Guild Wars 2

as a mesmer, thieves still trouble me, and I have to play smart against a war, meaning as long as I’ve noticed its a war fast enough and set up for his burst I’m ok, but my spec isn’t thief friendly.

For a war I need to be ready for a long fight. I’ve had my Time warp come up twice in a war fight… he was persistent.

Necros can be trouble if you let em live.. just kill em fast, TW drops them like no tomorrow, same with a Mes if you have the mesmer not the clone.

I don’t shatter much except on thieves because you only have short bursts to hurt them. I’m specd to siege and defend, my burst for a thief is staff/chaos storm and a lot of decoy work to get them to blow their wad on the decoy. If they happen to have a Bow I’m happy, if not I have to work for the win.

I really have to work for a thief kill personally as they arnt visible long enough for my hard hitting phantasms to hurt them. I actually rolled a thief just so i could better counter their stuff in WvW environment… I found it helpful.

I got kitteny against a thief just today where I was holding off on my heal to draw him/her back to the camp and let em stun me just 1 too many times and she took my tags …

Fighting another mesmer can be problematic too, it comes down to spec/gear/utility choice often for me. It’s easy to see quickly if the mesmer has chops or not as another mesmer, but usually it’s a draw rather than a loss on close calls, but I’ve never lost a 1v1 against a mesmer who uses Moa =p.

Raffie.7865: “Play the profession you think is fun”
>> This is the best advice for any game any scenario imo.

As a mesmer I solo all the time, most of it is not exactly by choice. Either I was scouting something trying to guard/cap a supply point/Quaggan on off-peek times or moving to target location, or of course my favorite securing hiding spots/portals because forgot to clear me out of the keep… But like an earlier poster mentioned solo is rarely the most efficient use of your skills in the WvW arena, and I agree.

peeps should pick their server for what they want 6 months from now .. not by an influx that has been 1-2 weeks old and likely to shift with the next big thing. Those who xfer off a full server because of queue times, are not much better as it doesn’t allow for settling. The xfer zerg will go to what they want, and you either ride it out or become part of it.

I think it sounds neat except doesn’t the final point tally not “just” the placement determine global rankings?

Wotah.2975:

Scyntrus.2458:

Raydaq.5421:

man WVW is SOOOOOOOO fun this week!!

We got our whole borderlands into a group yesterday (4 people) and took one camp. then 50 ppl showed up from JQ so i went back to farming in Orr and then logged out.

I can’t wait to get in and do some more!

seriously though, every match up is soo messed up this week…

Oh hey! I think I was there with you.

Anyways, HoD here. I’ve actually been having more fun now that we’re fighting an uphill battle. The trick to not being demoralized is to make an alt, preferably a thief or mesmer (facerolling classes). If you die, LOL WHO CARES, REPAIR IS 44c.

It’s actually quite fun having to resort to the most obscure tactics available in the game. The remaining players on WvW are the most dedicated ones, not the farmers or karmawagoners, so it’s easy to get a cooperative 5 man group. (btw, max # of players at peak times for us on a map is like 20) With this 5 man group, we managed to cap a couple towers. But even with all of us on superior siege, we still can’t defend against the kitten 50 man JQ zerg auto attacking the gate.

In other news, I saw how SBI took over half the map yesterday, then JQ came on a couple hours later and zerged it all back.

Autoattacking?! Are you kidding me? I use F1:2,4; F2:2,3(self),4,5;F3:5, and F4:2,4…. Come on now!

lols i get carpel tunnel during seige trying find all the seige equipment and wall defenders… I feel like something is wrong in the world when i can’t find anything but the door to hit, even then the camera panning … auto-attack /le sigh~!

Spacefish.4623:

On JQ… me. jk.

I can’t remember their names, but any commander from [LOST] (I think it’s Legion of Steel, not the LOST tag guild from henge of quitravi). Zeromass might be one? Anyone form that guild has always had good ideas.

Last night Rawnoodles and ESOD[sp?] seemed very competent in borderlands.

I spend most of the time running my own crew taking camps and ganking so I haven’t worked with many of them, but JQ has an abundance of good ones.

Rawnoodles is [ESOL] … it sounds like “ESOD” a lot on TS the way some the guys say it, though lol

people confuse not getting every complaints answered in the public forums as dev disappearance. They have given responses they’ve given their intents, some just are not happy with those answers or demand instant gratification.

