be inherent for large groups to be dominant in our medieval-ish game no matter how the devs tweak things.

In GW2 higher pop matchups, groups of all sizes play important roles. If a mega-zerg is on the map, they might be able to flip anything but they are back-capped so quickly they will not get the better of the points game.

A server that is balanced with zergs but also has small teams flipping camps and yaks, scouts probing for coverage weaknesses and sentries watching approach routes and upgrading towers will win the day. On that kind of team you can find an important and satisfying role no matter what size group you like to run with. But for this scenario to happen your server needs to have the coverage and not all do.

Snowreap.5174:

laokoko.7403:

So instead of TC fighting JQ which will give them some good fight. They are fighting like rank 10-15 server?

The deviation is too large.

1. TC can’t fight #3 JQ, because #3 JQ is busy fighting #2 SoR and #1 BG.

instead, #4 TC is fighting #7 Mag and #8 SoS. #7 and #8 are not by any means rank 10-15.

btw, #4 TC can’t fight #5 DB and #6 FA, because #5 and #6 are busy this week giving #12 CD a chance to prove that it deserves to move up.

really, these are all reasonable matchups. look at some of the outcomes in EU if you want to find servers who have a real reason to complain.

-ken

Not really. TC can beat Mag and SOS with one hand tied behind their backs by sheer coverage advantage. However if TC doesn’t push hard and completely blow their opponents out they will lose rating. So the point game incentive is to run up the score. Blowout matches are less fun than closer ones, especially for the loser.

Now DB, FA, CD might be a little more fun since DB and FA are closer in rank. They will probably concentrate more on each other and leave CD a little more breathing room to play a spoiler role.

Still count me in the favoring WULD camp, though I would even prefer a variant where you don’t move down or up unless you’ve won or lost twice in a row.

Counter treb from Durios anywhere near the Lord’s room.

alcopaul.2156:

Furiousbeard.7602:

alcopaul.2156:

It would be better for our server Kaineng to boycott WvWvW for a week and escape this imbalanced matchup. The then bandwagon (WM, CO, RISE, RE, Meow, XF, etc.) Kaineng wasn’t able go through the needle that is TC and FA T2 to go to T1. Do you expect a weaker server now void of these bandwagoners (even these bandwagoners are now on the other side) fare well with this same matchup?

I just don’t want CHIPSY and RE and KN bandwagoners to FA if there are any having the idea that what they did was right getting out of KN. Better lose rating by boycotting this just to flip KN’s finger to them and to the matchup in general.

I know it’s a game. But to be in full control of the situation sometimes you gotta be in full control of the path of the server that it is treading. You just don’t force yourself fighting the invincible zergs of T2 servers which sadly house the prolly now gloating exKNs. Boycott the matchup and let them TC and FA farm each other. Uphold your pride and honor and don’t give them an impression that KNs are walking lootbags.

kitten much?

If people want to fight, they will fight.

Also, glicko scores dont mean a thing till monday and tuesday.

Kaineng is better fit to fight CD/YB/EBay or prolly Mags. (leaderboard ranking tier) T3-T4 which is quite impressive still after all those exodus from bandwagoners.

Kaineng was T8. Bandwagoners got it to T2. Most of the bandwagoners left and the current KN population is maintaining the server to T3-T4. so from T8 to T3-T4. Impressive still.

Imagine boxing man. a featherweight doesn’t fight a heavyweight.

Again, imbalanced matchups are imbalanced.

I have a lot of fond memories from Kaineng and won’t forget them. I watched Kain grow quite a bit stronger in player skill over the months. I remember running with Chuck Norris Guild once early on and getting mowed over by pretty much everyone, then watching Chuck Guild evolve to become the Kain BL stalwart. There’s no way Kain will go all the way back down to T8.

As a late night west coast player I enjoyed seeing Kain get stronger last night into the later hours when you guys held more of the map than FA. That was me with about 6 other RE defending Mendon’s to try and slow you all down a little.

