Guild Wars 2

Ben K.6238:

Ansau.7326:

Just saying, the gap between tiers in NA is ENTIRELY FAULT of players. EU has had the same system and there have never been such big difference.

No, it hasn’t had the same system. There’s one very important difference.

If everyone in Europe spoke the same language, you’d see the same thing happening there.

The situation could have also happened in EU if all German people went to a single server, and all non-national server players went to a single international server, and have a locked tier 1 with one international server, one french server and another german one. But it didn’t.
When Vizunah dominated, Jade Sea was always around top 5-7, and Augury Rock was always top 8-10.
Elona Reach, Kodash and Riverside have always been on the upper side regardless what the other server were doing. There was a point when these 3 servers were in the top 6.
And there’s been only a single week in the nearly 4 years of the game where first tier was populated by 3 international servers.
About Baruch, there aren’t enough Spanish people to populate more than a single server

We can conclude it is not about the language people speak, but the mentality and the culture. NA is messed up because of the people playing there.

If the system will target all off timezones it will be ok, and a good measure to diminish the huge gaps servers gain when facing nobody. But if it only targets the night time based on a specific timezone then sorry, but welcome to the death of WvW.

Caedmon.6798:

I guess you never had a matchup vs sometihng like baruch bay ? Where you don’t really see anyone during day and prime but only for them to appear when everyone goes to sleep ? Thats just 87.5% bullkitten !

Glad you brought Baruch. If we play at night is only because our culture is different to other europeans. We have lunch at 2pm (there’s a PPT drop), dinner at 9pm (another drop) and our primetime starts at 10pm until 1-2am.
Not because we wait until everybody is asleep to play.

Silent.7290:

Ye thank you mate,i have character model limit, on medium, shadows on high and reflections on NONE, i know exactly what is eating the performance, still not normal for a gtx 980ti and i7 3770, before the update, my game was perfect, for me and my friends!

Ps: don’t use best texture filtering. :P

Because you need to disable shadows and put character limit to Low.

Non of them xd
I will stop to see the duel without involving myself, and only engage if the enemy is trying to stomp my ally, or another enemy joins and they 2vs1 my ally.

You can easily see if it’s an arranged duel when one of both are downed.

Loool so much fun!!!

You were OP before last patch, and now you QQ other professions get the same opportunity you had.

Stop crying, because Mesmers are far from being OP.

It barely meets the minimum specs, which means you’ll have a crappy experience all across the game with very bad framerate.

Just saying, the gap between tiers in NA is ENTIRELY FAULT of players. EU has had the same system and there have never been such big difference.

Blame people in NA wanting locked tiers.

Dark Night.5601:

I think you were doing something wrong. I run vipers armor w/ berserker runes and sinister trinkets. There hasn’t been a 1v1 I’ve lost since to any class. I’ve also had success 1v3 as long as I’m playing close attention. Scepter & shield is your bread and butter with gs for kiting. I’m used to power shatter so running glassy is nothing new to me. Scepter hits hard now with both condi and power…set up your shatter…..confusion, torment & burst. Usually light armors can’t last 3 secs after 1 full shatter burst. The exception being a full celestial ele. You can down them too just have to use cover condi’s till they blow cool downs. A good placed scepter # 3 followed by 3 illusion shatter and their done.

I do not recommend staff at all. Even with chaos armor your still going to drop as a light armor wearer from 1 good crit from a warrior or guardian.

If your experienced with a shatter build, then you know it’s go all glass or your damage is trash. Same with hybrid.

I tried Sc/Sh – S/T dueling-illusions/chrono, although I run a mix of rabid, zerker and rampager. Couldn’t manage to keep up with the condi pressure of an engi. Couldn’t manage to do anything to a d/d ele. Couldn’t put enough pressure to a stabackstab thief.

Probably it was me not going full offensive with stats. Neither I could as I still have to unlock Sinister and Viper (uuhhh pve…).

I tried an hybrid build and it isn’t a good build.
The burst damage from both direct and condis is quite meh. This wouldn’t be a problem if we had decent sustained damage, but mesmer is one of the profession with the worst sustained damage in this game.

With an hybrid build, your sustained damage is mediocre, your burst damage is mediocre, and your passive survivability is mediocre because you have to spread the available stats between power, precision, critical damage, condi damage, toughness and vitality.

This is a feature of Gw2, not a flaw. The purpose of this feature is, precisely, to make low level maps interesting for uplevel people, and to eliminate the easiness and dullness of playing those maps at such high levels.

Don’t make the mistake to say it fails miserably because you aren’t able to play unless low level mobs hit you 1 while you one shot them.

You don’t like it? It’s okay, and out there there are 1562374382364854 games they will allow to do what you like. But that doesn’t mean the feature is bad. What only shows your opinion isn’t based on solid arguments.