Every game that come out “everyone” says the same thing… “if you don’t fix this thing I’m upset about, I will re-post, respond to me” over and over and my 100 other “cant wait till stuff is balanced according to plan will do the same and you will fail as a company”. So many times in life the answer is wait and see. They have pages and pages. They have your input already, they are not ignoring they have answered.

Dev responses cause more drama than they help, once they have already given a public announcement on the topic. It will happen or it wont. People will like it or they wont. Repeating the same “you will fail because you didn’t respond to me”, just gets the others worked up and empowered to regurgitate the same thing over and over in stead of enjoying whats there already and providing constructive feedback, and more importantly accepting when their feedback wasn’t chosen for the changes.

There is diminishing returns. A solo player should have diminishing returns against larger numbers, hence a “soft cap” on how many players a person can reasonably solo. The more opponents the exponentially harder it should get.

That was a good fight just had over the bays by SBI in HoD borderlands. I thought it was a lot of fun and we musta wiped 3 times+ on second keep. Most of JQ said same thing that heard/read it was a good fight even “late” into the matchup.

aside from the northern supply camp, i really hate spawn campers.. they rob me of karma and cash =p

If invaders don’t turn over camps or at least attack them there’s no karma or cash to be had, since the kill ratio at the boarder is too low to fund my wallet… this is my practical reason why spawn camping is lame.

The reason i exclude the northern one is because there are infinite-esque combinations of way to drop down over cliffs and even invul bugs used by defenders, no one needs to use the door except to try and have a speedy escape, or wait for reinforcements to take the camp 10 feet away. In that case letting too many out of the gate = losing the camp.

I don’t like free or penalty free server transfers myself, but I think whats allowed for one server has to be the same for all.. regardless of population. Whatever final solution comes of the server instability situation needs to be across the boards imo. I do believe it will come personally, but there’s more waiting and seeing on the horizon as they math out and people get the hopping out of their system en masse. I xferred servers weeks ago and the last of my small crew is still trying to xfer as he can only get into the “full” server during very off peak times and he works during those times… it isn’t as easy as everyone just push move and a guild pops into a full server, but xfers should cost money after x amount of xfers, imo.

Once servers are locked into tiers… a gem cost to xfer based on tier rank might be helpful as it would be consistent across the servers by tier not necisarily population (although population can effect ranking it is not the only factor). 2000 gems to go to t1/T2, 200 gems for lowest tiers etc… after an account has already used its x number of free xfers.

Out-manned bonus is no where near the equalizing concept it might be meant to fill. It is a nice start but the buff alone is not enough to compensate for how heavily out-manned you have to be to get it. In the small fight it can make a difference but doesn’t offer enough against large-scale assaults if it is meant to do so that is. It’s been said wvw is not mean to be equal playing field, it’s meant to drop people to appropriate tiers in its attempt to offer equality but while mass server hoppers are in effect that will not balance out quickly.

I think zone spawn campers are lame, however they will always find a way. I’ve been on server match that’s been slaughtered and we finally get our map back just to get into the camp spawning point… trying to hold off the server who had conquered everything in the night while we achieved upgrades was a conscious decision rather than just mindless griefing, so I can see other sides of it, but i don’t like spawn camping personally. At least here there is 3 ways out of the spawn and they give the legendary guards to draw an imaginary line.

I think that if spawn points had supply camps they’d either be empty always, or people would just use the uncontested port to run back for supply then port to other port locations. I think this would hinder the losing sides more than help them as the higher scoring servers would have multiple port locations and not need to do supply trains anymore if they could just port home and back…

@ Lanerva and Johnyrockets.

I did say numbers are important, but the question was what else can be done to contribute aside from a zerg.
And yes I’m in top gear, I will admit it does make a difference, but I’ve matched against similar geared and been beaten and beaten others… Smart player with good situational awareness has a bigger advantage all things being equal.

“fend off”
Draw them into Kill zones or ranges that will trigger NPC aggro. lead them into committing to the engagement by not blowing cooldowns and saving heals when they try to skirmish from a safe distance. Always have a plan for when you get wired or necro pulled. Use terrain and vector type flanking.. ie dont try to catch them straight chase, but vector at an angle that will put you to where they want to go, and get there first. If they think you are running they often chase, use terrain to turn tables. Let them come barreling over the cliff to kill you as you pop your cooldowns on them then return for their friends who are now engaged in the camp NPCs.