Apologies for the stragglers in Kain, we are still trying to raise the gold to get over those who want to come to TC but can’t afford it. As with any 400 person guild, I’m sure we’ll have people who’ll never move, but after all the housekeeping is done they’ll no longer be in RE.

lani.7431:

Kreaven.3172:

Evalana.5480:

Kreaven.3172:

selan.8354:

Lanimal.6541:

neomccoy.2657:

Lanimal.6541:

Haldunius.7864:

CHIPS.6018:

Thesilentflute.8761:

War Machine blackgate wants you! Come play with us in T1 we have a grand community that rewards the efforts of all of our battle worn solders. If is great fights you seek look no further there are fights to be had against the mightiest of enemy in foo and many others. We have high skill base but low numbers with your guilds help there is nothing that could stop us our glory Awaits.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.-Thucydides

Well you guys better be prepared to pay, a lot. A server (I won’t name which) is promising premium dollars for WM, RISE, CO (and maybe others) to head over. I am talking about crazy out of this world money here. But they said no since they didn’t want to leave their Kaineng brothers.

Thanks for staying all! ^^

Oh come on now. Such juicy drama and you won’t share?! We can play hangman or something to guess the server.

Through process of elimination all signs would point to SoR.

1. Its not BG because the poster talking about the gold gossip eliminated them basically directing us to ‘another server’.

2. I highly doubt JQ would pay more gold for more SEA guilds? They have the most insane SEA in NA by a long shot anyway, I do not think their SEA guilds would want to deal with even more queue times than they already have.

This leaves us with SoR who are coming close to competing with JQ and all they need is more SEA/European. Also they have recently upped their recruitment and managed to get AFS and Tsym so they are probably going all out.

or it could be a European T1 server…

Believe it or not TC posted in RE forum recruiting us. I find it funny or maybe just a troll I dont know.

When was this? I don’t think anyone in TC condones cross-server recruitment in the same tier. Do you mind telling us the nick of the guy who posted on the RE forums?

erm sry, but i know 3 guilds that received recruiting mails in game from tc.

Do you by chance know who sent the emails? I nor the first person who asked the question are not asking to dispute the fact. We are more asking so we can tell them to stop if they were indeed serious.

When I was on Dragonbrand – We were up against TC in T3. My guild leader at the time expressed interest in FA on the FA forums. I got a personal message from someone on TC inviting me to Mumble, where they pitched TC. My mind was already made up on going to FA, whether my guild went or not… I have a lot of friends from GW1, and IoJ here… My GL had also told me that he wasn’t interested, so I basically went to hear what they had to say and kind of let it go. So, saying that TC is against recruiting from the matchup is a bit false, as I also heard that they were planning on subtly approaching others on Dragonbrand as well… But I don’t know how true or false that is. Just personal experience.

Well like I said, I am not saying its false. But since no one knows names I will put it out there here. I do not approve of openly recruiting from the server of which you are currently playing against. So if the person you did do that reads this then yea… Do not even know if it will change anything but that is how I feel. I don’t like it. Going to other tiers I am far more open to. Right now though with our recent transfers for our Off hours, I do not think there is really anything else needed.

Fact is both TC and FA tried to recruit from DB. The difference is FA approached only a few guilds including mine which was well before we even entered there tier. TC tried the underhanded way which seemed like they wanted to completely gut our server of anything and everything they could get just to make themselves better. Anyone saying that TC is not actively recruiting is full of it in my opinion just look at the influx of guilds you got. No server gets that many guilds by sitting around doing nothing about recruiting. TC leaves a bad taste in my mouth sure on the outside they seem all happy and friendly but really TC just wants to win at any cost. How much gold you got sitting in the war chest to buy your victory?

Kain recruited the best Karaoke singers and DJs across all of GW2. We combed every server for the finest singing warriors and didn’t compromise. We do not mess around. You have not lived until you’ve zerged a tower with 50 people singing to Bloodhound Gang’s The Bad Touch.

TC deserves to win. Their coverage was impressive yesterday and their willingness to bunker up in Jerrifers and Klovan last night kept Kain way down in points for several hours. They used the three way battle to their advantage last night by focusing Kaineng and letting FA have Stonemist.

At the same time, I think Kaineng could’ve done better and in general needs to consider putting more focus on maximizing points. As TC was proving to be the bigger threat, we should’ve focused more on taking away TC points. All too often we were deep in FA territory. Also, it’s pretty obvious we need to get better at defending our wider holdings, not just our key keeps.

Anyhow, congrats to TC on the strong showing. You wanted it more this week and you took it.