So you either reconsider the feature and start playing with it, or move on and play another game. All this drama you’re putting is pointless and wastes your precious time of your live. Be smart.

Well your main problem was to believe scrapper was supposed to be a melee train profession.
Seriously, 6 months with the denial and now you complain to anet?

Novuake.2691:

I completely disagree.
Power mesmer is one of the few things that can deal with ele sustain and tankyness at this point just by virtue of boon strip and cc chains alone.
The point behind my roaming comment was that mesmers are not forced to deal with so many condition users, which means they can rely on their very good forms of damage mitigation without needing to go inspiration for that much condi cleanse.
If you were to give mesmer more condi cleanse tied to dueling, domination, chaos or even illusions staff and sword/shielf could make a vey strong resurgence.
Hell i would even support those changes if mesmer actice defences were adjusted.
Ad mentioned the major issue with these defences is how frequently they can be use when used witj signet of illusions and continuum split.

Don’t know which WvW do you play, but Signet of Illusions is hardly taken in WvW, typical power burst mesmers are only good at ganking careless people but fail miserably against tanky builds or condi builds, and condis are actually the biggest thread, so that “mesmers are not force to deal with condis” is totally false.

This is the build I’d use: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsf7ensIClphNqBGpBcrhlXjqeYT2nFNAypmocC6toB-TVyCABZp8jiTAge6HWe/BcU/RiDCwxPAAAOCAJqEkUAQMNC-w

For condi cleansing you can get either Mantra of Resolve or Null Field, first is better for condis with lots of stacks, second is better for multi condi appliance.
In traits you can also go Evasive Mirror+Master of Fragmentation instead of Blinding Dissipation+Ineptitude.
Stats is a mix of Rabid and Dire. Dire brings more survivability and it’s better for begginers, rabid is more offensive with slightly more direct damage and illusions will apply more bleeding.
Any of those sigils work very well with this build, also Sigil of Geomancy and Sigil of Draining with shield (but it’s locked behind HoT pve farming).
For runes Perplexity, Undead and Scavenging are the best options.

Logicx.5832:

I’m currently running the metabattle PU roaming build
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Condi_Roamer

Tried some roaming / duels yesterday and got killed (not bigtime, managed to stay alive very long) but I just couldn’t kill my targets..

Is this build good or can it be improved?
What are some important combos or vital skills to use?

As you can see I’m not at all very good at mesmer
(eventhough I’ve had one for a long time, mostly for zerging though)

I’ve watched numerous videos too but well I just can’t seem to get it.
I normally learn classes pretty fast – I’m good with necro, even before the whole Reaper = OP thing, been good with engi roaming, thief roaming.
But I just fail hard at mesmer but I’d really love to be good because I really like the class.

Any tips and/or improvements for above mentionned build?

Thanks in advance!

One of the main issues with this build is the condi cleansing, which is very low. You must be very careful at condi burst, because it is easy to die at what you excel.

The build is not actualized and can be improved quite a bit.
First is to take Chronomancer. The alacrity, the quickness, the shield and the F5 paired with Mass Invisibility are big wins. For that you will have to lose one of the lines, and I find Chaos the least worse lost of all 3, you already have a lot of toughness and vitality so the defensive boons aren’t that useful as, for example, a power shatter. PU lost? Now you get double MI so it shouldn’t be such of a problem.

Then, I find sword/torch – scepter/shield a much better option. Staff is only good for the AA and Phase retreat, but the rest it’s quite meh, and it can become very annoying with stealth as it’s easy to get revealed since AA bounces a lot.

Yeah, nice to see my hybrid roaming build gets buffed as hell with those buffs to the scepter.
Confusing Images hits like a freaking storm in a power build. Conuterspell now has a 6.4s CD with illusions. And more alacrity.

Illusionary Riposte buff is nice, but the offhand sword is still limited by single action skills (1 block and 1 single target phantasm). All other offhand weapons have some sort of AoE effect.

EDIT: Found that they fixed Fencer’s Finesse CD for offhand sword. Before it didn’t work and now it does.
But Chaotic Dampening still gives extra +50 toughness and it is not showed in the description.

Ashen.2907:

…

No, the title only relates to the world/lore used, but Gw2 was never intended to be a second Gw1.
It can be seen in the Gw2 manifesto: https://www.guildwars2.com/es/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

And more precisely:
“Guild Wars 2 is the perfect game for Guild Wars players, but it’s not just the same game repeated again. We took this opportunity to question everything, and we have some exciting answers for you today.”

