Guild Wars 2

Actually a bad thief can still do pretty well. The rewards you get for the amount of effort put in is more than any other class. Which is where most of the complaining comes from I think.

At this point Im more tired of these whine posts than people complaining about thieves.

I agree that necros are underwhelming for the most part. However we are necessary in a solid group. Necros are great confusion spreaders with epidemic and are the best lock down cc in the game with all the chill we have access to.

We could seriously use some mobility like a teleport+stunbreak or something.

DB seems like good guys for the most part. A lot of solo/duo/trios from what I remember.

So how far out of balance does the spvp player to wvw player ratio have to get before we become the focus of balance/updates?

You designed a combat system around instanced pvp. This makes for terrible pve so naturally all your content updates are pve. All your pvp players are in wvw so your balance changes are for instanced pvp. Priorities need to be figured out.

Man, so much hate for my music Il do metal next time.

Weve been thinking about what to run besides the double mesmer. Ele or engineer are options. Still ironing out group composition.

One nice thing about the game is that many group compositions seem viable.

ancient Chinese secret. Completely on the up and up though.

2 fights did we hit a three way and on all of them, save the very last, we are very outnumbered. This was only a few runs on one day. Ill film up the better fights over a longer period of time.

If you would like to see more direct open world fights, well…so would I.

Since roaming groups have been a topic of discussion I decided to film some runs last week and share them with you, my friends.

Small groups are fun and completely viable! You should run one too. Then we can fight each other and have even more fun!

Now we did have a sidecar and in some cases 2 most of the night. Its zerg bombing though as all you great guys havent started participating yet. I promise well trim it down to an even 5.

I say small group but it was mostly 5+1-2 sidecars. Regardless its mostly zerg bombing.

There isnt much discussion of necros outside of a 1v1 or spvp setting. I thought this may give people an idea of what we are capable of in a more coordinated group. That said, I dont claim to be the best necro ever. Id only been playing the class a few days at this point.

Gondram.8365:

One thing we have to remember… we’ve already bought the game. Any more profit Anet can expect to make off of us is from the gem store… and us WvWers tend not to care about that sort of stuff as much. If Anet is concerned at all about profit they’ll spend most of their energy on the PvE “collector” type players… It’s plain business sense, disappointing though it may be.

I really feel like the game could be better if it just went subscription. Having the gem store creates some wierd incentives in general not just what is mentioned above.

PvP in any sense is an end game model that will keep people subscribed and does not require nearly the attention and update resources raiding does.

If I had to pick 2 it would be down state and 5 person aoe limit.

The aoe limit just makes no sense. If youre dumb enough to stand in it you should die.

Just a point about small group vs zergs…

The only time you can aford to stake people is with quickness, if there is a break in the action (they retreat a little), or if you get a critical mass downed.

We bomb zergs, a lot. Wasting 3-6 seconds with a giant “please someone come kill shot me” disco ball in your hand is going to get you wiped. You tag the downed people to keep them from healing and punish anyone that comes to rez. They bleed out eventually.

That being said, you tend to notice 10 downed people throwing rocks for 800 a pop. Or they tag a deer and half of them are back on their feet.

Which is why bads love the downed state.

Its a cost of opportunity as mentioned above. In many cases its not worth setting up a combo as the rewards of comboing are less than those of using the skills at more opportune times.

Also, most multi-player combos are finished entirely on accident with skills that just happen to be used in conjunction to one another.

Making combos require more deliberate use and providing stronger effects such as stability/invuln/ae imobilize et cetera would deepen combat and encourage inter-player coordination; something which is distinctly lacking.

Ive been thinking about down state recently and understand its never going away. What do people think about these ideas:

1. Make all down state skills either interrupt stomps (like they do currently) or support teammates only. No damage.

2. Include a reduction in effectiveness for a short period of time if resurrected. Something like a 33%-50% reduction in damage.

3. If downed twice in a short time frame you die.

sorry:(

The game just isnt any fun without rivalries

Honnor.6295:

Ordibble.3092:

Rhyis.7058:

These dudes who have been on Mag for 5 minutes need to shut up already.

Solution: either Bunzy or dreztina moves to YB. YB’s lack of roamer population fixed and they can duel each other till the cows come home. Win-win. Any stories of subsequent love-making to be kept in PMs.

Yaksbend Alliance plays as a team, thank you, but we do not need or want them. We have 7, 5 man strike teams, that is plenty. They do what we need them to do and do it well. People that do not play as a team we do not need.

Id love to know where those 5 mans are. My experience with yaks is if you see 1 you see 17 more. Thankfully thats about how many it takes to put up a decent fight.

Incorrect

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Rimalder.6735:

A question for our friends over at Mag. Last night there were a group of 8-10 of you running between Speldan and Anz in YBBL. Every one of you had some sort of perma ghost buff that made you glow translucent blue while running and fighting…and you were hard as heck to kill. None of us on the receiving end of your punishment could seem to figure out what buff or elixir that was. Care to enlighten us?

It was a mix of AoN and TLP. We had 5 plus one sidecar.