Arkanfel.8403:

Thrumdi.9216:

Server-wide truces are selfish, especially during prime time hours.

Many people only have a few hours a day to WvW. To log on and find no fights because someone is organizing a PvE event is kind of crappy.

If you must do something like this, schedule it for the off-hours, like before noon.

They’d only need to be location-specific, like at lowlands keep from 12am-12:20am, Veloka from 12:25-12:45, and so on.. There will almost certainly be people on all sides who aren’t participating; all I can really do is try to get some people on me to escort opponents to their vistas and make sure they don’t try to gank the keep or build siege or whatnot. I’m pretty sure some fights will still be taking place for those who want to participate in them.

Also, the more I think about it, I’m not sure we could really maneuver the PPT in any meaningful way, but we could at least agree to a general status quo in EB. We really need those points, is my concern, since EB seems to be our strongest map by far this week.

I still want to see the Yak parade… The ring of fireworks around SMC last night might’ve reminded me of that. Can anyone PM me the where/when if it happens?

Evalakitten480:

Furiousbeard.7602

Omg! Did you steal the shoes off that dead body?!

….

….. hmmmm …

Are you willing to sell them?

Five bucks!

I know who that is, he lost his shoes last night on a bender when riding a broom naked. If you happen to find them I know he’d be grateful for their return.

azizul.8469:

props to all Kain at FABL who defended Bay for few hours outmanned… we lost it in the end, but still some efforts there….

oh.. hi TC….. wink*

Hahaa yes, that was a fun Bay defense last night, and a long enough stretch of outmanned that the 300 quotes started popping up.

In regards to the double teaming, I’ll say this: it’s very easy to influence who your opponent attacks in the borderlands. We thought PiNK’s hold of Garrison was a little strong so we took Redwater and set up a nice long siege at Redlake with catapults. Sure enough, TC defenders started to build up until finally a zerg popped out of Redlake like a swarm of ants (hooray end of culling). We disengaged at that point but noticed FA had time to get to inner Garrison while that was happening.

On the other side of the coin, TC helped us hold Bay longer because they hit Garrison twice after FA had gotten through outer Bay walls, pulling away most of the FA attackers. We destroyed FA’s skeleton crew left to man the trebs on the cliff and closed the outer gates. It probably wouldn’t have been twice if FA had left a mesmer at Bay—even TC sent a mesmer to Bay…tsk tsk

Wow, this was already one of the toughest ones. I guess we now need to trigger the event once we find him. However we didn’t find any barrels last night. I guess we’ll send 50 ppl to comb the zone.

Last night we ran a guild event (on Kaineng) and couldn’t find any barrels in Gendarran Fields and ended up failing the event because we couldn’t find Sottz with 25 ppl searching. It used to be there were lots of little barrels at points (we use the map on Dulfy’s site) that we’d check and Sottz would eventually be in one. Has this particular bounty changed?

Furiousbeard.7602:

I think a few people are forgetting that we are ultimately stuck with eachother until something drastic happens in tier 1 or tier 3.

Enjoy it while you can. These will probably be some of the best matches you will see for a long long time.

True that. And this week has been the most intense of them all given TC’s push and the WvW update. We’re seeing it reflected in the in the hours people are pulling in the borderlands and here with the intensity of the forum posts, I think. We here on Kaineng were getting a little sleepy given the (relatively) easy wins week after week, now it’s a bona fide race to the finish. Loving it!

I had 2 omnomberry ghost buffs disappear within 2 minutes. I didn’t get downed or anything during that time. Also saw all my norn blessings disappear except for the bear one. Anyone else seeing this problem?

Is Dwayna supposed to have 50 infinitely-respawning adds? Looks like it will take a really large group of ppl and/or some smart add kiting to win this now.

Omne.4603:

OMW

/15chars

Os thinking about heading to Kain? I remember you guys were solid opponents when we matched up against NSP. Meow has become an awesome part of Kain, I bet you guys would too.

I doubt that condition damage, duration or traits were purposely designed to impact the power of siege, particularly when it appears to be an inadvertent change related to an engineer class fix.

It’ll be fun to test all the possibilities in the meantime…hmm…condition necro on treb cows?

Proumbro.1376:

Intended? Probably not, but maybe they did.

