Showing Highly Rated Posts By zen.6091:
To make it short and simple, if you don’t like the culture of WvW on your server because it’s too GvG / open field fighting oriented or the opposite with nothing but militia blobs, accept that you’ll be forking over some gold or real money to transfer to a server that is a better fit for your interest.
Now that they have taken your damage away?? my god you would think with all the outrageous QQ on these forums that the “crit dmg to ferocity nerf” is going to gut damage builds. YOU ARE STILL GOING TO BE DOING DAMAGE. They are not removing the power spec, and the amount of time it takes a zerker group to cruise through a dungeon, or a backstab thief to cruise through a zerker ele is going to be about 1 maybe 2 seconds longer in each case. This forum does not need any more drama queen as we are rapidly approaching critical mass in that aspect. The game has much bigger fish to fry than a 10% dmg decrease to the highest DPS builds in the game.
Look at this example, drama queen.
Condi bunker > power build in 1v1, due to how easy passive play Condi spam is, and how easy it is to tank at the same time and faceroll.
Let’s say that in Condi build vs power build, Condi build is 1.5x stronger.
After nerfing crit damage, Condi build now becomes 2x stronger than power builds, all year round.
Yeah I can make up arbitrary numbers too. LEts say roaming around wvw on my zerker warrior i run across 5 condi bunkers. I beat 3 of them and 2 beat me. So Zerker warrior is 20% better than condi bunkers. Take a 10% damage buff and I am only 10% better off vs condi bunkers. See how ridiculous your argument becomes when you enter in random subjective numbers?? I beat condi bunkers with power builds ALL THE TIME. is it hard? yeah. it is. That doesnt mean that condi is automatically “1.5 times better than power” lol l2p
That doesn’t make logical sense.
The fact is that condi builds are generally much easier to play. When I finished my mesmer 4-5 months ago, the first build I put together was the 20/20/30 blackwater build everyone loves. Within a single day of playing and acquiring muscle memory for the skills and cycles, I was out rolling most 1v1s, 1v2s, and 1v3s with absolute ease. I knew nothing about the class and never used shattering combos.
I was still losing to power builds ran by much more skilled players, but the learning curve was stupid easy, even easier than a d/p thief, which is probably the easiest, safest and most hated power build in wvw.
The basic math is not hard here. Players that run all or mostly zerker gear and trait offensively have very little defense besides dodging and their bar skills. Condi bunkers most often use gear with 2 defensive stats and trait deep into defensive traits. The theoretical equilibrium doesn’t occur except for the initial advantage power builds often have in DPS, or if the bunker has their defensive skills on cool down.
I am very much afraid that GW2 is going to fall into the same trap that GW1 did with passive pressure getting way out of hand. That was kept somewhat in check at first because GW2 mercifully does not feature hexing, and every class has access to condi removal skills. However, with the addition of torment, more condi bunker stat combos, and the continued existence of the +40% duration food, it’s been steadily creeping back into big problem territory. Nerfing power builds with no changes to condis just makes it worse.
This also says nothing about the PvP meta, or fact that the ~10% nerf to power in PvE just means speed runs will be ~10% slower, because the underlying mechanics of PvE do not favor anything besides maximum power.
(edited by zen.6091)
Ranger for sure. Every time you enter combat, all you will see is loot bags scrolling by. Ask anyone and they will tell you that rangers are the best suited class for every kind of combat in WvW by a mile, while almost being impossible to kill unless it’s like 1v20.
Lol like i said before WvW is like AB on factions just with walls and siege to counter those barriers, that behavior confirms it, since game is all about cap castles as if they are shrines.
Capping shrines faster makes server loose less ppt, so it makes sense what happened.I really tough game would envolve.
At least AB battles only lasted about 20 minutes with a winner at the end when it became a game of shrine speed capping or mobbing, and the 4v4s were always fun. Even a well-oiled golem train plowing through paper structures is fairly slow and terribly boring, and if you dare to break off the group, you risk missing out on the rewards. Bring an alt like say, an upscaled mes to help speed it up if there are not enough portals, and you get bakittens and WXP on a character you don’t care about.