Use an enemy downed player to kill living ones.. I don’t stake em right away when i’m solo, get a couple down and enemy groups can panic… lots of downs can make em nervous if smaller numbers. Players panic and they usually die. If there’s no NPC they can rally on, that players time is numbered anyways… let a couple try to save em and get more for your money. When defending, know how far out reinforcements are and when need to call for them.. ie can you handle 5, 10 etc.. it shouldn’t be an ego thing. If you know what you can do you will be able to give accurate numbers to the larger force as to what you need for cavalry. GW2 favors the moving player, don’t stand still. Make it hard to be targeted easily. Situational awareness is everything for this.

Soloing camps
Learn the camps solo and social aggro radius as well as their “tether”.. ie when do they break off solo or as a group. Kill players before NPCs. Much of taking a camp solo is controlling how many at a time you need to work and have an exit strategy if jumped always. Know what you can 1v1, 2v1 and so on. If jumped while solo clearing… drag them out, it should be part of exit strat to begin with. If they chase boldly pounce em soon as the NPCs break off, should already know where the spot is. The longer it takes you to take a camp the longer that cross sword is on the map and more likely to be jumped, always camera pan for enemy as you fight. Don’t get caught unprepared.

I almost solely WvW as a mesmer I’m aware we have a lot of tricks to work with. I can’t speak for other classes. when I duo it’s usually with a necro friend. These are only a couple ideas to show there’s a lot to contribute in a small camp defense/cap role. If 1-3 player can keep 5-15 busy for a length of time, that’s just math. I hope these are helpful solo/small group ideas for you.

I’ve seen a lot of small numbers turn away larger numbers by intelligence and occasionally bravery.

Not saying numbers mean nothing, but a good player can fend off a group, an organized well played group can fend off a smaller zerg, and most importantly an organized server can react quickly to commands to put the right amount of people in the right place, rather than strictly zergforce reaction to every call for support.

It only takes 1-2 to capture any unguarded camp, but 1-2 player can fend off 3-4 times their numbers, for example.

if only we could train yaks to use portals…

shortcake.8659:

i’d recommend better guards.

you mean assign extra people to guard against exploiters?

afaik there is no intended method to enter a keep aside from breaking down a gate/wall first. Portals even require the mesmer to have gone through a destroyed wall/gate first before they can portal people in. So unless missing some legit way to get in without a breech, there’s a potential exploit, bug or anet oversight, not a lack of useless people standing around doing nothing but watching for exploiters…

if it’s a legit way, like didn’t clear or some open hole in the wall, then it makes sense that it wasn’t played properly, but this is not the case in any way I can see.

i cant find this thread you mentioned.. anyone have link?

It’s been days since there’s been a breech, it was not likely from clearing oversight.

I think it is a joke personally. Every time a Mesmer has MOAd me Ive killed her. Yeah it takes me out of the fight for a min, but you run fast.. you can draw them away and its now down for 2 minutes. If a mesmer wants to waste a slot with a 2 min cool-down that is a CC effect that actually lets the prey get away, np but such a waste imo.

I have np keeping 2-3 phantasms up once they are up, with the illusion HP signet personally. I’m always swapping between the GS melee illusions and the staff ranged illusions to OT, DPS or cripple/Vulnerability the mob.

It does take a min to get 3 phantasms going but 3 illusions is a matter of seconds. With illusion builds that’s 9% less damage taken and 9% more damage inflicted right there. If AE is pretty intense ill put the ranged illusions up just to keep em up as I work in melee ones… rinse repeat, as I cycle in Chaos Storm. With 3 illusions up I haven’t found a dungeon mob that beats on me through chaos armor and a staff.

GS final hit is 2100+ against the training dummy, and the berserker’s final quad hit is 1200+. It’s not the burst damage you might see in others but I’m often the last alive soloing the mob while the others are rezing and running back.

I do agree the movement speed sucks as IMO the focus isn’t worth the speed buff. I have the rune of the centaur set which is power/precession/bleed and final stack is swiftness every-time we heal, which if you like the mantra heal is constant.

I’m not saying i wouldn’t like to see some improvements and we are not OP in a dungeon, but Mesmer isn’t for auto-attack and take a nap imo. My build is meant to Tank/OT close up (staff) and phantasm/GS ranged damage. I wear Berserker and Valkyrie Armor for high Power and crit%. Sword is Berserker, Staf is Valk. I keep feedback up most dungeons to both damage projectile users as well as a 3rd instant trigger of chaos amor.

hope this is helpful.