Broken? Certainly unbalanced, but I have a long list of more broken mechanics that I would like fixed before they worry about this.

Solution? More of a band-aid, just make sure you have some necros and mesmers with well of power and null field respectively if you are having trouble. If you encounter it, just avoid that area and use long range siege.

How many other player traits affect siege in an offensive capacity?

Way too many ways to game a dynamic cap.

datawais.7209:

Hydrophidian.4319:

Vagrant.1094:

EB has been odd.

The whole match has been kinda odd so far.

Should be interesting to see how long it continues in this vein.

It’s kind of predictable. It’s the same not-double-teaming strategy since last week. KN tries to take Anz/Spel, FA tries to take Pang OW. Right now, KN is taking Mend while FA took Spel and Anz.

We wipe FA at OW, KN will show up, take Pang, siege OW, and FA will make a play at Anz and Spel.

KN took Durios and Umber once yesterday, and FA had Gol when I logged, but that’s as far as they’ll go. Neither server needs to split their forces because KN can quit NA coverage after the weekend and FA—as far as EB’s concerned—doesn’t want first place.

From the Kain POV it’s a little different. Been spending a lot of time in EB since reset and while of course I do not represent all 24 hours, it seems like every time we’d get serious on Durios or Quentin we had to put it off because TC started trying to steal the cookies in Wildcreek or SM.

The funniest was Durios on reset night. We trebbed it from SM and TC used our wall breach to flip it. Then we kept on trebbing and FA used our wall breach to flip it back.

Dear FA and TC,
Thanks for the most fun week I’ve ever had in WvW. There was so much action and strategerie [sic] it just never got old. Glad we’re going to get to do this again next week.

BTW Stonemist tonight was just off the hook, unbelievable!

CHIPS.6018:

We are still recruiting. If you want a server that never gives up and respects our opponents join Kaineng! ^^

This week has been one of the most enjoyable weeks in WvW I can remember. Sure it’s nice to be winning T2 but I think it’s also because there are so many good battles to be had at all hours. At the same time I see more and more successful mixed-guild strike teams running around doing good stuff for Kaining. To me this symbolizes a cohesion on Kaining that’s grown over time—and there’s absolutely no doubt all players have benefitted skill-wise from the 5 weeks we’ve spent in T2 so far.

I have to echo the sentiment that I’m not in a hurry to go up to tier 1 because of the good situation we have here. At the same time I know it will probably happen eventually and look forward to that challenge.

According to the server select screen, we are still one of the lesser populated servers (especially compared to our rank in WvW). Hopefully by the time we get to tier 1 we’ll have more players in general, especially hoping a skilled European guild will have decided to join Kain so we can complete our around the clock awesomeness.

Furienify.5738:

Magiofdeath.2745:

I was wondering how TC got an 8k lead. I was also wondering why Kain BL was left alone last night from TC but TC BL and FA BL was all red. Hmmm, coincidental? I’m not saying there was 2v1, I’m just calling out factual observation just looking at the maps last night.

Did you miss the part where TC held Kaineng Hills and Bay for the majority of the late morning and evening?

Hell, there’s even posts from I think a [RISE] guy complementing the defense, since they threw something like 8 golems at it.

I was in Kain BL until 1AM, There were quire a bit more TC on the map than FA the entire time. Hills was in fact last to fall and it took about an hour by itself. TC used their waypoint timer and managed supply adroitly. They actually managed to rebuild inner cannons twice, It finally took us two pushes into the Lords room to take it. There was so many spell effects in the lords room I had to use the mini map to figure out where to go once inside. So yea, TC were out in numbers yesterday.

Saweth You Him.9047:

TheFug.5278:

This has been a fantastic match up and extremely civil compared to the last few times we met. So far the only real trolls have been from [BT], but they are a group that can actually back up their trolling so we will allow it!

Good week so far, FA really has a strong crew that is determined. With a little additional coverage you guys could really be the t2 top dog for a very long time.

If FA had a little additional coverage WvW would have to be nerfed. It would not play the way it was intended. Only if everyone elses trebuchets fired twice as far and their projectiles hit twice as hard could the game remain the same. Only if their walls were twice as high and twice as hard could the game remain the same. That is the majesty of FA.