About weapons choice, what I wanted to say is that a specific profession combination only had a handful of weapons related to traits.
Let’s say you had a build based on Warrior/Ranger. Bows, axe or hammer were boosted by traits, but staff didn’t. If you wanted to use a staff you could, but it wasn’t boosted. Of course you could change the secondary profession, but then you changed the build. Same happens in Gw2.
Then there’s the fact of weapon swap in combat. You cannot straight compare the amount of builds in Gw1 and Gw2 based on weapon choice.

Complaining about weapon lock in Gw2 without realizing now we’ve gained a purpose for weapons is a bit naive. Now weapon choice means something, you choose a weapon because a play style/role. That was an issue of Gw1, a monk doing the same with a shield, spear or staff…

Gw2 is based more on the performance of a limited set of builds, combat positioning and the actions/reactions based on animations. Gw1 was more based on build theory-crafting, combat organization and combo designs.
The fact that gw2 has less overall amount of builds is not a bad thing, because the game doesn’t rely on it.

To OP, I think your main issue is looking Gw2 as it should be a sequel of Gw1, when it has never been intended to be.
A lot of folks have done the same mistake and the result is people end up not liking Gw2, but that doesn’t mean the game is bad.
Think about buying a sportscar for off road and be disappointed.

• Leveling in gw2 is not difficult, you can get to 80 in about 30-35h just by killing mobs.
• Gw2 is not a stat based game. Sure equipment gives stats, but the difference between stat tears is so small it doesn’t matter that much. Between Rare and Exotic there’s only a 10% difference, same between Exotic and Ascended.
  A true stat based game is the one where you cannot kill another guy because he does 5 times more damage than you and has twice the amount of armor, and it end ups you hitting by 1000 and him by 10000.
• Full weapon availability is not a requisite, just a feature. In Gw1 you could wear any weapon, but there was little difference between them. In Gw2 weapon choice becomes more relevant in your playstyle. Staffs will be more supportive when greatswords will be more offensive.
  It’s neither a better or worse system, just different.

Ashen.2907:

Lanfear,

In GW1, by matching your secondary profession to your weapon, you could make very good attack use of a weapon not intended for your primary profession.

But you were still limited to a certain amount of useful weapons. It was not like having a warrior/monk and be as effective with a spear or longbow than a staff or hammer.

If I don’t remember wrong, Warrior/ranger was the combination with more based weapons, but the amount wasn’t bigger than what most professions have in Gw2.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Sorry the server are not in Seattle, they are in Austin Texas for the US and Frankfurt Germany for EU

No. All servers are in Austin. The thing is anet uses a server in Frankfurt that works as a bridge between Eu connections and Austin servers.

Hule.8794:

@Ansau
some points are valid.
- taking down outside and inside walls was bad, but not as bad heigh advantage at air keep where you basicly have zero chance to get enemy catas down. It also allowed defenders to build balista at inner and shoot down the catas before they breached outer. Or just use canon. Inteligent people also used canon splash damage as prevention against bubbles.

-traveling between camps is about the same time as on DBL,same for keeps, different is time needed to run form center of one keep(lord room) to center of other keep, but to walls and gates at outer, DBL is faster

-Lords will be adjusted

-sentries, on Alpine it will make sense if sentries will spot you, on Alpine they are strategically positioned, not so much on DBL through

-smaller structures helps defenders actually, having to run 5 minutes around the keep to be able to scout which sneaky wall/gate is enemy hitting is annoying. On Alpine Hills scout can be at outer wall and easily in 10 seconds be able to scout south/north.

It is pointless to talk about defending when we’re discussing the time needed to flip a map, as it mostly happens when there’re no enemies to defend structures.

Hule.8794:

Ansau.7326:

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

But that was possible only because gates could be max reinforced.
Make gates on Alpine to go Fortified too and its much harder.
Btw you can flip DBL in 20 minutes.

There was more than just only fortified walls and doors.
- You could take down both outside and inside with the same catas.
- Travelling between camps was a bit shorter and between keeps much more than DBL.
- Lords with joke health pool.
- Sentries didn’t spot you.
- Structures were much smaller and simpler = less time spent between outside walls and lord.

Decado.9304:

The Alpine border is only great when you compare it to the desert one. Its decent but has its own problems however i’d prefer to play it every single time.

The DBL is a karma map, nothing more, made purely for PPT’ers to cap/recap/recap ad infinitum. No structure is strategic and nothing other than keep is generally worth defending. They are all independent towers and have no relation to each other unlike ABL where at least towers and keeps were worth something.

The DBL WP system is just kittening shocking and whoever came up with it needs a boot in the nads.

It’s also too gimicky a map however at least they acknowledged how bad the laser event was and disabled it, pity they still insist we all want oodles of pve in our wvw. The shifting rock barricades and stealth channels serve no purpose and just irritate and interupt fights.