Im afraid it wouldet be advantageous to give our secrets away :p Ill just say its completely legit and in the game for anyone to use.

Knote.2904:

Acelerion.6820:

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Considering the 5 target cap, I fail to see how. =p

Limit is frustrating but cool down is short enough. Confusion → epidemic bombs…

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

I think the worry is that minons get buffed and they call necros fixed. Many of us dont use and dont want to be forced to use pets to be a complete class.

Not to take that option from anyone else…

Really though, the huge balance patch was 60% water combat updates and a few bug fixes (and engis?…wtf). Let me save you the time on water fixes in the future; Take a dump truck and fill that crap in. Water combat is a horrible gimmick. Can it.

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

Lex Talionis.5396:

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

As for Necro minions, true they didn’t fix those(but they did give a fix to reanimator which everybody complained about).

People complained about reanimator for reasons other than the pet dying in 6 seconds – namely that the pet was useless for the purpose of dealing damage and ended up a liability in many situation where giving your opponents more targets (for spells to chain between) was actually detrimental to your wellbeing.

The necromancer thread was actually appealing for the removal of the trait entirely so they wouldn’t have to put up with the existence of the pet which locked them into combat.

i understand that. It’s unfortunate there are side effects of the trait, but wouldn’t you say some help for it is better than none. With it dying in less time, it might work better than before (ik it’ll still be bad and a pain in PvP) in absorbing hits meant for you, and like some people had said in that thread that’s like an aegis on your necro for every hit your minion takes

You would think so. instead its just more time you are forced into combat and more opportunity for bounce attacks to multi-hit you. By making the thing live longer it really exacerbates the problems with it.

Farzo.8410:

The reason there is no deathmatch is because people will just go full damage traited and geared, and just nuke, there is no tactical thinking in it.

The first one to drop is the loser pretty much, It’s just pretty much spam all your buttons and dish out damage.

Haha, really?

My circle of friends has been running a lot of wvw as fighting people in the open field is similar to a death match environment. I can tell you from running into other like minded groups the combat system is absolutely deep enough to support 3v3, maybe even 5v5.

Your glass group will get destroyed by anyone running a decent cc/conditioner.

There are many people out there that do not like conquest that would come around for deathmatch even if it wasent the focus for balance.

I saw this whole scenario play out in DAOC. It starts with everyone playing the game how its “supposed” to be played. But eventually people get tired of beating on doors all day and see the success of (or maybe get rolled by) set groups and they start wanting a piece of the action too.

Then we have a gank group mecca with 5v5 all about. And no one assjams and the wilsoning is kept to a minimum.

We take supply camps and farm people coming to flip them regularly. Most gank squads do this I believe. We look for others doing it as its a great way to find a good fight. This both gains a paltry amount of points and splits enemy forces on different objectives.

See, I can help my realm!

Nice to see some other people interested in something more than humping keeps waiting for a poor soul to wonder too close to an arrow cart.

I think we may have had some fights with you guys last night around some island somewhere. d/d ele groups and one hammer warrior group. Nice fights, looking forward to more.

Dont let the for the realm zergers get you down. They get upset easily when they get rolled.

Psikerlord.2569:

shouldnt you not win a 2v1 anyway? If the game is balanced pulling off a 2v1 should require a lot of luck/good execution

This is the crap that kills me. In a high skill cap game 2v1 will be commonplace. Just like 2v5, 5v20, ect…

Before I begin let me say Im not here to discuss the merits of one play style over another. Only to ask what to expect in updates.

Its no secret that zerg and siege centered warfare is the dominant activity in wvw. Many game mechanics and designs either encourage this play or discourage small groups and soloers.

At the same time many players Ive spoken with prefer more of a consensual open world pvp environment more focused on fighting other players directly. This is somewhat at odds with the game as it stands. My feelings, and the impression I had after listening to developers discuss the wvw system, was that both play styles would flourish. Its only natural that in the overarching goal of winning a match both roles would be filled.

With no major updates to the wvw system scheduled until February people are curious what developers think of the current state of wvw. Can we expect changes that will encourage small roaming groups or is the system pretty much working as intended? Again, Im not judging one side or the other. Im genuinely curious as to what to expect from upcoming changes.

Talking about “what Anet intended” with combat systems in wvw is silly. Combat isnt designed around wvw its designed around spvp. Downed state is a terrible mechanic in wvw and it will never be changed just like thief burst will never be changed because its balanced in spvp.

“What Anet intended” was obviously for you to buy an arrow cart and camp a tower all day long.

Dware.4259:

More people play WvW than PvP…

Way more.

This is the interesting thing. sPvP is in a bad place and with many more people playing wvw how long, if ever, will it take for that to be the focus of balancing.

I really think the new gear treadmill is the direct result of tpvp doing so poorly, gotta make that cash somehow…

I couldent agree more with the above post. One of the interesting things about pvp in mmo settings is how the classes work together to achieve more than they could independently.

Support in this game in general is very weak and it turns the combat into more of a self focused undertaking than in my opinion it should be.