I don’t know why, but this post has inspired me to suggest the following celebrity commanders for next week:

Kain: Billy Ray Cyrus and his Achy Breaky Heart
FA: Miley Cyrus, superstar teen trying new hairdos as she transitions to adulthood
TC: Miley’s hot mom Tish, who made several critical decisions about Miley’s career

TC, really enjoyed the big cookie exchange at garrison just now. I hope you enjoyed all the ones we served up as well over that 45 minute (and quite memorable) time

Score update:

I am really proud of what we’ve done so far. We have found a really nice place here in T2. Those of us who transferred have built a lot of ties in the community and I see a lot of guilds helping each other out. It’s true WM is the top guild on our server and they not only get a lot of points during their prime time, they also share their knowledge and techniques with the community. We are all better players for it and we’re having fun.

Ketharius.9018:

TC defending bay a while ago was immensely fun, I hope that FA had as much fun attacking as we did defending. Not to mention the fun we had at WH.

I’d like to give both servers a round of applause for such a fun time.

Glad you had fun over there in Bay, looked like a big party with yellow swords up for the better part of an hour. FA came over to our Hills just before then and threw a beer bash in our outer and kinda trashed the place so we were busy scrubbing the bloody walls and putting band aids on our yaks…otherwise we would’ve come over to join the party.

Sunspots.9861:

eldavo.6054:

Sunspots.9861:

Looks like we picked the right Borderland! [BT] and [RE].

Welcome home, [PiNK]

You left the Bay fridge full of wine coolers!

That was a prank meant for FA, sorry about that. You can also please disregard the bag of rotten avocados in the risers behind the keep lord.

Sunspots.9861:

Looks like we picked the right Borderland! [BT] and [RE].

Welcome home, [PiNK]

Rising Dusk.2408:

You need to be able to make progress by helping the team, not just killing/capping.
People who scout are important, and so are people who refresh siege, or who upgrade bases, or who escort dolyaks. These roles are critical to WvW, and with progression being added, these roles must be rewarded with progression experience. If not, then people will forgo these critical roles in favor of things that earn them progression, and we will lose out on important parts of our strategy and the game will devolve further into zerg-smash-wall mentality.

If these three factors are appropriately handled in the March release, then I am confident that this release will be a good one. If not, then this will probably be one of the worst things to happen to WvW ever. Please, ANet, I don’t mind character-based progression so long as you get it right.

This is something that right now is already a detriment to the potential richness of WvW. Right now the best way, by far, to get karma, kills, loot, battle and die less is to run with a Zerg. If it becomes the best way to get the new WvW progression, you’ll see maps that are just tower flip-fests with hardly ever a defense.

Papawan.1952:

Hi Kaineng, I’m a prime-time Euro player and would like to try a NA server. Are there any commanders leading on Euro evenings from a WvW guild? I’m concerned that if I transfer, I would miss out on the main WvW events (at 3am my time) and I’ll be running around as a random PUG without a good commander during your afternoons.

There are a few, one of our guild leaders/commanders is from London. We also have a lot of strong commanders that overlap Euro times:

During Euro days/early evenings you’ll have many of the War Machine commanders to run around with. They are some of the best commanders I’ve ever seen, not only are they good fighters and strong tacticians, they are also pretty good at communicating to those following what’s happening.

And if you can stay up late there are a lot of strong NA commanders that seem to run regularly as you get closer to server reset time.

As far as I can tell, explorable mode dungeon rewards haven’t changed much if at all in the Feb update. Compared to the open world boss loot upgrades and even Fractals, it seems like dungeons are on the very low side for reward vs risk or time spent. Also, among the exp mode dungeons rewards seem skewed as well, e.g. CoF is richly rewarding for short paths while Arah or CoE take much longer and don’t offer any better rewards.

Is the thinking that dungeon armor/weapons balance this out?

Has anyone see the new ascended rings (e.g. P/P/T) as a reward from Jade Maw since the patch or are they something that can only be purchased?

SmokeyNYY.7841:

CnD’ing a keep wall to stay invisible is obviously not intended by A-net. You guys can’t be seriously defending this gameplay? This is coming from a thief as well.

Agree, CnD on a wall is obviously ridiculous. It will be fixed. In the meantime many thieves will use it just like many of us are using skale venom until the next patch— i.e. a weird kind of balance.