Wut? Alpine is the perfect map for karma train. A map you can flip in 12-15 min without any issue.

Pansertjald.5746:

Ansau.7326:

Just saying, Vsync is bad, period. It introduces lag which is not what you want in a fast paced game like Gw2.

No Vsync is not bad and it dos not introduces fps lag

Say whatever you want, but the way vsync works it introduces lag no matter what you do. There’re techniques to minimize it, but it is impossible to eliminate it.

Just saying, Vsync is bad, period. It introduces lag which is not what you want in a fast paced game like Gw2.

Basically because I’m tons of ways better with a mesmer than with a ele/necro. And because if I had to play any other profession I wouldn’t play at all.

Better have an alive mesmer than a dead ele/necro.
Better play with 20 guys + a mesmer than play with 20 guys.

Play at fullscreen resolution, fullscreen windowed has a hit of 10-15fps. Put fps limiter to “unlimited”.

Disable reflections, shadows, best texture filtering and put character model limit to “low”.

Go to Nvidia Panel and create a gw2 profile with:
- Anisotropic filter to x4
- Textures to “high performance”
- Energy mod to “maximum”

Lool sorry :P
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTvC5aMHrSM

The cpu is holding you. You can disable reflections, shadows, High res textures, enable effect LOD and put character limit to lowest.

But the ultimate solution is to upgrade to an i3 or i5.

I don’t have much time, so:
This is the build I use: http://goo.gl/r3zfSJ
And this is how I play it and how it performs: http://goo.gl/r3zfSJ

You’re basically a ranged DPS with CC.
Feedback is better against pug zergs, against guilds Well of Recall does more.
I don’t take Veil cause my guild relies on blasting smoke.

@lilypop a few things:
Gw2 issues are not gpu related, they are to cpu. It is not about the code related to the gpu and running in the cpu, it is about the code related to the game engine that doesn’t involve graphics.
As gw2 is a mmo, there’s a huge amount of these type of calculations, like player position, damage calculations, boons and conditions appliance, aoe player selection, range calculation, CC… Regardless the graphic settings you have, these calculations are still present and are still processed by your cpu. And as you get more players, the amount of these increases exponentially.

You think server do a lot of the calculations, when the reality is those are mostly done by the client in your computer.
The way you think it works is the way the new Camelot Unchained will work, but no how Gw2 does.
I measured the download rates in different situations.
- Guild Hall (no players) had a peak of about 7 KB/s and an average of 3 KB/s.
- LA (medium amount of players but doing nothing) had a peak of about 27 KB/s and an average of 8 KB/s.
- EoTM 50vs50 fight had a peak of 111 KB/s and an average of 41 KB/s.
- Loading EB map had a peak of 650 KB/s and an average of 65 KB/s.
There’s hardly 5 times more traffic in blob fights than standing still in LA.
Loading some maps downloads quite more data than blob fight.
Blob fight was hardly pushing a 0.08% of what my ethernet adapter is capable. Or better said, my ethernet adapter could handle 1250 people fighting each other.

Trying to guess the performance of that system is pointless. The specs are too low to give a proper idea of the performance of this game. It doesn’t even meet the minimum specs to play it decently (not to mistake with the minimum to run the game).
I have a fairly powerful setup and it is much easier for me to see where the spots are. Cpu usage ramp up all across cores when approaching populated areas, but some of them start to lower in insane populated scenarios, sign that the cpu is struggling with the main thread and all the rest have to wait for it, hence the lesser core usage.

@fermi I was referring to the idea of lolypop about issues being server related. With his theory, the power of cpu handling the client wouldn’t matter, and a fx 6300 should perform similarly than an i7.
You should have quoted the "If they did, ".

Just to say, dx11 brings multithreading to the API, but has nothing to do with the multithreading of the game engine, which is the main source of bottleneck in heavy situations.

Dx11 wouldn’t solve performance issues of gw2.

@lilypop servers have nothing, or very little, to do with the performance issues of gw2. If they did, a fx-6300 wouldn’t see such issues and would perform pretty equal than a oced i7, which is not the case.

First of all, server status also counts EoTM, so the result is a bit skewed.

• Baruch is mostly a pve server, the “very high” status is not the best representation of the actual wvw population we have, as a lot of people only show whenever a tag is up, there’s no roaming culture, and a lot only play for 1-2 hours per day to kill the time and do the dailies. SAB came and Baruch population has decreased considerably. And whenever an international server gets stacked they beat us easily, like it can be seen nowadays with Piken.
  Then, Baruch has a very volatile coverage along 24 hours. While it is true at night we are the server with the highest coverage, it is also true in some timezones we’re outnumbered even against mid table servers. Coveragewars2 is not updated, but I remember Baruch being 14th or 15th in mornings or late afternoons, while being 2nd or 3rd at nights for several weeks.
  But also, I’ve been playing during those offtimes of my server. Yesterday, as an example, there was just a 25 man zerg in EB, while borders were completely deserted.
  So my experience and opinion aren’t based only on high population situations.