Gets old and not worth it fighting the game more than the players at some point.
To address your question about solo camp flipping…it gets boring fast, but can be an a decent option if there’s literally nothing else to do, or you are doing it in a way to try to lure in players for 1v1 / 1v2 fights etc.
As for which is class is best, I’ll just give you my opinion on everything from most common to least common.
Thief
Everyone who roams has seen generic shadow arts D/P thieves 1,000+ times. It’s stupid, it’s boring to play, it’s boring to fight, but it can easily run away 98% of the time even if key skills are shut down or you make mistakes. The variation with no shadow arts and slight of hand is a little more risk / reward, but it’s also pretty annoying and boring.
Then there’s P/D perplexity thieves, which most players would agree is the #1 cheese build in the game, and no decent player will fight you. In fact, consider uninstalling.
There’s S/D evade builds that are pretty much the same as the sPvP build, but it’s weak to condi pressure in battles of medium length.
Lastly there’s still occasional D/D thieves, but they frequently use PvE creatures to cloak off, or fight 1vX feeding off random idiots standing around, which is stupid.
Warrior
The Nike warrior is the most common, whether it’s more burst with axe / shield / greatsword or more control with hammer / greatsword. Either way the idea is to either kill or whirlwind —> rush away to safety. In small group play a lot of warriors will also use this technique to break combat and come right back with full health. You can formulate your opinion about this.
Condi warriors are also pretty strong, but are susceptible to condi pressure, and lack the double escape of the above.
Mesmer
Most common is the condi PU mesmer, which is mostly a faceroll from left to right build. Can be very hard to kill, but it’s also easy to flee from. Even a necro can probably run away from you, which is really saying something.
Then you got hybrid and full power PU builds. Personally I like the full power version because you can still do shatter spikes and trait in some stuff like halting strike and bountiful interruption to reward better active play.
Lastly there’s the truly honorable full shatter builds. Pretty weak on personal sustain, but it’s still one of the biggest potential burst in the game.
Ele
Seems like D/D eles have to work about four times harder than anyone else to sometimes produce results that are slightly better….but they have also twice as many skills on paper to actively use when deviating from the usual damage and healing cycles. Plus you really don’t see much boon stripping in random roaming encounters aside from guild groups, and the one class that can really screw you over with boon stripping (necro) has no escapes, so not many solo roam with necros.
Players who solo roam with a staff ele have guts, but I’m not so sure most do it from an efficacy standpoint, but rather just to say they roam with a staff ele.
Engi
Whether it’s bombs, nades, perplexity, or some other condi runes, condi engis can be extremely devastating. They also have very little condi removal, and most builds don’t even have a stun breaker, but they can trait damage reduction and auto prot while stunned / disabled.
Power nades with rifle use to have a really incredible burst, but it’s been long been nerfed.
Necro
Necros are the kings of sustain, and full boat of punishing skills and traits, but also have zero mobility. Once in combat it’s a cage match usually, you are dying, the other player is dying, or they are running away…but you’re not running away.
Ranger
I say ranger in the sense of a good player playing a ranger and roaming with it. I don’t even know what to say. The condi regen shout build can be tough to take down in battles of attrition, and that’s about it usually. Glassy power rangers can be very annoying and dangerous, but they have almost no personal defense, and are always the first to be targeted in small groups.
Guardian
The meditations burst guardian use to be somewhat common, but I think it was one of those borderline builds before crit damage was nerfed. It can still be a good build, but for whatever reason, I hardly ever see it anymore.
Then there’s bunker guardians that are more or less guardians roaming with their zerg build. I don’t know why anyone would want to play this solo unless you find the idea of killing people with retal / spins / symbol ticks exciting somehow.