It’s an interesting thought as to what it will take for either BG or Kain to get to tier 1 and be successful. I imagine if BG had more guilds HB-caliber or Kain had more WM-caliber guilds that might tip the scales as well and even overcome some gaps.

On the Kain side we’re seeing a lot of improvement this second week of tier 2. We’re holding BG closer even though BG had the fresh transfers from Agg. Not only are we learning to counter strats we haven’t seen in the lower tiers, we’re also learning to fight better in groups. I think at least half of RE have tuned their builds in the last two weeks. We can all agree we’re having fun playing at a higher level

Raf.1078:

For pity’s sake ANet, can’t you do something about this? I don’t know how many times yesterday Commanders found their ability to communicate on map & team suppressed…so much so that they were asking in voice for us to relay their requests to the team.

If nothing else, how about instituting a Commander Only toolbox of Chat macros that could go out to either team, map, squad or whatever combo of chats? Maybe something like :

“insert commander name here” Go to Citadel…or Hold…or On Me…or whatever.

Not to mention that trying to type and fight has its own issues.

If the squad mechanic were improved to where it became natural for everyone following that commander to use it (see suggestion threads), the commander could use squad chat and not worry about being suppressed.

Chat macros are a nice idea, would be an improvement over having to find a spot to autorun while typing.

Swirling Winds and Smoke Screen can give attacking siege the advantage, almost too much so sometimes IMO.

Commander “reputation” is a cool concept, would definitely like to see something like that. Part of a challenge for current commanders is (as has been mentioned above a few times), the squad capability. It is rarely used, I think it’s for a number of reasons. Here’re some ideas I posted in suggestions forum a few weeks ago, reposting it here:

Problems with current squad functionality:

1. Everything squad-related involves /commands. Commander needs to type these commands to get any info about their squad
2. Being in a squad hides all other map commanders from people who joined the squads—so they have no idea how many other commanders may be on the map or where they are. They also have no idea who else is in the squad with them and for that matter if they’re even in a squad or not.
3. Squad members have to know about /squadleave to be able to leave a squad.
4. For non-squad situations, /supplyinfo has such a small radius it’s not very useful.

Possible solutions:

1. For the commander, provide a window that could show squad composition and supply full time. Would be nice to see squad member’s name and class as well as supply info. If that clutters the UI too much, make player name tags a unique color such as you can currently see for party or guild members.
2. For the squad member, see your commander’s icon in a different color but also be able to see all other commanders on your map.
3. For the squad member, be able to see who else is in the squad in the UI and be able to leave the squad by clicking on something in the UI instead of having to know /squadleave
4. Commanders of a squad should have their own chat color (or be bold text) so players can immediately notice what the commander is saying vs all the other stuff being said. This would likely be beneficial functionality in /team chat as well.

I believe changes such as these would be conducive to making squad usage a natural part of WvW and greatly empower commanders to coordinate their forces across the map. In turn it would make it easier for commanders to display their battlefield leadership skills and build their reputations.

nalenb.1425:

Kaineng, Kaineng. Who goes to war and thinks “I’ll wear a loin cloth”? hehe

Anyone know this guy? I want to send him some silver for repair costs.

Reminder: FIGHT CLUB today starting 5:00 PM Pacific time. Kain Borderland in the usual place. Maybe you’ll see Ulf the Naked Party Norn and his giant keg there.

nalenb.1425:

eldavo.6054:

FIGHT CLUB will happen tomorrow (Thursday) night—5PM server time in Kain Borderland at the usual place. Want to fight Kaining in equal numbers? 1v1, 5v5, golem v golem v golem? We’ll be here. Don’t forget your quaggan tonics.

I don’t know what time is server time, my map clock displays local time. So 5pm EST then?

5:00 Pacific time

FIGHT CLUB will happen tomorrow (Thursday) night—5PM server time in Kain Borderland at the usual place. Want to fight Kaining in equal numbers? 1v1, 5v5, golem v golem v golem? We’ll be here. Don’t forget your quaggan tonics.

It seems to be based on a certain amount of time or distance. It doesn’t take much to get a bronze, maybe 100 yards of escorting. If the yak’s on a route where it makes more than one stop e.g. North camp→Cragtop→Garrison you won’t get escorting credit until the yak reaches the final destination.