• I’m not calling people lazy or dumb because they’re not successful when playing alone in these borderlands. I’m doing it to those who criticize DBL just because it involves a different mentality than Alpine, it is taken as an easy target for issues of WvW not related to the map, overexaggerate travel times and do all these from the ignorance, showed by how little people know how the new map works.
  Sorry, but people saying new borderlands are bad because you cannot longer flip it in 12 minutes or you need to pay attention to the map geography is silly and ridiculous.

• Any map will fail if there’s no population there. Alpine was extremely boring during 3-6am and EB before HoT, when pretty much everybody (at least on my tiers) was on Alpines fighting each other while waiting for HoT in hopes of a new WvW experience.
  Even pve maps are horrible if there’s no population. I remember back in the first days when Cursed Shore was insane due to event farming. Later they nerfed it and the map became unworthy to step.

• Scouting and roaming purpose is entirely anet’s fault with auto upgrades, guild upgrades impossible for small guilds, gimmick central event (and now lack of it).
  This, the exaggerated verticality in some places and the excessive pve stuff present are the only things that can be complained with solid arguments. Everything else needs personal preference or biased opinion to be held.

• Well, you cannot expect to be able to defend anything against +20 people with just 1 or 2 guys. That would make defense OP and WvW would become boring as hell. There’s a point where numbers prevail, and should do. But 1-2 against 10? That’s easily possible.
  I don’t have the precisely footage you’re asking me, but here is something similar. 2 mid-size guilds and some randoms vs a german blob with like 8-10 arrow carts if I remember well:
  https://youtu.be/bTvC5aMHrSM?t=503

Bringing back Alpine BL neither is a solution. Half of 2015 wasn’t fun at all, and people had a lot of hopes in HoT to bring a new and fresh map that stopped the OPness and boredom of karma train and golem rushes (how many have you seen in desert?). It seems people have forgotten that.

Let’s be real and clear, playerbase has taken DBL as the culprit of the issues of WvW, when the reality is the map is not that badly designed, and with some tweaks it can actually become very good.
There are far more irritating issues, like population and class balances, which haven’t been targeted because they already existed before HoT and people already complained about them. Doing it now to them wouldn’t be as louder as DBL, which is a completely new thing.
It’s like the new guy in school being bullied because he’s new.

Puck.9612:

Except it clearly doesn’t work on this map.
Look at EB vs. the desert bl, EB is pretty darn open but it actually does funnel people together. For example, If you are trying to head south towards bravost or umberglade you have choke points at the ogres, or the bridge in front of durios. Most of the map is set up like this. Open areas to allow fights with strategic choke points where you know you can ambush the enemy.
In the desert the paths restrict travel without funneling people together. You can have zergs run past each other without ever seeing each other. If you do happen to run into a much larger group you are screwed because you are stuck in a corridor together with no room to outmaneuver them. You end up pirate shipping and hoping they are just really bad players because they have every advantage in that situation. If you get a call for action across the map you can’t just head in that direction, you have to make detours to find the path that leads to that area, and hope the fight isn’t in an area with some annoying PvE mechanic like stealth sandstorms or constant cripple.

You’re implying DBL is just a labyrinth, which is plainly wrong.
On both sides of northern and southern camps there are big open areas. Same between south towers and respawns. All upstairs of fire keep is an empty open area. All the area around north towers is also open space. And around the center there’re also open places. Only structures and nearby keeps have more defined paths.
But you also fail to see that these more defined paths are a key design of DBL to, in fact, disincentive the blob metagame. It’s like you’re complaining about a ferrari not doing well offroad…

And the rest is just a show of how badly you interpret the new borderland. The worst thing you can do is to play like if it was Alpine, and that’s why you fail so much.
- In desert you don’t cross all the map to defend, you should have covered the map so there’s people all around. And even if a full blob map shows to take a keep, with the new keep designs and with such strong walls there’s time for everything.
- In desert you should pay attention on map flips, enemies movements through sentries and get your mind skills to predict where a zerg is going to. Not I go wherever I please without thinking the consequences.
- And please, don’t tell me you’re not skilled enough to scape from some dudes you see at range 5000-7000 with such close gaps, map levels and structures covering such large space…

Sorry, but this argument about how badly tunneled is desert doesn’t hold itself by any point.

@Jana, my time calculations are timed from base respawn until I reach all camps. Shrines only affect you in earth keep, but the proper route doesn’t involve going through it, unless you own earth keep, in which case you won’t be affected.