Having said all that, picking one probably isn’t any easier! If you want to do what most everyone does, pick a thief. If you want easy, play a D/P thief or warrior. If you want more of a learning curve with very active play, pick an ele or engi. If you are bold, pick a necro. If you are crazy, pick a guardian or ranger. If you want skills that consistently don’t work, pick a mesmer.
(edited by zen.6091)
If you had asked this question one year ago, I would not have thought wvw could survive another year. The three main ways to play wvw still have major, major issues though:
1. Large groups. Still dominated by GWEN murderballs. Boring blob of particle effects and low FPS, frequent skill lag, the game barely functions, stay on the tag, spam some skills, don’t die. I don’t understand how people commit to this every night looking for fights, and then spend 2 hours forum warring over which guild blob won.
2. Small group havoc. The only interesting way to play imo, but all too often it can also turn into either boring uncontested PvD or getting zerged down.
3. Solo. Dominated by 5-2-5-2-5-2-5-2-5-2-5-2-refuge-run away thieves and OP condi builds using the +40% food. Not interesting all at anymore.
When you really think about, the only positive things anet has done for the format since launch is various bug fixes, server performance improvement (still problems though), and the big one was culling, which can still be a problem on an individual player level. Everything else has been a complete waste of time and resources, particularly the huge let down with the map design of EotM.
300g is rather easy to get nowadays, especially when we no longer have repair costs, which basically means that the only thing that drains money in WvW is upgrades (since you can get siege with badges).
Well let’s see here there’s also….
-36/40% condi food if you play a power build and don’t want to be rolled over by condis. There goes at least 30s every hour you play.
The cost of structure upgrades as mentioned if you chip in with those.
The cost of sup siege if you don’t always use regular.
The cost of gearing / re-gearing alts if you have more than one character. Many of the sigils and runes alone have risen to 5-10g+ each since the patch for those. There’s no cheap meta upgrade component used in WvW power builds. Strength (rune), hoelbrak, traveler, melandru, bloodlust, battle, energy, etc. are all expensive.
The cost of ascended gear /crafting. Still technically optional, but you do lose 7-10% of your possible damage output, or whatever the total is. Personally I have only been able to afford to do two crafts since ascended was expanded to weapons and armor, and neither of them armor disciplines. That’s not even on my radar as something I will ever be able to afford.
WvW is on the very low end of gold per hour compared to PvE if you are a zergling that spends nothing, or only do large fights and get a large number of kills daily. If you need to do any or all of the above forget it, you’re spending pretty much everything you make.
Once I went to spectate a GvG match between 2 very popular guilds… Obsidian Sanctum was full and people had to queue to get in.
I think that illustrates the failed potential right there, when a massive amount of player is trying to participate or watch a game mode that is MISSING from the game. It is my opinion that Anet dropped the ball on GvG and made a huge mistake underestimating it’s importance and the expectations of Guild Wars players.
True. I never have understood why they have such a huge chip on their shoulder against GvG. Especially since such a huge portion of the WvW (and even some non-WvW population) want it.
There was a video awhile back with two of the PvP devs where GvG came up, and the reaction shot when the topic was even broached pretty much said it all. Immediate long face, uhhh, why are those idiots trying to do that look.
On the original topic though, every time you load into WvW you can feel the wasted potential. It is an extremely impressive game with mechanics and features that no other title can boast, but it’s been terribly mismanaged since day one.
I believe this is a larger problem with big dollar AAA titles. Cookie cutter series, increasingly shocking greed with cash shops, devs that seem more like corporate robots than gamers. Look to indie titles and devs like Epic that are taking a chance with different business models, and real community development with the people who are most passionate about their games.
Generally I only have real problems with P/D thieves that will hit you with unload and be moving in for C&D before they even render, and are spec’d for long battles to wear you down. It seems the overwhelming majority of D/D’s go for mug over hidden thief, and you do have a chance to dodge backstab or at least not get hit from behind. You don’t see it very often, but honestly, S/D can be the worst if you are being constantly hit with daze. Other than that they do what most other classes can do, drop a big chunk of surprise damage on a low target.