Besetment.9187:

The main use for golems is busting siege deadlocks. Alpha Siege Golems get through a reinforced gate very quickly and Omega Siege Golems get through fortified walls very quickly, more so in large numbers.

There is something that can be said for playing the tower/keep warfare game without relying on golems because its important to think about the position of enemy teams on the map. Its difficult to describe this concept without showing you but stealth capping rarely works these days due to the number of players in wvw that react to contested swords on the map. They see white swords behind a tower and someone almost always checks it out and tells their teammates what is causing it.

So you need to tie up a large number of enemy forces somewhere on the map where they are forced to run back and defend but cannot do so before you can get through a gate with rams or a wall with catapults. You want to force a situation where they know they are losing a tower but cannot save it in time. A big part of borderland defense is getting your enemy out of position and denying them timely access to supply so they cannot repair fast enough or put up defensive siege. Speed and silence is very important.

With enough golems + appropriately sized escort you can get through a gate fast enough that it almost doesn’t matter where enemy teams are. They are not going to react fast enough unless they have already got siege weapons pre-emptively built and a large number of players are very near the keep/tower or literally inside it.

A properly executed portal chain allows golems to move across the map faster than players with perma swiftness. 5 alpha golems + timewarp will get through 2 reinforced gates really fast. In most cases, your only chance to save a keep is to have siege pre-emptively built and enough players nearby to hold until you can waypoint an army in.

Golem plays are fine and there can be a great deal of skill and planning involved in a successful golem rush. You need good scouting/intelligence, a good portal chain, a contingency portal if you get spotted or it all goes horribly wrong. You need to be ready to fight an entire server that will attempt to waypoint on top of you. You need to have some way of shutting down an enemy team’s ability to travel across the map quickly, which requires distraction teams and/or shutting down waypoints to increase travel time.

Or you can also elect to ignore all of those things and just throw money at a problem via failed golem rush #6 until attrition gradually gets the better of your opponent.

But thats more of a problem with attrition generally.

Thank you Rebel Daughter for being one of the seemingly few non-troll Maguuma posters. This match has made me kind of upset due to all the inappropriate “lynch mob” accusations of WM botting and the derision of Kaineng NA players. I remember you also made reasonable posts back in the day when I was on Darkhaven matched up against Maguuma, I think you among all others represent what might be good about Maguuma.

Maguuma has good strategies and defends on the whole as well or better than any other server I’ve played against. I was looking forward to the good battles and the challenges that all of us who WvW are here for. I’ve gotten a few so far and am grateful for that. Unfortunately I was skiing over the weekend so only consumed forum vitriol as a poor substitute in the first few days, was certainly not ready for the verbal abuse presented by so many of the Maguuma forum warriors.

I remember in the previous matchups (when we from RE and SE were on Darkhaven) we enjoyed some of the first Fight Clubs that Littlefeather put together. I am happy to see that Maguuma continued on the Fight Club tradition as did we. I hope by the end of the matchup things can cool down and we can enjoy the greatest Fight Club in the history of GW2. Maybe we can identify all the forum trolls (on all servers) and pit them together in a battle royale while we train warthogs and spiders on them as a Fight Club centerpiece.

I really like that Maguuma loves to defend and exhibits some interesting defensive tactics. Thanks for showing us the mystic forge arrow cart party!

This kind of opposition is what we’ve needed since T8. It’s unfortunate timing the end of free transfers was announced when it was, no doubt we’d have had better opposition as we worked up the tiers. EB, CD and Yaks among others would’ve been far stronger, IMO.

I look forward to a week of epic battles. You can call us bandwagoners or worse, but I suspect most of Kain feels very excited about this week as well. Supply camp whack a mole and uncontested jumping puzzles were boring!

Elementalists are the new mesmers..

Supersun.4603:

Bay is the easiest.

Hills is by far the hardest.
If Hills is upgraded and manned by competent people it’s frankly impossible to take.

I used to think this, but attacking siege from long distance protected by swirling winds can negate the outer walls easily.

Catisa.6507:

5. Commanders should have access to Commander chat that only other active commanders on the same map can see, this would help foster communication between commanders and reduce spying

I like it! Along those lines it might be neat to have a commander channel that spanned all maps. An awesome way to help facilitate commander community.