Puck.9612:

Ansau.7326:

Basically, capping camps in DBL requires map knowledge, takes just a bit longer and no way is the drama some of you pretend. Most of you complain about needing to learn the paths to be nearly as good as before, and sorry but that is a lame argument..

It’s not about learning the paths, it’s about being restricted to them, as I already explained above…

Every structure has at least 2 paths, and most 3 or even more. Defining paths is a way to incentive fights, which is what most people is seeking.

So, some complain they don’t find fights, others complain about paths and want a more open map, which doesn’t promote more fights.

The thing seems to be to get complains from anywhere, because there must be complaints.

Jana.6831:

Ansau.7326:

Jana.6831:

I’m just throwing in that I’ve been able to flip all camps on our BL (citadel WP as only WP) within one tick ( = 15 mins). Yes, flipping camps was my sport. One took me 1,5 mins from start to finish (first attack until it was my team’s colour).
Try that on the new BLs.

Camps from desert take pretty much the same to clean up, if not less. Elite specializations brought a lot of power creep and aoe pressure that counter the difficulty added, plus now dolyaks are out of range.

With several builds you can even spend about the same time capping than actually killing the npcs, which takes around 40s from the first hit until you capped, and your 1.5min is far from being surprising, even before HoT people were taking a camp in 40-50s.

PD: Capping ring lasts 20s, not 30.

I really don’t get why no one seems to understand me.
1) I tried to estimate the time from point to point (not really keeps or center of keeps) on the old borderlands – that’s why I brought this up.
2) I said that I found an old video in which the ring was up 30 s – I also said in the same sentence that I haven’t watched the time since June, so I have no idea whether or not that changed

3. All of this irrelevant anyway as the only thing that mattered and why I brought it up was that you could run around all camps (= more than the BL) within 8 mins on the ABLs.

I could explain a bit more what has changed when capping camps and whether or not it’s easier or faster or whatnot – but that wasn’t my point

Well, you exaggerated quite a bit with those 8 minutes, as capping the 6 camps already took 6-7 minutes.
I’ve now run all camps in home and enemy bls. With my mesmer it takes around 11-12 minutes to reach all camps plus around 50s to take each of them, which makes around 16-17 minutes to flip all camps from a bl.
But it was pretty much the worst/slowest case:
- Mesmer is one of the slowest OOC professions.
- Didn’t used swiftness at all, just +25% trait. Expect 25-30% less time with swiftness.
- Had to deal with barricades and surround the north towers. Owning garrison in home BL and a north tower in enemy BL reduces easily 1-1.5 minute the entire journey.

Basically, capping camps in DBL requires map knowledge, takes just a bit longer and no way is the drama some of you pretend. Most of you complain about needing to learn the paths to be nearly as good as before, and sorry but that is a lame argument.

Also, it forces roamers to play with tactics and prediction of what the enemy will do. In alpine you could rush all camps in a matter of seconds, which ended up frustrating for the players in disadvantage. Now you can have the control of a borderland if you are smarter than the enemy, even if they outnumber you.
I myself and alone managed to control and point 5 of the 6 camps during 3 ticks against 3 enemy guys in an enemy BL…

But probably anet overestimated the smartness of wvw playerbase, in which anything but a flat and straightforward map is just too much.

Jana.6831:

I’m just throwing in that I’ve been able to flip all camps on our BL (citadel WP as only WP) within one tick ( = 15 mins). Yes, flipping camps was my sport. One took me 1,5 mins from start to finish (first attack until it was my team’s colour).
Try that on the new BLs.

Camps from desert take pretty much the same to clean up, if not less. Elite specializations brought a lot of power creep and aoe pressure that counter the difficulty added, plus now dolyaks are out of range.

With several builds you can even spend about the same time capping than actually killing the npcs, which takes around 40s from the first hit until you capped, and your 1.5min is far from being surprising, even before HoT people were taking a camp in 40-50s.

PD: Capping ring lasts 20s, not 30.

Before HoT people were quite bored about Alpine.

• Karma train blobs had it too easily.
• Defending an entire bl with a blob was too easy.
• Structures were too simple. Once walls were broken that was no longer a structure, but an extension of the flat map the alpine is. People knew every last spot to attack and to defend so, unless you were ninjaing it without enemies the only solution was to treb from another structure you owned.
• Too easy to take even a keep without enemies.
• Map was too straightforward, and there was no room for mindplay with the terrain.

Anet designed the desert map trying to address these things.