I think this is a reason that group vs group death matches wouldent be so hot even though that is my preferred game type.

Even if they dont touch healing increasing the damage mitigation and enhancement abilities of people working in tandem would make the combat much deeper.

If you are going to complain about backstab in wvw and say this is fine no one should ever listen to anything you have to say,

Hufflepuffer.4201:

Acelerion.6820:

I do not think that any mmo will ever again have effective crowd control and a strong interrupt system. People want to pew pew too much and wont stand for it.

DAoC was fun and all, but you could CC people into next week and if I remember correctly there was no defense against it until they added the realm abilities.

Nobody likes to spectate a fight, no matter how much “skill” chain mezzing might add

At release yeah it was overboard with chain cc ect…

It got to a really good place around the time the first expansion was released. There were immunity timers, other classes could cure, and ra’s to reduce duration.

The most effective cc in daoc though was disease (snares) and nearsight (reduced casting range), not of which took control away completely.

Or you can focus fire the healer down and go on about your business.

WoW is not the only game to have ever existed, see daoc’s interrupt system.

Without healers and effective crowd control burst wins. I think its reasonable to say the downed state system was put in place to deal with the fallout from removing healers.

The system is bad, Id rather have healers.

You have a system in place where the healer cannot heal if he is under fire.

I fought this guy the other day that had a pocket dps, do you believe it?! Talk about unfair…

Produced by Matt Firor of DAoC fame. Way to early to know anything but there is a chance…

So removing healers entirely maybe wasent such a great idea huh

“think back for a moment at how GOOD you had to be to run a high end 8v8 group.
if I told you in WoW, we had an 8man group that ccould kill 52 people you would be amazed”

Yeah, 52 was fairly common place as well. There are plenty of videos of 8 people killing over 90.

I remember plenty of 8v8 fights we had that took 15-20 minutes for one side to win as well.

I do not think that any mmo will ever again have effective crowd control and a strong interrupt system. People want to pew pew too much and wont stand for it.

As a dreaded (nearly) glass cannon bs thief in a 5 man group I can tell you 90% of my kills come from green arrows (<80s) or classes that tend to be in glass cannon specs. I dont even waste time popping guardians, necros and warriors without a greatsword. Im not going to kill them and all my stuff will be on cooldown.

1v1 is another issue…the rendering bugs need to be fixed. Thief v thief fights can get pretty silly with both people running around swinging at air.

Also looks like CnD initiave cost is 6. I seem to remember it being 5, could be wrong though.

You dont have to directly see the players name but kill spam would be nice

Its mostly the rendering issue. In sPvP this does not happen.

thief vs thief fights in wvw can be kind of silly…its mostly about who can keep their cnd rotation going

That is true, farming spy accounts could have an impact. But as you mention removing transfers (as I assume will eventually be done) would solve most of the problem.

Also, the points per kill could be low enough that it will only start to impact the score in aggregate; a single person or few people wouldent make much difference.

The only other thing I can think of is players purposefully dying en mass to throw a match…perhaps in protest…perhaps to troll.

“like EVERYTHING it favors the zerg (yes everything does)”

Everything doesent have to though. Removing multiple rezzers for instance would go a long way.

“The biggest thing here is that people have an attitude that they are entitled those “kills” and quite simply they are not.”

I can make the argument that if I chew through your health bar I deserve a badge of honor at least, especially if Im outnumbered.

You say this is a step forward but nothing supports that. Its a step outside the box definitely but its yet to be shown that its any better/more interesting/whatever than traditional mechanics.

Ive seen this idea tossed around quite a bit but no real discussion has occurred. Lets change that. Here we will discuss the merit (or lack thereof) of awarding some small number of points for directly killing another player.

To summarize a common argument:

Zerging is fine time to time but the entirety of WvW should not rely on it. Incorporating a points per player killed system will encourage small groups or soloers that operate behind or away from front lines “ganking” players attempting to join the main zerg, run supply, et cetera.

This would have 2 main outcomes

1. Make it harder to operate as one large force. Allow smaller numbers to destroy a zerg through attrition as players in the zerg that are killed will have a hard time rejoining the main force. Instead of trickling out one by one they would have to form up and move as a group. This encourages coordination on the part of the zerging team.

2. Other groups will form in an effort to kill the smaller groups mentioned above and a nice meta game could result.

Of course the type of play that should be encouraged or at least made available is entirely up for debate as well. Im not trying to tell people how to play, just trying to generate discussion about it.

I suppose something akin to downed state was the natural result of removing healers and by extension rezzers.

Its a bold step away from the status quo. Unfortunately this one didnt work so well.

In MMOs even questionable designs usually have an amazing amount of ardent supporters. Ive never seen something as universally disliked before.

Fury.6248:

LOL @ maguuma @ astalhome I came in peace bra, we are both outnumbered but your people just attacked me for no reason so ya I just wiped yall 15 vs 1 at supply camp

Next time let’s not attack the guy waving an helping?

I was about to give up on this game because I figured soloing in wvw was impossible

I had no idea thieves could do that (if that was you), props. It was hilarious watching people fall over dead.