Other than the culling issue, I think the other possible tweak needed is to shadow refuge. Few individual players or small groups of randoms pack the CC, AoE, and / or knowledge needed to force a player out. Once it’s done, the thief (and anyone else in it) basically has a free ticket to safety. DD ele’s can also easily move out of combat usually, but at least you can see them riding away.
Lastly, perhaps it’s not thought of much, but most players cannot be focused in like a laser 100% of the time ready to be ganked or constantly looking behind them. That’s why solo gankers generally like to camp out in spots where players are likely to be running in a fairly strait line with auto run and not paying attention, so they have surprise on their side while the target is thinking about what they will be doing rather than what they are doing.
Hell….no. T6/7 NA has been the most fun I’ve had in WvW. Not dead, (usually) not ridiculously zergy.
For so long before S2 started, I believed the comments that low tier WvW is dead. I guess it’s dead if your definition of dead is not being able to load into any map and find a 50+ omniblob of morons on a dorito. The funny thing is though, I transferred here from SoS, and there’s more small scale borderland activity than there is in T2…
I don’t know about the very bottom tier in NA and EU though. That’s always been a tier for the recently tanked, and further punished by the crummy ratings system that makes it difficult to climb out.
This is just a gross misunderstanding on how the highest ranked servers work. PVD isn’t cause one side is fielding a massive zerg, it’s because there’s not that many to fight against, allowing groups to hop maps to ninja anything that isn’t upgraded.
People in towers aren’t “tower hugging”. It’s called scouting. It helps you keep the tower in case it’s attacked.
Lag is either caused by the server or your computer. Most of the time, it’s the server crapping out.
It’s not a misunderstanding at all; I played in T1 when SoS was in T1, and T2 isn’t that much different than T1 besides pugs to fill up BL queues.
There’s always tons of players doing absolutely nothing useful when there’s a full queue. Lots of afk’s that don’t want to re-queue, some just sitting in towers playing with siege (not just 1 scouting), some too clueless to get to a far off pugmander on their own.
Also, being on a server with an Oceanic population that dwarfs most, and sometimes being up late enough to play with them, I have often seen how enemy servers are systematically demoralized from defending by our huge zergs at those hours. I don’t think we are in disagreement here here. A much smaller group can only defend against a huge zerg with upgrades and siege, unless it’s a havoc guild that sets a murderous trap with ACs and ballistas in a paper structure for when the pugs rush in.
So it really boils down whether you’d rather zerg with 40-50+ doing PvD on a high tier server when you have a major coverage advantage, or a much smaller number on a lower tier. I don’t see how more people makes it more exciting when you are essentially doing the same thing.
Lastly, the skill lag and sometimes complete dysfunction of the game server is caused by monster pug blobs and guilds that are murderballing each other with a large number of players. The game servers clearly cannot handle those loads with an acceptable level of performance, and yet, it’s still part of the game and arguably encouraged as epic battles with large number of players. There’s nothing epic about not being able to use a skill for 5 minutes or listening to people scream on TS for 30 minutes about a strategy in screen full of particle effects.
Personally I have had enough of it, even if there is more action more of the time on higher tiers, and will be taking advantage of the free transfer opportunity. If the lower tiers are completely boring then I guess that’s it, but there’s only one way to find out.
A good start is a mandatory comment to get rid of +/- condi duration foods, or at least scale them down to a maximum of +/- 10% like other foods.
Condis in zerg warfare are an entirely different matter aside from imob stacking. There’s so much AoE removal now from eles and guardians primarily, plus other smaller sources, that DPS from condis is frequently useless besides keeping downed players ticking. Even if you are on the periphery of battles and get hit with too much condi pressure outside of group support, you can at worst usually hide back in the zerg before bleeding out and count on an instant res.