• WP mechanic changed, so now blobs have to spread to cover all structures.
• Map redesigned to a more square solution, so keeps are further from each other.
• Now towers and keeps are more complex. They can be attacked from much more places, and more particularly, those are separated from each other.
• They separated the structures so each one requires an isolated strategy and fight.
• Walls separation became bigger so there’s no room for out/in ninja catas.
• Lords became more complex and difficult, Those days soloing a keep or a tower in a matter of seconds are gone.
• Added complexity to the map. People now can play more with the terrain and it requires more attention and knowledge. No more autorun and I cross the map.

Anet had a promising solution for the map, but as they overtuned some changes (structure separation, map complexity and structure complexity, choke points) and added non-healthy things (auto upgrades, pve stuff, pve grinding guild upgrades), paired with the lack of proper test and feedback of the playerbase, the final result ended up being very underwhelming.

But the player base is also guilty for the actual situation. There have been a lot of exaggerated complains, which show how ridiculous the playerbase can become.
People have taken the new bl with the mentality of the old, and they have forgotten what was making alpine so boring: EASINESS.

• While it is true the complexity or air and fire keeps is too much, the rest of the map is quite well designed in terms of complexity. There are a lot of spots which gives a position advantage, and those seeking for them will have a much easier fight. But people seems prefer to farm enemies in a flat surface instead of quality fights.
  The funny thing is the most and best remembered thing of the playerbase are garrison fights, which were the quality ones with added complexity.
• While it is true navigating through some places can be even dangerous, the general added complexity allows more mindplay and those creative players are rewarded. People only want to rush to straightforward fights and bags. Mindgame and the unknown is not for them.
• While it is true keeps design are too over-elaborate, they are designed for multi-attacks. But people still have the blob map mentality.
• And while it is true DBL is not the most fun bl possible, the hatred over it is silly. EB with 50-100 men queue, the rest of the borderlands empties and people still complain DBL are empty. Move your kitten and start playing them instead of complaining them while sitting doing nothing because EB is full!!!

Personally I’ve had very interesting fights in the DBL. More than 1 hour trying to take keeps, difficulties with the portal, deaths because bad terrain decisions, kills through taking advantage of the map, soloing towers and it didn’t take that much, spending more time capping camps than actually killing the npcs…

The saddest thing is those who will complain about the new alpine bl will be the same who griped about the desert: People unwilling to try new things or to adapt to a new scenario, and well-sit in their comfort zone of blob farming and karma train PPT.

As a commander from a known guild said in one of the Reyana’s interviews:
“Alpine borderlands were just fun, they were great, they were easy, you could flip a whole map in 12 minutes, but that didn’t matter because… you could flip it in 12 minutes and then another blob would full map in the enemy bl. They would run to flip it in 10 minutes, but you would be there waiting for them”.

Try another pcie x16 slot or check in the BIOS it is set to work at x16.

Gw2, unlike other games, is a very sensible pcie speed game.

Your gpu is woirking at only x1. Reseat it.

Boonshare is cheesy and boring, but effective. But only works in closed raids and a roster prepared for it (a minimum of 2 boonshare mesmers and a boon rev in the same party).

Pretty much everyone hate it. In fact, some guilds abusing it gained such bad fame others are rejecting gvg, it’s pretty much the same as venom share.
You can use it, but be prepared if you’re focused in an unusual way, or you get insulted for using it.

The basic build is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAsuEFox+0QJJhMJA1LuybG-w
Usage:
- F1 and F4
- Mimic and F5 when casting
- SoL and F3 when casting
- Mimic (after returning from Continuum Shift)
- SoL and F3 when casting
- SoL and F2 when casting

This is the one I used. After the boonshare you’re a kinda of ranged DPS (izerker + Protected Phantasms is key), and also it allows another share with #4 shield and Illusionary Inspiration (bug).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRnknBFoh9pBmpBEgiFijquS/0S1MAClF6cD2sPD-TlSBABbcCA4SZwCPAA80HApSQi2f4KleWq+DAHBgIOEAkCYilRA-w

People have been complaining about portal and moa since betas back in May/June 2012. Both skills have been nerfed in the past from a result of all the whining.

The moaning in forums is nothing new.

It seems you have cpu turboboost disabled. Also you should play with reflections disabled and character model limit to low.

So here we are again with people complaining about mesmers because they cannot face the fact that they’re being outplayed by a profession that doesn’t do what others do (insane damage while tanking everything).

- Moa is not OP because it has such a long CD, in a real match a mesmer can only drop about 5-8 moas, meaning 50-80s of single target hard CC. Also, Moa can be blocked, evaded, blinded or interrupted. It’s not that hard to survive with it, and even you can do productive things while being moa’ed.
Now think about some other skills that have hard CC in AoE and have ridiculous low CD. Their effect aren’t that big compared to Moa, but as they can be spammed, the overall effect is similar if not greater.

- Portal is not OP because it has a high CD, and to take advantage of it you need real knowledge of map rotation, in which case you’re already outplaying the enemies. It’s simply a tool to allow another playstyle instead of killing everything in a point with an OP build carrying you.

Anyway, if mesmers are still relevant no matter what nerf or meta is because, and only because, average mesmer players are more skilful than what you find in other professions. This higher skill allow the main mesmers to overcome the nerfs, to be more decisive in fights with map rotation and to have a higher general knowledge of team fights and conquest gamemode.

And people arguing for more nerfs for mesmers really need to start thinking they aren’t that good, and probably most of them are being carried by OP builds based on passive procs or that have unbalanced spammable skills with insane damage or CC.
- Mesmer has one of the lowest sustained damage.
- Mesmer burst has been gutted.
- Mesmer sustain is average at most, even with defensive stats and pretty much all defensive skill you can throw in a build.

I can think a lot of reasons:
- Scepter has projectiles, same as staff. Engis, DH, revs and mesmers have access to reflection skills. Having both weapons being projectile based can hurt you.
- Sword AA cleaves while scepter doesn’t. In PvP cleaving is quite important, even if damage is garbage.
- Scepter block only blocks 1 attack, while BF allows you to evade all attacks during 2s.
- If you’re inside the point, Confusing Images can stop activating if the enemy goes behind you, putting you and the skill in CD.
- iLeap is mostly used for the teleport, not the immobilize. With the scepter you lose this key part (think about going up in mid of Nifhel, or getting access to the different levels of mid in Foefire).

Basically, even if scepter gives you more condi pressure, you lose a lot of active defense and mobility that can be more advantageous in crucial moments of the matchup.

Make sure the gpu is working at x16 and it is not in low power mode. Check it with gpu-z.

Dawdler.8521:

Dal.5872:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..

So the game breaking FSP MonoBlob is moaning about nightcapping. When FSP plays I can’t even play during primetime, being in the same part of a map as your blob brings ping rates up into the 1000’s and now you say my gaming outside primetime should count for nothing. Dream on…..

Dream on is the proper words. FSP can barely gather 10 people primetime on a blue border commander because everyone is busy glorifying the fightserver on EB. Even EB is barely crowded outside reset night. 10-20 man queues in primetime the last week. A while ago that number was more like 40-70 and FSP faced far, far worse night cappers then.

Everyone is getting tired of the current WvW with desert border and there has been a major loss to BDO – a loss thats going to hit harder on servers with a larger PvP oriented population, compared to mindless blob servers. nightcapping may be a huge flaw in the scoring system but it is a minor factor in this.

Anyone who is looking in BDO a substitute of WvW or PvP scenario will be hugely disappointed.
BDO PvP and GvG has everything to unbalance these games modes and make them utterly boring and disengaging.

Caedmon.6798:

“Maintain” war ? Barauch is absent during the day,getting wrecked ppt wise during prime,fights arent even worth mentioning,able to crawl out of their caskets at night as i remember them.And night PPT is All they can,and no..it shouldnt let a server win based on only capping at night when the other 2 servers are asleep.If you cant maintain daytime/prime time and lose every fight you have,you deserve to lose..and not win cus of a night ppt game.

Barcuh primetime is not the same as other servers. You’re mistaken when you say Baruch is wrecked at prime. Might be your prime, but not our.

In fact, even the good old Vizunah or SFR were beaten by Baruch at its primetime.
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/4/80
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/4/176

Btw, Kodash has so much PPT this week because they play like there was no tomorrow when Baruch is having lunch and dinner. Such merit, that skill, much wow.

TorquedSoul.8097:

I have the data for all the tiers but I generally only look at NA servers because I am looking for a new server in the lower tier. I just realized that the EU data is flakey so I pulled that report I linked. Supply efficiency should not be above 100%. Never happens on NA data but it is happening in EU. odd.

The OP is right that off hour capping is a huge advantage. Whether you view it as unfair depends on how you view the game. If you think that WvW is about building global communities then it isn’t really unfair. But if you think the game should be strictly skill based, then you hate it.

In its current state community organization overrides “skill”.

Well, anet has always thought WvW as a global and massive fight, like real war. An umpredictable place where not always the best wins. There have been a lot of questions about balance and such, in which anet devs have always said WvW is not meant to be balanced. Also they applaud the server pride and the existence of server communities, and it has been one of the main reasons not to merge servers.

SPvP was concede as a platform where the personal skill was more important, in such a point that it could have a meaningful impact over the final result.

13 pages and people still think the api is the issue…

Your cpu is not good enough to play cpu based games like gw2 or LoL. AMD FX have terrible single core performance, which is what it is important.

In gw2, enable effect LOD, disable reflections and shadows, and put Character Model limit to “Low”.