Sorry to see you go. You might check on the DR forum before forking over 1,800 gems to try to find a guild / group.
But if you’ve already made up your mind, one good way to do recon on a server is the live maps….
http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/
Periodically watch it for a few days, see what guilds claim and take stuff. Guilds that advertise themselves as havoc, and actually do havoc are going to be claiming camps for +5 all the time. Roaming heavy servers will also usually be controlling more camps in general, even if they don’t really havoc stuff much.
On FABL…can honestly say the Talon guild is equal to anything I’ve seen on T1 during NA coverage. Should be an interesting week with good fights, hope we can keep moral up.
Defensive anthem, aegis, ward against melee…basically anything that’s a hard counter to the zerg ball meta. At least GW1 had a variety of metas even if there was a certain R/P/S aspect to the team build.
Sweet, a new person to make one token post a month promising this and that, and then disappear.
I suppose by this standard meteor shower should be nerfed too, because guilds that run heavy with staff eles can basically turn any wall into an instant death zone.
As other people have already mentioned, the focus is completely terrible for combat compared to the torch or pistol. If if you only swap in a focus for situations where a pull is needed, you still risk still being stuck in combat with it. That’s not so bad if it’s a pistol you replaced, but in some builds, the torch is your main condi removal and setup for other combos.
SoR is the best example of the conflict that has been going on in many servers between guilds that only want to open field fight a few hours a night, and the other guilds + pugs that are still looking to play the ppt and defense game. The two mix like oil and water, but are kinda forced to live in the same house.
I don’t think either group is entirely to blame or entirely free of blame. Servers need fighting guilds so it’s not all ridiculous siege bunkering and WP abuse. Servers also need people willing to defend and do the more monotonous task like upgrading, repairing, and building siege so the whole map is not paper k-train bait. Unfortunately though the fighting guilds often run around chest thumping and disparaging players that play ppt and want to defend, and those players start to resent that attitude.
The real problem is this though. All the guilds that left SoR, and all the other servers that have rapidly collapsed at some point (KN, SoS, SBI, IoJ), they often get help from their new server with gold or quick farming help, while all the nobody players are stuck on a server trapped in Glicko hell (weeks of crappy matches). So they basically have to come up with 1,800 gems too to keep playing as they were before.
harharhar got rekt by condi spec when running power…. bet it was a power bunker or less bursty power spec then….
The problem is that conditionspecs can be bunkers and tanky as hell but still do as much dps as a full spec zerker with no survival. It’s simple – it takes one stat to go full out condition and three stats to go power.
Conditions have a wind up, power doesn’t. Power builds always try to kite and outlive condition spec’s, I see it happen all the time. They think if they play defensive and stay at range somehow they’re safe. Power damage is instant, condition damage is over time. Aggressive power spec’d builds will always beat a condition build, but 90% of power spec’d builds are too stupid to be aggressive.
Unless you’re playing a warrior with hoelbrak / melandru, -40% food, and dogged, ranged damage and kiting between burst is your only option against dire necro / perplex engi / blackwater mes / trap ranger / condi warrior. If you face roll in all the condis they can dish out point blank and ground target, you’re toast.
I can beat most of these builds with my mesmer by simply GS spamming skills and maybe using few careful MH sword burst. That doesn’t make it interesting or in any way exciting though…it can take a good 2-3 minutes to take down a dire necro with both spectral skills as they eat 95% of my damage, even if I lock down their heal skill. It’s a stupid fight where there’s no high risk turn of events where one player really outplays the other for the kill.
Then you have perplex thieves, which owe their existence to an absolutely indefensible rune and / or the one “why the kitten was this added to the game?” GM trait. There is no individual build that is a hard counter to the perplex thief that can actually kill them unless they completely screw up refuge or don’t have PvE creatures to cloak off of. Heck, very often you will see a group of 3-4 reasonably good players that can’t even kill them before they are able to break combat or refuge has reset with a safe gap.
(edited by zen.6091)